roll for initiative

Ants are way cool.

When I was little, I used to play with ants in the backyard. I’d see a trail of ants running from someplace to someplace else and I’d wonder how they knew where they were going and why they were rushing so much. Ants rush all the time. They never walk. Hell, they never just jog or even run. They always sprint sprint sprint. (Well, I’m sure they walk when they’re foraging, but when they’re going some place they’re going there SPRINTING.)

I’d place stuff in their way to see if I could distract them. Little branches, leaves, maybe even a burning match or two. But nothing could tear them away from the task at hand.

Later I took to lighting a candle and dropping little beads of wax on the little guys. I felt a little guilty about it, but I was sure they were still alive - just suspended in the wax. If I could’ve figured out a way to melt the wax without hurting the ants I was sure they would come back and immediately head off to their original destination.

One summer my brothers and I went to visit one of my mom’s cousins in Parati, a few hours south of Rio. It’s where The Emerald Forest was filmed. Mom’s cousin lived in a ranch in the middle of a tropical forest. His backyard was full of paths through the forest, one of which led to a little creek.

We spent much time hiking and exploring, seeing all the jungly vegetation and animals. One day we hiked up the creek. It was part hiking, part bouldering, part slogging through the creek, and the occasional wading. After following the creek for a while we came up to a huge boulder that was over 30 feet across and about 10 feet high. It blocked the entire path and since the creek couldn’t go around it, it went over it, making a waterfall that splashed into a large lagoon.

We stopped for to play in the lagoon for a bit. After splashing around, we decided to continue. We worked our way around the lagoon and found a spot where we could climb up on some smaller (yet still amazingly huge) boulders to scale up to the lip of the waterfall.

I remember being the first one to come up onto the waterfall. I pulled myself up, looked over the edge and saw, about a foot in front of me, a river of red army ants. It was a swath of ants about a foot wide that came up one side of the boulder ran for about 10 feet and then disappeared on down the other side.

And it was solid. You couldn’t see the boulder below the ants. They’re must have been hundreds of thousands of them. We stood there and just watched them for a while. We couldn’t see where the trail began or where it ended but the army ants just kept on coming and coming and coming. After a while, we decided to turn back - nobody wanted to try to cross their path.

Why am I going on and on about ants today? Well, today I got to hear E.O. Wilson talk. Dr. Wilson is THE ant researcher and is one of my childhood heroes. He spent his entire career at Harvard studying ants and ant society. His theory of sociobiology is largely based on his work on ants. He’s already won the Pulitzer (twice, once for On Human Nature and again for The Ants). I imagine he’ll win a Nobel one of these years, too.

In any case, it was awesome seeing him in person. Maybe in my next post I’ll ramble more about ants, sociobiology, and why EO rocks.

Well … not much comes to mind as I sit down to post tonight … so you all get little taste of a new concept I’m beta-ing:  Spreading Activation Conversation Style.

Work’s going well.  I don’t feel like I’m being tossed to the wolves.  There’s a good gentle learning curve right now that’s allowing me to get my bearings relatively well.  We’ll see how that lasts though.  That’s all good too, as I’m ready to start contributing.

Going on day 5 or day 6 with out a cig.  Making mad willpower saves!  Cuz that’s how I roll.  It helps that I’m not around old coworkers.  Like I said before, so much of the entire smoking ritual is social that it’s difficult to quit when they keep pulling you back in.

More excitement in my world.  Went to Target today.  I swear, I can never leave that place with out ending up spending around $120.  Yes, $120 at Target.  One wouldn’t think it would be possible but it’s deceptively easy to get sucked into making impulse purchase after impulse purchase.

Crap.  Now I’m hungry and there’s nothing to eat.  Grrrr.

A quick shout-out to the 3 of your reading this from Makati.  Ikinagagalak kong makilala kayo.

These last few days have been hectic with a capital HEC(k). Packing, flying down to the Bay Area, starting a new job, switching from PC to Mac … it’s enough to put one at a serious risk of illness due to stress…

All in all, I feel like I’m taking a trip to someplace foreign-y. Maybe somewhere in Canadia … or some (other) former British colony. Sure, all my new coworkers speak “English”, but they do things a bit funny. Everything I assumed was just the way things were (period) back in my country (i.e., last employer) must be re-evaluated and re-examined. Are people friendly-friendly or more formal at work? Is it okay to say “In my old company we did it this way … “? Do I shake hands? Bow? Is it customary to tip? Small things like that.

No more office either … we’re all in open collaborative spaces. Which is great, but it does take a little getting used to. Somewhat (but not really) akin to driving on the wrong side of the road.

Switching from a Mac to a PC is also a little like going overseas. Everything is vaguely familiar but also different. Hmmm … maybe it’s like going to Denmark or Sweden … they all speak English … but things are just prettier, better designed. And the people are all freakishly gorgeous. It’s true, they are - much like my new sleek MacBook Pro.

