For my final post in Blog Every Day April, I give you this multi-part epic; a reward to my readership (all 2 of you) to digest and (hopefully) enjoy.

Static electricity

On the way to/from work is a public access elevator located at the back of a bookshop that can take me up to the street level that has my work building. I don't often take this lift, I instead take the stairs beside it (I only have to climb/descend 4 stories) as walking to/from work is the only real exercise I get. On the occasions that I do take this lift (eg: am full from lunch so don't feel like going up 4 stories worth of stairs in-case a wrong bend somewhere causes it to rupture), I approach the moment with dread.

There's nothing really wrong with the lift (OK, I lie, the lift often breaks down and the 'out of service' sign is an all too familiar sight) and on the days that it works it works as expected. But it's not the lift I'm afraid of; it's the 'call lift' button that scares me.

The call lift button is a small plastic button embedded in a large metal plate, with a woollen carpet on the floor leading up to it, and thanks to the air conditioning system the atmosphere is always dry. If you don't hit the button directly (which is every time because of it's size) it's a perfect recipe for getting static shocks.

Static electricity frightens me.

When I was about 6 or 7 years old I had a slot car set. It had a pretty basic figure-8 track, nothing fancy, but it was what I had so I made do with it. One day I was playing around with the cars on the track, trying to see how fast I could make them go. Their top speed was OK, but I wanted to make them go faster.

My mind made the connection that the speed the cars went was proportional to the amount of energy (current, if you want to get technical) it received that flowed through the controller; the harder my finger was squeezing the trigger, the less resistance was being applied to the current going to the car, and the faster the car went. Somehow I got the idea that if it had More Power, say, from an additonal electrical source like a second power point, then the car might go even faster. And so I acted on this idea with all the reckless abandon of my age.

Details escape me at this point, but the result was that I was holding something conductive as it was shoved into the power point. The power point bit back and gave me the most painful shock I have ever felt. Tears were shed, and from that day on I had a very healthy respect for electricity.

It does more than make shit glow yellow

Several other events since then have reinforced this notion: at age 9 or 10 during a school trip to a farm I got zapped by an electrical fence, and at age 17 our physics teacher got us all to wash and link our hands to create a human circuit hooked-up to a hand-crank generator under his control.

While not on par with the shocks of mains electricity, getting jolted by static electricity is a braincell or 2 away from the memories of the slot car experiment, which in turn are a braincell or 2 away from memories of extreme pain, and so it's something I avoid if at all possible. I often keep a cautious distance from the static electricity balls that you find in science exhibitions in museums, and I would rather climb 4 stories than risk getting shocked by the call lift button. When I do have to press that button, I pull out my cellphone and use the protruding aerial to press the button for me.

Yesterday I did just that and drew an odd stare from one of my workmates. I told him about how that button keeps shocking me, and he started talking about it in a "Me too!" sort of way - reinforcing the notion that that button is to be avoided at all costs. I doubt that getting himself zapped by mains electricity is somewhere in his past, but it was good to know I wasn't the only person becoming wary of that button.

My online diary

Despite all the Facebook-stalking that goes on, only a handful of my friends have caught-on to the fact that I've been writing to my blog every day for this entire month. One of them didn't even know until this morning when, as we were walking to work, I told them. "I did notice the extra blog activity," she said, "but I never clicked on the link because I'm on dial-up."

Do you have Facebook?

Getting passed the obvious shock caused by the comment about dial-up, I had to recount a few of the things that I blogged about over the previous month to let her know what was going on. "Awww, is it like your online diary Em; do you write about Your Feelings?" she asked in a mocking tone.

I thought long and hard about that question, before coming to the conclusion that yes, it has turned into my online diary and yes, I do talk about my feelings.

Taking a quick tally of the things I have written about, here's what we find:

• meeting my neighbours
• getting fooled on April Fool's Day
• how it irks me when some people talk about healthy eating like they're diet pros (or maybe it was my repressed jealousy at, no matter what I do, statistically I'm going to die long before they do)
• how my lips dry-up when the seasons change
• how flu makes me emo
• that my IT job is nothing like 24
• Outlook's out-of-office reply
• Tips for business bloggers x4
• BEDA buddies x2
• how I learned I'm not that great of a singer
• how buying CDs makes me feel old
• my unique approach to hugging
• my love of cold days
• Mother's Day
• my unique approach to small talk
• Blogger's block
• how I make a fool of myself by eating too much
• the impact BEDA has had on my sleeping patterns
• the things I miss from city living x3

It gets pretty personal in places, and you could learn more about me from reading this blog than taking the time to befriend me in real-life before I finally trust you with this sort of information. So I don't know why I'm entrusting the internet with this sort of information. Then again, nothing in there is particularly damaging to me (except maybe the electricity-is-my-kryptonite thing, and I've just given you a tool to use against me if you were planning to kidnap and torture me).

Re-telling a few of those stories to her though, she wasn't all too impressed by the lack of scandal that takes place in my blog. Then again, this is a friend who rates real-life against Gossip Girl. So, as a fan of Gossip Girl, I asked her what would I have to do to compete? The answer:

Her: Develop a drug habit, after you were on rehab for a previous drug habit, and then sleep with your teacher, who you thought wasn't your teacher anymore because you think she's going to be fired, and so does she, except that neither of you know that she actually won't get fired.

Suddenly my life becomes insignificant and doesn't compare. I think this friend will have to divorce herself of me once she learns that I'll never be able to do, equal, or exceed the expectations she has set above.

The end of Blog Every Day April

I did it. I finally did it. What started out as something I stupidly thought would be really easy to do has instead turned into a writing challenge which has both punished and rewarded me at the same time.

You can haz finish line

The punishing parts:

• I have had to organize several of my days around blogging so that I can meet the daily deadline. Quite often I would find myself blogging from as early as noon so that I could get it done before whatever event I had scheduled in the evening. Sometimes I would think about it in advance, quietly letting the potential threads of each topic be born, strech, and die in my head. In short: my days sometimes revolved around the blog.
• I have had very few good nights of sleep since taking up this challenge. Particularly weekdays, but this is mainly a time management thing. The bags under my eyes have had an entire month to puff up and leave me looking like a zombie most days.

The rewarding parts:

• Blogging every day has increased the speed at which ideas can more easily flow into a readable form, and writing has become easier for me.
• I've found out that my friends actually do read what I write. For those not of my Facebook ilk, I have a Facebook app that duplicated this blog onto Facebook, or posts summaries with links to the full stories here. I've had several of my friends write comments to these posts over the month, and I've learned a few things about them in turn.
• I've become more observant of the things around me and at the same time more cynical of the most mundane things. When sarcasm supposedly flows through your veins like it does mine, this is actually a plus.
• I've made some new internet acquaintances: my BEDA buddies! :D We read each other's stuff and comment on them from time to time.
• I participated in a community activity, and at times it really felt like I had things to contribute to other peoples' lives.

So there's no gold star, no certificate of participation, not even a piece of cake as a reward for what I and other BEDA'ers have done. It was something cool we could do, a commitment we gave ourselves to illustrate a number of points about our abilities. Not all of us made it for the entire month, but if you came out of it feeling pretty good about yourself, what more could you ask for?

Will I do such a thing again? Maybe. At least the next time I can draw upon this experience to make a much more informed decision, instead of accepting the challenge with a smug 'I can do this easy!' attitude.

Will I continue to blog about inane things on an if-not-daily-then-semi-regular basis? You bet!

OH MY!

And that, as one of my BEDA buddies likes to say, is the end of my story :)

Those in the Australia / New Zealand part of the world are likely to be familiar with the words three thrityitis. It's a term used by the Continental cup-a-soup ad campaign in these countries to promote the drinking of their soup products at 3:30pm - the time of day when concentration in the work place hits a low.

It may not be the exact time of day for everyone, but it's in that mid-afternoon slot where things just seem to slow down and mistakes are often made. One time I saw it in effect was a few years ago when I was getting my degree framed.

It was a Thursday afternoon and I was at my desk when my cellphone started ringing. I answered and was greeted by the voice of a young lady ringing to let me know that my degree had been framed and I could pick it up from their shop.

Her: Oh, but we'll be closing early in the afternoon on Saturday, so don't come in tomorrow."
Me: Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Friday. You're still open on Friday right?
Her: Huh? Oh whoops, yes you can come in tomorrow. The closing stuff was meant for Saturday.

After that phone call was over, I took a look at the time: 3:38pm. Roughly 3:30-itis time.

I went to pick up my framed degree the following day. I was so excited about it I almost went to buy the person who called me some of that Continental Cup-a-soup stuff, as both a thank you and a joke.

Nowadays I face a different sort of battle at around 3:30: staving-off sleep.

We learn that eating large meals can make you sleepy. I learned this lesson during my university years, where I would eat lunch on campus. I never brought my own food, so I would eat from the places that were on campus, which weren't always serving the healthiest food options available. Most importantly (but I didn't know it then) was that it was the stuff that I was choosing to eat and the amounts of it which made me fall asleep faster.

So there I was, eating too much of the kind of food that would in lesser amounts still easily knock me unconscious. During my first year at university, I was lucky enough to not have too many classes too close to lunch time, but when I did, I was often drowsy and using all of my remaining concentration from keeping my eyelids from closing. All I needed was a 15 minute nap, and on the occasions that I did succumb to slumber, at the end of it I would feel great and refreshed. The problem lay in the lead-up to the nap where I sometimes spent 20 minutes trying to not fall asleep.

