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| So, yesterday, after having spent the better part of my afternoon sheparding my manager and two other senior auditors on my floor, we arrived at the meeting room to discover that, of the 13 confirmed participants, we would be the sole attendees present. As we stalled at the coffee machine, hoping that more people would show, one of the senior auditors quipped, 'I guess you shoudl have sent out a reminder today'
Me: *stomps foot* Dammit, I'm not your babysitter!
Yes, very unprofessional. Nonetheless, I need to have my job description/title modified.
See, it appears that I have unwittingly taken on the task of Where's the boss?! when I agreed to take this position. Come to think of it, it was probably spelled out in the Very Fine Print, which I should have known better than to sign without reading. In any case, Where's the boss?! is one of those frustratingly challenging, yet thankless tasks - like rounding up small children on the playground after it was discovered that the entire thing is made of sugar, and the kids had eaten all of it. It requires a stern face, loads of patience, and would be a lot easier if Rilatin were available over the counter.
My manager is pretty good at his job. He just has too much on his plate and thus, needs to be shadowed like a hawk about an hour before each meeting he is scheduled to attend in order to ensure that his ADD button doesn't get turned on, causing him to have the attention span of a squirrel and eventually becoming so distracted by 30 trillion other things that he fails to show up, leaving me and another junior coworker to run a meeting which we are hopelessly uninformed about, but which he insists that it proceed anyways.
Ultimately, this makes us look woefully disorganised and incompetent. So, essentially, it is also a self-and-ego preservation thing.
Unless, of course, the participants themselves don't show. See, Where's the boss?! also comes with the secondary task Where are the managers?! , for god forbid that anybody in this department actually show up to meetings which their attendance was confirmed. I dislike tremendously, this feeling of being a small sheepdog in a giant field of very scatterred sheep with a penchant for wandering. Honestly, is it so hard to expect working professionals to adhere to their own schedules? | | |
| Certification exam: 1 Number of modules: 2 of 4 Total number of chapters: 20 Progress made thus far: 1 (chapter) Time taken to achieve current level of progress: 2 months Time to exam: 8 days Projected amount of sleep until exam: - | | |
| My Dutch may be poor, but I understood enough on the radio this morning to know that rampant rumours swirling last week at the workplace regarding the removal of the CEO from his post was too juicy - and thus - too good to be true. Something about 500 jobs in the headquarters location...something about uncertainty regarding which 500 persons will be without a job. They are, of course, cutting jobs instead. Thankfully, my unit is relatively unaffected for now, but you know, these cost-cutting / mass layoffs decisions really do boggle the mind. Yes, of course redundancy has to be removed, and no doubt efficiency has to be increased, and wouldn't you know it - there is an entire department in a building at the far, far end of the metro line staffed entirely of giant slugs with protrusions which pass as limbs. Coincidentally - or more appropriately, consequently - they are card-carrying members of the the incompetent and inefficient. Naturally, the people at the top said, Fuck that shit! We're pouring salt over the giant slugs to punish them for their retardedness and then we will throw them all into a raging volcano so that no trace will ever be found of them. Then, we can use their severance payments to hire people with half a brain and/or actual limbs! But alas - The people at the top decided to keep the slug people. They are going to fire everyone with functioning limbs and brains and hire more giant slugs to support the semi-limbed giant slugs who are supporting the giant limbless slugs who are supporting the rest of the bank. 0_o | | |
| If you have not yet seen An Inconvenient Truth, you should. It is, at the very least, an informative and insightful look into the causes and effects of global warming; at most, it is a poignant and persuasive piece on why we should rectify the Kyoto Accord. In any case, should you have been living in a cave for the past 5 months or so, An Inconvenient truth is a documentary on Gore and his quest to stir the rest of the world - and his fellow countrymen in particular - to rise out of complacency and into action to curb the phenomenon of global warming.
The documentary paints this as Gore's raison d'etre. This is a man in his 60s who has spent the bulk of his life worming up the various political ladders only to lose his presidential bid to a schmuck with an IQ of a ball of yarn. Yet, he still has life left in him to put into making a difference. In fact, he has so much life left that he has declared it his life mission to educate the masses on global warming and its effects old skool style - one person at a time, one city at a time.
What struck me most about the whole thing is the passion which he has for the cause, and the tenacity which he displays as he goes about fulfilling what can best be described as his one-man crusade. In fact, he voices frustration numerous times throughout the documentary, on both the complacent (ie: yours truly) and the dismissive. And yet, he soldiers on, or so the movie shows, all in the hopes of keeping the earth habitable for future generations.
