Unbeknownst to me, I have been rostered for morning shift again this week. The new roster didn't come out until I'd already left last week, but I thought I'd go in early today just in case. It kinda worked out, as I could enjoy my weekend with the knowledge that I didn't have any more logs monitoring to do, but still make it to my shift on time.
I had my initial review for my 10-week workout challenge on Friday, along with a new workout plan to achieve my goal (socks, in case you forgot). I'm also meant to keep a food diary for a few days (two week days and one weekend day), and it says not to "cheat", but even the thought of having to write down what I eat makes me want to eat better. I'm not going to cheat though, because the whole point is to see progress, and get suggestions on how to be better.
I've been really keen to try boxing, although I keep having things on Tuesday nights, so I never end up making it. I'm going to try next week though! Albert keeps telling me that the best way to stay on track is to have a goal. I have a goal now, and so as extra motivation, I wanted to order a pair of socks, because that combines the lovely feeling of waiting for a package in the mail with the whole focus on what you want to look like thing. However, just browsing thigh high socks online makes me feel like I'm looking at porn or something. I can see why they're considered sexually suggestive now.
In researching, I've discovered that thigh high socks tend to fall down a lot, so there is this thing called sock garters (mostly SFW, there's an image of a guy with calf-length socks and sock garters, with no pants, holding an iron). Ashamedly, before I even did this, I didn't know what a garter belt was. I know that there's sometimes a part of a wedding where the guy tosses his now-wife's garter belt, similar to the bride's bouquet toss. Julian and Lucy did it. Until now, I just assumed it was some ribbony thing that was part of the wedding dress and torn off, but that is not what they are at all. And yes, looking these up also ends up with some very porn-ish looking images.
Anyway, it's a pretty cool idea, and I did find my socks fell down a bit when running, but the only time I ran was for the train, and I had plenty of time to fix up my socks before getting to the office, so I didn't think it was a big issue. But perhaps that's because I had my massive muffins to hold the socks up, but if I do manage to make some progress over the next 10 weeks, that might not be the case later.
I did not realise something as simple as socks could be so complex. I thought I could just google "thigh high socks", buy whatever the first result was, and be done. Seems like this is going to be a mission for another night.
Monday 28 September 2015
Sunday 27 September 2015
Food Mimic - BBQ Pork Buns (Char Siu Bao)
Not something we had on our trip, but I thought I'd stick with something on this side of the globe and attempt one of MrFodder's favourite foods. The recipe I decided to go with is this one from The Woks of Life, except (and this is the part I'm most excited about), I'd go with my mum's recipe for Char Siu. Finally I have something to contribute to the Internet!
Char Siu Recipe
Ingredients
1 kg pork neck
1 cup sugar
(marinate)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, or pressed in a garlic press
2 shallots
6 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon Oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Mei Kuei Lu Chiew cooking wine
2 tablespoons ground bean sauce
1 tablespoon Hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon sesame sauce
1/2 tablespoon ginger finely grated, or pressed in a garlic press
(glaze)
4 tablespoons of maltose or honey
1/4 cup boiling water
4 tablespoons of sugar
Wash and drain the pork, cut into steak-like pieces. Mix with the sugar and leave in the fridge for an hour to dry out.
Mix the marinate ingredients together in another bowl. Add the pork and mix. Leave to marinate, overnight is best, but a couple of hours is fine. It will look brown, that's fine - it'll turn red after roasting.
Before you start cooking, preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Mix the glaze and put in a bath of boiled water to keep it smooth and spreadable.
Stick the marinated meat on your oven racks, and put a baking pan half-filled with water underneath to catch the drippings. Glaze and roast for 30 minutes, before flipping over. Glaze that side and bake for 20 minutes. You can finish here, or flip over, glaze and bake for another 20 minutes and repeat until you're happy with what you have, or you run out of glaze.
On to the pork bun part. It took longer than I expected, because our steamer could only fit three buns at a time, and I decided to make a double batch (as TS would say, economy of scale). Also, the recipe doesn't specify except in the comments, but if you want pretty white, fluffy buns, you'll have to use bleached flour. I did not read that part until later, so my buns were a pale brown, with brown spots on top. :(
I was a bit dubious about the sauce, as it just smelled like flour. But I followed the recipe anyway, because I didn't know enough to adjust anything.
Here are my pre-steamed buns:
Here are the post-steamed buns:
It actually tasted good - I was surprised that I'd be able to do it my first try. I prefer a sweeter bun, so maybe next time I'll add more sugar, but MrFodder was happy with it, and that's the important part! I justify his decision to stay with me just a little bit more!
I made a double batch of the char siu as well, because I wanted to make fried rice - so that's an idea if you end up with leftover BBQ pork!
Char Siu Recipe
Ingredients
1 kg pork neck
1 cup sugar
(marinate)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, or pressed in a garlic press
2 shallots
6 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon Oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Mei Kuei Lu Chiew cooking wine
2 tablespoons ground bean sauce
1 tablespoon Hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon sesame sauce
1/2 tablespoon ginger finely grated, or pressed in a garlic press
(glaze)
4 tablespoons of maltose or honey
1/4 cup boiling water
4 tablespoons of sugar
Wash and drain the pork, cut into steak-like pieces. Mix with the sugar and leave in the fridge for an hour to dry out.
Mix the marinate ingredients together in another bowl. Add the pork and mix. Leave to marinate, overnight is best, but a couple of hours is fine. It will look brown, that's fine - it'll turn red after roasting.
Before you start cooking, preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Mix the glaze and put in a bath of boiled water to keep it smooth and spreadable.
Stick the marinated meat on your oven racks, and put a baking pan half-filled with water underneath to catch the drippings. Glaze and roast for 30 minutes, before flipping over. Glaze that side and bake for 20 minutes. You can finish here, or flip over, glaze and bake for another 20 minutes and repeat until you're happy with what you have, or you run out of glaze.
On to the pork bun part. It took longer than I expected, because our steamer could only fit three buns at a time, and I decided to make a double batch (as TS would say, economy of scale). Also, the recipe doesn't specify except in the comments, but if you want pretty white, fluffy buns, you'll have to use bleached flour. I did not read that part until later, so my buns were a pale brown, with brown spots on top. :(
I was a bit dubious about the sauce, as it just smelled like flour. But I followed the recipe anyway, because I didn't know enough to adjust anything.
Here are my pre-steamed buns:
Here are the post-steamed buns:
It actually tasted good - I was surprised that I'd be able to do it my first try. I prefer a sweeter bun, so maybe next time I'll add more sugar, but MrFodder was happy with it, and that's the important part! I justify his decision to stay with me just a little bit more!
I made a double batch of the char siu as well, because I wanted to make fried rice - so that's an idea if you end up with leftover BBQ pork!
Winning Isn't Everything
Maelstrom linked an interesting video today: http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/tips-top-5-problem-players/
It lists annoying types of people who play board games. To save you from watching the video, here's the list in text form (though watch the video for more detail, it's a good watch):
It lists annoying types of people who play board games. To save you from watching the video, here's the list in text form (though watch the video for more detail, it's a good watch):
- Quarterbacking: the people who tend to aggressively tell other players how they should be playing without being asked.
- People who don't care: people who aren't paying attention and generally look like they don't want to be playing.
- People who are too aggressive / aren't aggressive enough / care too much about winning / don't care enough about winning, i.e. People who aren't having fun the way you think they should be having fun: I didn't really understand this one, and I didn't really agree with his example that it's OK for a couple who are playing a game together not to attack each other*, but OK.
- People who heckle during rules explanations: self-explanatory - luckily, I've never experienced this one either
- People who bend cards or spill stuff: self explanatory again**
I didn't realise that I was doing it, but quarterbacking now really annoys me. I feel like it's inevitable in co-operative games, as everyone's chance of winning is dependent on each player playing the optimal strategy. I first noticed it in a Dungeons and Dragons game I was playing in, where a couple of the players seemed to be dictating what all the other plays should be doing, and in the end, I ended up thinking to myself that they might as well be playing all six characters themselves, and eventually I ended up leaving the game. It probably didn't help that one of the other players was a #2, and spent nearly ever session on the phone, or just doing what the other players said to do. Ever since then, I've tried to be really mindful about it.
However, what I wanted to write about was #3. Graham invited me and Sharon to playtest a board game that he had created. We played a couple of games, and I ended up winning both. Later that night, we bumped into RB, and we were talking about the game. RB asked who won, and Graham made an offhand remark, "Of course Anna did, she always wins, even at games that don't even have finished rules yet." Perhaps I am ovethinking it (and I have been thinking about it for a long time), but the way that he said it made it sound like I'm some cut-throat player who will win at all costs.
