August 25, 2024 - bloghan 8
bloghan 8! This week had a lot less going on outside my place, and a lot more things go on inside my apartment. Work is just as busy as it was last week, and there's some interesting stuff that happened then, I guess.
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: breakfast foods. This tier list is not so much on taste, but taste in combination with flexibility, and ease of preparation early in the morning. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, but unordered within tiers. My go-to breakfast in the morning before work is usually one of oatmeal, toaster waffles, or over hard eggs with toast. I don't usually want something super sweet, but chocolate chip toaster waffles aren't too bad.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
Work has been a little bit more relaxed. This was the first week where I got my own desk, one right by a window. It belonged to the coworker who basically taught me everything in my first few weeks, his last day being what was celebrated last week. I'm now part of the close coworker corner! With strict regards to my work, I was on the edge of my seat a couple of times during the week, becuase I had finally been given the go ahead to submit my changes to two important things in the project. They weren't major changes that changed the entirety of the project, but they were still sizable enough that it took a while to get it ready. However, I couldn't just submit it right away, but there were some things I had to wait for befroe submission. Specifically, I had to wait for other people to submit their changes, and wait for those changes to be verified. Once I finally did it, there were some oddities I noticed afterwards, so I guess I'll be figuring those out this week.
There were three other noteworthy things that happened at work. One was a talent show thing that HR held. I didn't participate, but I'm glad I didn't present myself doing a Capri-Sun speed run like one person submitted. A friend in my location submitted their drawing of the company's CEO (presented as a time-lapse of the sketch), as well as showing some drawings of the CEO he had made on the whiteboard and many sticky notes (he left them in the close coworker corner). He got third place! Exciting stuff, he won a speaker and an Uber Eats gift card, and a request from HR to frame his sketch and send it to headquarters, so they can give it to the CEO. Typical HR. The other big thing was a heart-to-heart I had with one of my coworkers: my work rival. Just as one person left the week before last, three more had their last day this past Friday. My rival was a bit distraught about that. He opened by asking if it seemed like he liked his friends at work more than his friends at work liked him. To be honest, I felt like that was not true for him, but more true for me, but I only told him the first half. He elaborated, telling me more about how he felt really connected to the three that were about to leave, since they had similar backgrounds and religions and such. He had only been around them for 4 months, but he already knew he was going to be crying on their last day. At one point, he said that if he could control their minds, he would make them come back to this company at the next summer, if they chose some other company at that time instead. It was a bit strange, to me, at least. I shared with him (just as I've shared with all of you) how I find it rather easy to say goodbyes or let go of friendships and things like that. I feel the connection as strongly as others do while I'm around them, but when it's time to say goodbye, I can't imagine myself crying about it. Even before I left my home city for this job, when my friends told me it was really sad that I was leaving, I was a bit confused. That admission of ease was something I had been formulating in my mind for the last few months, before I left, but now I finally felt like I had the context to state it in. Upon hearing this, he asked me if I had a troubled childhood, going into detail about his own father, and how he didn't see much of his father when he was a kid due to his father's work schedule. He felt bad about the assumption, but I laughed it off and shared a bit about my own parents. I also shared how I believed it was more to do with one's nature, and how we're nurtured can either encourage or discourage that nature; my nature as a person is to not feel so strongly about such a thing, and my parents and general childhood experience probably encouraged that a bit. My rival told me he wished he was like me: able to just shrug off such things, and not as emotional about them. I told him that he didn't want that, since it makes one appear cold and uninvested in the relationship. We would've talked more about it, but we got interrupted by others walking into the corner to talk about something else. I introduced them to the Advent of Code 2022 Day 16 puzzle, and my rival's new Meta Raybans (I tricked them into thinking I had a Machiavellian personality, which is pretty Machiavellian if I do say so myself), but in the back of my mind, I wondered if it was right of me to say that he was the better person for actually having an emotional response to an emotional event. Finally, the last thing was another round at the foosball tables. Rounds that I did not actually play. To be honest, I was a bit miffed at first, not being asked if I wanted to play. But after watching the first game, I realized that it was better that way. The two teams were evenly matched: every game was going to deuces, and the overall skill level with ball handling and blocking on both sides was about the same. Surely, if I had asked to play, it would've been a loss for my team. That wouldn't bother me, but it would spoil the fun. The other team wouldn't have had as much fun in steamrolling my weak defense or against my weak offense, my partner would be frustrated at the downgrade in performance, and the person who subbed off would probably be annoyed that I wanted to take their place to give such a mediocre playing performance. This gave me the further realization: maybe this also applies to other aspects of my life? The first example I thought of was dating, but maybe there were others? I kind of got distracted after that, looking off into space while standing near the foosball table, but that's alright. They didn't notice anyway.
