OakMonster’s Den

This is an announcement from Brandon.

So you’re settling in with the relationship with your Asian girl whose long flowing hair you adore.

Be warned that with the sexy hair comes a demon that will haunt you for the rest of your days with your Asian woman.

Behold, the Cousin Itt of the Carpet. (This specimen here came out of our Dyson vacuum cleaner.) Another one usually resides in the shower drain.

041507_1252a.jpg

Originally uploaded by theoakmonster.

(And yeah, I double-posted this on Thai-Blogs too. Slightly different version though.)

It’s Songkran, y’all. Thai new year, marking the “entrance of the sun” and of course the beginning of a countrywide water fight.

Bust out your Super Soakers, suckers!!!
Oh, and buy some shirts while you’re at it.

Why do we splash each other? Well, let’s see…because in April is HOTTER THAN HELL in Thailand? How else would you cool down? ;-D

My theory on how the little clensing ritual turns into an aqua war is this:

It probably started with the fact that we rid ourselves of bad mojo with water. In the morning, you go to you parents and elders and “wash” them. Wash their hands, essentially. They give you a blessing. Then the temples would be washing their Buddha images too. Of course, with all that water flowing, you might as well throw it at each other.

Anyway. I’ve scaled down my celebration to just flicking some water at my coworkers. But hey, a little bit is better than nothing!

USC layeth the smacketh down on the protesting students old school style, ending a sit-in in mere hours. How did they do it?

#1 - Threaten suspension.

#2 - Call the kids’ parents.

And here’s a reflection on the resolution of this generation of activists:

“We were prepared for arrest, but not suspension,” said Ana Valderrama, a senior in philosophy.

It’s getting harder every year to get in to USC and the tuition for one year can almost down pay a house. So hell yes, you’d better get your asses back to class or your parents will not hesitate to kill you. And I’m sure going to jail sounds a hell of a lot better than facing your parents after being suspended from USC for protesting.

Fight on, USC Administration!

I first heard the word today.

Net Reps: Internet reputation, that is.

A little news video on LA Times website talked about a British guy who was hired because he had a tech blog that hit the right note with the company. The bit continues to discuss how employers search the web to find dirt on the candidates, how you should “better” your net reps by not posting your keg stand pictures etc.

I know I wrote about this once before, about how screwed I am with putting my life on the internet.

And once again, I’ll say to all of this is that whoever is going to hire me is getting ME. All of it. The quirkiness. The blogging. The Director of Fun-ness. And the slightly less than a sailor skills in swearing. In type mostly, but I do let it fly…occasionally and appropriately…as in not in front of my Chief Anybody Officers or our clients.

Unless they go first, of course.

So yes. If a company is looking for a real character with endless energy and creativity (because I’m not afraid of the obvious, obnoxious or utterly idiotic), opinionated, quirky, work hard and play hard, Queen of “Oh yeah, I can do THAT”, life of the office type, I’m their gal.

In one way, I guess I’m weeding out who I don’t want to work for. If my blogging scares them; if my “un-corporateness” and casual and teamwork (not ranks) attitude unnerves them; and if my internet social life disturbs them, then I’m probably not the right fit in the first place!

I am VERY fortunate to be where I am and keeping my job going. My department surely knows about this little joint. And other folks in the office may have dropped in here once in a while. (Reveal yourselves, lurkers!!!)

Search me and I’m every elsewhere. I can’t hide.

And you know? I’m proud of that. I’m proud to be a part of a global community. It’s something I feel I’ve always been a part of. That whole fascination with airports and foreigners. The first taste of cultural ambassadorship at the International Summer Village in Australia at 12. And all that travels later on in life.

I never feel like I belong to only one country or culture. I feel that I belong to the world.

That’s why when this blog took off to a wider circle, not just my peers, I didn’t panic and stop. That’s why I joined Thai-Blogs to write some more. That’s why I’m doing Moo Swap over at Flickr.

That’s why I am not ashame of my “net reps”. Whatever it may be. It’s a part of who I am.

And that brought me to the next point, what I want to do career-wise.

(Boss Lady - If you’re reading, no need to worry. I’m not running out on you. Yet. ;-D)

My goal in life is to become a professional student.

I would like to make enough money to be able to afford to go to school forever. Just part time, I know I have to make a living still. But I’d like to be able to continue to take classes on whatever interests me.

As for a job, the one I have now is pretty damn near perfect. I get to play with the web, with graphic design, with writing, and with event coordinating. I even get to throw parties in the office of 30+ and get to know most of them. All the while, we’re doing good for the community. All the things that I love! The commute is hellish, made a lot better by the bus. That is probably the only thing I don’t 100% enjoy.

So thank “Walk the Plank” Amy–and gods–for this gig.  She planted me here and knew exactly how well I’d get on. Hopefully, my big mouth and “net rep” isn’t going to fail everyone.

Jane of All Trades needs to utilize everything she has or she gets bored. That is probably why it’s been hard finding a job. I’m just too fuckin’ picky.

That and probably this blog. Hahah!

A coworker came over with this:

“Can you help me open this thing up?” she asked. “It’s out of staples and I don’t know where it opens.”

I picked up the thing. And…

Um. Yeah.

*

Then Brandon sent me this picture with the title: “No, we can’t buy one of these for home.”

