California, 2007

Might be a little old, but I stumbled across Jonathan Coulton’s Code Monkey this morning. Kinda catchy:

…
Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code monkey have boring meeting, boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
But his output stink
His code not functional or elegant
What do Code Monkey think
Code Monkey think maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy just proud
…

Makes you smile a little, knowing that you’re in exactly the same situation as hundreds of other simians out there. Doesn’t make it any better, but hey, life is life, and its time you learned to live it.

…

Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow
…

Someday. Somehow.

Missed blogging about it, but May 20 marks one year since I left the Philippines. One year in this country, trying my best to make a living, trying to keep body and soul together for as long as possible.

Finding myself crushed under an overwhelmingly unreasonable workload. Deadlines and project goals and ship dates fly by in a blur, and I find myself up at 3 AM on a Sunday morning, staring for hours on end at a SIP packet trace from a box somewhere in Karachi trying to figure out a way to route data around the government data interchange.

Still no overtime, no benefits, and not much money left in the bank account. Still, keeping at it, just a few more months, I keep telling myself. Just a few more months.

Then hopefully, it’s back to picking up the pieces of my life and attempting to put it back together. Somehow.