Ramp Up the Red Tape
The beuracracy, the red tape, the pure b.s. Everywhere you go these days it abounds, but try breaking into a thriving and lucrative, well-established industry and see what happens. The number of announcements coming across the wire for newcomers to the business every week has me raising my eyebrows. No wonder there is an air of "oh yeah, right" to a few of the first people I have had dealings with. Now I know what my students go through. It's old hat for those on the inside and they really don't seem to show alot of patience for newcomers who are expected to come onside and then leave like a revolving door. Statistics say that apparently. Although there have been at least a half dozen newcomers since I started, a couple half-day, but mandatory training sessions I was signed up for had the dates changed with no recourse for me. Apparently, there was a lack of participants and only I could attend then. Even though the new dates don't work for me whatsoever, that is of no consequence to anybody but me. In fact, I am told if I don't comply, I will lose my new license. As you can imagine, I am quite frustrated. Even so, I can see where these agencies are coming from. Organizations tend to circle the wagons and over-compensate because they have been burned once too often. It's basically a sign of the times and what has gone on in the industry in the past.
I finished the course two years ago and now it's time to get going or start all over again. So, aside from all the glitches and new deadlines I am hanging in there come hell or high water. I have had an electronic key that didn't work and had to leave a house unlocked. I have been given directional signage that had the arrows pointing the wrong way. I have had people say rude comments, that I have largely ignored. I have had pretty much anything that could go wrong, go wrong. My name tag was spelled wrong. I just missed the cut-off date to have to do the yearly continuing competency class. So even though I just started March 13, I had to do the 2012-13 review. Luckily, I could do it online, but for some unknown reason the whole course refused to load and I had to get help to sort that out. It was an interesting course and I had it completed not too long after (Did I say about eight hours?). I couldn't figure out how to turn off one set of the lights at one of the ultra modern new homes after an open house. It's the little things. My day job in the last month has been busier than it's ever been and I was also asked to cover another portfolio at the same time if only for a short while I hope.
So what am I talking about? As you may or may not know, I have always wanted to try my hand at real estate. I'm telling everybody once they ask if I've left my day job, that this is my "freedom 65 plan", and no, I haven't left my day job at the moment. I hope you get the irony of the freedom 65 statement. Not that long ago, people pushed for 'freedom 55'. A year or so ago, there would be no joke to 65 at all, but now it's early retirement. Today, it's not really a joke, because it's not really funny. I'ts simply common knowledge that people will be working longer than 65. I joke that I will have to work until I'm 95, but that's not a joke either, I'm serious. So I hope to be well established in real estate by the time I'm ready to retire from my nursing career. I couldn't see making that leap after retirement and once I get stymied by a fixed income. It's an expensive business and they say you can sometimes go the first six months without a sale. Please friends, relatives and countrymen...lend me your ears.....don't let me go that long! Surely somebody I know, knows somebody who is looking to buy or sell a home? If not today, how about tomorrow?
Talking about bureaucracy. After several decades in the workforce, I'm beginning to recognize patterns, Back in the day....in the 70's sometime I guess, if you worked somewhere you did a whole lot of different jobs. For instance, I had worked in an office in a small town and was the receptionist, the typist, the banker, the mail person, the bookkeeper, and everything. Upon moving into the larger city, I discovered that now there was a single person doing each of these jobs in the same place. Of course, it was a much bigger organization. For instance, one person did all the mail, another was the receptionist etc. Nowadays, almost four decades later, the breaking apart of the workload is much more pronounced. People complain because of "communication problems" in the workplace. Well no wonder. There are so many people making up all the links of the chain, so does anybody really know what anybody else does? Especially if they're in a different department, in a different building, and in a different city than you. When businesses increase in size and the population continues to grow, you can expect it to happen.
