Monthly Archives: June 2006

why joggers world annoyed me today

Posted on by
2

From the last half-marathon race I did I won a $130 voucher to Joggers World. Yesterday I went in there to find things to spend it on, and I don’t need running shoes because I already have three pairs that I rotate between, so I spoke to an informative person about electrolyte, energy, and carbohydrate drinks. Between the massive amounts of drinks, energy bars, and a pair of socks this all came to $130, but then I told them how they owed me $130.

They told me I had to go and pick up the piece of paper that says this from the SARRC (South Australian Road Runners Club). This is great, but when I went to the SARRC office straight from Joggers World, I discovered that no one is in either of their two offices on Mondays. Why they don’t just have one person in on Monday and one person in on Tuesday is beyond me, because then people could go there any day of the week without dissappointment. So today after passing back through the city I drop back in to pick up the voucher from SARRC, and go straight back to Joggers World. I gather the dozen or so items up onto the counter, and after much hassle of them finding out the ‘codes’ for all the items, they inform me that the voucher can only be used on shoes. Why!! It’s like having a gift voucher for a record store that you can only spend on rock music – no jazz, no classical, just rock music. Since I can’t go running for the next 6 weeks whilst I’m waiting for a big knife wound in my back to heal, I couldn’t really justify adding a fourth pair of running shoes to my rotational pool, so I just took the voucher and walked out.

If anyone would like to buy a $130 “shoe” voucher for Joggers World for $129 you’re welcome :) *cough* *tight-arse* *cough* hehehe. It doesn’t have an expiry date, so I guess I’ll just leave it for now. But my quest for electrolyte, energy, and carbohydrate fluids that don’t cost more than beer is still on. And seriously, most of these performance drinks they sell costs more than beer. Does it really cost so much money to construct these drinks? You can make your own electrolyte replacement fluids using water, salt, bi-carb soda and sugar. Sure it has vomit-inducing taste and probably doesn’t work as well as this commercial stuff, but apart from flavourings, what really is in these sports performance drinks? Perhaps when I finish reading this book “Clinical Sports Nutrition” I’ll just be able to make my own sports performance drinks:

Clinical Sports Nutrition textbook

Speaking of which, I should hurry up and finish reading it so I can read the other textbooks and the cookbooks in the series.

lots of things happening = one giant blog entry

Posted on by
Reply

Lots of things have been happening in the last fortnight, and I won’t even try to put this into chronological order!

On Tuesday last week I got a phone call from ETSA Utilities, who rang to ask for my postal address so they can send my employment contract to me. This I guess means that I have the job with ETSA, which I haven’t mentioned in my blog yet since I didn’t want to be too preemptive about it. I nearly started working for ETSA in early 2005 although opted to try postgrad research instead, so I’m really looking forward to starting work with ETSA. Hopefully it comes in the post early this week, otherwise I’d best find out what happened to it.

ETSA logo

On Thursday last week I started volunteer work via Greening Australia, with the Youth Conservation Corps. It was all good and interesting, and I enjoyed working with people I hadn’t met before. I even learnt a few things. However, I only lasted one day before I decided to quit, because of the setup of the program they were running. Because the program is sponsored by the Government for the purposes of giving young people skills to make them suitable for entering the work-force, most of the other volunteers were people that didn’t neccessarily care too much about the work they were doing. The program works such that the team I was assigned to is rostered certain tasks for the week. Since I was an added bonus to the team, all I did for them was to make their job less work, which reduced their individual workload from about 2 hours a day to about 1.5 hours a day, despite them actually “working” for 8 hours a day. I found it hard to believe that people could be doing volunteer work “for the environment” whilst dropping cigarette butts all over the place. In my opinion, the majority of the people that require volunteer work as a means of building up their CV are more likely to benefit from it if the Government pays these “volunteers” a small amount of money such that they can be disciplined for lack of team attitude and work ethics.

I did an extremely hilly 20.3km run on the way home from the job-site of this day of work I did with these people, and at the average pace I did it in after nailing such steeply ascending hills, I think I can say I’m fit to do the Adelaide August marathon this year in at least the 3:15 mark. (Previously I have been hoping to do it in sub 3 hours, but I have been sick on and off for about 6 weeks this year with a virusy type thing).

Sometime last week I cleaned and detailed my motorbike the best I ever have, and took heaps of photos of it. Click on the image below to see all of them.

