Sunday, July 25, 2010

employees must wear bottoms

So I've had my first two days of work at job number one, an internship at a small publishing house based in Berkeley. Of course, I have already made my judgmental observations, and am here to report back on them.


The office only has thirteen employees, and that's including the four interns that are there now. Only two of these people are male by the way, and what's more is that three of the women who work there are pregnant right now. It's like a sea of estrogen in that office, but at least you know it means that stuff gets done.

From what I've seen in just a short time is that just like any other office it's also got its own set of quirky characters. Yesterday I met an intern named Page (no"i")—our resident hippie, vegetarian, Buddhist, UC Berkeley student. Apparently she's got a bit of a "beef", for lack of a better term, with another intern called Carol, the conservative, meat-loving, Arizona State graduate. One day, weeks ago, Carol made the mistake of eating a piece of pork for lunch in Page’s presence. Now, Page maintains that all she sees when she looks at Carol's hands is the hooves of many poor, dead pigs.

Like many other offices, none of us speak to the accountant. Unlike many other offices, our dress code can be summed up in one line - "Employees must wear bottoms at all times." This was tested when one of the publicity assistants—April, also a free spirited type—came into work wearing a 50s-syle apron she had almost successfully fashioned into a wrap dress.


We have two printers, named after our two bestselling authors, Wendell and Gary. I’ve found Gary to be the temperamental prima donna, he never gets through an important scan without making a fuss about it.


But the best thing about the job is that all day, every day I am surrounded by BOOKS. Lovely, lovely books in all stages of production. And I’m actually a part of the journey that sends them out into the world, albeit the very specific point in the journey where all the spelling mistakes and skipped page numbers are caught. And I love that our little office has a few weird ones passing through, otherwise I probably wouldn’t feel like I fit in there quite so much…

my preface

I have never felt like I’m from anywhere in particular. I mean this in a very literal way – my family of five has moved around a lot over the course of my life, from Asia, to Africa, then North America, and even in the last couple of years to the Persian Gulf and Southern Europe. I have an English mother and a Zimbabwean father, though to complicate things further my Dad is more of a Rhodesian and has therefore been a British citizen all his life. But when asked where I come from I always feel a bit dubious saying “Britain” or “the UK”, suddenly panicked that someone, a real Brit, might pop out from around the corner and start pop quizzing me on the lineage of the throne, Horatio Nelson, or what happened last week on Eastenders, as if any self-respecting English person has a requirement to know these things. But speak up at all about my African heritage, and I have to suffer through an awkward silence with this stranger asking me, watching the rusty cogs of their mind clicking slowly away before I follow it up with, “And no, he isn’t black.”

It’s tricky explaining where we’re from, and each sibling has a different way of dealing with it. My sister, the eldest, has a knack for adopting the indigenous accent of almost every place we’ve lived. After a couple of weeks she blends in seamlessly. My younger brother still speaks a very pure sort of English (in accent, if not in vocabulary…) but he’s sixteen and just returning to American schooling so our Mum can only hope he can tolerate being the different kid. As for me, I’ve been told I speak a sort of mutt, hybrid mixture that leads more than half the people who meet me for the first time to ask me which part of Australia I come from, even though I have never been to Australia.


But I’ve decided to be over this little identity crisis. What I come from is a loving family that’s become so incredibly close with every move we’ve made. Such a functional family is just about the most annoying thing that can happen to someone with writing aspirations, but I love them of course, and I don’t know why I worry so much about how to explain this geographical history of ours to people. What I’m going to focus on from now on is my future, for once not just because it’s impending but also because it’s quite bright and shiny too.


After the frustration of sending my resume out into the black hole of job search sites for months now and hearing almost nothing in return, I suddenly find myself, within the last week, employed by two different publishing companies. To say I’m over the moon about it is an understatement. I’ve barely sent them my acceptance emails, and already I feel the huge step I’m taking towards the next phase of my life – perhaps the start of my San Francisco years.


But until I can finally feel like my life belongs in one definite place, I still find myself in a limbo state, pulled in a dozen different directions. What I write here will be about my life during these in between days, spending every twilight looking over my adopted city by the bay.