January 18, 2025
Day H3: Fair Enough
After a delicious snack of a Cobb salad and some Carlsberg in the hotel lobby, I felt immensely satisfied. That bank errand had gone flawlessly. It wasn't so much the outcome, but rather one more small step of saying no to people, setting boundaries, and taking control of my own destiny. This cash value insurance was not what I wanted. Just because a pretty face was trying to sell it this time made no difference. In past situations like these I would have capitulated and then later come to regret it. As they say: never invest in something you don't understand.
We'll touch on this topic more, but all this and what I later saw proved my thesis: teachers are the most exploited groups when it comes to financial products. They target us because for the most part we lack knowledge of the market, we are ultra-conservative when it comes to jobs (think full time stable work and nothing else), and we trust people too easily. In that sense we're the perfect victims for these so-called 'savings plans' and related sales pitches.
But this time I turned the narrative around and redirected the conversation. The outcome was rather a simple one that could have been done in 15 min as opposed to nearly 2 hrs. Even so it was an extremely entertaining and informative meeting and I enjoyed every second of it. The timing would prove to be majorly coincidental. After all this, I walked into the main airport terminal to find a convenience store for more snacks. As I did so I heard someone yelling my name and they said, "What the fuck, this guy is here"
I turned around and two of my coworkers had just walked through the arrivals. They said, "What are you doing here at the airport?" I said, "Well you won't believe this but I was actually doing some business at the bank right here in the terminal. Before that I was in Guangzhou and Shenzhen then crossed the border in a minivan." They just laughed and said it's typically on brand for me to do something like this. They later said, "Our flight was delayed out of Shanghai, we sat for a few hours on the tarmac. Then we spent some money in the duty free in arrivals. If it wasn't for all that, we wouldn't be meeting here right now." I later shared some of the bank stuff and the lengthy meeting. It all led to this meeting here right now.
As it turns out we all decided to take a cab together downtown and get drunk in the taxi. They asked, "Is it a cultural faux pas to drink in the taxi?" I said, "Doesn't matter, I'm doing it." They laughed and said "Well that's the standard then." They had booked a hotel somewhere on HK Island. After seeing them off I then found the way back to my own hotel on the Kowloon side. It turns out we were all going to same job fair the next day. I said, "Want to party at Lan Kwai Fung first?" They said, "We can't man, the fair starts at 7:30am tomorrow." I said, "It does?" They said, "Yes! Haven't you seen the registration?" I said, "I haven't bro. There's been one kafuffle after another with that, and there's no registration ticket on my end." They said, "Well you better get on this then." I agreed then parted for the night.
Back at the hotel, I logged on to the system and found out that I was never invited to the fair despite paying the registration fee. Well that can't be good. It could have been sorted earlier, but it was a classic case of putting this on hold while trying to surive at my current job, and realizing that nothing had been done. I sent a flurry of emails, and thankfully the fair organizer was still up at 10pm that night, she said no problem we'll do the registration right now. Well that was super nice of her and I wrote her a thank you follow up. Then I just crashed.
The next day I woke up pleasantly surprised to find that both my stocks and the futures account had made really strong running profits. The big winner was in shorting Gold. I took a huge risk on this, but in my view Gold was overbought after the inflation report came in quite lower than expected. According to ChatGPT, this triggered more expectations that the Fed would lower interest rates, and caused the value of the US dollar to fall. This in turn spurred more foreign buyers to pile into Gold. But fundamentally, I see the Fed maintaining a hawkish stance on interest rates and fears that Trump's policies will be inflationary. So in the short term at least, the recent hype in Gold will fade and that was my bet.
Even better than this win, the markets would be closed for three days in a row. This meant I could forget about all this for quite some time and take a breather.
