This quote is from an article in the LA Times that came out on June 14 on A Wok With Jesus: Saving Souls in Chinese Kitchens: Thousands of Chinese kitchen workers live on the margins. A former restaurant owner tends to a subculture most Americans never see.

"Nationwide, more than 1 million immigrants work in 41,350 Chinese restaurants — from mom-and-pop takeouts to mammoth buffet enterprises employing hundreds, according to the Fremont, Calif.-based Chinese Restaurant News.Though many restaurants hire non-Asian workers, Lou's ministry concentrates on the Chinese — the people she knows best.It's a subculture hidden from most Americans. Speaking little or no English, many Chinese immigrants must settle for dispiriting kitchen work — laboring 12 hours a day, seven days a week.Many, here illegally, have no access to labor unions or social service networks. They live in cramped restaurant-owned dormitories or in rented garages without cooking facilities, bathrooms or running water.To cope with their harsh living conditions and mind-numbingly mundane work, many fall prey to gambling, drugs, alcohol and prostitution.Among the worn wooden chopping boards and flashing meat cleavers, hissing deep-fryers and walk-in freezers, the desire for a higher calling is fierce.

"In every kitchen, there's always the same tired old man hiding in the corner near the stove that is his life," Lou said. People in the restaurant business acknowledge a regimen called going "from the pillow to the stove," with no other life. Sadly, it's true," said Betty Xie, editor in chief of the Chinese Restaurant News. "Workers are lonely. They came from far away and don't have family with them. With no English skills, they don't have any choices."They're trapped by the restaurant life. They see no hope."

The phrase I red-fonted just brings tears to my eyes ... I don't know. Somehow I so relate to this image of the old man hiding in the corner. I feel like this in my job right now. My job is not my life, but I am so unhappy at my current job. It hasn't felt like home for these last years, and I keep getting distracted from leaving. It's all been for the best I know. There were lessons I needed to learn, people that I needed to meet, but I had such high hopes for this job that it was going to be a place where I could stay for awhile.

I know I need to give up this hope of ever being at home in job, and that my true job, my true life purpose is to focus on creative writing and not my job business writing of drafting a quality update for a regional medical directors meeting.