The Office Smells

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“POO! It smells like fish in here”.

I turn to Roy who is eating a subway sandwich.

“Roy? What’s in your sandwich? Fish?”

“No, it’s pork, but I can smell fish too, it’s pretty gross.” He replies.

I wander off in a hunt for the fishy smelling culprit. As I near the kitchen the fish smell gets stronger. The team who sit outside the kitchen all have their noses blocked and one lady is even spraying her perfume around. I walk into the kitchen and I’m almost bowled over by the putrid smell. There are many people eating their lunch in there, so it is very hard to pinpoint who is eating the fish. I wander back to my desk in disgust.

I work in a team full of blokes. There is constant burping, farting and swearing going on. It’s pretty hard to put up with, but they should be used to me by now.

But seriously, we have had a few issues with smells in the office. Yesterday there was a strong BO smell floating around. Roy reckons there was a workman crawling around in the ducting with bad BO, and this was the cause of the smell wafting around the office. This could possibly also explain the farty smells we had the other day. Maybe that same workman is up there eating fish today.

The Office – All By My Self

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It’s Friday. I’m sitting at my desk eating my lunch.  I glance to my left and am confronted with screen full of testicles.

“What the hell are you looking at Roy? Testicles?”.

“It’s the inside of a nose” replies Roy.

I’m not sure which is worse. Now for some reason I can’t stop glancing at Roy’s computer. This is really putting me off my lunch.  Roy is a young Asian guy with a kiwi accent who sits next to me. He is in my team, but works on other systems to me. I politely ask him to refrain from looking at noses and testicles until I have finished my lunch.

Speaking of young asian guys with kiwi accents, a  chat pops up on my screen

“Hi Jo, how’s it going?”

“OMG, Kevin!” I type back.

Kevin is an old workmate  from my previous job in Auckland, and he is now working for the same company as me, but in Auckland. We chat for about 30 mins, catching up on gossip etc. I’m glad he finally got away from our old firm – he was way too good for that place. When I finish chatting to Kevin, I realise I am all alone in the office. Mark has gone for a 2 hour lunch to play board games with his mates. Yes – you heard me right – I said board games. Visions of the guys in Big Bang Theory springs to mind.

I’m not sure where everyone else is. Antony is no doubt in a meeting, Brian and Evan are no doubt in the pub, and Thomas is in Argentina. I was friends with Thomas before I started work, so I get to read about all his travel adventures on facebook – how he got upgraded to business class, cycled around Dubai, photos of him drinking pints in London, and this morning he just landed in Buenos Aires. The fruit is rotting in his drawer as we speak.

At 1.30pm an email pops up on my screen.

You have won tickets to tonights rugby – Hurricanes vs Force.

“I’ve won tickets!” I announce to the empty office.

They have a ballot at work for spare tickets whenever there is a sporting event on in Wellington. I decide to walk up to the 10th floor to pick up my tickets. By the time I get to the 7th floor, my legs are like jelly. I struggle up the remaining 3 flights and am wheezing by the time I make it to reception. Note to self: I must do more stair walking (or take the lift next time).

By the time I get back to my desk everyone is back in the office so I wave my free tickets around to gloat. Mark spoils my thunder by saying “They are having trouble getting people to go, they are practically giving tickets away”. I look on the internet to see if this is true. It’s not.

The afternoon drags on a bit. I was planning to finish early, but now I have to wait around to 5pm as we are going to the game. Mark is busy concentrating on something. I see he has an earphone in one ear – which means he is either watching a movie, a Manchester united game, or something on youtube. There is a fornightly meeting downstairs at 4pm, which we are allowed to take beer to, so I drag Mark along with me. Mark doesn’t drink though. He’s a diabetic vegetarian who doesn’t drink. So that basically rules out any of the good stuff for him.

The meeting was ridiculously boring, but by the time it finished, I had time for another beer before Mike arrived to pick me up.