20 minutes fighting sleep + 15 minutes sleeping = most of the lecture gone.

That could easily be me

To fight this problem in second year, I went to my friends' psychology lecture which was sandwiched between lunch and my afternoon classes. It was a big class, so 1 more person - particularly one who doesn't take psychology - wouldn't be noticed. There, I would sit with them, lay my head on the desk, and fall asleep.

This didn't always work however. I often found the psychology lectures quite interesting and at times stayed awake throughout the entire thing to learn a little. One time, they even brought in a hypnotist! That was cool. Suffice it to say, this wasn't my most successful solution to the sleepiness problem.

In my 3rd year, I tried to get a nap on the couches in this common area where my friends would often hang out. It was a bit noisy, so naps weren't always easy to come by.

In my 4th and final year, the 4th year BIT (Bachelor of Information Technology) students had their own computer lab, and there I would eat my lunch, and then take a nice nap afterwards. It was a relatively quiet environment, so sleep was easy to come by. It was the best solution I had come up with.

Unfortunately, I can't replicate this solution at my work. If I happen to make the silly mistake of eating too much for lunch and then have an afternoon with either not much to do or with a task that really isn't all that engaging, then the drowsiness starts to return, and I find it hard to fight back. Once, I had been caught-out by my team leader, and on a few occasions my work mates have jolted me awake, either by coming up to me and saying something loudly, or ringing my phone.

If I do eat too much sugars (carbohydrates and what not) I can get hypoglycaemic quite easily due to the over-abundance of insulin my body makes. I'm like an anti-diabetic according to my diabetic friend, but am still susceptible to the same problems she faces if she doesn't watch what she eats. The thing is, she's the one that takes the insulin shots; all I have to do is alter my diet - smaller meals more often, don't chow-down the carbs at lunch, etc - so I feel quite bad when I make the mistake and eat too much at lunch and then start feeling drowsy afterwards.

Now that I do know a diabetic, I feel I'm not doing the best I can with the luck I've been given, and so berate myself every time this happens. I really have to fix this and stick with it; if not for the approval of my diabetic friend, then for my own well-being.

My last and final gripe with having moved back to the suburbs: the slow slow internets.

I always suspected that the kind of broadband we were getting out in the suburbs was slow, but I never really knew how bad it was until I moved into the city. On a good day in the suburbs, if you wanted to watch a YouTube clip that was 1 minute long, you would have to load the page, then pause the clip at the beginning, and return to it 4 minutes later so that you can get smooth playback from start to finish.

That was the general formula: multiply the video length by 4 to get the average loading time. We didn't even bother with high-quality or high-def clips, for streaming anyway; we always downloaded those with some multiple-connection download manager.

Anyway, when I made it to the city, one of the first things I had organized was the broadband (I actually had it set up before I got a fridge in... priorities, I know) and once the computer was set up, did a YouTube test. The difference? I could stream low-quality YouTube video!

I could load videos left and right, download podcasts, and have a torrent running in the background, all at the same time. I had finally caught up to technology as at 3 years ago, and it was great.

So what self-respecting IT guy would be caught with a slow internet connection? Unfortunately for me, that's kind of out of my hands, and no amount of shouting from the citizens of this country at the national telco has done any good to get it sorted.

And although it's not my problem, the slow internet thing got me thinking about other kinds of IT guy myths which I've been doing wrong. I mean, I don't have a digital camera, I don't have a smart phone (my cellphone doesn't even do + code dialing...), I'm not an early adopter (I only got the Xbox360 a couple of months ago) and I don't have a USB flash drive. I was probably the last of my group to get onto Facebook (a year of peer pressure finally got the better of me), I don't have any shirts which make references to internet fads, and I got a Twitter account only 2 months before Oprah did.

I think I'm just too cautious in my ways. While that doesn't explain the lack of digital camera, I often take the 'wait and see' approach to things such that by the time I've waited and seen, the thing in question has already hit the mainstream. Now that I'm looking for an apartment to buy in the city I just left, I think a cautious approach is a good thing to have. Who knows, maybe a cautious approach could've averted the subprime lending collapse.

So, I've taken my time, I've thought a lot, thought of everything I got and apart from blatantly ripping Cat Steven lyrics I've learned enough about what it is I am looking for in my own apartment. Amongst those things: high speed internet and a high-pressure shower. Everything else, as my favourite quote says, is negotiable ;)

Following on the back of yesterday's blog post, here I thought I'd mention a couple of other things that I'll be missing from my time in the city (and looking forward to when I return).

High-pressure water for showers

This was something I never knew I had until I moved into the city: shower water that can cut through my thick mop of hair and reach my scalp. At first I thought the water pressure at my old apartment was too strong, but, as with everything else, I got used to it. Then, when I spent a weekend with the family soon after moving out and had a shower, I was surprised at how weak the old shower was.

For years I had been showering with this water pressure, but only in that weekend did I notice that the rain does a better job than this! The water just hit the top of my hair and then slid away as my slightly oily hair built a protective shield over my hair which this low low low pressure water couldn't penetrate. No wonder I like rainy days; it's because only then am I properly washing my hair!

Now that's my kind of water

No more trains

No longer having to schedule my life around the train timetable was probably the biggest plus of city living. It meant I could spend more time out when I was with friends, most of whom live in the city too. Dance classes were also something I could extend without the trains; previously I'd cut the classes a bit short so I could catch the train home at a reasonable hour of the night. Although one thing I learned was that soon after the time I would normally leave to catch a train, my dancing would start to deteriorate. So maybe it was a good thing I caught the train when I did.

I could also enjoy other events held in the city a bit more when I didn't have to think about how long it would take for me to get to the station.

Don't let that smile rule your life

Home and Away

If you told me that I'd end-up getting hooked on a soap opera if I left home, I never would've believed you. But that's exactly what happened.

I normally leave work just after 5pm, and with a 20 minute walk to my former apartment, it positioned me perfectly to watch the pre-news show, which happened to be Home and Away - before that it was The Biggest Loser. After work, sometimes I just wanted to vege-out in-front of the TV, and given the timing of my return, Home and Away became the show I wound-down to.

With the train schedule, I can't watch this show without leaving work early, but I don't exactly feel like going to work earlier to make up my hours. Luckily for me the national TV station has a Home and Away omnibus on Sunday morning which plays all the previous week's episodes back-to-back, so I don't have to miss a thing!

So I'm out of the city - back with the family in the suburbs as I make my next move for buying a place - and having now spent 2 nights back in my old bed and room, I've noticed something here that I've been missing during my time in the city: hay fever.

The family house isn't like some sort of rural setting surrounded by rolling hills without a neighbour for miles; it's a pretty average suburban setting, but the house has it's own Lawn in both a Front and Back Yard, as well as Bushes and Trees around the back. When you wake up you hear Birds and can see Trees out my window. Whereas my now-former-apartment was a massive concrete block with just 1 big tree outside (probably only there because it was there before the building was built and so resource consent couldn't be obtained to cut it down) and the sounds of chirping have been replaced by the sirens of emergency vehicles. But in the city I never really get hay fever.

It's kind of sad to think that my body is better suited to an environment where the air is full of cigarette smoke and car exhaust than it is with whatever stuff nature throws into it. It wasn't always like this though: I remember when cigarette smoke used to make me physically ill. As a child when I spent too much time around smoking adults (like when my parents went to a friend's house and brought me along) I'd spend the next day vomiting into a bucket. Now, the only consequence of spending time with smokers is that I have to send my clothes to the laundry because the smoke has infused itself into the fabric.

Chain smoking++

It's too bad my body can't do the same thing with pollen or whatever it is in the air that throws my immune system off-kilter.

Short blog post tonight as I should get some sleep; I have to get used to catching the trains into the city again O_o

Oh, and I have, in just this month so far, surpassed the the most number of posts I have made to this blog in a single year (26 posts this month now, 25 posts in 2006).

...of Blog Every Day April.

While I've never written it here, I've admitted to several people face-to-face that this blogging thing is a lot more difficult than I first thought. How hard could it be to come up with something to write every day? I thought, and it was that attitude that I had when I went into this thing. Now, I'm looking at the light at the end of the tunnel that is the month of May and anticipating that month greatly as it creeps closer towards me.

Just because of this blogging thing, April has felt like the longest month in a long time.

Before all this, when my routine was pretty much dictated for me - wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, do more work, come back home, eat dinner, sleep - the days passed by faster than ever and it was days like that which felt as if they were being wasted. Now, with the days seeming to pass much slower, it doesn't feel like I'm wasting so much time.

So what has BEDA injected into my routine that has caused this perception of the slowing of time? I can't really pinpoint what it is, but I'm going to make some guesses.

Firstly, it's caused me to lose a lot of sleep.

Often I find myself typing into the wee hours of the night as I attempt to get the next post for the day out before the clock strikes midnight. I upload it to my website, and then go make sure the blogging application I use on Facebook has picked it up and then I manually post it so that it shows up as part of my activity for my friends to read it. Then I duplicate it over to my blog on the Maureen Johnson Ning network so other members of BEDA (most notably my BEDA buddies) can read and comment on it. By the time this is all done, it's probably just after midnight, meaning I cut my sleep short by maybe an hour. Multiply this by the number of days in April thus far (excluding the rare occasion when I write it ahead of time because of other commitments in the day) and that's a lot of hours of sleep lost.

So there's the possibility the days seem longer because I'm sleeping less.

zzzzzzzz

Secondly, I'm taking the time to observe the world around me a lot more than usual.

