Thank you, Hallmark.

I realized that I forgot to get my buddy a (belated) birthday card, so to kill two birds with one stone, I dropped by Montgomery Mall after work to catch a quick meal at the food court and to stop by Hallmark.

Since I travel most of the time, and I have no business at the mall after work, it’s a rare occasion when I drop by a mall on a weekday. A bustling place, being jostled in a crowd of families and couples spending their weekend on idyllic stroll in the mall aisles, people milling in and out of chain stores (usually during holiday shuffle to boot) is my idea of a typical mall, so I was shocked to see the mall pretty much deserted as I strolled in through Macy’s entrance.

The loud displays, glittery signs and dazzling lights are meant to compete against a crowd to catch your attention – close to closing hours on a Monday, however, it feels like I’m walking alone through an amusement park in a hallucination.

It’s downright depressing.

The only sanctuary I found was while browsing through the amusing messages on the cards at Hallmark, imagining what my buddy's reaction will be to each of these messages and cracking a smile at the most corny ones, until I chose one that was perfect for my buddy (I usually rummage through the “humor” section for the cards) – I can forgive them for dotting my year with bogus holidays*. Then, I walk out to face the creepily cheerful ambiance again, and quickly scurry out to the parking lot into the cold April night.

* That is, until the next sham holiday when I'm left to wonder if I need to get a card for "National Vending Machine Refiller Appreciation Week."

Another random rambling...

I find myself in a mode sometimes, where I find myself walking through my day with my forearms locked across the chest, being skeptical about every encounter, questioning every motive, and weighing the profitability in every decision. That’s what I’m paid to do, but through all the years I’ve been a consultant, while steady promotions bumped me predictably upward through the corporate food chain and I’ve developed a stock of managerial/technical acumen that puts me in roles of greater responsibility, I have always thought that I’ve maintained a reasonable degree of separation between who I am in my dress shirt and slacks in the office and jeans and t-shirt after hours. Perhaps that’s why “work hard, play hard” culture I’ve been indoctrinated in my firm has always been embraced so wholeheartedly. The “hard” part is always encouraged – dogged determination to “get shit done” when all else have abandoned projects, and incessant obsession to sniff out “opportunity” in every situation requires a mechanical propulsion that never lets up. The toggle between “work” and “play” is rather easy to flip; driving up the momentum to give it all you’ve got all the time is harder to regulate. Consulting company HR’s juggle a fine alchemic balance between stroking naïve career development appetites, tantalizing financial compensation (not too little to drive people away, but never over-compensate), and relentless propaganda that touts work-life-balance.

Of all the damages an impressionable young mind can take through years in such career, the most damaging one is when that separation between “career” and “life” gets blurred – and you go through years without knowing it. Although I suspect that all company HR’s have a healthy arsenal of procedures and solutions to address the “work-life balance” question, there’s no other industry like consulting where the absurdity of accounting for “work” and “life” into separate buckets are never really questioned – and they’re put on opposite ends of a scale for people to balance. Only the ones, who successfully meld one into another, move up beyond a certain ladder to join the gods at Olympus. The rest, are left wondering that this all means at 1AM in the morning while stacking up empty bottles of Sammy on desk next to the notebook computer as he types away – click click click – in solitude, in a strange city, in a strange hotel room.

How the random movies I occasionally catch playing on a random channel in hotel rooms, completely changes my mood sometimes, always bemuse me. (A-ha! The real topic that I wanted to type about finally emerges.) On a “good day” (when clients behave, the team works like a well-oiled machine, and I leave the work whistling a tune), I never sit down to watch TV – I find ways to get some exercise, treat myself to nice dinner or go out with teammates or friends. It’s the “bad days” (when I leave work late at night killing myself to meet irrational demands, team on the verge of implosion, and every new demand by client/team manager is met by infuriated resentment) when I plop myself in bed with a sack of the most disgusting fast food staples, mindlessly flipping through the channels until I numb my brain until I drift into a pathetic slumber. Oops, again, I digress.

On the “bad days,” (“Ah-hem!” trying to get back on topic), it’s not always the latest Hollywood blockbusters I’ve missed that shows up on HBO, or a well-reviewed flick that I run across on a random channel that titillates me – it’s usually the viewing of old favorites on re-run or a completely unfamiliar movie that really helps me put things into perspective and makes me get out the bed, rejuvenated and… dare I say it?

Happy.

Smiling.

Refreshed.

What was the movie tonight? Take the Lead, starring Antonio Banderas. I reckon that the movie had received a review no higher than a “C-“ on any critic’s list, and some of the scenes were grossly forced; the movie must have been a fodder for any critic having a bad day to just “let ‘er rip” and gleefully tear apart. However, I’m not here to harp on the critics’ blabberings. For all the reasons why a critic might hate the movie (formulaic plot, impractical and embarrassingly botched acting, and over-the-top scenes), it was the PERFECT movie to remind me that there are more in life than careers, meeting deadlines and exceeding expectations. I also have to admit that I’m a sucker for “a lone crusader educator in the face of overwhelming odds, redeems him/herself and restores dignity to the lost cause students” type movies. Of course, fanatical dance scenes and feel-good themes that made movies such as Bring it On an unexpectedly enjoyable flick never hurt, and the movie made me ponder about what life is like on a REGULAR job where people can get out at 5 PM and actually take dance lessons (or other life-enriching classes), follow fussy recipes that require more than canned/dry cupboard staples to cook, and actually a leisurely viewing of really cheesy movies with their loved ones.

When Mephistopheles wants to bargain for the zenith of corporate happiness, what he promises might not be worth the asking price. He sure can concoct a mighty intoxicating potion… that sneaky little devil.