Day off

Today was a day off work, so I took the oppurtunity to get out and about. I went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It wasn't exactly what I'd expected. It was more about humour and a play on suburban lifestyle than anything. However, the action scenes were pretty good though considering. They did well to mix in the whole married atmosphere too.

I also went shopping for a little bit. Bought some JEANS! Haven't owned jeans for ages and now I have two pairs. I was also looking for Battlefield 2, but the place I went to didn't have it, so I guess I'm not playing that for a little while yet.

Sent home early from work :(

Today was a pretty quiet day at work. I pretty much finished all the stuff I was responsible for before about 11am. The people who process stuff before me don't seem to be doing anything. Or maybe I'm just working too hard get stuff done too fast. Heheh.

Theres two sides to the coin. One is that now I have a bit of time to do things, since I don't even have to go to work tomorrow, but the flipside is that I don't get as much money. Oh well, I guess I don't need THAT much money, and I guess I need some time to get things done, like get some new glasses and buy battlefield 2.

Maybe I'll even go see a movie tomorrow, and use those tickets from call of the month I got a few weeks ago. YAY.

Groups and names

Its definately been a while since I've done any real thinking. Most of the past couple of weeks have been full of sitting around procrastinating from thinking or doing mindless work to earn money. So instead, I think I'll do a blog about friendship groups. I'm not sure if I've done one on them before, but I just did a search through my previous posts, and it didn't look like it, but its quite possible I missed something. Oh well, somebody let me know if I'm just repeating myself.

Friendship groups are funny things. Each has their own inside jokes, their own little culture, and just various little things which make it unique. For the people who might belong to multiple friendship groups, you can see this quite clearly, and in many circumstances groups aren't compatible at all. There will always be one person from one group which will have something against someone else in the other group. I guess thats why they're separate groups.

Its a lot different when you only belong to one friendship group. Everyone else who isn't in your group is just that little bit weird. They talk a little differently so immediently you'll have to explain certain terms, or come out with the "don't worry" approach when they don't understand something. You might still do that if you belong to two, but you understand the problem.

I was just thinking about this whole group thing when I realised the other day that a number of different groups that I know actually know me by different names. My high school friends actually know me by a mix of names: Ali, Ez, Alistair. The VMs know me as AAAALI... with an emphasised AAAA (you didn't think I'd notice?). Uni friends know me as err... Alistair or Ali. Work friends know me as Al, and then theres another group of people who know me exclusively as Ez. When you ask them who Alistair is, they won't even have a clue. Its kind of funny really, how someone can have so many names. I just wonder what its like for those people with like more than one middle name, or even just one middle name!

Funny things that happen at work

As you probably know, my job involves lots of phone calls. In fact, I spend about 50% of my time actually on the phone, that is, in the process of making a call.

I actually got the hiccups today at work. Its actually been the first time since I'd started that I've had hiccups. Heheh... it was funny while it lasted, since I thought I'd just keep making calls. People started laughing, which is a good thing!

Various

I've meant to blog before, I just haven't really got around to it. I'm not really sure why, just used to procrastinating I guess.

I feel drained. I'm probably not getting enough sleep. I sleep on the way to and from work, and when I get back, all I do is sit around. I think I need to get more sleep, and get out more. The whole weekend was spent just sitting around pretty much playing games. I don't know why... wait I do: Because I had nothing better to do.

Funny thing happened to me at work today. I had to call somebody, and it was their work number. Turns out I called and Eric picked up. Was quite funny at the time, because I heard his voice but I asked for the dude, and then he said he wasn't there. I thought it sounded kind of like Eric... so I asked.

Yeah anyway, wasn't really all that funny. Actually things that happen at work are sometimes really funny, but they're more like inside jokes than anything. Nobody else would really get them.

Oh I'm so sad :(

Yay now I feel like other people

Sitting around at work doing nothing again. Nothing in the queues to do. I don't know what the people at the bank are doing. They must be all like... walking around like zombies mummuring 'credit card applications... errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..........' instead of
'brains........ errrrrrrrrrrrr....'

I'm not complaining though. As long as I get paid...

