Love Affairs in Melbourne-Chapter 59 - 56 The Reputation of a Henpecked Husband

Waiwai:

Answer =>

I really am behind the times, I haven’t heard of those schools you mentioned. I just searched online and found that the top four fashion colleges are:

London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design,

New York’s Parsons School of Design,

Milan’s Marangoni Institute,

Paris’ Advanced Fashion College, Ecole Superieure des Aris et Techniques de la mode, ESMOD

Why is it different from what you mentioned?

I must compliment you, you are really well-behaved now. Feel free to discuss anything with me in the future, I definitely will not find you annoying.

What I mean now is, you have one more year to graduate, and after graduation, you’ll need to go to Italy for half a year, these plans are certain.

If you come to the United States, there won’t be a choice between Silicon Valley and New York, nor will there be the "pity" you mentioned.

When I mentioned I had job offers from UBS and Barclays, you asked me many questions, and I said I would write to you about it.

However, up to now, I still haven’t written about this in the letter.

You asked me if I would work in Silicon Valley.

For Stanford students, Silicon Valley is indeed the best and easiest place to find work.

Many founders of companies in Silicon Valley are Stanford graduates, and there is a preference to recruit Stanford’s graduates there.

When Silicon Valley was not yet established, Stanford leased their land to tech companies at very low prices to help them grow.

It’s less accurate to say Stanford is on the edge of Silicon Valley than to say Silicon Valley originated from Stanford.

Previously, Wall Street was the dream workplace for American college students, now they prefer coming to Silicon Valley.

Companies on Wall Street have been continuously laying off staff, whereas tech companies in Silicon Valley are growing faster and the jobs are somewhat more stable.

At Stanford’s career fairs, students from Harvard often fly over to attend now.

I also have offers from Tesla and Facebook.

After saying so much, what I want to tell you is...

What is it?

I am somewhat of an atypical Stanford person.

It seems I never considered staying in Silicon Valley.

Compared to researching new algorithms in tech companies, I am more interested in financial data analysis.

The UBS and Barclays investment banking positions I mentioned to you before are both based in New York’s Wall Street. (note 1)

Looking back, I wonder if I had foresaw it when I was job searching,

knowing that in the near future, I would see the "Tombstone Inscription" you wrote three years ago, then I would find you in Melbourne, and afterward, you would come to New York to study.

Question =>

When can you remove the word "if" from the phrase "if I go to New York" in your email?

.........

Yan Yan’s mother often says, "If I hadn’t married your dad, I would never have set foot in a place like a machinery factory."

At first, it sounds like a complaint, but it actually contains full of love.

If one of the two founders of Yanlu Shoe Machine had to be chosen as a "workaholic," it would definitely be Lu Bingran, not Yan Dabang.

Basically, Lu Bingran handles all the trivial matters of company management, no matter how big or small.

What Yan Dabang needs and excels at is focusing on technological research, inventing patents, forming research teams, and discovering technical talents.

The rest of the time, he just peacefully serves as the chairman who controls the general direction of the company.

If Yan Dabang were away from the company for ten days to half a month, Yanlu Machinery wouldn’t have any problems, but if Lu Bingran left, all kinds of miscellaneous matters would turn everything into a chaotic mess.

Paying salaries requires Lu Bingran’s signature, raw materials purchasing needs Lu Bingran’s approval, personnel changes need Lu Bingran’s consent...

In the company, apart from being a technical "hands-off boss," Yan Dabang is also famously "henpecked."

To what extent?

Yan Yan’s father often had a saying, "In the middle of summer, when I eat an ice pop, I still need to keep the stick. Otherwise, when my wife comes home from work and asks where the few dollars she gave me in the morning went, I wouldn’t know how to explain."

Not many people truly believed Yan Dabang’s saying, but under his persistent "slander" over the years, the image of Lu Bingran being overly controlling towards her husband gradually took root in people’s hearts.

In reality, aside from his skills, Yan Dabang had no other hobbies, and Lu Bingran simply couldn’t be bothered to manage him.

After all, since Yan Dabang liked to portray himself as a henpecked husband, Lu Bingran just let him be.

Lu Bingran felt there was absolutely no need to go around explaining this to everyone, and even if she did, it wasn’t guaranteed that anyone would believe her.

