Gone

Everybody in my pod, a cubicle of four, literally went off for a holiday. Jane's somewhere in Bali lounging - reading a book, soaking up the sun, Rayana's swimming about in Niue - probably hanging out with a different set of pods (a pod of dolphins for those of you who are thinking of something else), and Michelle - God knows where Michelle went for her break.

But as certain as taxes, the inevitable time for lunch loomed nearby like a dark little cloud.

Jared's out to get some shots for his upcoming holiday, so I sent Trace an email asking if she wants anything from the bakery round the block. To my surprise, she went for the personal touch, and came by inquiring if they sold any sort of fruits to go with her cornflakes.

"You know what? I don't think I've seen any fruits down there - not that I take notice."

She hesitates (probably thinking of getting a nice pie), but instead says "Well okay. I don't think I want anything."

She adds. "Let me know when you're back and I could join you in the lunch room. Not that you have to, but we certainly can eat at our desks."

So off I went, mulling over what she said before I left.

I thought about it (deeply), but my concern for her well being led me to decline her gracious offer (at the risk of further destabilising our fragile, ehermm, friendship). She doesn't realise it now, but I'm sure she'll thank me later on.

Here's a hypothetical. If I did agree to have lunch alone with Tracy:

"Hi Chris! What have you got?"

"Thai Green Curry and Chix." Chris says munching on his lunch.

"..."

(After 3 minutes...)

"So what did you do during the weekend?" Tracy asks again.

(This is where Chris just bores Tracy with the mechanics of pulling one grass stalk at a time.)

"..."

(8 minutes later...)

*Chris blinks back and just stares at Tracy

*Tracy blinks back.

*Chris re-crosses his legs and blinks again.

(a minutes later...)

*Tracy gives up, and just nods off on her fruit salad bowl. "Zzzzzz...."

*Chris scratches his head and was amazed that bland conversations still renders people unconscious.

Grains

ed : It's our 101st post! and dedicated to Jane. This was supposed to be a continuation from the Rego post. (Aug 16) but didn't have enough time to do it before Ms. J left.

Part 2 :

With the bad weather behind us and my lunch in tow, I was looking forward to gorge myself with the curries we bought down the mall.

As the aroma of Vindaloo and Buttered Chicken wafted through the break room, Rayana, Jane and Michelle came by and decided to join us.

Which led us to an interesting discussion about food. I think it started out with what Jane brought in for lunch.

"Grain Salad!" She enthusiastically says (as what Jane does). "Made of short grain rice, quinoa, slices of lime and some veggies."

"Quino-huwwat?" I say as I peered curiously at her lunch, sitting proudly in a little plastic container.

"Quinoa" Jane says "The oldest edible grain ever recorded. A staple diet by the Incas (or was it Mayans or Martians?) long before the Spanish conquistadors came looking for the fountain of youth?"

(As a side note, I actually went on wikipedia afterwards to look it up. Had an interesting read about this grain. link here. Yeah, that's right, I thought she was making it up like how she makes up stuff about the urgency of projects. But... it was true, it does exist.)

"So is it like couscous?" I ask without even knowing what that meant.

"That's totally different" Rayana says. And goes off describing what they're made off, what's it like, how you cook them, blah, blah, blah etc etc. The look on Jared's face was just pure amazement, you see, he's a potatoes man (or kumara boy depending on the mood - I think it's kumara for candle light dinners). It's only just recently that he found that rice is actually NOT a dessert.

(Pause. Another distraction as I just saw an odd shaped nut sitting on my desk as I was writing this. Hazelnut, I think upon closer inspection. Where in the world did that come from?)

Then Rayana says something about not worth the effort cooking Risotto. I haven't cooked risotto yet, but the way she described it sounded like it's easier to hunt buffalos than cooking this 'exotique' dish.

"What's Risotto?" Jared asks

Jane's absolutely shocked that there weren't that many people in the table who even knew what these dishes are. The look on her face was priceless. It's as if we were all like neanderthals gathered round the table, wet and dripping after recently thawing out from the ice age.

"I can't believe you guys are not adventurous enough!" Jane says.

Jared was also amazed that there were other veggies out there - so different from his staple meat and potatoes diet.

