Lunch was really good. Some kind of ramen variation. I will definitely go back again.

Work finished early. It was actually still bright when I left. I got to my station and skipped down the road feeling elated. I was feeling happy and lucky so I decided to play the slots. I walked up to the nearest vending machine and put my fingers in the slot and wiggled it around. Nothing, nada, empty. Oh well, that’s gambling for you. The odds of winning are always stacked against you. The odds of someone buying something from a machine, forgetting their change, and you being at the right place at the right time to capitalize are really low…

I walked into my house and there was a weird smell. What the..? Something smelled pretty foul. A dead rat? Well I certainly hope not!

It was coming from the bin area. I walked over and took a look. Mental note to self, “You don’t have to wait for the bin to start literally overflowing before you throw it out..”

I live on the 8^th floor. I had just got in and really couldn’t be bothered to go all the way back down to throw it out.  I tied it up and left it by the door so I would not forget to throw it out on the way out the next day. You see I am kind of forgetful. I would say my long term and mid-term. But my short and super short term memory is pretty awful. Does this make any sense? I don’t really know the scientific terms for the types of memory.

For example, since I live alone I normally just chill by myself and think about stuff. Have you ever been by yourself thinking about/remembering something so awesome that you are on the verge of cracking a smile even though you are all by yourself?

What I hate is when I am thinking about something awesome and feeling happy then the phone goes off or I hear a noise, and then bang the thing I was thinking about literally 1 second ago is gone. I can’t remember what I was thinking about that was making me feel all happy and shit. I have spent anything from a few minutes to a few days trying to remember what I was thinking about.

Why does this happen so often? And how can it be prevented? I guess it is what is called “losing your train of thought”? It might be worth looking into.

Anyway back to the story. So I leave for work the next day. Have a shitty day at work. Get home late. Open the front door and trip over and hit my head on the floor. I look behind me and see the bin from last night. I left it at the front door so that I wouldn’t forget to throw it out. How did I somehow manage to walk past it and not throw it out??

Oh yeah thanks Rachel. I went on Amazon today and they had a campaign saying that if I order within 22 minutes I can get Derren Brown’s book on the same day of ordering. I am going to try get off work early today so I can be there when delivery dude comes

Email from work I recieved yesterday.

Subject: A little bit of advice…

Prometheus,

Although I hate to be the one to pick on you or the one to be bossy, I’d like to
play the “sempai” = senior card here. Please read the following as constructive
criticism. This is meant to be advice, which hopefully will help you to get by
in this company.

I believe 103 is pretty laid back and we’re getting along cool. That’s great,
but this only works because we all understand that this is a workplace, and we
should maintain a certain level of discipline. Now this is not something we
drill into each other, but yet I believe it is a rule that we naturally abide
by.

Recently, I’m getting the feeling that this professional awareness is becoming a
bit weak with you (it’s quite obvious when you fall asleep during work, or
you’re chatting via Skype or MSN Messenger, or checking your Keitai  = cell e-mail, or
checking your Facebook account or  whatever other pages you may be checking
out). Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a certain amount of leeway and we all do
some of the above at some point during the day. That’s fine and cool, but it
must remain a secondary if not tertiary priority, which I can’t help feeling is
not true in your case recently (not that I have proof for that, but I think
giving that impression to your surroundings is enough of a reason to think about
it).

You’re a cool guy and I hate to be the one to yell, but I think it kind of looks
bad on you if you keep going with this attitude. The scary thing about this
company is that people are too nice to say anything, but they do take notice and
it does have an impact on your reputation as a workforce. And I don’t want you
to fall into that reputation.

So here are some ideas (my 2 cents if you will):

- Try to reduce the time spent on chatting and private webbrowsing. If you have
too much time, try to find something useful to do. I’m sure you can think of
something. If you absolutely can’t find anything, let me know, maybe I can help
you out.

- Try to keep an eye on what’s going on with the clients, what they are asking
for in the e-mails, how we are going by it etc. (Like John Doe’s case at Company X.
We’re talking about it in the office, but no one will come to you and give you
an extra report. Now let’s say The CEO comes in, and asks you about Company X’s status. How
cool would it look if you could recap the whole thing? …and how bad if you
have no idea?)

- Focus on the topic when others are talking about relevant issues you should
take part in. Don’t address your chat window or keitai=cell phone when people are talking
to you.

- Try to be a more active communicator.
If you get tasks to do from others and it spans across days or weeks, let them
know once in a while how far you got and what you’re up to (remember 104? They
didn’t know if you were still working on their requests and stuff…). Update
your teammates so they know where things are at. Check with them if anything is
unclear.
If the task you are working on is complex, confirm that you understand what you
are being asked to do (as opposed to just a simple “Yeah” followed by silence
until you’re done). Nothing is more comforting than knowing that someone you’re
asking understands your request.

