Banks, Banks, Banks.

Today I was feeling kind of motivated. I don't know why, I guess I'm just really enjoying the job in the city and the relaxation/satisfaction it brings. I'm being ultra productive and really enjoying myself at the same time. At work. Isn't there a law against that or something?

[WARNING Boring bit, feel free to skip] Yesterday I produced some reports which highlight items that haven't been marked in the database as completed, but by virtue of other facts, are.

I promise I wont bore you for long with this. Just an example, one of the company projects is laying cables for a client. Not just a few cables, but every cable required to build an aluminium refinery. Yup. A fucking big refinery in the Australian outback somewhere. But wait, it gets better. So remote is this place that our company are also building a powerstation for them. Oh, and the workers will need somewhere to live. And some have families. They need schools. They are basically laying every cable to build a town. From the massive stuff that takes power from the powerstation into the substations right down to the instrument cabling for the smoke detectors in the new homes. Fibre optics for communication, CAT 6 networking cables, so on and so on.

They are laying tens of thousands of kilometers of cable. And the database I've taken over developing keeps track of all these cables, right from the ordering, to the installation and testing, to the invoicing. And I noticed something. The invoices only get sent when a cable or piece of equipment has been marked in the database as installed. Out of curiosity I made a list of all the cables that had been invoiced. And of course a cable always has to go FROM one thing TO another thing, otherwise it's useless. I then cross referenced to see whether all the TO and FROM had been invoiced. Several thousand hadn't. Oooops.

I suspect someone will get fired for that but in the meantime everyone is happy that I've enabled them to send out more than $1m AUD of invoices that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. It's very small cash for a project that runs into billions but hey, I wouldn't mind 10% commission eh? [/ WARNING Boring Bit over]

So I turned up to work this morning pretty relaxed and checked my bank account. I rarely do this but the new job isn't really that intensive so I decided to add up my weekend spending instead. I noticed that I'd been charged for TT's dress twice. Hmmm. Do I go bank or go Myer? Work people said it was probably the bank at fault. I proceeded to tell them some stories about the useless Barclays Wank in the UK. And that reminded me: The saga is still ongoing. I've been sending them monthly reminders that the issue still isn't resolved and every other month they reply and say they're looking into it. So I sent them another reminder, quite a twisted one. Along the lines of:

Hi XXXX!

How are things? I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year?

Things here in Aus are still going well. You'd hate the way they do banking over here, they've got this wacky idea of keeping the customer happy, resolving problems, being honest and all sorts of stuff that I find alien to my experiences with yourselves.

Still, maybe it's the weather here. When it's so glorious no one wants a hard time so they just work together to sort things out. It's not so one sided as the UK where everything is a struggle.
Talking of which, you told me back in October that you would address my email after you returned from your holiday. When I reminded you three weeks later you said you had problems with your email. When I sent you a merry Christmas message and gentle reminder you didn't reply at all. I guess you weren't in the Christmas spirit.

I did send you another reminder in January but I think that must have got lost in the depths of your network, or eaten by a troll or something because you didn't reply to that either.
Hoping to hear from you soon, otherwise I'm going to have to find someone even more senior than you, and that's going to be pretty tough to do. Is the media senior to you? I could forward lots of stuff to them...

Patiently awaiting your attention,

Only Me.

What do you think? I'm rather looking forward to the reply but I wont be holding my breath.
Anyhoo, I then decided to check online with my new UK bank account to see how things faired there. Only to discover that they've banned internet banking from outside the UK in an effort to prevent fraud. GNNNAAAGHHH! What's the fucking point of that?! We can't check our balances from machines overseas! That's why I was so insistent on getting the online version of the bloody account! Stupid sods.