Bored

I'm at work again at the moment. I knock off in about 15 minutes, which is good. But this is one of the few times when I've really run out of things to do. Its quite strange because it normally doesn't happen very often when I'm here.

Maybe I just work too hard... haha... umm. nah.

So.. yeah just killing time and pretending to do work. Can't exactly sleep because its a fairly open office and people can look at me when they walk past. Oh well. Maybe I'll just leave a little earlier and catch the earlier bus.

I'm kind of bored when I get home now. I'm thinking maybe I should actually go out of my way to make a few phone calls to people I haven't talked to in a while. But then I remember a lot of people still have exams, and that probably wouldn't be an extremely good idea. However, a bunch of us have started playing diablo 2 again. That should be fun to get into for a while again.

Ho humz... 10 minutes left. Let me check if theres any more work to do.

Nup...

Other peoples' blogs haven't been touched recently. I wonder what everyone is up to. Dunno whats happening anymore. I need to go out. The free movie offer is still up for the first lucky person who wants to come and can send me a message.

Back to work, again

Its been more than a week since I've been making phone calls for money now. But suprisingly, it didn't feel all that different. I guess its because things don't change much at work. Theres a few new people at work. I don't really know who they are. Its just kind of adding to the number of people in my team I don't really know at work. Ah well, no huge loss, its not like we really hang out all that much outside work anyway. But hopefully there'll be Friday night drinks on this week, I haven't done one of those in a while.

In other news, I'm now part of this other blog. Its just another blog about random things. Well, not exactly random, but yeah. Guy stuff I guess. You can find it by clicking on this link.

Recent Happenings

Work, sleep, diablo 2, battlefield 2, eat.

Jeez I've been productive

Been playing too much Battlefield 2 demo. Couldn't really figure out how to fly helicopters, but I think I figured it out now. :)

Helicopter Landed on Crane

Click for bigger pic

YAY

Okay so I've done the psychology exam. It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be, thanks partly to the cramming I did in the morning. Well okay, not really, I just got lucky with the questions. Luckily the essay questions gave the option to choose both family and language as topics to write on. Language was something I'd done last year in cognitive psychology, and family... well... it was even better that they asked us to write something on parentin styles, because thats easy. Coming from a different ethnic background and being exposed or aware of other parenting styles definately helped. I rekon I could have done that question without doing psychology. Thing is I wouldn't have been able to cite research. Oh well... can't really get us for plagarism in an exam... or can they?

On another note, I got my database assignment back today. I think I did quite well, which is a good thing. Hopefully the database exam won't be too hard either. We've also got a review lecture tomorrow. They asked us to bring some issues which we had trouble with, and since I hardly done any study for database so far, I don't have anything to add. I think I'll just go for the hell of it though. Might as well feel better when listening to the problems that other people have with material which I don't. But seriously, some of the questions they ask in these kind of sessions are pretty stupid. Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question. I should know, I ask them all the time.

Bad thing happening:
The wireless adapter on my desktop computer is dying. The antenna fell off a while ago, and I can't seem to get it back on properly. I think I'll just get another adapter that supports WPA. Or maybe two.

In addition, my modem is dying too. The DNS server on it doesn't seem to want to work half the time, which makes browsing an absolute bitch. Seems like its one of those 'buying computer equipment' times again. Just gotta figure out where to get the money from without using a credit card...

I got nothin...

Its been so long, and I've still got nothing to write about.

*sigh*

This exam is killing me, and I've hardly done anything for it. Stupid psychology. I don't know if I want to keep doing it anymore. So disillusioned.

Exams

I've had two exams so far. One was for Project management, which was an absolute joke. It was almost exactly the same as last year's exam, that is, completely full of crap. Basically its a matter of how well you can crap on. You basically didn't even need to know anything except vaguely remember what you did last year in OAC about organisational politics. And even then, that was for 10% of the marks.

The second exam was software engineering process and practice. That was basically the same subject but from a software engineering point of view, so it required knowing a little more in terms of actual substance. It was different, but good I think. There were a couple of things which I didn't know, and I thought it was pretty silly they asked some questions from which they only had a couple of slides which covered, but oh well. It was kind of lucky that I'd done project management, because I wouldn't have known the answers if I didn't.

