a punch to the gut

i began my day chatting with pg: it was good to see her online.

i bladed out into a cool breeze, and it seemed that the day was slowly warming along with my core temperature. by the time i got to the office i definitely needed a shower.

it's an odd shower setup, very much like a nice bathroom one would find in someone's home. i guess i was expecting dorm / barracks-style. my tiny towel was *just* enough, i'm glad i brought a spare shirt, and there was something strange and pleasing about having my first cup of coffee at my desk after a shower. and something even stranger about talking to people on the way and wearing my rollerblades, which just look like cool hi-tops when the wheels are off.

i resumed facepalming over moonlighter's code, and was horrified when megaman came over to inform me that we're going to need to put in longer hours and get the new interns to stay late too. you see, i don't think i'd be against it if it wasn't because the cto had committed to something even more absurd than usual, and the feeling of hopelessness is dramatically demotivating so i just don't want to do any more.

as it was, my priorities had to flip to a dangerous shortcut, and i couldn't simply make the switch because i was halfway through securing something that would break what i was working on if i didn't finish it. on the one hand, i'm very glad i got it done. on the other, i was super-tense when i received a second phone call from our guy in panama who basically shared how irresponsible he'd been and how he'd managed to break something in his rush to get everything ready for a big presentation tomorrow.

*sigh*

i actually thought of throwing in the towel during my blade home, but i guess i'll stay and hope for the best. seriously, though, i can't see myself staying with this band of jokers longer than is necessary to acquire resident status. there are plenty of other companies in this town just as desperate for talent.

i'd left later than i'd intended, and so had to rush to get to training on time. kickboxing killed me, but it was awesome and i'm super-stoked that i went!

special moment: during conditioning, i was fighting back tears from a few shots to the solar plexus. the instructor took the opportunity to come over and demonstrate *precisely* where to strike... my only consolation, the next guy to have it explained to him writhing on the floor, wasn't particularly consoling.

mma is teaching me what i'm made of! whatever it is, it's soft and squishy and filled with nerve endings. but i'm totally loving this shit ^_^

extra long weekend

when i began this post i was locked in to my apartment and the building's water pipes were closed. i'd just gone for a walk to do some shopping, and came back with a sensation that spring is here. i'd just got off the phone with godmother, who had let me know that considering everything i've been through it's really okay to just wallow for a bit. that was confirmed by my mother later. i'm very, very glad that i get passover off.

i am resuming this post after returning from the second passover "seder", very nice, if a little awkward (i was, at least). the continuous loud buzzing in the background is me attempting to run down the charge on my clippers, which i used today and which come with an advisory to empty the battery once every two months or so. the battery life appears to be really, really good!

---thursday:

the day began with the faculty dean; the man is a phenomenon, with the most fascinating personal history and incredible achievements. he's the real deal, fighting corruption and playing the game simultaneously - talking to him is inspiring. talking to him about his plans for our product was reflexively inspiring: our product has tremendous potential, and the developers are so deep into tweaking its core that we don't get to appreciate the forest for the trees.

the shock of the day was discovering that the woman i'd ranked as dumbest in class is the woman in charge of the phd program - i spent a good deal of time replaying our quick q&a's in my mind and hoping that i hadn't been too flippant. so it wasn't that she'd been struggling to figure out our system; she was observing and evaluating. damn she's good.

after a long day at the end of a long week, i returned to the hotel and immediately shaved off my beard. i then sat by the pool and consumed half a bottle of myers's. which is a heck of a lot of rum. it wasn't too late when i stumbled back to my room and collapsed.

---friday:

it was a tough stomache morning, and i'd be in pain and uncomfortable for the entire weekend. the moment spent staring out the window at the fog-blanketed rainforest was not enough. my only meal in panama that wasn't amazing was that last breakfast, which was awful.

we were almost late for the flight, and the double security and frisk (!) wasn't appreciated. the flight itself was long and sucky. i felt horrible when we arrived in newark, my head felt screwed off and i just wanted to get home. five hours of nothing, with a touch of irritation with the idiot tsa guys forcing me to remove my plastic belt and raise my hands to go through the machine.

shit! i'm such an idiot!
*facepalm*
here i am complaining about indignities, and what i *should* have done is simply removed my pants and put them on the conveyor. what would they have done? arrested me for indecency?

the short flight to montreal was spent in agony. my belly was hurting, and no amount of time spent in restrooms was having any effect.
regardless, immigration into montreal was such a surprising pleasure! their welcome back made me feel really good. i was so happy to be back!

