Year of Songs: A Most Ingenious Paradox

Remember my 'Year of Songs' project I announced in January? Yeah, me neither. With all the craziness of February it got put a couple burners behind the back burner. But there are still a few hours left in February, so I'm getting my assignment turned in just before the deadline. Too bad it's not leap year, or else we would have had a full day to drink in these February Jams. For as we learned from The Pirates of Penzance:

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.

1. "When You Had Left Our Pirate Fold" - Gilbert and Sullivan
The above-quoted trio from The Pirates of Penzance explains how the protagonist, though he has lived for 21 years, has only had five birthdays since he is "the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February."

2. "País Tropical (Tropical Country)" - Gal Costa feat. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil
"I live in a tropical country, blessed by God and naturally beautiful. In February there's Carnaval, I have a VW bug and a guitar." The original version is by Jorge Ben, but I prefer this more raucous version by Gal Costa (maybe because I met her). This is a great song for winter - just start it up and suddenly the snow* melts away and you're sipping coconut water on a palm tree-lined beach (maybe because February is the middle of the summer in Brazil).
*If there were any snow in Portland. Best winter ever.

3. "President's Song" - The Simpsons
Fantastic President's Day musical number from the immortal Valentine's episode "I Love Lisa" (think "I Choo-Choo-Choose You").

4. "My Funny Valentine" - Elvis Costello
This 1937 standard by Rogers and Hart has been covered by all the usual suspects (Sinatra, Ella, etc.), but I like this unorthodox cover by Elvis Costello from 1979.

5. "Loomer" - My Bloody Valentine
The February-related name of this late-eighties/early-nineties shoegaze band was a barrier for entry for me for many years; however, when I finally gave them a chance a few years ago I fell under the spell of their unique sound: dreamy vocals floating over a guitar maelstrom. (Bands such as Smashing Pumpkins and recent indie darlings Sleigh Bells have since co-opted the Bloody Valentine formula.)

6. "I Got You, Babe" - Sonny & Cher

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Did I miss any great February songs? Any suggestions for March? Leave a comment!

When It Rains, It Freaking Pours

I've been a little overwhelmed the past few weeks and my blog (among other things) has gotten lost in the shuffle. After many, many months of joblessness, I suddenly found myself with not one, but three jobs all starting up simultaneously, namely:

1. As I have mentioned before in this space, I now work full time at Yahoo! Although I've now been there for three weeks, I'm still in that awkward beginning phase where I have to call my more experienced co-workers over to my desk a dozen times a day to hold my hand through any unfamiliar situation. The work itself is pretty challenging, but then on top of that there is the additional challenge of doing it all in Portuguese.

I'm a very proficient speaker for a non-native, but this job is really teaching me that there is a huge difference between being a proficient non-native and being Brazilian. I spend the whole day reading emails that are mostly written in slangy, misspelled, internet-abbreviated Portuguese that is very different from the Portuguese I heard as a missionary or tourist. I frequently have to flip over to Google Translator or the Dicionário Informal (it's like a Portuguese Urban Dictionary). It's been two and half years since I was last in Brazil and much, much longer since my mission, so the Portuguese isn't as quick as it once was. Reading/writing in Portuguese still comes to me fairly easily (my bosses told me that the written translation I did in my interview was better than a few native Brazilians they interviewed - that's an encouraging thought that keeps me going on the hard days), but my spoken Portuguese is more difficult. My mental loading time is a little slower and I'm sometimes appalled by the gringo accent I hear coming out of my mouth. By the end of some days I feel like my brain has run out of spoken Portuguese and I need to go home and recharge.*

2. I am also teaching guitar lessons part time. Here's how that came about: One of the first people I met out here in Portland is an LDS guy who has a large piano academy (150ish students) where he employs several piano teachers. He used to have a voice teacher there too, but the voice teacher started his own business and signed a non-compete agreement with the piano academy that lasts until this summer. But the academy owner likes me and wants me to potentially teach voice at his academy eventually, so he has hired me on to be a guitar teacher in the meantime.

He has never had a guitar program at his academy and doesn't know anything about the guitar, so I've been building my own curriculum and methodology, which is both scary (though I love playing the guitar, I'm certainly not a guitar wizard or anything) and interesting (it's a really fun challenge to approach teaching a different instrument). I had been really stressing over it for weeks leading up to my first lessons, but each one of my students is a true beginner - like, picking-up-a-guitar-for-the-first-time-in-their-life beginner - so it's all really basic stuff that I can teach confidently.

3. I am continuing my work with the University of Michigan department of surgical education as a mock patient. I agreed to do this job again back at the beginning of December, when I had no real job prospects on the horizon. Little did I know that the work would start up the exact same time as the other two jobs. I'm playing the exact same patient as I was last year and I've literally recited the script hundreds of times, so at least there's not the stress of learning anything new for this job.

