thank you, courtney… January 17, 2007

…for posting this and then letting me steal it. 

They call it the “Quarter-life Crisis.” It is when you
stop going along with the crowd and start realizing
that there are many things about yourself that you
didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling
insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or
two, but then get scared because you barely know where
you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that,
maybe, those friends that you thought you were so
close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have
ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are
some of the most important ones. What you don’t
recognize is that they are realizing that too, and
aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that
they are as confused as you.

You look at your job… and it is not even close to
what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking
for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at
the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what
others are doing and find yourself judging more than
usual because suddenly you realize that you have
certain boundaries in your life and are constantly
adding things to your list of what is acceptable and
what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the
next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest
force of your life. You feel alone and scared and
confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try
and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon
realize that the past is drifting further and further
away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you
are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you
loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed
and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough
that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone
but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing
this because you know that you aren’t a bad person. One night
stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and
acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over
and over, and talk with your friends about the same
topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You
worry about loans, money, the future and making a life
for yourself… and while winning the race would be
great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates
to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying
as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

– anonymous. for now

 note:  if anyone who the original author is, let me know

looking back, and moving forward. (volume 1: work) January 11, 2007

I’m going to dedicate my next few posts to reflecting on various parts of my life over the last year and my plans for the coming year. I had actually started writing it all in one post, but it turns out that I have a lot to write about, more than I expected! So rather than having my readers be overwhelmed with one long massive post, I thought I’d divide it up. I’m also lazy, and dont’ think that I can finish writing about everything in one sitting.

So, here’s my first one – the one thing that seems to have been the centerpiece of my life for the last 6 months. Sad, yes, I know. I really try to make an effort to separate work and home, but it’ so hard not to let it spill over into your personal time when you’ve got outstanding things that need to get done at work. Anyways, without further adieu…

Work

So 2006 saw the start of my journey into the real working world. People say that coming out of Waterloo coop, with 2 full years of experience in your actual field of study is supposed to prepare you for this. In my situation, coming back to the same company, same people, some of the same technologies, and even the same client, one would think that I would be completely prepared for the job and for the real world.

Is that the case? I’m not sure. I know I have an edge over anyone from any other university, and even any new hire coming from waterloo because of my extra 4 months of coop. But still, there are just some things that coop can’t ever prepare you for. In some ways, everyone still sees me as a coop, and I still feel like a coop. It’s only recently, after a few sets of coops have passed through, that I’ve now started to really feel like “I’m not one of them anymore “. I think the feeling mostly started after about 5-6 months, when I came to realize that normally, I’d be back at school and writing midterms by now. But no, I’m still at work today. and tomorrow. and the day after that. And there’s no end in sight…I’m here for the next 40 years!! It’s kind of better, now that I’ve been there for a while. But then again, it’s kind of not better! Cause I really miss being a coop! (as per previous post.) I still get pangs of….I don’t know what the word is. jealously? wistfulness? when I overhear them talking about looking for housing for the next term, or discussing what courses they’re going to take, or where their friends are doing coop etc. As a real person, you’ve actually got real responsibilities, and real deliverables, and if the quality of your stuff isn’t good, you’re still held responsible for it! No more saying, “oh well, by the time they realize how crappy this is, I’ll be long gone back to school with my steallar evaluation and a whole slew of fancy new skills for my resume.”

Am I happy at work? Again, I don’t know. I don’t think so. But then again, would things be any different at any other company or in any other position? I wonder if it’s just my idealistic view of what work should be like. Afterall, work isn’t really supposed to be *fun*, right? That’s why it’s called work, and not vacation. I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out what the problem is and what is leaving me so unsatisfied with my daily grind. Is it the company? Is it the people I’m working with (or sometimes as it seems, the people I’m either working without or working against)? Is it the client’s inability to drive projects? Is it this specific project? The PM? The lead developers? The management? Or perhaps it ’s something that I have to deal with more on a personal level. Am I seriously in the wrong field? I wonder if I would feel this same way at any other company or on any other project or working with any other people. Perhaps I’m not really as cut out as I thought I was for all the political crap and finger pointing involved in a consulting environment – especially when projects turn sour. Why can’t everyone just get along and work together as a happy team, helping each other out, making sure there’s clear communication among all parties, and not letting their egos get in the way of productive work??