Those “Hello, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” ads have it all wrong. The PC isn’t some geeky guy … he’s a hard workin’ ‘Mercan who loves his Nascar and his H2 and isn’t afraid to crank out a few extra decibels or a little extra heat emissions. Sure, he may have a low- to mid-level white collar job, but that’s just to pay the bills. Come Saturday he’s out in the geh-rahge warshing the TransAm.

The mac on the other hand is some tall and tanned guy (or gal) from Scandinavia who just happens to be working in the States. He’s worked in Barcelona and London but had the bad luck of being reassigned to the States. It’s only barely tolerable that he’s working in NY … or San Fran. He loves indie music but could care less for sports. If he drives at all, it’s only because the transit system in the US is quaintly ineffectual.
In any case, I’m starting to pick up on the language differences and the new strange customs. And I think the water’s safe to drink. It just tastes suspiciously kool-aidy…

A good friend of mine, JD, when he heard that I was quitting my job said “Are you trying to collect life stressors?!”

Good point.  In the past year I think I’ve gone through 4 of the top 10 or so life stressors.

The helpful folk at medindia.net have a handy calculator on which you can put a check mark next to all the various “life stressors” that you may have had the pleasure of experiencing in the past 2 years.

Me, I think I’ve checked off 10 or so of the 40 items on that list.  Granted, some of them were gimmes … as in Holidays and “Diwali, ID, Christmas” which occur with freakish regularity … about twice every 2 years, by my calculation.  Though I’m not sure what “Diwali and/or ID” are, I checked them off anyway.

The one that’s plaguing me right now (as in 8:45 this morning) is the “Change in responsibility at work”/”Change to a different line of work”/”Fired at work” trinity.  A few weeks ago I quit my job with evil empire #2 (for me anyway), took a 3 weeks loafing vacation, and today I start my new job with evil empire #3. 

Well, I don’t think it’s really evil, quite the opposite.  But the people I met during my loops were preternaturally proud/excited/gung-ho about working there.  More so that at any other large, globally dominant, hegemonic, corporate empire I’ve worked at.  I’ve always had a bit of a jaded/pessimistic mindset when working at these large tech companies.  It should be interesting to work in a place where everyone’s really drinking the kool-aid.  I’m actually looking forward to taking a few sips of the juice myself.

Oh, back to the life stressors… after checking off all the appropriate calamities my results came back as “under serious risk of illness due to over stress”.  Great.

Luckily for me I have the hardy immune system of a 3rd Worlder.  Growing up in less than antiseptic conditions has it bonuses.

While I’m on the topic of self-induced mindfucks …

A few years ago, a bunch of friends and I turned 30. Since we went to high school together and graduated the same year we all turned 30 within a few months of each other.

Turning 30 wasn’t all that traumatic, actually. My friends and I felt “young” and if we weren’t in our early- to mid-20s, we still didn’t feel all that different from when we were 28 or 29 … so to us, 30 felt just like an extension of “late 20s”.

40 was much scarier. 40 is big. 40 greatly reduces the chance that you have more years ahead of you than behind you. 40 is “I-remember-when-MY-parents-were-40″-old.

I thought I was pretty clever. While my friends were worrying about 40, I knew that 35 was going to be more traumatic. 35 is the sneak attack. Everyone’s looking out for 40. You know that one’s coming. But a few years after 30 you look up and you’re 35. You stop to think about it for a bit … and you realize the 35 is 1/2 way to 40 … and just last year you turned 30 … oh wait, was it last year … shit … that was 5 years ago?! Holy crap! 40’s gonna be here in no time?! I haven’t done (INSERT MEANINGFUL YET UNACHIEVED/POSTPONED LIFE GOAL HERE) yet?!

Here’s a little timeline to illustrate how that process would work:

The yellow line represents where all my friends were looking. They knew that 40 was coming and it was scarying them.  The red line was where I was looking. Yeah, I knew 40 was going to be traumatic, but I also new that 35 was going to sneak up on us and we’d look up one day and be 1/2 way to 40.

Pretty clever, huh?

This is what actually happened:

The red line is still me being clever and looking out for the 35 sneak attack.

What I wasn’t expecting was the blue line. That blue line is the 33/34 sneak sneak attack. I WAS being smart … I was being so smart I outsmarted myself into a mid-life crisis.

This is how all this went down in my head: 35 is 1/2 way to 40. One (and by one, I mean me) might say that 35 is practically 40. But all of the sudden, I look up and I’m 33, which is OVER 1/2 way to 35 … which is 1/2 way to 40. Hell, 33 is practically 35 … which is practially 40. Simple algebra will tell you that if A (practically) = B (practically) = C, then A (practically) = C.

Thus … 33 is (practically) the new 40.

And thus the early mid-life crisis.

I’ve got to stop being so damn clever.  Too clever by (practically) 1/2.