I close my eyes and write in my blog in an attempt to fall back asleep. As many of you know, I have never had a problem falling asleep. I’ve slept many times in the dirt camping, in a bathtub, on concrete balcony, every train, and in fact, you name it and I’ve most likely slept in it.
Except if I’ve had coffee. My body luckily reacts to caffeine very well. Last night included. At about 12:00 I decided to have a cup of tea, pouring not a teaspoon of leaves into my cup but a lumpy tablespoon (oops). I couldn’t get to bed until almost 6am. Then my alarm went off at 9:55am for a meeting, and it was cancelled!
The last few weeks have been less than ordinary. I went to a few parties, talked to a few interesting people and did lots of work. Somehow I was the organizer for this weeks Thursday Night Curry; a group of IT Professionals from around Auckland that gather to talk shop. I have to admit that I think TNC is one of the things I look forward to most every other week. Yum.
In other news, I’m preparing to start my travels throughout NZed and up to Singapore and Taiwan. I’ve acquired a car for 25NZD/day, plus they will pay for shipping. I thought this was a good price, less than half what my parents typically paid (from what I heard), but then a fellow Curry guy said “Oh, I have a connection, could have gotten it for you cheaper, like 22 or 23 a day.” Oops, Kelvin forgot to utilize the networking he has done.
At times I’m starting to feel like a dead bet that has gained an omnipresent view of its previous residence. People are coming in hordes to check out my room to rent out — maybe five a day. Crazy! And I must say, I think renters here in NZ are so much more normal than the ones I witnessed in Portland. Any previous flatmates that read that will immediately conjure up images of people driving drunk (you could smell the alcohol on them) to the interview, and proceed to tell you that if you choose them, they will hack your TV to give you free playboy. Or people who almost got on a fight on the bus on the way over, and proceed to tell you. Or 40 year old single guys.
And with that, I think I’m ready to fade into another sleep cycle. Oh!! One last thing I should mention. I try to leave tech-things out of my normal blog, but this one was just too much fun. Currently I have a Portland phone number (503-715-0066). But, but, but, a bankrupt girl named Melissa and a resteraunt owned the line before me, so I would regularly receive calls at 5am saying “may I speak to Melissa.” I decided to put a stop to it. Tech style.
There is an open source application called Asterisk that I have been using. Many companies use it, in fact, many if not most of the IT companies represented at Curry have at least one Asterisk box. It is an enterprise class PBX, that is, phone system. It may be useful for our office, so I’ve been learning how to play with it. Setting up an IVR (press 1 for tech support, 2 for a free drink, 3 for the CEO) was inevitable. So now, when you call the line, I welcome you saying “press 1 for Kelvin otherwise hang up now.” Then the theme from jeopardy plays. After pressing one my laptop, or soon-to-be-purchased SIP phone rings. Nifty eh? And if I don’t pick up, you hear a message recorded by some girl saying “weasels have eaten ourphone system, please leave a message.” I haven’t had an early morning phone call since.
Just great.
This entry is from my journal and was written on Jan. 25, 2006. It's been tagged with Notes on Life. There have been 0 comments so far.