Beer and Chocolate

This may seem a bit odd, but I seriously miss the beer and chocolate from Estonia.

I was looking at an Estonian website when an ad flashed up for Kalev chocolate, and I felt... I'm not sure, really. Deprived? Nostalgic?

My first taste of Kalev chocolate was on the third day of my cycling tour in 2009. I was starvingly hungry and in desperate need of lunch, but lunch had to be caught and cooked first (that's what happens when you order fish and chips at a fish farm). I grabbed a chocolate bar while waiting and wolfed it down. Then I grabbed another one to eat later (when I could enjoy it) because it was really good.

I think I probably managed to eat Kalev chocolate every second day from that point onward, and took some rather large blocks with me when I left the country (for sharing with friends and family, of course).

And then there was the beer. Apart from the fact that the Cider marketed as "Strongbow" in Estonia was much better than the "Strongbow" in Australia, I think I managed to sample the major local brands and at least one "boutique" beer while I was there. I have to say Saku beers quickly became favourites, and I quite liked the porter made by Palmse as well.

Ah, Palmse - I loved that place. It is a definite goal in my life to get back there one day.

So in the three weeks I was in Estonia, I managed to get oddly attached to the beer and chocolate. Haven't been able to sample either since. Bit sad, really, but there it is.

Princess Powerhouse

Ich habe eine tolle Idee für eine Film. Es ist die bestern Idee für jeden, der gern "Princess Diaries" oder "Bend it Like Beckham":

"Princess Powerhouse" - eine Film von einer Prinzessin, der in Verkleidung Fußball spielen.

She's a princess, see, so she has to pretend to be genteel and respectable, and is probably a target for kidnappers and such, so the whole thought of playing football would be a big no-no, but she loves the game with a passion. So, with the help of a faithful manservant who pretends to be her father, she plays for a local team under a false name.

As a princess, she has to hide the bruises and find good reasons to leave the palace without anyone noticing, but it's all relatively easy... Until she's given the opportunity to play in the national league. It's a dream come true for a football mad teenage girl, but a logistical nightmare for a princess who has been playing under a pseudonym, but not really "in disguise".

Can she pull it off? With both identities now in the public eye, how long will it be before someone notices that the princess and the football powerhouse are one and the same?

No Good Deed

So, I did something today that seemed to work well. Everyone was very happy about it. Everyone except my boss. I didn't think it was a particularly big or interesting thing, just nice and useful, so I forgot to mention it to him. That was apparently a big problem, because apparently it as a Big Thing, and I should run Big Things past my boss first.

Fair enough, I guess. I just didn't think it was such a Big Thing.

So, I came back from doing this nice thing, which I think worked well, feeling tired but victorious - only to have my boss act as if I had done something horrible, verging on reprehensible. All because I had forgotten to mention it to him, and all because I didn't think it was such a Big Thing.

But, I have to admit that I often don't mention things to my boss, because I don't know which of the things I'll mention will turn out to be a Big Thing, that somehow required something I didn't know I was supposed to do. And, then, I'm made to feel like a moron because I didn't know it was a Big Thing and therefore required this, that and the other.

I sometimes feel the only way I can win, in my job, is to not tell anyone anything and hope they don't notice what I'm doing. My clients like what I do, and I like to think that's a Good Thing. I just don't think any of it is a Big Thing.

The Project Effect

I used to say the CMS project altered my personality. It was just so mind-numbingly horrible that I had to stop caring about, well, pretty much everything. I can't really explain it, it's just that doing something enormous, time consuming, largely pointless and irreconcilably bad for several months solid meant I had to go a bit "zen" simply to cope with the soul-destroying, monotonous obnoxiousness of my day-to-day work.

Knowing that you were spending hours working on a flawed design which would never be good, could never be good and was doomed to fail spectacularly was depressing. Being able to see the flaws, but being unable to fix them was depressing. Being largely responsible for helping people try to navigate through the flaws in order to create something reasonably useful, even while knowing it could never really work? Well, that was kind of depressing, too.

So, I learnt to let it go. To accept the flaws in everything I was doing. To ride them, like a leaf on the wind. My brain was slowly turning into a glazed donut as a result of the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the tasks, but I learnt to be okay with that, too.