The job is done completely over the phone, so I could theoretically do it from anywhere, but the catch is that I have to call the patients between the hours of 8:00 am - 8:00 pm in whatever time zone they happen to be in. Many of them are in the Eastern Time Zone, meaning that I can make those calls from the West Coast is before I go to my other two jobs because by 5:00 p.m. my time it's already too late.

So, a typical day will go something like this: Wake up a little after 5:00 a.m., make mock patient phone calls until 7:30 a.m., go to Yahoo! until 4:30 p.m., drive a half hour in rush hour traffic over to the music academy, teach guitar until about 7:00 p.m., drive home, eat something, electronically submit the evaluations from that morning's mock patient phone calls, and fall exhausted into bed around 8:30 p.m. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Yahoo! and teaching by themselves are actually quite manageable and I'll only be doing the mock patient job for one more week, so I'm expecting a return to sanity fairly soon. And while it has been overwhelming, I got my first Yahoo! paycheck yesterday and decided that there may be something to this whole "gainful employment" thing.

*A few years ago while waiting for my flight in the São Paulo airport I overheard a long conversation in Portuguese between a group of Brazilians, including a middle-aged married couple. At one point the couple turned to each other and had a short exchange in perfect, unaccented American English. I was shocked - I was completely convinced that they were Brazilian. Later I struck up a conversation with them. Turns out they were Americans who had lived in Brazil for 25 years. I asked them how their English was so great after 25 years and they said that they only spoke English to each other because when they arrive home after a long day at their respective jobs they have "run out of Portuguese." I find that to be a very reassuring memory whenever I feel my brain short-circuiting by the end of the day.

SST: Have a 7

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

It's amazing how durable this ad is:



Coke Zero remade it for the Super Bowl two years ago with the Steeler's Polamalu, and this year's Super Bowl had a parody starring Dr. House and a churro. I remember finally seeing the original for the first time as a teenager and being confused - I always thought it was an ad for the number 7:



P.S. - This year's great Super Bowl ad was this stunning Chrysler/Detroit spot. It's already been plastered all over the blogs and facebook statuses of my Michigan peeps, so I will let you just link you through to their thoughtful analyses.

SST: Teeth Look for a Job

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I rejoined the workforce yesterday. After several years of working only sporadic hours as a graduate student instructor, I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to make it through a full 8-to-5 day, but the day actually flew right by. The first day on the job is always a little strange with training and tours of the facilities and whatnot, so I won't really get a sense of what the job is actually like for a little while. However, based on today I think I'll survive the baptism by fire just fine.

The application process for teaching positions is still in full swing, but I'm really glad that I can take a break from the search for an immediate position. I was getting pretty tired of this:

Year of Songs: January Jams

I had a fun time putting together my "Obliquely Christmas" playlist and just after Christmas I came up with a similar project that might become a monthly feature on my blog for the next year: a playlist for every month of the year with songs that either explicitly or passingly referenced the current month. A lot of obvious selections sprang to mind: "November Rain," "A Long December," "September Song," etc., but like the "Obliquely Christmas" set I wanted to mix in some out-of-left-field choices as well.

I was all excited to launch the series at the beginning of January, but I ran into a snag: January doesn't seem to be a very inspirational month for songwriters. At least not inspirational enough to assemble a full-length playlist. So here we are, nearing the end of January, and I have only a few songs to offer, but even if I only have 3-4 songs for a particular month, by the end of the year it will be one big, healthy playlist. I hope these selections add to your enjoyment of the final days of January:



CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: February is looking to be a pretty paltry month for songs as well, so I need your help to fill out the playlist. If you have a favorite February jam, please tell me about it in the comments (or if you have any January suggestions to add to this playlist).

Yahoo!

Monday, 5:39 p.m.
Right before shutting down the job search for the day, I hit refresh one last time on the Portland Craiglist "All Jobs" page. Curious, I check out the most recent entry on the list: "Bilingual Client Advocate." It's unclear what exactly the job is, but the pay is good and they're looking for someone with 1-5 years of customer service experience (check), with a bachelor's degree (super-check) who is fluent in Portuguese (check). I send off an email with a resume attached.

Wednesday, 9:39 a.m.
Having not received a response, I send another email about the job.

Wednesday, 10:50 a.m.
I get a phone call from Liza, who works for an employment agency. It was she who placed the Craigslist ad. She says the job is with Yahoo! and she is going to send them my resume and a few references. She says that she'll probably know by the end of the week if they want to schedule an interview.

Wednesday, 1:46 p.m.
Liza calls back and says that Yahoo! wants to interview me out at their campus in Hillsboro the next day at 1:00 p.m.

