I spent my evening last night switching the keys around on my keyboard, and now I just find it funny that I was unable to successfully change the index keys. Like my dodgy fix?

And does anyone have experience typing with a thumb/wrist splint on? Should I just go one handed?

I’m actually not annoyed, more amused. And to be honest, I’ve “borrowed” a few internal ideas here and there as well… In the context of work, I like to call it “using best practices” although I guess I could write a whole blog post on the lack of merits of using “best practice” (aka “old practice”). On the other hand, I do wish I could “charge” the IP team for the use of my scorecard. I think the aggressive (legal) pursuit of 5 unauthorised vendors in my region wouldn’t be asking too much. Would it??

Image from Atmostheory (link)

Lately, and from an incredibly subjective place, I’ve been pondering the merits (or lack of merits) of the “like” button. I actually do use the like button. On Facebook, if a friend posts a status which I find is particularly interesting or a photo which I find it really great, I will click “like”. But I don’t always stop at the like button. I also often like to leave a comment, just to show I don’t just “like” something, I actually care. On the other side, I admit to being a bit of a comment whore. I get a buzz when people “like” and comment on my posts/statuses/photos. There’s just something about being commented on or “liked” which puffs up my ego a little bit and makes me feel like I’m a slightly more important cog in the world, because someone took the time to notice me. Lame, I know

But recently I’ve come to the point where I hate the like button. It’s impersonal and too easily there. There are times when I don’t understand why someone likes my post/status/photo and I darned well want to. I’ve really come to loathe those people that just click “like” to everything. Seriously folks! Do you actually like it, or is it some kind of weird competition to see who hit “like” first? Stop being a drive-by liker! And I really hate it when people click “like” obsessively, as though they’re completely involved in your life, when they don’t really give a toss about you. And don’t even get me started about those negative posts which people “like”. Nothing online drives me more nuts than seeing someone click “like” to “I’ve got a horrible case of diarrhea and my guts feel like they’re going to spill out onto the floor”. What on earth is wrong with you people??

The irony of this post? I decided to take a semi hiatus from Facebook all because of this bizarre dislike which has been brewing in me, and I moved some stuff that I still wanted to share with close friends/family to a wordpress.com blog. And what do I see when I post? A freaking “like” button. LOL. It took me two days to work out how to turn the damned thing off.

Image from Disocciated Press (link)

Back in Sydney, I had tried multiple times to bake bread. I tried so many recipes, and they all failed. I don’t know whether I had a bad batch of yeast, but none of the breads rose properly. This time around, at the start of January I returned to my old faithful, the person whose recipes I have so far never failed at using… Jamie Oliver. In particular, his basic bread recipe. And to my surprise, I ended up with a nice round loaf of bread!

Emboldened by my success, today I tried baking pretzels, using the soft pretzels recipe indexed at the MSPI Mama website.

As a very non intuitive cook, who, despite being a massive Auntie Annes fan, I need step by step instructions. I gathered my ingredients, I mixed, and I kneaded. And then I went to roll my pretzels. “But… but…”, my brain stammered. “The recipe doesn’t tell me how long my pretzel dough should be, or how to actually roll the pretzel shape!”

I laughed at myself, and then found myself reminiscing on the time I made supersoft ensaymadas. I followed the recipe precisely there also, but again, didn’t know how big my ensaymadas should be as I rolled them and prepared them for baking. They ended up ginormous. And today in the case of my pretzels, they look like bread versions of those little plastic dog poops that you get in novelty stores. Also huge. Next time I know: The pretzel dough needs to be very thiiiiiiin and very looooong, and I don’t have to worry about them looking a little skinny pre bake. After baking, they will puff up to be about 3 times the size they went into the oven at!

The picture was taken with my iPod camera in bad light, which is why it’s so grainy. On reflection, I clearly still need to work out how to roll a pretzel!! The pretzel looks quite white on the bottom here, because I didn’t have any baking paper. I used flour dusted aluminium foil instead, so the bottom of the pretzel is very flour-y.

Overall, the recipe is quite good. I would add a touch more salt to the dry mix next time, and I also need to remember to be extremely liberal with the egg wash. I only put a little on (the same amount as I would if I was baking a loaf of bread) but I now know I should have put a lot more on. I also screwed up the oven settings and had the heat on only at the bottom of the oven, which is another reason why it looks so pale.

And next time I’m going to buy some powdered cinnamon. Boo yeah.

