Where do we come from?

I love checking the keywords of people's Google searches that lead them to this blog site. Just ilke when you search for something and get results that are unexpected, sometimes the searches that people use to get here are suprising because of how little I've thought about the different ways things I write about may be able to be interpreted.

A quick google search has shown up that there is actually quite a bit of debate about the top search terms people use. Everything from God, Sex, Paris Hilton, Jobs, Politics, to far ruder subjects.

Ha - notice that I've managed to slip all of those common search terms into one post? I guess this will be my own little test! I'll let you know if my readership explodes over the next few days!

And to the mysterious "alternative phrases for the best things since white bread", I'm glad you stuck around for a read and I hope you found what you were looking for!

Jacki

I am Sailing...I am Sailing...

Bugger, now I'm going to have Rod Stewart in my head all day!

Last Friday I went sailing. The photos are here.

I have to tell you all, I had a bloody sensational day! What's not to love about sailing? You're out and about on the water (lots of sunscreen is definitely the order of the day), the wind ruffles your hair, you hang on for dear life as the word tilts sideways and you're sure you're going to end up on the news...

then you get where you're going and sit and drink wine and eat nibblies (my favourite) in the sun.

then you do the same thing to get home and you get home exhausted and happy and sleep like the proverbial fairy-tale princess. Good company, good fun and a really great day. I could get used to a sport like that!

J.

Limbo (not the kind with the Carribbean drums and the stick)

We're currently in the middle of that limbo period...those couple of days between Christmas and New Year's. It's a funny old time, where the world doesn't quite work the same way it does the rest of the year. As with anything out of my usual routine, there are things about this period that I love and things that drive me bonkers.

Love: Work is quiet. You can tinker away on ideas that you've been wanting to invest some time in for months, but never seem to get free time to do.

Hate: The city is impossibly crowded. People everywhere with nothing to hurry for and plenty of time to wander, stroll and browse. Out of my way, people!

Love: Work is relaxed enough that you can actually get time to go out for lunch instead of grabbing take-away and eating at your desk as usual....

Hate: Public transport. Limited services (ie not even as many as usual), the usual train gong the wrong way around the city circle loop, tourists with suitcases who have no idea how to get on or off a train. Or a platform for that matter. Seriously, this is my everyday thing. You're the ones in the way...MOVE!!!

Love: Knowing that I'm saving my holidays for a big trip next year (almost this year!)

Hate: Knowing half my friends are on holidays now. And half of my team.

Love: Even without taking any holidays, I still get a 4 day weekend followed by a 3 day weekend.

Hate: Skeleton staff for support staff. I'm sitting here writing this because the normal fortnightly report that I produce, instead of taking the usual 10-15 minutes, has now taken 4 hours. I logged a call with tech support yesterday, but nobody seems in any particular hurry to help. ARGH!!!!!

so if you're working like me, I hope you're not working too hard, and if you're on holidays, well, I don't want to hear about it! See you Tuesday!

Jacki.

To Be Or Not To Be...

I like to think of myself as a pretty polite person. My parents certainly raised me to have good manners and I really think that was a good thing that I adhere to whenever I can.

The question is, though, when is it OK to stop being polite? What does it take for a reasonable person to be pushed beyond the limits of polite tolerance?

Today two things happened. Both of them brought into question the appropriate application of manners.

Situation 1: Today I went out to lunch with 3 friends. Admittedly we went into the nasty part (read: the mall) of the city right in the middle of the post-Christmas sale rush. This was obviously a mistake. (gotta love hindsight)

We went to a small café slightly out of the way. Apparently it wasn’t out of the way enough, however. Firstly the only table that was available was one that had been recently vacated. So the previous occupant’s dishes remained on the table.

Next we weren’t offered menus. Fair enough. It was quite busy. We borrowed one from a neighboring table.

Next we eventually had to go ask the waitress if it might be likely we would be able to order soon. These things happen. Annoying, but I can live with it. In response, she came over and cleared the table then disappeared for quite some time.

Eventually she returned. We managed to order. With effort. I’d be willing to bet that she was a temp brought in just for the Christmas rush period, based purely on the fact that she seemed completely unfamiliar with any item on the menu and made us point them out for her before after stating what we wanted before we could have our lunch requests committed to the notepad.

After a ridiculous amount of time the food started to arrive. Not only was it not the food that we had ordered, but it was also awful. Some time after this we thought maybe it would be a good idea to go find our absent waitress again to see if we could track down the mystery of where our drinks were.

The drinks were also not what we ordered. Mentioning the fact that a bitter lemon (as per the menu) might actually be different from a lemon, lime and bitters was met with a raised eyebrow and a “that’s not the way we do it here”.

Needless to say, by the end of our (semi-inedible) lunch, nobody was impressed.