Wednesday, 6:30 p.m.
In preparation for the interview, I get a disastrous haircut at a beauty college.

Thursday, 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.
I have an interview on site with Giancarlo (American) and Fabiana (Brazilian). They ask me some standard interview questions in English and Fabiana and I chat in Portuguese about my experience with the language and my experiences in Brazil. They tell me what the job entails: every Yahoo! page that allows chat or comments contains links that say "Report abuse*," which leads to a form where users can explain their objections to another user's comments. All of the reports filed on all of Yahoo!'s Portuguese-language pages go to a team of seven Brazilians located in Hillsboro, but one of them is shortly going on maternity leave, so they need to bring in a replacement ASAP. The interviewers then give me a document to translate into Portuguese. The title is something like, "The Role of Webcasting in Emerging Markets." I can't recall ever having a conversation in Portuguese about webcasting or emerging markets, so my vocabulary on the subject seems a little thin, but I plow through it and at the end am fairly pleased with my work. After nearly two hours, Giancarlo then wraps up the interview, saying that they still have a number of applicants to interview on Friday, and that I will hear back from them sometime next week.

Thursday, 5:00 p.m.
I get a call from one of Liza's co-workers from the employment agency, informing me that Yahoo! would like to offer me the job. I accept.

**********

I've been looking for a job for so long that I was amazed at how one could go from having almost no prospects to having a job so quickly. I had had a number of close calls and after I while I felt like I'd always be a bridesmaid, never a bride (is there a masculine version of that expression?).

This Yahoo! job is remarkable because it pays better than most any other job I for which I had been in contention, it sounds like more interesting work than other positions (hooray, it's not a call center!), it's geographically close to the place where I'm going to be teaching a few guitar lessons (more on that another time), and since I'll be the only non-Brazilian on the team I anticipate that my Portuguese is going to go to the next level. It's only a contract job (filling in for the woman on maternity leave), so it will only last until mid-summer, but hopefully I'll be ready to move on to a voice teaching position somewhere by then. But it's the perfect solution for right now and I feel very blessed that it all came together so quickly (despite the bad haircut).

*Ou seja, "Reportar abuso."

"I shouldn't have stopped for that haircut!"

Have you ever been at the barbershop and as the stylist is working you have the realization, "Wait a minute, I know what's going on here - I'm getting a bad haircut!"

Tonight was the first time that I was aware of a bad haircut while it was in the process of becoming. Since I have to remove my glasses I don't normally find out whether a haircut is bad until the end when the stylist says, "So how does that look?" But this time, even in the blur of glasseslessness I could tell immediately that a bad haircut was brewing.

I went to a beauty college where the students cut your hair for the fabulous low price of $5. I've had mixed results from beauty colleges, but usually I end up looking at semi-respectable at the very least. I gave the stylist-in-training the same simple directions that usually result in a successful haircut: short on the sides and back, a little longer on the top and front. However, her definition of "sides" apparently means "every part of the head except for a one and a half inch strip down the middle of the skull." She went straight for the clippers and buzzed me all the way up the right side of my head so quickly that I wasn't able to stop her until it was too late. "Hey!" I cried out as I put my glasses back on to survey the damage. "Let's stop for a second and make a plan, shall we?" But it was buzzed so short that she had no choice but to replicate her work on the left side as well.

When she finally got the scissors out I could feel how unsteady her hands were as she held my hair between her fingers. I don't know if she is normally that shaky or if I destroyed her confidence by speaking up, but I was on edge for the rest of the haircut. Several times she asked with finality "So how does that look?" with the implication that the haircut was over. And each time there was some glaringly obvious patch of wild hair that I had to point out to her, to which she'd mumble, "Oh... yeah, uh, I was going to fix that... I was just seeing if... uh.. yeah, I was gonna....." Together we neutralized the most egregiously bad spots, but eventually I just didn't want her to be near my hair anymore so I forfeited the fight and surrendered my five dollars.

A few days have now passed since the infamous haircut and each morning as I comb my hair (what's left of it, that is) I discover several previously unnoticed flaws, including some really obvious ones like in the picture on the right.

This experience has helped me realize three things:

1) A good haircut is a miraculous thing. The internet tells me that the average human head has 100,000 hairs and it is quite amazing how apparent it is when just a few of them are different lengths than their immediate neighbors.

2) I was much better off in the past when I found out about my bad haircuts after the fact - it's much less stressful than watching one evolve.

3) Maybe it's time for me to stop patronizing beauty colleges.

P.S. - 1,000 nerd points to whomever can identify the Simpsons episode from which I have taken this post's title without googling, plus 1,000 bonus nerd points for knowing who is credited with writing it.