Archive for October, 2006

Tired.

I have been tiring easily, the last couple of weeks. I’m still not entirely over the flu, and I’m back to work. So I work a full day on phones, come home, eat, putter around with my Tobermory, and sleep like the dead.

Although, according to Tobermory, I’ve actually been sleeping like I wish he was dead. Apparently, I’ve been nightmaring something chronic (I do not recall it) and beating him viciously. Thumping his ribs, scratching his back… poor man.

He’s not taken to sleeping on the couch (or, probably more fairly, making me sleep on the couch) so it must be bearable.

I’m enjoying the job, when all’s said and done. Apparently, that fact shows through to the customers. As witness, I present a phonecall from earlier this week:
Me: “… and someone should be back with you soon!”
Customer: “… are you new, by any chance?”
Me: “Er, yes, I’ve been here about three weeks now. Well, new to this particular contract, anyway, not to Helpdesk itself.”
Customer: “Thought so. It’s obvious you’ve not been on the contract very long, m’dear – you’d never think someone was going to get back to me soon if you had. It’s nothing personal, but the 3 years your company have done tech support for mine are the worst 3 years for getting anything done in my history with the company. Not your fault, lass, but it’s obvious that you’re new – lots of optimism!”
Me: “I’m… sorry to hear that, sir.”
Customer: “Oh, not your fault. Keep that smile, y’hear?”

Thing is, I’ve always enjoyed helpdesk, in one way or another. It has it’s moments, but by and large, troubleshooting and fixing problems is fun.

What isn’t fun? Customers like this:
Customer: “Geez, you speak good English for a change! You guys in the call center in Auckland, yeah?”
Me: “Yes, that’s right, up on the North Shore.”
Customer: “Right, do you have any folks who speak English there?”
Me: “Er, all of them? It’s a requirement for the job, after all.”
Customer: “No, I mean GOOD English.”
Me: “Hey, we’ve got folks from all over.”
Customer: “Well, you should get a promotion, girl. Can actually understand you!”
Me: “I’ve been here 3 weeks, I don’t think I”m up for any yet!”
Customer: “Shit, aim for the top. Keep our own in, y’know?”

Sigh. I do appreciate that some of our techs are a little harder to understand than others. The woes of international call centers are a well-trodden rant, and one I can’t be bothered repeating. In my immediate team, I work with Indian, Macedonian, Pakistani, Iraqi, South African, Chinese, and Kiwi folks. Personally, I like the variety. They’re all good at what they do.

Still, people are people. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

2006
10/29
CATEGORY
life
work
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Feels like home

I went back to Mum’s place for labour day. It’s been some months since I last visited.

And Nana’s been ill – a few weeks ago, she fell off a stepladder. Cracked a vertebra, gave herself a lot of bruising. It’s meant she’s had to accept a lot of changes. When she goes out with Mum, she’s forced to use a wheelchair. She can’t walk any distance. She’s ordered a walker, which she uses around home. She’s not been brave enough to try it outside her home yet – she’s relying on Mum’s visits and the wheelchair, until her back has knit a little further.

It was good to see Nana. Good to see Mum.

It no longer feels like home. Last time I visited, it was still familiar. Still my old stomping grounds, still familiar places. Mum’s place was all the same.

Now? The town has changed in small ways. Stores have shifted, streets are altered, resurfaced. Mum’s rearranged her home to suit her ways.

I don’t feel like I belong there, any more. It’s a town I know well. It’s where everything started. But it doesn’t feel like home.

I drove north. Spent the trip cogitating, trying to work out how and why I felt out of place. I wasn’t unwelcome, never that! My family love me, were pleased to have me there. But it wasn’t home.

And I returned to my little flat. It was dark, raining. The lights were out, Tobermory had gone to visit a friend. But it was home. My familiar places. Where I belong.

It’s taken a while, this adjustment. Months where I’ve felt out of place wherever I am. Where I’ve shifted my things around, tried to make my little flat somehow more mine. And it’s taken time and changes. There are still things I want to change.

And yet, waking this morning, Tobermory’s arms round me, the sound of the rain pattering on the ground outside our window? This is home. This little flat, this little life I’ve worked to build. This feels like home.

2006
10/23
CATEGORY
family
home
3 comments

Boop

I’ve never liked being bored. A quiet job, which is always routine, nothing changes, where I know in advance what I’m doing every minute of every day? Recipe for

<boop> Incoming call <boop> Welcome to the helpdesk, you’re speaking with Mahal…

Recipe for disaster, boredom, and me being miserable.

But this? This is fun. I’m sitting in several queues, so I never know what’s

<boop> Incoming call <boop> Welcome to the helpdesk, you’re speaking with Mahal…

So I never know what’s going to happen next.

I won’t say it’s a perfect job. (Really, there’s no such thing.) But I have a chance to work my way up. I’ll have job security – after all, a world-wide company with god knows how many employees isn’t going to go under. Sure, I might end up redundant someday, but that’s a slightly different

<boop> Incoming call <boop> Welcome to the helpdesk, you’re speaking with Mahal…

That’s a slightly different beastie.

In the meantime, I’m finishing the tier two training I started before I got sick last week. My team leader has told me that in six months, I’ll be eligible for the team leader role. Admittedly, the concept of me as management tickles my funny bone – but in the end, it’s where I want to be.

Well, that’s not technically

<boop> Incoming call <boop> Welcome to the helpdesk, you’re speaking with Mahal…

That’s not technically true. Eventually, I want to teach. But working as a team lead, as a manager, as a trainer, that’s all good experience towards being a qualified lecturer.

