The company I work for is expanding rapidly.  One result is that I have a handful of positions I’m trying to fill.  Regardless of the position and who it reports to, I always insist on taking part in the interviews.  I leave the technical interviewing for others, I want to meet the people, find out who they are, get some idea if I think they’d fit in with the rest of the team.

So today I’m interviewing this guy.  I’m looking at his CV and I see he was at his last job for a year and that ended several months ago.  I ask him if that had been a contract position and he says it was.  Since he’s not a native HK’er, I ask him how he’s managed to stay in HK since then.  (I consider it a relevant question because I need to know if I’m going to have to sponsor an employment visa for the guy.)  It turns out he’s got a new job.  It’s not listed on his CV so I take a guess that it’s pretty recent and of course it is.

He tells me it’s another contract position, this time for six months, so I ask when the contract ends. Next May.  So you just started this contract?  That’s right.  And you’re going to walk off it right away?  Yes, he only has to give one month’s notice.  But you just started the job – don’t you feel any sense of responsibility to the company you’re working for or the agency that placed you there?  Well, he’s assuming that they will just dump him at the end of the six months so he owes them nothing and can quit any time.  He had, by the way, no compunction about sharing this information with me.  There was no hesitancy, no attempt to pretty it up in a nice ribbon and a bit of sparkle, he was fine with the whole thing.

Of course, legally speaking, he’s correct.  He can.  And if he goes into a contract with that kind of attitude, then the odds are pretty strong that his contract wouldn’t be renewed when the six months are up, if he makes it that long.  And the odds are even stronger that I have zero interest in hiring someone with this kind of attitude.

Is it just me?  Are there other employers not bothered by that sort of attitude, who don’t think, “If he does it to them, he can do it to me?”

The amazing thing is, over the course of the past few months, he’s not the worst I’ve seen, not by a long shot.  But he certainly was the most brazen.

… By Being a Migrant Sex Worker is the title of a two part article posted a couple of days ago on Bloomberg – part one and part two. (Via BoingBoing)

Basically a Filipino woman by the name of Rhacel Salazar Parrenas wanted to study Filipinos working in the sex business in Japan.  She was in Tokyo but was unable to meet any hostesses willing to participate in her study – so she joined the industry herself as a hostess.  The result is not only this article; there’s also a book titled Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo which was published by the Stanford University Press in September.

After I began working as a hostess, every person I approached agreed to talk to me. By the end of my study, I had completed interviews with 56 Filipina hostesses: 45 females and 11 male-to-female transgendered individuals. After working just one week in a hostess bar, I realized I had entered an unfamiliar sexual world, where people are more open about their sexuality, where both customers and hostesses seem to be ready for extramarital affairs, and where men can sexually harass women with no punishment.

However, what she discovered ran somewhat counter to her expectations.

What I discovered, in fact, was that these women come to Japan voluntarily and gratefully, knowing what their jobs will be. Very few engage in prostitution, and if they do, they do so willingly.

And in the end, she concludes:

Unsubstantiated claims of the forced prostitution of Filipina hostesses are morally charged, and divert attention from the need for regulation and protection of sex workers.

For Filipina hostesses, the goal should be job improvement, not job elimination. What’s needed are laws to prevent abusive behavior by middleman brokers. Club owners should be required to pay hostesses directly, rather than brokers. And labor standards should be enacted to ensure that the hostesses have regular days off and an eight-hour-per-evening work limit.

Hostesses don’t need to be rescued. They need the empowerment that comes from being independent labor migrants. Only then can they remain gainfully employed, free of migrant brokers, and have full control of their own lives.

I can’t not share this one (from here).

Japanese adult video actor Taka Kato and Mainland star Wu Qingqing two nights ago promoted their film 33D INVADER.  Taka Kato demonstrated his “gold finger” ability on a blow up doll and even advised male fans to trim their nails before their act.  He said that he has attended similar events in Macau and was quite fond of Hong Kong.  He hoped to be able to stay in Hong Kong even longer next time because he still had many “gold finger” secrets that he has not unveiled.

Similar events in Macau?  Macau has “gold finger” demonstration events?