Taking the time to notice more so that I might use it as material for this blog has got me thinking more about those things. I dissect and disseminate everything that might at first seem blog-worthy and maybe try to write a few sentences on the subject in my head to see how the idea will play out. This gets me wondering and using my internal dialogue a lot more, and I think it's this kind of active thinking that has time slow down some. Idle wandering thoughts tend to take me out of the moment such that when I return, it's several minutes later and I've forgotten what I was doing.

So there's also the possibility that active thinking is stretching the time I have available to me.

Deep

Lastly, BEDA has a clearly defined end goal.

When working towards a goal, I tend to feel that a lot more time is spent in the present, the now. Say you've got a job that isn't doing it for you today and all that you want is for your shift to end or for the clock to hit 5pm. The moment seems to drag and that ending is always too far away for your liking. I'm not saying that Blog Every Day April is like a crappy job, but looking forward to something always makes it seem farther away. A more light-hearted example might be of children waiting for Christmas morning to come so that they can see what Santa has left for them under the tree.

So maybe it's just one of those things, or maybe it's a combination of all of the above. All I know is that BEDA has been good for me: my friends (and maybe random passers-by) have gotten to know a bit more about me, I've gained BEDA buddies and got to feel like I was part of a larger community in the process, and I feel as if this month has not been wasted.

All this guesswork as to my changing perception of time has reminded me of this quote from Einstein - a man who at least knew what he was talking about:

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.

Given that, BEDA is more akin to a hot stove than a pretty girl; a hot stove that has made me feel good about myself.

Yesterday my dad and I were going to have lunch together, but we didn't know where we were gonna go. My dad suggested we try a place neither of us had been to: a place called Burger Fuel. So we met up, made our way to Burger Fuel, and having never been there before, I used my knowledge of other popular burger places to make a guess as to what might be a good lunch for me.

Big mistake.

What I ended-up doing was underestimating the size of the burgers they served, so was very surprised when I was given one of the largest burgers I had ever seen. I only just managed to eat it all, before walking ever so slowly back to work. OK, 'walking' is the wrong word for it; 'waddling' is a better description of the movement I used to get myself back to work.

Suffice it to say, I didn't feel hungry again until moments before a planned dinner with my friend... where I made the same mistake all over again.

This time the place was called Lone Star. Like Burger Fuel, I had never been here before, so it was a good day for me to try new places. And just like at Burger Fuel, I underestimated the size of the portions they served here. Despite being warned by my friend who sounded like a Lone Star veteran, I only had myself to blame when they placed in-front of me the largest plate of food I had ever seen.

This time I never finished my food, nor did my friend finish hers. It didn't seem possible for any normal human being (that is, a person with 1 stomach) to complete the meals they served here in one sitting. I must've made it only 1/3 of the way through my meal before my insides just gave up.

Enough! Enough! I could hear my stomach say. You've already had 1 huge meal that almost killed me, now you want to do it AGAIN in THE SAME 24 HOUR PERIOD!!!??

During the walk home I poured all of my concentration into not throwing up. I was probably waddling again, but I didn't care; I would have used any movement, no matter how ridiculous, that had the lowest chance of puncturing a hole in my stomach, and the highest chance of getting me home. If it's good enough for the penguins, it's good enough for me.

'sup cuz

So that was pretty much the recurring theme for yesterday. What makes this whole ordeal even stupider is that this isn't the first time this has ever happened to me.

Rewind to almost a year ago. I was being invited out to a group dinner by someone I had recently met through the ceroc dance classes I had just started attending (I've called this person 'amazing baking girl' in a previous post, so will continue to call her so here). Amazing baking girl took us all out to place called HK BBQ which I haven't been to before (seeing a pattern here? New restaurants must be a precursor to gluttonous behaviour). But it wasn't HK BBQ that killed me. You see, everyone wanted dessert afterwards, which HK BBQ doesn't do. Down the road however, was a place called Strawberry Fare - a place that had earned almost legendary status with me after hearing so many great stories about it from so many other people - and that was where we went next.

Not only was Strawberry Fare another place I had never been to, but it had one of the best cheesecakes I had ever eaten. Yes, I ate ALL of my cheesecake against the advice of my stomach.

Stop eating! it would say, You've reached capacity! We'll have to store any further food in your throat if you don't stop!

STFU stomach!, I would tell it, After all these years of hearing about this place I am FINALLY here so I am going to enjoy it and let this magical cheesecake flow through my veins!

Well, you can guess what happened next. Waddling was involved, as was concentrating on breathing in, breathing out, and entering the PIN for my card between breaths, so that I wouldn't collapse from the shock that my body was undergoing in reaction to my new weight.

It's a story that amazing backing girl remembers well to this very day. I remember it too, yet I never let the lessons learned that night guide my choices at lunch or dinner yesterday. It's like a blindspot in my knowledge, and something I may well repeat and may well be the death of me, provided my statistically short lifespan doesn't kill me first.

Repeat it enough times, it's bound to stick... eventually

So why do some lessons stick with us and alter our behaviour to prevent us making those mistakes again, while others get missed no matter how many times we repeat the mistakes?

Well, it had to happen sometime.

Today I thought I'd be one of those awesome Time Management types and get a little blogging done at work. That way, I could get to a dinner I had planned for tonight, enjoy the dinner because I wouldn't have my BEDA commitment nagging at the corner of my thoughts, and then after coming home and posting my pre-written blog, get some sleep.

Well, that was the plan. But as I got my blog out in front of me and sat down to write to it, nothing happened. That is, no words started appearing on the screen, because my fingers weren't pressing keys on the keyboard, because signals from my brain weren't being forwarded to my fingers, because there was nothing going on in my brain.

I was hit with blogger's block.

Oh noes, I started to think, now I'm not going to get anything done, which means I'll have to get something written after the dinner tonight, and that'll make me stay up really late again and then I'll MISS OUT ON MY SLEEP! NOOOOOOOOO!!!11

DO NOT WANT

I'm not the fastest writer in the world, mainly because I spend an disproportionate amount of time thinking about what it is I want to write about. It never was the typing that was the problem - reaching 70, maybe 80 words-per-minute if I want to risk RSI, is not hard for me - the challenge is thinking at 80 words-per-minute. I'm sure that the human brain is capable of 80-somethings per minute, but those somethings are often brain noise that go off on strange tangents.

All this thinking about blogger's block and my failure to come up with anything to blog about reminded me of this picture...

You're also going to need a lot more time

...which in turn reminded me of that saying about how given a room full of monkeys with typewriters and an infinite amount of time (plus some other variables that would make this possible like making the monkeys immortal and having the typewriters never wear-out etc etc) the monkeys would eventually type the works of Shakespeare.

So I continued to follow my failed train of thought like a bored person would follow Wikipedia links, and I stumbled across a page that summarizes a study which tried to do the above: get some monkeys, give them typewriters, and then see what happens (http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2340).

Obviously an infinite amount of time was not possible, nor was lengthening the lifespan of the monkeys indefinitely, so the scientists just did what they could: 6 monkeys, 1 computer, 1 month. The result: the monkeys attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word. Other notable observations:

• the lead male got a stone and started bashing the computer
• the monkeys were more interested in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard

The monkeys eventually did produce 5 pages of text (for very broad and loose definitions of 'text'), but it mainly consisted of the letter S, along with random sprinklings of the letters A, J, L and M. The scientist's response: "obviously English isn't their first language".

I wasn't aiming to write the works of Shakespeare, I was just aiming to write one coherent blog post so that I could enjoy my dinner and catch-up on lost sleep! I'm just 1 monkey, with 2 computers (work and home), and a commitment to blogging every day. Surely that counts for something?

Then I blinked, and realized I had written a blog post. It may not have been my usual fare, but it was a blog post nonetheless, about my attempt at managing my time better, my fear of failing my commitment to BEDA... and pooing monkeys.

I guess that 80-somethings-per-minute of brain noise is good enough for writing a blog after all.

Small talk: it's an obstacle we all have to overcome. As a member of the workforce in an office environment, small talk is the precursor to all work-related face-to-face conversational threads for the day; it's as if it's not possible to get John to complete those reports until you ask John how he or his kids are doing.

The most common small-talk-initiation question is "how are you doing?", and the most common response is one of "good" or "fine". Not wanting to be the one who follows this pattern (I seem to have a habit of doing things differently just for the sake of doing things differently), when it comes to initiating the conversation I'll get straight to what I want to say - none of this "how are you doing?" business (you could be coughing up your internal organs and I'll still get straight to my question first). But when it's me being asked about how I'm doing, instead of answering "good" or "fine" I opt for a different tactic altogether: I think with my stomach.

My second brain

So, conversations at the office with me usually start like this:

Workmate: "Hi Em, how are you?"
Me: "I'm pretty hungry actually; it's almost lunch and there's nothing in my snack drawer 'cause I finished it all yesterday."

Depending on how comfortable I am with the person, responses will range from the general state of my hunger (just acquaintances) to whether or not the shrimp from last night's meal is causing me to visit the toilet at regular intervals (good work mate, must have shared several drinks or meals with them thus far).

It's a very simple change from the standard responses that everybody just expects, but it makes a big difference to the type of conversation that takes place. What would normally be very strictly-business conversations now turn into more friendly chats, and what could normally be very mundane meetings turn into story and experience-exchanging sessions.

I've since expanded my responses to include other aspects of eating, and put it into practice at a meeting today.

