Entries Tagged 'Random thoughts' ↓

I’ve thought of a couple of things people could invent lately. Well, I’ve invented them, just need someone to make them so I can get rich! So, 2 excellent ideas:

1. Walking to work we followed a guy from our building, 2.5 blocks to the subway and he spent the entire time walking in front of us trying to untangle his iPod earphones. In the end he gave up and listened to the city instead. Need some kind of silicon no-stick spray to spray on them to untangle them or the little fabric bag they’re kept in needs some magical insides with the same properties.
2. Got to work and folks in the office were gushing over the iPad … of course The Mister chimed in. They showed us some of their sites made for mobile devices working on the iPad – including a site that shows video demonstrations of meals being made. So you just prop your iPad up in the kitchen and follow along, pausing the video to do your bit. Enter my invention: little rubber or flesh-like-fabric caps to put on the end of various cooking utensils so you can tap the screen to pause and resume the video! Saves you having to wash your hands or get flour or wet all over it.

So let me know if you get these to market and I’ll take some royalties

Sometimes I’m left gaping at the inefficiencies of some organisations here. Sure, there’s often 3 or 4 people employed to do the job that 1 person would do in New Zealand which does speed things up and get big crowds moving, but other times the introduction of self-help for the customer would make certain activities much less painful.

The post office.

I went last week to post a small packet back to New Zealand. They had a single range of post office standard packing available, pre-paid bags. All good. Nice and simple. Weight limit of x pounds, whatever fits in the box/envelope, priority mail, domestic or international, $13.45.

So, first off, before standing in the long line, I had to find out the weight of my item, which I could guess in grams but no idea in pounds – found a weighing machine which turned out not to be a weighing machine but an enter-your-postcode-and-it’ll-tell-you-the-postage-required machine. Hmmm, not sure what was supposed to be entered for international although it did flash up 2.95lb which was under the limit, so I figured I’d be OK.

Filled out the customs form, including name of the person the package was going to – this seemed to be the thing to do seeing as the green customs forms (demanding To and From addresses) were there by the packaging. Waited in the line.

Got to the counter and asked if I could use the pre-paid envelope to post the item to New Zealand. “What is it?” A gift, just a [   ]. That I want to go via airmail to New Zealand. “No. You can’t use this one. You have to use a bag. You want priority or express?” Huh? Why can’t I use the international pre-paid envelope? What’s the difference between priority and express? Where are the bags? “Hrumfff, I’ll get you a bag.” And off she heaved under the counter to scratch around and find a bag. Why weren’t they on display? Thieves? She produced a bag. About the same size as the envelope, made with similar thick glossy paper as the envelope. “You want express or priority?” I don’t know! I want airmail. “OK, that’s $12.95 and write the address on it, it doesn’t go on that form you got, that bit gets chucked out, and when you’re done leave it here cos I’m on my lunch break now.” However, I was able to write fast enough while she got back up onto her seat and dealt with the money to had it back to her to make sure it did in fact get posted. She dumped the package to the side of the counter with a bunch of other mail ready to go and we scuttled apologetically out passed the even longer line now facing one less counter because our lady was going on her lunch. I felt so bad taking up their time at the counter waiting for a bag and then being told to pack it and address it. If they just provided these things out on the customer side then I could’ve done it there. Groan.

So, if your birthday is coming up on the 12th (you know who you are) there is hopefully something on the way – I hope it makes it – it could be coming on the USS Slowboat for all I know! I tried!

There are always giant piles of bags of trash on the footpath as night falls in New York. And there’s always someone going through the trash looking for plastic and glass bottles and cans, transferring them to another bag, and dragging or wheeling them off in a broken-down cart. I think they’re recycling them for coins.

A few random thoughts recently about some food here as we try to find what we need from various grocery stores:

• I’m finding lots of things are much sweeter here – bread, bagels, potato chips, honey (in an unnatural way) and Lemsip is practically sugar granules. We’re now reading the back of bread packets in the supermarket looking at the sugar content.
• The butter substitutes are so slimy, especially after being in a sandwich all day. We found something now that seems to be spreadable butter (rather than ’spreadable with buttery taste’ or ‘butter-like taste’ – obviously not butter) although it is still quite white.
• Gladwrap smells, or cling film or plastic wrap or whatever it’s called. At first I thought it was a sandwich ingredient or the bread that smelled when I opened my lunch each day until the other day I took a half eaten museli bar, wrapped for a morning snack, and smelled that smell. Not sure how we’ll solve that one – go around sniffing rolls of gladwrap in the supermarket I suppose!

