Meta-Tagging Your Life

previously titled “Mind Tag – You’re It”. My mind goes through so much subject matter with all that’s going on. My more precise thinking disappears before I can get my fingers to march.

Flit flit go the pages..

Flit flit the remarkable sentiment Obama unearthed deep in America’s heartland on Super Tuesday, flit flit Recession panic circling the globe showing how much the rest of the world looks to us to know their own fate, flit flit the conversation I had with an Indian bricolage store owner on Faubourg du Temple where he told me that the caste system in India has disappeared (his words) and how the country is becoming predominantly Muslim because in the Muslim religion there IS no caste system (his words); he thinks there will be a Christian Muslim World War Flit flit how a new bar for innovation in the online and offline world has us soaring to ever more hypoxic heights, flit flit my newly pricked ears homing in on companies like Ideo, flit flit taking online social networking innovations offline, flit flit amorphic online offline design and social space experience, flit flit living in paris, flit flit not living in paris, flit flit the view of New York from Paris, flit flit Should I consider Shangai? Hong Kong? How could I even get there? Could I find a way to live in the east for six months? flit flit the universal love quagmire and the single woman, and on and on.

While writing this an ex-boyfriend started up a video chat so again, my attention is divided. The distractions of multiple tabs and multiple agendas. I am writing and submitting. I am looking for a job. This is the first time that I am REALLY looking for a job because I want one and not just for the money. Actually honest to goodness desirous of a company I can believe in and call home. And it can be in Shanghai or Tokyo or Portland. I am open. I have a fantasy of looking out from plate glass windows onto some wilderness in some sort of city on the ocean/forest/cliff side/mountain range so that I can feel elements other than taxi horns, pedestrian body smacking, and foie gras stinky cheese sewage concoctions – but I love cities so I can accept the aforementioned. I just want my future to be ‘tagged’ innovation, design, experiential, experimental, revolutionary, ethnographic, social network, social space, team, creativity, and best of all user generated.

A CHORUS OF MANY VOICES FROM LIVES LIKE YOUR OWN BUT NOT

I currently live in Paris in case that wasn’t clear. I’m dedicated to my search to get a small chorus of multinational voices going as I continue to talent scout in the city of the ‘createur’ (createuse). I am looking for photographers, artisans, artists, visionaries, and designers for my next shopping party hosted in my home. I have found a great Vietnamese sister duo who have a store not far from my apartment. They are going to find a gang of like-minded souls that I can sift through as well. At least in theory they are.

I’m very happy to have Aja contributing to this site and I have a few interesting thought leaders lined up. Aja’s next post is already waiting in the wings as her mind is as fast as a Virgin Galactic plane. Daonne Huff has also written. She writes about sexuality in New York from a different point of view – not the jaded been there done that trickster viewpoint. It’s not ready to post though.

ON CROSS CULTURAL RESUMES

And outside New York, where I’m aiming to pick up more traction, I’ve met a woman at an international women in business event at the Deloitte & Touche building here in Paris who I think would be of great interest to you. She’s from Alicante, Spain. She just got her MBA (with a semester in India), she’s lived in Madrid and speaks Italian, Spanish, French and Russian. She raised her hand with great enthusiasm to say she was looking for a job in India and wanted to write a c.v./resume that would be of interest to Indian companies but make sure to separate it from her European C.V. (resume) in her online profile. What reads well in France wouldn’t work in India – or New York for that matter. In France, including a picture on your c.v. has been customary for years (one woman claims that’s a thing of the past but I was told to do so) and they always seem to ask your marital status and what your parents do -even when you’re in your 30s – and its not against the law. There is not one universal way to present yourself that is palatable or relatable to employers internationally.

FEAR OF FLYING IS NOT JUST A BOOK BY ERICA JONG

We know India and China have huge growth opportunities but I was really struck by the enthusiasm she had for every day life in Southern India. The danger right now is that these countries are drawing their own talent back home from the United States where they came to be FREE and CREATE and PROSPER because of our as-of-late impossible immigration policies and fear based government. But the even bigger danger is that us as Americans are still the most hesitant in the world to embrace cultures different from our own. ‘Assimilate to our ways gosh dang it’, would say our president. We are not natural emigrants – anymore. We cling to our comfort zone more than most anyone. Australians, as we’ve all seen, seem to get up and go and keep going once they do (I know, they live in the middle of nowhere). And though the French are afraid to put their toe in the water, the people I meet in Europe are infinitely better traveled than anyone (including me) that I’ve known in America. They are happy to trot around the globe as much as possible for work and adventure. We’re the ones that think Turks and Caicos is far enough for most vacations. It’s no surprise – with just ‘two weeks’ and 15 hour work days, there are a lot of reasons why this happens.

NOT GETTING INTO OBAMA HILARY

Lets see how the earth (r)evolves in 2009. I won’t get into Obama and Hilary as I really have to walk my dog but I will say I do hope to hear from my new Spanish friend and that she will tell you more about why she is so antsy to get back to life in Southern India.

-Chauncey

Saturday • February 9, 2008 • by Chauncey Zalkin

Category: Blog, Chauncey Zalkin, Essays, France, Motivation Monday, Technology Tuesday, Topical Thursday