Just a little catch up ramble

It’s been really nice to have my cousin live here with us for the last few weeks. Every night when I come home Ricardo and I chat and chat and chat and chat and chat. He’s a good boy. This week his girlfriend came to visit for a few days and she’s a very sweet kid too.

Thursday night we decided to attempt the making of a curry and rice, something to put some fire in our bellies amidst all this non-stop rain. We didn’t have a recipe, so we just followed the one on the box of the curry powder, took out all the stuff we don’t like eating, and added random shit from the food cupboard that we thought would be nice - and voila! it was magnificent. We probably wouldn’t be able to make the exact same thing ever again, but it went down really well.

Back at the office we saw the results of our first recruitment drive, which actually went very well all things considered. And in between all the chaos the BigBoss dropped the B-word mid conversation…rules are rules…he had to go out drinking like that on Friday, tsk-tsk!

My one colleague, ATM, resigned this week. He’s been there right from the beginning just like me, the place won’t be the same without him there to entertain us with his bitchy one-liners and dark humour. *sigh* From the original 12 only 4 of us are left. I wonder who will go next?

Saturday Troep let me know that we were having the PSD braai at our house. You may vaguely recall me talking about Seekamp before? Well that is the S of PSD, the full name being Post Seekamp Depression. I am well aware that I did not attent the S, so how can I have PSD? Must be a delayed reaction from a previous year then? Anyway, it was a great party. JacoStein and BloemfonteinBoy rocked up with an enormous Koedoe fillet to braai and plenty of leftover drinks from a previous occasion and we partied like rock stars. So much so that poor Troep doesn’t remember anything that happened after 21:00 (or any hats for that matter), luckily he was in good hands plus I captured everything on film so that we could bring him up to speed on recent events the next morning. The main PSD event was of course held in JHB, but I think the CT one was probably more fun than that one.

Sunday, the day of rest. Mmmm, I didn’t mind the rain at all today cause I got to spend most of it in bed. Oh yeah, except I am having a really hard time getting my laundry done and dry in this duck weather. Everything is now draped over chairs and hanging on doorknobs all over the house to get it dry. I was going to go out for lunch this afternoon but my colleague who invited me phoned and cancelled this morning…so I had no commitments, no real burning desire to have any either. Just peace and blissful quiet.

Poem Day : The Last Meal

Okay, don’t panic…this is not exactly the case. I just wrote a little fluffy poem because of the rising petrol prices, food prices…heck all the rising prices and so on. It’s been a rough month end because of my lack of deals in the previous month and I’m not the only one whose taking strain at the moment so I thought you might enjoy this too? My dad had to help me out a bit for which I am both extremely grateful and extremely embarrassed all at the same time.

Expect a big ramble post soon!

The weekend that was…

Friday night saw me zipping through to the airport (again) to go pick up my dear friend Denise. Shortly after I got news of my great-gran’s death Denise was “lucky” enough to get a call from me, and my tone of voice upset her so much that she decided to swoop in for a visit to see if I’m okay. That’s really sweet isn’t it? Also it was the first night ever that she and her hubby have spent apart since they got married and I really appreciate the fact that she did that for me.

We didn’t do the tourist thing at all, we just spent hours and days talking, chatting, catching up and up to our ears in deep conversations about everything and then some. It was just what I needed…

Denise has the metabolism of a speed train! I have never seen someone so tiny pack away that much food and still have space for more. Also she’s been craving pudding lately, so at least one of our meals consisted of a Woolies baked pudding drowned in custard. Not really health food by any stretch of imagination but it was lovely. I’m not really used to this kind of eating so my tummy was not so happy with all the new weird and wonderful things I was sending down the hatch, but a change is as good as a holiday right?

Some of our conversations were along the lines of my job and how I’m coping down here. It’s not always easy. I think I have the hang of it, more or less, but it’s one of those occupations where your head has to be in the right place or you get nothing done. Just to illustrate my point: during the 6 weeks that I was busy with exam and in and amongst my various family and other crisises I didn’t do any deals at all - and I’m definitely feeling it with just the basic this month. Denise gave me some really handy pointers which have little to do with techniques and more to do with heart and soul. She has a twin theory about what I need to do to get my job back on track. The first thing is that I must give my tenth to someone who needs it, it doesn’t have to be the church but it’s probably easier to do that because they do get to a lot more people than I could on my own. The second thing is to be very specific when I pray for something. Up to now when it’s been a bit rough and I didn’t know what my next move should be I’ve just been asking God to show me what comes next, and that is exactly what I’ve been getting. Instead she recommends a constant stream of little prayers throughout the day thanking and asking for whatever specific blessing I need or just received. I’m very excited about this and am already implementing it.