Speaking of an exploded population. This reminds me of when I visited China in 1998. The modernization differences between the city of Hong Kong and mainland China were very evident. Hong Kong had just changed it's status - no longer under communist rule right around then. I had arrived in Hong Kong after about a 14 hour flight to the oppressive heat and humidity of the airport. I met a friend and overnighted in a fairly posh hotel. I thought I could handwash a few clothes and hang them to dry, but that would have taken a week if ever, so eventually wrung them out by hand and wrapped them in plastic bags wet as anything for transport. Hong Kong was glitzy and rich with ultra expensive cars, a Hard Rock Cafe and a beautiful harbor. It was with the times, but then we travelled by plane to the mainland city of Hangzhou and that became another world...one living about twenty years in the past. We had flown on the Red Dragon (maybe Golden Dragon)....but some kind of Dragon Air. (Maybe my memory is being influenced by some of the names of the Chinese restaurants in my own city!) The colours alone...bright yellow and pink fortrel (I seem to remember, maybe it was red and white) is what the stewardesses had on with little pill box hats. Maybe my memory has been influenced by that movie with Gwyneth Paltrow....hmmm even if that was faulty...I do vividly recall being met by armed guards at the airport and wondering about the long rows of Mig fighter planes. No question about my memory of the words 'knee how' that mean hello as they are forever stamped into my brain.
Once on land, and after reaching our rural destination, we eventually travelled back to Hangzhou another weekend. Walking into a big department store in a country under communist rule was quite the experience. The number of salespeople in that place set me back. They were young women who each wore a matching flourescent green polyester uniform. They were nothing if not pleasant. The merchandise was on shelves in short rows, interrupted with a spot for one of them to stand at either end. In one row then, there might be eight or ten clerks ready to serve you. There would be several rows so there would be no less than 50 people expected to spring forward and be available to help at the drop of a hat. (Maybe I'm exaggerating, but you get my drift). I don't believe there was any sort of high pressure sale tactics going on, just big smiles. It was inspiring how EVERBODY got put to work there. I wondered if they had people on welfare and unemployment insurance in that country or not. I wondered how that concept would fly on my side of the world. The puzzling part was that with so many clerks available, I was not mobbed when I went to buy my one loaf of bread. I was left totally alone. Perhaps they are in such high numbers to act as watchdogs? To curtail theft? Who knows? Is it just that they are given a job to do and do it, no questions asked? A sort of, "this is my lot in life and that's it?" At any rate, the place was a dry goods store by the looks of it with food, clothes, small appliances etc. I remember all the different packaged foods like marshmallowy, pink glazed puffy cookies and that whitest of white bread... maybe made of rice. It tasted good.
Well, speaking of food..You know the concept of decorating a place with aquariums? You know all about having all sorts of exotic fish, plants, and other water creatures swimming in and out of sunken ships filled with gold and treasure chests ....all placed strategically around your home or office? Even restaurant? There used to be a beautiful one at the now demolished Venice House in Melfort. As you entered and waited for a table, you could be entertained by watching all the beautiful varieties of fish swimming around or coming up to the glass to take a look at you. There was one who looked exactly like Nemo and he and I were friends. Well, at a restaurant in China we also saw aquariums, or better yet, glass fish tanks, some with water, some without. There were plenty of tanks and they lined the walls. Some held fish or other shellfish which seemed quite reasonable, but others held snakes, frogs, kittens and other small animals, apparently available to eat... Sheesh! Yes, I did say kittens and no, I did not make friends with any of the things on the menu. There was also a daily market in the rural community where you could buy fresh farm produce. One of the vendors had dog meat for sale. You've heard the rumours and yes, it's true. Dogs tended to run at large and in packs in that little town, so if you went for a walk, you had better pick up one of the many large bamboo poles lying around, just to fend off the dogs. Again, the Chinese joke (at least I thought it was a joke) that they eat anything that doesn't have "Boeing" written on it.
Enough about China, but just one more thing. If you ever do go to Hangzhou, be sure to go to the Night Market...Haggling is expected and you are laughed at as stupid if you pay full price, so get with it. Remeber also, that you are nobody if you don't have a trinket with a picture of Chairman Mao on it. Have you ever been to Arizona in the winter? It is wonderful, but that will be for another year and another story. So many places to see...so many cultures to experience.
