August 3, 2025 - bloghan 58
It's the beginning of the end. Only 4 more bloghans guaranteed, possibly a fifth (I haven't decided yet). But that doesn't mean we have to say goodbye right now. Stay a little while longer, linger here for a bit. I've already made up my mind that in September, this portion of the website will become stagnant, but most other places will not be. Random thought (I will revive it at one point I promise) will probabyl continue, and maybe I can pick up the door project again! I probably won't but we'll see. Now as for the stuff that happened this week, well... there was a bit of tension, a bit of drama, and a somewhat sad backstory driving it all. Are you going to see that all represented in this post? Probably not, but let's agree to pretend that's it's because I'm a masterful writer and you are a novice reader who can't pick up on the subtle background-goings-on within the first person narrative I weave and tangle. Well, here it is:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: burrito bowl ingredients at that one restuarant I go to often, apparently. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. A burrito bowl has to have all the essential non-meat ingredients, especially the lettuce. I love lettuce.... mmmfgh... also, sour cream and cheese are extremely necessary (I understand because of my chili experience). As for my bean and rice preference, as much as I like basmati rice, brown rice just makes more sense for a burrito bowl in my opinion. Like, white rice is better in my opinion for things like curry and all that. Also, isn't white rice supposed to be bad for you or something? I eat it in limited amounts. As for the bean, I just like the sound of pinto better. I just feel like it fits better with the burrito aesthetic. I like the salsa medium but I don't like all that much of it, so that's why I ordered the salsa as I did (I am tired of the amount of spiciness in my life so I do limit it a lot). I also always ask for both the corn and the veggies to get maximal value out of what I pay for, but the corn mix tastes way better than the other veggies. The other veggies are a bit more bitter, and I know that while bitter is probably good for you, I can't lie to myself and say that I like eating it. Now for my protein choice, chicken just kinda works with everything. It doesn't necessarily have an optimal combo with everything, but it just kinda can fit into the flavour background of anything else. The others are fine, but are more distinctive. Also more expensive. They're also more expensive. I mean, I guess as a treat it would be nice, but I just feel like the chicken will work however which way I'm feeling that day. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
When I got into work on Monday, I was immediately greeted with a message from my successor, congratulating me for getting that reimport from last week all up and running. Yeah, well, most of the effort was the not-manager. I proceeded to do some work (including a short crashout at something my team did, causing me to sit in the corner in a cardboard box for 5 minutes to cope with reality), though some of that included making slight adjustments to the Jeopardy board and a little bit of bloghan. About an hour after I came into work, the link for the new work Music League got sent out by the idealist. We closed the one we started last week because more people wanted to join, so that last league was considered a trial run of sorts. Now, the idealist had chosen to share this new link to the new Music League as a QR code, but I wasn't about to believe this QR code actually led to it until he scanned it himself. He's also a big fan of lying, so there was no way for me to know sometimes. This time though, he was being truthful, and like that I had joined. The theme for this week was "Fight Songs," but since my predecessor couldn't remember what other themes there were from the last League, it was the only one available. I helped filled in the gaps (memory be remembering), and from then on my focus was split: half on the work in front of me, and half on the amount of people that had suddenly entered this corner to chat. People were in and out of this corner as I sat there, as was work and a new task, and random messages from others. For example, the idealist started to find the "emo" emoji really funny and sending it to everyone, and my predecessor got me to fill out a form (not one that he made, but some manager instead) for me to give feedback on the last project. This slowed down as people went off for lunch, but around ht emiddle of the day there was a power outage once again. I got up and laughed a little bit, but just as I was about to set out to explore around, my predecessor met up with me. Every other temp had gone down for lunch already, and I was just thinking of starting on my own lunch, but I thought now was as good of a time as any to get up. This had happened once before, before my predecessor had returned to the office, but this time it didn't seem to just be us. I don't know how people already found this out, but business all down this street had their power down too. My predecessor and I talked with my mentor a little bit and reminisced about the last time it had happened, and then I had a realization: I should get hot water for my tea now, while there's some hot water left in the dispenser's tank. We went to the break room and just out of curiosity, I looked in the cell: pitch black. Oh man. It's a good thing all the temps in the cell were away for lunch at the moment it happened. Going into the break room, I was surprised to see just how packed it was. I guess people didn't really feel like working all that much during a power outage, but luckily for me, no one else had thought to take any hot water from the dispenser. Disappointingly, the power came back on ten minutes later, so everyone got back to their work. My predecessor did just that, but I took a little bit longer of a break to drink my tea and eat my lunch. Once I got back to work, my main task at work was preparing to do some more detailed reimporting. Things had changed a little bit in the last project compared to the new project, but a LOT had changed in this new project. If I just used the reimport tool willy-nilly, it would see those huge differences and choose to take what's in the old project as truth. The correct way to approach this was to see what files had changed in the last project since I last looked at it, and see if those changes needed to also be repeated in the new project. Most weren't but a few were. I made a little thing in Tcl to help me out (well, actually, I made this thing way back in last August, but I needed to slightly adjust it for what I was doing in the now). As I did this and got tired of it simultaneously, I would also go around the office to try and invite people to the Jeopardy event on Friday. Some people weren't in so I had to message them online, but all the ones I messaged online told me no. Well, that's alright. My work rival was also not a fan of how we were going to do catering from that burrito bowl place, but he also said that he would talk to the idelaist who had already said he was not coming. The idealist actually did visit the corner for a second time today, and I showed him some example clues from prior Jeopardy games to allieve some of his fears surrounding how he wouldn't know as much stuff, but he still seemed unconvinced. Oh well, I'll let my work rival handle that. I also visited the cell at one point, around 3 houre before I left, ending up talking with my successor about just how stressed she is about the nightly stuff she's got not fully working as expected (hang in there girl...), and with Steve and Swarm trying to figure out something wrong with the project, but having a very hard time parsing through to identify one of tiniest parts of the project wehre the issue lied. Swarm was looking into using some parser lbirary to make something to find it, but I told him he doesn't need to do that: that's what we have Absconder for! I sent him stuff related to Absconder when I got back to my desk, but I have a feeling he won't be doing that. Oh well... some people can't really be reasoned with. I continued on with my spot merging, finding the changes between old and new versions of the last project, but I didn't quite finish that off by the time I headed back to my place. When there, I'd like to say that I really locked in and completed a whole ton of bloghan but... no. Not really. I did somewhat well in 'Voltorb Flip' then got really frustrated and distracted. I cooked up some pesto pasta with sliced Italian sausage (which I prepped yesterday!) and broccoli, and it tasted really good! Then I went back on the computer again so I could get frustrated with myself (clearly, it just means I should spend more time on the 'puter), followed up with a nice little online journey to figure out what song I would submit for the work Music League that kept me up until 3 hours past midnight. Ah, well. What did anyone really expect?
