A lot of people hate them, but if I have the time I don’t mind a chat with a telemarketer although I wouldn’t ever buy anything from one.
Sometimes I like to lead them on a little, but my favourite game of all is playing the I’m really having difficult understanding what you are saying. I’ll usually pick a certain thing they say, the more unimportant the piece of information the better, and just ask them to repeat it, or ask them lots of questions about it, or pretend you just don’t get it, they’ll try to move on but I don’t let them.
But my newest, and most favourite game to date, is to see how quickly you can get them to hang up on me. I have rules though, I can’t attack them, can’t abuse them, can’t be angry or anything, but just have to be reasonably polite.
So basically I play the I don’t understand you card until they get frustrated and hang up, but I don’t say that I can’t understand them but rather be polite and ask them to repeat themselves or explain it better, or repeat the word/phrase incorrectly back to them and ask if that’s what they said.
I didn’t think it was all that possible to get them to hang up on me, but it seems it is, yesterday I had one indian lady who called and her opening line was ‘Hi I’m calling from VIP Tel’ or something like that, now it took me most the conversation to work out she said VIP Tel, I though she was saying wepatel or something. Anyway I was able to get her to hang up in 2 minutes 20 seconds and the whole conversation was me repeating what I thought she said the company name was and her trying to correct me and say what it really was. At one point she tried to just move on, but I wanted to know the company name, so she didn’t get pass me trying to understand the company name before she gave up and hung up.
So lately I’ve gotten myself a few small website jobs, a little bit of freelance I suppose you could call it.
I thought I had kind of lost my passion for a lot of the designing and building of websites and that kind of stuff, but man it’s different when you’re doing it for yourself, I’ve enjoyed it a lot more. And kind of hope to get a little more in the future.
It happened! We have a baby girl! Little Evie Grace Dicker was born at 11:26pm, Saturday September 6th 2008, weighing in at 3.95kg and 52cm long.
Fi did a completely awesome job in labour. Fi will be the first to admit that she doesn’t have many stories of physical perseverance, and she doesn’t really have a high pain threshold but she handled it like a true champion! And… wait for it… no drugs! A lot of hot water and a little bit of gas, but no drugs! Fi now has the biggest story of perseverance and pain tolerance that a person can achieve.
It was all very exhausting, and we’re only now starting to catch up on some sleep. She’s feeding and settling quite well at present, we hope it lasts!
There are plenty of stories to tell, and maybe I’ll chronicle some, or you can ask me and I’ll bore you to death with them… but for now here’s a couple of photos to wet your appetite.
I’ve been keeping a quiet eye on the ‘end of the world’ experiment that some scientists are running at the moment (some news items about it here: here )
They’ve got a live webcam of the experiment running here: here
Um, hello? Has anyone spotted a problem with the rationale in taking down the “want longer lasting sex?” billboards? [The SMH article is here if you want more background]
The argument is that these billboards - which are text only - might be over-sexualizing our children. Now it might be the case (if they can read) that they’ll want to ask their parents what that sign is all about, but hey, kids start asking “where did I come from?” long before they learn to read…
But really, we haven’t hit the real heart of the flawed logic behind the removal of these signs yet.. Here’s the big problem with the rationale: everyday I go past bus shelters, shop windows, news stands, and billboards that have all sorts of erotic images on them - half naked women in underwear, swimwear, lingerie or whatever… Men and women in seductive sexualized poses, (and who knows what they’re advertising!) and yet there is no complaint.
What’s worse? A billboard that says “sex” or a billboard that shows sex? I’ve got no problem with the text. In fact these billboards are at least giving a voice to men who have real sexual issues and need help…
I think once again we’ve missed the real issue here… Print the word “sex” and we go ballistic… Try to sell me some shoes by putting a sexy brunette in underwear with big cleavage… hey, no problem…
Personally I find the image more distracting than the word.
Dubbo RTA is a wonderful place with some very nice staff and I actually enjoy going there, most the time, which is good cause I do it as part of my job so am there quite often.
I’ve always found the RTA an interesting place, I like to watch people waiting in line and their reactions and attitudes etc. A lot of people get really annoyed that they have to wait in line for so long and some make sly comments (which I’m sure are very obvious when you hear them all the time) about this when they finally get to the counter, others are just rude and blatant about it.
I’m sure they don’t take into account that on average they only need to visit the RTA once a year and that there own transaction can take half an hour or so, some more some less, and therefore the people in front of them can each take the same time.
Anyway, I’ll get to the point…
Stephanie RIce, of Olympic swimming fame, works at the Dubbo RTA, I kid you not!!
Ok so it’s not the real Stephanie, but I reckon a dead set look alike and to prove this I have put together the following pictures, on the left you will see the swimmer, and on the right the RTA worker.
I challenge you to pick the difference…
Am I not right??
Ok, so I didn’t think it would be at all appropriate to take a photo of the RTA worker, so I had to find one that was a very good likeness to her… but hopefully you see my point…