Time to delve into my past again. As a kid, I was a really sore loser. I think because I am the oldest of four children, and as many of my friends weren't into playing games, I usually ended up playing with my cousins, or my brother's friends, all of whom are younger than me. So for quite a while, I had an advantage over them, purely by being older and knowing more stuff. But after a while, that advantage grew smaller and smaller, until it got to the point where they were becoming equal, if not better than I was. I did not adjust well, to the point of accusing people of cheating if I lost. I am not proud of it, and I'd like to think that I've changed since then.
After that, I did a complete change, and went from being incredibly competitive to not caring about competition at all. Coming first felt as good to me as coming last - I really didn't care either way. While that meant that people were far more willing to play with me, it also meant that my rate of improvement slowed dramatically. But I didn't care.
All of this came to a head when AG took me aside and said that he thought it was really sad how little I applied myself, and that I should be competing because that's how you get better. I completely disagreed, and even though he and mum were both pushing me to enter competitions, I refused. My maths teachers and science teachers wanted me to enter, too, and I still refused. I felt like they were trying to pressure me into entering things for pointless reasons. I mean, come on, some of those crappy high school "competitions" were simply mini-exams, where you got a not-so-pretty certificate in the end, which you got to receive at a school assembly, along with fifty other students. Because they even had certificates of participation.
It was actually an 11-year-old kid at the chess club who said that he wanted to play in a tournament, but not by himself, so we signed up together and every Monday evening we'd play chess and then goof around in the chess club. The completely casual way that he handled competition was so awe-inspiring to me, and it made me realise that you can play against others and not have winning be so completely overwhelming. I ended up entering a few more comps, and played because I wanted to get better, not because I wanted to win.
So Graham's comment actually hit me pretty hard. I'm worried that the super competitive me is trying to make a comeback, and I really don't want to be that person.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* I played a Warcraft 3 free-for-all game with 7 other people, and built up my army, defended myself against a couple of attacks, and then launched an attack against another player (yellow). I see on my minimap that one of the other players (blue) was coming in from the other side of the yellow player, so I figure yellow is pretty much going to be wiped out soon, so win the fight I'm currently having against yellow's troops, and try to retreat so that I can rebuild while blue finishes yellow off. Then next thing I notice is that blue has marched completely unscathed through yellow's base, not attacking anything, and not being attacked in return. My army is smaller than blue's at this point, as I'd just been fighting yellow, so I get crushed. I go back to rebuilding, and defending, but eventually, the combined forces of blue and yellow go around crushing everyone else. After the game, I found out that blue and yellow are married, and for some reason, were allies in that game, when everyone else was playing a free-for-all.
** Personally, unless the game is one where it depends on cards not being marked in any way, e.g. one of those secret role games, where someone is a traitor of some sort, but nobody knows who it is, so the cards need to be identical, it doesn't really bother me if people aren't 100% perfect with my games. My Settlers of Catan is becoming kinda worn, and I do wish I had put the cards in plastic sleeves, but I do love how our family Monopoly game is worn, and I'd like my Settlers to be the same. It feels homey.
Saturday 26 September 2015
Blossom
Today was day 5 of the morning shift. The last day! To be honest, my brain feels a bit like it has gone to mush. But a weird thing happened on Wednesday, during my shift. I was sitting at my desk, staring at the screen to make sure that nothing was wrong. When I felt my mind start to wander. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a sexual fantasy, and it was only my screen flickering to remind me that I was supposed to be watching the screens.
I was trying to think about why, of all the times, it would happen then. It has been a bit of a theory I've had for a while. Whenever I feel bored, I'm more likely to want sex. I don't think it's because I think of it as a pastime, I think there might be some deeper connection.
So firstly, we have Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which says you have to have a base level of physiological needs taken care of, before you start to desire the next level, etc. And it reminded me of something that my biology teacher told me. There is this plant that grows in the desert, and it spreads its seeds out in some way that I don't remember. But the seeds never actually start growing until it can detect enough moisture in the surrounding dirt, as it knows that it'll just die if it tries to start growing here. So it'll stay dormant until there's enough moisture.
I was thinking that sex is, at a base level, connected with reproduction, and like the desert seed, perhaps your body just "knows" somehow that you're not ready to be able to handle children, so your libido is lowered. While I was at uni, my libido was quite high, but I was also "bored". Now I don't think I was at all ready for children at uni, but at that time, my mind was a lot less pre-occupied with other thoughts. I had my physiological needs satisfied, I felt safe, I had love from friends and family, I was respect enough (well, I had the comforting knowledge that I managed to get into a prestigious university), and at the time, I believed I was on my way to reaching my full potential (getting a degree). I don't think I was enlightened or anything, but I definitely felt a lot "lighter" with the thought that I was the best that I could be.
After uni, life took a tumble, in the sense that I was now in the world of work, and the sudden realisation that I was a tiny, tiny fish in a massive ocean was incredibly overwhelming. There's some saying about idiots thinking they know everything, and intelligent people knowing that in the grand scheme of things, they know nothing. I felt like the curtains were opened, and there was this whole world that I didn't know, and I suddenly felt dwarfed.
On the hierarchy, I felt like I was knocked down a few pegs. I know now that I have a long way to go to the top, and I spend a lot of time working on self-improvement trying to get there. I can't remember the last time I was genuinely bored. There is always one more thing that I could be doing with my time, and quite often, I feel the opposite - like there isn't enough time to do all the things that I need to do. Because of this, like the seed that doesn't detect enough moisture, my body knows it doesn't have enough time to take care of me, much less than take care of an entire other person, so libido is lowered so I can focus more on the things I need to do, in the hopes that I'll get back up the hierarchy, and then be ready for children.
Orrrrrrrrrrr, maybe it's because I'm no longer on the pill, and I don't have artificial hormones messing with my brain. Yet another anecdote that I can't really draw anything from because the sample size is too small and there are too many confounding variables. :(
Anyway, I definitely need to get some shut-eye. Will be nice to wake up while the sun is up.
Friday 25 September 2015
Truman Chips: Ally
Interesting news today!
You're probably all sick of reading about this, but the mystery deepens. So today, I was meant to go with DComics, but he got held up in the office, so I went with Alison instead. So the popular opinion so far is that the cashier is flirting with me through large bags of chips, and the second most popular opinion is that they're trying to fatten me up because I'm too skinny.
Well, Ally is pretty much a prettier, skinnier version of me. She is my role model at the moment, it's like she somehow manages to be tough, but well liked.
I wanted to take her, as she's also Asian, so she covers the same demographics as I do, except she's a vegetarian, but you can't tell that by looking at her, and you really can't tell from a burger order, especially as she was buying a burger on behalf of DComics. So it was like the planets aligned, and I finally got the ultimate test case for my experiment.
Funnily enough, a couple of my co-workers had also gone to the same place earlier in the day, and neither of them got the double bag. So there are two more data points for my study.
A: Older (50s?), white, male - no Truman chips
R: 30s?, Asian, male (though not "yellow" Asian, but Filopino - gosh, I'm going to sound so racist at the end of this "study") - no Truman chips
Ally and I walked down to the restaurant, and I explained to her about the Truman chips. She couldn't believe it, but she was kinda hungry and felt in the mood for chips, so she was hoping that I'd get Truman chips. To be honest, I was starting to doubt myself again, and this time there was the added pressure of the expectation that I'd get it! I'm probably going to stop telling people about Truman chips, especially now that a few of the other people on my team seem to expect it now as well.
Today, because I was on the monitoring shift, we ended up getting there at about 2:15pm, which is the latest that I've ever been. I would have liked to have gone during the lunch rush, but it's so rare to get Ally away that I had to take advantage of it. We order, and Ally goes first this time, as last time, I ordered before Intern Daniel.
Her burger arrived, single bag. Mine arrived, two bags! Truman strikes again.
So we've ruled out:
You're probably all sick of reading about this, but the mystery deepens. So today, I was meant to go with DComics, but he got held up in the office, so I went with Alison instead. So the popular opinion so far is that the cashier is flirting with me through large bags of chips, and the second most popular opinion is that they're trying to fatten me up because I'm too skinny.
Well, Ally is pretty much a prettier, skinnier version of me. She is my role model at the moment, it's like she somehow manages to be tough, but well liked.
I wanted to take her, as she's also Asian, so she covers the same demographics as I do, except she's a vegetarian, but you can't tell that by looking at her, and you really can't tell from a burger order, especially as she was buying a burger on behalf of DComics. So it was like the planets aligned, and I finally got the ultimate test case for my experiment.
Funnily enough, a couple of my co-workers had also gone to the same place earlier in the day, and neither of them got the double bag. So there are two more data points for my study.
