Day one

You've passed the interviews. All six of them. Even the ones you had no idea what they were about. You accepted the offer. You've made it. And now you can't wait to start.
Firstly, wait two weeks to one month.

[Two weeks to one month later...]

This is it. First day.
You don't know exactly where to park, where the entrance is, which button is the right buzzer, which floor to go to, but you don't get discouraged. Nothing can stop you now, nothing can cloud this brilliant day. You've made it. You're at the reception. Wow, she's pretty, she has lovely eyes. A bit bored, though, but still very focused. Important work, no doubt. You should focus, too. You're here for much more important things. You're here to build your future. You're here to meet whom? No, you work here. You're colleagues. A brief flicker of interest sparks in her lovely eyes. And... Back to bored. Who should pick you up? You don't know, you thought someone was waiting for you. No, you don't remember any name from the interviews, unfortunately. Bored turns to annoyed, all the effort put all morning in the Candy Crush tournament is going to waste now. Because of you. Finally, someone in your department is found that has vaguely heard about a new guy. A small detour to get a badge. A visitor badge for now, remember to give it back when yours is ready? In 3 to 5 weeks, most likely. Anyway, you and your temporary badge are being taken to your desk. And quickly abandoned there, you colleague has work to do. Look at it, your desk! It's brilliant. Your future starts here. Although it is a bit shallow at the moment. There should something be here, right?
Time to meet the local IT. You don't know it yet, but the brilliant day is about to be shadowed by a trip to the place of no sunshine. Time for NDAs, scorn, security, slight abuse, what you can and cannot do. Mostly what you cannot do. Be humble and be humbled for the gumption to expect a working computer and phone that doesn't weigh more than the computer.

[Two to four hours later...]

Victory! A bit crumpled, but victorious. You're all set. A shiny new phone, a not-so-shiny laptop. You're all set. The possibilities are limitless, everything's at your fingertips. Not right now, but right after you'll be granted access to the Internet, to the intranet, to the applications. And a SIM card. From now on the only way is up. The first day is really great. And now, it's lunch time. Alone today, because you don't know anybody.

[A lunch break later...]

If you think the visit to the IT department was the sole cloud on this otherwise perfect day, wait till you reach the bottomless tar pit that's about to come next. Yes, it's induction time. Time to get lost in the haunted office where a coven from HR is blighting all soul and life through tepid spells impregnated on meaningless documents more painful to read than ancient witchcraft guidebooks. If you think what you went through earlier was abuse, you're in for a surprise. A nasty, nasty surprise. 'Human resources' is not a department, it is prey. Their prey. Human is just a meaningless prefix indicating the type of resources they're after. For consumption. And what could be more delicious on their menu than a young innocent soul, another naive that comes with high hopes of growing and making a difference? Yes, you! Puny human.
Who knows, though, you might be lucky. If you catch them in a good mood it'll be over in less than 3 hours. And they may even act friendly to gain your trust and give you career advice from the Facebook games they've been playing earlier where you're told what's the perfect job for you in 10 years after you've answered to 3 questions and agreed to give your email address and all your personal details.

[Three hours later, if you're lucky]

Back to your desk. You're feeling a bit confused and there's an unpleasant sense of worry slowly creeping in. Alas, you chase it away, spending the rest of the day feeling eager for tomorrow and hopeful about the next 10 years.

[6 P.M.]

That's it, this was first day. You haven't done any actual work today and have no idea what you'll be doing tomorrow, but you have a good feeling about this.
Well... Give it some time. You've only been here a day.

Delicate flowers

I sometimes get lost in contemplation as my metaphorical sisters are vociferously expressing their disappointment with men not being considerate and respectful. It is impressive to see so much energy emerging from such small, sensitive and yet so powerful creatures. Sometimes the energy is pure rage, and for good reason; many men are just unable to fathom their beauty and delicacy and fail to appreciate it accordingly. If I had the talent (and budget) I'd like to make a movie to make people aware of their painful struggle. It would be my token of appreciation and empathy, my protest against this plague which taints our so-called "modern and evolved" society.
So far I have a title for it and a basic narrative. In order to gather more information about what women are looking for in a man, I went on Tinder. I thought of this little app to be a trove of sincere and unbiased openness, a channel where women can freely express what they want from a man, a lover, a potential partner to spend their entire lives with. Indeed, it was.

And what better starting point than the description in the profile? You're not one to judge a book by the pictures, are you?
Most of the profiles that have words in the description (more on this a bit later) are mentioning interest for relaxed conversations over a glass of wine, but intelligent and meaningful at the same time. Such descriptions are accompanied by pictures of ample décolletages and mashing bras in more or less provoking positions and tattoos depicting tribal symbols or deep philosophical quotes from Facebook. Often in Chinese characters, for emphasis.

