This morning, I slapped my alarm three times before I finally managed to get myself vertical at around 8:45. I shuffled to the loo, then to the kitchen where I swilled juice [because vitamins] straight from the bottle.
After that it was a swift transition out of PJs and into trackies [no bra, because working from home], before I sat down to clock on at 9:01.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area an HSBC Executive by the name of Melania Edwards is on her commute to her other office in Palo Alto for the afternoon, listening to The Goop Podcast and archiving her very important emails.
According to her Business Insider ‘day in the life’ profile, which has gone viral since being published on October 18, the British-born woman, who works for the bank’s Global Venture Capital Coverage Group, has already done more today than I’ve managed in an entire week.
For starters, she was up at 5:30am for a short meditation, where she focuses on deep breathing and determines her priorities for the day. Which doesn’t sound relaxing, but cool.
At 6:30 she catches up with her international friends on FaceTime, because she’s well travelled and cosmopolitan and also very popular.
Then it’s time for a green juice breakfast and a game of tennis (“The healthy Californian lifestyle is contagious,” she said), and then it’s off to work. She walks, of course.
Meetings with startups, tech companies and venture capital firms take up most of her morning, then she breaks for lunch at 12. For an hour and a half. That’s 90 whole minutes.
The evenings are for study – she’s getting a certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship from Stanford University. Get it, girl! And for drafting proposal a charitable organisation in Papua New Guinea. After that there’s a yoga session, before she and her boyfriend “experiment with new recipes” for dinner.
Oh, and: “On the evenings that we stay in Palo Alto, we walk down the tree-lined University Avenue, reflecting upon our key wins and challenges and preparing for the adventures of the next day.”
Our theory.
‘She’s not real,’ the critics say. ‘There’s no way.’ Well, Melania has an established Linkedin and Facebook presence dating back to at least 2016. So either the writer is a very patient con artist or she actually exists.
We’re going with the latter. Yep, she’s real, alright, but her life… isn’t. Well not entirely.
See after a very thorough investigation, that involved reading the profile more than once, we found some holes.
1. She doesn’t seem to know what meditation is.
2. With whom is she playing tennis at 7:30 in the morning? No one. That’s whom.
2A. In the accompanying photo, she’s swinging a racket. Incorrectly. And there’s no ball in sight.
3. She smiles in work meetings.
4. It doesn’t take 90 minutes to eat a salad.
5. She works in Silicon Valley. In finance. And clocks off a reasonable hour.
6. Everything that happens after that.
The only conclusion we can draw is that this is one giant recruitment ad for HSBC.
‘Come work for us and you too could achieve work/life balance while studying at a top tier university, helping disadvantaged women in PNG and doing a nightly Mystery Box challenge with your attractive yet sensitive boyfriend. Oh and don’t forget the 90 minute lunch breaks. They’re great.’