It’s been a quiet and relaxing weekend so far. You know, the 2 days break from the daily grind that feels like a 7 day vacation? One of those.

We spent an hour at a client’s house in the morning. It was half work half social call, so that was fun. I ran all sorts of errands in the early afternoon, much enjoyable and productive alone time. The rest of the afternoon was a mixture of doing laundry, taking a nap, watching TV, and reading my Dresden Files book.

I cooked dinner to Scrubs Season 1 Disc 2 and we sat down to watch it together. Many occasions I almost snorted wine out of my nose.

Who would I choose between Dr. Cox and Dr. House? Dr. House inched out on the fact that he isn’t too goofy looking. Plus the British accent. Heh.

Brandon went to bed early. His stomach was bugging him. So I was up reading blogs and writing one for Thai-Blogs on that silly picture I took with the Spicy Thai potato chips. I also caught my brother Onk online so we chat for a while.

Around midnight, B came out of the bedroom. Apparently, the F-Bombers in the next apartment complex gathered in a circle by their basketball hoop to, well, yell fuck this and fuck that at each other. Last weekend, they were fucking playing basketball at midnight and a few times more at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. We called the cops on them already. And here we were again. Dumb fucks.

Needless to say, we were up quite late, waiting for the usual neighborhood quietness to return. But then again, we didn’t roll out of bed until 10.

LOVE. QUIET. WEEKEND!

Thank god we don’t do Easter. LOL.

040507_0836a.jpg

Originally uploaded by theoakmonster.

This little Monkey followed me out of Starbucks!!

10% of his purchase goes to Conservation International.

Last night was totally and utterly out of this world fun. Let me demonstrate by showing you the last picture of the evening…

It was a fan-fucking-tastic last hoorah I’ve thrown to date. Well, it helps when Celeste got our “Screw you guys! I’m outta here!” Amy this little concoction.

Yes, Amy did “walk the plank” and she walked it VERY well. And I’m not even going to tell you if this was taken before or after our little department walked the plank…

As much fun and debauchery we had last night, it doesn’t even come close to the amount of fun we’ve had the past 2 years in and out of the office with Amy.

There’s a LOT of stories in the past 2 years I have known Amy I don’t even know where to begin. I’m sure if you scour this blog up and down the block, you’ll find something Amy contributed.

This woman I originally dreaded wasn’t all that scary. Fuck, she wasn’t scary. Perioud! Seriously, I thought she’d be very professional and strict and all that she was going to be nice to me but make my life miserable in my first turn to the corporate-ish world.

As it turns out, she IS professional but other than that, goodness gracious, this woman is AMAZING! (No offense, the original ‘Mazing Amy!) Down to earth. Hilarious. And all in all awesome.

Amy actually has become like an older sister I always wanted. She was the first one in the office I told about my life on the blogosphere. I can go to her to talk about anything from bitching about the Big Boss to begging her to ask her husband for a recipe he made at their barbeque to just shooting the breeze…or discussing Clive Owen.

Well, heck, because I have 2 Amys on my speed dial, I called her up to share embarrassing stories or ask her totally inappropriate questions on accidents a few times, thinking I had dialed Amazing Amy, my Trojan sister. That makes for quite interesting conversation the next day in the office! (So…what was that about waxing? Doh!)

Pretty much our entire team was handpicked by Amy. Not only we turn out to be an excellent team and work AND play well together, we all have become an extended family that having her leaving the company is like having a sibling moving away.

What do you mean we’re not going to see you everyday, chatting with you about your weekend and the adventures you have with your family, throwing mini Snickers and Twix to you when you’re stressed out or yelling “Vice Presidents do NOT run through the office!” at you??

All of that aside, Amy is truly the glue of our little northwest corner. Our department actually leans on her and quite frankly, we revolve around her more than the Big Boss. (We were good at letting him think we revolved around him. Hehehehe…)

The day after tomorrow will be an entire different universe for us. Well, okay. I’ll give it a week before we really feel the sting of Amy being gone. For the next week, we are going to pretend Amy went on her annual vacation abroad with her lovely family…which she is doing.

The difference is that she’s not coming back to us afterward this time.

But after that? I don’t know how we’ll deal with the void in our office and in our hearts.

“Amy! I have a question!….Amy?…Amy?

…Aw…crap.”

I’m SOOOO going to cry tomorrow.

I KNOW you’re reading this. So, you’d better make damn sure you’d be around for me say goodbye to you when I leave, and in your own word, MISSY LOU!

I’m super buzzed. A drive 5 blocks home was before the Captain (Morgan) came to say hi to my brain.

And I know someone’s reading to see if I”m going to blog drunk.

So there you go!

ETA…like 5 minutes later: Holy hell!!! The Captain is totally kicking my ass. Not quite throwing up holy hell, but if I had one more sip of anything I’d totally throw up Holy Hell.

Funny thing is, a fellow partier who shall remained nameless just emailed me all fucked up too. LOL. She KNEW I was going to either check my email or do a drunken blog. That crazy all knowing broad!!! ;-D

I am now realizing that I just pointed at my CEO and blurted out “My husband used to bodyguard for Vivid!!!” And that I owed somebody the sum of $20, a t-shirt cost that went on the main bill. Whoops. I was too buzzed to think about THAT when I paid for my tab.

Good times, kids. Good. Fucking. Times!