#And the whole application and interview process is a nightmare and a half

[ailurinae]

Look, it's probably just not possible for me to do any of those. Or to the extent I could do them I would probably completely and utterly burn out and have to quit. I've never held any of those jobs and there is good reason for that.

For sure waiter or other food service would not be doable. I actually tried to help out a friend at a food stall once and within an hour I fell apart had to just leave. Someone else had brought me but wasn't there, I just walked home, several miles.

Retail, perhaps I could do, at least for a time, if I didn't have to run a checkout line. I could not do checkout/cashier.

Call center/help desk is closest to something I have done, I have been tech support, but it was never call center, it was always onsite, and for internal. Yes people could call us, but it was more common to get stuff via the helpdesk web interface, email, or just people walking up. And while we might solve things over the phone or web/email, it was usually perfectly possible to go the the system having issues. And sometimes required, for hardware issues, or hardware upgrades, etc.

And that kind of tech work is very different and much much easier than a pure call center situation, and doubly so if it a call center for external customers. Internal customers there is usually a way to remote into people's machines even if you can't physically go to them. External customers, that is usually not possible. And while I *can* talk a user through just about anything, it is often vastly harder than if I can remotely or physically access the computer myself. The level of communication needed is extraordinary, and when it is verbal, it is immensely draining.

Things like server-side application support, and system admin are much better for me, I am better at setting things up, at maintenance, and at figuring out and fixing hard problems, than dealing with huge numbers of relatively simple problems like end user desktop usually is.

you cant move up and become a manager or anything either you will always be at the bottom most entry level position. however hours will be as typical for that position and you still get the 100k. basically i just want to know which of these jobs you’d be happiest doing if you didnt have to worry about anything outside of work lol

[rimouskis]

hey! I got a new job! that's crazy! I actually kept a huge spreadsheet to track my job search, from my layoff last year through three different job offers. obvs I'm not gonna share the spreadsheet itself but I wanna share some numberrrrrrsssss

over the course of 11 months, I applied to 142 jobs [not including any "easy apply" options on linkedin, which would easily add another 80 or so jobs to this list. if any of those easy apply applications led to an interview, they were added to my spreadsheet].

of those 142, I heard back from 25. I was simply rejected from 58, and never heard from 59.

of the jobs I interviewed for, I was rejected after the first round 12 times and rejected after the second round three times.

I made it to the third round of interviews three times, and all three times I was offered the job.

I removed myself from contention for three roles that were interested in me. I rescinded my candidacy for various reasons like compensation, wanting to be an actual employee instead of a contractor, stuff like that.

I also want to say that many times I interviewed and then was still ghosted, lol. it's so gross to me that companies don't have the wherewithal to communicate with people after speaking with them, especially face-to-face.

some anecdotes:

despite these numbers looking atrocious (and trust me, they FELT atrocious), I had pretty good luck. I secured my first job offer 2 months after starting my job search.

there was a MUCH heavier gap between the first job offer and the second (closer to five months). the reasons for that were: I had started my new job and didn't apply anywhere for a whole month, and also that job destroyed my mental health so badly that I genuinely cannot speak of it lol.

THAT BEING SAID, because the second job offer had a very long interview period, there were only three months between me starting my new job (first job offer) and me sending in my application that led to the second job offer. so, frankly, given that the job almost destroyed my life, I think three months is a pretty good turnaround.

I had a VERY good rate of return between the second job offer and the third. I applied to only 42 jobs and secured interviews for a whopping ~25% of them. maybe I'd finally Gotten Good at applying for jobs after applying to roughly two a day for half a year lol.

that being said, I'd also slowed down a lot in my application grind. I was very demoralized and also felt a lot of complicated feelings around turning down the second job offer. I had very good reasons for it, but it was still an incredibly hard decision and it threw me off my game for a while. I'd also become choosier in what I applied for.

finally, 100ish days after being offered that second job, I was offered the third—and final, for this saga—job. My Long Nightmare Was Over.

so: why share this? firstly, I'm proud of my recordkeeping and wanted to share it, haha. secondly, I know everyone is complaining about the job market, but in case anyone else is in the trenches right now: I just want to tell you that I see you, I feel you, and this has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

applying to jobs was like pulling teeth for me. job SEARCHING, itself, causes (for some reason) an emotional reaction in me so strong that you'd think the process was lab-designed to cause me stress and extreme self-doubt.

I've gotten a lot better at it in the last year, though, and my tolerance and stamina for it is much better. but christ alive, it was an emotionally-taxing grind.

job searching sucks. in several industries, the job market is a total blood bath right now. if you need to talk about it, I'm always happy to lend an understanding ear.

anyways. yay numbers. hopefully I don't have to do that again for a VERY long time.

[peachy-panic]

Only Temporary: Sebastian Tate

Hello. I was completely blown away by the positive response I got on the first piece of Jaime’s story (title under construction). Thank you to everyone who had a kind word to say about it! You made me really happy I made the mildly frightening choice to post.

In the interest of acclimating to the no-rules, freedom-to-post-out-of-order structure of this community, I wanted to introduce a new piece of the puzzle this time, with a new character that will come into play later.

Also, this piece goes into a little bit of the details, but for frame of reference on the BBU-adjacent thing: this story takes place in a not-so-distant future of the BBU, where WRU has undergone some changes. I look forward to exploring this world building more as I go.

Anyway, I’m rambling again. Thanks for reading. Here it is:

WARNINGS: General BBU warnings, talk of institutionalized slavery, classism, and general terribleness of large corporations. Referenced past homophobia and rough parental relationships, briefly implied/referenced non-con.

When Sebastian reflects on the day he graduated from med school, a sort of emptiness is the memory that first bobs to the surface. Among the cheers and camera flashes in the crowd, white coats and proud smiles, what Sebastian recalls most vividly from that day is looking out into the sea of parents and families and people there to support their loved ones on one of the biggest days of their lives, and not seeing a single person that had come for him.

What should have been one of the happiest moments of his life had been quickly overshadowed by the sinking feeling that none of it mattered as much as it would have if he had someone to share it with. Like there was something so fundamentally wrong with his life, that even something as objectively good and right and decent as becoming a doctor could be dulled over into a feeling of nothingness.

Perhaps, he thinks in hindsight, that moment had been foreshadowing for the following months ahead of him.

Watching rejection after rejection pour in from his top residency programs had felt like nothing short of his own personalized nightmare. He had spent several nights in a row on the phone with Alex, his undergrad roommate and only friend, clamoring back from the edge of many a panic attack, spiraling into all-out existential dread about the future and the past and what all of it meant for him if he couldn’t land an internship, let alone a real job out of school. To his credit, Alex never gave up hope in his friend. Or at least, he did a decent job hiding it if he did. Which was probably exactly what Sebastian needed to get through that particularly dark time in his life, and a good reminder of what a solid friend he had. Even if it was a party of two.

Unfortunately, Sebastian did not have the same faith in himself.

He was able to keep up some facade of optimism as his top five were picked off one by one. Telling himself, despite his devastation, that they were a pretty far reach, anyway. Even with good academic standing, it was famously no walk in the park to land yourself at John Hopkins or Mayo as a first-year. He even maintained a brave face as his first few safety programs reached capacity and moved forward without his name on the roster.

It wasn’t until he received his final rejection letter from some internal medicine place in Bumfuck, Idaho that he felt himself slip into dangerous territory. Sebastian knew himself well enough to know his own depressive patterns by then, and he knew it was only exponential decay from there.

Rock bottom came, as it did, in the wee hours of the night, after a full bottle of wine. Alone in his small apartment, surrounded by half-packed boxes with no destination, Sebastian found himself sprawled out on the floor with his laptop hot against his thighs. He couldn’t have explained why he opted for a privacy browser, but something about it allowed him to justify the words that he typed into the search bar.

It was a new low, and one he had sworn to himself he would never stoop to. Yet there he was.

He gave himself a moment to reconsider, to back out of what was undoubtedly a morally-gray train wreck waiting to happen as his thumb hovered over the enter key. And then the alcohol decided to override his moral compass.

Facility Care is the open secret of the medical profession. It comes with its fair share of stigma, and rightfully so, but it is notoriously easy to break into and pays a decent wage.

There are two types of people who end up stooping to that kind of employment. More often than not, it consists of doctors and nurses who had their licenses revoked or suspended somewhere along the line and needed a way back in. As far as Sebastian understood, they aren’t terribly ridgid about the particulars of each circumstance. After all, in the eyes of the law, the patients they would be treating are a price tag away from being entirely expendable.

The other percentage of Facility Care workers, and the reason Sebastian found himself staring at his too-bright computer screen with a sinking feeling of dread that night, are young medical graduates who find themselves in a tough spot. It isn’t difficult to spell out the logic behind that one when you open the WRU CAREERS tab on the home page and see the bright white words printed across the top of the screen:

LOAN FORGIVENESS.

It is shamelessly predatory and aggressively capitalistic, but Sebastian supposes that particular exploitation is pretty far down on the list of transgressions for an institution of legalized slavery. A few broke and hopeless medical students were hardly going to keep the Powers That Be up at night when they were able to rest easy under the weight of hundreds of thousands of stolen lives.

The whole thing is part of the massive PR overhaul the company did a few years back. In a world that was slowly inching toward civil activism and with the accessibility of platforms like social media to hold them accountable, WRU had to adapt to survive. Adaptation, in this case, took the form of changing the barest of minimums in order to keep themselves above board — to the public eye, anyway. Anyone who dares to take a closer look at the policy changes can see that it’s bullshit.

Changing ownership conditions to a rent-by-contract basis isn’t the humanitarian move they try to paint it as. In the end, it probably just equals out to more money in the company’s pocket when they can get more return on their “investments,” and a larger chance of exploitation for the people being moved around.

Getting rid of the Romantic division is an entirely meaningless gesture when they are still loaning out human beings with no legal rights and the inability to say “no.”

And offering an open job market with good wages and healthcare options to lower class individuals is a pretty convenient way to mute the backlash.

Essentially, you can tie a system of slavery and abuse up in a bow and make it pretty on the outside, but at the end of the day, it’s still fucking slavery.

Not that he has any room to criticize now. Now that he’s one of them.

In the end, Seb tries to justify his decision a few different ways. He is, after all, more or less a young man alone in the world. The odds are stacked against him and have been for a while. With only his own two legs to stand on, the only force stronger than his internal ambition is his instinct for survival, and he’s been running on those fumes for longer than he can count.

He had lasted less than two months under his parents’ roof after he came out of the closet at eighteen. It wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone involved; Sebastian’s parents had known about (and subsequently bottled) his… urges… since he was in high school. Probably before that, if he is being honest with himself. And Sebastian, for his part, had spent the better part of his teenage years mentally preparing for the inevitable. He can recall long, late nights he had spent crying into his pillow and the perfectly-scripted ‘coming out’ speeches he recited to his mirror when he was one-hundred percent sure his parents were asleep.

Of course, none of the preparation had been anywhere near adequate when he actually found himself wilting beneath the heat of his father’s glare, the weight of his mother’s grief.

But. He had recovered. That is the point he tries to remember when the memories sting fresh beneath his skin, even all these years later. He has more-than proven himself to be a survivor. He has worked harder than anyone he knows for every scholarship, every grant, every dollar to put himself through school. Sacrificed nights out and real relationships for night shifts at shitty diners and long weekends cramming for exams. It hadn’t been easy, but he considers it the price he had to pay for his independence. For freedom, to live the life as the person he is meant to be, despite his unfortunate odds. He spent years telling himself it would be worth it. That one day, his hard work would pay off.

