royal highness

so... this morning began lazy and happy. still glowing from yesterday's experience. the weather was as fine as i felt.

it's a timing thing: i was working on scripting my sketches when metro sat down beside me again. apparently we both have favourite seats :)

speaking of which, office seating politics made shunting people around complicated. in the evening i'd have a long chat with our cfo about our environment and he liked what he heard and has promised to explore options that suit our team.

i have to train someone tomorrow in something i'm not familiar with - the cto was supposed to teach me today but i couldn't get hold of him in spite of my having made an appointment. huh?!

my plan for the day was to explore implementing something in node.js, but managing the team took precedence. there was a lot of it going on...

---i left work in time to shop before training, originally planning on jiu-jitsu and beginner's kickboxing but then switching to advanced kickboxing on the off chance i'd see gg. she wasn't there, but i'm so glad i changed my mind!

there's a fifty year old woman who trains with us who, just like the old guy, is a tank. firstly, i was fortunate to have her holding pads for me on the circuit because she wasn't afraid to tell me exactly what i was doing wrong at every step. and boy, was she right! i could the difference every time i got what she was saying, and it felt good.

i got to do impact / conditioning with her. i started, and her explanations of how i'm supposed to be handling my body were the first i've received. she was hurting me by the end, but i actually felt like i knew what i was doing and once the striking stopped i felt surprisingly good. a little more compact, in a sense :P

then it was her turn. not only did it feel like i was hitting a wall, but it wasn't hard enough for her so she taught me precisely how to angle my gloves and repeatedly corrected my strikes until i started getting through. the weird bit was feeling proud and ashamed simultaneously every time i landed a solid shot...

... shit, that's one tough lady.

---i came home to find i've been headhunted by another BIG company with a very interesting offer. how exciting and flattering! after thinking about it for a bit, though, it doesn't seem to be in my interests. aside from being in love with montreal and its people, this is not only the best place for me to immigrate to in terms of process but it's also the home of a lot of good aerospace; american aerospace cannot employ foreigners so even though spacex, bigelow and virgin have job opportunities that i'm perfectly suited for i wouldn't be able to work there...

i've spent my whole night talking on the phone with my mum or chatting on messenger and facebook. shit! i have stuff to do! and i almost didn't finish my dinner again :(

---two completely unrelated thoughts:

1. an ex-coworker has been ignoring me whenever he comes in to freelance, and i was informed that the reason for this is that he believes that my reaction to cam2 was borne of racism (as opposed to my complete intolerance of incompetence). i find this hurtful, and i'd try to take it up with him if i hadn't been warned not to. there's not much one can do to undo that kind of sentiment, though.

as my mom rightly said, though, it would be racist to have kept him on simply because of the colour of his skin.

2. i really, really, really have to learn french! it's ridiculous and irresponsible that i've been so unmotivated.