And in other news…..

Actually, there isn’t too much really. We’re still a little busy here at the office, with half the section being on leave, but nowhere near as much so as last week. In fact, today is a local public holiday so we have the day off. It looks like the rest of the week will also be a little slower than last week, but there should still be enough work to keep me amused.

It’s actually been a fairly productive week for me so far as the office goes, & I managed to sort out that issue with my allowances I complained about in the last post. My “snotty letter writing skills” must have improved some since the last time I tried them out, because it only took the HR section 2 days to sort things out after my little missive of “thanks and appreciation” – yes, that would be sarcasm you detect there :p – landed on their desks. It’ll be interesting to see if they’ve managed to fix things in time for me to get my full salary on the 13^th, but if not at least I know I’ll be getting a fat bastard of a paycheck in February :)

You know, I might just make a habit of writing snotty letters actually, because God knows I’m sick & tired of being inconvenienced because other bastards haven’t done their bloody job. The next statement has already been submitted actually, about that UN cash allowance I was supposed to get in August and haven’t seen a cent of more than 5 months later, and I’ll likely typing up a third statement on its way on Thursday morning. I’ve been promised definite feedback regarding my extension for bloody months now, and tomorrow is the deadline – Joint Ops and the Mobile Formation sit down in Pretoria tomorrow to finalise the namelist for the next rotation, and if my name isn’t on it I’m going to be demanding an explanation as to why.

But enough of that – it’s starting to sound like a bitching session, & I’m really trying to avoid that. The happy thoughts are still doing remarkably well, & my outlook the last few days is also quite positive and upbeat. I’ve had really good comms with home the last few days, which has helped, & I managed to get hold of Rob, Ash, Shirlz, & my old lady in Howick, all of whom I really enjoyed catching up with. Shirlz in particular I was happy to get hold of, as I’d not heard from her since mid December, depite repeated attempts from both sides.

I did hit a bit of a dip when my old lady told me that her Jack Russel was attacked & killed by the dogs from the house next door though. I’m really going to miss Rusty, because he was a typical Jack Russel – all balls, no brain, & a whole shit load of character – and I’d become quite fond of him over the years.

My external hard drives also blew up on me yesterday – or the power supply for them at least, but the result is the same – which was rather annoying, but I should be able to get that sorted out in a few weeks at most so it’s not too big an issue. Or at least I hope the power supply is the only problem, because if the drives are also toast I’ll have lost over half the photographs I’ve taken since I’ve been here. The rest of the stuff on the drives is easily replaceable, so I’m really not fussed about that, but if I’ve lost the photographs I’ll be seriously pissed.

I still have all my books & music on the notebook hard disk, and some stuff on the DVD’s I brought with me – and especially the DVD Noelle & Paul sent, so thanks again guys :D – so I’ll be able to keep myself amused at least until I get home & can attempt a data recovery. And if I can manage to get my hands on a no-cd crack for Baldurs Gate II today I’ll be sorted, because I’m about a third of the way through it atm, just hitting my stride, & I really don’t want to wait a few weeks to carry on playing lol

Anyway, that’s about it for now and I’m going to end this off so that I can go get some breakfast – cigarettes & coffee ;) I’ll be heading into town a little later, after I’ve made a few calls – hopefully I manage to get through to Noelle this time so I can wish her a happy birthday, but it’d be a first from here – so I should get this uploaded then.

Ciao for now though ;)