Tania.co.za

Assessment overview

The following outcomes will be used as assessment criteria for students wishing to achieve a qualification in Social Studies by completing the Nocturnal Behaviour module at the University of Stellenbosch. The criteria have been set by a SAQA-accredited Assessment Designer to ensure fairness and to measure the candidate's competency in the practical application of the principles.

A successful candidate:

Geek stuff

I am quite tired after last night's Geek Dinner — had to be at the office at 07:30 this morning to prepare for an important meeting. I'd been on the organisers' mailing list but being so busy and flustered during the past month, I wasn't able to commit myself to a meaningful contribution. I had been given a solemn promise by a very serious and businesslike guy from the Zandberg wine estate that they would sponsor an event, but he evaporated, and nobody responded to the enquiry which I filled in at at the Zandberg Web site in an effort to re-establish contact. GetWine, who have previously been happy to sponsor a Geek Dinner, rose to the occasion, and I asked whether I might be the one to thank them for their sponsorship and promote their special offer. Jonathan was a little amused, since I do not actually drink wine myself (in spite of the fact that my father raised me properly). Wessel, who drove there and back with me, informed me that the wine was very good.

Rudi, Graham and Wessel at the Geek Dinner. At the end of the table (looking like a ghost of Jean-Luc Picard — sorry, low lighting) is Andy.

One of the talks last night was about what it takes to become an issuer of digital certificates, delivered by Stefano Rivera. I was a little distracted during the talk by other things which were happening in the room, but I thought, never mind, I know enough about certificates to do what I need to do with them once in a blue moon. Now at this point in my narrative, imagine an ominous change to a minor key in the background music, with nervous cello's and some rumbling timpani. Since I will be out of town next week and my Notes certificate was due to expire during that week, I had to recertify my Notes id this morning. A while back, I had changed my organisation name and moved my mail file to another server, since we are no longer running two Notes domains, but only one. So I reckoned I should recertify myself with the new organistion's cert.id. Logical, perhaps, but also unfortunately wrong: Just before the Big Meeting at 10:00, I locked myself out of my own mail file and all the other applications which I had developed and to which I had Manager access! Fortunately, my mail file was still open on another computer with a locally stored id file, and I could rectify my mistake by resending the request to the Administrator's mail file and then using the old organisation's cert.id to certify the copy of my id. I then replaced the messed up id on the server with the decent one. Perhaps I will have to cross-certify my id again at some stage, but perhaps I should not exacerbate a potentially shaky situation by acting preemptively. What I (re-)learned from this temporary disaster was that what appears behind the slash is not an indication of the domain to which you belong. Evidently, I am still a citizen of a country which no longer exists, and as long as it issues me a passport, I can travel. Bullet number two of the conclusion: I should probably listen more attentively to Stefano Rivera.

One of the most exciting talks last night was by Neil Blakey-Milner. An event called StarCamp is being planned for December, and the format is exactly what I would have wanted in a geektech event. More about this later. I still wanted to say something about the conversations that Dennis, Wessel, Graham, Arno, Christèl and I had at the table too, but I've got to go and do my to-do list now. Apologies to those to whom I have not created hyperlinks yet. Will try to rectify this faux pas when I get back from my trip.

Getting to know your friends through Facebook applications

I have very few 'Facebook friends' — people I met on Facebook. Most of the friends I have there are people I got to know in some other way, who also happen to have Facebook profiles. Having said that, it is still interesting to find out how little some of us know about each other, and in that way, Facebook is helping us to get to know each other better.

Naturally, one sees one's friends adding pictures or signing up for events relating to things you didn't know interested them. But what is also insightful is what the Facebook applications they want you to add say about the relationship. Here are a couple of exmples: Numerous friends have asked to 'compare movie taste' with me, not realising that I hardly ever watch movies nowadays. Others have generously sent me drinks using the 'Booze' application, not realising that I don't drink booze (of course, this is 'virtual booze', but nevertheless something to which I can't relate). Yet others suggested that I add the 'Are You Interested?' application, unaware of the fact that I am most decidedly unavailable for any kind of hanky panky. And the furthest from the mark of all, perhaps, is the request to add the 'Astrology' application from people who do not realise that I am entirely allergic to astrologers. Granted, most of the people who have sent these requests have not spent very much time with me in the 'real world' either; we may have met through a networking event, at Mystic, or through some other group situation, and chatted only briefly on subsequent occasions.

There was a tag-game amongst bloggers a while ago in which you had to tell five things that people don't know about you. Maybe I should write something along those lines, making a list of all my everyday eccentricities which would have been quite obvious if the circumstances to which they apply had occurred somewhere during previous social encounters.

