My Day Job

Besides me, I think only one or two people have a clear understanding of what I do for a living. Neither of those people are related to me.

It's time to correct this. Since today marks my one-year anniversary of being a fully-employed New Yorker, I thought this would be as good a time as any to explain my job.

I work for a company based in lower Manhattan that provides language services (mostly translation, transcription, interpreting and voice overs) to individuals, organizations and companies large and small. You name a business, and we've probably worked with them-- Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, museums, hospitals, banks, etc.

When I first started I wrote pages for one of the company's web sites and did a little proofreading of translated documents (not proofing the foreign language, but making sure everything in the document was translated, checking the format and items like that).

Today I am a content manager for one of the sites, in charge of writing and posting new pages as well as maintaining a blog. About half of my time is spent on writing, creating and perfecting landing pages for our marketing campaigns. We have a web team that designs the templates for the pages, but I write most of the copy and supervise the publishing of the hundreds of landing pages.

My daily vocabulary now consists of a whole new set of acronyms: PPC, CMS, SEO. That's pay-per-click, content management system and search engine optimization for the uninitiated.

So now you understand why I simply tell people I'm in internet marketing.

Tasty treats and sad defeats

Even 500 miles away, we still can't divorce ourselves from Ohio State football. When we aren't here to watch the games on TV live, Paul's sure to set the DVR. And since we have the Big 10 channel, I don't think we've missed a one.

Still, Paul was excited to watch the game with the OSU alumni club at a bar in Times Square on Saturday. Of course, he wasn't very excited when we left with a loss to our name.

The game was preceded by a visit to Bierkraft, a store selling (what else?) specialty beers in nearby Park Slope. He was happy with the selection but has been disappointed with the surprising lack of homebrew supply stores in New York City. As in, none.

After the game, we headed back to Park Slope for a visit to The Chocolate Room. Paul and I agreed to celebrate my new job at a place of my choosing, and this was it. It's a small cafe seating maybe 25 people at the most and sells only chocolate desserts and wine. I got a delectable piece of cake with fudgy frosting. Paul's hot chocolate was as thick and rich as fondue (which is also on the menu).

But today it was back to the real world. I started my job proofreading documents translated from other languages, and tomorrow I'll learn more about the writing aspect. Some good news: the dress code is superb (jeans are OK) and I get the day after Thanksgiving and all the typical holidays off (albeit without pay). And work starts at 10 a.m. I can live with that.

One month down

Today is our one month anniversary in New York, and I celebrated in a memorable fashion-- I accepted a job and became a New York resident.

I start work Monday as a proofreader/writer for a language translating business in downtown Manhattan, near the World Trade Center site. I became a NY resident by finally getting a driver's license here. I have only a temporary license now-- the real one is sent in the mail, so I'm not sure how my photo turned out.

My mini celebration continued with some shopping in Park Slope and a piece of Oreo cheesecake at a Bay Ridge bakery.

I also stopped at a grocery store a couple of blocks away that I had never yet visited. And this might be the highlight of the day-- they have the small flour tortillas I've been searching for! Now I can go back to making quesadillas without rationing my dwindling supply.