Old-Timers

Some months ago, I was MSN'ing with a friend who was about to get married. I've known this friend since elementary school. He went to high school with a good family friend of mine, and so I always heard bits and pieces of his news. In university, we started staying in touch.

During our conversation, I was figuring out whether or not I knew him or the family friend first, and it suddenly dawned on me that I met him in Grade 2 - twenty years ago! (Upon sharing that revelation, he exclaimed, "And still in school, wtf!" hahaha.)

My earliest memory of him is when we were in a Grade 2-Grade 3 split class back in elementary school. There were only 6 of us, so our desks were arranged in 2 facing rows, 3 desks each. WL and I were in the middle desks. We were colouring an assignment or something, and WL was using crayons. The girl next to him was being mean and saying that I could use her coloured felt pens, but not him. That was the era when felt pens were a luxury. I remember thinking that was really snobby of her, and so I ignored her and used crayons with WL.

Of course, maybe WL remembers it differently: maybe he remembers that I was the snobby one.... It was twenty years ago....

Atlas, but not quite as muscular....

In the past 5 months, I have:

• made my first income tax payment in Taiwan;
  
• climbed 8 or 9 mountains, including 2 peaks over 3000m in altitude (one more to add this weekend);
  
• swum a 3km water reservoir;
  
• organised a company event to swim a lake (although in the end the swim was cancelled due to this year's endless string of typhoons);
  
• "saved" somebody;
  
• mooooooved (Internet and my own bathroom - yay!);
  
• begun the process to obtain full citizenship status in my new country;

... and yet this is the one that breaks my blogging hiatus.

It was our Monday afternoon status meeting. Every week, my goal is not to get nailed to the wall. This week, I eked it out (yay).

And then my manager turned to me.

"Your work here is actually really important. The business unit's year-end meeting is coming up next month. One of the goals we have this year is to improve our technical documentation; of ten items, your work constitutes one entire goal."

In other words, in a business unit of 250 people, I myself am responsible for one tenth of the BU's goals. One tenth of how the BU will be graded in the company, and consequently, how we will be awarded bonuses after the year-end review.

No pressure there.

He continued, "The meeting is in a month, which means we'll have to prepare all our material in about 15 days. Please prepare a report about our status on this matter."

I told my friend about this extra weight on my shoulders, and he commented that he carries roughly 25 percent of his division on his back, so I guess I shouldn't be complaining. But I realised today that while he practically reports to the CEO, I'm at the bottom of the food chain. And, well, I don't get paid nearly as much. Not nearly.

*sigh*