I emailed them and they emailed straight back. I've got to use telephone banking instead. Although they could confirm my identity from the email that isn't enough to enable telephone banking. They have to send a form to my parents in the UK, who have to send it to me in Aus, I have to sign it, send it back to the bank, they will send a PIN to my parents, who will send it to me and then I can pay to call the UK for a bank balance. Hmmm. Splendid. Fortunately my mother can forge my signature perfectly. So in reality they'll send it to her, she'll sign it and send it back, they'll send the PIN, she'll call to get my bank balance and email it to me. 3 weeks cut down to couple of days. But it used to be instant on the internet.

I LOVE Banks. I want to marry one because they make me so happy.

Shop. Veg. Bum.

TT was hung over today. I wasn't much better. We shopped. We watched DVDs. We bummed out. I wrote a blog post and got all the dates wrong....I've corrected them now.

Gnome sweet gnome...

The day didn't start well. I'd checked yesterday whether we needed eggs. We had four that claimed to be good until Feb 10 - "Millions away, they'll be fine" I think to myself....Wrong. The first one broke ok. The second one put up a little resistance and didn't crack first time. I assumed it was because my hands were a little greasy from the cooking and tried again. This time the shell cracked but fortunately only fractionally, allowing one slow droop of slime to emerge and begin descending toward the pan. I narrowly averted disaster by unselfishly (I think) taking the gloop on my hand.

I tried to crack the other eggs into a jug to see if they were good. They were all mingy and rotten. I'm convinced the first one was actually a baby chicken but I've been told that's not possible. (Forgive me for believing all these years that eggs were actually designed to produce baby chickens. How fucking stupid have I been? I mean, duh, baby bird from an egg? Don't know what I was thinking when I dreamt that one up....)

I served TT the one good egg because it definately was fine and no slime had gone anywhere near it at all. Not just egg of course, but with mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon, and all other things that make English Breakfast. She asked why I had no egg. I lied and said there were only two and I'd dropped the other. No one wants to hear about slime eggs while eating breakfast do they?

As today is a normal Saturday rather than a public holiday we decided to take the trip to Garden City which was planned for yesterday. I asked for some time to myself and met up with her half an hour later clanging rather loudly as the three gnomes were too much for my bag and I had to carry them very carefully wrapped in carrier bags instead.

We got on the bus home and TT said after about 5 mins: "Can I have a look at my new gnome please?" Bah. Still it was a little obvious from the noise they'd been making and I'd told her I wanted to go to Garden City for something that I couldn't find in Brisbane.

Just incase you wondered, Garden City isn't a major garden centre - that would have been a dead giveaway as we only have our small patch of rainforest - it's actually a place that just happens to have a massive shopping cetnre including a shop with a garden section.

When we got home I gave her the gnomes first. They've joined Froggie and Froggo in the garden and they've been christened. But I can't remember what. I'm crap at names. I then gave her the dress and then the earrings. I think she was happy. Our friends visited and somehow we ended up deciding to go back to their place for beer and stuff.

I remember playing guitar heros or something on an x-box or playstation or something...

My first Australia day

Australians have lots of public holidays. Today was the first one since....ooh, 25 days ago? It was my first Australia day.

I've been feeling sorry for TT all week because I know she's been worried about me since the collapsing incident over the weekend. I'd been promising to make a Doctors appointment all week but somehow geuinely didn't get around to it. Besides, I'm pretty sure it was dehydration / bad food combo. I had a plan to get her some gnomes as a surprise from a large shopping centre called Garden city. But as it's a public holiday we weren't sure about going all the way out there only to find most of the shops shut. So instead we went to the city and I decided to suprise her there instead / aswell.

Firstly we went to a shop called the "Tree of Life" which sells all sorts of New Age stuff. I like "Tree of Life". I bought some incense and pretended to be uninterested while TT oohed and aaaghed at some earrings she really liked but didn't want to spend $50 on. I made a mental note.

We then went to the Myer centre which is a huge department store in a Mall of the same name. She took a pile of clothes to the changing rooms to try on. The first was a dress and it made her look beautiful. Again though, she didn't think it was worth the money and retreated back into the changing room to try on the next item. While she was doing this I spoke to the lady assistant responsible for taking away the tried on clothes. I told her to take away the dress and put it aside and that I'd be back later to pay for it.

