Friday 24 March 2017

Planetarium Review + Goodbye, Pikachu, Goodbye



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4680196/

Even though it was the second movie I watched at the French Film Festival, I haven't gotten around to writing a review because I don't have all that much to say about it. I must not have understood it very well, and fell asleep during a part of it, but it was very lacklustre. I didn't really care about any of the characters, and the part that interested me the most, the supernatural part, felt a bit downplayed. But it has been a week since I saw it, so I should write something now. And that's all I wanted to write.

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Today was the movie screening, which meant it was also Grad Daniel's last day in the office. I'm still super sleep deprived, so please excuse me if this post is not coherent. We usually buy farewell cards which everyone writes in, but since I'm not on the team anymore, I didn't have the chance to write in the card. So I sent him an email instead:
Thank you for being a fellow newbie alongside me. Even though we never actually got to work together on the same project, it felt like we were able to work together, since we shared all the highs and lows of our coding journey with each other. And the moths. So many moths. I will never forget them.

I loved that we have so many in-jokes, "Larry", "M", "Sylvanna", "Boris", "Natasha". I loved how all it usually takes is a single line, and we will both start laughing uncontrollably. I loved that I wasn’t the only socially awkward penguin, and your extreme responses to everyday situations never fails to astonish me.

I have always admired your ability to persevere through everything. You might grumble about it the entire time, but at the end of the day, you will somehow find a way to get it done. This has probably led to a lot of abominations in the code base, because it's the only way to get it to work, but hey, that's the life of a programmer.

I am going to miss coming in in the mornings and seeing a message from you telling me about the latest abomination you've found. I will also miss being able to grow alongside you as a developer, though I don't doubt that the next time we meet, you will be more powerful than I can possibly imagine. Or you'll be a famous Japanese movie actor and I won't be able to get past the screaming fangirls to say hi.

Either way, I don’t feel that I need to write “all the best” or “good luck”, because I don’t think you need it. You can handle anything. So instead, I will say, “Have fun.”
I think working on the movie has distracted me so much that even though I knew it was his farewell movie, I never really processed the fact that he was actually leaving. The thought hit me while the movie was screening, and I felt tears welling up. It's weird, we talk to each other every day at work, and when either of us is on leave, I don't miss him. I just realised that I won't have that anymore.

When I find a particularly funny snippet of code, my first instinct is to open a chat window and paste it to him. We studied for the Java exam together, and so we're fairly similar in terms of programming skill. We laugh at all the odd code we find in various repositories around the company.

I mentioned the in-jokes, but as I was travelling home today, I started thinking about them all and it's a crazy amount. Despite the fact that we are both incredibly socially awkward, we never have any trouble talking to each other. It's actually quite refreshing talking to him, because he's really straightforward, and I never have to try and read between the lines. What he says is what he means. I think that has caused me to return that straighforwardness, and so I find that I allow myself to be vulnerable around him. He knows all the bad things about me, he has gazed into the Crazy Anna abyss, and decided he is willing to be friends with me despite it.

I feel like it's really rare to meet someone who accepts you for who you are. It's even rarer for someone to accept who you are after you've shown them.

I forgot who told me about the whole "Work Wife" and "Work Husband" thing, but I think Daniel would have been pretty close to being mine - at least from my point of view.

I can't even think about how to express how much I'm going to miss him. It's only now that he's gone that I'm starting to realise how much he improved life in the office.

How does this relate to today's picture? When I left, one of the bosses bought me a bouquet of flowers. I mentioned it to Daniel, and he said he wanted one, too. But not from me, as I had already bought him Valentine's day chocolates. I did not, I bought him some Ganbakky (Ganbatte Pocky). I even wrote on the back that they weren't!


Anyway, I know he likes dark chocolate and Koko Black, so I bought him some dark chocolate Easter eggs and teddy bears and the store clerk kinda wrapped it into a bouquet shape. That was my best solution for buying him flowers without buying him flowers - as I had no faith in his boss buying him flowers.

I feel so bad that the movie didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked, but he seemed to enjoy it, and people were laughing, so that's good.

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