Cough. Splutter. Ugh

This is the second week running that I have been 'offline' at nights, and I blame it all on the flu, which has now ceased being the flu, but has extended into a coughing marathon. The right side of my ribcage hurts so much now... all I gotta do is just wait for the left side of the ribcage to hurt for another 3 days or so, and then it will be the end of this current bout of sickness. I suppose the fact that practically everyone at work being sick too hasn't helped much. Self-imposed exile to the confines of the house worked over the weekend, but by Monday evening, it all got worse. I'm currently on the 4th packet of Fisherman's Friend (I bought the last packet at the convenience store at the petrol station this morning, so you can imagine the number of people out there who may be carrying a packet or two in their pockets now)

Ugh...

Benefit of the Doubt

In the eyes of a keen observer, it would have looked like the turning point of all events was the sudden cancellation of a wedding surrounded by the most mysterious of circumstances. Naturally one would assume several reasons among others, but when looked closely, none of them make much sense. There's always one string left untied, one door left open, you get the drift.

However, recent developments have led to a startling revelation, courtesy of my new BFF at work (we sit next to each other, and we get along incredibly well and have bitch sessions when we both work late into the evening, hence the BFF status) which states that the wedding got cancelled because of a third party, which in this case is another girl, who also works with us.

Regardless of what people say about how men and women cannot only be just friends and all that crap, I believe that it is entirely up to the individuals involved. Now, most of the people at the work place have been carrying stories that Tevinsky (that's the guy in this story) and Hollansova (the t hird party girl) have been seen together for quite awhile including them being together at the Search concert last year (skipping our company's bi-annual family day event in the process and barely one month after the wedding got cancelled) and ahem... holding hands, and many such other cases. I myself have never been privy to any of these clandestine meetings, not hanging out in the same places as these people do. Arofsky (one of the guys at work) had actually directly asked Hollansova what her relationship with Tevinsky was, and she said those magic words... "we're just friends"...

To be honest, I'd give her the benefit of the doubt about her and Tevinsky just being friends, because I do know for a fact that people who have never been in such a situation would never believe it. However, other people think I'm being naive. But like I said earlier, it's entirely up to the people involved, and how likely they are to get friendzoned, so unless you are them, or are magically able to walk in their shoes even for one day, you will just never know.

Over the weekend we had at PD, I (and a few others, as I learned from BFF later) had taken the task of observing both Tevinsky and Hollansova to see if anything was up. Hollansova and I used to be travel buddies for a lot of company related stuff (us being the only two females in the office then), so it was a bit of a surprise to me when she declined my invitation to car pool together as she was going with Tevinsky. Was that an outright confession??

Anyway, during our presentation, I was inconveniently seated between them after the lunch break through no fault of mine, the projector's wire was a bit too short for anyone's good. I saw very subtle exchanges of text messages. He would send a message and she would instinctively reach for her phone on the table, look at the screen, subtly put it back, and maybe a minute or two later, bring it under the desk to reply. He wasn't so discreet about it, replying almost instantly and openly. (A bit of explanation is due here: Most people I deal with on a daily basis are under the impression that I am a very quiet person who is equally 'blur'. What they don't know is that underneath the quiet exterior is a person whose brain's gears are turning all the time and who was given the middle name 'observer' when she was fourteen. Nevertheless, this impression works very well for me to do my sleuthing activities. People hardly ever notice me)

Other observations were done later that night after dinner, they always seemed to find a way to sit next to each other from the time we were at the live band lounge to the time when we having late night teh tarik at the road side stall. According to Farrosky (now I know why he asked me to scoot over to sit next to me - he wanted a good observation point of view too!) who shared his observations with BFF, they kept moving closer to each other as the night wore on, which brings me to the sudden close of this post with yet another conclusion about people.

When you are privy to a certain knowledge, you tend to notice things that contribute to the affirmation of the said knowledge you otherwisewould have never noticed. What do you think?

Notes, Jottings and Other Random Stuff

1. Me and my misplaced doodling are going to get into serious trouble someday... all those controversial stuff! Yikes!!

2. The whole department coughs. Loudly. And in many different pitches. We would make an awesome frog symphony with a little control and a conductor.

3. Why is it easier to tell someone who is somewhat a stranger about something that is close to your heart compared to someone whom you know? And why does doing something like that always make you feel down again?

