Facebook Farmtown

One of my lovely colleagues, S, has introduced me to, what she admitted was “the stupidest thing she has ever been addicted to”. Now, admittedly she is a wholesome lass who probably has never been addicted to heroin or ice or some other “stupid” thing.. but this thing is pretty stupid. It’s a hokey little Facebook application called “Farmtown” where you plow fields, plant seedlings, harvest the crops and sell them at the marketplace. Sounds almost as exciting as it actually is.

So, on S’s advice, I got onboard. I signed upfor my little patch of unplowed field and planted my first batch of potatoes. And I sold them. And I planted some strawberries. And I sold them. So I planted some tomatoes. And I sold them. Are you getting the idea? You use your “coin” to buy seeds in the store, but the crazy thing is that you can use REAL money to buy coin if you want to. So someone, somewhere, probably sitting in a dark corner of a poorly decorated office, is making money from this very boring, very poorly decorated application.

Anyhoo, I’m getting of the farm track. So, this terrible application. You don’t compete with anyone, you don’t really acheive anything except different levels at which you can buy new, exciting types of seeds (or trees, or even animals), actually, there is not really any reward in the game at all. It is a sign of our times – an absolute timewaster of the highest order. And someone is making (lots) money from it! And that someone isn’t me.

But enough moaning. My grape crops are ready for harvest.

Busy-sick-over-it

Hi gang! Thanks so much to those of you who keep checking back even though I have been slack and not written regularly for a couple of weeks now. Singapore took it out of me and work has been hectic- I have had some rotten cough for weeks (verrry attractive, let me tell you! Actually, the cough is so bad that the other day a lady from work suggested I go to a doctor.. When I told her I had already been three times, she said, “maybe you need.. a.. um.. specialist.”

When I questioned why, she said, “i don’t want to scare you sweetie, (always a bad sign) but it might be lung cancer! You smoke heavily, no?”

No. Actually I don’t. Nor have I ever smoked in my life. But thanks for the words of advice.. and thanks for not wanting to scare me. Appreciate it. Cough, cough.

Anyway, the point of the blog was to say thanks to everyone for checking back – especially Pia who not only checks back regularly.. but then sends me messages asking me why I haven’t written. Thanks love!

Sing-sing again!

In Singapore for a work event and it has been a productive although tiring week. We’ve been locked in a room for 10 hours a day nutting out a few finer points of what our business unit does, how we interact wtih others, etc, etc.. the niceties of it all, shall I say. Anyway.. so, we got to yesterday, the final day of the proceedings and I think everyone was looking a little haggard – myself even more than the rest of the group. The last time I was in Singapore, I was with my friend D, and she and I attempted to try every beauty treatment we could (with varying reults – see previous blog entry). But I had discovered one she hadn’t tried… And here it is:

Yes folks, they are little fish.. Little fish that gnaw away at the dead skin cells on your feet and legs.. It sounds a bit um.. gross!  but I have to say it is actually a really lovely tingly sensation as they nibble away at your limbs. Check out garra rufa at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_fish

D wasn’t impressed when I got to try something she hadn’t and I think she’s booking her flight to Singsing now to get onboard!

My favourite part of the trip was sitting in Raffles drinking Singapore slings with a very good friend of my ex-loved one, who is now a good friend of mine – was great to see him, and know that I am still loved by the loser’s mates – the best revenge. Big love and fish nibbles to all.

Such is life

Had the worst day today. Woke up feeling rather out-of-sorts, due to a few too many Long Island Iced Teas last night – on a school night no less!! Got a call and wanted to get right onto the task assigned like the good little worker bee I am.. But computer said no. So went back to bed. Until about 20 minutes later when another call came in. OK. The sleeping gods were most definitely against me. So I got up. And my computer decided to reboot itself. And install some new-fangled software thang that my company was pushing out to all and sundry. Right. So I waited for that to be done. And received a few more phone calls.. And banged the ‘puter to try to abuse it into doing what I want.. But no. There was only one option. And that was to face the office. ARGH!

So, in I went, hangover hovering as a reminder of what good girls don’t do on a Thursday night, and faced my day, my colleagues and my sad, depressing worker-bee life. Only kidding. i went in, went for lunch, went for coffee, ran to the post office, grabbed another coffee, contemplated walking a lap of the park and chatted to everyone that I possibly could.. you get the idea. About 4pm, I sat down and faced the music. Or the workload. Groan. Ok, maybe it was 4.30. Whatevs.

At 5, my hangover cleared. What a wonderful, wonderful feeling that was. God it felt good. And at 5.10, I went out for an after work drink. Awesome.

A tale

Was out for work drinks on Friday night and one of my colleagues had a rather large amount to drink. Actually, we all had rather a large amount to drink, but you know how sometimes you drink and drink and drink, and DON’T get messy - well, that was me. And other times, you drink and drink and drink, and DO get messy – well, that was her. And it was hilarious!! She is a gorgeous girl anyway, but was being exceptionally eager, friendly, smiley, happy on Friday night. Straddling colleagues, chatting to (note – I wrote “to”, not “up”) random strangers, making sure everyone was having a great time, and just generally being the life of the party.

