Wherein I Sign an NDA and Celebrate My Sister's Birthday

My first job is taking a lot longer than I thought. The problem working freelance is that no one seems to understand that you need to put in the same amount of work as a full-timing nine-fiver, you only get to decide on the period in the day you'll be slogging.

And my time has been everyone's cheese the past few days, what with people having camps and courses and coming back from overseas and going overseas everything. Not to mention that school starts soon and I need to plan my modules this semester. It's ironic that even though I'm taking half the number of modules I usually do, my stringent criteria (minimum study time) and having to fit it into a two-day-week makes it all very difficult.

I'm about a third of the way through (as far as I can gauge), which would make me... the slowest designer ever. Ugh.

In any case, that's about all I can say about my work, having signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and also because I don't want to get fired for making fun of my employer being bald, fat and ugly (which he isn't) or complaining about the horrible habits of my colleagues (which I don't have) or bitching about the pathetic working conditions of my workplace (which would be my room). The NDA was something of a shock, considering the company I'm working for is so small and I don't really know much to disclose. I can't even remember employer's license plate number and I keep misplacing his name card, which mean's he's pretty much safe from stalkers, and I don't know enough about the business to make sense of how he's making money anyway.

On the other hand, the NDA does make everything I do the property of the company. It's rather strange for me, really, selling my skills in that way. I can still point to the thing and say that I made it, but I don't own it anymore. Which is the way of most products these days, but it's weird for something so close to art, where ownership is supposed to count for less than production (no one's ever become famous for owning a Picasso). I'm creating things of virtual value.

Sister's birthday tomorrow. Family went out for dinner today to celebrate the event which was, like all our current family events, a terrible display of how much we've alienated each other and have nothing in common at all to talk about. Father made the observation when we did family portraits at Lau Beijing restaurant that it was the first one in several years with all five of us. For a moment I was stunned, trying to remember the last time we'd done it, and for the life of me I couldn't remember a single one. There'd always been just one person not in the photo, sick of overseas or in the army or angry with one of the parents or something, and that had always spoilt it.

I guess we're not exactly the model family that spends weekends together.

I told mother it was silly that she didn't mind spending money to buy an extravagent (and too-large) birthday cake than to repair the toilet. Though I criticize, it's a trait I share too, though my extravagences are in stationery and books (that I never read) than savoury treats. My mother always has food in the refridgerator and I always have spare notebooks, office files, staplers, envelopes and various other implements of everyday-office-life..

My parents, when I'm not screaming at them in frustration for their inability to understand my need to do something in my life other than become a teacher and breed children, scare me by showing sides of themselves that I recognize as being present in myself. It would be an enviable state of affairs if I hadn't been spending my life trying to avoid that, and to make things worse I'm fallling into the lull of thinking it's not such a bad thing to be a maniacal grandchild-hungry madman.

Sister has contracted a horrendous streak of service-industry-snobbishness and looks down on waiters. Shocked me with a diatrebe about how if people didn't want to be looked-down-on then they shouldn't work as waiters. She will be spending the next four days with her various friends at cheap middle-class restaurants fulfilling their excuse to pamper themselves and satisfy their petty consumerist greed and flaunting their parents' money (and sometimes boyfriends', though in the case of my sister it'll have to take another one or two trips to the plastic surgeon).

Happy birthday, you evil girl, and may waiters spill soup all over your dresses!