He can’t stop now.

Sebastian doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off to reroute when his navigation has gone amiss. He is walking the precarious line of rapidly accruing interest and student loans and a dwindling savings account, and there is no safety net below him.

Beggars can’t be choosers, and as it turns out, beggars sometimes have to compromise their moral integrity in order to survive.

It’s only temporary.

That is the mantra that gets him through the (half-drunken) application process and the (disturbingly lax) interview process. It is a job. One job. In the medical field, though the details are up for debate, and it is real-life money for rent and food and a savings that will hopefully be sizable enough to get him where he really wanted to be. Which is… really, anywhere else.

He can do ‘temporary.’ And perhaps, some misguided part of him thinks he can do some genuine good from the inside, too. ‘Be the change you want to see’ and all that.

It is a far jump from the floor of his apartment, sloshed and exhausted and desperate, to the cold, sharp reality of walking into his place of employment on his first day of work. Ironically, it feels a lot like an echo of the emptiness from his graduation day.

‘Sterile’ doesn’t quite cover it. ‘Sterile’ is the expectation of any well-respected medical establishment, but the inside of the facility walls has been wiped clean of far more than bacteria and germs. It is completely devoid of humanity. The long corridors that connect the medical wing to the general ward are windowless and dimly lit by flickering fluorescent panels that had make his head pound for the entirety of his first week.

He is given an office, though it is a term he, himself, might use loosely, as it is more akin to what was probably a storage closet before the old prison had been converted into the state’s training headquarters. It leaves him just enough space for a small desk and two chairs. On his first day, he asks if it is okay to bring in some personal items to spruce the place up. The older, balding doctor who had been assigned to show him around merely shrugs, and Sebastian decides to take that as a yes.

The small, pink-framed photo of a six-year-old Sebastian Tate in his grandfather’s white coat and an old-school stethoscope around his neck is hardly enough to make the place cozy from the corner of his desk, but it’s a good enough reminder of why he has to make this work.

‘It’s only temporary.’

‘Be the change you want to see.’

He will do his best.

[writerwrites]

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Reader, Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Protégé to Bruce Banner, Rosemarie finds herself working closely with and befriending the Avengers. Friendship, lust, heartbreak, and so much more find her along this heartbreaking journey into new adulthood. Rosemarie discovers her self-worth and that home is where the heart is… she’ll just have to figure out what her heart is saying first.

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Smut 18+, language, angst, fluff, language, ye ole slow burn, and eventually death, pregnancy, love triangle… or love adjacent to a triangle? It’s complicated.

playlist . masterlist

A/N: This WIP is intentionally made to ruin all of our lives with feels. You were warned. It’s just my writing style, but I use a name for the reader, in this case Rosemarie, so adjust your imaginations as you read, fam. Also, I do what I want, so don’t come at me for MCU canon timelines. The most notable YOLO in this series is that Bucky/Winter Soldier is an Avenger pre-Blip, Banner isn’t in space, and though there’s tension between the Tony and Cap ‘sides’ of the Sokovia Accords they’re all trying to work together. Avenging is not a main point to this story, but that’s the clarification I will give you. I hope you enjoy my first posted fic, leave a comment, review, message, etc.

Introduction: October 2016

--- BANNER SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES (BST); MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY ---

“Anything? Anything at all? Bueller?” Rosemarie looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to spot some sort of subtle difference in her appearance. Though she had been searching for a job in her field for months, the ‘spooky’ elevator music chirping through the bathroom was an indication that she was just shy of that November 1st tuition payment start up. Her May graduation felt like a distant memory and all the years of hard work and applications to various schools, and even scholarships for being gifted and a minority hardly made a dent in the mountain of debt that came with attaining a doctoral degree. So, the prodigy looked, hoping for even a crinkle in the corner of your twenty-two year old eyes or a crease in her forehead. A little guilty knot formed in her stomach, as she thought no one ever wanted to ‘grow up’ faster than she did.

Rosemarie had been an intern for Stark Industries during her undergrad and worked a part-time research position for Stark while she looked for the right fit. It had been the CEO and his wife, Pepper, who had tipped you off about Dr. Banner’s small new company, Banner Science Technologies. No amount of ass kissing or overtime seemed to get the young woman a chat with Tony Stark, who was providing significant financial support to his friend and her boss’ endeavor, and she had all but given up until three weeks ago. That fateful email felt more like an unexpected termination. The fear of going ‘upstairs’ for that meeting amused Tony, he’d told her so much when he cackled that he had watched her self-talking on the journey up.

Now at BST, Rosemarie was leading a medical research team that rivaled Elon Musk and every major university in neuroscience. But there she was, leaning into the mirror on Day One, wishing she felt like she knew what she was doing, like she didn’t look like a dork in your square black rimmed glasses, or that she would look older than she was because she wanted to be taken seriously. The young doctor hadn’t realized that her accomplishments had already done that for her because almost no one ever blew through a public education, let alone Yale, like she had. The emotions tied to repeated social rejection; however, began to bubble in her chest like poison before her badge glimmered on her hip and snapped her out of the trance.

Oddly, in that interview for BST, Banner didn’t ask the doctor about her research. He asked Rosemarie about her mental health, how she balanced work and life, and what her definition of world peace was. It had somehow never occurred to her that both Banner and Stark shared the unnatural gift of intellect since they were young too and that, at least to some degree, could relate to her experiences. There was a steady and natural intimidation that came with working for an Avenger like Bruce, but seeing the rest of them in passing at the lab in Stark Industry’s famous tower made the young woman slowly catch glimpses of their humanity, taking off the rose colored glasses placed on every stranger’s face by the media’s interpretation of them. Nevertheless, Rosemarie was a nobody, a lab rat, scientist, doctor, dork, and perpetually invisible to everyone at work. In fact, she had been her whole life, special but not special enough to warrant connecting with on a personal level. She told herself you’ll learn to appreciate the anonymity, but after being an academic shining star in college and spending a half a year looking for a job in the field, any semblance of confidence left in her small frame had certainly faltered.

Before Rosemarie could hit the ‘wallow in self pity’ button on her emotional circuit board, the bathroom door opened. Quickly straightening up and without looking at who came, she turned on the water to wash her hands and only upon reaching for the air dryer did she realize that the woman was the curvy redhead Avenger known for her skills in espionage, linguistics, weaponry, and combat; Black Widow. Rosemarie blinked, making a mental note to not call her that if she managed to speak at all. She looked at the young doctor curiously, her eyebrows slowly drawing together in confusion. “Are you really going to the party dressed up as Bruce? We try not to do ‘the Avengers’ at this thing every year.”

Whether it was from Agent Romanoff’s use of air quotes or the fact that she was speaking to a person that saw themselves as invisible, Rosemarie’s mouth bobbed open and closed, head tilting to the side like a confused puppy. “Party? Bruce?” Please, Rosemarie, save yourself from chronic rambling, she mentally monologued, only showing she was in her head through the pursing of her lips and a fleeting nod of acknowledgement; both of which hadn’t gone unnoticed by the spy.

“Bruce really forgot to invite his top dog? Typical. I swear I told him three times this week alone.” She walked around toward Rosemarie with speed and grace. Her gaze was analytical of the body in front of her, despite the majority of it being tucked underneath a pristine new lab coat, as she kept talking, “The annual Halloween costume party is tonight and you and the other two department leads…” she waved her hand when she realized she’d forgotten their names. “Anyways, it’s a party Tony throws every year and it’s always been Stark Industries, Rand Corp., and some other companies in Stark’s pocket that get all the big faces together for a few drinks, laughs, and a good time. Banner Sci. Tech. has Tony at the table and Bruce in bright lights. You’ve got to be there,” Just as a protest was about to pass the girl’s lips a finger went to them, “No excuses, Rosemarie. Consider it a part of the ‘other duties as assigned’ clause on your employment agreement.” She wiggled her fingers dramatically, but there the lab rat stood, utterly dumbfounded. A new question was on her mind: What could she possibly add to a conversation with a bunch of brilliant wealthy CEOs and superheroes? “Soooo, naturally, the people that are the glue of this place should come and rub shoulders. You know, show ‘em why you’re so fantastic. Get to know the people your tech will likely be used by, little like that.”

“But, I’m… me?” The words were quiet, disjointed, and felt like you had more confidence giving your first valedictorian speech to a crowd of Seniors that had bullied you for walking with them at the age of twelve.

“Exactly, Dr. Smarypants. You’re you, which is why we’re going to mine and getting you some costume that doesn’t make you the laughing stock of introductions. How old are you, anyway?” Natasha opened the bathroom door and the doctor walked out feeling like she was about to get the Princess Diaries treatment with some sort of Nightmare on Elm Street plot twist.

“I turned twenty-two last February.” The answer was offered up in the tone of an apology but she disregarded the awkward timbre and stuck to the facts, making Rosemarie’s shoulders relax just a little.

“Well thank God for that,” The Avenger’s laugh echoed through the hall. “I was half worried you wouldn’t be able to drink and then you’d be both bored and silent at the party.”

With a finger up she skipped over to the main lab’s window where Bruce was squinting at four screens and banging on a tablet. When he finally looked over at the redhead, everyone in the vicinity noticed his expression quickly melting, something Rosemarie had certainly never seen. Natasha pointed to her watch, to Rosemarie, and gestured little walking legs with her fingers. Dr. Banner acknowledged her with what looked like a mouthed ‘I love you’ but before Rosemarie could even smile at the site he offered her an apologetic nod, unnerving her once more. In the blink of an eye, Natasha was dragging her out of the office, arm in arm, and out of midtown Manhattan.

--- BRUCE AND NATASHA’S LIMESTONE; UPPER EAST SIDE, MANHATTAN, NY ---

Despite asking a few times over what she had in store, Nat, as she asked to be called, gave her little to go on. Sitting on a bench at the foot of her boss’ California King bed, she watched Natasha rummaging through the walk-in closet. “Clint’s daughter dragged me to Disney a few months back. She insisted we go ‘Disneybounding’ and I have more wigs than I’ll ever need.” She was processing her choices and more than once Rosemarie picked up something that flew out of the walk-in closet at her head. A shimmering ruby red dress landed to the left and her mouth fell open in horror at the plunging neckline and thigh extra-high slit. Nat came out with a few things on her arm and laughed at the look of pure exasperation, “Don’t worry, babe, that’s mine… and this,” She plopped the garments into her victim’s arms, “Is your get up. There’s a bathroom down the hall, the only door on the left. I’ll be over in a bit to help with your makeup.”

Rosemarie wasn’t sure if she should take offense to the fact that it wasn’t a question, but remained too intimidated to say anything. Once in the bathroom with her back to the mirror she took off her white lab coat and untucked the seafoam green tie-neck satin blouse and skinny black slacks. As she folded the discarded clothes, she sighed at how proud of the outfit she’d been just this morning and how it now felt like a bland choice by the time she saw half of the spy’s closet. Like the pang of emotions set off a bomb, Rosemarie was self-talking about how nice Nat was being to her and to see this as a professional opportunity rather than a terrifying obligation. The mental chatter was enough to get her into the outfit which, surprisingly, required no sucking in, tucking, or wiggling to get on. It wasn’t until she turned to the mirror that Rosemarie registered what ‘Disney bounding’ was, immediately placing the character the ensemble was meant to resemble.

