Lametastic July

Summer work has definitely lost it's novelty. I literally spent the entire week helping people get ready for the field assignments that I don't get to go on. I was pretty much just a glorified baggage handler/personal shopper---hitting up Home Depot and racking up some credit card debt on sportsman gear and ATV helmets.

I keep having to tell myself, "You know, Marc, when Lauren Conrad interned at Teen Vogue, she didn't get to do anything fun." It does make me feel better, until I remember one of those lame episodes of the Hills where she gets to work backstage at Teen Vogue's L.A. Fashion Week Party or Prada's Spring Runway Show. Well, these trips to the Arctic are my runway shows. It's literally the only reason I wanted this job. Luckily, in the next couple of weeks, I'll have the even more incredible opportunity of watching everyone else arrange their Canadian North flights on Carlson Wagonlit, while they ask me to book them some ATV's or a couple helicopter trips. Then, I'll get the even more rare experience of creeping all of their Facebook photos and hearing all their stories about the polar bears and inuit tribes they encountered and how it caused them to have such a great epiphany that they've decided to pursue a career in Social Work or Natural Resources Management, all while we enjoy some delicious Wok that their overtime pay could easily cover two-hundred times over. Life's just not fair.

Anyhow, tonight is my first shift of NighHawk overnight security at the Folk Fest grounds. It should be a lot of fun, as long as I can manage to stay up for the entire twelve hours and not get sick of the person I'm volunteering with.

Shit in Gear, Part 2

Now that my trip is done and my job is growing monotonous, my summer is slowly starting to settle down. I genuinely miss running around all the time and being super busy, so I've decided I need a creative outlet to keep me entertained for the rest of the summer. My original plan was to become an advocate for more affordable transit, but my Mom thinks that would be a "bad career move."

Seeing as I'm not a novelist, that pretty much limits me to Scrapbooking. Yes, I've decided to make a scrapbook. But, I'm not just making your average everyday scrapbook for a trip to Calgary or my first baby (*shudders*), I've decided to make a scrapbook for the first 20 years of my life! I'm obsessed with self-reflection and self-improvement, or any other motivational word with the prefix "self," and I figured that this would be a fun way to put my self-love into action!

On top of that, I sorta made a mini-to do list for the rest of the summer:
1) Finish my GRE for Dummies.
2) Save $10,000 (this one's gonna be a bitch...I may have to start blow-counting again)
3) Lose 2 pounds.
4) Go to Vegas!!!!!!!!11
5) Plan a trip to NYC for September! This one is my favourite! I originally wanted to slip off for a week to wash oil off of shorebirds on the Mississippi Delta, but figured it wouldn't be as glamourous as I had imagined, so I've decided that I'm going to treat myself to a mini-vacation in the Big Apple before school starts. Originally, I had to stay home because of other commitments and miss Frosh Week, but now I have the whole week to myself! So I figured, why not spend some of that $10,000 I saved? =)
And finally, 6) Find lodging in Brisbane (that's what Australian people call housing ;) )

Late Registration

Ugh, its that time of year again....enrollment appointments. Am I that lame to make a huge deal over enrolling for classes?

Simply put, I haven't had the best of luck registering in classes: I've take twice as many first-year courses as I'm allowed to (meaning at least one extra term), I always fight to get into a 6th course only to drop it after the first week of classes and, most importantly, I have this obsession with scheduling days off. I actually haven't had a 5-day week of classes since high school. This awesome setup has come at a cost though. Rather than taking classes that I'm genuinely interested in or might benefit me in my career, I've taken exciting courses like The Fundamentals of Drawing (alright kids, lets draw some more naked 50-year olds), Freight Planning (trucks or trains?), Stormwater Management (there's too much shit in our water), and my personal favourite, Social Psychology in Everyday Life (too much for words...whoever said the Arts were easy never sat through one of these lectures).

