Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been doing really mundane things that don't require narration, so I thought I would spare you the details.
I did want to write about an interesting thing that happened to me a few weeks back though.
As most of you know, I am unemployed, by choice mind you. I couldn't very well keep up my law practice when moving to Hong Kong. Clients don't like it when they have to call you extremely long distance to get legal advice, and I don't blame them. So, I've been the dutiful house-fiancee, taking care of the cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. As you know, moving here has taken some adjusting and I needed the time off to figure things out like where to buy real food, get laundry done, buy furniture, etc. so the time hasn't exactly been wasted. We've also been traveling and planning trips so while I don't have to ask The Man for vacation time, I'm pretty much living it up.
However, I am starting to get brain rot and I figured I should probably start looking for a job. I had a lead on a job from a contact I worked with while in Atlanta. The contact works in Spain for an international trust company and he had mentioned that they had an office in Hong Kong. My ears perked up like Ella when she hears me say "Let's go outside" or "Ella-bella, you want a treat?" or "Hmmm, what I am going to do with this extra piece of bacon?" (The latter elicits the same response from Marc.) He put me in contact with the head of the HK office and we made arrangements to have a meet and greet (not a real interview, but I knew enough to bring my resume).
The morning of my quasi-interview, I got all decked out in business attire the likes of which I haven't worn since I quit my job. I've got to tell you, wearing shorts and flip flops everyday is awesome, it should be the new business casual. I wanted to print my updated resume but had to get the fancy schmacy resume paper and go to Marc's office to print the thing. So, I hailed a cab (since I didn't want to sweat in my business clothes) and headed down to the mall. Once I got there, I quickly jumped out of the taxi and promptly left my leather bound portfolio containing my old resume and my contact's info on the back seat of the cab. As soon as I got in the mall, I realized what happened but sure enough the cabbie was long gone.
Being the resourceful person I am, I bought not just resume paper but a new leather portfolio at the mall and high-tailed it to Marc's office to do the printing. I told him what happened and we looked up the contact info again on the internet since I still needed to know how to get there. Twenty minutes later, armed with a new portfolio and a stack of freshly printed resumes (or C.V.'s as they call them here), I was off. I got to the guy's office on time and the meeting went swimmingly.
Fast forward about 2 weeks.
The guy I met with calls me 4 times and leaves me a text message but I miss his calls and message because I didn't hear my cellphone ringing. I think to myself, "By gosh, this is it! He's called to offer me a job!" But alas, that was not why he was calling. When I got in touch with him, he said had an interesting phone call from the police who had called him and told him they had something of mine and whether he knew how to get in contact with me. Utterly shocked, I conceded that I had left my portfolio in a cab and had thought it was lost forever (because you really want to tell a possible employer that you are so flaky you misplaced important documents like your resume). He gave me the info for the police and I went down to the station with my tail between my legs to retrieve my old portfolio.
When I got there, a very nice receptionist took down my information and within 3 minutes, had retrieved my portfolio, just the same as I had left it just 2 weeks before. I couldn't believe it, so I asked her how they found it. She said the taxi cab driver put the portfolio in a post box and the post office, not knowing where to deliver it (since it had my address in Atlanta and an Atlanta telephone number, remember this was my old resume) turned it over to the police station.
At this point, let me state that Hong Kong has no crime. Seriously, you never hear about murders or muggings or drug deals ever. I think that HK just has no tolerance for crime, so if you do something terrible, you will certainly pay the consequences. Just ask the FDA guy who was executed for the tainted toothpaste scandal. So, I guess since they don't have any bad guys to chase, they called my contact whose HK info was in the portfolio and found me that way.
Can you believe that? All those people went through so much trouble just to get my portfolio back to me. If that had happened in New York, I would never have seen it again and I had honestly thought I never would. But somehow, people here are different and I guess they really cared enough to go through the effort to get it back to me. I'm still truly impressed.
As for the job, I don't think it really hurt my chances and I'm still following the lead, so I'll keep you posted if I get the job. In the meantime, I'm going to send out my resume to a few other places, just in case.
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