Choosing that song late last night (and not even being able to commit to one!) resulted in me waking up quite late on Tuesday. At the time I woke up, I didn't even bother to try and speed through things. I took it slow in the morning for the first time in a while, but somehow still finished all my morning prep earlier than I thought. I needed to head out for the bus at the time I would usually start, and I had about 15 minutes to kill before then. I pulled out my work laptop to do at least a little bit, to make up for the half hour I would miss in walking to work this morning. First, I saw that the merges I had done yesterday had passed the battery of tests I started last night, so I went ahead and submitted those to the new project. Next, I saw that those IT folks had finally set up everything for the newest new project, but that gave me an idea: that form they give us to request the new storage space for the projects doesn't allow us to use our project numbering properly; when we choose the number of the project we are making the request for, they give us a dropdown menu that maxes out at the project number from three years ago. Why is this not a text field that we can enter a number into? I sent that suggestion to one of the IT folk, and he told me that the best course of action for me would be to start up a support ticket for it. Well... ok? Just before I was about to leave, my manager sent me a message, seeing me online. He saw that I had done the reimport for the not-manager's team's stuff, but he wanted to know about our team's stuff. Well, that's what I submitted 5 minutes ago! After telling him that I did it with the spot merge method instead of the reimport tool, I left for the bus. It was a sunny day today, and because I had to walk the second leg of my journey on foot again, I walked up to my desk real sweaty. When I opened my laptop up again, I saw that my manager had thanked me for that reimport work. My goal today (which I shared with him) was to start doing it for another branch, and I also let him know baout the suggestion I made to the IT folks. He had a few questions about scalability regarding that second thing, but I assured him that I would bring that up too. As I began to do this spot merging for that specific branch, I quickly got sidetracked by Jeopardy things. First was a realization that one category in the current board I had designed (one that's suited towards my Japanese coworker's and the compatriot's tastes/interests) was very similar to a category from the last board I made (the one that has the Beatles as a theme), so I had to change that category on the fly. It was a cool category I think, but the way I did it in the Beatles themed board was better. Plus, I had already tested that one, so I might as well make significant changes to the new board now since it was as of yet untested. The second thing was talking aith my co-DM and the compatriot about the Jeopardy plans. My co-DM was going to be missing the event because she had become busy for this Friday over the course of a weekend (my work rival's going to be VERY happy about that... I'm a little hurt, but also unaffected. whatever...), making it alright if I shared the baord with her to get some feedback. I also saw that the list of names saying that they wanted to get catering for Friday's event had grown significantly, with my successor's name prominently at the bottom , and in the same handwriting, her boyfriend. Now no one said anything about this being a second-floor only type of deal, but there was a reason why we only wanted people to invite themselves to the event nad not put down other names. It could potentially get messy with the catering aspect and other reasons that the existentialist gave me. But... well, they are literally dating, so I'm sure it's fine for them to speak together. Then, the compatriot walks in from whatever meeting he has, sees the two new names, and erases my successor's boyfriend's name. Again with this frustration at my successor and the new temps over in the other building. I feel like this is unfair, but I don't tell him this to his face, only over messages when I'm back at my desk. I mean, my predecessor invited his wife and no one said anything about that! I don't know who told her about the event because I was going to do that today (she wasn't in office last Friday even though she was supposed to be?), but I guess this saves me some time. When I got back to my desk I thought to eat lunch, but decided to tease Steve with the idealist's help instead, then have a bit of a talk with my work rival about the traitor and my successor attending Jeopardy (just chill man), and finally deal with some messages about me apparently not signing up for the temp lunch that was occuring tomorrow? No idea why the email invitation system didn't work, but I guess it's good that someone checked. From here on there wasn't all that much that's notable until much later in the day. I had a conversation online with Blue-haired about the UK censorship laws (how did he not know about those???) and more of this spot merging on this branch (actually, it's looking more and more like nothing has changed all that much? so I guess I won't need to do any merging?), and the not-manager asking me to update some document with the details on the reimport I did for his team (I already updated that though? can you please READ?????). Also, I went to get tea in the breakroom with Steve, and on our way back we decided to say hi to the pair in their little room. ONe of them offered me a cookie made with Vietnamese coffee and it tasted SO good!! We got to talking for a little while longer, but then teh fanatic and my co-DM walked in. THe fanatic kinda took over that whole conversation and interrupitng me midway talking about Jeopardy and stuff, so I ended up just leaving. I later told my work rivla nd the idealist that they should go ask the pair for a cookie because I thought they were so good, but she did not let them have one. SOmethign to do with how I run stuff like Jeopardy for the group? I mean... ok...? Around 2 hours before my regular leaving time, the existentialist came by to the corner, along with my predecessor and the idealist. They wanted to talk food plans for Friday. The idealist and my work rival started complaining a whole lot about the food plan being that burrito place, saying our catering plan was stupid. Also, they wanted to go to soem fried chicken place that day instead. Fine then! Go write on the board that you want fried chicken and get off our catering list. Then, the existentialist started going off, asking me to help come up with a way to figure out who else actually wanted catering and who else was planning on attending but not getting food. I really didn't want to do this because I was still figuring out this board, but my predecessor had my back. He formed a group chat, and he... wrote a digital hardware module with a hardware description language, and turned contributors on? What? How's this supposed to help us with this task? Then he started typing into it, adding nets and stuff named things like "getting_catering" and "not_getting_catering" and I understood. This was his nerdy and joking way of getting people to fill in the answer to this question, and it was working remarkably well. My work rival had a bit of extra fun with it as he wrote in a whole new bit of logic at the bottom of the module just to complain about not getting one of those Vietnamese coffee cookies. I, of course, filled in for the role of the lint checker and put comments wherever he added a new wire that had not yet been given a definiion anywhere. We quickly got the information about who was getting catering, and I think the existentialist was quite happy with that. I got back to my work soon after, but just as quickly got up again because I heard that the teams had already been made. I had previously visited with both my co-DM and the existentialist to let them konw that my co-DM would be in charge of making the teams, but I think that others in the crossword cubicle had decided to go ahead with team making after they saw everyone who was attending put their name into that hardware module. It was the 6-team format thing (the one where 3 teams of about 5 people would play in the first hour, and then swapping with the other 3 teams who would play the board in the second hour), and it seemed pretty even? I didn't see any problems with it, other than the fact that my Japanese coworker would be placed with people he didn't really know all that well. I was a little bothered by how quickly everyone else had gotten this together, since I did tell my co-DM she would be deciding the teams, but I guess they did get her help with it so it's all alright in the end. I headed back to my desk and let my work rival know that the teams were ready, and he went off to check it out. After a short while I began to hear very loud arguing coming from the direction of the crossword cubicle. Oh no. Now what? I go over there, and my work rivlal is yelling and arguing with the compatriot and the fanatic (as the gregarious and my co-DM watch on) about how he HATES the 6-team format. Did... did he not know? I guess its possible that no one told him about this format. He's very upset about it because he feels like it's going to be a lot more borign for the people who aren't playing, and because the players he likes watching go up against each other aren't playing against each other. He's also very upset about how my Japanese coworker, who this event is mainly for, has been put in a group of people he doesn't really interact with, and that the second set of teams seems "less knowledgeable" overall and would make for a drier game. I gave the reasons why we are doing the 6-team over the 3-team format last week, but essentially it's because with fewer players on a team, individuals are incentivized to partiicpate more, leading to a more fun game for each person. My work rival disagreed for those reasons above, plus the fact that this level of engagement wouldn't matter if the groups were large and composed of people who really knew each other. My appearance in the cubicle made thigns worse, with everyone now turning to me to ask what my thoughts on each of their talking points were. I started with a noncomittal appraoch to each question at first, but this ended up just drawing them into louder and louder arguments amongst each other instead of using me for evidence. This wasn't good. I didn't want full-times or even managers coming in here to yell at us about ditrubing the office or something, so I got in between the two fighting parties and told them that I'd figure something out, but that yelling and arguing isn't going to solve anything right now. That sort of worked, but my work rival didn't go back to his deks until we agreed to shuffle around the teams so that he would end up in the game with all the "more knowledgeable" people in it. I shook my head. Looked around at the others in the crossword cubicle. Headed back. I needed to talk with him. And with everyone too. Back in the corner, my work rival was there looking unfocused and frustrated. My predecessor was also there, and my work rival questioned me more about what I thought of this whole thing. Would I personally have more fun in the 3-team format? Don't I feel bad for my Japanese coworker with the selected teams? Isn't the second set of teams going to be boring for me? I... didn't have easy answers to these questions. Usually with this guy, I can easily dismantle his aggravating quesitions, but not this time. He then brought up the idea of having a 3-team thing with full-times, old temps, and new temps, and my predecessor suddenly switched teams from the 6-team to the 3-team format. When my work rival then decided to act by making a poll around this in the group chat, I knew I had to say something to explain all of this. Not everyone was present for the argument in the crossword after all. Over the next 45 minutes or so, I started writing a giant response. In these 500 or so words, I gave a fair shake to both sides, asked everyone to stop arguing, gave each side a justificaiton as to why the other side wanted want they want, my perspective on how both formats would affect me as host (they wouldn't really), what I supported (6-team format is marginally better in my opinion), and told them that they should do a poll or make suggestions of something different instead of arguing for one or the other. I asked my work rival and my predecessor to hold off on their response until I finished mine, but I accidentally hit "enter" halfway through my draft, so I had to send it in two parts like it was a twitlonger or something. Right when I finished it though, I realized it was exactly my leaving time, so I had to run out of the building and barely make it to the bus. Hopefully, this will all have been solved by tomorrow... Things were much clamer at my place at least. I finished off my first round of JCOs (that's Jeopardy Change Orders) and did my cooking and my blgohan writing, before going to sleep a little earlier than last night. I was still a little uneasy though. I really really wanted this Friday to go well, but what's up with all this drama?
