A Thank You Note to the Tax Department

Dear Tax Department,

Just a note to say 'thanks' for not sending me a tax bill this year. Before, I waited with bated breath for that little green envelope, yet I have felt nothing but dissappointment day after day after day when I trudged back to my flat empty handed. So, I have resolved myself to the fact that I must be exempt from paying taxes. What a pleasant surprise! And rightly so.

Instead of scrimmaging for some serious cash in January, I have begun planning a henonistic holiday in Australia because I know that you lot would want it that way. I have also mapped out an extensive two-week long shopping spree at a major international city due to this oversight. It's going to be great.

So, to you all at the Tax Department, thank you. Keep up the good work. You are doing a superlative job.

Warm regards,

MB

In light of the sandwich lady's retirement, I gave in and bought a very horrible chicken wrap from her today. I am unsure if it was a sympathy purchase or if it was because I was genuinely starving. Regardless, she will be gone after Friday, so no more pressure to buy her wares. I am, however, fearful of a more tenacious and demanding replacement who will chase me around the lunch room. I better start preparing my lunches. Who knows what wrath one purchase from the new replacement may unleash.

A Comprehensive List of Things That Piss Me off

1. Unsolicited advice...especially when I am in the midst of a project which requires all of my concentration, and the better part of my lunch hour. I find it rather irksome when someone offers up the "well what I do is..." bit as they are enjoying their homecooked leftovers. While most do appreciate the consideration, please, just don't bother.

2. Stating the obvious. By writing this, and giving an example, I feel that I am stating the obvious. But how annoying. I feel genuinely sorry for those who feel the need to do this. Perhaps I have done it myself as some conversational 'filler' in an akward situation. Nonetheless, it's irritaiting and completely unnecessary. Some examples are: "Oh, you've cut your hair" or "Wow, I see you are wearing pink" or an email sent to someone's inbox in which they reply "So, you got my email address". Obviously.

3. Group Activities which foster workplace 'morale'. No, thank you. I do not want to play sports, barbeque, have a swingers night, eat at an ethnic restaurant or insert inane time-wasting group activity here ______________. I want to go home and forget for at least 12 hours that I have ever set foot in this place and that I ever had this misfortune of meeting you lot and drift off to sleep with the slightest hope that maybe, someday, I can marry rich or get hit by a tram so that I can finally get a moment's peace. Mind, my coworkers are lovely, but still.

4. People who talk incessantly about work. Yes, quite rich coming from me. However, one can only endure so much shop talk. Perhaps my own workplace issues make me slighly resentful of those who can yammer on and on at length about their nine to five. But I take great comfort in the fact that these are the people who own several cats and/or eat Malox for breakfast.

5. People Who Make Comments About Food. Obviously if someone has taken time to prepare it, or has spent money on it, they like it enough to eat it.

5. People who can pull off the colour tan. Because I enjoy it, but cannot ever wear it. So those who can, upset me.

Reason No. 04 Why I am Still Single

...see previous post.

There are those people in the world who can get up in the morning, manage to look polished, professional and presentable, have productive days at work, run a household, prepare the occasional meal, maybe raise a small brood and all the while, stay thin. These people, I am convinced, must have full-time PAs.

Contrarily, it wouldn't matter what time I got out of bed because I still always look disheveled and I am always running through the front door at sharp 8 -- sans breakfast. I am quickly learning that I do not really like my line of work, therefore hindering any possible productivity.

In the personal avenues of my life, I pay people to do things for me simply because I don't seem to have time. I pay someone to tell me what to do at the gym. I pay someone to do my nails. I usually eat out most meals, so essentially, I pay someone to cook for me. And my household? I actually wait to put my putrid leftovers in the bin till the night before the housekeeper comes just so I don't have to do it myself. I pay her too.

If I could pay for someone to shave my legs, do my job, or maybe even chew my food for me, then life would be sweet...and I might have time for breakfast.

Reason No. 76 Why I am Still Single

...when tall, dark and handsome strangers approach me with comments like, "my friend here likes you" I feel inclined to say things like, "yes, everyone does". Then, I walk away.

Ladies and Gentlemen ...the $1 beer hangover.

Thank you.

I am afraid that I have burned a bridge with the sandwich lady at work because she hasn't harassed me to buy her wares in the past couple of days. Admittedly, I did take a bit of a tone with her and have been eating cafeteria lunches since Monday after she asked me if I wanted a cookie, a wrap, a salad, chips and a flapjack. Clearly the loaded lunch tray in my hands wasn't indication enough that I already had a meal.