For years, I thought I wanted to be a PM, and for years I thought I wanted to be in the consulting industry (aka. the bullshit and suckup industry) cause that’s what I thought I was good at…but now, I have no idea anymore. There’s no way I’d ever be able to manage all the political crap that seems to run rampant around here, not only with the client, but internally with the developers as well. There’s the classic “business people vs. technical people” headbutting, but I think the PM is finding it particularly challenging with this set of technical people, and for the near future, I suspect that I’ll really only be working with these same technical people, project after project after project.

So. For 2007. What can I do to improve myself and my situation?

One of the main reasons that I was hired back fulltime was because as a co-op, I suggested an idea to automate a process, and then near the end of the term, I implemented the change for myself and future coops to use. (turns out, apparently, that my program was buggy and they stopped using it a few terms after I left. But anyways, lol, I still made the necessary mark to get my full time offer. If I have time, however, I would at some point still like to go back and fix it up for people to use…I did spend a few weeks programming it, aferall.)

So that being said, one of my goals for 2007 is to remind my boss and director about why they hired me, by offering one new, feasible suggestion for change. I actually do have a whole list of things that are fricken retarded at work, and one day, someday sometime, I’ll formalize the list somehow someway, and present it to someone somewhere. The problem with my list, though, is that everything is so…fluffy. As in, they’re not things that can be changed just because some punk-ass kid fresh out of school complains about it. There are things about company culture, resource management, organizational health, strategic management, human resource policies, etc, that don’t have a “right answer” to fix the problems. I have a few suggestions for things that *might* kinda, sorta, maybe make a difference, but I mean….these are problems that I’m in no position whatsoever to be concerned about at this stage of my career

So, given that I miss being a coop, and given that I know I haven’t contributed to the company the way my employer had hoped and expected from me when I was hired, my work goal for 2007 is to suggest (and implement?) one solid process change. Not something that’s going to solve all the complaints I have about management and strategic direction and work environment and culture, but something small that I can implement on my own (or perhaps with the help of a coop student). It’ll clearly not be the kind of thing that will take significant notice in the grand scheme of the company, since the most obvious source for my suggestions would be in the individual projects I’m currently on. But regardless, I’m determined to revamp my entire attitude about work. I’m not a coop student anymore. There were supposed to be big plans for me when I started, and I want to remind my boss, my director, and everyone else around me of the value that I can bring to the projects, but that I haven’t really brought…yet . I’m not “just a developer” and I’m not “just a business person”…I’m still the same “good mix of business and technical” that they told me I was as a coop. I just personally haven’t been motivated to bring it out and really show it to them in the last 6 months since I’ve been there

Entries to come: Health (mental and physical), Friends and Family, Money, Love

Are you a prostitute or are you a consultant????? December 22, 2006

This was stolen off Crystal. It was originally her accounting humour, but OMFG, this totally applies to consulting too!!! Who could have known how similar the professions are…!

Are you a prostitute or are you an auditor consultant?????

1. You work very odd hours.
2. You are paid a lot of money to keep your clients happy. *
3. You are paid well but your pimp gets most of the money. *
4. You spend a majority of your time in a hotel room.
5. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended. *
6. You are not proud of what you do.
7. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded.
8. It’s difficult to have a family. *
9. You have no job satisfaction.
10. If a client beats you up, the pimp just sends you to another client. *
11. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living.
12. People ask you, “What do you do?” and you can’t explain it.
13. Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate.
14. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money. *
15. Your pimp drives nice cars like Mercedes or Jaguars. *
16. Your pimp encourages drinking and you become addicted to drugs to ease the pain of it all.
17. You know the pimp is charging more than you are worth but if the client is foolish enough to pay it’s not your problem. *
18. When you leave to go see a client, you look great, but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM). *
19. You are rated on your “performance” in an excruciating ordeal. *
20. Even though you get paid the big bucks, it’s the client who walks away smiling. *
21. The client always thinks your “cut” of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you. *
22. When you deduct your “take” from your billing rate, you constantly wonder if you could get a better deal with another pimp.*

* apply to me.

the game to end all games December 20, 2006

As I was driving around tonight delivering bags of cookies to people, I took advantage of the alone time and just started daydreaming and thinking about stuff. In particular, I took notice of now nicely decorated all the houses were, and thought back to when my sister and I were kids.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you about a game my sister and i used to play ….It’s called “Christmas”.

 When the both of us sat in the back seat of the car, I always sat on the passenger side, and my sister always sat on the drivers side.  (The reason for that is because of another game we used to play, called “colours”.  Let’s leave that for another post.:P).

