Faith in Mankind

... Restored!

8:05am. These days, the mornings are a little colder, I'm a little lazier, I'm up a little later. It also means I have to walk to Baker Street to beat the peak hour crush at Marylebone. Sennies plugged in tight, Tiesto's Clublife (JT: "She's got me lovestoned...") blaring in my own personal headspace, double espresso in hand, I head off. Running down the escalators, hopping onto the tube that's awaiting...

SLAM! Doors shut behind me. My music's so loud, I don't hear the warning beeps and I narrowly made it into the carriage.

Hang on...

"SH*T!"

I'm stuck. My massive white handbag trapped between the jaws of the tube door. In embarrassment, I start tugging hard, trying not to spill my espresso and trying hard not to look like an idiot. Fellow commuters take pity on me, two of them start yanking on my handbag with me. A third commuter on the outside starts prying the doors open. Eventually my handbag slides through the gap. I land on my knees, a drop of espresso falls on my camel jacket. All good! :)

"THANKS!" *big grin* (I still have my earphones plugged in)

Help from strangers on the tube. That's something new to me :)

Beeniksterwaztri thanks you...

...for helping us to finish the household booze :)

Only one person threw up in my bathroom *grin* I had to do a costume change mid-party cause errr, "someone bumped me" and my drink spilt all over my clothes :P However, I did manage to stay up past 9pm this time round (4am!), and I was even capable of ordering cabs home for our guests *grin*

Chivalry

Poor MT. He bore the brunt of my diatribe on Saturday *grin* I couldn't help it. When MT fretted and requested one of us GIRLS to call for the bill, I let loose.
Me: "You know, if you want the bill, why don't YOU call for it? You're a guy! Take some action. I took care of getting the tea. Getting the soya sauce. Getting the chilli sauce. Clearing the empty plates. Why can't YOU get the bill?"
MT: "I'm facing the wrong way. You can see the waiters."

That was really the wrong thing to say to me. It's something that someone use to say to me _all_ the time and it's bothered me for the past four-five years.
Me: "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR NECK? CAN'T YOU TURN IT? YOU'RE A GUY, TAKE CHARGE."
MT: "You can't have it all. You wanted a metrosexual guy. A guy who's in touch with his feminine side."
Me: "I NEVER asked for a metrosexual! What the hell? I don't care if a guy moisturises!"

Is it really too much to ask? :P I don't care if I'm facing the room. It just exasperates me that I'm the one that always has to flag down the waiter for something at a meal. Guys, stop being so dang lazy. It would be nice, for a change, if I went out for dinner with a guy, and he:
1. Took care of ordering pre-dinner drinks.
2. Asked me what I wanted so he could order it.
3. Flagged the waiter for anything we needed.
4. CALLED FOR THE BILL at the end of the night.

There's only ever been two men I've known who do that. My Dad - and one Mr MacGregor. Lucky you, Mrs MacGregor! Good luck Babsy ;)

Make it so!

It was soo warm and cosy inside the theatre... I couldn't understand most of what was being said... This was my view for most of the play...

(someone with a Dragon Ball Z haircut)

...So I nodded off :P Jean Luc Picard or no, Macbeth wasn't doing anything for me. I liked the idea of a contemporary Macbeth, and I liked the way it was played out on stage. Other than that, wouldn't have a clue what was going on. My Shakespeare is a little rusty :P

After the play, Patrick Stewart was collecting money out the front for charity. It has to be a little odd to be such a celeb. I saw one well past middle-age woman reach over to try and plant a sucker on him :) Patrick Stewart was cordial enough, but you can see that it annoyed him to have his picture taken. I took it anyway :P Then scurried away. Nobody wants to get on Captain Picard's wrong side!

Me: "I gave to the witch, can I have a photo taken with you please?"
PS: "It's going to cost you £100."
Me: "But I'm Australian! That's $200!"

I almost forgot

It's 10pm, I've had a couple of pints with Trini, I'm ready to sleep it off. Then I remember, I have a ticket for EXTE at 11:30pm! Soon, I'm out of my pajamas and back into street clothes.

The premise is a little silly, hair extensions gone wild. Trust me though, this movie, creeped the hell out of me! I hid behind my hands for most of it. and couldn't help shrieking "ZOMG!" The villain is comedic, but just exudes CREEPINESS all the time!

I was planning to get a haircut appointment this weekend. I'm going to give it a miss. Gawd. I'll never get hair extensions in this lifetime.

