Girly Work Day

It occurs to me that I've been rather more girly at work today than usual. Rather out of character I've let a chipped nail bother me (stupid thing keeps catching on stuff and I don't have a file to fix it. No wait... I love my leatherman!). I've discovered that the scent of diesel will follow you around as soon as you look at a fuel tank. To top it all off I've eaten copious amounts of chocolate failing to make up for a missed lunch. Even now that I've eaten dinner I still want more chocolate! *sigh*

Just one of those days I think. Day off tomorrow though so yay :)

Maybe, just maybe if I'm a good girl, I might have an iPod on Tuesday and then I'll stop whinging about not having it...

A Good Night's Rest

Sometimes it's best to just go with the flow and deal with the consequences later. Last night I had a fantastic time at Al Bayti where some of the crew are staying. I'll only go for an hour or so because I have to be at work this morning somehow turned into oh is that the time... I have get up for work in just over four hours if I want to make my shuttle bus. It was all worth it though. I had one of the best, if shortest, nights of sleep and feel fairly refreshed!

It was also good to see Gene last night (while we were both awake). I hung around work catching up on my filing until the 00:30 shuttle to Al Waab, where we live, to change out of the day's clothes. Jack kindly gave us (and Rick) a lift to the party where there was the perfect mixture of music, beer, dancing, cocktails and, most importantly, conversation that didn't revolve around work.

I must admit it was particularly wonderful to put faces to the voices and names that I'd heard on radio. It's amazing how different people can look without a high vis vest and hard hat too...

All in all a good night was had by all. Gene & Jye arrived at our house around 07:30 talking rather loudly. I ended up trotting downstairs and making "please keep it down" motions in a half state of consciousness before heading back upstairs to make the most of my last hour of sleep.

It's gatherings like this that you end up remembering after the shows long over. I was originally planning to head home for another attempt at a good night's sleep. I'm glad I didn't. I don't think I would have slept as well as I did and I would have missed out on a great party. It's funny being social outside of work can be almost as refreshing as a night in when you're working. I look forward to doing it again some time :)

Tick Tock

Dozing on the bus to work today I discovered the name of a character for my (probably not so good) attempt at a novel to commence in four day. I figured that my number of blog posts in February and March were pretty good so maybe I'll hit the quarter-way mark this year. We'll see. :)

I had a wonderful time reading six word short stories yesterday. It would seem that my online entertainment springs from reading the blogs listed on the right and perhaps the Age website for a bit of entertainment. Anything email is a bonus!

We seem to have made it through the bulk of the holiday season in Doha which is a relief. Everything can crawl back to normality now.

The intersection that I was excited to discover had opened a few weeks ago (meaning a 5-10 minute travel to and from work) has been closed again extending travel times to 15-25 minutes. It's important not to miss your turn off in Doha... you may have to travel a fair way until the next roundabout or place where a frustrated driver has managed to move the concrete blocks and barricades.

My dislike of fluorescent lights inspired a desk lamp purchasing trip to Carrefour the other day. I returned with two "duck lamps" (Dave's is called Edward, and Lisa's is Lucy) and one ummm.... curvy metal stick with a folded bit of material. It's prettier than it sounds (and nameless). Perhaps I should try and build this into my story...

Gene's managed to get in touch with his French family so they know we'll be over there soon. Hopefully we'll be able to give them a call soon. By "we" I mean Gene. I think it'll be a Monday thing because of the time difference and the shifts he's working.

The tracking information from Australia Post tells me daily that it was cleared for dispatch from Sydney on 18th October. I wish it would give me some new information. I suppose it's still in transit? Until now I thought I was a patient person. Perhaps I need to start knitting more... that always helped distract me!

Rough plans

Alarm clocks are evil. Alarm clocks going off behind locked doors more so. Grumpy this morning much. Still not sleeping well and slept in an odd position on my sore shoulder and well, it's sore!

Anyhow, it's not all grumpy grumping today. Last night I decided to cheer myself up I started working out a rough itinerary for our Europe trip so that I could leave it on the pillow for Gene to look at when he got home this morning. Wow! What a trip :)

As a rough guide, the first week will be spent in France, Paris for Christmas and visiting friends and family. The start of the second week sees us travelling South to Toulouse to connect with our train/bus to Andorra La Vella. We'll spend a couple of days there before heading to Spain to live it up in Barcelona and then possibly Ibiza (costs allowing) and then Valencia before we fly up to Britain. A week or so in England doing the family, museum, theatre thing before we start our whirlwind tour of Wales, Ireland and Scotland. From Scotland we fly to Norway where we're heading north to the Arctic Circle to see the Northern Lights. Once we've frozen ourselves we'll travel south to the The Netherlands, possibly Germany but we may not have time or cash and then a quick stop in Belgium before relaxing back in France for a few days seeing friends and family again. After we'll be on our home stretch heading back to Doha, then Singapore and then Melbourne!

