Personal Dork Assistant

saturday! Saturday! SATURDAY!

"Can't wait until I finish these last couple of emails so I can get outta here."

"Isn't it kinda early?" [noon-ish]

"Not when it's Saturday and I haven't even swiped my time card."

Yeah, I got to sleep in an extra hour or so before heading in to work, but then I'd stayed up an extra couple of hours on Friday night, which was not a net plus. It was Friday night already in the US, so at least there was no rush to reply to everything that came in overnight. That was good, as some of the cases were serious PITAs. Our sales guys are out in the field, and they are machine-gunning specs and info requests from the customer, and they all need answers right now because they want to deliver face-to-face. Too bad factory is taking Sundays off now. Hope Mr. Chao is having a good time in Europe on the company-sponsored tour (an itinerary which more resembles the Bhatan Death March, except for the stops for souvenirs). Even with two of us working to fill in, I didn't get out until 7:30pm Thursday night running the weekly shipping reports. Had to stay an extra half hour to finish up on Friday, too, but I was actually leaving early compared to everybody else.

Went over to GF's house after work, mostly to install the Airport Base Station that I now have handy, and to run Software Update on the neglected iBook, which was a pretty useless computer without wireless networking in the house. Well, I would've just been wasting time on the computer anyway if I were home by myself. So this was clearly a superior alternative.

The crowd on the MRT on a weekend is so different from the daily commuting grind. No anonymous crush of students in their identical uniforms, no salary-folk in their non-identical uniforms. In the morning were those of us still going in to work and those families heading out to some outdoorsy thing, with their fully prepared yet rarely used backpacks ready for any need that should arise while in the great outdoors with millions of their Taipei neighbors (Taipei-nese? Taipei-dlian?). The train mid-day were mom and dads taking the little kids for an afternoon outing. The zoo's always a safe choice now that the MRT runs right to it. On the train heading home at dinnertime (the GF already had a thing scheduled with her college friends) were the glued-together couples and the gaggles of friends looking for a good time. From previous experience, I know the late train home are packed with the late-night revelers, especially on the blue line. Ironic that I ended up getting home at almost the exact same time as the usual time I get home from work during the week. Followed uncle's suggestion and didn't punch the clock for the overtime. At least I got paid for the extra time I put in at SCCN.