The USS Quad Damage

When I first came to the company, I was expecting (or maybe hoping) that people would have "personalised" their cubicle areas with posters, trinkets, etc. I found a couple of small trinkets, but nothing like a guy who converts his cubicle into a war-zone, and insists that you wear a camo hardhat whenever you enter his / her "domain". Seeing none of this, I started to feel like maybe the place was a bit soulless. It wasn't, but at first glance, it's seems very "businessy". When you add to that the initial discomfort of not knowing anyone and generally not fitting in, I felt like I had to do something to feel a bit more at home.

At first I didn't do much. I grabbed stationery to make my cube look less barren, and installed software when I got my account. Then I decided to end everything with "awesome", such as my notebook with "Sunny's book of awesome". Clearly, this wasn't enough. What I wanted was to totally "leet out" my cube, but not unless others started doing it, because the theory says: "If you're different and not much better, no one will like you".

One of the things I was worried about was my lingo. I would say it's almost definitely just people from my high school, but I think others have this "special quality" too. We share a sophisticated, but childish and crude sense of humour, recursive sarcasm, and almost always saying the opposite of what we mean. Shaun Micallef and Full Frontal was our bread and butter, and now it's Penny Arcade. It's almost how we learnt to "talk", so whatever we say is usually filled with puns, bitter sarcasm and double meanings. It's like a self-destructive version of celebrity squares.

I basically wanted to test out the waters, because otherwise, if I wasn't very careful deliberate in how I spoke, I'd let out something that would almost certainly piss someone off. So awesome of the week was born. It was basically something I said, heard, read, or saw the night before that was laced with "my lingo", in that what it said wasn't immediately obvious. I thought I'd start off slow, but you guys catch on quick, and now I'm having trouble stumping you guys, save for the occasional obtuse reference to some website no one ever visits but me.

Anyway, it helped me settle in, and I'm not even concerned about the lack of posters on my cube. Right now, I have 3 PCs whirring away under my desk, so I feel plenty happy. I still wouldn't mind a poster, though.