Wednesday morning wasn't nearly as punishing as yesterday's because I went to bed at a slightly more reasonable time last night. In the morning, I looked at the results of my Music League with Blue-haired and Grey-haired, and I was dsitraught to see that they had collectively given me a -10 score on one of my songs. Well, that's just great. Guess I'm going to have to work off this... debt? That's not the right word, but it's pretty close to correct I think. At work, there wasn't all that much that happened. My first order of business was to listen to 'Snake Eater' a whole bunch of times and talk to all the temps in the corner aobut the upcoming remake it was getting. Oh, that and some more of that reimport stuff, and going through the old requests for project space to gather evidence for when those IT folks got back to me about the thing I asked them yesterday. See, when I told my manager that I would ask them about adding a text field there instead of a dropdown list, I didn't actually do that yesterday? So I got prepared to send that email today. Next was a message from the not-manager asking if I had started up the process of getting the newest new projct setup. I left that on delivered. I'm not dealing with that until I have to. I worked on this email and the evidence collecting for it up until lunch time, when the temp lunch event was scheduled to happen. Still though, even after the time to go downstairs for it hit, I decided to work just a teensy-bit longer. There'd be pizza waiting for me anyways, after all. When we did eventually start heading down (complicated by my co-DM and the gregarious not being sure if anyone else was ready to go, while we were waiting for them to say they were ready), one of the girls in the pair asked my work rival to bring her cup down for her, as she had a little something to take care of upstairs first. He accepted this task ungraciously ("maybe I would if you gave me a cookie yesterday" oh come on it's not that serious), and we headed down. In the lunchroom where the event would take place, we stumbled onto a very busy scene. I mean, it makes sense, there's a huge amount of temps working in these buildings, and quite a lot of them are attending these events. But there was something strange... at the table where the pizza would usually be served, there was none! Instead, there was a tray of cookies and some plates like usual, but also some stacks of white containers. They were those plastic disposable lunch containers often given out for takeout. As we approached, the admin running this event told us that there were more chicken ones on the way, but there was still a lot of vegetarian ones left. Huh? I finally decided to look at what it was that the people at the tables were eating, and it looked like pitas! They had gotten Greek food for us on the last of these lunches! Wowee! I grabbed myself two cookies and a chicken pita, plus a little salad which I was going to add into my pita, then started to look around for a seat... of which there was only ones at the very back of the room. Well, that's alright, since it's going to be all the temps I had worked with in the past year back there anyways. We at and ate, and it tasted pretty good. We talked mostly about how there was new food, and rating it. It still was cheap I suppose, but I still liked it a lot! Conversation eventually shifted into other topics, including but no limited to: talking/gossip about the new temps on our floor, my work rival talking about how my equivalent and the girl he was talking to from (she's from another floor) seemed to make a good romantic match (what), some discussion about why the fanatic keeps going to the pair's room to talk to them constantly (can you guess what my work rival's theory was?), and him talking about how people tend to date within their race (he then pointed at the cable guy, and that's when I had to tell him to stop talking about dating). Other temps behind us started playing table tennis at the table, and the ball kept getting launched at us, specifically nearly hitting the gregarious and my co-DM multiple times. This caused the latter to cut her lunch short and leave, but the rest of us stayed long enough to see my work rival to go back to the food distribution table to grab the freshly delivered fries. The fries were alright. The cut was perfect, thick cut, but the seasoning felt off. Well, whatever, I'm feeling pretty full from my main lunch food anyways, so I don't need too many of those fries. At some point, the existentialist and my predecessor decided to come visit us down here for whatever reason, and they got shooed out pretty quickly because they're no longer temps. I'm sure they were just going to say hi, but I took it as a sign that maybe I should head back up. What a great lunch! Once I'm back at my desk, not much time passes before the next little event starts up. To celebrate something related to the last project (I have no idea what exactly it was, but it was something!), there were apparently supposed to be cupcakes placed at each manager's desk? But as I got up to look around for them, I just saw the cupcakes at common areas in the office, just kinda lying wherever. Then, I saw my co-DM and the gregarious hauling around this cart full of cupcake boxes all around the office, placing them at these spots. I guess managers did NOT like the idea of having their desks become cupcake hotspots? The gregarious needed to do something at her desk but unfortunately got looped into this, so I took her place. My co-DM and I went ahead dropping these boxes off, and once we were done I headed back to my desk. Upon getting back, my work rival told me I should go get my predecessor; once I did, he suggested that we go to my manager's desk to get cupcakes, unaware that I had just helped dropped them off in places that were NOT my manager's desk. Sorry, predecessor, for taking up your time. Finally, I got back to work, but YET AGAIN I get interrupted because of something new. Well, it's not new, but it's another one of those meetings with my team regarding the new project. Once again it was upstairs, but before we could go into the room there was a little bit of conversation taking place outside the room, with my manager listening in. That one full-time from last August was there, asking how that reimport process was going and if his old flow for helping out with it was working. Uh... well, I haven't really been using it for what I was doing, but I'm sure it's working just fine! Also, my successor and the newest new guy are there too, talking about some difficulty they're having with removing or adding some... some something and how it's gating others on the team. Now I don't know if this was something my manager knew already, but I swore I spotted him raising his eyebrow at it. Personally, I would've liked to never be seen talking to my colleagues in front of my manager, but if they wish to do so..? Good for them? The meeting was nothing special really. I wasn't brought up like last time. At the very beginnning, the director joked about if my manager liked this meeting room that was quite out of the way, but I think the joke flew over his head because my manager gave a somewhat deadpan and truthful answer? Later on in the meeting, that thing the newest new guy and my successor were talking about got brought up, but with just a nod of confrimation from them, nothing came of it. Later on though, she got interrogated slightly again about some flow she was trying to run but couldn't because another flow was supposed to be run before that, and that latter one was not working right now. That was strange to me, because I've run that former flow once before and I never had to do that latter flow as part of it. My manager seemed unconvinced too, but when he pushed her for a more complete answer/proof and she started taking a long time to find that info and report it, he just moved on after hearing her answer. Guess we have limited time up here, and indeed, another team started aknocking on the meeting room door; we all left and all headed back down. As we were going down and even back at my desk, I asked her about what she looked up that told her that info about the flow, and it seemed that you didn't actually need to do that second flow to run the main one? But she told me that it wasn't exactly that, so... I mean, I am definitely less experienced at this then she was, so she's probably right. I did end up having one more conversation with my successor today, and that's when the existentialist came to the corner to ask me to test something out. For the catering order, there was an online portal for people to submit