Poem Day : The Memory of Trees

Sorry that the poem and the weekly quotes have both been so late. I was mostly offline all weekend and only got home at 2:30am Monday morning after my weekend away! There is a loooooong ramble on its way about everything that happened over the weekend too, which I will hopefully get to post tonight.

Hope your week is off to a fantastic start! 😀

Poem Day : Homecoming

I’m moving poem days to Sunday. Why? Well, for the last few weeks it seems to be the day that I feel in the right frame of mind to write, and because I want to – that’s why. 😉

I’ll probably move quotes to Wednesdays now, but I haven’t made up my mind about that yet so you’ll have to wait and see like me.

Right. I’ve been putting off writing this poem for a while now, maybe cause I knew it would upset me so much to do it. I’m headed to Johannesburg next weekend for the first time since I moved down here in December – need I say more?

I think it would have been a lot easier for me to get what I wanted if I could only figure out what the hell it was…pathetic. *gives self a whopping mental slap and a box of tissues*

Poem Day : Buttons and Strings

Those of you who’ve known me for a while will know that every so often an idea sweeps me away at full gallop and I get completely side-tracked from whatever I was busy with until I get bored with my new toy or concept.

I am in the grips of just such an animal right now – not sure what to call it or how to describe it exactly. I feel a bit like my own lab-rat if that makes any sense at all? You see this all started with some of the training I received at my new job about a thing called “spontaneous habitual response”. Meaning that thing you do or say that is absolutely stupid and more often than not a lie, because you’ve been trained to do so.

Exhibit A: You set out one fine day to your local appliance store in search of a washing machine. You’ve gone there with the exclusive purpose of buying a washing machine but as soon as a salesman approaches you to try and sell you something “Hi there, can I help?” you fall into the spontaneous habitual response of “No thanks, I’m just looking” – which is of course a lie, you are there to buy a blasted machine. Now if you want to see someone go into a blind panic you should try saying to the little man: “I have come to buy a washing machine – go ahead and sell me one, I’m ready when you are…”. The last time I tried this he got so freaked out that he told me there was no stock, of anything, and asked me to go somewhere else please. I had to go back on another day at be more gentle and coy to actually buy the machine I wanted all along…poor guy.

Anyway, nuff said about machines…but the whole thing has opened my eyes to the possibility that all is not always what it seems, and that I have some sort of behaviour programming that I need to shake (or at least be aware of) in order to not be played everywhere I go according to my programming. I’m doing a lot of reading about this at the moment (there are a gazillion other things that I should really be doing but I can’t help myself, is that programmed in too?).

I guess you could say that I am doing a study in human behaviour, but on myself. I am the mad scientist of my own responses. 😀 Mwuhahahaha!

I came across a book called “In search of excellence” – Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, and even though I’m not very far into the book yet and it is rather old I’ve already come across some interesting studies that have been done on workers and what motivates them. For instance in one productivity study two groups of workers were taken and placed separately under the exact same conditions, doing the exact same type of work with only one difference. The one group was given a button with which they could turn off the aircon. The group with the button performed much better than the group without, even though they never once used the button…

I wonder if I’d need a button to be at my best? I wonder if I’ve already been given a button without realising it? I guess I wonder if I would realise if someone was playing me according to my programming if the button was not a really obvious button, but something a little bit more subtle? Then again…sometimes a button is just a button, right?

You can’t go through life doubting every single response you have – you’d never take your next breath! I may have to stop scrutinising my own responses and use this on someone else in future? 😉

Poem Day : No Words

Not every day is a great one, right?

Right.

Well, the week started off very nice over the weekend (I like to think of it as the week beginning really), when after the normal Friday night festivities at work we also had a braai at one of my colleague’s houses on Saturday.

Not everyone could make it, but most people made a plan to drop by at least for a short while and the mood was FESTIVE! 😉 It was also great not seeing everyone in the normal black and white get-ups (the only colours we are supposed to be wearing at work)…Yeah for jeans! 😀 It’s hard to believe that for the majority of the last 10 years I was working in jeans and T-shirts and now I hardly ever get to wear it at all.

Eep! I haven’t come up with nick names for anyone at work yet…I’ll just have to refer to them by initial till it comes to me, or until they pick one for themselves? The party was at E & B’s house – great people! You’ll be hard pressed to find a sweeter and more loving couple anywhere, and they have a son who is just as sweet as they are. It just makes you happy to spend time with a little family like them, because you can feel their love for each other in everything they say and do.

