[x] "Just one SkyTrain stop and the weather's nice. Fiiine. I'll go out." Mariya Sutton is from Vancouver, BC, and gains the benefit of bilingual education and access to the large Japanese expat community. She is a polyglot fluent in English, French and Japanese, and a smattering of others.
On this strange afternoon, central Vancouver looks faintly unreal, like a game you speed ran when you were fourteen. The towers glitter in the late sun, blocks of bright and mirror. Behind them, the sky is bright blue, with only a few vapour trails and high-level clouds, the color completely returned with the last of the summer's wildfires out. You love this city. Even as you tried your hardest to get away from it. Headed all the way over to the east. Worked hard. Kept your nose clean, did the internships and the job fares and the networking. "Have you tried?--" Yes. You've tried. "Maybe you could--" Maybe you already did.
You rest your head against the monorail's window and look out at the bay again. You're too sober to be this mopey. You need to get some drinks into you to give yourself more of an excuse.
The bar is about a block away from the station but the walk at least gives you some more exercise, preemptively burning off the empty calories you're going to put on yourself. From the outside, it looks vaguely like a coffee shop, with big windows and an unrolled awning, and a sign that announces itself as "Chainnigh Irish pub". Inside, it's all heavy wood and the facsimile of age.
You find a seat at the bar, consider ordering a girly cocktail like you used to go for at university, then decide you can't wait that long to get drunk and order a whiskey.
The guy comes up to you after a couple of minutes. He's pretty cute, chinese, tall and looks like he goes to the gym a lot, with eye-catchingly tousled and slicked-back hair which he either doesn't notice or spends about an hour a day getting right.
"This seat taken?" He smiles at you.
"Uh, not really." You wave.
"You looked bored, staring at your phone. Waiting for someone?"
"No, no. I came here on a whim after seeing the event, but I've only been here once or twice before. I'm not really…"
"Not really?"
"A bar person. I got rejected at a job app, so I thought 'fuck it' you know?"
"Yeah, I got you. How about I buy you a round?"
"That's sweet."
"Don't mention it. I'm Dennis, by the way." He sticks his hand out with the kind of casual ease that leads you to mentally categorize him as an old hand. Absolute gigolo. "So what was the job?"
"Uhh… Mariya. And it was a media startup. They were giving me some bullshit assistant-executive thing where I get paid secretary wages with an exec workload, but it would have been nice to get a job in my field." You try to make it sound like it doesn't matter. "Well I mean not exactly in my field, but it's like a start and you can kind of adapt your skill set to the job right? Make sense to you? Unless it's CPA work or IT, a lot of corporate jobs are kind of flexible anyway."
"Yeah, that sucks." He takes a pull of his beer with the platitude. You wonder how often he's been through this script with a depressed girl at a bar. "What did you study?"
"I'm not going to brag or anything," you lie. Your academic achievements came at great expense to your finances, social life and mental health and you'll be damned if you ever downplay them. "But I have a double-major and a minor."
"That's pretty amazing." His smile darkens in that way that tells you he's either intimidated or somehow disdainful of your successes. "Is it that hard to find work? What did you take?"
"Yeah, I took…"
Pick 2 and 1 Minor
[ ] Art
[ ] Archaeology
[ ] Anthropology
[ ] Anthropology and Sociology
[ ] Asian Studies
[ ] Business
[ ] Communication Studies
[ ] Classics
[ ] Creative Writing
[ ] Criminology
[ ] Early Childhood Studies
[ ] Economics
[ ] English
[ ] English and Creative Writing
[ ] English and History
[ ] English and Literature
[ ] Environmental Studies
[ ] Ethics
[ ] Fine Art
[ ] French
[ ] German
[ ] Geography
[ ] History
[ ] History of Art
[ ] History and Philosophy of Science
[ ] Human Relations
[ ] Human Rights Studies (Minor)
[ ] International Relations
[ ] Journalism
[ ] Library Science
[ ] Linguistics
[ ] Literature
[ ] Management
[ ] Marketing
[ ] Media Studies
[ ] Modern Arabic Language and Culture
[ ] Music
[ ] Philosophy
[ ] Physical Education
[ ] Political Science
[ ] Public Relations
[ ] Psychology
[ ] Modern and Medieval Languages
[ ] Sexology
[ ] Sociology
[ ] Spanish
[ ] Sport Science
[ ] Theatre (Minor)
[ ] Theology
[ ] Urban Planning
[ ] Western Society and Culture
[ ] Women's Studies
"That's cool. You're a hard worker. I was actually training to be a CPA for a while but switched into Business. The crowd's more fun. My Dad's already got me a job at the company he works for. He's really tight with the owner. It's great." He says, in a way that feels purpose-built to side-step addressing anything you actually said.
