Job Discussion Forums

[once again]

I think being anywhere that is not "home" leads to us finding new "homes".
I miss many aspects of the UK, but mostly these boil down to the walk down to the football ground on an autumns day with my friends and the really bad food at fish and chip shops, which I miss terribly. But HK is my home now, and other countries along the way. I miss HK when I am not here, and I miss there, wherever there is, when I am here. I had a good friend that said to me on the phone, after watching the HK rugby sevens on the TV, who said, "How can you live there, it looks so different." This stunned me. He was one of my idols who had done some travelling and "interailed" across Europe. When I went back to the UK he made all sorts of excuses not to meet up. Apparently he was worried that I would find his life so bland now after my travels. Little does he understand that being in a country long enough means that all of the bland things such as working, finding food, etc..happen again. But that brought it home to me that not everyone wants to do what we do. And even me on occasion when the food cravings set in. There is nothing wrong with them and nothing wrong with us. It is just the way it is.

[dmb]

Whenever I go home I always know that at some point I'm going to get the "talk". I'm sure I'm not alone.
You know the one

when are going to get a proper job?
When are you going to get a mortgage?
What are you going to do for a pension?

Etc, etc

Some people really cant understand why we would like to live abroad.

[Lanza-Armonia]

[johnslat]

Dear L.A.

"Dying a rich and lonely fecker, and in one's dying breath, weeping . ."

ROSEBUD

Regards,
John

[dmb]

Sorry John I'm confused.
ROSEBUD??

[yaramaz]

The tragic final words in Citizen Kane. Also a sled.

[yaramaz]

... or a child's wagon. I forget. My juvenile onset dementia is peaking today.

[thelmadatter]

dmb - your youth is showing!

Signed - a almost 40-yr-old, divorcee who juggled kid, mortgage and passive-aggressive husband, now trying to do what she should have done when she was 20-something ... (mid life crisis?)

[johnslat]

Dear yaramaz,
It was a sled. Thanks for clearing up the obscure reference for dmb.
Regards,
John

[dmb]

[dmb]

Oh my God. I've just noticed I have made 666 posts. My name is Damian. Should I be worried?

[johnslat]

Dear dmb,

No - but all the rest of us probably should be.

Regards,
John

[Aramas]

Actually the sled was just a cover. 'Rosebud' was William Randlolph Hurst's pet name for a particular part of his paramour's anatomy.

[johnslat]

Dear Aramas,
Now I know - or think, at least - you're just kidding. But somebody - dmb, for example - might take you seriously:

"There are two shots of Rosebud in Citizen Kane, the first as it's covered by a blanket of forgetful snow outside the boarding-house of Kane's mother, the second as it's being consumed by flame in the basement of Kane's Florida estate. Ice and fire. Citizen Kane is a film about contrast and duality, and it expresses so through nearly every facet of the production. Kane has two friends, two wives, makes two trips to his palatial estate, and visits Susan Alexander twice. He is torn by his pair of personas: public magnate and private misanthrope, both sides of him coming together when he writes an excoriating review of his own wife's debut opera performance just prior to firing his best friend Jedediah (Joseph Cotten) from the newspaper they founded together.

Citizen Kane is also two films--one set after Kane's death as reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) struggles to uncover the secret of Kane's enigmatic last word ("Rosebud," of course), the other following Kane from childhood all the way to his lonesome death among dusty stacks of unadmired errata in an otherwise empty mansion. As Kane tells his benefactor Thatcher (George Coulouris) at one point, "You see, Mr. Thatcher, what you don't understand is that you're talking to two people." The effect of this doubling is to present what is the quintessential American film in terms of influence and literal meaning; the working title of the film, in fact, was the decidedly non-enigmatic The American. What better way to explore the gulf between American idealism and the demons that haunt our failures, after all, than to portray a man who was presented with the American Dream only to discover that his happiness lay in an artefact from his lost childhood.

Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) starts a daily with his friends Jedediah (Cotten) and Bernstein (Everett Sloan) that employs sensationalism and tabloid journalism, quickly establishing them as the most powerful publishing conglomerate in the land. Beginning with a newsreel obituary that presents the public perception of the monolithic publisher, which transitions into Kane's isolated last breath (such pains are taken to show Kane as utterly alone at the moment of his death that his last word could not, problematically, be overheard by anyone), Citizen Kane traces Kane's steady decline from a bucolic childhood to churlish isolation. A series of testimonials from Kane's aged compatriots obtained by the intrepid reporter Thompson, the film is a meticulously composed piece that ties together fluid flashbacks, camera tricks, revolutionary editing techniques, and avant-garde cinematography by the legendary Greg Toland. The importance of Citizen Kane can, then, be similarly explained in terms of duality: to the eye it remains one of the most technically resourceful and inspired films; to the mind, it is a magnificently satisfying character study of a man--and that man's society's--archetypal struggle between literal and philosophical legacies and what is intended and what is achieved.

Citizen Kane also finds resonance in its evocation of both a dream and a nightmare (a conceit highlighted by the usage of Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan over the prologue, itself a piece composed out of a dream): the voyeuristic spectatorship that ultimately functions as a commentary on the very process and effect of film and media. Toland shot the film with a slightly fish-eye deep focus and stark, startlingly Germanic, lighting that's augmented by Welles' extreme blocking and staging techniques. Each of these elements are most recognizable as the stock and trade of the horror genre. They present a hyper-invasive hyper-reality that distorts perception and leaves the viewer with a feeling of insecurity and a loss of balance.

We aren't handed a solid grasp of Charles Foster Kane: he is grand and pathetic, generous and niggardly, nurturing and selfish, each aspect of his personality bound together by a childlike megalomania that made him turn everything in his life into an object to collect or a toy to mishandle. It is that very uncertainty that lends Citizen Kane its importance as an almost primal study of the instinct of mythmaking (in its modern form, mass media) towards encapsulation and shorthand: the difference, in other words, between the sloppiness of real life and the representative resonance of history. Welles was vocal about his ultimate displeasure with the Rosebud sled as a story device, calling it "Dollarbook Freud." And yet without this relic from childhood (recall that Thatcher attempts to replace Rosebud with a second sled), Citizen Kane's most powerful symbol, the paperweight, would lose a great deal of its meaning.

Appearing first as it falls from Kane's lifeless hand and shattering by his deathbed, the paperweight (really a water-filled snow globe with a winter's scene evocative of Kane's childhood home) reappears at the end of the film after Kane destroys his second wife's bedroom. The item is representative of a moment frozen in time, easily controlled, visited, and manipulated. The fallacy of a self-contained historical documentation that forever preserves an ideal eternally inviolate within its static confines. When the globe shatters at the beginning of the film, it is a bald declaration that Citizen Kane is going to be a messy thing that attempts to show the eternally invariable makeup of media mythology at odds with the ambiguity of real life.

Contemplating an early scene comprised of a roomful of reporters in an RKO screening room, scoffing at the incompleteness and 'un-media-worthiness' of Kane's newsreel eulogy, we come to the startling realization that Citizen Kane itself is invested in the search for a media-worthy "hook" (Rosebud). Startling because it is only at film's end that its wryness, irony, and intelligence becomes clear--there have seldom been any entertainments in any medium that marry a superb mind with a deft hand and an indisputable heart. Citizen Kane is considered to be the best film in history by many historians, craftsmen, and critics for the simple fact that it is brilliant in every individual element that comprises cinema (acting, directing, writing, editing, photography, set design)--and that it fashions all that surplus of excellence into a tale of unqualified humanity and archetypal resonance."

Regards,
John

[desert flower]

My dream was always to discover other cultures. travel and live abroad. I spent over 30 years in education in Canada, loved every minute of it, but was always holding on to my dream.

I retired from my job in Canada and the timing was just right for me to move abroad and experience a different world.

Teaching one year in Turkey was quite an experience. I survived but would not go back to it. Loved all the travelling I did throughout Turkey that summer and people were generally friendly and helpful but the teaching part was a "chore" and almost an impossible feat to accomplish ( Private Secondary Turkish School)

I am now in Qatar, have been for 4 years now ( 2 different jobs) and love it. What is great about living and working abroad is that you learn something new every day, it is exciting, challenging and can be fun at times......I love Canada and will eventually return but wonder what it will be to re-adapt to a "boring" day routine.

I am alone in Qatar , find it difficult at times but it would be basically the same back in Canada. My friends, daughter and ex used to worry about me all the time but they are used to it now and are quite happy about my accomplishements. As long as I am happy, they are happy for me......

So, dreams do come true....am working on my next one now!!!!!!