Geek question

Here's a question for anyone who knows something about databases. I have two spreadsheets (or databases, if you wish, but I will be receiving the data in spreadsheet format) and I wish to find the common records. There may be some field differences, but essentially there will be two or three fields which can be used for mapping purposes (representing name, surname and organisation). I want to have a small application which can run a query to identify the common records. It must be easy for me to feed in the data, e.g. I want to be able to provide the two source files as comma-delimited text files or simply as spreadsheets, and then push a "Compare" button, and get a report. If anyone wants to take this on as a little project, or simply to give me advice about a suitable approach, please contact me. The volume of records won't be huge (a couple of hundred at a time), and there are one or two nice-to-haves which I guess I could raise (e.g. the ability to run a comparison based on either a specific field's values or on the values in a combination of fields), but let's keep the scope simple for now. This is only for a single user — me — so please do not start thinking of buffer pool size or anything beyond this simple request...

I can't dance as though no-one is watching

Hectic

Hectic was never part of my vocabulary. Not that I had a zen master's life on a hilltop; I just chose other, more old-fashioned words. The same goes for stress. Stress is what women with painted fingernails have. What I have is something else. At this stage, I am surviving, more or less stably. All four legs of the table are still there, it's just that there are a few wobbles in the floor. Wessel and I are driving to the Geek Dinner together tonight, and picking up Marius' nephew Rudi on the way. (Wilbur, who was also going to come through from Stellenbosch, was torn between the Geek Dinner and Hog Hoggidy Hog at Mystic, and eventually succumbed to the latter.) Distractions like this are helping to maintain my sanity. I'm in the kind of situation in which many people would go drinking with friends as soon as they leave work (that is, if they do manage to leave before dawn). I don't drink alcohol, and from what I learned recently when I accompanied a friend to an AA meeting, this can be a very detrimental pattern (not to mention the fact that is expensive!). Apparently others go to the gym and work up a sweat. But I can't think of a more boring or torturous place to go for exercise, unless you can hog a huge trampoline for an hour or so.

Going out

For me, distractions are cheap. Listening to Muse in the car on the way home is a good anaesthetic (if I wanted to focus, I would have listened to something by Couperin on harpsicord). Muse's music makes me think of distant things which don't add pain. After that, I go out to a club in the early part of the evening, when it's still quite empty. This means that I can have a whole dancefloor to myself. I order a Coke, and when that's finished, I keep filling up the glass with water. If I feel hungry, I order two spring rolls. Total bill for the night out, including food: R17.

Dancing

There's an expression, "Dance as though no-one is watching." Well, I am sure there's some point to that way of thinking, but I can't see how that would work for me. I have to dance as though people are watching, even if I am alone, otherwise I don't think I would make much of an effort. Last night I went out and played two games of chess before moving upstairs for my regular exercise. After a while, I sat down, and a ballet dancer came up to me. She was a tiny, delicate person, and very beautiful, the kind that I would probably have wanted to gobble up in one delicious mouthful like a chocolate truffle, had I been a man. She expressed some admiration for what I was doing, and asked me whether dancing was my full-time profession — not the first time I have had that question (and at times I have wondered whether people ask it with veiled facetiousness), but it was extremely flattering coming from someone who can do the splits standing up (she showed me a picture from her modeling portfolio which she had on her cell phone), and especially since I had been so mediocre at ballet that Diane van Schoor suggested that I move along to some other activity when she needed to make place in her dancing school for others who had the talent to pursue ballet as a career. I begged her to teach me some new moves, and we exchanged telephone numbers. The little dancer also judged me to be about twenty-eight, which was additionally flattering, considering that I turned twenty-eight back in 1993, when most of my Stellenbosch friends were eight-year-olds.

Age

It's also by no means the first time that I have been judged younger than my present age, and the difference between my real age and the estimates is increasing. (By the time that I turn 80, people will probably take me for a three-year-old.) At first I thought that it was a worldwide social conspiracy, and I kept trying to figure out the purpose of the flattery. But several months ago, an amusing incident took place on that same dancefloor which if nothing else should convince me that I probably really do not look as old as I am. I was sitting outside Mystic with a friend some 20 years my junior, and two of his friends came and joined us. They were from Cape Town, and we hadn't met before. Shortly afterwards, the DJ put on one of my favourite songs and I excused myself, hopped over the back of the seat and excitedly ran upstairs to go dancing. After a while they came upstairs too, and were lurking next to the pillars, beer-bottles in hand. I tried to coax them all onto the dancefloor with limited success. I was unaware of the conversation that took place between them until it was reported to me a week later, but it went something this:

"Are you with her?"
"No, we're just friends."
"So why don't you go for her?"
"We don't have... that kind of relationship."
"So do you mind if I go for her then?"
"Go ahead."

