Tania.co.za

Memorandum of Understanding Entered Into Following the Unsuccessful Use of 5 Listerine Oral Care Strips

Dear Mr M., please check the wording of this agreement and indicate any required amendments. After I have made the necessary changes, I will sign it in duplicate and submit it to you when I come to see you in connection with the IP contracts on Sunday.

I, the undersigned, hereby declare my undertaking never again to eat raw onions for lunch, so that when driving to Claremont for a 17:30 meeting you will not have to open all the windows in order to diffuse (or defuse?) my weapons-grade halitosis.


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Date

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Signature

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Full Name

1st draft

This communication is subject to copyright and contains information that is privileged, proprietary and confidential.

I always said that when I wrote this book
Of poetry, I would need cushioning
For all the sadness that I'd have to bring
From memory to contemplation, look
And face the days, the many painful years
Of our best efforts, often all in vain —
Proposals which we hoped at last would gain
A due reward for all your work, the tears
I often cried because to you my best
Just wasn't good enough; the many nights
You wouldn't hold me, wouldn't trust — and all the fights —
No, I will have to put all this to rest
Till I can cry in safety when I face
Our years of failure with a special grace.

Geek Dinner

I won't have time to write about this as fully as I want to for a good number of days, because I was woken at dawn to attend to the lament of a friend who got pistol-whipped and robbed, and I still have to work two shifts today, with a noon deadline on one of my assignments. For now, all I will say was that the Geek Dinner last night really was a geek dinner. The company was excellent. I had the privilege of sitting next to probably the only guy there who could have a real appreciation of the application development platform on which I work. I felt so relaxed. Jonathan, thank-you for everything, again — for the travel arrangements, for the choice of music in the car, and for your excellent company. Henk, you were an evil child. I love the motivation, though. And I learned (with ample empirical proof to follow in a later blog entry), why true geeks are born, not made.

A bit of fun

If you've met me and have known me for more than 5 minutes, you may know that I detest astrology, except insofar as having a general interest in medieval and occidental history. So you will understand that I am not going all hocus pocus on you if I ask you to be so kind as to indulge my friend the Wizard of Oz by participating in his empirical study. (I fear that if he does not have a sufficiently large statistical sample, the results will not be as significant.) The less you know about your star sign to begin with, the better.

Technology

OK, for once and for all — no, actually, rather, for the first, but not the last time in public — I am going to lose my cool about the use of the word 'technology' on the Internet. Technology is not about computers, get it? Technology includes computers. Technology also includes the development of micro-organisms to process faeces into fertiliser faster. Technology includes mechanical devices for providing increased efficiency to the axles of vehicles. Technology includes the use of hydrocolloids in medicines. Technology pertains to novel food products, to construction materials and to the use of ball-point pens — yes, dude, non-digital ways of recording information! Will anyone who considers himself to be a technology writer, columnist, correspondent or editor please take some time to understand something about technologies other than information technology — or otherwise change the heading under which he writes to something more specific?

Identity crisis resolved

I took two vitamin B tablets this morning, and I am now cured.

Identity crisis

Except for in my professional capacity, I used to be unknown on the Internet. At forums and in chat (now I am talking back in the days of NewHorizone and before that, Geocities), I was known by pseudonyms.

I bought Tania.co.za just because I didn't want some other Tania to own it. After I got divorced I thought I could maybe use it in the manner in which I used our family Web site when I was married, to occasionally communicate with relatives.

I started blogging because I needed to test the Domino blog template for business purposes anyway, and I could not do this during office hours. Encouraged by the fact that a whole lot of people at BarCamp were blogging, I started "getting into it". Last year I pitched up at a party and when I introduced myself as Tania, and someone said, "Oh, Tania.co.za?"

It was amusing at first, having my surname replaced by a domain name extension, because it made me feel included in a certain subculture. My surname belonged to the real world, and Tania.co.za is my identity in the virtual world.

But it isn't fun anymore. The worlds have converged, and I don't know if I want to live this kind of life. What if I do something majorly stupid and embarrassing one day? People will know about it. People know who I am. I recently read a comment at Stefano Sessa's blog which said that he should get his own domain because it would be a better way of "branding himself". Is that what blogging is about — branding ourselves? Britney Spears is a brand! Good grief, and I wouldn't want her life for anything in the world. As soon as you become a brand, you become the slave to your public identity. You have to live up to people's expectations. Well, that you have to do in normal life anyway, but this is worse: You have to live up to strangers' expectations now.

Fine, if you change your name to Engelbert Humperdinck, you can always still be Arnold George Dorsey when you go home. But I am Tania. Really. I mean in the real world, not just here. And the things which I write are not made up, they are about real people, which means that in order to protect their privacy I must sometimes find roundabout ways of saying what I feel about them. Last night I jokingly said (to another blogger) that the time will soon come when people will say to each other, "So you don't blog? Well, I guess it's safe for us to date then."

Of course, there's a lot to be said for the whole "I don't care what people think" approach, but that depends on what you're actually famous for. Nigel Kennedy doesn't care, I am sure, that some people regard him as a show-off, and shun him. The same things that make them pull up their noses are what gets him audiences elsewhere. If I were a famous humanitarian, being disliked by some people would be a compliment. Everyone who has ever done something really worthwhile was hated passionately and ridiculed at some point. Jesus even got himself crucified. But that's different. It's worth it. Martyrs can afford to be proud. I can't be proud. I am no better than anyone else. I am a hypocrite, and often I even sin knowingly. I don't want so many people to see me. Spiritual heroes can sometimes fall too, but we accept that, because they repent and go on. I am not a spiritual hero.

