Full Plate
Good heavens. It's been a long time since anything new appeared on this page, hasn't it? But then it's been a long time since I wanted to write the way I want to at the moment. I don't know why, but words and sentences have been churning in my mind for awhile... maybe it's just that a lot of things have been percolating and now they're brewed and I might as well set them down somewhere. It's better than letting them stew in my mind.
And yet now, looking at this blank page, my mind wanders and cannot be pinned down to write of anything. It's very annoying, but it does show the state which my self-control has fallen to. I'm not very good at reining in my thoughts or impulses, and that's a great failing in me. But let us then impose some kind of order on things, and I will cover the main spheres of my life.
Work is going somewhat well. We had audits some months ago, and the findings are still being responded to because the auditors apparently went on leave or something of the sort, and so all we have to go on are our own memories of what the auditors wanted done. There are as always a lot of things to do and follow up on and work at; but at least at present it is more that we are waiting on the customer to give us information rather than that they are pressing on us. It is maybe not a very satisfactory situation, but it is the better alternative until the customer becomes more organised and better able to follow their own procedural demands. I still find it difficult to control my inspectors, though; perhaps I feel that they are somewhat justified in complaining about the workload when they had been told beforehand that their pay would be proportional to the audit findings, and their pay increased by a large percentage (so I'm told) but they did not get any bonus. Personally I think that's perfectly well, because with a bit of saving-up the additional pay will outstrip the bonus, but they'll have none of that. At least they obey me, if somewhat sluggishly, and certainly (I think) they respect me enough to take my instructions seriously.
I'm starting to also look into other bits of the department that have direct contact with me; there's a rather interesting coding challenge in one of them, because our customer has a lot of specifications in a lot of documents that only briefly to each other (and never state which version they're referring to). Which means a lot of testing to see if I can get MS Excel to store a list of all those documents and specifications and use a couple of fields to pull up the relevant information based on type and date. It's a challenge so far, mostly because the documents are all many-to-many related and that rules VLookup out immediately. I've been having a bit of luck with dependent lists, though, so I might try that out next.
The senior engineer's been taking me out for dinner a lot lately, with the result being that my belly is getting noticeably more rotund; he favours pizzas and all-you-can-eat steamboats, and I--being the incredible foodie that I am--tend to devour everything in sight. The pizzas aren't so bad, except when we overestimate our hunger and accidentally order enough for three when we're a party of two; but at steamboats I tend to eat about three or four heaping plates. I'm something of a minor legend around the office by now, because he finds it a stunning ability and tells everybody so. We talk a lot during dinner, of course; he needs the listening ear and it's good learning for me, and we're pretty friendly anyhow. But some time ago he asked me how I saw myself in five years' time and I said I hadn't any idea, and he said that was the wrong answer. He basically sees himself in five years as having an MBA (or a PhD?) and being either the owner or manager of somewhere, and being able to drive a nice car--he favours Peugeots.
If you read my blog very much, you'll recall that I thought of defining my ideal life some time back but gave it up in a fit of fatalism. But I think I should try and set it out anyway, just so I can come back again some time and laugh at myself for being so silly. It's not a five-year plan, of course; but it'll help me in my going.
We'll start from the basics, then; my ideal life contains rhythm. By which I mean that I think of my life as having some fixed, recurring events, generally on the order of a week or month, with some space in between for unexpected occurrences--which means, first, some sort of employment with fixed hours and not occurring every week. It also means a church to go to, a place to swim, a place to get groceries, a place to have sundry services done--haircuts and suchlike, where I can go to have stuff done or to do stuff.
I should prefer that the employment be one where I can fully use whatever skills I should have, where there are challenges that I can be confident in solving (given sufficient time and effort and guidance as needed), and where I can form enjoyable relationships. I don't really care that it should place me in a high-income bracket or that it should place me in authority over other people, but it does matter that I should do something that doesn't insult my intelligence or force me to insult other people's. (In fact I don't think I would mind the kind of position where I had interaction with only a limited number of people, with occasional encounters with others.) Perhaps I will have a Master's in Business Admin.; it seems a useful thing to have.
