L'Enfer, c'est les Autres

Saw a play tonight. Existentialist drama is funnier than I would have expected. Who said Sartre couldn't do gags? That letter opener joke is a scream.

I can't believe there's a site for this...

I want to see the dawn tomorrow morning. A site called sunrisesunset.com actually exists. I'm not complaining, though I might be when my alarms goes off at 5am.

Dublin, Ireland
12:13am DSTSun 5/22/2005
Sunrise: 5:17amSunset:
9:24pm

My curiosity will kill me one of these days.

There's a point in every relationship (friend, colleague, etc) where the person will start to tell you an anecdote that you've heard before. It could mark an important time in their life, maybe it makes them feel god [Typo Alert! Actually, I quite like it.], perhaps there's a moral in there somewhere. For whatever reason, their memories have bunched up around this one experience. Regardless of whether you choose to cut them dead or just keep smiling, it marks a definite end point - after this, you're stuck with the same old stories. Friendships are often at their most interesting when you're just getting to know a person and everything they tell you is like a discovery and every story is fresh. Their actions are still unpredictable and hence, in a an unsophisticated manner, exciting. Why do people place so much emphasis on the mileage they've clocked up together anyway? Society tells us that friendships are more important if they've lasted a long time - childhood amigos, friends forever, blood brothers - but what does it really add up to? So what if you've known someone for two decades? It doesn't count for anything. They could erase you from their life tomorrow. If you don't think that's true, tell me this, do you still see all your old school friends?

Spooling through the internet and wasting my last hour in this job, I have only one regret: I wish I'd stolen more stationery.

-So, will you miss the office?
What do you want me to say to that? I only turned up here for 3 months because you dangled a paycheque in front of me and I had nothing better to do. What part of that transaction makes you think that I will utter even one sigh when I leave this place? You're my coworkers, we didn't socialise outside of work, we didn't email, I didn't give you my blog address, I barely talked about myself. Did you look at me during our tea breaks? Did I look like I was enjoying myself? Did you think I was quiet because I was thinking of something to say? I was just wishing I could find a way to read my book instead of listening to you repeat your shallow catalogue of personal reminisces and bitch and complain about how unfair the world is to you. If I had one real regret, it's that writing this makes me realise how completely I surrendered to this job. That is one more thing I won't miss.

Holiday Info

It looks like I'll have to take out a monster loan if I'm going to get a holiday this year. South America, despite what people say, is not cheap. Still have to check with my new employers about holiday time but I'm looking at two weeks off in September to go to Peru. Found a useful article about backpackinghere, as well as advice on Delhi Belly and how to handle it. More stuff on travelling checklists here. Holiday Question and Answers here. Useful site. Lots of vaccinations to look forward to. Stories about malaria medication never get old. Yet more backpacker tips. Government site.

There you are

Journalistic Skills

"The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are
ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.
The capacity to steal other people's ideas and phrases — that one
about ratlike cunning was invented by my colleague Murray Sayre — is
also invaluable."
— Nicholas Tomalin, London, Sunday Times writer.

Forums, ah.

Now wash your hands

Turns out my office does have showers. Reassuring.

Office Etiquette Part 1

CD Swapping

Consider the following situation: you are in work, working quietly in front of your Personal Computer with your headphones in, when a co-worker expresses an interest in your music collection. How should one respond?

Rule 1. Allow the co-worker to browse your albums and, in return, you should peruse your co-workers entire collection, whether it is 2 cds or 100. Anything less is an insult to their taste.

Rule 2. You must select an album - regardless of the quality of the collection - and YOU MUST listen to it (in extreme situations it is permissible to put the cd on and turn the volume to mute, hence sparing your co-workers feelings and your delicate eardrums).

Rule 3. Choose 1 album and 1 album only, no one likes a music hog.

Next Week - 'World's Greatest Dud: Why you don't touch someone else's mug.'

People are disgusting. I'm sorry, but you are

My job is typing in application forms that the public have sent in. I don't mind the mispellings, spider handwriting, bad punctuation, coffee stains, children's drawings, adults' doodles and little, hateful messages, but when you have to prise the pages apart because they're sticky, that's when I want to take a shower.


[EDIT: Yes, I am aware of the irony of misspelling 'misspelling' so you don't have to point that out. Christ, paging Dr. Freud...}

City Lights

Sometimes this place doesn't seen so bad

What's my motivation?

When I suddenly felt the urge to blog again (something about sitting
in work and feeling tired of furtively writing in word, saving it to a
hidden folder on the hard disk, wiping the 'Documents' shortcut on the
Start menu, zipping them up, emailing them to myself and downloading
them on my home pc every weekend) I thanked God and any other deity I
could think of that I could still access my account 18 months later.

Idle Fingers

Been playing with my phone all morning, to the exclusion of colleagues, family, friends and work. Here's how I understand it.

I can take pictures with my phone and send them as a picture message to my flickr address so that they appear in my album. I can also MMS them to a slightly different address so that they appear on flickr and on my blog (using the subject line as a title and the message as an entry). I can send pics to my email address from my phone and then send them on to flickr.

I think that's it. Basically, I can moblog and upload pics to the web.

Now, how much will this cost me? I think that sending to email is standard MMS rates.

Foggy?

Foggy,
originally uploaded by aciddave.

Not foggy, doggy.

Why do I feel like a primary school teacher whenever I try to use a word that my phone doesn't recognise?

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Ideas

Short Story Compo
And another
This one sounds a bit pretentious and the prize money's not so good.

YES

Bored at Work

I think that explains a lot. Webtexting my friends this:

Wot do u no of ur fadr?
i no u kld hm.
No. I m ur fadr.
No. Dats impsbl.
Srch yr felgs, u no t 2b tru.
NoOoOoO
Bzz/\Zap/\Zap
Zrsh

Arghhhhh

DunDunDunDunDeDun

Next week: Macbeth!