From Laowai To Canadian

This sum­mer 2001 is hot and humid. The typhoon sea­son is in full swing and some days, I can’t even leave the 32^nd floor of the build­ing where I live. The whole island is reg­u­larly swept by strong winds and pour­ing rain. I live in Hum Hong, about twenty min­utes from my office in Tsim Shat Shui. When the rain isn’t too strong, I still make my way to the office, know­ing that my co-worker will oth­er­wise make fun of me.

Dirty Little Secrets

How­ever, I soon dis­cov­ered that work­places bore some resem­blance with the world I was used to. Con­trary to my naive opin­ion, peo­ple don’t auto­mat­i­cally become smarter and well-behaved nor that they turn into hard-working knowl­edge­able pro­fes­sion­als once they get a job. Quite the oppo­site actu­ally. I also dis­cov­ered that every job had its dirty lit­tle secrets that only insid­ers know. And some­times, I was one of them.

Overtime Work And The Overreactive Alarm

I’ve never been a morn­ing per­son. Even though my high school days mem­o­ries are slowly start­ing to fade, I still remem­ber my last year. We had to attend classes Mon­day through Sat­ur­day start­ing at 8:00 am, and every­day was a strug­gle to get up.

The Teacher And The Test Dilemna

My stu­dents are office work­ers. I’m not — and their field of work and the arcane of the ubiq­ui­tous bureau­cracy can be bewil­der­ing for a rookie like me. Like when I was fil­ing up for another teacher last week for a Canada Rev­enue Agency class. So I came into the class, intro­duced myself and asked the stu­dents to do the same, one by one.

It's Been a Hard Day's Night

I’m a young office worker. The world is mine. As soon as I’ll fin­ish my cig­a­rette, I’ll go deal with the com­mis­sioner, a weekly task to which I excel. That’s life when you go teach at the government.

- Hi/ bon­jour, what’s your name ?

Great. A spelling bee con­test at 8:55. I must say that I love my name, but really, does it have to have 4 “i” and sev­eral con­so­nants peo­ple never know in which order to arrange ?

Us And Them

Office work­ers have always fas­ci­nated me. I used to see them in pub­lic trans­porta­tion, early in the morn­ing : guys drink­ing their daily shot of black java in some kind of fancy spill proof cup; women awk­wardly apply­ing another layer of make-up on their face. They looked busy. They looked like they had a goal and shared a com­mon cul­ture of which other were excluded.

Comment Je Suis Devenue Prof de Français...

Qui est quoi ? Le Québec est offi­cielle­ment fran­coph­one, le Nouveau-Brunswick est la seule province offi­cielle­ment bilingue, et le reste est anglo­phone, avec des poches fran­coph­o­nes un peu partout (Man­i­toba, Ontario…). Le tout forme un pays qui se bat sur quelle langue utiliser, quelle langue priv­ilégier, quelle langue a com­bien de pour­cent­age de locu­teur. Et surtout, pas-dessus, un long con­tentieux entre anglo­phones et francophones.