How is it that anyone is still on dial-up? What is the point of the internet without broadband? Why even own a computer?
So many questions…
The other day on my way home from work, I was waiting at an intersection for the green man to give me permission to cross. It was rush hour and people were trying to squeeze the most out of the amber lights as possible, which of course means cars stuck across the intersection when the light finally turns red. A woman had stopped her car right on the crossing in front of me, with some cars pulling up behind her. A guy on the other side of the road sensed she wouldn’t be moving, and as the green man flashed at us he proceeded to cross behind her stuck car. At this moment, she suddenly started reversing without checking her mirrors, almost hitting the guy crossing. He jumped back and then walked in front of the car, as he probably should have in the first instance, although this would have put him right in the intersection where cars were turning. As I pass, I look at her, point at the man, and mouth, “You almost hit that man.” She obviously wasn’t trained in the art of lip-reading, so she wound her window down to talk to me. I walked over and repeated, “You almost hit that man.” She looked at me and said, “Yeah…well?”
Yeah, well?!
“Yeah, well, that would have sucked. The nightmares and demerit points would have sucked too!”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t and even though I am a stupid driver I’m okay until the next time! Praise the Lord!”
“Yeah, well, did you hear that joke about the pope and the donkey? Hi-larious!”
Yeah, well, you are a retard.
Nine days before my 28th birthday, today, I finally located what I had believed to be a grey hair, one I thought I had been seeing for a few weeks. At first, when the fluorescent bathroom lights at work made the colour-void strand gleam I thought I was mistaken. I thought, perhaps it was actually a blonde hair lightened by the summer sun even though my hair is actually brown. I thought, perhaps it was just the blindingly white overhead lights playing tricks on my eyes. Then I thought, shit, perhaps I actually have a grey hair. So every day after washing my hands, I searched for the little bugger. And what happens when you look for things? You find things. And I have found my first grey hair.
After finding My First Grey Hair, the first thing I did was ask my boyfriend if he would still love me if I had grey hairs. He said yes, but of course he isnt going to say no. There is a chance that on the inside he is thinking, Oh shit, my girlfriend is getting old, I really hope she starts dying her hair soon. The only problem with that is I really like the colour of my hair. The brilliant beauty of my brown hair that sometimes shines blonde and sometimes shines red and seems to have natural highlights and lowlights can not be reproduced in a bottle. Nor will it be able to be reproduced by paying someone I cant see with my glasses off many, many dollars many, many times a year. Just thinking about the cost and time it would take to start dying my hair to cover grey makes me immediately think of all the shiny, new things I could buy instead like one-third of a Nikon D300. Once I start dying my hair, what comes next? Botox? Chemical peels? Expensive shoes to draw attention away from my hair?
So here I am, nine days before my 28th birthday, with a grey hair on the top of my head. I have not pulled it out, and I have not decided if I am going to dye my hair. Instead, I am going to reflect upon this glorious aging process for a little while longer, and thank Christ my boobs are still pert.
For a bit longer at least.
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.”
Telecom are the biggest telecommunications company in New Zealand. Their monopoly over the New Zealand industry has been debated a lot, especially over the past few years with regards to broadband internet service.
Back last year, I posted this article with prices for broadband internet plans. It got a fair amount of notice from my New Zealand readers, most who were pretty pissed off about the prices and speeds.
In the past few weeks, Telecom has been advertising about how they are now providing “faster, cheaper” broadband. While they have introduced a plan with 10GB of bandwidth at a speed of 3.5Mbps downstream (which isn’t really that bad, considering it’s almost twice as fast and $10 cheaper than before, however it still slows down to dial-up once you reach your bandwidth limit and you seemingly can’t buy blocks of more bandwidth) they are toting them as starting at $29.95 per month. Sounds great! Or is it?
In small print the advertisement says that the plan they are talking about gives you only 200MB per month, and each megabyte thereafter is 2¢. That means that 1GB is more than $20. That is crazy! I fear that someone will get caught out like the person who this Telecom bill from 2003 belongs to:
That is tragic.
