Finally: I have a real, fulltime job! Hired to do data entry and maybe some actually interesting stuff for a headhunting agency. Pay’s decent, and it’ll be interesting to see how an entirely information-based company works: the employee database is the business. It’s not a ton of money, but it will more than cover the bills and the hours 9-to-5, meaning weekend travel extravaganzas galore. I start tomorrow morning, bright and early.
It was nice to get a job, but the real highlight of the day was a long conversation with Sean. He’s a friend of a roommate and has been staying in our luxurious building for a week as a place to crash partway through his pan-European backpacking. A bunch of us went to play a quiz game at a pub; it was a good time, even though we drew blanks on the Eurocentric questions and had trouble understanding the bartender’s thick Irish accent. I shouted out an answer and he had me stand up, asked me what part of America I was from, and told me to show everybody my teeth before yelling that I was absolutely wrong. Don’t know about the teeth part: I think he was trying to make fun of me somehow, but I don’t think anybody got it. Maybe for having much better teeth maintenance than him?:)
Anyways… Sean and I hung around later than everyone else to finish our beers. This precipitated a great, meaning-of-life conversation as we stumbled the few blocks back home. We went on and on about what we wanted to do with our lives, right and wrong, what effect we will/should have on the world. The highlight was definitely when I asked him what he’d do with a billion dollars: how would he better the world with all that money? Sean would make a porno so good that nobody wanted to fight wars anymore, and I think he was half kidding at most. He’s 24, works manual labor jobs when he’s in the States to earn just enough for his travels, and detests office work: he can’t just sit there for 8 hours. Some people would say Sean’s a borderline bum, not contributing to society or an IRA. I think more people should be like him: dharma bums, traveling and thinking. He may not have a lot of money, but he’s definitely living. Sean has his shit together, all over the world.