Desperate Times

Desperate Times. I think the economy is not getting any better yet. The days are getting warmer and the air is smelling like a smokey filled room. *yucks*

I was back in my office for 2 whole days last week. Was kinda visiting my colleagues, working plus spending time yapping here and there. I guess its been a long time since i last went to office and go work as a normal working person in almost presentable looking working clothes. *LOL*

My office does not have a dress code. We don't come to work in suits and pants and dresses except the ones who are doing some work at the hotel. I have been working in jeans and tee for many years in this office. My dressing gets worse. Now i work in my pajamas and shorts.. hahhahahahaa.. Not that i am a fashionista in the first place.. :)

Since the economy is not very good, we have a few cutbacks in the office. No more 3in1 nescafes.. and delicious expensive cookies (how do we keep the staff awake.. with no coffee??) We still have coffee laa.. but not the 3in1. No more Milo Fuse in the pantry too... gone are the days when we can have milo, coffee, teh tarik, green tea, nescafe all at once in one day. Tissue paper also cut back too.. no more fancy tissue papers on every table. I was pretending to make lotta noise about the tissue paper issue. I just wash my hands and walk to the office manager.. and tell her... you see you see.. no tissue in the office.. with dripping hands.... and annoy her. She even try to give me her personal towel to wipe. Such a nice lady.. hahhahahaa.. Ya.. my colleagues bring their own handtowels to cut back on tissue paper wastage.

Now we don't print as much as we used to. We used to even print 2 liners of emails. *LOL* Less printing means less ink and paper wastage. Now that i am working from home, i don't even have a printer here. I am completely paperless and saving some part of the environment. (except for toilet paper) Thank God we still have toilet paper in the office.. hahahhahahaa

They stopped the cleaning services in the office so now everyone has a duty to do after lunch. One will be sweeping, another wiping the tables, another mopping the floor, someone is collecting the rubbish and two other fellas are washing the toilet. Its good for team building and builds good rapport... no one is complaining. Everyone seems happy doing the chores and helping out. And i must say, the office is cleaner now.

I am actually quite proud of my colleagues. In this desperate times, they have stuck together and try and cut corners here and there because every dollar counts. The last time we did this cleaning of the office ourselves was few years back when the economy was not good. We cut every corner and everyone did their chore. And we pull through. I am sure this time, we will pull through too.

Few months back, my neighbours wired fence got cut up... almost the entire fence late at night by thieves. Its a corner lot, and the garden is fenced up with the wire. It was a rusty wired up fencing. These two loonies decided to cut people's fence up at 4am in the morning. I bet they spent quite a while cutting and rolling it up *LOL* It will probably only fetch them about 15 dollars when they try and resell the rusty wires.

When we woke up the next day, i was looking at my neighbour's unfenced house and thought that he was going to refence his house with new wires. Never in a million years would i think that someone would actually steal the wires. He was fenceless for about two weeks. He finally got it re-fenced and it costs him close to 500 bucks. But then again, some loonies were stealing all our garbage cans last year... hahahhahahahaa.. what a neighbourhood rite?

Desperate times.

When Times Are Bad...

With the current economic situation everywhere all over the world... (i am trying to start off sounding important like a newscaster).. errr.. yea... with the current bad economic situation everywhere... a lot of people are laid off with no work... and no work means no money.

No money means no food to survive (well.. if you are like the rest of us who depend on our salaries to survive every month). No food to survive means... desperate measures.

Even well before the economic situation crumbled, we always have thieves in our neighbourhood. Petty thieves. On bicycle sometimes. Preying on unsuspecting housewives and old folks.

In my neighbourhood, a lot of these folks are old. It was a new neighbourhood when i was born... but since even i am with a bit of grey, you can imagine how old most of my neighbours are. And these thieves loves to prey on old helpless folks.

Case no 1 ~ Garbage bins.
One day, we woke up to find all our garbage bins stolen.. hahhahahaha.. the whole backrow. And these are not new garbage bins. These are smelly broken plasticky garbage bins reeking of mouldy food.. and crap. All gone. The whole neighbourhood was buzzing and talking about the garbage bins thieves.

My aunt and uncle living on the next row was laughing their heads off. They were glad their garbage bins was still around. My father refused to buy new bins, just in case the thieves come back again. I think a few of them refused to buy too. So the whole back row... every house was hanging their garbage on hooks.

A few weeks later, the Garbage Bins Geng came back and went to the next row and swiped all the garbage bins off (leaving the lids). They came in motorcycles... and my uncle even tried to chase them in his car.. hahhahahahaa.. i told him.. leave it. They might have knives and who knows... you might get hurt and all over a smelly bin.

I wonder what they want the bins for? These bins won't fetch much in the scrap shop. Maybe these thieves are some artists who are doing some Bins Installation somewhere and they need lots of smelly bins. *LOL* Maybe they will return the bins to us after their exhibition. Yea yea.. i am trying to be postive here :)

If you see some Bins Installation somewhere... do tell me about it. I'll go run over and check it out to find my bin. We even have our house number written on the bin.. hahhahahahahaha.. the amount of bins that are stolen in this area. Dang them thieves. Now all i have is just a hook for my garbage.