Rain.

Dreadful weather. But the lunch turnout was pretty good.

Lunch was about discussing Mark's farewell lunch, how Margaret happened to have a gorgeous prepared meal (*hint:her sisters here!), how Rayana's name is not her real name (you've defintely got to ask her. *hint:Witness Protection), how Jared likes to wash the dishes while the 'neighbours' clean their car (*hint:his neighbours occupation involves climbing poles at night time), how Tony was pretty quiet during the course of the entire meal (*hint:probably thinking how many chicks he's gonna score for his next gig. the last one wasn't very promising as all the chicks were either married, taken, or your co-worker. We're still deliberating if Rayana's a chick or not.), how David was goingon about this super duper cool boss Marvin (not his real name - to protect his identity) and how I'm thinking I'll survive from hypothermia without my trusty jacket on.

Go figure...

Just Jared and me for lunch. Looking around the table, he mentions that nobody goes for a proper lunch anymore from Mondays to Thursdays. "Yeah, where is everybody?" I say.

Well Jenita's back in oz schmoozing with her bf. And who is that girl with a skirt on? Is that Margaret? I was too far away to tell if it's her, I'll check later. =). And Only saw a glimpse of Tony peeking through the cubicle - as everybody's practically busy - a typical Monday!

Rayana's apparently on a 'workshop', or so she says. When I snuck a look at her notes, all I saw were illegible words and scribbles and that odd poem of hers. (Rhyming words only count if they appear in the dictionary, Rayloc!)

Jared and I politely txted her to join us for lunch but just brushed us off with a resounding "Nah!". Ouch. Which practically felt like the slap you hear when you just get bitten by an persistent mozzie.

Annoyed, we txted back "We we don't need you anyway!"
Which pretty much started this texting debacle.
C : Well we don’t need you anyway!
R : But u wanted. Want is diff 2 need
R : Don’t argue
(Was about to send another message when…)
R : I heard that
(Is this lady psychic or what? Surely she can't hear through walls or even across 3 floors!)
.
.
C : We know you don't hang around developers anymore… (trying the "make-her-feel-guilty" approach)
R : *Sobs uncontrollably
(ha! looks like it worked!)
R : I'm so over you guys.
(okay, no it didn't)
.
.
C : You can't be over us. Like you can't get over coffee.
R : *she snaps. Grabs chris by his ears and throws him outta window
C : Okay okay. I give up Chris sez as he dangles by the window.
R : High self esteem huh, we'll fix that
C : Imagine what my self esteem is when you're around. It's high today coz you're away.
R : Fine. Not talkin 2 u for the rest of the day.
(followed by 20+ blank messages for the next couple of minutes.Talk about thee silent treatment.)
(figure that out, we're the ones inviting people for lunch and we gentlemen turn out to be the bad guys.)

2 hours later and she's still not talking to me.

Imagine this

Jared running down the street - Mitch of Baywatch. Girls stopping, hearts stopping, mouths drooling. Personally, I think he might look like a helium baloon with two legs if he exercises even more, but that's just me - the fat fondler.

Went out for lunch to BBQ King today, the Hong Kong-ian restaurant where they feed you till death do you apart. The portion sizes were extraordinary (yes, Telecom! it's not like you own the phrase!).

Breathe, Jared, breathe - they do have forks here.

Jared, being on the diet and all, vacuumed his plate in three seconds. The first two suspiciously eyeing the plate and grabbing the fork. Margaret ate her lunch and was gone before you could say: I'd like to have crispy pork.

Tony held on to his fringe while slurping the noodles in his soup and getting pinker by the minute. Jared was long done before Tony realized his hair had more of his noodles than his stomach.

I drowned my rice in Hoisin sauce and tried to save them one by one with Chris, pardon, chopsticks.

Chantal and Chris sat there waiting for their meal to arrive and we tried to keep solidarity by stuffing ourselves with food and making sure to produce sufficient sounds so they know how delicious their dishes would be when they arrived in 20 minutes.

The conversation never got further than whose pork was crispier and how fast can Jared eat. Even on our way back when we saw the construction workers digging a ginormous hole in the road, all we could think of was Hangi - Thanks to Jared.

Oh, Not even Uh!

Hannibal goes out for the day...

I honestly cant think how this topic came to be. I remember us talking about burgers, recycling, then whales, then greenpeace, then them crazy japanese whale experiments, then how the big whales are fast becoming extinct, then pork, then how animals or humans were born to be eaten. Which had us all thinking what kind of food we were to be if we were part of the basic food group.

"Bonjour Monsieur Lecter, welcome to Pierre's? How may I help?"
"What can I expect to eat today Gaston?"
"We could start off with a marvelous breakfast with Tony and Margaret monsieur."

