Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Gifts

September 26, 2006, 4:42 am

At least one week before my birthday and quite a few surprises came my way. I just loaded up on things from work last week. Besides the free meals and parties, Friday we had a company golf day. I’m not very good at golf. I average about three swings before I make contact with the ball, and for the most part, I hit grass. And when I do connect, the ball don’t go in the right direction. And if there’s any body of water in front of me, no matter how hidden, I’ll sink the ball directly into it. I also suck at putting. And no, I have no particular interest in spending money to get lessons, though practicing on the driving range might be interesting. I just think that it would hurt a lot more hitting pavement compared to turf…

But about the gifts. At the end of the day, we headed back to work for a “catered” dinner. We were probably the last team to make it back (don’t know why, thought we were doing pretty well) and so all the food that’s left were pasta and salad. For all I know, that’s all that was served. They gave out prizes to the best team, longest drive, closest to the hole, etc. And then a raffle for various donated prizes and swags from other companies. There were a lot of stuff, I’m sure the majority of the people got prizes, so you were pretty unlucky to not get picked. I was the first raffle winner actually, and so I got a DVD player. There were like 10 other people before me who picked golf balls, gift certs, clothes, and nobody touched the DVD player. (I caught myself going through the clothes myself, before realizing the DVD player is prolly worth more). It’s sad really, because it seems every tech worker have a DVD player at home, if not multiple. Nice prize yes, but nobody really needed it.

And earlier that week, I won a Harry Potter DVD. We recently got photo nametags, and to encourage us to wear them, they had this “contest” where spotters go around randomly looking for people wearing their badge, and giving them small prizes. One out of five people get a DVD. I thought the key was that you have to be spotted walking around donning your badge, but the spotter basically haunted me down in my cube and gave me candy, I didn’t have to walk anywhere. Then he came back later and gave me the DVD. Too bad I already have all the movies…

And then AFTER the golf game, Mike took me to Futureshop and got me the Canon Rebel XTi. We saved $100 with various discounts and coupons, and I’ve since blew about $200 on accessories for it. It was rather spontaneous to me, but he wanted me to have a good camera to take on my China trip in a couple of weeks. So it was a mad rush to get a bag, extra battery, memory cards, and other accessories. Internet shopping is so time consuming, but you do save quite a bit. I think I got robbed at Henrys for my circular polarizer filter…

The final “gift” isn’t really a gift, but on Saturday, Chau found this small kitten in her backyard. Her backyard is basically a couple of patio stones planted on top of a forest, that’s how overgrown it is. It was part of a litter, but it looked rather runty. All its siblings ran away and hid, but it just sat there and mewed. So we took it to the KW Humane Society, and was told it was too young to adopt. The whole time, I was being pressured to adopt it. Then we learned that the adoption fee for the KW centre is $200+. All adoption fees are waived at the Toronto one right now. Sigh. Chau was gonna called it “Bob” if it was male, or “Bobette” if it was a girl.

They are gonna give me a call when Bob is ready for adoption. So who wants a kitten??