Which was great.. until we got to the Crown casino to meet another colleague, who happened to be out with my customers. Um. Right. Customers. I wasn’t fit for human consumption, let alone customer consumption. So I politely made my excuses, said that we needed to go home, and dragged my friend/colleague away. To another bar. Downstairs. Oops.

So, we’re in this bar and excusing the stupid Canadian who was acting like an American (I pointed this out to said Canadian and it didn’t go down to well), it was loads of fun. We met some randoms to talk to and drank shooters, beers and spirits although at one point I turned around, wondering where my friend was. Oh, there she is.. talking to those guys..

One of whom was.. Andrew Johns! Yes. Andrew Johns. And my colleague had her arm around him, telling him about the play she was going to write and enter into Tropfest, about how much she loved her husband, about her two pet dogs that were way too cute, about rugby (she was telling Andrew Johns about rugby!!), etc, etc, you get the idea. I wandered over and rescued him.. he was grateful (and told me I had a deep, sexy, husky voice- another entry on that) and a gentleman and, much to my disdain, not very drunk at all. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he was sober.

Ten minutes later, my friend escaped again and I was relieved to see she wasn’t talking to Andrew Johns. Oh no. This time, she was talking to Carmichael-somebody.. I didn’t know who he was (although can certainly admire a fine looking young specimen when I see one) but the people we (well, really, I – as my friend was off on her own crusade) were talking to explained that he played for Brisbane in the NRL. Again, she was his best friend and again I had to rescue him.

Long story short, the night was a good great one, even if I did get home at 4.30 (my friend left half an hour before me, lives a half an hour further away and got home half an hour later? Hmmmm.. And for those of you reading who don’t know who these two fellows are:

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200708/r172965_652879.jpg

 

http://i.pbase.com/g5/17/628117/2/67876383.YScBcSM6.jpg

Just wanted to put this in here

A slow day here in the office today as the network does something or other to the something or other. We’ve all been sitting around, complaining about the speed at which our work emails aren’t being sent, and, more importantly, how slow Facebook is. Hmmm. I have had a pretty eventful day though, with my senior management panicking and sending a million emails regarding the same issue (scatter gun approach – super effective, right?). So, everything gets escalated up the chain.. and then it all comes back down. At once. To me. And I sigh my all-knowing, patient sigh, and say, as though I’m a hippie smoking green, “Chill out dudes, calm down.”

Actually I don’t. I am way more subservient than that and go, “OK, what do you want me to do? Sure. OK, ten minutes ago? Sure, no problem.” But I don’t panic. Unlike a few others around me. I don’t really see the point. I’d rather get angsty at Victorian drivers, or rude waiting staff, or the arrogant clients who call me that I can barely bear to speak to, but not my colleagues who I know are doing their best, busting a gut like I am.

So I don’t. I merely nod, or say “yes” on the phone, or by email. And then bitch and moan about it over 20 glasses of wine and a blog entry later.  

Office rumours

Talk in the office is of rumours, how quickly they start and how even quicker they spread.. so, some lessons regarding the office rumours:

1. Deny everything, admit nothing, and make counter false-accusation.

2. If you haven’t heard a rumour about the work Christmas party by lunch time the next day, start one.

3. If you have reason to believe a rumour might start about yourself (usually because you’ve done something dodgy), get in quick and start one about someone else. Aim for someone believable.

4. Re-iterating: Deny, deny, deny.

Fun in the old town!

Have been back in Sydney for a week now and started it off with a bang with my company’s Christmas party. And what a fab night it was.. The theme was studio 54 which saw some amazing costumes – hot 70s outfits that were completely outrageous and verrrry sexy… my favourite was rollergirl – she stayed in those skates ALL night! Working in IT, I had a large number of the opposite sex coming up to chat to me… or rather, chat me up. And, no, not because I am exceptionally gorgeous.. but because there is a distinct lack of ladeeez in the IT world. So the ratios are all out. Which means that any girl gets a large amount of attention. But, hey, who’s complaining?

Not me. But I did have to laugh when a particular hottie made a bee-line for me on the dance floor and started laying on the charm.. Thickly. I smiled politely and the more I rejected his amorous advances, the more he leaned in closer, until I took it upon myself to lay the facts bare and whisper sweetly into his ear, “um.. just so you know.. I don’t do the whole work thing.” And with that, he was off. Across the dance floor to another pretty young thing, who as it turns out, does do the whole work thing, and actually does it, at a work function, in front of everyone. We were soon all privy to pash-fest 2007.

And when I related this story to friends, their common response was: “Since when don’t you do the whole work thing?”

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Corporate golf day

Had a day out of the office yesterday for the annual corporate golf day. Have never been to a corporate golf day so was a bit unsure about what was going to happen.. it could have been a boozey, love-fest of the type that gets Telco employees fired, as much as it could have been a death-by-powerpoint day. It turned out to be a very enjoyable day in the sunshine, the best part being the golf carts. I was on fire behind the wheel of the vehicle of choice for the golf club.. on fire!! Hooning around, terrifying the local fauna, and getting that baby on two wheels around hair pin turns near the 12th hole.. I reckon I got it up to at least 40 kph for a few seconds there.. Before the engine cut out on me anyway. As it constantly did. Not sure why.