The high-waisted yellow shorts with their two panels of brassy buttons hugged Rosemarie's hips and made her see the curves of a defined hourglass frame for the first time in clothing other than yoga pants. The off the shoulder royal blue crop top had enough draping and a built-in bra to make her comfortable about wearing this around other professionals, just the tiniest hint of the tan skin of her upper stomach when she raised her hands or posed, neither of which she planned to do tonight. The red bow against black hair was the perfect final touch to make it obvious the outfit was a modern Snow White. Before Rosemarie could overanalyze going to a work event in the getup, there was a rhythmic knock on the door and, even though she thought she’d locked it, Nat was walking in, items in hand. At first she whistled, taking Rosemarie’s hand in hers and spinning her around. Nat smiled when she saw the heat rise up the bashful doctor’s neck and color flooded her cheeks. “I have one last thing.”

Until Nat pulled black heels from behind her back Rosemarie hadn’t even noticed Natasha had changed, but when she did her mouth went dry. “You look…” With a knowing smirk, she put her hands on Rosemarie’s hips and spun her back toward the mirror, her chest pressed to the doctor’s back as she studied her features, the pouted lips and high cheekbones, the long eyelashes underneath the ridiculously hipster glasses. Rosemarie felt naked in front of her, no one having ever really looked at her that way before and her body naturally reacted with a shiver that caused her hips to roll back into her host. As Rosemarie was about to apologize, Nat simply smiled and shook her head no, getting to work on their makeup with both expertise and speed.

Rosemarie thought she had gotten away with the embarrassing and obvious moment of unrequited attraction when the Avenger popped the lipstick into a wristlet purse that looked like an apple. Then she leaned in like a panther pouncing on her prey and, somehow, the doctor didn’t cower back. Nat was intrigued by that, a little curve found its way to the corner of her crimson lips, two shades darker and glossed compared to Rosemarie’s, “Let’s have a good time tonight, Snow. Something tells me it’s going to get very interesting.” She bit her lip, noticing that Rosemarie was holding your breath and assumed that it was a combination of her looking great and being the girlfriend of the girl’s boss, she wasn’t wrong. Nat still dipped down between her legs and slipped the heels onto the young woman’s feet, letting her fingertips tickle her ankle before they were holding hands and heading to the party.

--- STARK INDUSTRIES: THE TOWER; MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY ---

The closer they got to Tony Stark’s ‘Tower’ the more Rosemarie wanted the stroke of midnight to hit so she could get out of dodge. Nat worried, even if she hid it well. She’d playfully asked her a few casual questions about her time at Yale, what the parties were like, and what the doctor liked to do for fun. She quickly and accurately surmised that the twenty two year old had been in love once and upon some bad sex and the dropping of the ‘L’ word, she’d been dropped like a fly. The pity never reached Natasha’s face, but it was there. It reminded her of more than one person that would be at the Tower tonight, and as she cooed compliments to the anxious new girl in town, she hoped that offering the invitation was the right thing. Rosemarie nodded and blushed, hoping accepting was the right choice too, though she didn’t hide it well at all.

As Natasha entertained that young woman with pleasant little stories about how harmless everyone was, she couldn’t help but think that, with the tension of the Sokovia Accords, you might not be up for the mental olympics the attendees would undoubtedly be going through. As the elevator doors closed behind them, Rosemarie didn’t notice how worried Nat was and instead tried to calm herself down in the bustling room. Her matte dusty rose lips pressed into a closed mouth smile as she tried to remember little details about the people in front of her, people that she had only heard about on television or seen through a lab window. “Here we go,” Nat spoke with surprising pep and with a sigh, Rosemarie followed. She was glad Natasha let her walk down the stairs behind her as the crowd funneled in both in front and behind them. You can do this. You’re smart, a good person, you can do this. This is totally normal. Just smile and nod, fake it to the bar, fake it ‘til you make it. The doctor’s gaze brushed across the room after Natasha moved away toward Bruce. Immediately Rosemarie froze, a few heads that had turned to greet Nat now turned toward her. Well, shit.

CHAPTER 1

Taglist: @caplanbuckybarnes​

[artdjgblog]

Innerview: Ercan Ucer / Grafik Tasarim (Turkey) October 2008 Image: Giphy Note: Take #2 of a design magazine interview.

​0​1) How do you name yourself other than being a versatile designer? In the past year and a half I’ve come to realize that I’m not really a graphic designer. It’s definitely in there and will always be because design is a poison, like any vocation or skill can be. But, I’ve always approached the way I work as an artist first, and I don’t fancy myself an artist either. I am what I am, though I can’t always be so selfish. Am I an illustrator? I guess there is a collision of the three. Add this to a love for getting my hands dirty, plus a celebration of youth and American pop-culture mixed with Eastern European and post-WWII American Design – B.C. (Before Computer) and the product is me? “Versatile” is too defining of a word for me and way too classy. I simply like to say I make things. Each day is new and I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do. ​0​2) What is the relationship between marketing and your designing process at different areas? (poster, packaging, logo…etc) A design is a marketing tool, no doubt. I haven’t really worked on a large scale setting with this, but I have in terms of marketing on a small scale for rock concerts and prospective CD buyers. Though, a designer plays eye-grabber, a designer is not really a marketer, but I guess it helps to attract attention or sell something. I had friends in college who studied marketing as well as design and they’d probably be more equipped to answering this question. It’s an area I’m not familiar with other than thinking of ways to attract people to get excited for a musical group, a sound, feeling or expression by way of putting a stamp on a poster, CD or logo design. It is a marketing tool especially when working with a client. It certainly is not only what the artist-designer can bring to the “product” (Though, I do think this can apply at a certain larger level with selling something), you’re also working for somebody and trying to sell an image or an item. In the case of a show poster, you’re selling a concert venue or the place the poster is hanging or even the music scene and the city and environment. I think this can be a tricky walk. I’ve been fortunate to have some small success with great clients and great projects to where things work out well. I guess it helps that independent music graphics kind of start out in left field to begin with, to where they are approached more like an art project than a product? Though, I don’t think that the work should not limit itself to a certain kind of audience. I think it’s great when the work speaks to anybody. There are times though where things don’t mix well, whether under the weather by design, client-wise or consumer. It’s just part of the deal. The work isn’t always going to be a homerun. Another deal is the way people interact with communication in marketing. Today I find that technology has a lot to do with people getting information for a rock concert via social networking sites, musician, ticket and concert venue sites. I don’t think that something like the poster will ever be dead, but technology can almost make a poster feel second-rate, a collector’s keep-sake and more for show than for the actual show. Logos are very interesting when it comes to marketing for bands because they are generally slapped onto many-many products. I’ve worked with a lot of music-related designs, but I’ve also made logos varying from a lawyer to an internet-computer company to a church before. So, these different applications encourage me to find new ways to talk to other audiences who come searching for something that isn’t entertainment, but I approach these designs with the same techniques and tools I use with the music graphics. I try to give something unique, and of a new take, to get a double-take. ​0​3) Can you tell us about your working environment and your different feelings or extraordinary events that inspires you? Ever since I was a child growing up on a farm, my working environment has been outside and especially in my bedroom. Working environments also extended to anyplace I had my eyes open. I certainly believe in a home base or comfort zone of operations, but a lot of my more thorough processing happens while out and about and then I bring it back home with me to make. Currently I work out of a basement in my home. I’ve constructed a work space out of wood found in the street. I call it my “club house”. I love it down there despite my continual problem with having a work space that barely has room for me to work in! I collect and store a lot of things around me and still have a lot of my childhood things around me, along with piles and piles of supplies, research and things I’ve found or see the potential in for a future use. I have a mind-set that if I can’t use it today, I can easily use it in 50 years. I’m a major fan of extraordinary events and tend to find humorous and peculiar ones to be more my taste, and more-so in retrospect of the event. I feel to be blessed with a certain quality that attracts odd circumstances, or maybe it’s all in my head? Extraordinary has its own brand of “something”, but more often I find inspiration in places, events and things that are fairly run-of-the-mill and everyday ordinary for anyone, which can give them an added cushion of “extra” for me. On my website I’ve made a list of my history, the things that have been the everyday ordinary for me, but might seem very out of ordinary to others. It all depends on perspective and where you’ve been. ​0​4) When did you discover the impulse that led you being a designer? This impulse to leave behind a paper trail of some sort on my impression has always been kicking around in me. I didn’t fully know it at the time, but I believe it started when I was young as I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing or making something. It’s a large part of my make-up. Much of it has to do with my farming background and watching my Dad and his Dad and others always doing or working on something whether it was building fences, planting crops or tending animals. I also owe a lot to my Grandma, for her hands-on making skills and to my parents for allowing me to grow-up fully plugged into the American pop-culture of books, toys, music, movies, video games and sports. Now, I just feed off of my former self and continue to feed for the future. It’s not work to me when it truly works and I enjoy myself. ​0​5)  Is looking at life always from a different angel, the designer’s necessarily ego? Most any area of most any job, skill, talent, business doesn’t come without some ego hurdling. The ego is amped further within the arts. Inflated achievement comes with ease when your voice gets a little loud in a “scene” or beyond. I’d like to think I’m fairly grounded, but it’s hard not to feel the eggs weight the other side when I’m told I could be sitting on a couple of golden ones. Working a day job can help matters, but it can also be a nightmare with time management. I have to just tell myself that I am a man and a man who happens to make things. Still, that can be hard. It doesn’t mean that I’m better than somebody or am a “somebody” because I’ve found a certain something within me. I just enjoy my life and feel very fortunate to even know what I want to do with it. I think one needs healthy doses of reality and a whole heap of humor to make it too. Besides, I have no answers. If you know somebody with it all figured out, have them call me! What helps me is to find comfort and ease is venturing back into my child manner. I’m much more content and find peace when I’m either looking at the world through a certain lense that I might qualify for, or just making and enjoying the act of celebration in creativity. The moment I start to think too much about it all or answer questions, that is when it can get a little dangerous in the head. I’d like to think gaining wisdom through age and maturity helps. I know that my energy and will-power have died some, and of late I’m leaning on this as a benefit. I think I say and do some dumb stuff today, though I’m positive it’s a little less than yesterday! ​0​6) Can you inform us about graphic design’ s one of the important field, package design and your sketches? / Tell me about the sketching and process of packaging. There is a certain amount of image longevity that becomes attached to packaging. I’m not experienced in much more than musical CD packaging, but I think a long life span especially applies to this in the iconic halls of pop-culture, even on small levels. Though, that’s not the reason to put into making something and/or package something but if you can add some meaty eye candy, then so be it. I love poster design because there are endless possibilities to exhaust, many ways to work reach-and-grab-of-the-moment and intuitive, and if something doesn’t work all-around, it’s throw-away and will die soon like house flies. CDs are so different, at least for me, and they can be quite intimidating and intoxicating. Sometimes another designer’s great CD package makes me not wish to do another one, and in a good way! With my own process, I do a little bit of sketching, but more-so the process and evolution of the CD package is the sketching for me. If I’m rewarded with an ample amount of time to work on a CD I usually make it happen in three different sessions, or what I call “incubation stages”. This allows me time to sit on ideas and to come back to them with fresh perspective and clear head, to play or spin off ideas and avenues. When figuring out an image or “look” for an album, I like to at least digest the music or get a track listing. With the way in which I work, I tend to feed off of my day-to-day (sometimes minute-to-minute) emotional handy work. It can be a little strange though as I can easily obsess over wondering the what-might-have-been with something like a CD package or anything. I think that a CD package for me can be extremely different given what day I’m at. I do believe my best packages have come down on me at the last minute, intuitively and usually on the lowest of budgets. And I mean cheap, major cheap. 0​7) What are the benefits of making global designs for the designer? I love a body of work, one that breathes and not only serves as a timeline for the maker, but also for views and observations on life itself. Ideas that can extend globally even, throughout time. I think that a great body of work can extend to anybody, anywhere in the world. And even if it is for some other body like a client, it is always from its original body of the creator. Anything that goes global is still connected to that first breath of singular life. Due to technology, it’s so much easier today to go “global” with designs, even if one does operate on a small scale. I think it’s great to put the work out there, to share, even if it’s not marking up or wrapping up a popular product. In today’s fast-paced world of millions and billions of images and things flashing, it really does mean a lot that my meager things have made it in some strange little way. Even, if it’s just a grin or a double-take by someone looking at a little poster on a wall or in a magazine or a global internet billboard or world-wide magazine and book distribution. Though, a part of me still likes to keep some things to myself. And I’m odd because I personally don’t like to attract attention to myself with graphics on the shirts I wear or product logos on bags and things. ​0​8) Can you explain the relationship between marketing and designing? I’m not sure if I was successful, but I tried to answer some of this in question 2. With this one I’ll try to wrap it into the way that I work, to where my designs act as marketing tools for me, as well as the product they are pushing. Until recently I’ve never had to market myself in conventional practice. For the first six years my work itself was the marketing. Everything from a poster to a package and a logo has been on the same level with causing a “Trickle Down / Word of Mouth” marketing effect. And I’ve been fortunate to keep fairly close relationships with my clients due to a small industry I work in. These clients have brought other clients. For my first two years I was living and working with several bands in a house. I didn’t have to leave and would get new work constantly. At times I’d just make things before I was even asked. Some of the best marketing can come in poster making and that is how I started to gather some attention. Posters have a short shelf life in comparison to packaging and logos, so there is always a new one to tack up. And if a poster doesn’t succeed, then it’s easy to just make another one. It’s just a poster and practice is good. After a while people start getting curious and come looking for you. ​0​9) Does any of your designs have an unforgettable story? The “Whatever Makes You Happy” CD package design I made in my basement in June of 2002 for the band Elevator Division, is one of my most memorable moments. It was a special run of 250 handmade CD packages and my idea came at the last minute. I made an image of a hand shooting off its index finger like a missile that married the themes for the album perfectly, with reflections of war and failed relationships. It was the idea of shooting off one’s options and making decisions. It was fitting for the band-music but also for the national-world climate. Each one was hand-cut from cardboard and stencil sprayed and rubber stamped. Inserts were copied, cut, folded and glued. At the last mist of red spray paint, a crack of thunder shook the massive home’s foundation and I bolted from the basement and out the front door to a down pour of rain. I leapt off the front porch and slid head first down the front lawn embankment and into the street flowing like a river current. The drug dealing squatters of the home across the street were on their front step looking at the fire in my eyes and the red paint streaming from my ears, nose and mouth. It was a high much higher than that of chemical substance. -djg

