Applying for Jobs… Moving to Japan?
07 February 2016 [link youtube]
Talking about my life (at a crossroads) in 2016, and, yes, inexorably, this involves anecdotes about war, poverty, atrocities, and political history.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey I wanted to make a video here for a
little while talking about my current job search and my plans to possibly relocate to Japan but possibly any more on planet earth to be honest with you um I just filled out a job application the other day that asked me the intentionally vague and frustrating question of please describe an experience that has changed who you are in the world and then after that it specifies 200 words so this asking you a supposedly profoundly meaningful and profoundly relevant to the job you're applying for question and that's giving you two hundred words to do it so this is really the the Twitter generation of you know define your barrier soul for the world in 200 words this particular job was indeed relevant to my past work experience doing humanitarian work and research in Southeast Asia so I attempted in only 200 words to tell the heartbreaking story of a woman in Laos who during the Vietnam War I a war that by the way is referred to as the american war over in that part of the world if you want to sound sophisticated especially in speaking the local language um during the Vietnam War she had to flee up into the mountains and across the border from Laos and Vietnam to escape us bombardment pretty common story that general outline of it at least and while she was working her way along one of these mud roads through the mountains a helicopter an American helicopter came down from the sky at the slaughter them even though they were course just civilians fleeing that also was fairly common quite well-documented to on the hole in the in the war anyway so this helicopter came down and shot them or shot at them I might say and they scattered and tried to hide themselves in the water of the river just fled in all directions as civilians will do in those circumstances and one detail the story that definitely brings true by the way those big guns that are that are bolted onto helicopter gunships it's nothing like a rifle it's not like being shot by a pistol or or handheld rifle this has come up a few different times in my political science career or so to speak if you get hit by around from one of those guns because they're designed to be able to at least stop a truck but quite possibly to stop a tank and also to go a long distance itself tremendous power it'll tear your body in half getting hit by just one shot and if you get hit clean in the midsection it can carry all of your internal organs of your body that kind of thing is the the amount of energy is so tremendous I am just now thinking that a couple of people might have clicked on this video not at all expecting to hear a gory war story and that's exactly what you're put together anyway 200 words I tried to tell this heartbreaking story that I heard in in Laos moving through the mountains try to escape the ravages of war and there was one woman who was carrying her own newborn baby still breastfeeding when she was shot by this helicopter gunship in these circumstances and the bullet probably hit her in the hips and took the bottom half of her body clean off definitely took both her legs off and while she's lying there in shock she can still speak for a few minutes or a few seconds or what have you after this has happened and she says to the survivors after the helicopters gone away carry me along with you a little ways so I can breastfeed my infant one last time and then set me down when I die and they did exactly that the men picked up the half of a woman not yet a corpse and that half of a woman held on to her baby and breast fed as they walked along a little ways after some time they felt the body turn lifeless and of course it wasn't holding on to the baby quite the same way anymore and they put the body down took the body out of her arms and then went along the west rest of the way they did eventually escaped into the the caves they were seeking there in the mountains and the woman who told me that story survived the war learning to read and write at a chalkboard in a cave in the high mountains northwestern Vietnam so that is the story I attempted to tell in 200 words when this job application asked me to describe an experience that had changed my life and my place in the world and it's a moving story it's a memorable story but the truth is it didn't really change me hearing that story and having that experience really an example of something that did change me if you look through this channel there's a recent video the title is something like cocaine and the philosophy of science that actually discussed is a book that really changed me and the reason why I change me was a course that I'd gone through some prior learning some prior experience and then reading that book was a turning point where things change my attitude change my little changes on this story even though moving about the woman in the mountains the helicopter and so on I already knew all that stuff at least in broad outlines already read survivors accounts to the war I was aware of many other examples of things like that happening so there's no reason why hearing this one further story would actually change me as a person so I could say more on that but actually it's it's an interesting question what are the experiences and what are the stories that really change you as opposed to things that are maybe dramatic but that leave you unchanged what changes you is understanding you can do a lot of suffering without getting any understanding and you can sometimes gain a new understanding without doing so much suffering but we'll see if I get the job so look guys my reason for sharing this video with you is partly because for me I do not have a real separation between my internet presence in my real life this video does not exist to talk about just politics or just economics or just the study of languages it also doesn't exist to just talk about veganism or some other issue that may have brought you here it certainly doesn't exist just talk about my past history as a scholar of Buddhism although I do still talk about for some time time this channel talks