Faceless

Faceless (adjective) - without a face(book page)
[from the official RockFob Dictionary: Insomnia Edition 2012. Italics omitted in some editions]

I deactivated my Facebook page this afternoon. Why? To free up my time to do the billion and one things that I have to do before our month-long holiday to Samoa [we interrupt this blog post to unco-dance around the room and rub your face in the fact that we three beings are going on holiday baby ... holiday ... woot ... ok, that's enough].

Back to pre-holiday reality. Where there is a billion and two things now to do. We have ten more sleeps until we fly out of this freezing cold flu-infested arty farty city of Wellington. Only ten more days to:

• finish some work for a customer that I am about a week behind on (thanks to the abovementioned flu bugs)
• write pages and pages of handover documents
• finish buying the oso for our eagerly awaiting fans (i.e. 2 years' supply of chocolates that will be compressed into an average-sized tote bag that weighs as much as King Kong but will be swung easy-breezily onto the plane to escape detection by the lovely customs officials)
• buy some summer clothes for myself (considering it's smack-bang in the middle of winter in Wellington, I would have to say even Tom Cruise would struggle to find a way out of this Mission Impossible)
• learn how to apply makeup (don't ask. I now have to dig out the email that my dear sister Donna sent me...basically a loser's guide to makeup. When will the tired washed-out zombie look ever be "the thing"??)
• spring clean the house (since someone will be house-sitting, we can't leave the house in the usual state we do when we rush out of the house for a holiday. sad face)
• do other stuff that I can't remember

So anyway, my work mailbox has finally freed up from whatever task it was doing, so it's back to the grind for me. Good times to roll on!

Virtual will

Will
noun
A legal document containing instructions as to what should be done with one's money and property after one's death


I have been planning to get my will done for a while now. I am the paranoid type and am constantly worrying about Lyla's welfare should something happen to me before she reaches adulthood. I am also the lazy procrastinating type, rescheduling my appointment with the Public Trust a few times now.

The driving force behind me getting a will done is pretty much to state Lyla's legal guardians in her parents' place. It must be someone who loves her nearly as much as I, because there ain't gonna be no money coming with that kid.

It's an embarrassing truth. When the Public Trust person starts listing my assets and liabilities, and they excuse themselves, I know they'll be having a good laugh at the back somewhere at how unbalanced my will is. I will pretty much be delegating who will be paying my loans, and I don't even have a mortgage...kalofa e. Any takers?

So I had a good think about what I do have, that may not be Public-Trust-will-worthy, but nevertheless will need to be passed on to those who will truly appreciate them. And I have come up with this.

I, Bina, daughter of the Most High God, aged 21 years, resident of Windy Wellington, do hereby revoke all my former Wills that I made when I was a pimply teenager in Saoluafata. I declare this to be my virtual Will until I actually get around to making my real will.

I maintain good health (barely), and possess a sound mind (mostly).

I hereby bequeath the following items as specified:

A. Collection of rugby pics: I leave this to Sleepless. I know you will be presented with a big burden to steward such an important collection, but I trust that you will do everything in your ability to look at the pictures every day and night and will not spare your life to keep them safe.

B. My Springboks jersey: I leave this to Stella. I don't know anyone with such limitless fanaticism, and more deserving of this most treasured article of clothing.

C. My boss: I leave him to Coconut Girl. You deserve a boss that recognises and rewards your hard work, that will give you his parking spot when you are preggo and don't want to walk from the carpark way down the road (I think you will find this perk especially useful ... lol), that encourages high standards but sets these by example. Because you're worth it.

D. My trusty laptop: I leave this to Laura. The laptop is actually from work, so make sure you get to my house first and nick it. The only condition is that you must Facebook, blog and YouTube on a daily basis with this laptop. Difficult, I know. You must put aside all that socialising and extrovert activities you are currently involved with.

E. My binoculars: I leave these to Kuaback. They will come in use for your ... ummm ... "bird watching" at the beach. Please feel free to share your findings with your virtual friends.

F. My husband: Are you serious, I don't trust him to any of you crazies!!

As witnessed by my five or so blog followers this beautiful but chilly Welly day.
Long live the queens. Over and out.

Vicious love

This evening something happened that made the day/week for a lot crazed female Manu Samoa fans. Wait for it...Ezra Taylor joined the Go the Manu Facebook page.

In case you don't know, it's this guy

I am sure the minute the hard-working and devoted page administrator* posted this detail, there was a collective sigh and hearts stopping momentarily as the 600 or so female members of the page swooned. (Just speculating though, will need to check with one of these members to verify *cough*)

Then almost immediately the stampede of gushing comments began, including invitations for Ezra into fans' houses, lives and ... well you get the point. I hadn't seen the page members so welcoming before :)

And then I saw another comment. Saying how beautiful and athletic Ezra's wife is. Ooooookaaaay. *crickets* And ... ? I have to say I literally laughed out loud. Ia ua lelei defender of the universe of Ezra's wife. Now, I have no idea who this person is and if they were related to this wife or if they were offended by the comments/suggestions/invitations. But I found it hilarious. Like the fanatics give a care about wives, I mean, come on. I'm sure he (Ezra, not the friend) was flattered by all the attention and love he was getting, as vicious as some of it might have been. Lol! And it's all just silly and fun and nobody is really gonna hunt him down ... right ...?

