‹ 31.10.02 / 0 comment(s) ›
How many Fs are in the following paragraph:
RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC
STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
Three? No, you're wrong. Try again.
‹ 31.10.02
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The long weekend went well ... the perfect antidote to three days of hard work at the Ministry! Much alcohol was consumed, much barbecued food was consumed and much rest was caught up on. A few new people were encountered too including friends of Herb's down from Auckland for the weekend, and the charming Gareth who was up from Christchurch - go visit his site for the extended megamix version of how to really have a good weekend in Wellington. And no, I wasn't ignoring him later on ... let's just say he looked, um, busy ;)
‹ 31.10.02
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If you take guilty pleasure in fastening two or more pieces of paper together with a small bent strip of wire, then hie thee hence to Virtual Stapler and staple yourself silly. Samuel Slocum would be proud.
‹ 26.10.02
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After three days of work, there's a public holiday on Monday. And it's Labour Day. Oh delicious irony, I kiss you! While we're on matters working, who invented "casual Fridays"? The internet is strangely unhelpful on this burning question but there are a few people out there (here's one; here's another) who are prepared to vent their displeasure at the concept.
‹ 26.10.02
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Well, the first day at work went well ... there's a whole of learning to do, which is to be expected in such a nebulous field. I think I'm up for the challenge though and that's the important thing. Yesterday was spent in a dervish-like frenzy of hair-cutting and shirt-and-tie buying which ultimately proved to be rather annoying. My God there are a lot of ugly ties out there. Rack upon rack of the ill-textured and ill-coordinated ... pink and olive-green argyle will never be a good look I'm afraid. Still, they pale in comparison to the specimens on this site. Egads! Later on, the internet again proved itself as the handiest invention known to man when I decided to teach myself how to tie a proper "half Windsor". After a smallish number of attempts, I succeeded ... and so can you.
‹ 23.10.02
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Unfortunate mail drop of the week:
A local government sponsored solution to incontinence? Alas, no. The next line below the fold read, "Make a submission on Hutt City Council and Wellington City Council's proposal to jointly manage water services". Still, you can't blame a boy for thinking the worst.
‹ 23.10.02
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The road to employment is a long and fraught one. After the end of varsity in 1997, I decided to stay on in Dunedin and job hunt. That time, it took just over six months of "government collection" and part-time work before a sneaky Taskforce Green subsidy (which was clearly not used for the purposes its creators had in mind!) got me into full-time work at the University of Otago's Management Department. The next big career hurdle was the search for work in London in March of 2000 and, to my eternal gratitude, occured at a time where there was a plethora of straight-forward HTML-coding work going around (talk about good timing). That hunt was over and done with in a little over four weeks.
I guess I never really knew what to expect when I ended up on my home turf again. Would it be a protracted experience? Or something quick and painless? Well, the two decided to fight it out and I ended up somewhere in the middle. I applied, and was turned down for, work as a Parliamentary Officer (Select Committees), Strategic Analyst, Analyst (Corporate Reporting), Advisory Officer, Research Analyst, Legal Information Officer, Administrator (Research and Equity), Research Communication Co-ordinator, Legal Information and Research Officer/Librarian, Legal Publication Officer, Information Analyst, Reporting Analyst, Policy Analyst and Assistant Crown Counsel. There were only two interviews out of all those applications and there's also another seven of the bloody things still in being considered.
But all that doesn't really matter anymore. As of next Wednesday, I'm officially an Analyst for one of the Government's major social service ministries ... and I'm bloody chuffed with that. Total time to find? Around two and a half months. Frustrating, yes ... but it sure feels good to be back in the land of the working.
‹ 18.10.02
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Gamespot has been a favourite of mine for some time now: it's pretty much head and shoulders above the competition and is basically the biggest repository for all things electrogaming on the web. So, I tend to stop by every now and then ... usually when I'm in the grips of a major game addiction or two (Warcraft III and Black & White, I'm currently looking in your direction).
Surprisingly, in this world of ever increasing user-pays demands on the net, the site has remained free since its inception. You can guess what's happened, right? Yep, the good parental folks at CNET have birthed a subscription service called Gamespot Complete. This isn't a gripe though! The price for full and unfettered access is reasonable - $US4.95 a month, or $US24.95 a year - and you still get a fair amount of stuff in the free version. The most interesting thing though, from a usability perspective, is that each story or link is coded with either an "open green lock" a "yellow clock" or a "locked red lock" icon, in other words "free for all", "free for seven days" and "only for members" respectively. So, if you want to continue using the site for free, you know at a glance what material you can get to and what you can't. Nice and easy and without the annoying premium content teasers employed by Salon and its ilk. So, kudos to Gamespot for a transition which could have been handled a much more restrictive and annoying fashion.
