Movie and a chat

I guess this week has been one for introspection. I watched The Philosopher Kings on Netflix last night. It's currently streamable and very good. The premise is they interview custodial workers at many top US universities and as expected when you ask somebody for their story there's more than just their exterior or just their job.

 

The movie was sprinkled with quotes. The kind that seem really brilliant to me and I immediately want to post here or put up on my cube wall for inspiration. Before realizing I am a cynical hag and maybe nothing will change that, even a nice documentary and a couple good quotes. But all in all it's a very interesting movie. It's not surprising maybe that several of the workers have undergone great personal tragedy at some point in their lives, overcome adversity, and have (or are portrayed to have) generally positive outlooks about their lives and their jobs.

 

This was after a conversation with HerrTech where I was bemoaning my future at MegaCorp and ranting about my jealousies towards the others on the chessboard. He began asking me how much of it was really about partial treatment or what I could be doing to make it up. He asked if I was being proactive and finding problems to solve before people asked me to. He also told me not to get cocky about my job stability. This is all a bit strange coming from HerrTech who doesn't make the world's best optimist and generally agrees there's no reason to give too much to one's job.

 

So I had all this in mind. This idea that I would bring it at work today. The idea that I've had a relatively cushy and stable upbringing compared to those custodians and maybe I could be doing more. A notion that if they can be satisfied I can certainly be satisfied with my cushy office job. All this is battling the sarcasm the bitterness the cynicism that normally operates in my brain space. Not sure what conclusions I'll come to, if any.

Your Stuff

I had to haul around my laptop the other day. Due to not having a trunk in my car this meant dragging my heavy backup into the doctor's office, than around me all day on the first day of classes. While in the library during a break I had to pack everything up just to walk over to the bathroom only to return a few minutes later. It's frustrating, but of course the consequences of not taking my valuables with me are overwhelming and far outweigh the trouble in hauling my stuff around. I began to reflect back on how there are no lockers on campus and how for security reasons no lockers at my high school. Obviously, the lockers themselves might not have been that secure but as a commuting student sometimes I lament a place I could stash some books for a few hours and not have to carry them around.

 

Then I began to wonder what it's like for those don't have a home or a car to keep their things in. The stereotypical homeless we can picture with shopping carts or large trash bags. Ratty looking, but I wonder if that doesn't discourage someone assuming their valuables are worth stealing. I would suspect homeless are a highly vulnerable population to theft and how difficult it must be to not have anything of value that you can't carry around with you. I wondered if there are solutions for these people. The shopping carts they use are technically stolen property and might get taken away from them. City workers might see their stashed belongings as trash and throw it all away. Does anybody have in mind backpacks or carts that could help the homeless? Or how about a safe place to keep their things?

 

A little digging pulled up this program for a homeless storage facility in Portland, Oregon. There's also this program at the First United Church in Vancouver. It's not a permanent storage facility, but a place that people can leave things while they go to job interviews or appointments. It's interesting as a society we focus so much on where we are going to house our homeless, which is important, but other things that make such a big quality of life difference are perhaps overlooked. I see this as akin to internet access for the homeless. It's important we realize they are people like us and the needs we have are the needs they have but with no property their lives are extremely complicated. I wonder if it might not be more beneficial if many of the engineering solutions that we look to implement in third world countries as affordable healthy and quality of life enhancers weren't applied to our poverty stricken population. Urban homeless may not have the same needs as rural third world poor but they do have needs and I'm not sure it's getting enough attention at the moment.