[violetsystems]

#personal

It was a productive but discouraging week for the most part.  I received my second dose of the Pfizer shot on Wednesday.  I felt a little more exhausted than usual but I’m fine.  Thursday I had a message in my inbox on LinkedIn about a job.  Two or three weeks ago I had applied for another job which was seen but no reply.  The offer sounded interesting so I replied and they asked to schedule a phone call.  So this was to be the first human interview I’ve had since ten months or so ago.  The recruiter’s prescreening went pretty well.  The first call.  Which means there were a total of about three or four calls in a two hour span.  I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the years but never really had the reason to interview myself.  That happens when you are consecutively employed for twenty years.  So while I am a little rusty, this occasion I had a particularly good opener for a classic question.  What drew me to the job in the first place?  I had a nametag tucked above a cabinet from 2014 that I had forgotten about.  It was from when I attended a lecture by myself about Abenomics and the rebuilding of Japan after the Tsunami.  It was at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.  It’s pretty tight security in that building.  But in 2014 they let a malcontent like myself in there.  At the time I was doing a lot of work which LinkedIn now categorizes as “human rights.”  Mostly volunteering for local organizations like Japan America Society of Chicago to attend these lectures and even helping run a Korean fest with a chamber of commerce after work.  I did all this alone.  Mostly to network and meet new people.  This is back when I thought meeting new people was the answer.  The answer in the interview was a lot shorter but it impressed the screener enough to finish the call and send me the scary forms to fill out.  Then there was a call back.  “I’m so sorry we forgot to talk about wages.”  That really wasn’t my fault.  But that is always the hardest part.  The job offer was a six month contract and not salary.  So I quoted my current hourly rate which was seemingly too high for the recruiter.  So they quoted low.  Which worked out to be about half of my salary last year without benefits.  I still had interest.  It was remote work but I’m literally not very far and fully vaccinated.  I told them on the first call I had a zero trust office network set up for my consulting.  Then the tone started to get weird.  I had sent a 2020 resume because it was the most relevant.  That did not include my current consulting business.  The woman on the second call started to dig deeper after the salary question.  “Can you tell me what you’ve been doing since your last job at the school and why you didn’t include it on your resume?”  I explained that I formed a LLC back in later December and have been working for smaller clients freelance.  She asked me to edit my resume and add this.  She wanted it within the hour so she could “sell me to her hiring manager” properly to be considered for an interview.  I did so.  A third call.  “Can you add specifically the types of computers you supported?”  That was in there.  A request to fill out more scary forms for the federal reserve.  A fourth message.  “Can you add specifically the types of computer you supported at your old job as well?”  It was then I thought something was extremely fishy.  So I apologized and rescinded my offer.  Then I spent most of the rest of the day feeling like a failure.  Discouraging but productive.

I woke up the next morning to an email in my professional inbox from another person at the recruiting agency.  It was legal in nature informing me I had the option to file a EEO form.  This is tied to equal opportunity insofar that by signing it, the recruiter must by law share with their client all the names of applicants that they screened and probably why.  Do I expect any justice?  Not really.  I don’t know that I would have even been selected if I got the chance to interview.  It is a federal job after all.  The point is that in the eyes of a hiring manager at a recruitment agency, my resume did not seem strong enough.  If learning through failure is apparent, I shudder to think if I didn’t start a company back in December what my next interview would be like.  That is if I even get an interview.  I was reading this morning that HP and HP Enterprise are being hit with a class action for age discrimination.  There’s a lot of reasons for this.  But particularly when it comes to the money game, people fresh out of school are easier to leverage.  Whether it is tax breaks for hiring new grads or simply cheaper salaries with less experience, the agenda is simple.  Save more money so CEO’s and shareholders can get a bigger piece of the cut.  Meanwhile, America’s answer is that it is the perfect time to start your own business.  Then compete with huge sprawling mega corporations and recruitment firms that have galvanized the employment market with their magic show of balance sheets and deductions.  I’m qualified to do a lot of things which is great.  I just bought a drone so I could use the SDK to learn Python and UI design.  These are great things to add to my resume for 2021.  But the likelihood of being employable with no debt to speak of is like kryptonite to the job market.  Much less the fact that my entire professional network is scared to admit I’m alive in fear of them being blamed for favoring their job security over friendship.  I was very lucky to be where I was at when this happened back in July because of the CARES act.  I just finished the personal nightmare side of my taxes from that year on tax day.  There’s still my business to do.  Which if anything I’m more qualified to do these days, it’s your accounting.  Add those skills to the resume stat.  Along with all the computers you supported since before you were born.  Twice.  It still does not matter.  And this is where I hit this insane brick wall.  I try to be acknowledged and useful.  I try to be employable and valuable.  And I am treated in such a shitty and abusive way that I’m starting to wonder if I’m better off behind closed doors.  I have money.  I have deductions.   I have time on my hands to organize my life so I don’t spend unwisely.  I have a roof over my head with a verbal agreement at best.  And I have been living in the oblivion of no one wanting to admit fault or praise since July in varying degrees of comfort.  I’ve had people stalk me in the street because of the companies I’ve invested in like they’re the fucking mob.  I’ve gone through all of this alone while people have peeped over my shoulder.  And I’m supposed to think the law is on my side in a city that shoots thirteen year olds point blank in the chest with their hands up.  If I know one thing, it is what I can rely on.  And mostly that has been my own instinct, wisdom and prudent decisions.  And I know where I’m at at the end of the day.  Pretty much at the end of my rope with the whole process of being ignored and treated like some joke.  Then there’s people who see me in a different light.  A different hue of the spectrum.  Easier to read than my resume after it’s been edited fourteen times that’s for sure.

Things are extremely broken.  Living in a neighborhood and a sanctuary city sometimes you look for the places that aren’t.  Regardless of feeling useless and unemployable, there are times when I feel valued.  Times when people in the street follow me around more so in solidarity than fear.  People who want to be free to express themselves and look the way they feel.  People who don’t want to lower themselves to mediocre standards just to get ahead.  People who want to walk around without being judged by people who never critique themselves.  As fucked up as everything is, there’s another side to this coin.  People do get what I’m about.  That meme about people going to your hood or block and never hearing about you?  You try that shit with me and you are in for a history lesson these days.  There are no shortage of people in Chicago who will tell you all about me.  Some of it is skewed.  Some of it is nostalgia.  And then there’s people in this neighborhood who know all about stuff I haven’t told anyone.  Like I don’t sit on the weekends talking to my friends about who I like or who I think the world of.  I don’t really have the luxury of trusting many people in my situation.  And yet sometimes when I walk out to get groceries or pay the bills, someone is there to say it without even saying it.  That people just get what I’m about without me having to say anything.  Besides three paragraphs on the internet every week or so.  The reason I don’t fuck with people.  The reason I keep to myself.  The reason I don’t really care if you get me or not.  That confidence is something infectious.  That after all the fucking shit I’ve been through I keep it real regardless.  Every year some troll has to prove me wrong and fails.  Every failure proves a very clear point.  The problem isn’t me.  I’m not invisible.  I’m not hard to understand.  I’m not a liar or a traitor.  I’m literally just existing here while people size me up.  Nobody has asked my name or my agenda.  Nobody really has had enough of a human conversation to pry it out of me.  I’m an only child.  I grew up lonely and learned how to survive on my own.  I also learned begrudgingly to stand up for myself.  It doesn’t mean I don’t like society or am anti social.  How the fuck can I be anti social when everyone can’t stop talking about me in public?  I understand people are antsy, paranoid and fatigued because of the pandemic.  But some of us have literally been rolling through this warzone for years.  I’m supposed to feel humbled and privileged to be so lucky to have survived?  Fuck you.  The number one thing con artists try to do is fuck with your confidence.  Because we all know better by this point.  America is not working.  Specifically we can’t when we’re overqualified and a threat to the natural order of whatever corporate scam is going on these days.  The one thing I know is that people with actual money got richer this year.  Stocks, 401k’s, CEO salaries, tax breaks, and whatever else you throw in there.  If I learned one thing from starting an actual business, it’s that the books are overcooked for a reason.  Not that mine are.  Years and years of shady deals are hard to cover up.  Donald Trump took a loss on his business for years and evaded taxes.  I’m technically what they call going concern.  But there aren’t many tax breaks for me as a small business.  Nor is there much money coming in other than what I can hustle out of the market or royalties.  Did I mention I’m royalty?  Not in the Prince Harry sense of the word.  But I do hold the sword and shield up for feminism in America.  That much we’ve learned by now.  That and the glass ceiling is harsher for women than it is for me.  So maybe I’ll sit this one out and let the ladies take control.  In that I know my work is worth something.  Just consider me interning for the movement at the moment.  And make sure you sign that contract in bright pink because I’m not really paying attention to anything in the red.  As far as the federal reserve is concerned, my finances are in the green.  <3 Tim

[dailykhaleej]

Stuck in paradise: Stranded for months in Bali, UAE residents now find their jobs at risk

Lana Shevchenko in Bali Picture Credit score: Provided

Dubai: What was meant to be a tropical vacation has become a nightmare for a number of UAE residents who’re presently stranded in Bali owing to journey restrictions necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. Residents of assorted nationalities reached out to DailyKhaleej narrating their struggles of getting to pay for their home lease, utility, cellphone and Web connection in absentia in the UAE whereas additionally having to concurrently pay for their lodging and meals bills in Bali, Indonesia.

