On Friday, we had first aid training. We play acted the management of hysterical casualties.

My first aid buddy staggered into the room, moaning. “I’ve been hurt!”
“What happened, Andy? I can give you first aid!”
“I don’t know, there was an explosion! Oh, the pain, the pain!”

He had a red ribbon around his arm to represent bleeding. Even though it was play acting, I still had trouble thinking under pressure.

“Um. Um. Press this pad to your wound. Hold your arm up.” Then I noticed everyone around me was dealing with wounds to the leg. “Do you hurt anywhere else? Have you been hurt anywhere else?”

Moan, moan. “I don’t know! It hurts everywhere!”

I was confused and a bit panicky, even. I patted his jeans at the ankles. I didn’t know what to do. They had taught us to run our hands over clothes to see if there was severe bleeding. Our gloves would come up bloody.

Andy wasn’t really bleeding so I didn’t want to run my hands up and down his pants! But I didn’t know what to do. There was no ribbon around his ankle.

So I reached further up his pants. I patted his calf and shin. In the back of my mind, buried underneath the haze of groans and voices around me, I knew that what I was doing would normally be extremely hazardous in a normal work situation. But what could I do?

“Check the other leg!” he yelped, laughing as I almost reached his knee.

Sure enough, there was a red ribbon around his other ankle. I was so embarrassed. Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear.

Hehe.

“Wah!” Mum looked mournfully into the open fridge.

“What’s wrong, mum?”

“It’s so frustrating!”

“What is?”

“I really want to make stir-fried noodles but there’s too much food in the fridge already.”

“Why do you want to make noodles so much?”

“Because I bought them.”

Of course. It made perfect sense. “Do we have lots of leftovers because you cook too much of every dish?”

“Yes.”

“So why don’t you cook a smaller amount next time?”

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “It’s as much effort cooking a little bit as it is cooking a lot. Why would I spend time cooking only enough?”

“Oh…” I consider this. “It sounds like you need more children to eat it, then.”

“Yes!”

“Or why don’t I just invite Damjan over?”

Throughout the year, the postperson delivers mounds of tax-relevant paperwork to my door mounds of paperwork. The document proessing system at my house is as follows:

1. An envelope arrives, addressed to me. Snail mail is displayed on the lounge room coffee table.
2. If I don’t touch it within 12 hours, the envelope may be inadvertantly diverted into mum and dad’s document processing stream.
3. Usually, I open the envelope within 24 hours. Depending on how busy I think I am, I will either leave the scanned document on the table or place it in the ‘holding zone’ in my bedroom (on top of the chest of drawers).
4. If the opened envelope remains on the coffee table for another 24 hours, it may disappear again into the parental document processing queue. If it manages to find its way into my room, it will stay in the ‘holding zone’ for three days.
5. The paperwork is then moved into the third level of my desktop document tray.
6. At tax time or during the Annual Work Filing Festival, the paperwork will be filed into its final resting place — a folder, which is carefully organised by company and chronology.

As you can see, in between arriving at my house and being properly filed, there are opportunities for documents to get lost. Amazingly, I haven’t lost any tax-relevant documents yet.

“Gee whiz,” I thought. “There is no divine punishment for lazy paperwork management. No need to reform my ways, I guess.”

But the cracks are beginning to show.

Rummaging through my paperwork for my fifth tax return, I couldn’t find three dividend statements, one contract note and who knows how many bank statements.

I’ve been creative about reconstructing my costs of acquistion and franking credit. I’ve made a few stabs at donations to tax-registered charities. I’ve hesitantly put in claims for work-related laundry expenses.

Look, I think it’ll be all right — maybe two, three months jail time, tops.

Every fortnight, I’m excited about getting paid. As soon as I see the bank balance jump up on Thursday afternoon, in a mad delighted rush, click, click, click, I transfer 70% of it into my savings account.

Oh, thrill! Thrill!

