My mother has worked at the same company for nearly 25 years. She immigrated from China to Canada with my father in the 80s, went to school, and got a job in her respective technical field. She worked her way up from humble beginnings as a chemist, to a scientist, to now a director within this global manufacturing company. Her bookshelves are lined with company tchotchkes, trade secrets (while proud of them, she is annoyed they are not patents), and group photos celebrating her project successes. She's a true woman of science who, like most people in a science or engineering field, prefers the aspects of her job where she isn't actively interacting with other human beings, and especially prefers not to communicate in her second language.
In the present day, it's a Friday night and I'm sitting in a local sushi restaurant having a post-gym recovery meal. My mom in a roundabout fashion is now working for the same company, but back in China, as they expanded operations over the last decade to Asia. I'm reading a WeChat request from my mom to help her construct a 1-minute speech to be used for a video to be played at an industry conference. The goal of the speech is simple: summarize my mom's career, and talk big about how my mom's company is a great place to work- especially so for women. Surely this is one of those things that can nowadays be solved by ChatGPT and similar AI services, but my mom is not tech-savvy and doesn't want to bother. I guess you could say I'm like my mom*.
* I'm like my mom in the sense that I also don't want to use AI. Not because I'm not tech-savvy. I wouldn't claim to be totally tech-savvy since that would be overtly-braggadocious, but I am in the tech industry so I feel confident in saying that I'm not not tech-savvy. I don't want to just use AI cause I feel like writing something about yourself should have its personal touch to it- that's why I agreed to write about the experiences of someone else.
Like any well-adjusted son exercising their filial piety as normal people do, I got to work. I wrote in my Notes app while waiting for my dinner. I was mentally keeping track of timing and cadence as I interweaved thoughts brainstormed by my mom with corporate ass-kissing until I had enough written down for about what I imagined was a minute's worth of speaking time. I sent what I had over, and ate my salmon sashimi platter.
On the streetcar on my way home from the restaurant, my mom was texting me about how she thinks it might be a little long and couldn't quite record herself reciting it in a minute or less. Not willing to keep her waiting, I recorded a voice memo of myself giving the speech at the pace that I expected. Lo and behold, it was just under one minute. I sent it to her and she was able to trim down her own record to fit the requirements. Later, I would hear from her that the conference went well and people really liked her speech. Managers (emphasis on man) praised her for making the company look good (which by all means, it truly is good, as my mom has stayed with them for so long and enjoys her job).
For a brief moment on a non-empty public transit vehicle, I was Aaron Sorkin proving to Sony that The Social Network has the same runtime as advertised. Except this was done in public, and I was talking about my experiences as a woman working over the course of a time period that seemed literally impossible for me to have worked in.
In that moment I had stopped being a Canadian working in San Francisco, and became a true San Franciscan by sounding like a crazy person babbling away on the tram.
I should name some of these recordings on my phone properly.