There are some descriptions where the author was too busy to use words (yes, this is the later bit mentioned earlier). She opted for various sets of emoticons instead. Usually including a party hat, a glass of red wine, a smiling sun, a pair of lips, ice-cream, cigarette and smoke, 3 wiggly lines (probably waves, the phone set on vibrate or drunken cocaine lines), a cat's head and an umbrella tilted to 45º, which is not how you'd normally hold an umbrella.
Others -probably the more avid Shakespeare readers- take brevity to the next level of wit and have blank descriptions or brief statements such as "5.7 ft min." or "love 2 get p*ssed". An asterisk is proof that foul language does not belong in a well-educated woman's vocabulary.
And -to close the circle- there are some descriptions that contain painfully long stories about a child being afraid of the dark and a man being afraid of the light, an injured deer or cat finding shelter from the storm, a storm, the soul reflecting from a tree in a lake at midnight under the moon and above the clouds, the warmth of kindness, being present and/ or connected, a drop of water in the ocean, crossroads and so on. Usually combined.

I'm not one to generalize, every woman is unique -of course- but some common traits have emerged. The ideal man should be usually taller, considerate, without tattoos, well-mannered, educated, loyal, attentive and funny. No pictures without a t-shirt, please. They like Hawking and Chopra, Dawkins and Osho. And they're also quite religious. Some have pictures wearing a wedding dress. And at least one with a small cat or dog. Many think the eyes are the path to the soul, usually the ones wearing sunglasses the size of manholes. It's rather hard to strike the right balance. But the treasure awaiting those who go all the way is worth any effort. This is true. Some even remember to remind it to the potentially lucky ones. Just in case.

As an homage to Mr. Scorsese's masterpiece Raging bull, I'd name mine Raging cow.

There's nothing quite as bright as the future.

Here's an interesting trend.
Robotic children are doing fine for about 6 to 8 years, but 20 minutes into the movie and they go hectic. This usually happens around the time when daddy's research loses funding. And mommy decides it's time for a midlife crisis and starts questioning love for the robotic child and her life in general. At the same time, daddy discovers the mysterious owner of the lab where he's building robotic children is also working on something that threatens to destroy the entire humanity and render it slave to either the robots or some obscure evil spirit that never gets mentioned in the movie after this. This helps daddy regain his focus and also clears mommy's doubts. The robotic child sacrifices his life to save humankind and mommy and daddy are left a bit sad but somehow optimistic about the future of mankind. Happy end, humanity is saved, bright future ahead.
This is a bit ironic for a couple of reasons: firstly, the robot doesn't really have a life to lose: a solid recharge and maybe a reboot and they're as good as new. And whatever they lose in the confrontation with the unknown evil mastermind (well, it's the guy that funds the lab) can be easily ordered from aliExpress. The only risk is lengthy delivery times; by the time they've been delivered some components would have caught rust already. Secondly, daddy and mommy still cannot have children.
This summary is relatively consistent with almost all the sci-fi movies and TV series I've watched in the past few years. A fortunate exception from this pattern is a short series about two magicians, but there's no robotic child in there at all. And pretty much everybody is going through some crisis, not only the leading female character. The only thing in common is the ridiculous socks the evil character is wearing.
For such a smart guy able to build humanoid robots, daddy miserably fails to realize he could follow a better path. Instead of going through this ordeal he could father the stunning secretary that has an obvious secret crush on him during her 3 or 4 cameos. Although potentially diluted a bit by potential-mommy's genes, his genius could still carry on. And current-mommy's outbursts would be perfect catalyst for this to happen. They would also render her as a much more desirable shield against and sacrifice for the turned-evil entrepreneur. Alas, it doesn't happen, because in this case it wouldn't be sci-fi, it would only be sci-.

While I’m still spending some amounts of time evaluating which superpower I’d like to have and how I’d use it towards financial freedom and ultimate comfort, I’m also trying to be a bit more realistic towards achieving that. And having a robotic child is one of these more realistic alternatives. Which means that on top of not killing a spider in the bathroom in the hope that it would come to the bedroom at night and bite me while I’m sleeping or not walking away from tall trees while it's raining because there's a better chance to be hit by lightning there, I'm also paying more attention to children behaving strangely on the street. To be honest, this hasn't worked out very well, all I've got so far is a couple of mildly itchy bites that hurt when you're scratching and a rather severe cold from soaking 20 minutes outside during a cold rain in late autumn. And panicked or hostile glances from annoyed grandmothers.

The future may be bright, but the present is disappointingly mundane and dull. Never give up on your dreams... Huh!