Soul Coughing.
wednesday Sep 9, 2009 5-08 PM
Originally uploaded by conformerSome of you recently received an e-mail update from me that may have suggested that all is not right in Your Humble Narrator's melon out here in the land of pearls and rocks. Sorry about that, didn't mean to bum you out; but despite the change of scenery and the swapped-out crew at work, I still like to use the practice of stringing one humble world after another like so much popcorn tinsel as a form of personal therapy. It wasn't my intention to put you all in the blast radius of my catharsis' shotgun scatter. That's what blogs are for.
So, apparently there's a story making the rounds in the office about me, or rather, about my personal habits. Nothing unhygienic, I assure you; even out here where a hat trick of high heat, high humidity, and rude rain can reduce even the sweetest-smelling sojourner into a case for the Battle Creek Sanitarium, I make it a point to be presentable at all times, and under the scrunity of all available senses.
No, the rumor in question was concerning something that everyone has noted at one time or another; that of my diet. Without getting too much into my complicated relationship with food, suffice it to say that lunch, or any other meal that crosses paths with the eight hours I spend in the particular salt mine I happen to be contracting for at the moment, is a pain in the ass. And never more so than during my tenure at GDI, where there has never been a shortage of work to do. Temper that with my time working at various call centers, where a near-inhuman fascination with quality, quantity, and speed turned me into a walking sequence of nervous breakdowns and encouraged me to curtail my lunches to the bare minimum allowable by my Great State, (thirty minutes, FYI) and you have what I have become to-day: a person somewhat resentful of the demands of the human body.
Anyway, the story: I make it a point to leave the office for lunch whenever possible; partly to make a conscious decision to walk away from work for a time and create a solid disconnect, but mostly because I don't like it when people watch me eat. Unless I'm on a date, (hah!) I usually have one hand around a fork and the other prising open a book when I eat. In a completely unrelated but somehow relevant sidebar, I also drink a lot of water at work, but space constraints forced me to leave my beloved (albeit demonized) Nalgene bottle behind. Soon after arriving in India, I replaced it with a stainless steel model, which apparently is all the rage with the hipsters these days, and I want no more than to take on as many characteristics of as many niche culture cliques as I can so no matter where I go, I will be accepted into any randomly chosen fold.
The point is this: (and I do have one, believe it or leave it) everyone in the office sees me drink, but they never see me eat. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to assume that the resident expat in the building might be fortifying his daily imbibement with something a little more calorific, hur hur.
That's right, they think I'm a lush.
No, not really. But that's the story.
Other than that, to-day was better than I may have made yesterday out to be; not only is the work continuing apace, but my presence and style of imparting knowledge is having a more significant influence on the team members here than I originally thought. Some people here have even gone so far as to ask me to extend my stay; not necessarily because there's more information to transfer, but rather that my bedside manner is so disarming that it generates a buffer-bubble effect: people become more amenable to learning when I'm the teacher, apparently.
This is encouraging not only on the level of puffing up my ego, but also when it comes to repurposing my skills for my next work assignment, wherever that may be away from GDI. I claim, at least to myself, that I'm not a people person, that I'm more of an introvert, that people are tiresome and exhausting and I'd much rather not deal with them for extended periods of time. On the other hand, five fingers: my shiny record in customer support over the years has shown that while I may not like interacting with people, I'm pretty good at it, and I've managed to make a second string of job assignments based on the principle of customer support turned inside-out; that is, when the company is the customer.
It's like that affirmation I like to throw at people when they get down on themselves: "You have worth."
Suddenly, 2010 doesn't seem so bad.
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