"Risotto's short grain rice, cooked slowly in stock/water with veggies or meat" Jane says. She also mentioned something about why you're not supposed to pour cold water during as it halts the cooking process.

"I like mashed potatoes best!" Jared says from out of the blue.

Which made me wonder why we quickly jumped from that topic to "Tabouleh" (wiki link here)

"Taboulehuwat?" I ask again.

"I'm sure you've eaten that stuff with kebabs before." Rayana explained "You just didn't know it."

"Was that the green thing they stuff in there?" I ignorantly say.

Jane definitely knows what that is as she quickly rattled off what it's made of. I didn't even have the courage to ask what vulgar wheat is - sounds like porno wheat.

Anyway, we moved on to how we eat or cook eggplants. (Here's a trivia for you : Jared has never ever knowingly eaten an eggplant before!)

"Stuffed!" Michelle says

"Mashed eggplants" Rayana says.

Poor Jane was reeling from the trauma. She must've been thinking "How could these savages mash an eggplant like that?!?!"

This is where I got lost as everybody was pretty excited when Michelle asked what their fave vegetable is. It's like the evolutionary clock was turned back a tick. You could see monkeys jumping up excitedly and screaming.

"Oooghhhhh ei ei ei ah ah ah ah eggplants! eggplants! hoo hoo hoo." said one hairy Canadian monkey.

"Urk urk urk Okra okra okra shriek shrieeeek!" Said one of the orangutans as he smelled both his armpits.

"Rrrrrrrrrr ooh aah ooh ahh ooh ahh Potatoes Potatoes!!!" Said one big ape-like gorilla.

"Hoo hoo hoo mushrooms! mushrooms! giggle giggle snort snort!!" (Guess who this monkey is.)

Then Jared suddenly freaks out and jumps up and down screaming and turning the big table over. Like a big gorilla, he utters a low guttural sound. "Hroook hroook hroook!!!" and takes a sniff at our terrified guest. He says loudly "Me TARZAN!!!... you Jane!" He then makes a "Thump thump thump" as he beat his hairy chest like there's no tomorrow.

Jane can no longer take the madness and runs away screaming.

And that's pretty much how our lunch ended (and how monkeys came to be in BI.)

Signs that Jane's no longer in the office

15. Nobody to hold the Aussie flag or speak with an Aussie accent or fight for New Zealand Pavlova
14. Nobody to wind up whenever an Australian team loses (which is always)
13. Be good to Australians month is no more
12. One less person wearing boots in the office or twirling her hair
11. BI team is no longer a library of rare books
10. Nobody knows about upcoming art exhibitions, galleries or film festivals
9. Bagels from the cafe downstairs are getting stale
8. No birdfood lunches and a lot less breadmaker stories
7. Nobody knows what couscous or quinoa is anymore
6. No more free marketing for the organic foodstore
5. Chris can safely say the word "even" and doesn’t have to add "just kidding Jane" at the end of every sentence
4. Nobody walking around with a printout of a massive spreadsheet
3. The tallest cup in the office now belongs to Chantal
2. Nobody has a cute snort after they giggle

AND (DRUMROLL…)

1. We all have upsidedown smiles on our face

Top 10 Signs that Tracy's back

10. Kath and Kim impersonations
9. Boots are suddenly back in fashion.
8. Members of the Info Delivery team are having anxiety attacks
7. Jared is actually doing work
6. Videos of baby Lucas bouncing on the couch goes circulating round the office
5. Lately, David M's actually the one getting wound up.
4. Chris' nails are worn off from biting
3. Grand prix office chair racing
2. The word "NOW!!!" appears on all work requests

And

1. Somebody shouting out "Where's my damn team?!?!"

Rego

"So what are you doing for lunch today?" I ask Jared.

"No plans as I didn't bring mine." He says "You?" asking back but already expecting what I'm going to say.

"No plans." I say as I shrugged. Like I'd give out any other answer. I'm notorious for not bringing in lunch.

"I do need to go to the post shop, to renew my motor vehicle registration."

"Hey what do you know, I need to do the same thing as well." I say.

"Cool" Jared says. "It's a date then... but we can't hold hands."

"I was expecting more than that on the first date." I say flippantly.

