Do do do do do… Do do do do do do dooo… Oh, New Jersey here we come, Yeah, New Jersey here we come… New Jersey, New Jersey, Here we cooooooooome!!! Nah, it doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "California here we come," now does it? But New Jersey it is, so be it. Mark and I arrived last week and finally managed to trek all of our crap up to Damian's apartment in Jersey City, where Mark got the futon and I got the couch. I ain't complaining, the couch is dead bloody comfortable! And besides, give my current daily task of walking all over Manhattan begging for jobs, I'm too knackered at the end of the day to care WHERE I sleep. The job front is hell. Absolute f*cking hell. Although my former employers didn't in fact have a job waiting for me when I arrived, they are making calls on my behalf and trying to locate something for me. My usual sense of luck and timing has applied in my thus-far futile search for gainful employment. I missed out on a job in Thady Con's (49th & 2nd) by a week. Patrick Conway's (44th & Vanderbilt) by three fecking days. Oh well. The chef at one of the places where I used to work made a call for me to a fancy schmancy restaurant up in Central Park called the Boathouse. So I went up there to do an interview and met a bloke up there that I used to work with! He was a manager there so I figured that I was well in. I did an interview with the GM and wowed him with my well-patented line of bullsh*t. He was well impressed and asked me to come in the following day for training. Sweet. He did mention the possibility that there could be an issue over my Social Security Number (I don't have one yet), in that the company might not be able to employ me without one. Hmmmm. I quietly explained that under US employment law, it was perfectly legal to employ me as long as I had APPLIED for my number. He didn't seem to buy that, and mumbled about having to check it with the main office. But we agreed that I would start training anyway. Kickass. So off I went to the Social Security Office in Jersey City, with a veritable sheaf of documentation under my arm. After getting there a half hour before it opened, I only had to wait in line for about 45 minutes to be served. I'm not surprised why some people snap and walk into McDonald's with machine guns, I'm really not. Anyhoo the very "pleasant" lady behind the desk took the most cursory glance at my passport and said that I was ineligible to apply yet, that I had to wait until the 17th of June, when I had been in the US 15 days. I protested that by then I would have been in the US for 20 days and that with out at least applying for my SSN, I wouldn't be able to work. She listened patiently to my earnest and logical statement, and replied "NEXT!" Boy, is my trigger finger getting itchy… I looked up the legal letter that I got with my J1 package from USIT and lo-and-behold, it seems that I am legally cleared for work in the US even without applying for my SSN. All I have to do is advise my employer of my number as soon as I get it. Nice. So I trekked back up to Central Park, all dolled up for my training session, and met with the GM. Again. He took all of my information (passport, work visa, various letters, including the aforementioned legal letter) and said that he had to fax it all off to the main office. He'd get back to me in about ten minutes as to whether I would be permitted to work there. I patiently explained to him about the whole legal letter thingy, and he looked a bit dubious. After sweating for ten minutes, he came back to me and informed me that US law would not allow me to work without a SSN. After I showed him the legal letter stating the complete opposite, he changed his tune and said that it was company policy that all employees had to have SSNs. Ah b*llocks, I said to myself. He then "kindly" offered me a job as soon as I had my SSN, which usually takes anywhere between 2 and 12 weeks!! Aaaaaargh. So I went back to the drawing board. Yuck. So for the last five days I have been walking the streets of Manhattan in record-breaking weather (90-95 Fahrenheit, which roughly translates to 32-35 Celsius and a whopping 100% humidity), which makes walking across the street something akin to a stroll through SOUP. So now imagine walking for 5-6 hours a day, in a shirt and tie, with a bag of CVs on your back. Got that mental picture in your head? Good. Now imagine how I smell at the end of the day. After you finish throwing up, you can read the rest of this email ☺ Last night, Damian, Mark and I had the moving job from hell. Damian owns two apartments in the building next door, and lives in rented accommodation. Clever boy. But one set of tenants are a bit high-maintenance, so to speak. They called Damian up, whinging about how their fridge wasn't cold enough. Gits. The solution? Damian, Mark and I sweated, swore and struggled to carry the world's biggest fridge down THREE flights of stairs, across the street, and up TWO more flights to the tenant's apartment. There are precious few elevators in older apartment buildings over here. If that wasn't bad enough, we then had to carry an even bigger fridge down the same two flights, across the same street and back up three more bloody flights! Yup, that's right, Damian solved their fridge issues by swapping his fridge for theirs. Americans like their fridges big. You could set up a decent sized apartment in one. We managed to replenish the lost body fluid (i.e. rakes of sweat) by inhaling a case of Heineken. Yummy. At the time of writing, I am still looking for a bloody job. I did an interview today with a theme restaurant in Times Square called Mars 2112. A bit kitschy, but at this stage of the game, a job is a bloody job. Besides, they gave Mark a job in the bar (he started today). And my old boss Ian made a call to a busy bar near Madison Square Garden called Tir na nOg for me and I'm going in there tomorrow to talk to the owner. Fingers crossed! More news as I get it, Talk soon…. -- Roibeard O Mhurcu # 54144094 CS1 Class Rep. DCU Drama, Chairman (Chairperson/Chairthing, y'know like, whatever). www.dcudrama.ie "They have the Internet on computers now?" "Okay, brain. You don't like me, and I don't like you, but let's get through this thing and then I can continue killing you with beer." "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" "Do I know what rhetorical means?" - Homer Simpson, America's second biggest schmuck -