I get daily emails from Groupon.  So far I haven’t bought anything from them (though I probably will at some point).  I think the main reason I get them and look at them every day is because whoever writes their copy is clearly insane.  They could simply write, “Here’s a thing, buy it,” but instead they have these little intros for each item.  Some are funny while some are simply over the top bizarre.  Here are some recent examples:

For a discount Thai dinner:

Thai food is apparently internationally famous and whether chilli-hot or comparatively blands, harmony is the guiding principle behind each dish.

For a TV:

While sadly a watched pot never boils, it’s a mercy that a watched TV doesn’t.

For a massage and dinner combo:

A few days ago I tried to buy a transparent Octopus case, but I just don’t know where to get one. It’s funny because you think it’s easy to get a plain one, but it’s not.

For a dinner combo:

Okay, so we read your Facebook statuses, about how you’re upset with your co-workers, annoyed with your boss, and are sick of working overtime without compensation. Or are those statuses really yours? Why complain on Facebook when you could be enjoying a gourmet meal?

For a vegetarian dinner:

Exercising and regularly eating vegetables are the building blocks to healthy living, unlike lying in intersections while munching on plastic bags.

For, ahem, skin whitening treatments:

Smooth skin is like freshly frosted birthday cake: it looks so delicious that no one cares how old you are.

And then, the same day, for facial treatments:

Smooth skin is like a beautifully made birthday cake: eminently lickable and perfect for disguising one’s true age. However, the pressures in life can get to us and make our face and body lose that natural glow.

For a trip to Taipei:

Mentioning a melting pot at a cannibal convention is usually not the best of ideas, much like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun.

For iPhone cases:

Whether tap dancing, lassoing cows or sitting in the dunce corner, it’s a scientifically proven fact that everything is more fun if done wearing a hat.

For iPhone speakers:

Despite how al dente a plate of spaghetti is, it will not taste delizioso without the Neapolitan or truffle cream sauce on top. The same applies to a rock song: it will not be grungy to the ears and make you feel your blood boil without a heavy-bass, high-fidelity speaker.

For spa treatments:

Much like a tough steak, the human body’s road to ripeness involves tenderising the meat, thoroughly coating it in an aromatic marinade, and topping it off with a shower of tangy barbecue sauce. Explore a sauceless option for soothing the skin …

For a hotel in Shanghai:

Statistically, home is the place you’re most likely to fall asleep under a running lawn mower or spontaneously combust while trying to slow dance with a running lawn mower.

For a royal carviar [sic] facial treatment:

Tired faces can accidentally reveal thoughts and feelings we’d rather keep secret, letting our crushes know how we really feel and taking all the fun out of charades.

For a medical check-up:

The body consists of 3 parts – the brainium, the borax, and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax, the heart and lungs; and the abdominal cavity, the bowels, of which there are five – a, e, i, o, and u.

Dinner for two:

A marriage between two cuisines is preferable to a marriage between two clones of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a process that eventually results in a baby reared on raw egg and a terminator suit.

Another dinner for two:

Before fishermen discovered the edibility of fish, they used each catch as bait for larger species, hoping in the end to hook the biggest fish of all—friendship.

So, to Groupon’s copywriter, as soon as you post a deal for some of whatever it is you’re taking, I’ll buy two!

If you follow celebrity news, which I do (and I have no excuse for this behavior), then you’ve probably read that Mike Myers of Wayne’s World and Austin Powers and Shrek and hasn’t made a good movie in a decade fame and his wife Kelly had a baby boy and they named the baby Spike.  Congrats to both of them and kudos on the wise name choice.  Mike, now that you got that out of the way, any chance of being funny again?

There’s one thing that’s gotten me this far in life and something that I tell my friends whenever they get depressed.   You may think this is all a bit Little Mary Sunshine for me but it’s what I truly believe and it has successfully helped me make it through some pretty dark periods in my life.  Someone’s made a nice poster of it.

It’s from here.  I know, you folks thought I was gonna have some bad joke at the end of all this but in this case, no.  Memorize this.  Share it.  It’s true.

Artist/blogger Elizabeth Briel and her husband were victims of an acid attack in Bangkok.  They’re okay now.  And leaving Thailand.