their order, with all the details of which ingredients you wanted. Now I knew I wanted a burrito bowl, but the existentialist was really pushing me to decide on an order, so I let my successor choose which protein I wanted. She told me chicken. Great choice, and probably what I was going to go with anyways! After this, there wasn't much I did at work. I had a bit of conversation with the new compatriot about Linda and Kevin O'Leary, another round of JCOs that I ran by my co-DM (she liked it a lot! definitely not as easy as it used to be, but still not debilitatingly hard), a little bit of some workplace Music League talk (trying to get people to put their songs in for the Fight Songs category), and then: time to leave! Now normally I would just skip my regular bus rides and go straight to what I got up to once I got home, but this bus ride was different in that Grey-haired just up and called me. She was at a tech store, and she wanted my recommendation on a laptop, given the field of work that I'm in and (mostly) my interests/hobbies. I gave her some sound and displayed advice, but once I got home I could be a bit more detailaed about it. It felt strange getting a call from her on the bus, and it was the first time in a while I took off my headphones on the bus. I never realized just how noisy these things were! When I got inside my apartment, we had a call that Blue-haired eventually joined. At first, I had a joke that my portion of the conversation had nothing left to give and I made motions to leave, which led to Blue-haired demanding that I left the call. Oh, well. Fine then. I got to work on bloghan and learning about Chisel (the hardware description language), going about 15 minutes before Grey-haired called me and told me it was a joke that I apparently didn't get. Ah. That would.. make sense. I still kind of ended up pretty silent during this call anyways, as it was mostly Blue-haired giving laptop buying advice to Grey-haired, with me sometimes chiming in with the same repeated joke of "oh how fast is she going to break it ha ha ha Break-Break Devil Fruit powers ha ha." The call ended pretty late, but just before I went to cook something, my father called. He warned me not to say no if the company decides to invite me back to work there after my temp position ends (wasn't planning on it...), then tells me him doing the same many years ago was his biggest life mistake. After this, it was about plans on how I would ge tback to my home city at the end of August: driving back. Hoo boy... that's something I don't really want to do, but I can't exactly say no... After doing my cooking and looking into how long and how expensive that would be, I was feeling very very tired. I had been staying up late and waking up at the same time more and more as of late, and it was not doing me well. I could barely focus on bloghan stuff, just doing word puzzles, random news scrolling, and a bunch of random videos too. Well, everything that happens to me here is usually my fault, so I can't complain too much but... aggh, come on me! Get it together! I go to sleep, somehow even more frustrated with myself than yesterday. At least people aren't arguing about Jeopardy anymore, just voting on that poll.
Thursday was a lot like Tuesday, where I woke up late and didn't even bother with trying to make that early bus. Once again, I came online for a couple minutes before leaving for the second bus, and I ended up talking a little bit to one of those IT folks. They had already started to respond to the email I sent yesterday about the text field thing, but he seemed a bit confused about what I was asking. But I couldn't respond right away: I had a bus to catch, then a good long walk to make too. I was definitely walking slower than I was on Tuesday due to the tiredness I had accumulated throughout this week, but I'm not going to let my tiredness stop me from getting where I wanted to go. Today, that was work. When I got in, first up was to tell that IT guy about when I was going to be available for a call. I told him for the next 3 hours. I only realized that this would mean I would have to sit at my desk for lunch just in case after he saw the message. Well, that's alright. That gives me some time to start working on the next round of spot-merged reimports, the stuff form my work rival's team. Now there was a lot more to be done with this, so it ended up taking up a lot of my time for the rest of this week. Outside of work things though, there was a bit of a frustration with the Music League at work; there were so many upvotes acailable and the platform forces you to use all of them before submitting your votes, so a lot of people were running into situations where they didn't want to give a song votes and ended up doing so in order to even vote. I mean, there were a LOT of songs I really didn't think would fit with the category at all, but I had to give them votes. Also, people were talking about the song I submitted ('Rude Buster'), and they were not fans. I KNEW I should've gone for something more heavy if I was going to go with a video game fight soundtrack angle. Eventually, my predecessor let us know in the group chat that he would reduce the number of upvotes for the next round, but my work rival was still a little unhappy. No pleasing that one, I guess. I even overheard him telling my predecessor that he should not let any other people join, so I immediately messaged my predecessor that he should let other people join if they want to. I put in my votes then, and I will say that it wasn't too hard to recognize who submitted a couple of the songs. Apparently, the new compatriot submitted a song named 'Don't Wanna Fight' (gave that my two downvotes for cowardice), the pair submitted songs by Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, the heavy metal song was the idealist, and the 'Naruto' song was definitely the cable guy. And only like 5 of the 12 or so submissions were fight music in my opinion, but that's just my opinion. Waiting at my desk, I ended up back on bloghan after I started to get a bit bored with my reimport preparations. People came and went, asking if I would join them for lunch, but... yeah. I don't know why I told that IT folk guy I'd be available for 3 hours, but I did. While I ate, I even had some time to do a New Yorker cryptic! And of course, this IT guy didn't reach out for that call until the very very end of those 3 hours, asking for that call to take place in yet another 30 minutes. Now I had to rush my eating of my sandwich, but I did manage to finish at least. Once the call started, we got to talking, and pretty quickly I figured out he had no understanding of what I was asking for in the ticket I opened. I went to the form and all that to start going through what I was requesting, and he got some understanding pretty quickly. He thought it was weird that it wasn't a text field (isn't this your team??? your team's form???), and that he'd talk to the others about this sometime next week. With that, it was done. I reported this to my manager, and relaxed for just a bit before realizing that it was time for another one of those regular Thursday meetings. I headed over to the meeting room and... well, yeah. It was just another meeting that I wasn't really relevant to, so there's not really anything I can say about it. I mean, I can say what I did throughout it? I looked up more info on Chisel and how specifically you were supposed to use it (this confused me even more, those docs were not straightforward at all), and an insult from my successor about how monochromatic my outfit was (false! my socks are blue), which ended up leading into teaching her how to move directories from the command line. I ended up helping hre with that even after the meeting. At the time, I thought it was a bit strange of her to not be able to do this. Was she imcompetent? But now, looking back, I get it. Her messages weren't saying things like "I don't know how to do this at all," they were actually more along the lines of "I think this is how I do it, but I'm not sure and I'd like to confirm with someone else." No, she's not incompetent, work rival, anyone else who thinks she is. Just a little unsure. I probably would've been in the same spot if given this very task last year. I feel a bit sorry about my mindset when dealing with her folder copying question, but hopefulyl I can make it up to her with future interactions. After this, I tried to focus in on my work, getting pretty far in. I got a little automation going to help me out with it too! I got so wrapped up in it that I ended up finishing all that off right before it was time to leave, so