吃饭

解决了睡觉问题，吃饭问题就接踵而至。

搬家，重新找房子，安置新家，各种花费让银行帐户亮起红灯。很多额外支出。比如，在这儿去哪里都要开车，而且动辄三四十分钟，汽油费远超出我的预算。

于是，找零工赚钱，就成了生活关键词。

十二月份做了几天律师秘书工作。没做多久，就因接受不了老板无故辱骂威胁而辞掉。第一次体会到可以被气得胃疼。可笑的是，我辞职后的两三天内，他还发长篇段信攻击我的能力和为人。我回了他一句中国古语“欲加之罪，何患无词”，不再和他纠缠。那之后的一段时间看到双语律师楼助理工作便敬而远之。

想找一些翻译和口译的工作还真难。首先，这是一份市场小、不稳定的职业。什么时候有翻译工作都不可预料。比如，我现在唯一的一个客户，一家中国人在美国开的做中国官方访问团业务的公司，去年一年给我的口译大概只有十次。其次，笔译的价格太低。昨天看到网上一个人给价3.5美分一个字。假如一页纸有400个字，你翻译两三个小时，只能赚到14块，平均每小时只有3到4块。口译也好不到哪里。像我这样没有任何证书的刚入行者，要做十次口译才可以挣到一个月房租。所以找这样的工作只能广撒网。我把自己的简历寄发给了十几家翻译公司，根本没有回应。和我的同学们聊找工难的问题，他们建议加入美国翻译者协会（American Translators Association），就有可能会有人和你联系。于是花了一百六十大洋买了一个会员资格。所以现在我的名字和一个简单资料也在其网上，相当于打广告了。我将来也可以用这个会员资格招摇撞骗。现在的关键是，好好学好翻译，练好基本功，争取一年后拿下通过率只有5%的加州法庭翻译认证考试。我没有身份，不能在法庭做，到时可以用这个证书当敲门砖，可能简历就有人理了。

现在我能找到的只有教汉语。教学龄前儿童或小学生咿呀学语。一家中介机构要求完全用汉语教汉语，对我是个很好的锻炼，我得学着用我非常不擅长的肢体语言和表情。第一节课从下周一开始，有些紧张、有些期待。

找到这个教书工作，紧绷的经济压力稍小一点，毕竟有所收入了。也是一个开头。做好这份，慢慢再找其它的。

Same

Another year? I do not feel anything exciting though. November and December were so crazy for T and me that the excitement of a new year’s coming cannot vibrate my nerve at all. It is like after you experience the roller-coaster on top of the New York New York hotel in Vegas, you would think the rides in Disneyland are so bland.

Finally, we got a new home. No roaches. No cigar or chemical smell. Hardwood floor. Fairly new kitchen appliances. Everything is just great! For the first time in my life, I feel this is my home. In my other recent renting experiences, I occupied one bedroom in two-bedroom apartments. Before I moved in, someone else had already been there, signed the lease, and set up the dwelling structure of the apartments. In those places, I was more like a guest than a equally rightful roommate. But now, I am the host. I have the freedom to do anything I want. It is a sense of independence that I never had before. It feels good.

One day, when I was helping T make some cases for our sofa pillows, the image that my parents were making sofa covers came in my mind. It was not long after my parents bought their own house in mid 1990s. They brought in some new furniture and a color TV. They put on curtains, made sofa covers, picked dining cloth... They used the same fabric for sofa covers and heating radiator covers, making the living room look quite coherent. It was their first time ever to own a home. They must have been extremely excited and hopeful, enjoying creating a home for us. Interestingly enough, after all these years, T and I were doing almost exactly the same things.

I thought I had traveled farther enough than my parents, but actually I came back to where they were.