Do you know how it feels to watch a loved one’s eyes melt? Not metaphorically. But to watch them disintegrate. As our taxi driver kept up a bilingual patter about the fastest route to the hospital, Roy’s eyes began to shed their outer membrane like jelly. It hung there like frozen tears.

Read the complete post on her blog here.

Selena Li Finds German Sausages Too Oily For Her Liking

She’s talking about food.  Just in case you had any doubts.  (From here.)

Completely unrelated but worth posting, the front page of the New York Post from August 10th.

It’s always been a classy rag.

So Harry Potter took the record for top grossing weekend in the US, with a take of $168 million, beating out the last Batman movie.  Both are WB films and a testament to WB’s crack marketing squad.  But also HP benefits from the extra amounts charged for IMAX and 3D and the ever-increasing number of screens in the US.  Internationally, it took in $307 million.  That means that the film grossed close to $500 million in just its opening weekend.  However you want to look at it, that number is staggering.

So the theatrical business remains healthy even as home video is dying because the fools at the studios wasted years debating around DRM delaying a full entry into digital distribution.  So now DVD is dying, Blu-Ray isn’t picking up the slack, legal digital is still in its infancy.  These people have no one but themselves to blame.

I want to write more about the whole Murdoch thing but haven’t had the time to fully collect my thoughts and cite sources.  I’m sure the scandal will not end at the borders of the UK.  The FBI is said to be looking into things now.  Plus, one report has it that MySpace was just sold for $32 million – Murdoch bought it 6 years ago for $580 million.  Karma is a bitch, dude.

Also wanted to transcribe some bits of this past week’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen.  Guests included Dan Savage, Mark Cuban, Marc Maron.  Savage calls Bachmann and Palin “grifters and scumbags” – I think he was being too polite.  When they talk about the debt ceiling, about what might happen if the US defaults on bond payments, how the US is missing the boat on climate change, even the opening bit with that doctor who co-wrote The China Study talking about how the Republicans have even managed to politicize nutrition for fuck’s sake, well it’s an hour worth watching.

Anyway, here’s one statistic I remember from the show, hope I’m remembering it right.  In 1995, there was only one state in the US that had a population in which more than 20% were classified as obese.  Today there is only only state in the US in which less than 20% of the population is obese.  Why do you think that is?  It is the relentless mass marketing of garbage food.  I love my Double Stuf Oreos and Krispy Kremes as much as the next guy, maybe even more, so I’m pretty guilty of this shit, but I do try to balance it by otherwise trying to eat as much natural, unprocessed stuff as possible.  I’m not in great shape, true, but I’m just about 6 feet tall and usually weigh under 180 pounds, so I’m not doing that bad, though I could be doing better.

Anyway, long day, rainy day, Monday.  Time for sleep.

I’ve been online with Google+ (or G+ as I like to type it) for about a week now.  In case you haven’t heard, G+ is Google’s latest attempt at a social networking site.  Their previous attempts all crashed and burned but this one is actually getting good buzz (pun intended) and is rapidly closing in on ten million users.

My initial reaction was that I liked it (and I still do).  From what I can see, they’ve combined elements of both Facebook and Twitter.  You can post photos and photo albums and you get a news feed, all reminiscent of Facebook.   You can choose to follow anyone you want; you don’t need to wait for them to accept you as a friend.  You add your contacts into “circles” and can choose if your posts get shared with everyone or just one or more of your circles.  There is chat, for which you can use a webcam.  And more that I probably haven’t discovered yet.  Presumably because the service is still in beta, there are no ads to be seen.

So far, my newsfeed there is less than compelling.  That could be because, by comparison, I have 500+ contacts on LinkedIn, 800+ “friends” on Facebook and am following almost 5oo on Twitter whereas at the moment there are just 51 people in my “circles” on G+.  Of course I expect that to change as more people join the service and as Google continues to advance the functionality.  I do like the interface.  And it’s possible that Google really does have a winner on its hands – by primarily combining the best features of other services rather than trying to completely reinvent the wheel.

If you’re using Google+, what are your thoughts on it so far?