All in a days work

I know I say this every week…but wow! What a crazy week! (Maybe it’s me and not the weeks?). You should take some time to get comfortable – this is again a ramble of note.

Anyhoo, where did I leave off telling you about the drama? Aaah yes, job hunting. That’s still ongoing. I’ll keep you posted on what happens as soon as it does.

Tuesday or Wednesday night, I forget which, I came home to find my house-mate Xander bleeding from the fist! And “slightly” pickled in white wine. Apparently round about 17:00 a man (suspected criminal scum P.O.S) jumped over our fence from our neighbour Sandy’s house. Xander, being quite fearless, and still furious about the last break-in, decided to apprehend the scum and went outside to grab him (and beat the living daylights out of him or something similar). Turns out that the scum had a gun, and as luck would have it the gun was in the hand that Xander decided to grab him by. I don’t know which of the two of them was most surprised when this happened, but the scum cocked the gun and at this point Xander decided to let him go (the above mentioned cocking being the reason he was now bleeding from the hand). Scum then jumped over the fence and was never to be seen again (yet). Xander says that they phoned the police and a small army descended on our street, but scum was long gone already…even though it only took the police a few minutes to get there.

I missed all the excitement since I work till about 18:30 at the moment, and by the time I got home at about 19:30 Xander was well and truly calmed down with the aid of some wine and frankly a bit more concerned with his PC’s hard drive, which crashed because of a power failure earlier the day. It’s not every day that you see a man bleeding from the hand clutching a bottle of wine and a recovery disk in the other. I’m just glad he didn’t get hurt badly. I told him he really needs a hockey stick like mine so that there’s a bit of distance between himself and whoever he wants to clobber.

Other news from home is that my cousin has found his own place and is moving out, or off (since he lives on my couch technically), on Sunday. On Wednesday night we went through to go have a look around. It’s a very beautiful apartment and I think he’s going to be happy there once he gets settled in. I wonder what I should get him as a house warming gift?

Don’t for a minute think that this is the end of chaos this week…because wait! there’s more.

At work they have given me my very own budgie to turn into an eagle. Poor girl. I don’t know if she has what it takes to do this job (I don’t even know if I have it myself), but if it’s in there somewhere I’ll bully it out of her. She seems to respond very well to my methods of pushing her to grow some balls. At least she knows that I’m only doing it to help, but perhaps I should tone it down just a little bit. I think I learnt (or re-learnt) this week that patience is not really one of my virtues. I used to think that I’d make a great teacher, but I’m not so sure anymore. How do you know when you’re pushing someone too hard? Next week I’ll try and be more gentle, promise.

My buddy Kwagga resigned this week and is starting soon in another place barely a block away from where we are. He promises to faithfully attend Buckles on Fridays as is the custom, and so far he is proving true to his word. I’m very happy for him that he’s moved on, I think he will be much happier there. At least he’s allowed to talk Afrikaans – which is not permitted in our office (even though we still do it).

On Thursday they changed the way we do things at work and the new way takes only about 5 times longer than the old way. Sure it’s the more proper way to do it, but it does take longer – as the proper way most often does. Then we hear the next day that there is some unhappiness in the UK about why we don’t get more done?! We told them it takes as long as it takes – and this is as long as it takes. It’s not that we’re on a go-slow or anything, but we are limited by the speed of our new tools and also we were still figuring out exactly how to use it on top of that. There’s bound to be a rematch on that sometimes next week if I had to guess.

The next unexpected twist in the tale played out yesterday shortly after lunch. Myself, ET and Sparrow went out for lunch and came back just in time to find our HR guy having a heart attack on the couch in reception. This was apparently his second one, and his only 39 now! Usually we have a trained paramedic working there that would kind of take control of any such situations but he was on leave, and as the only other person there who knows how to do CPR I had to step to the plate. Luckily I did not actually have to do CPR on him, I just kept a close eye on him to make sure that he kept breathing. The man was clearly in incredible pain, so I just tried to reassure him that everything was going to be okay and kept reminding him to breathe. Also I read in one of those “send this to everyone you know” emails that coughing while having a heart attack can sometimes help to keep the old ticker going till you get to the hospital, and even though I didn’t know how true this was I made him cough every few minutes just in case too. He says it really hurt, but it seemed to help so I kept asking him to do it. My main concern was just to keep him breathing and conscious until the medics arrived.

Sparrow was standing outside in the road flagging down ambulances so that they don’t get lost and waste more time getting there. It felt like forever before they rocked up, and I was very happy to hand over the patient to the pros when they got there. HR-guy’s wife pitched before they did and she was calm… actually too calm if you ask me. If I ever have a heart attack I’d like at least one person to be in distress right along with me. That might be selfish, but that’s just the way I feel about it. He’s been carted off to Panorama Cardiac Hospital and it looks like he’ll be okay. BiggBoss sent everyone home after that to go calm down and the company has offered to pay his medical bills, which is nice cause they are bound to be spectacular.

*breathe in…breathe out*

Right, enough crisis and drama for one week I think? It’s the weekend baby! Whoohooo! And guess where I’m going tonight. I am going dancing with the fishies.

Sparrow’s wife bought me a ticket to go to a trance party in the aquarium for my birthday next week (I expire on Friday the 8th by the way ). Can’t say I’m mad about trance music but I guess if you’re going to do it, this is definitely the way to go? If I understand correctly it’s quite an exclusive event and only 200 people are invited. One of the organisers, Dean Fuel, is a friend of Sparrow and that’s how he got us in. I’m very excited about this – I’m just not sure what the heck a person is supposed to wear to a trance party? Any suggestions?!

I’ll try and take some photos to show you how it turns out…