I realized something tonight, that there is something I hate. And I mean, hate. What you might ask? Mosquitos. Mozzies, as they are called here. But I don’t hate all mosquitos, just the small ones. The big ones live in a dog-eat-dog world, and I’m usually the bigger dog. Somehow I have mozzie-radar that allows me to get them without even really looking. Yay for me. It is almost like a game, a little messy, but satisfying regardless. The game is sort of like being in class with the annoying guy in the front row always asking questions and trying to pretend like he is smart; but it is obvious, especially through the teachers nonverbal (and verbal sometimes) language that they are annoyed as well. I’ve always wanted to just throw my pen at that person, but I was a back-row dweller, so not an option.
Damn tangents.
The point is, you can’t get the small ones. They are so small you can’t either hear them, and don’t always know if it is a mosquito or a piece of dust or something. While I don’t know about you, I’ll pass clapping the air randomly at all the little pieces of dust I see.
So why do I bring this up? I have all these little mosquito bites (and a few spider bites from gardening) all over me. Well, all over me where I’m not furry.
Damn mosquitos.
Thinking about productivity I now realize that I have just wasted 5 or 10 minutes from my life complaining about mosquitos, and now I’m wasting more time complaining about complaining. I told you, mosquitos are like a bloody plague! Sucking blood and productivity from ordinary people. If I ever get a work evaluation that says “sub-par productivity levels” I’m going to blame it on the small mozzies and ask to be transfered to a less humid environment.
Enough. Life here has been enjoyable as usual. My days are consumed working online, talking to Yan-Shih online, talking to my parents and friends online, writing papers online, and sometimes hanging out with my flatties. Basically, I’m making sure to get every penny out of my DSL, as overpriced as it is.
Two exciting things did happen this week, I guess. Curry went great, about 10 people showed up, and the bill was quite low. The curry was great as usual, conversation decent, and the bill was lower than normal. No complaints. After curry I went to a trendy bar/coffee place somewhere with two IT guys. Michael, Jay and myself chatted about running an efficient Customer Support center for a few hours, chatted about general IT for a few more hours, and then got kicked out of the bar/coffee place (it was closing, I wasn’t being bad. Unlike Christmas of last year in London and getting kicked out of the hostel at 7:00am or something…) Got dropped off home.
Michael owns an ISP out of Wellington and Jay was Orcon’s first employee — his cousin owns Orcon. It is one of the largest, if not the largest, ISPs in New Zealand. I spent Friday afternoon with him and the other owner chatting about IT and getting on the piss. My esteem was boosted slightly when Michael asked if I wanted to work for him running a php+billing sync project and/or as their network admin. Would have been very fun, but I would need to stay in New Zealand, and I just feel learning Mandarin and spending time with Yan-Shih are the next course in my life. Plus, the people I work with now on various projects are pretty wicked.
After drinking piss and driving around in Mercedes all afternoon and evening I came home and found a party — I guess I knew a little shindig was going to happen, and was supposed to be home at 7:00 (I came home tipsy from drinking a homebrewn whiskey at 9:30). I knew some of the people here, which was cool, and started chatting away. The highlight happened when for some reason Dylan (flatmate) was teasing me about my hat. My lucky hat. I wouldn’t wear it out on a Friday night surely, but I had been out since 12:30 in the afternoon. Well, I tossed it at him for some reason, but didn’t aim well (can you aim a cap?) and hit him in the head. Oops.
I turned around to grab a beer but saw him get up and start to walk off. Somebody asked him where he was going and he said “to take a piss. In this cap.” Scary thing is, I bet he would have. And it isn’t a mesh hat, it is like, rain proof! Which flipped around is a very, very bad thing. We tussled in the hallway and he tackled me to the floor — he’s a bit bigger than me. I apologized and all was well.