The immediate problem was trying to get to the fair on time. I took the MTR then another taxi up the mountain and found the school. It was prestiguous but also very chilly with the open air design of the building. Now I wished I had brought a jacket as I was starting to get sick and the cough was only getting worse. To make matters worse, food was in short supply. This wasn't at all how I remembered it the last time coming here in 2018. The only thing there was this time: coffee and biscuits. No breakfast, no muffins, no other refreshments.
Before even getting there, they asked to see my ticket at reception. I said, "Ticket? I just registered last night and they didn't give me one. Is there a digital version in the email portal?" They said there was not, but they escorted me to the main registration table and they found my namecard on the table where my name was hand written. Everyone else's was printed. I later bumped into my coworkers and we sat together. They said half-jokingly, "Now all the recruiters and potential employers will see this namecard and think you walked in at the last minute. It will show you are not prepared and they won't consider you for positions." They had a point but I turned it around and said, "I'll just use it as a conversation piece and say that I'm environmentally friendly." Even so I got a dreadful sense that they were right and that the deck was going to be stacked against me.
For that matter, I also had no physical copies of CVs to hand out, no printed business cards, no folders, basically nothing of any paper whatsoever. Isn't this the 21st century where things are digital and we are trying to become more paperless anyway? You would think that everything on the fair portal is digital and that employers could access my CV and other information online.
After the introductory speech, there was a short coffee break. I hadn't a clue what was going on but I saw this was the chance for me to practice my networking skills. I introduced myself to a Chinese lady and her husband, they worked in Shanghai at a school in Pudong. Well that was interesting, they invited me to their table and we had a chat about all the developments. That led to talking to others nearby. Most interesting was that Ying had actually worked at one of the schools I was considering in the Shenzhen and Guangzhou area, and yet she said they exploited the teachers which is why she left. Well that can't be good. Where is the fairness anyway? That's why I was leaving my company right now too.
Oddly enough, that school she referenced was not present at the job fair this time compared to when I interviewed with them in 2018. I'll never forget what the recruiter said to me at the time back then. "I highly recommend you take this offer. $75k US tax free. You'd be a really good fit for this. It's time for a change don't you think? If you turn this down, you'll be sitting in some bar maybe 7 or 8 years later with your life going nowhere and thinking why didn't I take the offer? We want to hire you on the spot."
Looking back now, exactly 7 years later, his words were chillingly prophetic.
Later I met some other people at a different table and they said, "Oh you're math and science, people are gonna snap you up. You'll find a job in no time." You know it's funny how many people say this but what they're saying is a myth. If it was really this easy, then why hasn't it happened already? Don't get me wrong, they are correct in theory but the structural allocations of how jobs are found means that close to 90% of positions are being missed. It's like the recruiters and teachers are sitting in chairs with their backs to each other.
We listened to more speeches and I used this chance to read the room. The vibes were intense! People everywhere were taking detailed notes, laptops were out, papers everywhere, and a level of planning intensity I hadn't seen in ages. The speeches were of course very contradictory as they always are. They said things correctly like it's just one job fair and this shouldn't be the only chance to find a job. But later in the same speech they say that in the next 30 days, most of the teaching positions will be filled and after March it gets harder and harder to find jobs.
You could correctly get a sense that people were extremely nervous and pinning everything on trying to land a full time job right now at this fair. It is precisely for this reason that many will do as my coworkers did and what I used to do: they sign a contract at the current company to secure a position for next year, then they go to these job fairs and look around. Some employers, like my current one, they take it very personally when people do that. At the same time, these companies pressure teachers to sign a contract for next year very early, before the job fairs start. And this all happens during the busiest and most stressful part of the year. If they're like me and refuse to come back next year, then there's more pressure to find a new job at these fairs as the stakes are naturally higher.
At the same time, taking a step back from all this, it doesn't matter actually if I find something right now or not. Full time work is just one core position out of many satellites or side hustles: private tutoring, stock trading, newspaper editing, and I'm sure many others. As important as the core full time position is, not everything depends on it. But for teachers, being the ultra conservative group we are, we sure act like it and for that reason we are the prime targets for exploitation.