But no matter. I made it around the course a couple of times. At speed. In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t playing. I was the driver for the girl who was filming the event, who also happens to be the girl who sits next to me at work, which means that she is also happens to be the one I run amok with more than anyone else. We make a great team. And we decided that there is only so many times you can film office-dwellers tee’ing off (often verrrrrry poorly) before it becomes to put it bluntly, pretty bloody boring.

But we jazzed it up as best we could. With beer, boy-racer-style tactics to get around the course, and of course some very fancy editing of the said vid..  which will make it look like the drinks-cart girls are handing the national sales manager the “do not drink” pond water and a customer skulling a beer before crashing his cart, making the channels manager ninja roll from the cart to fall precariously over a cliff.. As I said, not super rivetting stuff. But back to the go-cart… er.. golf-cart. Or not. Let’s just say that my colleagues are now saying that they’re not surprised I had a car accident on Sunday.. Hmmm..

Work drinks

Gotta love it when you are dragged along to a bar to make up numbers for the ole’ client drinks – “the client is going to be there, so please, please, please come out and have a few drinks so it look like we care” – er.. no problemo! Not only did I drag my own sorry ass along, but dragged three friends’ sorry asses as well. Thinking that we would get a beer or two at the company’s expense, I was pleasantly surprised when we were all invited to go to dinner. It was me, my three ring-ins, the two Client Relationship Managers, the one client. Did you count that? Me plus three, my beloved company’s two representatives, and ONE client. So my group of four, outweighed the client reps two-fold, and the actual client FOUR-FOLD. Oops!

And another thing…

My flatmate and I have been detoxing together for almost a week now, and admittedly we haven’t exactly been puritanical in our tee-totalling regime. But we have definitely cut back on our alcohol consumption – where we used to drink “way too much”, we now drink “a bit here and there”. And it has had various results. A couple of positives to come out of it - the reduction of my beer belly (Frank Zappa was on the right track with “the bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’”) and the noticeable non-reduction of our funds. A few negatives, however, are the boredom, restlessness and insomnia of an evening. It is becoming more and more apparent that alcoholism wasn’t  the only reasonwe drank – it had medicinal purposes - i.e. allowing us to sleep at night.

Sunday night, after almost three days of solid-not-drinking, I was awake until about 4 in the morning – I’ m reading “The Dirt” – a (very intimate) look at Motley Crue’s rise to fame and then some, so had Tommy, Nikki, Vince and Mick to keep me company, but let me tell you, getting to sleep at 4am is not the best preparation for a day of teleconferences (not even half-exciting at the best of times) starting at 8am sharp… I was asked on more than one occasion if it was me snoring down the line. The question is, is it better to be well-rested, albeit hungover, or sobre as a judge, but asleep? Hmm, it’s a toughie..

Working from bed

I’m working from home today after a late night (I was working til 2, and yes, I promise, I really, really was – no school night drinking for me anymore… much). Because I had to be online until so late, I decided it was too cold sitting in my loungeroom, so took my laptop, internet modem and power board/cords/etc upstairs to bed with me. Sad, I know. But it’s actually quite a nice feeling chatting to someone who so obviously hates their job (which I would like to think is at a grey, boring desk in a grey, boring tech support call centre) while you’re getting toastier and toastier thanks to the almighty electric blanket.

And this morning, it was a late start.. so late infact, I considered not getting out of bed at all. So I didn’t. But that’s not to say I didn’t work. In fact, I rolled over, switched on my laptop and got online.. again, while getting toastier and toastier with my almighty electric blanket. I made a few calls, responded to some emails… all from the comfort of my own bed. From now on you can forget about WFH.. it’s all about WFB.

The office/bar fridge

Everytime I open the fridge at my work to get out some milk for the delightful instant coffee I insist on drinking (because I’m too lazy and too tight to go downstairs for the (mediocre) lattes), I get an eyeful of the bottles of beer, wine, and alcopops sitting at the bottom of it, calling my name. They’re the obvious remnants of an on-site event, probably leftover from Christmas fesitivities, 6 months ago, or something similar, and now, they just sit there. Abandoned. Unwanted. Forgotten amongst the leftover sandwiches, past-due-date yogurts, and half-drunk bottles of coke.

And what happens to all that alcohol now? I’m starting to think it might be my responsibility to “dispose” of it, or more realistically, that I should make it my responsibility. If I don’t drink all those bottles of alcohol, they might be thrown out and no-one likes waste. Especially not when we are in a drought. The bottles, and alcohol in them, continue to stare at me, day in, day out, almost begging me to take them with me when I return to my desk for some secret-squirrel-skulling. And some days, believe me, I wouldn’t mind doing just that. Sometimes even first thing in the morning…