---saturday:

aside from household chores and a bit of fallout, i spent my day with k-twang and cls who were visiting. cls showed me that my projector issues were focus related and not resolution related (hooray!), our visit to godmother was amusing and silly, dinner was huge and drinks were fun (i hope i didn't talk too much, but i think i might have :( ).

---sunday:

brunch with godmother: it was hard to get into tiffany's, but the food was good and it's a comfortable place. afterwards we visited the old jewish quarter in an unsuccessful quest for kosher-for-passover gifts.

the rest of the day was a day of nothing: george carlin, star trek ii, a little bit of shakespeare in busan's to be or not to be and johnny mnemonic. only a little of to be or not to be because it kinda sucks.

i finally went shopping, and the slow, quiet walk was time for reflection, on my being alone and on my motivation in general.

---monday:

monday was full of woe. work-wise, i had a few meetings and a training session for a new developer who i'm excited about, and the director and i had an important chat about my responsibilities.

i tried to transfer cash to pg to pay my imaginary social security fine, only to discover that her bank branch has two SWIFT codes. why does everything have to be complicated?!

leaving early on such a beautiful day made me feel a little better, and i was amused by the beery pub smell of the guy entering the metro in front of me: it was the perfect afternoon to be out drinking with friends.

the passover "seder" was really nice, not quite what i'm used to but fun nonetheless.
i played fallout into the night, and was totally exhausted when i finally dragged myself off to bed.

---tuesday:

i already posted about the important stuff.

---gun control: oh, shit. in one fell swoop, the case for controlling firearms has just been relegated to the irrelevant box. our options? have full government control of all technology and our uses of it, OR try to educate and instill values so that we can be free and reasonably safe.

we'll never be 100% safe, but as long as we can offset the dangers we can maintain a good balance. that offsetting cannot include big brother without causing more dissatisfaction and frustration and thereby increasing the threat level.

training days

i don't know where to begin or end this post, or what to put in the middle. this post actually begins on monday, recalling the meeting with the government organization. most of it went over my head, but the bits that were translated painted an interesting picture. aota came out an absolute winner.

the government building is located on an evacuated american army base: military is military. an unquantifiable sense of familiarity when walking into a building on a repurposed us army base, every aspect different, yet precisely what i'd expect after my six years of service. i felt at once at home and uncomfortable.

it was a long day and we tested until late. even though i was exhausted and needed to get to sleep, i spent a few minutes on a comic script that i thought up on the flight down here. i'm a few panels in and quite happy with it.

---tuesday:

in spite of my (ulcer? heartburn? nerves?) the training went really well. so well, in fact, that i walked out really proud of myself and aota and i began the evening's celebrations by visiting the canal. after a good dinner spent ogling the ships - which were impressively large - and once again being fascinated by the simplicity and elegance of locks - we returned the hotel to swim (it was a beautiful evening) and polish off most of a bottle of ron abuelo. we talked a lot and laughed a lot, and i left to go to bed early.

i slept a lot, and i slept like a baby.

---wednesday:

the second day of training began with me unable to get dressed as the laundry hadn't been returned. i had a quick breakfast and returned just as the laundry guy was leaving the room; while speaking in a constant stream of spanish he signed what appeared to me to be a message that two buttons on one of my shirts were missing, and i sighed and thanked him for the heads-up. i quickly shaved and brushed my teeth, by which stage i was running late (even by panamanian standards), and i opened the closet to discover that only one of my shirts had been returned.

noooo! only one shirt, and it had buttons missing??? not many choices there, and so i put it on, surprised to discover that everything was in order. then the penny dropped and i realized that he'd been signing that two of my shirts hadn't been returned yet.

*phew*

the training itself was fun and entertaining on both days, but today more so as i put the customers through their paces and did tricky things to test them. we were pretty much done by lunchtime, and the rest of the day was relaxed. i could finally spend some work time responding to urgent emails and imparting lessons learned from the training experience.

we went for lunch, and it was delicious. we had dinner when we got back, and it was delicious. the food here, for tourists at least, is really incredible. i haven't had a meal here that i haven't enjoyed, although today's were something seriously special.