It's taken me a couple of years, but I've slowly managed to get a bit more coherent. At least, I think I have. But, then, I forget what I'm doing as I'm in the middle of doing it, and I just spent the last three minutes hitting myself in the head with a balloon.

Believe it or not, that's some sort of progress. I still have a nasty habit of not caring about things being wrong and horrible, though. I think it annoys the dickens out of the people around me, because they tend to want me to panic along with them (or at least look like I'm taking it seriously), and all I can do is say, "Yup, we're doomed all right. Want a cup of tea?"

Out of Context

Today's example:

"Because I'm a visual person, I can picture myself picking them up between the legs and smashing their head against a wall"

Out of Context

There are things you hear that would probably make more sense if you knew why someone said them. Today's example:

"That's not a typing frog - that's a turtle"

Happy Palindrome Day!

Ah, palindromes. You know, they're never odd or even. And, of course, on palindrome day you should try to drive a Toyota. You should also take the time to ask important, meaningful questions, like do geese see God? And Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

It's also the perfect time to forgive someone called Dennis. It matters not if Dennis sinned, he is still worthy of forgiveness.

Oh, and don't nod - even if you agree. But do spare a thought for the incredible chutzpah that went into designing the Panama Canal - A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.

Is this all a bit ridiculous? Maybe, but dammit, I’m mad!

Time to send out an SOS, I think...

Waffle

The trouble is I've been trained to do it. Literally. One of the tasks I has to do to pass a number of exams involved impromptu speeches. I'd get a couple of minutes (or less) to prepare a speech on a topic that had practically been pulled out of a hat, and I had to speak convincingly about that topic as if I had at least five minutes of prepared material in front of me.

It's a very useful skill, but it has lead to some very bad habits. I have a nasty habit of underpreparing presentations, confident in my ability to pad out my scanty notes on the spot. I also have a habit of padding when I don't need to - I'll talk for 10 minutes when I should be talking for 5, or for over an hour when I'm only supposed to take 50 minutes.

Time management. I have issues with it generally (what with the fact that I have almost no concpet of linear time), but when you've actually been trained to waffle... Well, let's just say I have some trouble with brevity.

Good Australian Football

This is a saying deserving of acceptance: "If you want to watch good Australian football, watch the W-League".

If you want to watch "elite" Australian football, watch the A-League. Sure, you have to pay for the priviledge as it can only be seen on Pay TV or at a live match, but you can see the high-paid high-flyers of what football talent can be bothered staying in Australia or thinks Oz will be a nice stepping stone on the way to somewhere better.

Alternatively, if you'd like to watch good Australian football, you could watch the W-League. You can see them for free of a Saturday afternoon by tuning into the ABC.

Well, you could. The grand-final is this weekend, and I recommend you tune in to watch it. These girls are good. I mean, really good. I've been watching the A-League just long enough to forget what good football looks like, but an afternoon with Canberra United reminded me. Sadly, they aren't in the grand final. They lost out to Brisbane Roar after a game that was so well played and hotly contended that it came down to a shootout in order to determine the winner.

Now, I have seen some good football matches in the A-League. Mostly involving teams other than the Fury, but that's beside the point. The women in the W-League just seem to play a better class of football entirely. It's even better than some of the Bundesliga matches I've seen.

What really annoys me is how long it took me to discover the W-League. I don't usually read the TV listings for a Saturday afternoon, and no one advertised or mentioned the fact that the game was on.

And, I mean no one. Even in this day and age, women's leagues don't get listed in the "What sport is playing on TV this week" lists, they are rarely (if ever) covered in the sports pages of the news papers - and even the ABC can't be bothered advertising them during the week.

This is pathetic, people. It's the 21st Century, and we are in the most sports obsessed country on the face of the earth. Surely we could start giving women's leagues better coverage?

It's true

Hmm

When I started this post, I had forgotten what I was going to say. I thought if I just started writing it would come to me.

I was wrong.

Palindrome Day

Oh, and I hereby declare next Friday, the 11th of February, Palindrome Day.

If you aren't following America's daft way of putting the month first, the date reads as 11/02/2011.

So, have a palindrome party where you say things like "Madam, I'm Adam" and "A Toyota's a Toyota", listen to songs by Abba (particularly their #1 hit, 'SOS') and play Weird Al Yankovic's 'Palindrome Song' far too often).

Oh, and you can eat anything you want at a palindrome party, except melons and lemons. No lemon, no melon.