Ayeesha's job log: 5
After graduating last year, Ayeesha Shahani found it hard working out what to do next. Flash-forward The last few weeks have really been a blur. I went from not knowing what career path to follow, to signing up for a Montessori teacher training course, taking a job in Hong Kong and planning my emigration. Big stuff for little girl in a short period of time.
Even though I only have a summer job and nothing permanent set up (just yet) and even though I will be sleeping on my sister’s couch and don’t have anywhere to live (just yet), the thought of moving back to Hong Kong doesn’t scare me one little bit! My apprehension is by far outweighed by my excitement because for me, it has always been, and will always be, home. I guess it’s comforting to know that I couldn’t possibly be lonely there. All of my old school friends still live there and my sister recently moved back there too so between them, I’m sure that I will have enough people in my life to create a great support network. Big fish in Hong KongWhen it comes to the world of work, Hong Kong is one of those places where in addition to what you know, it’s who you know that counts. So having grown up there and having friends in a huge variety of industries means that I suddenly have the advantage of contacts! When job hunting in the UK, I tend to feel like just another faceless CV in the pile, whereas back home I feel like more of a ‘somebody’. The more I think about it, my decision to move back is based on so much more than the fact that I got offered a job there. It comes down to a few very particular, but for me very important, differences between the UK and Hong Kong. Obviously since it’s a smaller country, there is less competition for certain jobs and I really feel that living in a such a close-knit city, makes it easier to make a name for yourself. Hong Kong has a large expatriate population which in a way, delineates an even smaller tight-knit community of expats in which everybody knows everybody and word gets around fast. That’s the community that I grew up in and in a way, the only one in which I feel like I belong. Wherever else in the world I have lived I have always felt like an outsider, but not there. I think a large part of my decision to return really just comes down to me wanting to feel like a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond. Also, having taught in Asia, South America and the UK, I can honestly say that I feel teachers (of all levels) are given far more respect in the East than in the West, and in the big Asian cities, they are far better paid too! For example, the children I had the pleasure of working with in Thailand, politely bowed to me every time I entered a classroom, did their homework and were attentive, enthusiastic and eager to learn. They were a teacher’s dream. Compare that experience to the one I had in a UK school as a teacher’s assistant, where on my very first day I was told to ‘Shut up and go home’. Same thing in Brazil, I entered a room of rude, rowdy gum-chewing kids who were too busy being plugged into their i-pods or texting each other to bother learning anything. They were all just ‘too-cool-for-school’ and to me, that’s a teacher’s worst nightmare. The way I see it, if I am going to make a career out of it, I might as well spend my time inspiring those who actually want to be inspired. Being uni-lingualContrary to popular belief, being a native English speaker in Hong Kong is not necessarily a disadvantage and can often work in your favour. In my experience, a lot of people have told me that if they hire an English teacher for example, they would prefer that he/she did not speak Chinese because then they wouldn’t be tempted to converse with the students in anything but English. Obviously in certain sectors you need to be bilingual but luckily, education isn’t one of them. I myself do not speak Mandarin or Cantonese (obviously barring the handful of phrases I know in order to make myself understood in situations involving taxi drivers, bus drivers, shopkeepers and waiters), and yet despite not grasping the local language, I am not in the slightest bit concerned that this will hinder my ability to find a job after the summer. Having said that, I decided that I should nevertheless endeavour to learn Cantonese once I have a stable job because I think it’s just plain embarrassing that I lived in a country for 18 years and don’t speak the language! ExodusAs I pack boxes and boxes of stuff that I have accumulated over the last year or two I've started feeling weighed down by my possessions! Who knows how on earth I am going to transport all this stuff over as I can’t afford to ship it. Even if I could get it all there I would eventually have to squeeze it into a poky little shoebox that only a Hong Kong letting agent would call an ‘apartment’. One apartment I looked at online in my price range didn’t even have any windows! Surely that’s a prison cell? So unless I want to sleep, work and eat on top of a big pile of clothes, I predict many visits to the local charity shop in my near future. Luckily my boyfriend is coming to HK for the summer too and kindly offered me some of his luggage allowance. So I’m hoping that unlike me, he knows how to travel light! Read Ayeesha's previous job logs:
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