No parking....

At this very moment I'm sitting here in Starbuck's sipping a sugar-free, skim milk caffè latte, when I should be in my office. Lately it seems as if no matter how early (or late) I get to the office, I always find myself without an available parking space.

You know, it's kinda ironic.

I can take the office politics, the back-biting and back-stabbing, the office gossip, being passed over for promotion, being floated, etc., but somehow not having an available parking slot when I get to work has a strange bitterness unique to itself.

One day you realize you only have a job and not a career. It is no longer a calling which gets you out of bed in the morning, more often than not just an alarm clock which you don't hesitate to put into snooze mode when it blares out the opening salvo in the daily grind that you call your life.

You get dressed, brave the morning rush hour, in the process avoiding a number of rushing buses who would soon run you over rather than allow a competing bus to get first dibs on waiting passengers, and after everything has been said and done, you find yourself in your place of work, without a place to park your ten-year-old clunker. Is there no justice?

Even if you resign yourself to your fate of being nothing more than a salaryman, fate sometimes deals you a hand so inane in its triviality, yet hitting right where it hurts.

Yet, I choose not to blow my top. What's the use anyway?

I go to the nearest Starbuck's, fire up my laptop, and over sips of a low-calorie, sugar-free, caffeine-rich brew, I type this post to help maintain my sanity over what seems to be an insane world.

I guess I should be thankful though. A lot of more experienced and more qualified individuals have lost their jobs, thanks to the global economic crisis. I may not have a career, but I still have a job, and for a lot of unemployed people, I'm on easy street. On the flip side though, a lot of no-skill, no-talent, no-common-sense people have been able to weasel themselves into high-paying corporate jobs, and for no other reason than having the right political connections. C'est la vie.

It still bugs me though, but I'll live.

What I want though, is to do a Datsusara, but that will come in its own time. For now, all I can hope for is an available parking slot when I get back to the office.