HR vs IT

This week, I'm trying to take back my social life. I'm trying to start by socialising with work people after work hours. Wednesday night, I'm out with the HR team. It. Is. Different.

I've never felt like an underachiever before *grin* A lot of things come into play. A couple of them are a bit younger than me, and have multiple degrees. One is studying for her doctorate. There are a few extremely strong personalities, and there are definitely a few who take things way too seriously. It's hard to have light hearted bantering going on when people don't get the joke. Questions asked to me that night:
"What is your five year plan?" (it's almost a running joke with me and the HR team)
"What are you looking for in a guy?"
"If you don't have a five year plan, do you have a five point plan?"
"What about an 18 month plan?"

It's a little harder for me. These people know what they want and where they want to be. They're in HR! It's their job to organise other people's careers, so they should be good at organising their own.

How do you explain to those people that you like the freedom not to decide?

Project Manager to me: "Lightweight Liew, when are you going to face reality and make some decisions?"

Thursday night, I'm out with the boys from the IT team. This was when I truly felt ok to just... Be. Fck talking about life plans. Let's talk about girls in short skirts. Let's bond over burgers and beer and shots. Let's bitch about office politics. Let's talk about what gigs are on this weekend. Let's just scull beer. Yup. I sculled my Negro Modelo. I even earnt some admiring glances from the table nearby. Mate, I'm Aussie, mate! By the end of the night, I couldn't stand straight. I was hanging on to the bag strap of a developer for dear life. But you know, that's what I call a decent night out without a care in the world.

And I didn't throw up *beam*

Shooting the breeze with Iz

I love talking to Iz. She'll fill my head with ideas on how men should treat women. Iz is a woman who has to create phantom boyfriends to keep the boys she doesn't want away. Iz's thinking is that a man should always be "hot for the girl". The guy should always call the girl. If the guy doesn't call within 48 hours, then he's playing games, and who's got time for that sht these days? If the guy wants to be with a girl, he'll make it happen. Straight from the start, the guy has to treat the girl like a queen. Suits me :)

Then again, Iz has the attitude and the looks for it, I... don't *grin* It's funny, Iz talks about how a man should always see a girl safely home. Even if he had to take the bus for 2 hours in the wrong direction. No offense to my ex, but he never once bothered to meet me at the train station to walk me through the dodgy park to his place. Or I was always the one spending money on cab fares to his place. Iz would've set fire to my ex :P

I'd kinda like to think that it's possible to meet a guy who'd go out of his way to do things right by me... But these days, it's hard enough to meet a guy who can do something as simple as show up on time :P

Movie time!

About a year ago, I watched City of God. It still remains one of my all time must-watch movies. This movie made me squirm. The thing that got to me was the imagery of kids with guns. Tonight, I had the chance to watch the sequel, City of Men, as part of the BFI London Film Fest! The director Paolo Morelli stuck around to answer questions after the film. However, I left when the presenter started asking questions like, "Tell us about the themes of friendship in your movies". Wtf. What is this, highschool? That's like pointing at a painting and saying, "Tell us about the use of red here". I'm more a "What inspired you to make this movie? Who are these people that have this story to tell?" type of person. So, I didn't stay around for the Q&A.

Next on my list is Exte! Unfortunately, I managed to quadruple book my upcoming weekend :( I have tickets to see Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Rodriguez's Planet Terror, Patrick Stewart in Macbeth (*squeal*! Captain Picard!), and I forgot our house is having a party >_< Therefore, if anyone wants tickets to Clockwork Orange (I'm gutted :( ) or Planet Terror in Rondon for this Saturday, let me know :P

Also on my list is FrightFest! I can't wait! George A Romero, the Father of Zombie movies, will be making an apperance :D I'll have a chance to watch at least 3 of the movies scheduled before making my way to the airport for a weekend in Cologne *grin* AAAH... Can't wait!

Land of the Giants

On my trip home from Amsterdam, I was contemplating a theory. I wonder if there's a correlation between megalomania and height. Because, I can seriously understand why there would be a lot of shtty short people who would want to conquer the world just to get their own way. Me being one of them of course :P I'd make all the tall people stand at the back :P

The theory was blown when I came home and did a Google search for Chairman Mao's height. He was 1.83m.

It's really difficult for me to go clubbing these days. I value personal space so very much. A Paul van Dyk gig is the last place on earth with personal space. Not only that, this time I was picked on by tall Dutch people before I even got into the club! I fell for the old "tap on the shoulder and pretend it wasn't me" trick... Ah well.

