Moofer

So I am a moofer today - "Mobile Out of Office" for the uninitiated, and Oxford Dictionary's runner-up for Word of the Year.

There's even an entire blog dedicated to people's moofing experiences. It doesn't come as a surprise that the site is "in association with Microsoft".

My moofing experience today involved about 5 minutes of Oprah - something about women being insecure and making their partners partake in a lie detector tests. Was actually hoping for the 2008 'Oprah's Favourite Things' episode. Perhaps that's incentive to moof for the rest of November.

Now that the presidential election hype has subsided, it's time to project forward to the next 100 days. George W's activities in his first 100 days made my chuckle. His achievements included:

• announcing the end of U.S funding for international centres that offer family-planning counselling and perform abortions;
• creating an Office of Faith Based and Community Initiative to help religious groups obtain federal tax dollars to address social problems;
• presents $1.96 trillion budget plan to Congress, which proposes reducing growth in government programs and gives Americans the largest tax cut in two decades
• meets with German Chancellor and defends his opposition to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol

Aw my gawd.

On the other hand, Franklin D. Roosevelt is fast becoming my fave U.S President according to his first 100 days track record.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

I am engaging in supreme work multi-tasking:

Headset on one ear - participating in work meeting
Earphone in the other ear - listening to "American Boy"
Google Talk - chat
Writing Document - work
Blogging - to prove the point

I digress ...

This week has been rather eventful in an "I, Robot" kind of way. Thursday morning, I'm rushing to get the car started to make an early morning meeting. My car was parked outside that morning, and to give you a sense of its surroundings:- it is parked on a strip of grass that leads directly to the neighbour's house. Immediately beside the strip of grass is concrete pavement.

Before I hop in the car, I do the right thing by starting the engine - this was the previous owner's parting advice (I think he decided to keep it simple realising that I wasn't capable of up keeping his millions of fastidious care tips). With my kaya + peanut butter sandwich in one hand, I insert the key into the ignition (toot toot! beep beep!). Next thing I know, the car bunny hops and suddenly (and I mean very suddenly) gains forward momentum, heading in the direction of my neighbour's house. At this point, I'm still not in the car, rather I am hanging on to the car door with dear life trying very desperately to get in the car. The car seemed to be speeding towards my neighbours house - I really thought it was going to smash into the house blockbuster-Hollywood (or perhaps Australia's Funniest Home Videos) style with me lying unconscious still holding on to my sandwich. It could have been a disastrous, expensive outcome. Fortunately, I managed somehow to drag myself into the car and slam on the brakes. Let me tell you, very hard to locate the brake pedals when you are about to career into a house.

I breathed a heavy sigh of nervous relief, then realised that I had burned a hole around the knee caps on my favourite work pants thanks to the concrete pavement. I had not actually noticed that I was being dragged along the pavement all that time until the sting set in.

Such an improbable set of circumstances. Leads me to believe that my car has developed a mind of its own and is attempting to get away from me (by committing suicide?) a la the movie I, Robert.

Eventful morning. Missed my meeting and now have a very puss-filled knee.

I should mention the announcement on my train ride into the city the other day (this is the "train" part of the blog - see subject header). As per usual, cityrail was experiencing delays between Central Station and Wynyard. The driver was courteous enough to inform us that there was a delay and then added "But Cityrail guarantees same day service", to which some random commuter responded "Well that's a bit rich". I tend to agree.

Precarious Start

01/01/06
Some idiot head had some kind of brain explosion and decided to vandalise my car. Not only is it now blemished to the factor of 10, it is also undrivable due to intrusive metal bits on front right tyre.

04/01/06
Today I saw my favourite and most respected colleague flee for the proverbial greener pastures - even a CityRail toilet cleaner looks pretty green at the moment ... bygones.
She was indeed a remarkable individual - passionate, diligent, incredibly bright and switched on, principled and inquisitive. Mind you, she was also rather anal, quirky and not one to suffer fools lightly - a category I may have fallen in one too many times. Despite the stark difference in fool-dom, knowledge and experience, it was a collaborative and never a condescending process. She is the truest example of 'leader by example'. I often marvel at her work & style with admiration. Both she and my (ex)manager have moulded my career-outlook (whatever you call it) in the most profound ways. Both individuals always had my best interests at heart (rare quality in the evil corporate world), and never treated me like a pleb. They challenged me time and time again. They have defined what, for me, success, intelligence and respect means. I question whether I will come across 2 such influential and remarkable characters in the remainder of my work-life. It seems somewhat unfair that I should be blessed with such an opportunity so early on.

What makes it that much more precarious is that fact that I have come to know these people not only as colleagues, but also as friends. They provided legitimate work-related stuff; and I provided light entertainment, gossip, frivolous emails and GMAIL!

Will be braving the not-so-green pastures like a nigel ... in the corner of the room (sing with me!)