Two Minutes In BureauLand (Two Minutes Unlike Any Other)

I had a tough day in Bureauland today. This did not help:
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To all staff

Two Minute Silence

Wednesday 11 November, 11.00am

On Wednesday 11 November, there will be an opportunity for staff to observe the two minute silence of remembrance to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day.

The two minute silence will begin at 11.00am and end at 11.02am.

There may be an announcement in your building to indicate the beginning and the end of the Silence, providing there are the facilities available to do so.

Please respect the wishes of colleagues and other visitors to your building by remaining as quiet as possible during these two minutes.

Thank you.

Corporate Communications

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So, just to be clear, this is how the opportunity to observe the silence will be organised:

• The two minute silence starts at 11am.
• The silence will finish at 11.02am.
• The silence will go for 2 (two) minutes.
  
• The silence, if it is to be observed, should ideally be observed in silence for two minutes.
  
• There may be a noise to alert you that the two minute silence has started.
• The silence (but not the preparatory noise) will go for two minutes (the duration of this noise is at the discretion of your building, if you have a noise at all).
• After two minutes, there may be another noise (depending on whether you still have a building that makes noise).
• The secondary noise indicates that the two minute silence is over.
• The second noise will sound two minutes after the two minute silence starts.
• The two minute silence will go for 2 (two) minutes.
  
• Please be silent during the silence.

Any questions?

Bureauchat

I neglected to mention this yesterday, but the HR forms I was talking about ALSO asked about my sexual preferences. As there was no box marked 'How would I know, I'm a virgin', I didn't answer.

Honestly, where do they get off? Or more importantly, who or what with?

They also wanted to know whether I was black, white, or yellow, and which shade, exactly, like they were going to go out and buy me some concealer, or stockings or something. Truly, that is nothin' but nosey.

And, I'm not having it. As I said to my friend Jai today, it's none of their business what colour it is, what I like to stick in it, or how high it is off the ground, and I think I'm going to tell them exactly that tomorrow.

Bureaucrazy

So, I'm going to need to start keeping a list, because there are just too many things that go down in my work place that can only be described as 'bureaucrazy'.

Today, for example, I was looking over a list of upcoming meetings for the Justice and Home Affairs Council, where Justice and Home Affairs Minsters from all over the European Union come together to discuss things like asylum, and the right to a translator in a criminal trial and all sorts of very lofty things, and I found this: Horizontal Working Party on Drugs. And I am not lying.

Is there a bowl at the door for your keys? Is that bureauspeak for 'swingers' or 'mad acid rave'? Are they going to take so many drugs that they have to lie down, or are they going to get horizontal and then take the drugs? And who exactly will be working it? I was dismayed to find that this conflicted with the meeting my boss was actually supposed to attend, (called CATS, incidentally. When you say them together 'a cats' horizontal working party on drugs', it sounds pretty jazz, actually.), and so he wouldn't be able to go and find out EXACTLY how horizontal working parties on drugs work when conducted by middle aged men in suits...

I nearly wet my pants when I found this today, and, if you don't find it as funny as I did, can I say, that when you're under fluorescent lighting all day, when you've unjammed the photocopier 5 times before 9.30, when being asked why there aren't paperclips in two sizes in the 'tech station', when you're surrounded by people speaking in acronyms the whole day long, these things become hilarious.

Also today, filling out some HR documents, I was asked these two questions:

• height without shoes, and
• weight wearing indoor clothes.

I beg your pardon? Who measures themselves with shoes on, a, and b, who weighs themselves with their clothes on? See? See how this would make a person insane?

There are more examples of bureaucrazy. Many more. And I have decided I need to start sharing them, because I can no longer bear them all alone. So stay tuned.

The Voice Of A Reason

I called an information number at an OGD (that's Other Government Department for those of you who don't live in the same acronym land as me), and the recorded voice on the other end of the phone was so profound that I had to share the number with a few friends and ask them to call and tell me how it made them feel. The woman who generously donated her voice is probably just a humble Band C (or equivalent, which is bureaucrat speak for 'you won't be my first choice but I may ask you to lick my boots'), and yet her voice was so moving that I had to spread the word.