What would have been the appropriate response to this situation?

Situation 2: I finish work and hop onto a fairly crowded train to get home. I notice with delight that there is a large area with nobody sitting in the seats, and, assuming it is due to the reduced number of commuters during the holiday period, take a seat.

I soon discover why the seats are empty. I’m sitting next to a guy smelling strongly of urine. Apart from that fact he seems reasonably sane. He’s not doing anything wrong. Do I move seats? Do I get up at the next station and pretend I’m getting off and get on at another carriage? Should I care? Don’t I have the right to move seats on public transport whenever I feel like it? What if he gets offended and I hurt his feelings? What if he doesn’t know he smells like wee? What if he does and he’s trying to cause trouble and he yells at me for moving?

What do you do?

….Answers (at least to what actually happened, not to what should have happened) in tomorrow’s installment….

Photos, photos and more photos

I've finally gotten a little organised (mainly due to the fact that we're havinga few network issues this morning) and started sorting my way through my photos from the last couple of months. I've been working my way backwards, so have managed to get the following events on...

Christmas Day at Sandy's
Christmas Eve Eve at Danielle's
Sailing Adventures
Welcome Home Drinks for Kogi
A couple of Work Christmas parties
The PA Offsite dinner
and Karen & Anthony's Wedding

Whilst there are defniitely still more to come (including a whole buckload of photo diary), if you're interested, just pop on over and have a sticky-beak.

Jacki

A bit ridiculous

OK, I know it's that quiet period between Christmas and New years when only the people with no famililes or different cultures end up working.

And I know that it's 4.30 and pretty much even those people have jumped ship and buggered off to do something more exciting.

but seriously? The cleaners are vacuuming around me! I feel l ike I'm at that last table at a restaurant at the end of a long night!

don't they know I'm trying to sort through my Christmas photos?

;-P

And then it was over...

Well it's Boxing Day. The big one is over. The food (or a small portion of what was planned) has been eaten. The wine has well and druly been drunk. The presents have been opened and the tree is ready for disassembly to be put into storage for next year.

Thanks to Sandy for hosting orphan's Christmas and thanks to Edel, Kogi, Jonathan, David & Ronene for sharing a beautiful day.

Hmm, guess I should get out of my pajamas and off the couch and go collect my car.

Soon.

Soon-ish anyway.

Hope you all had a good one.

Jacki

Count down til santa's visit

Given my penchant for countdowns, you may be wondering why I'm not counting down to the big sparkly shiny day coming up next Monday.

Well everyone else seems to be counting down to that one so I thought it might be a bit redundant. I was downstairs on level 28 earlier and the boys down there have a litte blackboard with Santas and stuff that you write in the number of days to go until Christmas.

So if you want to count down, you could go get yourself one of those. Or an advent calendar (maybe one with chocolates?). I'll leave you to your own devices on this one.

J.

Chocoholism

Now let me start this post by stating that I'm usually not a big chocolate person. I may have been when i was younger, but my taste buds seem to have matured (read: aged) a little since then and usually I'll head straight for the cheese plate without so much as a pause by the chocolate bowl.

This year, there seems to have been an awful lot of chocolate around. I've received some as gifts, had them handed out at work and been given them as after dinner treats at the various Christmas functions I've attended this holiday season.

So in the interest of not appearing rude (of course! What other reason would there be?) I have partaken of more chocolate in the last couple of weeks than I probably have all year.

But somehow now that I've jumped on the chocolate bandwagon, I seem to be having trouble getting back off. I've started looking for something sweet after lunch and dinner and a piece of fruit is not longer making the grade.

So what's going on? Have they started making chocolate more addictive? Or was it always like that (that might explain my teenage years, I suppose)? Do I need help beating the demon dessert?

And so this is Christmas...

I received the annual christmas letter from my Uncle yesterday. this year it was in pdf format and received via email, so I guess things have changed a bit from when I remember Mum getting organised with the photocopying and the personal writing on the bottom of each one and then an enclosed photo of the family sent off months in advance (my Mum's a very organised person) to reach teh overseas friends and relatives.

Anyway, I'm digressing. I thought it might be a good idea to do my Christmas letter on here. These annual events always prove an interesting time to reflect on the highlights and lowlights and to take stock of the previous year to clear the air in preparation for the next one.

So what have been the features of 2006 for me?

• My brother Bronte's wedding to Bec
• My sister Mel's wedding to Brownedog
• Alison & Steve's wedding
• Bec & Luke's wedding
• Karen & Anthony's wedding
• Travelling all over the country to attend weddings: Perth, Melbourne, Port Douglas, Perth, Launceston. Whew.
• Learning to Bollywood dance
• Buying and moving into my apartment
• Mum & Dad visiting me in Sydney
• lots of other visitors now I finally have a spare room
• Sandy moving to the inner west
• Seeing Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz
• Bloody missing Beth Orton in concert again!!
• Sadly farewelling my Grandma
• A dodgy flatmate and freeloading swedish backpacker experience
• Moving into the shiny new office building
• And I started this blog!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!!