about me in my life and what's going on and what's going on with me right now is that I'm applying for a whole bunch of jobs within the last week as I recall applied for two different jobs in Japan one job in Myanmar and I'm using the word job here to include all sorts of opportunities whether they are paid internships whether they are co-op jobs arranged by my university or whether they are just directly talking to employer oh yeah that reminds me yeah yeah there was one more job in Japan I forgot about just in the last week that I applied for I'm pursuing new work through at least four different methods as i categorize things in my own head and one of those methods that may surprise you surprised a lot of people is that i have formally applied to join the canadian military and I am now going through the testing and interview process that begins admission to the Canadian Armed Forces different people react to that using different ways as I've mentioned in recent videos many of my professors not all but many really do talk to me as an equal and a friend which is wonderful i have professors who I you know go for coffee with and really you know we talk as as equals would you wonderful and again it's not all professors there are a couple professors who I think hate my guts and it's okay um some of you watching this channel right now may hate my guts and that's also ok um but it's interesting to see how powerless and frustrated they feel because many of my professors regard me as an unusually talented student and unusually bright student or brilliant student I mean now some of them say very flattering thinks about me which is nice I'd use words like brilliant Sakura just saying um they see me as somebody with potential but the reality of the conversations I'm having with them is that we're talking about the details of exactly how my potential is going to waste and very likely how it is going to continue to go two ways tell what is really going to be snuffed out so some of these guys have been talking to you for like whatever year and a half now and it's like well year and a half ago we were talking about ma programs and PhD programs for me we're talking about other possible career paths for me and these professors didn't have any positive answers didn't have any positive opportunities to talk about with me they were all kind of hanging their heads and saying it's hopeless nothing paused to tell you and now I'm telling them well I'm joining the army and they react in all sorts of different ways to that some positively one professor in particular really said that he felt that joining the army would be an honorable path for me to take and he saw it very positively others regard it very negatively and they feel sort of crushed and set back and show and don't see how this fate could have happened to me again given they perceive me as an unusually talented promising bright student as someone who in theory could do all kinds of positive jobs in the world and the past I have done all kinds of jobs that's in the story but the reality is with Canada joining the army is a very slow process it would be at least 12 months between the present and my beginning active service and that is partly because of extensive background checks and security checks so is not a case that I will be in the near future looking at an either/or decision between getting a job and joining the army I would say it's quite likely the army the first process will be even 18 months I won't go into why so 18 months is long enough that I could move to Japan work for a full year and in theory I could even move back to Canada after that year and still not have actually signed up for the army if they want me and if I decide I want the work so I am applying for many different jobs in many different corners of the world as I mentioned one of the jobs i guess two of them have been really related to my humanitarian background one in japan one in myanmar i am applying for straight-up work as an English teacher including in Japan and one of my reasons for sharing this stuff with you now if you're watching this in the year 2030 kind of a different situation but if you're watching this right now in the year 2016 you guys are part of my life my viewers can change my fate and at least one of my viewers already who gotten touched me we had a couple different conversations he actually took a copy of my CV of my resume and gave it to his boss it was about a particular job that he thought I was well suited for blah blah blah so already a couple of different people have known to the internet have tried to help me and try to get involved with my current job search that's about it look man I don't talk about it every video I don't want to ruin anyone's day but yeah fundamentally there is huge pressure on me because I have a two-year-old daughter and still it is possible i'll never see my two-year-old daughter again i also have a very expensive lawyer but if I ever do want to see my two-year-old daughter the cost of doing that geographically legally and otherwise is enormous so I've pressure on me to earn money not just for her not just to support her but also to support my spending time with her and that's partly made even more difficult because both short-term and long-term I don't really know where she's going to be living in the world they're not really based in France no point getting into it and also when they first moved to France i was told that was just temporary and that within a number of weeks they were going to move from france to either New York or Seattle through all these different things that push and pull on it but yeah one way or another I already lost more than 10 years of my life becoming a scholar of Buddhism I don't have those 10 years back to do over again I can't waste another 10 years developing expertise in some area of scholarship that can't possibly get me a job although I don't need a career today I need to have a career direction today and yeah these are all factors that despite my relatively deep knowledge of atrocities committed in war by all sides click through this channel boy if you think the Communists didn't commit any trustee sin Walker I have a lot of videos on this channel discussing in-depth mass murder by communists but yeah there's also course atrocities committed by the American side and so on I'm aware of all that but I am looking at making the decision of joining the Canadian military and joining the military at a time of war