Of course, I could blog about other things. After all, I started this because I needed to test the whole blogging thing for work, and I have to find the time to get all these business blogs going. There are other things to talk about, less personal things, less egocentric, introspective things. I take note of what's happening in the "world of blogging", because I need to implement that stuff sometime. But for the rest of it... I have begun to wonder why I signed up at Facebook and MyBlogLog and all these different places, or why I check my stats. Is this an ego-trip? If so, there are far better ways of getting reassurance that you're an OK person. Love people. Save people. Make them happy. Live a meaningful life!

There is just too much of me out there now. So if I gave it up, that would be why.

Even putting all this out there feels like going naked in public.

And now Google is going to index me for saying 'naked in public', and I am going to have to pay for the resulting traffic.

Dis alles maar net blogstories

Ek het nie 'n redelike idee van hoekom ek met hierdie blog begin het. Dit was destyds maar bloot 'n tegniese oefening. Hoekom ek nog aanhou, weet ek nie. Hoekom ek dalk binnekort mag ophou, weet ek redelik goed.

The usual Monday admin blues

It's been weeks now. Weeks of network DNS, proxy, router, cache bla bla bla workarounds and I am still having intermittent problems as a result of whatever it is that Telkom did. I managed to solve Gabriel's problem with his mail notifications because I remembered that I could search the Notes/Domino 4 & 5 forum without actually having to login, and luckily I remembered that there was something there explaining that if you deleted some value in the notes.ini file, the notifications would be revived. Fine. At least I could VNC into his machine and fix the problem. But in the meanwhile my access to https sites is just dead. Hopefully it will come right again when I restart my computer with this gazillionth toggle between the one proxy setting and the other, but why should I have to spend so many valuable man-hours -- no, polymath-hours, which are decidedly more dear -- to fiddle with workarounds? (OK, don't jump on me now. I can call myself a polymath in spite of the fact that I know virtually nothing about network admin, as well as virtually nothing about anything else compared to God, Brendan Coulson and my history of art lecturer, Mr. Koperski.) I installed Firefox for Alex this afternoon and used Stii's workaround (which wasn't working in old-fashioned Mozilla), so Alex was able to access Absa again. So far so good. But what is next? Doesn't someone at the Geek Dinner please want to talk about Telkom and the recent DNS problems, and systematically and logically explain the features and benefits of the various vigilante groups? Thank-you. I have a headache now.

Indexing

It takes me no more than 48 hours to get indexed by Google. Is this, like, normal, or am I unusually privileged?

Prayer

I love you
Because I do not need to choose precise and persuasive words in order to negotiate with you
Because I do not need to negotiate with you at all
Because you already know
Everything
And all you need is
To know that I will know that
Always

How to get a Web 2.0 life (the short version)

Dear Grace

As requested, here is a reply to your question about a permanent e-mail address, and also to the questions which you did not ask but would have asked if you knew to ask them. For now, I am going to give you the very short summary version.

Register your own domain using a domain registration service such as MyDomain. I use several such companies, and I can't really say which I prefer. There's also GoDaddy and RegistryDomains, to mention just two out of a thousand. The Americans are the most competitive and they tend to throw in a lot of free and useful services. One of these services which you will definitely need (all of the registrars I mentioned provide it) is e-mail forwarding. Some of them also provide POP mail. With forwarded e-mail, you can choose to have an e-mail account with your local village service provider (e.g. MWeb or the Apple Creek County Internet Company or the XYZ ISP) and have all of your e-mail to you@yourfancydomain.com directed to there. In your outgoing mail settings on your own computer, you specify you@yourfancydomain.com as the address which people will see, whereas actually your real e-mail account address is grace785@applecreekcompany.com. So nobody will ever know that you are actually getting your mail via some local yokels. Once you have had a big a fight with the Apple Creek Company about their rates and services, or you move to Zimbabwe or whatever, and thus decide to move your account to the Banana Republic Internet Company, you will just change the settings with the registrar to now send your mail to gracecat@bananacompany.zw, but your friends will still see you@yourfancydomain.com, and your e-mail will still come into the same e-mail box on your computer or on the Web (wherever you care to keep it). There are other ways of doing this, but I am talking quick and dirty here.

To keep in touch with what friends and family worldwide are doing, encourage everyone you care to know to sign up at Facebook, which is the most intuitive, full-featured social networking site I have ever come accross. In addition to Facebook, you may want to use Flickr to share pictures with the big wide world. (These services are free -- up to a point.)

Thirdly, to tell people what's new and how Julia is getting along after falling out of a tree, start a blog, preferably using WordPress -- I think it's at WordPress.com (I prefer a different platform, but there are reasons why it wouldn't be practical for you to use that). Friends and strangers will be able to post comments about what you write, if you choose to enable this feature. I recommend WordPress because it can be ported later, and as you mentioned, you don't want to be stuck with a specific service provider. The address of your blog will be http://whateveryouwant.wordpress.com -- however, you will later want to move it to a proper professional hosting service (such as ANHosting, which has an import tool for WordPress sites), so that you can have it at http://www.yourfancydomain.com -- but I wouldn't do that right in the beginning, because you'll be paying for hosting while you struggle to get your head around the technicalities of blogging in the first place. If you have a fight with your host later, you can port your whole site to another hosting service, but everyone who is used to visiting your site will see the same URL (address on the Internet).

As I said, this is the quick and dirty answer. The path is, in fact, frought with potential hitches, but short of paying someone to do it all for you, you will just have to go through the pain of getting Web-fit if you want to live this life! If you're lucky, you will make a couple of friends along the way who can guide you through some of the steps in exchange for home cooking. Ironically, it is always best to have real, tangible friends to help you lay down roots in the virtual world, so don't be overly hesitant to get to know the people you meet online in person.