This activity turned out to be a bad idea because instead of wearing out my brain it just got me excited about the trip which is possibly only 58 days away! Eek!

Detailled itinerary to follow in the next few days as we start to make bookings. We're in the process of contacting various people to arrange visits :)

Awake

Well, so much for the daily writing eh! In my defense I did write in my journal, I just didn't blog.

Monday is my new day off and it feels much more normal. It was weird having Saturday as the start of a new week. At least Mondays is the theatre "weekend".

Much like our last day off together we didn't do much. In fact I think we did even less than we did last time. I carefully avoided the coffee table by spending most of the time in bed asleep or, in braver moments, mere centimetres away from it on the couch. The most productive part of the day involved making brownies (pecan fudge) which we proceeded to not eat because we weren't feeling well. We think that the gastro bug that's going around may have finally come to visit us.

Yesterday was shabby. Very shabby. I totally missed the shuttle bus and ended up calling a car to take me into work. We stopped by the supermarket so that I could get some yoghurt to try and settle my stomach and actually have something for breakfast as we didn't manage to stomach dinner the previous night. Happily the symptoms eased during the day. Well, mine did. Gene still wasn't 100% at dinner but he made a good go of it!

My dreams are full on spreadsheets and whiteboard markers at the moment. While it means that I'm sleeping in short bursts it means that I'm awake for a quick chat with Gene before he drifts off to sleep and I leave for work.

Plans for our Europe trip are slowly taking shape...

It's looking like we'll stay in a 3 star apartment about 20 minutes from central Paris when we arrive. Apparently the Metro is really close and Gene's confident he can get us around as he's had experience so I'll be making the booking soon. It allows us to stay in/near Paris for longer.

So far our Paris activities and London activities have had the most thought. We're planning to see Wicked, Cabaret and Spamalot while we're in London. It's probably going to cost us a fortune but I'm sure it'll be worth it!

More details are likely to follow on Monday when we've had some time to think about it a bit more and discuss. Gene got our copy of Europe on a shoestring back from his old villa so we'll be reading that a bit more in the next coming weeks for ideas!

Less thinking more sleeping for now!

Recurring Dream

My recurring bad dream of not having graduated from highschool is back. This generally spells a few days of poor sleep *sigh*. I call it a bad dream because it usually doesn't bother me too much. Last night's was almost a nightmare. I woke up feeling all stressed this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Odd really because I had a really productive day at work and rounded off the day with a nice light meal and the last 6 chapters of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Actually there were somethings which usually make me realise it's just a dream but for some reason I didn't pick up on them so I kept dreaming/stressing. Things like the name of my maths teacher being wrong (for some reason I'm always stressed about maths. I think it's a repressed regret that I didn't drop higher maths and go to maths methods because I enjoyed the challenge). Other more obvious things like my highschool not being attached to a venue like the Victorian Arts Centre in reality... or the $7 self-service bar (stocked with all standard spirits and beers) in the back of the maths classroom. That was $7 for all the drinks you wanted in the 75 minute lesson of course. Oddly the maths class involved flicking through knitting books as well but I was really stressed about having to get good grades and pass with a really high score. Makes me wonder what's going on in my subconscious.

Yesterday I was really excited because when I checked the pidgeon holes at work there was a hand-addressed envelope with my name on it. Funny how little things like that light up your day. On closer inspection I realised that I didn't know anyone who lived at the return address... Anyhow, it turned out to be an invoice for work. On other postal related news my iPod was cleared for despatch from Sydney on Thursday. This makes me happy and frustrated all at once. After all I paid for it and the funds should have all been cleared by the end of last week. Monday at latest after the seller gave me the wrong details for the additional postage. Still, it only cleared Sydney this Thursday. I like to think of myself as a patient person but it's now been close to a week and a half since I paid for the item and the 4-5 working days that the courier is likely to take is going to be extended into at least a week if not more because Eid (three day public holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan I think) is likely to start on Monday. Then there's another two public holidays (not sure what for) on Friday and Saturday. I'm beginning to think I should have paid the extra dosh to get Apple to send it to me...

Looking over my post today and the last few days it does occur to me that I'm a bit grumpy. I'm really not that grumpy. At least I'm quite happy about most things in my day. Just not the iPod. Or lack of sleep last night.

On a brighter note, Gene & I are about to book our flights to Paris. I just need to confirm some details at work and we should be all good. Our return to Oz from Doha has been booked. We depart Doha on 9th February and connect in Dubai for a Singapore-bound flight. We'll stay in Singapore for a few days to say hi to the folks and dream about spending money shopping there and eating all the local foods (no stomach flu for me this time!). On the 13th February we'll depart Singapore for Melbourne where we'll get to see our friends and family at some point shortly after that! Well, that's the theory anyway. My guess is that we'll land on the 14th February in which case I think we'll have a quiet Valentines day unpacking, sleeping and reacquainting ourselves with Herman.