A: Older (50s?), white, male - no Truman chips
R: 30s?, Asian, male (though not "yellow" Asian, but Filopino - gosh, I'm going to sound so racist at the end of this "study") - no Truman chips
Ally and I walked down to the restaurant, and I explained to her about the Truman chips. She couldn't believe it, but she was kinda hungry and felt in the mood for chips, so she was hoping that I'd get Truman chips. To be honest, I was starting to doubt myself again, and this time there was the added pressure of the expectation that I'd get it! I'm probably going to stop telling people about Truman chips, especially now that a few of the other people on my team seem to expect it now as well.
Today, because I was on the monitoring shift, we ended up getting there at about 2:15pm, which is the latest that I've ever been. I would have liked to have gone during the lunch rush, but it's so rare to get Ally away that I had to take advantage of it. We order, and Ally goes first this time, as last time, I ordered before Intern Daniel.
Her burger arrived, single bag. Mine arrived, two bags! Truman strikes again.
So we've ruled out:
- female
- skinny
- being hit on by the cashier
I can't say for sure that we've ruled out the idea that I'm insane, and Truman chips isn't a thing, but I am now 5 for 5.
Tuesday 22 September 2015
InspirationGates - The Power of Automation
I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
- Bill Gates
Day 2 of the morning shift, and it was much easier than day 1, because between me and the guy on the afternoon shift, we automated a lot of the tasks that need to be done. Perhaps that was management's secret goal all along. By giving us a crummy manual task, and telling us that we have to do this every day for a week, they knew we'd find a way to make it easier for ourselves. Automation is king!
So a bit of background for the non-software people (and to increase my word count to something other than the Bill Gates quote and the above paragraph), despite how much we work with computers, a lot of the things we do as part of our job used to be manual. I'll start with testing as it's a lot easier for me to explain. If you already understand automation, or have surmised the gist of this, you can skip the rest of this blog post, as it's written in an "Explain Like I'm 5" way.
This part is interactive!
Open up / turn on a calculator (it can be the one on your PC, or your phone, or even a super-dooper TI-1000000 graphics calculator, it just needs the basic arithmetic operations).
Type in 4 + 4 (and hit equals if your calculator requires that). Did you get 8 as an answer? Test passed!
Now try 3 + 7. Did you get 10?
0 + 0. Did you get 0?
If your calculator failed any of the above tests, I'd be worried.
Congratulations, you are now a tester! But that was the life of a manual tester. Someone would develop some software that performs addition, and it was the job of the tester to type in a bunch of different inputs, and check that the output is what was expected. It's not that basic, as they'll also do tricky things, like what if you hit plus twice in a row, or what if the sum was too big to fit on the screen, but that's the general gist of it.
Now your crazy cowboy developers have updated the application to also perform multiplication. So you need more tests:
3 x 5. Did you get 15?
4 x 0. Did you get 0?
1 x 19. Did you get 19?
All passed, time to go home!
Hold it!
You've proved that the multiplication works, but what you haven't done is proven that the addition function still works. So you also need to go back and perform the tests that you did before. Imagine how many tests you'll be running once the other functions get implemented: subtraction, division, sin, cos, tan, power, factorial, exponential, etc. Your fingers are going to get pretty sore pressing all those buttons. (You laugh at the idea of someone pressing buttons like that all day long, but I went to a talk given by some employees of a game development team I won't name, and they said one of their testers pretty much spends the first hour of his day playing through their game's tutorial. Every work day. They say he's gotten quite good at it, and can usually pick up when something is broken with the tutorial quite quickly.)
In comes the power of automation. If you could set something up to run all those tests for you, then all you'd need to do every time a new feature is added is update the list of tests, and then press a button to start the automation, and check the results at the end. (Astute readers might ask, "But if the testers are writing the automation framework, who tests their tests, and will those tests be automated, too?" Let's not go down that rabbit hole right now.)
Automation does come with a cost, as it may take time to set it up at the beginning, and so if you're just doing a two-hour throwaway thing, it might not be worth it, but seeing as the thing that I'm doing at work right now is probably going to be on-going, I'd definitely like to work more on automating it. One of the developers on my team wanted to get a T-shirt that said, "Go away, or I'll replace you with a really small shell script", and I feel like I am being replaced by some shell scripts now! Although I'm not worried about my job, it just means that I'm freeing myself from the more mundane tasks, and will have more time to do cool things!
Monday 21 September 2015
Living the Thigh Life
While at the gym yesterday, I realised I forgot my own advice. I've been focusing on working out to run away from being fat, rather than working towards something. So I signed up for a fitness challenge at the gym, and the first step of the challenge is to come up with a goal. Previously, I had the goal of trying to get to a particular level on the beep test. Then there was the wedding. Now there's...
So, I was thinking about something that'd be practical, and I thought, how about being confident enough to be able to wear thigh high socks?
Before you start to think of Zettai Ryouiki, I am well aware of my age, thank you very much. Actually, I discovered the convenience by accident.
The long and boring backstory: I finally did what I've been meaning to do for a while, which is to go through the clothes in my closet and get rid of the stuff that doesn't fit anymore. I held on to a few things for keepsake value, like my WPT shirt than I won by beating my poker class in a tournament (which funnily enough, finally does fit me now, but is too much, "Hello, cleavage!" for me to want to wear anywhere), my PAX Enforcer shirts, my university open day volunteer shirts. Anyway, a lot of my business clothes were in that pile, and all I have left are some dresses, skirts and shirts that were given to me / bought with co-workers.
Anyone who has been in this city for the past couple of months knows that it has been cold. Really damn cold. So, two things I've found that I dislike about wearing non-pant-like clothing. I don't like going bare-legged, so I have to cover my legs, which means stockings. But stockings means that your legs are stuck together in this weird way that I really don't like. The second part being that stockings aren't as warm as socks. So I realised, I can just wear thigh high socks. All the warmth, and none of the legs-stuck-togetherness! What I don't feel comfortable about is the fact that there is still a bit of a muffin top going (sorry for the imagery). I don't know if it's possible for me to get rid of it, but any goal's a goal, right?
Actually, I later ended up Googling whether it's appropriate to wear thigh high socks at work, and the general consensus seems to be that it's not. Apparently thigh high socks have a sexual connotation. But I think it's OK, as given the fact that my skirt/dress goes to my knees, nobody but me should even know that I'm not wearing stockings!
I came back to this after a couple of hours, and I don't even know what I was going on about. So... today marks the first day of the morning shift. My brain is officially mush. I thought I'd be able to easily adjust, because it's kinda just like being back on graveyard shift at the casino, but not quite. I also realised that the year is disappearing, and I have a lot to write if I want to get my goal! So here's to writing more, even if it is nonsensical rubbish.
So, I was thinking about something that'd be practical, and I thought, how about being confident enough to be able to wear thigh high socks?
Before you start to think of Zettai Ryouiki, I am well aware of my age, thank you very much. Actually, I discovered the convenience by accident.
The long and boring backstory: I finally did what I've been meaning to do for a while, which is to go through the clothes in my closet and get rid of the stuff that doesn't fit anymore. I held on to a few things for keepsake value, like my WPT shirt than I won by beating my poker class in a tournament (which funnily enough, finally does fit me now, but is too much, "Hello, cleavage!" for me to want to wear anywhere), my PAX Enforcer shirts, my university open day volunteer shirts. Anyway, a lot of my business clothes were in that pile, and all I have left are some dresses, skirts and shirts that were given to me / bought with co-workers.
Anyone who has been in this city for the past couple of months knows that it has been cold. Really damn cold. So, two things I've found that I dislike about wearing non-pant-like clothing. I don't like going bare-legged, so I have to cover my legs, which means stockings. But stockings means that your legs are stuck together in this weird way that I really don't like. The second part being that stockings aren't as warm as socks. So I realised, I can just wear thigh high socks. All the warmth, and none of the legs-stuck-togetherness! What I don't feel comfortable about is the fact that there is still a bit of a muffin top going (sorry for the imagery). I don't know if it's possible for me to get rid of it, but any goal's a goal, right?
Actually, I later ended up Googling whether it's appropriate to wear thigh high socks at work, and the general consensus seems to be that it's not. Apparently thigh high socks have a sexual connotation. But I think it's OK, as given the fact that my skirt/dress goes to my knees, nobody but me should even know that I'm not wearing stockings!
I came back to this after a couple of hours, and I don't even know what I was going on about. So... today marks the first day of the morning shift. My brain is officially mush. I thought I'd be able to easily adjust, because it's kinda just like being back on graveyard shift at the casino, but not quite. I also realised that the year is disappearing, and I have a lot to write if I want to get my goal! So here's to writing more, even if it is nonsensical rubbish.
Friday 18 September 2015
I'm Sorry, So Sorry
Well, I screwed up big time at work last week. Not going to go into the details, but it was pretty bad, and a bunch of people had to stay pretty late to manually amend things because of a bug I introduced. I wasn't too happy with myself, as I felt like it was something I should have caught, but didn't. For a couple of days, I just felt so down. I was really off my game, and I kept thinking, "I'm really not cut out for this."
