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Should I, or shouldn't I?
An organization cannot be an organization if it's only a one-man show. In my case, it's a one-woman show.
I haven't been able to check my emails all day due to the internet connection/laptop problem. Imagine my shock when I found an email about 15 minutes ago rom the student body president, sent 9 hours earlier, asking where the PowerPoint slides are for my organization.
See, we're supposed to have introductory meetings tomorrow to introduce ourselves to new students, and we were supposed to have made and sent slides to her so she can put them up on the projector tomorrow at our meeting. The slides were due on Wednesday at 5 pm.
I delegated this task to one of my officers on Monday evening, when I bumped into him, because I don't have access to PowerPoint that's needed to create the slides. Since that night I've sent several messages to him, basically dictating how to create these slides and reminding him of the due date/time. He didn't have to do anything other than copy and paste.
I'm rather P.O.ed right now, but even more so, pretty humiliated. This is how we represent ourselves to the student body? Further, my own executive officers can't be bothered to reply to my emails or do tasks in order to sustain this organization? I've just had to hunt down his phone number from an old student directory, which thankfully has his cell phone number in it. It sounded like a wild party on that other end. I've just had to yell at him on the phone and I hate doing things like that, especially over something so stupid.
My own officer told me that he thought he could just make the slides tomorrow and it'd be ok, when I specifically told him they were due on Wednesday. The student body president set the deadline, not I. When I asked him if he's gotten any of my emails about the slides, he first said he hadn't gotten them (a lie - I bcc'ed myself and got that email, pronto), then said he hadn't checked his emails for the last 2 days. I didn't want to flat out call him a liar then and there, but you find me a student with full internet and computer access (and one who has time to party) who hasn't checked his email in the past hour.
Unfortunately I can't fire my officers because there are only 3 of us on the executive board, and we desperately need more officers and more members. Previously, I only disliked one of my officers, but now both of them have sorely disappointed me.
I'm so sick of the deception and ineptness that's going on all around me. I'm seriously contemplating disbanding the organization altogether this year. I can't be the only one who cares.
One of the things that went missing just before my return was the black rug (I meant to say) doormat I had outside of my door. I've had that thing for the past 2+ years and it has moved with me, from one place to another.
I just noticed that one of my downstairs neighbors has the same exact rug doormat. That rug doormat was not there before. What really made me look wasn't just the fact that it looks just like my missing one, but also that it's not new. In fact, it has pretty much the same exact dirt on it that mine had, and by that I mean all the dried up grass and pieces of leaves tangled in it that I never managed to shake or clean out of mine from the years I've stepped on it.
If you look outside, even though it's winter, there's not a dried leaf or dried grass in sight.
Granted, this type of rug doormat isn't all that unique, but I haven't seen it elsewhere, either. And for the exact same one to pop up in my section of the building, looking like one in the same 2-year old condition I'd left mine, when the people downstairs had barely moved in to start the program here, when we all had to leave for a semester, in the midst of a summer?
Coincidence? I really think not.
My laptop is dying. It has suffered death twice before, only to be resurrected by tech guys who came and replaced my motherboard because I had the foresight to buy a 3-year extended warranty. (Note to all those out there: It's smart to buy the extended warranty when you buy a laptop!) It's about time that it decides to die again, though I was really hoping it'd live out its old age at least until I'm done with school.
It started with random freeze-ups. ALT+CTRL+DEL would do nothing to it; the only thing that would get it to un-hang was to power down manually with the power button. About 2 hours ago, it was BAD. It froze, I powered down, tried to power it back up, only to have it freeze right at the start up where the Windows XP logo would come on. Once it froze at my login screen. It wasn't recognizing that I have an internal ethernet card. I managed to figure out that F2 = setup menu and F12 = boot menu and ran diagnostic checks on this thing. Everything looked ok, but I did get one error message: "Temperature sensor out of range, temp = 8C, min = 10C, max = 100C"
I even had my headset plugged into my cell phone as I anticipated reliving 4-hour calls to the Dell call center about my laptop problem tonight.
I have a feeling the temperature control is right on the motherboard, and the fact that all this is going haywire is NOT a good sign for the motherboard.
At this point, there's nothing else I can do. The only thing I was really worried about was the opportunity to back up my class notes from today, which I managed to do just now because I actually got the thing to boot up normally. As for my MP3s, I think most of them are on my desktop computer already (which, BTW, was in a nice home office network with my laptop before my router decided to go bonkers, too); the rest I should be able to rip from my CDs again, except for ones purchased on iTunes, which are in this weird M4P format anyway.
