Tina's wanderings around the world

It's amazing how much people can chatter away at work. I don't think the following remarks can be stereotyped as "Australian" or even as a "Sydney" thing (as I oft catalogue things I encounter here), and I only have one real workplace to refer back to in the States so that may add to this particular observation. But I do find this peculiar. People talk an awful lot in my office. In fact, on any normal day, the first thing my department does in the morning is hold a 20-30 minute chatter session. What did you do last night? How about you? Craft comment. Food comment. Lots and lots of food conversation. Boy talk. Girl talk. All and any of the above. Yesterday morning centered on bridesmaid talk, and whether or not a fellow bridesmaid should be booted from the wedding. What did the dresses look like? The bride sounds quite nice. If this girl isn't supportive and this is a friendship ruiner, why would she want her in the wedding anyway? Blah, blah, blah. I ca...

Smiles often come from unexpected places. I'm perceiving life as a bit stressful right now. Work stresses me out, my boss avoids me, and my work is still taking ages to be approved which means my biggest projects take ages. Which annoys and frustrates me to no end. And leads me to look for jobs elsewhere. I was speaking with a gal at work, the one who is notoriously opinionated and who quite frequently grates on my nerves. However, she's one of the only people here who will connect on a real level, if fleetingly. One of the gals from my department merely set a folder of letters on my desk today, which was enough to set off a facial reaction in me. I didn't quite realize it, but it happened. Ms notorious noticed and inquired. I divulged. Tears came. I had to put my face to the computer screen, whereupon she gave me a hug (yay, in a world that gives air kisses instead of hugs!) and a tim tam. Strange, but she's making my day. I'll take happiness in any form.

Sometimes I wonder if at some point in the past few years I actually took my brain out of my skull and left it somewhere, and I'm subsiding on the spirit of my former brain. My functioning is not quite as good as it used to be. I forgot my chocolate and apple at home today. I've recently decided to start taking chocolate from home into the office to satisfy the afternoon sweet cravings. The sweet cupboard at home (yes, the biggest double-cupboard in our house is a sweet/snack/baking cupboard) is the accumulation of prepared for, yet unsatisfied, baking whims; holiday chocolate that fell by the wayside with new chocolate purchases; cookies and biscuits that were bought then not craved thereafter; and all manners of half-eaten nuts that have gotten pushed beyond memory. This special nook even has a small bagful of saltwater taffy from the Oregon coast, picked up during our trip to the states last year. Part of me remains sentimental and doesn't want to eat them...though the o...

I went into the cafe last weekend to spend a few hours "observing" and seeing how the cafe runs. Of course, the first thing they put me to was the dishes. It makes sense. It's easy. And when there's a tiny kitchen and four people milling about, it's not a bad place to put the newbie. After a bit of washing (and worrying about doing the wet work my dermatologist warned me against), I got upgraded to cleaning up dishes from the table, then taking coffee and food out to the tables, then taking orders. Admittedly, I was nervous. Even when it's a job I don't perceive as being difficult, I still take it very seriously and try to do a very good job. Balancing a coffee cup (with a little serving spoon) counts as one of these simple tasks. So simple, yet so simple to screw up. But in a cafe with only four tables, it doesn't exactly get full enough to make too many mistakes. Anyway, the guys I was working with were nice and the owner forbade me from doing the di...

This blogger host is a bane. Thus far I have tried three times to write about NZ part two, but this silly blogger website seems not to like the picture uploading. Boo! It's not for lack of love that I didn't post yesterday--well, perhaps it was, though not a lack of love for the writing but rather a complete detestation of the picture uploading function. It coughs and hiccups and utterly refuses to work. Another try will be made, and we'll see if it will agree. At least a little bit. Other than that, just trying to stop crying at work these days. Does anyone else have a boss that treats them like a petulant child and tries with all their might to avoid looking over your work? Mostly because they're not in the mood? Because they're just too busy and you're not a priority? (Your work never is...) Well this has brought me to tears for the past few days, despite the fact that one of my co-workers brought me a brownie to make me feel better for yesterday...then we ha...

With all of this potential career upheaval, the point remains to be examined--why do I want to open up my own cafe? Here's my own personal brainstorming session on the subject. I would be able to bake my own goods. Cookies, scones, maybe muffins and anything else that strikes the fancy. I could have tasty blended drinks--coffee, chai, hot chocolate, and cider. Nobody really does cider drinks, but they could be amazing! Possibly not as versatile as coffee, but there's great potential there. Ooh, and let's not forget submarinos. Or Italian sodas. And the horchata. There's a wealth of good cafe drinks to be concocted. I like the idea of having my own business. I could be a small business owner. I'd get to be the boss and have my own employees and do the hiring. I love going to cafes and having an alternative to the bar/pub nightlife. Cafes provide a space to work, read, play on your computer, whatever. They're nice places to meet up with friends when you don't ...

