I believe I hinted at this in previous posts, but I had been looking to switch jobs for quite some time. More than anything, I think it came down to disagreements with senior management, which was vastly compounded by the steady degradation of the working environment. It took a very long time, principally because most Canadian consultancies are pretty risk-adverse and didn't want to make senior hires unless they had oodles and oodles of work lined up. Of course, now I have to help win new work, though I do have the advantage that this firm is truly organized internationally, so there is no issue of putting a Canadian on a U.S. project and vice versa. Other companies claim that this is possible, but the reality is that there are massive challenges of working across borders. So that's quite exciting.
While the first week has been almost entirely devoted to training and just getting set up with new equipment, I have put in my input on a few leads already and "added value" in raising a few issues that I thought would be important to show the client we had sufficient understanding of the project. Hopefully, we will win at least a few of these jobs and things will continue to go well. There are always quirks at new places. I find it rather annoying that they don't allow transferring files from any USB device, as I have a lot of large, critical files that I do need to transfer over. There is an IT policy on how to get an exception, so I am following that. It does, however, mean that I can't rely on listening to music off of a USB, and I also don't want to upload everything onto the share drive, as I am quite sure they have a policy against that. At some point, I may start trying to listen in to Youtube (and restore my playlists yet again), but for the moment, I am compromising and listening to the many albums I've purchased through Bandcamp. The silver lining is I hadn't listened to a lot of this music more than once or twice, so it all feels pretty new to me. I also really hate the whole hot-desking concept. I have a lot of reference material (books and journals) and there is nowhere to store them, since we are expected to just put our stuff in a tiny locker. This whole concept just cuts against the idea of deep rootedness that I think is actually essential to succeed, and at some point the organizational experts will realize what a huge mistake they have made, but the damage has been done. I'm going to keep pushing for a permanent space, i.e. to be an exception to the rule, but it will probably take a couple of months before I can make this happen. At any rate, the good outweighs the bad, and I hope it stays that way for many years to come.
I did have to stay quite late at my last week of work. Even now I have a few outstanding items, but I think in general the transition wasn't so bad, at least from my perspective.
I was able to go swimming twice this week, and I actually biked a couple of times (and maybe two or three times the previous week as I was winding things down at my former job), which is pretty incredible, considering it is the middle of February! Now, we have gotten snow. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but enough to be uncomfortable when you are no longer used to it. One small irony is that I had left my bike at the bike shop for a minor adjustment to stop the brakes from squealing. I had planned on picking it up after work on Thurs., but clearly wasn't interested in trying to ride home in the super snowy conditions. I think I will just need to pick it up no matter what Friday after work, even if I just have to walk it home.
I've continued seeing movies on a regular basis. Frustratingly, I am being shut out of TIFF screenings all the time, and just in general am not impressed at how few older films they show compared to the past. Being a member does not seem worth it, and I cannot see renewing my membership next year. Instead, I go to The Paradise a fair bit, though I wish they showed even more movies, and Carlton Cinema for their $5 retro movies. I don't go to The Fox that often, as it really feels too far out of the way, but I did catch The Holdovers there around the holidays. I almost never check The Revue website, as that is just way too far out of the way, and I'd rather not know what I am missing. Anyway, returning to The Paradise and Carlton, recently I have seen Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Taxi Driver, Chinatown, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kurosawa's Dreams and, just last night, Amelie. A pretty decent run.
Reading is a mixed bag as always. I'm finding I really don't care for Zora Neale Hurston's early short stories. I'm pretty close to bailing, though maybe I will read the rediscovered ones set in Harlem. Veličković's Lodgers was ok. Almost all the "action" takes place in a museum in Sarajevo where the director and his family have taken shelter from the siege. While the tone is quite different, this reminded me of one of the few passages I still recall from Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum, which also takes place in a museum. While I likely will never reread The Tin Drum, I might chase down that chapter. I'm nearly done with Vincen's The Empty Page. The narrator is (intentionally) kind of tedious, and the closest equivalent I can come up with is Machado De Assis's Epitaph of a Small Winner. But next week I should be able to start in on (and likely finish) Pym's Excellent Women, and I think it will be a combination of Rushdie (probably starting with Fury) and then finishing up whatever is left of Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica. The plan is to take the bus out to Buffalo on Sat. (to see the Albright-Knox Museum) and read this on the journey. I'm a little nervous that they will have had more snow, and the roads won't be clear, but in general, it should be fine. I don't see any more snow in the forecast for Saturday. Hopefully, all goes well with that, which would be a good way to round out the week. And I'll have Monday to recover, as it is a stat. holiday (Family Day), and indeed my son is back from Ottawa, so we may be able to do something fun together.
No comments:
Post a Comment