they start them out young

A little toddler caught my eye this morning while I was on my way to the train station.

Not because she was unsteadily wobbling along about 5 metres in front of me. And not because of the frilly pink dress she was wearing. But because of the handbag she was sporting.

It was a LV..... a freaking Louis Vuitton..!!!!

The kid couldn't even walk properly and she was carrying a LV...?!?

They sure start them out young now days.

Cough and More Coughs

I've been officially labeled as the 'Tissue Thief' in my team. For the past week or so, I've been raiding my team's tissue boxes. After my own one has been depleted obviously.

I came into work today with shopping bag full of tissue boxes. One for each person. So they can at least stop complaining.

Which by the way, Kleenex has now got Anti-Viral tissues which... "Kills 99% of cold and flu viruses in the tissue".

I had to get those. Especially now that the whole team has my flu.

Every minute or so someone will go off on another coughing fit.

Which reminds me, does alcohol make coughs and sore throats go worse ? Its Friday today and I've had a horrible working week. I'm not going to be able to survive next week without drinks on Fridays.

help + desk = ?

A helpdesk is supposed to be helpful. After all, it does contain the word 'help'.

A helpdesk should not reject and send back forms that require a user to fill in everything again and again.

Once... fine

Twice... if its for a legitimate reason. (Which somehow wasn't picked up the first time.. also fine).

But 4 times ? Not including the first two forms I was requested to filled out, actually turned out to be the wrong form !!

Not only does he want individual forms filled out for each user request. He now wants me to highlight which ones are existing rules on the firewall (We are talking about an IT change request). And which ones will be new additional rules to the firewall.

Riigghhtt...Hang on a moment there. I DO NOT OWN \ HAVE ACCESS TO THE FIREWALL.

If I did... wouldn't I just do this myself ??? And save myself from all this pain ?!??

And since I do not. Just how do I know which rules exist on the firewall ?!????

Psychically remote into the firewall, take note and match up all the rules with the ones I'm requesting ???

Fooking peanut.

Helpdesk IT support is supposed to make your working life easier. Not harder.

I work in the IT industry too. If I did this to any of my customers, I wouldn't have a job anymore.

Btw.. for those who are thinking, at least you have someone attending to your requests. I lodged this request over a month ago.

bite-me-not

Like any one else that likes to go out for drinks, I go out to have a good time.

But, there is always a fine line between getting close and getting too close. Atleast I think I still do so while reasonably sober.

I've been joining my colleagues for drinks for a while now. And while its all good clean fun, you do run into some weirdos once in a while.

This one guy, who I had met once before at another colleague's farewell joined us for drinks as well. I could tell he was reasonably dosed up when he arrived. He asked to swapped seats with another one of my colleagues to sit next to me and we chatted for about a couple of minutes. I turned my attention back to my colleagues when I realised he wasn't making much sense.

Then out of nowhere.. He bit me.

Somehow it occurred to him, it might just be a good idea to try and take a piece out of my left shoulder.

After a few stunned seconds, I asked my colleague to swap seats with me. After I finished my drink, I asked some of the regulars if they wanted to move on to another pub. They had sensed something was wrong when I had asked to swap seats and left straight away with me.

I felt a lot more at ease after we had left him behind.

After we reached the next pub, I told them what that weirdo did. Although most of them were appalled, we did have a good laugh over it. A lot of laughing accompanied by various chomping sounds.

One of the guys commented on how 'thats what 10 years of system administration will do to you'.

*sigh.. One weirdo and the whole industry gets a bad name.

I still have the bite marks on my shoulder.

However, he was drunk. And drunk people do stupid things. So I will let this go.

But I swear.. if he ever comes close to me again, I will punch his lights out.

The beginning of the end

He took me out to dinner last night.

I can't actually remember the last time we had a proper going out alone dinner.

But this one marked the start to new beginnings. We talked about work, when I was going to buy my own apartment and him moving out to a 1 bedroom or studio apartment. How we were going to split our pets and other assets. When the bill arrived, he realised he was $20 short, so I told him we'll just split it and I'll pay for my part. Some things never change.

There was no 'Maybe-we-can-work-this-out' talk.

We got home, said good night and both went back to our own bedrooms.

It was so civil, it actually felt normal. Like thats how we always were.

Its still funny how we manage to keep up appearances with our mutual friends. Last week one of his close friends I bumped into at a bar came up to talk to me. His first words were...

'Normally, I only say this to the boys... but don't you f*** this up, Pete is a really nice guy'.

My only reply was just to laugh and buy him a drink.

I guess after we do move out separately, all of our friends will eventually figure it out.

can they really still grow ?

Ok. Firstly, I'm not delusional.

But over the past few months my boobies have decided to go to the next cup size.

Not that I'm complaining (I've always wanted them to be bigger). But I'm just a bit curious.. Are they still supposed to grow after puberty ???

Last week I went to buy my first bra in the new cup size. I was actually pretty amazed that it fitted nicely. By the way, why does any bra that doesn't look like something my mother would own all cost way over $50 ?? Its fooking daylight robbery!

If they do decide to stay this size, then I'm going to have to replace my current lingerie wardrobe. I wonder if this is only a temporary thing ? I would hate to go spend all this money, then find out a month later they've gone back to normal.