Today, I cried in the supermarket. On a Friday evening as everyone is getting their groceries before the weekend. I am such a pussy.
We were at New World in the City Centre getting Peter’s fix of Celestial Seasonings Green Tea with Lemon, Honey & Ginseng (I actually had to call the distributor for him, he loves it that much). I was wandering down the baking ingredients aisle when some lady smashed her cart into the back of my foot. Right at the base of my Achilles tendon. I did a, “Ffffffffuuuu-aaaaah!” and hobbled over to the shelves to get my balance to see if my foot was bleeding. It was one of those pains like when you stub your big toe really hard, and you have to sit on the ground and hold your toe, just because your brain says you need to hold it even though holding it does not help.
Anyway, evil trolley lady says, “Oh, sorry. Is there anything I can do?” In hindsight, I should have asked her to get me some frozen peas, but instead I just said no in a “go away before I cry” type of way. Peter comes over to me and asks if I’m alright and I say yes but my heel hurts like a motherfucker. At this time, I am able to succeed in pulling my sock down to see that the skin is hanging off but it’s not bleeding. For some reason, at that moment my eyes felt a bit wet. I say to Peter, “I better not cry.” Apparently, saying that actually made me cry.
So there I am, crying in front of the olive oils thinking about how I am crying in the supermarket in front of all these people over a scraped heel that isn’t even bleeding. This makes me cry even more. I was also wearing non-waterproof mascara.
It’s been quite a few years since I’ve had to look for a flat in Wellington, but I don’t remember it ever being as bad as it seems to be right now. Luckily, we only had to look for about two weeks for a place, which meant we only had to look at approximately 20 disgusting flats. I wish I was exaggerating.
The first thing that pissed me off was when we were looking in the Dominion Post were the prices. Apparently it is the time of the year when shitty landlords jack up the prices because they have the pick of the bunch and desperate people (such as ourselves) who are somewhat willing to pay out the nose for what is potentially a fucking dump. When I left New Zealand, I was living in a $400 per week brand new 2-bedroom apartment in the city centre with a garage (although, it was actually a shitty build with paper-thin walls and crusties living next door who used to play stupidly loud music in the middle of the night and punch our front door when we complained). I thought that place was pretty flash, seeing how I was previously living in a somewhat rundown 2-bedroom upstairs flat with a garage just on the city centre outskirts for $240 a week. Now it seems that $350 is a very average price for a 2-bedroom flat in the suburbs.
I also kept coming across things like this while reading the classifieds:
MT COOK cute 2br renovated villa with all whiteware inc dishwasher, polished floors, garage, garden, available immediately, $330pw SORRY PROPERTY LET
I mean, WHAT THE FUCK. Why even run that ad? Why waste my precious five seconds reading that? Argh!
A new thing that I noticed while doing the flat hunt was that these flats were being shown like open homes. I’m talking 15 people waiting on the street for 1:30pm while the owner put a sign up on the gate while we all rush the apartment and someone quickly says, “I’ll take it!!!!!!” and then does a victory lap around the living room while the owner gets the lease out, and while everyone else is still standing there looking in cupboards and checking the bathroom. Or, the 15 people are quickly looking at the flat and one person says, “I’ll take it!!!!!!” to which the owner or agent says, “Oh, yes, fill out this application form. We still have another 150 people to show the flat to, so we’ll get back to you.” Again, WHAT THE FUCK. If someone wants it, why not give the flat to them subject to a credit check?
Also, due to the open home-esque views, we saw the same couple at three places who I jokingly referred to as “our competition”. They were (are?) in the same position as us – have been overseas for five years, and are now staying with their parents as adults. Fun.
In addition to the crazy prices, I also noticed that the majority of the places we viewed were fucking repulsive. Stains on the carpet, mould in the bathroom, filthy walls, and trash littering the yard. Again, WHAT THE FUCK. Why bother showing a place that looks disgusting with a high rental price? Surely, only a complete dolt would bother renting it.