I rushed out one more time to catch my bus. I said goodbye to my Japanese coworker as he was stuck on call with his manager, like I had been for weeks, months now. I've never really called attention to it because it was just so common, just part of what I did nearly everyday but now? This was the last time. This time tomorrow, he won't be working here. It got me a bit sad on the journey home, but I steeled my resolve by really deciding to make this next day, his last day here, as good as possible for him. I don't really know how close I am with everyone in this office, but I think my Japanese coworker is one of the ones I want to stay in contact with way in the future. When I got home, it was Jeopardy testing time with Blue-haried and Grey-haired and... uh oh... it was not great. Typically, my best boards often feature close scores between Blue-haired and Gre-haired when I test it on them, but this time there was an extreme difference between the two. Blue-haired went negative almost immediately, even though I often gave him control of the turn from Grey-haired (I would give Blue-haired control to select the next clue whenever Grey-haired got distracted with some random conversation topic she got from the clue; I wasn't doing this passing of the turn specifically to help Blue-haired score more or to get Grey-haired to focus on the game, but instead it was to speed up the game so that there's shorter window for Grey-haired's internet or devices to start acting up and stall things out even more, and it worked!). Near the end of the game, Grey-haired's internet decided to just bug out and that caused her to start repeating the answer to a clue really loudly and repetitively. At least it didn't last as long as the last time this happened... in the final round, Blue-haired got it right and Grey-haired got it wrong, but Blue-haired's confidence had been killed during the game and he gambled 0 dollars. I don't think he would've won anyways, but that test had me worried. Even during our feedback where we adjusted clue and category difficulties, I was feeling nervous. Would it be like that tomorrow? Woudl my Japanese coworker struggle with it and think this Jeopardy thing sucked? I know he didn't always enjoy the Jeopardy games I put it because he had a very different knowledge base compared to almost everyone else. Would it be super one-sided to my predecessor's team, causing the other teams to feel stupid? I really didn't want that to be the takeaway that my Japanese coworker would get from tomorrow's event. But... I've already put all this effort into the board, and it's too late to change it and have it ready for a test. Whatever happens tomorrow, happens. The call ended soon after that, but I wasn't done on the 'puter. After a bit of staring at the board in hopelessness, I decided to playu my worries away with a good old round of 'Balatro,' getting a really insane run with Yorick and Glass Joker on the Checkered deck. After my cooking and my writing and even more puzzle games to take the edge off, followed with some rather last-minute and rough face shaving (SO MANY CUTS IT BURNS AAAAAA), I went to bed. Uneasy. Nervous. Less confident than yesterday. But, confident enough, confident enough.
I stumble out of bed at a good enough time on Friday, having enough time to get all fully dressed up for Jeopardy and everything, and make it to the office on time. To be honest, there wasn't all that much I did at work throughout the day. In the morning I talked to my work rival's successor, and he said he would make it to the office in time for Jeopardy even though he was working from home today. The Music League results also came out today, and I got last place because a bunch of people gave me downvotes. I threatened in the Jeopardy group chat that every Music League downvoter would incur a penalty of $1000 in Jeopardy, but the cable guy spoke up about what his reward would be. He was one of two that gave me 3 upvotes (the other was the newest new guy, strangely), so I offered him a reward of $300 in Jeopardy. He was not thrilled about that, but I'm not actually going to do either thing anyway, so who cares? In the leadup to lunch, I was mostly doing those very puzzle games from yesterday (you know, your classic New York Times stuff, a bit of voltorb Flip, all that), sprinkling in actual work here and there. I still had that reimport to do, after all. Just before lunch, a bunch of us decided to go out for bubble tea. I didn't want to get any but I walked along with them, just to walk in the sunshine a little bit. Once again, I mostly walked alone during this trip, but when we all split off so people could support the business of their choice, I went with my work rival to the Japanese restaurant where he was going to get lunch. We actually ran into my Japanese coworker and his successor walking back to the office, with takeout from another Japanese place, something to do with ramen. Aw, it's nice that those two are doing their own little goodbye lunch. Inside the Japanese restaurant with my work rival, we talked a little bit about anime and the like, before getting into a more serious topic. He had noticed my worry, and I started to tell him about yesterdays testing results, but he told me not to worry about it too much. We would've talked more about this, but that's when eveyrone who went on this little firled trip for bubble tea walked in to the restuarant to see us. They got my work rival to draw something (and he drew a horse with minimalist design: pretty cool!), he got his food, and we all walked back. I did end up joining everyone downstairs for lunch, and we filled the relatively empty space with our rather loud presence. I mostly stuck to myself like with a lot of our other lunches, starting to read the Elbaph arc of 'One Piece.' This arc seems pretty interesting, and almost like a return to form of sorts with older 'One Piece,' so we'll see how it goes. It probably won't finish by the time I'm done with this company though. I spent so long focused on 'One Piece' and kinda half ignoring the rather strange manga recommendations that my equivalent was giving me that I didn't even realize it when the only people left in the lunch room were me, the compatriot, that one full-time on the fanatic's team, and the stoner. Well, I'm still eating my sandwich and it's probably because I was so focused on 'One Piece,' so I closed that and opened up 'Voltorb Flip,' which made the stoner real excited. He's pretty into Pokémon, reaching something like top 80 on the 'Pokémon Showdown' random battles ladder or something, and I let him play 'Voltorb Flip' on my phone. And play it he did. He got REALLY into it. I couldn't take my phone back from him for half an hour. Well, that's alright, I'm not doing all that much right now with work. I waited in this lunchroom and watched the stoner try and fail a lot, taught that full-time how to play and watched him get sucked into it, watched the compatriot just start playing 'Snow Halation' on the keyboard in the lunchroom, and eventually got my phone back and headed upstairs. In between my prep for this reimport, there were a couple things that were somewhat intersting. I journeyed to the existentialist's cubicle as he was just submitting the order for the catering (apparently, we weren't doing catering anymore, but instead a really big pickup order). The gregarious was there too, and for some reason they had two versions of the orderlist on their hands. I don't know why two versions existed, but they were there I guess. The gregarious suggested he use AI to tell him what the differences were, and to all our surprise it worked really well! With the order submitted, I headed out of that cube back to my desk, where I ran into my successor and her boyfriend. She was apparently going back to her place with him for a late lunch (ok?), so she wanted to know what the plan was for Jeopardy: what time to be here, where we would hold it, all that. Well, I could really only give her an estimate for the first, so I hope that's correct. Later on, an hour before we started, I was talking to the idealist about some guys from my home city I knew that he might, but unfortunately he didn't. Then, it was about that yearlong project thing that he did, and the questions I had about that. That was a very insightful conversation. At the same time, I had finished preparing the reimport, and had begun the process of starting to copy them over on my device, for later submission. It was a lot of files so I had to do it in chunks, but when it was done I first had to run the battery of tests to make sure it was all correct. I started up the tests and.. wait, 