Short version?

<boop> Incoming call <boop> Welcome to the helpdesk, you’re speaking with Mahal…

Once again, I’ve fallen on my feet. I Win.

2006
10/16
CATEGORY
work
4 comments

Lung cookies

Last night, I curled into bed with my Tobermory.

And started coughing. Uncontrollably, unstoppably, miserably coughing. Feverish, chilly, tired – and every time I started to relax a little, I coughed again. Painfully.

The night became rather a blur, in the end, of coughing and being miserable and Tobermory worrying about me. I’m told that I coughed more-or-less non-stop until about midnight. I was feverish. Tobermory had wandered around the house, finding my asthma inhalers, finding me a bucket (mainly for spittoon purposes, but also because I was threatening to puke from the violence of the cough).

He wasn’t at all happy about my situation. He rung in to the after-hours line at work, to let them know I would not be at work today. Rubbed my back, curled alongside me in the bed, reading. He wasn’t willing to sleep, because I’d relax, stop breathing for awhile, and then launch off coughing again. He was understandably scared I’d end up entirely unable to breathe.

Apparently, he offered to read in the lounge instead, so that I could sleep in the dark. And I started crying miserably.

This is me. Stubborn, independent, bolshey. I don’t do that when I’m sick, I soldier on. Thus how I’ve gone to work at all in the last week. For me to cry, I must have been miserable indeed.

I don’t remember any of it.

It took till 4am for me to have coughed up enough lung-goop to be able to sleep properly. About that point, Tobermory was able to relax, and dropped off himself. And the poor man is not well himself – like me, he’s had the firey sore throat, and had got to the coughing violently stage. Neither of us are at all happy.

This morning, we both visited the GP. He has a throat infection, threatening to hit the lungs, and inflamed sinuses/ears. I have a lung infection, and inflamed sinuses. We’re both on strong doses of antibiotics for 10 days. I’m off work for, at minimum, another 3 days. He spent all afternoon sleeping. I spent it watching Shrek and Shrek 2.

Apparently, the powers that be are trialling our relationship by fire…

2006
10/10
CATEGORY
girl
home
life
4 comments

Guest post by Reiver: Mahal's couch tried to eat me.

On Saturday, I went up to Auckland with two friends and we had a welcome-to-the-country party for Tobermory. The party, by and large, went pretty darn good. Much foodings (Pot luck for the win!), much chattings, much socialisation all evening.

OK, so. Everyone had started arranging going home, sleeping arrangements were being prepared. I was offered couch bed, and whilst I did not mind simply sleeping on the couch proper, they wished to do things Properly(tm), and so bed was unfolded, and made up. So all was well, and good. Mahal’s couch is the sort of couch bed that is three sections that unfold, after the cunning lever system allowed the thing to be unfolded up and out of the base.

Alas, I’d been having spatial issues all night, which are linked into my OCD (Or more to the point I start manifesting OCD when they’re causing a problem, but anyway), and had been causing issues. Especially in one incident that left me a little rattled where I got a bit lost, but ANYWAY

When I have spatial issues, I tend to be more comfortable with my back to my wall – then there’s nothing behind me that I have to keep track of. Generally speaking, I tend to sleep with my back to a wall in my bed at home in such circumstances. Thus, I ended up unconciously wriggling around to the head of the bed, so my back would be against the back of the sofa…

This was not a problem.

…What was a problem is that apparently the couch bed lever system is, in fact, levers, and I was too heavy to be on the wrong side of the fulcrum… So the entire bed, hinged on a point approximately at the front of the couch, proceeded to lift up and dump me into the empty bed base.

Now, had that been it, it would not have been a problem insomuch as rather embarrassing to have to explain in the morning. Unfortunately, with my weight now off that end of the bed, the bed now tried to lower itself back into the resting position on the ground… And I was in the road.

At this part of the story, I pass over to my good friend, party host and owner of this couch, Mahal:
* Mahal grin.
Mahal: We were, of course, in the bedroom.
Mahal: We hear: creak-creak-creak-creak.
Mahal: =silence=
Mahal: **FUCK**
Reiver: Hey, I managed to not shout it!
Mahal: You did not shout it, Reiver.
Mahal: You were, however, quietly vehement about your statement.

Er, yes. So!

I was now lying inside a sofa bed, with an entire bed frames worth of weight trying to reassert itself into a position better in accordance with gravity, if not my ribcage – and via the principles of leverage, this was somewhat problematic from my point of view…

Am on my left hand side, pinned to back of couch. Right hand on back of frame, force with all my might! Manage to lower my end, and lift the other end down and away. So I Grab hold of same end with *left* hand that is still pinned to ground but can at least hold on like buggery, and then, via the miracles of adrenaline, manage to use my free hand and a foot on the far side sofa arm, to force my way up, and out of the gap.

…But the Mighty Couch had one last ploy in store for me, of course…

Y’see, I’d just lifted myself up and out of the way of the sofa bed. I’d been holding onto the edge of the bed whilst doing so, using my body weight to hold the end down (And away). Having just wrenched myself clear of the gap, and no longer having my body weight available to keep the bed base dangling in midair on the other side of the lever, it thus slid neatly and quietly back to the ground… …And launched me about three feet sideways.

Having landed face-first halfway down a bed I had seconds before been trapped at the end at, I then got up, quietly folded the bed away, replaced the cushions, and went to sleep on the couch proper.

After all, I figured the couch was happier that way…

2006
10/10
CATEGORY
friends
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