Before we started, we were all asked how we were. The usual "good" or "fine" was uttered around the table, until it got to me, where I replied by saying how I had burned my tongue on a hot chocolate this morning and so the tip of my tongue is feeling a bit sensitive right now. It got a round of laughter, and then everybody started pitching-in with their own stories about burning their mouths on hot food (or why is it that we constantly do it despite learning the lesson several times), or what things to look out for when you don't want to burn your mouth (like tomatoes in toastie sandwiches because they retain their heat better than other fillings).

And it's not just work where I do this; small talk is prevalent in any social situation.

Tonight, at dance (ceroc) class, when we changed partners and the girl asked how I was doing, I complained that my left foot was itchy beneath my shoe and then acted-out using my right shoe to try and scratch it. There isn't much more time to say anything beyond that, but after laughing at my predicament, my dance partners became visibly more relaxed, especially those who were here on their first night.

I haven't really figured-out why this is: why complaining about how hungry I am, how I burnt my tongue, or how annoying it is that I can't scratch an itch beneath my shoes, is such a good ice breaker. Maybe it's because the person asking how I am doing keeps hearing "good" or "fine" from others that they never really expect a frightfully honest answer. Maybe it's because upon hearing my complaint, they know exactly what I'm going through - we've all been hungry, had burnt a part of our mouths on scalding hot food, and had an itch that we couldn't scratch.

What I say is pretty boring stuff. I mean, you don't measure your life by the number of times you've burned your tongue, but it's a story that everybody can relate to. Exciting stories are those about going to far-away lands or doing risky things, but they don't make us laugh. Boring stories are those about everyday occurances, but they make people giggle, open up, and sometimes build connections.

So maybe we're all going about things the wrong way when we accuse ourselves of being boring such that others couldn't ever get attached to us. I mean, telling stories about how you saw Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower doesn't make me feel closer to you; telling stories about cuddling-up on a cold day to a mug of hot chocolate that subsequently removed several of your tastebuds does.

Suddenly, being boring doesn't sound like a bad thing. You just need to be ready to tell the world how boring you are.

If you ever needed a good indicator of up-and-coming holidays or events, just take a good look at retail and what the shops are doing.
For the months leading up to Christmas, stores will advertise the fact that it is coming and flood their shops with decorations of red, green, and silver.
Then, come the day after Boxing Day, and all these colours are quickly stripped away as if Christmas never happened, only to be replaced by 'Sale! x-percent off!' signs for the next major milestone on the retail calendar: New Year's.
The cycle repeats and continues: after New Year's, Valentine's Day.
After Valentine's Day, Easter.
After Easter...

You get slight variations depending upon the local holidays, but this is generally how it goes.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, because it keeps me informed of what's coming next.
And today, it reminded me that Mother's Day is just around the corner.

For some reason, Mother's Day is one of those holidays in which I really try to come up with something for my mum.
Maybe it's because my mum's birthday is only a handful of days in proximity to the event, thus guilting me into doubling my efforts (although when I think about it, my dad's birthday is only 2 weeks from Christmas, yet I never seem to try any harder for his birthday... must be a bias or favouritism).

My earliest vivid memory of having done something for my mum was when I was somewhere between 10 and 12 years old.
It was a Saturday morning because we were having eggs for breakfast - a long running family tradition, I still cook eggs every Saturday morning since moving out - and we were trying to figure out what to do for the weekend.
Mother's Day was the next day (always the second Sunday in May in NZ) and we had been complaining that our current cutlery holder wasn't doing a very good job.
So, I offered that my mum could go out and buy a new cutlery holder, and that I would pay for it, up to the value of $30 NZD.
Back then I was on an allowance of $7 NZD per week, so I was effectively offering a month of my money.
That was a lot to me at that age.

The next memory is a bit more recent, I was maybe 20, when my brother and I started to notice that there's one thing missing from our house when compared to houses of others: family pictures.
You could go through our family home and not find a single portrait of us on any wall, desk, or bedside table.
We decided to rectify that come Mother's Day / mum's birthday by taking a photo of ourselves, her 2 boys, framing it, and giving it to her as a present.
Now it's only 1 of 2 framed pictures in the entire house (the other one being a picture of my brother on his own bedside table... vanity be thy name).

And so it goes.

At the moment, I'm idealess for Mother's Day '09.
If I do anything, it'll probably be small or low-key.
But thanks to the bookstore I have to walk through every day to get to/from work, at least I've been given fair warning.

I really like cold days.

When people learn this little fact about me, I get a very narrow range of reactions. For those who know me well-enough to have learned that I was born in a country just 15 degrees north of the equator with only 2 seasons - 'dry and hot' and 'wet and hot' - they give me a strange look and question my heritage. For those who don't know the previous fact, they just give me the strange look.

This doesn't mean that I hate the hot days, but my habits and choices are those of a person with a bias for colder temperatures:

• my favourite pieces of clothing in my wardrobe are all long-sleeved shirts
• I don't own any shorts, not counting the pants that can unzip into shorts or my togs / swimming trunks
• I like curling up into a ball on or beside my couch, even when I'm the only one on it
• I like the feeling of a light breeze on my cheeks or the gentle rain on my hair during long walks
• and I like that effect when you breathe out through your mouth and it's visible as a fog for a few moments

I got to experience (or wear) all of the above today.

I had work today, so it's a given that I'd wear a long-sleeved shirt and pants. As I left my apartment building for work on this cold almost-winter morning, a light rain started which was enough to just pat my hair down and not so heavy as to make me worry about getting my recently-replaced-under-warranty headphones soaked. And on the walk back from work in the afternoon, the rain was replaced by a gentle southerly chill to accompany the already cold temperatures that made my breath fog-up in front of me.

All that's missing now, which we don't get where I live, is snow.

I often complain that if the temperatures are going to reach the single digits (celsius), then it should at least be accompanied by a nice sprinkling of snow. And because it never delivers, I often joke about going to live in countries that do snow; countries like Greece, Denmark, or even Alaska, just so I could get one of those white Christmases that are mentioned by our northern hemisphere cousins.

Looking at that list of countries however, it reads like another list that I have, of places that I'd like to visit for reasons other than snow. Greece: I'd like to visit the sites/ruins of an ancient civilization. Denmark: I'd like to go to Legoland, ever since I did that project back in intermediate school about it, and it's the country of a family I befriended over the Internet. And Alaska: it's also the home of some met-over-the-Internet friends, the first really-snowy place that came to mind when I was thinking of experiencing a white Christmas, and it's got yaks (inside joke).

Maybe that's the reason I enjoy the cold days; because they're reminders of the things I'd like to do/see someday.

So as I type this blog - curled-up next to my couch with my legs in a sleeping bag, a large blanket over my shoulders, and a warm cup of soup next to my keyboard and mouse - I'm reminded of all the places I'd like to see, and some of the things I'd like to experience.

I really like cold days.

1 day with my new BEDA buddies and I've already embarrassed myself: here's me saying I buy girly deodorant. What will tomorrow bring? I don't even want to know.

Speaking of looking forward to tomorrow, today's post is going to be about hugs... that, and I need to work on my segues.

Over the years I've developed a reputation for not being the most hug-giving person; I didn't hug my friends for regular things like meeting up for the day, parting ways after a party or other event, or saying thank you. I'd often save it for things like birthdays (even then, only hugging the birthday boy/girl), or, as we grew up and some started doing overseas travel, for seeing friends off / welcoming them back. But one friend in particular, I didn't hug AT ALL.

This friend was a hug Nazi and would hug somebody for any reason: hellos, goodbyes, saying one of her magic words like 'amazing', wearing something that she liked the look of, sending said friend more than 2 text messages, etc etc. When she'd try to get a hug out of me I would either walk the other way, or if there weren't any readily-available exits, just stand there and not hug back. It made for a good laugh amongst our group, but it was this behaviour that got me that reputation.

I remember the reasoning I used back then to tell myself why I was doing this: by reducing the frequency of my hugs, it would increase their value. It's a bit similar in the way that commodity prices are set (rare = higher price), but I think it has worked-out exactly like that.

Fast-forward to the hug nazi's 21st birthday. Having withheld hugs from her for about 5 years, it became a part of my speech when it was my turn to say a few words about her. Something was brought up which had her try to hug me while I was talking - I probably said the word 'amazing' - but of course I didn't hug back, to which she said out loud to everyone listening to my speech "And Em never hugs back!". She started recounting a time at university when she ended-up chasing me for a hug where I kept on walking away. It was funny, and it made for the perfect lead-up to what I was about to do: give her a hug for her 21st birthday.

It got an "awwwww" from her parents, aunties, uncles, and the older crowd. It also got an "awwwww" from our friends, accompanied however with gasps of surprise (OMG Em's giving her a hug WTF!?).

Several years on and while I've loosened-up the hugging criteria, it still gets the occasional comment from the recipient. Sometimes they're even called "Em hugs", used in sentences such as "Yay it's an Em hug!", or in the case of man hugs, "Holy shit it's an Em hug!" as if they were something special.

I was thinking about all of this because last night at a friend's 25th birthday party there were a lot of hugs going on:

• when I arrived I gave the birthday boy a hug
• shortly afterwards I hugged my friend the bride-to-be after learning that she and her boyfriend had (finally) set a wedding date
• later on another couple (this one already married) arrived and, with no more room for them on the couch, the wife sat on the arm rest to my side, gave me a great big hug which pushed me into another hug with the aforementioned bride-to-be (hug sandwich #1)
• and as we parted ways (I and some others were headed home, the rest were going into the city to continue the party), I got caught in another hug sandwich that started with one of the guys surprise hugging me from the front, followed by a girl I had only known for a week hugging me from behind, and then hug nazi came and finished us off with an epic hug from the side (hug sandwich #2)

With that last one, I think another of the guys jumped in on that hug bringing it to a 5-person group hug. I do know that we were cheered-on by those driving by. And I also remember girl-I-have-only-known-for-1-week licked the back of my neck... or that could've been the mystery 5th guy...

