Salocin

Feeling down? Reflect for a moment

I’m sitting in the Eurostar terminal in Brussels, and it’s some ungodly hour of the morning, and my painfully early awakening coupled with the prospect of an entire day of travel for 2 hours of job interviews out west of London have obviously put me in a pissant mood. It’s one of those mornings where every silver lining comes with a thundercloud, and every observation I make seems to fall short of expectations somehow. Allow me to demonstrate…

The WiFi Access in the Eurostar terminal is shitty, without clear instructions on how to subscribe, and probably costs a fortune. The coffee is bitter, machine-made, and has an anonymous hair in it. The train to Bruxelles-Midi (where I catch the Eurostar) was smelly, old and overcrowded, my Thinkpad battery is so dead I get about 30 minutes power out of it and my shirt collar is half a size too small.

In other words, I’m quite capable of seeing the world in shades that vary between black, pitch black, dark black and gloomy, particularly when I’m asked to get up at 6am two days in a row, and spend a fortune on transportation for an interview that will probably not get refunded by my prospective employer.

But I’m in an introspective frame of mind these days, probably brought on by the sense of perspective gained from seeing a ski-lift cabin crash to the ground a few metres away from me, and so I find that the gloom is only skin-deep. Going through the observation exercise again…

I love my top-of-the-line laptop computer (I’m a big fan of IBM), even though it is now 30 months old and therefore probably quite out-of-date. Despite being over 2 years old, the battery still has some life left in it. The Thinkpad has built-in wireless access, and 5 years ago I wouldn’t even have conceived the possibility that I could connect to the internet with my own computer in a train station, let alone without a cable, so it’s quite impressive that there should be a wireless network in the Eurostar terminal at all, and it’s unsurprising that the provider should want to make some money from it’s installation. I got to the station in time to buy myself a coffee, which was provided thanks to the fact that someone got up even earlier than me so as to open the coffee shop in the first place. There’s a direct service from Waterloo (where I live) to Bruxelles-Midi, and my mother was kind enough to get up and drive me to the station before dawn, even though I could have walked and she could have slept. I’m now on a super-fast French-designed train that’s going to go from Belgium to England via France in 2 hours and 15 minutes, will deliver me direct to London Waterloo, and goes through a tunnel that has to rank as one of the most insane acts of engineering ever witnessed.

Incidentally, I will have been to 5 countries in 3 days, which is quite something all by itself.

As for my collar being half a size too small, I choose to believe that my shirt shrank in the wash.

With a second look, it seems like there's a lot to be grateful for. And with that, as though by magic (and with a bit of cognitive dissonance), everything’s right with the world.

Now let’s hope I get the job.

UPDATE : Looks like the positive attitude paid off. Apparently I will have a job offer through the mail soon.

Posted by nlvp at November 16, 2004 07:47 AM