The End.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Office

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I arrive in the office at the ungodly hour of 7.30am. Mark is on the phone. He sees me and promptly hangs up. I think I just interupted his early morning phone sex. “Morning Jo, how was the traffic this morning?” chirps Mark in a cheery voice. I’m still half asleep and grunt something in return. I head to the kitchen for some caffeine. As my tea is brewing I begin emptying the dishwasher. There is like a million dishes in there. I half empty it and give up in disgust. It’s worse than cleaning up after Christmas day!

I head back to my desk and notice Mark is on the phone again. He sees me and promptly hangs up. There is a bit of de ja vu going on here. I rustle around in my drawers looking for some fruit that I stashed there yesterday. I load of fruit flies swarm out and the stench of rotten fruit makes me gag. A bit more rustling reveals a nectarine stashed right at the back. It looks like it may have been there since last year! I put it aside to stash in Thomas’s desk when he goes away for a whole month around Europe. That will teach him!

“Where’s that Thomas-M” annouces Mark for the 100th time this morning. “Gone to get a chart” I reply on auto-pilot. Thomas went out to buy a chart of the Milford Sounds once (he has a holiday house there) and ever since this has become a bit of an “in joke”. When someone asks where Thomas is – he has gone to buy a chart.

At 7.40am Brian wanders in. “Morning punkly” says Mark. “Don’t call me a cunt you fucken cunt” replies Brian. Mark then goes on to explain that he called him a punk – not a cunt. An argument erupts between the two of them that involves even more swearing. See what I have to put up with?

Evan arrives at 7:45am. “Are we doing the quiz today?” “No, because you guys are crap at it” says Mark. It’s true we are crap at it. Evan sits down at his desk in a huff. Thomas arrives at 7:50am. “Where have you been Thomas-M – you’re late!” says Mark.

Mark and Thomas start chatting about the cricket so I tune out and get on with my day checks which involves checking my email, facebook and the news. Antony (our boss) rocks in about lunchtime. It’s not really lunchtime – it’s just wishful thinking. It’s only 9.30am, but it feels like it should be time to go home already.

Mark takes a drink of his chocolate milk and gags, splutters and spits all over his monitor. That’s fucking coffee flavoured milk. Christine brought me the wrong milk. She’s trying to kill me. I can’t get that coffee flavour out of my mouth yuck yuck etc etc. This went on the next hour or so.

It’s now 11am. Antony is in a meeting, Mark is washing his mouth out and Thomas has gone to buy a chart. I am all alone and have run out of things to write about.

The End.

 

Breakfast in America

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In America there is a lot of choice and breakfast is a scary time for me. It goes something like this:

Me: I’ll have fried eggs and bacon please
Them: How would you like your eggs?
Me: well done please
Them: Sorry we don’t do well done
Me: um, I don’t want them runny.
Them: blank stare
Me: cooked, not runny in the middle
Them: still staring blankly
Me: I dont want that yellow bit in the middle to be runny. Mike help me out here.
Mike: What is the choice?
Them: sunny side up, over easy, easy under, over well, over medium, over hard
Me: Its all too hard
Them: do you mean over hard?
Me: yep, sounds good
Them: What sort of toast?
Me: (oh dear, here we go again) what’s the choice?
Them: rye, sourdough, sweetdough, wholegrain, halfgrain, quartergrain, white, Brown, Red, Green, or Blue
Me: um, white please
Them: Drink?
Me: flat white please
Them: The choice is coffee or tea.
Me: hmmmm

Its all good fun.

Ooh Aah

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We spent 2 days on the Grand Canyon.

Terry and Sue did a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon and Mike and I did a hike into it.

The morning was cold and overcast, but it cleared around 10am.

The walk into the canyon was amazing. We did the Ooh Aah trail which was a windy trail into the canyon. We had to step aside to let some people on mules through.

Elvis and the Grand Canyon

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I had a good night sleep despite having to climb down the ladder in the middle of the night for a wee.