4. This has been an awful week in terms of productivity.

5. The Poll Results. Last week, I ran a poll asking if you preferred quality or quantity... the official results are:

 

Well , and plus one delayed vote for quality which makes the ratio look like: 37.5% Quality and 62.5% Quantity.  

If You Fall, I Will Catch You

I suppose it must have been in the far away days of the Triassic period when I first found out that I had fallen in love with him. The reason was never really clear, but then, when it comes to these things, what is? All I remember is that he had a sort of intense, albeit comical hatred for almost everyone and everything around him, accusing them of being phony and all that. I did find that particularly endearing. Of course this was way after the Permian period of my life when all idealistic thoughts of the knight in shining armour had been thrown away and flushed into the nearest toilet.

Alas, it went all unrequited due to the fact that he was only 16, and above all, a fictional character who went by the name Holden Caulfield, a fragment of the imagination of a man who was known as JD Salinger.

I had found out last Friday that JD Salinger had died, not as surprising as me finding out that he had been alive all this while, although I do remember reading about him some time ago, where I found out that he led a  reclusive life, and pointedly refused to allow the Catcher in the Rye to be made into a movie. How did the fact of him being alive escape me? I must admit that I was rather appalled at one of the articles about him where it states that he probably has a few unpublished works which they hope to look for (and do what, may I ask?) Yes, The Catcher in the Rye may have been splendid, but if someone wants to keep their manuscripts to themselves, then that's the way it should be. Dead or alive.

Anyway, it's been almost a week, and I have forgotten what was my objective of starting out this post... (the flu had prevented me from thinking very clearly this past one week, I'm afraid) and I leave you with this link which you may enjoy, or not.

The Flu - A Haiku

Sapped up energy,
Spinning tops, dancing dragons
Oh flu, leave me be

The Weekend that Was

If I were being not exactly honest, I'd say I had tonnes of stuff to blog about, but never got to. In reality, there are about a few things only - 3 perhaps, which I really hope to get to before they lose all relevance.

I suppose I should start with the weekend, where some people from my department were picked to do a presentation on our KPIs with the attendance of several guests of honour from related departments. As far as I can recall, we had always done our KPIs in our office, having meetings late into the night where people argued amidst boxes of pizza and paper cups of Pepsi. After the deadline, the department boss would face the bearded lion in his den and explain everything we have discussed.

This year though... it was completely different, we had one on one meetings with the boss (a new one) and she gave us her opinion and we did it all on our own. It saved time and as it turns out was a success when we finally presented our previous years data and our plans for 2010 in a freezing room in a resort hotel about 2 hours away from the confines of the depressing office without much ado although most of us were sick and had worked like crazy the past week and barely slept the night before.

We had the meeting/presentation at a resort in PD and later that day, we had gathered at the beach for some fun in the setting sun, and some dinner (in one of the hotel's restaurants). Now, I don't really complain that much about service because I know people are trying their best, but their food was rather bad. And they didn't have the courtesy to book our tables and we had to end up eating separately when all we wanted to do was to hang out together and talk about things not so related to work. After dinner though, we went to watch a live band perform and it was good. They played most of the songs that were asked for (we as a bunch were on a requesting spree) except for Guns N Roses' Sweet Child of Mine.

As much as I thought that I was going to hate the whole thing of "I have to see your faces everyday at work and now I have to see it in the weekend too??!", I guess I ended up being completely wrong about it, which is good. We trooped into a few cars and hit PD town, hoping to find something exciting to do, which led us to a karaoke lounge. At the very instant we parked our cars to discuss if that was what we wanted to do, the place got raided by the cops! Talk about an almost adventure. We could have almost gotten mugshots! In the end, we just went and had some drinks at one of those 24 hour restaurants that littered the sides of the road.

I drove home earlier today after waking up with a sore throat, and although the flu allowed me to drive back and forth safely, I suspect it is here to stay. Gotta go and find me a pack of fisherman's friend.

Protectors of the Earth don't get the sniffles in January

They don't. And they shouldn't but this one has.

After sneezing all through yesterday, I woke up with a headache and sniffles this morning. This wouldn't be so bad if:

Publish Post

a) I didn't have to take a two hour drive to a different state tomorrow night
b) I didn't have a presentation on Saturday morning
c) I had been informed earlier (even yesterday would have been fine instead of at 10:30 am this morning) to use Power Point as the main document and link it to data from Excel instead of the other way round.

So now, slightly woozy from the headache, panicking because time just decided to move a wee bit faster and waiting for the antibody support the doctor prescribed to me about an hour ago to kick in, I decided to steal some time to put this up.