So, today I confirmed my suspicions that she's been blatantly ignoring me as she was going through the her same routine with the others -- but not with me. She even interrupted my co-worker, mid conversation, to comment on the fact that she 'noticed' that she eats a lot of spicy foods and that her company does a great spicy bean salad. The coworker, equally as perturbed as I have been in the past weeks, said, "Thank you, but I am eating now and don't need anything else". Say nothing about the fact that she actively watches our daily eating patterns.

Now I am torn because although I do have the upper hand in this little battle, I have huge crush on her tandoori chicken sandwiches. I may have to give in...

Because I live in This Part of The World, I am now accustomed to the fact that a there is a high percentage of people who do not know the English language. I find this amusing, not because I am a patronizing colonial, but because the misuse of my mother tongue can be just plain fucking hilarious. I realised this when I was walking to work one morning and saw a kindly-looking grandmother (her granddaughter in tow) wielding a T-shirt which read "Let My Dick Buy You a Drink". Now, assuming she didn't have a hubby called Dick, or that she, herself, didn't have an appendage of her own, I can safely say that the poor soul hadn't an inkling of what it meant as she had worn the shirt every morning for a week. A nice native speaker would have tried to explain it's ambiguity to her and perhaps encourage her to sport the usual Hello Kitty-type wear that the locals seem to adore -- but it was just too funny to bother.

I wonder if anyone has actually approached her in hopes of taking her up on the offer?

Today the VP bought us ice cream. Although it was a nice gesture, it made me uneasy because I had just seen the episode of The Office (American version) where the Senior Manager buys his staff ice cream sandwiches because he had just relinquised their healthcare plans. They weren't the nice ice cream sandwiches, either, but those generic-looking ones with the plain white wrapping that is indicative of bulk packaging for low-cost purposes (which is no problem because this is how buy my deoderant and tampons). I am not too worried because we had legitimate chocolate Drumsticks. That, and nobody can pilfer my health insurance because I don't actually have any until December...

Hopefully I don't get hit by a tram between now and then.

They Suck, They Really Do.

Asshole.

Of all the nights in the week that I am dead tired and manage to slip into a comatose state, for some reason or another I couldn't sleep tonight. So, I got up to turn up the aircon and get a drink in hopes that I could drift off to sleep. And there on my IM list, which I leave on all night and check whenever I pass by, was the phantom ex.

After nine months. Since January. Of zero contact. Of any sort. Whatsoever. He initiates conversation and uses my name to do so "How's life, Metrobabe?". The best I could muster up was 'heya' (so totally not anything I would ever say) and entertain light conversation that consisted of inane banter such as "how is work" and "I heard that you moved" to all of which I replied as flippantly as possible and asked him nothing -- simply because I don't want to know ever that he is doing great and work is great and his ex-who-is-now-likely-his-fiancee- again (and saying that, likely never was his ex while we were together) is doing great too. Fuck.

Now he is just sitting there online, mocking me with his silence. That's fine. Satisfactory, even, because evidently his guilt is what drove him to unblock and chat after all this time. Feeble, weak and pitiful. And it fills my heart with glee.

Sweet, sweet retribution has been made. Ha!

I have been to the grocery store exactly three times since I have returned from my summer holiday, today included. Considering that my return was one month ago, one would think that I am either a spendthrift domestic genius or that I have been slowly starving myself into thinness. I can safely say that neither are the case.

And if I were to be asked what it is that I do eat in the run of a day/week/month, I honestly can't answer because I don't know. I just don't. Yet, I am obviously getting calories from somewhere because I am erring on the side of obesity (re: last post). So $50 and some steak and floor cleaner later, I have decided that I need to start becoming a spendthrift domestic genius because I think that I am just one curry, take-out pizza and pound away from legitimate obesity.

Apparently being twenty pounds overweight is cause for being classified as 'obese' and not 'overweight' in some parts of the world. Luckily for me, I volunteered to live in that particular part of the world. Otherwise I might be rattling about thinking that I am something akin to Twiggy rather than the obvious Anna Nicole Smith (circa rock bottom) lookalike that I evidently am.

Fuck it. I am off to eat buttered chicken and drink Tiger beer.