Eerily Familiar, Yet Still So Foreign

I am in Jakarta. I have been here for almost a week already, and will be based here for the next couple of years or so.

Coming here, I tried not to expect too much, or anything at all. All I was told and everything I read gave me the idea that Jakarta is almost like Manila, except it's populated with Indonesians. In a lot of ways, that was correct.

Apart from being mistaken for a good-looking Indonesian almost all the time, I have yet to find any affinity with Jakarta. Pollution? Check. Garbage? Check. Heat? Check. Traffic? Check. Beggars? Check. Bascially what we have here is a carbon copy of Manila in another country. But then again....

There's something about their nature that makes Indonesians seem very different from Pinoys. I don't get the feeling that people I talk to (or try to talk to) here are trying to cheat me put one over me. I seriously think that if I raise my voice, I can make them cry. Yep, they're that timid. Indonesians, I think, haven't developed that 'dog-eat-dog' mentality that Pinoys have. Which is good... for non-Indonesians like me.

What I really hate though, is the lack of reliable internet cafes. Connection speeds are hopelessly slow, and their pcs are jurassic. No wonder they need Pinoy IT people here. Seems that if you have more than YM and one IE open, people around start wondering what you're doing. A couple of times, strangers come up behind me to look at what website I'm surfing. Just to give their Muslim sensibilities a shock, I go to a porn site. Just for them.

Mortified

Mortified is, in my opinion, the best word to describe how one feels when he has just joined a new company, given his own windowless room in the office, releases the foulest, thai-food spiced fart ever, and then the Finance Manager and Admin Manager walks in.

Damn. I hope they didn't notice.

One Month and Counting

Well actually, it's been more than a month - since I've resigned from the most recent 'old' company. I've been a bum for five weeks now and it's starting to take its toll. I'm now officially a two-player battle city expert, and I play alone. Man, I'm bored.

The highlight of my recent unemployment was a few days' break in Singapore, which resulted in Liz' and myself buying iPod Nanos. It's sexy as heck, but it gets scratches as easily as a cat on a major PMS mood.

Got a few dozen pics which I've never been able to upload to my phlog account because I don't have an internet connection in the condo, and I lent my cpu to Liz' sis.

There've been a number of job interviews I've gone to, but so far only a couple have showed real interest. I was told that the other agency I turned down previously would be happy to accept me again, but if I had second thoughts before, I'm having thirds now. What I thought was to be my dream job (for a bank) unfortunately didn't push through because I was only their second choice. Damn them.

The most concrete offer will probably come from a company that makes products which I'm not really familiar with, and their office is on the other end of motherfreakin' EDSA. If they give me a Fortuner, then I might consider. I hope they do.

When things that should be good don't seem right

Every fiber of my being is detesting what I'm doing.

Weird, because I should be happy. We keep hearing things like "It's a problem, but a good kind of problem" and "We'd be in more trouble if no one was busy".

But does it always have to be me?

I currently have a batting average (projects proposed vs projects won) of over 80%. In research, that's pretty damn high, considering that we don't (yet) have an expansive list of clients. I've been dead tired since two days after I started working here. It's been only five months, and already I feel as if I need a month off to recuperate from all the stress. Karma. I slacked off for almost a whole year in my previous job, and stress has come back with a vengeance.

I'm brain-dead. My flashes of brilliance have diminished into microseconds of semi-clarity. My grey matter has been reduced to an addled, muddled, curdled and grated mass of incoherence.

I'm like a car battery that doesn't even have enough juice to honk the car horn.

I thought last month that I'd have more free time by this month, but now I'm gonna be busy until September.

If I were a stockholder in this company, then I should be jumping in my seat, but I'm just a lowly employee who hopes against all and sundry that all thiese late nights will be converted into a two-month bonus at the end of the year.

My only distraction from work is UAAP basketball (and I thank the high heavens that we've started winning).

I wake up everyday hoping against all hope that it's the weekend, that I can keep the blinds shut and stay in slumberland, free from all the meetings, presentations and beastly things that a market researcher must face every single friggin' day.

I only get to read when I'm in the crapper (I finished a couple of Narnia books and and HP6 while flushing).

I'm finding it harder and harder each day to gather myself and focus.

Work is killing me.

POO-TA-RA-GIS!!!

I swear, if this job doesn't kill me, then my boss will.

"Exhausted" is an understatement here. The whole freakin' deal's impossible to cope with because we're so undermanned.

This is the only form of release that I can do today. In two minutes, I will publish this and go back to work on the endless requirements of our clients. People are stressed out, fragile, and ready to break - including myself.

My backlog....is unbelievable. Just unbelieveable.

I've already been staying in Makati the past 2 weeks, just to lessen the travel fatigue factor, but it's only helped marginally because for every one thing you finish, five more tasks take its place. The slew of incoming projects hasn't stopped since the last quarter of last year, or so I'm told. The current number of projects can already keep us preoccupied until the end of June. I've already managed to forget all about 2 proposals and a topline report, all for the same client.

Beyond tired.

Rent

I couldn't be happier. They're finally filming the movie version of Rent, the musical. Chris Columbus is at the helm, and the outift of the Radcliffe guy, Harry Potter's dad, is producing it, along with Jonathan Larson's sister.

The great part is, that almost the whole original cast is in it!!! Adam Pascal and Taye Diggs RAWK!!! The only downside is that Daphne Rubin-Vega, who played Mimi Marquez in the original runs, got beat out by Rosario Dawson - the girl in MIB2 who has uneven nostrils. She can also be seen in another movie that I can't wait to watch - Sin City, which is in turn being directed by Robert Rodriguez and the co-creator of the comics himself, Frank Miller. Coolness.

I wonder if this Rosario Dawson lady can sing. Sure, Daphne Rubin-Vega's ass and boobs might already be hanging all over the place, and Rosario Dawson might be a decade or so younger, but can Dawson-lady give justice to Mimi's character?

Rent will be shown at the end of the year in the US.

Sin City will be shown here (hopefully) in the next quarter.

Tired but happy

It's only Monday. Monday, for cryin' out loud! And I'm already beat. Last week, I was just playing fireman and putting out all the flames that developed as a result of our lack of manpower here in the office. Today, I finally was able to make some headway on my own projects.

Our big boss is really something else. She's really too old to be doing any of this stuff, and you'd expect her to be really forgetful and all, but the funny thing is, she's still sharp as a razorwhen it comes to research and marketing. She really knows her shit, and that's probably why she was still chosen to head this fledgling company eventhough she's well past retirement age.

Holy Week just zipped past. Hardly noticed it, as I woke up this morning tired. Last night, my cousins from Iloilo called and said they wanted to go karaoke. So we went to the karaoke place in G3 (and paid a freakin lot for a 1-hour stay). Met one of my younger cousins again, after more than 10 years, I guess. I hardly recognized him because he's huge, weighs more than I do (and looks older than me). Great thing to discover was how well he sang. I swear, he actually sounds like Gary V. We also made him sing a number of Usher songs, and he got dat down pat too. That kid can really groove.

Pau was able to fix my blog a bit. Much more, actually, than what I can ever manage to do in an hour. That's because he's a nerd.