Perks of being Uni Staff

Lately, I've been day dreaming about what it would be like to be in university again. With Jud and Cassy being here, I'm often jealous of their late nights and sleeping in routines. I feel old when I want to go to bed by 10 and don't want to go out on the weekends because I FINALLY get to sleep in one day. I guess that's what they call being an adult. I'm married and have a job now, which I guess calls for higher priorities...

My job has been pretty stressful lately. My boss just keeps laying it on me and one of these days I'm going to be so overloaded I'll crack...just waiting for the day! But as stressful as my job has been lately, I do get some pretty awesome perks. Students and staff members of HKBU get discounts at Festival Walk (the mall located closest to campus.) We not only get discounts at most stores but also at some restaurants near by as well. I also get full access to the library and gym here on campus. Working accross the street from Ellison, we get to come to work together every morning and have lunch together most days as well. Seeing him at times through the day really helps when things get chaotic. But one of the greatest perks of all came to us the other day..

We've been needing a new computer. We have a desktop, which is in the office, which is serving as a storage room right now. But even if it was plugged up...it's all in German. I can't even begin to change the German windows because I can't read enough German to even know where to CLICK! Then there's Ellison's laptop, or lack there of..it died on us about 3 months ago. Oh, and then there's my laptop. I bought it about 4 or 5 years ago and recently had to delete everything and restore the computer back to factory settings. It's still decent, but needs a lot of work. It doesn't even have Microsoft Office anymore. So Ellison has been using the church's laptop for studies and work, but it's about time we give that one back. We talked about getting a Macbook because it would allow Ellison to design things for his ministry with ease. Neither of us know much about using a Mac, but we checked into it. We looked at them in some of the electronic stores around Hong Kong and then checked out the Apple store online. We finally decided to get a Macbook Pro and found out that even STAFF MEMBERS qualify for the Education discount. So not only did we get the computer for a couple hundred (US) dollars cheaper, Apple is having a back to school promo and we got a free Ipod touch. On top of that, we also got a free printer/copier/scanner. And we were able to get incredibly great deals on the Iworks software and Microsoft Office with the discount as well. Altogether we saved about $600US on our new computer and components! Pretty sweet perks I think...

Thanks Apple for great service and awesome promotions and Thank you HKBU for giving me a staff card.