Head to Toe Restoration

Am excited. Started up a new business this week.

I have been certified as a swedish masseur for many years, and have been thinking of setting up a little business on the side for a long time. Finally got around to it. Just bought the table tonight, a lovely thickly padded one by Master Massage Tables. Earlier I bought professional liability insurance, just in case anyone sues me. Ordered my business cards and they should arrive tomorrow. Have to buy a few things on the weekend, like more oils and towels and things, and then should be all set.

Threw a little website together over the weekend, and have been tweaking it ever since. Its wiltonmassage.com - check it out and tell me what you think.

To build up a client base reasonably quickly, I'm offering a promotion of the first massage free - hopefully once people have had the first one, they should come back for a second. Assuming they love the massage I give :)

Swedish massage is focused on relaxation, not like massage therapy where it can really hurt, and where you are trying to help relieve an injury or more than casual soreness. I have on more than one occasion put people to sleep while giving them a massage. Perhaps it was just the droning of my boring voice, who knows.

Clever Sex

Lester suggests where we should go for our Thursday night outing. He gets to choose - its only fair since he was let go yesterday :(

He picks Dragonfly, a cool restaurant and lounge with a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere, and quite tasty food. We did Rack 'n' Roll last time, and all agree that we need a change from foosball.

The whole crowd is there, Albert, Leo, Nabil, Sruthi, Lester of course, Alok (he actually came this time!), Tawanda (Alok's new colleague), Manju, Bright, and his carpool buddy Sam.

The place is amazing, plush furnishings, gothic motifs, detailed stonework and carved woodwork. The ornate dragonflies hanging from the rich burgundy velvet drapes add a nice touch.

Nabil is into red wine, Sruthi is drinking some sort of plum martini, I'm having a mojito, everyone is consuming a variety of different cocktails and liquors - most of us have seconds and get very happy. The conversation flows freely, but you wouldn't want to take some of it out of context, or it might sound very suspicious. So here goes:

"Nabil is the best blower in CDR."

"I'm having problems with a vibrator - how do I get it working properly?", asks Lester inncocently. "Let's ask the expert, Sruthi!", everyone says in unison.

Nabil stands up and makes yet another announcement: "Leo shares his towel..." (don't even want to think about that one)

"You want it right now?!" demands Bright (whatever could he be talking about?)

"Banging goes with any alcohol!"

Bright gives us his words of wisdom about how gender and intelligence mix:
A smart man plus a smart woman is a great life;
a smart man and a dumb woman is pregnancy;
a dumb man and a smart woman is an affair;
a dumb man and a dumb woman is a marriage.

We all agreed whole-heartedly :)

Half way through, a live light jazz band starts playing swinging music, adding a lot to the atmosphere. A fantastic night out, we all enjoy ourselves immensely.

"Blow out those candles Nabil!" But he surpises us by extinguishing them with one swift wave of his hand.

All-nighter

Lots of problems today, in fact the whole week, so here I am after knock-off time on a Friday evening stuck at the office, lucky me, running a job to load up data so I can give it to the users for testing. Oh joy.

Finally get the job started at 7pm. It runs. Actually a better description would be it crawls. After crawling for a couple of hours, and based on the number of records in integration, I estimate it will finish at 11:30, so I head off home on the train to spend a couple of hours with the family.

Get back just before midnight and its still going. Of course. Check its progress every 10 minutes. Its gone past the number where I'd should have finished. It finally hits me that its just going to keep running forever, just to torture me.

Listening to loud music. The office is completely deserted. Start singing. Get a bit crazy. Start dancing. Wander around all over the floor, find someone's candy jar, leave a quarter for a mini snickers bar.

Feel like passing out around 2ish, so lie down and power nap for 30 minutes. Up again, job keeps on going, UAT is a wet towel. Eventually ends after 4 and I do the extract and send it out and leave at 5am.

So looking forward to my nice warm bed. Walk to the car park and stare in disbelief. The car park is closed. My car is locked behind mesh doors. It doesn't open till 8am. OMG.

