The Wonders of The Mind

I had previously written a post about our subconscious mind. Today I have another story to add to that.

Yesterday, I had written quite an important email at about 7pm. I didn't think about the email at all afterwards. Then when I went to bed at about 11:30pm, just as I was about to sleep, an image flashed into my head. It was of the email, and the image was crystal clear and I could read every word on it. My short term memory is quite good but I'm not one of those people with photographic memories. However, I saw this email so clearly, and had spotted a mistake with my address that I had written. I thought about going to sleep but my curiosity got to me. I got up, fired up the computer and started my email. Just like I had imagined, the address on the email was wrong. I had no clue how I had memorised the whole email. This was the first time this has happened to me, or that I can remember anyway. If I had spotted the email mistake earlier, I would have fixed it. But it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to sleep. I think my subconscious mind had spotted it but since I was pre-occupied in my waking hours, I didn't hear it. Not until I was going to sleep when my mind was quite blank did it come to the fore. It's the same sensation as when you are trying to remember something but can't. Then as you turn your attention to something else, that thing you wanted to remember pops into your head.

The second weird thing that happened today also concerns my strange mind. I went from the photographic memory high to wondering if I was becoming forgetful. I had gone to lunch, and had take my drink bottle as usual. I always carry a drink bottle with me since I like to be hydrated. I was walking downstairs to the kitchen as usual. I went by my work mate John's desk and stopped by for a quick chat. Then I went downstairs and ate my lunch as usual. Before my lunch ended, I packed up my lunch box and bottle and left them on the table. I went across the road to the shops to get a newspaper. When I got back to the kitchen and picked up my lunch box, I noticed that my drink bottle was missing. I went around to a few usual suspects and asked them if they had taken my bottle as a joke. No one admitted it. I was getting a little annoyed but decided to go back to my desk anyway. When I got back to my desk, what did I find, my drink bottle. However, it was where I normally put it.

This started me questioning whether I had taken my drink bottle downstairs at all. I tried to retrace my steps and remember everything but there seemed to be missing parts. And even the parts where I could remember my drink bottle, I was questioning whethere they were images from previous days. Such a simple act had caused me to totally question my memory. More and more things made me question whether I had taken my bottle downstairs. For example, I remember reaching into my wallet to get some money before going to lunch, so maybe I had forgotten to take my bottle. When I got to John's desk, I remembered raising both hands so how could I have had a bottle. Then when I was eating lunch, I didn't remember drinking any water. It was really starting to get my worried. I went to John and asked him whether he saw me with a bottle. Thankfully he said he did and I was totally relieved.

All the images came flooding back to me. I could remember getting money from my wallet and then grabbing my bottle. I remember raising my hand when I had put the bottle down on John's desk. I remember drinking from my bottle at lunch and even shuffling it around. It's so weird how selective the mind can be. It had chosen all the parts that made me think I was becoming forgetful but once it was assured that I was indeed correct, all the key evidence suddenly came flooding back.

If whoever played the joke had put my drink bottle anywhere else on the desk, I would have known they were playing a joke. But seeing it in its usual place made me wonder if I had imagined taking it. I was extremely bored at work today reading Approvals Standards all day and I thought I was getting a little forgetful. When I found out I wasn't, I was quite relieved and couldn't stop laughing at how silly I was. Whoever played that practical joke got me good. It has taught me that the mind is a strange creature indeed. Sometimes you need to draw your attentino elsewhere and what you wanted to know will come to you.

A Random Post, Just Because I Felt Like It

I usually don't write posts that are scattered all over the place without a particular topic, but I just felt like writing one of those tonight. I was initially going to do a video blog but it's getting late and it takes a while to film the video, compress it, upload it to YouTube and then post it into the blog. I think I will do that tomorrow instead.

The weeks are flying by faster and faster. Work is quite good, our team is under pressure working towards a December presentation. I'm looking forward to December despite the presentation because I can't wait to go on my holiday. There's still some planning to do, such as buying interconnecting air tickets, booking hotels and deciding on where to go and what to do. You may have read how my friend and I got into that car accident just after paying for the plane tickets, I hope that isn't a sign about the trip.

