On Being A Hater and An Outsider

The work friends are catching on. After nearly three years of working alongside some of them, they know that beneath the smiley, friendly, calm facade, I'm truly a hater. One of them picked up an Oscar the Grouch t-shirt for me at Comicon last weekend. "For those days when you want people to leave you alone at work," he said. "It'll go right along with your Happy Bunny 'Not Listening' t-shirt."

Since I'm up to 5, possibly 6 projects right now, I went into work yesterday to catch up on reports, emails, schedules... all those tedious things I can sit down and do while listening to my Ipod without someone coming up to me every 15-20 minutes. One of the supervisors shuffled over, all happy that I was there working on his project and updating his ridiculous powerpoint book. I told him time and time again, that powerpoint was not a production friendly shot tracking system, but he insisted on using it.

"Are you guys going to actually use this?" I warily asked.
"Oh yeah, we're definitely going to! I'm going to print the whole thing out" he answered.
"You better use it, or else I'm going to use it to throw at people." I grumbled.

Besides feeling like I'm slowly going crazy from not being able to sleep the past few weeks due to the obnoxious heat, work is cranking my grumpiness levels to an all time high, while my productivity level and brain activity is pretty darn low. Last night was also the second annual farewell party for my old boss and her husband. Though he'd continue to work offsite for our company, they were moving to Texas, where they could actually afford to buy a freestanding home.

I was pretty burned out from large groups of people in general, much less more work people. But I hitched a ride to the house party and settled into a nice lawn chair in the backyard for the rest of the night. As I watched crowds of people swirl about, I felt like we were back in high school. The popular kids were all sitting at the picnic table - beautiful blond mememe talkers and the boys who loved them. The smokers stood off to the right chuckling about manly things, whereas I sat with the few quiet loners in the middle, leaning back in our lawn chairs, occasionally making conversation with passerbys, observing all the quaint interaction.

I also realized that I was the only Asian at this shindig. Not a big deal, but it felt like a rare first since the days of going to elementary school in Phoenix. Most of the time I don't think of race - I even forget that I'm Asian. Not in the whole I'm totally whitewashed kinda way, but more in the it's no big deal manner. I take it for granted that most of my closest friend are Asian-American and that in Los Angeles, I blend.

I'm more American than most of the company since we have people from all over the world working there. The last few guys I've dated or have been interested in have all been non-Asians. But it's the little things that remind me from time to time that I look different from everyone else. The innocent questions regarding my background and my culture. We have a handful of Asians from other countries at the company, but I'm truly the only Asian-American there. It seems to amuse them.

By midnight, many people were calling it a night. I hitched a ride back to work with my favorite loner and could feel the curious and the gossipy high schoolers raising their eyebrows as we walked out together. Just another typical night being around the work peeps.