Author: thisduck

i can’t seem to find it anywhere any more. while i was at my previous job i was constantly rotating between honey lemon ginseng and jasmine green tea, both tetley products. that started once i got back from india. in the india office it was either your normal chai or 7up, and i switched between the two. but once i got back, i actively decided to let go of cold drinks and go with just green tea. this was made highly convenient because the coffee machine had a hot water tap.

but where i work now, it’s not so easy. there is no instant boiling water tap. so i need to wait for the water to boil in one of them water boiling devices. it took me a while to bring my mugs to work. i guess that was part of the moving over phase, it took me a long while to bring anything that was really mine to work. the mugs, books, hats etc. i haven’t gone so far as to take the hats and walking stick to work. i’m not that comfortable there.

to top things off, it seems that tetley has decided to stop selling the jasmine green tea. this complicates matters, as much as i like honey lemon ginseng, the smell is not quite jasmine, nor is the taste. i’ve checked multiple stores, with no luck.

the cafeteria three floors up has lipton (i think, not sure) tea. and it’s… awful. i’ve tried the plain green tea and the jasmine green tea… and it’s no good.

i need to find an alternative. a good alternative.

udpate
i tried yaser’s recommendation. it’s not bad, but it’s not green tea. i had lipton’s earl grey from the caf this morning. no milk or sugar, of course. again, not bad, but not quite happening.

i’ll try and hit up numi’s green teas on the way back home today.

emo alert

is everything a mind set? and can you set (or trick/delude) your mind enough to get from it what you want?

there is a contradiction somewhere. i don’t have expectations from other people. i can’t have any, how could i? but from myself? i try not to, but it’s hard sometimes. i work myself into this gridlock, where i create my expectations (loosely based on what i think i can accomplish), but yet somehow i feel i can’t meet them, so i don’t get started. thus the contradiction. and a battle within.

it’s this contradiction, this tug-of-war in my mind, that seems to be distancing myself from the things that i love. where i don’t find myself in the moments i’m in. the motions and reactions are the same, but i am not the same. my actions now seem so selfish, where once they were not. i am different.

with relation to software, i know i’m not in the boat alone. i see so many colleagues in the same situation i find myself in. outer perception and inner reality, and the conflict between the two. i feel slower and dumber than i was 3 years ago. 3 years ago i was practically singlehandedly carrying a team building a major website. now i feel like a shell of my old self. people still see me by what i’ve done in the past, and i can’t seem to get over my reality. i can’t seem to get over my apathy.

i have not really built anything in the last 3 years. i used to build things all the time. without any hope of reward, with no expectations, with nothing. i just did, because i wanted to. purely for the sake of building something. now i know too much. the clutter in my mind prevents me from doing anything real. i know what i have to do. i’ve read and researched everything. i can plan it all out. it’s just the act of doing it. it’s during that act (and i do start) that i convince myself about what i cannot do. again, i’m not alone in this state. this is the state of many many software folk.

haha, i think at some point, i’m afraid. afraid of doing something good, afraid of meeting my own expectations. i’m afraid of something alright…

it’s pretty much the same thing with magic. i am completely out of touch with people i used to know in the magic circle. on the web and in person. haven’t been to the magic shop in ages! even in the moment, i don’t find myself in the moment. everything is the same, i am not.

for the life of me i can’t understand why i would distance myself from the things that i love so much. the things that really do matter.

zen… hah. the first part of my zen was dealing with my surroundings and the expectations i had from others. that was largely a reaction to work. and now the second part has to start, i have to react to myself.

So, yes, I took it off. I don’t wear it on my finger anymore. I carry it in my wallet.

It was the only piece of jewelry I was wearing and I suppose it got attention as a result.

It happened at the doctor’s office. It happened when I was playing basketball, and it happened when I was at parties/gatherings. It happened when a political candidate (brown person) was doing door-to-door campaigning and started talking to me about engineering, and how his cousins and nephews are engineers etc etc… which I really don’t need to hear. And some other incidents I care not discuss, and these incidents I really don’t need either.

So really, the ring was serving a completely different purpose (what purpose it was supposed to serve, I don’t know anymore). But it felt too much like, “look at me, i’m engineering”. So as happens in The Lord of The Rings, I destroyed it! Well… not really.

I took it off. And it’s in my wallet.

i hate it when people toss money or leave money on the table for someone else to pick up in the process of a transaction (at a grocery store, or the mall, where ever). this goes both ways (though often i see that it’s the customer), the person standing on the other side of the counter is a human being, please put the money (or receipt) in their hands. do not leave it aside or toss it.

thank you.