breathing out

i worked from home yesterday morning so that i could be with my family for the "zoom funeral". it was weird watching my brother carrying the coffin and saying kaddish for our uncle, he's really looking like a hunched-over shadow of his former self.

that set off an unpleasant train of thoughts. i don't want to have to return to south africa for any reason whatsoever, least of all to bury people.

this is a selection from what i sent to hido on wednesday evening: "this is gonna sound harsh but i'm praying my mom gets out of there soon because honestly, if i never set foot on SA soil again i'll be much happier for it... i'm over looking over my shoulder, brother, being thoroughly relaxed walking through the city at any time of day is where it's at!! i'll take the occasional siren/bomb shelter run over 24/7 security any day of the week"

...

gd and phoenix were on their way to a store next door to my office, so they popped in for a visit. the office was practically empty because thursdays are mostly-remote days, but within five minutes my son was begging me to let him stay. we have a playstation. one of my coworkers had brought his dog in. and the snacks drawers has his favourite chips (doritos spicy sour).

an investigation a bit later into installing rayman: legends on the playstation quickly turned into a dressing down by a coworker when i suggested that i was planning on getting an xbox (the mongoose had convinced me that in israel it's the better option, my coworker strongly objects, now i have research to do), and our discussion quickly generated some in-office rivalry after i told one of the fifa-leaguers that we were talking about real video games }:>

otherwise, i spent an hour sharing my RCA reports with my department and apparently i did really well.

i also managed to implement most of the feedback i'd received from my team lead, so even if i didn't accomplish my goals i did make a lot of progress.

last night was a celebration of... the end of the week? not being thoroughly exhausted even though mr smear only went to bed around 10pm? i had a beer, making sure to disturb it into as much foaminess as possible, and gd and i watched an episode or two of the boys. something's "settled" a bit in the third season, but the payoff is amazing.

...

i still can't believe this scene from don't look up actually played out in real life.

...

i've become increasingly frustrated by all the things that don't "just work". and by all the people and organizations that think that mobile messaging is a viable, reliable communication medium. or that the consumer needs to make an effort to get services instead of the service provider.

the blur

i went to bed after posting on wednesday night, i'm still not clear on why mr smear was sleeping in our bed but that and my neck were the least of my troubles - with everything else going on, my ear starting hurting and it felt like i was heading for an ear infection. i managed to get an appointment with the doctor first thing (well, first thing after dropping mr smear off at school and joining my morning meetings), and was relieved to learn that we'd caught it in time, so i could avoid antibiotics but still had to engage in preventative medication, which appears to have done the trick.

sleep-wise things didn't improve, though, as i've spent half the nights waking up around 1am with what seems like post-nasal drip-induced acid reflux, being too tired to do anything constructive so just resigning myself to hours of watching youtube (okay, some of it was educational, at least).

otherwise, the rest of the work week was arduous but much improved, i closed off the week with a new release candidate with which i believe the problem is resolved.

yesterday was fantastic. hido's down in cape town with his family and we joined them for a braai, it was wonderful seeing everyone and introducing all our kids ^_^

after an excellent day, mr smear and i played some biped in the evening (hardcore, absolutely brilliant) and after getting him to bed i jumped in to a thunderstone evening that was a little slower than usual, but between turns i figured out how to get my expo app working on an android emulator and by the time i got to bed i had moved all my TODOs out to a backlog board which seems a lot saner.

on the shakespeare front, on wednesday i received page updates for the nymphs' breast reductions but haven't had much bandwidth to publish them, so i'm going to do that now and then dive in to putting the page 12 script together for mr cat.

the porsche story

apparently i've never shared the porsche story on my blog! how shameful...

hido used to work in a restaurant, and the owner developed a giant crush on me. he was an attractive man and very sweet, but i'm not that way inclined... over a period of weeks and months he made his intentions extremely clear, sometimes in a funny way and sometimes crossing the line of sexual harassment. i was always there to see hido, though, not him, so i just let it slide. aside from inappropriate solicitations he was quite kind to me (and the food coming out of his kitchen was delicious), and he certainly wasn't threatening so no biggie.

one day, a gorgeous summer's sunday, a few of us were sitting at a table outside drinking and having a good time, all the while eyeballing a brand new (80km on the odometer) porsche carrera parked right outside with the top down. we'd been ogling it for ages when hido's boss came out to say hi...

... and saw what i'd been looking at. it was his new purchase...

"hey, totalwaste. you can HAVE the porsche.
...
IF you'll be my boyfriend"

let me tell you, for eighteen year-old me that was mind-blowing - the next five seconds were some of the toughest of my young adult life :(

"i'm sorry, man, i'm going to have to say no."
i think i was almost in tears.