The other thing I hate in universal club culture, are the girls who are obnoxiously obnoxious about their prettiness. The ones that stomp on you with their heels, and flick their disgustingly germy long hair in your face. Those ones. The nasty part of me just wants to grab a handful of hair and rip it out.

The nice part of me just grumbles and puts up with it to prevent deportation charges. U&W, you need to teach me some Dutch swear words! "Bitterballen" just isn't going to cut it.

Anyway, 11:30pm, post Groove Armada, it was time to head off to see PvD at Powerzone. This has to be the nicest pic I've ever taken of PvD :)

There's also one more thing I'd like to mention about Dutch clubbing. What the hell is with the token system these days? Everywhere you go, it's exchange money for tokens to buy drinks. There's always a massive line to buy tokens. There's also that nasty thing they do where they give you the bottle without a cap, forcing you to buy a new bottle everytime you want a drink. Gawd, it's illegal not to give water for free in Australia.

Unfortunately, I was too tired to wake up at 1am to see PvD play at KoKo in Rondon the next night :(

I see you Baby

SHAKIN THAT ASS!

To be honest, I had no idea what Groove Armada were like. I didn't even know any of their songs. I was just going along for fun. What, you mean you don't take a day off to fly to Amsterdam to listen to random DJs for fun? ;) To be honest, I initially thought the support act were Groove Armada, and was disappointed that they sucked so badly *lol* I was falling asleep! It wasn't until Groove Armada got on and sang the words, "Whenever I'm down, I call on you my friend," that I realised, "OH! Groove Armada sang _that_ song!" And of course, there's also the infamous "I See You Baby" song :)

By accident, I took this really cool photo:

Ok, so it's not that cool, but I was never able to take photos like this with my old skool Canon :) There's something called "Intelligent ISO" mode on my new camera. One day, I'll RTFM.

New camera

To be honest, I don't know how to use it :/

I initially bought it for my aunt. But... She left for her holiday and I didn't have time to give it to her beforehand. So it sat in my room. Staring at me. I thought I'd be nice and charge the battery for her. But the nice packaging got ruined. You know how those sticker seals get. So I might as well keep it for myself :P

Don't worry, I bought my aunt a replacement :) I'm not that mean.

Lager Lager Lager Lager!

On a school night :) It's been such a looong time since I've been to a gig. SW4 was way back in August. So it felt good to be out again :) Who cares that it's a school night when it's UNDERWORLD! It's funny, they're one group I never thought I'd see live. The singer's nuts! On my best-live-gigs list, I'd rank them #4. B, this one's for you :)

Drive boy dog boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a lipstick boy
She was a beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your innerspace boy
You had
hands girl boy
and steel boy
You had chemicals boy
I've grown so close to you
Boy and you just groan boy
She said comeover comeover
She smiled at you boy

Let your feelings slip boy
But never your mask boy
Random blonde bio high density rhythm
Blonde boy blonde country blonde high density
You are my drug boy
You're real boy
Speak to me and boy dog
Dirty numb cracking boy
You get wet boy
Big big time boy
Acid bear boy
Babes and babes and babes and babes and babes
And remembering nothing boy
You like my tin horn boy and get
Wet like an angel
Derail

You got a velvet mouth
You're so succulent and beautiful
Shimmering and dirty
Wonderful and hot times
On your telephone line
And god and everything
On your telephone
And in walk an angel

And look at me your mom
Squatting pissed in a tube-
hole at Tottenham Court Road
I just come out of the ship
Talking to the most
Blonde I ever met
Shouting
Lager lager lager lager
Shouting
Lager lager lager lager
Shouting...
Lager lager lager
Shouting
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega
Shouting lager lager lager lager
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
So many things to see and do
In the tube hole true
Blonde going back to Romford
Mega mega mega going back to Romford
Hi mom are you having fun
And now are you on your way
To a new tension
headache

My lucky day

There I was, sitting in a chair similar to one you'd find at a dentist, getting my eyebrows waxed by Nina in Selfridges. Suddenly, an announcement:
"Attention customers, please join Michel Roux Junior at the Cookshop for a cooking demonstration."

EH? WOT WOT? MICHEL ROUX JUNIOR? But my eyebrows are only half done! Impatiently I wait for Nina - "Done! Take a look". I do a cursory glance into the mirror, give some smiling nods at Nina and push off the dental chair. With flaming eyelids fresh from waxing, I rushed 3 floors down, and claimed front row at Michel's cooking demo. Not that hard, since not many people were there at the time :P I can't help but grunt humorously when I hear an elderly oriental couple next to me exclaim, "Oh, look at that wok! Looks really good, is that what he's selling?"