I just bought a new beautiful Sony X Series 40 inch LCD TV. Its a proper high definition TV, which means it can produce 1920 x 1080 lines. In Australia, high definition has a minimum requirement of only 576 lines, which isn't really high definition in most countries. This image can be interlaced (meaning that only half the lines are broadcast in one frame, and then the other half in the next frame) which gives a slightly blurred look, or progressive (all lines are broadcast in one frame). The other formats of digital channels in Australia are 720 progressive and 1080 interlaced. Proper high definition is 1080 lines, and I can tell you, its beautiful. You can really see the difference between the various signals on a large TV. The wide screen is also great for movies and sports. You see so much more of the action.

Of course if you get a proper high definition TV, you need to get a hard disk drive recorder with dvd burner right? Right! So that's what I got as well. Now I can record shows in proper high definition and watch them in all their glory when I want and skip through all the commercials. I still haven't worked out the best way to connect the hard disk recorder so that I can get a digital signal without having the TV on since the digital tuner is in the TV.

I've been so busy lately with my secret project that everything feels so rushed. I haven't had my usual time to sit down and read everyone's blogs each day. I also only skim through the newspaper now rather than reading a lot of articles thoroughly. Hence I haven't read up on any interesting topics to discuss. I did see one article about a woman who has become a real life millionaire from playing the online game Second Life. Can you imagine that? Becoming a millionaire from playing games, and virutal games too. She owns a lot of property in that game and some other players actually pay her real money to exchange some of that virtual property. The exchange rate is US$1 for $270 Lindon dollars, Lindon being the company who made the game. Why you would want to pay real money for fake property is beyond me. But maybe that virtual property will end up being an exchangeable commodity in future, who knows. It just shows you that you can make money in anything, as long as you are one of the early adopters. Early users of blogs are the most successful and the ones making money. Once the market becomes saturated, its so much harder to crack it big and make significant impact.

Anyway, I think thats it for now for my random thoughts. Anyone have any random thoughts to add?

VFS Dinner Dance 2006

Last week was our annual company dinner dance. I have been so so busy that haven't had time to upload the photos. This year it was held in one of those function sheds along the Docklands. You can read about the food part here.

Here is a photo of the river outside and the buildings of Melbourne at night.

Inside the shed with all the tables nicely laid out. In the foreground of the photo is (from left) Dominic, Tafazal and Tafazal's wife.

Our table went with a Zorro theme. From back left we have Fei, Jessie, myself, James, Hien, Esther, Khemara, Alan. From front left we have Thanh (yes Thanh is a unisex name in Vietnamese), Tin and Wei. The only one missing from our table shot is Trung our cameraman. You will see him in the next photo though.

Here is our hard working photographer Trung taking a smoke break. Kids, do not smoke, its bad for you.

A hilarious photo of a pregnant Hien riding the horse that we made.

I'm doing my best Zorro imitation here.

Throwing my assasin forks like an expert.

It was a fun night where all of us could socialise outside of work and know each other even better. It's great to work at a place where your colleagues are also your friends.

Are Asian Women Bad Drivers Part 2

I had previously written a post called Are Asian Women Bad Drivers. In that post, I asserted that Asian women, especially those in Springvale, are pretty bad drivers. Well, now there is a follow up to that story when my friend and I felt the full force of how bad Asian women drivers in Springvale are.

My friend and I had just paid for our plane tickets at the travel agent. Then as we were leaving, he was backing his car out onto Springvale road. He had finished reversing and was about to go forward. There was previously no car behind us. But then I saw a car from the side mirror who was about to turn left out of the adjacent street. I told him to "watch out, she might not see you", but he said it was ok and that she would see us. I kept looking in the side mirror and then it all started to happen. I saw that she had looked right to see there was no oncoming traffic. But she didn't once turn her head LEFT to see if there were cars already on the road. Instead she started to turn very quickly. At this stage, my friend started to honk his horn, but to no avail. She didn't even flinch and just kept accelerating. If I was him, I would have stepped onto the accelerator and gone back into the car park. I have been driving in Springvale for a while and I know how bad the drivers are. Instead he still thought that she would see us and stop. Nope! BANG! She ran right into the back of us.

The bumper bar came off my friends car. The lady pulled into the parking spot next to us and got out saying "sorry". When we asked for her driver's license, she didn't understand the word "license". This got me suspicious about how she could get her license as the driving test has to be taken in English and she must of heard of the word license at least once. As I had written in my other post, my aunties had bought their licenses and I suspect this lady had done the same. This again just confirms how dangerous it is to buy your license. Just because you think you will only be driving short distances, it doesn't mean you don't need to know the road rules.