Also, especially this month, you are doing the daily processes. Ask yourself:

- If Mr X and Mr Y were gone, would you be able to run the CD cut with full
confidence? Check the spots you don’t feel 100% comfortable with and check with
the guys. Your goal should be to be able to run all daily tasks and CD cuts, and
be able to take full responsibility for your output. Given your position (one of
the people running cuts and dailies), in an emergency situation you may be on
your own, and then people must be able to trust in your output.

- If The Ceo came in and wanted a recap of todays issue with the CAFs, would you be
able to explain everything? To be honest, I missed some of the things that were
going on this morning myself, since I was busy with other tasks. So what I
did is ask the guys what was going on. You know, just to have an understanding
of the issue. Afterall, you never know when that knowledge becomes important. It
was a bit disappointing to see you sleeping while we were talking (and I wasn’t
the only one to notice…). Try to be aware of what’s going on, especially if it
is something that involves your scope of work (PRICES are part of the database
you are creating today!)

OK, that was a lot of “yelling” which again I’d like to emphasize is meant as
constructive criticism. All of what I wrote is based on what I can perceive from
my desk or when I wander around in the office (I’m not spying on you, it’s just
noticeable). Some of the things I pointed out about you may not apply 100%, or
it may be things that you are already aware of. But I decided to write based on
the impression I get from you, since this may be the impression others may be
perceiving too.

I’m not telling you to be perfect. But you may want to show a bit more proactive
participation. This is me trying to nudge you into the right direction (”right”
as in “the way that is probably expected from you in this office”), before you
get hit by a harder wave in form of a CEO or other influential people around
here. No one knows I’m sending this to you. If this were Mission Impossible,
you’d be now hearing a voice saying “This message will self destruct in 5
seconds.”

Hopefully my message is coming across.
Let me know if I can be of help.

Best,
My T

Meh, it is pretty hard to put any effort in or try hard when the work you do is boring and soul crushing. So thoughts? My tank is on empty lol, not sure if I have the energy or desire to change..

Quit or wait for the sack?

Hi there, welcome to the corridors of my mind.

I sit here at my work desk very tired. Is it because I have been getting home from work at 8PM every day? Is it because I went to the gym last night and overdid it? Is it because of stress?

No!

No!!

No!!!

It is because of a dream that I had last night. But we will come back to that in a minute.

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?” Morpheus

I remember when I was younger I wet the bed a few times. It was weird. I would be in the middle of a dream then all of a sudden I would experience a scene change.

What is a scene change you may ask? I am not sure what the average person dreams of. I personally don’t dream about fairies, unicorns, princesses and rainbows. I normally just dream about everyday life stuff. Chilling with my chick. Going clubbing with Tokyo Grindhouse CEO and Cincere etc

A scene change is when your dream changes from clubbing in Tokyo with your friends, to being in secondary school again…

Ok, so when I was a kid I would scene change and end up in a bathroom or a bush and I would start taking a pee. I would actually experience the relief that you feel when you finally take a pee after holding it for so long.  I would then open my eyes and realize that I had actually taken a pee not only in my dream but in real life lol.

There are probably numerous other examples. Like suddenly feeling cold in your dream then waking up to find out that your window is open and your room is freezing. Or when you first start puberty and have a X rated dream and wake up only to find out that you…. lol

So lets return to the dream I had last night. I was dreaming then I had a scene change. I was trapped in a burning room somewhere. It was getting hotter and hotter until it got to the point that I was actually burning up in real life. Then bang I opened my eyes, threw my bed cover off and started sprinting towards the front door of my house.

After leaving my room I realized that my house wasn’t on fire and stopped dead in my tracks.. I was in a semi-subconscious state. I wasn’t sleep walking or anything, with the dream and the temperature rise I actually thought that the house was on fire. I guess it was a hardwired reaction. Like when you go to a club and hear gunshots and just run for the exit without even thinking.

It seems like when dreaming the body sends signals to the mind. If your body is feeling some sort of extreme sensation it might make your mind portray it in your dream. The opposite is also true in that the mind might send signals to your body based on something extreme you experience in a dream.

Luckily last night was the mind playing tricks on the body and sending signals based on a dream… 

Anybody have any weird experiences where they experience some sort of link between their body and mind while they dream?

Another cool topic is death in dreams. People say when you die in your dream you die in real life.

I don’t think I have died in a dream yet. There is one time where I wasn’t sure if I did die or not. I find that a split second before dying I either wake up or scene change.

Based on my recent dreams I have nearly died by getting shot, stabbed, falling off a cliff, falling of a building, and falling out of the sky. Anybody ever died in their dream and lived to tell the tale?

How many people remember what they dream about? It sucks when you have an awesome dream and forget about it. Anybody write them down?

Anybody have a dream that came true? I think I’ve had a few dreams that I lived out. But I think it’s based on the numbers game seeing that I dreams about things that I do on a daily basis… 

What do you dream about? 

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/

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.