It seems that the world is getting chaotic in the year 2016. The Brexit and the US presidential election eloquently indicates this chaotic situation.
On the other hand, I can say that the year 2016 is personally great year. One of the good occurrences to me was joining a new company.
However, I didn’t think I would leave the former company a few years ago.
The trigger was that I started teaching my kids English in on weekends in June 2015. My wife asked me to do so and I agreed with it.
After the start of teaching kids English, I felt I needed to re-train my English speaking ability. I started to find language exchange partners to practice speaking English and made friends.
I met an Italian lady who lived in Sweden and studied Japanese. Her son was also learning Japanese.
We talked that our kids could be being language exchange partners of English and Japanese between Sweden and Japan in the near future.
One day she asked me if I was interested in working at an international organization where she worked since there was a new vacancy in a post of for marketing officer there.(marketing is pretty close and connected area to public relations, my specialty.
I didn’t imagine I could work overseas, especially at an international organization since I didn’t use foreign languages so often during the working time at that time.
However, I liked the idea. If I get got a job at an international organization or a foreign company, I can boost my English skills through work.
So, I applied for the post in Sweden and posts in other international organizations abroad and in Tokyo. Also, I started to see agents and headhunters.
I had final interviews from several international organizations and embassies in Japan. However, they didn’t accept me. I guess they found risks to hire me since I had no experiences in international organizations before.
Anyway, I got a job offer from a foreign capital ad agency. Before the offer, my agent fully negotiated over my salary and I was satisfied with the result. So, I joined the agency as a public relations manager in May this year.
I basically enjoy working at my present company.
However, I sometimes imagine, if my wife didn’t ask me to teach my kids English, I may still work at the former company. Life is unpredictable and interesting.
Life is indeed unpredictable and interesting at the same time isn’t it? A lot of opportunities can arise from a simple desire of learning, just like how your kids learning English opened up a new door of opportunity for you professionally. Good luck with your kids’ English studies and hopefully they’ll have a chance to visit California one day.
Roy-san, my family actually visited California in March this year. It was a great opportunity for my kids to expose English communications. They can manage basic communication in English so far. I’m sure they will become more fluent in the future than I am.
I bet your kids loved tasting good, authentic Mexican food in California. When I go to Japan, I always miss having good Mexican food. I’m sure there are Mexican restaurants in Tokyo, but they seem few and far between.
I think Kids are better language students than us adults. I am actually very jealous of my 6 year old son’s Japanese fluency level. He is much better in conversation than I am.
That’s inspiring to read!
I imagine it’s always great to keep learning and meeting good people. I recently met some people from Japan and it turned out that I’m helping a Polish friend to get a job in Japan thanks to them.
Hi Tom-san, sorry for this late reply. I totally agree with you. Helping learn languages each other is always awesome! Also, we can do more than that!