I will say it again, NOT ALL Asian women are bad drivers, but a large majority of those in Springvale are. There needs to be changes to the licensing system. Maybe you need to be retested every few years. Everyone could do with a refresher course on the road rules, myself included. This way, if you buy your license, you will either have to keep finding people to bribe every few years, or you will actually learn the road rules.

Here is the car in its sorry state. We had to rip off the bumper bar in the end and put it in the back seat. Also the boot wouldn't close so we had to tie it down.

Train Ride

Today I had to go to a training session in the city. I had driven to a previous training and that was a nightmare. I couldn't find a parking and in the ended up paying $38 for about 5 hours parking. Luckily I was able to claim that back from work.

So today I decided to take the train. I haven't taken the train in ages, let alone during peak hour. It's such an uncomfortable ride in peak hour. Usually when I take the train, its at night or to a sporting event. During those times, you usually have lots of space since or you have friends with you so you are chatting away. During peak hour, the people on trains are usually individuals on their way to work. Everyone is gloomy and tired. The trains are very packed, so you are uncomfortable physically, but also psychologically.

Humans need their personal space and are not good when crammed together. In general, strangers will keep a distance of between 2-3 feet from each other. Friends will talk to each other at about 1-2 feet. If someone comes closer to you than 1 foot, they are really in your personal space. Generally, most people will take a step back to free up some space, unless the two people know each other well and are comfortable in each other's prescence. Sometimes the task or environment will also dictate the proximity. For example, when you lean over someone to show them something on a computer, you are really invading their personal space. Since its usually only for a short period to click a few buttons, people will put up with it. In a train, the physical space available forces you to invade someone else's space. I tend to find that I don't know where to look. Everyone else is the same too. Mostly people stare off into the distance or out the windows. However, when you occasionally make eye contact with a total stranger, there is a really awkward feeling.

It's the same situation in a lift. It's a confined space and generally the people in it don't know each other. For that short ride, there is an edge to the atmosphere and everyone is just waiting till they get to their floor. If you want to try something really psychologically challenging, next time you go in a lift, don't face forward but instead turn your back to the door and face everyone. This means that you are really getting into people's space and I'm sure you will be extremely uncomfortable.

Back to the trains though, a lot of people now listen to music to pass the time, myself included. I, along with many many others as I had noticed today, had the tell-tale white earphones and cord sticking out. We are the Ipod brigade and are happily lost in our own little world with our music. Time passed by a lot quicked with U2 singing to me and FIR joining in later on as well. A few other people were studying their books, one girl was on her laptop, people reading the newspaper, some sleeping, and one lady knitting a sock. All of us had the goal of wasting some time while we waited to get to our destination, and to avoid making too much eye contact with complete strangers who are invading our personal space.

Busy as a Bee

Bees are always so busy buzzing around collecting pollen and making honey. They never stop working tirelessly. Lately I've felt like that too. I've been very busy, a bit stressed, but also pleased at what I have been learning and the progress achieved.

I'm going to be a bit mysterious and just say that I have started on a new venture, which I will let everyone know about soon when its less busy. But for now, I'm working very hard and have hardly had time to blog even. It's been so busy that when a friend asked me what I did last weekend, I said I couldn't remember. I really couldn't remember since I hadn't had enough sleep all week. I said to him "let me refer back to my blog to see what I did". That was totally hilarious, not only was I writing in my blog, I was also reading my own blog.

To be serious, reading my own blog isn't that silly a thing to do. Occasionally I will be browsing my blog to send people a link about something, or linking one post to another post that is revelant. Then I might see something I wrote a while ago and read it. I can't even recognise that it's my own thoughts sometimes. It just shows how different people can think when their state of mind and situation are different. When I am upset, I can see that my posts are rather down or slightly angry. Those posts remind me not to repeat the same mistakes. Some posts I read and can't help but smile, because they just remind me of some very happy times. I have to say that I'm generally not a down person and about 85% of my posts are happy ones. About 13% are unhappy ones, but those ones are about me whingeing about something. Only about 2% of posts are actually of incidents where I was upset about something. I've just made up all those percentages by the way and have no facts to back them up. If you have some time, maybe you would like to go through every post and do the statistics. I'm probably sprouting those numbers because I am in a very satisfied and happy mood at the moment, despite being very busy. Maybe I will read back in a week when I am unhappy and say, why the heck did I say 85% of posts are happy ones when clearly they aren't.

