Tag: work

Yelly Writes

Working Sunday

Yelly

I am at a train station cafe waiting for my train to arrive.  Such is the joy of timed tickets.  You buy a ticket for a particular train to, quite possibly, find the lowest fare that is available.

I feel slightly sorry for myself because I am, in fact, working this weekend.  Whilst  the rest of the country is enjoying a wonderfully sunny Sunday, I am here, at a train station, waiting for a train to take me to the venue of the conference that I’m going to be managing tomorrow.  Lovely.

I’m also resigned to the fact that I won’t be sleeping much during the next few days.  I don’t sleep well in a bed that isn’t familiar.  It takes me about three days (MINIMUM!!!) to get used to an unfamiliar bed.  I don’t necessarily have that much time to get used to the bed I’ll be sleeping in.  After the conference, I’ll be flying off to the home of the deep-fried Mars bar to attend a meeting.  Yet another night in an unfamiliar bed (at least I’ll have TV!).

And yet, despite my whinging, I do enjoy my job.  I enjoy the challenge.  I know I am more fortunate than most people because I do have a job and I do love the job that I have.  I constantly tell myself off for complaining.  Because I shouldn’t.  Not really.  I am fortunate that I have a job that I enjoy.

But sometimes, it would be nice not to have to travel on a lovely, sunny weekend.

My train’s nearly here.  I should probably be gathering my things together.

Yelly Writes

That Friday Feeling

Yelly

I am at my desk and am staring at that little clock on my computer screen’s system tray area and I’m thinking, “There are only 15 minutes left to my lunch break!  Oh no!”

I am experiencing my afternoon dip early.  My afternoon dip is me not really wanting to go back and do something work related.  Quite possibly because it is a Friday today.  There is certainly a lack of motivation in the air around me.  I am exhausted mentally and physically.  I feel very blecchy because I probably ate a dodgy tuna mayo sandwich yesterday from the sandwich van that comes around to the office.  I’ve always said buying food off the sandwich van was a dangerous exercise, but then again, I never listen to myself.  So now, I along with my stomach, am paying for it.

This is an especially special Friday because it is a bank holiday on Monday.  This means I’ll have a 3-day weekend and it means I can most certainly find time to bake!  I’m looking forward to being able to bake food for the gods during the longish break.  I haven’t had them in quite a while!

What do you do when you get an energy dip at work?  How do you cope?  I’d love the tips because frankly, today, I am not in the mindset to get out of this Friday funk.  I need a long holiday where I don’t do anything but not do anything!

Yelly Eats

Desktop lunching

Yelly

Sometimes all you need is a pot noodle and a bottle of soda!

This might not be the most healthiest of lunches (the sodium content is quite high, as you can probably imagine and soda is never really healthy, even if you do drink the diet kind because artificial sweeteners can be nasty) but it is the most nostalgic for me.  It remindes me of noodle soups that can be bought in the Philippines.  I must say I’ve tried the “Anglicised” pot noodles that you can buy in most of the supermarkets but have never really appreciated them.  I tend to like the instant noodle soups — pot or otherwise — that you can get in most asian groceries.  They seem to have more flavour (aka salt!).

I have a desk job and I do not drive (YET!) so I’m sort of stuck in the office during the day (unless I decide to venture out, which I do, if it’s not raining).  So anything that I can plonk into my bag is a good lunch really.  Most of the time I’ll have a sandwich or a pot noodle.  My desktop lunches are sometimes more adventurous, especially when I can be bothered to pack my lunch the night before or wake up early to put my lunch together.  Then I’m lucky because I have a salad or a rice meal.

I remember once walking through the office with my pot noodle and my soda and an officemate said that hot soup and a cold soda was a very weird lunch combination.  I wasn’t offended but it made me think.  I’ve always had hot food with a cold drink…something to do with what I’ve always had growing up.  It was always hot steaming rice, with a viand and a cold drink, be it a fruit juice or a soda, or even just water.  I’ve never really thought about how weird a hot-cold lunch combo would be to some people, but now that I think about it, it might be weird after all.  Maybe it’s a cultural thing?

 

Yelly Writes

Catching up

Yelly

I haven’t been writing anything recently.  The ideas are in my head but I need to write them down!

The past several weeks have been crazy busy!  The day job has been eating into the time I’ve put away to work on the dream job and I’m getting really frustrated!  I really need to make time to write.  I need to make sure I make the time because I really want to work on my recipes and my writing.  Dear God please give me time…or at least one of those Harry Potter time turner thingmebobs that Hermione used!  That would be incredibly handy!

Fingers crossed I am able to write this weekend!  If I do get to do that, I will write up a storm!

Yelly Writes

Choices, choices

Yelly

I had written down this woeful entry about how tired I was, and how I wished I could just go to work tomorrow (as it is 8 minutes after midnight, I guess I should say later!) and just say, I’m going now, toodle pip!  But I’m not a quitter.  I may whine and cry about how hard it is but I try my best to get things done…with a smile on my face.  I guess I’m just feeling the pressure at work and needed a good cry to relieve the tension.  I hit the delete button and trashed the entry.  It’s a good thing to vent, but not a good thing to send out negativity into the cosmos!

In my heart of hearts, I’d love a job where I can read, cook, bake and write.  Does anyone need anyone to do just that?  I’d love to do that, and, because we live in the real world, with real needs and real bills, I’d love to get paid for it too!  But when I seriously consider what I want to do in this dream job of mine, the pesky self-doubt creeps in:  Am I a good enough writer?  Will people want to read what I want to say?  Are my thoughts even interesting enough?  Am I interesting enough?  After I’ve wallowed in my self-doubt long enough for my hands and feet to go all pruney, I go back to my dream job drawing board, not to rethink, but to plan how I’m going to find a way to find that job that lets me do what I want and make money out of it!  There has got to be a way for me to do what I love the most!  But until I figure out how to do just that, I shall go back to the grind!

Now how’s that for verbal diarrhea?

I’m trying to decide which cookbook to write about:  Lorraine Pascale’s Home Cooking Made Easy or Rachel Khoo’s Little Paris Kitchen.  Any thoughts?