telephonic joy and sadness in rice

Last week I returned a phone that I had found on the ground to its grateful owner. She is from Taiwan and she gave me these gorgeous little biscuits with my name in Kanji on them. She told me I was a wonderful person. I always think that any person would try to return a 'phone that they found, but obviously the real world doesn't work like that. It was a charming little ivory and gold Sony Ericsson phone and I searched her texts to find numbers of friends who may know her, tracked down her lecturer and found out her email address. I felt very nosey! Yesterday I put my (purple) mobile through the washing machine by mistake. Its sad little wet oblong face is blank and black. Placing it in a bowl of raw rice (thanks Google) for 12 hours at first appeared to partially revive it but it is now once more defunct. I'm lucky to have isync and a memory card so I've lost no data but it feels, in a small way, as if I've lost a friend, and found one. To have been able to give the gift of someone's phone back with all its precious pictures, numbers and messages from family is of far more value than losing my own phone which is just a lump of purple plastic/metal without its data. The biscuits are probably made of rice, too. Isn't it strange how the funniest things are linked. As luck would have it I'm due an upgrade so It'll be hello HTC Hero. I wonder if I can write applications for it in Python? hmmmmm

New year (again)

Well here is another year, and more importantly another decade. I feel like I've left the last ten years behind...officially! I find all the conversations about when the date "actually" is, whether there is a Year Zero, etc, tedious. I find this particular date handy to hang a feeling of closure on, and it feels good to me. The picture is from Udevalla in Sweden where I finally went to visit Paul.... at minus 15! Snow boots minimised the#uksnow disruption for me and worked perfectly in Sweden too. Thank goodness.

The best thing that has happened to me lately is getting a brilliant new job. 2009 was a whirlwind- moving house (of course- I do it every year don't I? did I? hmm can't remember) purple wedding, my job at BAC ending, and I'm now working and training at the same time in Flash animation and various bits of code. This is probably the first job I've ever had thats a perfect fit for my capabilities- I'd always thought I'd left it too late when I stopped programming in Basic in 1980-whatever at primary school to catch up- it appears not. I've always somehow regretted not going down the Computer Studies route... thought as my friend Paul pointed out, he likes to think of me as his friend the jeweller...not his friend the computer programmer! I suppose I'll always be a metalworking girl and aspiring gemmologist at heart, but the pure detail and predictability of code, plus of course its visual manifestation in Flash, is right up my street and I've never been happier...in fact I actually look forward to Mondays! I bet there are not many people who can say that.