The weather looked real bad from inside the office. Cold, and sputtering, Rayana mentioned that she's not coming along. She mumbled something about not feeling well and would rather get something from the ground floor cafe.

Part 2 follows...

Adventures of Momo

Chantal bought her son a bird, a Cockatiel. A really cute one with orange cheeks and a punk hairdo. A true transvestite.

Chantal: We woke up the next day and I heard my family say Good morning. I was quite surprised, as no one ever says good morning in my household. I came down only to see them saying good morning to a bird, not even to each other.

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds. Oh and I think she's planning to clip those fine feathers.

Chantal: The bird, Momo, we called it bit my son this morning.

When we asked how that happened, she mentioned her son stuck a hand in that 1.5 metre cage and tried to pet the bird.

Chantal: I think I need to clip it's nails, they are way too long and curly and sharp.

I stopped chewing on the dumplings and heard someone at the table cough. But it was only Jared laughing with a mouthful on chicken curry.

Jared: But the bird will just go "flop" from its perch!

To which Chantal just nodded and commented that otherwise they are just too sharp, while we all tried to imagine the poor creature trying to walk on the floor of the cage as if wearing fins.

Adele was kind enough to recommend a sand paper glued to the perch, so that we wouldn't report Chantal to the SPCA for bird nail abuse.
I think we're going to hear a lot about that bird in the future. We shall call those stories Adventures of flightless Momo.

Microwave Experience

Let's play a game, association. I say a word and you come up with the first thing that comes to your mind.
Summer --> Sun, beach, whatever
Sweet --> Candy, cake…
Station wagon - babies, babies, babies

Jared has got himself a station wagon, albeit as he says a sporty one.
Rayana: are you expecting?
Jared: No, it's a small one
Rayana: still, it's a station wagon and it says: baby on board
Jared: No, it's actually smaller than Kate's car
Rayana: still says babies
Jared: it's very sporty though, and it's got tinted windows
Rayana: … with babies
Jared: and alloy wheels
Rayana: babies, babies…
Jared acts really annoyed, and keeps smiling through his teeth. Silence…
After a minute or so: We couldn't actually fit this-and-that into a car and we had to put it into Kate's car.
Rayana: small babies.

It's not that the last word has to be on me. It's just when you get a station wagon, and you are the right age and in a relationship, be prepared to be stereotyped.
Plus, he drives like he's got a permanent baby in the car - slooooowwww.




Any who, considering he couldn't keep talking about his car anymore or any other car for that matter, we moved on to microwaves.
Chris has been trying to understand why 2 containers of food warm up slower than one.
Chris, but the mass is much larger, hence it takes longer to heat up in a microwave, I exclaim. Jared happily nods while munching on his toasted sandwich: yes, more food, more time. But Chris went into a whole philosophical discussion about microwave particles getting excited about the quantity of food and rubbing against each other and the food and that's how it gets Hot, hot, hot!
That's when some of us have lost their appetite. I mean just thinking about what your spaghetti was up to in a microwave, all shy, covered with spinach and white wine, getting drunk with all those over-excited particles. Hmm, I don't know if I want to eat that anymore. So Jared and I just kept looking at each other while listening to Chris' meaning of microwave life.
Another lesson for you kids - don't heat and eat.

Recycling tip of the day

Today's lunch revolved around names: short and long, old and new, funny and pathetic. No offence to anyone named Doris.

Our very own Christian Dale has argued that the middle name could be used as a first name, if the owner so chooses. But in some instances and cultures that is not really possible. Just like that email that Rick sent about some last names that you just don't hyphenate, like Wang-Holder. Or Michelle's new last name when she gets married. Or mine...

Jared as usual had a nice little story to go with Butter Chicken lunch. He usually gets them out of his big pocket with his Fick Ammm.


Jared: I once dated a girl named Jane. After a little while i decided to get her a gold bracelet, with her name engraved on it.

Everyone: Wow!

Jared after a polite second: Too bad we broke up shortly after that and she gave it back to me.

Everyone: Awww!

Jared raises his hand: But not to despair. I started dating Janet after that, so all i had to do is add a letter T to the end of it.

And this, kids, is another tip on recycling.