Employee Recognition Award

I was telling a friend at work today how I was feeling a lot better today. Yesterday I felt terrible from lack of sleep and I told him that my care factor about everything yesterday was zero. Having got a fairly good night sleep, I felt much better today and was back to my cheery self. Well it turned out my day was going to get even better.

We had our company communication meeting today which I had totally forgot about. Anyway, the meeting went through the usual summary of how our company was doing and what each department was up to. Finally at the end of each meeting, there are service awards, multiple of 5 years that you work at the company and occasionally some employee recognition awards. Today when our CEO was about to announce the recognition awards, I thought "here we go again, the management team give out awards to other managers, how much fun is that". Guess how shocked, and I seriously mean shocked, when I heard my name being read out. I thought there was a mistake and they meant another Thanh at work. But then they read out the project I was working on and I knew it was me. What a great surprise. To get recognition for work that I genuinely thought I did great on. The project completed on time and only used up 50% of the budget. Thats pretty good in anyone's books right.

It's not like I need formal recognition to do my job, but it doesn't hurt. I know some people at work would give an arm if they were at least thanked by their manager for a job well done. Well my manager is already great. He tells me quite often what a good job I'm doing and that's enough for me. I also constantly say how great it is to work with my current team and thats the honest truth. I have learnt so much from those guys. However, I won't knock back an official thanks. My manager had already put in my recommendation months ago when the project finished but they just got round to giving it out today. And the best part from this award, I got a pretty large gift voucher, which I will happily be spending.

Omissions of the Truth

There is the truth, and then there is a lie. Simple. Easy. Black and White. Right? Wrong! Life is generally shades of grey rather than black and white. Today I want to write about the act of omitting the truth. This is when someone leaves out something that will be detrimental to them. They are not technically lying, but conveniently leaving out things to make themselves look better.

A few weeks ago, I was waiting to talk to a friend while he was on the phone. He had ended his conversation with the other party by saying that he needed to talk to "someone". When asked again who that "someone" was, he just said "someone". I asked him why he lied for, since I was that someone and I knew the other party on the phone anyway, so he could have just said it was me. He said that he didn't want to get in the middle of things. I was totally lost and asked what he would be getting in the middle of. He said that lately myself and the other party didn't get along so well and he didn't want to choose sides. I said that was silly since no one was asking him to choose any sides. Just because I don't talk as much to someone doesn't mean I hate them. However, this small omission of truth might come back to bite me if the other party found out who the "someone" was and thought I had told my friend to stop talking to them over the phone.

My observation about how omitting the truth coming back to bite me was fully shown to me this past week. Another friend, lets call him A, had told myself and friend B something. We were very upset as it affected us as well and we called up party D and told them how angry we were. We sent emails and called party D trying to get some justice for ourselves. Party D eventually sent us the logs from themselves and friend A. It turns out that friend A had conveniently omitted some very important information, information that would have him to be partially at fault too.

When I asked friend A what exactly happened, his story slowly changed when I presented him with more facts. He still didn't know that I had the logs of his conversation, so now he didn't just omit the truth, he started to lie to cover up his initial omission of truth. Slowly the story got clearer and clearer and it was clear that friend A was partially at fault too. Friend A told more and more ridiculous lies to cover his initial omission of truth since he was more and more worried that myself and friend B would be mad at him.

The hell that friend B and I had been put through, and how stupid we had looked when we had unfairly accused party D was all due to an omission of truth. We both also had a couple of sleepless night worrying about the situation and thinking about how to deal with it, when really it could have been quickly and fairly solved had we known the WHOLE truth right from the start. A very small problem was blown into epic scales due to friend A omitting the truth, probably because he knew he was partially at fault and worried we would get mad at him.

Omitting the truth when you know it will change the whole complexion of a situation is as good as lying. Generally people will not get mad at you if you tell the truth. Even if they get mad, its not for long. Instead they will focus their energy on trying to solve the problem. By when you make matters worse by omitting the truth, then when the truth is known, the problem has become much bigger and then people do get mad at you for virtually lying. So tell the truth when you can rather than omitting the truth.

Kin and Jo's Wedding

My good friend Kin got married on Friday to his long time girl friend Jo. It was an extremely happy day for them with Jo being quite emotional a few times and breaking out in tears. I was there for the whole day and it was definitely an experience. Who knew weddings would be so tiring and confusing.