My intense scheduling, along with my waffling over specializations, minors and other buzz-words to add to my diploma, I've managed to screw up all the hard work my advisor put into making me a simple plan to finish my degree in 3 years. On top of that, I'm going to Brisbane for school this year (ch'yeaaa)! Probably the only downside to Australia is that school there is really lax. They take 4-courses a term and mostly have 3-year degrees, meaning most of courses I'm taking only transfer over as first or second-year courses, which I definitely have more than enough of.

Yesterday, I was telling a project engineer about my colourful year at school and he asked me the question I absolutely loathe hearing: "When are you gonna be finished?" He then began to glare wildly when I told him that I wasn't really sure when I'd be graduating. Oh sorry, I didn't realize there was suddenly a stigma attached to enjoying my youth...

In reality, it makes me restless to not know when I'll be finished my undergrad, to not be able to make plans or try to envision where I'll be in two years. But I'm trying to keep it all in perspective. I have the rest of my life to slave away at a 9-to-5, what difference does one year make?

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P.S: Random pet peeve-- I hate when I decide to spend my lunch break lurking blogs and the only ones I come across are about Catholic families or new babies.

Mac Attack

On Monday, my boss randomly surprised with an overnight business trip....

....to Fort McMurray.

Seriously though, my company operates in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, and I get to travel to the exotic oilsands city.

Fort Mac is in the Athabasca River valley, which is actually a really beautiful area. Its too bad that they've reworked or destroyed most of it to get at the most dirty form of oil on Earth. On top of that, the whole Wood Buffalo region is a vegan's worst nightmare. In a sprawly city of 100,000, the only places we could eat at were McDonald's, Burger King, or Tim Horton's. Oh, and it was Camp Day, so Tim Horton's was just out of the question...

Before leaving, the biologist I was working with decided to show me the Syncrude Mildred Lake operation, one of the biggest in the region. I even got to see the infamous tailings ponds that were responsible for killing all those ducks! Those things are the size of lakes. Someone might actually think they look kinda cool if they didn't know they were full of toxic chemical effluent.

I would have just loved to go kayaking on this.

Otherwise, my week has been oh so lame. Work has been awful and it still feels like January outside. However, I'm getting a much needed break from the cesspool that is St. Albert this weekend and heading up to my friend's cabin. Weeooo!

Le Snobisme

I'm starting to settle into my summer here in Edmonton and, as usual, I'm starting to second-guess my "life choices." In case you didn't know, my life has been interesting lately. I spent the first 18 years of my life living in the white-washed suburbs of Edmonton. Then, I did a year of liberal arts and got accepted into a really good Business School for International Business, and I threw it all away on a whim, as I figured I'd never be happy building a career on helping corporations maximise profits and take advantage of people, while infusing buzz-words and schmoozy language into everyday conversation. I left the Texas of the North to study Urban Planning at Waterloo. Ever since then, I've been bouncing back and forth between the two places, never staying in the same spot for longer than 4 months. It's always been my dream to go away for school and relish my newfound independence. I began to over-indulge in telling people about how I was so glad that "I got out of St. Albert," and I started to show contempt for people who "just didn't have their shit in gear."

Nowadays, I feel so unsettled, like I'm rootless. I don't really have strong relationships with anyone simply because I only see most people about four times a year and have terrible time keping in touch with old friends. My concept of home has become a "grey area." I have a hard time feeling grateful anytime I have a change of scenery. On top of that, I'm constantly poor, which kinda sucks. Bourgeois kids just aren't raised to have budgets and make sacrifices.

These uncomfortable feelings really bitch-slapped me in the face a few days ago. I got in a fight with my parents after they let my brother drive the family truck to the U of Alberta campus to drop off his writing portfolio, while I took the bus there just two hours earlier to do homework. My mom got mad a t me and awkwardly described me a "Toronto Snob who intentionally acted like he wasn't part of the family." She apologized almost immediately and has been especially nice to me since then, waking up early to make me breakfast smoothies and letting me drive her Toyota.

To be honest though, it didn't really offend me. Well, the part about hating my family offended me, but I actually took the "Toronto Snob" name as a compliment. I've never actually lived in the city, but I wouldn't hesitate to pack up and go there after my undergrad. But whyyy you might ask???