So now I wonder: did withholding my hugs when I was younger really pay off? Was I really trying to increase their value, or was I just trying to be different? And have I sold-out with my own hugging criteria, or are my friends just becoming more persistent when it comes to stealing an Em hug?

I thought today was going to be another struggle to come up with something to blog about, but as I sat down in-front of the keyboard to write my post, the RSS reader popped-up a new item. The item: our matches (BEDA buddy assignments) were ready.

Despite being only 3 days ago, it feels like a long time since I talked about the BEDA buddy system and threw my name into the proverbial sorting hat in the hopes that in groups we'd be able to help each other through our Blog Every Day April commitments. Now that we're grouped-up, I went in search of my BEDA buddies to learn a little bit about them.

DeCoolz loves American Idol. That is, loves with a <3. I don't think I've ever talked about American Idol, I mean REALLY talked about it. A search through my previous posts reveals that it gets a passing mention in The BEDA Buddy System post, and the post where I talk about breakfast (WTF?). My friends probably already know I'm an American Idol fan - and have been since last year from the Top 10 onwards - but the only other people I can really talk about it with are my family. So, DeCoolz, I think we'll get along just fine :)

Ephiphany Renee is a fan of rock music, in particular, The Used (which may not feature prominently in my music collection but it's there nonetheless). She also recently bought a copy of Devilish, which is the first Maureen Johnson book I read that in turn got me hooked on the author. There's certainly enough there to start a dialogue.

Kaitlyn (from the university of Michigan) - I'm finding hard to put into words what our common ground could be. There's nothing immediately obvious in her bio, but as I read through her blog posts for BEDA I started feeling like I could relate as they were mostly about her transitioning to university life. OK, so university is far behind me, but I have a good memory of those days and experiences which in turn shaped me into the person I am today.

So, to my BEDA buddies if you're reading this, here's to hoping that only good things can come out of our grouping, and here's a semi-relevant picture to go with it.

Group hug!

With New Zealand and several other countries now 1 year into the recession, a lot of recession-related articles have started showing-up, or at least have started being displayed more prominently than they had before. Daily browsing brings to my attention a lot more links to articles about finding great deals or savings on items, about massive discounts on travelling, about updating your CV/resumé and giving job interview advice, about how to save money, and of course about which big business was most recently bitten by the bankruptcy blues (alliteration FTW!).

With curiousity getting the better of me, I've followed several of these kinds of links in the past months to see what they have to say. Most of them are pretty US-specific, but I came across one 'how to save money' article which had some advice that could have helped anybody trying to save a buck or 2.

I wouldn't consider myself a frugal character (FFS I just shelled-out for Rock Band 2), but I lead a relatively low-maintenance lifestyle, and can be quite content with what I do have instead of going out to buy everything I don't. I turn off lights in rooms that I'm not in, I turn off the oven and microwave at the wall when I'm not using them for cooking otherwise they're just glorified time pieces (if I could even be bothered resetting the clocks on them). And I give all of my games several play-throughs, squeezing as many hours of gameplay out as cents that went into buying them.

So I went through that article's list of things one could do to save money, grinning as I mentally checked-off each item like some smug yes-I'm-already-taking-these-measures git, until I came across 1 item that kicked me in the financial region of my gut. It said something like:

Don't buy CDs. Purchase music online instead.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that it is cheaper to download an album via iTunes or Amazon than it is to buy the CD - especially when you're in a tiny country and your musical tastes are only sated by non-mainstream overseas bands where the price of importing an album causes the price of the thing to jump about 50%. I'm no mathematical genius, but for some reason this just never occurred to me.

Sorry girl but you're doing it wrong

The reason my eyes were really drawn to this item was because only a month before I purchased 2 albums on CD, and maybe 3 months before that I bought another 4 albums on CD!

What recession?

I can't seem to locate the article anymore, but Googling "don't buy CDs" gives you a lot of pages with arguments similar to the one I read. One blog even citing a recent LA Times article that said teenagers don't buy CDs anymore.

The link to the LA Times piece is broken - so there's some FAIL that needs to be fixed there - but the blog, on top of the 'save your money' article, made me feel a little out of touch. Not that I'm trying touch that age group (there I go again, writing down something without realizing how paedophillic it could sound) but it did make me feel a little older.

If there's any age group I'll be trying to understand, it'll be my 7-year-old niece's. She's already got an mp3 player, and will likely grow up "obtaining" all her music online and not even touch a CD in her life.

As for myself? The CDs I buy don't even get a lot of play in a CD player of any sort. It's maybe a couple of runs through the PC or Xbox, before burning it all as mp3s to chuck onto my mp3 player.

So whether I'm just sticking to an old habit, keeping it old-school, or just keeping it old, I'll continue to buy CDs for many years to come; I'll just convince myself that I'm doing my part for the recession.

I made it pretty obvious in a post this month that I got Rock Band 2 and was loving it. Several days on, I'm still loving it, although I have left it and the Xbox back at my family's place since I couldn't be bothered bringing all those fake plastic instruments back to my apartment.

Yes, I'm Xbox-less right now :( The removal of said gaming machine has given me a lot more time to work on PC-related stuff (ie: this blog and other ongoing website developments) and general responsibilities (eg: cleaning, cooking). Without the Xbox the TV is only used to watch broadcast television, so I went and hooked-up my PC to it so I could watch my videos and have music in the lounge again.

So yeah, I'm blogging from my lounge today, and will be for several days to come while I continue life Xbox-less. I'd take photos of the PC-next-to-the-TV setup, but I don't have a digital camera. Yes, you read that right: this tech-savvy IT guy DOES NOT HAVE A DIGITAL CAMERA (and I'll probably turn that into a blog post for another day in April).

Anyway, back to Rock Band 2

My mind wanders

So I was introduced to the world of fake plastic instruments through Guitar Hero 3. Being a (fake-)guitar-only game, it got me pretty good with the 5-button guitar side of things, and it also got me really excited about the evolution of the music & rhythym game genre when it turned into Rock Band (or Guitar Hero: World Tour if you wish to stick with the GH franchise). So when Rock Band came out, and my friends brought it around one night, I instantly loved it.

That night I stuck to the guitar part, but when I bought Rock Band 2 I resolved to try out the other parts: drumming and singing.

My family isn't the most musical kind out there but it's musical enough; my dad doesn't play any instruments, so any music genes must've come from my mother's side. She plays the classical guitar, my brother plays drums and some guitar, and I play piano and some guitar. We can all keep pitch, can keep in time, and sing to some degree.

Finally, all those years of singing in the shower and walking down the street as I hum the tune to what's blaring out of my MP3 player would come to fruition. RB2 would give me all the reason I needed to sing my lungs out. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened; I sung my lungs out (and my throat and voice too).

When I decided to tackle the singing component of RB2, I went straight to the Hard level (I can keep pitch right?) and picked a song that I enjoyed but didn't really realize was way out of my range until that very moment. The result: I was often flat or sharp, and ended-up shouting my way through choruses. At every step of the way, RB2 was there critiquing my progress after every major phrase with words like 'Good' or 'Awesome', except what mostly popped-up was 'Weak' along with a loss of my score multiplier and integrity of my throat.

Even after picking songs within my range, my throat and voice started crapping-out on me, and as I slipped below the 80% mark at the end-of-song score, even RB2 decided to stop heaping its hollow praises on me. I sucked, and RB2, myself, and my brother - who was unfortunate enough to be in the room - knew it.

So what now seeing that 1/4 of the Rock Band experience is locked-away from me? Well, I always have the fake plastic guitar to fall back on, and the drums are pretty fun (so at least I wasn't wrong about my ability to keep time). But it looks like 'learning to sing into a mic' is now on my to do list. That's right, the singing part has become my white whale and my sheer stubbornness - and the fact that I've spent hundreds of dollars on this game and I'll be damned if I'm not going to squeeze every last penny out of it, especially during the recession - is going to propel me forward.

Hopefully I'll have more luck than Captain Ahab, and won't destroy my voice in the process.

Mentioned amongst one of the tips for business bloggers was an item about getting a blogging buddy. My comments on it were that it was a very good piece of advice, one that I would do well to follow. Well, looks like I've been given a chance to make good on those words.

On the blog of the Blog Every Day April (BEDA) progenitor, Maureen Johnson, is an item about organizing us into small groups in which each of us will get a BEDA buddy. Reading that post, you'll find a link to her Ning forum and BEDA Buddy thread. There, I and every other BEDA participant can post a little bit about themselves and Maureen will then put us into groups (I don't know what criteria she'll be using to put us together, but I hope the formula doesn't aim to create the most volatile combinations possible). When assigned our groups, we're to encourage other members of the group by commenting on their blogs, asking questions, giving ideas, etc etc.

One thing that became immediately apparent to me, was that most participants are the target audience of Maureen's books. That is, teenage girls.

I immediately felt old, very old. I even mentioned in my reply to that discussion that, comparitively, I'm something out of the jurassic period. There was the odd sprinkling of 20-somethings, but good God I felt like the far end of the bell curve.

