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| Crime Prevention and Passing the Buck
Last night whilst out grocery shopping we managed to pick up a fair few bargains. The fruit juice was on such a good special that we now have no room for any food that might get cooked this weekend and left for another day. Between us we managed to buy 20 litres of it, not to mention the special on my favourite chocolate bar too.  We'd happily gone about our shopping and were patiently waiting in the queue when I started looking in the trolley in front of us. I could see there was a few environmentally friendly green bags strategically placed. They'd had however missed a spot and I could see the fish cakes or whatever it was they were trying to sneak out without paying. Not to mention the half drank coke bottle and whatever else was lurking amongst the bags. I mentioned this to Alan and he could see it too. I started looking at the people and when making eye contact I immediately looked at their potentially ill gotten gains. A few quick words between the Abbo trolley pushers resulted in them taking out the item and placing it on the conveyor belt. This was quickly followed by a couple of comments, which included "you don't own this store", aimed in my direction and a few glares. I carefully watched where they went to make sure they weren't lingering around outside the shop waiting for us. Luckily they weren't although we did pass them in the car park and a couple of glares were exchanged.After putting away our groceries and Alan taking a 10 minute nap for 20 minutes, we went off to play table tennis at his office for an hour. Two and a half hours later we decided to stop playing due to tiredness and inability to concentrate any longer at 1:15am. I was shattered when I went to bed but somehow didn't ache at all when I woke up. The same can't be said for the opponent though! hahThe last four school days have seen me take on a new role of relief co-ordination. This involves taking calls of people being on all kinds of leave and getting their classes covered. It was particularly awkward this week due to the sports carnivals being on and all the tute teachers being out their requiring their lessons covered. Luckily 95% of this was sorted before I took over.The week didn't pass without incident though and two classes were covered by a HoD and one went uncovered before I was then informed about someone being out of the school and I needed to find cover for period 4. The deputy principal came up to me and said how come I didn't cover it? I told her that I didn't know but she said she put the yellow form on my desk. I said that I hadn't received it and she promptly checked my desk and couldn't see it anywhere. She had a look around in her room too and still couldn't find it. Anyway, two days later she asked me how it had all gone and asked me what had happened. I said I didn't get the form and still don't have it to this day. She said that she'd shoulder the blame for this one. I thought inside my head; Well duh, it is your fault. You signed the paper and then lost it without giving it to me, it is your fault! She has this amazing habit of passing all her work onto other staff. I was covering someone elses job and she got me to do her duty roster for next term, which she'd passed to me the previous week instead of me taking any classes. That is finally sorted but then she wanted me to find someone else to input a bit of data into the computer and asked me who was available. I simply replied that nobody was available from the relief list already at the school because I knew it would have meant me showing someone for 30 minutes how to do it and it is her job. Plus she's letting anyone else see confidential information about people and why they were off sick when she's the one supposed to be entering it.It was an challenging but enjoyable week starting at 6:30am each day and most days not getting home until nearly 4pm for no extra money. My normal hours would be from around 7:15am and getting home at 3:15pm on the dot. It's not a lot extra but a lot of the stuff I had to do was someone elses job who is well known for hand-balling all her tasks onto others.Enjoy Easter. I have too much chocolate and fruit juice to consume. | | |
| My First Post of the Year
I finally found out what happened to the table at work but sadly it doesn't make for a very interesting conclusion. I've been waiting to find out for about 4 weeks only to find that a resident borrowed it and took it to their unit. I do find this somewhat confusing though as it is heavy, they are old and it was taken between 11pm and 6am from a usually alarmed building.
Things have changed and have settled back to normal again. I'm just quite bored with the long holidays that schools have over the summer break. If it coincided with the summer break in England then that would be nice. It would mean that I could go back most years and enjoy a few games of cricket with my old team and not get stuck inside due to the cold weather.
I enjoy living where I live and it's very convenient being on the doorstep of the river. As I get older I seem to enjoy the older things more. I always thought it was weird when my Mum and Dad used to go on walking holidays. I now realise that it isn't such a bad idea after all. I don't think I'd go on a walking holiday just yet as I am not that old but I do enjoy a peaceful walk around the river from time to time when the weather permits. It is often too hot though and with my skin I get burnt very easily.
So far this year I've done 1 work shift, got my car repaired at great expense, had 3 fillings and having another 2 or 3 tomorrow, spent a bit too much money during hours of being free, gained an extra digit to my age, gained an old friend back (this is the best part of the year so far and will be difficult to match throughout the rest of it) and finally managed to re-tidy my room after a few weeks of letting it slide. I have a pre-school year gathering on the weekend with a few of my now former (since I'm now technically unemployed) colleagues.
I just realised that I don't think I've been to the beach for a couple of summers now. I can't remember exactly the last time I went but I just blame it on the Siow siblings going away for the holidays again. Well, I'm not going to blame it on myself am I?