Jenny works in our International Development Group. Today, she made her third speech for Toastmasters.

I want to tell you about someone who made a big impact on my life. Eight years ago, I arrived in Australia. I was no more than the wife of a young Chinese student. I knew I had to find a job. But I had never written an English letter or even a resumé. Who would lend me a computer to do this? Who would proofread my broken English? I was very doubtful anyone could help me.

I was lucky. Some wonderful Australians at a neighbourhood learning centre let me use their computer for two hours. They read over my letter, and they also sent me to a training session to teach me how to do interviews. This was my first experience in this country.

I found the perfect job and began writing my letter. It was for “an ASX listed company”. That is what the advertisment said.

Oh, I was very, very confused. What was ‘ASX’? It wasn’t in the dictionary. I thought, “This must be a very normal word that everyone knows.” ASX, ASX. How could I find out?

The learning centre people gave me a phone number of someone who might help. The number was for ‘Ray’. I called the number and this is what I heard.

“Hello, Ray speaking.”

“Hello. My name is Jenny. I am writing a job application but I need help. Someone told me you could tell me what ‘ASX’ means.”

After a short silence, Ray said, “Well, Jenny. ASX stands for the Australian Stock Exchange.”

And do you know what I found out then? Ray… Ray was the National Director of the ASX. I was very, very embarrassed.

But not only did he answer my question, he also asked me to come to that tall ASX building on Collins Street so that he could look at my resumé. After speaking to me, he took my resumé and at the top wrote his own name and phone number as my reference.

Well, of course I got the job after that!

I lost my sunglasses last week. I lost them after wearing them out on site. I loved those sunglasses. They let me see better. I wore them to Mt Buller. I wore them in USA and Taiwan. I wore them in Tasmania. I wore them while driving. And I wore them on site.

I haven’t lost anything this significant for a while. I should be thankful for at least that.

I made an appointment with the optometrist today. She told me that my eyes were healthy and had not gotten worse, as I had feared. All those hours sitting in front of the computer at work seems not to have damaged me yet.

Right eye: -2.25 shortsightedness, -0.75 astigmatism
Left eye: -0.25 shortsightedness, -0.25 astigmatism

(What does it mean?)

Then I got to choose my new sunglasses frames. They’re pink.

Pink! Pink! Pink! Piiiiiiiiink!

I looked in horror at the fax receipt in my hand.

The machine had spat out a reduced copy of my letter.

Confronted with my handwriting in miniature, it was only then that I realised that I write in Comic Sans.

The office (mansion) is quiet.

Everyone has left for the party at Federation Square (ball at the Palace).

I’m not going (can’t go).

I booked myself into an Engineers Australia workshop (My step-sisters and step-mother laughed when I asked if I could go). No party (ball) for me.

Can’t concentrate (It hurts inside). Still have half an hour to work (I’m a slave).

Argh (Weep).

My friends know that I’m a sharemarket gambler. It looks like someone has been gambling on me! I’m listed in Blogshares!

A friend tells me that he habitually looks at the ground while walking. I usually look up and around. The trade-off seems to be between the rate at which you run into people and poles, versus the rate of tripping over footpath cracks and small dogs.

Since the start of this week, though, I have spent nearly all my walking time looking at the ground.

Don’t worry, I haven’t turned into an introverted mathematician. Rather, I’m dreaming of a day I can use my inline skates as a form of transport. In anticipation of that day, I’m inspecting the condition of the pavement along my normal walking routes.

It’s surprising how easy it was to change my habits. Today, I kept forgetting to look up and around me while I walked. I’ve become accustomed to seeing pavement rush by underneath my black Mary Janes.

One day, I hope to see the pavement pass by even faster. One day, I will feel confident skating in the real world.

I’ve booked myself in for inline hockey lessons next week. My rationale? There’s nothing like fear of letting the team down to motivate me to learn how to turn and stop in a hurry.