When I learned that he had said that, I was quite annoyed with him. "But I am not available!" I said. "And you know that, and yet you..."
"I knew he wouldn't get anywhere with you," my friend replied mischievously, "but Konstantin (name changed to mitigate further damage to his reputation) is always such a nuisance to everyone when he is drunk and I thought he should learn his lesson."

So, back to the events of that night. Konstantin thus eventually decided to enter the dancefloor. As far as I knew at that point, we were just dancing, but in his mind (I later learned), he was making great advances at securing my romantic affection. By the end of the night the evening (at around three in the morning, actually) the DJ was playing Big Band songs, and Konstantin and I we were dancing langarm, German-style. The three of us left together when the place closed for the night (the other Cape Town guy had left much earlier), and Konstantin was in great spirits. "So, Schatzi," he said, "where are we going?"
"We're taking you home," my friend and I replied.
"Home? Whose home? Yours?" asked Konstantin.
"No, we are dropping you off where you are sleeping over at your other friends' place."
"You guys are so boring! So, Schatzi, when am I going to see you again?"
"My name isn't Schatzi, it's Tania. And I am sure we shall run into one another again sometime, since we have a mutual friend."
"I know your name is Tania, but I am going to call you Schatzi. Otherwise I will call you gogga. You choose."
"Oh, good grief. Call me Schatzi then. Good night, Kontantin."

A week later, so I am told, the following conversation took place between Konstantin and our mutual friend. I can only imagine that he must have told his other friends with great gusto that while he was out with his buddy, he met this really hot chick and told them my name, and that they know of me via our mutual friend; because it was with great incredulity and angry embarassment that he confronted this friend a week later, saying, "Why didn't you tell me she was forty-one?!"

So, since I have been told by about seventy-three people that I do not look my age (I even recently got accused of having had botox and plastic surgery -- eeew! Can you imagine!), I have decided that I can provide a great service to humanity by telling them the secret to eternal youth and happiness (or some variation on that theme), and get rich by traveling all over the world to exotic places, holding motivational seminars, selling books and signing autographs. Aaaaaargh! Can you imagine me doing a Chata Romano? I'd probably die from underexposure to rock music and cheap Chinese imports!

Good morning!

What's the opposite of a blue Monday? Probably a yellow one. Well, that's what I am having so far. I didn't sleep enough, but I feel bright and chirpy this morning. I am on a roll, creating the delegates' customised courseware, which, for the first time, will include references to PRINCE2. Using electronic media, I have honed the course customistion process at ProjectManagement.co.za over the past year to be able to deal with the fact that it isn't always feasIble to have a pre-course customisation meeting with clients in other parts of the country. The projects to be undertaken by next week's group are quite unsuited to proper PRINCE2 Project Management, IMO (and I am sure that certified PRINCE2 experts will agree), but I will need to explain why against the backdrop of Project Management basics, because their organisation has "standardised on PRINCE2". And at least I can include PRINCE2 terminology (such as "Business Case" and "Project Initiation Document") where appropriate within the simplified Scoping Template I am drawing up for them; but I did make it very clear in my proposal that what they will be getting will not be a PRINCE2 course, so I won't set them up to end up doing "PINO" projects.

OK, enough talking about work. Going back to continue doing the work now. Starting to feel like one of those "strategic bloggers" now, eeeew. Got to get a separate blog going for this stuff.

Weekend

I am not feeling sorry for myself anymore. I had something of a weekend after all. I got a vitamin B injection and bought myself some emo music on Friday (apologies to Neil Blakey-Milner for allowing myself to sink so low; hope he will still deign to greet me at the Geek Dinner on Thursday), and rapidly degenerated into a state of emotional insecurity and terrible decision-making which, inter alia, took a me on a picaresque journey which included incidents such as punching a guy at the BP (seems like the place to be violent in Stellenbosch these days) and staying up until five in the morning with only one other witness to my inenviable state of mind.

On Saturday evening a friend took me out to supper. He gave me all the adult advice I needed to restore my moral sanity (after all, he is 28 and I am only 42), so that by by Sunday lunchtime, I had more or less recovered my dignity, and got my act together nicely enough to tidy up my flat to a state of relative presentability. Here is one of the pictures I took of my pretty friend (the Princess of the Hebridean Fairies, but currently employed as an accountant) after cooking a decent lunch for the two of us.

