Self confidence and London.

I mentioned on the sad blog recently (amid the crushing of my self-esteem) that my self-confidence and self-esteem were at their highest by the end of the London trip.

I was going to elaborate that as a tie-in to a much longer post complaining about how my mother insults me nearly continuously, but I figured that while the majority of the post was negative, that this bit was positive, and shouldn't be on the sad blog.

So why was my self-confidence and self-esteem so high after London? Readers of my sad-blog know that half-way through the trip I was whining about how I felt distanced from both my fellow ASU students and from the general Londoner population (with the merry exceptions of Joefish and Slightfoxing, who were a pleasure to meet).

Well, first off, I proved that I could be successful. I survived and (with the exception of what probably was swine flu) stayed healthy. I got kind of down because of not being accepted at my original job placement, and then later being dismissed from my second job placement, but in the third one... things worked out. And that was the last one, too, so that left the strongest impression.

How did things work out? Well, the tasks were readily defined (as opposed to the school, where I had basically no instruction on what to do), and I could do them, so I did them. Turns out that I am a pretty hard worker - all I was doing was mostly mindless busywork, but... hmm...

Did I ever mention why I like fighting games (the Tekken, SSBM, Virtua Fighter sort)? It's not because I am particularly bloodthirsty, or have anywhere near the motor-memory or fine-motor control to be effective at them. Instead, it is a pursuit of perfection. Every time I play, I try to optimise my techniques, fiddle with the balance of what I do, and pursue a state of empty mind (mushin, if you will).

Doing rote tasks at work is much the same, particularly if they are repetitive. Each time I find a website to write down the contact info from, I try to improve on it, given the inefficiencies from last time. Finding out the most likely places to get the appropriate information, figuring out which sites are promising enough to search for other sites via their links... balancing detail and time spent hunting through the website with the benefits of simply going to the next website. With each iteration, I try to improve the rote algorithms of how to react to a website, doing it fast, doing it better.

Additionally, I hunt for other ways of doing things. Better ways. We have a database of email addresses to email out to people, and we would mail 60 at a time - as we selected them off of the worksheet, we looked them over for duplicates, which slowed the selecting. So I went online, as found a series of excel formulas that I could use to eliminate duplicates (shrinking the registry by over a thousand addresses), searching for common email address misspellings (yahooo.com is a common one, as is anything with a double letter, it seems), searching for two addresses put in the same entry, searching for non-email address characters, eliminating all spaces in front or behind words, standardizing everything to lowercase, and even searching for addresses which did not have an @ sign, which required some out-of-the-box usage of excel's tools. All of this was via search functions and excel formulas, meaning that I could apply them quickly on the several-thousand-entry data base.
Naturally, this task was not without the same sort of optimization as everything else. For emailing outwards, I found it was more efficient to open a dozen messages, then copy and paste the same subject line to each one, and correct the message for each one, etc, rather than doing all the changes to each message one message at a time.

This sort of stuff I could take pride in, and my bosses were apparently pleased with it all. Turns out that mindless drudgery is only mindless drudgery if you don't constantly hunt improvements. If I do wind up flipping burgers, I'm pretty sure I could seek to optimise a balance of speed and quality, and spend my mental energies improving my technique.

Not only that, but at work people did appreciate me, did compliment me on doing well, etc.

Onwards to reasons other than work, London was a pretty cool place to be, and I greatly enjoyed the museums and performances, and the sights.

Additionally, while I was in London, I had enough time outside of work to design my own creative stuff. I made at least two game-design blog-posts while I was there (viewable on earlier happy-blogs, specifically the one on designing a new fighting game, and designing a new space piloting game, both of which showcase my desire for horribly complex game design). I started designing a DnD campaign, though that eventually had to pause due to my lack of ability to test the game mechanics I was designing.

Also in London, I got to see Joefish and Slightfoxing, as awesome as previously mentioned.

On a more personal front, I managed to sort out things romanically, and the result was much better than I feared it would be. Down-right good, given the circumstances.

And then, after my internship ended, I went to France, and stated with Bubble B and her family. Turns out everyone likes me. Her family thinks that I am well-mannered, well-raised, kind, trustworthy, and perhaps other descriptions that I cannot think of off the top of my head. And going around Paris with Bubble B was a delightful pleasure, naturally.

And then, as I was coming home, I had a visit to Toshiko to look forward to, as well as Krystalangel coming to visit for a week. Plus DnD on Sundays with Alec, and being in the same timezone as most of my friends.

So I got off the plane pretty happy, pretty hopeful, and pretty confident in my abilities. In fact, while I normally sink into being miserable within the first few hours of interacting with my mother, this time I lasted all the way from getting back Tuesday night until breaking down and crying on the following Friday. (This is still the happy blog. That was a statement showing just how good I was feeling when I got back. The story of that all goes in the sad blog.)

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Time to go help mother with whatever she wants me to help her with.

Movies on a Plane

I watched three movies on the way over the Atlantic (Traveling from London to Calgary, as it were).

Watchmen was pretty good. My version was censored, so I didn't get to see the vaunted Big Blue Penis. Other than that, I thought it was well done, though I wish that the hero-types didn't occasionally kick people completely accross rooms with... strength they are not supposed to have. Ozymandias, I can see. He's supposed to be the absolute peak of physical conditioning, to the point of being unnatural - the other ones? Not so much. Also, the second Nite Hawk was too slim. C'Mon, he's supposed to be a bit overweight. I liked him like that.

Push was... meh. I have to say that it was a pretty decent movie. It has a complicated plot, the characters are okay, and the special effects are pretty cool. But the thing that really drives me up the wall is how much potencial the setting has. I wouldn't be surprised if there are fan-fics that are better than the movie. Hell, I'd write a fan-fic set in the same setting. Not because the movie was actually good--it's just decent--but because the setting is open to so many possiblities. It's like someone wrote a mediocre plot, with mediocre characters, and then handed the setting creation to someone like me. Someone who was given the needs of the plot, and went crazy with creating a flavorful and world-comprehensive setting.

Coraline was really good. I liked it a lot. Started out a bit slow, but after the first few minutes (I'd mark it as about when she meets the circus man, and then the two old ladies, a bit later) it starts going all kinds of cool. Reminds me of Psychonauts a lot. That's a good thing. You should see the movie.