At the Gates

So I just started my new job last week and it’s been pretty hectic, as expected.

For starters, there’s the travel time and distance. Its over 40 km / 25 miles away which is within an average range for commuting to work, but the fact is, Toronto has the busiest highways in North America. So at first I thought of taking the bus and subway to work, but even with the express routes, that turned out to be a staggering two-and-half-hour trip, EACH way. Five hours a day commuting back and forth? Sounds like my college days. I used to skip sleep at home and make up for it on the bus and subway.

Anyways, screw that.

I went to SmartCommute.ca and found two commuters who live close to me and also happen to work near my new office. Coupled with my flexibility of work hours – I told my boss I’d do 9:30 to 5:30 and he agreed – and working from home if I want by just hooking the laptop up to the corporate network, commuting to the office is easy now alhamdulillaah. And I’ll pay them $160 /mth, which is less than what I’d pay for the bus and subway tickets, and definitely less than the gas + insurance I’d be paying if I were driving to work by myself each and every day. So that’s one problem off my back.

Then there was all the mental cramming to do – because of my job as an account manager at the company, which has its HQs stateside, we up here at its Canadian branch are subject to all American laws governing American corporations, including laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and more … especially a slew of American export laws. We can’t export to Cuba and Syria and North Korea, and a few other countries, etc, blah blah blah. Financial regulations, getting upto spec on pretty much all the lines of businesses / services that I’ll be handling.

And then there’s the issue of my diet [haha] – I skip breakfast at home and I get to work and this is an example of what I’ve eaten in a day, for breakfast and lunch:

– Spicy Dritos chips with Tostitos salsa sauce
– Haagen Daz ice cream bar
– A slice of potatoe bread [made by a co-worker, she gave me some as she was passing by]
… that’s all for breakfast

Had some macaroni and meat leftovers for lunch, from the day before. THen the Marketing guys came by and told us all to head down to a conference room because they were having some big new product launch and wanted us to check it out. So I go there and of course, refreshments were available so I helped myself to some more Doritos, a Mars chocolate bar, and a cup of really strong Starbucks coffee with like ten pounds of sugar dumped into it, because I never really drink coffee or even tea. That kept me awake for the next house and then the downer came, my body just crashed, and I tried to fight off sleep. That same high metabolism which keeps me in shape automatically with no exercies required, also uses up the energy so fast that it leads to such crashes.

Oh well.

All I ask is that God make me so good at what I do that I make it look ridiculously easy. Because if I can do it, so can you, so can anyone else.

Filed under: Current Affairs, Food, Ghetto