The day started off at 9am on a slight hitch. The photographer was a little late, and the car driver was extremely late. This meant we just waited around with nothing much to do. Here is Kin calling to find out where the driver was.

I was enlisted to carry one of these gift trays for the day ceremony. I picked the lightest one since I'm such a lazy guy.

When the driver finally arrived, we went to Jo's parents house first for the traditional tea ceremony. Here is Kin and Jo offering tea, or in this modern adaptation, wine to Jo's parents. They in turn presented the happy couple with gifts.

Here is a picture of me in my best suit and tie with the happy couple.

Here is the bridal party, consisting of the bridesmaid, Phuong, and the Best Man, Paul.

Here is Kin and Jo preparing for a photo for the photographer. I caught them in a more candid natural photo just before they actually posed. This photo is one of my favourites that I took on the day. Such a nice touching moment.

Next it was off to Kin's house for the tea ceremony with his parents. I carried my red gift tray again and waited and waited as usual. There was a lot of waiting that day.

Here I am being silly while we did some more waiting.

Once the Asian style tea ceremony was done, it was off to the Church for a white wedding. Kin and Jo arriving are taking their vows and Jo gets quite emotional. This photo is courtesy of the much better photographer Clayford. All my shots in the church were blurry except one.

Kin and Jo signing the marriage certificate with Phuong and Paul as their witnesses. Once again this photo is courtesy of Clayford.

The happy couple leaving the church.

Kin giving his best cheesy grin upon my request.

Photos of the bride and groom with their families.

At night it was the reception dinner where Kin and Jo made a grand entrance accompanied by music and waving to screaming fans.

The couple doing a very good modern brial waltz. From all my watching of Dancing with the Stars, I give them a 9 out of 10. Their footwork could have been better and sharper hahaha.

Here is my friend Clayford and I enjoying ourselves at our table eating all the delicous food. You can read more about the food served on the night here.

Finally it was time to go home and I posed for one last photo with Kin. Here I am looking silly again. Gee I seem to be looking silly a lot.

And I leave you with a picture of the beautiful bride Jo in her stunning and daring red dress. I asked her to do this "Hollywood" style pose which she happily obliged.

It was a tiring but great day and I'm so happy that they are now a married couple. I wish them the best in the future.

Melbourne Cup

The Melbourne Cup has come and gone for another year. It was a pointless excuse for a public holiday, but I will take any public holiday that comes my way. It was actually two days ago but its never too late to regret about how much money I should have won.

Like most other Melbournians, I went and put a bet on the Melbourne Cup. It's my one and only horse bet each year. I've had a few successes in past years where I have picked the winner or a place getter. This year, I went at the last minute again to the local TAB and crammed inside with everyone else. I then went about trying to put in my picks. While I was at the computer screen scrolling through the odds, an old man asked me if the machine gave the results. I just said to him that I have no clue whatsoever since I rarely bet on horses.

When I had made my own pick, my friend rang and asked me to help him put some money on as well. He had picked quite a few horses, one of which was the winning Delta Blues. He also asked me to put a quinella on, and one of the combinations was the first and second finishers Delta Blues and Pop Rock. I told him that I didn't have a clue how to mark a quinella on the card so he said he would get someone else to help him out. It turns out that he never found anyone else to help him place the bet so I had caused him to miss out on about $40 :-(. Well it was his own fault too for not going a previous day or something and placing the bet. I did what I could. At least I helped him get some money for the winning horse.

With my own bet, I was too greedy. Instead of putting an each way bet on Maybe Better, I plonked all my money on a win, hoping for a big payout. As it turns out, Maybe Better finished third and I finished with nothing but a lighter wallet.

Betting, like my previous post Life is a Highway, also has parallels to life. Its full of risk, with higher rewards linked to higher risk. The outcome is totally unpredictable and can change at any minute. However, unlike taking risks in life, I urge you not to get too involved in gambling. In the end, it will only suck you dry. The odds are stacked way against you and in the long run, the majority of people will only ever lose. I've seen how devasting gambling addictions can be from some relatives, so it's definitely something I will only do occasionally.

Life is a Highway

"Life is a highway, I wanna ride is all night long" Life is a Highway, sung by Tom Cochrane.