That’s correct. You heard me. The Dad factor. On the weekends, Dad is home!! It’s time to wrestle, play, and subvert Mum’s rules and schedule. I love watching the two of them together, so every weekend and with a grain of frustration, I shake my head, sigh, smile at my boys who are both getting over tired (yes, that can happen to Dad too), and grin and bear it. Even though I sometimes have to spend hours mopping up tears, pacing with an 8kg baby in my arms in a dark room singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and even though sometimes I feel the strong and overwhelming urge to hurl the baby monitor onto the floor, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Dad factor comes into play in other less frustrating ways also. Bath time and bed time are different. Instead of rubber duckies, “splash splash revolution” comes to town. Instead of a soothing story about three bears (a Karamello Bear, and Holly Berry Bear, and a Nicholas Bear btw… we’ve tailored the story somewhat), Nicholas is regaled with stories of Dad’s crazy workplace. Milk time becomes a downright wrestle between myself and Nicholas, as he constantly strains to maintain eye contact, smile, and laugh at his Dad, preferring to do these things over drinking. And play time (complete with soft toys) sees Mr. Rac Rac (the Racoon) being “eaten” by Lejon the Lion; Mr. Robato (the Robot) coming to the rescue, and Raffie (the Giraffe) ultimately saving the day.

The Dad factor makes me reminisce about spending time with my own Dad. Spending time in the garage, watching him work on the car or help me with a particularly tricky homework assignment that involved building things (a pyramid and a kite spring to mind almost instantly). Crawling under the house after my Dad, carting wheelbarrows filled with dirt and sand or bricks from one end of the garden to the other. Building lego houses and being instructed in the correct way to “lay” the “bricks” so that my house walls are strong. These kinds of experiences fill my childhood, and I think helped to shape me into the person who I am today. I always felt (feel) safe with my Dad. I can run any idea by him and never feel judged (although I’m sure he has hung his head with frustration and disappointment about  some of the choices I’ve made in my life), and if I really need to, I can run to him for help.

That’s the kind of relationship that I want Nicholas to build with his Dad, so Dad factor, come on in. It’s a mixed bag of goods, which I wouldn’t trade for the all world.

Update: It didn’t work I guess the hardware problem is more significant. Now to contemplate whether or not I want someone to go to the effort of extracting the data from the disk n some other way. Probably not… Lol.

My home laptop hard disk drive is currently chilling. Yup, chilling. It’s in the freezer, and fingers crossed tomorrow when I take it out of its little zip lock bag and plug it back into my laptop, that it work for long enough for me to extract my important data. The ironic thing is that I do have a backup of most of the data somewhere but I have no idea where… Anyway, it is notable to mention that this is my first legitimate hardware failure. Yup, not taken out by a virus or a stupid user error (yes, I did once spill a cup-a-soup on a laptop to disastrous consequences), or by an “too early” (i.e. 6 months after I bought the damned thing) hardware failure. This is a hardcore, “it’s old and overused, and now ready to die” failure. I feel like I’ve reached some kind of milestone in life.

But back to my hard disk drive “on the rocks”. I had never heard of this kind of method (see “Freeze your hard disk drive to recover data: Myth or reality?“) to try and resurrect (temporarily) a hard disk drive, until I started googling… it’s actually extremely interesting, and fingers crossed (again) that it works for me. I’ll update tomorrow!

But since we got our landline in The Philippines, aside from being a cost I wish we didn’t need to have (annoyingly Sky Broadband isn’t available in this building), you get the most ridiculous pre-recorded phone calls, the odd “we’re currently testing the phone line” call, and a ton of hang ups. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone how annoying a “Happy New Year” pre-recorded phone call is, first thing in the morning on January 1st… Or how much it makes my blood pressure rise when the phone starts ringing pointlessly when Nicholas is down for a nap (like now). And today there have been about a half a dozen phone calls in the last 2 hours! I don’t even know what my landline number is, so it’s not like I’m expecting any urgent phone calls…

So is it possible for someone to explain to me why my phone keeps ringing, and when I answer it, there is noone there? I don’t think they’re prank calls, I think that they’re line testing. But goodness only knows why they are repeatedly testing the line.

I really need to move on with my life (although if the phone rings again, my next blog post might be from a cell, and not a cell of the smart phone variety). Could this be a sign I need to get out of the house more??

She’s pregnant. Gee golly. At least it means she really needs the work right now and will be less likely to just take off and not come back. And it resolves my dilemma as to whether or not to have a helper  - I’ll just wait until she wants to leave, as it’s only a few months away anyway, and then I won’t hire anyone else. But it sounds worse that I made a pregnant woman cry. I had better make sure I don’t put on any heart wrenching Disney movies while she’s watching Nicholas… I know when I was pregnant, Brother Bear was well, too much to bear!

Overall I’m happy for her. It’s another year of babies, and a good year at that. But since this blog is all about me, I am torn between feeling like a sh*t because I made a pregnant woman cry and feeling vindicated – “ahh, pregnancy hormones”.

Sigh.

Fast forward to yesterday, where the day ended with a big and slightly befuddled sigh.