All the best

Tania

Ek voel simpel

O God, jy weet van my dwaasheid
en my misdade is vir jou nie verborge nie.
Laat die wat jou verwag nie deur my beskaamd staan nie,
o Here Wat-Is-Wat-Jy-Is van die leermagte.
Laat die wat jou soek, nie deur my in die skande kom nie,
o God van alles.

Depressie

Ek het vlugtig gelees dat jy vermoed jy ly aan 'n "mild depression", maar dit wat jy beskryf klink nie heeltemal so "mild" nie. As jy sulke persoonlike dinge op die Internet skryf, moet jy nie te verbaas wees as mense wat jou nie so goed ken hulle oor jou begin bekommer en free advice begin uitdeel nie.

Ek het vanaf 1998 tot iewers na 2000 aan kliniese depressie gely, en vanuit daardie ervaring wil ek jou graag aanmoedig om nie te lank te wag voordat jy professionele hulp gaan soek nie. Ek weet goed hoekom ek depressief was: Die liefde in my huwelik en in my kerk het gesterf. Soms, omdat ons weet wat die emisioneel-filosofiese oorsaak van ons depressie is, dink ons ons moet daaraan werk in plaas van aan die simptome. Dit klink wel eerbaar en volwasse, maar is ongelukkig nie heeltemal logies nie. As jy by 'n afgrond afgeski het en jou been gebreek het, moet jy dalk wel herbesin oor jou deelname aan ekstreme sport; maar die behandeling van die simptome -- die spalk van die been en die daaropvolgende rehabilitasie -- behoort jou die eerste prioriteit te wees. As jy nie die simptome van depressie behandel nie, sal jy sukkel om die probleme wat die "besering" veroorsaak het, aan te spreek.

Jy mag nou wel nie "suicidal" wees nie, maar sommige van ons se geloofsparadigma verhoed in elk geval daardie opsie. Dit beteken nie dat ons nie net so ernstig depressief kan raak en op ander maniere destruktief begin optree nie. Om die pyn te eksternaliseer deur jouself doelbewus te begin seermaak, of om onverskillig te begin bestuur, is maar net twee van die voorbeelde. Die feit dat selfmoord dus nog nie 'n oorweging was nie, beteken dus nie dat jy minder bekommerd hoef te wees oor jouself nie.

Ek lees dat jy onlangs 'n groot verhoudingsramp beleef het, en dit kan natuurlik bydra tot depressie (of miskien is dit selfs wat die depressie ge-"trigger" het); maar daar kan ook ander doodeenvoudig-fisiologiese redes wees vir hoekom jy so voel, en die oorsprong daarvan is nie altyd voordiehandliggend nie. Kliniese depressie is 'n fisiologiese siekte, en chemiese behandeling is dus nie onvanpas nie. Soms tref 'n mens dit gelukkig en dit wat die dokter voorskryf, werk goed vir jou; soms word daar gesukkel met die dosis en die spesifieke anti-depressant wat vir jou die beste is. Wat ek wel ook uit ervaring kan se is: Moenie tyd mors deur met allerhande kruierate te eksperimenteer nie. Ek is seker daar is wel 'n plant wat help (after all, die medisyne wat dokters voorskryf word uit organiese stowwe vervaardig), maar jy kan lank sukkel met self-medikasie sonder dat jy die regte middel vind. In die over-the-counter vorm is die goed ook gewoonlik nie gekonsentreerd genoeg nie, en teen die tyd wat 'n dokter jou begin behandel is die probleem wat hy moet behandel groter.

Ek het gelukkig die simptome van kliniese depressie geken omdat ek 'n jaar of twee voor my siekte ingeroep is om die illustrasies vir 'n boekie oor depressie te voltooi toe die eerste illustreerder skielik nie meer beskikbaar was nie, en ek al een op die uitgewer se span was wat haar tekenstyl kon naboots. Ek kon gelukkig ook redelik baie onthou van wat hulle geskryf het oor hoe vriende en familie kan help. Om hulp en bystand binne my huwelik* of die kerk te soek was natuurlik hopeloos, want dit was tog die bronne van my depressie! Ek het 'n paar maande lank by my ouers gaan bly, en my vennoot was ook baie ondersteunend. Een van die dinge wat ek goed onthou was dat die boekie gese het dat dit vir die depressiewe persoon goed is om aan "aktiwiteite" deel te neem, en dat vriende en familie nie behoort toe te laat dat jy heeltyd net in sak en as by die huis sit nie. Ek het bestuurlesse geneem by 'n bestuurskool, en my vennoot het my douvoordag by my ouers se huis kom haal sodat ek by Brackenfell se verkeersdepartement se toetsterrein kon gaan oefen om te bestuur, te parkeer, ensomeer. Kan ek nou vir jou se hoe min lus was ek vir daai storie! Maar ek het geweet dis goed vir my, en het maar my min krag bymekaargeskraap en dit gedoen.

Nog 'n brokkie raad wat die boekie gegee het, was dat 'n mens nie vir die depressiewe persoon moet probeer vertel hoe mooi die lewe is nie, en dat hy nie so treurig behoort te voel nie. Amen daarvoor. Ek het baie meer comfort gekry by Franz Kafka (wat ten minste op 'n manier kon uitdruk hoe verskriklik en paradoksaal en hopeloos die wereld is) as by hoopvolle gesegdetjies versier met blomme.

