Who you gonna call?

Seriously folks now?!

Don't worry, it is just a drill

On Friday I had to leave work early due to preannounced fire drill taking place. I was among the odd few who had actually come to the office on Friday rather than working from home due to the same drill. They had announcements on the elevators posted already on Monday asking politely for forgiveness for any inconvenience caused.

Is it just me or isn't a bit weird to tell people before hand that there is going to be a fire drill. I mean of course it is good to practice exiting the building in orderly fashion and convening on designated assembly point so that in a real situation people know how not to wave hands and scream. However, apparently preannouncing makes everybody leave and avoid the hassle altogether. It was clearly agreed to be done on Friday afternoon to cause least amount of disruption to business. It seems to me fulfilling of the mandated process step just for the sake of fulfilling.

At least back in Finland you never know whether it is a drill or a real thing, you should be behaving exactly the same. Having drills ever so often has caused that I often finish what I am doing on my laptop before gathering my things. Occasionally I found myself wondering would it really be worth it finishing "this one last email" just before inhaling toxic fumes if it was a real case. For good or worse I am not panicking.

Not related to 'Pore or Finland, but my colleague told me a funny anecdote to fire drills while working: A fire alarm went off and this colleague of mine started to leave the work premises. This time it was clearly not a drill, but heavy smoke was already coming from the corridor. There was another coworker still on the phone clearly with a client. My friend started urging his colleague to leave the building pointing at the smoke. The following phone conversation apparently really took place:

- "I am so sorry ma'am, but it seems that there seems to be a bit of a fire in the office I am working, so I might need to you to ask to call our number again in a while"
- "What? Is there smoke?"
- "Oh yes, there has been smoke in the office for quite some time now, ma'am."
- "There is a fire going on and you are still talking to me?"
- "But I would like to make sure that you would not mind calling us back again."
- "Get out now! Seriously."
- "How would you rate your call today..." 

"Se taitaa olla vain pora." (Sorry, old Finnish inside Star Wars humour)
(picture from http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/36inoo/)

PS. In continuation to the comments to this old post, I went to see the new Start Trek movie yesterday night (again at IMAX) and was blown away. Plenty of horizontal lens flares and pretty nice scifi imagery.

1k

Yay! Just noticed from the blog statistics that there has been more than 1000 different visitor sessions logged into my little relocation blog. It feels weird as the whole thing started as a means to share some experiences mainly to a relatively limited group of my old colleagues. Remember me accepting the challenge more than a half a year ago.

Then again it just might be my dear own mother who is logging in to see several times a day on how's life treating me & my family on the other side of the globe. Obviously she is using a private VPN connection to get around obnoxious regional limitations and accessing this blog from US, Germany, Russia, UK, Nigeria (!), Korea (south, in case you are wondering) or just from the other Nordic countries. In addition to reading it mostly from Finland and Singapore of course. And naturally she would be using at least occasionally Linux with YaBrowser -- that's just given.

Be that as it may, big thanks to all you readers out there (mom included)! Makes it worthwhile to continue blogging knowing that someone actually is reading my ramblings. And watching the Blogger provided statistics is kinda addictive on its own as well.

Near fail experience

Just the other day I was blogging about my severe fruit juice addiction. Instead typical juice, just for a change I succumbed to á strawberry smoothie, when I saw that I just missed my MRT (AKA Singapore Mass Rapid Transit AKA metro AKA subway for all you UK English illiterates out there) connection home. I would have to wait full 6 minutes (which is a very long interval) for the next train. Thus I rewarded myself with a manly pink drink to pass the time. 

I walked intentionally slowly to the MRT station. At the station I was loudly slurping my smoothie while the platform started packing up with people. Soon I realised that there were no trash cans in sight - which there are typically plenty in this city. I was aiming on finishing my drink before the train arrived, since it is not allowed to eat or drink anything in the train.

I never found a trash can, but I did spot your typical big no-no sign saying that you can also get charged a nominal fee of 1000 dollars if caught eating or drinking at the platform! I felt so certain that they'll absolutely make an example out of the ignorant ang mo gurgling his pink smoothie if someone as much as notices me, that I did the only sensible thing imaginable: I quickly hid the remainder of the drink into my work suitcase. Smoothie costing 1003 dollars might have actually cured me of my addiction.

Already addicted

I know already now a thing that I am going to miss so much from SG once the two year assignment is over. "Hello everybody. My internet moniker is koomikko and I am addicted to fresh fruit juice." Now this is the time when you all say "Hi koomikko!" in awful cacophony. 

Costing 2-3 SGDs you can basically get any imaginable fruit available pressed in front of your eyes into an oh so sweet, vitamin heavy refreshment. The weapon of choice for this morning's commute was star fruit juice, but it could as well have been mango & passion fruit or lime & green apple. I honestly can't pick a winner. I like them all -- except probably the ones where they ruin the taste with carrot or other veggies. 

Now the really spooky part of this post is why there is clearly an ET drowning in my juice!!1

Seriously. Who in their right mind would even consider a fruit juice with celery in it?