Anyways, the objective of “christmas”, was to count how many houses we passed by that were decorated for Christmas – be it with lights, trees, gigantic snowmen, red/green spotlights, whatever.  As long as you considered it decorated, you counted it.  Yup, it was a complicated little game we had.  Look out your window and count outloud.  The only real rule we had was that only your window was allowed; not out the front or the back of the car, just your window.  At the end of the car ride, the winner was whoever had counted the most. Fun, eh?

While I’m telling you about our old games, might as well tell you about the game called “colours” that I mentioned above.  It was another complicated game: Look out your window, and say out loud the colour of all the cars that were passing by.  Yup, that was it.  Say the colour of the cars passing by.  Now, notice above, how I said that I always sat on the passengers side whenever we got in the car?  This was me being smart, and my poor little sister not knowing any better.  I would always be leisurely naming colours of all the cars passing us on the right, or that we were passing, or in the best case, naming nothing cause we were in the right-most lane.  At the same time, my sister would be frantically trying to sputter out and catch the car-colours of the oncoming traffic!! Needless to say, I usually won this game, and to this day, I still don’t think my sister knows why we developed that habit of where we always sat in the backseat of our car.

I was a mean, mean, sister (6)

December 19, 2006

a preview of things to come…. December 18, 2006

baking and decorating

       


the finished products

       
 


pickles… December 10, 2006

this is funny cause i had a huge craving for pickles today. so when i was at no frills, i grabbed a jar of baby garlic dills, and had three of them after dinner

actually,…. when you think about it, it’s not really that funny. this girl has an honest, genuine, phobia…not so different from being afraid of snakes, or spiders, or mice. i really hope she finds the help she needs and is able to overcome her fear.

gotta wonder, though…what happened in her childhood to make her so afraid of PICKLES!??!?!

i miss… December 6, 2006

i miss being a coop student 

i miss the 2.5h friday lunches. i miss playing cards at lunch.  i miss meeting new people every term and working on different projects all the time.  i miss being able to say “oh well, i’m just a coop”.  i miss gossipping about the full timers.  i miss slacking off and noone really caring what we do.  i miss going out with people after work.  i miss the stress and excitement of applying for coop jobs.  i miss looking at the postings, hearing about what amazing interviews people are getting, and seeing how the employers ranked you.  i miss the stressfulness of being “strategic” in your job rankings and job choices.  i miss being able to come into a company with fresh new eyes and being able to pick out things that can be changed. i miss being positive and excited about work.  i miss working with people that i respect and want to “be like” (of everyone i work with, there’s really only one person that i consider to be a “role model” for what i want to do in the future).  i miss being able to switch projects every 4 months.

i miss living away from home, and with friends…

i miss watching prison break, amazing race, and sex and the city on james’ big tv.  i miss cooking yummy meals together, and then watching tv together while eating them.  i miss eating so much that i’m unable to do anything afterwards but fall right asleep.  i miss cursing at the phone/internet/cable companies EVERY SINGLE TERM for screwing up and rendering us disconnected to the rest of the online world.  i miss the stress that was “house-shopping” every term.  i miss not having to tell anyone where i’m going, what i’m doing who i’m gong with or when i’m going to be back.  i miss cooking what i want, eating what i want, eating how much i want and eating when i want.  i miss living within walking distance of bars, clubs, and fast food.  i miss being able to take a $10 cab ride home from clubs.  i miss the cheap drinks.  i miss being able to wear bluejeans into a club.  i miss decorating people’s doors on their birthdays.  i miss surprising people with candy-filled cakes.  i miss the late night chats. i miss the balloon peopel and our balloon mice.  i miss our balloon family, and our balloon RIP wall. 
      

i miss student meals…

i miss going out for wings EVERY monday night. i miss our “everyone-contribute-one-ingredient-to-the-corn-soup soup”.  i miss grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon and spam.  i miss laughing at janet eating her food out of the pot (even after 5 years, i still can’t bring myself to eat food out of a pot/pan).  i miss instant noodles.  i miss kraft dinner.  i miss hot dogs.  i miss making “gourmet dinners”, while improvising on ingredients and kitchen appliances (have you EVER tried to make fresh pesto by chopping and mixing up the basil by HAND??).  i miss our oven-baked lasagnas, our massive nacho platters and taco nights.  i miss eating at pho viet, and watching the “office politics” of the teenage waitresses and the guys in the back.  i miss how you can take any piece of meat, stir-fry it with any vegetable, steam some rice and have a perfectly quick, easy, healthy meal. i miss being sick of east side marios and front row,c ause those are the only big restaurants within walking distance of the campus.  i miss the massive burgers at the grill and of course, their waffle cones.  i miss mr. sushi. 