Shuffle around Stamford for 3 hours, half asleep. Eat breakfast at Curleys, a 24 hour joint, not exactly classy, but by that stage I don't notice. Finally get home 24 hours after I started work the previous morning. Curl up in bed exhausted.

zzzzzzzzzzz

Bangers and Mash

Rack'n'Roll, a cheesy dive not far from work with an only half-decent bar (no red bull, but at least they have smirnoff ice) and way too many pool tables. Its only redeeming grace being 2 foosball tables. Bright, Manju, Albert and I turn up tonight to find Leo and Lester already there, so we all order a drink and some medium spicy wings, and start playing. After a couple of games Sruthi turns up as well and joins in the fun.

Bright spins the foosball men with raw power, Albert goes for the cunning corner shots, Sruthi sneaks it past the defence, Manju encourages the ball with "yes, yes, yes!" It's been a while for us all, so we take a little while to warm up and get good again.

"Bang that ball!"
"You really get hot and sweaty when you bang it hard!"
"Go on, ram it in fast!"
"Bang it straight into the hole!"
"Everyone is banging now! Woot!"

Man, did we have a good time or what! High fives all around!! :)))



And the dessert afterwards (tiramisu, pistachio gelato, and chocolate mousse) was just icing on the cake :p

Elevator

"Baaaa!"

Tasty Bovine Treat

Sitting at lunch today, most of the whole crowd, Albert, Bright, Sruthi, Manju, Nabil and I, discussing the usual motley collection of random topics.

We get onto soup, which seems to be a popular one. In this case the unspiciness of my "spicy crab chowder". The usual americanized cafeteria food. I wonder why we don't go out more often?

Someone, I think it was Bright, puts the weirdest image in our heads. Cow soup. He doesn't mean soup that has beef in it. He means grabbing hold of the teats of a cow, and exercising them in a "milking" motion, only, instead of milk coming out, you get delicious, spicy soup. Putting your mouth under them and the soup squirting straight into it. Tasty. Scrumptious. Bizarre.

Not as bizarre as the egg soup that is suggested next. That's right. Nothing Chinese about it. Crack open a nice fresh egg, and out comes, you guessed it, delectable soup.

UBS Christmas Party

Drinks: 3 stars
Food: 2 stars
Desert: 5 stars
Atmosphere: 2 stars
Company: it isn't so much the people that are there, it is the people that aren't - none of the contractors are allowed to come, which is most of our team :(

No live band doesn't help either.

At least those raspberries and cream and Tiramisu taste delicious :)

Colorful Cocks

In India they color baby chicks, by injecting the eggs with dye. It doesn't hurt the chicks, and the kids love it. It lasts for only a couple of weeks, until the new feathers grow out.

So instead of just little cute yellow ones, you have little cute yellow, pink, green, and purple ones. "Chicks?" asks Bright facetiously, "you mean, just the female ones?".

"No, no, not at all" replies Sruthi, 'they color the, what do you call them, um, the cocks as well."

Well, I don't know, but for some reason I just can't get the image of glow-in-the-dark green condoms out of my head. As the founder of that particular company said, "We would like to give the phrase 'rise and shine' a whole new meaning." :-)

Norma

Not all moments can be highlights - today is one of the crappy ones.

3 of the people in our team are let go today, as part of across-the-board layoffs throughout the company. One especially makes us sad, as everyone got on so well with her. She is sorely missed :-(<

One moment she is there, the next, gone. Each of us wonders who will be next. Our desks become a little cleaner today as we scramble to box up what we need to take, and throw away the last few years of accumulated junk.

Ooey Gooey

On our way to P F Changs for lunch (which is quite tasty, even though it arrives somewhat late, much to Leo's annoyance) one of our party steps in a huge blob of chewing gum. Guess who. Yep, Leo. He is having one of those days.

He then takes off his shoe and spends the next 5 minutes hopping around and trying to scrape it all off his heel, with Albert giving him advice, and everyone else having a good laugh. :)

The Great Wall of Chocolate makes us forget all about it of course. D-licious!

Oh, and my fortune cookie says "Be careful! Straight trees often have crooked roots." Have no idea what that means.