Office life is as interesting as ever... but in the last few days I have managed to enjoy myself. I guess a big part of that is that it has been the weekend, and another big part is that the weather has been great.
On Saturday night, after Rae had finished her final paper for Discourse Analysis, we went over to her house to have dinner with her homestay Ark. Ark is a student from China who's parents we visited when we were there this summer. Until this point, I had never talked about politics with him. I guess I had just assumed that he was a typical Chinese student who studied hard, trusted authority and didn't concern himself with politics. I was quite wrong. When he asked me about my opinions of China I told him what I thought. I told him how the nationalism was scary, how students all have remarkibly similar ideas about everything and how people generally don't know much about the outside world. I also complained about the media and the anti foreign (especially anti-Japanese) slant on all the news. The thing that surprised me was that he was in general agreement. He was actually quite concerned about the nationalism and being stirred up, especially towards Japan.
Ark's father is a fairly highly placed Chinese Communist Party official in his home town. This satus allowed him to read the internal communist party magazine (which is strictly off limits to normal people) and to let his son read it aswell. This magazine is actually critical and open minded. It includes things like policy debate and disagreements. On hearing this I was both happy to know that it was possible for open minded writing to exist in China as well as dissapointed and scared that this was denied to the majority of the people who are force fed the government's propaganda.
Ark is actually a very interesting person who I should see more. I regret that it took me this long after I got back to Vancouver to see him.
On Saturday Rae and I watched Crash. I was impressed with its brutally realistic portrayal of racism and of the city of LA. It made me want to go back to LA to see it again and to stay away at the same time. I can see why it won the oscar.
On Sunday I met up with my friend Noah who has just gotten back from spending the better part of a year in Japan. He was looking good and was in good spirits. Since it was a nice day we went for a walk along Coal Harbour where we saw a boat rental place. The prices looked reasonable so we rented a boat and boated out to Deep Cove and back. It was great fun to be out on the water, surrounded by mountians, ocean tankers, sky scrapers and bridges. When we got to deep cove, it felt like we were in another city, that we were on vacation. We parked the boat at the public warf and went for an ice cream. It was great fun, definately one of the coolest things I have done in Vancouver and something I would like to do again.
Hanging out with Noah was fun. His time in Japan has made him very polite and also very excited about everything Canadian. I regret that I was not able to visit him in Japan while he was there.
On Sunday evening my sister came over to do the laundry. While here, she cooked an amazing mango curry... mmmm... mango curry.... and we watched cartoons. It was just like old times from when we were living together, except without the tension.
Today I went to work again. It was as fun as usual. I had lunch with Ashley and we talked about our weekends. It reminded me that I was having lunch alone too often. Life in the work world has so much less socialising built into it, it needs to be forced in in order to keep life worth living. After work I met up with Scott and a friend from econ last year. We had a beer on Coal Harbour and then dinner at the Korean place on Robson that I like. It was good times. One of those moments where I am happy to be working and to have money to enjoy myself, and happy to be stress free while off work.
The working life is just life. Work is the constant and life is a function of the other variables. To take the derivitive of life, work falls out of the picture and you are left with the other variables either going up or down. In a situation like mine where work is a constant, these are the areas where effort should be applied.
I am starting to wonder why I am staying in my job. The answer that I come up with is mostly twofold. Firstly, and most obviously, it gives me something that looks good on my CV. Everyone has heard of CIBC, and underwriting sounds pretty cool. Secondly, and probably just as importantly, it is training me for the workplace. It is a place where I don't necessarily have any power over my work, my coworkers or my environment. It is a place where I have responsibilities and where I have learned things like keeping my voice down when talking to people and not talking about anything too personal or contraversial because the people I offend will still be there with me every day. Although these are not lessons I want to learn, I am sure they will be required in any workplace so it is better to make an ass of myself while learning now than to screw up a job I really like later. Maybe I am just trying to rationalize a decision that I am actually making out of inertia and the happiness I feel making money. Maybe I just don't think that I will find anything better anywhere else. Either way, I will show up to work tomorrow.