Back to the real world of today and speaking of the opposite of slotting into a time clock, I have a pet peeve. I've noticed a situation changing over time to the point that I think it is an issue. In several workplaces, including mine are workers who seem to have lost the concept of taking breaks. They just don't bother. I tend to be one of the worst offenders even though I don't expect others to work that way. Some do expect others around them to do what they do, but I don't think that's fair. What happens is pretty soon everyone in the vicinity has no respect whatsoever for a time during the day to stop or the need to eat. If you are in your office with the door slightly ajar, and God forbid, eating your lunch, you can expect to be fair game for anyone who has the need to talk to you. You seem to have to physically remove yourself from the building to get time to yourself. The other thing is working until all hours of the night because you have so much to do and deadlines looming. I gave myself an ultimatum a few years ago that sixty hour work weeks were going to be a thing of the past, unless they were for my own business. I have tried to keep that promise for the most part, but sometimes there's no choice. If I can give you any advice, I would say that the work will always be there and you will never get to the bottom of it. Even though you want to succeed and advance in your workplace, remember, you will only live your life once. If you have a family at home waiting for you, please stop and think about getting some kind of balance into this realm. You have evenings and weekends scheduled away from work for a reason. Remember what that reason was. Try to think about how things went historically. People didn't get a weekend off and they worked from dawn to dusk and often much longer. They had to claw their way to get and maintain a forty hour work week, so let's respect what was won for us by previous generations and not throw it away.
Speaking of chickens with their heads cut off, as you can see, this post is totally unfocused and jumping all over the place. I will try to do better next time. I want to say that suddenly this week, I have 45 readers from France. How does this happen? Do they all know each other or is it entirely random? How did they happen to find my blog? The same thing happened with a whole pile from Sweden. Another time it was Russia and Latvia. I get a number of posts from people who want me to check out their websites. They ask me questions and I don't know whether to answer or not, because it could be a scam. I would rather these anonymous commenters not clog the blog so to speak. My answer to all these inquiries about how I do the blog and how I set it up is...happenstance. There is no grand plan and no expert abilities here. Just basic randomness...anybody can do it. I hope one and all has a good Spring...that is if it ever gets here. As I keep thinking to myself every morning and every night as I bump along the roads....holy pothole Batman...
The beuracracy, the red tape, the pure b.s. Everywhere you go these days it abounds, but try breaking into a thriving and lucrative, well-established industry and see what happens. The number of announcements coming across the wire for newcomers to the business every week has me raising my eyebrows. No wonder there is an air of "oh yeah, right" to a few of the first people I have had dealings with. Now I know what my students go through. It's old hat for those on the inside and they really don't seem to show alot of patience for newcomers who are expected to come onside and then leave like a revolving door. Statistics say that apparently. Although there have been at least a half dozen newcomers since I started, a couple half-day, but mandatory training sessions I was signed up for had the dates changed with no recourse for me. Apparently, there was a lack of participants and only I could attend then. Even though the new dates don't work for me whatsoever, that is of no consequence to anybody but me. In fact, I am told if I don't comply, I will lose my new license. As you can imagine, I am quite frustrated. Even so, I can see where these agencies are coming from. Organizations tend to circle the wagons and over-compensate because they have been burned once too often. It's basically a sign of the times and what has gone on in the industry in the past.
I finished the course two years ago and now it's time to get going or start all over again. So, aside from all the glitches and new deadlines I am hanging in there come hell or high water. I have had an electronic key that didn't work and had to leave a house unlocked. I have been given directional signage that had the arrows pointing the wrong way. I have had people say rude comments, that I have largely ignored. I have had pretty much anything that could go wrong, go wrong. My name tag was spelled wrong. I just missed the cut-off date to have to do the yearly continuing competency class. So even though I just started March 13, I had to do the 2012-13 review. Luckily, I could do it online, but for some unknown reason the whole course refused to load and I had to get help to sort that out. It was an interesting course and I had it completed not too long after (Did I say about eight hours?). I couldn't figure out how to turn off one set of the lights at one of the ultra modern new homes after an open house. It's the little things. My day job in the last month has been busier than it's ever been and I was also asked to cover another portfolio at the same time if only for a short while I hope.