Yes, my favourite female author is the writer of books aimed at teenage girls. Now how you think that makes me feel whenever I go to the library to see if her back-catalogue of books is available?

There I am, an adult male, perusing the young-adult fiction section of the library for a book (or books) written for the opposite gender of an age group I passed-through with several bruises a long long looooong time ago. All I need now is a trenchcoat in the middle of summer and my creepiness would shoot through the roof.

At least I'm not this bad...

So let's see where this BEDA Buddy thing takes me. It might be like the group round in American Idol: we're either gonna prop eachother up supportively for the remainder of the month, or together we'll turn into a beautiful disaster.

Here's to hoping.

(continued from Tips for business bloggers - part 3)

Today, we reach the final part of the Tips for business bloggers series as part of Blog Every Day April.

7. Use plain English and a conversational style.

For blogging, I don't think any other sort of style could work. Here's me talking about the ride home from the air balloons light show I saw over the weekend:

I can't remember whose iPod was currently attached to the car kit, but Umbrella by Rihanna (no, I'm not leading-up to a Chris Brown joke) started playing. What was a quiet ride home turned into a car-wide sing-along that was enjoyed by all. Well, all except our newest travelling companion, Nele, who either had an aversion to Rihanna, R&B in general, or the idea that everyone else in the car was enjoying themselves. Either way, her dislike for the situation only added to the our enjoyment, and had us singing even louder.

Now here's me talking about the same thing in a manner similar to that found in an instructional manual:

1. someone's iPod was playing through the car stereo
2. Umbrella by Rihanna started playing
3. we all broke into song
4. except Nele who didn't like Umbrella
5. hilarity ensued

I'll have to admit the concise nature of the numbered bullet points has a certain appeal, but it's not really story-telling. When listing just the facts, an image of the situation doesn't really form in my mind.

That's not to say that an instructional style doesn't have its uses. Here's me adapting a conversational style from a point-by-point recipe for brownies:

I pre-heated the oven to 160C so that when the brownies go into it they'll start cooking. But that's not yet. First, I got one of my saucepans - a hand-me-down from my parents no less - and set that to the '2' setting, which I assume is the low heat setting, because the highest is 5. Gotta make sure it's a low heat, otherwise you might just cook the butter and dark chocolate which is next to go into the pan. I learned this lesson the hard way because I got a bit impatient with the speed at which the chocolate was melting... big mistake. I ended-up burning a little bit of the chocolate, and I did not feel good.

6 sentences into the actual recipe, and it's already got everything into the mixing bowl. 6 sentences into my story, and I'm ranting about how a pan that used to be my mothers' had burnt some dark chocolate.

"There's a time and place for everything" they say. Writing style is no exception.

Good time, but probably not the best place

8. Link to others and give them credit for ideas.

And on that note, I'd like to thank Melissa (the same Melissa who helped bring you my review of the McDonalds Seared Chicken Burger) for sending me the blogging tips e-mail which in turn gave me 4 days worth of blogging material. Her blog - a travelling blog that she doesn't bother maintaining anymore because there's no travelling happening at the moment :P - can be found at http://kiwigirlnextdoor.blogspot.com/

Goodnight internets. I'll see you again tomorrow.

(continued from Tips for business bloggers - part 2)

5. Be useful, be fearless or both. Simply being useful is a worthwhile goal.

This one doesn't seem like much of a tip to me. It reads more like a very brief soul-inspiring speech - "being useful is a worthwhile goal" - to rally the business bloggers together and advance for their cause.

It's probably a much-needed pep talk for some because maintaining a constant barrage of blog posts can quickly become tiring. Looking at my own progress and adding-up all the hours spent typing into this blog, I must've lost about 10 hours of sleep thus far in my desperate attempts to get a post completed before the day is done.

So what's in it for a blogger if the only reward awaiting you is bags under the eyes and a stronger addiction to your favourite caffeinated beverage? Well... I don't think I have the answer to that. If you're a writer and need practice writing, then blogging usually helps. I mean, the only way to get better at writing is through practice, err, writing.

But hey, you're not just doing it for yourself. Whatever the subject matter of your blog, somebody out there could find it useful. Maybe you're writing about the process you went through to build that new deck for your house which other DIYers out there could find handy. Maybe it's a blog about your pet and experiences with taking care of said pet which another potential pet owner could find pointers in. Or, if you're blogs are subject-less like mine for this month of April and are just doing it for the lols, then maybe somebody out there will find it funny, appreciate the attempt at humour, and it could put a lol in their day.

And without knowing it, you've suddenly become useful, and that's always a worthwhile goal.

6. Ask your blogging buddy to check each post, and stop you from being too personal, leaking company secrets or breaking the law.

Blogging buddy... gotta get me one of those. But if they're there to prevent me from doing any of the above, then it might be a little too late for that.

I've been pretty shameless when putting my own life stories up on the internet, and the only reason I haven't already disclosed all of my personal secrets is that I don't blog enough (and this month is going to cover my secrets-revealed quota for the year). And while I don't think I've leaked company secrets, I have revealed enough about my work environment such that you could easily guess as to who my employers (or as I sometimes refer to the upper-most of management, our evil overlords) are.

So this tip is a pretty useful one, and one which I would do well to follow. The closest thing I have to a blogging buddy are my Facebook friends who read this, and then point out my myriad spelling mistakes, or write on my wall that I'm going about it (ie: life) wrong. Of course by then, company sekrits have already been leaked, personal stories have already become public, and my evil overlords are contacting HR, giving them another reason to tap my phone or track my IM conversations.

"Put another bug on Em's phone; he's talking shit about us on the internets again."

Gonna take a break from the business blogging tips for today to just mention some site updates that have finally kicked-in.

Firstly, the SEO-friendly URLs are now in place. That is, no more URLs that look like: Content?Page=Blah&Thingy=Blah. They now make a bit more sense to both people (more human-readable) and search engine spiders/bots that crawl the web.

Secondly, I removed that fancy overlay effect from the Artwork and Writing pages because it actually prevented someone from middle-clicking the links to open them in a new tab. Whoops. So a big fat usability blunder on my part.

So what's left on the 2009-redesign-to-do list? Automatic updates.

Updates to this blog are actually reflected in Facebook, but for me to get them to show up I have to go to Facebook and give it a kick in the guts to let it know that a new blog post is up. It's a small annoyance, but one that I've been meaning to remedy for a while now.

(continued from Tips for Business Bloggers - part 1)

3. Follow your organisation's guidelines - or create them!

If by organization they mean ME, and by guidelines they mean My Writing Rules, then I believe I follow this tip quite faithfully already.

I don't have many rules for writing. They basically all boil down to making sure the reader knows exactly what I'm saying. eg: proper spelling, and no silly text or internet speak.

Actually, I've broken both of those rules already. I do try to spell correctly, but having been raised amongst both American and British spelling conventions, I'll do British things like spell colour with a U, but then do American things like spell organize with a Z. And while I do avoid text speak (ie: you won't see me write things like 'hv a gd weeknd'), I will occasionally throw in the acronyms like LOL and WTF.

Text speak somewhat irks me. For example: today I hung out with some friends to watch a hot air balloon light show. Amongst us was a person I hadn't met before, who had received the most cryptic text message that made sense to none of us. The cryptic part of it read:

d b a gd weeknd

d b a? W T F?

We bounced around several ideas (database administrator? don't be a good weekend? douchebag a good weekend?) but none of them made sense. She finally asked the sender of the message what the hell it meant, and got the reply that the d meant either 'should' or 'would'. I don't know what dimension or ass-crack they pulled that from, but there's a good example of miscommunication for you right there.

Translate server error

So I guess my guidelines would be that I don't stick to one spelling convention, but I spell consistently, and I don't use text speak, but I like to use internet acronyms.

4. Focus every blog post on a single topic: it's not a newsletter.

Oh fail. Just like when I talked about having a focus or strategy in point #2 in the last blog post, I definitely don't have a single topic in mind. But I don't think this point could apply very well to what I'm doing now anyway.

Sure you have your topical blogs which only post news relevant to the topic being covered, but when it's a blog about my life, I don't think I could ever confine myself to a few defining topics, or just my hobbies, or just my job. There's a whole lot of funny things that can happen to me, and I think it would be unrepresentative of life in general if I didn't talk about the comedic side.

This reminds me of back when I was a 7th former (US equivalent would be a senior) in high school, and one of 3 7th form students who were assigned to a 4th form (freshman) class. I never knew what the exact reasons were for this arrangement - maybe we were there to act as role models, maybe we were there to keep them off drugs - but there we were. One day, the teacher was berating one of the 4th formers for laughing at something (I didn't catch the joke) when then the teacher turned to me and said:

"Life isn't all that funny, is it Em?"

Side with authority, or side with what I believed? It was one of the easiest decision I ever had to make. My reply:

"I'm gonna have to disagree with you there miss."

Life is beautiful

That little remark got me into the good books of the 4th formers. And having funny things to say or talk about has got me into the good books of a lot of people ever since.

It's just how I roll.

(more to come in part 3)

Now that I've pulled myself away from Rock Band 2 (not an easy task), I have time to write about what I was supposed to write about yesterday.

The other day, a friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail entitled Tips for Strategic Bloggers (with a subtitle of Tips for Business Bloggers somewhere in there). Despite being business-oriented tips, I decided to give it a full read and see what tips applied to me.

1. Don't start unless you were born to blog or need to blog. Very few people can keep up the pace month after month, year after year, having something original to say, something worth saying. (However, a competent and persistent blogger can have fun and influence people.)