It was such a beautiful place to camp. We had breakfast  overlooking the reflections  on the lake.

We stopped in the little town of Williams to top up with fuel, coffee and some Elvis photos.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon around lunchtime and did a walk along the rim. There were afternoon thunder storms and rain so the view wasn’t as spectacular as other times we’ve been here, but it was cool watching the lightning over the canyon.

We had a nice quiet campsite in the Mather campground near the main part of the canyon. There are Elk wandering around the campsite.

We spent a heavy downpour in the van playing monopoly which was fun. Then we went and watched the sun set behind the clouds over the canyon.

It was dark when we got back to camp so we lit a fire and cooked a tuna pasta in the dark. It was yummy, but a bit freaky eating it in the dark, worrying about spiders falling out of the trees into our food.

I’ll put some more photos up later.

P.S. for Liz or Heather – There is no phone reception here which is why Susan hasn’t phoned home yet.

To Arizona

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Jetlag had us up at 6am. We were on the road by 9.30am and it was already stinking hot. We stopped at some outlet stores and sue bought some fancy jandals.

We got back on the highway that was very long and very straight.  It was a bit ofr a bumpy ride.  We went over a large bump and the air conditioning cut out. Bugger. 45 degrees outside and no air conditioning. As well as that, there was some very hot air coming in on terrys feet. Service stations out here in the desert are about 100 miles apart, so we pulled into the next one we came to. All looked well with the oil and water, so we topped up and continued on. Then the air cond started again. Yay. For about 5 minutes then it stopped again. Poo.

Sue rang the rental car company and they arranged a garage that was on our route to look at it. We were pretty Lucky as it was Saturday afternoon and they were about to close. It was stinking hot while we waited for them to look at it. It wad about 48 degrees. We soaked our feet in the dogs bowl for a bit.

There is a problem with the compressor and he couldn’t fix it, but he did some fiddling and it seems to be working now.

We stopped at a nice campsite right beside a lake and watched the sun set over the lake. Perfect!

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Sue and Terry cooling their feet in the dogs bowl while we wait for our air conditioning to be fixed. HOT – 48 degrees!

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Sleeping in our upstairs house

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First day LA

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We awoke at 6am and were having breakfast at 7am and woke up terry and Sue at 9am. Our body clocks are all out if whack.

We walked 40 minutes in the heat to pick up our campervan and were dripping in sweat by the time we got there.

Our campervan is cool. It’s a Ford maverick and has an upstairs and a downstairs for sleeping in.  To get upstairs though, we actually have to climb up some stairs. t’s also painted with a cool design.

Getting out of LA was not much fun. We all forgot to eat and fill up with fuel before setting off, but were a bit reluctant to get off the motorway as LA has some pretty dodgy areas. We saw a shopping centre at the side of the motorway so we stopped.  We all stood out pretty badly with our pale faces and big painted campervan.

We went to the supermarket to stock up on supplies. The food prices here are really expensive and that’s before the tax has been added. We grabbed some essentials such as water and beer.

Sue spotted a Sketchers outlet store and disappeared in there while Mike and I tried to hunt down a sat nav system as Barry lost ours in Europe. It’s not much fun trying to find our way around LA without one. Unfortunately nowhere in this crazy place sold sat navs. We asked the guy in the Sketchers store where we might find one. He seemed quite amused that 4 kiwis were lost.  He said “How did 4 people from new Zealand end up in Mexico Plaza”. To which we replied “we don’t have a gps so we don’t know where we’re going”.  He gave us instructions to radio shack where he was 1000 percent sure they would sell them. “It’s only half a mile up the road”. We asked if we could walk there. “Oh no, you don’t walk in this neighbourhood, you must drive”.
Ok, time to leave we think.

Sue needed to go to the loo first so I accompanied her to a Taco bell. While I was waiting a very smelly homeless woman walked in followed by a scary looking gangster type. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.