It's weird, I kinda feel like I went through the five stages of grieving in the process.
Denial
Well, obviously, when someone told me that something was wrong, my first thought was, "No way, there can't be!" That lasted approximately the 20 seconds it took for him to log into the production server and bring up the logs. Then I realised that yes, something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Anger
Once I realised what the issue was, I got angry, because there was a developer who was working on this, and right before we left for Europe, I remember him being tasked to fix this particular component, and check for compatibility issues. The error I caused was caused by an incorrect fix that I made to fix a compatibility issue. Rather than focus on the fact that the fix I made was wrong, I was so angry at the fact that he should have picked up the compatibility issue months ago, and fixed it back then, when there was almost no pressure. Instead, I had to fix it with a heap of people breathing down my back asking when I was done.
Something I do when I feel angry, but I know it's inappropriate to be angry is that I tell myself, "OK, you're angry now, but you need to get your act together for ____________. So put it away, and we can deal with it later." Then I picture the anger being pushed away somewhere in the back of my brain to be processed at another time. That doesn't mean I dealt with the anger and moved on instantly. I did spent at least an hour feeling angry.
Bargaining
This one was an interesting one. I guess not quite bargaining in the traditional sense, but I felt a lot like I needed to push myself to be better. To prove that I'm not the crappy junior dev who breaks things left, right and centre. That, yes, they can trust me to work on critical pieces of software. Which is interesting how quickly I went from feeling really good about getting up early and getting things done, to feeling like I'm the worst person in the world.
I was pulling 13 hour days in the office, because I wanted to show that I am dedicated. That I can take responsibility for my issues and fix them. One of the days was really stupid, and I really should have gone home hours earlier, but I felt compelled to do something, even though at this point, it was in the hands of our vendor to provide a fix. I was brute forcing every combination of configuration in the hopes that maybe I could unlock the secret combination that would fix the issue. It was all a huge waste of time, as the fix ended up being something else the vendor told us to do. I went into work the next day half a zombie. I honestly don't know how people can work 80 hour weeks, as I was only getting close to 60, and I couldn't hack it. By the time Friday hit, I honestly could not remember where the day went. In a bad way. There are periods of time where it's just a blank.
I'm so glad I failed the pre-med test so badly I never decided to pursue that career.
Depression
Once again, I hit a low, and a voice in my head kept telling me, "You really don't belong here." Do I look like an engineer? Girl power? Memories of my pretty poor grades at university, and how much I struggled to pass my programming subjects.
I don't know what it was that pushed me out of this stage. I just went to bed, and when I woke up, I felt at peace with the whole thing.
Acceptance
I went in to work, and I accepted that I screwed up. I was working on a fix, and there were a few people working on the manual entry to fix things. As bad as it was, and though it did have the fallout of some pretty high up people getting pissed off, nothing terrible happened. I found out that I'm being "punished" with some pretty crummy work for the next few weeks, but I can live with that.
I did still feel bad about causing the issue though, so I bought a box of cupcakes and sent an apology email to all the people who were impacted. Because that's another difficult conversation, right? Being able to go up to someone and say, "Hi, I am the reason why you had to stay until 8pm last Friday."I thought they'd all hate me, but some of them seem to think it's funny. Those who don't at least appreciated the apology. And the cupcake.
So all up, I'm out the cost of 25 cupcakes, I learnt a valuable lesson about being more careful of what I put into production (not that I'm not careful), and though I know that I can put in crazy work hours, my brain really starts to lose its effectiveness, and it's really not worth it.
It has been a while since I last tried cooking something from our Europe trip, but I am so drained already. I took last weekend to recover from the week before, but this week feels like double what last week was.
Time to conk out. Goodnight.
It's weird, I kinda feel like I went through the five stages of grieving in the process.
Denial
Well, obviously, when someone told me that something was wrong, my first thought was, "No way, there can't be!" That lasted approximately the 20 seconds it took for him to log into the production server and bring up the logs. Then I realised that yes, something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Anger
Once I realised what the issue was, I got angry, because there was a developer who was working on this, and right before we left for Europe, I remember him being tasked to fix this particular component, and check for compatibility issues. The error I caused was caused by an incorrect fix that I made to fix a compatibility issue. Rather than focus on the fact that the fix I made was wrong, I was so angry at the fact that he should have picked up the compatibility issue months ago, and fixed it back then, when there was almost no pressure. Instead, I had to fix it with a heap of people breathing down my back asking when I was done.
Something I do when I feel angry, but I know it's inappropriate to be angry is that I tell myself, "OK, you're angry now, but you need to get your act together for ____________. So put it away, and we can deal with it later." Then I picture the anger being pushed away somewhere in the back of my brain to be processed at another time. That doesn't mean I dealt with the anger and moved on instantly. I did spent at least an hour feeling angry.
Bargaining
This one was an interesting one. I guess not quite bargaining in the traditional sense, but I felt a lot like I needed to push myself to be better. To prove that I'm not the crappy junior dev who breaks things left, right and centre. That, yes, they can trust me to work on critical pieces of software. Which is interesting how quickly I went from feeling really good about getting up early and getting things done, to feeling like I'm the worst person in the world.
I was pulling 13 hour days in the office, because I wanted to show that I am dedicated. That I can take responsibility for my issues and fix them. One of the days was really stupid, and I really should have gone home hours earlier, but I felt compelled to do something, even though at this point, it was in the hands of our vendor to provide a fix. I was brute forcing every combination of configuration in the hopes that maybe I could unlock the secret combination that would fix the issue. It was all a huge waste of time, as the fix ended up being something else the vendor told us to do. I went into work the next day half a zombie. I honestly don't know how people can work 80 hour weeks, as I was only getting close to 60, and I couldn't hack it. By the time Friday hit, I honestly could not remember where the day went. In a bad way. There are periods of time where it's just a blank.
I'm so glad I failed the pre-med test so badly I never decided to pursue that career.
Depression
Once again, I hit a low, and a voice in my head kept telling me, "You really don't belong here." Do I look like an engineer? Girl power? Memories of my pretty poor grades at university, and how much I struggled to pass my programming subjects.
I don't know what it was that pushed me out of this stage. I just went to bed, and when I woke up, I felt at peace with the whole thing.
Acceptance
I went in to work, and I accepted that I screwed up. I was working on a fix, and there were a few people working on the manual entry to fix things. As bad as it was, and though it did have the fallout of some pretty high up people getting pissed off, nothing terrible happened. I found out that I'm being "punished" with some pretty crummy work for the next few weeks, but I can live with that.
I did still feel bad about causing the issue though, so I bought a box of cupcakes and sent an apology email to all the people who were impacted. Because that's another difficult conversation, right? Being able to go up to someone and say, "Hi, I am the reason why you had to stay until 8pm last Friday."I thought they'd all hate me, but some of them seem to think it's funny. Those who don't at least appreciated the apology. And the cupcake.
So all up, I'm out the cost of 25 cupcakes, I learnt a valuable lesson about being more careful of what I put into production (not that I'm not careful), and though I know that I can put in crazy work hours, my brain really starts to lose its effectiveness, and it's really not worth it.
It has been a while since I last tried cooking something from our Europe trip, but I am so drained already. I took last weekend to recover from the week before, but this week feels like double what last week was.
Time to conk out. Goodnight.
Sunday 13 September 2015
Much Tofu About Nothing
This blog is in danger of becoming a "What Anna Ate Today" blog. Oh well, I'm starting to think food is my passion.
Growing up, tofu wasn't just the thing that vegetarians use to substitute for meat. Tofu was just another type of food on the table, and I thought nothing wrong with it. It wasn't until I was at uni, going to dinner with some friends, and I was asked if I was a vegetarian after having ordered a tofu dish.
"No?" I replied, confused.
"Oh, I just thought because you ordered tofu..."
For a while, I turned a bit defensive. I'd order tofu when I could, and always talk about how delicious it is. I still think it's delicious, but I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea, a lot of people complaining about the texture of it, which probably takes some getting used to, but since I have been eating it since I was a kid, I don't think it's all that weird.
Since moving out of home, I've rarely had the chance to eat tofu, as it just never comes up when we're thinking of meal ideas. Lately, I've just had this huge tofu craving, and ended up ordering some at the 440 dinner last month. But that only made me want it more. So as a semi-compromise, I thought I'd make a honey soy stir fry with tofu and chicken. The result was not what I expected.
What I ended up with was what MrFodder dubbed "Ninja noodles". There's a rough 50-50 mixture of tofu and chicken in the meal, but because of the way that it was cooked, it's hard to tell whether a particular piece is chicken or tofu until you go to pick it up.
The new era of evil cooking! I actually liked it though, so much so that my lunch this week is going to be tofu, broccoli and carrot. I would like to learn too cook salt and pepper fried tofu like they do in Chinatown though. One of my favourite dishes, and was the inspiration for my IRC nickname.
