Part Time Job

One Sunday morning in 2000, I was surprised to see Tessie, my daughter, bravely walked into Daikoku Restaurant to the interview for her application of a part time job as waitress. She looked somewhat nervous but she deliberately tilted her chin up, radiated as much confidence as possible through her face and posture, smiled a bit and walked to the reception counter. Outside of the restaurant, waiting for her in the car, I and my wife observed all about that short moment of Tessie's pre-interview nervousness, extolled, "what a brave girl."

About half an hour later, she walked lightly out with natural brilliant smile. "I am employed!", she yelled.

This life experience of hers occurred when she had just returned from her one year stay in Kansai of Japan through AFS student exchange scheme, and was going to enter the university. She had worked a couple of other part time jobs during her school days so she had earned her own.

Seems that year 12 is the period when most of New Zealand children starts their first part time job. Again, when Chenny, my son, reached his year 12 in school, I heard from my wife one day after work that Chenny was out with some other classmates in the business areas of Takapuna and Milford hunting for part time jobs door by door.

Both I and my wife had been concerned that Chenny might not be as independent and brave as his sister, but the news of Chenny's attempt of seeking a paid job indeed astounded me deeply. I was so grateful to the education of New Zealand which helped my two children cultivate the spirit of independence.Though his first attempt was a failure, he didn't let it affect his mood. A few months after that try, through one of his close friends' recommendation, he got a part time job with New World Super Market Milford, worked as produce assistant stocking the shelves of its vegetable section. (Chenny is second from left.)


Since then, he, was just like his sister, had made his own spending money to accommodate his social and hobby needs through their own effort. Of course he changed a couple of employers since then. By the time this blog post is being written, he is working as guitar tutor at Glenfield Music Education Centre in North Shore.

What about their dad in terms of part time job during his school days? Nothing until the end of his first year in Journalism College.

I was in my first year in the college in 1970. In Taiwan, the school year normally starts from September. The first semester ends at early February followed by three week term break. The second semester starts from early March and ends at the tail part of June followed by two months of summer vacation.

In the Western world of 60's, The Beatles were getting popular, and hippy style living was spreading like wild fire, and these cultures began to cast their influences over the students in Taiwan at the ending part of 60's, In most high schools, the male students were supposed to be bald and this was part of the school uniform code. The school which I was in was less strict on the hair ban. They allowed us grow hair on the top part of the head up to 2cm maximum, and yet many more rebellious boys still tested the authority by growing hair beyond the limit. So from time to time, there were serious arguments between the offenders and the disciplinary officers occurred in the school yard.So as soon as we entered university, we were free from the hair restrictions. In the campus, we saw quite a few students grew hair style of The Beatles, and most of us grew hair following the society's norm. Mine was of the average length and of the standard model in 1970 (photo taken in a school gala).

Now back to the part time jobs I involved in the three years from 1970 to 1973.

When the first school year was coming to end in June 1971, I registered myself as job seeker at the student center in the school. I knew the number of job seekers outnumbered the jobs available, however, I hoped that I was lucky enough to be given one of any jobs because I really felt I should not ask for any pocket money from my parents after high school.

And I was really lucky that I was assigned to the Central Currency Production Plant to work as assistant of its administration office. That was a 9 to 5 job, but because it was for me during the summer vacation to work in only, so I called it part time job, the first paid job in my life. I used some of the money I earned from that job to buy a transistor radio.

Then in 1972, I was offered an on call job in a film subtitle print* workshop. It was owned by my friend's big brother. My friend was there helping his brother doing the marking on the footage of the corresponding subtitle, but since he was leaving for military service, he recommended me to his brother.

When I went to the interview with the boss, he showed me what to do and told me the wage of $100 (at that time, a simple lunch costs about $4) would be paid upon completion of each movie. Averagely each movie took me 8 hours to finish on my part. I was over joyed with this offer.

Every day after school, I was asked to call my boss to see if there was any task awaiting me. If so, then I was given a start date for that job, and I went to work on it as instructed. Sometimes if the job was urgent, I had to work till midnight or even through out the night till it was done. But it was not too bad.

When I got paid a lump sum at the end of the first working month, I used part of that money to enroll myself on a Japanese course with a private institute. In another blog post, I will tell you some dramas that occurred during that period of time.

I was on that part time job till I graduated in June 1973.

I like to tell my children that it is not for the money we go for a part time job, it is for the spirit of independence and for gaining life experience we go for it during our school days.

Amituofo

* How the subtitle was done at where I worked in 1972? Nowadays the subtitle of a film of other language is done by various modern technologies. But the process of the subtitle making which I involved in 1972 was quite primitive compared to modern day's.

The process began with recording of the dialogues of the whole film in a small lab. The translator presented to watch the movie while I recorded the sound onto the tape recorder. Then I gave the recorder together with the tape to the translator after the movie. The translator listened to the tape and typed all the dialogues in sentences of proper length on the paper both the original language, normally English, and the translation. Each sentence was coded with a number.

Then this bunch of papers of the translated sentences was passed to a writer whose calligraphy was perfect. He wrote each sentence within the specified space for plate making.

Then the calligrapher's originals were made into copper letterpress through photo graphic technique with corresponding number on its back side.

While the dialogues were being made into letterpress plates, I ran the reels through a photo electrical device. This device beamed through the sound track of the reel and brought the sound out through a speaker, enabled me to trace the beginning and the end of each dialogue on the reel so I could mark on the film with the code corresponding with both of the translation's and the letterpress plate's.

Lastly my boss would run the reel through a stamp machine which applied heat on the letterpress plate that has a code corresponding to the code I marked on the film frame. After the plate had stamped each of the picture frames, the subtitle of that peculiar dialogue was then done.