22 tests???? When did they add 15 more of those? Everytime I've run this it was like 6 or 7 tests, and that already took 3 hours. This was going to take monstrously longer, wasn't it? I asked the idealist about it, and he told me the existentialist added all those tests??? WHAT?? I stormed around the office, huffing, searching for him, and once I did I asked for an explanation. And he gave a really calm and detailed explanation about how it was always kinda a lot of tests, just all bundled together or something? So it would still take 3 hours, but we would just get more precise tests and more precise logs detailing failures. Oh... that's. That's a good thing I guess. I apologized to him for getting so confrontational about it, and went to my desk, just to see that my changes felt the test that tests to see if you can even run the tests. Lovely. I'll figure that one out later. I got up to make tea, talked with the pair for a bit (they expressed concern that the 3-team format was winning in the poll, and they preferred the 6-team format because I preferred it), and got back to my desk to fix the issue. I didn't get very far in (close enough to reasonably try the test batery again though) before it was time to start herding people down to the conference room we woudl be using. It took a while, a LONG while, but during that time I found out that my work rival and the idealist had still not returned from the fried chicken place they went to, and that my Japanese coworker had been taken off the premises by his manager already. We said goodbye to my co-DM and the gregarious (oh yeah, she flopped on this plan too! always seems to happen, but I can't really hold it against her), and the cable guy and I headed down just to scout if the room was empty. It wasn't. There were two full-times just randomly in here. We explored around the first floor, looking to see if there was a notehr room big enough, but there quite literally wasn't. It all turned out ok though, because by the time we looped back around it was just one of them in there, and he immediately left when we told him about our plan. Now people were filtering in, and I even swa my work rival and the idealist return, eating their food in the lunchroom. Let's see here... I had already seen off the existentialist and a bunch of others to go pickup the food, I had people watching for when my Japanese coworker returned, and everyone was about to join us down here (well, not the traitor; he didn't show up at all today, but luckily he didn't put in a order for food so we saved some money there). I thought the wait for the food and for everyone to be ready would last maybe 15 minutes. It ended up being nearly an hour. My Japanese coworker had returned within that hour, but I bet his manager kept on yapping and yapping at him even after he was brought back because that's just how his manager is. And the food? I had no idea what was going on there, and people were starting to get hungry. Then, my work rival's successor shows up and he's completely caked in sweat and huffing and puffing. Did- did he actually run here??? The fanatic and Steve were still working too, and people were looking bored, regretful. All this had me pacing up at the front of the room, stressed out. I really didn't want to start late, but I was willing to start late by little bit. An hour? That's not a little bit. I thought I was saved when the food came though, but because I chose to wait for my Japanese coworker even longer instead of just starting, a bunch of people went to another room to eat, and now my attention was split between two rooms. Then, my successor messages me that she was running late, from her boyfriend's account. At this point, I was really feeling the pressure, and I relayed this stress to Steve over messages. He made me feel a bit better about it all. Even my work rival, who had finally decided to join us in the conference room, was trying to help me to destress. It was working, so thank you two for that. Finally, my Japanese coworker came down, finally free of his obligations. He brought chocolates too (yum!)! Even though he was here, we still couldn't start for another 15 minutes because the people who moved to the lunchroom were very hesitant in getting up. I mean, one of the pair had barely even touched her bowl! Once they did get up, after I stared at them creepily from a doorframe, we could start. And man, was I wrong about the balance of the board! It was neck and neck the whole time (until my predecessor's team, the full-times, bet it all on a Daily Double and lost). My Japanese coworker got a lot of the questions right for the first time in these Jeopardy games, and everyone on his team (the old temps) treated him like a hero for it! There were a lot of questions also relating to my home region, which drew great enjoyment from people on each team also from that region. The only contenious part was at the Final Jeopardy round, where the answer was "radical." The full-times got it, the old temps got it extremely wrong, and the new temps answered "rad." I spent a while deliberating with myself about whether to give it to them, but ultimately decided not to. That was an unpopular decision, yes, but it was all made better by us playing another board, the Beatles based board we didn't get to play at the end of June. In between games we took a short break, which saw Steve leave with barely a goodbye to my Japanese coworker. Also, the newest new guy wanted to know how my Japanese coworker knew so much about that one techie category, but my Japanese coworker was more surprised that not as many people knew about it. Ah, Jeopardy is always filled with good times. The next board was slightly harder for everyone than the first, but it still resulted in a really close game for any team that was not the old temps team. I don't know what happened to them, but they suddenly were not able to buzz in for any clues at all, always getting beaten out by the other two teams (I found out later that the website I use somehow accidentally got rid of the penalty for buzzing in early, and the other two teams discovered this before the old temps did... sounds like I'll have write anotehr email...). This time, it was the new temps that won by being a bit more strategic with their betting than the full-times were. These two games were so fun because it felt like everyone had a good chance to answer at least one or two questions, and everyone had a good chance to win too. As the event ended, I said one last thank you to my Japanese coworker and the compatriot to the sound of great applause that I had to request, and afterwards the existentialist brought out some cake and demanded everyone take a slice before they left (lots of people just straight up left anyways). Soon enough, it was just a couple of us left in this conference room, just cleaning it up, trying to put the chairs back the way we found them, some waiting for rideshares to get here, and some of us spending our last few couple moments with my Japanese coworker. Me and him ended up taking a picture together, like we said we would many many months back, to show to our surprise mutual friend. Don't worry, I'll show him soon. After wiping down the cake table and my predecessor making sure we turned off the projector and screen, it was about time we left. With one last hug from me and my work rival, I saw my Japanese coworker leave with others for the last time. I myself got a ride back to my place by my predecessor and his wife, and the mood in the car was a bit quieter than usual. It's sad to see someone go like that, but I think he and I will always be connected in some way. When I got home, it was late. I tried to stay up late just to get something done, anything but the tiredness from this week was really catching up with me now. I was starting to fall asleep in my chair, so I decided that enough was enough and that tomorrow was another day, and crashed in bed, falling asleep almost immediately.
Nothing much to say about Saturday, where I woke up a good couple hours after noon. There was a bit of planning with my predecessor and our friends from our shared home city about going to the aquarium tomorrow, but overall a lot more tired scrolling and distractd video watching and all that. I did some useful things though! I ordered my groceries for Monday, I did some cooking, I even wrote chunks of bloghan late late at night! But yeah, I felt so drained from this week, all the effort I put in to just about everything, I think a more restful day was deserved. Before I went to bed (3 hours after midnight) I began to pack my bag for the trip tomorrow. This was going to be fun.
