That’s twice now I’ve heard business school described as an item on the “checklist”–ostensibly of life, I suppose–that I’d do well to address. I’ve shared my thoughts on education with you previously, and while my views haven’t changed much, I have been mulling over what another degree would entail. By no means has an MBA ever been presented to me as a rocket ship or anything like that. It’s less a device designed to punch through glass ceilings and more a mark, a kind of gold star next to my name that would aid me, give me the nod, for some future corporate reckoning.
I still don’t know if I buy this. Even if I did buy it, literally so, I’d have to contend with the two biggest roadblocks in my mind. There’s the issue of cost, where the product at hand would likely call for funding equivalent to 15,385 burritos, and here I can unequivocally state that I’d prefer the burritos. Comparatively speaking, my car ran me about 3,700 burritos, and rent–shelter–when I arrived here was roughly equal to 80 burritos a month. That Iron Man 2 Blu-ray I picked up earlier this week? Three burritos. Small-ticket item, obviously, but you get my point. Perhaps I’m undervaluing post-graduate education, though, and maybe an MBA is worth, like, 10,000,000 burritos.
There’s also the specter of classrooms and tests and group work for the sake of group work and due dates for projects of imaginary import. But those conceits are largely fakeable, provided you put in a modicum of effort, which brings me back to the central choice: should I continue to avoid additional schooling, hoping instead that hard work will win the day? In place of another diploma would be a renewed urgency to network and be scrappy, fearless, lucky. Or should I bite the bullet and succumb? What if b-school cost no burritos? That would be a very different proposition indeed.
The last time I went to a Chinese restaurant was years ago, during a farewell lunch for a co-worker that wasn’t so much a goodbye as it was a hearty hello to questionable cuisine. Full disclosure, I usually top out at places like Pei Wei or, in what the public apparently deems as the Taco Bell of the Far East, Panda Express. I don’t care about “authenticity,” end of the day. I just need to know whatever’s happening in the kitchen falls under the comforting purview of health inspections on a regular basis. Well, I broke my streak today.
Part of me wanted to be open to change. It’s been a while, after all, and it struck me that perhaps I’m in a different place now, where the idea of enjoying Asian food, even more so than the scallion chicken I ordered, would be the dish du jour. In my mind, I was extending a veritable olive branch to my heritage. Turns out I should’ve had an actual olive branch for lunch instead. It was the usual suspects, as you may have surmised. Grease in generous portion. Chicken of mysterious origin. The ensuing MSG-induced headache.
That said, takeout was free, which significantly reduces my license to complain. And what I really wanted to discuss, anyhow, was progress on the ping-pong front. You may recall my quest, along with how much I like the skill acquisition framework. With table tennis, it’s more a question of skill reclamation. Sure, there’s a ton more to learn. But at my current juncture, I’m content with thawing out what I remember, and once the basics are in place, doing all I can to invent, to author the outcome of every point, if that makes any sense. Today’s tally? Six games, all favorable, and shit just got real.
When you think about it, I suppose ping-pong has oriental roots, so maybe this could serve as a substitute olive branch for today, kind of like an alternative peace offering to compensate for the scallion chicken. Isn’t it, like, a major sport across the Pacific? Then again, the office ping-pong tradition existed long before I got here and upped the Asian to non-Asian ratio to 1:50–the golden proportion for me, incidentally–and when the people have spoken, you have but to listen.
Six weeks into my new gig and a few life optimizations later, I now find myself with an abundance of time, and naturally I’ve been thinking about how best to honor this surplus. Extra time is a bit of a misnomer, I suppose, because from a certain perspective I’ve always had extra time. It’s not like I’ve been rushing to volunteer outside of work, nor have I been partaking in any communities, and I certainly haven’t had to drop anybody off at soccer practice or anything like that.
Indeed, the cross I bear usually takes the shape of a Hulu queue filled to bursting, but even this can only last so many hours. For a while I had suspected that bringing an Xbox into my home would consume my free time, perhaps unravel the very fabric of my being. Hasn’t been the case, though. In fact, it’s been sitting there–idle!–for a couple days and counting, I’m pleased to report. What I once surmised would destroy me may have turned into something far more manageable: an electronic diversion and nothing more.
The life optimizations I mentioned revolve around the office building itself. The only sunlight I see on a typical weekday from 8:45 AM to 5:25 PM is through glass, honestly, and if they could install a pneumatic tube from my place to the corporate park, I’d be set. I basically roll into a parking garage in the morning, enter the building proper through a skyway, and when lunch time hits the food comes to me. Then, it’s back through the skyway and into the parking garage. I’ve even switched to the bank in the lobby, a newly furnished community institution adorned with marble countertops, upon which sit soft-baked chocolate chip cookies. Every day. They call me “Mr. Wu” whenever I swing by to bank, and I’ve told them to stop it.
There you have it: the contours of my new weekday. If any of my ancestors were given to hunting or other feats of nature, I’m sorry! It feels like I’ve violated a covenant of some sort. Lack of sunlight aside, this means the center cut of my day is far more compact, hence the extra time. I’ve been kicking around a few remedies for this. A renewed search for a dog. Perhaps a membership at the local racquet club. Another push to find a community. This last point actually intrigues me the most, and I’ve the beginnings of a plan that, if nothing else, should offer a rich vein of stories. The first task at hand is to go back–way back to the ’80s, a return to my roots. I’d prefer to not be cryptic, but this is all I will say for now.