My credit card still hasn't recovered from my last retail therapy session. :(

For better or worse

For better or worse, I have always tried to put in 100% effort in to my relationships. ('Tried' is the keyword here). I'm not perfect, but I always believed that if I didn't give it 100%, then I can't expect 100% in return. In my current relationship, I'm at the end of my 100% of giving.

When my friend over MSN asked me today if I still loved him. I couldn't answer him anymore.

Love is such a strong word.

I know that I am comfortable around him. I like coming back home to him. Trying out new cooking recipes on him. Watching old movies with him.

But that that spark is gone. And its been gone for a long time.

My friend asked me whats stopping me from moving out. Because according to him, that would be the next thing to do. But after living together for 1 year plus, I'm not even sure how to start moving out. How should we can split our pets..? Actually, I think our pets is the least of our worries. The whole 'moving out alone' concept scares me. And this from the girl that moved alone from Perth to Singapore then to Melbourne then drove up to Sydney herself. Ha !

I guess I have grown too dependent on him.

He isn't ignorant of this. He knows we have issues and problems that cannot be resolved. We both care about each other. I know I always will. However, one thing we both know, is that we have grown too accustomed to each other. That is what makes breaking up hard.

3rd Day in SG

Just witnessed one of the simplest sweetest weddings I have even been to.

If I had to find any fault in the day, it would be that it was held in Singapore -- Thus the groom was sweating like ****. And I mean seriously sweating. Full suits with tie and Kwa (The Bride's Chinese sytled wedding gown), for that matter really isn't made for the Singaporean weather.

But like it said before, it was one of the sweetest, simplest and smoothest running weddings I have ever been to.

Wishing the happy couple all the best. :)

4am ??

During my trip to Orlando, I probably went to bed about 4am every night. (For some reason, I just got more and more awake after drinking - the same issue does not exist when I go drinking in Sydney).

But for the last 3 nights since I have been back home, I have been waking up at 4am sharp EVERY-SINGLE-BLOODY-NIGHT ~~!!

It is driving me peanuts !

And I don't think this has anything to do with jet lag.

Things I learnt during my trip to the States

I was over in Orlando, Florida for the past 8 or so days. Here are somethings I've found out..

• Look Left !! - People in the U.S. drive on the other side of the road. Too many times have I looked on the wrong side and thought there was no cars approaching and when I went to cross the road, I nearly ended up walking into a oncoming vehicle.

• Carry your ID everywhere - If you want to be able to buy alcohol that is. On the first few nights out after my conference dinner had finished, we hit the bars. Me being way over 21, didn't think for one moment that I had to go back upstairs to my hotel room to pickup my ID. No ID = No Alcohol (apparently, if you looked under 21). Although I enjoyed the flattery, I had to hang around some seriously old guys and beg them to buy me alcohol the whole night.
  
  
• On the subject of Alcohol - they had my favorite tequila - 1800 - at every bar I went to. Even the Ale House next to the hotel. Its not even available in most pubs over in Australia. Sweeet... :)
  
  
• I'm a size 4 - Whooot !!! U.S sizes range from 0-20 (Someone correct me if I'm wrong).Enough said.
  
  
• Always ask for Aisle Seat - My flight over to the States was 14.5 hrs then an addition 5 hrs from LA to Orlando. For the 1st leg of my flight I was put into the window seat, with the two seats beside me occupied by a rather large elderly couple. They both required extension seat belts attachments (normal ones did not fit) and their tray table couldn't even come down properly. I ended up offering 1/2 of my tray table, so they could place drinks on it. For most of the 14 hrs of flying I was stuck against the window, sitting on about 2/3 of my seat. I also decided against consuming any liquids as getting out of the row to get to a toilet would be rather troublesome, if not - um.. impossible. On the 2nd leg, I was put next to an elderly lady who was wheelchair bound. Not much better. And forget asking for a exit row seat, you aren't going to get it.
  
  
• When in doubt.. Always Tip - For the first few days, this was the hard one to remember. I really didn't know when or when not to tip. Holding money out for someone was quite a weird concept for me. But then when you realise the minimum wage over there is $3.50 an hour, you realise the necessity for having to tip for everything.
  
  
• Security checkpoints at airports - Require you to take off your shoes !! And if you didn't know it beforehand, security personnel will just be really pissed off with you. Its like you are expected to know their rules. The next time I fly, I'm just going to be wearing my slippers.
  
  
• The venues serving alcohol closes at 2am - And thats 2am sharp ! So at 1.30am order a lot of alcohol, drink it all up and hope that the last order you made is able to satisfy you throughout the night.
  
  
• No one seems to Walk - Everyone drives. When we walked from one Mall to another Mall and asked Information on how to get to the next shopping mall we wanted to find. The guy replies... 'its about 5 mins from here straight down this road'. 'Oh.. 5 mins walk is not too bad'... someone replies. 'You mean you walked here ??????' *Information guy cracks up laughing*. . . 'Ummm.. yeah.. we are Australian'... We were then told to catch a taxi and forget about walking.
  
  
• On the subject of Cars - I was able to find Drive-through ATMs everywhere, but no actual ATMs in the wall of buildings. On one of the days I had run out of cash, I had to walk up to a drive-through ATM and withdraw cash out of that instead.
  

Thats about it for now. I had heaps of fun throughout my trip. Hopefully will be able to see everyone again next year. For now, I'm still suffering from my major jet lag... time to go snooze a bit. Gdnite !