Peripathetic, p.15
Peripathetic, page 15
It’s an easy sign-up, so easy that all it requires is for me to walk into an office building in town to do the paperwork and pick up the special insulated bag to transport the food in. There’s a zippered holder at the bottom for pizzas, so they can lay flat. I’m set! I start working as soon as I exit the building, logging onto the app the staff at the office had already taught me to install in my phone. Adrenaline courses through me; this is a computer game, except I’m playing it in real time.
Henry is right: it’s an okay deal. It’s not the best deal, but it’s good enough. At this job, I make $8 per drop-off; sometimes I’m lucky and my ‘trips’ from point A to B are 500 metres to a kilometre apart. One job requires me to pick up food from a restaurant below an apartment complex, only to find out that the destination is in the same complex upstairs. Sure, I think to myself, whatever floats your fucking boat. That’s an easy eight dollars.
While the company initially promised a three-kilometre maximum distance for cyclists, the app’s algorithm begs to differ – I end up delivering further and further away from my starting points. On one delivery, I ride six kilometres down a busy main road known for ‘killer’ trucks with interstate deliveries, my bicycle hugging the road shoulder, my hands gripping the handlebars. The eight dollars is a flat rate that doesn’t increase with distance, unless the app issues a randomised ‘boost’ that multiplies the payment anywhere from 1.1 to 2 times the usual rate. The algorithm makes it such that it’s literally luck; one takes what they can get. Reject too many jobs and you get penalised, the algorithm putting you onto a secret blacklist that ensures you get fewer job notifications. Predictably, these boosts don’t last long, and often appear during harsh weather conditions, which makes the job hardly worth it on a pushbike. Other times, they appear at hours in between mealtimes, where you’re hardly guaranteed deliveries anyway, especially in a city as small as Adelaide. Customers – if you can call them that – are either overly thankful or completely invisible, with many preferring to communicate via the chat function on the app. ‘DO NOT KNOCK!!!! SLEEPING BABY,’ writes one. ‘Please take lift to unit 1107 and place food on ground next to door, thx,’ writes another. The rare times I see another delivery cyclist while at work, we give each other a tiny wave as we pass, both on the way to either a pick-up or a drop-off.
I deliver food like this for a year as a second job. As much as I’m sceptical over its claims to ‘change lives’, I do manage to supplement my income from writing and the restaurant. I can’t complain.
domestic assistant
After the Melbourne cafe job, I’m back to square one: indeterminably afraid of what the future will hold, paranoid that no one will hire me. Although I’m making a considerable sum of money writing at this point, it’s nowhere near a liveable wage. I have no money left from the interstate move, and credit card debt that looks like it’s never going to be paid off. There is still the question of the $10 000 my friend in Singapore lent me six years ago, which I ended up using.
But I remember I’m back in the big smoke, so I look on the internet again. I’m not entirely convinced about returning to chefery. Where can I find a job that requires the least interaction possible, where I can be mostly left to my devices? In theory, thinking and interacting should be voluntary endeavours – they shouldn’t be done in exchange for something as lacklustre as ‘having an income’ ‘towards survival’.
On a practical level, however, I live in this society. Utopian wishful thinking isn’t going to house or feed me. I would rather not do food delivery again if I can help it, so I look at a national job outsourcing app to see if it’s any better than the scant offerings I’d seen back in Adelaide.
It turns out that in Melbourne, the app is teeming with ‘Posters’ looking for ‘Taskers’, an assortment of one-off jobs filled every day in various locations throughout the metropolitan areas. New jobs appear on the app every few minutes. There aren’t many cooking jobs on there, so I look at cleaning. Due to my obsession for order it’s one of the things I’m fairly good at, so good it was a point of either praise or contention with many chefs at previous workplaces. It was invariably a virtue or an affront. And Melbourne’s five million population delivers: out of the many ‘tasks’ offered, many happen to be housekeeping jobs. I do well enough to convince a few clients to take me on as their regular cleaner, and my roster of clients begins to expand.
In this job, I get to peer into the intimate lives of the professional–managerial class, they who can afford to pay people to clean their houses because they’d rather – for whatever reason: lack of time, usually – not do it themselves. I have never known myself or anyone in my proximity to have that kind of luxury. It seems so absurd. It’s a job most people can do by themselves! Nonetheless I’m glad that others’ ineptitude, apathy, and disposable income are helping pay for my living.