I don't think I was born to blog, nor do I REALLY need to, but I do have a lot of uninteresting yet honest stories to tell (because all the interesting ones have already been written). But since I decided to join the Blog Every Day April challenge, I guess my 'need' is my drive to prove that I can follow-through on long-term goals. Hmph, funny how close to stubbornness that sounds.

Stubborn like a mule

I don't think my long-term commitment/stubbornness is really in question here. For example, a couple of years ago I decided to play a long-term joke on one my friends.

You see, he was sufferring from ongoing pain in his knee, and like any concerned friend I would ask him how his knee was. But I didn't want to be just concerned, I wanted to be a dick. So every day, whenever I'd see him, I'd ask him how his knee was so that my 'concern' would eat into his patience in little nibbles until he'd go insane.

This went on for about a month until he was talking about it with another friend. For the next paragraph's sake, let's call my knee-hurting friend 'Simon', and the person he's talking to 'Janna':

Simon: "Em keeps asking me how my knee is."
Janna: "Yeah."
Simon: "It's... starting to get annoying.
Janna: "You know why he's doing it right?"

Well, let's just say that after that, the next time I saw him was the last time I asked him how his knee was.

So if I can be a dick for a month, then blogging every day for that length of time shouldn't be too difficult, right?

2. Think first about strategy: what do you hope to achieve with this blog? Focus sharply. Explain your angle or topic in your tagline or description.

Strategy? Angle? Topic? Tagline? lol wut?

OK, so it's obvious I didn't enter into this thing with a strategy in mind. Looking at the categories I file my blogs under, I'm neither here nor there, and the topics get around (kinda like your mum) and I talk about whatever comes to mind (eg: your mum). There's no focus, but neither does the mind have any when it needs to come up with something new every month.

No distractions

I guess my 'strategy' is to take any ordinary thing that happens to me and turn it into a multi-paragraph blog post, which is exactly what I've been doing so far. I mean, look at what I've talked about: my neighbours, April Fool's Day, ice cream, breakfast, my dry lips, how often I get sick, my work, my work (again), and Rock Band 2.

It's not paperback fiction stuff, but it's what gets me by.

(stay tuned for part 2 where I go through more of the blogging tips listed in that e-mail)

I've left today's blog a bit too late to write something approaching the average number of paragraphs I've had for every other entry thus far of Blog Every Day April, but I was held-up for good reason. That reason: Rock Band 2.

w00t

So I'm gonna leave it at: I just got Rock Band 2, and OMG it's awesome :D (proper blog coming post tomorrow)

And as work ended for the day, my holiday officially started :D

As per the suggestions of upper management, I (and several of my workmates) will be taking the this Thursday, and next Tuesday and Wednesday off. Couple that with the Monday and Friday already being public holidays thanks to the Easter weekend, and we're each gonna have a week-long break!

Now I can guess as to why the big wigs were encouraging all of us to take our leave as a cost-cutting measure during the recession - something about how leave not used is costing the company money - but despite their agenda, if they're encouraging me to spend extended periods of time away from my desk, I'm not going to say no. So as the office quietened down and people started leaving for their long long weekends, I got my own stuff in order, including the automated out-of-office reply.

I never came across the out-of-office reply until I started full-time work. I believe Gmail has an equivalent feature with their On Vacation automated reply e-mails, but it's a very handy thing that lets anybody who e-mails you know that you're away. Some people often say whether they're on leave or sick, when they're returning, and sometimes a secondary contact is mentioned who is available to help should they want to seek somebody else who kinda knows your job. Many out-of-office replies I've encountered are very professional: quick, concise, and straight to the point. Others however, like mine when I first started work, tend to beat around the bush.

I was looking for pictures about "getting to the point" (ie: not beating around the bush), and this is what Google gave me...

I often liked to include a little backstory. If the leave was around a major public holiday, then I ended-up personifying the holiday and saying how it coerced me to get out of the office. If the leave was some kind of personal vacation, then I liked to write about the sorts of things I'd be doing.

It was all great fun coming up with these mini stories, but over time I did get told that they were a tad inappropriate, and not at all informative. With the assignment to my current project in which the client is a rather serious government department, I've had to compromise.

So no, I never got to talk about how the Easter bunny had swept me away (in a non-paedophile manner) towards my leave, nor did I get to say how it left me a trail of chocolate egss to lead me out of the building and into a dungeon of my own making in which I'll be stuck for a whole week. Instead, the first line reads:

The Easter Bunny has kicked me out of the office, and so I begin my Epic Easter Leave.

It's pretty tame, but I don't imagine anybody else mentioning what the Easter bunny did to them, let alone mention the Easter bunny at all. And for that, I can still claim the prize for originality amongst my peers.

While I'm no longer an avid viewer of 24 (I haven't seen seasons 6 or 7, but was glued to the TV when 24: Redemption just happened to be on) I have taken several things away from that show which, on occasion, cause me to be disappointed in real life. One of these things is the speed at which the crew of CTU, or whatever rag-tag bunch of techies Jack Bauer has to help him now, seemed to operate.

Whenever Jack Bauer needs the details about a certain suspect, all he has to do is give maybe the first couple of characters of said suspect's plate number, and within minutes (REAL-TIME minutes) he will have all the info he asked for. Things like aliases, addresses, phone numbers, political views, the place their credit card was used last, the neglect they received from their parents, the lasting psychological effects of that neglect leading to the number of Chris Brown's they've pulled with current and past partners... No information is out of reach of CTU.

I even remember one episode where they get their hands on a laptop with encrypted contents. The level and method of encryption is pretty reasonable such that trying to crack it would take much longer than 24 hours, yet they did, somehow, because CTU is that awesome. (although XKCD has already shown that encryption is virtually useless against a determined opponent)

Unfortunately, real-life (or at the very least, my work) doesn't operate like this at all. Here's how a quest for information went down at work today:

• request for information was made to our client
• client then e-mailed my project manager with the request for information
• e-mail is then forwarded to me 2 HOURS after the first bullet point
• I start work on the request by running several queries on the database, some of which take up to 5 minutes to complete
• all members of our team attend a scheduled team meeting which took about an hour
• we return and I run more queries to double-check my results
• I send a reply e-mail with my findings to our client

At the end of all this, it's 6pm, it's getting dark outside, I'm pretty much the only person left on our floor, and the person I sent the e-mail to will have probably gone home already meaning they won't get to forward the results to the original requestor until tomorrow morning. How's that for information turn-around time?

The story of my life

OK, so if speed was needed, I probably wasn't the best person for the job; I'm still becoming familiar with the system I've been assigned to, and I'm far from any kind of programming genius. But by the end of it, I just wanted to get back home as quickly as possible, and I was both disappointed in 24 for setting unrealistic expectations on programmers (just like how CSI has set unrealistic expectations of clear-cut forensic evidence in court cases) and maybe a little envious of people like those in CTU who could've done my job in mere minutes (REAL-TIME minutes). Provided such people existed.

If they did, then I totally understand why 24's Chloe looks pissed-off all the time.

The wind changed, and it stayed that way

So I mentioned several illnesses in yesterday's post - the common cold, winter flu, and tonsillitis - all of which I do nothing about as I let my body just battle it in its own time. In the case of the cold and flu, there really is no cure, only several medications to alleviate the symptoms and the general feeling of crappiness. Regardless, the result is that whenever I get one of them, I'm knocked out for several days.

The common cold is, by definition, the sickness I get most often. I can tell it's upon me by the stuffy nose and sore throat that usually accompany it, and I usually get about a day's warning before it really hits.

The flu is like a super-charged version of the cold, which is probably why several work places have free flu vaccinations every year... which I never participate in. As I said, it solves itself given enough time, so I never bother doing anything about it. That, and it hasn't killed me yet (which when I think about it is a rather stupid philisophy because of the Catch 22 in that sentence). Flu usually knocks me out pretty badly: all the cold symptoms are there - stuffy nose, sore throat - and sometimes a headache, but the worst part is that it causes me to despair and feel like nothing is right in the world. That's right; flu makes me emo.

Flu: ready to slit her wrists

So I said that, given enough time, each of the above will resolve themselves. The problem though, is the amount of time needed to do just that: a cold can knock me out for 2 days, whereas a flu can take me out for 5. Calculating the frequency of either multiplied by the number of days, and I end up with a number that is much larger than the 5 sick days work gives us every year.

Falling ill over a weekend helps dampen the blow to my sick leave (at the cost of making my weekends suck), but every year since starting full-time work, I have blown my 5-day limit out of the water. Our team leaders have the ability to sign-off on additional sick leave from a small pool of it given to each person, but recently I learned that I've used-up all of that too and have gone into NEGATIVE sick leave. Nobody else I know at work or in my team has done this, so from a management perspective I must be some sort of statistical anomally. I bet HR is keeping a close eye on me as well, making sure I'm not faking my sicknesses and using the days off to sell company secrets to the competition.

To HR, if they're reading this (which isn't easily possible because this site is blocked from work): I'm actually being sick and I get sick a lot. Please double my sick leave allowance so that I don't spend 4 months of the year waiting for my work anniversary to roll over so I get my sick leave reset.

When I woke up this morning, a few things came to mind: First, why am I up so early? My clock said it was only 9am, and I was out all night and didn't get back until 3:30; I expected to be knocked-out until 11. Then I remembered I rewound my clocks back by 1 hour for the end of daylight savings. Second, what am I going to blog about today?

