CINDY, INCIDENTALLY:

Last week a message hit my e-mail account with the subject “Iceland goes bankrupt.”

Sadly, this wasn’t code for anything; it was true — a country was in the midst of a meltdown, and our world’s economic turmoil felt bleak and overwhelming.

These days the news is filled with buzzwords like “Depression” “Recession” and “Unemployment,” and it actually pertains to our life today. Not something from our history books or another story from a grandparent.

It’s happening right here, right now.

Personally, I was already collateral damage in the downward spiral of our economy when I was laid off from my job back in March with a small severance package and a cheerful “It’s not you; it’s our economy” speech.

Gratefully, I’ve been able to bounce back on my feet, but it took some time and I’m happy to be out of the unemployment track and not have to scour my way through job ads and attend congested job fairs.

But while I have made my way out of unemployment, it seems everyone else I know is being laid off, fired or having hours at work reduced.

It’s been happening so much that while I was searching for jobs, I discovered a cocktail party for the unemployed called the Pink Slip Mixers (pinkslipmixers.com).

Edwin Duterte, a corporate Realtor and banker from Los Angeles who was laid off in January, created the mixers as a way to ease the woes of the downtrodden and network during these times.

“I was hanging with one my friends, and we were trying to think of ways to get jobs for ourselves,’” Duterte, 39, explained. “I remembered during the late ’90s and early 2000s after the dot-com bust there were these pink slip mixers … It was really just an excuse to party. But people began to realize they were interviewing at companies while out … and it helped some of them get jobs.”

Duterte said that in a struggling economy like today’s, in which the unemployed vary in skill and background, it’s important for people to think of different ways to network and share resources.

Looking for jobs online or at job fairs is not always the way to find jobs in a workforce saturated with skilled professional with jobs that had taken them 10 to 15 years to attain.

The pink slip mixers he created were geared toward professionals to meet other professionals and get the inside track on companies and share the information they have on people.

There have been two Pink Slip Mixers so far, in Santa Monica and Pasadena, and there is one scheduled for Long Beach on Nov. 5.

Duterte plans on increasing the number of mixers to two to three per month, because of the interest, response and throngs of people who have come by to the introductory mixers he has held.

“We have people in different industries … from biotech to high-level staff attorneys … it’s a different class of job seeker across the board,” he said. “When you see that what does that say about our economy? It’s hard and sometimes your friends who work, they don’t understand how hard it is.”

CINDY ARORA is a freelance writer. She may be reached at paprgrrl@gmail.com.