(Sorry if that last bit bored you. It was a PSA for R because he keeps telling me to back up my files. Dear, maybe you will need to find a box and some good padding to send me down that other laptop after all!)
* * *
In better news, my mail service has resumed!
<--- Yes, it's time of the year again when I play with dolls, so here's a new one just for the season. Heck, I might as well, since quite a few people stumble upon my blog looking for cartoon dolls.
The company (person?) that makes the software, eLouai, is on its third version of dollmakers. More bells and whistles, but the hair department it is still sorely lacking. To find the hair that remotely resembles mine, I had to choose one with a hat, which I never ever wear.
Which reminds me, I used to have a tin box full of paper dolls and their dresses. I remember always wanting to own the princess-type ball gown dresses when I grow up. Those poor dolls, sometimes they got severed under the clumsy hands of a child, or simply because their heads were heavier than their flimsy paper necks would support them, so several of them received some medical care and wore scotch tape around their necks for the rest of their lives.
Wonder what ever happened to them after my move to the U.S? I'd love to see them again. If only to relive the childhood days of playing with my best friend, who lived next door.
How many volumes would I fill if I wrote down all of my memories?
BBC has reported an unusual friendship: A snake has befriended a hamster that was fed to it as a meal.
Aochan, the snake, and Gohan, the hamster, have shared a cage since October of last year. Reportedly the hamster even falls asleep on top of the snake at times.
Take a look at the article and especially the picture of them side by side. I about fell over from a cuteness overload. "Gohan" means meal in Japanese, and the hamster does look like a fat, fluffy rice ball. "Aochan" means the little black one (note that "chan" is used instead of "san" as a term of endearment, especially when addressing someone younger than you, like a kid), which seems appropriate in its own way.
Mortal enemies, living in peace. Humans can learn a lesson from them, eh?
I went to check on the part of campus that houses the laundry services. They're back up with new heavy-duty washing machines and dryers, and it's still only 75¢ to do a load!
Can't wait until the weekend. I don't think I've ever been so excited about doing laundry in my life.
Once you've been bitten by the travel bug, it's an incurable disease. You're constantly thinking about your next destination, the sites you will see, the people will you meet, and the food that you will eat. If worldly travel isn't still so expensive, I'd encourage every person to travel to somewhere s/he's never been before and simply absorb. With an open mind. It is one of the best ways to overcome stereotypes and intolerances. Of course, the caveat being that if you like being set in your own ways to begin with then you're not likely to consider it in the first place.
Ok, lecture/digression over.
In celebration (?) of the spirit of traveling, I'm posting just a few pictures from our trip to Oxford several years ago. It was rather cloudy that day, even drizzly if I remember correctly.
These are for you, InMyLife!
How do you know if you have carpal tunnel?
I think I do but I can't be sure. For a short while I kept feeling tingling sensations. Right now my left wrist is killing me; I may have overworked it today.
I broke my left wrist when I was 16, during a practice session to try out for the basketball team. Go ahead, laugh. Really, it's not a dare. Even I have to laugh at how ridiculous it was since I've been 5'2" (that's around 154 cm for you metric people) for a very long time, I've always sucked at sports, and really, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. The break wasn't bad but the wrist has given me problems throughout the years.
Though, I did use my left shoulder/arm/hand to hold the phone for about 8 hours today. I went and volunteered at a service that refers people who need legal assistance to lawyers or to other community resources. It's not so simple as one of those "How may I direct your call?" type, operator deals, but I actually had to listen to people's problems and assess whether they really had a case that could be helped by lawyers. The average call probably lasted about 30 minutes for me - that's a bad record considering how backed up they were with messages and how the phone rang off the hook, but it was my first time and I still haven't learned the art of cutting people off from talking. Then I think about all of the rude customer service people I have talked to and thank the stars that I am not like that.
I made absolutely no money, didn't even manage to get lunch, my ear hurt from the phone, and my wrist hates me right now, but you know, it was worth it. Granted, some people abuse the system (one woman has called multiple times per day for the past few days and left about 10 messages on the voice mail just today) but most of them I did feel bad for. Maybe it's because I was raised by my grandparents for the first 10 years of my life that I have an incredible soft spot for the elderly, but I especially empathized with the older people. Maybe it's also being Asian; the concept of filial piety is alive and well, and I kept thinking to myself, don't they have younger family members to help them out? After a whole lifetime of labor, shouldn't they be enjoying life rather than worrying about how insurers or landlords have screwed them over?