i miss the student lifestyle…

i miss procrastinating with my fishies!  i miss having them on my desk and watching the little bablies swim around.  i miss worrying about them overheating and being cooked in the non-airconditioned oven we call student housing.  i miss the nosiness of procrastinating on friendster and reading people’s blogs.  i miss working out at waterloo womens fitness, going to an all-girls gym, and going to a gym that has fitness classes runing all day, every day, from first thing int he morning till 10 at night.  i miss going to the gym in the middle of the day.  i miss only having to drive 5 mins to get to the gym.  i miss being able to take a nap whenever i feel like it.  i miss being able to skip class whenever i feel like it.  i miss being able to skip assignments, and being able to say “screw it, it’s only worth 3 marks” when i don’t know how to do something. 

i even miss the hell that was school…. 

i miss the exam period intensity. i miss feeling like i’m going to fail every single course because of not having gone to any classes and only half-heartedly doing my assignments.  i miss studying in MC.  i miss going to school to start working at 11pm, when other people are starting to leave.  i miss being the only one in the classroom, working through the night with my music, being super-productive, and then going home in the wee hours of the morning.  i miss being busy; i’m still somewhat busy now, but it’s a totally different kind of busy, an inflexible kind of busy.  i miss pulling allnighters and then cooking bacon and eggs in the morning and making janet’s room smell like meat.  i miss walking home in the morning and seeing the family of bunnies running around the in the strip of grass by DC.  i miss breathing the crisp air while walking home, after having stressed out all night over finishing an assignment.  i miss being able to assume that all the data entered would be valid.  i miss not having to do any stupid error-checking and exception catching in the code.  i miss being able to submit code that was “65% good”…i dont’ think clients appreciate code that’s “65% good”.  i even miss the crappy wireless connection in DC.  i miss my bullshit business courses.  i miss being about to ace my bullshit business assignments without doing any work in the course whatsoever.  i miss barely passing my CS assignments, despite having spent hours and hours trying to undersatnd wtf was going on.  i miss studying at 2nd cup.

November 28, 2006

things i learned… November 27, 2006

• in the states, 5 chicken nuggets cost ONE DOLLAR.  so 75 nuggets for a car full of people costs $15! no WONDER americans love their fastfood, it’s so damn cheap!
• passport/birthcert are RECOMMENDED to cross the border, in addition to photo ID.  what that actually means is that if you don’t have them with you, prepare to answer questions like, “don’t you think that in this day and age it’s important to carry your passport with you??”
• celebratory duty-free chocolates are to be eaten only after successfully crossing the border.  failure to adhere to this will anger the border gods.
• having a 2am sit-up competition will have consequences.  bad consequences, lasting for many days afterwards. (ok, that’s my own fault for being such a lazyass….)
• divide and conquer doesn’t work when trying to master piano pieces.  it takes four hands (with gr 9 and 10 piano) to butcher a piece that roger (the pianist guy from ACI) can sightread while having a casual conversation with the people beside him
• if you want to be first in the best buy line, you have to be waiting since 5am the day before.  if you arrive at 3:45am for a 4am sale, expect the line to already be wrapped around 3 sides of the building
• if you DID arrive at 3:45 am for a 4am sale, and DIDN’T expect the line to already be wrapped around 3 sides of the building, don’t bother waiting.  instead, talk to the comquest guys who are giving away free doughnuts and tropicana juice. then leave to go to other stores and come back later.
• it’s cold at 3:45am
• daniel craig is not really that good-looking…but there’s something about his character that just makes him so sexy!
• i like suzy because she’s just as lazy as me.  suzy is a dog
• people look like retards while playing with the wii.  the wii is made for people like me who can’t play real video games. from this point onwards, the nintendo wii will be referred to as the jack-off game.
• at the duty free shop, beer is cheaper than water. ($12.99 for a 24!)
• jeff’s sister has a friend writing letters to her from prison
• i can’t afford to shop at neiman marcus or saks fifth avenue…but it’s still fun to walk around.
• great lakes mall was probably designed by the same people who did vaughn mills.  the style and the layout of the malls are almost exactly the same.
• and finally….jeff has an extremely backhanded way of giving compliments.  last year’s ‘compliment’ was “you’re not hot, you’re cute.  that means that you’re non-vomit-inducing“. this year’s ‘compliment’ is…….
  

  “Even TANIA is more/less/better/worse than <insert topic of conversation here>”.