Based on my past experience of going to a gym in Japan I knew that there would be a lot of people staring at me and wanting to poke me. Especially the old folk. Here in Japan there are 70 year old dudes at the gym pumping iron. Pretty impressive seeing that where I’m from most people that age are circling the drain on their last legs…

There was this one dude who seemed to be there every time I went. He looked like one of those busy bodies that knew everybody. He was always talking to a different person. He tried to nod his head and smile at me a few times but I just pretended that I couldn’t see him.

I know his type well. He is looking for an icebreaker. Once the ice is broken he will start trying to talk with me and get all pally pally. So I kept ignoring him and avoiding eye contact.

One day I was doing some bench presses. I did my last lift and sat up. It was a really hot day. I remember thinking to myself,“Woah, I’m parched”. I looked down to my left and saw an unopened bottle of sports drink.

Wait a minute, time out!!

There are only two possible ways that this drink could have gotten there:

1) The power of the mind. I was so parched and needed a drink so badly that I somehow willed it out of the vending machine and next to my foot.

2) I bought it but forgot about it.

Using logical deduction I came to the conclusion that it was neither of the above. I looked around and saw dude smiling. “Fuck, he got me” is what went through my mind. He came over and said, “For you”. I tried to say no thanks but he insisted and wouldn’t take it back -_-

So long story short ever since then dude is always trying to talk to me and keeps randomly throwing me drinks…

I have been watching a cool TV series called Criminal Minds lately. A team of FBI agents who make profiles on criminals. Here is my profile on the dude from our brief interaction:

“I don’t know his age but I think he is in his late 20s or 30s. He is about 5 foot tall. He has no job. He told me that he wants a girlfriend but is too pussy (chicken) to talk to women. He goes to the gym everyday and stays from 10am till closing time… “

I try not to judge people or anything but dude is a bit …

It is good to be dedicated about something. But when you aren’t training for the Olympics and you don’t work at the gym, what excuse do you really have for spending all day everyday there?

I think a few times he tried asking me what my plans were and then tried hinting he would like to tag along LOL. I obviously shot him down. I kinda feel sorry for dude. A part of me wants to take him under my wing, help him get laid, get him addicted coke and basically just help him get a life..

But part of me wants to just tell him to fuck off and never come near me again… However, the gym is pretty small and I don’t really want the awkward vibes… 

It is not that I am anti-social or anything. I just wanna pump iron for an hour or so in silence and then go home…

I think I messed up by taking the drink. I should have just left it untouched and walked away…

I sold my soul for a bottle of sports drink

Anybody in any weird predicaments with people that they have to be cool with even though they don’t want to be?

I can stomach it if I don’t have to see the person again/often, but when they are at a place you go to on a regular basis….

I hate having to fake being nice…

Woah, that was close. It completely slipped my mind. My memory must be getting hazy in my old age.

I woke up early with plans to knock out a few episodes of Gossip Girl before going to work. As I sat there I felt a shock go through my body. I like to call it memory shock. You know, when  a surge run through your body and then boom all of a sudden you remember something that you had forgotten.

It is a good thing I remembered when I did. An hour or two later and I would have found myself in a spot of bother. Today is my day. Right after a national holiday as well… The worst thing about it is that I was supposed to do it last week but it got pushed forward one week.

I guess it is just one of the perils of working for a small company.

There are 6 of us in our room. We do a rotation and once a week someone gets to come to work 1 hour early to let the cleaner lady in…

It made me reminisce of my stretch at NEC a few years back and made me start wondering if big company life is better than small..

In a small company you have to become part of an interchangeable unit. If somebody can’t come in you need to be ready to pick up their slack for them. You normally need to go the extra mile, do tasks you don’t really want to do (picking up the phone..), and once in a while go above the line of duty. At a bigger company you only need to worry about covering your own arse and getting your own work done. Screw the company and everybody else ;P

I think the thing I liked best about a big company is your lack of presence. In a small company if you spend too long in the toilet eyebrows start getting raised about where you have disappeared to. You can’t really keep leaving your desk or just start wandering around. Anything and everything you do is more or less under a microscope.

But when I was at NEC I was on some Spiderman shit. Once the folks got rid of the, “OMG there is a black man in the building” syndrome and stopped starring at me all day I was free to run loose through the building. Heck, there were days were you might not see me for like 2 hours straight. But what could they really do? I might have been in a meeting, on another floor or another part of the building carrying out a task.

Another good thing about big companies is that they have extensive resources. I remember the floor I was on had two big toilets with lots of cubicles. The first time I entered one of the cubicles a light bulb appeared above my head.

Since the buildings are so big the cleaners would just leave 5-6 rolls in each cubicle instead of leaving one and coming back every hour. Do you understand why the light bulb went off? Well let’s just say that, “Toilet Roll” did not appear on my shopping receipt for the next 6 months.

So what type of companies are you guys working in? Which do you prefer big or small? Do you have any interesting perceptions of either?

What is your poision? Are you a paper clip theif, a pen pocketer, or like me a toilet roll bandit.  Or are you big time and steal desks, chairs, printers and anything that is not nailed down.

Oh and here is a curve ball that I just thought off. An ethical question.

I go to work and steal 10  1-2 rolls of toilet roll.

Some kid runs into a store and steals a pack of toilet roll of the shelf.

Is there any difference? Is one more ok than the other?

Would be interested on thoughts on that.

Lastly, this link made me laugh a bit:
http://www.itsatarp.com/

Today is the worst day of my life….

Wait, what is this feeling. The feeling of a moment relived. Like when you see two black cats. I remember now, they call it Déjà vu aka a glitch in the Matrix.

Last week Monday at 9AM I was thinking the exact same thing as I sat at my desk starring into the abyss. I was also thinking the same thing the Monday before that, and the Monday before that also.