...

my buddies all had a good laugh then, and i'm constantly surprised by how many straight guys i know who are horrified when i tell the story.

"you did what?! are you mad?!?? you should have taken the porsche!!!"

more buck for my bang

i'm going to start with the bit that i still haven't internalized: it's kinda weird news.

let's start with the immigration lawyer: the lawyer costs a bomb even though we paid substantially less than the full fee; at that price she didn't even get to go over our forms. she just sent us a list of things we need to give her to review, and that list included a super-critical form that doesn't appear anywhere on the immigration website. she also told us what we have to write on the envelope. apparently this is an important detail and we'd written the wrong thing. in my defence, i wrote precisely what the guy on duty at the ministry had told me to.

instead of completely redoing the application, we fired off an email to the ministry with the new form and an explanation that we'd fouled up the envelope, what we got in return was a reassuring phone call and helpful instruction. part of the instruction has to do with the salary offered: in order to hire a foreign worker, the company must pay the provincial average salary for the posting / experience level of the applicant.

there was a sensation of "oh, shit" when i was informed that i've accepted (and gratefully so) a lot less than average, and we're talking about enough of a margin that the difference could cover most of a year's tuition at graduate level over here. the sensation wasn't a positive one because everyone up the chain would have to approve the new salary or the entire deal would be off.

i tend to lose confidence in that sort of situation.

and then... relief! i have been given the impression that this will not be a problem. so while i'm not going to be totally relaxed until i actually walk across the border with papers in hand - otherwise they could agree to pay me millions and it would mean nothing - but the outlook on both counts, future employer and the province, is really, really good. it's very exiting stuff!

---thursday and friday:

the weather over the past couple of days has been a little too warm: here in montreal the word "balmy" is used when the temperature rises above -5. no jokes, i find myself opening my jacket and removing my tuque if there's no wind to bring relief. hands feel the cold if they're not protected, but that's about it. it's been so warm that i've actually opened a window, and slept with just a sheet: wtf?!

on thursday i walked into the office to find the snow / salt stains on the floor cleaned and my shoes neatly placed on a small square of a black plastic bag. how sweet :)

in the office, i've been feeling like my hands are tied. i can't work until i have my permit, and there's so much i want to do and get involved in and play with! it's exciting and pleasurable and frustrating all at once.

in the meanwhile, i've been messing about with my own little projects and one of them involves using curl and jira apis. i couldn't figure out what the problem was, and tried everything, and then suddenly yesterday morning i had an epiphany and realized that the issue was security configuration, not software. this led me through a chain of fixes from which emerged a solution so much bigger, better and easier than what i'd previously planned that i ended my day well pleased with myself.

i woke up on friday morning early for a long skype meeting with sorter and -someone. i was five minutes late, -someone was about twenty. the meeting went better than i anticipated but i'm still left with not much faith that anything's going to happen.

i don't know why, but i suddenly felt distant with pg over the past two days. it's better now, but it was disquieting.

playing through on the rain-slick precipice of darkness on the ipad, even if it's the second time because saves are shared between devices, is nothing short of grand! i'm not a fan of their d-pad implementation, but it's not a big deal. i do feel a bit awkward about the ipad in general, though: between games and wired magazine i'm getting great use out of it, but pg's just not getting into it. at least i know she's got the hang of reading comics.

---this morning, i woke up three times from three vivid dreams, each connected somehow to the last.
1. i return to sea point with SxS and ru55 from a party on the same morning SxS and i have to fly. i get ready with the help of pg but SxS is nowhere to be found, i'm late for the flight, i can't find my passport anywhere and nobody can help me print my ticket.

2. walking down to an alternate mouille point on a long road. i help an old indian woman (dots, not feathers) and we start talking, then we're walking along a bridge past the most intensely beautiful scene: i look to my right straight up a giant, calm river flowing through a vast, golden city of skyscrapers. i stop to take a photo and somehow i can see below the waterline, where there are giant turtles swimming downriver towards the bridge and then turning sharply to follow it giving me great turning shots, but now when i look up the bridge seems infinitely long and is slowly sinking. the two of us continue hurriedly, i'm holding my phone above the waterline and eventually, when the water reaches my neck, we give up and swim.

