Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Julie, The Dinner Lady

We have a dinner lady in our canteen named Julie. She's rubbish. She's also a very friendly lady who tries to be very helpful, but that doesn't change the fact that she's rubbish at being a dinner lady.

By way of an example... I encountered her 3 times yesterday - once to buy my morning cuppa, once for my lunch and once for an afternoon cuppa.

She got the morning cuppa right.

Lunch was interesting... during her efforts to locate the mislaid leek and stilton sauce for my turkey escalope, mash and vegetables (it wasn't as nice as it sounds - it's a staff canteen, remember), she entirely forgot to give me the vegetables. So when I got my dinner downstairs and opened the styrofoam carton, I found turkey, mash and sauce, but no vegetables.

Then came the ultimate travesty. I popped up to the canteen just before it closed for my customary afternoon cuppa and, rather then ordinary tea, she gave me Earl Grey. I don't mind Earl Grey too much as long as it has no milk in it, but when you're expecting ordinary PG tips with a splash of milk, an Earl Grey with a splash of milk is a pretty horrible surprise.

She was mortified when I mentioned the Earl Grey incident to her. I briefly considered mentioning my lack of veggies to her, but decided that her heart probably couldn't take it!

On the other hand, she does give me larger portions than anyone else and always saves me an apple!

Monday, September 10, 2007

My Bloody Phone!

I have decided that my mobile phone (that's cellphone to you colonials) is rubbish!It's supposed to be well cool. It's a Sony Ericsson P990. I used to have the P800 and then upgraded to the P900 - both excellent phones, despite the number of times I dropped 'em, sat on 'em and generally abused 'em. I only upgraded to the P990 cos I'd managed to horribly scratch the touchscreen and cracked the casing on my P900 quite badly!

I love the touchscreen which recognises my handwriting (Apple's iPhone ain't nuffink revolutionary!), I love that they stuck a full querty keyboard on it just in case I get bored with the handwriting recognition. I love the fact that I can browse the net and post on the bored board or facebook or check my e-mails. I love the little bit of software on it that lets me quickly check the cctv cameras on the motorway before I go home in the evening to ensure that there's no delays. I love the 2.3 megapixel camera on it and the huge storage capacity.
But...

Not only does the clock on it lose about 10 minutes a week, it arbitrarily decides to disable the alarm clock function, randomly answers itself with no external intervention, frequently drops calls half way through - not that it makes much difference cos the sound quality on is rubbish anyway, switches on it's bluetooth function all by itself and connects itself to the handsfree earpiece I keep in the car - unless I'm actually in the car, in which case it refuses to connect to it at all; and takes about 3 weeks to do anything I ask it to. Just opening a text message to read is painful. The so-called 3G internet connection is slower than dialup on a bad day!

So basically, I'm fed up with it. It appears to be made of pants. Not fine Egyptian cotton pants, but nasty polyester pants from Primark. Problem is, I'm only about 6 months into an 18 month contract (when did they start doing that, anyway - it always used to be 12 months... grr) so I have no free/subsidised upgrade options.

What do I do. Should I grit my teeth and put up with the phone's rubbishness? Should I bite the bullet and fork out for a new one? Or should I just stop complaining?