Jared on Tour

Jared, who recently came back from a Queenstown trip, was ecstatic.

"We went on a jet boat, went on bus tours, jumped on a quad bike, jet boat, luge, etc. etc." He droned on as he mentioned, in detail, the awesome time he had in the south's peremiere holiday spot.

I thought about what I was doing when he went away. I believe I was checking the Herald regularly to see if the town he went to had any sort of bungy jumping accidents.

"Uhm Sir, are you sure this cable would be enough to hold my weight?"

"Yesireee, that's for certain. Even if an African Elephant were to jump, I'm purty certain our cable would still be able to hold."

"Are you saying I'm fat?!?!"

"Oh no, not at all, Sir." The proprietor said defensively. "Am just sayin' that this cable right o'er 'ere is capable of pulling a medium sized Beluga whale off the beach."

(I'll leave the rest of this violent and blubberous scene to your imagination.)

Anyway, let's move on to the part of the trip where they hopped on a bus and went on to see the scenery.

The bus driver, who happened to be the tour guide was rattling on about how the locals were a funny bit of people. He mentioned that its part of their culture picking fights with everybody just because it's fun. How awkward, coz for those who don't know, Jared, is a local - obviously not apparent to the bus driver as he just blabbed on about them 'natives'.

Then again, why would a local take a tour of his own country anyway? Is it possible that he's looking for more land to reclaim?

Anyhows, the bus driver was just having a great time pointing out the culture and the diversity - oblivious that one of his passengers was seething, ready to pop. This soon got aggravated by the events at the next stop, where he found that another cheeky tourist seemingly flicked their bags aside and somewhat settled himself rather cosily on their seats.

"What are you doing in our seat?" "

Seats ain't fixed." The man says with an Aussie twang. "and blimey!, lots of them tourists have moved around 'lready."

Which obviously wasn’t the case when Jared asked around.

"Grrrr..." Jared thought (or whatever sound he makes when he's mad) "This guy is pissing me off."

"Sir" he said with as much restraint as possible. "I see that your seat is still vacant and that all the people havent moved from where they were sitting before. Can I please ask you to move?"

The guy says "No, I won't move."

"I'm asking again, would you kindly move out of our seats?"

"No, no, no!" "This will be the last time I'm going to ask you. You heard what the tour guide said about those funny indigenous people who just picks fights for fun? You're looking at one right now."

Like my previous post from months before, Jared starts the Maori ritual of starting a fight. He sticks his tongue out, puffing his eyes, as he vigorously uses his right hand in a wave like motion for intimidation. The tourists just went wild, with everybody chanting, "Kill! Kill! Kill!".

The driver panics and runs off, knowing full well what to expect from these natives.

It was mayhem, as Jared did some of his muscle flexing. I can't tell you if the tourists were experiencing some horrible pain seeing him do that, or if they were wanting a fight to break out.

After a couple of odd minutes strutting his stuff, Jared plunges his hand straight to the kangaroo man's chest and pulls his throbbing heart out.

The man's screams were drowned by an elderly couple from Bosnia shouting, "Eat the Heart! eat the Heart, eat the Hearrrrrrrttttt" which Jared obligingly does.

The guy finally realised that it's one of the battles he can't win and takes off making incomprehensible disgruntled noises. The guy never moved from his seat again.

How's that for a tour?

Changes

[Edit : Look at how behind I am! I was supposed to post this at the beginning of the year but just got around to. I'm halfway trying to complete my manager's annual survey, and thought that I might just need a break and finally post this.]

January 2008. The first 'official' work day of the year.

Those who showed up looked fresh and relaxed from their long holiday break. I see Tracy, Zoey, Jared, Andrew on our side of the pod. All bright eyed, bushy tailed etc etc - seemingly looking busy, tapping away at their keyboards. Don't you love it when you see everybody like this?

