Entries from August 2004 ↓

Well I never thought I would break my long standing coffee habits but I think times are changing. Since 1998 I have fairly consistencly gone to Fuel Espresso twice a day (unless work meant I was more than a 7 minute walk away which has actually only happened twice and one of those times it was because I lived in Auckland) for ‘morning’ and ‘afternoon’ tea. The drink of choice is a lattee although in the summer I switch to their Latte Ristretto (TM) (less coffee, way less milk). Whether or not it’s a good thing I’ve decided I need way less milk in my life and this has meant, very unfortunately, way less caffiene. I still visit Fuel usually once a day for a late morning Latte Ristretto but it will be interesting to see if the same type of coffee is available elsewhere.

Orange *is* legally binding so it’s OK for me to use orange pen when signing legal documents. The blue/black requirements is more to do with faxing and copying.

All the people that get off the train in the morning and head to work in the city seem to think it’s OK to walk 4 or 5 abreast, taking up the entire footpath, and resent having to leave a small space for me and the one or two other people who are walking in the opposite direction. The number of times I get banged or poked is ridiculous – I’ve taken to swinging my lunch box with great determination in the hope of banging them back!

Came across a flyer for this company when at Pravda for lunch today – Girl Friday. It’s like project management for your life – a simple concept which apparently is turning into a very successful company. Now for the obligatory comment on my dining out experience … Pravda has a pretty cool interior and both menu and counter food. I especially like that you are greeted when you walk in the door so there is no doubt about where to go or what to do – perhaps it’s because it’s more of a restaurant than a cafe. Food selection was good, although for a picky light eater like myself dodging full sized meals, meat, mushrooms, olives, eel, squid and smelly cheese was a little bit of a challenge – however the bruscetta was nice – a bit disappointed that the tomatoes were not in small enough pieces to absorb the warmth of the grilled ciabatta, but a nice flavour anyway. My companion had the warm chicken and kumara salad which apparently *could* have been the best salad ever had.

My experiment with crossing the road only when the green man shows is proving to have interesting results. Firstly – the willpower to NOT cross is almost excrutiating at times! Secondly – I have had my fair share of strange looks – I’m quite used to being stared at due to the large amount of orange I wear (especially in the winter when clad in orange knee length coat, orange gloves, orange scarf and orange hat) but people are especially puzzled by my just standing by an empty road. Funny thing is – they stop and pause momentarily and look at me as if I know something they don’t – before rushing out to cross, tsking because I held them up! And thirdly – I AM getting to see a lot more – apartments on top of buildings I didn’t know where there, drivers doing dorky things in their cars, new shops and other human behavious observations that I’ve missed in the past.

Not that many orange cars on the road are there.

Why don’t the makers of commerical rolls of toilet paper actually test them out in the aparatus for which they are intended to be used in? I refer specifically to being able to unroll a length of toilet paper from a near full roll of paper in the dispenser which is impossible because the roll is so heavy that the act of pulling on the end of the roll causes only the little bit of paper helf between your thumb and finger (or however you do it) to be torn off. ARRRGH! I need to work in product testing I can see!

Well, two gold medals for NZ at the Olympics both won by women; everywhere I look women are in the lead … Prime Minister, Governor General, all the managers except for one at work … although I guess the nationally worshipped game of rugby is still the domain of men so nothing to worry about

Came across two things of great interest to me today – things I wish I’d done but others have beaten me to it! The first is a book I shall certainly be keen to get “Eats, shots and leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation” written by a women infuriated by incorrect use of apostrophes. The second is the 555-list. Everytime a phone number is given in a movie (e.g. 555-3123 – the number of the fax machine at the precinct where Al waits for John to fax from the airport) I write it down – I have about 20 – this list goes for pages but I’m pleased to see that some numbers I have are not on the list. I was fairly surprised to see that some numbers (e.g. 555-1999) have been used multiple times.

A small window of MSN chat has opened up with the beta release of the web version – when our firewall lets through stuff from MSN at the designated lunch period, it seems that I can login and use MSN Web Chat.