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| Missing Table and Gift Cards
As most of you will know, I also work at a retirement village occasionally on weekends as a duty officer. At the place there's a cafe, restaurant, pool, small gym, spa, pool table and a bar. All of these added up amounts to quite a lot of furniture that can get shifted around quite a bit and I sometimes have to put it back.
This leads me onto Friday night. A Christmas dinner was had by 142 residents in the restaurant. That many people requires a lot of tables so we had to do some shifting around. After the dinner, the tables had to be returned to the cafe. This was done at about 10pm. I moved the small ones and two others moved the big table. I know it was there at 10:15pm.
A bit later on, I had to switch off the alarm as people hadn't finished cleaning up. I went to bed and woke at 6am and did my rounds unlocking doors. When I returned to the cafe to unlock the doors, one door was slightly ajar and the big table was missing. I was quite surprised and started looking around for it in various places. I asked some residents and they did not know. I also asked the restaurant staff and they did not know. So somewhere between 11:10pm (when the other staff left) and 6:20am, someone has 'borrowed' the big table. This is weird because it would take a lot of effort for retired folk to move it and there's about 25 steps they'd have to take it down or cram it into the lift somehow. I'm still waiting to see what has happened to it. The alarm never rang as I'd switched it off the night before so I could go to bed. The relieving duty officer said he'd have a look for it so I hope to find out what happened soon.
Onto the gift card thing. We're seeing now on the tv a lot of adverts for gift cards for Mitre 10, Bunnings and alike. Don't know what to get them? Give them a gift card and they can decide for themselves is pretty much the message. Well, how about just give them the damn money and they can choose whatever they want from wherever they want and that solves everything doesn't it? Gift cards are a total waste of time except in one situation. For example, you want to give your child/relative some money but only want them to spend it on a cd or something other than alcohol. By giving them a gift card, obviously you restrict their choice. However, why bother when you can just give them old fashioned cash that can buy anything as nobody is allowed to refuse cash as a payment. (Unless you're in SG and the Aunty wont accept more than one 5cent coin as "it's not nice") The message of the ad was that if you're not sure what they want then give them a card, what if they don't want anything from your shop?
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| An Eventful Week - Phones, Lotto Dreams and CarsThe week started as normal as many others, arriving home from work on Sunday morning and having a day of doing nothing. I had decided to cancel my Telstra phone plan that was expiring on the 16th, on Monday. I trudged off to vodafone with my telstra and vodafone sim cards. I explained that I wanted my telstra number porting to vodafone and the vodafone one cancelled. Sure, it will take 1 to 3 hours. Off home I went safe in the knowledge that I'd only have one number very shortly.All night on Monday I could still make calls from the Telstra number but not from the vodafone one. The vodafone one had cancelled quite quickly leading me to believe it would all be done soon enough. (n.b. this may get a little confusing) I decided to get Alan to call my Telstra number, and what do you know, it rang. I called from the Telstra phone and the house phone rang. I called from the vodafone number and nothing, dead. A short while later I get a call from Dura in Singapore. Now we only ever communicate through the vodafone number as it's cheaper. The call came through on the vodafone phone. Weird. Dura told me that she'd called my Telstra number but it rang my vodafone one. Also, her sms came through on my vodafone one. So at this point, I'm getting local calls through on Telstra and International calls through on vodafone, both on the same number!I go back to the shop on Tuesday and they say it's in the process of porting and that they had a problem yesterday with their system. Anyway, I decide to wait patiently as I do. Now I'm getting confused so here's the outcome. The vodafone sim was faulty and they had to replace it and the Telstra number cancelled itself on the Wednesday.On Tuesday night (I think), I had a very vivid dream about winning lottery numbers. Now this was weird because I needed 7 numbers and I got six and a bonus number. The winner outright got about 4 billion dollars I think whilst I had to make do with a meager 10 or so million dollars in my dream. My mum was present so this makes me unsure as to where the lottery was held. Surely, if it was in the UK it would have been pounds? Anyway, all the way through the dream I kept telling myself, it's only a dream, it's not real, don't get excited, you're in a dream. Sure enough I woke up and I was in a dream. The thing is though, I can clearly recall all 7 of my lotto numbers from that dream. This is kinda spooky. No, I have not put money on those numbers.CarsOn my way to work on Thursday, my clutch decides to stop working. I managed to ram it into 2nd gear and drive in the outside lane on South Street at 40kmh and get honked at repeatedly. I couldn't get any other gear or even neutral. I managed to slam it into neutral at the point where I have to cross the oncoming traffic to get onto a side road. Then I can't get any gears for what seemed like ages (probably about 20 seconds). I slam it into 2nd crunching everything and drive across the road. I pull over and manage to shift it into a 3rd gear for some reason so I drive to school in 3rd gear for 2 minutes and park into a space in the car park.
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| Just to Clarify...
...I have not broken up. The previous post is about one of my friends and has nothing to do with my situation at all. Sorry for any confusion. heh Thanks for the concern though. =)
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