A few months ago, I went with my friend the VietIceCream to a late night session at the Science Museum (awesome: booze and kids' toys) & I heard a presentation about how the competition to choose the voice for the first speaking clock. The judges, poet laureate John Masefield, actress Dame Sybil Thorndike and chief BBC announcer Stuart Hibberd, were looking for someone who sounded 'like a nightingale singing at midnight without any trace of over-emphasis or personal advertisement'.

The people responsible for recording the message at the Overseas Healthcare Team at the NHS (that's National Health Service, just so you know), set even higher targets. Rather than take calls from people wanting to have their medical expenses incurred overseas refunded, they have sought out a voice which will actually euthenise callers. I am not lying. It made me want to find an apocalypse and walk slowly into its centre with my arms out stretched singing gospel songs in Urdu. And, since on my first call they cleverly directed me to another OGD who were directed me back to the OHT, I HEARD IT TWICE TODAY. I died a little bit. And I wasn't the only one. I expect that if anyone bothered to research it they'd find that in fact NO ONE has claimed back overseas medical expenses in the UK EVER, because anyone who tried to was found dead, gasping for the will to live, with this the last dialled number on the phone: 0191 218 1999...

Amazing.

The Reasons For Beans On Toast In Your Trackies or Why I Broke Up With Pea And Ham Soup And The Lessons Learnt

What is it about cooking for 1 that sucks the big one so badly, exactly, I wonder?

My first real experience of cooking for 1 was in the LadyShack -- a small paradise in the desert where I lived, briefly but blissfully, alone barring occasional visits from an incredibly vicious, snow white cat who frightened off suitors and kept away mice -- and now I'm in one of those weird sharehouses were it's every man for herself in the kitchen and there are shelves assigned in the fridge.*

I think there are a few things that make cooking for 1 an exercise in fried egg sandwiches. I find I'm less likely to cook say, a pie, if I'm the only one eating it, because a) there's too much preparation involved to bother cooking one souffle-dish-size pie, and b) I couldn't eat whole pie-sized pie before it turned to compost.

Not only that, but I'm too clever to eat pie every night for a week. Once, my mum, on procuring by who knows what means, a clearly sizable ham hock, made 20204883 cubic metres of pea and ham soup. I'm sure she didn't purchase the ham hock, it must have been a gift - a very generous gift for a woman with only a young girl to feed -- because it made enough pea and ham soup to feed all Africa for 50 days and 50 nights, and therefore, enough pea and ham soup to feed a woman and child for 393293 days. I think I actually suggested, if not attempted, sending the soup to Africa, but I must've sent it to the Muslim bit, because they cleverly sent it back and now, no thanks to them, the smell of pea and ham soup can make me retch at 20 paces. In fact, I think somewhere, in a parallel universe, there is a woman my age STILL eating pea and ham soup from an endless barrel in my mother's kitchen. And I don't want to be telling that story about pie in a week from now, you know?

And yes, thank-you, I am wise to the miracle of refrigeration, but freezing portions of meals you've cooked just never works. Much like a budget -- on paper, fine, but in reality, making your own frozen dinners is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from too many cats, a violin, a hallway full of newspapers and a sofa that smells slightly of lavender, urine and dust. Trust me -- I've tried it.

I guess the other thing about cooking for 1 is, who are you trying to impress, Solitaire? 'Wow me, I can't believe I made asparagas and blue cheese quiche?! What? I made the pastry too? I am AWESOME! I am so washing the dishes tonight man! Thanks a lot!' I suppose we don't normally think of cooking as a performance art, do we? But much like getting dressed, it's hard to find a reason NOT to make yourself when you're the only one who's ever going to know, isn't it?

Anyway, I'm going shuffle off in my slippers to butter my toast while it's still hot.

*NB. This is exactly the kind of sharehouse I've never wanted to live in, but strangely, in this, case, it's as much about circumstance as a lack of communality: I've eaten at the same time as one of my 3 housemates once in 2 months, so really, attempting to cook communally just would not work. Also, they eat weird things like radishes and peanut butter on toast and faux meat, which I feel like would be best avoided.

