Last week was quite a weird week for me. A couple of embarrassing things happened. Firstly, I decided to go to McDonald’s for lunch on Wednesday as I hadn’t been there for quite a while. I ordered a milkshake, fries and chicken nuggets as usual. They didn’t give me a tray; instead they put the fries and chicken nuggets in a paper bag. I headed over to the condiments area to get some tomato ketchup: you have to pick up one of these little paper cases and then pump the sauce into it yourself. As I didn’t have a tray, I decided to put the paper case on top of the lid of my milkshake and then head over to the nearest empty table. Even though I was holding the milkshake steady, the paper case containing the tomato ketchup flew off the top and fell to the floor. I stood there horrified as I saw the ketchup splat all over the floor and some of it even landed on a nearby table! I was really scared that some of it might have landed on someone’s clothes or in someone’s hair, but luckily that wasn’t the case. I picked up the paper case (which still had some ketchup left in it) and I told a nearby member of staff what had happened and apologised for the mess. The really embarrassing bit was that just after I’d finished speaking to the member of staff, the same thing happened again, although luckily it wasn’t so bad the second time as there was less ketchup left in the case. The man laughed and said “You’re a nightmare, you are!” I then picked the paper case up again and tried to find a table. However, there weren’t any empty tables downstairs, so I thought I would try upstairs, but getting to the stairs would have meant having to walk past the area where I had dropped the sauce. I was too embarrassed to walk past that area again, so I just left the building and I ended up eating my food outside, even though it was quite a cold, grey day!
The second embarrassing thing happened on Friday morning on the bus on the way to work. Often when I’m on the bus in the mornings, I go on the internet on my phone, just to check my emails, Twitter/Facebook updates and things like that. My keypad is set up so that whenever you press a key, it makes a clicking sound, just slightly louder than the click of a computer mouse. I was replying to someone’s status message on Facebook, which meant that the keypad was making the clicking sound each time I typed a character. We came to a stop, and the woman sitting in the seat immediately in front of me suddenly turned round and said “Excuse me please”. At first I thought that maybe she was unfamiliar with the area and she was going to ask me which stop she needs, but what she actually said was “Could you turn the volume down on that keypad. It is annoying.” So I put the phone on silent. I did feel embarrassed though – I never realised anyone would find that noise distracting and no one had ever complained about it before. In future, I’ll put my phone on silent before using it on the bus or in any other public place where others could be distracted.
This reminds me of a funny incident which happened when I was at the cinema with my friends when I was about 10 years old. The cinema was full, so we couldn’t all sit together – my Mum had to sit a couple of rows behind us. There was a woman with a little boy sitting in the seat in front of me. I had a carton of drink and after I had finished it, I flattened it so that all the air gushed out. I saw one drop of juice come out of the straw and it landed somewhere in front of me. The woman in front turned round, with a really angry look on her face, and she started shouting, “If you do that again, I’ll ask the manager to remove you from this cinema!” To this day, I’m not exactly sure what she was angry about – whether it was the noise of the air gushing out of the carton, or whether it was because a droplet of the juice landed on her head. However, during the rest of the film I hardly dared move a muscle! I felt that I couldn’t enjoy myself after that. The woman’s face reminded me of a really strict teacher I had a few years earlier, but I don’t think it really was her. When we left the cinema, we laughed about it and my friends didn’t let me live it down!
The weekend has been better though. Yesterday I went to the Lord Mayor’s Procession in Norwich city centre with some other people from the IVC social club. I had a good time. By coincidence, it turned out that the lady hosting the event for the IVC was the daughter of my science teacher from high school! She was there as well, and she was asking me what I had been doing since I left high school. After watching the parade, we all had a drink in a local bar and then we went to watch the fireworks display.
This afternoon we went to Thrigby Wildlife Gardens, a local zoo. It was a nice sunny day, although it only took us a couple of hours to walk round the zoo as it is fairly small compared to the other ones in the area. I took lots of photos which I’ll upload to my Flickr page soon.
My studies for my Microsoft certification are proving to be a bit of a struggle, although I think this is mainly a matter of finding the time to devote to it. Out of 700 pages, I’m currently up to about 100. I was hoping to finish the book by the end of August, but I can’t see that happening now! (There are 3 books in total, and I was hoping to complete them all by the end of April 2010, as that’s when my current job finishes). A lot of the material is very advanced, in fact it is even more detailed than my computing science degree. At least with my degree course, I had proper lectures and seminars where I could get help where necessary, but with this course I’m all on my own, which makes it more difficult. I have even started to wonder whether the course is right for me after all. I think I’ll have to start setting aside an hour each evening to study, and then I’ll see where I am in a month’s time. If by then I still don’t enjoy it, I may as well give it up and find another course to study instead.
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