September 2008 Archives

I buy the Guardian today to give me something to read at lunch, because I don’t want to have to go back to the office and eat lunch at my desk. Special offer for a free Starbucks espresso drink inside. Seems they are appealing the ethical guardian readership with their new “our beans are responsibly grown and ethically traded” marketing nonsense. Typical Guardian reader probably wouldn’t be swayed. I, however, am not a typically ethical Guardian reader. I generally avoid Starbucks because their coffee isn’t that great, not because I have some moral beef with the company. But this is a freebie so I figure why the hell not take advantage? Maybe I am a cheap skate?

So I go in there after lunch and get a double shot mocha with whipped cream. I don’t think I have had a Starbucks mocha for at least 10 years! I don’t even realise this fact until I take a sip. The taste brings back a flood of memories. I am transported back to when I used to get one in the morning before work when I worked downtown San Francisco for gap.com. I remember the chill of those brisk wintry mornings and the rush and crush on the BART train and then the 3 block trek to the office, hoping I had enough time to snag a drink before I arrived at my desk ready to toil all day coding web pages selling jumpers and jackets for kids. The job was all right actually. There were lots of friends working there, and the work was a bit challenging as I was just a beginner on the web coding front. The atmosphere was a bit crap though, all of the Gap HQ people who worked in the building were all clones. They were a tall blonde army of women who were immaculately dressed in a completely dull way. The only interesting people where the online folks, but as they had run out of room in their section I was forced to sit amongst these accounting and merchandising un-fashionistas in heels and khakis.

Now I am 8 thousand miles and 8 time zones away from that place. And almost 1o years later in time, I forgot that it even existed. The Mocha brought it all back. I think the memory burst was far more beneficial than the caffeine/sugar rush, because now I am finished with it I have a rather dull headache from the sugar. I remember why I stopped drinking this shit. Maybe in another 10 years I will have another. It just reminded me that, to quote a cigarette advertising campaign :“hey, you’ve come a long way baby!”

As we get off the plane onto the bus that will carry us the long ride to the terminal, I take note of my fellow passengers. Every single one is dressed for business, with laptop and blackberry. We are all clones. In a way I feel like we are all going to the same meeting, the same offices, although I know this is not true. On this bus I feel as if I am back at school again, and we are on the school bus, headed onto different teachers and different friends, but the same place none-the-less. Welcome to the glamorous world of International business or third grade, sometimes it feels the same.

I have a new job, this is my third week. It realised today that I have done something I didn’t think was possible, I have moved over to the other side. In Internet business terms, the other side being the sales/marketing/management side versus the technical/development/support side. And believe me, there are definitely 2 distinct sides. I’m still more or less in the middle, but somehow very happy I made it over here, where most of the day I am dealing with people and ideas, instead of systems, builds and code. Although I’m still not completely happy, I would actually like to go more into the creative side of “business”, which means marketing and other evil terms that the other side doesn’t like (or understand). But for now I have to get serious about my career. I never thought I would be serious, I must be getting old.

Its hard to get serious when at the moment I am a bit bored to death.

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Not having a camera in a new place. It kind of hurts. Being in a new place alone not much to do really but explore and look at things. I don’t think the people who are behind things like “photography free day” really understand that half of the joy is taking the pictures, not having them. Its a fun activity for me. I see ideas for pictures all day long. Sometimes I want to save them. When I don’t have the option at all, it gets annoying. My memory is not as good as a photo. My imagination is better, but that is the problem! Photos are a way of blending your imagination into reality.