My parents would've said the same thing *grin*

Who is he? He's Alain Roux's cousin :) That's Alain from Waterside Inn. Their family history goes a long way back. Michel Roux Jr's restaurant is called Le Gavroche. Very highly rated by Zagat. Number 28 on this list. It's one of the places I've been thinking about eating at for awhile. Thinking only, because I don't actually have anyone to go there with to eat :P According to their website, it was the first restaurant in the UK to earn first 1, then 2 and finally 3 Michelin stars. At the end of the cooking demo, I smile at Michel and walk over:
Me: "Do you mind doing me a favour? Can you sign my cup for me?"
Michel: "Sure! I've never been asked to sign a cup before!"
Me: "Normally I'd ask you to sign a menu. I have Alain's signature too." (Nothing like a bit of name dropping)
Michel: "Ooh, so you've been to Waterside Inn."
Me: "Yes. Isn't it your restaurant's 40th anniversary this year?"
Michel: "Yes, it is."
Me: "Did you do anything special?"
Michel: "We had plenty of parties!"
Me: "How come I wasn't invited?" *grin*

Michel laughs and winks and hands over an autographed fork (the cup didn't work cause it was waxed). Yup. I'm officially a celebrity chef groupie.

When I got home and looked in the mirror, I belatedly realise that Nina had done something weird to my left eyebrow :P

7am

What's the worse thing you could do to someone after a 20+ hour flight?

Take a picture of them and blog about it *grin* Hey, I woke up at 5am to be at Heathrow, surely that's justification enough! *grin* Welcome to Rondon Missy W :)

Taking a compliment

The angry man walks over to me and sits down. I tense up. My fingers literally cramp over my keyboard and stop tapping. I almost wince because I think he's about to yell at me about something. It can't be good. He's never sat in on any of my meetings except when it's critical. He's even gotten up and left halfway through a critical meeting. I can't help but glare at him whenever we pass each other in the corridor. So most of the time, I pretend to be pre-occupied and look down when I walk past him.

Ok. So I'm not very subtle :P

Angry Man: "I just read your email about go-live, and I wanted to tell you that I think you did a great job. You did really well, and I've told *insert Boss' name here* the same thing."
Me: "..."

I can't help but think, "You ass".

For the past 3 months, I've had no support from him at all. It was obvious he didn't give a fck about my work. Even worse, in his position, he should've taken a more active interest. The only time he spoke to me, was to yell at me for making a couple of minor mistakes. It was more a misunderstanding than a mistake. It was soon cleared up with other colleagues. No harm done, everyone else seemed content. I had sincerely apologised to him and more importantly, people who were actually involved, what else did I have to do?

It's been bothering me for awhile. It's been a long time since I had been yelled at and made to feel imbecelic. When I talk to people at work, I don't yell at them and make them feel like the world's going to end. I don't belittle them. I don't make people feel shit about making mistakes. You hope that after talking them through it, they'd learn from it and improve. Or at least, that's how I've always treated people I've worked with. I didn't scream like a lunatic at the developers when they left with me a server error at login after a 7pm code release. If I was younger in my career, I would have been crushed and probably would have grovelled for the angry man's forgiveness.

You know what, fck that. I was doing my job and trying to deliver.

Me: "Thank you. But, I'd just like to say, you made my life difficult. You're not very good at communicating. And it wasn't easy for me to deal with how you spoke to me."
Angry Man: "I'm sorry to hear that. I wish someone had told me."

I'm pretty sure someone did.

The world moves on, but at least I said my piece.

Going LIVE

I had no idea what "global" meant until I started working on this project. Tomorrow, it's go-live. Here's what the month of September was like for me:

Anywhere you see "UAT Group", that's at least an hour of me briefing groups of people somewhere around the world via WebEx and conference call. Dubai, New York, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Greece, India, Taiwan, Bermuda, Bangladesh. For participants in Rondon, I had to do face-to-face sessions. That's close to 130 people I spoke to in the space of 2 weeks.

Anywhere you see "GSC Con Call", that's where I had to do an hour long debrief with the Support Team in Bangalore. Although they were great fun to talk to, they were exhausting with their endless list of questions. I can now greet you in Hindi - Namaste!

Every Monday was the Steering Committee meeting at lunchtime, where I had to answer to my workstream sponsors.

