Merry Christmas!
Friday December 24, 2010
Wishing all of you who read my blog (I estimate around 3 of you) a Merry Christmas.
The past few days have been quite delicious, with visits to Tony's Steak House on Lorne Street, Tonino's Pizzeria in Mission Bay and Dragon's Gourmet in Epsom. Great catching up with various people!
More eating today... just finished a heavy brunch and just killing time until tonight, where we're going to have a heavy dinner. Ah, it's truly Christmas.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:35pm on Friday December 24, 2010 :: 0 comments :: 
Shopping
Tuesday December 21, 2010
I hate shopping. Even for myself. I went shopping yesterday with my sister at St Lukes to get presents, and I ended up spending more on myself than any other person. Farmers were having a 50%-off sale so I purchased two bath mats and a face towel for myself; Number 1 Shoe Warehouse had a buy-two-get-one-free offer AND the shoes I happened to select were also under a 25% discount, so I bought three pairs of shoes for $60.
¯\(º_o)/¯
Anyway, I met up with the CSC group at Elliot Stables for dinner, and then to Giapo for dessert. I always thought Kaffee Eis was the supreme gelato destination but I was wrong; this place is amazing. They had so many scrumptious sounding flavours there, like a "sexotic banana with Macadamia nuts and finished with nutella streams", and of course other traditional flavours like maple walnut and pistachio. For $7, I got two flavours in a cone and struggled to finish the immense amount of ice cream. A much welcome treat to a hot day!
Posted by Jeremy at 8:50pm on Tuesday December 21, 2010 :: 0 comments ::
Day 1: Bored
Monday December 20, 2010
Yesterday's drive up from Wellington was wet, particularly around the Desert Road area, and required full concentration on the wheel. We stopped at Bulls for lunch, then Waiuku for a stretch, Turangi to fill up, Taupo for a snooze and Cambridge for a light dinner. We left Wellington around 10.30am and arrived in Auckland around 7.30pm, so not too bad given we were slowed by both the weather and a traffic jam caused by an accident just south of Cambridge.
Anyway, been trying to organise things but it seems quite a few people are still working. The crappy weather doesn't really help either. And I'm bored. My goodness, I am so bored. There's not much to do. I really should have brought my computer up ¬.¬ Then at least I can do some work on Psypoke instead of lazing around wondering what to do on this silly laptop. It doesn't even have any worthwhile games :(
Posted by Jeremy at 7:03am on Monday December 20, 2010 :: 1 comment ::
End of Line
Saturday December 18, 2010
The Sidhe Christmas function this year was a two part extravaganza, the first part being Tron: Legacy and the second part being at the Ballroom, a pool lounge.
I went into Tron expecting "terrible" and I got "average". I was anticipating lying in my seat, writhing in agony but it wasn't actually the case. It was a mildly entertaining film with pretty graphics (bar Jeff Bridges in CGI) and an enjoyable soundtrack. Final verdict: not the worst two hours of my life. I have to say, though, movies aren't very social events. You're all focused on the screen and can't talk with anyone, so if we could avoid yet another movie for next year's Christmas do, that would be great. (Last year, they had 500 Days of Summer, but I was unable to attend that due to my flight to Malaysia ":(")
Following the movie, we had about an hour to kill and Surya really wanted to go to Strawberry Fare, so we gathered a small group and went. I was astounded at the number of new desserts I hadn't tried... there was a strawberries and cream one, a gooseberry dessert of some sort, the key lime pie was back, and there was a cranberry and white chocolate cheesecake, which I ordered. Absolutely fantastic.
The rest of the night was good. I played two games of pool with Jordan against Damon and Rob C, in which we were owned, twice. The remainder of my time there was catching up with various people, drinking, scoffing some pizza, just chilling and relaxing really. Being a Thursday night, there was some self-control to be exercised so most people started drifting away around 10pm so we could at least turn up to work the next day...
The last day of work was pretty uneventful, and I was just cleaning up my scripts and committing my code to the repository. We submitted the Zen Puzzle Garden update to Apple, so hopefully it'll go through review soon. We said goodbye to four of our artists by having dinner at Harem, and we learned of some surprising resignations for next year. Gasp.
The past week has been pretty hectic in terms of finding a flat to live in. After turning down the Mt Victoria property that I mentioned in my last post, we were kinda desperate to really wrap up the flat hunting situation before the end of the week. It so happened that we found another place at the bottom of Brooklyn Hill that Charlotte and I loved, and it also turned out that the landlord really wanted to get the tenancy sorted before the end of the week as well. So all in all, things aligned perfectly and now we have a really nice flat about 20 minutes walk from work and we are paying the same amount of money for it as the Mt Vic property.
Thank God for that.
Posted by Jeremy at 3:49am on Saturday December 18, 2010 :: 0 comments ::
Depressed
Monday December 13, 2010
I can't remember the last time I was actually depressed over something relatively serious and non-trivial, but I guess life has its ups and downs and this in particular is a downer.
I got an email from Beth this morning. It was a lengthy but cleverly written poem about indecisiveness. As I sit here pondering about my housing options for next year, I can't help but think about the what-ifs. If I sign this tenancy agreement, I might miss out on a nicer place for a cheaper price. If I don't sign it, then I might have to settle for a dump at a high price (a bit like what happened with my current place). There's a lot of properties out there - some are damn expensive - but all the ones I've seen have been inadequate or were taken by someone else.
Charlotte and I looked at a place today in Mt. Vic, and she seems really keen on it. The practical side of me likes the place and I can see myself living there. But something doesn't quite appeal emotionally. Something isn't quite right. I pride myself on being logical and rational, but there is something I do not like about the place and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Is my gut instinct telling me there's something wrong?
Usually when I become stressed or depressed, I can just sleep over it and wake up feeling fine. Maybe that's all I need, just some time to relax and chill out, sleep and process the day's events, then come back with an answer tomorrow.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:17am on Monday December 13, 2010 :: 4 comments ::