Super 8

A year ago today was the last day of the Wells Fargo Advisors contract. I lived in St. Louis for half a year and worked as a contractor at Wells Fargo Advisors for five months and change before getting cut. The experience would have been a bad one if not for the seven other individuals in the same boat as me. This lists who they were and Kabin dubbed us the Super 8. I like to think that he named us after the movie that came out when this blog was two days old and not the type of film the J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg collaboration was named for nor the chain of motels that wears the moniker. I guess all three things don't really draw a parallel to eight people who are super. Kabin was Nepalese and there were also five Telugu Indians on the team. In working in tech and working with the Nepalese and Telugus (this was NOT the first time by a longshot) I, as a white guy born to America, found that the Nepalese and Telugus had stories that made me jealous. They see more of the country (United States) than the people who are born here as they hop city to city and contract to contract. It seems akin to the telegraph operator of the nineteenth century who rode the rails city to city getting some regional job as a telegraph jockey during his days and falling into IRC chat over telegraph with other likeminded individuals at night in off-hours. (This description comes from a Bruce Sterling talk I saw at a South by Southwest when I was young.) They (Indians/Nepalese/Bangladeshi) all have a communal roommate situation that supports them, lowering the cost of rent, in any city, any environment, where there are tech jobs. Without such a support structure I still wanted to have the experience. I had been living in Texas for thirty-one years and was ready to do anything to get out. I learned the hard way that the place that will just give you a job out of state and over the phone without an onsite interview is not a good place to work. Right after this contract I took a similar one, secured through one over-the-phone phone screen, at Optum in the Twin Cities and it was sickly in comparable ways. I guess I won't hop states again, but at least I've had the experience and I got to escape Texas, right? There was a lot of talk from the Telugus of Trump and how he was making the art of being an immigrant that much harder and that much more expensive. Most Telugus are really chill people and I wish things were easier for them. I'm glad that they are here and I do not wish them away. The team was rounded out by another White American named Josh who was from St. Louis itself and could kind of coach us as to things to explore in the city. We ate out a lot as a team.

Ted Drewes has some pretty good custard and Corner 17 is easily the best Chinese restaurant I have ever eaten in, the kind of Chinese place where you see other Chinese people and not just White Americans eating out of Styrofoam containers with plastic forks.

The photo of Sri up top in this blog post is from a Cinco de Mayo street party that is a surreal blowout in St. Louis in spite of the fact that there are not really any Latin people there. Maybe everyone is just happy to have a margarita. (I'm not encouraging you to drink.)