Na 'n jaar of meer het ek self geleidelik my anti-depressante begin verminder, en ek het ook nie meer 'n sielkundige besoek nie, want alhoewel my probleme nie opgelos is nie, was ek ten minste nie meer siek nie, en kon ek darem aangaan met die hoop op 'n toekomstige oplossing vir die probleme.

Die hele ervaring het my baie geleer. Miskien was die grootste les dat mense besonder broos is, en dat ons maar net deur 'n fyn verwewing van sosiologiese, chemiese en filosofiese draadjies aanmekaargehou word. Dis so maklik om iemand te breek. Ek kon so maklik op straat geeindig het. Die feit dat so baie mense op die aarde kan werk, paaiemente betaal, motor bestuur, kosmaak, rekenaars gebruik, baklei, die bakleiery oorleef, en daarna soms selfs die kapasiteit het om cool te lyk, is 'n jolly wonderwerk. En dan praat ek nog nie eers van brandarm mense wat ook honger is nie. Die digter Gerard Manley Hopkins, wat verskriklike depressie moes deurmaak in die 19e eeu toe daar nog nie behoorlike anti-depressante was nie, het geskryf oor die feit dat daar soveel inwerk teen ons dat 'n mens eintlik sou kon verwag om 'n selfs erger staat van verval te wees as wat ons wel is.

"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," skryf hy, "Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

* Ek is 'n paar jaar later stil-stil geskei, en het eers daarna vir familie en kollegas vertel. Die godsdienstige implikasies van 'n egskeiding was vir my die grootste hindernis. Dit gaan deesdae goed met my verhouding met my gewese man. Ons het albei letsels en verwag nie dat ons ooit al ons onopgeloste konflik sal deurwerk nie; maar, alhoewel ons glad nie van plan is om ooit weer 'n romantiese verhouding aan te knoop nie, is ons wel lojale vriende en ons sien mekaar gereeld.

Abafazi

When I was at Kingswood-Oxford, I did a semester course in Language Structure and Semantics with Mr. Kyff, a descendant of a Dutch immigrant whose surname was klapped into that shape by American officials who did not believe that an i and a j belonged together before a consonant. I even remember that our textbook was written by a man named S. I. Hayakawa. Weird.

Anyway, one of the things we learned about in that course was the difference between connotation and denotation. I was recently invited by Max Kaizen to join a group at Facebook. I accepted, but not before I had worked through a heavy load of personal connotative-denotative dissonance.

The group is called Abafazi, and is a tribute to "gorgeous glorious untamed women: girl geeks, media empresses, wild web women... a new social media place to connect". (Not sure that I would want to fit the description, but I always complain that I don't have enough female friends, so let me try not to be so compulsively otherwise. Max was being nice to me after all.)

Now when I think of abafazi, that would be one connotation that would never have entered my head. Even seeing 'Abafazi' in a curly-girlie font requires some mental adjustment. Actually, the use of the word in this context may well be aimed at challenging prejudices such as mine; for, while abafazi is simply a bland, generic word denoting women in general, in my own mind abafazi has the connotation of a very specific group of women: a stereotype from this group would be a solid and matronly inkosikazi who doesn't wear jeans, whose breasts dominate her torso for sheer volume — a woman with a couple of abantwana, and with an unwholesome set of traditional values — established, entrenched and certainly no longer an intombi, an inkosazana or even a makoti. Oh yes, and she doesn't use the Internet.

OK, so I have accepted my classification... ndingumfazi then. Masilinde and see if I can manage to crack the old connotation and whether I actually feel like living up to the new one. They may have to kick me out after a week once the nerd in me starts rebelling against the fashionability of the whole thing, and I crawl back into bed for an afternoon of chess and eating Marmite off a spoon.

Surrealisties, post-modernisties en skokkend absurd

Saterdagoggend 'n week gelede skakel ek die radio aan op RSG (ek boikot mos nou vir Cape Talk, alhoewel ek somtyds die gevoel kry I am cutting off my nose to spite my face), en hulle kondig aan dat die volgende lied op die trefferparade die dans-weergawe van De Lay Rey is. Ek kan nie glo wat ek hoor nie; ek begin luister en na sowat vier mate skakel ek die radio af in afgryse. Ek skakel hom weer aan net om seker te maak ek is nie dalk bloot snobbisties en bevooroordeeld ten opsigte van ander mense se smaak nie. Na nog vier mate skakel ek die radio weer in skok af. Dis dieselfde woorde, dieselfde melodie, maar inderdaad 'n sokkiemusiekweergawe. Ek vertel later vir Roelof. "Nee... nee... nee!" se* hy. Dis so af!"

Dis nie net af nie, dis besonder siek! Goeie genugtig, ek verwag nou nie alle Afrikaners moet salueer wanneer De La Rey speel asof ons in 1973** is en hulle speel die Vlaglied nie; ek is nie deel van die regse minderheid wat die lied as 'n politieke anthem eien nie, maar dis tog darem 'n knop-in-die-keel lied. Dink nou net hulle maak 'n sokkie-weergawe van O Sacred Head Now Wounded! Tog sekerlik sal mense in opstand kom daaroor. Maar die dans-weergawe van De La Rey is op die trefferparade: Dit beteken dus dis nie net een ou se siek grap nie -- mense hou actually daarvan! Wie is hierdie mense? Die kakies het die verkeerde Boere uitgemoor!

* Jammer oor die gebrek aan deeltekens en kappies, maar die laaste keer toe ek hulle op die skootrekenaar probeer aanbring het, het my screen geflip.
** Ek was toe in Sub B.

