gunslinger

I forgot about this blog. I left it for another that gets no traffic. I'm going to America in 2 days. My family wants me to stay this time. I don't want to. There is nothing there. This place, this strange, fucked-up Asian country, is my home. My friends. My strange date who I laughed at, but secretly hoped to keep dating. I feel empty. I don't want to pack my luggage because I know my family will plead with me to stay. They'll cry. It'll be really hard to get back on the plane.

"It's time to come back home," they say.

No. It's only time to visit. I have no friends in America. Only memories of people before they changed. Before they got married. I don't even know them anymore.

That's not my home.

A yahoo website had an article about what not to do when looking for jobs. I thought it would have something useful, but it didn't...

What is your biggest pet peeve about job seekers today?

The Price of 'Perfection'

My biggest pet peeve is perfect candidates. They only had successes, are perfect and can't see any improvement to make on themselves -- except maybe to "work a little less." People who are too insecure to admit their shortcomings or even their mistakes make me feel that they lack good emotional intelligence. In all the reference checks we reviewed at Checkster, none were 100% positive, so be realistic. If not, you will be seen as either not daring enough to perform difficult things, or stuck in a myopic belief that you are perfect.
-- Yves Lermusi, CEO, Checkster

So now people are being excluded from jobs because they're too perfect or just believing in themselves?

There’s a bittersweet taste that only heart can taste whenever I see old pictures of all of us. I remember all the trouble we got into in high school. I remember talking at random hours about the most obscure, shallow subjects. I remember how it always felt like a party when 6-7 friends showed up out of the blue to hangout. There was one thing that signaled my friendships were coming to an end: night you got arrested and everyone else admitted they also had warrants for their arrest. Of all the details I knew about my friends, they seemed to have left out the most important parts. Perhaps I was just too naïve to notice all the clues.

One by one, I lost you all to drugs. It started with pot. After a few years of nothing but Mary Jane, crack and meth whittled away at your souls until everyone became a shell of their former selves. You guys only started to call me for rides or money. Never to chat or hang out.  

V, on your birthday you called me saying that you wanted to hang out and to come pick you up. You never wanted to hang out. You had just come from a party and had been abandoned by a drug dealer by the side of the freeway.

I didn’t want to be friends anymore with anyone else from our old group. It hurt too much. Talking to V now is like talking to someone who has stolen my friend’s body and wears her face as a mask. Like a grotesque body snatcher from a horror movie. Yes, you’re your own walking, talking horror movie. You died a long time ago, yet somehow you’re still alive.

It hurts me when I hear people talking about their life-long best friends. Even though I was somewhat popular growing up, I won’t have any childhood friends to invite to a wedding.

Now my life is filled with acquaintances that I hold at arm’s length because I’m scared of going through this cycle again. Sometimes I call these acquaintances “friends” but it isn’t the same.

How could I lose you all to drugs?

Victoria M

Victor M

Victor S

Alfredo (and your brother)

Mike

Richard

Santiago

Jackie V

Valerie

Sandra

Tim

Ben

Margarita M

Chris

Edwin

Dallas

Damon

George