Hand Signals

I can't stop thinking about the woman that I saw this morning on the way to work. She was standing by the side of the road, watching the oncoming traffic. She had her arm extended out as though she was hitch hiking, but instead of holding her thumb out, she was pointing with her index finger.

I looked at where she was pointing, but there was nothing there. I looked at the road, but there was nothing of note on it. She didn't seem troubled or anxious in any way. She was just calmly standing by the side of the road, pointing into nothing.

What was she pointing at? Was she trying to tell me something? I can't work it out because I am a complete failure when it comes to basic hand signals. I would never make it in the army, because all of that tricky hand motioning that they do when they're hiding in the jungle waiting to surround the enemy would go straight over my head. It doesn't matter how much you point at your eyes and the ground and try to mouth words without saying them - I just don't get it. Write it down or say it out loud if you want me to understand!

This woman was obviously trying to convey something to the people passing by and it's driving me crazy trying to work out what it was!

A Serious Question

Is it possible to think about a person so much that you inadvertently draw them into your life? How is it that after not thinking about someone for over 2 months and hoping that they were out of your life they can suddenly re-appear? It’s like the second I let her slip into my thoughts her evil little mind heard her name and materialised to continue wreaking havoc.

Ok, whingeing about evil women aside, I have a serious question:

Why is my spam always in Russian? How am I supposed to know what means of increasing my manhood are available if it’s in a foreign language? How am I supposed to understand the pleas of the Russian diplomat who wants me to help him transfer millions of dollar if I can’t tell what it is that he is saying? If I can’t read it, then it really is just junk and as such, the junk email folder is living up to its name in ways that it never really did before.

Social Problems Solved!

While discussing my total and utter social retardation with my boss, he came up with the idea to take me out on his sales calls so I can see his small talk in action.

It could be good, I might be able to learn how to answer questions about pus without being sick all over the person I'm talking to.

Third time unlucky

I think the general level of driving skill has deteriorated quite seriously of late. It seems that there are more random and dangerous drivers around than ever before. What i can't seem to work out is whether this is because people are getting worse at driving, or if it's just because the number of drivers on the road in total has increased, therefore the number of bad drivers has increased.

My sister has been run into twice in the last week - both times at the same intersection. The first was a taxi driver, who did a very sharp (and very illegal) left hand turn out of the right hand lane – then proceeded to get out of the car and abuse her for not being more careful!

The second was a woman who was stopped behind my sister at the same intersection. She kept creeping forwards whilst looking at the oncoming traffic instead of the car in front of her. Luckily she only tapped the bumper. On getting out of her car, she said “oh, I thought I’d hit the kerb for a minute there!” Which is a bit of a worry, considering she was nowhere near a kerb at the time!

Let’s just hope that bad things don’t really happen in threes, because that would mean an accident with an even more stupid driver, and I’m just not sure that’s possible.

A Little English Giggle

I've mentioned before that foreign accents tend to make me a little bit giggly, so you can imagine how I feel at the moment, while the only other people in the office are three Englishmen. They're talking serious business and I'm trying very hard not to giggle out loud.

An EBay Experience

I had my first EBay experience last week. Despite my super nerdiness, I’ve always resisted the urge to purchase on EBay - firstly because I am an addict by nature and I know that if I start, I’ll find it hard to stop; Secondly, because I’m spoilt and I like there to be a newness to my purchases. I like to be able to open an item and know that it has never been used before. That’s not to say that I’m opposed to second hand items, because I’m not. I just like the experience of unwrapping something new. It’s like a birthday present that I’ve bought for myself, but it can happen any time during the year. What can I say? I’m a big child. I LOVE birthdays.

The reason that I moved past these reasons and finally made a purchase was because I wanted to purchase something that has a totally unrealistic retail value. My new car has a USB connection and I wanted the manufacturer’s iPod cable so that I can control the iPod menu using my stereo buttons. Sadly, this tiny little cable retails for over $100. For a cable. Crazy! I wasn’t really keen on the idea of forking out that much money for a piece of wire, so I searched around to see if I could find somewhere else to purchase from, and eBay was the only result I came up with.

The fact that this item isn’t going to be purchased new is ok with me now, because I came to a realisation that negates all of the second-handed-ness.
This item will come in the mail. And not just the regular mail, but international mail. And if there is one thing as exciting as a present on an un-birthday, it’s opening the mail box to find a package that has travelled 12,000Km to reach me.

Frozen Seat

It's on days like today, when the temperature in the building is hovering around 5 degrees C, that I envy the male ability to pee standing up.

Belated Thanks

I’ve finally managed to write all of my thank you cards for the wedding. Better late than never, right? It was painful trying to think of unique and meaningful things to write. I sort of wish that I had just printed a generic thank you note and posted that out the week after the wedding. At least that way it wouldn’t have reached the point where people just assumed that the thank you’s had been forgotten. But I wanted to be specific about thanking people, so that it was all a little more personal. I just didn’t expect that it would take quite this long. I suppose a late thank you is better than no thank you at all.

Now all that’s left is to lick 52 stamps and send them out. Yum. Can’t wait for that. Ok, I’m lying, I don’t intend to lick ANY stamps. Not after finding that the wedding stamps for the invitations weren’t self adhesive and I had to lick over 100 of those little buggers. I suppose that’s the price I pay for being a perfectionist about my wedding invitations. I might just lower my standards a little for the thank you cards – you know, In aid of getting them sent out sometime this year.

Gobal Warming?

It is so cold today that i'm going to petition that it be renamed 'Global Cooling'.

Past, Present and Future

On Friday, I had a little preview into my future and my past all at once. We stopped on our way home to have dinner at an all-you-can-eat place that we used to go to a lot when we were kids. To be honest, when we drove past, I was surprised to find that it was still there. It's probably been 15 years since I last went there, and prior to that, it would have been another 5 years since I last visited. It was a Polynesian themed chain store that I thought had gone out of business a long time ago when all the other all-you-can-eat stores fell out of favour – around about the time that salmonella poisoning got a lot of media.

We stopped at KJ’s request, not my own, because I’m very anti all-you-can-eat. There are a whole heap of reasons why, the most prominent being that I don’t like to eat anything that looks as if it has formed its own protective coating in the indeterminate amount of time it has spent slowly congealing in a bain-marie.

I was shocked when we walked in to find that in the last 15 years not a single thing had changed. And I mean NOTHING. It was as if time inside the restaurant froze the second I walked out 15 years ago, and re-started when I walked back inside. The same 80’s carpet, same half-hearted Polynesian ‘artefacts’. The same old boat shaped salad bar, same plastic plants, same padded wicker chairs. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the same customers as there had been when I last left. Everything looked exactly as it had 15 years ago, not even the regular telltale signs of age showed. No fading, no patches, no replacement parts – 100% pristine, preserved buffet splendour. Even the food hadn’t changed (although that’s pretty typical of an all-you-can-eat restaurant).

As we were seated, feeling like we had stepped into a time capsule, I suddenly got a glimpse into my future. The reason we had stopped there was because we needed to have an early dinner and it was the best option available. It was 5:30pm, and as we sipped on lukewarm, soggy vegetable soup, the seats around us filled up with senior citizens. I suddenly came to the realisation that maybe I wasn’t looking into my past so much as straight into my future! I never thought that life coming full circle would involve a return to dodgy all-you-can-eat restaurants, but I guess the future is unpredictable!