And speaking of Salon, why didn't anyone tell me about this? I dunno, you go away for a few months ...
‹ 16.10.02
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Tasty nosh was consumed the other night by myself, ex-London flatmate Jason and old school buddies Todd and Kit. And how could we resist a restaurant, serving up a variety of Asian dishes, called ... wait for it ... Monsoon Poon! You wonder if they're aware of the slightly dubious meaning of the second half of that name, but then you see they advertise with the slogan "Love You Long Time", and you wonder no more.
‹ 16.10.02
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Hospital rejects porn film cameras:
"Paul Geoghegan, representing film distributer Vixen Direct, said chief social worker Shannon Pakura had been 'given a clear assurance' the actual moment of birth would not be shown in the film."Phew. For a moment there I was actually worried.
Update: Porn film child placed under court's guardianship
‹ 11.10.02
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So, you run a zoo. And you have a few animals. And these animals tend to ... erm ... shit a lot. So what do you do with it all? Market it of course! Now, what would a catchy product name be? Why, how's about Endangered Faeces! Genius!
‹ 10.10.02
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Oh, and ickle.org has returned from it's holiday hiatus ... go check it out and then submit something of your own. The power of Christ compels you!
‹ 8.10.02
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He resurfaces! Yep, I'm back one and all ... typing this entry via my new ninja kickass PC (which arrived last Friday) from the (today) sunny climes of our nation's capital, Wellington. I'm actually a bit drained, having had an interview this morning for an Analyst position with the Ministry of Health - yes, the job hunt continues ... a thoroughly frustrating and lengthy process and one I'll be quite pleased to see the back of, hopefully sooner rather than later. So, fingers crossed for me ... I'll find out next week either way.
Life in New Zealand goes on, fairly unchanged since I last left it in the autumn of 2000. It's been fantastic catching up with the eclectic collection of people you seem to accumulate in life - family (both the regularly close and generally estranged), friends, former colleagues, flatmates and other such ne'er-do-wells. My mum celebrated her 50th birthday in style at the end of August (read "enormous piss-up") and one my cousins became a father. Life indeed marches on.
Wellington is proving to be a great place to be too - there's a good vibe to the city, good restaurants, lots of cosy bars and cafés, a reasonable shopping precinct and a superlative view from our (being mine and the ever lovely Kyle's) flat, thusly:
Things could be a lot worse, right?
‹ 8.10.02
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Vancouver
After farewelling Sarah, The 'Hound spirited me across the border and into Canada - no real hassles there, not counting the minor inconvenience of unloading and reloading every man, woman and child (and their luggage) of course. Home for the next few days was the Global Village Backpackers in downtown Vancouver, which offered the usual mix of friendly travellers, thinly-disguised vagrants, snoring bunkmates, cheap barbeque, questionable video choices, well-patronised vending machines, and pricey internet access. Pretty much all we love about the hostelling experience, right? Accommodations aside, Vancouver was a wonderful city which I had a great time exploring - wandering around the unexpectedly dense downtown zone, the historic Gastown area, indulging my apparent predilection for urban viewing platforms by shinnying up "The Lookout!" ... all good stuff. After retaining the services of a competent tour guide after a Saturday night out in Davie Street, some of the city's more outlying areas were taken in - the beautifully tranquil UBC's Nitobe Memorial Garden was a real highlight, as were the spectacular views from around the bay. Vancouver's wealth of tasty, inexpensive food was also indulged - cheap and cheerful Chinese, after watching the sun go down on a walk around the Stanley Park peninsula, certainly hit the spot.
So ... a beautiful location, friendly locals and fine food - a great, albeit brief, introduction to Canada and the perfect end to my travels. The getting home was an interesting exercise though - an unexpected day in L.A. after a missed connection to Auckland ... these things tend to happen though when airport security hasn't noticed that a metal detector has been turned off for ten minutes, necessitating the entire reprocessing of around five full flights worth of grumpy passengers. That hitch aside, finally arriving back on the opposite side of the globe was great - after two-and-a-bit years of being a foreigner, it was strangely satisfying to waltz past the crowds and front up at the counter designated for New Zealand citizens. In your face, tourists! Auckland's icy, early morning air also did an effective job of letting me know I was back in the depths of an Antipodean winter.
Home. They say there's no place like it, and now that it's a few months down the line and I've managed to settled back in almost entirely ... I think they may just be right.
‹ 1.10.02
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