So a pretty good start to the whole call-centre-experience, training until Thursday – and then went onto the phones today. But it’s pretty easy really – they let you work with an experienced person up until the point you’re ready to take over, and then they stick around until you’re confident.

Nice cycle to work though

Off to the West Coast tomorrow morning (6am) with the same people (well one) that we went canyoning with back in January. Promises to be another cold experience! This time no wetsuits.. so that’s interesting! ;) Hehehe, still, as long as it doesn’t rain too much we’ll be grand. Hopefully we’re doing this cave :

If you’d like to do a vertical cave then the Cataract Pot/Myopia trip is an awesome easy vertical cave with a 40m pitch next to a water fall and a couple of other pitches – I’d be quite keen on this. It’s easy to rig and I have enough rope. The cool thing is that it’s a through trip – ie, down two pitches then a look around the bottom then up the waterfall pitch and out, it only takes a couple of hours.

So we’ll see.. that one sounds like fun though. Oh, and went to see Big Fish last night, and it was absolutely excellent!

So a few changes to the website.. note the *new* reverse-page *feature* ;) Any more suggestions welcome!

So today in work learned that a bird watching society in Auckland is winding up. Now societies aren’t allowed to make money.. however, over $3 million had been given to the society in gifts etc, and in the rules of the society upon winding up the company, any leftover monies were to be shared out equally amongst the members.

There were 30 members. So.. $100,000 just for being a member of a bird watching society. Not bad eh ;) Not naming names but I believe when the people who found out in the companies office (where I work) that this was the case, they tried to become members (wouldn’t you?!) unfortunately no dice…

It is actually quite insane the amount of havoc one could reek if one wanted to ;) I mean for example every company is given a company key – a mechanism to change data on through the companies website for anything pertaining to the companies set up etc. For example (and this has happened once) a disgruntled employee obtained the company key (a mechanism for changing the company data) – and then went and resigned all the directors!! :D Hehhehhe, ehem, sorry, I mean that’s terrible of course, but still, kinda funny – and the thing is that we can’t just put it back together.. they have to write in and do all sorts of stuff… It isn’t super easy to get the key – you do have to confirm that you are authorised etc, but still.. it is possible

However, for the most part (99%) the system is not abused so it is actually very effective – it’s quite interesting really to see the different systems. You can incorporate a business online for $60. Not too bad really. They can e-mail / SMS you when you need to file your annual returns etc, it really is quite efficient. Must check the Irish governments website sometime and compare…

Glynn missed his flight out of Bangalore.. so got as far as Singapore and may have to wait a week for a flight. Still, I guess he’ll enjoy Singapore!, shame, now we are going to have to wait another week to see Big Fish (Tim Burtons latest offering, which I’m quite looking forward to)

Lazy weekend, registered for kite surfing which should be fun. Headed off to see a bouldering competition in castle hill, but it rained so no show.

Pretty close and loud (and wet) thunderstorm on Saturday night – haven’t had one of those since getting here.

Oh – and while I try not to watch tele, I make allowances for (admittedly crap) remakes of… Battlestar Galactica. They’ve remade it. But it’s still pretty cool. I mean any series which starts with the human race being annihilated down to 50,000 people has gotta be good? right? ;) No, but seriously, I lived in fear of the cylons (and my brothers), so it’s good to catch up with them again.

So, interesting last couple of days in the new job, doesn’t look like it’s going to be like what I thought Call Centers would be like.. at least there’s no selling involved.

Glynn is in India, which sounds like a bunch of fun, but it’s kinda good too, as I feel slightly less unfit now that this

isn’t happening this week. I dunno, when you get past 100 situps in a single sitting (ba boom) it’s too much! Mind you, I guess it’s good for those overhangs.

Me, well – I’ve been playing a bunch of squash, almost every day this week!. Oh, and good news for next week, looks like caving could be happening on the West Coast / Nelson with Dave and maybe a few of the others we went Canyoning with back in the beginning of January.. who knows.

Well, last day in work today, well the Administration job at any rate.. pretty interesting one as they go – conducting reference checks and stuff..

The interesting stuff though was that head office (Auckland) is migrating all the system over to Exchange 2003 so mail has been totally messed up, coupled to that they want to set up a VPN, so looks like there is a fairly good chance I will get some contract work out of it (at contract rates too I hope ;)

Start work tomorrow in a government call center.. should be a whole lot less pressured.. there’s no targets, no deadlines, just do as much as you can in the time given, and will get 15 min breaks too I guess (thank God for bureaucracies I guess!) So quite looking forward to that.

Kite surfing lessons this weekend – Billy Connolly is in town too, was fairly tempted to get tickets again! but they were re-sold out (he put on an extra show).

Got killed at squash by Thor! dunno what happened :)