So what am I talking about? As you may or may not know, I have always wanted to try my hand at real estate. I'm telling everybody once they ask if I've left my day job, that this is my "freedom 65 plan", and no, I haven't left my day job at the moment. I hope you get the irony of the freedom 65 statement. Not that long ago, people pushed for 'freedom 55'. A year or so ago, there would be no joke to 65 at all, but now it's early retirement. Today, it's not really a joke, because it's not really funny. I'ts simply common knowledge that people will be working longer than 65. I joke that I will have to work until I'm 95, but that's not a joke either, I'm serious. So I hope to be well established in real estate by the time I'm ready to retire from my nursing career. I couldn't see making that leap after retirement and once I get stymied by a fixed income. It's an expensive business and they say you can sometimes go the first six months without a sale. Please friends, relatives and countrymen...lend me your ears.....don't let me go that long! Surely somebody I know, knows somebody who is looking to buy or sell a home? If not today, how about tomorrow?
Talking about bureaucracy. After several decades in the workforce, I'm beginning to recognize patterns, Back in the day....in the 70's sometime I guess, if you worked somewhere you did a whole lot of different jobs. For instance, I had worked in an office in a small town and was the receptionist, the typist, the banker, the mail person, the bookkeeper, and everything. Upon moving into the larger city, I discovered that now there was a single person doing each of these jobs in the same place. Of course, it was a much bigger organization. For instance, one person did all the mail, another was the receptionist etc. Nowadays, almost four decades later, the breaking apart of the workload is much more pronounced. People complain because of "communication problems" in the workplace. Well no wonder. There are so many people making up all the links of the chain, so does anybody really know what anybody else does? Especially if they're in a different department, in a different building, and in a different city than you. When businesses increase in size and the population continues to grow, you can expect it to happen.
Speaking of an exploded population. This reminds me of when I visited China in 1998. The modernization differences between the city of Hong Kong and mainland China were very evident. Hong Kong had just changed it's status - no longer under communist rule right around then. I had arrived in Hong Kong after about a 14 hour flight to the oppressive heat and humidity of the airport. I met a friend and overnighted in a fairly posh hotel. I thought I could handwash a few clothes and hang them to dry, but that would have taken a week if ever, so eventually wrung them out by hand and wrapped them in plastic bags wet as anything for transport. Hong Kong was glitzy and rich with ultra expensive cars, a Hard Rock Cafe and a beautiful harbor. It was with the times, but then we travelled by plane to the mainland city of Hangzhou and that became another world...one living about twenty years in the past. We had flown on the Red Dragon (maybe Golden Dragon)....but some kind of Dragon Air. (Maybe my memory is being influenced by some of the names of the Chinese restaurants in my own city!) The colours alone...bright yellow and pink fortrel (I seem to remember, maybe it was red and white) is what the stewardesses had on with little pill box hats. Maybe my memory has been influenced by that movie with Gwyneth Paltrow....hmmm even if that was faulty...I do vividly recall being met by armed guards at the airport and wondering about the long rows of Mig fighter planes. No question about my memory of the words 'knee how' that mean hello as they are forever stamped into my brain.
Once on land, and after reaching our rural destination, we eventually travelled back to Hangzhou another weekend. Walking into a big department store in a country under communist rule was quite the experience. The number of salespeople in that place set me back. They were young women who each wore a matching flourescent green polyester uniform. They were nothing if not pleasant. The merchandise was on shelves in short rows, interrupted with a spot for one of them to stand at either end. In one row then, there might be eight or ten clerks ready to serve you. There would be several rows so there would be no less than 50 people expected to spring forward and be available to help at the drop of a hat. (Maybe I'm exaggerating, but you get my drift). I don't believe there was any sort of high pressure sale tactics going on, just big smiles. It was inspiring how EVERBODY got put to work there. I wondered if they had people on welfare and unemployment insurance in that country or not. I wondered how that concept would fly on my side of the world. The puzzling part was that with so many clerks available, I was not mobbed when I went to buy my one loaf of bread. I was left totally alone. Perhaps they are in such high numbers to act as watchdogs? To curtail theft? Who knows? Is it just that they are given a job to do and do it, no questions asked? A sort of, "this is my lot in life and that's it?" At any rate, the place was a dry goods store by the looks of it with food, clothes, small appliances etc. I remember all the different packaged foods like marshmallowy, pink glazed puffy cookies and that whitest of white bread... maybe made of rice. It tasted good.