The job is different every day, which imbues its inherent monotony with a sense of adventure. I clean four-bedroom houses in the suburbs, inner-city apartments that resemble hotels, passive income airbnbs, CBD apartments that strike me as akin to boxes if not for the visible city skyline. I clean an open-plan office that also houses a place of residence downstairs, and I fear for the client’s mental health because who can conflate work and rest, or at least compartmentalise them, in such close quarters? I clean a gay white yoga instructor’s house in addition to his studio around the corner every fortnight. ‘I love gentrification,’ he tells me, a glint in his eye. I’m sure he also likes the fact that his cleaner is an alternative-looking woman who also happens to be a person of colour. Occasionally, I do the shopping for a young woman who requests that I get the exact same items every week. I clean the family home of an ex-goth with multiple sclerosis, our relationship a kind of paid-for friendship, her talking to me about everything and nothing while I clean. Another client gives me some Aesop hand soap for Christmas. I bid successfully on a $150 one-off that requires me to dispose of all trash – fast food wrappers, dog shit, junk food packets, rotting half-eaten fruit – from a hoarder’s room, with the stipulation that I have to finish the job in an hour. The app becomes a game: every job is a quest and I don’t progress to the next level until I receive my five-star rating. I make sure every tap and doorknob gleams.
wordsmith
It strikes me at some point: I’m bored in Adelaide. People seem not to do very much, there’s a lot of drinking, and I can’t seem to find the right array of people to talk about compelling stuff with. I’ve already increased my alcohol tolerance, and I’m sick of seeing the same people all the time. Things only really happen on the weekends, and weekday nights are filled with nothing much at all.
It is this under-stimulation that leads me once again to the internet, bearer of opportunities not unlike the trusty classifieds of yore. There, I notice a left-wing Australian publication I e-subscribe to is ‘looking for pitches’. I have no idea how to begin, but I follow the instructions and fire off something on their Submittable anyway. ‘Dear Editor,’ I write. ‘I am submitting an essay critiquing the exceptionalism accorded to a particular kind of asylum seeker “approved” in mainstream circles, while hundreds of others remain wilfully ignored. Do let me know if your publication is keen on publishing this. I understand that I am not a subscriber to the magazine, but am happy to volunteer this article unpaid if necessary. Best regards’. For some reason, the editors find it persuasive enough, even though in the bio section I’ve written ‘never published’ and have submitted something in the ‘non-subscribers’ column, which I take to mean would less likely result in acceptance or payment.
When it’s published, I share the article on Facebook and Twitter, as advised by the automated email I receive after my submission is approved. I can’t believe it. So someone finds my thought vomit interesting enough to read and then also pay me for? Later I find out that I inadvertently submitted something called an ‘on-spec’, which happens when a writer finishes writing an article before they are promised any payment for it, shopping it around with the hope that it eventually gets published somewhere. Even though it takes me close to a week to research and write it, I don’t feel like I worked for the $60 payment at all. I was engaged in deep thought the whole time, ruminating about something I want to tell others, things I already do during my leisure time. I mean, it’s a serious subject, obviously, but it’s nice to be able to argue a case, isn’t it? Especially if it’s something that’s been bugging you for a while and one you can’t seem to find much non-academic literature on. I’m hoping to have a conversation somehow.
I get addicted to the feeling. My friends and boyfriend seem encouraging, impressed even. It seems as if it’s a job worthy of admiration, many attaching a sense of glamour to it. But I’m only addicted because, like Charles Mingus, I can’t and don’t ever want to stop thinking, which, as he puts it in his memoir, is ‘the only way I can go forward’. Might as well get paid for it.
But I gradually realise I’m not the only person to think this. Duh! The mysterious workings of the publishing world, while becoming less opaque to me as time passes, become more and more perplexing as I come up against more questions than answers. Secrets are held and spilled, private messages rife with grievances and gossip. It is nothing like the world I imagined: comradeship and intellectual exchange often sacrificed at the cost of something else, usually a form of capital even if incomes remain stagnant and the winners take all. Injustices, prejudices and inequalities reveal themselves again and again. Unspoken transactions often occur: you scratch my back and I scratch yours. I begin to see it as a combination of high school and the corporate world: a huge, remote office that runs itself like a subculture, so that yardsticks can continue to change without so much as an explanation even if what we are all doing is considered a job. Everyone fights for crumbs. Newspapers are funded by fascists. Only the moneyed can keep at it – if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Yet no one seems to have any money either.
Disgusted, I turn to George Gissing’s novel New Grub Street, which I’d only heard about after joining the ranks of this establishment, making the reading experience even more pathetic. This atmosphere dissuades me from seeking out more friendships than the ones I already have, once a desired fantasy. Perhaps I had been sucked in by its presumed glamour too; it might be the reason why the literary arts tend to be imbued with an appeal both impenetrable and desirous. How can community be built when transactions are involved? Still, nothing is totally horrible: I occasionally get to know mentors and others whom I admire, whether they are those who have battled these same odds without descending into an inflated sense of self-importance, or those who really do want to champion and nurture writing. They are friendships that I hold on to; the facelessness and remoteness of this job – especially if it is done on a freelance basis – almost ensure alienation otherwise. A close friend and I share a bitter laugh: and to think we thought this would be the greatest job ever – we love reading and writing, don’t we? We fucking love reading and writing! And yet. I get to know aspiring poets and novelists who seem to disappear off the face of the earth after a few years, never wanting anything to do with writers and writing ever again. And if I had to learn to read between the lines at my job at the convention centre, here I have to pay even closer attention: it increasingly appears I am now inside the enemy’s lair. Not a proletariat, not yet a bourgeoisie, while not making enough money to belong to the professional– managerial class either – a kind of upjumped knight from the George R.R. Martin universe. And contrary to popular belief, the writing increases in difficulty the longer I do it, which I take as a sign of my ascending the levels of this revolting video game of a life. The chasm widens.
director of first impressions
I find myself going to a cybercafe most days after work to game my pent-up energy away. A friend I met while working at McDonald’s also goes there, and he had frequently extolled its atmosphere. The cybercafe – also known as a LAN (Local Area Network) shop – is run by a 30-something dweeb with a penchant for model airplanes and short film directing. I can see that he enjoys the power of being Alpha Nerd amongst the others that frequent the shop.
