Lucky Friday

Music: The Story by Zee Avi

To receive even one good news in a day is unusual.
But to get not one, not two, but three good news in a day is definitely a rare occurrence, for me at least.

The day started like normal, woke up at 10am.
Ate breakfast, checked my emails, and watched the latest episodes of gossip girl, private practice and greek.
Got ready to go to work at 3.30pm.

As soon as I stepped into the control room, the first thing my friend said to me was..
"Weh kita dah confirm dapat 6-man".
Omg gila bestttttttttttttttttt!!!
I was so excited but I had to contain it or else, I'd be jumping up and down and shouting like a (very happy) mad woman.
Ok a brief explanation, our roster cycle used to have 6 people but since Dec 2008 it was reduced to 5 people and let me tell you that the past 1 year and 4 months has been mentally and physically exhausting, work and social activities combined.
Working in shift is not a bed or roses, as some might think so when they only see the days I get off but what about the weekends and public holidays and raya that I have to work and the staying up all night and the troubles of trying to sleep and the fucked up body cycle and the missed weddings and gatherings and the permanent dark circles under my eyes and omg i can go on and on..., and the things that I have to sacrifice to make myself available for these things, when I can easily choose not to join but I do coz its what important to me, connections with people and spending time with friends and family.
I may not talk about it or show it much though, I think its a waste of time and energy to complain about work to the people outside when I could be doing and talking about something more fun than work.
Plus I've done enough bitching with my office mates, I don't need to do it with my friends, most wouldn't understand anyway.
I eventually stopped bitching at the office too coz it was too draining and I was starting to get demoralized with all the bitterness surrounding the atmosphere.
So you can see how this single piece of news was enough to make my day, no, make that the rest of my year!
Haha.
Everything will be back to normal soon.
My boss said "Kalau blackout pun tempat ni sure still terang sbb muka korang semua bersinar-sinar!"
Well saiddddddddddddd!!

So then after hand over shift, checked my office email and surprise surprise, the day got even better.
My visit to the Western Power Control Center in Perth is on its way to being materialized!
I told my boss that I'm going for a vacation there next month and is it possible if i make a private/unofficial visit to their control room.
I just inquired for the sake of it, didn't think I'd get anything out of it.
But then my boss said he had contacts there and he will try to get in contact with the appropriate persons for me.
Still I wasn't really hopeful.
The WPSO didn't have any obligations to accomodate me, I mean its not like its an official visit where a TNB delegation goes over there for a technical/friendly visit between utilities right.
But there it was, in front of me, the emails exchanged between my boss and his counterpart from WPSO, cc-ed to me.
This is great news!! To be able to go see how other control centers operate and to get to know other Grid System Operators.
We've had GSOs from PLN (Indonesia) and EGAT (Thailand) before but I've never gotten the opportunity to meet them as I had to work when they came over to visit TNB.
Ok although this visit is still yet to be confirmed, but at least I can see the chance that it might actually happen right! Fingers crossed!

They day continued and suddenly I received an email from AirasiaRedTix (the ticketing office that's handling online sales for Zee Avi's gig tonight).

There are 10 winners and I'm one of them, yeay!
Actually, I had a feeling I would win the tickets.
The contest was opened after I bought my tickets to the show.
You had to take a picture of an item that is precious to you and trade with them and a give brief description/explanation for free ZA tickets.
I wasn't interested at first coz I didn't think I had anything worth trading for right?
The contest ended Thursday at midnight, and I submitted my entry on Thursday evening.
These are what I offered them.

My precious ticket stubs. Its only 2 of the 4 that I've ever kept from all the gigs and concerts I've ever been to.
I thought of giving all of them the other two is Weezer's and Matchbox Twenty's.
But there weren't anything meaningful I can say about those 2 concerts.
Of course I like them but it didn't have the wow factor.
This is the email that I sent.

This is the second time I've won a contest. The first time was after SPM when all I did was listen to Hitz.fm all day and I called in and won rm400 that time. That was pretty awesome actually. Free money baby. Actually, I was supposed to get something from Red.fm. Sometime last month they called me..
I'm registered with Red.fm a longgggg time ago and so whenever they give the cue to sms for a contest, I can simply text the number without giving them any information and the announcers will choose to call anyone from the list of people who sent the text to them coz they have these people in their database already, something like that i think.
So I was on the way to work at 8am in the morning on a weekend and was listening to Red.fm and it was cue to sms for the anwer 10 questions correctly in 1 minute contest.
And whaddaya knowww.. they blardy called me lah..
The thing was, I was actually on the phone speaker with my boss at the time and suddenly I had to answer my cell phone to JD and Dilly shouting.. "Shakirahhhh Shakirahh!!!" you know.. the tune from Hips Don't Lie..
Thank god my other friend belum balik lagi so he took over talking to the boss for me hhahaha.
I had no idea whether it was live or not.
I didnt even know anything about the contest, suka hati je sms on cue hahahahahha.
So anyway, I only managed to answer 5 questions kot. And got 2 wrong.
Yeah yeah.. how the hell should I know what's the capital of Ethiopia???? Heheheh
(Btw, its Addis Ababa, now i know lah!!)
They took my details after that and said they'll call me sometime next week to tell me where to pick-up my goodie bag.
But I've never gotten that call up to this day.
Well, doesn't matter really.

I digress.
So with 2 free tickets, offered mine to D and Tel (tak amik untung ok! if it were to some other unimportant people in my life, would've sold them for RM55 the original selling price without discount.. kalau lagi mata duitan aku boleh je jual RM70 ke kan.. hahahaha)
And last night after I came home from work I saw this on fb:

I've never introduced myself as Kirah to these people before. suka hati je diorang ni kan!

p/s: I don't really value the ticket stubs that much, but I thought it was the perfect thing for this contest, that's why I was almost confident I'd win the tix. But because they announced the results quite late, supposedly by 12pm on Friday but I only knew about at 5pm, so I thought, ok so I didn't win it after all.  But what I said about those concerts are definitely true :)