Redpossum
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- Mar 20, 2014
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Hello!
My handle is Redpossum. The "Possum" bit goes back some 25 years or so. I was working as a bench-tech in the repair lab of a local laser printer company called Talaris Systems in San Diego. We got a new manager, an ex-Navy officer, who was clearly looking for an excuse to get rid of me, so I made a point of arriving early, staying late, skipping breaks and cutting my lunch short. He kept trying to catch me goofing off, but every time he came in my lab, I made sure he found me head-down and working. My co-workers jokingly accused me of "playing possum", and the name stuck.
Why am I now "Red" Possum? Ah, well, Winston Churchhill once said something to the effect that you'd have to be heartless not to be a Liberal at 20, and you'd have to be an idiot not to be a Conservative at 50. I suppose I must be a double-idiot, because I reversed that order. I was a Reagan Republican in the 80's and became an unabashed Socialist in my very late forties. Again, it was a comment from a friend, who joked that "The Possum has turned red". I replied, "well, I'd rather be a red possum than a dead possum in the road" and once again, it just stuck.
My background from the mid-90's or so was system administration; I was a Novell CNA back in the heyday of Novell, before NT 4.0 was released. Unfortunately, when the dot-com bubble burst in the aftermath of 9/11, I was laid-off and never hired again. I spent the next decade or so waiting tables and doing odd jobs, before I decided I'd had enough of that. So I sold my house, (thanking all gods great and small that I actually had a little equity), got my TEFL cert, and next week I'm off to BA.
People ask me why I'm doing this. I tell them, "well, I'm the right age for a mid-life crisis, but I can't afford the Ferrari."
I have spoken Mexican Spanish as my second language since I was 5 or 6, but I have never quite attained full fluency, though I did come close when I worked in Barrio Logan for seven years. I am already aware than the Castellano spoken in Argentina is very different from the Mexican dialect which is my polyglot heritage. But I flatter myself that I have a certain gift for languages, and I'm confident that once I'm immersed in the culture, my ears and tongue will quickly adjust.
I have been an expat before, back in the late seventies, but that was Europe and Africa. Not to mention that the whole (expletive deleted) world was a different place in the 1970's...
So, there's my introduction. Now you know more about me than you ever wanted to, and you can deduce one more thing than I have told you; I can be long-winded!
My handle is Redpossum. The "Possum" bit goes back some 25 years or so. I was working as a bench-tech in the repair lab of a local laser printer company called Talaris Systems in San Diego. We got a new manager, an ex-Navy officer, who was clearly looking for an excuse to get rid of me, so I made a point of arriving early, staying late, skipping breaks and cutting my lunch short. He kept trying to catch me goofing off, but every time he came in my lab, I made sure he found me head-down and working. My co-workers jokingly accused me of "playing possum", and the name stuck.
Why am I now "Red" Possum? Ah, well, Winston Churchhill once said something to the effect that you'd have to be heartless not to be a Liberal at 20, and you'd have to be an idiot not to be a Conservative at 50. I suppose I must be a double-idiot, because I reversed that order. I was a Reagan Republican in the 80's and became an unabashed Socialist in my very late forties. Again, it was a comment from a friend, who joked that "The Possum has turned red". I replied, "well, I'd rather be a red possum than a dead possum in the road" and once again, it just stuck.
My background from the mid-90's or so was system administration; I was a Novell CNA back in the heyday of Novell, before NT 4.0 was released. Unfortunately, when the dot-com bubble burst in the aftermath of 9/11, I was laid-off and never hired again. I spent the next decade or so waiting tables and doing odd jobs, before I decided I'd had enough of that. So I sold my house, (thanking all gods great and small that I actually had a little equity), got my TEFL cert, and next week I'm off to BA.
People ask me why I'm doing this. I tell them, "well, I'm the right age for a mid-life crisis, but I can't afford the Ferrari."
I have spoken Mexican Spanish as my second language since I was 5 or 6, but I have never quite attained full fluency, though I did come close when I worked in Barrio Logan for seven years. I am already aware than the Castellano spoken in Argentina is very different from the Mexican dialect which is my polyglot heritage. But I flatter myself that I have a certain gift for languages, and I'm confident that once I'm immersed in the culture, my ears and tongue will quickly adjust.
I have been an expat before, back in the late seventies, but that was Europe and Africa. Not to mention that the whole (expletive deleted) world was a different place in the 1970's...
So, there's my introduction. Now you know more about me than you ever wanted to, and you can deduce one more thing than I have told you; I can be long-winded!