I’ve had a few jobs “over the years” (ok, it hasn’t been that many years, but there have been enough incidents) where I’ve had to manage people, and I know that people in general don’t always do what you want or need them to do. So in the corporate setting I follow a few logical steps:

1. see the behaviour/incident/thing/etc (at this point moving forward I’m just going to say “thing”)
2. teach the person nicely, the right way to do said “thing”
3. see the “thing” again
4. commence performance management
5. correct the “thing” and accompany correction with a serious discussion on why it shouldn’t happen
6. see the “thing” again
7. Forget corrections, it’s time for this moron to get the h e double hockey sticks out of here or pull up their socks big time

And “over the years” (I’m seriously not that old) I’ve had the misfortune of getting to step 7 a few times. People who make it to step 7 aren’t always the brightest sparks, but are usually always the nicest people around. There have of course been the odd few step 7 conversations which I’ve had with absolute relish – it must be the bitch in me – but generally it bites big time to have a hard discussion with step 7 people.

And in thinking about step 7 people, there are times when step 7 people cry.  Sometimes I can understand why the person is crying. Other times I feel guilt because maybe I’ve gone too far (although half a second after the guilt pops up it’s squashed down with cold, hard, reason and facts…). But sometimes I’m just confused. I seriously didn’t go that far! I was nice! I was gentle! I used “When you do x, y happens…” statements! I’m not firing you! I’m giving you a billionth chance! Why on earth is this person crying?!

So coming back to yesterday, I made my maid cry.

I had had a discussion with her last year about taking time off, and how if she wanted a few extra days all she had to do was tell us before she went on leave. Of course there would be times where it wouldn’t be OK, but 99% of the time I’m sure we could be flexible. The only thing I asked was that she be upfront and talk to us about this before she went on leave. So I too, was disappointed, when she was late back this time around, and expressed said disappointment. We sat down and I talked about respect, and how I respect her as an adult and an employee, but I felt she had disrespected me as her employer… that I couldn’t give her an additional new year bonus because she wasn’t here for a week that I expected her to be here, and how it can’t happened again.

And there were tears! I was genuinely shocked. I don’t even think I sounded like a bitch. I smiled and was empathetic about how difficult it is to be away from family. What the hell did I do wrong!? I genuinely like the woman. I think she’s good with Nicholas and the cats, she cooks well, and she keeps the house clean to a standard I am satisfied with. So I don’t micromanage her. I don’t look follow her around waiting for her to do something wrong. I respect her space and I honestly require very little from her.  So why tears?

After the tears had subsided and the world had been restored to order, I checked my email. I’m a member of an expatriate mums and dads group here, and one of the perks is a mailing list, free seminars etc etc. And wouldn’t you know it? An email from this group tells me that they will be running a seminar on “managing your household help and cultural expectations” this weekend. A bit freaking late don’t you think? But maybe I should go, just to find out where I went wrong, or if I “went wrong” at all…

When we were back in Sydney, I always imagined how amazing it would be to have someone to do all the household chores I really don’t like doing. When I was scrubbing out my bathroom every Saturday, I would imagine with relish, having someone to do it for me. I admit I wasn’t really thinking about a person doing this, but some amazing and magical “cleaning fairy” (girl’s gotta dream), but I’m sure you get what I mean.

When we moved to Kuala Lumpur, we hired cleaners to come in once a week. They would mop, scrub out the bathrooms, iron the clothes and clean the kitchen. It was a pretty sweet deal, and the only complaint I had was that I had to be at home to supervise them! It was a fantastic arrangement otherwise, because while I didn’t mind the day to day chores, I’ve always hated but been obsessive about the once a week total scrub down of the bathrooms/kitchen/laundry. That and the fact that I hate ironing.

I was truly thrilled about moving to Manila, because I thought immediately “live in helpers”. Of course, there were other things about moving to Manila I was excited about (the food, the people, to name a few), but being pregnant and working… having a helper just sounded amazing for my sore legs and exhausted body at the end of each day.

We’ve been in our apartment since April, and have had a live in maid since May. It’s been nice. She does all those things I wanted my magical cleaning fairies to do, and more! But just now she is away for the Christmas break – she left on the 23rd of December and she will be coming back this week. And let me tell you – it’s been AWESOME. I love having the house to myself, not having to worry about telling someone what to do, being able to wander around the house in my underwear… LOL. Sure I have to do my own laundry, make my own bed, clean my own bathroom, but in all honesty… I’ve had to do all of these things for all of my adult life anyway and it’s not an inconvenience at all. Even with a baby now, it’s not too much skin of my nose. I’m not an OCD housewife, so I can live with a little mess, but I’m not a slob – the clothes are always clean, the kitchen always sparkles, and you could eat off my bathroom floors.

Reflecting on this time, I’m seriously considering not having  a maid at all… But that’s more easily thought than put into action. I return properly to work in two weeks so I might give it a couple of months to make a decision.

So in a natural, at the end of the blog kind of way, are there any “luxury” items or things that you have in your life, that you could do without, but can’t quite rip the bandaid off for just now?