Category: Uncategorized

A few days ago, as I was wrapping up the work day, I randomly wondered what time it was in London, England. Since it was around 6pm here, it was 2am (the next day) in London. I did some quick math and realize if I lived in London and wanted to match the work hours on the west coast exactly, my work day would be from 6pm to 2am locally. For someone who stays up pretty late anyways, that’s not a terrible work day. It’s not ideal either however. One of the drawbacks would be on Fridays. You wouldn’t start your Friday “work day” until 6pm, while locally, everyone in London is now enjoying the start to the weekend. I guess on the other end, on Monday morning and afternoon in London, I’d be still on my “weekend” as Mondays wouldn’t start until 6pm.

I suppose there could be some flexibility to the start and end times to the day. For example, some people start earlier in the day so they can leave earlier. Similarly, I could start the work day at 4pm London time and be done by midnight. Still, the biggest negative is that your evenings are gone. Forget about being social during the weekday. Then again, during a pandemic, this isn’t something you should be doing anyways. On the flipside, your late mornings and early afternoons are all free. You have all that time to run errands and get stuff done while regular local business hours are in effect.

Like I said, it’s not the worst working situation possible but it’s not perfect either. The reason this even popped into my head is because with the pandemic, the whole corporate world has been upended. People are working from home in all sorts of different places. Just on my team alone, I have had co-workers who worked from Dubai, the province of Ontario, and closer to home, on Salt Spring Island.

I am simplifying it a bit, but it seems like you’re no longer tied down to one place if you want to work somewhere specific now. It will be so interesting to see some data about where people are working from now in relation to where they used to reside for work.

In my current capacity at work, my team coordinates with another team for the development of a game. This team is located in California. They’re a pretty independent team with a strong culture. I just found out last week that this team gets a four-week holiday break. That means this week is their last week at work and they’re off until the new year.

They are so lucky. Four weeks is long enough for a real and genuine break when you can actually get refreshed again. With holiday travel grounded for most folks (hopefully), that means they won’t have to deal with the hassle of flying or driving.

Like a bunch of suckers, my team has to work another two more weeks before our break arrives. I am so envious of the other team!

This is one of my favourite SNL skits in recent memory because it deals with a situation that I can identify with, having to poop at work. Well, that’s no longer a problem now, with working at home and all, but it definitely was a problem in the beforetimes.

Something that I ate late Saturday night has thrown off my gastrointestinal system all day and night on Sunday. I’ll spare you some of the details but all evening I’ve been extremely gassy.

It’s a good thing I’ve been by myself tonight, otherwise people in my presence would have been subjected to an olfactory onslaught. I gotta go to bed now and I’m a little worried about pooping my PJs while I sleep.

As some of you know, in past years, I’ve worked right up until the Christmas holidays. Most of employers shut down after Christmas Eve and we don’t come back until after the new year. It’s rare that Christmas Eve lands on a Friday, so there’s that odd short week where you kinda have to phone it in for a few days and then take off at lunch on Christmas Eve. A lot of people tend to just use their vacation days to start the break early. My thinking has been to save my vacation days and since lots of people are gone anyways, you can just pretty much do nothing for those days right before Christmas.

This year has been unlike any other in recent memory. I’ve also been working very hard since I started on my new team a few weeks ago. I also have lots of vacation saved up, close to six weeks now. As such, I’m gonna take four days of vacation during the week of Christmas. Christmas Day lands on a Friday this year. With that in mind, that means I only have three more weeks of work left in the year. After that, I get a full two weeks off before starting work again in 2021. Two weeks sounds nice but I can already tell it will fly by. On January 4, when I log back into my work computer again, I know I’ll be wondering if I should have taken a few more days off.

I hope everyone has the chance to take some time off at the end of December. I understand not everyone has that luxury but please do it if you can.

It’s been abundantly clear now that many, if not all, company holiday parties will not be happening this year. Well, my employer just announced what they’ll be doing instead for us employees. They plan on holding events on three separate days from 11am-6pm each day. This is a list of things that employees will get or participate in:

• Alcohol Package Delivery
• Uber Eats E-Voucher  
• Virtual Cooking Classes with Delivered Ingredients
• Holiday Dance Classes for all abilities  
• Interactive Game Shows 
• Michael the Magician
• Vancouver Theatre Sports Improv Show
• #1 Worldwide Bestselling Online Show – Sangria and Secrets Drag Show
• Holiday Storytelling Event 
• Daily Dress up themes
• WFH Bingo : Holiday Edition
• Prizes
• More!

Of course, all of this voluntary and there is no pressure to partake in any of this. Employees are encouraged to do as little or as much as they want. Personally, I signed for a gin-based cocktail kit to be delivered to my home. I also signed up for a cooking class. I believe I’m getting ingredients for a chicken pot pie.

This is super nice of my employer to do this. As you might imagine from looking at this list, this took an amazing amount of planning, consideration, coordination, logistics, and of course, money. Remember that a couple thousand employees work in my particular location and these events need to scale up to that.

I feel lucky to be participating in this, given the circumstances here and worldwide.

I bought a super cheap tripod from Amazon that came with a smartphone mount. Using that, I was able to turn on the “astrophotography” mode on my Pixel 4a and took the above photo. I live in an urban area, so the light pollution is pretty bad and there were lots of clouds out tonight. Nevertheless, I was able to capture a few stars in the sky.

The results would be much better if I was in an area that had lower light pollution. I’ve seen some amazing photos using the same mode when people are away from the city. I’m not usually in the wilderness at night but if I am, I will take some great photos.

I took the above picture almost three weeks ago, on November 4, just a few days after Halloween. Someone had put up their Christmas tree and lights basically two months before Christmas Day. My first reaction was that it was too early for a tree to go up and for Christmas decorations to appear. That reaction stayed in my head for about ten seconds when I changed my mind.

This has been a very different and difficult year for many people. I don’t know what others have gone through in the last few months. We’re all just trying to survive and do our best until better days are here. If putting up a tree and lights a few weeks early can bring this family a little more joy in their lives, then I cannot blame them. I hope their holidays are as happy as they wish them to be.

We’re all trying to cope as best as we can and it’s important not to be critical about the little things right now.

This afternoon, the government of British Columbia introduced new restrictions to attempt to curb the direction of that the pandemic is going in this province. I welcome these new measures and while many in B.C. will whine, the restrictions aren’t even approaching the strictness that other jurisdictions are under. Some countries have locked down hard with severe penalties for those who don’t comply.

I’m of the opinion that we need to look at even more measures, with the some enforcement to back it up. It’s no good to list all the things you can’t do when there’s no one to keep people in line. The reason why we’re in this current predicament in the first place is because of morons who can’t or won’t get with the program.

This might be shaping up to be a pretty terrible holiday season.