She tried on some other clothes and ended up buying a couple of tops. I then told her that I needed an hour to get some stuff myself. I went back to both stores and bought the earrings and dress, legged it home, stashed them under the bed and caught the bus back into the city. Mission accomplished in 55 minutes. Although she still told me I was late of course. Boys always are aren't they?

We then went and done some food shopping and I made a point of ensuring we had everything needed to cook her breakfast in bed. Watched some movies at home, went to bed quite contented although still being questioned about what I'd bought until I dozed off.

The mega-bring-up-to-date post...

First day back to work - Tue 2nd Jan
We didn't do anything special on the New Years Day holiday. Just bummed around the house. On tuesday it was back to work as normal, within 45 minutes of mundane work shit I'd forgotten about the 10 or so days off. Work has that effect doesn't it?

I went for an early break out onto the roof (views photos). It's where I spend most of my breaks, it's good and the only place to have a quick smoke if the need grabs you. Also very good for planes but I'll save that exiciting post for another day.

As I was about to step out onto the roof I passed one of the very senior members of our company. He was busy gibbering at someone about something important but I saw him try to catch my eye as I passed. I ignored it because I wanted some roof time. Besides, I'm a consultant, I'm not one of their normal employees that has to bow and scrape.

He came bursting onto the roof about a minute later and just called "J, could you pop into my office when you're done please?" I was in no hurry - My contract is only due to run for six months and that expires soon so I just suspeced that they were going to ask me to leave a couple of weeks early. After all, there isn't really much work left to do now (A contractor that works himself out of a job early never has trouble finding another)

I wandered into his office about 3 jumbo jets later. He askd me to close the door behind me. Ooops. Have they disovered I've been stealing office stationary for personal use? Or no! Perhaps it was that letter I sent to the UK on office postage? Perhaps I may care one day?

He asked to to take a seat and proceded to tell me all about some company our company has recently bought out. I wont bore you with details but the crux of the gibber was: "The company we've just bought out has their own database and we want them to adopt ours. We want someone independant to go along and "compare" the two systems and deduce that ours is the best and convince them so. If they happen to have any features better than ours you may build them into our database. This will make them think they've won a battle in the war of takeover."
Now, I think I've made a fairly accurate translation of what I was asked to do. In fact, my version is probably more concise. Yet somehow the meeting to tell me took over two hours. He was so timid and shy about telling me. I don't know why, I've got a thick skin and it take more than dsigruntelled employees to piss me off. So long as I'm getting paid I couldn't give a toss.
The new position was due to begin on Monday of the following week. And guess what? The best news of all - the new office is only a ten minute walk from my house! With views of the bridge and Brisbane river!

My only concern was the South America trip. How would they react when I told them that in mid feb I'm going overseas for four weeks? After all, when I took the position it was due to expire just before we left.

I decided to tell the manager man. I figured that If I work 10 hour days and offer to work saturdays too I could get the equivilent of at least 3 1/2 months work done. And my pay packet would be huge too! He considered it for a moment and then asked me not to tell them.
I start the new job on Monday - yey!

Did I forget to mention? Fri 5th Jan
The new job thingy on Monday revolves around my expertise in a partcular database language. You wanna know what I know about this particular language? Nothing. Nout. Nada. Zero. Zilch. On the way home I go to Borders and pick of a copy of New Language For Dummies. I'll make an impression eh?

First day on new job - Monday 8th Jan
I couldn't get New Database Language for Dummies so I bought New Database Language in 24 hours instead. And over the weekend I read the back of the book several times and then opted to clean the bathroom. It needed doing. I then read the chapter listing and decided that a nicely ironed shirt should make the right impression. I ironed my shirts, even the ones I never wear, twice each. I started on chapter 1. A couple of pages in I remembered I had some filing that really needed doing. Then it was Sunday, the day of rest. I was glad. My couple of pages had worked up the desire for a well earned break.