I had arranged to sleep over on the couch on Saturday night because I didn’t want to be driving back home late or after a few drinks, and another couple there also ended up spending the night. I’d call them S & I, but this initials thing is going to get confusing real fast. I think I will call S Moegperd instead. Moegperd, loosely translated from Afrikaans means tired horse. Hehehe…I’ll call him that, not because he is one (cause he’s not, he’s actually a really nice guy) but because he likes to call other people that. Right, so Moegperd and his girlfriend slept there too and Sunday B and Moegperd worked on Moegperd’s “Orange Ferrari” all day long while the rest of us gave them moral support from the shade. Car servicing is definitely a spectator sport in my opinion. 😉

Then the week started off with a bang. Six newbies joined us on the phones on Monday and the boss (which I shall call Sparrow) gave a very moving and inspirational speech (as he always does in the mornings) and told us where our focus should be for this coming week. Last week we focused on numbers, this week we focused on building trust and on the quality, subsequently the numbers dropped so dramatically that I believe the focus for next week may very well be balance (between quality and quantity of course).

I’m still having fun doing the work (and no, I’m still not saying what that is), and I love getting to chat to all kinds of strange and wonderful people every day. On Monday a customer actually asked me if I was married because he decided I was one of the nicest people he’s ever spoken to over the phone and he’s looking for a wife…imagine that…(must not get out much, poor dear). 😆

Yesterday was a truly crap day. Right from the start of it. On my way to work I spotted a significant traffic problem on highway going the other way, and when I got to the office we heard that a truck had lost control and fallen off right on top of another road crushing two cars below with people in it. Sparrow said that when he drove past there you could hear the people screaming from under the container. *shudder* As far as I know none of them made it except for the truck driver. What a way to go…imagine your last moments spent screaming in agony and panic trapped beneath a truck, and the pressure of that truck being the only thing keeping you alive enough to scream. I have claustrophobia, and I believe that must be one of the worst ways to die imaginable.

Work yesterday was also not so cool. Sparrow was very unhappy about the lack of balance between quantity and quality. And when Sparrow is unhappy, then everyone is unhappy. I really hope that today will be better.

When I got home yesterday the house was already in full swing party mode because Troep had his birthday party there. I met some nice people, and had great chats with the other two house mates too, but at midnight I had to bow out and go to bed so that I could be fresh, well rested and enthusiastic for work today. I do not wish to piss Sparrow off further when he’s already having a crap week.

You have to be a bit tolerant when you live with other people, right. And birthdays carry with them a special kind of exemption. More or less 20 people partied here last night…through the night…I hardly slept, and even the bit of sleep that I got was to the beat of some trance music (Troep’s favourite). I can’t say that I like it – it’s a special kind of torture to make me listen to music without words, and to listen to it THROUGH the night is not really something that I want to do on a regular basis. Luckily he only has a birthday once a year. 😀

And this morning someone walked in on me while I was having a bath…I am not a happy puppy right now. Not at all.

As promised to KnotKeats, new poem today. Very new in fact. Written to the beat of trance music while I was meant to be sleeping. Hope you all have a kick-ass day. 😉

Poem Day : The Late Line

Poem day again today, and once again I had to go dig in the archives for something nice. Sorry…I’ve got a couple of ideas flitting round in my head but to get 5 minutes to sit my ass down and capture it is another mission impossible! 😉

So far this has been a fairly uneventful week…

No hang on, that’s not really true. Esmeralda and Marco came down for the Argus Cycling Race and I got to see them while they were here – thanks guys, it was great to see you again – miss you! 😀 Alex and Chere’ are back at home, it’s very nice to not come home to an empty house anymore. All my assignments are due this week, and it remains to be seen if I will actually get them all done on time (see where those 5 minutes go?). One of the recordings of what I do at work was pulled and used for training purposes (in a mostly good way, even though I did end up with a B on my head for a while!) – and last but not least: I am now the owner of a washing machine! I really hope that I don’t have to move again this year because the amount of shit I’m accumulating is becoming quite daunting to cart up and down at will. 😉

Other news this week is that my cousin Melanie had a close escape from an attempted high-jacking incident in Pretoria on Monday. She’s a nervous wreck at the moment. Keep in mind that last year she was both mugged and involved in a very traumatic smash and grab incident and this has brought all that back for her – she’s having trouble sleeping again because of it. It sucks! On top of the great job and the lovely scenery and people down here, the thing that I like the most is not being afraid everywhere I go. But I am under no illusions, what ever happens up north will be down here shortly too.

I think that about covers it? 😐 Looks like it was quite an eventful week so far after all!

Right…back to poem day. From the archives, a little poem about lust. (Don’t ask why I picked this one), hope you enjoy it. 😉