What's in A Name?

When I first saw the headline on Yahoo! this morning I thought I had read it wrong.

'Adolf Hitler taken by US Child Services'

Then the thought that maybe the US really did believe there were God and had managed to travel back in time and removed the youngster from Mr. and Mrs. Hitler befour he caused so much trouble and angst for everyone.

I was, of course, being completely ridiculous and read the story anyway. Only to find out that a couple in New York State have named their three children Adolf Hitler, Aryan Nation and Hienrich Himmler. Child services became involved when the parents asked a local cake maker to put young Adolf's name on top of his birthday cake. The shop refused saying it was an unreasonable request.

The part that makes me smile, is that the parent think it perfectly reasonable to name their after the WWII dictator, his ideals and his right hand man and say they aren't subjecting the children to cruelty. They believe the names to be unique and the swastiker to be a work of art. Dumbarses.

The part that makes me sad, those children have to live with those names for the rest of their lives or at least until they are old enough (and hopefully smart enough) to change them.

Poor Planning

As you may have gathered from numerous posts on the topic, but I am less that satisfied with my current employment. I find myself in the position of being up to my eyeballs in work due to poor planning by the Project Manager and not giving a rats arse.

I spent an extra three hours last night writing a document at home. I've spent several hours in meeting that have absolutely no relevance to me because it's deemed (by the PM) that I be there. I could be writing the 45 odd page document that I have a week to write. Now, it's not just me that feels this is a bit wrong. Two other people on the project don't remember hearing about this document before Friday last week. Also, it's important to know, there are only four people on the team.

Today I was thinking about how I'm going to write my parts of the document, while in a two hour meeting for another document that didn't require my input, and did a couple of doodles I'm quite happy with.



Anyone know what doodles tell us about what the artist is thinking at the time of drawing?

Stars

On a work daily basis I read my stars while on the train platform. Then I go into Facebook and catch up. It's become a bit of a morning ritual that I quiet like although I have turned into one of those commuters that is wired for sound and more interested in my mobile than those around me. What I'm not too happy about is that for the last week my stars have been forecasting doom and gloom;

Romance: Thunder
Finance: Rain
Work: Snow
Mental: Snow
Physical: Sun
Emotional: Snow
Spiitual: Thunder

Today, as with everyday, it goes on to detail each of these aspects of my life and it doesn't look good. Power struggles, toxic envirnments, not rushing into friendships and today it even told me I should call my Mum. On the plus side, I do have some sun in my physical today.

I console myself with the fact that Year of the Rat is nearly over and next year it should get better.

What a lot of old bollocks horoscopes are ;-)

Err...No!

Expectation and Annoyance

On Christmas Eve I surprised and delighted a customer at work by agreeing to have a coffee with him in the New Year. I even gave him my number to prove I was in earnest and explained I was away until the 7th Jan.

While I was on my abortive road trip (I really should write about that) he rang me twice. I was actually driving at the time, ignored the call once and picked up and explained I was on the road with no hands free. I asked him to call me upon or just after my return to Sydney on the 6th. He agreed.

He texted me on a couple of occasions and I chose to ignore these.

Yesterday, just as I was leaving for lunch he rang me. I asked when I would be available for that coffee today. I explained that I already had lunch plans and that I wasn't available until next week. I start swimming again tomorrow; I don't want to put it off anymore.

'Well, dinner then?'

'I'm sorry, but I have plans.' He didn't need to know I was rushing home for the first episode of Dexter Season 3.

He then ranted a bit about how he might be going to America next week for business.

At this point I was getting closer to my lunch rendezvous with a friend and wanted my caller gone.

'I only agreed to have coffee with you in the first instance. I very busy and have offered you a chance to meet next week if you are able. That is the best I can do at the moment.' I was calm.

'Well,' he said, 'in that case why don't you call me when you're free.'

'I sure will.' was my reply.

As the escalators took me to my lovely lunch company, I found Bonne Annee in my phone and pressed delete.

Morning Giggle

I seem to spend a lot of time on trains. Last night, on my way home a derailment caused my 45 minutes trip to be 70mins of unair-conditioned boredom (I forgot my book and my iPod) in 40 degree heat. I was glad to be home at twenty past seven so I could remove my sweat soaked trousers and jump a cool shower.

This morning, random stops outside Lidcombe and Newtown meant I had an extra ten minutes on the train, but a dramatic over night drop in temperature meant I got to work with a dry seat.

I had my iPod this morning (not making that mistake again) and I was happily listening to Cat Stevens and looking outside the window, watching the world whoosh by at 30kph. Our trains don’t move very fast.

I had noticed earlier in the ride that the Christmas reprieve was coming to an end and few people were having to stand. The people that did have seats had their noses buried in books, school work and newspapers, or just like me, had music soothing them towards another day at the office.