Having no other fixed routine and little to keep me occupied apart from the retail job, I go there more often, getting better and better at Counter-Strike and DotA. There are few female regulars at the shop, so the men and boys enjoy my presence, even though I’m bespectacled and not considered conventionally attractive in a Singapore where Japanese and South Korean beauty standards trickle down to dictate the kinds of women considered beautiful. Still, being Chinese, I pass regardless. You take what you can get. Tim, who ends up declaring us ‘godsiblings’ because of his Catholic upbringing, lends me his World of Warcraft account so I can start a character on it.
‘My mother is sick,’ Alpha Nerd tells me one evening. ‘Are you interested in being the receptionist while I take care of her?’ At this point, retail has sucked me dry, and I’m eager for any opportunity to switch occupations. I say yes, almost too enthusiastically, delirious at the thought of being paid to be there. This is probably the only way I can level up my WoW character to Level 70 because I can’t afford to keep visiting with my paltry retail pay-cheque. Here, I go back to McDonald’s pay levels, but I tell myself that at least I can game and spend time on the internet without worrying about spending too much money – in fact, I am making it!
After Alpha Nerd returns from his leave, I end up being offered the receptionist job on a permanent basis. ‘It’s rare to find a girl like this. You know the games and you have customer service experience,’ Alpha Nerd tells me. He’s glad to have a female face at reception, and I know it’s because he thinks my presence can get more people (men) to the shop. The shop is open from midday to midnight to satisfy all gamers’ routines, so the pay actually turns out to be fine; I can help myself to the cup noodles for sale during mealtimes as well, which helps. More importantly, I get paid to game. I spend more time online, joining groups on LiveJournal and blogging constantly. Between cleaning eczema scabs off a regular’s seat, polishing mice and sitting through some of the worst amateur short films ever, I meet Christine on LiveJournal. We hit it off immediately, thanks to our mutual interest in Nine Inch Nails and goth aesthetics. When we eventually meet in person, she takes me to an emo gig at an arts venue in the city, and my mind is blown – I’d never known there to be an underground anything in conformist Singapore. This is where I’ll end up making any friends, inserting theory into my day-to-day politics, and learning how to build lasting relationships, albeit awkwardly and haphazardly.
book influencer
It is surely a made-up job. I get to read new books – books that are soon to be published, before ‘the public’ – and decide if they’re any good. For a dollar a word ($300 each month), I get to display my literary tastes, recommending a book to a sea of infinite readers who will then consider buying the book to read themselves. Really? You can tell people you loved the fuck out of this book and they’ll end up trusting you enough to go out and spend their money on it? That’s an unthinkable responsibility. I’m a book salesman!
Every two months or so, I’m supposed to look through various publisher catalogues to get a sense of what’s coming out. Short of refreshing a book publisher’s ‘Forthcoming’ page every month, I begin a list that notes down the title, author and month of publication so that I can refer to it again later. I also learn that US/UK publication dates differ from what is referred to as the ‘ANZ region’: a book available in the United States may not be distributed in Australia until a couple of months later. The cover, as well, might possibly be different. Size, too. Baffling, I know.
This all seems like a terribly clinical way to approach an enjoyable activity. I also doubt that I can possibly be so discerning or so time-rich that I can go through twenty books before I pick one. This is where I grow to directly understand that there is no such thing as ‘objectivity’ in the media; it all comes down to what I gravitate to, who I consider worthy of attention and how much attention I pay in the first place. It would be impossible to shut myself in day after day with a plan to finish every single English-language book released each month. I’m a book salesman, I guess.
I come up against other obstacles. I’m not entirely used to this style of writing, which is meant to be succinct yet persuasive, organised via an arbitrary formula where it’s advised that each paragraph can’t be longer than two sentences – a holdover from newspaper-style writing, and a kind of copywriting, if you will. At first, I think my editor is trying to dumb me down, but after a couple more times working with her I realise she’s actually training me to write good service journalism, which is a completely different mode compared to creative nonfiction. I mean, duh. But sometimes you have to do the job to even know what the job actually requires, whether it makes sense or not.
I’m having a bloody ball of a time until my editor tells me six months later that it’s very likely she is going to be made redundant. The entire department as well, actually. How long had this been going on? Here we go again, I think. More cuts to the arts in this cartoonish backwards continent. I can’t seem to find the heart to lambast this ruthless overhaul either, having come from a place where the opportunity was never there in the first place, let alone diminishing. Yet I know this can’t go on; it’s enough of a backwater for arts and culture to sink further. The old country’s influence is strong on the region, its image a beautiful marriage of east and west – neoliberal, neoconservative, feudal, attractive, illiberal. I am beginning to observe eerie patterns, things that look and feel way too familiar.