We don’t have a kettle. Mind you we don’t drink tea or other drinks requiring hot water, except when I have a cold and need Lemsip (which thankfully I don’t) but when we got the packet of Lemsip-equivalent the other day just in case, I had a second look for a kettle.

We have this magic tap on the sink. Dispenses boiling water. I assume it’s clean and germ free because it’s boiling, but if the water is in a tank of some sort it’s going to sit for weeks and not get used until parents visit. Interesting. It’s that tap on the right.

It’s New Year’s Eve. I don’t really have anything profound to say and am not doing anything out of the ordinary although today I am wearing my singlet on the outside and have some strange idea that I will work like the wind up until midnight to get all those things done on my To Do list that have been lingering for what feels like the last year so as to not carry them forward into the next.

This year has pretty much been more of the same for us, trapped in the routine of long hours at work and feeling too tired to spend time with family and friends or try anything new. Our choice, and one that I’m sure said family and friends don’t understand but apart from often asking ‘when will it be over?’, seem to accept. Same old same old which probably strengthened our resolve to make our move to New York next year – not a permanent one – but 4 of the most looked forward to months of my life. It’s been a strange year of living part of my life even more publicly than this blog with the adoption of Twitter all the while keeping other stuff completely inside. New York will be the welcome shift in life I need as I realise I’m about half way through mine.

I just scanned back through this blog at the last year’s worth of entries, all 35 pages of them. Some classic one-liners, great food, precious family times, unexpected trip to New York and lots of date scones, coffee and orange – reading it made me smile many times and it still intrigues me that I find so much non-work stuff to drivvle about!

God, this post isn’t supposed to be depressing, just a reflection. I was just thinking about the year as I came across the Mayfly Project – where in this culture of brevity we should be conscious that our snippets give us a very full life of lots and lots of things rather than reducing it to something like the tiny bio of the mayfly that only lives for 24 hours … “born, eat, shag, die”. So as part of this project where you reduce your year to 24 words, you actually realise that there’s way more to your life than this as you think of your 24 words. Actually I didn’t think very hard at all – in manner of often hitting exactly 140 characters on Twitter I walked out of the front door of our apartment building this morning and this phrase came into my head. Strangely, right on 24 words!

2009 was long hours for Xero, no salt, New York plans, Blenheim trips, date scones; spiked with MRI, first conference speech and Webby Awards.

Right, I’m off for a walk to meet The Mister and eat our sandwiches outside in the sun somewhere.

Saw this in the New York Times – just amazing – hundreds of cookies as part of a wedding tradition. Very cool.

So, it’s not all a wives tale or overprotective OSH-type warning, those messages about not breathing the air above the bag or container of potting mix you’re working with it are worth heeding.

News this morning on the radio and in the paper that Legionnaire’s disease is alive and well and is caused by breathing in potting mix. Someone has died.

So no more laughing at me when I take precautions when gardening on the kitchen bench please!

Potting mix linked to legionnaires’ disease

Gardeners are being warned to take care with potting mix after five cases of legionnaires’ disease in Canterbury in the past three months.

stuff.co.nz

Been a while since I’ve posted one of these (probably because people smirk at me for not knowing some of the words I don’t as a supposed writer!) Anyway, today’s word is (which I came across when searching for apartments to live in in New York next year … considering this 35 story monster on the East Side – bit of an eye-sore in the neighbourhood and some may think clinical like a hotel but if you’re going to live in New York why *not* go for a place that will have absolutely stunning views of the city? It’s a toss-up between a Chelsea loft and a view.)

fenestration

The design and placement of windows in a building.
An opening in the surface of a structure, as in a membrane.
The surgical creation of an artificial opening in the bony part of the inner ear so as to improve or restore hearing.

Thanks again dictionary.com

Amusing moment today made The Mister and I realise how out of touch we are when it comes to kids these days (I mean small kids, not the Twilight-watching kind as we know all about that) – got some ideas for Christmas gifts for nieces and looked at each other after reading the list – we didn’t know what half the stuff on the lists was! Beados? Hmm.