Tag: work

Protests at the Capitol: Vang Pao Supporters March!

My hopes in the future are to be able to mingle with protesters and talk with them a bit to get their sense of why they’re protesting and what they hope to accomplish by doing so.

Last week (May 11th) a large group of Hmong, Vietnamese, Vietnam Vets and others (estimated at over 10,000) gathered at the State Capitol to march through Sacramento to the Federal district court.  The marchers were protesting the trial of General Vang Pao and 10 others who are on trial for allegedly trying to overthrow the Communist regime in Laos.

Using my Flip Mino (first time) I was able to record a small bit of this as the protesters assembled at the Capitol.  I had no idea who Vang Pao was, or that he and others were on trial.  For more details on what exactly is going on you can check out the Wikipedia article on the him here.  This has been the largest group of people assembled at the Capitol I’ve seen so far this year.  I only caught a small bit of the march as I was heading into work and had quite a bit today that morning and so was prevented from talking more footage or talking to the people.

My hopes in the future are to be able to mingle with protesters and talk with them a bit to get their sense of why they’re protesting and what they hope to accomplish by doing so.

So here’s the videos via Youtube (warning 5 seconds in there is a loud whistling!) :

and another short clip  to roughly show the size of the crowd:

Working the Capitol…

Not quite I’m the one getting worked, or I soon will be. I started my internship with the Chief Clerk of the California Assembly last week. I’m part of the floor analysis unit, which means absolutely nothing to you, since you don’t really know how things work up at the capitol do you? I could explain it but it is all very complicated and redundant. What did you expect? I’m working for the government. The workload is light right now, I keep myself occupied with busy work. In May, June, and July it is suppose to get crazy because the Legislature has to pass a budget then.

I wish I could give you juicy gossip some of which I’m sure I have, but I just don’t know enough about anyone there to tell you anything, besides I’m in a non-partisan  position and I have to keep what I hear to myself, especially since I’m trying to make a good impression with my bosses in the hopes I get a letter of recommendation out of this.

As I get stories I’ll relate them to you here, I’ll just change names and such.

Stay tuned!

Finding Answers…

To questions I haven’t yet formulated. I recently went part time at Borders. There were a number of reasons behind the move, the biggest one being that I was unhappy. I was unhappy with the erratic schedule, the high demands, and the exceedingly low rewards for my work. Sadly, though this means I have taken a pay cut which is troublesome as my budget is tight already. For a college graduate I make very little 😛 I was okay going part time because it gave me more time to work on writing and other things, but at the same time it makes it harder to pay bills. It’s also a little premature as I was hoping to keep the full time position until March when my internship starts. That didn’t work though. I’m pretty sure I’ll be ok as soon as my tax return comes back, but I can’t file yet because the IRS isn’t ready to accept my e-file. According to the service I’m using I should be able to file by the 1oth. When it does come no problems, until then I need pinch every penny.

In the meantime I’m looking for greener pastures with some better pay.

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