Ahem!

All the way into work on the train today about five people in my immediate vicinity of the carriage cough and spluttered continuously for the whole journey. Normally I don’t notice the odd cough here or there on the train but this morning was different. First one person coughed loudly, then the next, then another as if they were all taking it in turns. Maybe it was similar to the yawn catching syndrome that exists – when one person yawns those nearby tend to ‘catch' the yawn. Anyway these coughing antics reduced my mood to one of annoyance. I know, these people probably couldn’t help it, but nor could I help being annoyed.

Then I arrived at work and saw the quote on the bottom of today’s calendar page:

“A cough is something that you yourself can’t help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.”

- Ogden Nash

‘Cops called to quell Krispy queue chaos’

The above quote and picture are taken from the MX free newspaper, 22 June.

Krispy Kreme opened up in Victoria last Thursday, just over three and a half months after the 10,000 free doughnuts it gave away in a promotion as reported in my post of March 3^rd. Although I couldn’t be there for the event (for which I am most thankful) I can quote further from the report of this event found in the esteemed MX free commuter paper:

‘Mounted police were called in to manage sugar-craving crowds…’

‘Thousands swamped the much-anticipated Narre Warren (the suburb it’s in - Ed) fast food outlet at Fountain Gate shopping centre, forcing police on foot to manage queues around the hot jam traffic jam, and mounted police to manage the more general mayhem.’

‘Fast food fans camped in single-digit temperatures for up to 23 hours to be among the first to munch the holey snack.’

‘Lard lovers emerged with a typical bounty of between two and 10 boxes of the roly –poly confection, each holding a dozen doughnuts…’

But my favourite is this one:

‘A war of the waistline waged at the store when a heavy hitter of the salad world arrived, chanting, slogans like “Don’t get fatter, give up the batter”.'

Now even if you remove the tabloid hyperbole this really is a sad indictment of western values, is it not?

Is Krispy Kreme really that good? Or are all the sad people merely jumping on the Krispy Kreme band wagon thinking some of the ‘kudos’ (and I say that with some reservation) might rub off on them through association? Is this public showing of insanity for dough and sugar a world wide phenomenon or just peculiar to Australia?

It's fixed! No wait, it's broken again...

Another month passed and no posts from me. I feel ashamed. No excuses, so I will make none. Here is the latest on the hot water debacle in the kitchen at work:

Nothing happened for a long time and my issues with EKS continued. Then a technician arrived – who proceeded to replace the COLD drinking water filter and dispenser. The new tap for this has been placed next to the tap for the (broken) hot water dispenser. Now why would a perfectly good existing water filter be taken away and replaced with a new one when in fact the problem facing the collective staff is the lack of hot water? This is of course standard logic for the organization within which I work – completely unfathomable. OK, I admit that perhaps the old water filter was not filtering properly and had to be replaced for safety reasons (tasted fine to me). In addition, the water from the new filtered drinking water system tastes like warm metal, and is undrinkable.

Eventually a hot water service technician turned up and fixed the hot water dispenser, which continued to work well - for about three days. In those three days I had of course become complacent and stupidly assumed the tap would work without any problems from then on. So it was with great disbelief that I came to fill my coffee mug three days later to find nothing coming out of the tap but a couple of gurgles and a drop or two of tepid water. Great. A couple of days later it began working again, then stopped again. Of course nothing has been done to fix the ongoing problems, so I guess I’ll just have to accept that this state of affairs is within the ‘accepted tolerance levels’ of the staff.

Perhaps I am being harsh on my employer. In all probability it isn’t the company’s fault, but fault of the equally inefficient and lumbering building management and the relationship between them and my employer. No wonder my company gets cheap office space…