Growing up, tofu wasn't just the thing that vegetarians use to substitute for meat. Tofu was just another type of food on the table, and I thought nothing wrong with it. It wasn't until I was at uni, going to dinner with some friends, and I was asked if I was a vegetarian after having ordered a tofu dish.
"No?" I replied, confused.
"Oh, I just thought because you ordered tofu..."
For a while, I turned a bit defensive. I'd order tofu when I could, and always talk about how delicious it is. I still think it's delicious, but I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea, a lot of people complaining about the texture of it, which probably takes some getting used to, but since I have been eating it since I was a kid, I don't think it's all that weird.
Since moving out of home, I've rarely had the chance to eat tofu, as it just never comes up when we're thinking of meal ideas. Lately, I've just had this huge tofu craving, and ended up ordering some at the 440 dinner last month. But that only made me want it more. So as a semi-compromise, I thought I'd make a honey soy stir fry with tofu and chicken. The result was not what I expected.
What I ended up with was what MrFodder dubbed "Ninja noodles". There's a rough 50-50 mixture of tofu and chicken in the meal, but because of the way that it was cooked, it's hard to tell whether a particular piece is chicken or tofu until you go to pick it up.
The new era of evil cooking! I actually liked it though, so much so that my lunch this week is going to be tofu, broccoli and carrot. I would like to learn too cook salt and pepper fried tofu like they do in Chinatown though. One of my favourite dishes, and was the inspiration for my IRC nickname.
Friday 11 September 2015
Early to Bed, Early to Rise
I mentioned earlier that I now started getting to work at 6:30. That's a bit of a lie, as due to the train I manage to catch, it's either 6:15 or 6:45, but I guess it averages out?
So it all started when I stepped on the scales it the screen said, "You're fat" back at me. I had given myself a month after Europe to get back to normal, but July flew by and suddenly it was August and it was time! Well, I didn't make as much progress as I had hoped, so I faced a choice. Either I could keep complaining about it, or I could do something about it.
The do something about it turned into decided to wake up at 5am to go to the gym before work. I found that I was struggling to go after work, because I kept making excuses like I had to make dinner, or I wanted to play Dota. Well, there's nothing to cook at 5am, and nobody to play Dota with. Plus, I had the added benefit of being able to catch public transport to work at a discounted rate as it is during non-peak time.
Well, that super failed, as the gym doesn't even open until 5:45 (Intern Daniel did try to warn me about that), and if I started at that time, and accounted for shower time, I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the discounted travel. Anyway, with nothing else to do at 5am, I decided the only thing left was to go to work.
It is amazingly serene on the train that early in the morning. It's like everyone is quiet in respect for the people who are still in bed. I feel like I can zone out without getting distracted. I can read or just stare out the window. I know I sound super old saying something like that, but that's just the way I feel.
And work. Oh, wow, it's so nice. There is only one other person on the floor at that time, so I can really get into the zone. I find that I get so much done before other people start coming in. I'll admit, the first day was a struggle. I nearly fell asleep a few times throughout the day. But the second day was much better. That's when I started to get more productive. I don't know what it is, maybe it's just that I know I'm going home earlier, so I feel like my deadline is a lot sooner than it really is. Since I have swapped though, I managed to complete 18 story points in 2 weeks. New record for me. I don't know, my usual line, sample size is too small. But it does feel good.
The downside to getting in early is that sometimes people forget. Or don't realise. I haven't really gotten around to telling the whole team yet, as I don't directly work with them all, so I'm not sure if it's really relevant. This week has been pretty tough. We had a big release over the weekend, and there have been some issues that have come out. So everyone has been putting in lots of work trying to figure things out. My boss actually warned me about this, the strain of getting in early and then staying late because stuff just has to get done.
I want to do it at the moment, because I can see the toll that it's taking on one of the senior devs, who is pretty much the sole person everyone is relying on to take care of everything. But at the same time, I feel like I'm not getting enough rest. I feel like even though I'm awake, and I can still work, a part of me hasn't really recharged. Hopefully things start to calm down tomorrow. But luckily, I have nothing planned for this weekend, other than spending some quality time with MrFodder, and getting some much needed rest.
Oh... and going to the gym. :|
So it all started when I stepped on the scales it the screen said, "You're fat" back at me. I had given myself a month after Europe to get back to normal, but July flew by and suddenly it was August and it was time! Well, I didn't make as much progress as I had hoped, so I faced a choice. Either I could keep complaining about it, or I could do something about it.
The do something about it turned into decided to wake up at 5am to go to the gym before work. I found that I was struggling to go after work, because I kept making excuses like I had to make dinner, or I wanted to play Dota. Well, there's nothing to cook at 5am, and nobody to play Dota with. Plus, I had the added benefit of being able to catch public transport to work at a discounted rate as it is during non-peak time.
Well, that super failed, as the gym doesn't even open until 5:45 (Intern Daniel did try to warn me about that), and if I started at that time, and accounted for shower time, I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the discounted travel. Anyway, with nothing else to do at 5am, I decided the only thing left was to go to work.
It is amazingly serene on the train that early in the morning. It's like everyone is quiet in respect for the people who are still in bed. I feel like I can zone out without getting distracted. I can read or just stare out the window. I know I sound super old saying something like that, but that's just the way I feel.
And work. Oh, wow, it's so nice. There is only one other person on the floor at that time, so I can really get into the zone. I find that I get so much done before other people start coming in. I'll admit, the first day was a struggle. I nearly fell asleep a few times throughout the day. But the second day was much better. That's when I started to get more productive. I don't know what it is, maybe it's just that I know I'm going home earlier, so I feel like my deadline is a lot sooner than it really is. Since I have swapped though, I managed to complete 18 story points in 2 weeks. New record for me. I don't know, my usual line, sample size is too small. But it does feel good.
The downside to getting in early is that sometimes people forget. Or don't realise. I haven't really gotten around to telling the whole team yet, as I don't directly work with them all, so I'm not sure if it's really relevant. This week has been pretty tough. We had a big release over the weekend, and there have been some issues that have come out. So everyone has been putting in lots of work trying to figure things out. My boss actually warned me about this, the strain of getting in early and then staying late because stuff just has to get done.
I want to do it at the moment, because I can see the toll that it's taking on one of the senior devs, who is pretty much the sole person everyone is relying on to take care of everything. But at the same time, I feel like I'm not getting enough rest. I feel like even though I'm awake, and I can still work, a part of me hasn't really recharged. Hopefully things start to calm down tomorrow. But luckily, I have nothing planned for this weekend, other than spending some quality time with MrFodder, and getting some much needed rest.
Oh... and going to the gym. :|
Thursday 10 September 2015
The Truman Chips Experiment
I didn't plan on it, but Intern Daniel wanted to see the famous Truman chips in action (I've started telling some people at work about it). He was doubtful, but yet again, my Truman-ness prevailed. I'm 4 for 4 this year. I took a photo to prove it, but Intern Daniel is in it, and I don't have his permission to upload it.
I think we can rule out time of day, because I ordered before Intern Daniel, and since they had to give him chips as well, it seems unlikely that they'd dump an entire batch on me.
So now it has become a mini-experiment. Trying to single out what it is that unlocks the Truman chips.
So, the data we have so far:
Geoff: white male, no Truman chips
MrFodder: white male, no Truman chips
MrFodder's friend: white male, no Truman chips
Intern Daniel: white male, no Truman chips
Me: Asian female, Truman chips
I've gone at:
11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:10pm and another time I forgot, that I think might have been just before 12.
I have lined up:
Special K: white female
DComics: white male, but older, he's in his 50s.
Albert: Asian male
The theories that people at work have come up with so far:
I think we can rule out time of day, because I ordered before Intern Daniel, and since they had to give him chips as well, it seems unlikely that they'd dump an entire batch on me.
So now it has become a mini-experiment. Trying to single out what it is that unlocks the Truman chips.
So, the data we have so far:
Geoff: white male, no Truman chips
MrFodder: white male, no Truman chips
MrFodder's friend: white male, no Truman chips
Intern Daniel: white male, no Truman chips
Me: Asian female, Truman chips
I've gone at:
11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:10pm and another time I forgot, that I think might have been just before 12.
I have lined up:
Special K: white female
DComics: white male, but older, he's in his 50s.
Albert: Asian male
The theories that people at work have come up with so far:
- I'm Asian
- I'm female
- The staff there think I'm too skinny and want to fatten me up (unlikely, I also wore my super baggy hoodie today, so it was hard to make out my size)
- The cashier is hitting on me
- I'm insane, and Truman chips isn't really a thing (come on.... 4 for 4? Can it really still be a coincidence?)
