Surreal job hunting

Recently I attended a career fair where Japanese companies and Japan-based companies came to recruit Jap-Eng bilingual college grads or experienced people. Held in
the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel smack in the middle of downtown Hollywood, it was weird that the moment I approached the event hall, every conversation started to be conducted in Japanese. That came as a shock, all of a sudden, entering a hotel in Los Angeles and seemingly stepping into another dimension. It took me at least 15 minutes after registration, sitting down at a common rest area, pretending to read some promotion material before I composed myself. Everyone looked Japanese, with the exception of 4-5 caucasians and a few people of mixed heritages. Everyone was dressed in black suits and white shirts with ties. The ladies had a little variation and all
looked very dao.

This was Friday. I had an interview with company A on Saturday, and Friday was supposed to be a day for warming up and talking to other companies. So I wandered around the hall, absorbing all the Japanese and talking to a few English-speaking people at first, Then I decided to practise my Japanese for company A's interview. I walked into company B's booth, talked to them as best as I could and showed them my Japanese resume that I frantically composed a couple of days before. To my complete surprise, after a few minutes of chatting (in my broken Japanese), they asked me to come back at 3pm for a formal interview (in another room).

That was already very unexpected, so I was pretty ecstatic and went downstairs to attend another company's seminar and spent some time in Starbucks drinking coffee and practising some notes--technical/business terms in Japanese that I prepared with the
help of a Japanese friend.

At 3pm, I went to the interview room. There were two people, one from HR and one engineer. Both tooks turns to talk to me. I was seriously amazed that somehow I could understand what they said. Not word for word, but somehow the meaning of the entire sentence got through. Guess watching all the anime/movies helped. The HR guy asked me stuff, then the engineer asked me to describe my current job. And near the
end, the big surprise came. The HR guy said, "We would like to invite you to our head office in Japan to meet the rest of our team."

!!!!!!! At that point, I remember thinking, "Shit, did I really understand him correctly?"

So I guess I will be taking a trip to Tokyo soon. hahaha I still can't believe it. Now I have to work harder to prepare for it. Maybe I'll fail, maybe it'll go alright, I'm both looking forward to and dreading it. Don't want to let them down either.

On Saturday, the interview with A didn't go as well as the one with B, in my opinion. company A was more formal and they asked questions from a large company's point of view. Kind of expected, I guess, but still interesting. I don't think I impressed them at all, but I will find out in two weeks' time.

Finally a hectic few weeks of preparation for the career fair is over. Somehow, I came through the interviews unscathed. Looking back, I realised that I made many grammatical mistakes in my verbal conversation but hopefully I got my message across and left a good impression. Should have approached more companies too but I was too
intimidated. Next round, I will try my best to do better. There's still much work to be done : ) At this point I have not gotten anything and maybe all this talk is for naught. But somehow or another, I hope to leave by March 2007.

Isn't it ironic? When life becomes routine, it is kind of boring but one can also be content. When life is approaching a change, everything becomes hectic, many important decisions have to be made, anxiety, blood pressure, excitement pile up, and somehow that makes it so much more interesting! Of course moments of rest and relaxation are good too, so I guess it is important to strike a balance.

OK, thanks for listening to my long-winded story.