We left without our sat nav and found ourselves on the motorway going in the wrong direction. We got off at the next exit and found ourselves in a scary neighbourhood.  There was a couple of unsavoury looking guys under a bridge and the houses looked like slums with Windows all barred up. We saw a girl getting into her car and asked directions. Thankfully she spoke English and gave us directions for the motorway (in the correct direction this time). Phew. We were glad to be out of that seedy neighbourhood.

We crawled along the motorway for a while when we saw another shopping centre, but it was more of a mall and looked better. We stopped an voila – they had a selection of car gps’s. So we bought one. We decided to eat dinner at the food court while we were there.

Finally, we dragged sue out of the shops and were on our way again. We stopped about 8pm at a camping ground beside the motorway. We had showers then sat around chatting and drinking beer.

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Arriving in LA

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We had a good flight from London to LA. We had chosen a semi-exit seat where the aisle seat had nobody in front, but the seat next to it was a bit squished. I noticed there were a lot of empty rows of 3 seats by the windows, so I asked if we could move there. They said we could move after take-off. I had a look and it was going to be tricky nabbing the seats on the other side of the plane before someone else. I asked if we could switch before take-off. The airnz staff were awesome and arranged this for us. So we packed up our stuff and moved to the other side of the plane. The best part was that these seats convert to a skycouch. This is where the footrests come all the way up to form a bed. If we bought these seats in advance it would have cost us an extra £269.00 so we were very pleased to get them for nothing. So I watched a bit of TV, ate my meal, drank some wine, then crawled into my bed and slept for the remainder of the flight 🙂

Coming in to land was a bit freaky. It was like we were landing in high winds, but there was no wind. As we were coming in to land the wings started rocking from side to side (possibly because the plane was unbalanced with everyone moving seats) and when we landed, it felt like we were doing wheelies down the runway. I wasn’t too concerned as I know they can land sideways if need be, but Mikes hand is looking a bit bruised today.

We had a long queue at immigration that didn’t seem to be moving. The immigration man who checked me in was pretty scary looking. He was very solid, with tattoo’s down his arms and he was wearing black leather gloves. I dunno why the gloves freaked me out but they did. He sent Mike away because we weren’t married, so it was just me and black glove man. He must have noticed my fear as he spoke with a gentle voice and didn’t make me feel like I was a criminal (like they used to do at Heathrow before I got my British passport).

Finally an hour later we cleared immigration, picked up our bags and waited for the hotel courtesy shuttle to pick us up. We waited and waited and waited. By the time all the other hotel shuttles had been passed us twice we decided to ring the Radisson and see where their bus was. Apparently we had to call them to come and get us, and the pick up point was elsewhere.So we moved to the correct pick-up point and waited for a further 20 minutes and it finally arrived.

The bus driver was a black guy who had a bad case of verbal diarrhoea – kind of Eddie Murphy style. He picked us up and drove 2 metres up the road where we got stuck in traffic. “This is the chicken hour” he says. “Everybody they try to push in and change lanes without blinkers, dat why I call it the chicken hour. You gotta be switched on during the chicken hour. I’m always looking left and right. See dat guy there trying to push in without blinking. I knew he was gonna do dat. I’m good at knowing when they gonna push in blah blah blah” and on and on he went. “We’ll sit in this traffic, but when we get around the corner there will be a big hole. See that there – that big hole (he meant a gap in the traffic).”

He just went on and on for the entire trip which took ages as most of it was spent stuck in traffic. It ended up taking us 50 minutes to get to the hotel that was just around the corner. Had we known – we could have walked there in 5 minutes! OH well – these are things we learn for next time.

As it turned out it was good timing. We were to be meeting Sue (Doodle) and Terry here (our friends from NZ). They had arrived earlier in the day and had been to Santa Monica. I got a text from Doodle as we were checking in saying they had just arrived back at the hotel. So good timing. We managed to meet up briefly before heading off to our beds.

The road trip begins today.