I am feeling flustered, though. I have a lot of preparation to do for the course I am teaching at Wits in October. And everybody else wants me to do everything else on top of it. As usual, they are being nice about it, but I can't say no because there's no other alternative for them.

Turning down an invitation from the Wizard — the abovementioned Princess' beau — to accompany him and his sister to a performance by Stef Bos, I went to sleep over at my parents' house last night so that I could work on PowerPoint on their computer today (which I did not do in the end anyway, as I had to read through certain Project Management methodology documents first). But I did not sleep well. The blankets were blobby because I was too lazy to configure them comfortably before going to sleep, and I dreamed that a giant troll was causing havoc in the midst of a place that looked like a sprawling agricultural expo. In the dream I had two identical half-brothers who were of another species. They were about 8 feet tall and powerfully built, like rugby props, only wider. They were kept in a barred enclosure at the expo, and we were going to let them out so that they could deal with the troll. One of them was called Herman. I don't know whether the fact that I saw my former neighbour Herman as I left home in the afternoon had anything to do with it, but he is not built like a rugby player at all, and he has long silky blonde tresses, while my ogre-brothers had short thick brown hair cut in a Vrystaat style.

And there you have it, a typically unconclusive Tania story. I am now going to try to make a plan of what I have to do during this week. It's easier to not be flustered if you have a plan. But it's hard to make a plan if you're feeling flustered in the first place.

An indulgence

For the next fifteen minutes, I am going to allow myself the luxury of self-pity. I am going to mope about how tired and ineffective I feel at work during the week, and how about not wanting to work over weekends anymore. I am going to envy people who have the priviliges I covet.

Then I will go and get myself a vitamin B injection in preparation for not taking a long weekend.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Last night I accompanied a friend to his first AA meeting. I'm practically a teetotaller, so you might imagine that there would be nothing there for me. Wrong. It was an uplifting, inspiring, encouraging and humbling experience. If I have time within the next week, I will tell you why.

Project Management seminar

I recently went to Sun City as one of the speakers at a seminar on Project Management. It was the first time I'd ever visited the place, and I was glad that I got paid for being there because I cannot imagine wanting to go there for fun, although people who like golf, or who have a horde of children to be entertained, could justifiably have a different perspective on the place — and the food, and even the coffee, was excellent. But I prefer real rocks, and plants that choose where they want to grow. Disneyland is more honest. It doesn't pretend to be real life.

People

My topic was An Introduction to Project Scoping and Planning, and I also assisted Celeste Venter in facilitating a workshop on the third day. I met a number of interesting people, including a PMP who works for Siemens and who appeared to be the very embodiment of what you'll learn a good Project Manager should be — a man of uncommon emotional maturity and humility. I also met the Issue Manager for the Gautrain project and arranged to interview some of her colleagues later (got something up my sleeve, don't want to reveal all now).

Microsoft Project and PSNext

I will be going back to Johannesburg at the end of the month to present a course for a team of researchers at Wits university, and will then complete the advanced training which is necessary for me to offer training in PSNext in Cape Town. At the Sun City seminar, I also met one of the guys from the project office of a major retail bank, and I arranged to go and take a look at their Microsoft Project setup. They have both PSNext and Microsoft Project, and following my own initial evaluation of the one versus the other, it was very handy to get his perspective on which one is better for what. Since I will be continuing to present both a Microsoft Project course and now also a course in PSNext (contact me via ProjectManagement.co.za if you want details), I found his insights invaluable. He also provide best practices for Microsoft Project. Some of these were things I'd figured out for myself already, and some were new. For example, I use a "noun plus verb" approach for naming lowest-level tasks; what I will now also adopt is a "verb plus noun" approach (i.e. the reverse) for the naming of milestones. Things like this seem like pedantry to first-time users, but if you have seen some of the vague and ambiguous project plans which have come out of major organisations prior to training, you will understand why tips of this sort are important tools to producing good plans.

Groupwork on the final day of the seminar.

Seminar dynamics

Inter alia, I also learned some valuable lessons on how social events can assist in building a learning environment, as I saw the effect on the collaboration between participants in the groupwork session which followed a visit to the shebeen the night before. (It wasn't really a shebeen, it was a pub, but the Sun City people seem to like to call it a shebeen so that you will think you are getting a township experience even though you are surrounded by security and opulence.)

Supper at the shebeen which was not a shebeen.

