Prangster in Chicago

Now I know what cream soda is

The other night I had my first cream soda ever and it was good! I ate at a pizza place in Wicker Park called Santullo's with my friend Steve and his brother. It was some locally brewed brand with a weird name that I can't remember right now. But if I saw it again, dammit, I'm gonna get another one!

You're probably wondering right now if drinking my first cream soda is worthy of its own blog entry. Don't worry, I'm wondering the same thing. But the truth is that I was so into the cream soda that night that I said to Steve, "This is so good I'm going to blog about it!" And I'm a girl of my word.

I'm supposed to be heading to my coworker, Katie's place in a bit to carve pumpkins because it's Halloween on Wednesday. To do so, I'll actually need to BUY one of those pumpkins I've seen everywhere and transport it to her apartment. This may require taking a cab. After that we're going to meet a few other coworkers -- Jessi and Elizabeth -- at the after-party for a Halloween-themed costume bike race that Jessi helped throw. I wonder how the bike race went. Jessi was a bit worried because the starting line was at the same place as where 20,000 people were supposed to hold an anti-war protest this afternoon...

This is no joke

When my afternoon meeting was over, I went back to my desk and found this note on my chair.

You did not just say that

For some reason, conversation at the work lunch table today turned to boxing then to the Sydney Olympics. I was asked if I went to see any events:

Me: "Yeah. I went to see the basketball. It was some random team like Lithuania against another random team."
Them: "Oh cool."
Me: "It was a great game. We had the best Mexican waves going around."
Them: "WHAT? What did you say?"
Me: "Mexican waves?"
Them: (in complete shock, with jaws dropped) "Oh my god! That's so racist!"
Me: "Why? What do you call them?"
Them: "Uh, just waves...!!!!!!!"
Me: "Oh."
(awkward moment)
Me: "Well, what about something like a Chinese burn?" (I pretend to wring my forearm with my hand)
Them: "Um, we call that an Indian rope burn..."

It's always a better lunch when there's some cultural exchange.

Desk vs. desk

Since today I finally gave in and bought an office mug, I thought I'd take a trip down workspace memory lane. In reverse chronological order...

So here is my desk at my current job. No, I do not have two computers -- the monitor's hooked up to the notebook. I have a phone, but it rarely rings. Sometimes my dad leaves me messages along the lines of, "Kathy. This is your dad. I have no news. Have a good day." I also have random papers everywhere. Random papers all the time. Stacks of random papers. And a small ugly pumpkin. And hand cream. (Now I also have a mug. Photo of mug to come.) I sit opposite the elevator. Our office is on the 2nd floor.

Here is my desk at my old job. It looks kind of similar, doesn't it? Same kind of feel. Same papers everywhere, but different size. Americans use US letter size, Taiwan uses A4. I didn't have a phone at my old job. We could play music though, because the office was small. At my current job we don't do that. Everyone listens to different stuff. For example, someone (on the print side, I hope) has Will Smith's "Big Willie Style" in their iTunes share folder.

So this is my old desk, maybe about 8 months into the job. It was just when I got the Christmas Starbucks mug. Before that I was using a mug from a client that had my first slogan on it: "Software Engineered for Growth." I wonder if that company is still in business? (I just checked. They are!)

And here's some of the crap I had on JUST THE CORNER of my desk towards the end. So after about a year. We'd changed the desk configuration so I was in another row. And as you can see, I'd accumulated much crap. The kangaroo isn't mine though. That's (meant to be) on Victoria's desk.

Please excuse the embarrassing photo quality. It was taken with the work Macbook's Photo Booth function. And if my old coworkers are confused about the perspective of this photo, it's flipped over left to right.

So that's it. And tomorrow I'll have a mug on my desk and it will feel soooo homey then. Actually there's a plastic umbrella that I stuck to the top left corner of my monitor and it shields the Viewsonic logo birds from the harsh storms of interactive design. Having that there makes me feel pretty cosy.

Here's a close-up of that.