I must admit 2006 has been an amazing year. For years I'd been saying that I wanted to head overseas to work, go to Europe etc. This year I've been lucky enough to work on two major events, one overseas and I'll be spending Christmas in Paris! What a year!

Well, I think I've managed to succeed with one New Year's resolution this year. This year certainly seems to be an improvement on last year (not that last year was terrible or anything). Now I've got 70 days to learn how to juggle three balls and I'll have completed all resolutions... :)

More ranting than expected

I was browsing through the Age website today, as I often do on my day off, and was immediately drawn to the two articles on cosmetic whitening creams in Asia. While I have no real opinion on the findings they presented in terms of mercury and chromium traces in the creams, I was surprised that "white is the new tan" in Asia. It really isn't that new when you think about it. Just take a look at any Chinese or Japanese illustrations and you'll see pale skin instead of olive skin. I understand that the title of the article is just something to catch the attention of the reader (worked for me) but a little consistancy in the reporting would have been nice. One of the articles finished with a comment about reverting back to old methods of temporary whitening like yoghurt.

It is true though, the love of fair skin among Asian communities. Browsing the cosmetics and skin care isle at Carrefour over here there's a miriad of products that can give you a perfect porcelain complexion. There are even capsules that you can take daily to assist with this complexion. Face wipes, soaps, masks... anything to keep the skin fair. At school I had a friend who stayed indoors/out of the sun for a couple of months because she had to go to a wedding and didn't want to be tanned. It's crazy but I guess we the grass is always greener. At least foot binding doesn't seem to have come back into fashion...

Speaking of fashion... as a small tiny person I was a little alarmed and disappointed when I read an article and saw a news snippet that said that some bra manufacturers were planning to stop making A & B cup sizes in their bra. This really sucks. I'm small enough to be able to fit into size 12 Australian kids clothes. (Pretty funky clothes out there for twelve year olds let me just say!) I can't buy off the rack pants for ladies without having to hack at least 20cm off the bottom of them. Shoes are a nightmare. I buy virtually any shoe that fits me that I like because I don't come across them often. Now to hear that I might not be able to get a bra that fits with any great ease really pisses me off. Grrr. Small frustrated person right here. I don't mind wearing kids clothes, they're often comfortable and it's highly unlikely I'll end up at a party in the same frock as someone else. I think that when I start having trouble buying underwear that fits I'll quite possibly lose it. Sorry, that was probably sharing a bit much but it's frustrating being small sometimes! (I know that there are people even smaller than me and I shouldn't whinge but I'm selfish that way. Besides, I think they should have access to clothing that fits well too).

Now that that's out of my system... the article in the Age on fried coke also caught my mind. All you'd need to do is add some chicken and fries and you'd almost have a fast food meal on a stick.

I've been thinking about the time difference between Melbourne and Doha and I've decided it's not so bad. When I'm eating lunch in Doha is roughly when I'd be eating dinner in Melbourne. I'm not really having much dinner, just a light snack when I get home which is roughly what happens late at night in Melbourne and breakfast in Doha is lunch.

Sorry that was a bit random.

In other news my iPod has finally been dispatched from Sydney. Hopefully it will arrive on Sunday or Monday. I say hopefully because there's a huge backlog of freight at the airport apparently because there's some event happening here in December...

Well, I'm going to curl up on the couch and hitchhike the galaxy a bit.

Sad Panda

I'm trying to prepare for November's daily writing. Even got some plot ideas sketched out. Not sure which I'll go with but figure if I have at least a small idea it'll be a start.

Anyhoo...

Last night's trip to the doctor's was an adventure as predicted. My driver got lost on the way to the X-ray place which was fun. I had no idea where I was... I think I may have been in the industrial area. Anyhow, after an hour we found the place. I got my x-ray and then went back to the doctor. He wasn't in so I waited for the other doctor but through inattention missed my number which caused a commotion. Once that was sorted out he looked at my x-ray, poked and prodded and then wrote me a referral to the hospital's accident and emergency. To cut the long story a litle shorter, I ended up not going to the hospital and instead letting the nurses at work look at it. After the nurses looked at the x-ray this morning they advised that I should just rest the arm (no rotation & no lifting etc) and the pain will go away over the next few weeks. If I have fractured it (which is what the doctor seemed to think) then there's not much I can do. Nothing's splintered (which is good) so it's just a matter of rest and managing the symptoms, maybe a few stretches in the coming weeks. Yay!

Sadly Gene & I no longer have a day off together. So I'm really not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Most of the people I see are either working or have gone to Oman for the weekend. *sigh* Maybe I'll try and nut out a plot for next month... More likely I'll be curled up on the couch with The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sad panda because there's still no iPod in the mail for me. Stupid backlog of stuff at the airport.