working and holidays

my boss called me on friday afternoon, asking me to come in and work extra on saturday. i said yes straight away.

while i had enjoyed sleeping in, sitting on my backside on comfy couch all day in my comfy, soft home-clothes, i was feeling extremely useless and unproductive.

okay, i needed about a week of that holiday to work on an assignment but two weeks of holiday is just… too much.

so i woke up before 7 yesterday morning, brushed my teeth, washed my face, had a shower, put on work clothes, made lunch and went to work.

i worked from 8-5. yes, on a saturday. i admit, i got a bit restless after 3 because my back was starting to ache. hey, i just, as i already said, spent two weeks sitting on the couch. from that to standing up for 9 hours straight is kinda extreme.

so we all left at 5 and the moment i got home, i changed into my home-clothes and flopped onto the couch. that was good. lounging around after work is a rewarding thing. lounging around all day on holiday is boring.

i love working. i love knowing that i earn something and can contribute to paying our living expenses. i love not having to ask for money because i have my own. i love doing a good job and get told so. i love being appreciated. (please please please, whoever’s in charge over this in the universe, let me always have a job. i promise i’ll never take it for granted. thank you very much.)

i think it is absolutely crazy that i have five weeks obligatory paid holiday annually. fair enough, people usually use their holidays to travel but what about us who don’t want to go anywhere? five weeks of doing nothing at home is mental. who needs so much time off from work anyway?

the first year i became a permanent employee, i didn’t take my holiday and got paid out in cash. the year after, i went to indo and had one week left, which i transfered to the year after. then some stupid (government?) rule came and now we have to take our allocated five weeks every year. no more cashing it out, no more saving it up and transferring it to next year. stupid, i tell you, stupid!

i have another two weeks holiday in about three weeks. i know. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, crazy!!!

here comes winter

i am so glad i have the week free because tuesday evening, it started to snow. it has snowed on and off ever since. i still have summer tyres on my car. needless to say, i am so, so glad i didn’t have to be one of those people driving nervously on the snow-covered roads with my summer tyres.

ummm… autumn???

today is the 4th october 2010.

it’s autumn in norway.

this morning, i woke up at 5am to what i was later told a 20 degrees weather. celsius. i’m not kidding. i don’t know what the average temp for october but i’d say we usually struggle to get to 15 this time of the year. and don’t we usually get our first snow end of october?

20 degrees! early morning! in october! what the heck is going on???

cold

i came out from work around 10.30pm last night.

the moment i stepped out of the building, the cold air hit me. it was so cold, it felt like winter. frosty breath. icy fingers.

i was sweating and complaining about the warm weather last week. we sat out in the sun and had a barbie at work last week.

unbelievable. not that i’m complaining or anything.

i think, i hope that…

summer is finally over.

the crazy warm days dragged me down.  sure we usually only have about a month of them in the whole year but my goodness, the summer days here are intensely warm. the sun burns. and to make things worse, we had a lot of humid days this year. it’s like being back in indo, basically. without the ac.

our flat has no ac. my car is over 15 years old antique and has no ac. my workplace has no ac. can’t even escape to the mall because the bloody mall has no freaking ac either.

we tried to cool down. the warm cable on the hallway was turned off. the temperature of that in the bathroom was turned way down. the balcony door was constantly open wide. the doonas got kicked to the floor constantly. tons of ice cream were bought and consumed. mostly by me.

the sun i could take. stayed under the shade and i was ok. the humidity, however, i could not run away from.

and that was how i lost sleep night after night. i took naps a few times because a) it was too warm and the only way i could stop thinking about how warm it was, was by sleeping to kill the time and b) i was sleep-deprived.

this week has been lovely. lots of rain, cloudy days and the temperature has really dropped. no more sticky days before rain, just very cool days.

for the first time in goodness know how long, i went to work in jeans instead of leggings this week (yes, i’ve sunk that low. i wore leggings to work paired with long tops. it was WARM, ok). i even wore a long-sleeved shirt one day. i had my hair down instead of pulling it up into a pony tail. and my bang was freed, not kept out of my face by a hairband. today, i wore boots instead of flats or flip flops.

i am soooooo relieved. i hate summer.

colours

i still don’t like summer but i like how the inside of my fridge looks like in summer months.

vegies for salad because i don’t need warm food during summer. fruits which either aren’t available in winter or cost much higher then. pickled cucumber and beetroot. oh, how i love beetroots. and jams. i currently have three kind of jams; cranberry, apple and four fruits (strawberry, cherry, blueberry and another one). red, yellow and purple.

and that about sums up what i like about summer food. the gorgeous colour of it all.

gorgeous!!!

ps. this was taken last week. this week, there’s an orange from pawpaw and yellow from lemons in there. heaven…

sleeping

winter: curled up in foetal position to keep warm.
summer: feet and arms dangling over the side of the bed to get some fresh air.

winter: snuggled up under the doona from toes to face. usually only eyes upward not covered up.
summer: get under the doona. arms out of the doona. feet out of the doona. push doona down to waist. throw doona away.

winter: teeth chattering.
summer: neck sweating.

winter: get as close as possible to MOH to steal some of his body heat.
summer: get as far away as possible from MOH without actually falling off the bed to get away from his body heat.

winter: dreading the time to stand up because the super cold air will be greeting me once i get out of the bed.
summer: looking forwad to the time to stand up because then i can hit the shower and wash away the sweat.

winter: sleep through the night no problem because the girls sleep a lot during winter too.
summer: got woken up plenty of time because the girls come home late at night and want to go out early in the morning.

winter: dark. fall aslep easily.
summer: bright. difficulty in falling asleep. restless sleep.

winter: love.
summer: hate.

stupid summer. over 15 degrees, dangit! that is not okay. plus, we’ve had some very humid day which is what i hate the most. dark, heavy clouds with high humidity which usually means a storm is on its way but of course the storm never comes here so we’re left with sweaty clothes sticking to our backs and not even a drop of rain. stupid summer.

say it ain’t so

three times in the past month i went to my local asian shop to buy kecap manis abc. three times i was greeted by empty shelf where they used to placed bottles of it.

could it be… is it possible that… that… that they no longer stock kecap manis abc?

oh. the horror!!!

irony

how funny is it that we set the clock an hour forward today for summer time and we woke up to snow? as in, snow falling off the sky, not snow on the ground from ages ago. fresh snow. white, fluffy, cold.

i can either laugh or cry, i guess. fortunately i like gloomy weather.  

oh! and MOH said it all week long that it was going to snow on sunday and i refused to believe it because it’s been so warm. so yesterday, we made a bet. over whether it was going to snow or not today. he said yes, i said no chance. i lost, obviously. the first time i ever bet on anything and i lost. bugger! i knew i had a good reason not to ever bet on anything. now i have to pay dearly for it. good thing is, i’ll never bet again. ever. on anything.

surnames

somewhere in norway there is at least one person whose last name is sandal.

if that’s not funny enough, there is at least one person in norway whose last name is buset.

nyahahahaha. hope that buset person has no plan to visit indo in this lifetime.