5 months and a day

Yeah, that feels like the right amount of time after starting my new job to commit to an office mug...

Yeah.

So I got a mug from Starbucks this morning! It's a Halloween one! Very cute. And I had two cups of tea with it today :)

I'll take a photo of it tomorrow and post it. Because this is a huge freaking deal, people!

HUGE!

P.S. Work THIS one, Jessi...

A cup of fat

There is no name for this day of the week

Today I scraped up the remains of the most intense and insane work week of my career to date. And I'm not even feeling that it's a Friday. Because it doesn't feel like Friday. It feels like the last day of my first week back at life after being reincarnated. And the first thing I realized after reincarnation was I found out I have two projects with schedules that are all intertwined and their deadlines are all jammed together like...oh fuck it, I'm too tired to go on.

Stupider by the day

My free Wall St Journal subscription suddenly ended this week. I don't know why it came in the first place, but I miss it. My morning bus and train rides will never be the same. And I will never look as smart or concerned about the financial world as I did way back then.

These are baguettes from the Balthazar bakery in NYC. And here's a macro photo I took of the coffee cup. It could have been crisper, I know, but my camera is crap like that.

Perfect and magical

Three days ago, Jess became the first of my close friends to get married, and I was honored to be her bridesmaid. And even just to be there really, sharing the day and night and good times with her and her husband, Ray. The ceremony was beautiful. They were beautiful. And there wasn't anything else in the atmosphere that night except for happiness, excitement and dancing. I'm uncharacteristically emotional just thinking about it, to be honest. And I can't even really explain why. Janice and I gave a joint speech at the reception and I got all weird as I was reading my part. I talked about us all being old friends from highschool in Sydney, seeing each other grow up, and how special it is to be as close -- if not closer -- than we were those many years back and getting to be by her side halfway across the world in New York.

One of the bits that tripped me up as I started writing was how it felt easier for me here in Chicago knowing Jess is just a phone call or text message away. I jotted that down and immediately my eyes went stupid. And they continued to go stupid every time I read it over. I also reflected on the type of person she is, and I realized how much I genuinely like her. How we've grown to share many of the same values, attitudes and priorities in life. How we have such ridiculously complementary shopping styles that we call each other "shopping soul mates." And how much fun we can have -- talking about nothing, or talking about everything. Just effortless good times. I wondered, how many people can say all that about friends they've known for 10 years? Probably not many. And then I absolutely lost it.

Needless to say, the wedding was gorgeous. So perfect and magical. And a ridiculous amount of fun. Even with these shoes on for 8+ hours...

Here's Jan and me with Jess in her traditional Korean costume.

Montreal: Once more with feeling

Last night I got back from NYC and bridesmaid duty at Jess and Ray's wedding. It was a gorgeous, amazing day. There were so many highlights -- and so many great photos -- but it doesn't seem right to post them without first posting some people shots from our time in Montreal. I could've waited until Mona's bro, Kia, had uploaded all his great shots onto Flickr, but he's still traveling and probably won't get around to it for a few more days. So here we go.


At Marche Jean-Talon. Dorky non-North Americans see pumpkins and go, "Oooo!"


Awesome cafe au laits and espressos at the best coffee house in Montreal: Cafe Olimpico. It took a good 30 minute walk in the cold and rain to get there from Marche Jean-Talon, then we had to wait in line for another 15 minutes or so to order, but trust me, it was well worth it. Maybe the best coffee I've ever had.


At the Musee des beaux arts. Next to these wood carvings, there was a mop, buckets and cleaning products in the corner. There were bubbles coming out the top of the mop from all the detergent, so we went over wondering, "Why doesn't someone put this crap away? What's it doing here?" Turns out it was an art installation called "The janitor has gone out to lunch." Meh, if it's art, then it's art. Shrug. But I'm not gonna take a photo of a mop.


Drinks at GoGo Lounge Bar at Rue Saint Laurent.


Siblings Mona and Kia at GoGo Lounge.