I would also like to live less than an hour's travel from the workplace (at maximum--this means assuming a jam, accidents, having every traffic light on the way be red, etc), and to live a certain distance from the city centre.
At this point I have an impulse to delete all of the above and laugh at myself for even trying to do this. It's all so patently ridiculous, isn't it? and stereotypical of a young man like myself to even want to do it.
But let's go on anyway; there is no point doing this halfway.
I should like to live with people; I don't think I'm the marrying kind, or even the dating kind, as my previous attempts at this have ended quite disastrously. But I am certainly the befriending kind, and I would like to live with good friends. I think I would like to also be on good terms with my neighbours. I don't think my place of living will be particularly lavishly furnished; I think I could get along quite well with a futon or mattress, a functional kitchen, a fridge, a TV (for the Wii), a table and some chairs--maybe a lounger, a futon, a rack on which to hang clothes, and a good Internet connection. I might have beanbags for the sheer luxury of it, or a hammock. Maybe even a washing-machine. I certainly shouldn't mind a standing punchbag and a bicycle and a nice electric piano--so perhaps my demands aren't quite so modest.
Well, on to more concrete matters.
The house my parents bought is almost ready to move into, and I will be moving just as soon as the renovations are complete, the paint is dry, and it is furnished; I will almost certainly have a landline installed, and then put up all the rooms except the master bedroom and mine for rent--cheapish, too, since the rent will only cover utilities and the place will be quite unfurnished. I don't know if I'll throw a housewarming party; the guests will probably go in and say, "this is Spartan!" I'm putting off the move a bit, though, since I'm already comfortable in this place--by the end of this month I'll have been here an entire year. But it has to be done, and so it will be, sooner or later. It's not like I've accumulated very much stuff in the past year, anyhow.
And so that's that. Five-year plan? At the moment that just goes "furnish and move into new place; befriend neighbours; rent rooms out; get experience at work, take on more and more responsibilities; potentially apply for and go through an MBA course, most likely locally". I can't see very far beyond that.
And yet now, looking at this blank page, my mind wanders and cannot be pinned down to write of anything. It's very annoying, but it does show the state which my self-control has fallen to. I'm not very good at reining in my thoughts or impulses, and that's a great failing in me. But let us then impose some kind of order on things, and I will cover the main spheres of my life.
Work is going somewhat well. We had audits some months ago, and the findings are still being responded to because the auditors apparently went on leave or something of the sort, and so all we have to go on are our own memories of what the auditors wanted done. There are as always a lot of things to do and follow up on and work at; but at least at present it is more that we are waiting on the customer to give us information rather than that they are pressing on us. It is maybe not a very satisfactory situation, but it is the better alternative until the customer becomes more organised and better able to follow their own procedural demands. I still find it difficult to control my inspectors, though; perhaps I feel that they are somewhat justified in complaining about the workload when they had been told beforehand that their pay would be proportional to the audit findings, and their pay increased by a large percentage (so I'm told) but they did not get any bonus. Personally I think that's perfectly well, because with a bit of saving-up the additional pay will outstrip the bonus, but they'll have none of that. At least they obey me, if somewhat sluggishly, and certainly (I think) they respect me enough to take my instructions seriously.
I'm starting to also look into other bits of the department that have direct contact with me; there's a rather interesting coding challenge in one of them, because our customer has a lot of specifications in a lot of documents that only briefly to each other (and never state which version they're referring to). Which means a lot of testing to see if I can get MS Excel to store a list of all those documents and specifications and use a couple of fields to pull up the relevant information based on type and date. It's a challenge so far, mostly because the documents are all many-to-many related and that rules VLookup out immediately. I've been having a bit of luck with dependent lists, though, so I might try that out next.
