That Icy Feel

The whole region is now covered in a sheet of ice. Even though the sun is hiding behind the icy clouds that slowly but persistently pours out the icy rain, you can see the shiny white blanket as your train cuts through it like a pair of tiny scissors. If only the sun were out and the sky were blue, the magic would be felt. But what I have now is a somber gray everywhere, as if the icy rain had frozen up all colors and washed them all away into the unseen gutters among the snow.

It was a little tough walking to the little train station. Just a few patches of the sidewalk along the way was cleared up. I hope as the day gets warmer the icy layer in front of my house would melt away like a bad dream that never existed in reality. It's strange how a house can haunt you even without ghosts. I am turning 37 in a few months and I have no desire to be more responsible; if anything, this desire for simplicity just means I want less responsibility.

Speaking of responsibility, I was waiting for the very late train yesterday evening with another coworker. Like the Korean guy, this one (Caucasian) was also married. He is very soft-spoken, very friendly. He was one of the people who interviewed me. Unlike the Korean guy, this one had not only a wife but also an eleven month old daughter. He is probably my age, maybe even younger, judging by the little gray hair and wrinkles that he has. I was surprised to learn he was married, even more so, as you can imagine that he had a daughter about the age of my niece. Of course, on the other hand, my sister, younger than me, has two children already. I guess I am too much involved in academia, where people don't seem to have time for such silly human activities such as marriage and child-bearing. In that sense, I am more excited about being out of academia; I sense that one of the reasons I've had bad luck with women is that the ones I've met were mostly academics, and women in academics differ immensely from those outside in terms of desiring to bear the responsibilities of marriage and children. There are, of course, plenty of men and women in academia that have families, and undoubtedly they are in the majority. My former boss has two daughters, visiting sometimes and making lots of noise. But compared to the real world, I think, and I can be wrong, women my age and younger in academia are much less interested. And I wonder if that necessarily translates to being less interested in relationships in general, or not ready. I thought about the women in the past nine years, and every single one at some point revealed that they weren't interested. My problems with women are much more complicated than blaming them for not being ready, but I am just wondering if academic girls are just not as interested as, say, all these serious-looking dressed-up finance women, most of whom are married.

Speaking of finance women, one of the topics the father and I talked about waiting in the freezing cold for the late train was the strange event that had happened that morning. I wasn't really paying attention when a man waited for the Chinese woman that worked on the other side of my cubical, and then she got up and they left together. I didn't really think much of it until my English colleague said, "That was weird." (The "English" colleague is the one that golfs, the one I know the best so far.) His face was full of worries and intrigue. He said, as if to himself because he wasn't looking at me, "I think she just got fired, or quit." Standing up, looking around, he then mumbled, "That was a guy from HR." He gestured to the other Chinese woman that sat across from the one that had left, and that woman made a very painful face expressing that she didn't know what was happening. A few minutes later the Englishman went and sat next to that Chinese woman, and they whispered a few things. He then came back. I asked him what happened, but he said he didn't know. The departure of that Chinese woman got a few people talking that day. Yesterday was also a crazy day, being the first day of the month when everything in January had to be reconciled but the database server conveniently decided to crawl instead of run. So it was already a crazy day as far as job responsibilities was concerned (though not for me since I didn't work on most of the stuff, but I did help). Later, though no new information surfaced, it was confirmed that she wasn't coming back.

"She was marched out," mumbled my English colleague one more time during the day. It was like in the movies for me, except that she didn't have a box with all her personal stuff. It was shocking to me, not just to all the people already working there, because there were no signs of problems. She was always talking talking talking, didn't seem to be getting much work done in a corporation that was always ready to crack the whip. So in a way I wasn't surprised she was let go (or resigned, as we were told), but to be marched out, that was really something. I was told that you are usually given 30-days where you are required to continue working, unless, of course, you did something really wrong that they would march you out. So it couldn't just be talking too much and working too little.

I didn't know her well. We never spoke, except the day before yesterday when she brought breakfast from McDonald's for the breakfast club, and that upset everyone because McDonald's food wasn't really food. She simply asked me if I wanted breakfast. She was also very late with the breakfast. I wasn't in the breakfast club. Before that I never had spoken to her, but we had some connection because of culture. Not only is she Chinese, but she is a Cantonese speaker, and the only reason I knew she wasn't from Hong Kong was that she spoke Mandarin to the other Chinese woman. So while I wasn't in any way sad to see her go, her absence would make a marked difference for me.

But what impressed me more than just her being marched out was how serious employment dismissal was here. I have never worked in any place where the threat of being fired was felt omnipresent. I started working when I was fourteen, and never was there a job where starting from the first day and for at least once a week there would be some sign or talk of what one could do to risk being fired. It sometimes comes out as the official words in regulation compliance. It's a bank, there are lots of rules, and the rules are never meant to be broken unless you want to go to prison. I sometimes feel like I am working for the CIA. Sometimes, the threat comes out from people talking, like, "if a trader consistently makes a loss, well, he will get fired" or "the they show consistent low performance, they will be let go." All this makes sense, of course, but I have never had to hear it all the time. It's not that they are saying to for my benefit (I am learning I am not in the center of the universe), but that it's part of the culture. It's what I learned from movies (source of my stereotypes of the world), people in finance, always under a lot of stress in the black-and-white world of success and failure. I have no doubt that the stress is even greater than the one I encountered for scientists and their grants. I was telling my sister that it's no wonder you hear about traders taking cocaine to get by. I wonder, really, how long I can last. I am not a trader, but I am not sure what the expectations really are of me. It seems that even if I follow all the rules to the dot, there's no guarantee.

So that's why I was slightly worried when a man last night right before I left shook hands with me and told me his name. Later I asked the father before the train came who that man was. I found out that he was my boss's boss. I was embarrassed and worried, just slightly. I just shook hands but I didn't say anything courteous. In fact, I started packing to go home right after shaking his hand. What a great first impression, huh?

The departure of that woman made me think about the value of a job, of a career. Only two days ago she was talking to the man sitting directly in front of me, on the other side of the cubical wall, about her children preparing for college. The classes they were taking, the difficulties of competition, the messed up American educational system. She was a mother working at one of the biggest financial services firms in the world, having a very normal mother life. Now her job disappeared. What would she do next? Would she cry on her humiliating drive home (I am assuming it's humiliating; I guess it could be liberating)? What would she say to her husband? (Assuming she has one, and seeing how conservative the environment is, I think it's a good assumption.) I wonder what it was like to have everything and lose a big pillar that holds up that everything.

For that reason, also, I would not like any more responsibilities. To have children means i have to have a job, preferably a stable, salaried job. One of my fantasies was to be a husband at home, maybe working, but mostly taking care of the house, the wife, and children, if there was one. (The wife would be the one working.) I don't know why I have that. I think I prefer to be taking care of people and things that I care about in a direct way than making money to put food on the table. Maybe also because I don't have as much ambition as others. But the truth is, I don't really see much ambition in the people here. I assume the traders have ambition to make the biggest commission, the top managers have the ambition to drive the company's profit higher than the competition, or meeting more than the goals set. I guess in finance everyone has the ambition to get the biggest bonus, but really, is that what ambition boils down to? A number? I see ambition in my scientist friends, who want to come up with a better and better project and be the sole owner of its conception, delivery, and success. That is certainly a more real and more admirable ambition, for me, than a mere number. But numbers are symbols, and symbols are powerful.

Being here in this glass building of ambitions of numbers, I ask myself what really drives me on a professional path, and against that is the background of the reality of being fired, of challenges that are not related directly to my ambitions, whatever they are.