The Penalty Box

I could spend hours just watching random TED talks and they’d be infinitely more fulfilling than any funny Youtube video posted on reddit. This TED talk is about photography and how changing the context of how a picture is presented can alter your memories or change what you believe to have happened. Pretty cool stuff. Check it out here. If you have any interest in law, you’ll definitely want to check out the second half of the presentation which talks about wrongful convictions.

I keep forgetting to keep an eye out for fish sales and I wanted to get some fish back in my diet. This one was an easy recipe to put together, and while it didn’t exactly use high quality fish, it was fish nonetheless. Plus it turned out pretty good. Good enough that I forgot to take pictures, so uh, use your imagination.

So here’s what you’ll need to make salmon burgers.

• 2 teaspoons of chopped parsley leaves (or a couple small bunches)
• Half a red onion, diced
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of panko bread crumbs
• Few cranks of black pepper (or about a teaspoon)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lemon, zested
• 4 tablespoons Dill Mayo (recipe below)
• 2 cans of salmon (try to find skinless and boneless - you’ll have to judge whether the extra price is worth your time picking out bones of the regular cans)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (you can use olive oil if you want)

The cooking part:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. In a bowl, combine parsley, onions, eggs, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, lemon zest and dill mayo together. Add the drained salmon and mix together. It’s best to use your hands here, and go slow so you don’t fling bread crumbs everywhere. Make 4 palm-sized patties (or however big you want them) and set aside on a plate.
3. Take frying pan or a skillet, put it on medium heat with the two tablespoons of oil. Brown both sides of the patties. If you don’t have a big enough pan, do it in batches. Then put them on a cookie sheet or oven safe pan/dish and stick them in the oven for 5-10 minutes. The salmon is already cooked, so you just want to make sure the eggs are cooked.
4. Serve on buns with dill mayo. Add dressings to your liking, but other than lettuce, I think these things go pretty good just with the dill mayo.

For the dill mayo:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped dill (use dried if you need to, fresh tastes better)
• Pinch of paprika (use cayenne if you want more kick)
• Large pinch of salt
• Couple cranks of black pepper
• Optional: couple teaspoons of yellow mustard

Combine these ingredients together in a small bowl, stirring with a fork or a whisk. If it looks too liquidy, add more mayo. You want it to spread like mayo, not be a sauce.

This recipe should make 4 burgers and more dill mayo than you should need. But the dill mayo is good on other stuff too. Happy eatings!

Check ‘em out.

Also, hooray for business decisions being made without due diligence! This doesn’t remind me of anyone at all, nosiree.

If you ever hear anyone list the actual things they like about their job, chances are (assuming they like their job) money is not at the top of the list. It’s almost always something intrinsically motivating, something intangible. Perhaps your co-workers are pretty awesome, or your manager isn’t a dick. Maybe you find what you do incredibly fulfilling. I watched this TED Talk again for the third time and every time I wonder why more companies can’t understand this concept of intrinsic motivation. If your company understands this, you almost certainly work for a really awesome company.

Life, and the relationships within it, is often about perspective. Your particular perspective in a relationship with someone, be it working, friendship, familial or love, is different depending on how you interact with them. Everyone has some level of crazy in them; some have OCD, some are geniuses, some are in love and some enjoy the squishing sounds that a stabbing knife makes. How much of this crazy you see in a particular person generally depends on the amount and quality of time you spend with them. What gets in the way of this time is barriers, which can be people (like your parents) or physical (like an ocean).

Take, for instance, that neighbour of yours. You’ve probably seen him do something a little crazy; maybe he goes running in short shorts when it’s so cold out your boogers freeze. You don’t know him too well though, so you’re pretty far away from his personal Crazy Tree. Because you’re so far out, he appears lower in the branches. The barrier here would be the walls of your domicile…and the fact that you don’t want to see him in short shorts. Ever.

Another example might be “That Girl” at work. You know, the one that can’t seem to shut up about her gerbil. She’s over in Sales though, and your manager generally keeps a tight lid on things so you can do some work. If your manager is good at it, you’ll never even notice just how much crazy has been kept away from you. But you probably will notice the less subtle ones, like Gerbil Girl there. You’re pretty sure she’s high up in the Crazy Tree, but you’re not close enough to be sure; your perspective just tells you that (I mean really, who names their gerbil Pinky McSparklepants?).

Barriers skew your perspective of how much crazy you see. The closer you are to someone’s Crazy Tree, the more you notice how high up they are. They could be just dangling off of a low branch or they could be swinging in the upper branches, screeching and tossing turds at you. Think about it; how much crazier did your roommate seem when you moved in with him compared to when you just had beers every now and then? Barrier of housing dropped there, letting you closer to his Crazy Tree. That supervisor that seemed really cool during the interview for grad school? Well, now that you work in his lab, he’s a turd slinger. Barrier of unfamiliarity dropped.

Where am I going with all of this? Show some appreciation for the barriers in your life, particularly the human ones. Once they’re gone, you might find yourself in the Crazy Forest in the middle of freaking Crazy Town and wondering how all this crazy just snuck up on you. Hint: it didn’t; your perspective just changed.

…but that doesn’t make it any easier.  It’s a curious emotional roller coaster when layoffs happen in at the company you work at. At times, it’s worse for those that stay behind. Call it Survivor’s Guilt, call it resentment, call it whatever you want. A sense of humour usually appears to mitigate the negative feelings, although it seems the outgoing personnel have a better mood than the ones that keep their jobs (at least the ones that are confidently employable). I won’t compare it to death because that’s far too much of a dramatization, but despite any rational thought of being able to continue communication through other means besides “being at work,” there is a brief worry of “I’m not going to see these people again.”

Besides the people front, one also goes through thoughts like “Wow, I still have my job” and “Shit, I have all this work.” How does one avoid feelings of resentment and bitterness? I don’t know if you can; when you work closely with your co-workers and develop friendships as a result, you can’t just shove all of that under a rug and go to work the next day without SOME kind of effect on your person. Tempering such feelings has a lot to do with how your company proceeds next (ie how they communicate, take care of those laid off, manage work expectations with a reduced staff). Talking to former co-workers probably also has a collaborative healing process.

In any case, it’s better to not make any decisions in a raw emotional state. Process, think, seek advice, decide.

I am amazed that turned out as coherently as it did. If it weren’t clear enough, layoffs happened at my company, but I was not among them. If, however, you are aware of openings for the following positions, I would be appreciative of an e-mail so I can pass the necessary details onto some former co-workers:

• Web developer
• Development manager/Project manager
• Office manager/Executive assistant
• Accountant
• Semantic modeller

Now I’m gonna go toast ‘em off with some scotch. Here’s to you, guys. Been a pleasure.