Amusing Work Activities

One of my cow-orkers, who I refer to as Bouncing Derek, sits at his desk on a Swiss Ball. He wasn't in today, and another cow-orker, Rob, borrowed said swiss ball. Rob sits at one of the four desks in our little cubicle group.

I'd just got in and was turning on my computer, when there was an almighty pop or bang, kinda like... well, hard to describe. I thought something had fallen from the ceiling or someone a few cubicles away had dropped something heavy.

I turned around, and said "What the fuck was that?" to see Rob lying on his side on the floor... the Swiss ball had popped under him and was in at least two pieces! Everyone in the (open plan) office got up from their seats and looked over cubicle walls trying to work out what had happened. I described it as best I could between pissing myself laughing. Some people a few cubicles away gave a small round of applause, and commented on Rob's weight. We took photos of Rob holding the remains of the ball and sent them to Derek. It was an $8 swiss ball from Aldi, so no one was terribly surprised.

The funniest part was the noise the ball made when it popped. Like a balloon popping, only several octaves lower.

This is the stuff office legends are made of... Which is kinda sad...

Yours Truly Fighting the Power

In case you've been living under a rock, APEC is on this week. Which means a certain George W. Bush has come to visit us. Thrillsville.

Anyway, some people who, like me, object the President Shrub's handling of... Just about everything he gets his oil stained fingers on... organised a student walkout, with a bit of a march, starting on the steps of Flinders Street station. Well, what better way to spend my lunch hour.

Actually, it was great to see so many teenagers giving a shit.

We marched from Flinders Street Station, down Flinders, up Elizabeth, then down Bourke, where I left the rally to get back to work. Those teenagers march fast, I tells ya! And slipping back into the crowd was simply a matter of stepping up onto the tram stop on Bourke street. Then I could have been anyone...

Bumped into a mad keen activist/photographer Dallas, who snapped this shot of Yours Truly and the end of march (click on the picture for More Bigger):

Also bumped into a journo from the Age who happens to be in my toasties club. I asked if he was there in his official capacity. He was, but didn't want a quote from me because I wasn't a student :-) He reckoned the crowd at 400, which seemed about right to me.

I'll be curious to see what happens in Sydney on Saturday.

Everyone Needs Two Of Everything

I picked up a new phone off ebay this week. Why the heck would anyone need two phones? Well, I'm glad you asked :-)

Originally, I picked up a pre-paid SIM card from Vodaphone so I would have another number for people to call me when I was being an activist. Since then, it's actually proved quite handy to have a spare, more or less disposable phone - we popped the sim into evildoom_bunny's old Nokia. Useful to take to the gym, gigs, places like that.

Anyway, the Ol' Nokia is so on its last legs, and it was proving so useful, that I decided to "upgrade". This 1110i is sooooo low-end, lacking in superfluous features like cameras or interchangeable covers or any of that shit. The kind of phone you'd get your grandmother. Refreshing in a way, compared to my usual phone, which runs Windows Mobile and needs to be rebooted every few days.

Vodaphone are hacking me off however, I'm going to look into switching carriers...