Back at my place, I had been getting up to some things to. I ended up starting 'Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney,' since I was feeling like solving something that wasn't technical. And wow! I was very surprised by the game. At the time of writing, I completed 4 of the cases, and I'm very pleasantly surprised by how the game makes me want to root for the characters, and engage me well with the cycle of pressing and presenting evidence throughout the trial sections. The music is amazing, and it's got a good sense of humour as well. I don't quite like the investigation sections (they feel like extended fetch quests which get tiring after a bit), but they're not so bad, and it's probably a good thing I go through them to get more context for the evidence presented in the trial sections. I was not expecting to like the game as much as I did, but I will probably finish off the trilogy within a month or two. The other thing I started is 'House,' the medical drama that I'm sure is really a disguise for a comedy. I only watched the pilot, but I kept laughing at every instance of blatant medical mispractice and all the inappropriate things Dr. House does. The memes were right: every episode of 'House' really is like that. I will probably watch the whole thing eventually. Another thing? I managed to beat the Arena in 'Kirby: Planet Robobot,' the second hardest challenge in the game. I only have the True Arena to beat, and a few stickers to collect, and I will have finally completed a game 100%! Something I've never done before, so to me, it's very exciting. Finally, the other big thing that happened... is spoiles for 'Jujutsu Kaisen.' Sorry, but I'm not going to say what it was. I was about to head to bed, when I decided to check if the scans had been uploaded yet, which they had been! They were two days early, which I was fine with. I read it, getting more and more excited for the possibility for the fulfillment of a fan theory made after last chapter's conclusion. And then: it came true!!! I was literally bouncing up and down on my couch, then up on my feet prancing around my aprtment, yelling things like "yes!," and "that's my GOAT" and such. It was a couple hours after midnight that I was doing this, but I don't care. Was the chapter the clearest demonstration of Akutami's poor writing by far? Yes, 100%. Was it exciting, thirlling, and hype? Also yes, 100%.
Outside of happenenings at work, there were not as many plans in place this week. There was one big event on Friday, and for the first time in a while, none over the weekend. After work, we headed to my work rival's condo. We first went up to this "yard," some artificial grass that's outdoors and up 7 floors or so. While a couple guys played Spikeball or kicked a soccer ball around, the majority of us played 'Secret Hitler' in duos. My duo got assigned "Liberal," and we pretty easily identified one other team that was "Liberal," and eventually settled on a policy of always voting ourselves or that other "Liberal" group for chancellor, and voting no for every other team. After it was pretty clear that the "Liberals" were going to win, my partner and I decided to re-create some classic Liberal infighting by switching to voting only for those we thought were "Fascists" for a round or two. The look of confusion on everyone's faces for those two rounds was delectable. I am a bit concerned about how the other condo tenants felt about our loud accusations of "Fascist!" but that's not my living place so it's not my problem. After that, some of us headed off for food. While most people went for the McDonald's inside the Walmart, I used my Walmart gift card to get one of those microwavable dinners. We hit a Harvey's afterwards for the vegetarian guy, and the first round of goodbyes was said by someone who had left the gathering earlier, but met us at the Harvey's to say goodbye on the way. We then headed back to the condo, this time actually going into my rival's apartment. It was kinda empty, and everyone was sitting on the floor, eating their dinners. I microwaved mine for 4 minutes, becuase I threw the box out before I read the instructions, but I did get to surprise everyone by popping the plastic cover as loud as possible. Once everyone ate, and dived at the strawberry, orange, and strawbeery shortcake Kit-Kat bars, my work rival started up a game of Telephone, and thankfully, most of the messages weren't nasty. It had been been a bit since I last played, but it was still pretty fun. After some shenanigans involving photos in complete darkness, the fresh circular wet stain someone put on my rival's bedsheets, the turn-based queue for 10+ people to use the one washroom, trapping my rival in his closet and forcing him to participate in other people's knock knock jokes, and a discussion on a romance plot involving two people living in two separate complexes of condos, we went back out to the yard. We spent 5 minutes there, before moving towards the patio chairs. However, the main group went ahead towards those chairs, while three others and I lagged behind to see if one of us could make a jump between ledges (they couldn't). We tried to trace their steps through the floor we had access to, given that we didn't have the fob that the residents that. We ended up doing a depth-first search through the halls, with people staying behind to hold doors open so that we wouldn't get trapped in those halls. Eventually, we just called my rival, and he brought us over to the chairs. We stayed and sat there a bit. I softly whistled and looked at the stars. One day, I want to see a sky filled with stars, not just the 5 or 6 that are bright enough to be seen close to cities. Security kicked us out, and after way too much talking and reminiscing, we finally headed to Denny's.