---tomorrow is our last day. i'm not sure what we face, but friday we leave and i will be feeling very relieved indeed. i might miss some aspects of hotel living, to be honest, but they're not as strong a pull as the crazy snow that's fallen in montreal this week or my own personal space with fallout 3.

overdone

forget the day yesterday, some of which actually went well. we started early and only returned to the hotel around 10pm, eating our dinner through a conference call that can only be described as political and diplomatic.

today's the big day, and working or not we have to perform. meaning, i have to perform. i woke up around 3.30am with an inexplicable burning in my chest which i suspect of being caused by an ulcer. i hope i'm wrong. it's now hurried breakfast time and my stomache's doing backflips.

signing off on the wrong long weekend

this is fucking negligence: moonlighter has now achieved full liability status. we waited half a day for a half-assed, unplanned and untested fix to an issue that i simply cannot believe had not been dealt with as part of the original design. as in, there was no original design. the cto is supportive and defensive of his behaviour and that's caused me to lose all faith in him.

this little trip has been a complete perspective flip. i have gained insights into our company and our product that i might have glossed over if i'd been back at home base. well, maybe that's not necessarily true: the past couple of weeks have been extremely off the mark and frustrating.

i have been familiarizing myself with this company and its practices for most of the past half a year and actually working for about a month and a half, and i am shocked and amazed that a company with so much potential can be so badly mismanaged. if we can pull the present delivery off, we might be able to get things on track and i'd be really happy to be a part of that. but if we can't, well, then i guess it'll be time to go looking for greener pastures.

the relief comes in the form of discovering that if my employment is terminated for whatever reason, i can still remain here legally until my current permit expires and so go through a relaxed job search before re-applying for a new work permit as soon as i find other employment. i'm disappointed that i'm even thinking about this stuff so soon after getting started.

on an amusing note, all of this is happening and i haven't yet signed the contract. this is the second time i've been in such a situation (my previous engagement as a freelancer was also sans signatures) and that means that there's less chance of my being taken advantage of.

---aside from an extremely unpleasant start to the day, the rest of it was quite comfortable. aota and i were taken out to lunch and later to drinks, and on all counts the food was exquisite. also, panamanian rum is exceptionally good! panama is beautiful, the people are friendly and i'm glad we're getting at least a little time to enjoy some of this trip.

the "real" me

after a long day, i sat down for drinks with aota. her comment when i placed my first order? "yeah, let's meet the real you!"

i figured i'd just get tired fast and go to bed early, but after talking about our recently failed relationships we moved on to philosophy, psychology and religion. i got more excited in spite of the constantly flowing double jack daniels', and my favourite part of the evening was the bit where an otherwise argumentative aota was suddenly awestruck by the sheer coherence of my theories as it all came together in the first commandment.

---today was not the saturday i'd been hoping for. i had to leave early to work and there wasn't a lot to do (moonlighter and the cto really weren't at full speed). there were three of us on call, and the two panamanians took me for lunch to a great spot with a fantastic view. there's a definite touch of paradise over here. the ceviches and panamanian local vegetables were delicious. it was fun! on the way there i was surprised to discover that the girl's music collection includes a lot of late 90s house, and i feel like i got to enjoy something touristy and local simultaneously.

at least the system seems to be stabilizing with all the small fixes... some of which i was shocked to discover weren't in the original design. *sigh*

---comparisons:

1. i take back my comparison to israel, it's only relevant in terms of the weather. in terms of attitude, it's somewhere between india and africa, but i guess that's just a relatively uninformed opinion.

2. french versus spanish: similar, but one's pretentiously elegant and the other is fun and seems to flow a heck of a lot more easily; i can get the gist of things when i'm reading in spanish whereas with french every second word's a struggle.

an academy of broken dreams

i woke up this morning from a deep, comfortable slumber. the view from the balcony was magic. the weather wasn't as bad as i expected - not compared to israel, at least - and breakfast was manageable. kind of. i guess i'll be consuming a lot of fish this week.

after a struggle to arrange room cards and pack the equipment, i joined our it guy in the taxi and we headed off to panama city. the canal's pretty, what we could see of it at least, and the whole area and city is pretty darn awesome. it's kinda like israel, only jungle instead of desert.

universidad de panamá: it looks like a bomb hit it ages ago and the janitors all quit. at first it was kind of boring, and i took the opportunity to go through my inbox and deal with all sorts of issues. but the real work started when moonlighter finally got his shit together, sort of, and the cto and i spend half the day coordinating testing. it was long, hard work and it got late very fast. i was tired and had a headache, but i know that aota isn't interested in leaving the hotel so i joined the it guy for a walk about town. after a decent dinner i bought some good rum fairly cheap (myers's), and we went to play pool in a super-divy joint. it was really fun!

i haven't a clue how we made it back to the hotel, because we don't speak any spanish and the taxi driver didn't know where it was. but i was exhausted and passing out on the back seat... until we arrived. after a quick shower i lay down to write this, and instead was distracted by a long series of insane ice hockey fights and amazing clips of ufc champion st pierre.

it's late, i'm tired... and i'm not looking forward to resuming this shit early on a saturday morning. today was delivery day: we should have been done weeks, if not months ago.

core temperature offset

last night, i was sweating just thinking about how hot it was going to be in panama when i arrived. the thought of it when i finished packing at 1am was enough to force me to open the window; i couldn't sleep otherwise. the -6 the night got to was good enough, though.

