Friday, July 28, 2006
The Absence of Tam
Even if she had only been working two days a week since the year began, saying goodbye to my favorite co-worker Tamara yesterday was not an easy feat. Tam joined the company a few months after I did, and so we both witnessed the company's growth, watched people come and go, and had both been subject to our employers' ridiculous wrath. :o)
She is scheduled to give birth to a baby girl named Josie on Tuesday, and I cannot wait to see the pretty baby that I had a dream about the other night. And as Tam moves on from receptionist-slash-resident soapmaker to motherhood and beyond, the company loses a valuable employee, and I lose a dear friend. Well, at least one that is compelled to deal with me twice a week!
All kidding aside, there have been numerous conversations between Tam and myself that I have treasured the past few years. Two stand out. One, the origin of footwear left on streets (no, Julie, they're not always from vehicular accidents). I had always wondered about shoes just lying in the middle of city streets and had never met anyone who wondered about them as well. Until Tam. And two, the physiological mechanism of pain. I remember this conversation in the treatment room while watching the Siberian Husky Francesca scream in pain. Can someone actually die of pain? Or is the pain always a result of a deeper injury to the body?
I know, all these conversation topics sound like they were influenced by strong stimulants. But aside from really good tea (and Tam had lots, thanks to her online tea dealer), we were only high on conversation, client impressions, and of course, your run-of-the-mill boss frustrations.
Tam and I had conversations about love, sex, marriage, family, careers, city life, country life, dogs, cats, bees and postal services. Rent, mortgages, samosas, soups, steak and killer chocolate sundaes from sinful steakhouses. No matter what the topic was, these conversations were very precious and highly motivating, especially in a physically-exhausting and mentally-draining work environment.
Tam, I know that you are addicted to us and that we will see you with Josie daily, but please do know that I will miss you terribly, terribly, terribly. Perhaps this is better, because we can actually go out for lunch and dinner and finally have a no-holds-barred conversation that will not be interrupted by pesky telephone rings.
See you around. :o(
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The Macdaddy Macbook
On my birthday, I got a Macbook. Very skeptical, I explored its every nook and cranny to see what the big deal was about this platform. I hadn't used a mac since circa 1990, on the little Macintosh that my brother owned. My first Windows was the 3.1, circa 1996, and since then I had almost no exposure to the Mac world aside from my brother's and my nephew's iMacs later on.
Sure, it is true that Macs run seamlessly and system crashes seem to be few and far-between. But because of lack of knowledge about them (as well as lack of free software!), I was about to lose faith in the Mac phenomenon.
It was only tonight that this Macbook had actually redeemed itself. My sister's old flame had resurfaced at her request and provided me with the much coveted Parallels Desktop for Mac , which when installed allowed me to open a separate window which ran Windows XP. Is that impressive, or what? So instead of a complicated dual-boot system, my Macbook now has a "virtual machine" in it that can run Windows XP and applications without skipping a beat!
Yes! It runs Mirc! Whoopee!