Anyway, that's my story. I didn't want to stir the pot on the page by adding my half a cent, especially after the admin diplomatically smoothed things over. I gotta say though, some people are just tuned to a completely different station.

Go the Manu! I still love you lots. In a purely platonic way. Ua ma laia, go back to your wives.

----------------------------------------

* I don't know what the administrator is like, but I have credited her with some of my attributes :P

FB shorts

Lyla has come down with a chest infection/sinus infection/asthma combo. Note to self: don't tempt Murphy by saying things like 'This winter has been quite mild', or he will slap you around with his law. So it's been less blogging and more Facebook stalking for me the past few days, as it's easier to do in the little bursts of spare time.

Here a few interesting/funny/thought provoking (yes, I am still talking about FB) things I came across.

Go the Manu
 

Go the Manu















If you are not a technical guru or rugby purist, but an avid supporter (or extreme stalker type supporter even) of the greatest rugby team in the world (subjective), then this is the page for you. It has all the basic components of a supporters page:

• team photos



• game schedules



• pre-game team line-up



• details of which pools the team will be swimming at (that's right...pool as in swimming pool, not a competition grouping)



• hilarious and/or angry comments (depending on the result of the latest game) from other crazed/delusional/extremist fans



• opportunity to present questions for player interviews

Chemistry funnies
 

"Hey, know any good jokes about sodium?" "Na"












Caution: Contains extremely geeky Chemistry puns

If you think the periodic table is a schedule of monthly hormonal cycles, then it would be best to avoid this page.

I quite enjoy the puns that people post on this page. I admire their wit (or is it lack of better things to do). I don't ever plan on commenting on the page though, for fear of being shot down by those waaaaay more geeky than I. When chemistry geeks get angry at you for not subscripting the numbers for a chemical formula...it ain't pretty.

Reminder
This is day 3 of working from home as Lyla's too sick for daycare. She has been driving me up the wall with her whining and constant demand for attention (*cough* love). Then I see the FB status of a friend, a single mum of 2 little boys, saying one of her boys has bad tonsillitis and they've been up all night and he might be going for surgery. Oh shucks, now I feel like a drama queen. Puts things into perspective. A little bit more gratefulness and a little less selfishness can do wonders. And so does prayer...so I'm praying for you Xavy!

Blast from the past
There are quite a few photos and posts on my News Feed about the annual Sootaga, which is like a convention for the Samoan Students Associations from the different universities in New Zealand. It reminds me of my uni days at Canterbury. And how I refused to join such an association, because it consisted mainly of NZ-born Samoans, and I was a real Samoan...a Samoan from Samoa...real Samoa, not American Samoa. What a narrow minded turd I was. In my last year of uni most of my real Samoan friends were gone, either graduated or failed the previous year on a break, and it was during that time I came to befriend many of these NZ-born Pacific Islanders. I came to appreciate the realness to them of their culture and roots. I even frequented the Pacific Islanders study room, and for that got mocked by another sufferer of I'm-a-real-Samoan-and-you're-not syndrome. Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.

Right. Back to FB stalking.

Of course it's wrong

I just saw something on Facebook that has given me a very bad twitch. Worse than those Osama spam videos, or the text language that youngsters use while typing (don't even get me started on that). The crime? The misuse of the word 'of' in Kiwi lingo, like for example - "I should of known" or "I could of brought some more". What. The. Fridge.

I don't know the history of this obscenity, and pardon me for seeming like a grammar Nazi, it just gets on my nerves. It makes my eye literally twitch...which is why it's taking so long to type this. Earlier this week I found out that I wasn't suffering alone with this, and it seemed to be my fellow Samoan-born-and-raised-and-now-living-in-NZ Facebookers that firstly noticed this was happening, and secondly found it extremely...for lack of a better word - weird. Oh wait, here's a better word - gross.

Ok, now I sound mean. Which was not my intention. Let's go back to the beginning. I just saw an FB "friend" post a status about some Californian man making some silly prediction about the world ending tomorrow. It had turned into a nice little discussion and some interesting points were brought forward, then this post happened - "how would he of ever known this?". Now I have completely lost interest in the rest of the content, and every time I check out my FB News Feed it is all I can see. Would of. Would of. Would Of. WOULD OF. Argh!!!

It took all of my (little) self control to not comment saying "Did you mean 'would have' instead of 'would of''?".
I don't want the be the cow that killed the buzz. Besides, it's likely no one would know what the hell I was talking about. And when people are having serious Bible discussions about the return of Jesus and all that, in perspective this really doesn't matter, right? Well...it matters to me. And now I've had my little vent, I will go back to FB and click 'x'->'Hide this post' and put this behind me. Until I see the next 'of' offence...

Thanks for listening. This is so much cheaper than getting a shrink, right?