- I go at the right time, and just happen to get the remains of a batch they're tossing
- They ran out of the small bags, so they only had the large bags to give out (I feel this one was also disproven today, as Intern Daniel ordered after me and still didn't get Truman chips)
So by finding people of different demographics, we're trying to single this out. There's only one Asian female on my team (other than me), but she's always super busy, so it's hard to get her to go to the burger place. But that'll be a last resort. I added DComics because I wanted to see if age played a part. I'm not sure what other demographics to hit. I thought about asking a gay person, but that's not something you can really tell by looking at someone, so it didn't seem like a good thing to study.
I think the cashier hitting on me has been ruled out, as I'm pretty sure I've been served by at least two different people. But DComics suggested taking note of who serves me, and who prepares my food so we can rule that one out, too.
I will report back once I have more results!
Edit: Forgot to add MrFodder's theory: it's my burger order, the no mayo, no cheese that makes them feel compelled to make up for charging me the same amount, so they give me the extra chips.
Edit: Forgot to add MrFodder's theory: it's my burger order, the no mayo, no cheese that makes them feel compelled to make up for charging me the same amount, so they give me the extra chips.
Wednesday 9 September 2015
Food Mimic: Beef Bourguignon
Last week, MrFodder made a beef stew, and it was delicious. Unfortunately, I had a lot of stuff on after work, so I didn't make it home for dinner many nights, and only got to eat it a couple of times. Inspired by that, for my food mimic challenge, I decided to try beef bourguignon. Which I still have to google the spelling, even after looking at recipes for the past couple of days. If you haven't seen the movie Julie & Julia, this dish formed an important part of the plot, and for a moment, I was also tempted to do what Julie did, and call in sick - I'll explain later.
So the recipe I decided to with is from the kitchn: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-slow-cooker-boeuf-bourguignon-recipes-from-the-kitchn-196361
I wrote down the ingredients, went to the supermarket, and returned thinking I'd just have to chop up some stuff, chuck it in the dutch oven that Sharon and Graham bought me for my birthday, and check on the dish between games of Dota 2.
So the recipe starts with frying the bacon to get some of the fat which you'll use to sear the meat, and lightly fry the veggies. Since MrFodder and I are currently trying to eat better, I stupidly bought the lean bacon, so there was very little bacon fat in the pan. Mistake #1. Still, I just ended up using canola oil once I ran out of the bacon fat, so it worked out OK. I also decided to make a double batch, as we just acquired a new freezer, so we have room to cook things ahead of time for later. But that also meant I spent a long time at the stove searing the beef, as the recipe says not to crowd the pan. It takes ages when you're searing 2.5kg of beef cubes! But the smell. So good. Chucking the red wine on the pan between batches of beef to clean the pan gives off such a delicious smell.
After a few hours at the stove, I finally had the first part ready to go in the oven.
You're meant to cook it at about 150 degrees for a couple of hours, but I guess since I had double the amount, it didn't quite hit that tender stage in that time, so I left it for a couple more hours. And it still wasn't done. So we put it in containers to be finished the next day. The kitchen smelled amazing at this stage though. Just so many nice food scents.
I originally wanted to serve it with pasta, but after looking at some pictures on Google, I thought about trying my hand at aligot, which is the fancy French way of saying mashed potatoes with cheese, garlic and butter. But since he has had his gall bladder out, MrFodder hasn't been great with large amounts of cheese, so I opted to replace the cheese with a bit of parsley, so it's like potato garlic bread (which I'm really sad we didn't eat any of while we were in Italy).
So here's the dish I was trying to replicate:
So the recipe I decided to with is from the kitchn: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-slow-cooker-boeuf-bourguignon-recipes-from-the-kitchn-196361
I wrote down the ingredients, went to the supermarket, and returned thinking I'd just have to chop up some stuff, chuck it in the dutch oven that Sharon and Graham bought me for my birthday, and check on the dish between games of Dota 2.
So the recipe starts with frying the bacon to get some of the fat which you'll use to sear the meat, and lightly fry the veggies. Since MrFodder and I are currently trying to eat better, I stupidly bought the lean bacon, so there was very little bacon fat in the pan. Mistake #1. Still, I just ended up using canola oil once I ran out of the bacon fat, so it worked out OK. I also decided to make a double batch, as we just acquired a new freezer, so we have room to cook things ahead of time for later. But that also meant I spent a long time at the stove searing the beef, as the recipe says not to crowd the pan. It takes ages when you're searing 2.5kg of beef cubes! But the smell. So good. Chucking the red wine on the pan between batches of beef to clean the pan gives off such a delicious smell.
After a few hours at the stove, I finally had the first part ready to go in the oven.
You're meant to cook it at about 150 degrees for a couple of hours, but I guess since I had double the amount, it didn't quite hit that tender stage in that time, so I left it for a couple more hours. And it still wasn't done. So we put it in containers to be finished the next day. The kitchen smelled amazing at this stage though. Just so many nice food scents.
I originally wanted to serve it with pasta, but after looking at some pictures on Google, I thought about trying my hand at aligot, which is the fancy French way of saying mashed potatoes with cheese, garlic and butter. But since he has had his gall bladder out, MrFodder hasn't been great with large amounts of cheese, so I opted to replace the cheese with a bit of parsley, so it's like potato garlic bread (which I'm really sad we didn't eat any of while we were in Italy).
So here's the dish I was trying to replicate:
By the way, those veggies are covered in butter. Did I mention they love butter over there? So good though.
Here's what I ended up with:
The meat was decently tender. A tiny bit chewy, so it probably could have cooked for a little longer, but soft enough. The mash is so nice though. Very soft and fluffy, and garlicy, though it does have the downside of leaving you with serious garlic breath, so I felt bad eating it in the office today. Might have to pick up some gum tomorrow morning.
I'm not a fan of mushrooms, either, so I was a bit dubious about adding them, but I think it worked out. It tastes good.
Tuesday 8 September 2015
Different Friends
Following from my last post, I have to say that I'm not the greatest friend either - says the person who has a draft email replying to one that I received in November, 2013. I think I should step up my game, but also be a bit more forgiving of Brian. We probably just have different ideas of what hanging out with friends entails. I prefer smaller groups, but maybe he prefers larger groups.
On the topic of the email that never gets sent, I feel like it's never going to be sent. So much time has gone by it feels weird to bring up the topic all over again. So I've been trying to think of ways that I can make it up to him. Well, not make it up to him as such, but rather reconnect as friends. He has a regular roleplaying game, but I think my biggest issue with it is that I don't like the long-term regular commitment. Work is bad enough, having to go in 5 days a week. My gym schedule was fairly constant, but I could always fall back on the fact that if I really didn't want to go, then I didn't have to go. So even though he has offered in the past, I don't really want to join his game.
I guess I could suggest we just catch up for dinner or something after work, as we both work in roughly the same area (or at least he did the last time I spoke to him). I was thinking, since I am experimenting with so much cooking, why not go back to having those mini-dinner parties? I did it over the last Easter break, while MrFodder was away, with a few groups of friends, and I learned how to make cannelloni and BBQ pork. It's something that I would like to do again. Maybe when it's a bit warmer. Although this guy lives on the opposite side of the city, so it might be something that'll have to wait until we move, if we end up moving closer. It is a bit difficult to have five people sitting around a table in our house.
So I'm glad I waited to talk to Brian, since it seems like it's a conversation that doesn't need to happen. Though in the future, I'm not going to put myself in the same situation. If he wants to invite a large group of his friends, then he should be the one organising people and making the booking.
And that's all from Aggressive Anna today.
On the topic of the email that never gets sent, I feel like it's never going to be sent. So much time has gone by it feels weird to bring up the topic all over again. So I've been trying to think of ways that I can make it up to him. Well, not make it up to him as such, but rather reconnect as friends. He has a regular roleplaying game, but I think my biggest issue with it is that I don't like the long-term regular commitment. Work is bad enough, having to go in 5 days a week. My gym schedule was fairly constant, but I could always fall back on the fact that if I really didn't want to go, then I didn't have to go. So even though he has offered in the past, I don't really want to join his game.
I guess I could suggest we just catch up for dinner or something after work, as we both work in roughly the same area (or at least he did the last time I spoke to him). I was thinking, since I am experimenting with so much cooking, why not go back to having those mini-dinner parties? I did it over the last Easter break, while MrFodder was away, with a few groups of friends, and I learned how to make cannelloni and BBQ pork. It's something that I would like to do again. Maybe when it's a bit warmer. Although this guy lives on the opposite side of the city, so it might be something that'll have to wait until we move, if we end up moving closer. It is a bit difficult to have five people sitting around a table in our house.
So I'm glad I waited to talk to Brian, since it seems like it's a conversation that doesn't need to happen. Though in the future, I'm not going to put myself in the same situation. If he wants to invite a large group of his friends, then he should be the one organising people and making the booking.