I shared my inspiration with a few of my colleagues and I know at least one person feels the same as I do. We’ve decided that on Friday we’ll be making our first deposit to the Durbanville Chidren’s Home - which happens to be run by the local church anyway, and they seem to have the need that’s for sure. As for the constant stream of little prayers there every person will have to follow their own heart…however I would like to point out that it’s now Tuesday and I’ve already done three deals for this week! Which is equal to some of my best weeks before.

Other than catching up and talking about some seriously deep and meaningful stuff, Denise also got roped into helping with the painting of the burglar bars. Alexander wanted it up for my safety before he left for business in KZN for the next month and that meant that we all had to hustle to get it done. We had a team of friends in the garage painting their hearts out and helping us to get it done in time. Let’s just say that we shouldn’t quit our day jobs just yet… however this has given my house mate some inspiration for a little side line business when he comes back from his trip. While we were painting at least three cars stopped with people wanting to know if he could do some for them too. So he’s thinking of doing just that when he comes back and I promised to help him set up a web site to showcase his work. (I’m guessing that I’m going to learn aaaaall about domain registrations and what not soon-ish).

• I’m really glad that Denise came to visit me
• I’m really ecstatic about the three deals I’ve been blessed with so far this week
• I am enormously grateful that the burglar proofing is painted and fitted and that I have housemates and friends down here that are so concerned about my safety that they would spend their weekend helping us get it done

I don’t even know where to begin!

Let’s see…

The last time I managed to get a post out was just before my last exam. Well, the last one was not much fun to write - I guess all the recent chaos just caught up with me and I was not prepared. *sigh* Oh well, maybe next time?

Saturday my parents arrived from Johannesburg for a visit…it’s been wonderful for me to have them here with me and to be able to show them “my world” down here.

We kicked it off with a braai at the house, which was a rip-roaring success. Just to give you an idea, the last guests left at 07:00am! I bought a small mountain of firewood and we made fire in both fireplaces…nice and cosy. ET brought yummy potato bake and salad, and my mom baked bread. Troep and Alexander helped with the fire-making and we played Jenga with Old Brown Sherry shooters, pool, and naughts and crosses in between just chatting and having a good time. I could tell that my dad was also having a blast and at some stages he was busy playing two different games at the same time!

Jenga, for those who don’t know is a game where you stack a whole bunch of teeny tiny wooden blocks on top of each other and then take turns to pull out a block and add it on top without making the stack collapse. It defies the laws of gravity and reason. Now with a local twist that we added when you do make the stack fall you have to drink a shooter and write an instruction or dare on the block that finally did it, if there is already something written on that block you have to do that. My dad wrote one that would have you mow the lawn (yes, yes, it’s a bit lush at the moment with all the rain), and Cookie wrote a very X-rated one “make love to the person next to you” and warned us not to play the game alone in future (something tells me that particular block will only be in circulation for very special games).

Here are some of the pics from the party. As you can see someone ended up saying the B-word as well and rules are rules.

Sunday morning after what felt like 10 minutes of actual sleep my folks picked me up to go visit family in Citrusdal. I’ve been meaning to catch up with my cousin Natasha since I moved down here but there never seems to be time and Citrusdal isn’t even on my map. What a beautiful place…talk about wide open spaces and serious farm style living. Now that I know where it is I will definitely be going again, maybe for a weekend or so?

I took a day’s leave on Monday to spend with my parents too (I know the rest of SA had a public holiday but we only get the UK ones in our office), and we did some serious sight seeing. We drove out to Melkbos to go see our old house where we used to live when I was about 4 years old and then zipped through to Houtbay, Simons Town and Muizenberg. I haven’t really had any excuse to venture out that way and who knows when I would have made time to see it so it was really nice to do that with them while they were down here.

All too soon it was time for us to say goodbye again. I hate goodbyes…

Every time I see my family I wonder what the hell I’m doing down here so far away from them? In general I am very happy and I’ve met some awesome people and learning how to really stand on my own two feet has been educational and fulfilling to say the least, but life is so short…am I doing the right thing? Anyway, these are some of the things I’ve been thinking about over the last few days. I’m not making any decisions yet though about staying or going. I promised myself a year and that’s what I’m going to stick to. Plenty of time to obsess about this till December.