I got up early in the morning and rushed through my routine. I had overslept by just a couple minutes, but at least this time I wasn't fighting the clock to reach a bus. My predecessor and his car were far more understanding. Turns out though that I didn't really need to rush at all. He first was running late by 10 minutes, then by another 5 on top of that. When he did get here, I hopped in, looking forward to a car ride that would pass by new scenery. It didn't. My predecessor's wife just drove us down the same route as the bus. Well, that's alright. After fielding some questions about why I have a membership at the aquarium (I like the aquarium? what more reason do I need than that?), the car fell into silence. I was happy enough looking out the window. Once we were at the subway station, his wife lef tus to our devices, then told me that I was responsible for making sure he would be back here at this station before a certain time. They had an anniversary dinner planned, and he was not to be late. Aye aye, miss! We headed down into the terminal, talking a bit about the transit in this city compared to my home city, but really quickly we ended up on a train. He also started this bit about how this station at the very end of the line was the best because you didn't need to read any signs to go the way you wanted to go. Well, yeah, but for any other station it's literally just one sign, maybe two. He was adamant about it being a way bigger gap than I was giving it credit for. Really, it wasn't. It's just two signs maximum. How can there even be any more than 2 that you would need to read? And it doesn't really matter anyways if there's signs to read anyway, because you can just read them and understand them as you're walking. There's basically no time loss from reading the signs??? What's he on about? Now, don't be worried about us. We did manage to talk about other things on this train ride, like future work prospects and our current work; the stuff we would be doing today; the friends we would be seeing soon; the friends we would be seeing less soon; the friends we would be saying goodbye to soon. But, those last two or so are conversations for another day, and that guy with the 'Tokyo Ghoul' bag sitting on a seat (both him and the bag in two different ones) and preventing a grandfather and his grandkid to both have a seat are looking rife with a way to change the topic just a tad. Now my predecessor's lateness in the morning would translate into us being slightly late when we got to the station, also by about 15 minutes-ish, and my predecessor went ahead and told the friends we were meeting that we would be slightly late. They said that's ok because one of them was still getting ready. They... they hadn't even left the hotel??? Well, that gives us a lot of leeway. When we got to the central terminal station, the pre-agreed-upon meeting spot, me and my predecessor wandered into the main hall area. We had about 10 minutes before our friends got here, so we explored around a little before my predecessor announced that he wanted some tea. Well, we just passed by this coffee press place, why don't we go ask them if they've got anything. Unfortunately, they didn't (yeah, should've seen that one coming), but the guy we asked turned to the other working behind the counter, and she told us about this really good tea place in the terminal, along with some very complicated and quickly-given directions to follow, which we ultimately completely failed in following. It led us to an ATM and a dead end. Then, my predecessor spotted a chain restuarant location close by where we got lost, but the line was very long. I pulled out my phone to get a look at this place on the map, but while I couldn't actually find the tea place that girl suggested, the map gave me an idea about what she meant in her directions. We headed down from the floor we went up to in our original following of directons, then at the other side of the large hall we went up again, but in a different place. Sure enough, there it was. It looked closed, but when I checked on the map app a second time, I found the store's page and saw they were opening exactly... oh, well, exactly now! We headed in and this tea shop was totally bougie. It felt so weirdly clean and put away. There were some elements of style, sure, like drawers in cabinets styled like they were part of a large and grand furninshing set, and the shelves had some decorative leaves falling down them, but other than that it felt kinda modern, shiny, and spotless. I don't know... it felt strange. The menu was just as strange too, but I guess a bougie tea shop would have some weird add-ons for your tea. Whenever the cashier posed a question about what my predecessor wanted in his Earl Grey, he would often have to ask what it was or what she thought was best. It was a kind of expensive cup of tea too, and as we walked out he said it was "just alright," but wouldn't have noticed the difference between this and the chain restuarant. Maybe I should've stayed quiet when I had that idea. We go back downstairs and head to that coffee press shop once again, this time waiting outside of it for our friends. I'm interrupted in the middle of a sentence by them showing up behind me. The two of them, one a former president of a society I halped out with once, and one a former project manager of that club I sometimes talk about. They've also got a guy with them in a purple shirt that I've never seen before. Mr. President, Mr. Project Manager, and Mr. Purple Shirt respectively. Mr. President and Mr. Project Manager see my hat, emblazoned with my company's logo, and decide to take a picture of me (a "shill" they called me. a "shill!") and send it to all our mutual friends back home. Some things never change, I guess. We talk for a good bit at this corner, catching up, asking about the remainder of each other's weekends and/or vacations, before Mr. President finally got us all moving towards the aquarium. For some reason we all decided to take the long way around to it, so you know what that means: Way! More! Conversation!! Woohoo!! I talk too much. Need to do more work... but anyways, the conversation was a whole lot of repeat comapred to the train conversation, just with Mr. Project Manager joining us (Mr. President and Mr. Purple Shirt were walking faster up ahead). I guess there was an additional couple of segments with Mr. Project Manager, just about the club we were both in and how it's doing, and about his upcoming research position too. I had him trying to re-convince me to become the lead of one the club's divisions (hee hee, I already agreed! no need to try again and again even if I express doubts now..!) by the time we got to the aquarium, and oh boy it is completely packed isn't it yep aw geez well alright let's just shuffle in and get in line talk some more and then wait and wait and wait and wait just a bit more and oh are we still talking about the Analog Guy yeah he's cool and wait and wait and just like that, we were at the front of the line!
...what kinda writing technique did I even just use there? That was weird, it was almost like the words were flowing straight out of my thinking mind, like some sort of stream rushing out of my consciousness.
Wait... say that again?
Anyways, after I scanned my membership (giving a discount to all the others with me for their day passes - that's why we went here) and got past a little confusing mix up at the ticket scanning line, we were there: at the aquarium. And man, on a summer's Sunday morning, I really underestimated just how many families with very young children would be here. I didn't mind personally, I can enjoy the aquarium regardless, but I was a bit nervous about what everyone else was thinking. Well, I can't really control that I guess, so who cares!! I can live how I want. Some of the highlights of this trip were: seeing a blue lobster actively roam its tank (it even approached us and bumped the glass) instead of just lying at the bottom, constantly aura farming and staring down the more passive orange lobster; stopping in front of the narwhal info panel for like 30 minutes just to talk about club stuff with Mr. Project Manager; talking about the rare prints on tickets; finding my favourite bench in the aquarium; seeing schooling behaviour for the first time!!; the tropical section being so packed that we just took the fast track instead of the coveryor belt that was supposed to be the fast track; seeing so many more sharks swim over our heads than they usually do when I go to the aquarium alone (what's what up with that sharks?); Mr. Project Manager being unable to feel the electric shock from the electric eel info panel becuase of how many times he's shocked himself during club activities; the sea dragons (no one said anything about them really but I still think they're so cool!!); the temporary lizard exhibit which had some D&D paraphernalia inside it, inspiring Mr. Purple Shirt, Mr. Project Manager, and myself for our next campaigns; the manta ray exhibit (my favourite place) and our conversation about how Mr. President is always late for everything because he takes SO LONG to get ready; then, by the upside down jellies talking about my plans when I eventually come back to my club and the story arc that I would try to write for it; talking about control systems by the water pipe management system thing, Mr. Project Manager's interests; all three Mr. Ps freaking out over the axolotls in their tiny little fishbowl; then, the manta ray petting zone, where Mr. President spent 20 minutes or so trying to pet a manta ray (he could barely reach the water from where he was standing) on his phone camera, without dropping his phone in the water. We left the aquarium afterwards, and I was fully satisfied with that visit. I'm not sure how much the others enjoyed it because of all the screaming and crying kids, but I enjoyed it and I think that's what counts. We had a little group discussion after this, and decided to next walk to some old historic district at my predecessor's suggestion? It was a rather long walk that took us back through the big train terminal, then out on the streets for a good half