Surfer's Paradise

So, I am leaving Auckland. The flights, the hire car and the accommodation are booked. The date is set. All I have to do is now is sit through another 2 weeks of, well, nothing. And that's harder than you think......

I joined this company during a staff shortage. And because there was work to be done, accordingly, I did it. But since that day way back in April, the company has hired no less than 6 new people, meaning that for the last 4 weeks I've been content to dawdle, dally and lozzock about on the internet, whilst work is actually taken off me by eager new beavers (probably an unfortunate choice of words given I'm still the only man here).

The problem with this is twofold. First, if it weren't for George providing me with a few choice websites, I would have bludgeoned myself into oblivion with a hole-punch by now through sheer boredeom. In your own home, doing nothing makes you the king of your castle - revelling in your inactivity and celebrating the stationary with no expectations and therefore no reproachement or guilt.

But to do nothing when you reckon you probably should be doing something. That's different. It's disquieting and makes for an uneasy day. Which leads to my second point.

I can't prove it, and it may well be a kind of mild paranoia, but I think the fact that my days are emptier than John Leslie's Diary is breeding a kind of polite but palpable sense of resentment among people who actually have work to do.

I have indeed telegraphed my availability on a number of occasions, responding to the Kiwi's wanky buzzphrase "Phil, do you have capacity?" with the reply "Yes, I'm not busy right now", although I would have liked to reply "Yes, I am indeed capacious right now", yet work has not been forthcoming. In my defence, all I can say is: it's not my fault I'm not busy.

Anyway, I have two weeks of surfing youtube and Facebook left, and then will have to find 3 weeks of temp work before I leave Auckland on the 25th August. If anyone fancies sending me some interesting links to browse whilst I glance over my shoulder to see who can see my screen, before flicking back to an empty Excel spreadsheet and punching a few random buttons on the calculator to make it look like I'm working, please feel free.