Besides, the flowers and plants by the roadside were unlikely to bother with a man "strictly controlled by his wife."

All in all, Yan Dabang’s reputation as a henpecked husband was more beneficial than harmful.

Yan Yan’s family environment was good, and she wasn’t particularly antisocial as a child. Logically, she shouldn’t have been targeted by most of her classmates starting in elementary school.

The cause of the problem dates back to the first day Yan Yan started elementary school.

That day, the factory was especially busy. As soon as Yan Yan got up, she saw her mother constantly on the phone upstairs, apparently discussing something.

Since the factory and the school were less than a hundred meters apart, Yan Yan, showing her understanding, took the money and household register her mother had left on the table to pay the tuition fee herself.

Yan Yan thought that, as a child coming to school to pay tuition, she was doing something commendable that only adults usually did; yet, she was outright rejected by the teacher.

At that time, there weren’t any methods like entering information into computers, card swiping, or mobile payments for paying tuition fees.

When registering, a crowd of students and parents surrounded the teacher, all paying in cash.

The teacher was too busy to explain in detail why she refused to accept Yan Yan’s fees.

Yan Yan was still young at the time. After being rejected by the teacher, she, not understanding why, started crying out of frustration.

In Yan Yan’s view, the teacher probably thought it was inappropriate for a child to come alone with money to pay the tuition fee, something that deserved criticism.

Seeing how upset Yan Yan was crying, the teacher had no choice but to pause her duties to tell Yan Yan that she had a rural household registration, not within the jurisdiction, and could not directly pay tuition fees. First, she needed to find her parents to pay a capital levy before she could attend school.

Nowadays, in major domestic cities, rural household registrations are much more valuable than urban resident registrations.

Many who are now "city people" can’t even transfer their registration back to "rural" areas.

Having a piece of land in the city is what many dream of today.

Just think of Shenzhen, where due to demolitions, the whole village became millionaires overnight; it tells you how valuable rural households in the city are now.

Not to mention anywhere else, during demolitions in Wenzhou, the compensation for rural registration was three times that of non-rural.

But these are today’s situations. Back in the 80s and 90s, converting from "rural" to "non-rural" was a significant matter.

Back then, everyone aspired to be "city folks," and no one wanted to admit they were "farmers".

Only Yan Dabang, for some reason, always took pride in being a farmer’s son and never thought about having an urban household registration.

Yan Dabang held a rather unusual pride at the time, which resulted in all classmates having non-rural registrations except for Yan Yan, who had a rural one.

When Yan Yan was starting elementary school, it coincided with a critical moment in the development of Yanlu Shoe Machine. Converting from rural to non-rural needed connections and procedures, so Yan Dabang and his wife felt it was unnecessary to address this matter at that time.

Lu Bingran also took time to inquire whether the household registration would affect her daughter’s education.

After realizing it merely affected whether a capital levy was paid, she didn’t bother further.

At that time, neither of the parents really cared about paying the little extra for the capital levy.

"Capital levy" during the era when Yan Yan was about to enter elementary school was a very arbitrary concept. Each school had its own regulations, and within some schools, the "capital levy" varied from class to class.

That morning of the registration, Lu Bingran wasn’t busy with company matters, but was figuring out how much and how to pay Yan Yan’s capital levy.

Lu Bingran didn’t expect that she hadn’t sorted these matters out before Yan Yan went to the school on her own.

Soon after Yan Yan cried, her mother rushed to the school, paid the required capital levy, and Yan Yan officially started her elementary school life.

In the 90s, Yan Yan couldn’t understand the adults’ perspectives, but the children in Wenzhou had a clear sense of regional discrimination. freeweɓnovel.cøm

Children from the city looked down on those from the suburbs, and after being despised by the city children, those from the suburbs particularly looked down on kids from "rural" areas.

.........

note 1:

The word "base" is simple; looking it up in a dictionary will tell you it means "base," and digging a bit deeper, you can find it also means "base of operations."

However, finding an appropriate translation for "base" as used in the text is challenging.

In large foreign companies, when they have branches in many places, employees often have to mention which city or country they are based in.

For instance, Dell’s employees in China can be based in Dalian or Xiamen.