Not unlike the zombies I used to mingle with last year. No red eyes, no moaning and groaning, no sharp teeth and no biting. Doesn't it create a pleasant atmosphere where, when you wake up in the morning, all you want to do is work, work, work?!*

*I threw up soon after I finished this sentence.

So I plop down on my seat, login and look at some of the empty desks around me. Tsk tsk. Awfully quiet. Zoey hardly speaks to me, Rwanda, our low flying airplane, has gone maternal, and Tracy, Tracy Tracy. Tracy never talks to us except when she wants something.

It always starts with "Hey.... (insert a real lonnnng pause here - which I suspect is the time it takes for her to remember our names.)

"...what do you know about (insert topic here)?" She continues.

I find this really annoying as I've already been caught turning my head too many times after she says "Hey", only to find out that she's after Zoey who sits right beside me. I think she does it on purpose, as she always cups her hand to her mouth to suppress her evil laugh (and big teeth).

Anyway, back to me, as I glance around the mostly empty desks. There were some changes indeed. I shake my head at Rwanda's desk as it looks more and more like inorganic day. I already notice some spiders building webs on her screen and a couple of squirrels hanging about chitchatting about this seasons chestnut harvest. Tsk Tsk.

I personally use her chair as a coat hanger now, which is just about the right size. Will definitely come in handy during winter where you could hang a couple of coats side by side. I find that I'm just too lazy walking down to where the real coat hanger is (which I'll be calling George). Also, before you get to George there's this danger of venturing near the T-Rex dinosaur paddocks as well - better be safe than to get bitten.

By about mid-morning Cesar comes down from the 4th floor and takes out some some treats from Peru. How really nice of him sharing pretty exotic goodies from his holiday.

"Lucuma is what we call them." Cesar mentions as I carefully inspect the pastry. "It only grows natively in Peru high atop the ancient pyramids of the Mayas where the virgins hearts are cut out in honor of the Sun God Saludos."** Interesting, I though as I bit into my first piece. Hmmm. Tastes pretty good actually. It's not strong as you barely taste the fruity flavor between the wafers it was enclosed in, but yummy nevertheless. Cesar also brought in some marshmallowy-puffy-thingies which probably came from the local dairy.

**This may or may not be true.

By midday, we decided to celebrate our first yearly lunch be going down to the local cafe. It's always good to start off with where your roots are, so this was the natural choice.

Expecting changes, I thought that they'd have more things on the menu, but pretty much the same old thing on offer from last year. Even Tracy's pick stayed the same - she got the same fave from last year (buttered fig muffins and scones)

The tuna pide (a type of bread - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIDE) looked tasty which I decided to have. but tasted worse off than before, I mean, where did the caramelised onions go? Why'd it take longer to toast my sandwich? So that's where the changes happened, I thought.

Our conversations weren't that different from before though. "So what did you do for the break?", "Did you go anywhere?", "What are you going to do on Friday?" Blah blah blah.

"I did some squats last night and gave my ass muscles a workout" Jared abruptly says.

I nearly spat out the tuna I was chewing on.

"I know, I know" he added. "Too much info." (But something he surprisingly squeezed in the conversation.)

I closed my eyes and tried to get that horrible hairy image out of my head. Not that I've seen it personally! I'm no expert but I watch a lot of documentaries including Gorillas in the Mist. So I kid you not when I say that I have a pretty good idea on the number of indeterminate hair on their lower backs.

Tracy, as perceptive as ever, states the obvious over my sudden discomfort over the subject.

"You can't get the image off your mind, huh?"

I gave her a frown and thought, "No, unlike you Tracy, I haven't been desensitised at home."

It's obvious that our lunch conversations haven't evolved. They still retains the down, dirty and crude interpretations of opinions. There are missing gaps however. As people leave, they take along some of the expresiveness that you've grown fond of. e.g. one less person doing the eye rolling.

Which led me to ponder what this year's plot would bring about. More of the same? Or more twists than this season's episode of Lost?