Hong Tao was considered a newcomer in this small company, and his status was quite different from that of his colleagues. Most of them were official employees under the Aerospace Ministry, while he was a contract worker hired through social recruitment. Although it was said that he could become a formal staff member of the Aerospace Ministry in the future, for now, he was still considered an outsider.

This status didn’t affect his salary, but it did make his position a bit more distant. Except for him and two others, everyone else in the company lived in the Aerospace Ministry’s Second Institute dormitory area in Jiugong, commuting together by shuttle bus. Many of their families had been in aerospace for generations, making it a family tradition, so their relationships with each other were naturally different from those with someone like Brian Carter, who had joined halfway through.

However, Brian Carter didn’t pay much attention to these things. He had only graduated from college a little over a year ago, his parents had passed away in an accident, and he had no siblings, making him the type who only needed to take care of himself. Besides, he already had a house, so he didn’t have to worry about not having a place to live or not being able to find a wife when it came time to get married. Besides, even if he were immediately given official employee status at the Aerospace Ministry, he didn’t expect to be assigned a house anytime soon. It was true that the benefits at major ministries were good, but not so good that everyone got a house just for being on the payroll. If you wanted a house, you had to wait your turn according to seniority—unless your father had a high-ranking position, or you could latch onto someone powerful and rocket up the ranks.

These two possibilities had never even crossed Brian Carter’s mind, nor did he expect them. He was the type with no grand ambitions, just getting by. Well, not exactly just getting by—he wasn’t someone who muddled through life, he was just a bit unconventional, with interests and concerns different from most people.

Others liked high salaries, high status, and great benefits, thinking that such a job would make others envious. He didn’t see it that way. He liked high salaries too, but valued freedom even more; he liked high status, but didn’t want to deceive superiors or colleagues; he liked good benefits, but didn’t want to spend his days idling at work with a newspaper, constantly scheming against others. No matter how good the benefits were, unless he could spend money freely and sleep with beautiful women at will, he absolutely wouldn’t do such a job. As long as he could still put food on the table, he would never do it!

Chapter 0002: Applying Knowledge Flexibly

His ideal job had three requirements. First, plenty of free time. He didn’t need to make a lot of money, but the job had to be flexible—ideally, he could work from home, do whatever he wanted all day, as long as he finished his tasks and checked in at the office every six months.

Second, he didn’t want overly ambitious colleagues. He wouldn’t work anywhere people were constantly scheming to climb over each other, no matter how much it paid. That kind of environment didn’t suit someone as wild as Brian Carter; he’d end up fighting with someone within three days.

Third, the workplace couldn’t be too far from home. If he had to transfer between several buses and subways every day, spending hours commuting, even the best job would lose its appeal. That wasn’t a job, that was just earning a living. For someone like Brian Carter, who wasn’t desperate for food, working that hard just to eat clearly wasn’t worth it. To put it bluntly, he was just picky—he could skip three meals and still be fine, let alone just one; he’d do whatever job he was given.

Originally, when Brian Carter graduated from college, he caught the last wave of job assignments, which was lucky in a way, but also unlucky. He didn’t want to go to a steel mill to continue in his field of heat treatment. In fact, he wouldn’t have done well there anyway, since he hadn’t really studied seriously in his four years at university. The only reason he got into that school and major was because of his father’s insistence. He couldn’t get into a top school, but since his father taught there, he managed to get in through connections, so he couldn’t be picky about popular majors. Less than three months after starting work, he resolutely gave up his iron rice bowl and quit. By then, his parents had already passed away, and with no one at home to control him, this seemingly reckless decision was only encouraged.

But it wasn’t fair to say Brian Carter acted on a whim—he did have a backup plan, like riding a lame donkey to look for a horse, not entirely on foot. He had another side job: together with two classmates from a sound engineering training course, he installed stage lighting and conference audio equipment for karaoke bars, restaurants, and meeting rooms.

He’d been doing this since his sophomore year. From the day he got into college, he knew he wasn’t cut out for academic pursuits. He spent those four years just to fulfill his father’s dream of being a successful teacher. His father was a university professor, and if his own son couldn’t even get into college, it would have been humiliating for him at work.

But studying was one thing; after graduation, how to arrange his own life was no longer up to his father. He had to find a way to support himself for the rest of his life. He couldn’t say he’d dedicate his whole life to a career, but at least he had to be able to support himself before he could talk about dreams and ideals.