Growing up

To save the world

I am home today, working on the laptop, but feeling under the weather. Felt like I was getting flu last night. Took all the relevant medication, and now I am mostly just tired.

"Ek dink dis van te veel galavant," my mother said on the phone this morning. "Jy's nie meer sestien nie."

I think she has a point. I am without a doubt the oldest woman who regularly visits Die Mystic Boer. If I stay up all through a Friday night, it doesn't mean that I will manage to stay asleep until Saturday afternoon as I would have when I was the same age as my friends, as I appear to be entering that phase of life in which rising with the birds is inevitable; yet, nor I am so old that I can easily pull off a middagslapie as was my grandparents' custom. Saturday night comes; I get to bed before dawn on Sunday, but it's still not early enough to get my body clock out of the Bermuda Triangle. The Wizard requires more than three double brandy-and-Cokes and a bottle of red wine before his physiology will even consider rewarding him with a hangover; I, on the other hand, don't even drink alcohol, and manage to proceed directly to a hangover without having to spend the money on booze. (Obviously my body, being more chronologically advanced, is more efficient at this.) And so, while I may have the dutiful intention of catching up on my office work on Sunday afternoon after washing dishes and clothes and floors in the morning, I start the day sluggishly, yet unable to sleep, and thus also unable to fulfil my undertaking.

"Tania still hasn't grown up," Mikhailo tells my mother.

The thing is, if I am going to grow up completely, I will need some powerful motivation. At this stage, the whip is my best hope, because the carrot won't grow unless the donkey pulls the plough.

I know, I know, it's a convoluted metaphor, but I thought it through (up to a point, anyway) and it made sense. Discipline is the key to freedom; it's a Law of the Universe, applicable to all sorts of spheres of existence. If you want the freedom of being able to run swifly or dance beautifully, you must be fit and supple, and that requires discipline. If you want the freedom to be able to relax in a comfortable home and to take a straight path to the kitchen or the toilet, you must discipline yourself to pick up all the receipts and coffee cups and unwashed laundry from the floor, and process them appropriately. I am familiar with those applications of the Law, and except for the occasional impedence to my intertial motion (usually the result of my hectic work schedule), I manage to do just that. (Well, perhaps not as well as most women my age, but better than all my friends, who are mostly not women and not my age.)

The challenge is now to extend the same philosophy to the notion of having a disciplined entertainment schedule. It is easier to be rational in the face of irrational temptation when the logic has been embedded in my mind to such a degree that just one keyword is sufficient to trigger an already established conviction.

Here, then, for the purpose of growing carrots, is the logic:
1.        Fun and distraction are good and essential to fostering the sanity required to do my job efficiently and effectively.
2.        However, too much of a good thing is bad.
3.        By creating a playpen -- that is, pre-planned boundaries of time for my recreational activities, even over weekends -- I will be able to continue playing. Without the playpen, I may end up following a ball into the road and getting run over. More people die in South Africa as victims of road accidents than as victims of crime, so statistically, I am at high risk if I don't have a playpen.
4.        If I build a playpen, I can and save myself from death on the road and start growing carrots.
5.        Carrots contain beta carotene, which is good for your vision, and especially for developing the rods and cones required for night vision. So, if only I have a playpen, I will eventually become a visionary capable of saving the world from darkness.
Pedestrian deaths... beta carotene... vision to save the world... any of these keywords* should be able to do the trick next Friday night when the temptation to stay up till six presents itself again.
* Never before in the course of human history has a metaphor been more mixed. Yet, never before in the history of mixed metaphors has a metaphor made more sense. Tomorrow I will start drawing up a plan to save the world. That is, if I can get a good night's sleep first.

To save your friends

If you lack discipline, it affects everyone around you.

I have a tendency towards co-dependent relationships. I am a natural enabler. OK, one thing I am not going to do is to buy weed for any dope-smoking friends; but I am certainly not helping much to break any of these or other juvenile habits either, and if I prove willing to stay up beyond the Sensible Hours, they will gladly join me in my folly. I suppose I must qualify this: It's not that I am doing nothing for them. I am darem teaching one of my friends the basics of cooking and nutrition, and I do whine regularly about R's new tobacco addiction. But I am not really doing enough which is to their benefit. Oh, they probably think I am. They probably think I'm quite generous and unselfish. They know that cash loans from me carry zero percent interest. They know they can eat here just about anytime they want, and they don't even have to help me wash up. They know that I prefer to pay for my own coffee, so there's no great sense of obligation towards me. The problem is, I think I am depriving them of the opportunity to develop and practice useful social skills. If I insisted that they help me to wash up, they may just start doing it more regularly in their own homes, and thus they would become more desirable to the girls they wish to attract, which is exactly what I would want for them. But by feeding some bottomless hole of unfulfilled desire in myself (for what, I don't know -- to be a mother? to be liked? to fit in?) I am not helping them grow up. I probably want to keep them helpless to some extent, so that I can keep helping them. That is what co-dependents do, after all.

And I have been lazy. I know I need to write one friend a long, well-structured letter, but structuring letters is what I do all week, sometimes even before dawn and after sunset. I have also been meaning to sit down with another friend and talk through the situation with his housemate, which is going to erupt into something unpleasant if it isn't thought through soon. But strategy meetings are also part of my job, and we're talking about my relaxation time here. So, while I have a number of useful skills, I am only diligent enough to use them at work, but too lazy to use them in friendships -- and friendships are, after all, the purpose of life!

Besides, you can't effectively help your friends grow up if you're still wrestling with the irksome duty of having to grow up yourself...