little while talking about my current job search and my plans to possibly relocate to Japan but possibly any more on planet earth to be honest with you um I just filled out a job application the other day that asked me the intentionally vague and frustrating question of please describe an experience that has changed who you are in the world and then after that it specifies 200 words so this asking you a supposedly profoundly meaningful and profoundly relevant to the job you're applying for question and that's giving you two hundred words to do it so this is really the the Twitter generation of you know define your barrier soul for the world in 200 words this particular job was indeed relevant to my past work experience doing humanitarian work and research in Southeast Asia so I attempted in only 200 words to tell the heartbreaking story of a woman in Laos who during the Vietnam War I a war that by the way is referred to as the american war over in that part of the world if you want to sound sophisticated especially in speaking the local language um during the Vietnam War she had to flee up into the mountains and across the border from Laos and Vietnam to escape us bombardment pretty common story that general outline of it at least and while she was working her way along one of these mud roads through the mountains a helicopter an American helicopter came down from the sky at the slaughter them even though they were course just civilians fleeing that also was fairly common quite well-documented to on the hole in the in the war anyway so this helicopter came down and shot them or shot at them I might say and they scattered and tried to hide themselves in the water of the river just fled in all directions as civilians will do in those circumstances and one detail the story that definitely brings true by the way those big guns that are that are bolted onto helicopter gunships it's nothing like a rifle it's not like being shot by a pistol or or handheld rifle this has come up a few different times in my political science career or so to speak if you get hit by around from one of those guns because they're designed to be able to at least stop a truck but quite possibly to stop a tank and also to go a long distance itself tremendous power it'll tear your body in half getting hit by just one shot and if you get hit clean in the midsection it can carry all of your internal organs of your body that kind of thing is the the amount of energy is so tremendous I am just now thinking that a couple of people might have clicked on this video not at all expecting to hear a gory war story and that's exactly what you're put together anyway 200 words I tried to tell this heartbreaking story that I heard in in Laos moving through the mountains try to escape the ravages of war and there was one woman who was carrying her own newborn baby still breastfeeding when she was shot by this helicopter gunship in these circumstances and the bullet probably hit her in the hips and took the bottom half of her body clean off definitely took both her legs off and while she's lying there in shock she can still speak for a few minutes or a few seconds or what have you after this has happened and she says to the survivors after the helicopters gone away carry me along with you a little ways so I can breastfeed my infant one last time and then set me down when I die and they did exactly that the men picked up the half of a woman not yet a corpse and that half of a woman held on to her baby and breast fed as they walked along a little ways after some time they felt the body turn lifeless and of course it wasn't holding on to the baby quite the same way anymore and they put the body down took the body out of her arms and then went along the west rest of the way they did eventually escaped into the the caves they were seeking there in the mountains and the woman who told me that story survived the war learning to read and write at a chalkboard in a cave in the high mountains northwestern Vietnam so that is the story I attempted to tell in 200 words when this job application asked me to describe an experience that had changed my life and my place in the world and it's a moving story it's a memorable story but the truth is it didn't really change me hearing that story and having that experience really an example of something that did change me if you look through this channel there's a recent video the title is something like cocaine and the philosophy of science that actually discussed is a book that really changed me and the reason why I change me was a course that I'd gone through some prior learning some prior experience and then reading that book was a turning point where things change my attitude change my little changes on this story even though moving about the woman in the mountains the helicopter and so on I already knew all that stuff at least in broad outlines already read survivors accounts to the war I was aware of many other examples of things like that happening so there's no reason why hearing this one further story would actually change me as a person so I could say more on that but actually it's it's an interesting question what are the experiences and what are the stories that really change you as opposed to things that are maybe dramatic but that leave you unchanged what changes you is understanding you can do a lot of suffering without getting any understanding and you can sometimes gain a new understanding without doing so much suffering but we'll see if I get the job so look guys my reason for sharing this video with you is partly because for me I do not have a real separation between my internet presence in my real life this video does not exist to talk about just politics or just economics or just the study of languages it also doesn't exist to just talk about veganism or some other issue that may have brought you here it certainly doesn't exist just talk about my past history as a scholar of Buddhism although I do still talk about for some time time this channel talks about me in my life and what's going on and what's going on with me right now is that I'm applying for a whole bunch of jobs within the last week as I