Some examples of great houses we’ve looked at:
Another thing I noticed is that our prospective landlords were asking really personal and/or fucking stupid questions. My sister is also looking for a new place for herself, her fiancé, and her kid. We both got classics such as:
“Do you have much in savings?”
“Are you married?”
“Will your child scribble on the wallpaper?”
My sister has also noticed that people do not want to rent to anyone with children and these people are not doing a good job of pretending to not to be biased and potentially breaking the law. My sister has found that landlords will tell her something different on the telephone when she mentions she has a daughter, than to my mother who calls and mentions her granddaughter coming to visit – for example, telling my sister the place has no yard and is unfenced, to telling my mother the complete opposite. Also, telling my sister than the house is unsuitable for children but not asking my sister’s question of, “How exactly is it unsuitable?”
Basically, renting in Wellington is shit. The quality of the housing is awful, especially compared to the places I’ve lived in overseas, and the rental prices are extremely over-inflated. The agents are useless bigoted twats who seemingly don’t actually want to rent their properties. I have also learnt that “tidy” in a property ad means “disgusting”, and “cute” means “old”.
I am so glad we found a place in a decent area that wasn’t completely over our budget, owned by a woman who actually seems to be a decent human being. My sister however, is still looking…
Yesterday, I mentioned very briefly about having some drama with the video iPod my boyfriend gave me for my birthday. Now here is the expanded version.
The iPod in question was a white 30GB video iPod. My boyfriend bought it for me on the 30th of January, and gave it to me the same day (my birthday is actually on the 31st, but my boyfriend can never wait to give presents). When I opened it the box and took off the plastic packaging, I noticed that the scroll wheel was tilted to the right and had a slight gap on the left-hand side. The scroll wheel worked, but the fault was very noticeable and the unevenness of the back and forward icons made me feel a bit dizzy if I stared at it – it looked like my eyes were off because you wouldn’t expect it to be misaligned. Also, when you pay 329 for an MP3 player, you expect quality. So no problem we think – we’ll just take it back the next day, on my birthday, before we spend a fun day in town. Right? Wrong!
The iPod was purchased from IT Pro on Eiermarkt in Antwerp’s city centre. We go in, explain the problem to one of the guys and he calls whom I can only assume is his supervisor – Dimitri. I explain that it’s brand new, it’s just been opened the night before, is unused, and very obviously has a manufacturing defect, and that I would like to swap it for another one. Dimitri tells me that it is not possible to swap it immediately in the store. I suggest a refund – and am again told this is not possible. I am told that the only way to get it fixed is to send it off to Apple for service.
His reasoning for this was that every iPod that is sold is automatically registered to a name and if it was returned they couldn’t resell it because it would be in my name. I explain that I haven’t registered it with Apple, but he still says that it’s registered to me – perhaps by the power of thought? I can only imagine.
But hang on, this is a brand new iPod with a manufacturing defect – I don’t want it serviced. I want it replaced. I mention the Apple 14-day right-to-return policy (clause 7.1!), which is that you can return anything within that time frame and it doesn’t even need to be broken, except opened software, of course. He tells me that they are not Apple and do not follow Apple policies. I question this because they are an authorised Apple reseller, but he again states that they “are not Apple”. I mention the 7-day right-to-return policy under Belgian law, and he goes on to tell me that this does not exist and that it is not Belgian law.
By now, I am pretty fucking pissed off. I say, come on! It’s my birthday! I just want to get my iPod fixed. Dimitri tells me again that all I can do is send it in for service and wait up to 2 weeks. I explain that I am not Belgian, and I am leaving the country permanently in 2 weeks and that I do not have a fixed address to send the new iPod to. He still says this is the only way to get it fixed. He tells me he could swap the iPod immediately if he “wanted to be a nice guy” but that he just couldn’t do that. At this point, I raise my voice at him and tell him this is pathetic customer service and that they are selling Apple products so they have to follow Apple return policies. He says he is going to report me to Apple for customer abuse.