I really wasn't expecting a restaurant to be open for dine-in at such a late hour, and I was even more surprised that they were still serving breakfast. My first meal of the day was that Walmart microwave dinner, so I decided to get myself the item that was mentioned in Snapcube's 'Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)' fandub: the Grand Slam. I had it with orange pekoe, and it was pretty good! I've not tried pancakes with eggs and bacon and such before, but it actually works pretty well. I will be trying the other pancake styles another time, perhaps, still in the Grand Slam format. That night was quite interesting in terms of conversation: some discussion on record setting times for the 400m dash, the standard length of typical hurdles events, countries dependent on tourism, the origin of my classic "aggressive thumbs up" maneuver, roomates discourse, and the types of people who continued to walk into the Denny's way after midnight. I had a feeling that the servers didn't like us very much, since we were originally seated kinda awkwardly, and we just got up and changed our seats without asking. I was mostly quiet during this. I didn't really feel like I had much to add to the conversation, only talking when someone asked me something. Once we had all paid and left, we gathered in an awkward circle outside the door. For almost all of us, this would be the last time we saw the three people who were leaving. The guy driving me back was feeling real tired, so him and I said goodbye first. To my prior coworker: thank you. To my sane coworker: farewell. And to my senior coworker: congratulations. I remember that the last thing I told them was "you and I will always be connected from this point forwards, hmm?" A bit awkward of a line, but that's just becuase I haven't gotten around for lyrically translating 'Next SPARKLING!!' yet. And just as the literal translation continues, "It will never stop, I'm sure it won't get even warmer," this feeling in my heart.
On the drive back, I asked my driver a question: is it considered a red flag if one finds it easy to say goodbye, without much emotion? I phrased it at first as someone I knew from a while ago being like that, and he talked a bit about lane assist in newer vehicles, and how that type of response wasn't really a red flag on its own. I shared about how some of the people in that awkward circle were crying, but how I can't imagine crying over something like that. People leave our lives all the time, and I can't imagine crying over it, or even feeling very strongly about it at all, sharing about the heart-to-heart I had with my rival, but not about the content of that heart-to-heart. At this point, I had been doing so many clarifications about the type of personality that the hypothetical person had, that it was getting hard to keep track of them, so I admitted it was really about me the whole time. My driver was surprised and told me that people don't mind hearing from me, and that I shouldn't feel like I have to hide my personality or who I am from them. It made me feel better about the whole thing. Still though, I spent some time thinking about it that night. If I find it so easy to leave relationships behind like that, am I just meant to never have a permanent one in my life anyway? Why try anymore?
I got back from Denny's three hours after midnight, and went to bed another hour after that. Not much happened on Saturday, since I woke up after noon. Just some 'Ace Attorney,' some 'Planet Robobot,' a bit of cooking, and then bed. Sunday was basically the same, except for one other major event. I dropped a cooking pot lid while cooking, shattering the glass all over the floor. I was frozen for about a minute, before rushing for the broom. I swept it up for the most part (using the bare foot test to find where I needed to sweep some more), and cleaned the carpet too, but now I can't make chili. Still, I can't help but feel like there's a metaphor in that shattered lid for how this past week went for me, emotionally. Another possibility is that it represents not how it went, but what I discovered and re-discovered about myself this week instead. Either way, it still hurts.
Future plans
This week, I want to finish the first 'Ace Attorney' game, completing case 5 this week. I want to also collect the last stickers I need in 'Kirby: Planet Robobot' this week, and maybe even go out for a little walk as well. But, the most important plan I have for this week is to finally get a haircut. I have gone 2 months without one.
Song of the week
'In a Silent Way' (https://youtu.be/A9fGB1ln13E) by Miles Davis is the song of the week. Lately, I've been listening to soft jazz like this as I fall asleep, and I think it works? Either way, I also have started to listen to this song when I wake up sometimes and also whenever it rains and I'm doing something more relaxed. These days, I'm more at home in my apartment, relaxing there more often. Since some of those close coworkers have left, and the summer is winding down, the rest of the close coworkers aren't doing as many hangouts and such. Quieter days have reached me, and quieter days still shall reach me soon.
Call for suggestions
In a not-so silent way (or maybe it is rather silent, since this is all text?), we've reached the end of bloghan 8. This is the last week that this suggestions section will be here. Next week, I will be calling it "Until Next Time," unless someone... has a better suggestion.
- bubbler