On Tuesday, it was back to the salt mines for me after a great long weekend. Far from being uneventful my “Monday” took a turn for the dramatic when work was interrupted by gun shots downstairs. We share a building with ABSA and some robbers shot a 69-year old man outside the bank because he didn’t want to hand over his briefcase. Luckily it wasn’t fatal and they only shot him in the leg, and even more lucky for him that one of my colleagues is a trained paramedic and was able to administer first aid while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. I wish I could have been more surprised or shocked when it happened…is this what our country is coming too? The smell of gunshot hung about outside…do you know what smell I’m talking about? And why does it smell so familiar to me?

The office was rattled and it showed in our work for the day. We’ve also taken to locking the door while we work because we found out that another shop downstairs was burgled on Monday.

This whole week has not been super productive at work. We had all the excitement of the shooting and the burglary downstairs and on top of that our Sparrow has not been there to tell us, “May the force be with you” when we needed it. Next week the BigBoss arrives for a three week stay while Sparrow flies off to the Ukraine with his wife to go meet her family and get married again.

On the home front there have also been some developments recently. Troep had vamooshed off to Seekamp for 10 days and Alexander and Chere’ will be headed for Kwazulu-Natal and beyond come Monday, possible for as long as a month. I was meant to get someone to come stay with me here for the month because it’s a pretty big house and could be quite creepy to be here all by my lonesome for so long. And what do you know?! The Big Plan kicks in and my other cousin Ricardo asks if I’ve got room for him while he’s looking for a place to stay for the next month or so…and that’s how he ended up moving in too yesterday. I’m going to feel much better having him around, and it will give us a chance to catch up too.

I think that more or less wraps up what I’ve been up to since I last wrote - sorry for the MONSTER post, I won’t let it get this out of hand again. Expect normal transmission to commence at once. (that includes poems of the week which I think I must be about 3 or 4 behind on by now?).

Have a kick-ass Friday…speak to you again soon!

Now you see me, now you don’t…

Tuesday morning: (Yes…I do know that it’s Thursday today). I woke up to find the house full of drunk people. It seems Troep bumped into some old colleagues from a different restaurant in the wee hours of the morning while looking for a taxi to catch back home. So they decided to make a party of it. I found one passed out on the couch and Troep plus another two playing pool and drinking beer at 05:00am. I decided to sit with them while I have my cereal and coffee, and for my trouble got psycho-analysed and entertained by one of Troep’s buddies who was feeling philosophical at that stage.

It’s quite nice to start your day off with someone telling you that you look about 5 years younger than you are, and telling you that you’re going to be great once you decide to stop holding yourself back - even if they are as drunk as a skunk at the time. I had a really nice day at work, maybe I should ask him to make me a few recordings when he’s pickled again?

Off to work after those inspirational messages and I had to lug my luggage around with me since I was going straight to the airport after work. This was not nearly as difficult as you can imagine since I only had to pack for one day in Johannesburg…I didn’t even have to check anything in. Seriously, it’s a whole new world of travelling to travel with only carry-on! My dad was so surprised by my lack of luggage (I am not well known for travelling lightly) that he asked me where my handbag was - I even squished all that in the same back too.

Yesterday was Ounooi’s funeral. The end of an era for my family, and a very sad occasion. It was really nice to see almost my entire family again though. I just wish I could have stayed a little longer.

Too soon it was time to go to the airport again, at least this time it was not such a tearful goodbye because I get to see my parents this weekend again. They land on Saturday and then stay until Tuesday morning - it’s going to be awesome showing them everything and introducing them to everyone.

I got to fly SAA yesterday, and was fairly surprised when they handed me a newspaper to read as I got in the plane…even more surprised by the headlines featuring a burning plane in Sudan. Lucky thing that I’m not a nervous flyer, but the guy who sat next to me was taking a bit of strain. He was trembling in what I can only imagine must have been fear and actually assumed the brace position for landing (which really wasn’t rough enough to warrant that!). I was only awake for take off and landing and snoozed the nearly two hours in between blissfully unaware of anything worth bracing for.

I left my car at the airport overnight and I was pleasantly surprised that it only ended up costing me R66 to do that. For very short trips this might be the way to go in future?

The tail-end of this week is going to be rough…since I write my last subject tomorrow. Wish me luck! See you on the other side.