tales from an ordinary world

2002-03-15

Things found whilst cleaning up old files this evening :

• The resignation letter from when I quit my first job, in a file called bye.doc, which simply said (minus formalities at the top of the page) :

  I have accepted a job in [company B] as a [insert role here], starting on the 7th of October. After an enjoyable two and a half years at [company A], I feel it is time to move on and apply my skills in slightly different ways, in order to better myself. I am extremely grateful for the experience I have gained while working with XYZ, and wish the company all the best.

• A WAV file containing the sound of a Currawong.

• A copy of the "so long and thanks for all the fish" message from the maintainer of the old UWP lyrics archive when it shut down (1996 ?).

• My goofey finger information from sometime in 1996, that mentioned, at the end :

  Most Recently Bought CD : Intifaxa, by Muslimgauze
  Most Recently Bought Book : On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
  

• A message from a friend via goofey, saying :

  i want a cat simply cause i had a weird dream where i had a cat and it was fun :P

• Lots of old Emacs or (mostly) XEmacs config files.

• The playlist for one of the radio shows I did back at Monash (the 1998-12-07 one that's mentioned over yonder).

• An old .plan file, with the words to Hank Williams' Ramblin' Man, and my PGP key.

• An address of an old overseas ICQ friend, to whom I'd send a postcard.

• A quote from Laurie Anderson :

  "'there are ten million stories in the Naked City...'
  ...only, no-one can remember which one is theirs..."

• A copy of RFC1945 (HTTP 1.0), which, going by the date, I'd pulled down for a read just before starting a new job.

• A Staalplaat catalogue.

• One or two conversations with ex-girlfriends. Thankfully I no longer log messages in my instant messengers these days - I used to be scared of forgetting stuff, but these days I've become frightened of remembering.

• A goofey message from another friend :

  Sorry about this. But how do you make the files in Unix writable again??

• A quote from Naked Lunch :

  William: "What do you mean it's a literary high?"
  Joan: "It's a Kafka high. It makes you feel like a bug."

• Old party invites, from 1996 (I went to lots of parties, mostly involving geeks, that year).

• A paragraph or so from Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, which I'd read back in 1996 :

  Our Wednesday afternoon picnic, she called it.
  "Everytime we come here, I feel like we're on a picnic."
  "Really ? A picnic ?"
  "Well, the grounds go on and on, everyone looks so happy ..."
  She sat up and fumbled through a few matches before lighting a cigarette.
  "The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. The time breezes by. That's like a picnic, isn't it ?"

• A file called words.txt, with the following in it (if only I knew the significance of having these words together like this) :

  desolation
  groovy
  odd
  quite
  lydia
  hug
  yuki ("snow")

• The contents of my first internet purchase, an order from CDNow in mid-1996 (the two Information Society CDs were for a housemate :

                                                  Quantity  Price  Ship Date
    1)UNDERWORLD : DUBNOBASSWITHMYHEADMAN            CD  1  15.36            
    2)INFORMATION SOCIETY : HACK                     CD  1  13.97            
    3)INFORMATION SOCIETY : INFORMATION SOCIETY      CD  1  13.97            
    4)UNDERWORLD : SECOND TOUGHEST IN THE INFANTS    CD  1  14.96s           
  
   Total # items: 4                             Subtotal $  58.26    
                                   Shipping and Handling $  16.38
                                                     Tax $   0.00
                                                   Sales $   1.00-
                                                   TOTAL $
                                                   73.64

• A goofey message from a friend. If only I could remember who those two people were, and why they wanted to meet me :

  Hey, are you free on Monday night for dinner?
  Tuck Lye and Kok Mun REALLY WISH to meet you.
  Venue: Meet outside the travel agency at Village Centre (City)
  (ie. near dragon boat restaurant)
  Food: Shanghai Noodle Place (negotiable for change) :)
  Time: 7:00 pm
  Let me know, ok? Ta.

• text files with snippets of indonesian, or cantonese, that various net friends taught me, once upon a time.

• An old, old joke :

  How many people does it take to change a lightbulb on Usenet?
  1 to say the light's out, 100 to say "Yes, I noticed that", and 1,000 to post requests for FTP sites with free software that replaces lightbulbs.
  Meanwhile, it's still dark.

• A rather memorable goofey message from a friend, while stoned:

  this keybo2ward tasteds y8mmy !

• Lots of random small work offers from people, all of which I'd politely turned down because I didn't have quite enough random faith in myself.

• ...not to mention the hundreds of tales of sadness, happiness and in-betweenness, from far too many net friends.