It was an eye opener, an invaluable experience, and an exciting opportunity for me to dole out sometimes legal advice. But when it came down to it, it was having the chance to lend an ear to some of these callers that was the most gratifying. I am an INFJ after all, that 2%, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, idealist counselor types.
I'm in the wrong field!
My router doesn't hate my laptop anymore. Yay.
Maybe the power outage 10 minutes ago helped to reset it. Who knows. Though that outage killed a long post I had about what else has been going on with the city. Poof. Gone like that. If I had been typing on the laptop the battery would've kicked in and I would've still had that post.
I am not going to reconstruct it right now. Maybe it was meant to be.
But, I do think I will post some pictures I've taken around here. (I've hidden them for those who have slow connections.)
My head hurts and my throat feels dry. I was having some difficulty breathing, but now I'm back indoors, I'm feeling better.
Is this what must happen if I venture out to the city? I was only out for about 4 hours. The air here hides invisible gunk that's not safe to breathe in. Anyone who denies it is either ignorant or stubborn. It's irresponsible to make people come back here.
Mind you, this is not heading towards a complaint. Surprising, perhaps, as I'm fond of complaining on my blog. Many a times I've ranted and raved about this city, but today, I actually felt very sorry for it, to the point of feeling choked up while we drove by all the houses under reconstruction and all the businesses that remain unopen.
Am I getting soft? Do I take back all of the bad things I've said about this place?
I won't. There are things that are very wrong with this place, and there's no denying it. I still scoff at the foolish pride of some people. But what lie beneath it all are the stories of regular old folks who are just trying to survive, and people who have nowhere else to go because they can't or don't know how to.
Since there's no longer an ATM machine near me and the post office is not open, I finally took the bus I said I was going to take and went downtown. After running my errands, I decided to check out the place at which I interned this past summer. First of all, downtown is no where near running full capacity. Many stores remain closed or boarded up - interestingly, many of these seem to be athletic shoe shops that suffered heavy looting and damage in the aftermath. The stores that did open, they were in dire need of customers. I was approaching shock when I got to my destination, which used to be a fancy, bustling shopping mall con office tower, and saw that the entire sidewalk was taped off for several blocks and workers were doing lots of heavy construction. (I later learned that the biggest department store on the first floor was not only looted but set on fire, so it won't be opening until September.) I went around back and almost gave up when it looked like I couldn't get inside, when some ladies opened the door to a store that's under repair; one of the ladies led me through a store to the other end, told me to walk through more construction tapes, and bid me good luck. It felt like I was going off into an eery, uninhabited unknown.
I made my way to the elevator and up to the place where I worked for 8 weeks. Although lights were on, no one greeted me; the security guard I knew was nowhere in sight. No one seemed to be there, until I went through the metal detector (which wasn't on anyway) and looked into one of the rooms. The security guard was sitting by the window, looking out on to the things below, apparently deep in thought. He didn't even know I had come in until I said hello. He was always cheerful and friendly while I was interning there, and although he was glad to see me and gave me a hug, I knew something wasn't quite right.
He told me he had lost everything in the storm. Here was a guy, a single father of two who worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, one of the few who grew up in the inner city yet did not turn to a life of crime or drugs, but instead tried to better himself by becoming a police officer and then a private security guard. He was going to save up some money to buy his daughter a computer to reward her for her grades. It's for people like him that I feel downright awful.
He led me to the back where the offices are, and I got to see the old ladies with whom I had several office supply tiffs back in August. I am sure they were surprised to see me, too, but one of the was actually pretty nice and we actually chatted about the city and what's happened to us in the past several months. I also got to see my judge, who was happy to see me. I last heard from him in September.
Apparently, the office ladies have been back since November, but only this week have they opened up the place to the public once again. The younger office lady with whom I was close gave up on the city and moved to Atlanta. She was so excited about finally saving up money so she could start fixing a house her mother had left her and rent it out to people, but that house had 3-4 feet of water in it and was either razed or had to be gutted. I haven't heard from her since September despite my attempts to contact her. Too busy moving? Too many bad memories? I don't know, but for certain she left behind some of her dreams.
The judge wouldn't stop talking about his house and the work he's had to do on it, but comparatively, he was lucky, as all of the other staff members' houses were under water. Though out of all those people, he could probably best afford reconstruction and repair costs. Not sure where the rest of them are living right now.
As one of the ladies said, life goes on. It does because it must. But I can't help but feel for those whose hopes had been taken away from them.
Argh! I can't believe I missed "Arrested Development"! I MUST stop confusing my Mondays and Tuesdays.
