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LA would be one of my favorite cities ever if they just decided to do two things every city should do:

1. Make the streets (as in roads where the cars go) smaller
2. Put in a big, punctual, reliable train system or something similar

Streets in Hong Kong are half the width or less of streets in LA. Hell, the only real highways in HK are about the same width as some of the roads I was driven through in Santa Monica. This means a lot less people drive, and good amount of vehicles on the roads are taxis and buses. Taxis are used to get out of the more remote parts of the city that don't have MTR (the name of their train system) stations, and MTR is used to travel more quickly throughout the rest of the city.

Seriously, fuck everyone having a car in a city and making cities accomodate that. I could go from where I lived in HK (pretty much the most east side there) to the center of the city (which is on a different island than where I lived) in less time than it took to get out of LA when I was already on the highway and only a couple miles from the outside.

I've never been in a city with public transportation as good as Hong Kong. People thought I was crazy when I told them I walked about four miles to a McDonald's because I didn't want to pay for a bus. People walk a lot, but the public transportation is so cheap, quick, and effective that people rarely walk really big distances without getting on a bus, getting in a taxi, or going on the MTR in between.

LA would be a completely different place if it was just one large city with a downtown center, "narrow" streets etc. Part of what makes Los Angeles the way it is, is the fact that it is essentially a conglomeration of a bunch of smaller cities. Yeah, in terms of driving and traffic, it sucks, but it is what it is. The structure is just completely different, you can't compare apples and oranges.
 
I can have a preference, though. I like apples more, if apples are cities like Hong Kong and oranges are cities like LA.
 
i'm planning to prescribe myself unemployment at the end of this month. job is getting me kind of depressed/crazy.

i asked my boss about a leave of absence today, and he said i had some options, but that waiting until the end of march would be "ideal". i think tomorrow i'm gonna insist on taking it from beginning of february through june.
 
Maybe when it's warmer, haha.

I'm planning to do a lot of travel during this leave of absence, or whatever it turns out to be.
 
zabu of nΩd;10138609 said:
i'm planning to prescribe myself unemployment at the end of this month. job is getting me kind of depressed/crazy.

i asked my boss about a leave of absence today, and he said i had some options, but that waiting until the end of march would be "ideal". i think tomorrow i'm gonna insist on taking it from beginning of february through june.

I hope to be in NC by June, maybe you can work out a visit.
 
So I was prescribed Prozac today.

Do you actually need it? I think medicines are overprescribed for people with depression. Well, except for bipolar.

zabu of nΩd;10138609 said:
i'm planning to prescribe myself unemployment at the end of this month. job is getting me kind of depressed/crazy.

i asked my boss about a leave of absence today, and he said i had some options, but that waiting until the end of march would be "ideal". i think tomorrow i'm gonna insist on taking it from beginning of february through june.

What's so depressing about your job?
 
zabu of nΩd;10138616 said:
Maybe when it's warmer, haha.

I'm planning to do a lot of travel during this leave of absence, or whatever it turns out to be.

You should plan on doing some writing as well. I seriously miss the mastery of poignant language that was your poetry.
 
I hope to be in NC by June, maybe you can work out a visit.

That would be sweet, keep me posted!

Have you met with any UMers before? Trying to remember if you and Cythraul hung out once.

What's so depressing about your job?

It's stressful, and i'm tired of having to wake up at 7:30 AM 5 days a week and constantly have to show progress on a project i have no motivation to do. It makes it hard to enjoy my life without 'chemical additives', and i need freedom, like, bad man.

You should plan on doing some writing as well. I seriously miss the mastery of poignant language that was your poetry.

Thanks for the encouragement. :) I think i'd be at least as good if not better now than i was back in '09 when i was still writing a lot.
 
zabu of nΩd;10138625 said:
It's stressful, and i'm tired of having to wake up at 7:30 AM 5 days a week and constantly have to show progress on a project i have no motivation to do. It makes it hard to enjoy my life without 'chemical additives', and i need freedom, like, bad man.

What's your job?
 
I am a software development consultant. I work in a client's office doing production support work, which is monitoring the software that is in use by the business, analyzing/diagnosing bugs that come up, reporting/discussing the bugs with developers, and also looking through data that is sent between systems to make sure it doesn't become invalid over time or whatever.

No personality to the work environment whatsoever -- i dislike everyone i work with, and the corporate culture means there's a lot of pressure to be on good behavior all the time, so i don't socialize while i'm there, and that makes the work a lot grindier.
 
zabu of nΩd;10138629 said:
I am a software development consultant. I work in a client's office doing production support work, which is monitoring the software that is in use by the business, analyzing/diagnosing bugs that come up, reporting/discussing the bugs with developers, and also looking through data that is sent between systems to make sure it doesn't become invalid over time or whatever.

No personality to the work environment whatsoever -- i dislike everyone i work with, and the corporate culture means there's a lot of pressure to be on good behavior all the time, so i don't socialize while i'm there, and that makes the work a lot grindier.

Wow. Even my job washing dishes at Pizza Hut sounds a lot more fulfilling. Why'd you even get that job in the first place?
 
Do you actually need it? I think medicines are overprescribed for people with depression.

Fuck knows if I need it. I've had anxiety issues for a while now and bits of OCD and depression (as in not being able to focus on things and lacking motivation). The Prozac is more for the two former bits than the latter (the way the doc described it, it almost sounded like a personal panacea). When I went to get a physical today at the UMaine clinic they had me fill out a personal health assessment, and when I got to the Psychological part I checked off a bunch of stuff and so they handed me one of those official OCD scoresheets, and I scored about middle range between perfectly fine and criminally ill, which is severe enough to treat with drugs. So I might as well take it and see what it does.
 
Wow. Even my job washing dishes at Pizza Hut sounds a lot more fulfilling. Why'd you even get that job in the first place?

I majored in computer science and had an internship in college, so i came out with a decent resume that got noticed by the consulting company on Monster.com. I've been on 3 projects so far, the others involving testing and web development. I was really just looking for anything degree-related after college, and this is what came along.