Maëlys McArdle

Category: Life

Every other post.

  • Rice Tea Reaches Page 100!

    Progress really slowed down on Rice Tea. The main factor was the starting of the new job. For my first weeks there, I’d just come home from work and collapse. On some days, I went to bed at 7PM. I could not do any university work or writing.

    Then I had two days where they had nothing for me to do at work. So I wrote. And wrote. In fact, I wrote twenty pages. As a point of comparison, I had only managed to write two pages since I had started my new job.

    I’ve now reached the 100 page milestone. Don’t count on returning to summer-level production. Perhaps in three weeks, after my job here is done, and university is complete (forever!), I’ll have the time I need.

    The next update on this blog pertaining to Rice Tea will be to tell you that it’s done. Keep up to date on the book’s own website, ricetea.ca!

  • Arrived at Desination

    I’ve arrived at my destination. I’m in the western part of Argentina. Being here makes me realize how wealthy we are in Canada. The city people live well, but you see the lesser income in he shape of the buildings, the cars, the crumbling city infrastructure…

    As a rite of passage, I just had my first litre beer (beer here comes in bigger containers than Canada.) Good stuff.

  • In transit…

    Okay, so maybe I won’t be too precise about what I do where, but nothing says I can’t talk about what I do on my way there.

    I’m in Buenos Aires at the moment. Interesting city. Wonderful, wonderful food. I stopped by Santiago, Chile, earlier today. It’s interesting – it’s right by the Andes, yet you can’t see them because of the smog.

  • Malaria pills are %#@$ expensive.

    I just spent $470 on malaria pills.

    …and that just covers this one trip.

  • New job…

    So the new job is going well, so far (I’m a field geophysicist.) In a week or so, I’m getting shipped off out of the country. I’ll be gone for a long while. This ambiguity brings me to a realization I made: secrecy is everything in this business.

    This is a cut throat industry. These few talented companies are competing for some serious business. And what these corporations do to get the edge over each other is incredible. The R&D alone is unbelievable. They’re single handedly pushing the barriers of human technology. It’s like AMD vs. Intel: IP means a lot. It’s really cool stuff. Unfortunately again, I can’t talk about it here (I imagine Intel employees are in the same boat.)

    To that same extent, I won’t be posting pictures of what I do or where I go. It sucks, but if I do it right you won’t ever get the feeling that I’m withholding information from you. This is the only time that I’ll broach the subject anyways.