Tonight's Friday night and Marcus is away hiking for the weekend. Strangely, I find myself at a loss. Once upon a time I lived alone and spent lots of time on my own--going on walks, to cafes, reading, movies, parks. But when Marcus is away at night, I don't sleep as well. Aaaaaaand sometimes I really don't know what to do with myself. Too much time spent reminiscing on facebook. What about making new memories? Well, new experiences are certainly beginning. :) At work today, while folding hundreds of letters, I listened to some Tedx talks on happiness ans positive psychology. One of the speakers talked about synthesized happiness and how we seem to be happier with fewer choices. I am a lover of freedom and choice, but there's some sense to this theory. If there were only three jobs a person could ever have, it would be easier to choose amongst the three and be happy with it, don't you think? One of the other speakers mentioned being happy with different areas of lif...

I'm still querying the decision, and am going to try to go on in Saturday for a few hours to see what it looks like from the other side. Scary. So, so scary. But is it scarier than staying here and wasting good hours of my life without work that excites and interests me? Possibly not. I would miss the free plays and the interesting events we put on. Though I wouldn't miss the forced socializing (though that's not terribly frequent and I am getting to know people better). There are exciting things in the future at the theatre--bringing on board a whole new client database; refining the communications I finally have a good understanding of; new leadership has brought about more clarification, though I often feel like my brain's a bit muddy when I try to tell people about what we do. Who knows. It's time to stop talking about it at the moment. Tonight I'm going to see one of our plays, Zebra! . It's set in an Irish bar in New York City. Two middle-aged men are ...

If it wasn't obvious from my lack of talking about the work life for ages, I'll make it clearer now--my job has been somewhat less than satisfying for quite a while now. I'm lucky if I speak to my boss for a total of 30 minutes in a week. I've had fewer and fewer work assignments coming in. Because I have so much free time, I spend ages surfing online and reading things that I hope will be useful but don't tend to feed into my work or even in conversation. The gals I work with are nice, but I often feel quite isolated and like I don't click with them. The pay is fine, though I should be paid more for what I'm capable of, though I should actually be paid less for the work done lately because my boss only reads through my work when she's in the mood. I'm not learning anything and there certainly aren't any mentor prospects on the horizon. The perks are great and I love going to the theatre, but I'm so bored !!! I feel like I'm treading wate...

Every once in a while I get a childhood flashback of a series of activities I did as a child, and with my now-adult eyes I wonder if they were actually normal things for a child to do. For example, when I was 8-9 years old, my two sisters (just recently written about) and I made a neighbor friend. This wasn't one of the neighbors that was our old age but a single lady, who must've been in her late 20's or early 30's at the time, and lived just down the street from us. Gretta, she wanted us to call her. She had always wanted to be known as Gretta and we were eager to grant her wish. I don't even remember what we did over at her house, maybe just sat and listened to her talk about her grown-up life with her grown-up boyfriend and her grown-up job (which I think was as a waitress, but I don't really remember). I recall one Halloween talking about what we were going to dress up as, whereupon Gretta related that she had dressed as a lady devil once, which intrigued u...

It's been a while since I posted a reading list, but here are the books that have occupied my spare time lately: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft: 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry by Deborah Cadbury (I really enjoyed this one. It gives great context on the moral values that used to exist in business and how those morals have quickly dissolved. It also talks about chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. How could I not love it?) How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life by the Dalai Lama The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ,by Stieg Larsson (Really sick of reading about horrific rape and murders...I will not continue with this series) Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010 --this was one of the best and most enjoyable books I've read in a long time. My reading is quite scattergun, and my tendency is to jump between four to five books at a time. This book sat by my bedside for the past eight months, filling the gaps between ...

After the previous focus on dream themes, a particularly strange and memorable one. Marcus and I were getting married, a small, non-traditional wedding in a building alongside a lake, somewhere here in Australia. I was stressed out because none of my friends and family were there, which we realized at that moment was because we hadn't sent them the invitation. Then my mom showed up and I felt better, though we weren't sure if we should go ahead or if we should postpone. We had a two-person huddle and hemmed and hawed, not sure what to do. Finally we decided to just go for it. There were maybe 30 people in attendance, most of whom I didn't know. Only two of Marcus's friends had RSVPd and they were late (as usual). Marcus was wearing jeans and a dress shirt. I was wearing a blue-green dress. I started walking down the "aisle" then Marcus came over and we walked down together. There were three lawyer-type officiants at the end, apparently in charge of the ceremon...