Well, speaking of food..You know the concept of decorating a place with aquariums? You know all about having all sorts of exotic fish, plants, and other water creatures swimming in and out of sunken ships filled with gold and treasure chests ....all placed strategically around your home or office? Even restaurant? There used to be a beautiful one at the now demolished Venice House in Melfort. As you entered and waited for a table, you could be entertained by watching all the beautiful varieties of fish swimming around or coming up to the glass to take a look at you. There was one who looked exactly like Nemo and he and I were friends. Well, at a restaurant in China we also saw aquariums, or better yet, glass fish tanks, some with water, some without. There were plenty of tanks and they lined the walls. Some held fish or other shellfish which seemed quite reasonable, but others held snakes, frogs, kittens and other small animals, apparently available to eat... Sheesh! Yes, I did say kittens and no, I did not make friends with any of the things on the menu. There was also a daily market in the rural community where you could buy fresh farm produce. One of the vendors had dog meat for sale. You've heard the rumours and yes, it's true. Dogs tended to run at large and in packs in that little town, so if you went for a walk, you had better pick up one of the many large bamboo poles lying around, just to fend off the dogs. Again, the Chinese joke (at least I thought it was a joke) that they eat anything that doesn't have "Boeing" written on it.
Enough about China, but just one more thing. If you ever do go to Hangzhou, be sure to go to the Night Market...Haggling is expected and you are laughed at as stupid if you pay full price, so get with it. Remeber also, that you are nobody if you don't have a trinket with a picture of Chairman Mao on it. Have you ever been to Arizona in the winter? It is wonderful, but that will be for another year and another story. So many places to see...so many cultures to experience.
Back to the real world of today and speaking of the opposite of slotting into a time clock, I have a pet peeve. I've noticed a situation changing over time to the point that I think it is an issue. In several workplaces, including mine are workers who seem to have lost the concept of taking breaks. They just don't bother. I tend to be one of the worst offenders even though I don't expect others to work that way. Some do expect others around them to do what they do, but I don't think that's fair. What happens is pretty soon everyone in the vicinity has no respect whatsoever for a time during the day to stop or the need to eat. If you are in your office with the door slightly ajar, and God forbid, eating your lunch, you can expect to be fair game for anyone who has the need to talk to you. You seem to have to physically remove yourself from the building to get time to yourself. The other thing is working until all hours of the night because you have so much to do and deadlines looming. I gave myself an ultimatum a few years ago that sixty hour work weeks were going to be a thing of the past, unless they were for my own business. I have tried to keep that promise for the most part, but sometimes there's no choice. If I can give you any advice, I would say that the work will always be there and you will never get to the bottom of it. Even though you want to succeed and advance in your workplace, remember, you will only live your life once. If you have a family at home waiting for you, please stop and think about getting some kind of balance into this realm. You have evenings and weekends scheduled away from work for a reason. Remember what that reason was. Try to think about how things went historically. People didn't get a weekend off and they worked from dawn to dusk and often much longer. They had to claw their way to get and maintain a forty hour work week, so let's respect what was won for us by previous generations and not throw it away.
Speaking of chickens with their heads cut off, as you can see, this post is totally unfocused and jumping all over the place. I will try to do better next time. I want to say that suddenly this week, I have 45 readers from France. How does this happen? Do they all know each other or is it entirely random? How did they happen to find my blog? The same thing happened with a whole pile from Sweden. Another time it was Russia and Latvia. I get a number of posts from people who want me to check out their websites. They ask me questions and I don't know whether to answer or not, because it could be a scam. I would rather these anonymous commenters not clog the blog so to speak. My answer to all these inquiries about how I do the blog and how I set it up is...happenstance. There is no grand plan and no expert abilities here. Just basic randomness...anybody can do it. I hope one and all has a good Spring...that is if it ever gets here. As I keep thinking to myself every morning and every night as I bump along the roads....holy pothole Batman...