So now I'm procrastinating. Hmm.

Girls who don't like people and play netball

So its the night before an exam... and I'm going to blog.

Two things happened today. I went to work, and mum got back from China. At the moment, my house smells like Chinese firewater. I think I'll get drunk just from smelling too much of it.

The other night, a few of us (Mr. Soh, The Agemiester, Olga and I) made a trip to maccas. I don't really know why the others went, but I was DAMN hungry. Anyway, since maccas is such a happening place, we spent almost two whole hours there talking about stuff. Maccas is da new joint! Its newly renovated and everything! Screw PP.

So anyway, we're talking about this girl who doesn't like people (and somehow has a boyfriend) and plays netball. This, in addition to the fact that she's been to Mongolia and that she watches documentaries on World War 2, makes her a very interesting person. Somehow more interesting than any other person some people have met, which isn't that big a thing. I know I've never met anyone who's been to Mongolia, nor anyone who willing watches documentaries about World Wars besides my grandpa and I. At least not that I know about. Maybe I'm specialising in knowing certain types of people. Or maybe Mr. Soh should try to meet some more people, instead of blowing them off because he "can't see" due to his alchohol induced state. If you ask me, its a whole heap easier to meet and get to know people while you're drunk than when you're sober.

See previous post number one and another post about this self same topic.

Randoms are GOOOOOD - Sometimes.

I'm so very bored.

I feel like playing computer games, but I've got nothing to play. At least theres nothing that I'm not already bored of. I need to find something to do, since I'm not actually studying for exams.

I'd even write an extended post about something, but I can't even find something to blog about. Anybody with help?

Ah Well.

Went to work, 9-5. Finished studying for two subjects in about 3 hours after that, then came home to find I didn't get DB. Ah well.

I get so bored when studying. Maybe its the subjects I'm doing, maybe its just that I don't have any concentration. Maybe its a whole heap of other things. I just can't do it.

I don't think I'll go to uni tomorrow to study. Can't be stuffed.

A cheesy Olga is now gracing my background

I just have to keep stuff in the way to stop myself collapsing in gales of laughter everytime I see it.

Bloggin from da kitchen

This is the first blog from the kitchen. I think its kind of a turning point, because I've never blogged about cooking before. Thats probably because I don't cook. That is, until now.

Of course, with any first attempt at cooking by oneself, there are errors. Thats not to say that this was the first time cooking, I'm just really unco. The error was that I made way too much. I should really watch the packet when I'm pouring it in. I thought, its okay, I'll just err... eat it all. Then it expanded, as pasta tends to do. I figured I was in a wee bit of trouble. I started to panic about what I'd do with it all. After a bit of wondering, I figured.. wham! I'd just invite people over for free food.

Nobody who happened to be on MSN and within driving distance accepted my offer. Bemused and somewhat astonished that nobody wanted free food at 12:30am in the morning, I felt all my hopes had been dashed. Finally Fi came and saved the day.

Then Anne pointed out that I probably didn't have enough sauce. Easily solved: I used two bottles of sauce to make it kind of tasty. Don't get me wrong, it WAS tasty, you might even say tastier because it had two different kinds of sauce mixed in. So in effect, it was an artichoke hearts, onion, basil, tomato and mushroom sauce (maybe with some other stuff I've forgotten about). Nice.

So now I'm sittin here with 3 containers of leftovers. At least breakfast and lunch are covered.

Nerdy score.

I think I just pooed my DB interview

Just an overview of some of the questions, and what I was thinking.

"So.. why did you use prolog for your project instead of something like Java?"

Err....

"How do you think you'd use a sprial model in that sort of situation?"

Uh oh... Prototypes? Yes... thats what it is.

"Can you tell me what a derivitive or options are?"

Err....

"What are the key things you should have in a presentation?"

Err.... Wait.. I can BS this one.

"Can you explain a situation where you've had conflict in a group and how you solved that conflict?"

ooOoo.. BS skills are coming in handy.