Though a lot of these stranded are managing to work remotely, they’re frightened for their jobs if this uncertainty persists. Small enterprise homeowners are struggling, with no work being commissioned, but having to pay lease for their home and workplace area. Others have even been laid off from their jobs whereas in Bali.

Obtained the pink slip in Bali

Lana Shevchenko, an Ukrainian who has been a UAE resident for a yr, visited Bali on March 15 for a two-week enterprise journey. Nevertheless, the occasions trade skilled acquired the pink slip from her firm as quickly as she arrived in Bali.

A tranquil scene from Bali, Indonesia, however for UAE residents paradise is misplaced Picture Credit score: Provided

With Ukraine additionally closing its territory for residents, Shevchenko’s solely possibility was to spend time in Bali till borders reopen and fly to Dubai the place she rents an residence for which she nonetheless pays lease, has her private belongings and mates.

“I planned to stay here only for two weeks, so I’m running out of money and using my credit card now. I’m still waiting for my last salary. To save money, I initially stayed in a cheap hostel, but now I’m sharing a villa. I’m cooking at home and buying fruits and vegetables from local people instead of shops,” she advised DailyKhaleej.

Shevchenko is aware of it is going to be not simple to find a job throughout a world disaster. However she is utilizing her time in Bali to be taught portray and assist a charity. She is actively wanting for jobs and has already attended an interview.

“I tried registering with Twajudi as soon as it was announced, but several times it showed errors in my application. Finally, I have managed to register successfully and currently the status is shown as under process,” she stated.

Double whammy

Natalya Afanasyeva, an expat from Kazakhstan who works in Dubai with Chalhoub Group as a industrial government, has been caught in Bali since March 11. A 10-day trip has now prolonged into a number of months with no readability on when it is going to finish.

Natalya Afanasyeva Picture Credit score: Provided

“I am still paying my house rent, car loan, DEWA bill, phone and internet bills back in Dubai plus all my expenses in Bali. Although we are not living in Dubai and using these services, we are still receiving bills to pay. I cannot stay in Bali anymore since I don’t have enough money to pay for my second accommodation and food expenses,” she advised DailyKhaleej.

Within the first month in Bali, Afanasyeva and her pal rented a house for $1,300 (Dh4,774) a month and paid $650 for meals (Dh2,400). She modified homes on a weekly foundation in the primary month hoping the state of affairs would change and he or she might fly again. In April, she paid greater than $1,000 (Dh3,672) for a rented home in Bali whereas in Could, she is paying $650 (Dh2,400). She additionally must put aside Dh3,000 for her month-to-month home lease in Dubai.

The Kazakhi expat who has been residing in Dubai for 12 years stated her employer has been paying her the absolutely wage with none deduction thus far. “My employer is doing everything to support me but if the situation deteriorates further, I might have to face unpaid leave or a salary cut,” Afanasyeva added.

Ready for Twajudi approval for weeks

Though Afanasyeva has tried filling up the Twajudi type on the UAE’s Ministry of International Affairs and Worldwide Cooperation web site a number of occasions, there was no response and he or she is ready to get an approval earlier than reserving a ticket on Etihad’s flight from Jakarta to the UAE on Could 29. “A one-way air ticket from Jakarta to Abu Dhabi costs almost Dh4,000,” she identified.

A number of stranded expats declare that the UAE authorities is prioritising solely lecturers, medical employees, youngsters separated from dad and mom and faculty college students who’ve been ousted from college lodging to return to the UAE.

Caught in transit

C.M., an American analyst, travelled to Bali alone on March 17 since her UAE residence visa had expired and he or she wished to re-enter the nation on a vacationer visa. Nevertheless, with the nation closing its borders on March 19, she has been stranded in the Indonesian resort city. She has attended a number of digital interviews and was on the verge of signing a brand new job supply. Nevertheless, the employer just isn’t open to her beginning work remotely.

“The experience has been extremely stressful. I left the UAE with the intention to return in seven days. My apartment, belongings and bank accounts are all in Dubai. I am being forced to cancel my apartment, give up my DEWA account and close my phone since the expenses add up. I have to support myself in another country without knowing how long this will go on for. I don’t appreciate my life being put on hold and my career being interrupted,” C.M. advised DailyKhaleej.

The American expat is pissed off with the shortage of transparency in how Twajudi approvals are being given. She has acquired no responses from the UAE Embassy in Jakarta or the Amer providers. She has additionally contacted the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the American Consulate in Dubai, the American Consulate in Bali and the American Embassy in Jakarta. “Not having information in terms of what to do and how long I may be stuck here is unnerving. The American Embassy has offered to fly me back home to the US at my own expense. The number of coronavirus cases are rising in the US. I don’t feel safe returning there and I don’t have health insurance in the US. My parents are old and are considered a high-risk group. So, I don’t want to travel across the world and put them at risk. I might as well stay where I am,” she defined.

The expat, who has lived in the UAE for three-and-a-half years, has some cash saved to fulfill these unexpected bills. She additionally secured some freelance work with a Dubai firm.

With the Bali tourism trade in limbo, a whole lot of companies are providing discounted lodging and scooter leases. Nevertheless, stranded vacationers are renting a home and transportation solely on a two-week foundation. “They can negotiate a much better price for a month as opposed to two weeks. But because we have no foresight of when we might return, we are spending more money than necessary. There should be a systemised approach to repatriating residents stranded abroad,” C.M. defined.

Honeymoon prolonged

Shervan Shivesh Soogrim and Chenelle Diane Chattergoon, each residents of Trinidad and Tobago, arrived in Bali for their honeymoon on March 14 and are now stranded for two months. Shervan has been a UAE resident for 4 years and works in the well being and security division of a maritime firm in Dubai.

Shervan Shivesh Soogrim and Chanelle Dian Chattergoon Picture Credit score: Provided

“I am able to work remotely and get my salary. Thankfully, I bought my personal laptop during the holiday. I am not guaranteed any job security. While most of my managers are supportive of my situation, some are not as understanding of how it is to get work done around here,” Shivesh Soogrim stated.

Lodging is the household’s largest expense in Bali. The couple paid Dh7,500 for their lodging in April and Dh3,500 on meals and groceries. In Could, the couple moved to a different place for Dh3,800 and paid Dh2,000 on meals bills.

“I am using my basic salary to cover food, transport and accommodation costs in Bali. There is no saving,” Shivesh Soogrim advised DailyKhaleej.

The unique plan was for Chenelle to fly again to Dubai after the honeymoon on a 90-day vacationer visa. Nevertheless, in the present state of affairs, even when the UAE opens borders for residents, Shivesh Soogrim’s spouse can not fly again with him. “Trinidad borders are also closed and all flights stand cancelled,” he added.

Stuck in Turkey

Ryan Pyle, a Canadian nationwide, is a movie and tv host in Dubai with an workplace in Jumeirah Lakes Towers. A UAE resident since 2018, Pyle has been caught in Istanbul, Turkey, for eight weeks now.

Ryan Perle Picture Credit score: Provided

He was filming for a TV sequence in Ethiopia when the UAE closed its borders on March 19. “I could have gone back to Canada, but wanted to stay in the Middle East where I could keep working in the same time zone as my main partners. I landed in Turkey because it was one of the few places I could travel to,” Pyle defined.

He’s not at risk of dropping his job however admits to his firm being in horrible monetary form. “The experience has been expensive. I was in a hotel in Istanbul for the first six weeks. Now, I have rented an apartment because this is looking like it will last much longer. The UAE has still not offered low interest or zero interest loans through financial institutions to small businesses like mine. I am still paying rent for my office in JLT. I have not received a rent holiday from my landlord,” he identified.

Pyle stated that small companies had been getting crushed in the lockdown. Nobody is commissioning new movie and tv work, he added.

“I am not interested in a repatriation flight. I will come back when Dubai and Emirates get back to work properly. I am not missing any work in Dubai, there is no work anywhere,” he added.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2TgvwMO via IFTTT

[josephinewongg]

3 months into 2020.

Took this picture about a year and a month ago when I was happily basking in the natural sunlight, enjoying the comfort of my floral sheets and the cool spring air in my very cozy, humble room in 6 Treorchy; probably a week and a bit after I got news that I merely borderline passed one of my modules and was terribly upset and confused with that. 

//

It’s been a while since I sat myself down to write about all that’s been going on and hence here I am, on a Saturday afternoon, locked up in my room, forcing myself to process thoughts and happenings to pen it all down for reflection and reminiscing + reminding purposes in the future. 

Before we get started with all that’s been happening in 2020, I want to start off with where I last left off in 2019. Second half of 2019 looked a little like completing degree with a second-upper - something that I was so concerned about not achieving since the beginning of my transfer to Cardiff. Truth be told, growing up, my mind was always set on obtaining a First for my degree studies but my later years in Cardiff taught me that my pursue of education is more than the grade I obtain. June and July consisted of having my younger brother over in the UK, saying goodbye to my beloved housemates and city that I called home for 2 years, taking a 13 hour flight home and celebrating the marriage of my older brother. The later half of July and the beginning of August looked a little like seeking career advise from people, looking out for openings, submitting job applications and attending job interviews. 

Then, a trip to the US for a month. Ask me 10, 5, 2 years ago if I’ll ever get the opportunity to visit US in my lifetime - no, will be my definite answer. But hey, God is a God of surprises and there I was, flying across the globe for around 24 hours (still a nightmare), visiting a couple of states in the US including Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. The trip to US was another eye-opening one, seeing scenes from American TV shows come alive, breaking down the typical stereotypes I had of Americans and coming across a variety of people from, or living in The States. 

And to all Malaysians, welcome home. 

A month later, I started my first proper full-time employment in a firm that I would never have thought of applying to, with the responsibilities looking like something I would never have thought of a year ago. Two months into the job, I got news that my team lead - the manager that recruited me in and I wanted to work with, tendered her resignation and there we were, a team left without a lead, which somewhat made me feel like an orphan. Fear and uncertainty came to me with that decision of hers but I’m glad that 3 months later, I’m still holding on to this job and more often than not, enjoying bits and pieces of the job (and the rest of the team of course!). 