I think that life does resemble a high way. There are many parallels that can be drawn. I just saw the Pixar movie Cars on DVD and they drew on those parallels when they used it as the theme song for the movie.

Lets look at some of the parallels between life and a highway.

* There are speed limits and rules on a highway, much like life where there are restrictions on what we can do.
* A highway has smooth stretches where everything is plain sailing, low troughs where you roll down slightly out of control, and high peaks where its tough to get up to, but has a great view once on top. Life has similar changes with people going through calm patches in their life and at the extremities, high highs and low lows.
* A wrong move on the highway and you can end up splattered by other cars or rocks on the side, so you have to learn which part of the road you can trust and go fast on and other parts go slow on. Life is similar in that you need to find out what type of people you can trust and who won't hurt you as opposed to fake people who will use you.
* The highway leads to many different destinations, and its up to you where you want to stop. Life is always offering various opportunities and possible destinations for you, and its up to you to pick which road you would like to take.
* Finally, your journey on the highway will eventually end either when you reach your desination or you run out of fuel and the car breaks down. Life has to end for everyone, that is one inevitable thing. But where it ends is up to the individual. Someone people do more in their lifes and visit more destinations but that doesn't necessarily mean they had more fun that people who visit less destinations. A lot of the time, its the journey that is the important part and not the destination.

And that concludes this slightly pointless post trying to draw some thin parallels between life and a highway. I like the song though.

"Life's like a road that you travel on
When there's one day here and the next day gone
Sometimes you bend sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind
There's a world outside every darkened Door
Where blues won't haunt you anymore
Where the brave are free and lovers soar
Come ride with me to the distant shore
We won't hesitate break down the garden gate
There's not much left today
Life is a highway
I want to ride it all night long
If you're going my way
I want to drive it all night long"

Subconscious Mind

I think that our minds are acting subconsciously all the time while we are awake. You often hear the saying that "Maybe subconsciously you wanted that to happen." This is usually applied to a negative situation for either yourself or someone else. In general, people don't like bad things to happen, but say you did something that ended up being bad for someone you hate, well maybe you did mean it subconsciously.

I think that we do sometimes know what we want to do, but since it is not a good thing, we trick ourselves into believing we didn't mean it. But deep down, our true mind knows what we really want and is carrying it out.

Often it is said that your subconscious mind will betray your true feelings. For example, you may be listening to someone talk. What they are saying is extremely boring. To avoid being rude, you give all the classic signs of interest. You nod your head, you say "yes" and you keep eye contact. However, your subconscious brain will betray you by the way your body may act. Although you are pretending to listen, you may have unknowingly crossed your arms, are tapping your feet, or even have a quick glance to your watch. All these are very subtle clues that you have lost interest and you may not even realise that you did it. Something must be controlling these actions. Even though your conscious brain is telling you to pretend to listen, deep down you know that you don't want to listen and your subconscious brain is exhibiting all the classic signs of boredom.

Just today, I was driving home from a friends BBQ. I was going down the road that would take me to my new home. I was really listening to the music in the car and singing along so wasn't paying attention to where I was going. Without even thinking, I had turned into the street to go to my old house. Years of repetition had trained my mind to this task and even though I knew I was going home, I wasn't really thinking where. My subconscious mind must have taken over and instructed my hands and feet to take a path that it knew well. Only when I was nearly at my old house did I realise I had made a mistake. Once I was "awake" again, I knew which road to take to go to my new house.

Sometimes our brains can go into an auto-pilot type state, which I think is one of the tasks of our subconscious mind. It's like a back up system that helps you function while your active mind has dozed off. The other task of our subconscious mind is to display the true feelings we have towards things sometimes despite our conscious mind telling ourselves to lie otherwise.

Well thats my crazy thinking for the day. Have you ever had any experiences where your subconscious mind has betrayed you or helped you out while you were on auto-pilot mode? I am really interested to hear what other people have experienced in this matter.

Office Prank

Previously I had written about some other office pranks that I had played on work mates. I had also linked to the Prank Mike website and said how great their cardboard office prank was and that I should do it.

Well today, myself and a couple of work mates rearranged another work mates desk with a lot of cardboard items. It's not as eloborate as the Prank Mike one, but I think it was still pretty good for about 10 minutes of work. It was heaps of fun to do and I will see what the reaction of that work mate is on Monday. This is what silly engineers get up to on a Friday afternoon after a few beers hahaha.