Bad juju

Weng has bad bus juju: The bus will speed away just as we're coming up to the bus stop no matter how fast we run.

Cheryl has even worse bus juju: The bus never comes.

I have bad baking juju: My oatmeal cookies come out of the oven fused into a single sheet of biscuit, and my fairy cakes look like this.

Like a peach

I've finally gone paintballing and I've got a story. I hope to finally go clubbing at some point too, and I'm sure that'll be another entertaining story, but for another time.

Paintballing is basically a good excuse to shoot things at your friends. It involves little yellow balls of paint that squish deceptively easily underfoot, but when fired out of a pneumatic gun, cause so much pain that when I was dealt my first stinging shot on the shoulder blade, I actually froze midstride, which earned me two more bruises. Paint ball guns are phenomenally inaccurate, that's the only way you actually hit someone - sheer luck - and you can be pulling away on the trigger as someone charges you from 20ft away and watch in vain as the little balls veer to the left and right.

I've got a couple of visible bruises I can wear fairly proudly, and I'm sure I would've had at least two or more had I not been shot in the head twice by vagrant paint pellets. I'm sporting a spectacular bump, but my hair's in the way, so it's not as dramatic. Here's a summary of my bruising:

1. Left quad x 1
2. Inner thigh x 2
3. Left arm x 1
4. Right shoulder blade x 1
5. Skull x 2

It's probably going to hurt more tomorrow when the adrenaline and post-paintball half pint wears off.

The Office

It's amazing how incredibly aware you get of the person sitting next to you. It's not like we're jammed in shoulder to shoulder or anything, in fact this desk is bigger than anything I've ever had through my four years at Uni, but all the same, I could sit back in my stylishly ergonomic chair with my eyes shut (time and work permitting) and know exactly who's doing what. Ringtones are easy but the rhythm of someone's mouse and keyboard gives away almost as much.

We also have a tin of cookies in the office. Some 'premier selection' or other that involves a lot of chocolate and some biscuit in various shapes and sizes. When I first got here, I thought it was awesome, and it would magically refill every time it got empty. Six weeks on and I shudder to even look at the cupboard where boxes and boxes of this stuff is kept. We also get fruit delivered twice a week, but you gotta be quick, or you'll be left with the last, most dessicated looking orange in the pile, and even that'll go by lunchtime.

One of the upsides I can think of working in a firm that's largely male is that there's never a queue for the bathroom. Although whoever designed the toilet paper dispenser and the toilet roll should be shot. There is too much tissue on the entire roll (you'll probably never hear that one at home) and it rests against the inner wall of the dispenser such that you can only ever get the paper out square by square, because the perforation isn't strong enough to withstand the entire bulk of the roll. Worse still, when you have to twist your arm up into the dispenser to find the end of the roll, and then proceed to pull it out square by square until you've collected enough.

Network printing is another thing that is beyond me (Regressions, I can now handle). You need to remember to set up two-to-a-page, double sided (because trees are good things), and tell it to collate so you're not the idiot sorting through reams of paper. Then you have to choose one printer out of about twenty three, choose which pages you want and how many copies you need and finally hit print. You then walk all the way to the printer of your choice and stand there waiting for it to start, only it doesn't. You dash back to your computer, thinking you've probably sent it to one of the other twenty two printers, and run around the third floor printers hoping that it hasn't gone to the second floor instead. Then it starts all over again.

To be fair though, I haven't been all that desperate for Fridays. Still eager.

When your knees buckle, but your belt won't

Random parts of my body are aching, often those associated with encroaching age. We only played a couple of hours on Saturday, which made me feel fantastic for the rest of the day. Then Sunday morning rolled around; every movement was accompanied by a grimace and I found my hands involuntarily supporting my lower back.

So I also tried updating my iPod this weekend, but got confused, so Cheryl helped. Then she kindly went through her collection, playing me song snippets that suddenly sounded all too rock. Looks like I'm going to have to start turning to Tish. I've joined the grey side.

Still lovin' it

I'm a month in and still enjoying myself. I was blessed with a very understanding and an incredibly patient job manager who told me I didn't need to come in on time every day. After spending a week worrying about protocol, I've finally relaxed and my brain is no longer in a blank state of panic. I think I've moved a little past the moron mode, although the IRC know my name and probably think I'm an idiot for sending the wrong data request twice. The awesome part is I can wear jeans into the London office. I heard, in Spain, you can even wear a t-shirt. I love this firm. And there's a guy working here that looks like Mr. Anderson. Our part on this project is wraps up tomorrow so I'm waiting to see what's next.