After the speeches were done, we lined up to enter the gymnasium where all the recruiters were. I wasn't aware why it was happening this way, but later I found out: people had secured seats at the main coffee room right at the front. Their gameplan was to literally run into the gymnasium and fire off as many paper CVs as they could to all the recruiters at schools then snap up interview slots for the afternoon as well as tomorrow.
I was one of the last people to get into the gymnasium because of this, and not knowing how the allocation system worked, it really looked like the deck was stacked against me and I probably wasn't going to get many interviews. As proof of that, I saw a school that looked interesting in Hong Kong, introduced myself, and shook hands with the recruiter. He said naturally, "Do you have a CV?" I told him I didn't have a paper one but the electronic one was on the fair portal and he could look me up. I gave a brief speech about myself. He saw my handwritten name and said he'd search for me on the portal but of course that never happened. There was then another school in Hong Kong, this time I had gone through a lengthy application earlier and was curious if they still had it on file. After a chat with the principal I asked about this and he said, "If that happened then it means you were not shortlisted for any positions. Sorry about that and good luck in the future."
Next I walked around to other schools that looked interesting in southern China and basically told myself to forget about outcomes and just talk to people and have a chat. This strategy worked much better and I had a chance to ask a lot of questions to the schools, especially focusing on the economic development of the area and the growth of the schools. This is a key thing I look for, just like investing in a stock position: if both the macro and micro economic picture is good, then so is the overall health of the school and position. Put simply, there has to be long term growth potential. My current situation in Shanghai was proving the opposite: when the economy sucks, the schools start micro managing harder as it means people are more desperate to hold onto their full time positions.
Finally I joined the biggest queue for the top school in Hong Kong and realized I likely wouldn't have a chance but was going to simply talk to the recruiters and practice networking with no expectations of outcomes. While I did this, my coworker was in front of me, and he shared a lot of the struggles he faced at my current job. Thankfully I was not alone after listening to him. And yet, sadly, he lacked too much self confidence and was a prime target for exploitation, just like I used to be. For someone with his experience and qualifications, it was beyond unfair how he was being treated. Ever sadder was despite how he and the other coworkers were making the rounds at the job fair, there is a 95% chance they'll come back to my current employer and suffer next year and the year after etc.. This was exactly the trap I had fallen into and stayed over 15 years in the situation.
So I had a chat with the Hong Kong recruiter and much to my surprise he scheduled an interview later on. Alright then. There was about two hours to kill so I took a hike in the woods nearby and tried to decompress from all the madness. People were taking this fair too seriously.
The interview itself went well, and they said they'd be in touch. We'll just see what happens. After that it was time to check out the famous Knutsford Terrace that my bank guy had recommended, basically a bar street on the Kowloon side. His advice didn't disappoint and there were many places competing for business. They lured me in with happy hour. But I wasn't really in the mood for any of this. My body was in shock form all the stress actually. I went back to the hotel around 6pm and just crashed for 14 hours straight. Forget about jobs etc... sometimes it's better to practice self care. The cough got progressively worse then a mad fever began. Whatever this virus was, I figured the best way to solve it was to stay curled up in bed and allow the fever to go away, hopefully in time for my flight to Thailand the next day.
One thing I learned from all of this is that the market doesn't owe you anything, and neither does a job fair. If you're losing money in the market, then it means you made the wrong trades. Don't get me wrong it's not easy but this idea that you have to win at all times is foolish. Even the most professionals will lose money. For that matter, so will the most experienced people face rejection and setbacks while looking for jobs. I later consulted ChatGPT about all that happened, and the general consensus was that I handled it with dignity. That being said, you have to look at things from a market metaphor: if there's too many people chasing too few positions, then it becomes an employer's market and they can get away with micromanagement etc.. As in the market, and in life, money flows from pool to pool. If the economy is in decline in one place, then it has to be booming somewhere else.
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