//

28th March 2020 - Day 11 of the Movement Control Order (MCO) in Malaysia due to the rapid outbreak and severe spike in COVID-19 cases.

Fast forward 3 months later, here we are, on the final week of March in 2020, experiencing a partial lock-down due to COVID-19. “A crisis like never before in our lifetimes”, many have said. Personally, the severity of this pandemic escalated before I could properly comprehend what was happening. What started off with a “virus outbreak in Wuhan, China” suddenly came knocking not just on our doors, but all around the world. Truth be told, when news of the virus became a little more viral due to the increase in cases in China, I myself couldn’t really be bothered because my ignorant and selfish self never thought that it would have affected us in any way. The sympathy might have been there but the empathy was definitely not because I could not understand nor put myself in the shoes of those being affected in China back then. Now, seeing the realness of the severity of this pandemic, the fear and uncertainty actually gets a lil’ overwhelming. 

I know that different people have different thoughts about this whole pandemic and partial lock-down situation (which is now extended for another 2 weeks), but here are some of mine that I’ll like to pen down for remembrance and reflective purposes (as shared at the beginning of this post). 

Foremost, this whole situation has definitely made me think about life. It has made me really ask myself, if it really is ttg (time to go), have I done enough here on earth - or rather, what have I done given the time I have had here, that would weigh up in the span of eternity? 

If decades of life can be taken away in just an episode of pandemic that might last as short as days, weeks or months, what actually really matters in life?

A pandemic like this has reminded me that this virus spares no one - regardless of age, gender, nationality, skin colour, religion and social economic status. Yes, those that are more privileged might not be indirectly affected as much because of accessible health care/essential needs, good supply of food etc etc. But, for those who are directly involved - who unfortunately contracts the virus, this virus doesn’t look at individuals and go “hey, you’re rich, I’ll pass” or “you’re white, I’ll look for someone else”. The realization of this just reminded me that at the end of the day, we are all equal, we are all merely, humans - neither one more superior than the other.  

Through this pandemic, I have also thought a bit more about profession/career. Currently, the front-liners are those in the medical profession - doctors, nurses, lab staff etc. Doctors especially, is one of those professions that you grow up thinking would earn you a good amount of money (possibly just a strong stereotype) but who would have known and foresaw, that for, and in, such a time as this, it would also put you in such a sacrificial and risky position - to the point of possibly giving up your life for others. Having been thinking about long-term career goals over the past months and year, this has re-emphasized and amplified to me the importance of purpose in a career choice when, and if you are fortunate enough to be given the luxury to choose yours.

In regards to the partial lock-down or better known as the MCO, it has made me ask myself whether what I probably would have been doing on a day-to-day basis if this MCO had not happened would’ve been more beneficial. Apart from the sufficient amount of time spent on social interactions and maintaining healthy relationships with others, could I be spending time on things more beneficial - picking up new skills, reading, staying in with family, spending more time on the Word? 

Following that, something that I saw online this week hit home hard - “It’d be really sad to come out of the end of this with just more screen time. Why not more prayer time, more quiet time, more worship time, more time with God? You’ll never regret sacrificing other things to go deeper with God. He deserves our time, not just the leftovers.” Dad has been constantly reminding each one of us to be spending this extra time to dig deeper into the Word - but let’s be real here, I’ve been failing, badly. At the beginning of this week before the extension was announced, I thought to myself that I might have just wasted 2 weeks not fulfilling what could have been done and was a tad bummed about it but I think (though of course not too glad about it), the extension was personally God’s way of giving me a second chance - two extra weeks, to make time for things that are of kingdom value. 

Finally, I just want to take this opportunity to express gratitude and to continue praising. Unlike many, I acknowledge that I am blessed because throughout this period - I am surrounded by family, there has been a constant provision of (good) home-cooked food, I have shelter above my head and a comfortable space to live/be in, I have access to technology, I am still holding on to my job, I have yet to experience a pay-cut or asked to take unpaid leave; and no, I do not deserve this, this I know. Grace, the free and unmerited favour of God, is what it really is. 

If you ask me where God is in all these, I am very tempted to say, I don’t know. But as cliché as it might sound, the truth is still the truth. Though you and I might not see it, He is amidst and above all that is happening. We might not be able to make sense of all that is going on, but we need to remember and hold on to the nature of who He is. He is sovereign, He is faithful, He is Love, and He is good. And for that, we will continually choose to praise. :) 

Stay strong, stay safe, stay hopeful. This too, shall pass. ❤️🌈

[stuffedinside]

The Beginning

The order of my posted story might not be good. I just write when I’m in the mood, hence the order.

So, I’d like to share the process of my luck (?) in joining this electricity government-company. I’m no longer seeking money from coffee industry, instead I change the course to electricity. It was about months before my work-contract in my old company expired, around July or August. My senior from college organization shared this information on Whatsapp group. I never bothered to check it before, since I have no plan of leaving before that contract ends (though I occasionally apply for multinational company’s vacancy for management trainee). But somehow, one thing led to another (mainly because of the succeed of my friends in this company), so I checked it out. It’s easy to fill the form online. I do that often. But someday, my friend who applied the same vacancy told me that the applicant need to submit the document directly in a job fair in Bandung. That gave me second thought. Too many efforts while I’m still considering to stay at my old company.

But, I think this is Allah’s way of leading me to this path. My father happened to visit Bandung at the same time, inviting me to come to Bandung to check on my little sister. Then I thought, what a chance. So I prepared every files needed and packed my bag then went to Bandung. It was Friday night. I spent all Saturday with my family, since my father would be leaving on Sunday. So I thought submitting the papers on Sunday won’t be hurt, since the job fair last till Sunday. So when I went there, it was very crowded, too many people gathered in one place. I arrived around 11:45am, bad timing since the gate was closed for lunch break. So I waited for almost one and half hour. The queue is impossible, beside they also said that the entry tickets were sold out. Lucky me I got a very last place in ticket queue, while not so lucky for other job seekers at that time. My luck came again when they said that they opened a direct line only for paper-submit. And the other luck came again not long after when they divide the queue for online apply and manual apply which the line is a bit longer than the online apply.

I brought 2 files in a hope that I could submit it for my friend. Too bad they didn’t accept since the applicant itself need to submit it. That day was exhausting but little did I know that it would be worth. Around 3 weeks after visit to Bandung, I got an invitation to attend the first preliminary test. Of course it was in Bandung. The test was academic and English test. I still remembered that it was on Tuesday, while I got the announcement in less than a week. So I request an off day to my manager. It was easy to request a day off at my old office since it was a branch. You just need to tell that you want to take a day off give the paper, and get it signed. Voila, you have a day off.

The test was early in the morning, so I decided to sleep in Bandung at my friends’ that night. Thanks to two of my best friends, your part in my career is very substantial. I almost got late, as my behavior to hurry in the last minutes. I found the test acceptable. I could handle it well and had no worry after it. So I spent the day well with my friends and went back to Jakarta.

I passed into the second test. It was announced only the day after the test. I took a gamble here to go back that day hoping that I got the second test at the third day it was held. So I needed to act quick since all of the test took place in Bandung. The day was so close I couldn’t bear to request for another day off. So I told my boss that I was sick that day and asked to take a rest at home. He said he was okay with that. The test was at 11am, so I decided to go to Bandung that morning at 5am. The sun probably hadn’t rise yet. The second test is physical checkup. I did some research before the first test about the steps in the recruitment process. So I quite knew vaguely about the test. Since I only knew about the rumor, I only ate a bread in the morning because I didn’t want my cholesterol coming high. Turns out it was literally physical test, but I got to have 70 cm for my abdominal ring. That was my first physical checkup. I was shocked, though I’d expected it before.

Thank God I still passed into the third test. The announcement came a week after so I request for another day off. My manager guessed it correctly that I was taking a test, so he asked where I applied. The third test also happen on Tuesday (perhaps it was my lucky day). I arrived early that day so I went to visit my friends before the test. The test was a new developed adaptive test. It depended on every each of your answer. I felt pretty confidence at that time.

Lucky me I still allowed to take the fourth test. It was only a week after the last one. I felt happy cause I didn’t need to wait for a long time to get assurance. On the other side, I was furious on how to ask a day off. My branch manager won’t have a problem with it, but the head office surely will ask about my absence. Though it was my right to claim the day offs, but it was odd to have too many in a month. But I thought I was saved because it was a new circular attendance calendar in my old company. The off days didn’t look too obvious. The test was early morning, so I stayed at my friends that night. This time I was worried sick after the test. It was a usual psychology tests I used to take. None of it I hadn’t tried before. But I kept have a feeling that I was caught using an eraser when drawing by one of the observer. It was forbidden to use eraser but I couldn’t handle an itchy feeling to erase a bad line in the drawing. But however I went home that night praying that I didn’t matter and I would pass this test.

The fifth test was lab test, where your blood would be tested and all. It was scary according to many people in their blogs and online forum of this recruitment test. The one thing I fear was my cholesterol level. Even though I’m from West Sumatera, I rarely eat its food. I’m not that really fond of Minang food. Lucky me. But still, I was worry that my cholesterol was high. Other thing I fear was my blood pressure. I always knew that I had low blood pressure from the time in college. I often felt dizzy after taking too many stroll or taking stairs. Some people at the forum recommended to have a healthy diet after psychology test. It would give us around two weeks to wash out bad things in our body. As much as cleaning our blood. I followed the suggestion, but didn’t fully gave much attention for it. I only controlled to have a less rice, ate green veggies, and took less eggs. I was very worried about the psychology test so I didn’t put my full attention into my diet. I ignored the fruits and more green veggies since I thought there might be a chance that I didn’t pass the test.

When the announcement published at the website, I prayed hard, even the days before. And thank God, I passed it. I feel a big relieve and ready to plan another trip to Bandung to attend the fifth test. For a week I planned my diet and prayed that it wasn’t too late. On the day before weekend, I checked my blood at pharmacy that served instant blood-checking. Man, the cholesterol was the nightmare. Not really high but above the high line by 7 points. But surprisingly my blood pressure was normal. So after that I went to supermarket and brought apple, pear, lemon, cucumber, papaya, mango, dragon fruit, broccoli, and tomato. That was my big plan to suppressed my cholesterol. I even bought brown rice. Whole weekend I spent by drinking fruits and veggies juice combination. The first time I drank it, it tasted like shit. I almost threw out, literally. But I endured it and somehow, the day after the juice became a more acceptable. I also drank honey-lemon shot and lemon-infused water for a week before. The test was Tuesday. Before the day, I took the blood test twice. The first one stated that the cholesterol came down to 197. I was relieved. But that was not enough. And after many efforts I took another test on Monday. The result was 174. Thank God all my efforts weren’t useless.

So I went to Bandung after working on Monday. I took a day off again this time. The test was at 6am, and I also felt the need to have a good sleep before the test since it would affect my blood pressure. After fasting for 12 hours, my blood and urine samples were taken. I had another test. This was my first lab test so I felt a little bit exciting. I had electrocardiograph (ECG) test, chest Rontgen, and hearing test. The hearing test was giving me feeling the same as psychology test. I knew I did it right, but I didn’t have a clean start. That was my habit. If I did a mistake at the start then I started to feel anxious for the rest of the event, even though I didn’t make any other mistake.