The re-engineered reconstituted reconstructed Geek Dinner Party

There was so much politics following the first Cape Town 27Dinner and I did not have the leisure to read it all, and I decided to back out of the debate, because in spite of my notions about the importance of geekness, I felt that it took a very nasty turn at one point, which I thought was mean, considering the initiative and goodwill of the organisers, and the fact that everyone was supposed to be having fun (albeit in pursuit of fame and fortune for some). I didn't read the whole thread, but it appears to have been resolved amicably, because there is now also a Nasionale Herstigte Original Classic Revival Geek Dinner, and a lot of the Chief Elders from the Neo-Progressive 27Dinner are going to that one too. Perhaps it is a my-party-is-better-than-yours competition, or maybe it is an ecumenical thing, I wouldn't know. But I am going, because people I like are going. It appears that they allow dual citizenship.

The only thing I am now left wondering is, when on earth did we start calling meals dinners? I know they have always called it dinner in America, and the British called it tea; but when I was growing up, the evening meal in South Africa was called supper. Except if you went out and did ballroom dancing; then it was called a "dinner and dance". Which begs the question, why don't we ever dance at these dinners?

Drome

Die laaste paar nagte het ek 'n reeks onaangename drome gehad.

Slang

Een oggend het ek wakkergeword vanuit 'n droom dat ek op my maag lê, en bo-op my occipital lobe lê daar 'n heldergroen slang, en ek voel hoe hy met sy tande in my kop begin inhap. Ek is nie bang vir doodgewone slange nie, maar sover ek weet is 'n heldergroen slang of 'n mamba of 'n boomslang, en albei is gevaarlik. Mense staan om my en weet nie wat om te doen nie. Ek probeer baie stil lê, maar strek my hand uit en gee vir my ma my selfoon. "Bel vir A.," sê ek, "Hy sal die slang kan afhaal." (A. was voorheen 'n boer.) Maar in die droom bekommer ek my dat A. se alkoholisme sal beteken dat hy die slang lomp gaan misvat. "Nee, wag, bel vir Christopher. Gaan haal vir hom in die Strand." (Christopher is 'n omgewingsdeskundige.) Toe word ek wakker.

Derrick

Die dag daarna het ek van Derrick (alias Dennis Houy) gedroom. Seker omdat ek die laaste paar dae per e-pos in gesprek is met 'n vriend van sy weduwee, en omdat ek die vorige aand by Bernard gekuier het, en Bernard lyk bietjie na Derrick. In my drome is Derrick nooit heeltemal lewendig nie; hy is daar, maar nie daar nie; ek weet hy is dood, maar hy loop daar rond en gesels en alles, maar hy kan nooit lank vertoef nie. Drome oor hom is dus altyd treurig, omdat hy moet gaan.

Honde

Gisternag het ek van ons afgestorwe honde gedroom (en vanoggend het ek sommer uit verlange na hulle op pad werk toe gehuil).

Geweld

Maar die droom oor die honde het oorgegaan in 'n slegter droom oor iemand wat my probeer bykom. Daar was baie gereedskap wat rondgelê het, en ek het dit as wapens begin benut. Naderhand het ek drie implemente deur sy maag gesteek tot in die grond in, skroewedraaiers of sulke goed, maar hy was nog nie dood nie. Toe roer ek sy ingewande heeltemal deurmekaar met een van die stele (soos as 'n mens 'n marinade in vleisstukke inmeng met 'n sosatiestok omdat jy nie 'n groot lepel byderhand het nie), maar hy het nog eers opgestaan en my agternagesyrompel voordat hy uiteindelik dood neergesak het.

Vanaand is ek van plan om van pienk wolhaarolifantjies met vlerkies te droom.

General update

Jaco, ek hoor niks van jou nie. Kom jy nog more? Ek gaan moet aan die kant maak vanaand, want daar gaan more nie tyd wees nie. Hier is my storie oor Dirk, nou met foto's by. Het nog foto's bygevoeg op die About RoseBlood-bladsy op Roelof se Webwerf. Kan glad nie meer objektief wees oor Roelof se musiek nie, ek ken hom te goed. My kollega Andrew het na die demo geluister op MySpace en sê dit klink goed. Mystic bedien kos ook, het julle geweet? En dis nie baie duur nie. Hulle betaal my nie om sit te sê nie. Bernard spel klassieke ghitaar, en baie mooi. Ek het gisteraand vir hom gaan kuier. En hy maak ordentlike koffie ook. Lotus Notes het so terribly ge-crash dat al my linkerkantse icons piepklein gekrimp het. Ongehoord. Ek is 'n amateur drawer-upper-of-legal-documentation. Die Italianers is baie kwaad omdat ons nie spoediger deur daai vyf kontrakte kan werk nie. Maar ek moet dit voor-ure en na-ure doen en ek is soms moeg en suf, en in die laaste ruk is ek baie oneffektief. Ek vermoed dat dit is omdat nou al die afgelope paar weke muesli eet wat ek onlangs by Pick 'n Pay gekoop het, waarvan die "best before"-datum Julie 2004 is.

Besoek aan Dirk Winterbach

Hierdie artikel het geskuif. Hy's nou hier.

Skaakmaats

Several people have asked me when we can get together for chess again, so if you want to play, come to Fandango this Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock (can't be earlier, because we will need the morning to recover from the previous night's gig). Bring a chess set if you if you have one; I will be bringing three anyway, and Fandango has one too. If you want to just come along for the kuier without playing chess, that's fine too. If you intend coming, please confirm before Friday afternoon. (If you only find out about it afterwards, then just pitch up anyway.) By the way, Fandango has three sections and an outside, so make sure you walk all the way through to see where we are. It has happened in the past that people have missed us. (Although as a leptorrhinian blonde, I would have thought I would be hard to miss.) I can never guarantee that there will be a crowd. Sometimes twenty people pitch up, sometimes there are just two or three of us. If you have questions, ask.

