We Are Made Of Glue

Well, E@L currently might as well be, as he does his expenses for the last two months, sticking small bits of paper onto other, larger bits of paper in order to get some of his money back. He got that Holy Card and a Gold Star in Kinder for a reason, after all. So much for the paperless office. E@L is up to neck in dead trees and UHU sticks. [Update: the UHU stick ran out on me and I have a replacement, in both stick and brand - also in what must not be a proprietary yellow tube, it is called Power Glue Stick (New Formula). Let's check it out... Mmm, smooth and quite clump free! Excellent.]

Once upon a time, people in E@L's exalted position would have had secretaries to do all this shit, freeing up E@L to blog, or play on-line chess, practice his putting (God knows he needs it) or snooze.

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Or stare out the window in slack-jawed mental vacancy as the enormous Star Virgo cruise ship spins slowly 180deg on its central axis, before being tugged into dock at Harbourfront...

...

...

Huh? Oh sorry. That's a fucking big ship. Friday is always a bugger for taxis.

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It's all the wrong way around now, the universe has come unstuck. It's the "Office Manager" - the only secretary type person for six of us - who goes over all the stuff AFTER E@L has done the sticky work of putting it together. SHE checks HIS arithmetic on the *printed out* Excel sheet, collating it against the stuck-on receipts, before sending it on to the Big Boss-san who signs the cheque.

Why didn't we do this the other way around?

Surely it is the OM who should be doing the glue sticking (she is not educated much further than kindergarten anyway while E@L has a Post Grad - even if only it was a Diploma) and, as a professional typist, she should be entering the stuff* into Excel in the first place. Then she could interrupt/wake E@L and get him to check HER for the usual errors?

Wouldn't this avoid printing it twice/thrice/whatever, AND keep the order of events and things in their proper God-ordained places?

The world is topsy-turvey and barely held together by cheap glue in yellow plastic tubes.


* Maybe it's the way E@L is so creative with his expenses that makes him indispensable...

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In further news requiring copious expletives:

Why THE FUCK is it that every time iTunes upgrades itself, the Quick Launch link no longer works?

Why THE FUCK is that every time E@L turns around something on either of his computers is upgrading itself, often going into a complete restart in the middle of an important customer presentation (it really happened to me once) or blog post?

Why THE FUCK... just WHY the fuck?

Sigh.

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Meanwhile, in the real world, E@L negotiates a loan to actually PAY for his off-the-shovel property in Noosa Heads. Settlement should be in October sometime when the place opens.

What to do? Take a low-interest loan in Singapore dollars so that rental on the apartment allows it to pay for itself, or take a high-interest loan in Aussie dollars and earn tax-credits on the difference between re-payments and rental income? Either way it's a winner investment, so long as the AUD doesn't plummit again and they do a margin call on the devalued property...

The Australian expat - the luckiest person on earth, so my loan brokers say.

E@L