On Saturday night, after Rae had finished her final paper for Discourse Analysis, we went over to her house to have dinner with her homestay Ark. Ark is a student from China who's parents we visited when we were there this summer. Until this point, I had never talked about politics with him. I guess I had just assumed that he was a typical Chinese student who studied hard, trusted authority and didn't concern himself with politics. I was quite wrong. When he asked me about my opinions of China I told him what I thought. I told him how the nationalism was scary, how students all have remarkibly similar ideas about everything and how people generally don't know much about the outside world. I also complained about the media and the anti foreign (especially anti-Japanese) slant on all the news. The thing that surprised me was that he was in general agreement. He was actually quite concerned about the nationalism and being stirred up, especially towards Japan.
Ark's father is a fairly highly placed Chinese Communist Party official in his home town. This satus allowed him to read the internal communist party magazine (which is strictly off limits to normal people) and to let his son read it aswell. This magazine is actually critical and open minded. It includes things like policy debate and disagreements. On hearing this I was both happy to know that it was possible for open minded writing to exist in China as well as dissapointed and scared that this was denied to the majority of the people who are force fed the government's propaganda.
Ark is actually a very interesting person who I should see more. I regret that it took me this long after I got back to Vancouver to see him.
On Saturday Rae and I watched Crash. I was impressed with its brutally realistic portrayal of racism and of the city of LA. It made me want to go back to LA to see it again and to stay away at the same time. I can see why it won the oscar.
On Sunday I met up with my friend Noah who has just gotten back from spending the better part of a year in Japan. He was looking good and was in good spirits. Since it was a nice day we went for a walk along Coal Harbour where we saw a boat rental place. The prices looked reasonable so we rented a boat and boated out to Deep Cove and back. It was great fun to be out on the water, surrounded by mountians, ocean tankers, sky scrapers and bridges. When we got to deep cove, it felt like we were in another city, that we were on vacation. We parked the boat at the public warf and went for an ice cream. It was great fun, definately one of the coolest things I have done in Vancouver and something I would like to do again.
Hanging out with Noah was fun. His time in Japan has made him very polite and also very excited about everything Canadian. I regret that I was not able to visit him in Japan while he was there.
On Sunday evening my sister came over to do the laundry. While here, she cooked an amazing mango curry... mmmm... mango curry.... and we watched cartoons. It was just like old times from when we were living together, except without the tension.
Today I went to work again. It was as fun as usual. I had lunch with Ashley and we talked about our weekends. It reminded me that I was having lunch alone too often. Life in the work world has so much less socialising built into it, it needs to be forced in in order to keep life worth living. After work I met up with Scott and a friend from econ last year. We had a beer on Coal Harbour and then dinner at the Korean place on Robson that I like. It was good times. One of those moments where I am happy to be working and to have money to enjoy myself, and happy to be stress free while off work.
The working life is just life. Work is the constant and life is a function of the other variables. To take the derivitive of life, work falls out of the picture and you are left with the other variables either going up or down. In a situation like mine where work is a constant, these are the areas where effort should be applied.
I am starting to wonder why I am staying in my job. The answer that I come up with is mostly twofold. Firstly, and most obviously, it gives me something that looks good on my CV. Everyone has heard of CIBC, and underwriting sounds pretty cool. Secondly, and probably just as importantly, it is training me for the workplace. It is a place where I don't necessarily have any power over my work, my coworkers or my environment. It is a place where I have responsibilities and where I have learned things like keeping my voice down when talking to people and not talking about anything too personal or contraversial because the people I offend will still be there with me every day. Although these are not lessons I want to learn, I am sure they will be required in any workplace so it is better to make an ass of myself while learning now than to screw up a job I really like later. Maybe I am just trying to rationalize a decision that I am actually making out of inertia and the happiness I feel making money. Maybe I just don't think that I will find anything better anywhere else. Either way, I will show up to work tomorrow.
1 Comments:
Nice! Where you get this guestbook? I want the same script.. Awesome content. thankyou.
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