I, Amber, take you, Breakfast

I have just been to Adelaide for my cousin's wedding, at which I had the honour of being a brideslave. The ceremony was incredibly beautiful, and I wept like a baby throughout. During, and in the lead up to the wedding, I was moved to ponder the enormity of the commitment that is marriage. I mean, it's pretty massive: a) you're talking about forever, which is complex, and b) you're promising it to another of those changeable, good-for-nothing creatures called people. I came to realise 3 things during the 10 days before and the 9 hours of this wedding:

1) If I ever need to get married, I'm eloping, probably to Vegas, where I will marry the first Elvis I see and thus avoid the palavar that is wedding. Email me if you want a postcard with me and my Elvis sipping post-matrimonial cocktails by the pool at the Pink Flamingo.

2) There is a very short list of people for whom I will perform brideslave duties again -- if you don't think you're one of them, please don't ask because it will probably be awkward when I say no, but I'd love to come and eat your food and drink your wine and eat your cake.

3) Though I wish it were different, I don't think I could even commit to a breakfast cereal right now, let alone a person. I mean, cornflakes? Forever? Sure, sometimes you might have them with soy, or fruit, or honey, or even orange juice -- just for something different -- but forever? Yeesh! Admittedly, as Bisso pointed out, people are generally more dynamic than breakfast cereal, but also, they are more changeable, more likely to gain weight and go bald, more likely to snore, and cheat. On that basis, you'd think that would be an easier commitment to make, no? I will confess, that for preference, I have long been a big fan of Red Hill Muesli which has such limited distribution that it's only available from near my parents' and I have had my dad post it to me in Japan, North Fitzroy and Alice Springs, but still, hazelnut or almond? I'm a cereal floozie! I have conducted imaginary conversations with a certain Cow Chicken Whale along the lines of 'I'm sorry bircher, but when I was away for work last week, they had fruit loops, and I just couldn't say no', or 'I know I said I buy the variety pack for the kids, but last week I ate the whole thing myself. All in one bowl. I'm sorry'. I'd probably find myself skipping breakfast, having a muffin and calling it 'morning tea', day-dreaming about the days when I used to have toast. Trying to find a way to get Vegemite onto cornflakes...

Good luck, marrieds. I mean it: It's big thing you're setting out to do, forever. Maybe someday I'll find a cereal I'd just rather die than not eat for a single breakfast? I'm not adverse to the idea, so if you're out there, cereal of my dreams, give me a shout and I'll get a spoon.

What a way to make a living

So, I got a job in an office. I'm starting tomorrow. After pretty much having everyday to myself for the last 6 months, I'm slightly apprehensive about having to be at work ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. I mean, they're both 9-5, but in some ways, an office job is less desirable than a job behind a bar because:
1. You can't openly drink while working in an office
2. It's far less likely that strangers will buy you drinks while you're at work in an office
3. An office isn't really a good setting for pretending you're recording your own music video whilst working
4. You have to spend all the sunny day in an office

but ultimately preferable because:
1. In an office, shouting and being shouted at is less a part of every communication (ideally)
2. An office environment means less unwanted exposure to other people's spit
3. Usually, there is more sitting and less spending 8 hours on your feet
4. The hourly rate is much higher

And right there, with the last point, we rejoice. We go to work for the money, after all, right? We spend. We consume. Hoorah! I'm going to be PA to a guy who works for the Ministry of Justice, or rather Mystery of Just-Is, since, well, I don't really know what they do. Or what he does. Or, for that matter, what I'm supposed to do*. But, since I like mysteries, I'm just going with it. Also, I've never worked in a big glassy building with a security pass and a gym before and I think this could be interesting. It's a posting for 5 months and I think if I can work at the Dogbox for 2 months, I can work at the Mystery of Just-Is for at least 5!

Here goes!

*Katy, recruitment consultant extrodinnaire, if you're reading this, please rest assured that I have taken some poetic license here and that I know more about what's required of me than I'm letting on. I'm going to get things done and make things happen. See? I'm going to be great.