To be

I thought my whole career plan was dashed, leaving me in a singular island with no boats in sight, when my ambition to be a journalist, which was laid out beautifully before me, was dashed with people around me saying “it will be tough lah” and “the pay is not good lah”. Man.

Today, after dozing off for a bit during a fairly free lesson with no teachers around (and after I failed to keep awake to continue studying my Physics), Pn Anisah, councellor and unofficially voted as the most sporting teacher around, suddenly entered my class as a relief teacher.

She began dishing out two A-Z career books to us, and naturally, I took one of them and began reading in deep thought.

I had thoughts of maybe joining the IT sector, or even electronics, since Art-related courses were deemed to be low-paying, tough, easiest to be sacked during an economic downturn, etc. It was UNTIL I saw the following words:

Interpreter

that it hit me there are indeed other jobs I would be interested in. As I flipped through more pages, I have six careers laid out before me, waiting to be filled in by yours truly. In no order:

1. Web developer
2. Translator
3. Interpreter
4. Journalist
5. Photographer
6. Editor

Though Editor is the least likely job for me to get. A photo-journalist sounds like an awesome job (note: travel a lot), but the prospects still remain dark to me.

As of now, translator seems like a viable, good job, and I don’t mean the lame ol’ BM-English, English-BM thing (local translators suck btw, if you look at the subtitles and the amount of mistakes they make these days). I’m talking about: Japanese-English, English-Japanese!

If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that my love for the language, and my enthusiasm to learn it has been rekindled. It all makes perfect sense to take up translating, or even interpreting, as a job—especially if I love something, and has a passion for something, very much.

I’ve a friend, a Briton currently living in Japan (married with a daughter, bless him), who was a teacher, but now works as a freelance translator. If I could rememeber the details correctly, he earns USD500 for a manual he translated. Or something. And on other jobs, he earns money for each sheet of paper (or words, I can’t remember) he translated.

Yes, I think I’ll work my way to be a translator—and I’m being serious, this means getting a degree in linguistics, or whatever it takes to be a Japanese-English and vice-versa translator. Living in Japan. :) Hooooyah. And you get paid pretty good too. :)

If that doesn’t convince you why the job is so viable, the forum I visited (GameFAQs.com) has an American working in Japan as a translator in Capcom, probably the most reputable videogame companies bringing you titles like Street Fighter and Mega Man.

Of course, it may be that the guy is lucky. And I may be not. But who cares >_>

I realised I’m actually studying Japanese now (apart from the usual stupid SPM subjects) because of Toshi. Because I want to try to communicate with him in Japanese, and because I want to further improve my Japanese (and indeed, it has been improved a bit). And also because I’ll be hosting a Japanese student in December, if all goes well.

Funny how people from a distant country, that has absolutely no relevance to your life prior to his visit, could touch your life like that. Could actually affect my way of thinking, my possible career path, and ultimately my entire life.

In memory of Toshimitsu Takashima, who has (not died, thank god) changed my possible job path (I remember him asking me what my ambition was, and at that time, I honestly replied “I don’t know”), here are some pictures taken from Suet Li’s camera, of last Thursday’s night mini-farewell gathering.

Awesome fella, can be helluva funny with his Japanese-accented English when joking with us (and it works!). Deserves a little bit of love from all of us.