The three men sitting in the seat in front of me were a combination of newspaper, school-work and book. None of them had music. The guy next to me though, he pulled out an old Sony Discman that I remember having when I was 16, but I digress…

Back to the guys in front. The school-work guy was sat in the middle. Wedged in between the two larger guys like a party popper about to be pulled, he was looking at accountancy sheets. The print was large and bold, and very easy to read from my position. He was flipping the pages, reading about credit and debits and P&L before moving onto end of year. It was all so riveting just outside Stanmore he started to get the head bob.

You know the one, the I’m falling asleep and I have no control, one. I want to stay awake, but, I. Just. Can’t.

His black haired head was slowly swinging to the left, then jerking upward. Then back down again until his chin hit his chest, then back up again with a start. This went on for a few minutes and then his head came to a stop. Nestled against the shoulder of the man to his left.

I watched as Cat sang ‘The Boy with the Moons and Stars’ as the man slowly put his newspaper on his lap and with his index finger pushed the sleeping mans head into the upright position. The continued support meant he didn’t wake up. The finger was bent rapidly, taking it away from the man head, then the whole hand was slowly moved across its owners chest so as not to wake the sleeping neighbour. The sleeping man stayed like that for a moment, then despite his head already being upright, his head snapped back with such force his whole body spasmed, he stood up then sat back down again.

After resuming his set he looked around to make sure no one had seem him, then continued to read his school-work.

mobile

this is my first post written on my mobile (cell) phone. Uppercase is hard to get and functionality is limited, but otherwise it's all good. I can't figure out how to do paragraphs either. Maybe this should be an emergency only posting option:-)

Noise

Whilst enjoying my Nam Pho yesterday I witnessed an injustice. It didn't spoil my day (nothing could have done that yesterday, I was far too chilled out) but once again it made me wonder about the way society lets parents and children get away with almost anything.

I have often given thought to the way parents let their young ones wander and get underfoot of other shoppers. Or how a pram is a licence to run toes over with no apology. How a pregnant woman, no matter how big her 'bump' is, gets the seat over the injured or aging. I may or may not have voiced my concerns here in the past, but I feel I had to tell this tale. It left me in a mild guppy like state until I stepped onto the bus.

As I said, I was enjoying my Nam Pho (with thinly sliced beef brisket) when a group of six twenty something’s came in and sat at the table next to me. They were laughing and joking, and having fun as a group of people do when lunching together socially. Behind them was a couple with a pram, occupied by a baby. I have no idea how old it was or what sex, it looked like a wrinkled prune, and I was thankful when they took a seat as far away as possible from me.

The twenty something’s took a little while to order as they where having fun, chatting and laughing and continuing the fun they were having when they came in. Eventually they ordered. As they where ordering the baby started to cry. Actually cry was being kind, it was screaming. Mum tried bouncing it up and down on her knee before putting her boob in its mouth. That didn't work, so dad tried the knee bobbing up and down thing. That didn’t work either. Neither did the dummy or the rattling keys.

Meanwhile the twenty something’s had resumed having fun after the momentary quite of ordering.

After about five minutes of screaming baby and the boisterous group, I was feeling glad that I could see the bottom of my bowl. The screaming was starting to pierce my ear drums.

What happened next, astounded me. The waitress walked up to the group and said, loudly, so she could be heard over the baby.

'Could you keep it down please, you are disrupting our other diners.'

At no point in the proceeding or follow five minutes did anyone approach the family with the screaming baby.

Something to Do

The day of my freedom from work dawned a few hours before I actually got up, but I made an effort, because I needed to sleep well, ready for my return to bondage.

I had a few errands to run and popped into Parramatta on the bus. I went to the Post Office, Rebel Sport and couple of other places. Just Dorising really. I had lunch at my favourite Vietnamese eatery. Even though it was 35degrees I really fancied a pho. Chicken/beef broth with rice noodles, bean sprouts, beef brisket and mint, vey yummy and considered to be the national dish of Vietnam.

After lunch I wanted to do something. So I step on the next bus that pulled up. I asked the driver, ‘Do you end up in Merrylands?’

‘Oh, yes, but I take a while to get there. Why don’t you get the 802, it takes 5 minutes.’

‘Yeah, see I want to kill some time and see some stuff I haven’t seen before.’

A woman in the first seat laughed and said, ‘this bus goes to Greystanes.’

The old lady next to her, joined her with a hearty giggle.

‘I haven’t been to Greystanes,’ I said.

I paid a $1.90 and took a seat at the back.

My only mistake. I’d picked an unconditioned bus.

If I hadn’t have taken my random bus trip I would never have seen a streets named after me and a mate with the correct spellings (e for me, no h for him). I wouldn’t have seen the Sri Lankan temple with all its bells and whistles and icons. I wouldn’t have spotted the pet feed store and I wouldn’t have realised just how many lovely houses are in Greystanes.

I actually quite enjoyed my little trip. I think I might get on a random bus again.