choices

I had to make a decision, go with an entry-level job with relatively modest pay or go abroad for an unpaid but rewarding opportunity…
Background info: I had a job once, when I was 19 and life was good… So I got a job and I did quite well at it, but i had to quit coz of school. I wanted to go back several times, but school kept messing it up, so there was no choice, really. Now, 3 years later and I went back. Place is pretty much the same, even the salary hasn’t changed. And a bunch of people I worked with are still there, the job description is still the same, so as far as opportunities for growth are concerned, there is not much left. If anything I know some of the stunts they pull, like all the mind-games and the sense of obligation and whatnot.
The other option is a CEED, a Cultural Envoy for Exchange Development. I’m taking the opportunity between now and July when my term as local committee president to go learn a bit on Projects and see what else I can help them out on. And I can see opportunities for growth here, getting out there and seeing how the rest of the World (ok, it’s Uganda, but it still counts as a part of the rest of the world…) does it…
Explaining my reasons has been hard. Like now I should stay and take the job because it’s money, and I shouldn’t let it go to waste. And the one question that kept coming up was whether the project I was going to do would pay more than staying and working. But that did not feature in my consideration. I raised my hand when they asked if anyone was there for the interview just to get a job, which was my reasoning. And I was not ashamed of the fact. A little extra money wouldn’t hurt, but then again, neither would going on an awesome learning experience.

I leave for Uganda in a few days. I do not regret my decision.

regurgitations #2, or my first job

Sunday, February 04, 2007
So this is how I spend my time
Current mood: sleepy
Category: Life

I’m really sleepy. Seriously. I’m zoning in and out right now.
Got a new job the other day, selling ISP service over the phone.
So people call up and what I do is basically tell them about our available plans and whatever and they either buy or not buy depending on whatever they want. So the thing is, I live in Kenya, and the market I sell to is in the States, so I have to stay awake the whole night to do my job.
So in the end my body clock is messed up.
Badly.
It doesn’t help much that half the time I have to convince the guy on the other end that I have a real job, that I’m getting paid for talking to him and telling him why he should quit ISP A and join ISP B.
Then there’s the people who call “Just to ask”, and in the end that’s not a sale.
So initially I was a bag of nerves and I really felt the pressure to perform and as a result I was permanently on my toes.
I’ve relaxed more, the challenge is off, and so what’s happening is that I’m getting complacent.
I’m bored.
To wit’s end.
I reached my zenith sometime last week when I made 14 sales in one night as opposed to some other people with something like 3, so it was major.
But now I’m not driven to do the same, to make 14 sales again.
Now I make 6, 7, 10 if I’m feeling inspired.
But the thing is, I’ve been there for 2 weeks now.
And I’m bored.
How can that happen to anyone? I mean, 2 weeks?
But it’s partly because the office is strange.
I have to wear a suit all night.
It’s at night, so the relevance of that I still fail to see.
But dress is everything. I’m not really likely to make more sales if I’m wearing jeans than if I’m wearing finely spun wool now, am I?
Wrong.
I made more sales wearing a cotton throw-on than when I was wearing the same finely spun wool.
People are funny, there’s neat freaks, like my boss.
Then there’s couldn’t-give-a-damn people like this guy at the office who’s constantly getting made fun of about his shoes, but he always insists that whoever’s saying it isn’t paying his rent so they don’t really deserve any of his time.
End of the day, it’s what you’ve done that matters.
Not how you do it.
That’s what life’s like.
No one cares that you were wearing a yellow t-shirt with green socks when you made that 100th sale.
But if you make the mistake of screwing up, the t-shirt and socks will be blamed.
Success can happen on its own, failure has to have an explanation behind it.
I sleep days now.
I’ve had to reset myself.
It’s been a process.
But I’m going back tomorrow, and the day after.
To prove a point to myself.
Those 2 weeks is way too short a time for self evaluation, and that I can hit 14 or more as easily as I did it the first time.
That’s kinda the point of this blog.
It’s self-confidence time…
Moving on with life.

Deux Milles Neuf

The end of a year, and the (supposed) end of a decade…
It has had its fair share of ups and downs, this year. And thankfully it’s been more up than down.
It has been the year of responsibilities stumbled upon, relationships consolidated, the blog, the internship (with the awesome sandwiches), the ulcer, the failure, the identity carved out, the new laptop, the .1 child (*wink* at @sweetestshaboo), the criminal record, the broken phone, tech support, TWITTER!!! (including the super awesome tweeps, mnajijua), the drought, the rain, Hurricane Wanjiku, Zain and free calls, the census, Coast twice in one year, AIESEC, hashtags, road trips, respect… I could go on and on…
It has been a good year.
All indicators are that 2010 will be teh awesome.
Happy new year, world.

The sweet life…

Week 4 of school, and so far things are going… well.
More responsibility than ever, I’m even turning down stuff to do coz my schedule is just way too tight. I have Fridays free, free from class. But not free from other things, like AIESEC and extra-curriculars and such.
And to make it worse, my success is my own worst enemy. Like the more I get done, the more I get to do… Finishing stuff on time means getting more stuff to do that’s not even mine…
But still, college life rocks.
Wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
Even the caffeine-driven Coke days that start at 7 and end at 3am the next day… Even those ones. Sleep is for the sleepy.

To college. May it rock, and rock, and rock.

Eco-hypocrisy

There’s a raging debate in the office about how to save the environment and conservation of power and water taht was started by a suggestion to save paper… I work at UNEP, the UN’s environmental governance and slow-motion planet-saving agency (as opposed to whizz-boom-bang, Superman style), and some of the things that happen here are in direct contradiction to the suggestions they make and the end result is a series of massive windbags. Ok, I’m on the fringe, being as I’m an intern, but still, this does not make any sense. Saving the Earth, one paper-and-ink intensive report at a time? I don’t think so…

unnamed, for some reason or the other…

I’m blogging at work.  Not good. I could justify myself by saying I’m working on my blog, but still, that’s not good enough. here’s the long and short of it. i blog because i can’t Facebook. I twitter because I can’t randomly surf. Randomly surf means I can’t get on sites like  Cracked, the site with the arbitrary lists of very funny things and such… *sigh*

I’m getting soft.

No, really, I’m getting soft, a little extra padding, a little more of me to love… The euphemisms are endless, I have realized. Living at home means I can’t go hungry. That used to be my answer to exercise, not eating. Now I eat. And the most exercise I get is a brisk walk through Nairobi on my way home. Which should be good enough, but for some reason it’s not…  It’s likie that wake-up call, I need to get me some of that exercising…

Somewhere along the line, I realized I’m not the man I thought I was. I’m a lot more worldly, a lot less religious, and my philosophy had dulled with time. Now I’m more of an economist. Everyone is, really. Like with the tide of collapsing equity, the resulting flood of CNN coverage and the spectrum of experts that went ignored in a previous lifetime, conventional wisdom suddenly centers around the fact that material prosperity isn’t all that… Like there’s more to it than the mansion in the ‘burbs, the postergirl wife (or posterboy husband) and the two-and-a-half children… There has to be more.

More please… It’s the puppyness that get to you… And it’s a puppy…

It’s one of life’s classic gambits, where does it end?