Ruminations

My Boss was talking yesterday about wondering what he will do to maintain his social networks when he retires in about three years’ time. Realising that he gets a lot of enjoyment from daily interactions with his colleagues at work, he was a little worried that he would be at his wits’ end not knowing what to do with himself when he no longer has to come to work. It’s true that work plays a very big part in workers’ lives - I can’t think of another routine in my life that I spend five days out of every week working at (no pun intended). If I’m not careful I can also spend a lot of my non-work hours thinking about it.

Anyway the conversation somehow led to one of my colleagues telling me that I wouldn’t have any problems with social networks because all I would need is a computer - I was quite surprised that she had that perception of me, as I don’t really talk much about what I do on the computer outside of work. (I don’t like being jeered at, even in a friendly way, when I mention blogs, or MMORPGs, so I don’t normally talk about such things at work - I seem to be strangely oversensitive in this area as I often set myself up to be teased in other areas and don’t seem to mind!) This particular colleague plays the role of the Bullshit Radar in our team - she tends to just observe all our silly interactions and verbal venting during meetings and then when we’ve worn ourselves out (or worked ourselves up into a state), calmly manages to summarise the problem and what we can do to solve it, without buying into all the ego, whinging and excess of emotion that can get displayed at meetings. I really admire this ability. Maybe I’ll develop it when I grow up. (I’ve very lucky in that I have workmates I actually like! Unlike Mickey in California.)

I wonder, what would I do with myself to occupy my days if I didn’t have the whole work routine to take up the majority of my week? It is true that The Computer is a great tool for social interaction, but I find that after spending x hours in front of it every day it is still good to actually talk to other people, face to face. I don’t seem to have many hobbies or interests that need the involvement of other people. Reading. Collecting fountain pens. Computer games. Maintaining this blog. Other people’s input usually improves my enjoyment of these but is not essential. (The joys of being an introvert!)

But then again, why am I pondering this topic anyway? It’s not as if I have the luxury of being able to retire anytime soon, and who knows what the world will be like in 25 years??

Categories: work-life-balance, meaning-of-life, navel-gazing

Today being the last day of my extended birthday, we went out to lunch. Lunch was pleasant: we went to Coco’s in South Perth, with M’s parents, J and W. There’s something very enjoyable about being surrounded by office workers on a working lunch when you know you have nothing to do but enjoy your meal, and the afternoon. Neither M nor I had ever been to Coco’s before. It’s one of those Perth restaurants that has had a bit of a reputation for being a ‘good restaurant’ but I’m not sure if it’s been resting on those laurels a bit for some years now.

The service was good, although one of the waiters who served us couldn’t seem to put a plate on the table without a bit of a bang. They did however make sure our glasses of water were regularly topped up, which always gains points in my book.

Certainly the food* was nothing amazing, although it was done well and nicely presented. The Turkish bread we had as our entree was nicely warm and the olive oil accompanying it was beautiful - very fruity. I had Tasmanian salmon on mashed potato, and two oysters kilpatrick. I can’t think of a thing to write about the salmon (I can’t even remember what the sauce was, apart from the fact that it was green!), but the mash was creamy. The oysters were a bit overdone, and quite overwhelmed by the bacon.

M had the char sui (sic) chicken, which he enjoyed, but the sauce was very rich and I think the meal, which was served with a medley of veg including bean sprouts and slivers of capsicum, could have been improved by the addition of some carbohydrates, like rice. He had a side dish of broccoli with an almond butter; I wasn’t impressed by the price tag - $7.50 for around 6 florets?!

J had an unusual asparagus, hazelnut and avocado salad with raspberry sauce - she didn’t like it very much because she was expecting warm asparagus, but the whole dish was cold. W had smoked salmon which he did enjoy. The salmon was billed as Fresh Mohr Smoked Tasmanian Salmon, which I assume means it came from that Sydney fish institution, Mohr Fish. (Cherry, I still remember eating in that tiny whole in the wall restaurant and loving every bite of the amazingly fresh and flavoursome fish. How many years ago was that?)

After the meal we enjoyed a cheese platter. This was quite good because none of the cheeses (blue, camembert, cheddar and a softish cheddarlike one) had that just-out-of-the-fridge feel and taste, and the quince jelly they served instead of the usual dried fruit was very tasty and complemented the cheeses very nicely. I do like a good cheese platter.

I didn’t mean to go on and on about lunch - and this for a lunch that wasn’t that spectacular in terms of flavours - so I will leave my tale about our excursion to the Perth Zoo, where we went to walk off lunch! - for the next post. I had a great afternoon.

*Note that the online menu is not an accurate listing of the actual menu that we had today. It’s sad that they haven’t bothered to keep it current.

Categories: food, review, Perth, Western Australia