Little Question

Mr.Reak

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So I had a chance to visit Russia again, during Spring Brake. Seems like my Spring Brakes are always spend somewhere else, in Japan last year, this year in small town called Dubna. That’s where I come from, been last time there five years ago. I guess my childhood memory remembers it as being perfect, which it is not of course.

Anyway, point of this, is how time moves much slower there. I visit my grandma, who sadly doesn’t remember me, my fat cat and uncle. One thing that made me realize how fast we move here, in USA. I am going to university, so weekdays consist of wake-up at 7am, taking shower, checking e-mail, relaxing in front of PS2 for little bit and rushing off to BART (ala subway system) at 9:00am. While sitting in the train for 40 minutes, I usually do some kind of homework or research. Reading books or doing quick sketches, doesn’t matter. So in university until evening, by the time I come home, I am already thinking about next day, what I should do, how I should maximize my output per minute and some other rubbish. Basically, much of my last 2 years spend in constant rush, I am 20 years old and almost done with 4-year university.

To my surprise, when I came to visit my relatives in Russia, seemed like everything just stopped. It’s a small town, my Uncle told me “why rush, if you have another sixty years ahead of you.” Well, surely there are many reasons, I need to have steady job by 25, house by 30 and so on. “Well great, but look at you, you can’t even sit in one place for a minute.” Uncle was talking to me, while cooking, which took him about two or three hours. He just liked talking and cooking at the same time. Atrocity, he dares to waste three hours on cooking a dish that would take me 30 minutes to do! How can he do that, why isn’t he hurrying?

This was my first day of Spring Brake, yet I still was in fast-paced mode. Every minute not spend doing something productive felt like a waste. I tell you what thought, with a help of my uncle, I was able to relax. Last three days were the best three days for the past 5 years, I tell you that. There is something amazing waking up in the morning, taking everything slowly, going outside and enjoying fresh air. My uncle is a poor guy, however he still got all his hair on his head, he is very relaxed and has no worries. God, do I wish to enjoy life like he does.

Well, here I am, back to society and again, I am back to my old rushing self. So here is a question to you, do you feel our society is very fast-paced? We rich our goals fast, however they provide little of satisfaction because of that and we race off to another goal.
 
societey sucks. our societey brings everyone up to be greedy, selfish, money grabbing naysayers. we all are constantly trying to better ourselves (but no avail)
and most people try to fit in with societey to be 'normal' not many people today make their own decisions or do what they want, this is because they make thier choices through what societey has tought them is 'normal' or 'better' for them....

that probly makes no sense *rant over* yeah society's pretty fast paced for most people
 
our society is extremely fast-paced. if you disagree, watch a new york city street corner for 5 minutes. Despite the reputations many americans recieve as being lazy, our average work weeks are longer than most other countries. Were constantly bombarded by ads and with the internet EVERYWHERE, we can find the answer to any question in a matter of seconds.

This is not to say you cant find places like this in the states though. I myself am from a small town and the lifestyle is definately more relaxing and easy going down here.

Maybe if u enjoyed yourself that much, you should find healthy ways to help yourself relax when youre in the States. you can still wake up late and cook 3 hour dinners on the weekends. :)
 
johnmedz said:
our society is extremely fast-paced. if you disagree, watch a new york city street corner for 5 minutes. Despite the reputations many americans recieve as being lazy, our average work weeks are longer than most other countries. Were constantly bombarded by ads and with the internet EVERYWHERE, we can find the answer to any question in a matter of seconds.

This is not to say you cant find places like this in the states though. I myself am from a small town and the lifestyle is definately more relaxing and easy going down here.

Maybe if u enjoyed yourself that much, you should find healthy ways to help yourself relax when youre in the States. you can still wake up late and cook 3 hour dinners on the weekends. :)

Oh I would love to, however I work on weekends and even if I have day off, my mind is already thinking what I should be doing to better my skills in my area of study.

However, don’t get me wrong, I am not complying, I am just trying to find way to enjoy life bit more, while living in a city and having future with a stressful job.
 
I'm pretty sure society moves too fast for me. My brain just can't keep up. Maybe I'm just a lazy student hippy bastard, but that's the way I tend to see things. :p
 
may i ask what career u r in or are entering. work doesnt have to be stressful
Think of things you enjoy, like halflife2 im sure!

Also, get urself an ipod... hehe, it sounds stupid but it adds some spark to my day being able to listen to what i want when i want on my lunch break and during classes.
 
johnmedz said:
may i ask what career u r in or are entering. work doesnt have to be stressful
Think of things you enjoy, like halflife2 im sure!

