Entries from December 2004 ↓

Well, the person down the way has finally become a grandparent. I’m very troubled though by grandparent pride. Is there nothing in the world that a person’s child can do to make them more proud than having a child themselves? I’m not talking about cluckiness and the fact that there’s another baby in their lives (in an indirect way), and the miracle of watching that child grow. I’m talking about the ultimate achievement that seems to round off a person’s life, only making their life a true ’success’ when they have a child. Makes you wonder, if you don’t have a child, if your achievements in life are rated at all by your parents. Well, I’m sure they are, but they’re not on the universal life-defining scale.

The new barber shop next to McDonalds is jumping! There are often several men waiting and this morning at 7.45am there were two barbers snipping and clipping and another guy waiting.

And the parsley in the garden opposite the library is flourishing! I’ve watched it grow from spindly seedlings. My friend who works for a council said there was probably a by-law against picking some on the way home for dinner Unusual thing to have in a flower bed but it does make a nice green border.

You may remember my observation last week of the orange motorbike parked in a dubious spot … it’s there again today! In exactly the same place. So the rider is either not affected by tickets, or all that measuring determined it was not illegally parked. Interesting.

The Majestic Centre on Willis St has green and red light bulbs in its ‘crown’ for Christmas. Just how do they get out to the end of those long poles, 35 floors in the air to change those bulbs? Mysterious.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job. Ever since I left IT to work in the environmental sector I’ve been unsure if that feeling in the pit of my stomach has been an ongoing tug to get back into IT work.

Yesterday I was asked to devote some time to writing a functional specification for some enhancements to a system I project managed a year ago. Back then I was in heaven – I’d only been in my environmental job 2 months when I was asked to work on this development project. That work ended 8 months ago.

However, today I’ve begun writing the function specification for the enhancements. Oh how energised I feel. How I love reading the screeds of text that flow from my fingers which almost comes as second nature when you know a system, know what you’re writing about and why, and feel confident that what you’re doing is what’s expected and is going to be absolutely critical to a successful solution. In 3.5 hours I feel like I have achieved more than I have done in the last 8 months.

Is IT my true calling?

Someone at work is about to become a grandparent. It’s just amazing the amount of time in the day is taken up with swarms of people stopping by the grandparent-in-waiting’s desk to tell stories about when they were pregnant (and they all tell it with that air that they are an authority on pregnancy and childbirth) and enquire about every detail of the poor mother-to-be’s life. Without knowing her, they know everything about her … what food she doesn’t like at the moment, when her scan is, what sex the baby is, what she’s doing to keep her days busy, whether she’ll be induced by suppository or orally etc etc.

For Godsake gimmie a break! I’ve been witness at 3 births, I have my own memories and experiences and I don’t feel like hearing about it every 5 minutes from the next cubicle!

I am quite distracted at my desk with a harbour view today awaiting the rumoured arrival of the Sapphire Princess, the biggest cruise liner to come into Wellington harbour. It’s ginormous with a golf course, wedding chapel, 13 bars, 9 restaurants and is too big to fit under the Auckland Harbour Bridge! Quite hard to believe really.

The weather happens. And really, we can do nothing about it. So whether hot or cold or wet or windy or totally inappropriate for the season we are in, I take the view that we just have to deal with it. Sure I get cold, hot, wet, blown about and often wonder what to wear and complain about the hole in my shoe on wet days and that I can’t put my umbrella up on wet and windy days, but we can’t change what is going on. I cope and other than wet socks or knotty hair I don’t blame the weather for anything.

However, with the recent unseasonable cold snap bringing mid-winter to the week before Christmas, to fit in socially I have had to take part in my fair share of ‘wasn’t it freezing yesterday?’ or ‘can you believe the weather yesterday only 5 days away from Christmas?’ conversations today. Me, I put on 5 layers including a jersey, got out the heater and went everywhere in the car yesterday!

I just got chatting to a stranger when getting my coffee (as you do if you’re a Fuel addict) and he was driving back from up North yesterday, via the Desert Road, where there was so much snow they got out and built a snowman! That *is* strange for this time of the year – but at least they got out and made the most of what they had.

My orange Birkenstocks arrived from Auckland over the weekend. Very rare and very cool (For those not totally intune with footwear fashion, Birkenstocks are shoes and my orange ones are like this: http://www.birkenstock.co.nz/pages/GIZEH.html … will hopefully have a photo available soon)

Last night we attended a 2.5 hour Body Corporate AGM for our building – our first ever Body Corporate meeting now that we’re grown up apartment owners. I found the whole thing rather daunting. It was the first time I’d seen a meeting run formally with motions and seconds and votes and ayes and shouts of ‘point of order Chairman’. We were trying to figure out if we were the youngest there as well – certainly felt like it as the people who spoke sounded so terribly knowledgeably on accounting and finances and Unit Titles Act and management agreements and insurance and caveats and rights of way. However as the meeting progressed it became clearer the drama of running our building with 3 bodies corporate for the 3 different uses of the building (being commercial car park, retail and residential).

So at times it was a very heated mix of passionate homeowners protecting their security and way of life, property developers just wanting to get on with it, lawyers (from Auckland) making firm stands on their rights and challenging previously set up management agreements and financial statements, an emotional Body Corporate Chairman who has put life and soul into running the building, a feisty property manager who referred to a mountain of documents and Acts and us sitting quietly at the back hoping not to be fingered as nominees to stand on the Body Corporate Committee. I was all keen to join up but after seeing what experience and determination you seem to have to have I felt altogether just too overwhelmed.