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 have slept in the dirt while camping, in a bathtub, on a concrete balcony, and on countless trains. In fact, name a place and I have most likely slept there.

Except when I have had coffee. My body responds very strongly to caffeine, and last night was no exception. At about midnight, I decided to have a cup of tea, pouring not a teaspoon of leaves into my cup but a heaped tablespoon. Oops. I could not get to sleep until almost 6 a.m. Then my alarm went off at 9:55 a.m. for a meeting, only for it to be cancelled!

The last few weeks have been less than ordinary. I went to a few parties, talked to some interesting people, and did plenty of work. Somehow, I became the organiser for this week’s Thursday Night Curry, a group of IT professionals from around Auckland who gather to talk shop. I have to admit that TNC is one of the things I look forward to most every other week. Yum.

In other news, I am preparing to travel throughout NZed and then on to Singapore and Taiwan. I have acquired a car for NZ$25 per day, and they will pay for shipping. I thought this was a good price, less than half what my parents typically paid from what I had heard, but then a fellow Curry attendee said, “Oh, I have a connection. I could have gotten it for you cheaper, perhaps 22 or 23 a day.” Oops. Kelvin forgot to make use of all that networking.

At times, I feel as though I am already observing my old room from the outside. People are arriving in hordes to inspect the room, perhaps five a day. Chaotic! I must say, though, that prospective renters here in New Zealand seem much easier to evaluate than those I encountered in Portland. Any previous flatmates reading this will remember some unusually memorable interviews: people arriving in no shape for an interview, elaborate plans for unauthorised cable channels, and others who clearly were not a good fit.

With that, I think I am ready to fade into another sleep cycle. One last thing: I try to leave technical topics out of my regular blog, but this one was too much fun. I currently have a Portland phone number. A previous owner and a restaurant had used the line before me, so I regularly received calls at 5 a.m. asking, “May I speak to Melissa?” I decided to put a stop to it using technology.

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, or phone system. It may be useful for our office, so I have been learning how to work with it. Setting up an IVR (“press 1 for tech support, 2 for a free drink, 3 for the CEO”) was inevitable. Now, when you call the line, I welcome you by saying, “Press 1 for Kelvin; otherwise, hang up now.” Then the theme from Jeopardy! plays. After pressing 1, my laptop, or soon-to-be-purchased SIP phone, rings. It was a neat setup. If I do not pick up, you hear a recorded message saying, “Our phone system is unavailable. Please leave a message.” I have not had an early-morning phone call since.

Just great.