Also, get urself an ipod... hehe, it sounds stupid but it adds some spark to my day being able to listen to what i want when i want on my lunch break and during classes.

Oh iPod.. I had mp3 player before, it broke. I don’t have money for iPod yet, they always go some other way. I will of course, but then I will be plugged in all the time, which is even worse. I wish people still talked to strangers on trains, alas nobody does anymore. To shame I guess…

Anyway, my career is 3d animation. While I know for sure I will have tons of fun at work and will be waking up looking forward to it, it’s still a stressful job. Lot’s of hours, not much of pay (which I know about and don’t really care, as I better of having fun at work) and tons of overtime. When crunch time comes around, it will drive me insane, then again who cares.
 
The BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit - so I am guessing this guy lives in San Francisco.

There are a few issues I have with lifestyle today. Its a technocratic age - and by that we are an age of forms, multitudes of paper and testing, interviews and references. Does all of this mean that you get the best person for the job? I don't think so. Just means you have a lot of paper about who you think the best is, and the person you hire is the 'bland' person.

The whole lunch is for wimps thing and sacrifice your marriage and family life on the altar to the God of Success is as prevalent now as it was in the 1980s. The question is, why bother? You can work your ass off at a company and then get 'downsized' or the better one 'rightsized' as they say now.

As an associate and then a senior associate in major law firms, I was given unbelievably large volumes of complicated work, and told to do it with an impossible deadline, with superiors screaming and cussing at me to go faster. And it was not like I was hauling bricks on a building site. This was re-drafting major transactional documents on the fly. So you would stay awake for days on end, sometimes 3-4 days. And God help you if you ever made a mistake, even a typo. I was also on 24 call - and had projects on in every timezone on the planet just about, so the phone would never stop ringing. For a long time afterwards, I was chilled and frozen to the spot by the sound of the telephone ringing. I had nightmares about phone calls of supposed mistakes in transactional documents. Superiors risk shift matters onto you, and then refuse to look at them so they can say - its your fault. You are not allowed to ask the clients for further information quite often as it is seen as 'bothering them' - so you are nearly always flying blind trying the best you can to cover off as many risks as possible, get the job out the door, and not get sued. The more difficult work which has major risks in it gets risk shifted onto people, like me, the Senior Associate, because the Partners want to be able to say - wasn't me, it was him! So anything 'dodgy' would be sent down the chain, and they would not talk to you about it saying 'Your matter - tell me when its finished. And don't bother the client with questions.'

And at the end of the day - for what? Nothing at all. Perhaps the experience on my resume. People say you earn a lot of money. You don't really. Not until you are a partner.

Otherwise nothing substantive. When I was 'downsized', I could not get another job in the USA and had to return to Australia. And Im left thinking, hmm, I could have avoided all that and worked mowing lawns, got some sleep, and I'd still have a job now. As it is I am going into business for my self, hopefully one day being able to get back to the USA to live before I am too old.

There are a lot of problems with the way companies treat their staff. The way references and resumes, determine who is the best person for the job. But what to do? I expect for me, the answer is - work for myself. Leastways, if I work hard I get the money instead of someone else, and no1 can fire me.
 
Calanen said:

You are right, I do live near San Francisco, and my university is there.
I also agree that you work shit hours for companies, who will milk everything they can from you. However I find being business ownership even more stressful, it’s a job that’s 24/7 on your mind. I guess that’s why I went into 3d animation field, my father wanted me to be a doctor or program for some company, which in return will outsource all the jobs to India. Easy for him to say, he is expert in nuclear physics, so when we moved here, he put bunch of bullshit on his resume and he already knew how to program.

However, constant search for marriage and family, I found it to be overrated too. Of course, we are as humans, want to reproduce and leave a little spawn running around, who will carry our legacy. However, for past two years, all relationships I have been stressful, because of expectation you have for your partner and vise-versa. The only way I see settling is when I am not younger than 35 years old.
 
I don't know, where I live in Golden Valley right outside of Kingman Arizona, it's fairly slow and relaxed. Stuff goes by slowly or "medium?" (usually)

But when I go to Phoenix, city of millions, I'm in a rush. I think it's the atmosphere.

Mr. Reak.. do blurry vaginas exist in Russia?
 
RakuraiTenjin said:
I don't know, where I live in Golden Valley right outside of Kingman Arizona, it's fairly slow and relaxed. Stuff goes by slowly or "medium?" (usually)

But when I go to Phoenix, city of millions, I'm in a rush. I think it's the atmosphere.