recall applied for two different jobs in Japan one job in Myanmar and I'm using the word job here to include all sorts of opportunities whether they are paid internships whether they are co-op jobs arranged by my university or whether they are just directly talking to employer oh yeah that reminds me yeah yeah there was one more job in Japan I forgot about just in the last week that I applied for I'm pursuing new work through at least four different methods as i categorize things in my own head and one of those methods that may surprise you surprised a lot of people is that i have formally applied to join the canadian military and I am now going through the testing and interview process that begins admission to the Canadian Armed Forces different people react to that using different ways as I've mentioned in recent videos many of my professors not all but many really do talk to me as an equal and a friend which is wonderful i have professors who I you know go for coffee with and really you know we talk as as equals would you wonderful and again it's not all professors there are a couple professors who I think hate my guts and it's okay um some of you watching this channel right now may hate my guts and that's also ok um but it's interesting to see how powerless and frustrated they feel because many of my professors regard me as an unusually talented student and unusually bright student or brilliant student I mean now some of them say very flattering thinks about me which is nice I'd use words like brilliant Sakura just saying um they see me as somebody with potential but the reality of the conversations I'm having with them is that we're talking about the details of exactly how my potential is going to waste and very likely how it is going to continue to go two ways tell what is really going to be snuffed out so some of these guys have been talking to you for like whatever year and a half now and it's like well year and a half ago we were talking about ma programs and PhD programs for me we're talking about other possible career paths for me and these professors didn't have any positive answers didn't have any positive opportunities to talk about with me they were all kind of hanging their heads and saying it's hopeless nothing paused to tell you and now I'm telling them well I'm joining the army and they react in all sorts of different ways to that some positively one professor in particular really said that he felt that joining the army would be an honorable path for me to take and he saw it very positively others regard it very negatively and they feel sort of crushed and set back and show and don't see how this fate could have happened to me again given they perceive me as an unusually talented promising bright student as someone who in theory could do all kinds of positive jobs in the world and the past I have done all kinds of jobs that's in the story but the reality is with Canada joining the army is a very slow process it would be at least 12 months between the present and my beginning active service and that is partly because of extensive background checks and security checks so is not a case that I will be in the near future looking at an either/or decision between getting a job and joining the army I would say it's quite likely the army the first process will be even 18 months I won't go into why so 18 months is long enough that I could move to Japan work for a full year and in theory I could even move back to Canada after that year and still not have actually signed up for the army if they want me and if I decide I want the work so I am applying for many different jobs in many different corners of the world as I mentioned one of the jobs i guess two of them have been really related to my humanitarian background one in japan one in myanmar i am applying for straight-up work as an English teacher including in Japan and one of my reasons for sharing this stuff with you now if you're watching this in the year 2030 kind of a different situation but if you're watching this right now in the year 2016 you guys are part of my life my viewers can change my fate and at least one of my viewers already who gotten touched me we had a couple different conversations he actually took a copy of my CV of my resume and gave it to his boss it was about a particular job that he thought I was well suited for blah blah blah so already a couple of different people have known to the internet have tried to help me and try to get involved with my current job search that's about it look man I don't talk about it every video I don't want to ruin anyone's day but yeah fundamentally there is huge pressure on me because I have a two-year-old daughter and still it is possible i'll never see my two-year-old daughter again i also have a very expensive lawyer but if I ever do want to see my two-year-old daughter the cost of doing that geographically legally and otherwise is enormous so I've pressure on me to earn money not just for her not just to support her but also to support my spending time with her and that's partly made even more difficult because both short-term and long-term I don't really know where she's going to be living in the world they're not really based in France no point getting into it and also when they first moved to France i was told that was just temporary and that within a number of weeks they were going to move from france to either New York or Seattle through all these different things that push and pull on it but yeah one way or another I already lost more than 10 years of my life becoming a scholar of Buddhism I don't have those 10 years back to do over again I can't waste another 10 years developing expertise in some area of scholarship that can't possibly get me a job although I don't need a career today I need to have a career direction today and yeah these are all factors that despite my relatively deep knowledge of atrocities committed in war by all sides click through this channel boy if you think the Communists didn't commit any trustee sin Walker I have a lot of videos on this channel discussing in-depth mass murder by communists but yeah there's also course atrocities committed by the American side and so on I'm aware of all that but I am looking at making the decision of joining the Canadian military and joining the military at a time of war