Stranded, city-style.

Warning: Language contained within may not be suitable for the young, the prim, or people learning English =P

Today I was working in the University Graduate School offices. A small office, less than 10 staff members – and one was leaving, so they had cake. So they offered us some cake too. Winnar!

Anyhoos, at the end of the day, they all left and the Dean’s Assistant asked me to lock up when I leave.

“No worries, how do I do that?”

“There’s a large green Exit button on the wall to the side, just press that and when the door closes, it’ll automatically lock”

Or something along those lines. I had heard ‘large’, ‘green’, and ‘button’, and got a little excited about getting to press something gadgety that the next part of the sentence my mind registered was “it’ll automatically lock”.

So, I go to leave after I finished my work. Walk through the door, past the reception table and see the green button over to the side, like a siren calling sailors unaware as they drift down the stream. Except this adventurer was aware… I knew what it did. I knew… And I was ready and willing.

I pressed it.

Then went to open the glass door and trot off on home towards the sunset. The door wouldn’t budge. It was locked. Locked good. Shit. I could see freedom on the other side. Shit.

What did Maree say?

Press the button… Door locks.

Fuck. Was I supposed to have the door opened when I pressed the button?!

That’s obvious goof, how do you expect the door to know when you’ve left the room?

But it’s so far from the door handle and the green button! How does the physically (arm-length wise) challenged reach both at the same time?!

I suddenly got mental images of someone (me!) propping the door open with their foot and reaching in vain for the button. Or alternatively pushing the door open as far wide as it would go, dashing over to press the button, and then sprinting for the ever-closing door, sliding past it Indiana-Jones style (dropping my hat and reaching back to grab it too! haha)

But that didn’t help my predicament. I wondered if there was a safety button, to unlock the door in the event some foolish ITD staff member locks themselves in (me again!). I looked around.. pot plant, chair, telephone, reception table, door back into the UGS offices. Crap. There’s a keypad on the other side. Who would have an access code?! Ric? No, ITD wouldn’t be given access to UGS offices. Could I wait for someone to walk by? Not on level 7. There’s nothing here for anyone to walk by towards. Security. I’d have to call security… omg, whats the number for security?!

I never did work out the number for security. After 5 minutes of what-the-hell-do-I-do-now, how-could-I-be-so-stupid, omg-I-wonder-if-theres-any-cake-left-for-overnight-sustenance-if-I-can’t-get-out panic, I decided to press that darned green button again. I heard a click and looked at the doorframe suspiciously. Gingerly, I pulled on the handle.. and it opened!

The universe… sometimes it just has a laugh. Helped out by yours truly.

 

Gravity

I debated with myself on whether I should post this or not… and decided that even though the whole song isn’t what I’m feeling, a fair chunk of it is.

Something always brings me back to you
It never takes too long
No matter what I say or do
I’ll still feel you here ’til the moment I’m gone

You hold me without touch
You keep me without chains
I never wanted anything so much
Than to drown in your love and not feel your rain

Set me free
Leave me be
I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity
Here I am
And I stand
So tall
Just the way I’m supposed to be.
But you’re on to me and all over me

You loved me ’cause I’m fragile
When I thought that I was strong
But you touch me for a little while
And all my fragile strength is gone

Set me free
Leave me be
I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity
Here I am
And I stand
So tall
Just the way I’m supposed to be
But you’re on to me and all over me

I live here on my knees as I try to make you see
That you’re everything I think I need here on the ground
But you’re neither friend nor foe though
I can’t seem to let you go
The one thing that I still know is that you’re keeping me down

Gravity – Sara Bareilles

I’m a fool >.<

 

BBC’s Top 100 Books (2003)

Nicked from my cousin Kim’s Facebook Notes ^_^

BBC polled people in 2003 for their favourite books (www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread)
Instructions – look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read.

I’ve bolded it instead and italicised any comments!

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien I rushed through bits of it, but only because I wanted to see what happened next before I went to watch it at the movies
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling Wanting to borrow it from someone… Qing? haha
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible Funny this one.. I was young, in the Doctors waiting room a lot, and thought it was just a novel to read haha
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller Does started it, read halfway and get totally lost count?
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Err, not quite alllllllll…
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy Started…zzz
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky Tried.. I really did!
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne I’ve seen the TV shows?
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving Loved it!
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding Oh.. I always thought this was the same as Lord of the Rings… >_> haha
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding Saw the movies? Don’t ask…
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn ZOMG I thought I was the only one who’d read this! I actually cried at the end >_> I had found the book for like $2 at Basement Books!
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas One for all, and all for one! =D
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl Mmm chocolate…
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So 15 out of 100. That’s kinda shocking for someone who reads a much as I do. I guess I’ve been reading too much of these modern day authors. Maybe I’ll give some of these a try again. So many books, so little time! ^_^

 

Life’s roads

Life. Its funny where the road leads us and forks us (forks us? geddit? haha), giving us options that we either recognise and take, or miss and let slip by. Sometimes its good, sometimes not so. But that’s life.