My Bike

A lot of my time in the last fortnight has been spent with the lovely Morv. She’s been on holidays which has been really fun but is back at work tomorrow :( We’ve been for a couple good hikes in Cleland, a DNB event with Technical Itch at the Colonel Light that Eddie organised, together with Darius & Sari, played a game called “pooker” which we’ve devised as a fair way of playing eight-ball together (not quite snooker, and not quite pool, rather more like eight-ball except I have to hit all the balls in in order and she doesn’t, since I’ve played about 1,000 times more pool than she has in her time it puts the game on a level playing-field) and just hung out together in general. The Technical Itch was awesome – I was expecting Tech. Itch to be heavy industrial type DNB but it wasn’t too bad, slightly progressive. We all had an awesome time, but all left by 2am as I think we’re getting old or something. Definitely have to go to some more DNB events in the near future. Morv took me to one of her friend of friends band that played at the Ales and Sails hotel (not somewhere I’d normally go!). The band was called the Lady Beatles – they were a group of chicks (quite young) that play Beatles songs, and their logo is of course a lady beatle! They were very impressive and very talented, it was just unfortunate that there were a few drunks in the pub that felt the need to dance in front of where we were sitting to watch the band. This would be fine if one of the 40 or so year old ladies had not decided to flash her tits, and shortly thereafter moon us. Thankfully I was able to use mind over matter combined with telekinesis to deflect the photons of light beaming from the said “moonie” such that I did not completely burn my retinas, and nor my sanity. I have not been having hallucenagenic nightmares since being mooned at point blank range by this drunk lady due to the quick action I took with the situation, and am trying to move on with my life. I haven’t even required professional counselling…yet.

I also still need to decide on a replacement light-fitting for my bedroom and would like to get some feedback of what you few readers there think of this one. Nai took me shopping for light-fittings and we found this one, which I’m intending on putting in alignment with my desk. So, what do you think? Please, leave a comment!

cool light-fitting

On another random note, one of my blog entries made it into the South Australian Rogaine Association June Newsletter!

What else have I been up to lately.. well the marking of assignments and stuff for uni is nearing complete. I finished all the “assignments” and just have to finish this marking 44 reports that are maximum of 2,000 words each, and then I’m done for good – can’t wait!! Speaking of which, I best get this done ASAP. It is so hard to motivate myself to mark assignments though. As my colleague Laura once said, it is “soul-destroying”.

new blinds and desk chair and hating Ikea

Posted on by
1

Today I got some new blinds installed by my desk. Before, there was a disgusting set of 70′s brown curtains. After, there are now beautiful modern blinds.

The real eventful part of my day was buying the desk chair from Ikea:

  • At 9:20am, I sat down to do some marking.
  • At 9:30am, I decided that this broken chair was going to annoy me, so I popped down to Officeworks to buy a new chair.
  • At 9:50am, I decided to pop down to Ikea to check out if I can get a bargain compared to Officeworks.
  • At 10:25 I finally find a carpark in the Ikea carpark after 5 minutes of driving in circles.
  • At 10:30 I find the entrance to the showroom of Ikea, and by about 10:40 I found the deskchairs.
  • At 10:41 I decided I wanted a particular chair, but was confused about the lack of display of the ‘optional arm-rests’.
  • At about 11:00 I finally get to ask a staff member about what the deal is, and by 11:05 they found a display model of the arm rests.
  • At 11:15 I finally find the pickup area, and by 11:20 I found the pickup area for the chair and arm-rests.
  • By 11:30 I was in the car and drove home, for a 12:00 lunch.
  • At 12:10 I discovered the arm-rests were not the ones they showed me in the store, and not adjustable, so would not fit under my desk.

Ikea

  • At 12:30 I leave back to Ikea to swap them over, and by 1:20 I have a park. (I was on the motorbike this time, notice the difference in travelling time!)
  • By 1:25 a nice lady gave me a piece of paper to say they owe me $20 for the arm-rests, and by 1:30 I had made it back to the display area, and noticed that I got the pickup area for the armrests wrong, so I go to the actual pickup area.
  • By 1:35 I discovered there are no arm-rests in that area, and I was conned.
  • By 1:45 I found a staff member back in the display area, who explained to me that the ones on the display chair are for a different chair, and the arm-rests for the chair I was after were not on display, but there are ten sets of them down where there wasn’t, where I had just been.
  • By 1:50 I’m asking a sales person in the pickup area to find them for me (very kindly of course) and by 2:00 after being convinced to give them my surname and mobile phone number they gave me a piece of paper to allow me to pay for them before they have even found them.
  • By 2:10 after a queue for paying for stuff, I paid for this piece of paper using my first piece of paper, which the young girl found very amusing. I complained about the bureaucracy of paying for chairs these days and she giggled.
  • By about 2:15 I made it to the merchandise collection area, and by 2:25 they gave it to me.
  • By 2:30 I made it back to my bike, and by 2:40 I was home.

Basically, Ikea stole almost five hours of my life, and I only saved $50. What really pisses me off is now I’m starting to think the first pair of arm-rests I got for the chair were more comfortable, even if they don’t fit under the desk. My summary of Ikea, is don’t shop there if people walking really slowly in front of you pisses you off, like it does for me. I got really pissed off with having to walk around in their snake like showrooms just to get out of the bloody store, and eventually found these shortcut doors which were put there so people in a hurry can’t complain, but to steer browsers into spending more money. I’m hating Ikea, but can see it’s defnitely an awesome store if you want to refurnish a room on the cheap. Dedicate an entire day to it though, and get there early!