Well you know I looked around for other jobs, but there weren't other things going on in independent film at that moment that I could easily join--everyone was in the same stasis, waiting for funding to come through, and I didn't have connections yet in the town. I did once try to get an English teaching job to have something while I looked for something else, but honestly what happened was that I showed up for the interview, they were like wow your English is great! I reminded them that I was born and educated in the US and held advanced degrees from pretty good schools. Their answer was, yes but we can only pay you like a local Chinese teacher because you have a Chinese face. If you remember anything about that time, this was a difference of several thousand RMB/month, and lots of perks. So there was no way I was going to accept that on face--to be paid so much less than some of the teachers who were from, say, an Eastern European country who had themselves very imperfect English, but had Western facial features? No. Also this all took place in a very condensed period of time--it felt like forever but the truth is that I worked there for something around 8 months or so for real.
It's at this point in the story where I start yelling at the screen "Get off!! Get off!!"
You must've been fishing around with every line available for something, anything, else to hedge this bet.
Well you know I looked around for other jobs, but there weren't other things going on in independent film at that moment that I could easily join--everyone was in the same stasis, waiting for funding to come through, and I didn't have connections yet in the town. I did once try to get an English teaching job to have something while I looked for something else, but honestly what happened was that I showed up for the interview, they were like wow your English is great! I reminded them that I was born and educated in the US and held advanced degrees from pretty good schools. Their answer was, yes but we can only pay you like a local Chinese teacher because you have a Chinese face. If you remember anything about that time, this was a difference of several thousand RMB/month, and lots of perks. So there was no way I was going to accept that on face--to be paid so much less than some of the teachers who were from, say, an Eastern European country who had themselves very imperfect English, but had Western facial features? No. Also this all took place in a very condensed period of time--it felt like forever but the truth is that I worked there for something around 8 months or so for real.
Just like reddit: the best stuff is in the comments
Hope things are well with you.