There are numerous times in my life, when I have felt that I have not lived up to my potential as a young person of the world - the demographic which the world pins its hopes and dreams on - and watching this movie certainly did make me feel that way. My generation is probably first in the line of the 'future generations' which Gore referred to in the documentary. He is trying to leave a better world for me, and in the meantime, I am googling for the episode when George will stop being such a wuss on Grey's Anatomy. Am I deserving of this man's time, energy - and essentially - life?
At a time when one couldn't begin to count all the worries of the world, one would think that my demographic would be far more inclined to embody a raison d'etre of a far self-less nature. There are endless reasons as to why this is not the case, and I think that I would not be too far off to mark when I say that ignorant and complacency sit at the very top of this pile of reasons.
Of course, there are those who push aside the tug of ignorance and the safety of complacency. My peers include people like Severn Cullis-Suzuki and Craig Kielburger, who were, very literally, just kids when they decided to address issues and take up causes which seemed so far beyond their comprehension. Craig Kielburger formed an international child-rights organisation at the age of 12. Severn Cullis-Suzuki addressed delegates at the Earth Summit at the same age. You know what I was doing at 12? Figuring out how to keep the nickel from slipping off the back of my hands while playing the piano (it helps to wet the back of your hands first) and conspiring with my sister on how we could convince our parents to buy us jeans.
While young activists make me feel wholly inadequate, it is tireless, selfless veteran activists who really put me to shame - people like Aung San Suu Kyi and Jane Goodall who have embarked on a relentless pursuit for the betterment of the world as a whole. These are people now entering the golden years of their lives. They should be travelling to warmer parts of the world; tending to their gardens or fattening up their grandchildren. Instead, they have chosen to remain steadfast to bigger (and better?) causes.
Needless to say, many of us - young people and otherwise - pale in comparison to the most outstanding of citizens among our peers. For the most part, we realise the scale of their accomplishments, and for brief moments, we come to realise that we, too, can do what they do. That is, until the more frivolous nature of the worries of our (adolescent) world bubble up around us again. Truth be told, we - myself included - like living this way. Concerns of food, clothes, work, friends, significant others have borders which are far more defined - and thus are more easily containable - that those of poverty, equality, or sustainability.
Al Gore is no lifelong, tireless activist. However, he is among the group of people who could be doing other things with their time, who could have turned their backs to the non-definable, uncontainable problems of the world; but who instead, have decided to tackle these problems head-on - sometimes at huge personal costs - for the betterment of the rest of us.
Craig Kielburger and Severn Cullis-Suzuki gained international recognition at a very young age. They got to travel all over the world and probably never really had the time for the frivolous worries of growing up. Aung San Suu Kyi never got to say goodbye to her dying husband, nor did she get to see her children grow up. Jane Goodall lived with freaking chimpanzees for 45 years! These are people who do the most extraordinary things at the most extraordinary ages, whether they be too young to be taken seriously, or too old to be doing this anymore. We will probably have these people to thank for the state of our world one day - I am assuming things get better, of course. However, I doubt that few outside of their generation will remember them and truly understand the impact of their work.
Do we fully appreciate the work that these activists do? Are we deserving of their efforts? Probably not - and no. But that doens't stop them from trying, anyways - and that is truly admirable. | | |
| In the midst of a busy work week:
My song du jour came on the radio while I was waiting at the elevator after work today. Since I currently find Bob Sinclair and Cutee B absolutely irresistable, I break into a little dance. I had figured that, since I was only one of four left in the office by the time I stepped out, it was probably a safe thing to do.
The thing is, it took a while for the elevators to get to my floor - and the longer it took, the more comfortable I got. The more comfortable I got, the more parts of my body I began to move and the more floor space I began to cover in the elevator waiting area.
When one starts to dance in this kind of environment, one generally starts tentatively. First, there is the hand-tap-on-the-side-of-your-pants thing, which is followed by the semi-coordinated feet-tap kind of thing, which inevitably leads to the shoulder-and-head-bopping move. And if one isn't careful about it, then one may just find oneself taking steps - which, needless to say - is the end of the whole covert dancing thing.
Now, the trick to dancing when no one is watching is, well - to ensure that no one is watching. I obviously need to work on this, because I was mid-dance when I glanced to my right to see an open elevator with two rather surly - but well-dressed - senior-looking people.
I generally try not to capitalise on my size - or lack thereof - but I will admit that it often comes in my favour, as I will tend to come across silly and cute even when doing the stupidest, strangest things. Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case today. Those people did not seem even mildly amused. Come to think of it, they had actually looked slightly pissed, as if I had just held up their speedy trip to the bottom floor - which I suppose I did.
So, there you have it - I will try my darndest not to dance in a public space again, and should the urge ever comes up, I will suppress it until I get home, where I can dance free and stupidly, and spare myself the humiliation of being stared down from behind while the elevator takes its own sweet time to get to the employee exit level. | | |
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