Entries Tagged 'Random thoughts' ↓

We went to a memorial service for Amy at the Fuel roastery last night. It was amazing. Staff and customers mingled in candlelight and listened to a grief counsellor speak. Various emails sent by Amy when on her travels and an application letter she’d written to apply for the job of head barista were read out by Sanjay. Emails from staff and friends from the cafe where she worked at the ski resort in Utah were read out. One of the girls who worked with Amy on the day she was killed spoke about what it was like at work that day. A guy who had only worked for Fuel for 2 weeks read a poem he’d written.

It really was amazing. And it’s what I’d want I think. People remembered and shared and cried and in that moment saw and felt their support network for those that were there were there because the effect on us is all the same.

Might be time … http://www.audi.de/audi/de/de2/neuwagen/a3/s3.html

When I was out for coffee this morning I saw a woman with an iPod and it was in a colourful little crocheted cover … perhaps I could start making these as an alternate to orange jersys when I have a break in orders 😉

Speaking of iPods, I rode in the lift (after getting my coffee) with a couple of guys who just carried on their conversation with each other and when talking about iPods and that one of them wanted to get one, the other responded with something that I thought was positively archaic “Yeah, my old lady’s got one.” He was talking about his wife!!

It’s very cold today. Southerly sleeting showers and gale force winds are making it worse. There is ice in the rain that is piling up on the window ledge outside my 22nd floor window. Feels like the coldest day this winter to date.

Update:

Sleet is causing a build up of ice on the window sill!

Our elecricity bill has hit an all-time high – $250!! For two people in an apartment. No need for heating when I opened that bill – my blood was boiling! No matter how many times the Mister explains the concept of supply and demand, I just cannot understand why electricity is more expensive in the winter. I am quite happy that we are using more of it, but given that we’re both out at work 10+ hours a day 6 days a week and we have reduced the computer population in the house by half, I wouldn’t expect our electricity consumption to have doubled!

Why is it more expensive? Is it because as a country we are using so much of it that we are going to use it all up, so the hike in prices is designed to make us more mindful of our consumption? Or (if I understand the supply and demand theory) Genesis simply looks at their little electricityometer and sees that usage has sky rocketed and rubs their hands together uttering “more KW = more $$” purely to line their pockets? Or is it because of the nasty weather causing hundreds of people to be without power down south – they see the potential loss in revenue so hike the price for the rest of us to make up for the loss due to these people in the dark and cold using no electricity for a week or two?

I know back in the day electricity was a luxury and now we consider it a commodity which makes it even harder to swallow the supply and demand thing.

Sigh. All I can do is pay the bill early and it’ll only be $225 – whoop-de-do.

Another week has flown by. It felt like a particularly tough one too.

• It’s so dark – being the week of the shortest day doesn’t help


• I’m so tired – the Mr has been coughing all night, every night


• I haven’t eaten my greens – it’s been a case of eating whatever’s in the fridge and cupboards


• I can’t get anything finished – I’m at that point in my new job where I am almost flying solo on some things but there’s always that last 10 – 20%

Never mind, day off tomorrow 🙂

Scone horrors.

That dry feeling in your mouth that you get after eating a scone.

Every Sunday after lunch … yep … still doing the Nikau thing.

I know I am a Fuel legend (as I’ve rambled about before when the WT site opened and my encounter with a new barista at Hunter St) and it’s great when it pays off for my friends. Just yesterday, a friend who goes regularly to WT was saying that they didn’t seem to know his order yet – that all changed after we met there for afternoon shorts …

“So I went to Fuel this morning, and they were all over me.
Yes sir, can we polish your shoes sir.
Clearly being a friend of the coffee queen is a good thing!”

(snipped from email from said friend)

I remain nothing but sceptical, when I’m not reeling from disbelief …

Barista finalist not wild on coffee
08 June 2006 

Claire Bishop doesn’t drink the stuff but she sure knows how to make a decent coffee.

The Hamilton manager of the BP Tristram St Wild Bean Cafe is one of 12 regional finalists for the Wild Bean Cafe Barista of the Year competition.

She said coffee was an acquired taste that she did not have. “I just don’t drink it. It’s really funny, I don’t even know how to make instant coffee.”

Making a decent coffee was all about fresh beans, the 20-year-old said.

She starts work at Tristram St BP at 6am each day and from then on it’s a constant coffee rush. “At 8 o’clock it’s the wake-up rush, then we’ve got the tech rush at about 10, then we’ve got the lunch rush.”

The central North Island regional winner heads to Auckland on June 20 to compete in the national finals.

(Waikato Times on stuff.co.nz 8-6-06)

A BP station? Seriously?

I always wonder how careful I have to be with my blogged thoughts that put me at odds with the decisions and beliefs of my friends. I often hold back from posting in case I upset someone. However, this is my place for my thoughts and I am entitled to them. It does not mean I disagree with choices of others. And for me, I never verbalise in certain areas, so this is my only outlet.

In this case, I know couples with IVF children.

This morning I heard on the radio about medical researchers in Auckland discovering that more ‘sticky’ embryos would increase a woman’s chance of holding a pregnancy. I began to wonder about the true effects of IVF on the size of the population. Are couples that cannot conceive part of the universe’s natural control on human inhabitation? And compared to back in the day when there was no IVF, were potentially higher birth rates due to no contraception and ‘uneducated’ younger mothers counterbalanced by higher death rates? People are now living longer and people who are unable to have children naturally are now able to have children through medical advances so is it not a reasonable conclusion to come to that the population will indeed get out of control? … I sound a bit like a tree-hugger … Although widespread killers like AIDS and cancer take their fair share so is this now the natural control on the population? … Now I’m starting to sound a bit like a Jehovah’s Witness …

In the whole context of natural selection, is this a reversal? There’s no way that I’m saying that if people can’t have children then they have no right to because they will upset the process of natural selection. In my own personal experience, it makes me wonder how ‘nature’ chooses that some people cannot have children just the same as ‘nature’ chooses to weed out the population by eliminating through cancer.

In my choice to be childfree, am I subconsciously bothered by the challenge against the natural selection process or is ‘nature’ at work and I am actually not making a conscious choice, I am just ‘switched off’? I thought I had made a choice.