casino highs and casino lows…and if you write it…
well, if you write about transformers, anyway. who would have thought a movie review would generate around 250 hits?
my average, like i said earlier, went form single digits to double after i wrote that transformers 2 review. i’m still getting hits on it, and i’m tempted to find more bits of information to write about. i don’t know why this movie is as popular as it is — it sort of makes me wish i finished writing that dark knight review after i watched it instead of keeping it in my draft pile.
ah, well.
i feel like i’m keeping a big juicy part of my life out of this blog by neglecting to write about my job. i’m worried that it will create a backlash when my employers find out. there are so many interesting stories, though most of them come at the cost of someone else’s reputation. i work with some interesting characters. i’ve seen things that would be great material for the television show — it definitely rivals it in terms of sheer hilarity and absurdity.
take, for instance, the members of our writing staff who are in charge of the bulk of the elementary grade materials. richard is from washington. he’s a native english speaker and has no excuse for writing sentences like: We were astounded by the titanic amount of people that attended the movie premiere.
our newest writer, sunny, is a native korean with a few years of working experience. normally, that would be a plus, but her resume says she graduated from the university of missourri this year. thinking about how she could have gone to class in america while working here in korea makes my head boggle. and, assuming she did receive a legit diploma, she would have been working in korea illegally up until the time she received her diploma. here’s something she wrote on a recent set of tests: Even if you achieve, you can start over and worker harder. she also decided to go against protocol and make up her own definitions to the words that kids have been studying and memorizing for the past few weeks. granted, she’s a noob, but she already worked on last month’s tests.
our other canadian writer, trish, writes at the fourth grade level. that’s my own assessment based on the work she’s turned in. here’s a sample sentence: What did Pedro had to do before he could create words and tell his stories? i gave her the benefit of a doubt — her use of “had” instead of “have” might have just been a slip. but then, in the same test: What did Gabriela had to do first before she read stories about princes and princesses and about birds and flowers?
jae wan, our senior writer doesn’t write as much anymore. he’s also from canada and borrows books from the school library to improve his english. problem is, those books are at the fifth grade level. when novel studies projects were being handed out to the writers, he chose the book that he, coincidentally, was reading at the time. when he does write, he makes tests for the lowest level — gti (first grade). i wouldn’t consider him a native english speaker — he’s more fluent in korean than he is in english. here’s a sample of his work: We have plentiful enough of junk food for the camping trip.
i’m not trying to be an elitist. proficiency in a language doesn’t always make a person more personable, and the inability to speak english doesn’t make someone worthless. it does, however, make for interesting scenarios at an office that specializes in creating curriculum for an english school that parents pay half a month’s salary for each month.
if i could, i’d quit my job and make my money at casino. yes, it’s risky, but it’s more challenging, fulfilling and cheaper compared to clubbing/drinking (when i lose). i almost began to type out that it’s also healthier, but i remembered ben telling me that the casinos pumped in pure oxygen. i blame that for my giddiness and inability to walk away from a table despite being a few hundred up.
since i started playing pontoon, a version of blackjack, my tallies have been:
day 1: 1,000
day 2: 1,130
day 3: 810
day 3 was a bittersweet experience. i spent nearly 12 hours there trying to reach a goal of 500. i hovered around even for most of the night until the end when i shot through the roof almost scoring a gold chip (1,000 in profit). the dealer beat my 19 with one of her magical 20s. had i won, i would have been a few 10-dollar chips away from 1,000.
the next morning, i woke up and realized i lost my cellphone.