---work yesterday was relaxed. the new director is precisely the kind of guy one should be able to expect in a managerial position. he's all about doing things right (even more than i am), and he has a head for meetings and memos (which i don't). this is seriously comforting. perhaps i'll learn a thing or two!

dinner with godmother after work was really nice; her doctor friend came over and made inappropriate consolations that were quite amusing: apparently montreal's jewish community could use another eligible bachelor. i was a little offended when godmother scrapped an offering on the grounds that i'm not a "creative type". i kept my begging to differ to myself :P

my packing took a while, and was accompanied by netflix's stand up shows - louis ck, aziz ansari and joe rogan. none of their performances were particularly good, but there were a few funny moments.

i woke up this morning to episodes three and four of penny arcade's strip search - it's simply excellent!

the officials at the us border told me that with my short-term visa stapled into my passport i wouldn't need to carry my old one at all. i found out the hard way that this only applies to ground entry - i couldn't check in at the airport and i was extremely fortunate to catch a ride home and back with our art lead who hadn't gotten far after dropping me off in the first place.

the front seat of a no-class emb-145 is nothing special. aside from overhearing conversations in yiddish (so it *is* a living language!), i passed the flight either nodding off or feeling crap.

no water on the plane?! i mean, nothing coming out of the tap, and waterless soap indicating that that's intentional? damn, united airlines, i've never heard that one before.

---once again, i forgot to request vegan meals on my flights. i was hungry when the meal cart came by, and when i heard "cheeseburger or chicken wrap?" my choice was easy to make. the first few bites tasted weird, though i couldn't quite put my finger on what was bothering me. it wasn't bad, as such, but it definitely wasn't good either. then i got to the halfway mark, at which point i had a clear view of the wrap's contents. not so much with the chicken, and plenty with the cheese. what the hell? i immediately thought back to the news report i saw two hours before, about the heart-attack grill guy most unironically dying of a heart attack.

this is newsworthy in america? they don't exactly force you to eat there, their food does precisely what it says on the tin. free meals if you weigh more than 350 pounds? AWESOME. it's essentially a legal euthanasia clinic! they really shouldn't shut it down (i presume there'll be calls for that). a quick death by excess doesn't sound so bad, actually.

i dropped the wrap, and moved on to the salad. well, the lettuce. it came with a dressing, which i was tempted to use until i read through the list of ingredients, which would have done a fantastic job of mitigating any potentially healthy / not nutritionally irresponsible effects of eating the lettuce. i picked up the brownie, wondering if it was possible for it not to be too bad: milk, eggs, corn syrup... yeah, okay. whatever. but... "made with love"? love for who?

---arrival in panama. first off, flying in over panama city at night is incredible, the city is magnificently well-lit and between the ships and the city it's beautiful.

the airport experience:

1. immigration was surprisingly uncomplicated.

2. i was shocked and horrified to discover that the lock on my bag was missing. my first thought was that crooked panamanians had picked the lock and stolen the demo equipment i was transporting, but the stuff was all there. later i found the polite little slip from the tsa: "to protect you and your fellow passengers... the officer may have been forced to break the locks on your bag". the bag was in transit, dammit. america, land of the free? that's a country that really doesn't understand the meaning of the word freedom. and privacy in particular.

3. i was worried about customs. i've heard stories. i lucked upon two officials who didn't speak english. after an odd back-and-forth, i asked if they wanted to send me to someone else.
"just go," i was told, with an unsubtle "just get out of here" to boot. i hadn't completed the forms, so they don't know what's in my bag, where i'm staying, or how to contact me. smooth.

the hotel:

it really is rainforest, the hotel is located in the middle of a national reserve. i'm sharing a room with our it guy. he regaled me with tales that make me certain that nobody's in control of what's happening here and that i may as well take things easy. i'm disappointed to learn that he's looking to work somewhere else; he's fed up with having so much responsibility and being at the mercy of bad management. i can't say i blame him, and i really hope that with our new additions we can turn things around a bit.

---the remake of the jazz singer is very different from what i expected. also, much longer. it's a surprisingly good movie, and even more surprisingly serendipitous: jess and his wife separating because she's not into what he's into feels heartstring-tuggingly similar to my present story with pg. i'm not sure how i feel about the blackface nod to the original.

---hmmph. i was totally getting into breaking bad, but then fallout 3. much healthier. also, i had a flash of inspiration on the way here for a quick and cool comic, maybe i'll play with that now that i should have a good deal of spare time.