Well for starters, Toronto is actually a city. Edmonton might legally be a city, but it's not actually a city. Relatively speaking, Edmonton is small. Only a million people are brave enough to live this far north, and for some reason they all feel they need to live on a half-acre of cheap land and still have a 20-minute commute as their reward. Our only claim to fame is a shopping mall, a decrepite shrine to capitalism and over-consumption. And it's not even a nice mall......

On the other hand, Toronto has a lot going for it. It's Canada's largest city and one of the most multicultural cities in the world. They actually consider social progress and sustainable living to be a good thing, rather than some toxic evil that's just going to make it harder to drive your Hummer H2 to work.

Does Edmonton's Riverfront look like this?

The whole incident reminded me of this awesome quote from one of the most random movies I've ever seen, Hamlet 2. At the end of the movie, the whole cast goes to NYC to celebrate the launch of their Broadway play (OH SHIT, SPOILER ALERT!!!1111). One of the kids, Chuy, tells his teacher about how awesome New York is compared to Tucson, their hometown. Their drama teacher responds, "Chuy, you're going to live a magicial life because, no matter where you go, it's always going to be better than Tucson." This will sound stupid, but this quote kinda motivates me and gives me hope that these restless feelings will shake off as soon as I peace out for new adventures!

Hard Knock Life

Back to work for the 2^nd week of like, 16? At least I’m finally doing real work, which makes it much less painful to read incoming interview offers from firms that I applied to months ago. I’ve seriously gotten at least 4 emails from different municipalities since starting my job. I mean, who actually waits until mid-May to hire summer students? Oh wellz…I’m actually starting to enjoy my job now. I’m working on environmental assessments with this super chill Environmental Scientist. She pretty much gave me total control of the project. I even get to contact clients, which is something that the folks in Planning and Landscape would have never even considered last year. The other co-ops are awesome too. Lunch breaks are actually ten times better when you spend them conversing with other people and playing cards, rather than mindlessly creeping Facebook and OMG-UW.

I’ve officially been on the ‘tane for a week now. In that week, I went on a three-day binge and gained 4 pounds (which I lost by literally spending the entire weekend doing p90x and watching documentaries about the obesity epidemic while working out on my exercise bike), my entire face dried out and then broke out, and I’ve had the most bizarre dreams. I’ve heard of people having night terrors while on isoretinoins, but my dreams have just been really weird. For example, after spending yesterday with my mother, I had this dream where she vividly told me that I was her toughest experience in parenting because I was a Student Works Franchisee. It didn’t even make sense. I had an even weirder dream on Saturday night, where my friend from high school transferred to Laurier Business, and then we both dropped out to start a daycare. Sure, these dreams don’t have dragons or take place in Nazi Germany (which is literally where half my dreams take place), but they felt really real. I actually remember every detail from them, and when I woke up I still didn’t realize they were fictitious.

It's probably an early symptom of schizophrenia or something…

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"And we’re just like how Rousseau depicts man in the state of nature: We’re underdeveloped, we’re ignorant, we’re stupid....

but we’re happy."

The Grind

It’s back-to-work time! I looaathe this time of year: the early commutes, the 8-hour workdays, my empty cubicle, the strange parallels between my work and the stuff on Office Space. This year is a little different though. Unlike last summer, the firm actually hired multiple summer students. Although they’re all chummy from school, they’re still awesome! We get together everyday for lunch and to "discuss" about the mind-numbing tasks assigned to us. One of the things I was always envious about my friends in co-op was the friendships they made during their work terms. In my department last year, it seemed everyone was so cliquey, or just never took the time to chat with me because they were so career-driven. So, it's been a nice change this year.

I made the mistake of telling my father this morning that I hated working, and he took it really personally. It’s not that I hate my job, I just hate working. And I’m pretty sure 95% of the world is on the same page as me. Like, if someone handed me a cheque for a billion dollars, the first thing I would do would be to quit my job. Wouldn't everyone?