It is never ending. It is an infinite cycle. Kind of like a while loop that contains no breakpoint in sight (programmer jargon).

Every Monday is the worst day of my life (does this make sense?)!!!!

Well, ok no more complaining. It is time to fix things.

Question:

Why do I 9-5?

Answer:

To pay the rent…

Hmm, I guess seeing that is the only reason I work all I really need to do is find an alternate means to pay my rent. With my overflowing talents it should be as easy as pie.

So let’s think, what can I do…:

l  Freelance Programming

l  Online Poker

l  Rob and Steal

l  Chef

l  Artist

Ok so lets look at the talents that I listed above.

Programming is self explanatory. It is what I do every day. I guess the only problems would be getting contracts and having the discipline to get stuff done. Starting projects is easy but finishing is pretty hard. The push to get the last 10% done is always pretty intense.

Online Poker is something I don’t talk to many people about. They probably think it is just some reckless gambling like Pachinko or slots. Well it is actually a skill game. And I just so happen to have the skillz to pay the billz.

The main problem is the volatile nature of the game. Because of short term luck, no matter how good you are you will experience patches where you lose a decent chunk of money even though you played well. Losing $500+ in less than 1 hour can, ahem, spoil your day.. I suppose I am immune to losing retarded amounts of money now but it can still be pretty stressful.

Rob and Stealing is something I would only do if my back was against the wall. I think that I would be pretty darn good at it. After all, I did learn from the best:

Cooking is something that I used to like doing, but I haven’t really done much lately. I could do some catering or work as a freelance chef for special occasions. I guess it would be easier to show you my skills rather than explain them with words:

The above dish is called, “Spaghetti with a T”. It was made using high quality spaghetti only found in the mountains of the North Pole. The bolognaise was cooked at a low temperature using the on and off method where you cook for 5 minutes and then leave it to cool for 2. The sauce contains fire tomatoes, garlic, basil and high quality mince meat.

How do you like it? It is to die for right! I am sorry if the picture made your mouth water or made you hungry

With my food presentation skills and vast knowledge of rare cooking ingridients (North Pole spaghetti) finding a gig shouldnt be too hard, right?

Lastly is Art. Oh you never knew I drew? I actually had one of my pieces in a magazine. I was walking though Harajuku a few years back and a magazine editor asked me to draw a piece for the magazine. It was one of my finest hours. 

The theme was, “Draw a childhood cartoon character“. The editor was amazed. She had never seen such a drawing that I showed her

So, thoughts? Am I the next [Insert famous artist] or should I bury my sketchbook and never pick up a paint brush again?

So that is it. Which route would you recommend I take?

I am not too sure. The only thing I do know is. Prometheus is talented, Prometheus is tender… Prometheus is beautiful… Prometheus is a mystery.

Ok a quick test to make sure that you guys are awake. Can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

If not then LOL don’t worry. If you can, how long did it take for you to realize what was wrong with it?

Ok, so you are awake now huh? Good.

The weather in Tokyo today is beautiful. Not a cloud in sight. Ladies and gentleman, today is a good day to kill people go to the beach.

However, I am sitting in this shitty office at work with a splitting headache. I tried to login to a website today only to find out I didn’t know my password. I tried using the forgot password feature to retrieve the password only to find out that it sent the password to an email address that I didn’t know the password to either (I have about 6 email accounts) ..

This whole internet thing is all messed up now. It’s like I have got at least 20 passwords now. I am paranoid about using the same password and username combos for multiple sites so I started making up different ones. Now I am in a pickle and have to keep retrieving passwords. When you retrieve it they give you some junk password like “sdklfjs;dlfkj” and then you have to go through the hassle of changing the junk back into something you want.

Being the lazy bastard procrastinator that I am I never actually change the junk password. Meaning 3 months down the line I have to search through 3 months of emails trying to find the forgot password email so that I can copy and paste the junk and login to the site. It is all very annoying.

I am slightly pissed off agitated about a few other things too. The company that I am slaving away for working for doesn’t even give us dual monitor setups (PC with two monitors). The two people in the room with a dual monitor setup are not even doing anything techinical .. Single monitors suck so hard!

On top of that there is some faggot dude on my left who can see my screen. It’s annoying because I can see from the corner of my eye that he periodically looks at my screen. He has sublime timing, he always happens to look when I am using MSN and Facebook not doing any work (90% of the time). I really want to fuck him up move desk.

I just looked at the clock and it is 12PM. At least 5 more hours left until I can go home.

Somebody kill me please. 

It is a retarded habit that I have had for a while now. I wonder if I am the only one who does it. There has to be others like me, right? It is like anytime I come home I subconsciously throw my house keys somewhere and forget the location…

When it is time to go back out all hell breaks loose as I go into a crazy panic in search of my house keys. Did I put them on top of the fridge? Under the bed? On the toilet floor? Inside of my wardrobe? I think you would literally choke by surprise if I named all the random places I have found my house keys.

It can be pretty stressful tearing your house upside down looking for them when you are on the verge of leaving the house. You planned your time to perfection to catch the 8:09 train. But every second you spend searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack puts an extra dent in your plans. When you have finally found them you can no longer catch the train you planned to get, and on top of that you feel slightly agitated and heated. You should have seen me demolishing my apartment this morning leaving no stone unturned. I am pretty sure if I took you guys back to my apartment today you would take one step in, turn to me and say something like:

You: “OMG Prometheus, your house has been ransacked by burglars, CALL THE POLICE!!!”

Lol. Sorry but that kind of cracked me up. The dude on my left just peered over. He is probably wondering why I am laughing to myself.

So, thoughts? Can anybody relate and feel my pain? Does anybody have any weird habits they would like to share ? I promise I won’t laugh. I mean I will try my best not to..