Office Environment

I’ve finished my Schlumberger project. It was a challenging few weeks of number crunching and staring blankly at graphs, but it’s done! I think the working environment I’m in helped quite a bit. One of the huge advantages Schlumberger has over other companies is its blend between an office environment and a manual labor job. My general daily plan is to do work on my laptop until I feel tired, then get changed in PPE and head out to the workshop and watch stuff get built. This gives me two lives – the office Matt and the workshop Matt. My office alter ego is boring and predictable. I find myself falling further and further into a routine which involves;
1. Waking up at 7:20am and rushing to get changed and brush my teeth before the Taxi leaves (while simultaneously dreading the fact that I pressed ‘snooze’ a dozen times)
2. Heading to work and getting a really shit hot chocolate from the coffee machine
3. Sit down at my desk and start up my computer
4. Say a startled hello to the other employees who come in just as I begin to type in my password
5. Begin the inevitable ‘who can type the longest with your head down’ competition with all the other employees.
I noticed with my other internships that this type of routine can do wonders for productivity, but at the same time destroy the social part of you that makes you human. There are two things I hate most in this world; 1) when a Japanese man slurps miso soup really loudly in a restaurant, and 2) the social life in an office environment. My previous internship showed me that there is an obvious hierarchy among employees which involved ‘desk sitters’ at the top, ‘cubical chillers’ in the middle, and receptionists/ secretaries at the bottom. Consequently, a strange and unnatural social life evolves from this environment. The social life I’ve observed the most is the one between two ‘cubical chillers’. I feel like David Attenborough when I see it because it’s so unique. It’s a strange mix of; small talk and work conversation blanketed in a sea of small grunts of approval and faint laughs. It’s kind of like a normal conversation that’s been compressed into 1.5 minutes and disguised by a very forced sense of humor. The office laugh is the most iconic thing about it though – whenever two employees in cubical finish talking to each other they either let out a loud and quick burst of laughter or draw it out like an overly prestigious gentleman coughing out air…
My previous internship with Transfield taught me that a joke can be as unfunny as ‘prank defibrillators’, and you’ll still get that iconic office laugh.

Sometimes I feel like I can be a composer around the office. I could use the different sounds made by working employees to make a symphony. My first big hit would be this:
Sigh sigh sigh sigh sigh
cough cough
sneeze sneeze.
Frustrated typing, cough cough
Murmur, faint laugh

Watch out Beethoven

Anyway, enough about the past. How about the present? I was walking down Liardet St yesterday and I noticed the most pathetic street advertisement ever. It had written on it; “Taranaki – where family violence is NOT OK!” I wonder how many drafts they came up with before they ended up with that one. I’d suspect the only other alternative to this ad was:
“Taranaki – where domestic abuse is NOT PREFERED!”

I’ve decided to use my spare time at home to do something creative. I’ve decided to make a new meme that’s going to hit the world by storm. I decided to make a meme very similar to “Philoso raptor”, but instead call mine “Hypothepotamus”. And the picture is going to be a hippo wearing science glasses. Genius, right?