Darkschunt 
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Book Review
I got The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emaa McLaughlin out of the library the other day. It's pretty good, it's funny and sad at the same time. You'll get picked up and carried along with Nan's frantic life as she tries to graduate from NYU, get to know the Harvard Hottie from the 1th floor and keep up with her employee's crazy demands all at the same time. Not to mention, pay for rent and sustain a living in expensive New York.
I wonder if it's possible to get anxiety from reading books? Because I do get anxious and feel I should be rushing from place to place too whenever I read books about people running around like this, the same as when I read Everyone Worth Knowing, the second book by Lauren Weisberger, author of the Devil Wears Prada (which I am longing to get my hands on). That, folks, by the way, is also a great book.
I notice there's a trend in books lately concerning employees with crazy, out-of-their-mind, unreasonable bosses that work them like sweat shop slaves. I don't know if it's because of the success that the Devil Wears Prada had, or whether it's because that really is just the way working life is now? Everyone rush rush, everything go go, no excuses as there's cell phones and faxes and the Internet and all that now. And you find yourself having to work all the harder even if you don't have to, even if you've already clocked in all your prerequisite hours because the guy in the next cubicle is overworking himself like mad and you feel like a lazy cur next to him. That is so unfair, I say. I think right now there needs to be a limit to the hours too so that people don't get away with overworking and making their colleagues look bad, even though said colleagues had been perfectly responsible and hardworking as well.
I mean, honestly. I remember this article about CEOs and their daily schedules. Most of them get up at some crazy time in the morning, 4am seems to be the average waking time. They launch themselves into the gym and at their e-mails right away. Then breakfast and getting the kids off to school before heading off to work before coming home to check more e-mails, etc. Oh and they don't have lunch. They work out or do yoga or whatever. Anything but relax and have lunch.
So when do they have time to sleep and relax? I guess they must go to bed pretty damn early. But honestly, now, what kind of a life is this? There's hardworking and motivated and passionate but there's also a boundary too. I've done my fair share of slave labour and overworked hours, at my now-ex-job, i used to work nights and weekends all the time, and the result was that I was always haggard, always tired and always very stressed and snappish at everyone. Of course, that might have to do with the fact that I got paid peanuts for working my ass off. But still. The point is, is that really the kind of life that you will look back on and say, 'ah! i have truly lived in this life.'?
I guess it depends too on the kind of the job you have. Some people have a job they love and it gets them out and about in the kind of world they want to be in, so in that case, maybe that's not so bad because what you do doesn't feel like work at all. But a lot of people are just in the job for the money which isn't a good thing because it's not good for the soul, spending hours doing something you don't actually enjoy just because the pay is good. And some people think they NEED that house in the burbs with the kids going to fancy schools and fancy dinner parties with way too much designer goods and they don't actually want any of those things but even they don't know that. It's just society that told them they want those things.
Hmm. I don't know how I got to this. But to conclude, overworking is stressful and not healthy and I guess I hope the corporate world decides to slow down. France and Australia, it seems, are actually doing a pretty good job of putting up boundaries for work and time-off-to-make-sure-you-get-a-life. But America and a lot of Asian countries are overworking and I hear so many horror stories about that. In the end, it's just not productive.
Anyway, enough! Back to Nanny Diaries. When I was looking for a picture of the book cover, I found out the movie based on the book is coming out soon too. Scarlett Johansson is staring, looking very un-Scarlet with brown hair and dressed in casual everyday clothes. But they glammed her up for the poster, though, in a very nice, Audrey Hepburn-ish classic black dress that I don't think her character ever wore in the book.
I got The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emaa McLaughlin out of the library the other day. It's pretty good, it's funny and sad at the same time. You'll get picked up and carried along with Nan's frantic life as she tries to graduate from NYU, get to know the Harvard Hottie from the 1th floor and keep up with her employee's crazy demands all at the same time. Not to mention, pay for rent and sustain a living in expensive New York.
I wonder if it's possible to get anxiety from reading books? Because I do get anxious and feel I should be rushing from place to place too whenever I read books about people running around like this, the same as when I read Everyone Worth Knowing, the second book by Lauren Weisberger, author of the Devil Wears Prada (which I am longing to get my hands on). That, folks, by the way, is also a great book.
I notice there's a trend in books lately concerning employees with crazy, out-of-their-mind, unreasonable bosses that work them like sweat shop slaves. I don't know if it's because of the success that the Devil Wears Prada had, or whether it's because that really is just the way working life is now? Everyone rush rush, everything go go, no excuses as there's cell phones and faxes and the Internet and all that now. And you find yourself having to work all the harder even if you don't have to, even if you've already clocked in all your prerequisite hours because the guy in the next cubicle is overworking himself like mad and you feel like a lazy cur next to him. That is so unfair, I say. I think right now there needs to be a limit to the hours too so that people don't get away with overworking and making their colleagues look bad, even though said colleagues had been perfectly responsible and hardworking as well.
I mean, honestly. I remember this article about CEOs and their daily schedules. Most of them get up at some crazy time in the morning, 4am seems to be the average waking time. They launch themselves into the gym and at their e-mails right away. Then breakfast and getting the kids off to school before heading off to work before coming home to check more e-mails, etc. Oh and they don't have lunch. They work out or do yoga or whatever. Anything but relax and have lunch.
So when do they have time to sleep and relax? I guess they must go to bed pretty damn early. But honestly, now, what kind of a life is this? There's hardworking and motivated and passionate but there's also a boundary too. I've done my fair share of slave labour and overworked hours, at my now-ex-job, i used to work nights and weekends all the time, and the result was that I was always haggard, always tired and always very stressed and snappish at everyone. Of course, that might have to do with the fact that I got paid peanuts for working my ass off. But still. The point is, is that really the kind of life that you will look back on and say, 'ah! i have truly lived in this life.'?
I guess it depends too on the kind of the job you have. Some people have a job they love and it gets them out and about in the kind of world they want to be in, so in that case, maybe that's not so bad because what you do doesn't feel like work at all. But a lot of people are just in the job for the money which isn't a good thing because it's not good for the soul, spending hours doing something you don't actually enjoy just because the pay is good. And some people think they NEED that house in the burbs with the kids going to fancy schools and fancy dinner parties with way too much designer goods and they don't actually want any of those things but even they don't know that. It's just society that told them they want those things.
Hmm. I don't know how I got to this. But to conclude, overworking is stressful and not healthy and I guess I hope the corporate world decides to slow down. France and Australia, it seems, are actually doing a pretty good job of putting up boundaries for work and time-off-to-make-sure-you-get-a-life. But America and a lot of Asian countries are overworking and I hear so many horror stories about that. In the end, it's just not productive.
Anyway, enough! Back to Nanny Diaries. When I was looking for a picture of the book cover, I found out the movie based on the book is coming out soon too. Scarlett Johansson is staring, looking very un-Scarlet with brown hair and dressed in casual everyday clothes. But they glammed her up for the poster, though, in a very nice, Audrey Hepburn-ish classic black dress that I don't think her character ever wore in the book.
Comments:
Post a Comment