My ma se skoenekooppatroon

Ek en my ma dra dieselfde grootte skoene. Soms erf ek by haar skoene. (Ek het ook al by een van haar vriendinne 'n baie lekker paar loopskoene geërf.) Na haar onsuksesvolle knie-operasies het my ma vir my heelwat van haar hoëhaakskoene aangebied, maar my smaak het intussen sodanig verander dat ek die meeste van hulle nie eintlik wou hê nie.

My ma het die gewoonte dat as sy skoene kry waarvan sy baie hou, sy sommer twee pare koop, want anders raak die skoene naderhand uitgetrap en teen die tyd wat jy hulle wil vervang, is hulle nie meer in winkels beskikbaar nie. Sy het ook heelwat Hotters en soortgelyke skoene in verskillende kleure, en daar is een soort plat sandaal waarvan sy seker vyf pare of meer in verskillende kleure het.

Toe my ma se geliefkoosde skoenwinkel (Burtons in Tygervallei) vir haar hierdie T-hemp present gee, het ons die gepastheid van die bewoording baie geniet...

Naskrif: My ma het eintlik baie goeie smaak. As ek die klere dra wat sy vir my koop, kry ek gewoonlik komplimente, maar as ek vir myself klere koop, dan lag mense vir wat ek aantrek. My pa is 'n afgetreede skoenwetenskaplike. Toe ons kinders was, is ons nie toegelaat om Bata-tekkies te dra nie.

The usual admin moan

Ag jong... It's been nearly a week and this Telkom thing is still not resolved. I have been switching back and forth between Telkom vanilla and Stii's workaround, and still I don't get uninterrupted constant access to all the places I need to go on the Internet. I need to solve a user's problem with mail notifications; I know exactly where and how to find the solution at the Notes forum, and I just can't get there...

Your name

I know too many people called Marius, Johan, Chris, John and Mike. To be able to tell you all apart in conversations I am afraid I am going to have to rename most of you. So if your name is Marius, Johan, Chris, John or Mike, please tell me what name you want, otherwise I will pick one for you, and you're just going to have to be happy with being referred to as that. (No cheating: If your name is Johan, then don't think that just because Johan is not an option anymore, you can now be known as Chris, Mike, John or Marius. I need something unique to work with. Like a username.)

Afterthought: If I actually knew the surnames of all the people I know, I wouldn't have to rename them... Except maybe for a couple of guys called Johan Botha.

RoseBlood site

The Wizard of Oz and I put in a good number of hours yesterday and managed to migrate Roelof's blog from the free WordPress space to a hosted area where we could fiddle with the CSS and get in our own graphics. (If it weren't for the Wizard I would have suffered immensely, and certainly wouldn't have got this far by the end of 2007, hehehe...) It's not all done — I stilll need to put in the interviews I did with the band members, provide a link to Dirk the Sculptor's page (and I still need to create his page!), edit and caption some pics, fix some bad punctuation, make a proper splash page, and a whole lot of other stuff; and at the moment it is hanging in there by threads with a cloaked redirect. But at least it is up! Go and take a look.

Self-sacrifice

I think Scarface (movie with Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and others) had an interesting message: You must either be good or bad, because both are closed systems that run on incompatible fuel. The protagonist was undermined by his weakness: that little bit of uncomprimising good in him.

You'll have the same problems if you live according to the mirror of that image, viz. if you try to be basically good, but allow yourself a bit of evil. I do a lot of things for other people, but I am not wholly unselfish. In fact, much of what I do for others is out of guilt, or in avoidance of conflict. And I do a lot of things for my own pleasure, selfishly. It doesn't work. It even leads to an unhealthy concern over what my friends and other people might think. I must go back to uncompromising unselfishness. I have learned a lot since 1998 about the importance of taking time to regenerate oneself in order to serve others better, so that whilst living a life of self-sacrifice, I need not again fall into the trap of self-destruction.

But still, I fear how hard it will be to change. And I don't really want to change, not yet anyay. And if I don't pray, I am not definitely going to be able to talk myself into this either. But remaining where I am is probably going to be much harder...

One hour later

I accidentally knocked over my very large mug of Ceylon tea onto the tea-coloured carpet.

En ek wonder nou heeltyd: Sal jy darem betyds by jou vierde periode klas uitkom?

This is not a good way...

...to start a week, with a 3-Panado headache, following an emotional evening. When I feel good, I drink Earl Grey. When I feel sorry for myself, I revert to Ceylon. I am drinking Ceylon. I also woke up deluded: I thought that following the four bars of Cadbury's chocolate I ate last week, and the pizza and coke while watching Star Wars with the Wizard, I would eventually gain weight. Instead, I weigh less this morning than I have weighed in about a decade. I don't feel thinner. Perhaps I am hollow on the inside. Maybe I have an exoskeleton. There is so much work, and I am behind on everything. I shouldn't have taken off the weekend. Permit me the indulgence of negativity for another 15 minutes. Then I will repent, adopt a positive attitude, and systematically plan how to fight the basilisk, the griffin and the serpent.

Conspiracy theory

Ek het net gewonder... is Google, Firefox en Linux nie miskien Raka nie?

