February 8th, 2006

Ok. So, no job yet, but an awesome week with my boyfriend! And chiling with super-pregnant Erica and the rest of my friends and family.

In regards to jobs, Thailand and elephants it was kind of up and down....

Good things!!!
1. The Bronx Zoo is phasing out their elephant exhibit!
2. The Hawthorn Elephants are slowly getting moved from Illinois to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.
3. Correne, The Cat Empire's manager sent me an email asking if I wanted to work on the next two tours.
4. I saw there were two job openings at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.
5. I visited Jordan (old boss/works at a fancy booking agency in NYC now) and he said he would introduce me to his boss as soon as I wanted.
6. I got info on "The New York City Thai Language February Meetup." It's next Saturday. I'll see how it goes.
7. I found a Thai Students Association at Columbia and emailed someone who said they'd keep me updated with events.
8. There's a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification program in the city that I think I'll do in a couple weeks. Maybe.

Less good things
1. I found this. It's a family circus that has elephants and says they keep them because it's "best for the elephants" and "from it business standpoint it would be better to not have the elephants, but we keep them because we love them" or something like that.
2. I looked up www.asianelephants.com and found out that Ringling Brother's has got it, they have the "Center for Elephant Conservation" where they "are committed" to doing a lot of important things. Blah, blah, blah...
3 & 4. I got a really upsetting email from Em...
Hi guys,
I'm not sure if you have heard but Jobaan and Kanoon's owner has sold them and they are going to work in a camp. Pom sent me an email today, she is really upset. I don't know what to do and I asked her to let me know if there is anything I can do. Maybe raise funds to buy them back or something?
Crap huh? Yes. Crap. They were on lease, not purchased. Jobaan and Kanoon's story in 30 seconds (click on their names for more info) - "Jobaan suffered 2 miscarriages (due to her work in a trekking camp), then saw her 2-day old baby washed away by torrential rains down the river. She fell into depression and refused to mate, but was arranged by her owner to be "raped". Lek heard about her 4th pregnancy and Jobaan was rescued and brought to the park so she could deliver her baby in safety. Kanoon was born 15 August, 2005." As I left the park he was a very very happy 5 month old baby elephant.
5. The jobs at The Sanctuary in Tennessee are for an experienced elephant handler and a $7.00/hr receptionist who won't have any contact with the elephants at all. Ehhh... not exactly what I would plan on moving to Tennessee for.
6. When I visited Jordan's office I decided I don't want to be an agent and felt really skeptical about the music business in general.
7. When I asked Correne for more specifics on the "job" she wrote back a long, vague email which didn't really help me at all.
8. I'm pretty sure I've lost the ability to digest dairy. I'm going to need to work on that. Apparently, nightly ice cream parties are not the way to slowly introduce dairy back into your system. I was surprised too.

So I guess I'm about even. Eight and eight.

Wait, I bought a karaoke machine today from Target (I needed a CD player, it was only a little bit more and now I can do karaoke!), so I guess it's nine and eight.

Tomorrow - Cleaning my room more!