The senior engineer's been taking me out for dinner a lot lately, with the result being that my belly is getting noticeably more rotund; he favours pizzas and all-you-can-eat steamboats, and I--being the incredible foodie that I am--tend to devour everything in sight. The pizzas aren't so bad, except when we overestimate our hunger and accidentally order enough for three when we're a party of two; but at steamboats I tend to eat about three or four heaping plates. I'm something of a minor legend around the office by now, because he finds it a stunning ability and tells everybody so. We talk a lot during dinner, of course; he needs the listening ear and it's good learning for me, and we're pretty friendly anyhow. But some time ago he asked me how I saw myself in five years' time and I said I hadn't any idea, and he said that was the wrong answer. He basically sees himself in five years as having an MBA (or a PhD?) and being either the owner or manager of somewhere, and being able to drive a nice car--he favours Peugeots.
If you read my blog very much, you'll recall that I thought of defining my ideal life some time back but gave it up in a fit of fatalism. But I think I should try and set it out anyway, just so I can come back again some time and laugh at myself for being so silly. It's not a five-year plan, of course; but it'll help me in my going.
We'll start from the basics, then; my ideal life contains rhythm. By which I mean that I think of my life as having some fixed, recurring events, generally on the order of a week or month, with some space in between for unexpected occurrences--which means, first, some sort of employment with fixed hours and not occurring every week. It also means a church to go to, a place to swim, a place to get groceries, a place to have sundry services done--haircuts and suchlike, where I can go to have stuff done or to do stuff.
I should prefer that the employment be one where I can fully use whatever skills I should have, where there are challenges that I can be confident in solving (given sufficient time and effort and guidance as needed), and where I can form enjoyable relationships. I don't really care that it should place me in a high-income bracket or that it should place me in authority over other people, but it does matter that I should do something that doesn't insult my intelligence or force me to insult other people's. (In fact I don't think I would mind the kind of position where I had interaction with only a limited number of people, with occasional encounters with others.) Perhaps I will have a Master's in Business Admin.; it seems a useful thing to have.
I would also like to live less than an hour's travel from the workplace (at maximum--this means assuming a jam, accidents, having every traffic light on the way be red, etc), and to live a certain distance from the city centre.
At this point I have an impulse to delete all of the above and laugh at myself for even trying to do this. It's all so patently ridiculous, isn't it? and stereotypical of a young man like myself to even want to do it.
But let's go on anyway; there is no point doing this halfway.
I should like to live with people; I don't think I'm the marrying kind, or even the dating kind, as my previous attempts at this have ended quite disastrously. But I am certainly the befriending kind, and I would like to live with good friends. I think I would like to also be on good terms with my neighbours. I don't think my place of living will be particularly lavishly furnished; I think I could get along quite well with a futon or mattress, a functional kitchen, a fridge, a TV (for the Wii), a table and some chairs--maybe a lounger, a futon, a rack on which to hang clothes, and a good Internet connection. I might have beanbags for the sheer luxury of it, or a hammock. Maybe even a washing-machine. I certainly shouldn't mind a standing punchbag and a bicycle and a nice electric piano--so perhaps my demands aren't quite so modest.
Well, on to more concrete matters.
The house my parents bought is almost ready to move into, and I will be moving just as soon as the renovations are complete, the paint is dry, and it is furnished; I will almost certainly have a landline installed, and then put up all the rooms except the master bedroom and mine for rent--cheapish, too, since the rent will only cover utilities and the place will be quite unfurnished. I don't know if I'll throw a housewarming party; the guests will probably go in and say, "this is Spartan!" I'm putting off the move a bit, though, since I'm already comfortable in this place--by the end of this month I'll have been here an entire year. But it has to be done, and so it will be, sooner or later. It's not like I've accumulated very much stuff in the past year, anyhow.
And so that's that. Five-year plan? At the moment that just goes "furnish and move into new place; befriend neighbours; rent rooms out; get experience at work, take on more and more responsibilities; potentially apply for and go through an MBA course, most likely locally". I can't see very far beyond that.
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