And that's all from Aggressive Anna today.
Saturday 5 September 2015
Maybe Means No
Grad Daniel and I are trying to get promoted. I asked Mike, one of the senior developers on my team, what he thinks I need to do to become a senior developer, and he said that he would like me to be more "aggressive". He didn't mean aggressive in the sense of aggressive, but he wanted me to want things more - to want to be challenged. I told him that that's just the way I am. "Be the river," I said. But I told him that I'd work on it. Mike also told me that one skill it's really important to have is to be able to have difficult conversations. Grad Daniel have adopted "Be aggressive" as our way of goading each other into doing more.
It started out as a lunch. "Hey, haven't seen you in a while, want to catch up during lunch?" I agreed, but was busy that week, so suggested a different week. Lunch turned into dinner, as Brian decided he wanted to go to a particular restaurant. I suggested that we invite the people we went to get burgers with last time, and he agreed. So I created a Facebook event, with a date, and invited those people, plus MrFodder. He asked to be made a host, so I did it.
I woke up the next day to find that the little catch up dinner had turned into an event with over 30 invitees. OK, fine, he's the one doing the challenge, whatever. To be honest, the idea of being a large dinner was not appealing to me at all. MrFodder dropped out, and I wanted to as well, but as the host, I felt obligated to go. The event was created 3 weeks and 2 days in advance, and I gave people until the week before the event to respond before I'd be making the booking.
At that point, I had 8 yes responses (including myself), and 3 maybes. So I made the booking for 8 people (Old Anna would have thought about some algorithm, looking at the statistics of people who say "maybe" and factoring in the likelihood of them coming. New Anna says maybe means no). The restaurant is pretty busy, and we only had a limited window to eat, as it was for a Friday night, during peak time.
The night before the event, I log in to Facebook, and see that it suddenly says 9 people are attending, the new person being one of Brian's friends (I know his name wasn't there, because I said that if people said they were going, and didn't show up, I'd have the right to slap them twice the next time I saw them, or once at a future undisclosed time. I wrote down those names so I would remember who said they were going). I call the restaurant asking if we can increase the booking from 8 to 9 people, and they tell me that they don't have room, and we can either eat an hour earlier, or two and a half hours later. Well, an hour earlier was not going to happen, as people needed time to get from work to the restaurant, and given that I now wake up at 5:20am to go to work I really didn't want to be starting dinner at 9pm. Old Anna would have started calling seven other people, try to get a diplomatic response, and then do whatever that was. New Anna called Brian and asked what he wanted to do. He wanted to move if to the earlier or later time. Old Anna would have said sure, and made it happen. New Anna said no.
And here's why. Eight managed to reply in time. Eight people had organised their day to take into account that we would be having dinner at 6:45. All because one person suddenly wanted to come did not mean that we should completely re-arrange everything. That is not fair for the eight other people who did the right thing. Who were organised enough to be able to click a button saying, "Yes, I will go".
As a compromise (because even New Anna knows that it's good to compromise), I figured at the worst case, we could all squish up a bit, and add another chair to the table. Even though, sigh, it means the poor waiters will have to constantly try and work their way around this oddly seated person. Until around 2pm, when I checked Facebook again, and got a message from another person saying, "Sorry, I know it's last minute, but since you're already calling to change the booking, could you add me as well?" I explained that I wasn't able to add more people to the booking, but said that if he was willing, he could come along and hope that someone doesn't show. And at the very worst case, if we're already squishing to fit an extra person, we should be able to do the same on the other side. But I told him that if there was no space to fit in, then the people who had responded earlier would take priority. He said that he understood.
I finally make it to the restaurant, and tell them that I have a booking. The guy takes me to the side section, and points to a couple of tables, then goes back to the hosting station. I wasn't quite sure which of the two 8-people tables he pointed to, but one of them already had a small group of people I didn't know, so I figured we must be at the other one. Slowly, people start to show up, including the 2pm RSVP dude (he messaged me earlier, but I was busy at work and didn't check until 2pm). We are now 7 people sitting at an 8 people table, and Brian and two other people we were expecting are nowhere to be seen (in case you're confused: we had six people who had responded, plus the 2pm RSVP dude, we were still waiting on Brian, his friend who responded on time (Patty), and his other friend who changed his response after the deadline).
We're 15 minutes in, and I check Facebook to see a message from Patty saying she's here with Harry. Who on Earth is Harry? I had checked the event quite a few times in the past couple of hours, and there was no mention of a Harry. We were well beyond the "squeeze in and fit a couple more chairs" stage. Brian finally arrives, says hi, and walks past our table to the other 8-people table next to it, greeting the people there. Oh, that must be Patty and Harry. And some other dude. And then another person shows up. So we are 12 people for an 8 people booking. Luckily, we are split over the two 8-people tables. And then it dawns on me, I had sat down at the wrong table. But it was too late for that now, as we had already ordered food. Nobody seemed to be kicking us out of the table either, so perhaps the group who had booked it didn't show. Phew.
Part way through our dinner, a few people appear behind us, and the waiter and host seem to be discussing something. Uh-oh, it looks like the people who had booked our table finally showed. Nobody spoke to us about it, and I don't know what they ended up doing with that group, but I really wanted to leave. It was unfair to that group that we were sitting at their table, and they now had to wait for another table large enough to be free. As soon as the people on my table finished eating (except me, because I'm so slow), I asked for my food to be boxed up and requested the bill (OK, Auto hadn't finished either, but he only had half a slice of pizza left).
To be honest, I was pretty pissed off during the entire dinner. My desire to spend time "catching up" with Brian has dropped significantly. Firstly, the only thing he did as a "host" was invite a crapton of people, almost none that I knew. Yep, great start to our "catch up". Secondly, either his friends are inconsiderate people, or he is an inconsiderate person.
When you go to eat at a restaurant, you take up space. There is no getting around that at this point in time. And each restaurant only has finite amount of space. Sure, you can add chairs to an extent, but people still need to move around, so for a popular restaurant on a Friday night, you can't just "drop in". I mentioned a week in advance that I would be booking. The date and time was known three weeks in advance. So the three people who showed up (all Brian's friends, by the way, at least mine had the decency to respond on time), either thought that it'd be fine, they could just show up, in which case they are inconsiderate, or they told Brian, and Brian didn't tell me. In which case Brian is inconsiderate. The last guy, the 2pm RSVP dude, did respond late, but at least he told me he wanted to come, and was accepting of the fact that he might not fit. When the 7 of us were sitting at the table, he looked like he was ready to say, "Sorry guys, I didn't respond last week, so I'm OK with someone else taking my seat."
You might be asking, if his friends are the ones who are inconsiderate, why should that stop you from wanting to see him? Well, I just want to avoid a repeat of this situation. As soon as I got off the phone with the restaurant knowing they wouldn't be able to fit extra people, I spent a lot of time fretting over what I was going to do. I was hoping people wouldn't show. I was mentally preparing myself, if Brian said that a non-RSVPer could stay over an RSVPer, I wanted to be ready to just get up and leave (hey, it's a seat). I guess a part of me had already lost respect for him after he was so willing to just change the time of the dinner (see my reason above).
Thirdly, I think we just don't have as much in common as we did when we met. I think because he is a huge fitness buff, and I was going through my fitness transformation, we had a lot to talk about. Now I find that fitness is jut a background event to me. Sure, I go to the gym, and I go to fitness classes, but they're just like chores now, I don't feel so OMG passionate about it that I want to talk about it all the time.
So when he has recovered from tonight's meal, I plan to have a difficult conversation with him. I want to say that while I'm happy to stay friends, and I am not going to avoid him if we end up at the same social event, I have no desire to go out of my way to meet up with him. Perhaps this is a harsh thing to do, but New Anna says life is too short to water that lemon tree when you don't really like lemons. I have friends who treat me better than that, and those are the friends that I would like to spend my limited social time with.
Am I being too hasty? Am I being too aggressive? I feel like I had to write this all out so that tomorrow morning, after I've slept on it, I will still have the same resolve that I feel now. Am I being too crazy about the etiquette of responding to events?
Edit: I just want to add that this incident alone isn't what makes me want to see him less. It's part of a pattern of behaviour. We have had many rescheduled lunches (sometimes it's my fault, sometimes it's his). But also times where he has been incredibly late, or messages at the last moment apologising but he's double-booked, or plain forgot. Everyone has bad days, but I just feel a general lack of respect for my time.
It started out as a lunch. "Hey, haven't seen you in a while, want to catch up during lunch?" I agreed, but was busy that week, so suggested a different week. Lunch turned into dinner, as Brian decided he wanted to go to a particular restaurant. I suggested that we invite the people we went to get burgers with last time, and he agreed. So I created a Facebook event, with a date, and invited those people, plus MrFodder. He asked to be made a host, so I did it.
