Thoughts on being a battery hen and why offices are terrible places

I always knew offices were places of terror. Now I’ve had enough proof to last a lifetime.

For since earning some of those nice Monopoly-money green dollar bills has been a pressing concern for new immigrant me, I’ve had to take the first jobs that came my way – in this case, signing up with some Manhattan temping agencies and being sent out on receptionist assignments to banking firms, in the heart of capitalist New York.

My initial thoughts were, it’s not going to be too bad, is it? Surely this will be a doddle after teaching (I’m a qualified EFL teacher) – at least I’ll just be able to sit down and relax all day rather than leap about in front of a class of adults inspiring them in the ways of the English language. Maybe I’ll even get to do some writing/revising Spanish/reading as I sit there, I thought.

And yet, what I had totally forgotten was how much of an extreme torture it is for the restless soul that I am to be forced to sit still, in the same position, all day long. I had forgotten the sheer tedium and brain-draining experience of being constantly sedentary without any recourse to anything intellectually-challenging.

What’s more, being a temp, i.e. replacing the permanent receptionist, meant that I was invisible to the vast majority of staff members who passed my reception desk. So essentially, I was just a drab piece of furniture that they passed by, loudly continuing their inane pointless corporate banter:

-Business is love, ha ha ha (special corporate laugh)

-Happy New Year – To you too! -So far so good! Ha ha ha

-When’s that meeting? -On Tuesday afternoon  -OK I’ll make sure I’m not there, ha ha ha

-We meet again, ha ha ha

-Oh, just to let you know, I’m making those modifications – OK, I’ll let them know the letter’s not going out today

(all genuinely overheard)

Each day felt long enough to have lived an entire lifetime in. I willed myself not to look at the clock, trying to trick time into going faster. To no avail. Each minute was the equivalent of an hour, each hour the equivalent of a day. In the evening, between each lifetime of torture, I made myself laugh when discussing things that had happened only a day or two earlier because to me, they truly felt like they had happened three months ago. Time was playing bad tricks on me.

Then my hubbie, who is even more anti-offices than I am, made a very valid point: Why do we humans make such a point of buying free-range eggs, making sure hens get to run around freely, but not demand the same treatment for ourselves as a basic human right?

It got me thinking. Why indeed do so many humans sit in their office-cages day after day, week after week, year after year, doing tedious, pointless, paper-shuffling work, having to pretend to be busy when they’re not? Surely, in the 21st Century, we must be able to seek out an alternative vision for the general good of humankind?

And then I complain why I’m always so poor.

A world overflowing with inter-faith love? Don’t worry, there’s still enough intolerance flying around…

Last night I went to shul* to see an Afro-American Baptist gospel choir bring the house down.

What’re the chances of having such a boast?

And yet, in the vibrant spiritual underbelly of New York City, this is exactly what happened to me last night.

For yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a public holiday in the US where concerts and events across the land commemorate the great civil rights leader’s legacy.

And here in the Bronx, NY, I wandered up the road to the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (HIR), an open-minded, left-leaning Orthodox synagogue, to witness something quite remarkable – and the most un-shul-like experience you could possibly imagine.

view concert flyer here

Here was a truly uplifting evening of song starring a dead cool Reverend (Roger Hambrick) with his Green Pastures Baptist Choir singing their socks off (to quote Cheryl Cole) alongside Jewish spiritual singer Neshama Carlebach to a packed auditorium. It all just felt far too cool to be taking place in a shul.

(well, apart from a very sincere communal rendition of the American national anthem which nearly got me and another English friend into trouble as we nearly got the giggles – can you imagine British Jews being patriotic enough to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ in shul?)

Here were Rabbi and Reverend, Jew and Christian, Black and White, man and woman, old and young, all standing together, singing, dancing, cheering, committing to right the wrongs in the world. Here were Afro-American gospel singers putting their own spin on legendary Carlebach tunes, Rabbis pledging the Jewish community’s commitment to helping victims of the Haiti earthquake, to rebuilding post-Katrina New Orleans.

Here was Judaism actually getting off its insular, complacent backside and turning outwards to connect with other faiths, mobilising to fight injustice.

You simply couldn’t help getting carried away with all the upbeat energy floating around the room – it was positively infectious this positive energy thing. I was starting to get worried about myself – could this American ‘Yes We Can!’ upbeat optimism really be getting to cynical old European me?

Well, guess what, the first thing I did when I got home was send an email to a local NGO about volunteering possibilities…

…And then a new day began, and I came back down to earth with a bit of bang:  Apparently the world had not become perfect overnight after all. People still hated each other. Sigh.

I heard reports that today in Manchester, in the north of England, there were anti-riot police called in to watch over some Satmar** Hassidic demonstrators sparring with pro-Israel counter-demonstrators outside a hotel where a meeting was going on for Jewish people interested in moving to Israel.

Fractured inter-denominational Jewish communities? Business as usual?

* Shul – the common Yiddish term for “synagogue”

**Satmar is a Hassidic group extremely hostile to the idea of the modern secular State of Israel.

a small milestone for the novice blogger that I am

I’ve now had more than 1000 – that’s ONE THOUSAND -  hits on my blog!