Jacki

New Year's Resolution

I've decided what my New Year's resolution is going to be so I'm declaring here, openly for all the world to see...

In 2007 I will get better at remembering people's names!

Anyone have any ideas how?

Dirty Little Secrets

I enjoy watching Grey's Anatomy.
I really like the new Pink Album.
My favourite social activity is playing board-games
I love Coke Zero
I'm really clumsy and really forgetful
I'm very bad at remembering names. Really bad.
I like playing with databases. For fun.
I buy movies on video or DVD because I can never return them on time when I rent them and they end up costing me more in fines.

So there.

My new Favourite Word

neologism \nee-OLL-uh-jiz-um\, noun:
1. A new word or expression.
2. A new use of a word or expression.
3. The use or creation of new words or expressions.
4. (Psychiatry) An invented, meaningless word used by a person with a psychiatric disorder.
5. (Theology) A new view or interpretation of a scripture.



The word "civilization" was just coming into use in the 18th century, in French and in English, and conservative men of letters preferred to avoid it as a newfangled neologism.
-- Larry Wolff, "If I Were Younger I Would Make Myself Russian': Voltaire's Encounter With the Czars", New York Times, November 13, 1994
If the work is really a holding operation, this will show in a closed or flat quality in the prose and in the scheme of the thing, a logiclessness, if you will pardon the neologism, in the writing.
-- Harold Brodkey, "Reading, the Most Dangerous Game", New York Times, November 24, 1985
The word popularizing was a relative neologism (the Review boasted five years later, "Why should we be afraid of introducing new words into the language which it is our mission to spread over a new world?").
-- Edward L. Widmer, Young America


The French word neologisme, from which the English is borrowed, is made up of the elements neo-, "new" + log-, "word" + -isme, -ism (all of which are derived from Greek).
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for neologism

Smug

Can't help but feel smug about articles like this .

And as I sit here eating my lunch....home-made pizza with fresh basil, baby spinach, mushrooms, capsicum, capers and pine-nuts...I can't say I'm feeling like it's much of a chore being veggie either.

Yum.

Shame on you, chocolate thief!!

In our office, we have one of those charity chocolate boxes offering enticing treats sans guilt since you're helping out with fundraising.

Someone in our office has been stealing from the charity chocolate box.

I hope they get the karma they deserve. :-(

Weird World

OK, this has got to be the strangest media story I've read for a while.

Wear sunscreen

Ouch. I had a nasty looking mole cut out of my back yesterday. It's very painful (despite being very small and not looking too impressive at all). I'd prefer not to have any more pieces of me cut out, so my summer's resolution is to always wear sunscreen.

slip, slop, slap everyone...that's my advice for the day.

Work - vocation or job?

I was at a discussion forum the other day, and we were taling about career development. Kind of a dry topic, you'd think, but things took a bit of a philosophical turn, and we ended up contemplating some questions that I thought were kind of interesting.

I thought that I might share them with you. You can contemplate them on your own, ignore them completely, or if you feel inspired, you could even post up your thoughts.

If you weren't getting paid, would you still come to work?

If you were getting paid to either sit at home all day or work, would you still come to work?

If you could get paid the same to do something else, what would it be?

It's definitely that season again!

Hmmmm. The big company Christmas Party was on last night. great fun, a whole (open) bar to ourselves, lots of networking, food and wine.

Lots of sore heads this morning. A few fuzzy ones too. And lots of sighs and bottles of water and trips to the coke machine. Quite a lot of big greasy breakfasts this morning. A few people taking an early mark today. The odd scandal and person looking a little embarassed today. (Not me, in case you were wondering, I was suprisingly well-behaved!) My boss reckons that our team is operating with one brain-cell between us today.

It's definitely that season again.

Team Christmas lunch tomorrow....
Christmas Lawn bowls for the greater team next week....
Then there's the big day itself....
and New Year's Eve....

I definitely know why they call it the "silly season".

Still, back to my regular job on Monday so I'll try to get in a few more regular posts.

Where did the week go?

Do you ever have weeks like that? I'm sure it was Monday morning about 5 minutes ago and suddenly I've been in this weird time-warp and it's Friday afternoon.

Seriously, I've had such a great week. I've learnt some amazing stuff and had a ball doing all sorts of nerdy things.

And I've had a great workout in the process. sounds odd, I know, but it's true. All due to the fact that I've been working on level 28 and still doing stuff on level 31 and transferring all sorts of stuff around between desks. I'm on my record today...9 trips up and down those 3 flights of stairs!!!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

J.