I guess you would faint if you went to New York City or London, or Hong Kong for that matter?

I guess the point is for everyone - is do what is best for you. Do not think that your hardwork or loyalty to a company counts for anything at all. Imagine that every day at any company could be your last. Do your job and always have your eye on somewhere else to go.

In addition, something I learned the hard way - is don't tell people at work about yourself. Don't hang out with them after work. Don't let them know about your girlfriend, your wife, the problems with the kids or anything else. To succeeed you must be the Grey Man.

The Grey Man has no views so no1 can criticise him. He has no political affiliations. He endorses no products and has no money problems. He complains about nothing and whatever hits he takes in life are absorbed so that no1 can see them. If the grey man is asked what he did on the weekend, he says, had fun, or had a relax - never says anything specific. Because if you are in a high powered corporate environement *any* information you give to co-workers can be twisted and used against you. Anything. So give them nothing. The people at work, in a high powered office are not your friends. So don't think they are.

To give you an example - in the city of Sydney where i am from, sometimes people can get violent when waiting for taxis. One time when waiting for a taxi after work, some drunken clown took a swing at me, because it was 'his' taxi, I ducked and hit him once which together with the alcohol meant he was down. And got in the cab. There had been some stories in the press about taxi rage - and i mentioned at a drinks function that someone out the front fo the building had attacked me because it was 'his' cab. This casual conversation became rumours of me having a serious drinking problem and assaulting people at the taxi rank. Yet it was I who was assaulted, and I seldom drink. But the Grey Man, would not have told the story.

So be the Grey Man in corporate life.
 
Calanen said:
more words

Well as I said, it depends with whom you work and where. Also of course no need to tell everything that happenes to you, but not socializing at work, how can that even work? I mean fine and dandy you want to keep your life private, but then you just a boring as guy. If you work on the team, on a short/film feature/video game production, good luck being a gray man. Nobody wants boring people who don’t talk around work, so yeah I will disagree with that statement. Then again, it all depends what kind of work you do.

Oh and RakuraiTenjin, no they do not, then again I didn’t check.
 
Heh, I live in New York, and it's extremely fast paced. Most things are done on a whim.
 
If you work on the team, on a short/film feature/video game production, good luck being a gray man.

Not really what I was talking about...more:

-banks

- law firms

- accounting firms

- large manufacturers.

Being on a creative team is very different from those sorts of things - but you can still be friendly and innocuous in those places too. Talk about 'safe' things, pretend not to understand the bigger picture. Anyway - just my advice - take it or leave it. But do whatever works for you. I was talking mroe about the cutthroat corporate environments rather than people who are game designers.
 
Mr. Reak, you don't have to tell me what fast-paced is, I live in the most fast-paced place in the world - New York City. Every morning on my way to work I put on really fast music (like 140+ bpm) to get myself prepared. When I walk down the street I always walk faster than everybody else (even if I'm in no rush). If somebody is walking slowly in front of me I automatically get angry at them. I forgot what the word "relax" means.

Oh yeah, I also get "burned out" every month or so.
 
LoneDeranger said:
Mr. Reak, you don't have to tell me what fast-paced is, I live in the most fast-paced place in the world - New York City. Every morning on my way to work I put on really fast music (like 140+ bpm) to get myself prepared. When I walk down the street I always walk faster than everybody else (even if I'm in no rush). If somebody is walking slowly in front of me I automatically get angry at them. I forgot what the word "relax" means.

Oh yeah, I also get "burned out" every month or so.

Oh Lone, man what’s up? Didn’t see you for ages, how you been? I see you got your old avatar back too (if thought Spike is cool and everything, I still like this one better). Yeah, I get mad at slow people very fast too, not mad, but more like irritated. Especially when I drive, oh god I want to smash any person who can’t drive fast.

Calanen, sorry I misunderstood you, you are right heh. Especially after watching British Office series, haha, I must agree!
 
Mr.Reak said:
Oh Lone, man what’s up? Didn’t see you for ages, how you been? I see you got your old avatar back too (if thought Spike is cool and everything, I still like this one better). Yeah, I get mad at slow people very fast too, not mad, but more like irritated. Especially when I drive, oh god I want to smash any person who can’t drive fast.

Well, I'm back, meaning either a big Half-Life release or a big Real-Life disaster. Yeah you guessed it, I had a girlfriend for 9 months (my first!), now its all gone to hell. Gah. Those Russian girls .. always gotta watch your back when you're with them.

I guess I'll relax here until things settle down.
 
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