Firstly thanks to the most tech savvy brother for creating a forum for us to store our madness for public discussion. Many blogs have
started or spread revolutionary uprisings, some blogs have
launched the author to fame or fortune, other blogs have brought
humor into otherwise monotonous days. Whether the authors intended these outcomes when launching the blog is unknown but they have proved to be very powerful with the right mind at the wheel. This blog is starting as nothing more than an experiment of a few siblings exploring more of the interwebs. When we happen to spawn revolutions, accumulate millions of followers or get our jokes ctrl + V'd all over the Internet...twas not our original intent. Here goes nothing...
I am currently living in Canada, interning at a management consulting firm for the summer. The work is legitimately interesting, the people are very smart, the pay is fantastic but the hours are shit. By shit, I mean leave the house at 7 am, return at 11pm. Shit. That is an 80 hour, 5 day work week. There are clearly downsides to this schedule so I will cover the limited upsides. There are two that I can see, I welcome any I may have overlooked.
1) Free Food - If we work past 8pm we are allowed to bill our dinner to the client. Great policy, 100% behind it...I am going to be so fat. So far the menu has consisted largely of sushi, some noodle joints, Greek food, Nepalese, filthy pizza, Korean, etc. If you know a consultant who is not completely overweight, you can safely assume one or more of the following things:
- Said consultant works for a firm that does not hold this policy - they should upgrade
- Said consultant does not work past 8pm - wtf mate?
- Said consultant works out like an absolute animal to stay in shape - you should fear him / her
2) I am never home. Normally this would be a bad thing, but my living situation for the summer is probably the worst thing that has happened to me in the last year. I lead a very rough life. The place is in a very safe, suburban area of Toronto and is close enough to the subway line that I cannot complain too much. However it has significant downsides - The mud room / kitchen / entryway / living room / den have been conveniently combined into a single room (the 'MRKELRD'). There is a washing machine, a bar (with an obligatory snake carved into the top), a nice leather chair and a stove within 3 feet of each other. I can look past the cramped quarters as my dorm room at school was about 300 square feet. However (there is always a catch): the roommate has awful hygiene. The level of filth is not improving as I only have a few weeks here and am not investing any time/capital to make improvements. Being away from home due to long hours on the job have actually become a blessing and I recommend any future interns to adopt a similar strategy for your summer. Having recognized the two upsides to my internship, we will now discuss an experiment I am now accidentally conducting. (next slide please)
The experiment is a product of my shit hours and the roommate's love of composting. He left for a week of vacation and did not empty the composting bin, which I always neglect because he manages it. After roughly 3 weeks of rotting fruit and vegetables sitting idly, I noticed there were fruit flies EVERYWHERE and made the mistake of opening the lid. Holy shit. Biblical swarms of fruit flies cruising the aforementioned MRKELRD. Being ever-curious, I watched them to see if there were habits I could exploit in order to slaughter them. They appear to have the mental acuity of warthogs and were completely random. Figuring I could exploit their tendency to land on anything, I went straight to the google machine and discovered that "
fly paper" is actually useful for catching flies. Makes sense eh? Another site recommended
using vinegar. Unfortunately both of these required me to go out of my way to stop the swarm. Knowing that my bedroom has an airtight seal from the MRKELRD and the flies seemed to prefer the kitchen to the bathroom, my domain was safe for the time being meaning drastic measures (ie. walking to the store and spending
canadian monopoly money) could be delayed. I decided to be a naturalist and see how many flies the spider who lives near the sink could snag. As it turns out, he is a rock star. He has been slaying these flies for about a week now, repaying his life-debt to me for not squashing him. It is truly symbiosis at its finest and an argument in favor of those saps who never kill anything.
That felt pretty good for a first hack at blogging, I will study up on
some of my favs and try again next week.
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