You make an "another" gesture to the barmaid. She refills your glass.
"It's kind of a boring office job, but in a few years, I'll be on the management track for real."
"What kind of firm is it?"
"Oh, we're a finance and real estate company. We take people's savings and invest them in high rate of return property assets."
"You sell condos?" You ask in the most straightforward manner you can manage, trying to not seem accusatory.
"Yeah. Well like, we don't build them or anything. We just buy them with people's savings and then sell them. The market's bull right now and the banks are holding it real stable, so it's a good bet for a job." Ah yes, the 'if you can't find work, just retrain and join my job' routine. You've gotten it from aunties and cousins and friends who work as nurses, doctors, accountants, lawyers, electricians, occupational therapists. At this point you can count the number of jobs you haven't been told to switch to on one hand. He smiles like he doesn't know this is a barb. "If that thing you're doing doesn't work out, maybe you should switch over."
Still, you play it off with a coquettish giggle in the name of the public peace. You're a genuine humanitarian. "Me, a real-estate agent?"
"You could pull it off. Speaking of, where are your parents from?" He rubs his chin, eyes wandering. "I'm trying to figure it out looking at you. You're kinda dark but also look…"
"Asian?"
"Yeah. And the hair. I was wondering if you were Hawaiian or Filipino or something."
"It comes up now and then. You're Chinese?"
"Yeah, both parents are mainlanders. Second gen though." Another sip. He doesn't seem to notice that he's asking you in a kind of annoying way though you feel disinclined to correct him. Although in a few more drinks, you probably will. "So you?"
"My dad's Trini but grew up here, and my mom's Japanese. Also grew up here."
"So what do you usually do when people ask you?" A more interesting question. He might be more sensitive or perceptive than you gave him credit for. Maybe he gets it and you just imagined he was a shithead. Maybe the problem is you.
"Say they're from here and make a funny face, unless they're cute." You look at him and manage to stammer what you think is something nice.
Too nice, maybe. He doesn't seem to react too much to it.
"Haha, same. For real though let me give you a number if you need that job or..." Dennis lets out a warm chuckle and finishes his beer, waving back to bar for another. It seems like you've been at this for a while, or maybe you're just getting drunk. You're about to ask him about hobbies and maybe drunkenly confess you like anime when his phone rattles across the counter where his hand was resting over it. He checks it, then sighs.
"Oh, sorry, looks like I have to go. See you around."
You're kind of drunk now, and you're suddenly incredibly disinclined to sit alone at the bar and stare into your phone screen. In one of those drunken ideas that always seem to come to you about this time in a bar, you decide that what you really need is snacks. You can buy a bunch of snacks, go home, and watch this stupid Netflix thing that everyone is making memes of, or just find some stupid anime on Crunchyroll to skypewatch with one of your university friends.
You're not a hundred percent sure how you end up at the all-night Chinese grocery store that your Mum always goes to, but by the time you're there, the cooling evening air is starting to take the edge off of the whiskey.
You have fifty dollars in your wallet, and you decide defiantly that you're going to spend all of it on snacks.
What should you buy? Top 2 choices and top 6 write-ins will be included.
[ ] Let's be totally real here, sweets are the only way to go in times like these. I'll grab a bunch of assorted Japanese kitkats, filled mochi, chocolates, ice cream and Pocky.
[ ] Going to want some salt to retain water after everything I've done to myself tonight. It has to be rice crackers, cup noodles, shrimp chips, corn nuts, battered peanuts and jerky.
[ ] I guess really, I should be a good daughter and buy a bunch of ingredients to cook tomorrow. We have a bunch of meat in the fridge so I'll load up on sauces, spice blends and get a new bag of rice.
[ ] In such desperate times, at risk of being deadass hungover tomorrow, I'm going to grab a bunch of bottled drinks like aloe drinks, shelf-stable strawberry milk and honey green tea.
[ ] Write in: pick any item (food or otherwise) available in an Asian grocer or convenience store.