The announcement was 2 weeks after. I felt worry when I opened the file. But, once again, I had my luck. The sixth test was interview with human resource and a psychologist. This time I took another day off, probably my last one. I decided to sleep at my friend to avoid coming late. The interview was going well. It took about one and half hour. Form what I read in the forum, that was normal. After that I went to visit my little sister. Her place was not far from it. I also had a good time with my friends. I felt very confidence about the result and that affected my mood. The interviewer even advised me to give a resignation letter as soon as possible. But I’m not a risk taker that much. The confidence I had still had some worry of failure. So I postpone the resignation plan and continued my work life as usual. 2 weeks after the announcement came. I couldn’t tell how I felt that day. I waited it for 2 days and was sure that the announcement would came that day. And it was, at 2 pm. Alhamdulillah, perhaps it was the best path Allah decide for me. I told my mother and that night wrote my resignation letter. It was the craziest week of my work life. Plus, I needed to go to Bandung again to sign the work contract. This time I ask permission not to come to the office. My day off was pretty much run out.  The sudden leave and the problem I had at that time took all my energy. And so my last day which was on Friday was extended to Saturday since I kept missing small things.

That exact Saturday, I went to Bandung because I need to check in on Sunday morning. One side I felt excited and relieve, the other side I felt exhausted and sorry not to resign early so that I had a few spare time to rest and do nothing.

But now, here I am. 3 months later. Survived. I couldn’t thank God more for this blessing. I am happy.

[jeremiahdowney]

My Hotel Still Has a Thirteenth Floor

On the edge of the town of Greenwood sits a hotel. Newly rebuilt and re-branded after sitting for months as a pile of ashes. The official cause of the fire remains unknown…but the truth is that it was arson.

Taylor explained as much to me in her suicide note. Due to the intimate, “for-your-eyes-only” nature of the note, I wont be sharing it here. Suffice to say that she told me she couldn’t continue with the nightmares, and that Teegs was only the tip of the iceberg. She planned to take the whole place down with her, thirteenth floor and all. By the time I found her confession, it was too late for me to do anything about it. I’d sped through town toward the hotel I’d walked out of for the last time months earlier, only to arrive at a towering inferno. Bright orange and yellow flames were bursting from the windows, reaching upward toward the sky. Guest vehicles were ablaze, no doubt due to their proximity to the burning building. I don’t think Taylor would have purposely set fire to them, no matter what she was suffering at the time.

The firefighters seemed to have given up from what I could see, albeit my vantage was limited to my driver side window as I drove past, and my attention was primarily drawn to the nondescript black SUVs that were blocking the driveway entrances. Police officers, the public would think, no doubt…but their black suits…

I’d continued my drive out of Greenwood, stopping in our neighboring town. The city that Taylor had worked in before I contacted her, roped her back into all of this. I pulled into the parking lot of a gas station and let the emotions come. I read, and reread her note through my tears. The nature of our relationship was a unique one. We’d been friends, and lovers after the events of the thirteenth floor, sharing a bond that I assume only two people who have encountered the supernatural can even fathom. Now she was gone. I read her note one last time before pressing my car lighter into the bottom right corner of the torn notebook page. I’d dragged her into this, pulled her back into the world she’d managed to escape before. I could at least protect her legacy. I’d make sure there was no proof that could link her to the crime. As I sat there, wiping the tears from my eyes, watching the note burn in my vehicle’s pull out ash tray, I mentally prepared myself.

In the weeks that followed, I took to drinking. I’m not proud of that, but its the truth. Instead of reaching out about my loss, seeing a therapist…I turned inward, and to the bottle. My apartment felt so big, and empty without her. I’d drink often, but especially when following the story of the hotel. The Greenwood news covered it extensively. The police report, along with saying the cause was unknown, claimed there had been no casualties. Who knows if that was true, or just more bullshit. Those men in black no doubt spun a narrative, and the droves would just believe whatever the authorities told them. I knew for a fact that there was at least one dead. A redhead that was mentioned a total of zero times.

It was a few months before word of construction would hit the news. A new hotel to be erected in place of the old one, renamed “The Greenwood Hotel” after the town, of course. No franchise this time, apparently. “The Greenwood on the bay!” The news anchor had joked, with a plastic smile and big, white teeth flashing. She was referring to the swampy bog that sat in the forest behind the land. I remember thinking she was quite tacky for making the joke, but then again, I supposed I was the only one left who knew the history of the hotel which once sat there. Within a month the doors were opened.

My drinking came to a head about six months after Taylor had done what she did. Half a year of living on the stuff, lines begin to blur and limits become nonexistent. I showed up to work shitfaced, and even though the factory I’d been working for ever since the thirteenth floor turned a blind eye to numerous safety violations, and sexual harassment was a daily thing, I guess showing up drunk was where they put their foot down. I wouldn’t call it serendipitous by any stretch, but that very day was when I saw the ad. It shouldn’t have shocked me the way it did, I was searching the help wanted section of the newspaper after all, but I did feel my heart drop when I read it.

“GREENWOOD HOTEL-NIGHT AUDITOR WANTED”. I had flashes of it all when I read those words…night auditor wanted…I saw Taylor, The Bunnyman…memories of the puppet, and the way the wind whipped at me as I eagerly pounded on the elevator button the first time I’d stumbled onto that floor. Something clicked inside of me, and I don’t know if it was the alcohol’s affect on my brain, or maybe I was just drifting closer to madness due to my depression over losing my friend, but the one thing in my mind that I could not shake was the thought…maybe…maybe shes still there…Teegs managed to stick around, so why not? It was a crazy thought, but this whole place, these events, they were all crazy. So why not, right? It was with a shaking hand that I dialed the number listed.

There was no application process. I was called for an interview the very next day after the manager had heard my qualifications. Arriving was surreal enough, but nothing compared to hearing those automatic doors sliding open and setting foot inside once again. The wallpaper was different, as were some fixtures, but essentially the layout was the same. Desk to the left as you walk in, breakfast on the right. Beyond the desk sits the elevator, and hallway, expanding in both directions, ending in a stairwell. I wondered to myself about those stairwells.

The General Manager was the one manning the desk when I walked in. A woman who looked to be in her forties, who was trying desperately to hide any gray hairs with an unnatural, jet black dye job. She was enthused to meet me once I introduced myself. She gave me her name, Jeanie, and asked me if I’d step into her office. Why not, as it sat in the same place that Roger’s office had been. It was bizarre, yet so familiar. The interview was by the numbers, and at the end of it I was unsurprised when Jeanie, in a sweet voice, told me they’d love to have me on board, and asked when I could start.

“Immediately.” I replied, before adding “May I ask what happened to the last night auditor?”

Jeanie’s smile never faltered.

“She said she wasn’t comfortable working alone, something about getting a weird phone call. You know how that is, don’t you, Justin.” She said, as if the two of us were sharing an inside hotel joke, and she winked. I smiled back at her and nodded.

I started the next night. My trainer knew less than I did, so it was merely a single night that I wasn’t alone. My second night was when I began to look for any signs of the strange. I paced the halls, watched the cameras, but nothing happened. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. With this hotel, or at least the one that used to sit in this location, that was weirder than anything. Nothing. I spent four hours walking up one flight of stairs, and down the other…no thirteenth floor…nothing. Just the same three floors, over, and over, and over.

I wasn’t surprised, as the thirteenth floor had been quite elusive before…but a nagging at the back of my mind was arguing that maybe it was gone. Maybe Taylor HAD killed it, maybe this new hotel was just that.

Months went by like this. I’d check the stairwells, and the laundry chute…nothing. Hell, I’d even check the audit boxes to make sure they were normal, which they always were. To tell you the truth, it was quite a boring place. Until tonight.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. I was just sitting here at my desk, catching up on a movie, when the phone rang. We are entering the off season for the hotel business in my area, and I’d dealt with a guy who was trying to get a room for he and his “wife” to “celebrate” in for only a few hours, therefore he felt he should only pay for said few hours. I’d explained to him that that is most definitely not how the Greenwood Hotel worked, to which he demanded I call my manager and call him back right away.

“Sir, it’s the middle of the night, my manager doesn’t want to be bothered and I can tell you that shes going to say the same thing I’m telling you.” I said, trying not to sound like an asshole, but not trying that hard.

“I’ll have your job!” he screamed back at me.

“You don’t want it, sir.” I finished before hitting the end call button.

I fully expected it to be him again, to give me what for, when I picked the phone up this time.

“Greenwood Hot-” I started, but was cut off.

“Set a man to watch all night, watch all night, watch all night, set a man to watch all night, fix my TV!” a shrill feminine voice shrieked at me to the tune of “London Bridge” through the receiver. Following the words came a horrible, witch-like cackle.

The line went dead, but not before I caught a glimpse of the phone console, which assured that the call was coming from room 604. A room that does not exist at The Greenwood Hotel. Immediately after the realization struck me, I heard the metallic “clang” from the laundry room, and the same witchy cackling, but much clearer than from the phone…much closer. I turned toward the noise, and my suspicion was confirmed, that it was coming from the laundry chute. The clanging was the chute door, opening and closing, like a mouth. This gave the appearance that the fucking chute itself was mocking me with that wild cackling.

I didn’t hesitate, and charged toward it. I violently grasped the handle, forcing the chute open, and through the manic laughter, I heard myself yell up the chute…

“Taylor!? Taylor, are you there?!” I managed, before starting to get choked up.

The chute stopped its laughing, but I kept my grip on its handle. I stood that way for what felt like minutes, but realistically had to be only seconds. Then the lights all around me flickered out, and the only illumination was what emanated from the opening of the laundry chute. A sickly crimson.

“You couldn’t take the fucking hint, could you?” My own voice spoke to me from inside the chute. It was unsettling to say the least, hearing oneself like that.

It startled me enough to make me jump, and caused my grip to loosen enough for the chute door to tear itself free and return to its natural closed position. I fell backwards onto the hard tile as I watched the chute slowly open again, eerie red light filled the room again as it did so. I saw something slowly descending in it. It looked like the chute was giving birth, pushing whatever it was down, with some effort. The scarlet glow didn’t help with recognizing it at first, as it simply looked like a shadowy blob.

“You know that I never loved you, right?” I heard the voice say. It was raspy, and gruff, but unmistakably Taylor. I was unable to move, as I sat there awash with horror.

The blob began to move, and it became clear once I saw the head rotate to face me. It was Taylor. She was upside down, shoulders, neck and head sticking out of the chute. It was a terrifying sight, seeing her badly disfigured. The burns on her face, scalp, and neck made me want to look away, I TRIED to look away, but I couldn’t. Her eyes, they were…they were melting, rolling down, or up her cheeks…her lips were black and split open, revealing tender pink meat. No hint of the beautiful orange hair existed anymore, it was replaced by the same horrific scarring that covered her face.

“Taylor…” I managed to whisper.

“Come to get me, Justin?” She wailed, and laughed simultaneously. It was as if pain and humor had met. It made my skin crawl and my hair stand up.

She chattered her teeth at me, and began to squirm. I saw on arm slide free, down the chute, followed by the other…she was going to work her way out, and she was going to get me…and I was going to let her.

“Fix. My. TV!” She howled, in that same pained laugh, as she grasped the edges of the chute, pulling herself closer to the actual opening.

“Ding, ding!” came the sound from the front desk. The unmistakable sound of my bell. I don’t know why it snapped me out of it, but I turned my head in that direction. This somehow broke me from the trance, and when I turned back toward the chute I saw it slam closed, followed by a banging on the metal door, which quickly faded. I was able to stand, and did so. I tried to process what I had seen, but the rapid dinging of the bell came again.