3. i'm on a hollywood-like college campus and it's a gorgeous day for skiing, so everyone's getting ready. but i'm having trouble finding my gear.
then i'm with a family and we're getting ready for the bus to the slopes: they've brought me my gear and i'm expected to hurriedly put it all on because the bus is leaving. we're dressing in a glass booth on the edge of a square where some kind of celebration is going on; the announcer conflates new year's with [the weekend? i don't remember] and suddenly the square explodes with a powerful house beat that makes it difficult to do anything but dance like a wild thing. only the younger members of the family get me. we drag ourselves away to find the bus.

---i caught a link from hido yesterday morning to tri-force Live at ageha 24.03.2012, and i've had it playing while posting this. what a groovy, adrenaline-filled mix!

to quote scrapper on extra credits - god does not play dice: "it's a unique feeling, to hear someone state your own opinion, especially when it's one that you've had such trouble expressing, and when he does it so well."

get out of the oven!

did somebody forget how hot and sticky it is in israel during summer? i'm dying here, people!

friday morning was grand - depressing, but nice in spite of the knowledge that i was leaving. woke up slowly, packed, and then we all went to the market to organize sushi. *excellent* sushi. the nice drive round parts of montreal i hadn't yet seen also went down well.

then we were off to the airport, for another tearful farewell (my aunt's good at that), and then i was rushed through to my plane to toronto (with a promise from the check-in counter that my luggage would go straight to tel aviv).

the first flight was alright, and in toronto i walked straight through to the shuttle to my next flight. i didn't see border control anywhere, so i guess i'm officially still in canada.

unfortunately, i had an hour to wait, and not only is the building non-smoking, but OUTSIDE TOO. the building is situated in the middle of all the runways... DAMMIT! so i bought a couple of magazines, munched some m&m's, and eventually we boarded.

a harsh, 12 hour reminder that aeroplane seats are designed for people without legs. not only was the kid behind me playing with his seatbelt the entire flight (enough clicking will get on your nerves), but the little girl in front kept holding down the button and bouncing back and forth. i went bananas, and nobody could stop her from doing it.

so yeah, that was a pretty sucky flight. i hear my mom's was worse, but that doesn't make me feel better. i think i slept about half an hour or so. i spent a lot of the waking hours hating myself for returning to uniform.

i discovered, to my complete and utter surprise, really, that my luggage is still in canada. notice the use of present tense. i hopped on the train (and luckily didn't get caught - i used my soldier's id for a free ride) and went to the base. aside from picking up my keys, and going for lunch with the kid (although after two weeks of good food, i couldn't bring myself to eat any of that crap), and some milling around and appreciating the beautiful bums the girls sport here, i waited two hours to speak to my commander. who managed to sneak out when i wasn't looking.

disappointed, i caught the bus home. my stuff's all there, which DID surprise me, and i showered and read myself to sleep.

aside from an hour or two in the late evening, when i spoke to my mom to hear about the horrors of her trip (and it really was horrific), i slept soundly until 3am.

AAARGH! and i'd slept too much, so i just lay in bed reading until my alarm went off. i shaved, and hurried off to the base (forgetting my shoes, so i'm stuck in uniform at work, which SUCKS), pretty much straight to work. oh, and i made a neat 9 month calendar (the amount of time i have left), with each month a picture of the appropriate phase in a foetus' development.

the work today (and i'll be continuing tomorrow) was extremely frustrating. my commander was in meetings the entire day, i literally didn't get two seconds to talk to him. i cleared out my 150+ new emails, sewed on one of my new ranks, and other than that had a particularly boring day.

i came straight to work, and have been in the thick of it since i got here. did some conniving with yogi. conniving is always fun. can't talk about it yet. sorry. and i have actually gotten a lot of work done. and eaten a good hamburger; i was desperate for food - i'm still not craving mess-hall trash.

considering the fact that the following thoughts consumed me for most of my trip, i've decided to jot them down:

i live in the future. i always have. it's why i dress the way i do, i why i plan do the things i haven't shut up about (IRL). so i'm constantly thinking about my possibilities, specifically from my release date next year.

1) i sign on 3 extra years, assuming that they make me an offer i can't refuse (and can't talk about, sorry)

2) i stay on at work a couple of months, to make starting money and enjoy a bit of summer out of uniform

3) i return to sa for a couple of months - i need minor surgery, and i'm not doing it when alone in israel

4a) i go off to japan, to seek work in vr / aerospace, and if i'm unsuccessful then just to have a holiday there and spend time with hido

4b) i go to the states, where i join SxS in building an empire (with me primarily focused on vr)

4c) i go to canada, to work in gaming / aerospace (they have some good places to start) or to do research in mcgill university (have contact, will travel).

so that's about it at the moment. not to mention much thoughts about starting a family; but those are just arbitrary.

right, i'm off.