Across from where I work is a really good café. The staff are incredibly friendly and the food – really good, unpretentious fare. It has to be. It’s a blue collar, industrial suburb where real people work. I was talking to one of the ladies in the cafe. I was buying coffee and she was making sandwiches. She loves – and I mean loves - making sandwiches. She told me nothing makes her happier. I stopped and thought about that – I’m still thinking about that. Is that the key to life? Doing the simplest task yet loving it with a passion? Can it be that simple? And how do you find something you love so much? Or does it find you? Or do some people just never find it? I dunno…

Amarinda Jones
Penn Halligan
www.amarindajones.com
www.amarindajones.blogspot.com
Be daring...read an Amarinda book

....the internet....the saga continues...lots of drama today – it still does not work properly and I am on this interim system– translation= crap dial up service - but the clincher was they have somehow wiped my email address from their system. They put it back on but changed the spelling of my surname from Jones to Jons. I said that’s not my name. Am I sure they asked. Why yes I am. Hmmm...they said – that’s very strange...yes it is. After much discussion they fixed it to the correct spelling. I am now at that punchy stage where I am laughing hysterically every time they do some other stupid thing...anyway, off those wankers until the next episode tomorrow.

Once a month at my job, the Acme Dance Shoe Company, (code for the place I must go to in order to get paid) has a lunch for factory and office staff. It’s nothing fancy but it’s part of a reward and recognition thing. Now, having worked at a few jobs (29 or 30) I have seen a few of these and they never change despite the company. First up the staff always, without fail, bitch about the food for lunch…I didn’t want chicken…I don’t like this salad…pizza
again…and yet they eat it and whine all the same. Pardon the French, but for fuck sake don’t eat it if you don’t want it. I annoys the hell out of me that just because food is ‘free’ people become gluttons and yet still whine about what’s on offer. Maybe I was raised strangely but just because something is free I don’t feel compelled to eat or take it if it does not appeal to me. I hate greed like this. The other thing – the reward and recognition – people, without fail, will bitch about the person or people that get said reward or recognition. Really who cares? I know it won’t be me – I do only have I have to at work in order to get paid (surprise) - and I don’t covet the laminated certificate. So why would people care? I guess it’s because being at work 8 hours a day is like being trapped within a small country with warring factions who have nothing else in their lives but food and certification. What do I do during these lunches? Why I do what I do everyday - I go for a walk and cross the border and see what life is outside. I don’t need the drama. I am dramatic enough without it.

For a while best friend Ethel was going through this phase where she kept telling me how ‘happy’ she was at work. I was very sceptical about this. Now, I don’t see Ethel often. She lives on the south side and I live north. People in Briz are either one or the other and rarely cross sides. When we meet we meet in the middle. In saying this, we talk all day on email, text each other and talk via phone – and no, despite some opinion, Ethel is not imaginary, though I suspect she would like to be sometimes due to the dramas in her life. And no, she will never comment on the blog as she just won’t. She’s quite shy despite the façade of bravado – but then aren’t we all? Anyway – back to being ‘happy’ at work. I, being the sceptical person that I am, knew this ‘happiness’ phase could not last long with Ethel. Why? Because we both have a long checkered history of jobs. So last night I got home and there was this email about work ‘sucking’ due to a new manager – translation = Ethel can no longer rort (exploit) the system. Being rorters of long standing, this pisses people like Ethel and I off and naturally we start thinking of other jobs. No, not me for the moment – but I will be expecting some reference check calls about Ethel soon. That’s okay – I haven’t lied outrageously for a while, okay a couple of hours, so I look forward to it. See? Happiness is just a passing phase and cannot be counted on.

I went and tried to buy a clock radio. Now while I have this annoying internal body clock that wakes me up at 3am, on the odd occasion it does not kick in and I may sleep to some crazy hour like 6am – wild stuff. So, I still set an alarm so I can get up and haul my arse to work without running around like a mad thing…okay, I still run around but there is less swearing. Yes, I swear. I feel fucking terrible about it. Anyway when did clock radios become so involved? They seem to do everything but tap into Mars television. Where is the clock the makes a sound to make you up without making coffee and paying your bills?

Tibet and the Olympics…shall I have my two cents? Yes, I think I will. I absolutely believe Tibet should be free and independent however is screwing with the Olympics really going to achieve anything? No, sport means absolutely nothing to me - but frightening average people who are running with the Olympic flame sucks. I respect people’s rights to protest but remember that ordinary people, kids, get caught up in it as well. I’m a great believer in manning barricades – show me one and I’ll defend it. By all means be passionate but be reasonable as well.

I had a man open a series of doors for me today. Chivalry is not dead. Yes, I am perfectly capable of opening a door myself but every so often it nice for a gentleman to come forward and do it. And yes, I am all for equality but I appreciate good manners from a man as well. It’s nice to know real men exist who are still men but are polite and thoughtful. Manners take nothing.

Just saw something on the TV about vandals smashing up headstones at a cemetery. Wow – that takes real guts to do that doesn’t it? To me, these people are losers. Grow up or get off the planet...it’s pretty simple.

Filed all day today (trying to clean up a mess the last person left)...I have no idea what the alphabet is any more. LMNOP is really hard to concentrate on when you add vowels to it and you have been doing it for 8 hours. I just know it’s all stuffed up but thankfully I don’t have a strong work ethic so I don’t have to worry about a guilty conscience. Apparently, some of the good people are working Saturday – see, it pays to be bad

I haven’t heard from Anny and Kelly in a while but I expect they are doing RT stuff so I guess they will be blogging on that…or not

www.freewebs.com/amarindajones/
Go ahead: Live with abandon. Be outrageous at any age. What are you saving your best self for?