After finally finishing my uni degree (woo!) at the end of last year, it was time for me to make a decision about where I want to go career wise. I have been working at my current job for the last 2+yrs as a contractor (as it gave me the flexibility I needed for uni). So I thought I’d ask the bosses about a full time position (which I had been offered in mid-July, but had to turn down because of uni commitments). Unfortunately, do to budget constraints, they couldn’t make the same offer as previously. In fact, they couldn’t make any offer at all O_o They would like to keep me, but it was only possible at the current setup – which doesn’t include any super or sick leave or other benefits a full-time employee would get. There is a piloting trial with a major nationwide business happening “soon”, and I’m slated for the role that would bring – assuming we get the contract. In fact, the job that would entail was designed around/for me. But it still wasn’t a sure thing.

So that left me at a fork in the road. Do I stay and hope for the company to win that contract, and thus the role with a higher (albeit unknown) salary. Or look for pastures anew? Loyalty tells my heart to stay. But unfortuntely, we all know the heart doesn’t always make the best decisions. Time to bring the noggin’ into this conundrum.

I started looking at my options. Long story short, I ended up with one option that looked the most promising. IT Support @ UTS. Ric, a friend and soccer teammate, works there and would see if there was any openings coming up. Turns out there is, but the cavaet is that it’s only 2 days per week at the moment.

So I’ve got the option of staying where I am, where I’m comfortable, know what I’m doing (and am very good at it!, get to listen to music all day and come and go at whatever hours I please. Or, I take the 2 day a week job at a financially stable institution, which pays almost TWICE what I get now, plus superannuation, with all the challenges that a new job brings. Also there’s a lot more room for advancement. Currently, if I want to ‘advance’ here, I’d have to mutiny and overthrow my the Tech Manager, who technically is the only person in the tech department. IT Support may not be the 9-5 Mon-Fri job I was looking for at the moment, but it definitely beats what I’ve got going now, I think.

So I’ve accepted the offer and secretly can’t wait to start, even if I have to get there at 8am on my first day. I’ve told my current GM about this, and she didn’t seem too pleased. Maybe not angry, but definitely disappointed. They did say they’d understand if I went elsewhere for a full time job though. The UTS offer isn’t full time now, but it will be down the track once a position opens up. And I’ve also worked out that to earn the same amount as I do now, I only have to work 3 days a week. THREE! A three day working week. Or a 5 day working week with heaps better pay. Money isn’t everything, but it sure helps make everything a bit easier =P hahah

It’s funny though. I spent 7 years to get out of university… and here I am, going back to it.

The universe… it makes fun of us all ^_^

P.S. Thanks a million Ric!!! ^_^

 

Cutthroats

It’s tough out there in the big wide world.

I’ve lived a generally sheltered life thanks to my folks. I avoided the local “rougher” schools and went to a selective high school 30ish mins away. Even when going to school, either mum or dad would drive me to the train station and thus skip the bus part of the journey. While getting dropped off at the station, I would be warned repeatedly to avoid those people who were a bit dirtier, smellier and acting in a very strange manner – especially the sort that would ask you for money. This is back in the day where Cabramatta wasn’t known for it’s Asian delicacies, pho restaurants and market style bargains. It was known much more for the drug culture, dealing and gangs roaming the area.

Anyways,

Today we got one of our machines back from a former client. The company I work for provides background music systems to clubs, pubs, hotels and various retail venues. There’s only a few in the business, and its pretty competitive, especially now with the economic downturn.

From what I know (admittedly, not everything since I don’t need to know), one of these pubs, lets call it The Fairyland Tavern, ended their contract with us a while ago. With not much else to do to convince them otherwise, we asked them to kindly pack our system up for us and post it back to us. So they did that. Extreeeeeeemely slowly (3 months+). It arrived this morning. In one of our biggest competitor’s cardboard boxes. Their logo, contact numbers, website all over it. >.<

It’s kinda funny in a way. I don’t think its the most ethical thing to do, but I can see the humour/irony in it. Wonder if they’d see the humour in us using the box as an effigy and burning it somewhere they can see muahahaha (I like fire ^_^)

Anyways, it’s a big bad world out there (with a sense of humour if you can look for it!)