I'd been asked to arrive at work at about 7.30 which is about 45 minutes later than I'm used to. As the journey is so much shorter I could sleep in too. I didn't get up until 6am which was a nice lay in. Such a lazy start to the day made me tired all day.

I was encouraged to bum around for the morning and get to know people. In the afternoon we had a welcome meeting. During the first part of the meeting the tiredness caught upwith me and I dozed off. I really know how to make the right impression don't I? I wasn't just me, I saw four out of about 10 heads nodding. Eventually a guy called Mr P got up and announced he would fetch some refreshments. He returned less than a minute later with a carton of 4XXX. Apparently they keep a supply in the fridge incase things get too busy to cross the street to the nearest pub! I LOVE THIS COMPANYY!

What work is all about. Tues 9th Jan

11.00am BOSS: "Hey everyone, we're going across the road to the pub at midday to welcome Jay to the company. Beers on company!"

Everyone: "Yey!"

11.05am.BOSS to me: "Shit, I wish I'd said 11.30. I'm busting for a beer eh?"Me: "I'm not used to this at all, it's so great I'm happy to wait until 12!"BOSS to me: "Bollocks to that come on, lets get the order in early!"

Us: [Leave]

11.30am.Us: [pissed as Lords]

Hmmm. Fairy heads. Yum. Sat 13th Jan
Today we went to the "alternative cinema" and watched a film called Pans Labyrinth. It wasn't an accident, TT saw a trailer or read a review for this and decided we should see it. We tracked it down and ended up there. I was a little scepticle to say the least. As we joined both the other people in the queue TT warned me: "Quite a few reviewers have said this is a shit film..." My spirts drop slightly. 30 seconds later she adds: "Oh, and it's reputed to be a bit girly". My spirits drop further. Finally she pipes up: "Oh, and it's in Spanish" Hmm. Fucking marvellous.

I've since read the official description of the movie and it's billed as "a fairy tale for adults" I agree. In my opinion it's great. Violent - pehaps overly/unnecessarily so, inriguging, fascinating. I loved it. I've only a spaterring of Spanish and yet I managed to listen to most of it rather than read the subtitles. Not there's a need though, the story is visual.

My favourite scene was perhaps when a horrible monster dude (who usually eats children) made a dietry sacrificice and ate the heads of two fairies. Or maybe when this girl grabs a Spanish general, gives him a chelsea grin and then stabs him in the mouth. This is a fairy tale that's not really for kids.

I can't tell you a thing. Tues 23rd Jan
I took the day off work sick today yesterday. I kind of collapsed on Sunday morning. I have no recollection of it or the hour or so beforehand. Worried? Yes. A bit. I remember waking up yesterday morning and saying to TT I'd get a later bus. The I went back to sleep and woke about 5pm when she got home. Today I made it to work but despite two days sleep I was tired all day, I don't mind being sick but the memory loss is new to me. Dont like it. TT just says I was conscious on Sunday but really spaced out. We've since narrowed it down to being related to my lunch consisting of the hottest curry Brisbane has to offer. Perhaps there is such a thing as the insanity pepper as featured in the Simpsons?


Other stuff
TT is getting urges for these. They are only available in the US. We're willing to pay if anyone can send us some please?


























The fireworks Australia is famous for on New Years Eve















And again















The river on New Years Eve



My watch and new chain for my necklace

Ahoy! Some News!

Hello my dear readers,

Incase you hadn't noticed, this blog has been a bit behind the times recently. I've been keeping some notes but there's always something stopping me from posting. So please forgive me, I'm going to post my notes to bring you up to speed.

Then you'll maybe understand why I've been so busy and also how I've managed to cram about 10 posts in during the last week.

Right now though, I'm in an office surrounded by very professional (HA HA HA!) people so I'd better get on with some work.

Thanks for your patience,

Only Me.