The Blog Every Day April challenge has given me something to look forward to every morning. When I wake up, I wonder: what exciting/mundane activities am I going to do today that I can write about for all the world to read? This morning I thought I'd write about things that happened at the birthday party last night, but many of the funnier things that happened then - embarrassing moments being caught on camera and then posted to Facebook or the slideshow that's on the TV - have been pretty well covered elsewhere on the Internet. Then when I turned on the computer and saw my brother's tweet about how he has "mastered information" by getting the TweetDeck app and organizing his follows, I thought I'd be writing something about Twitter. Every other media outlet seems to have said something about Twitter in the past month, so I might end up writing something about it later just so I can join the bandwagon.

But instead I settled on writing on something that's been plaguing me for the past week: dry lips.

We could've been friends

Dry lips are a pretty easy thing to remedy - just get yourself some chapstick. However, I never did because it's one of those things I've put into the it-will-go-away-by-itself-and-so-I-don't-need-to-do-anytyhing-about-it category. Things I've also filed into this category are: sore throats, the common cold, the flu, and tonsillitis.

These are the sorts of things that happen so often that I can accurately plot my progress through these illnesses for the week after the first symptoms appear. I get a cold at least twice a year, three times if I'm unlucky, the flu at most once a year, and while I haven't had tonsillitis since turning 20, I used to get it about four times a year - another reason why my teenage years weren't exactly great.

So how often do I get dry lips? Exactly twice a year: once when summer ends, and once when winter ends.

My lips have become a barometer for seasonal change.

"But it's April now!" I hear you say, "Summer finishes end of Feb!" I don't know what it's been like in your country, but in NZ we had ourselves a late summer which felt like it ended just last week. We've actually had several late summers for the past couple of years and every time my lips were there to let me know.

I wouldn't start thinking about adjusting the seasons, set by decades of climatic data, just because my dry lips said so. They're definitely not on par with the kinds of instruments used to measure whatever forces are adjusting our seasons. Heck, I can't even use them to whistle properly! But they're good enough for telling me when I should start wearing thicker or thinner clothing on the walk to work.

So whenever I make it to work with a jacket as we change seasons, and one my workmates didn't bring one because they think it's still summer but then it starts getting really cold, I like to break into a little smile - but only on the inside, otherwise my lips might crack.

Coming up with something to write about today is gonna be difficult: I wrote yesterday's item very late at night, then went to sleep, woke-up at about 10am this morning (yay for the weekend), had breakfast, watched the American Idol top 9 and the results show (yes I'm a fan, quit hating on me), and after a bit of cleaning-up around my place, have only 2 hours before I have to go to a birthday party which won't see me in-front of my computer to do any blogging for the day. So I have to come up with something now, and as you can see the number of things for me to draw upon is very slim.

Since I was talking about food in the last post, I might as well follow it up with more talk about food, which brings me to the topic I've chosen for today: breakfast.

Now in spite of hearing my friends go on about healthy food, one thing they often fail to get right, is breakfast. We've all heard the age-old saying about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. My parents drilled this fact into my head from a very young age, this country used to have an ad campaign about it in-case your own parents forgot to do the drilling, and whenever a report comes out that a statistically significant amount of children aren't eating breakfast before going to school, it makes headline news. So with all this talk about breakfast, I would've thought the advice had been heeded and is one of the things that every diet-talking person I know would follow and take to heart. But oh not so.

Your breakfast may vary

I most often used to hear my friends complain about crappy days because they missed breakfast during high school and university. Yet with both of those eras long behind us, the number of missing-breakfast-related complaints hasn't subsided.

Understandably, some of these people have demanding jobs with strict working hours that see them operate on the weekdays with minute amounts of sleep that have to be offset by popping back-alley pharmaceuticals. But others with the most flexible work-whenever-they-want-and-can-even-work-from-home hours still miss out. It's not as if they're being hypocritical of all the dieting advice they like to spout, but rather that they've mis-prioritized the advice and poor little breakfast has taken a back seat to sucking down omega fish oils or counting vegetables.

My own experiences with missing breakfast have always been bad, understandably, I feel CRAPPY for the entire day if I skip breakfast; I can't concentrate, my head aches, my stomach complains because it's schedule is all messed-up, and I'm much more likely to fall asleep at around the 2:30/3pm mark. Having skipped breakfast maybe once or twice during my university years was all the lessons I needed to remind me to never do that again. Nowadays, even if I'm running late for work, I will make a detour to the nearest McDonalds or Wholly Bagels and grab something from there before beginning my day. Everything else can wait; people rely on me to be focused when I do my work, and combating head and stomach pain while I'm comatose on my desk in the afternoon isn't going to help.

Now if only something just as cool can be said about greater/increasing age. No, I haven't started feeling the pinch of the years on me, but some of my friends definitely have, and it's their conversations on things like nutrition and fitness that make me think it's having an effect on them.

As we creep towards (or in the case of my older friends, pass beyond) a point that is equidistant with both 20 and 30 years of age, I've noticed they have an ever-increasing need to talk about their diets or their choice of food, or the number of kilometres they can run. Not that any of these things are particularly bad - putting healthy food into your body is always a plus, as is testing the heart rate - but they never really talked about these things before. It's like a switch has gone off in their heads that, now they have to tick a different age group tick box on surveys or censuses, an extra and conscious effort has to be made to cling to youth.

Topics of conversation

Suddenly, everybody is an expert in kilojoules, carbohydrate intake, the types of vegetables to eat, and the perfect weight-to-repetitions ratio on certain gym equipment. Should they be worried? Maybe. Should I be worried? Most likely yes.

A majority of my friends are of your white western-civilization type, whose chances of reaching a very old age increase with every year and every advance in modern science. Whereas I'm from a country where the average life expectancy will see me through my 50s if I'm lucky. But either through genetics or culture, despite being almost half-way through my natural life, that switch in my head hasn't gone off.

I feel no extra compulsion to eat any more healthy than I have already been doing, nor do I feel the need to supplement my existing activity with trips to the gym. I'd like to think that I have pretty good tabs on my body; that I can understand the signs of a past weeks worth of bad food or of not getting enough sleep, than I can predict how my health will fare in the following days when I'm struck with illness, and that I know the distances I can run or the number of stairs I can climb before collapsing on myself (hint: it's not a large number).

With good weeks in terms of the above, I tend to reward myself with a trip to McDonalds or a large thickshake (if I haven't had either in a while). Today I decided to have an ice cream after lunch, but made the mistake of underestimating the size of the scoops of ice cream when I ordered a double. The result was huge and looked to topple any moment if I didn't keep a close eye on incoming people or gravity.

We all scream for ice cream

Once I made it back to work and to my desk, I relaxed and thought now I can enjoy my ice cream. Yet just as I started to, all I could hear were voices of my friends talking about bad desserts, or the number of calories that might be in this ice cream. One voice, that of my diabetic friend, was rather prominent. I imagined her looking at the ice cream saying "Oh my God" in that "what the hell are you thinking" manner, and shaking her head as if I hadn't learned a vital life lesson.

Since when was eating ice cream supposed to suck?

While today is technically the 2nd of April in my timezone, it's only just begun to be the 1st of April on the Internet.

Every year, I tell myself to be wary of news posted on the 1st, taking everything that comes my way with a questionable look and a raised eyebrow, so that I won't be so easily fooled by jokes that, when played to a much younger version of myself, would have had me emotionally crash in disappointment after the initial excitement when I was being fooled.

And it's not only the 1st, but when you're roughly 20 hours ahead of where the majority of the Internet lives, then you gotta prepare yourself for a 2-day onslaught of 'creative journalism'.

Too good to be true?

Why is it I can get fooled so easily by the Internet when it's already full of pranksters desensitizing my funny bones with their remarks that are ever so full of wit and sarcasm? I guess it's because, for these 2 days on the calendar, the news finally tells me what I want to hear.

Yes I want to hear about Obama abandoning companies like of AIG, yes I think it's awesome that StarCraft 2 will have a gigantic transforming robot, yes I would love to get double the bandwidth on my internet connection, and yes I would like bacon sauce with my fries thank you very much.

So slowly, April Fools is becoming more and more a day for me to dream on how much more awesome life could be.

And so we enter the first day of Blog Every Day April. Like Maureen Johnson, this'll pretty much be a day-by-day account of my life this month.

So what exciting things happened to me today? Well, today I walked to work with my neighbours.

I was late to work as usual, waiting for the lift to get to my level, when I heard the door opening to the only other apartment on this floor. Out came my neighbours, also ready to go to work.

There are 2 of them: a girl who I've encountered several times and keep calling "neighbour" since moving in to this apartment, and her boyfriend who I have seen before but never really met until today. I gave them my usual greeting - "Hey neighbours" - and we all walked together to our respective jobs.

We spent the walk talking about things that people who don't know a lot about each other talk about: work, work hours, being collectively called girls by one of the girls' friends as we passed-by, having my brother mistaken as a girl on his plane ticket, etc. The guy and I properly introduced ourselves to one another, and once they went their separate ways, I walked the rest of the way to work thinking, WTF, I actually don't know her name!

I tweeted that thought during the day (you can probably see that item in the Twitter feed to the right unless you're reading this via RSS) and found I wasn't completely alone when it came to nameless neighbours that you frequently encounter. One respondent referred to their nameless neighbour as "#12".

So I resolved to find out her name the next time we met, and as fate or co-incidence would have it, while I was waiting for the lift to take me back to my apartment this evening, I heard the lobby door open and in came my neighbours, also ready to get back home. After greeting the unnamed one - "Evening neighbour" - I found out her name.