At this time, there are also about 7 other customers in the store, all listening to the crap coming out of Master of Customer Service Dimitri’s mouth. Eventually, they all leave and buy nothing. You would have thought at this point he would come around but he still sticks to his ground – trying to fuck me around and rip me off. So I say, fine. I’ll call Apple. He says, “Go on then!” I ask for the number, and he gives it to me.
I spend the next 45 minutes on the telephone speaking to a helpful guy at Apple who takes all the information down and gives me some options to get a replacement iPod. He says he could courier me an iPod but it could take 7+ days to arrive – but I am moving out of our rented studio in 8 days. He tells me that, indeed, IT Pro are an authorised Apple reseller and should adhere to Apple policies. He says I should either get a new iPod on the spot, or my money refunded. He says he would be reporting the incident to the powers that be at Apple, and made a case note for Dimitri to look at and said I should now be able to get my money back.
So we tell this Dimitri fellow what Apple has told me and he still says that they can’t help me in any way! Also, while I was on the phone he was taking numerous photos of the iPod which he also said didn’t need to be replaced because “it wasn’t broken”. He goes on to tell me that now that I’ve made a case note with that serial number and my name against it, that he definitely can’t give me my money back. Eventually, he goes upstairs to call who I can only assume was his manager or the owner. He has a rather heated discussion – none of which I can hear or decipher with my crappy grasp of the Dutch language.
Another few minutes pass and he comes downstairs. He says that actually, now that there is a case note he can give us the money back. We have now spent one hour in the store on my birthday. He grumpily gives us the money back and we leave the store.
We walk down the road to FNAC, which is a Belgian chain department store that sells electronics and books. We explain the situation to the information guy and ask if we buy one from FNAC if we could open the packaging before we leave the store and check for the defect. He says, sure. We end up opening two boxes because the first also had the same manufacturing problem. Luckily, the third iPod of the day was relatively okay and I left the store a happy birthday girl with a new iPod. Thanks, Robin!
Moral of the (very long) story: Do not buy anything from IT Pro, ever. They have the worst customer service I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing – and that includes the notoriously shitty Micro Anvika in Selfridges. I wonder if this is what you get by trying to support small local businesses, as my boyfriend had gone into FNAC and considered getting the iPod there, but went to IT Pro instead.
Also, Dimitri from IT Pro is not a nice guy. In fact, he is a fucking rude cunt.
Prologue to this article:
Yes, I’m bitching about men again. Do I have a problem? Sure, I have sore feet from wearing heels that are stupidly high. Do I need a therapist? Yes, that would be swell. Thanks.
Women have issues. Especially when it comes to men. I hear two things often:
- All men are bastards
- Can’t live with them, can’t live without them
We whine, we whinge and we complain about men being assholes. “They’re lazy! They’re smelly! They treat us like shit!” But what happens when you meet a really nice, lovely guy? Nothing. That’s the problem.
Why do women like men that are bastards? I can’t figure out the attraction of men that treat you badly and that are obviously bad for you, but still, they’re the guys I tend to fall for. The only conclusion I can draw is that they are a challenge. That’s the ticket, a “challenge”. We want a man that cooks, cleans, and treats you like a princess. But we don’t want them to do it just because they are like that, we want them to cook, clean and treat us like a princess because we trained them. Moulding – that’s what we want to do to assholes and that’s why we go for them. As much as some women don’t like to admit, we like notches on our belt. We like to be able to say to our girlfriends over coffee, “Yeah, when we first started going out he did nothing, and now I put my feet up and worships me!” Nice boys just aren’t a challenge.
What is it about men that are assholes that makes your clitoris tremble with excitement? What is it about nice guys that makes you think, “Oh, I like his smile. He has a really great personality. He’s just fine and I love his cooking!” Just one more unexplained question from the realms of the female psyche. Call in the therapist!