I have run out of clever titles for blog entries

De la Rey

Uiteindelik het ek nou ook die veelbesproke de la Rey-liedjie gehoor. Eben het hom vir my op sy selfoon gespeel. Nee, gits, jong, dat mense so aangaan oor die politiek en alles... Dis dan 'n mooi liedjie, ek het amper gehuil, so sentimenteel is dit en alles. Die Boere-oorlog was tragies. Daar sou vandag miljoene meer Afrikaners gewees het as dit nie vir die oorlog en konsentrasiekame was nie. Hoekom so kwaad raak omdat iemand die misery daarvan bekla? Toe die liedjie begin, dag ek eers dit gaan oor 'n plaasmoord in hedendaagse Suid-Afrika. Ek kan mos nou nie help nie. Mense het nooit gemoan oor ABBA se Fernando nie, en hulle moan ook nie dat Ché Guevarra se kop op al wat tiener is se t-shirt sit nie. Dis alles net te complicated... Mens mag ook nie eers meer iets voel nie.

Last night

Stuck behind a digital wall

I feel... blind. I can replicate*, but due to a Telkom DNS problem, I have almost no access to the Internet via http. So you can see me, but I can't see you. I can't get into my bank account so I can't see if I have paid my rent. (Will go in later via personal dial-up account and see if the DNS situation improves when working through a different ISP.)

"Ek is bang ek..."

Two odd things happened last night.

One of them was witnessing a conservative, intelligent and perfectionistic young woman having a panic attack in the choir practice. Our erudite and delightfully pleasant conductor has been teaching us techniques of relaxing our bodies (jaw, tongue, throat, shoulders, everything) to be able to produce a less strained sound, and also, ultimately, to be able to pitch better and eliminate the quarter-tones which we sometimes inadvertently sing (in layman's terms, to stop us from singing out of tune). So I was very relaxed, and managing to reach some of the notes which I had lost to laryngitis some eight months ago in Kathu. In the meanwhile she (who reads music far better than I do, and who knew that Brahms was the composer of several Afrikaans folk melodies long before I knew) was working herself up into a tizz, until eventually she was shivering; her arms had spasms and she looked as if she was sweating. I thought she was ill at first, or dealing with some immense personal trauma, such as a death in the family. I sent a doctor after her when she left the room (I have had the impression before that she doesn't like me, so I didn't go myself), and felt extremely sorry for her when I found out what her real problem was: "Ek is bang ek sing verkeerd." Imagine getting so worked up over something like that! (And it's not like she's a soloist or anything.) It made me wonder to what kind of upbringing and adult environment she might have been exposed. Or what was happening at work? (She's an accountant, and I know she works very hard.) If she was suffering from clinical depression, that behaviour would make some sense to me. Later on she came back inside and was chatty towards the others around her. I still pity her and wonder how I might help.

Violence

The other thing is probably just as insane. And this time the nutty person was I. I am not going to tell you the whole story, because it is too stupid and embarassing. If my blogger friends who know some of the details want to tell it, they can go ahead and embellish it, or omit details as is their custom, and thus give you a warped but entertaining version of it. The conclusion of it all is that I think my latent physical aggression, which on the odd occasion (such as last night) is not so latent, is going to get me into big trouble if I ever get attacked by an armed person. My first reaction, I think, will be anger; and in my anger, I will fight. And by fighting rather than simply playing dead, I will get badly injured.

* Lotus Notes Web sites are not uploaded via FTP. They consist of one or more databases which are synchronised with other replicas on a Domino server. I have three replicas of my blog: one on the company's Domino server, one on a laptop (client only, no server), and one on the machine in the server farm at our ISP.

No time to give you the real picture, the big picture or anything but these pictures

I am too busy. No wonder The Wizard of Oz says that my blog doesn't really give my readers a good idea of who I am. Besides, these last few weeks I have been reporting primarily on my after-hours activities, whereas in reality of course a lot of my soul also goes into my work — these early mornings working on patents and contracts with Mikhailo, my days at Pavatile and the university, and answering questions at ProjectManagement.co.za. And also, saying what I feel is becoming quite convoluted, since I cannot, in fairness, compromise the privacy of all the people I would really want to talk about.

I am slightly miffed because there is something wrong with the Internet at the moment, and I only get intermittent access to patches of it. I am in the middle of a couple of minor debates at various blogs and now I can't get there to see what people are saying!

So, as usual, just a couple of snatches.

Saturday night with Jaco and other friends was very enjoyable. Jaco and I went back to my place early (about 1 a.m.) while the others went on to Long John's house to ummmm... well, you see, there it happens again: I hit a topic I can't discuss. I wish I had the time to tell a fuller story of even the uncensored stuff, but brevity forces this blandness.

Earlier in the day I had the most satisfactory chess game I have had in months, beating the Wizard fair and square. No silly mistakes this time. Just strategy. He is eagerly awaiting the rematch.

I need to take the opportunity also to commend KFC for sponsoring the guys in the picture below. This is the KFC Youth Band playing lively and loud music outside KFC in Stellenbosch. I loved it. Of all the possible worthy causes that they could have picked to support, this one is certainly a very cool choice. There was a big crowd, and traffic was slowed by the people encroaching on the road.

Last night I went to photograph RoseBlood practicing for their gig at the Klein Libertas in Stellenbosch on the 16th, so that I can fix up the RoseBlood Web site this weekend; and also to meet Dirk, the sculptor who will be exhibiting at the concert. I am awfully tempted to post some pictures here already, but I think that will spoil the dramatic effect, so I am exercising restraint in spite of my extreme enthusiasm.

To my dear friend who grieves me

I would have preferred it if you had told me upon your arrival last night that you had smoked so much weed before you came. Then I would have known to judge you as a fool for the weed instead of judging you as a fool for uttering such an unprecedented volume of drivel!