Squeak, Twirl, Murder

TS' mouse suddenly turned all Final Destination on her this morning while she was at the back of her desk, clearing up because it was *Tuesday. The long **tendril, camouflaged incredibly well by the black work pants she was wearing slowly tightened it's grip on her ankle, just waiting for her to make a wrong move (or move too fast as is usually the case), fall down and break a tooth or two, or better yet, stop her blood from circulating properly and then finishing her off with flourish (how that will happen, she leaves to your respective imaginations)

She bent down, untangled herself and reminded herself to tie the cables together before something bad happens to anyone.

*She recently found that Tuesdays can be a bit wearisome because the ***neat freak team (or psychotic clean-a-holics) goes all click happy with the camera and takes pictures of messy desks for all and sundry to see... so the picture of her messy desk (it may look messy, but she works better that way... if the desk is too clean, she starts playing twirl the pen or twist the volume knob on the walkie-talkie) on the 2nd floor might be shown to a member who probably works on the ground floor in the main office and who most likely has never had the need to go all the way up to the second floor.

They seriously need to find something better to do, perhaps she could delegate some of her work to them... especially get them to do some of the horrible paperwork she so hates doing ;)

**wire

***Obviously not their real name...

(Picture borrowed sans permission from ihaschezburger (I think))

Quality vs Quantity

Ok. The word "quality" probably stretches it a bit too far, akin to bestowing yourself the nickname Rapunzel when your hair barely surpasses your scapula, but I'm sure you get my drift... a lower frequency of posting inadvertently assumed to be well thought out and crafted posts. How far it is from the truth... Sigh.

So here I am, taking the blogging bull by it's proverbial horns, doing the best I can to get back to somewhat regular posting - preferably every other day, training my mind to view things from the left hand side of a tightly closed box (whatever that means), appreciating the amusing stuff that happens on a daily basis and documenting them no matter how daft. I will try to avoid rants as much as I possibly can, though... unless they're in the form of haiku.

Therefore, while we may lack quality, which I am fervently hoping will not be the case for too long, here's to a tad bit more quantity (does a crazy toast with a giant blue water bottle and coffee mug). Oh, and if you look closely at the top left hand corner, we have a poll there... which would you pick? Quantity or Quality?

Edit: The question of picking quantity vs quality is just a general poll, like if you're a blogger, would you rather blog more, or scrutinise every single post and only post it when it is perfect? And if you're a reader, would you rather read more stuff (no matter how silly), or would you rather read carefully crafted posts?

However, the result of the poll will probably not influence the direction of this blog... our aim is quantity at the moment

All in the Fingertips

With the immense quantity of information floating around these days, it would be surprising indeed if you were not exactly aware of what is going on around you unless you purposely shut yourself out, something which is possible but unlikely, or is it impossible but likely???

A case in point is the recent, never-ending string of natural disasters that have happened, the latest being the massive earthquake that crippled Haiti. Now, certain quarters may say that recent events indicate evidence pointing to how we are nearing the apocalypse or something along those lines, anyway, but when you think deeply, are we realising the existence of these natural disasters in alarming numbers because we are more aware and more exposed to up to the minute news? It seems much more likely, I'd say. Besides, the Earth has never exactly been the most stable planet, and probably never will be either.

But I digress...

In the past week or so, the people of the country have been stunned into almost silence by a certain statement made by a previously important person who still seems to get way too much attention from the media despite being retired (anyone heard from Margaret Thatcher lately?), and that too for a statement so far-fetched that upon initially hearing it I felt sick to my stomach. (I'm afraid you have to click the link as I do not want to pollute this page by quoting such a ridiculous statement) In fact, had anyone taken the statement seriously (or if his opinions had still been considered significant), it could have caused a war. What about the people who were victims of the incident? What about the number of kids who lost their parents, or parents who lost their kids, the dead firemen/firewomen and rescue staff?

Naturally, as a person who believes in the right of having the freedom to express thoughts and opinions, we can't ask him to shut up, but seriously, there is a line between fact and fiction and he has clearly lost the line that divides both among all the squiggles. Of course what was going through his mind as he made the statement is anyone's guess... did he want to create a sensational headline? Or did he want to get the attention he thinks he deserves?

I suppose he did get a whole lot of attention, a random Googling of his name, and certain keywords leads to many sites where blogs have quoted him, news articles and other such things. Clearly, information is at our fingertips.