I haven't exactly been afraid of not being able to find a job in America that would sponsor my visa - if I had to go to Hong Kong full-time, that would be another big change and challenge, and it would be weird to be so isolated from everyone I know, but I've kind of managed everything the lady few years have thrown at me, y'know? It wouldn't be like suddenly waking up as a chick and having my roommate try and fucking kidnap me. It's a big enough city that I wouldn't have to worry about running into Chen-ai too often.
And I may still wind up there. The visual effects company that hired me will probably open an office in China a few years down the road, because having people in a lot of different time zones means that when you've got absurd deadlines to meet - and you're going to have absurd deadlines to meet - the team in Burbank can hand something off to the team in Montreal who can hand it off to the one in Paris to the one in India to the one in New Zealand and back to Burbank, working round the clock without anyone getting paid overtime. You're apparently eligible for a shit-ton of tax breaks, too, based on all the post-production incentives that get a logo at the end of a big movie's closing credits. But, anyway, they said in the interview that if they do expand, there might be a promotion to look forward to for someone stepped in the company culture who can also speak the local languages.
Sounds good, but I'll kind of believe it when I see it. I've graduated from college and seen promises of advancement turn out to be bullshit to the point where you're trying to do the work of three people from your apartment, so I'm not crazy optimistic about just being a couple years away from being a supervising animator with her own office in a brand new facility. But I guess I can afford to be optimistic this time around, right? There's a trust fund that'll fully vest in a few more years, and Chen-ai can't completely cut me off if I quit or get laid off for some reason so long as I don't become some scandal-ridden L.A. party girl.
Which, I've got to admit, is tempting as fuck. As soon as I got the call that I had a job as soon as the paperwork went through, I started going through my closet, and putting sweaters in boxes, looking at gossip websites, and trying on every outfit in my closet because, man, what gets a college student labeled slutty in Massachusetts is barely cool in Los Angeles. I kind of regretted not really being cool with being sexy as Deirdre, because New York is a lot closer to L.A. in that regard than Boston, but I was a kind of bitter outsider to that when I was a fat nerd. But as a hot chick whose family has the sort of money that can get you into movie-star parties? Man, I kind of want to see how far into that I can get without self-destructing.
And, yes, I did have a bit of a freak-out about weight when I started thinking I needed more bikinis, because it must be kind of tacky to repeat them too often. I sometimes don't think I get nearly enough credit for keeping the weight off, but the standards for that are different there too, and I kind of still fucking love pizza.
I've also got things other than my weight to freak out about, since it's not like there's a shortage of CGI artists out there that make hiring a foreign worker necessary, and I might not have gotten the interview if it weren't for one Parker Costello, who's been out there since visiting the Inn about twenty years ago. She also started out as a guy, and she's been working behind the scenes in show business for a while, mostly for this company that makes VOD crap that you might confuse with real movies (they put out something called "Infinite Revengers" this year). Not as great a business model as it was when people bought DVDs, she says, but if you make 'em cheap enough, you can still make it work. I guess she was one of the first people in the network Ashlyn has kind of been building for Inn people trying to get a leg up, so she was able to put a good word in for me with the effects company that does those things.
Which, obviously, is not where I want to end up, but it's a start, and a reason to go out there and house-hunt in a few days!
-Jordan/Yuan-wei
No comments:
Post a Comment