Guest Writers

Guest Writers / Life — 2 Comments
9
Nov 07

Farewelling Friends

Sorry Ani lovers, but it’s Tui again. Ani is still ‘busy’ but keeps asking me to give you all some blog love so being the obliging gal that I am (and being mind numbingly bored at work) I decided I’d keep her happy and write another blog post.

Lately I’ve noticed a theme becoming prevalent in many peoples lives, (most importantly in Ani’s of course) which is that they seem to be experiencing a mass exodus of friends to exciting offshore locations. I just did a quick tally up and there have been a dozen friends of mine that have left in the last year or so – that’s one a month! And there is approximately that many again taking off in the next 12 months (including myself). This would be all very well if it was possible to regenerate one friend a month to substitute the abandoners, sadly this does not appear to be the case.

Sure it’s all fun and games for the person who is taking off but it’s just a bit shit for the people being left behind. You have to pretend to be all excited about their travels and happy for them that they are going to be beginning this new journey, when secretly you’re actually thinking how jealous you are and how crap it’ll be having to scratch yet another person off your already depleted list of lunch/drinking/hanging out buddies.

Perhaps something to soothe those of you whose closest friends have left/are leaving is to form a support group on the ever popular Facebook. Those of us feeling the effects of friend displacement could console in one another about all the things that seem to be a common occurrence of late like counting up who has had the most friends leave, which friend has had the best leaving party, who had the most ungodly airport farewell time, who has the most interesting travel blog etc etc.

The other option could be to jump on the travel bandwagon but this is obviously not possible for everyone. So those that are venturing off to explore the seven seas, spare a thought for those who have to stay behind by making sure you throw an awesome leaving party, making your departing flight at a decent hour and keeping your travel blog updated regularly so they can at least try and live vicariously through you.

And now since this is Ani’s blog I’ll zoom in on how this phenonmen has effected her:

“My two best coffee/dinner buddies, Louis and Simon, left in the past two months, my awesome flat is breaking up with Kate leaving in December, my awesome intern Tui is also leaving in January. This is on top of my best friend in the world, Pip, leaving last December to go to the UK, which she planned when I was living in the UK but didn’t really tell me, while I had planned to come back to New Zealand. That was some good planning on both of our behalves. Now I will have to:

  • find someone(s) to replace my coffee buddies when I’m stressed at work (I’ve started drinking tea at my desk – lame!). It was very handy when my two coffee buddies worked two buildings down the road. 3:30pm stressbuster for the win!

  • go out to a restaurant when I want food on the level of Louis’ masterpiecery
  • find a new flatmate to replace Kate, which is going to be hard. Not only is she a great cook, who cooks for me, but she pays her bills, comes to gigs with me, and is tidy, and I haven’t caught her checking her poo.
  • Find new friends. Where do they come from?! Grow them? Clone them? Rent some?

But I guess this isn’t all doom and gloom, because I’d rather have met all these people and become good friends with them than not at all. All of those people have made my life awesome this year, well, except Pip because she sucks and hasn’t been here all year. But she did send me a keyring with a bear wearing a snorkelling mask that said “muff diver” on it. She’s a classy broad.”

Now, haven’t we all missed Ani’s writing!

Guest Writers / Rants — 2 Comments
18
Oct 07

Workmates = Retards

Intern Tui here again.

As a rule, all workmates tend to be retarded. But my god, I have one in particular who manages to rub me so far up the wrong way my hair stands on end just at the thought of him.

Now, I have a thing with personal space. As a general rule, unless I know you well it makes me very uncomfortable when people come into my personal space. My lovely workmate, lets call him Bob, seems to be the complete opposite in regard to this. I kid you not, he will come up to your desk and stand less than 30cm away and then bend down so that his face is within centimeters of yours and will proceed to breathe his rotten coffee breath all over you whilst asking you questions that someone who gets paid twice as much as you should not need to ask.

As if his bad breath isn’t enough to make you recoil in disgust when you are near him, I used to be lucky enough to sit next to him and at frequent intervals throughout the day my nostrils would be invaded with his farts wafting by my desk. These farts are a result of him drinking at least 5 cups of instant coffee, a can of coke plus some sort of lovely unhealthy concoction for lunch per day.

He’s one of those people that looks like he never spends any time outside, instead I am 99% sure he spends all his time at home in front of his computer looking up dirty internet sites. My conclusion of him looking at dirty sites is by no means unfounded as a.) every time “Boobs on Bikes” are in town, he mysteriously disappears for a few hours and then comes back and tries to do a very poor cover up by complaining of all the “silly people watching the parade blocking his walk to the shops” and b.) I was fortunate enough to mistakenly found smutty photos on his c drive while doing a search for work related files (what kind of person has porn on their work computer?!).

For someone who gets paid as well as he does you would expect that he was enthusiastic about his job and really put in the hard yards to earn his salary. Not Bob, he skives off work at any chance he can get. For example, if everyone senior to him has left for the afternoon he will sneak off and get the early bus home. He also keeps his own tally of his sick days taken to ensure every sick day he is allowed is used up before his year anniversary rolls over. God forbid he would actually miss out on using every last one of them up. I think in the first six months that he has been at my work, he had taken more sick days than I have taken in my 3 years that I’d been there. He actually averages about one sick day a month. That is one sickly guy right there.

A few more lovely habits of his are; standing at your desk tapping his pen constantly while he talks to you, going and gazing out the window for minutes on end in order to have less work time, saying he is going out for a “quick sandwich” and not returning until hours later and leaving between 15 and 20 minutes early most days. Anyway, you get the general idea.

And just to prove that I’m not a completely irrational person who judges people unfairly, I asked another workmate (a non retarded one) to describe in one sentence what they truly thought of Bob. This is what they said: “Bob is a sly, weird behaving and looking creature with disgusting eating habits, weird sense of humor and the smelliest breath I have ever smelt.”

Boring Site Stuff / Guest Writers — No Comments
17
Oct 07

Feeding Addictions

Unfortunately for you all this is NOT your favourite blog poster Ani Moller, but is in fact her ‘intern’ Tui. It is clear from her last post and the time that has lapsed since then, that she has not rekindled her love for this website as yet, but has instead hired me to give this extremely deprived site and its devoted readers some much needed love.

What has Ani been doing that is so much more important than feeding your animoller.com addiction you ask? She tells me that she has been too busy feeding HER addictions which consist of surfing facebook, listening to lots of drum and bass and of course investigating the Shortland Street killer. She has also been spending a lot of time kidding herself into thinking she is going to redesign her website. Hmmm… we will believe that when we see it (hopefully some reverse psychology will work its wonders there).

I personally think however, that the real reason Ani has fallen out of love with this site is a result of her having fallen IN love with Duncan (see hopelessly in love) which doesn’t leave her with enough love left over to share with the internet. By having a quick look at her archive you will notice a rapid decrease in posts from about February 2007 which coincidentally is the point in time that Ani and Duncan began their whirlwind love affair.

Who can blame her though as we have all been guilty of temporarily forgetting long time friends when we find a new someone special. So, I ask all you readers to be patient and I am sure that as the dust settles on her new and wonderful relationship she will be back to regularly (or at least semi regularly) updating us on the goings on in her life.