I woke up the next day to find that the little catch up dinner had turned into an event with over 30 invitees. OK, fine, he's the one doing the challenge, whatever. To be honest, the idea of being a large dinner was not appealing to me at all. MrFodder dropped out, and I wanted to as well, but as the host, I felt obligated to go. The event was created 3 weeks and 2 days in advance, and I gave people until the week before the event to respond before I'd be making the booking.
At that point, I had 8 yes responses (including myself), and 3 maybes. So I made the booking for 8 people (Old Anna would have thought about some algorithm, looking at the statistics of people who say "maybe" and factoring in the likelihood of them coming. New Anna says maybe means no). The restaurant is pretty busy, and we only had a limited window to eat, as it was for a Friday night, during peak time.
The night before the event, I log in to Facebook, and see that it suddenly says 9 people are attending, the new person being one of Brian's friends (I know his name wasn't there, because I said that if people said they were going, and didn't show up, I'd have the right to slap them twice the next time I saw them, or once at a future undisclosed time. I wrote down those names so I would remember who said they were going). I call the restaurant asking if we can increase the booking from 8 to 9 people, and they tell me that they don't have room, and we can either eat an hour earlier, or two and a half hours later. Well, an hour earlier was not going to happen, as people needed time to get from work to the restaurant, and given that I now wake up at 5:20am to go to work I really didn't want to be starting dinner at 9pm. Old Anna would have started calling seven other people, try to get a diplomatic response, and then do whatever that was. New Anna called Brian and asked what he wanted to do. He wanted to move if to the earlier or later time. Old Anna would have said sure, and made it happen. New Anna said no.
And here's why. Eight managed to reply in time. Eight people had organised their day to take into account that we would be having dinner at 6:45. All because one person suddenly wanted to come did not mean that we should completely re-arrange everything. That is not fair for the eight other people who did the right thing. Who were organised enough to be able to click a button saying, "Yes, I will go".
As a compromise (because even New Anna knows that it's good to compromise), I figured at the worst case, we could all squish up a bit, and add another chair to the table. Even though, sigh, it means the poor waiters will have to constantly try and work their way around this oddly seated person. Until around 2pm, when I checked Facebook again, and got a message from another person saying, "Sorry, I know it's last minute, but since you're already calling to change the booking, could you add me as well?" I explained that I wasn't able to add more people to the booking, but said that if he was willing, he could come along and hope that someone doesn't show. And at the very worst case, if we're already squishing to fit an extra person, we should be able to do the same on the other side. But I told him that if there was no space to fit in, then the people who had responded earlier would take priority. He said that he understood.
I finally make it to the restaurant, and tell them that I have a booking. The guy takes me to the side section, and points to a couple of tables, then goes back to the hosting station. I wasn't quite sure which of the two 8-people tables he pointed to, but one of them already had a small group of people I didn't know, so I figured we must be at the other one. Slowly, people start to show up, including the 2pm RSVP dude (he messaged me earlier, but I was busy at work and didn't check until 2pm). We are now 7 people sitting at an 8 people table, and Brian and two other people we were expecting are nowhere to be seen (in case you're confused: we had six people who had responded, plus the 2pm RSVP dude, we were still waiting on Brian, his friend who responded on time (Patty), and his other friend who changed his response after the deadline).
We're 15 minutes in, and I check Facebook to see a message from Patty saying she's here with Harry. Who on Earth is Harry? I had checked the event quite a few times in the past couple of hours, and there was no mention of a Harry. We were well beyond the "squeeze in and fit a couple more chairs" stage. Brian finally arrives, says hi, and walks past our table to the other 8-people table next to it, greeting the people there. Oh, that must be Patty and Harry. And some other dude. And then another person shows up. So we are 12 people for an 8 people booking. Luckily, we are split over the two 8-people tables. And then it dawns on me, I had sat down at the wrong table. But it was too late for that now, as we had already ordered food. Nobody seemed to be kicking us out of the table either, so perhaps the group who had booked it didn't show. Phew.
Part way through our dinner, a few people appear behind us, and the waiter and host seem to be discussing something. Uh-oh, it looks like the people who had booked our table finally showed. Nobody spoke to us about it, and I don't know what they ended up doing with that group, but I really wanted to leave. It was unfair to that group that we were sitting at their table, and they now had to wait for another table large enough to be free. As soon as the people on my table finished eating (except me, because I'm so slow), I asked for my food to be boxed up and requested the bill (OK, Auto hadn't finished either, but he only had half a slice of pizza left).
To be honest, I was pretty pissed off during the entire dinner. My desire to spend time "catching up" with Brian has dropped significantly. Firstly, the only thing he did as a "host" was invite a crapton of people, almost none that I knew. Yep, great start to our "catch up". Secondly, either his friends are inconsiderate people, or he is an inconsiderate person.
When you go to eat at a restaurant, you take up space. There is no getting around that at this point in time. And each restaurant only has finite amount of space. Sure, you can add chairs to an extent, but people still need to move around, so for a popular restaurant on a Friday night, you can't just "drop in". I mentioned a week in advance that I would be booking. The date and time was known three weeks in advance. So the three people who showed up (all Brian's friends, by the way, at least mine had the decency to respond on time), either thought that it'd be fine, they could just show up, in which case they are inconsiderate, or they told Brian, and Brian didn't tell me. In which case Brian is inconsiderate. The last guy, the 2pm RSVP dude, did respond late, but at least he told me he wanted to come, and was accepting of the fact that he might not fit. When the 7 of us were sitting at the table, he looked like he was ready to say, "Sorry guys, I didn't respond last week, so I'm OK with someone else taking my seat."
You might be asking, if his friends are the ones who are inconsiderate, why should that stop you from wanting to see him? Well, I just want to avoid a repeat of this situation. As soon as I got off the phone with the restaurant knowing they wouldn't be able to fit extra people, I spent a lot of time fretting over what I was going to do. I was hoping people wouldn't show. I was mentally preparing myself, if Brian said that a non-RSVPer could stay over an RSVPer, I wanted to be ready to just get up and leave (hey, it's a seat). I guess a part of me had already lost respect for him after he was so willing to just change the time of the dinner (see my reason above).
Thirdly, I think we just don't have as much in common as we did when we met. I think because he is a huge fitness buff, and I was going through my fitness transformation, we had a lot to talk about. Now I find that fitness is jut a background event to me. Sure, I go to the gym, and I go to fitness classes, but they're just like chores now, I don't feel so OMG passionate about it that I want to talk about it all the time.
So when he has recovered from tonight's meal, I plan to have a difficult conversation with him. I want to say that while I'm happy to stay friends, and I am not going to avoid him if we end up at the same social event, I have no desire to go out of my way to meet up with him. Perhaps this is a harsh thing to do, but New Anna says life is too short to water that lemon tree when you don't really like lemons. I have friends who treat me better than that, and those are the friends that I would like to spend my limited social time with.
Am I being too hasty? Am I being too aggressive? I feel like I had to write this all out so that tomorrow morning, after I've slept on it, I will still have the same resolve that I feel now. Am I being too crazy about the etiquette of responding to events?
Edit: I just want to add that this incident alone isn't what makes me want to see him less. It's part of a pattern of behaviour. We have had many rescheduled lunches (sometimes it's my fault, sometimes it's his). But also times where he has been incredibly late, or messages at the last moment apologising but he's double-booked, or plain forgot. Everyone has bad days, but I just feel a general lack of respect for my time.
Tuesday 1 September 2015
In Case I Don't See You
It's settled, I am Truman Burbank.
It happened again! Which makes it 3 out of 3 times.
I told my friends at work about it, and none of them believed me, so because we had our fortnightly game today, I decided to see if it would happen again in order to prove it to them. And I was a bit doubtful at first, but once again, was presented with two bags, one of them with a lot of chips (though less than I remember) and another massive bag with just my burger in it (usually, the chips and the burger go in the same bag, at least that's what happens when the other people in my office order from there). I have to say, I'm not complaining, I am just really curious why it's happening!
So now I have a new theory. By pure co-incidence, my allergies have triggered a secret code. When I order my burger, I ask for no cheese, no mayo. I think this is some sort of secret code identifying me as the messenger. By showing up and putting in my order, the cashier is responding with another code word, "That's $9.50 please", at which I fumble around for a 50 cent coin, but to no avail, and apologise. She replies, "That's OK" and hands me my ticket. The purpose of the giant serving of chips is that I'm supposed to take it back to the secret hideout where they do money laundering and drug running, and share with the other people at the "office".
Instead, I am ruining their plans and taking it back to my co-workers to snack on while we trade wheat for wood and steal longest road (I won today, yay!). Between the five of us, we didn't manage to finish the bag of chips, and I ate a lot more than I should have because I hate wasting food. :(
Anyway, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.
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