{"id":1628,"date":"2008-11-25T13:17:15","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T13:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=1628"},"modified":"2008-11-25T13:17:49","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T13:17:49","slug":"tadaima-2-networking-karate-and-stocks-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/25\/tadaima-2-networking-karate-and-stocks-oh-my\/","title":{"rendered":"Tadaima! #2 – Networking, Karate and Stocks, Oh My!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My name is Rick Ambrosio<\/strong><\/a> (Ibaraki-ken, 2006-08).\u00a0 And whether readjusting to post-JET life is something you’re facing now, will deal with in the future or if you just enjoy reconnecting with that awkwardly uncertain feeling you had when you got back from Japan, come along with me as I look for a new job, a new apartment, and yes, mow the lawn of my parent’s house.\u00a0 Tadaima!<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

My cousin recently published a mystery\/horror novel called “Once Upon a Nightmare,” which I read exclusively at night because that’s generally when scary stories are most poignant.\u00a0 She asked me to review it, so I am.\u00a0 But like most books you get really into, you forget what time it is, and I ended up staying up really late.\u00a0 So I end up waking up late.<\/p>\n

First I checked e-mails for leads and responses with jobs.\u00a0 A fellow JETAANY member (Steven) needed help with the Kintetsu Essay Contest, and at this point he and I were working on a title for this series.\u00a0 The back and forth was a great way to keep myself engaged and feeling like I was doing something.\u00a0 The Essay Contest data was formatted quickly, but Steven and I went back and forth several more times brainstorming for a name for this series.<\/p>\n

Downstairs I went for brunch in my deserted house.\u00a0 Carefully placed on the kitchen table was my daily note from Mom.\u00a0 Tuna in the Fridge.\u00a0 She’s going to Lowes when she gets home.\u00a0 Vacuum all the leaves in the front of the house.<\/p>\n

I thought of calling my mother at work and telling her that many houses in Japan lack yards and doing yard work would severely cripple my cultural transition.\u00a0 Instead I threw on my weird leather and faux fur hat (I have a habit of wearing odd hats during chores) and began on the leaves.\u00a0 While doing this my neighbor Tony sauntered over.<\/p>\n

Tony is about my fathers age and has two loves:\u00a0 Cigars and Sinatra. A former stock broker, we tend to talk about the market when I see him because well, I don’t smoke and I’ve never been to Vegas.\u00a0 He relayed to me that we are in the midst of the worst economy he’d ever seen in his lifetime, and that I should have stayed in Japan a little longer.\u00a0 Thanks Tony.\u00a0 Before walking back home, he told me I should move down to Raleigh, where his son works as a financial analyst.\u00a0 I told him thanks, but I’m going to try and stick it out in New York a little longer.<\/p>\n

Six leaf bags later my mother comes home and I realize I’m going to be late to karate practice.\u00a0 I grab my computer, my dogi<\/em> and the keys to the car and I head off.\u00a0 Studying karate is a large part of what got me into JET, and now that I’m home it really helps me keep a piece of Japan with me here at home.\u00a0 My sensei<\/em> was happy to have me back, and in realizing I was without a job, made me a deal.\u00a0 I would teach him about this “Facetube web thing,” in exchange for karate lessons.\u00a0 It’s turned out quite well actually.\u00a0 I’ve helped him with some simple website updates and Photoshop stuff and he now has a youtube video<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 I can now combo a side kick into a spinning back kick and my kata<\/em> look pretty good.\u00a0 Everyone wins.<\/p>\n

After karate, I e-mailed a recruiter recommended to me by my cousin.\u00a0 After more back and forth, (and after deciding to pass on some funny names) Steven and I decided on a title for this series: “Tadaima!”\u00a0 We both liked it, and the fist post was published!\u00a0 Things were looking up.<\/p>\n

That is, until I read some of the New York Times and found out GM, Ford and Chrysler might be going bankrupt.\u00a0 Initially I started waxing nostalgic over Japanese cars, and how they were already so fuel efficient, and how it would take American companies a while to catch up.\u00a0 I then realized that I had bought some shares of GM because I thought they were really cheap.\u00a0 Okay, I bought a lot of shares.\u00a0 At 6 dollars a share.\u00a0 As of this writing, they are now worth $2.79 a share.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Ah yes, the new and exciting economy in America.\u00a0 Ganbare!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My name is Rick Ambrosio (Ibaraki-ken, 2006-08).\u00a0 And whether readjusting to post-JET life is something you’re facing now, will deal with in the future or if you just enjoy reconnecting with that awkwardly uncertain feeling you had when you got back from Japan, come along with me as I look for a new job, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,9,45,1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","category-humor","category-networking","category-uncategorized","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-qg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1765,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/1765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}