Anywhere you see "DEV KETCHUP", is when I had to go through defects, fixes, retest results, change requests and any issues with the Development Team. Who sat on the opposite side of the floor to me. My excuse for wearing trainers to work, "Because I keep having to run to talk to them, and I can't run in heels" :P

Smattered in between all those are meetings with the third-party trainers, more demos to new managers, conference calls to Philipines on developing Macromedia flash demos, and lots of time spent sorting through defect reports. Teaching non-technical business users how to test, is not easy.

Total number of defects raised for UAT: 98.
Go-live delayed by: 1 week (mainly because Dev were late in delivering to me :P)
Number of times yelled at by angry fat man: 3
Time off to spend with my parents: 3 days and I was still working :(

It's been such a solid hardcore month of work. I'm exhausted. But I'm proud :) We're going LIVE! :D (Me to my boss: "We have to go live on Monday, I'm losing weight!")

Special thanks to Trini for being my escape buddy *besos*
Special thanks to Shuai for defect management advice *grin* No Jira (haha, if only SF knew), no Test Director, just good old Excel done in a very efficient way.
Special thanks to KC for comforting me at dinner :)

Splashing out

I've been surviving on premium apple muffins lately. So I was really looking forward to NOBU :) Verdict?

Urm... Majority of the dishes seemed too salty to me. And I usually take a lot of soy sauce in my diet. Sorry, it's probably not what you want to hear. Don't worry, I still ate everything on my plate ;)

Amuse bouche:

The signature miso black cod was great, but it left me hankering for Yoshii's delicate cedar smoked rudder fish.

Miso black cod:

Quality seafood produce. However, it's 70 squids for the omakase. I wouldn't expect anything less than quality. I'm looking at the pics though and still thinking, "Salty". It'd be interesting to try the 90 squids omakase to see the difference. Apparently, it's meant to be more traditional in preparation. However, for somewhere that's rated so highly for Japanese, I have to say I've had better. I wonder if this is what happens when renown chefs branch out and open so many restaurants globally.

Me: "As a souvenir, can you get the chefs to sign the sake menu for me please?"
(Waiter goes away for awhile)
Waiter: "Do you want the Nobu signature, or the chef's signature?"
Me: "Is Nobu here?"
Waiter: "No" (big smile)
Me: *lol* "Then not Nobu's. Please tell the chefs who prepared my meal I really enjoyed it and I would like their signature."

Bloody recruitment agents

In my inbox today:
===========
Subject: Get In Touch
Dear Shireen,

I would be grateful if you could contact me to discuss your career aspirations in detail as I am working on a vacancy for a client that I feel would be of interest to you.

Please could you either contact me on the number below or alternatively, email me back suggesting a convenient time, date and number for me to call you.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Regards,

*Recruiter Name Here*
Consultant
===========
I hate recruiters. They always screw you over. ALWAYS. Tonight, I'm feeling brazen. I've had an umeshu, 330ml of quality beer, and a large shot of sake aged 10 years. Here is my response:
===========
Hi *Recruiter*,

Here's what I would like to know. When I was unemployed and looking for a job, you contacted me and told me something along the lines of, "I can definitely help you out, I'll call you back".

You never did.

So. Why should I give you my business?

Cheers,
Shireen
============
Can you believe, this recruiter looked me up on LinkedIn and wanted to join my network? Yeah, like I'm that stupid to accept and let a recruiter view my contacts.

Awkward moment

It's close to midnight, I'm in a mini-cab on the way home from work. The driver is talkative. Name one cab driver in this world who isn't. The conversation veers. From work, to movies, to the inevitable - relationships.

The awkward moment arrives when the middle-aged married father-of-one cabbie divulges, "I have an oriental gf. She's in her 20's! I like oriental girls. She treats me well".

My eyeballs somersault. It always creeps me out when cab drivers say the words, "I like oriental girls". You'd be surprised how many times I've heard it. Hell, those words don't have to come from a cabbie. Any guy who says those words creeps me out. It's normally followed by a creepy knowing look. In the dark hidey corner of the cab, I scrunch down lower and pray the next words aren't...

"Do you have a bf?"

...It's soon followed by the routine questions. And the routine exclamations of surprise. "Single? YOU? Why isn't a nice girl like you dating a nice boy? It's ok if you want to play. You're still young. What? You're close to 30? You don't look it!"

As he drops me off, the "once I dated 4 girls at the same time" cabbie cautions me with these wise words: "You only live once! And don't trust any guy!"