I composed myself and headed back around the wall to the front desk, where I was greeted by a sight just as unreal as the one I’d been confronted with moments earlier. There, staring at me from across the desk, stood a skeleton. It leaned on the desk, tapping its bony fingers on the plastic. I stopped in my tracks, and just looked. The thing looked back at me with its eyeless sockets for a few seconds. I don’t know how I knew it, but it could see me perfectly fine. This was confirmed when it spoke to me.

“Hi.” it said, despite having no neck to contain any vocal chords. Its skull pivoted back and forth on its spinal column. As it did this, dust fell from its bones onto a brightly colored, yet dirty, neon jogging suit. I also noted a huge crack along the left side of the skull.

“Hi.” I uttered back, still trying to understand what I was seeing. This was most definitely not the thirteenth floor. This was my brightly lit, clean, normal hotel.

“So, uh…” The skeleton spoke again. “Got any rooms?”

I nodded

“Can I have one?” he asked, a bit sarcastically, as if my standoffishness were unjustified.

I approached my computer, very unsure of how to proceed.

“How many nights are we looking at?” I asked, my tone unsettled.

“Indefinitely.” The skeleton responded, reaching into a pocket with his skinless hand. It produced two gold coins, that for lack of a better term looked like pirate treasure. It dropped them noisily onto the counter it was still leaning against.

I looked down at the spinning gold coins, and then back to the skeleton. I silently pointed to the sign next to him, which read “No Cash or Checks”. It sighed, scooping up the coins and jingling them in its fist.

“Amex okay?” it asked.

“You, uh, got a valid ID?”

It laughed, a sincere laugh, and put the coins back into its pocket, and pulled out an old, weathered wallet. From the billfold it pulled a brand new credit card, and to my shock, a drivers license. The most baffling look must have come over my face when I peered at the license, because the skeleton spoke again.

“Take all the time you need, chum.” It said, closing its teeth in a sort of awkward smile.

I looked the license over. It was local, because of course it was. Why wouldn’t Greenwood have a skeleton with a drivers license. And it definitely was the thing standing before me, as the description matched. “Hair:NA, Eyes:NA, Class:D” oh, and the picture in the corner was a fucking skull. Dead giveaway. The thing wasn’t even expired.

“Bruce Gumps.” I read aloud.

“In the…well, I would say flesh, but ya know.” Bruce said back to me, humor in his tone.  

I shrugged. Valid ID, valid credit card. I set the skeleton up with a room.

“Do you have a floor preference, Mr. Gumps?” I asked, in full on professional mode.

“Bruce, please. ‘Mr. Gumps’…yuck. And, Justin, I think you know what floor I want.” Bruce said slyly.

“How did you know my name?!’ I said, taken aback. The skeleton slowly raised his right hand and outstretched his index finger. He slowly began moving it toward me.

I panicked internally,images of the grim reaper doing the touch of death danced across my mind. I held my breath, bracing myself.

The bony finger struck my nametag with a soft “clack”.

“Oh…well, how about the third floor?” I said, feeling like a dumbass.

Bruce pivoted his head in a “no” motion. A weird “squeal” noise came from the bones rubbing together. I leaned in close.

“Thirteenth floor?” I whispered.

“Justin, I was just outside…there is No way this building has thirteen floors. No, I want you to type this into the room slot…and don’t you worry, I’ve still got my key from last time I stayed here. I know this building is ‘new’…” he raised his hands to do the rabbit ears gesture, “…but I think my key will still work.” He finished by showing me a skeleton key hanging around his neck.

“I see.” I said, not seeing at all.

“Punch in the room number B06.” He said, showing me his strange smile again.

To my surprise, it worked totally fine. I explained to him that he was all set, and pointed out the elevator.

“Elevator doesn’t go to my floor, Justin.” He said as he walked down the hallway. He disappeared into the stairwell, and I heard thunder clap outside.

So on the edge of the town of Greenwood, there sits a hotel. Inside of this hotel, sits a night auditor, smiling as he types up the events of the night. They may have been horrible, or surreal, but the night auditor smiles anyway, because he knows he will have new stories to tell.

[theyreview-blog]

The Refugee Crisis: an ongoing trauma

“I am receiving a call on Skype. My husband’s cousin was killed by Assad’s grenades that came down in East Ghouta yesterday. We hear the cries of his family on the phone, while we, thousands of kilometres away from them, are useless”, wrote Ameenah Sawaan, describing her recent experience of receiving a death note, while writing her latest piece, condemning the Assad regime.

“With the tears, come old memories. I have a long list of friends and family that have been killed since 2011. None of them wanted more than what I perceive as self-evident here in the streets of Germany: a life in freedom”, continued Sawaan.

 Sawaan is a young woman from Damascus, Syria. She is one of the lucky ones, arguably, extremely tough and resilient, as she is, despite the horrors, building her career as a freelance journalist and activist since her arrival in Berlin in 2013.

 “Our lives have become a single balancing act. We are always somewhere between the moments in which we try to distract ourselves, as to not lose hope, and the moments when we look the situation in Syria in the eye, to see what we can do”, wrote Sawaan to me.

 The Syrian Network For Human Rights (SNHR) reports that 5381 civilians have been killed in the first half of 2017, from January until June. The number includes 1159 children, 742 women and 93 people who died from torture. SNHR estimates that over 480,000 Syrians have died since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011.

 Recently the Violation Documentation Centre in Syria (VDC-Syria), discovered a record number of civilian deaths, a 71% increase –  143,630 deaths since 2011. The organisation also brings attention to the increase of child casualties, from 9% - 3,354 in 2011, to 23% - 11,444 in 2016. VDC-Syria reports “an increased reliance on aerial bombing by the Syrian government and international partners.”

 The Syrian crisis does not only cause deaths, in even higher numbers it leads to internal displacement, lost jobs, homes, and livelihoods, while people remain in the war-zone. According to a UN High Commission for Refugees report, around 6.3 million Syrians have been internally displaced since 2011, the highest number in the world. Out of the 11 million people that have fled their homes according to Syrian Refugees.eu, over 5 million fled the country between 2011 and December 2017, reports the UN Refugee Agency.

To date the European Union is facing the greatest mass movement since the Second World War. The UN Refugee Agency, visualises the global trend: in 2004, there were 37.5 million refugees in the world, by 2014 the number had reached 59.5 million people – half of them children.

A Displacement Tracking Matrix published by International Organisation for Migration (IMO) found that 30,465 migrants arrived in Europe by December 2017, more than 29,000 arrived by sea in Greece, Italy and Spain. IMO records 175,056 arrivals in Europe in 2016, this is over five times higher than this year.

 People become refugees anywhere were political and military conflicts endanger their livelihoods. The Migration Observatory, reports that in 2016 most people came from Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Albania, Syria and Sudan.

 Akim (a fictional name to protect his identity and asylum process) described his journey from Pakistan to Austria as the most difficult thing in his life: “The dangerous travel was from Turkey to Greece. Because I used to be boat on the sea. The tide was so strong in the sea when I was on the boat. Many people are gone in the sea, due to destroy boat or for Strom.”

 Akim, described his journey that cost him 13,000 euros and took him almost 15 months: “Also more dangerous to cross the border from Iran to Turkey in the night time because I used to illegal way and if any border guard of police sees that someone is crossing the border they can shoot then and there.

I came to Bangladesh to India on the foot but a middle man helped me. And I paid money. It's easy to cross, then I moved India to Pakistan by taxi and on foot. After Pakistan to Iran and in the same way like taxi. Iran to Turkey by bus and taxi. Turkey to Greece by boat. Greece to Macedonia by private car and Macedonia to Serbia by bus and taxi. Serbia to Hungary by private car and Hungary to Vienna by train.”

 Like thousands of others, Akim arrived in Vienna at the peak of the refugee crisis, when trains full of refugees arrived in Austria’s train stations. Linda Schütte, an Austrian student, was one of the many civilian helpers in the summer of 2015.

 Schütte said: “Conditions obviously weren’t the best; a train station can’t actually accommodate 4,000 people. That’s what happened though, in the beginning the people really slept there too, later there were emergency sleeping places all around Vienna, and shuttles to get there. The whole thing got structure over time.”

 Schütte valued her fellow locals’ efforts “People (volunteers) find an enormous amount of energy, because they simply want to help. Sure, it is a pity that, including myself, most people only help, when the misery is right in front of them, but most people completely disregarded their own needs and were basically at the train station 24/7, to help destitute people, that was really surprising.”

After tagging along once, Schütte felt inclined to come back for every free minute of her time: “From then on, I spent every day there. For me there was no other choice, but just to go there after work, and as long as the body could cope, sometimes even passed that. So, it was really a tenuous situation that brought me to it. (…) I spend most of my time, with people that had lost family or friends on their journey. I had nightmares about that, especially about a few individual cases. They were so terrible, that I can’t deal with them to this day.”

IMO’s report finds that the majority of migrants arriving in 2017 are from Western Africa. In Italy, 13% arrived from Guinea and Nigeria, high numbers also came from Bangladesh and the Ivory Coast. Greece received 36% of migrants from Syria, and a significant number from Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

 But many don’t make it to Europe. Missing Migrants Project states that in 2017, 3,091 people lost their lives traveling to Europe. A number much higher in 2016 – when it was at 4,962. For many the journey and the traumatic experiences linked to fleeing, civil war, suffering and the conflict in their home countries, are extremely difficult. Alongside cultural and language barriers it proved difficult for Milab Zamanlabib (aa fictional name to protect his identity) to share how the family came to Austria.

The father of two, who has recently lost his wife, talked about the benefits of life in Austria: “There is no militia. We can do what we want. There is work and respect for people and coherence to the schedule.” The father explained what was the most difficult after arriving in Europe: “To wait on the decision of the asylum status. German is also very hard. We want to work, and give back to the Austrians, what they have done for us.” His dreams for the future are “To be able to stay in Austria, work, own (a) flat, good life for the children.”

Italian lawyer L. B. (who wishes to remain anonymous) raised problems with the asylum process in Europe: “The EU has been making efforts to adopt common minimum standards regarding asylum processes in member countries. However, it remains a long and tedious process across Europe. From the moment an application is made, as much as a year can go by, between bureaucracy, papers, interviews and checks on the person’s status. Italian law states that the process should take a maximum of 35 days, but that is hardly ever the case.”

The lawyer emphasised the hardship the process puts on already vulnerable people: “The complexity of each individual case makes it difficult, leaving the people who apply in a limbo – not knowing whether their application will be granted or rejected, not knowing whether they will be allowed to legally remain in the country or not – is worsening a situation which is already, by nature, very delicate.”

He criticised the vagueness of the asylum process: “One of them gets granted asylum, the other does not. If the migrant says he is simply looking for a better life, that is not a good enough answer to be granted asylum. The law is still old, and it deals with an old model of refugee – one that flees because of persecution by the state. We have to confront new situations, where people have to flee because their country isn’t offering them security or a decent life.”

“If the asylum request is granted, the migrant can start a new life with the rights as citizen. If the asylum request is denied, the migrant has three choices: he can appeal for a new request, he can agree to be deported, or he can remain, illegally, in the country, living a life running away from the police – which oftentimes seems paradoxically to be a better choice than going back to his/her home country.”