Still standing

Last week I made the very drastic decision to cancel my cable TV. Now, I can't live without TV but these days with Netflix, HBO and other online services I don't see the point in paying £55 per month for watching live TV which is basically just five minute commercial breaks very 10 minutes and a sprinkling of the odd old movie here and old TV show there. I really don't.

So, I started by pledging my allegiance to Netflix which just launched last month, and that's how this all started. Then today I called to cancel my cable TV and it should be mentioned here, that the same company supplies me with Internet and has supplied me with cable TV and Internet for over 10 years. I digress. What happened then, was me explaining for five minutes how I felt my needs had outgrown their cable TV and how there was nothing they could do to make me stay. Not an uplifting conversation for the desperate call centre monkey on the other end of the line, but that's what he's there for. For showering me with freebies and telling me how valuable I am to them. Why he didn't do that or tell me how he would wish I would reconsider, I don't know, because I've been a loyal cash cow for them for over 10 years now.

Anyway, the call centre monkey (who I assume is either baboon or howler monkey) was very clinical about it all, and then told me in no certain terms that they'd be cancelling everything. Including my Internet. I protested, the monkey ignored. He then continued on about what was going to happen and mentioned again about the Internet being cancelled. I protested, said that I'd like to keep that. The monkey told me I couldn't and that if I didn't have the cable TV then I couldn't get the Internet and I'd have to find that somewhere else. So we spent the best part of 10 minutes with me asking in east and the monkey answering in west and then I decided to go with it. I asked what I should do about that then, and repeated it three more times.

He ignored me and the phone call ended unresolved as to what I am going to do about my Internet because by December 30 I will no longer have any cable TV or Internet. What irks me more than feeling like I was kicked out of a saloon with peanut shells on the floor by a bull dyke in a pair of ill fitted and hideously ornate country western boots was that at no point did he say that I could contact their sister/daughter/mother company TDC because they supply broadband/cable Internet as well. I felt like I'd just been rejected by the leper guy with two extra fingers and the monobrow over in the corner. I decided to check things out and how now ordered Internet so that I should be with Internet before I'm kicked out on the street like a common street ho.

On the plus side, I now get to write an angry letter and in very unrelated news I've got the results back on my exams. I am now officially a legal secretary and I passed with the second highest mark. Yay for me.

Alone I'm not

Things at work have been hectic for a while and on top of added work pressure we also said goodbye to our team leader who transfered to another team. This left a vacancy in our team that a few of my colleagues fought to get but alas for them they brought in someone new. An outsider. She's about 4 years younger than me, married, has a child, travelled around the world and has literally sailed the 7 seas in one of those big wooden ships with the huge sails that need to be hoisted or whatever you call it and finally she's also just passed her bar examination is a full fledged lawyer. She's 30 years old and completely lovely. If she didn't wear gorgeous footwear I'd totally hate her.

Anyway, with new people comes introductions. All of us (we are 6 people her included) sat around this massive boardroom table and had that "get to know each other" thing. The kind where you don't know what and how much to say. It's not like they can remember anyway. This was about a month before she joined. Well, we sat there and people were talking about children, pests pets, spouses, age, where they lived, hobbies etc. Then it came to me, and this is not word by word because remember, this was a little over a month ago.

I'm Pete, I'm 29 years old, live in the city centre, I have a brother and a niece and nephew, spendt a year and a half at our Copenhagen branch and I work with collection from our debtors to whom we've financed and leased cars and boats. When I'm not doing that, I'm tweeting, facebooking, watching trashy tv, reading naughty books and being a filthy, raging hormonal gay reading books, travelling, interested in film history, studying to become a legal secretary and hanging out with friends.

This was pretty a pretty decent spin if you ask me. Even with the obvious stutter at times because I'm not good with meeting new people for the first time and having all eyes on me. Ask me something completely work related and I'll be waving my arms and talking for hours but that's not about me then. Our new team leader then started a month later. Then there was some discussion about what I was doing on a Friday night and I was asked "are you single?". Yes, I'm single, living by myself, call it what you will really. Frankly I didn't think I'd care whatever people called it. That is until another colleague said I was alone. Just alone. Not living alone, no, no, alone. Just alone. She might as well have said I was lonely.

This actually annoyed me a bit because I'm not 'alone' or 'lonely'. I have friends, people around me, I just don't happen to live with anyone. If that's a choice I've made or past/future boyfriends who decided it, that is irrelevant. I like being by myself, living by myself or whatever you call it. Living by myself has many advantages in my opinion and I don't think I could share. As a child I wasn't good at sharing my toys with the other children either. Anyway, I told myself 'smile through it dear, smile through it' and I did. Of course she didn't mean anything by it, but she's been married for so long that if she was living by herself she'd probably feel lonely and alone. Bless her.

Another term I don't like is 'Singleton'. I don't live in Singleton so no, I'm not a Singleton.

New Beginnings (maybe)

Last year during the summer I decided that I needed to educate myself and given the nature of my work, I settled on legal secretary. My boss approved it and work paid. So for the past year and a few months I've been studying, tweeting, Facebooking and studying some more, culminating in the written exams I took part in on Thursday (to which I won't know the result until the beginning of December). I guess my decision to improve my skills came partly from a round of sacking (not the good kind) at my workplace and partly because I felt that it was time for something new. The fact that I could do this course whenever I wanted to and not having to show up for classes was just a massive bonus. Now if only I could stop overanalysing the things from my exams and move on.

This is just some of my draft scribbles of nonsense that I came up with during my studies

So work and studying, what else is new at Chez Pete? Well, not too much which my Twitter followers can attest to, but I did redecorate somewhat.

As you can tell, I like black, white and red. I really do, but I also like this hyper jade green

 

 

Well enough about me, did you missed me?