My Thursday
I had combination rice for lunch, which is rice, steamed chicken, char siu (chinese barbecue pork) and green vegetables (usually choy sum) served with a small bowl of very tasty chicken broth with sliced spring onion floating in it. Mmmmmmm.
I always pour extra soy sauce over the chicken, and it soaks into the rice too.
It was very lucky that I’d felt hungry and had my lunch earlier than normal, because around 10 minutes after I’d finished and was drinking a cup of tea, the evacuation alarms sounded, well, the first round, which are the beep beeps. Chris (who has a desk in the office with MK and me) and I looked at each other. “Oh crap!” I said, rapidly packing up my laptop and cables and grabbing my class notes for the afternoon’s tutorial. I knew we were supposed to evacuate as quickly as possible but there was no way I was leaving the laptop and class notes there. I couldn’t smell any smoke, and unless the concrete stairwell out of the building was on fire I figured there were plenty more than a few minutes left for me to grab my things.
This morning MK told me that if she’d been there, she would’ve clipped me over the head and told me off for not evacuating right away. My response was, “Well, that would’ve only slowed down my packing”. Yeah yeah I know I’m very bad. I didn’t know when we’d be allowed back into building once we were out of it, and so I grabbed my tutoring file with my lesson plans and student info. It would be really crappy if I had to go to my class without my lesson notes. (MK said if there was really a fire then maybe there would’ve been no class – but I thought since my class was in a different building it probably wouldn’t be cancelled). All up I think we took a couple of minutes to pack up and leave – it wasn’t like we were in there for 5 or 10 minutes rearranging furniture! Funny thing is, after Chris and I had been downstairs for about 5 minutes we looked up at the windows and saw one of the guys still moving around very casually and calmly in the office next door. So I guess his death wish is even more pronounced than mine.
So anyway, we got out of there with our backpacks – I guess since I packed my laptop in mine, Chris thought he’d take his laptop with him too (I’m pretty sure insurance wouldn’t cover our stuff if it got destroyed in a fire at uni – I must investigate this further, but I am 99.999999% sure of it). We joined everyone else downstairs on the lawn. I think we got out just before the next phase of alarms – the ones commonly known as whoop whoops. The whole building was evacuated, including the bank, the bookshop, the food court, staff and all. As we waited there, wondering what was going on (and I secretly thought about the possible looting of honey chicken out of the bain marie in the food court – actually, looting for bottles of Nudie Juice from Aroma would be far smarter, as they are so yummy but so expensive!), I wished I’d taken my cup of tea downstairs with me!
In a little while two security vans drove up, as did a fire truck. Security guards and three firepeople (two blokes, one woman) ran into the building. They weren’t in there long; when they came back out, the firewoman had this huge grin on her face (she was quite spunky actually) and we were told we could go back into the building. I guess someone’s toast caught on fire or something (actually, that happened in an office building I worked in – after a couple of toast burning episodes and entire building evacuations, toasters were banned in all office kitchens in that building).
When we got back, I resumed sipping on my tea, which was still more warm than cold. I wonder what set the alarms off, but I guess we’ll never find out. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a drill though. I’ve resolved to practice packing up my essential items for future evacuations.
Jac and I went to the Perth Hockey Stadium in the evening to watch the Australian men’s hockey team (called the Kookaburras) play against the Malaysian men’s hockey team. Jac has played hockey since she was about 14, and she is planning to play until it’s physically impossible for her to do so. When we started seeing each other (in our ‘courting’ days) I used to go and watch her play on weekends. I now find hockey quite boring to watch, and can’t be bothered going to watch her any more. I haven’t been to any of her matches for years now. I’ve told her if her team makes the grand final I will come and cheer her on, but with consecutive seasons of team mates ‘ suffering injuries and having babies, the team has not been at full strength for some time. Still, Jac enjoys her hockey.
We both understand that hockey is important to her and the internet is just as important to me. I would never ask her to give up hockey, just as she would never ask me to give up using the internet.
The match last night was pretty good. Initially, Malaysia seemed to have more of the ball, and neither team really got any good shots at goal. When the siren went at half-time, the score was still nil-all. I was like “WHAT! We paid $10 each and I want goals, damn it!” In the second half, though, things got more interesting. Australia scored all of its 5 goals – which included three very cool ones off penalty corners and one off a penalty stroke. I wasn’t very impressed with the Malaysian team as they got visibly more desperate and resorted to shirt grabbing and some questionable defending. Oh, and there was a fair amount of falling over theatrics from the Malaysian guys, you know like soccer players do. That did not impress me at all. They also did far too many shots where they lobbed the ball high in the air to move it forward over most of the players – unfortunately these were not executed very well, and most of the time an Australian player would get possession of the ball from the lobs. The final score was 5-2, and by the end I felt that I’d gotten at least $7 worth, if not the full $10 (just kidding – the second half was really exciting and I really enjoyed it). Read the write-up of the match at the Hockey Australia website here.
I wasn’t very interested when Jac told me that Australia would be playing Malaysia, but I said I’d go along because we haven’t really spent as much quality time together lately, with our busy schedules. It was a pleasant evening, sitting on the grass watching the match, though it got a little chilly towards the end of the match. (To be honest, I was extremely bored during the first half and kept watching the clock, but hopefully Jac didn’t notice. Thank goodness it got better after half-time.)
Oh yeah – and the other job offer that this week was for more room auditing. I explained that I was too busy to take on another job, with my PhD and the teaching, but maybe I’d have more time when semester was over. The lady who rang me said, “Okay then, how about if I give you a call at the end of semester, say, the end of May?” Heh. Apparently it’s going to be a campus-wide audit this time, and the entire project will take a number of months to complete. We’ll see what happens and where I’m at when she calls again at the end of May.
EDIT: Oh yeah – and we’ll be going along to the Perth Caravan and Camping show next weekend! Jac was feeling blue about the party, and because I knew she wanted to go to the Caravan and Camping show I won a double pass on the radio on Tuesday to cheer her up. It should be fun.