hour. We talked a bit at first, but as the journey went on we sort of focused on the walk. We passed this street festival, an opera house that looked cool, a large construction project, but overall not much to say about this walk. The histroic district itself wasn't all that interesting to me either. There was this large heart shaped structure that I'm sure is for couples to pose under, and we all sat down in front of it just to rest from that walk. As we walked through, it kinda just reminded me of the old town in Switzerland? Like, I don't know, this doesn't seem all that interesting to me, but if it's for the enjoyment of the Mr. Ps, I'm alright with it. We walked on farther: there were some restuarants that were very very expensive or very very "come get drunk here" coded, a giant statue of a peace sign with lots of symbols of world religions carved into it where we tried to see/guess some of the more obscure ones; then, some random stage where musicians would eventually play some reggae/rock fusion; some sort of dsipaly that was shaped in the letters "L," "O," "V," and "E" with a heart symbol, covered in padlocks (might be nice to do something similar, one day); then, the end of the road where there was this fancy sign welcoming us to the district. We jaywalked across the next street which was completely normal so that Mr. President could take a picture of that fancy welcome sign, then backtracked through it. On the way back to the main train station we encountered that street festival once again, and decided to go in one of the building nearby to get food. It turned out that th e building we entered was more of a small little shoppping center with a bunch of restuarants and grocery stores in it. It felt like an outdoor market, yet somehow it was inside. It took us a LONG time to decide what to eat (mostly because of Mr. President), but I settled for some veal sandwich from this Italian place because it looked good! My predecessor had also decided to get his lunch from this place too, and got one for wife, all maybe 10 minutes before anyone else had decided what they were going to get. The place was packed too, so we often lsot track of where everyone was, but after we got our lunches we made the rest of the trek back to the large main terminal. The Mr. Ps had a concert to attend and a pre-merch line up thing they needed to be in (well, ok...), but at one particular intersection my predecessor realized it would make more sense for us to split off from the Mr. Ps instead of going to the same station as them; it would simply be faster as us. We said our goodbyes: I probably would never see Mr. Purple Shirt again, but he was pretty cool to get to know; I will definitely be seeing a lot of Mr. President next year when I return; and as for Mr. Project Manager? Well, I'll see him around, just slightly less that I'd like. It was great to see them, and as we headed to the alternate train station (where he brought up his STUPID argument about reading two signs, right after we read two signs- IT'S JUST TWO SIGNS! JUST TWO!! T-W-O!!!!) and back to our starting location, those guys were the focus of mine and my predecessor's conversation, among others we have come to know. I'm so glad I get to keep both my friends from back home and the ones I make here, even if we don't talk as much or talk too much in different points of my life. Ah, but I've already used 'Thank You, FRIENDS!!' as a song of the week, so I can't get sentimental about that until The Last Bloghan. It takes us a while to get back to our starting location, and we even get lost in it trying to find the exit where his wife would be waiting for (I never knew this train terminal had a secondary bus terminal attached to it??? what??), but once we get out the right door I see my predecessor's wife in his car, in the exact same parking spot she dropped us off in. Did she stay here the whole time??? Surely not... OK, on the ride back she confirms that she went out to do other things in the area, eating the sandwich my predecessor got for her from the passenger seat (she made her husband switch with her for the ride back). We mostly talk about the Mr. Ps and the places we went to at first, but once I've said my piece I slip us back into that comfortable silence that I'm perfectly alright with. My predecessor's wife wasn't having it though: closer to the destination (my apartment), she asked if I had gotten up to any dating during my time here. To deflect, I tell her that I simply do not have the technology to do any carbon dating of anything found here. This gets both a laugh and a second question, about the "other" type of dating. I go through about 4 other homophones to deflect, but eventually I tell her that I haven't done any dating because it's not really what I'm looking to do/focus on right now. She seemed happy with that answer. I honestly don't know what to think of her asking me that, but I think it's best if I stay quiet anyways. After one last question from her about if I want to do karaoke sometime before I leave (YES, but you have to give me a time and place and I'll BE there), I'm dropped off at my apartment, and those two head off to whichever restuarant it is. Have a happy anniversary you two! I got in my apartment and did a little bit of chores before doing a little bit of bloghan, but I blame that long walk today for what happened next: as I was typing away, on pace to fully catch up on bloghan, I started to feel tired and sleepy again. I started to fall asleep at my desk, AGAIN! Fine then. I know how to fix this. A 15-minute nap! I set the alarm, go to bed, and wake up 3 hours later, after the sun has set. Well, shoot. There goes that catching up plan. I make a small dinner with stir fry noodle and almost finish one of the bloghan's I wanted to today, but before I do, I stop. I have the day off tomorrow. To make sure I don't run into this "falling asleep at my desk" issue again, why don't I just... go to bed earlier? Vienna will wait for me, won't it? And so, I went to bed. Unsatisfied still, but with each passing day I get better and better. And I think that's a wonderful place to be, even if it doesn't always feel like it.
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans:
- Bloghan catchup: did one week's worth, plus a little bit into the next two weeks. I think this upcoming week is the one where I catch-up..!
- Door: no progress
- Jeopardy board for the compatriot and for my Japanese coworker: see above, but yeah, I got it all ready for testing on Thursday and it played extremely well on Friday. Also, before both those days, I did help with the event planning quite a bit, so I'm happy with that.
- Music League: I sent my songs to both groups. I got shot and eaten alive by both. I did not succesfully send a message. But at least I got it out the door.
- Visiting friends: see above for our aquarium visit! I think I'll go one last time this upcoming weekend..?
Going into this next week, I think I can get the bloghans all caught up. I can't keep going like this, but I've been presented with a wonderful opportunity in the form of a day off, which I can easily follow up with a moved work from home day or even a sick day! I think I also want to start thinking of a fun last Jeopardy for this month (maybe for the day my work rival leaves?), and I kinda want to do something extra interactive for Blue-haired and Grey-haired too! Oh, I think I have to update my resume as well. And maybe a cat cafe visit into an aquarium visit on the weekend, if all things shake out the way I want them to. I think this upcoming week genuinely has the potential. Finally, I think this is the week where I finally catch up fully on the 'One Piece' manga. Please.... let me have what I want, just this once. I know it's a lot, but I really think I can do it now!
Song of the week
'Omoi yo Hitotsu ni Nare' (https://youtu.be/Fz0XoQY3sMw) by Aqours is the song of the week. The title of the song means "may our feelings become one," but to fully explain this one, let me tell you a short story about the voice actors behind Aqours at one specific concert. In the 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' anime, when Aqours performs this song they perform it without Riko, as she has a piano recital that day. When they adapted this song for the voice actors to perform at the live performances, which mirror the ones given in the anime, they had Riko's voice actor learn the song on piano. The plan was that she'd play the piano from one end of the stage as the other 8 VAs would perform on the other side of the stage, but the extra training that Riko's VA went through for this piano were very agonizing and frustrating for her. On one of the concert days, when it came to this song Riko's VA messed up badly right at the beginning. She began to have a bit of a panic attack, then broke down and started crying then and there. All the other girls went over to her and hugged her to make her feel better, and the audience raised up all their penlights in her colour, sakura pink, to show their support. To my Japanese coworker, a lot of my effort this week was for some enjoyment on your last day, and a chance for you to get a highlighted performance. I know that the last year or so of this job has really pushed you to your limit, and I am so glad that I was able to become your friend and support you throughout it. Even if we perform on different stages in the future, doing different things, I'm sure that our feelings still resonate the same. Aside from that. Aside from that. Well, another reason I chose this song is that the other song on its single release is 'MIRAI TICKET.' I think only my Japanese coworker will understand why that song is relevant to the sentence I just said.
Until next time
It's nearly here. The promised time. The one that I promised to myself at least. There won't be a neverending night hanging over me for just one more night. I've still got things to do in these final days, but I think I finally have the ways to actually deal with them in a way that brings me something close to closure. How much longer will it be? I hope to not keep you waiting, huh. Whatever the case, I hope to see you next week.
- bubbler