Aliens Have Landed!

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

I went into work today and this was the headline on the newspaper - they've been talking about this "travel bubble" for a while but the resurgence of covid in Australia put paid to that. 

It would be good if we could get it open again. This time last year, I was sort of thinking of taking Caro to Sydney for a long weekend. Maybe it will be back on the cards again by mid 2021.

But this should not be the headline because - ALIENS HAVE LANDED!

I learned this in our fortnightly BA meeting. It's an incredibly touchy-feely meeting and you would effing hate it. For me, I have to remind myself that I'm getting paid $110 an hour just for sitting there. That helps. 

The fortnightly BA meeting always starts with "the shout outs" wherein BAs around the room credit people for doing their effing JOB for god's sake. 

It starts to sound a little bit like an Oscar acceptance speech. "I'd like to shout out to Dave," says Man, "for helping me draft the business case, and also shout out to Stan for all his encouragement and support and also to all those little people who always believed in me."

That's what I hear anyway. I'm a bit cynical like that.

There were a few other items and then - according to the agenda - the meeting was handed over to Shahnaz who would be leading us in 35 minutes of "Fun Activities".

(This sounds exciting until you realise there's no nun outfits or French ticklers or buckets of syrup, so how much fun can it be really?)

But back to Shahnaz. There were two rounds of fun. 

ROUND ONE: Try and convey the name of a film using only emojis. But 3/4 of us didn't have our laptops. And no-one could think of anything. Also oops Zoom doesn't have emojis.

Okay then. That was fun. 

ROUND TWO: Aliens Have Landed! In this fun game, we split into teams! Two of us are aliens who SPEAK NO ENGLISH and so the other person has to try and convey the operational priorities of Kainga Ora as an organisation to them WITHOUT USING ENGLISH WORDS!!

Everyone looked at everyone else. I sensed the word "F***" hovering over us in a giant thought bubble. 

And anyway, the thing IS, we all already KNOW the operational priorities of Kainga Ora. Because we all work for Kainga Ora. 

"Do you mean like, 'Pictionary'?" said someone.

"No, Aliens Have Landed," said Shahnaz. As if this was obvious.

Then she looked around the room for us all to start.

"Maybe we could try the emojis thing again," said someone. He tried to prove his point by cutting and pasting emojis into Zoom. 

"How's that?" he said. 

Zoom converted the emojis to complete gibberish. 

"Oh," he said. "Hang on, I'll try something else..."

"Aliens have landed?" suggested Shahnaz.

"Wait, wait..." said the man. And then pasting a whole load more gibberish into Zoom.

"Aliens have landed?" repeated Shahnaz.

Someone decided to humour Shahnaz and drew a picture of newly-built housing with WHAT LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE a queue of dildos waiting to go in. 

It was a bit like Pictionary!

"Okay, great, now for the next team," said Shahnaz, desperate to beat this idea to death with a rock.

Man Who Had Been Posting Emojis typed in the phrase "MAHI TAHI" which is a Maori phrase you see on posters all over Kainga Ora. It means, "working together". 

"There you go," he said. "We didn't use English."

Shahnaz seemed somewhat crestfallen. "I had put down 35 minutes for the Fun Activities," she reminded us. "But the whole meeting has only taken 20 minutes. I guess you guys can have 40 minutes back."

I didn't need to be told twice. But don't knock Aliens Have Landed. I got paid $33.33 for that. 

S.