Yippee!

I know this is a pretty small-fry milestone in the blogosphere but to little me, 1000 of anything sounds like quite  a lot.

I’ve got loads more to learn about the art of blogging (and all the technical stuff that goes along with it), but what’s intriguing me is that the more I blog, the more ideas I have.

Thanks for reading my humble offerings to date, and I hope to continue to surprise – or even delight.

Doing drugs Manhattan-style

A friend of a friend living on the Upper West Side told me a funny little anecdote:

She was at a Friday night dinner being chatted up by a dashing French fellow sitting beside her. All was going swimmingly until he suddenly threw an entirely random, and somewhat inappropriate, request at her. Here’s a rough version of how the conversation proceeded thereafter (bearing in mind the Gallic gentleman’s thick French accent):

-You ‘ave ‘potte’ in yourrr appartement?

-Pot? What kind of pot? (somewhat startled)

-You know, ‘potte’, jwoints, what you can smokk.

-What, pot as in marijuana?!

-Yes, exactlee! You ‘ave eet? We go smokke in yourr appartement?

-Hmmm, um, funnily enough, no, I don’t have any marijuana in my apartment.

-What you mean you don’t even ‘ave an emerrrgencee supply of potte? (sounding aghast)

-Emergency supply???

-Yes, you know, like you ‘ave zat emerrgencee fifty-dollar bill in case of emergencees- zat kind of sing.

-Umm, how can I put this? Look, I don’t even smoke the stuff for one thing, so certainly don’t have an emergency stash of it! And anyway, I keep Shabbat and you’re not allowed to smoke on Shabbat.

-Oh but it would create exactleee ze right ambiance forr Shabbat!

-Well, even if I wanted to, where would I even get hold of weed in Manhattan? I mean, where do you buy your pot here? Do you have a dealer?

- But we arrre in Man’attan – I get it delivered of courrse.

I love that punchline, delivered in that entirely matter-of-fact way.

Only in Manhattan!

PS. I suspect that it was not just a language barrier that prevented the two protagonists from deciding to take their relationship up to the next level.

And the biggest loser is……..

Seeing as I’ve barely scratched the surface on the infinitely fascinating theme that is Americans and their food/diet issues, here’s some more food for thought…

Forget X-Factor, forget Britain’s Got Talent, here in America, the biggest reality ‘talent’ show is none other than The Biggest Loser – where a group of  people who are larger than life in every possible way (or  in more simple terms, morbidly obese) battle against each other to lose the most amount of weight over the course of the series, so as to be crowned THE BIGGEST LOSER in the grand FINALE – and walk away with a neat quarter of a million dollars.

I just came across a repeat of said finale of the last series on the NBC website and quite simply could not believe my eyes.

Of course, this being America, the land of unrepentant and joyous exaggeration, everything about The Biggest Loser was super-sized and coated with sentimentality. It was a story of hyperbole heaped upon hyperbole, superlative slapped upon superlative: The FATTEST/THINNEST contestant ever! The MOST amount of weight EVER lost in a week! The SADDEST/HAPPIEST I’ve ever been! The MOST incredible experience ever! The hardest ordeal ever!

From the melodramatic weigh-in ‘ceremony’ of each contestant stepping onto a giant weighing scales mounted on a giant podium, to the deafening screams and whoops of delight of the live audience, and the ‘emotional’ live marriage proposal between two ‘losers’ who met and fell in love on the show…

From the jaw-dropping vital statistics of the ‘losers’ who started off weighing anything from a hefty 250 pounds (18 stone/113 kg) up to a terrifying 480 pounds (34 stone/217 kg), to their even more dramatic weight losses – one guy broke a record by losing double-figure pounds for seven weeks in a row, not forgetting of course 40-year-old Danny, crowned “The Biggest Loser”, who lost a staggering 239 pounds, or 55% of his original body weight – this was larger than life even than by usual American reality TV standards.

The ultimate in sadistic, voyeuristic, vicarious viewing, you couldn’t help but watch in utter fascination and horror at everything these people go through to lose weight, not least of all the extreme cruelty and rigour of the shiny happy skinny practically-perfect celebrity personal trainers who lick them into shape week after week in a gruelling boot camp regime. It’s a no-holds-barred viewing experience – you see the contestants breaking down during exercise sessions, flying off treadmills, collapsing during practice runs, panting, sweating, screaming, sobbing, all dignity gone.

Yet, putting aside cynicism for a minute, the message of The Biggest Loser is pretty powerful. These people, many of whom have suffered all their lives with the trauma, low self esteem and physical limitations of being morbidly obese, are literally born again. Although they may not all have reached their target weight by the finale, they’ve all achieved something not easily done by the best of us – they’ve changed, on the outside and the inside, and they all without exception spoke about how they had ‘got their lives back’, or become the person they always wanted to be.

So in spite of myself, I watched every minute of that finale riveted, and I must confess, I was not averse to a tear or two.

Final word: For any American reader, rest assured, I’m not preaching superiority given that I come from England, where the rate of obesity is probably almost as high as over here.