betty loves blogging

You know it's been a bad day at work when...

We had a "Very Big and Important Meeting" at work yesterday afternoon. There are "Very Big and Exciting Changes Afoot" apparently. When you hear that, you worry you and all your workmates are going to be sacked as part of a "New and Exciting Financial Streamlining Opportunity" or somesuch (don't you love corporate speak? This is, after all, a company that nonsensically gives out trees to employees to fight climate change). Thankfully, that was not the case. There will be changes, and they kinda suck. But it's all deal-able with.

But it was all fairly draining, especially with a full day of people speculating what the meeting was going to be about and stressing in general. On the scale of good to bad workdays, this one was a bad.

Which was probably why I found myself, without any thought behind it, in the supermarket (I'm sorry, I know this is turning into a supermarket and food blog, I promise I will post something else soon!), buying the ingredients to make potato and leek soup on autopilot while narrowly avoiding mega mums and their upper middle class suburbia burdened shopping trolleys. I then went home and made it, without even using a recipe, in some sort of daze.

Soup is such an amazing antidote to all of life's woes that it seemed like the only answer. It turned out pretty good considering I just threw stuff in at the same time as watching the news, fretting over the work meeting, and eating some nutella on a spoon.

Blending is the best part of the soup making therapy process. I had a huge urge to stick the word "thoughts" on the blender, because it is an extremely apt analogy for emotional turmoil. But I really couldn't be bothered to be arty.

But I'm feeling much cured today. Soup-er, in fact.

From little things, big things probably don't grow

The large corporation that I work for is trying to become carbon neutral.  The solution... buy a truckload of carbon credits, and give every employee one of these;

That, dear readers, is a tea tree.

Great idea, major corporation!  Cos I'm sure most of the employees in Sydney would live in houses with large enough gardens to accomodate a tree!  In fact, I doubt many of them would live in apartments or tiny terraces with no gardens.

This poor little tree is doomed me thinks.  Maybe I should just drive around with it in the car, so my commuting is more carbon neutral.  We don't really have anywhere suitable to plant it.

Nice gesture though.  Thanks major corporation!

I love it when...

...random cool things happen.  The other day I was out doing a story on a local gelato maker, and I got free gelato (which was awesome).  While I was eating it, after I had finished interviewing him for the story, we had a really good conversation, and then he was playing with my camera while we were chatting.

When I got back to the office, here is a cool photo I found on my camera that the gelato maker took.

The photographer ended up photographed.  I love it when I get to meet interesting and cool people in my job.  I also love it when I get free (awesome) gelato.

Luxury is an escape from the corporate park

My office is in the middle of a hideous corporate park.  Big buildings with no character.  Truck traffic, controlled by boom gates that take a good minute to contemplate if they are going to open for you when you drive up to them. A couple of carefully manicured sections of grass to chill out on for lunch.  Two mega-cafes, whose owners probably can't believe their luck at scoring a business in a location filled with cashed up corporate types who are trapped in a concrete jungle and have to drive five to ten minutes away to have any other choices for lunch.  All they have to do is stick a couple of olives or feta on a sandwich to appear like they are selling a "gourmet" product.  And worst of all, there is a stupid corporate park newsletter full of typo-ridden crap that litters the concrete every few weeks.  The only shops around are mega marts, storage facilities and home decorator outlets.

So one of the biggest luxuries is finding time to escape from the corporate park for lunch (which rarely happens).  Today we managed to get away to Glebe, and it was so refreshing to inhabit the normal world during the daylight hours.  There is something luxurious about inhabiting the weekday 9 to 5 world that I am now deprived of participating in.  I took lunches in a cafe on a Wednesday, or beers on a Thursday afternoon, for granted during my student days.  Now, being outside the trappings of the corporate park for anything other than a story or photo job between 9 to 5 on weekdays seems like a decadent treat.  We went to Glebe (to Well Connected, one of my favourite cafes in the area), had frappes and pumpkin and olive lavash, and even spent a short time perusing the book shops.  'Twas lovely.

It was so strange though.  Even the weather seemed nicer once we left the drab trappings of the corporate park.  Did the architects design them to be sites of misery on purpose?  Our old office, while equally dull inside, was at least in close proximity to shops and normal cafes.  But I guess the less distractions there are, the better we serve the grinding mill of capitalism...