I'd see Tony as a part of the all day breakfast meals that you serve down at the pub. 2 fried eggs, fresh tomatoes, hasbrowns, bacon and Tony. Yeah, I think Tony would be more tastier when fried. Margaret would be a nice soup base for noodles. I'm sure simmering her in in hot water would bring out that yummy aromatic stock flavour she absorbed from her cup noodle marathon.

"For lunch, we're serving our magnifique Jared stew with baguettes on the side."

We'll probably use lots of tomato sauce, potatoes, onion. We need to stew him at a minimum of 5 hours just so his tough muscles becomes tender enough to be enjoyed. Don't forget to shave him thoroughly before you plop him in that slow cooker though!

"Dinner would be from an an exotique part of eurasia. The Abercrombie Roast and pasta, served with chilled red wine on the side"

Rayana would be great for supper. I think she'd come out well baked for an hour (longer if you could still hear her chatting away). You need to marinade her in wine and rosemary overnight though just to release that bubbly nature of hers. Bubbles always gives me gas.

I've excluded Stephen and myself. Just imagine eating spare ribs without the meat, wouldn't be a good deal would it?. Tony suggested I could be the toothpick. Hmmm. "You want me to clean your teeth for you, sir?" Actually, Stephen and I would make a great pair, if you want to use chopsticks that is.

Now all this talk about food just got me hungry again...

In Memoriam...

To those people who don't know (or don't even care) I mourn the passing of Steve Rogers who served as an inspiration through our turbulent years. A real hero in essence and someone definitely to aspire to. I wish you well on your journey Steve.

"Is there beyond the silent night, an endless day?
Is death a door that leads to light? We cannot say."
--- Declaration of the free.

Who wears the pants at home?

Yup, it was up to Jared and me to stimulate the sushi economy today as Rayana's gone out with her (back-from-the-dead) friend and Adele, whom we invited, blew us off to eat the ham sandwich her husband made. Which led to Jared making a good point that men seem to do all the cooking nowadays (or the better cooking) against our counterparts. Then again, I'm not surprised, this has been the trend for quite sometime, ever since those women took their placards to the street back in the 70's and demanded equality.

I, for one, don’t have any problems with this. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a female president/prime minister around? A woman president who won't make nuclear weapons - just weapons that will make you feel bad for a while. And there would never be any wars! - just severe negotiations every 26 days.

Jared also mentioned that apart from cooking, he also does the dishes at home, the ironing, washing the clothes, cleaning, and has the car checked out in the garage. Looks like we now know who's running the show back home, eh? But that's fine right?

For songsters

Here is a nice variation on trivia questioning - they give one lyric line and you have to say what the extremely well known song is :

http://pages.prodigy.net/macknife13/70slyric.htm

Although it is 1970's lyrics but hey these songs play all the time...

Cheerleaders

There was an unusual vibe in the air this morning. The cheerleaders were supposed to arrive at 11:00 am sharp to present us with many fancy moves of you know what.

Jared jumped up at exactly 10:57 and ran towards my desk, which isn't very far: are you going?
* me with a blank expression: where?
Jared: Didn't you see downstairs? Cheerleaders are performing at 11:00?
Looking at my watch, the conversation was very fast and the above didn't take longer than a minute: but it's only 10:58 - are you sure you want to seem that desperate as to go there 1 minute before?

I could see his face going grey: ok, we can wait another 5 minutes.

I gave up, after all it's not fair that Mark is probably sitting in the foyer since morning and panting, waiting for cheerleaders to arrive and Jared is stuck upstairs with me. We went downstairs and as we left the elevator Mark jumped out of the door, energy bursting out of all pores, eyes everywhere, looking, seeking and not finding. Poor Mark. :)

we had to wait the whole 2.5 minutes before the girls came out of elevators and I could see his neck extend. I've never seen a giraffe before.

And Jared! THE Jared that wanted to come downstairs the whole minute earlier puffs: I've seen better!

I thought I had more fun than he did, the girls WERE pretty. And there were so many cameras on them...

After the performance the underaged went round talking to the people, so we decided to go back up - show's over... But nooooo, not for Mark - for him it's only just starting.

As we went inside, Debbie and I, we saw him standing in the middle of the hall, enchanted by one of the red heads. I slowly fell to the floor of the elevator while Debbie started making weird noises. I knew she needed my help, but i couldn't lift myself off the floor. Who can blame him? He waited for this moment for so long...

Moral of the story? There's none. This is just for those who have missed it. He's probably still there, making dreamy eyes at that redhead.