This is Brigitta. She was born in Taiwan in 1980. Her family moved to England soon after, and her father set up a business supplying foods to ethnic restaurants. She gained experience working for him and developed an interest in Business Studies. She made her family very proud by gaining the qualifications necessary for university.

She chose Liverpool John Moores because she had grown up being forced to listen to the Beatles. She came to like the music, and loved the sound of the places they sang about.

Brigitta enjoyed uni life, especially her final year. She came out with a 2:2, and openly admits she could have done better but for a heavy social life in her final year.

Whilst I was moving into her old bedroom in the halls of accommodation, and finding her old enrolment photos under my new bed, a bed I suppose we kind of shared, she was moving back home with her parents. She hoped to one day take over the family business, and expand, then move abroad. The world was her oyster.

Brigitta fell in love, and her family pressured her into marriage once she’d fallen pregnant. She had a beautiful baby girl, who is now nearly six, and her new husband was invited to become involved in the international foods business.

But she filled with regret. What might have been, instead of what was, a doting mother to a newborn and wife to a distant, regularly stressed out middle manager. This was not what she had dreamed of. 

To help make ends meet she began working in the factory part time, whilst her daughter went to school. The credit crunch hit hard, and Brigitta had to cover more shifts for her now ailing Dad. Liverpool seemed a long way away, a long time ago.

She wanted an adventure. An avid reader, she saw parallels between herself and the narrator of The Joy Luck Club. To pass the time and boredom at work, she realised an escape route. Every so often she would sneak into the message writer’s room and play around on the computer. Who knew whom a fortune cookie message might reach. Maybe someone who could save her. Anything would be better than this.

In October 2008, our paths crossed again, when I opened a fortune cookie following a banquet at a restaurant her in Liverpool.

We need to free the fortune cookie factory one. If you can help fill in the gaps in Brigitta’s story, or would like to add your name to the petition I am sending to her father’s factory, please e-mail theartist@jonathangreenbank.com

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under UNLUCKY FOR SOME. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.