My role in this industry

I was chuffed to discover that I am indeed fulfilling a valuable niche role in this industry (hmmm, 'niche role' seems too much of a mixed metaphor, but I can't think of anything more fitting right now). In spite of increasingly good feedback from participants on both my software courses at the university and the in-house customised training which I present, I have struggled with self-confidence because I am not as good at this or that aspect of Project Management as so-and-so is. After this seminar, I feel much more confident amongst my peers, knowing that what I do, I do well, and that this adds value. Not everybody can simplify the complexities of Project Management like I can for a novice audience. Not everyone has the same insights. Not every Project Manager — no matter how good he is — is a good course presenter. Being an outsider — a consultant if you will, although I tend to balk at this over-used epithet — allows me to be objective in a way in which even senior insiders sometimes cannot afford to be, given the pressures of company politics. And objectivity coming from someone like me, who cares very little about business glamour, can be useful in getting companies to address the fundamentals of effective Project Management, while my attention to detail can make a big difference when using tools for effective Time and Cost Management, or in producing documentation.

And now I really need to go and plan the project of tidying my desk...

Need advice on the choice of a cell phone

We have two cell phone routers at work, and because of this arrangement, we can get two new cell phones. One of them will be mine. This leaves me with the task of choosing a model. Years ago when I was faced with this choice I gave my requirements list to a colleague who was into electronic gadgetry and asked him to make the choice on my behalf. Since then he has left the company, so I hereby request the advice of anyone who has an opinion on the subject. My requirements are as follows:

Alles

Die intimidasie duur voort. Dit gaan baie moeilik. Die polisie en die unieleiers help nie. Ons weet nie of hulle kan help nie, maar hulle help nie. Die staking is amptelik verby, maar die lede praat nie meer deur hulle unie nie. Die intimideerders gaan nou na die mense se vrouens toe, waar hulle woon, en dreig hulle. Alles is in die hande van drie moordlustige mense wat keer dat 'n honderd ander kan aangaan met hulle lewens. Selfs die tydelike dagarbeiders — vlugtelingimmigrante — is bang. Saans probeer ek om nie daaraan te dink nie. Ek gaan dans en gesels oor onbelangrike dinge. Die maand is nou eers halfpad en ek verwag dat as ek na my banksaldo kyk, ek sal sien dat ek al hierdie maand byna tweeduisend rand aan Carol se mediese kostes bestee het. Soggens word ek te vroeg wakker en dan bekommer ek my oor al die mense wat ek ken wie se lewens deur dwelmgebruik beïnvloed word. Donderdagaand gaan ek saam met 'n vriend na sy eerste AA-vergadering. Ten minste een persoon wat stappe doen om te verander! Dit bemoedig my. Maar ek vermoed dat hy nie die enigste van my vriende is wat verslaaf is nie. Ek gaan nou nie eers begin praat oor dagga- en kokaïenmisbruik nie, anders kom ek nooit by my werk uit nie. Ek werk hard, maar ek werk nie effektief nie. Ek het ná my onlangse sakereis al weer deur die naweek moes gewerk, en teen tyd, ten einde Mikhailo se jongste patent te help klaarkskryf. Nou vind ek dit moeilik om my aandag op kantoor te bepaal by die belangrikste take. Ek hanteer dinge darem (nou ja, so min of meer, maar af en toe met 'n onverdiende afjak aan Dennis), en ek val nie om nie; die laaste keer wat ek gehuil het, was dit oor iets moois, nie oor 'n probleem nie. Maar ek wil 'n naweek van my eie hê om my wasgoed en skottelgoed behoorlik te was, om my stofsuier deeglik deur die hele woonstel te begelei, om my yskas te ontdooi, om alleen te wees en om te lees, te bid, te skryf, en te dink.

A Sunday conversation at Facebook, mildly edited to protect the guilty

He:	Must say I was rather disappointed not to see you at the 1 of 50 parties... tsssk tssk. And I think you were actually the one that invited me :/
She:	I am sorry. I actually did think of messaging you yesterday via Facebook, although I did not know whether you'd get the message in time. I removed my name from the list because I worked until 21:37 last night and was exhausted; by that time the party would have been well underway. Had a busy week, was a speaker at a seminar in Fake Africa and only returned late on Friday night. So... was the event worthwhile, though?
He:	Interesting people, by that I mean, uhm, dunno what I mean... Jimmy seems like a cool guy, didn't really bother talking to him, because that's what everybody did. Met a very funny architect from Thailand, you'll see him in the pictures on my friend's website. You're still not off the hook...
She:	I am extremely interested to find out what form of penance you have selected for me!
He:	I don't think your desire to be forgiven is that big a deal to you... so I'll let it pass, oh wait, I'm not gonna think twice if I want to flirt with you at any time. Suppose that might be more of punishment now.

Tuesday

I am vexed now. By time, because I have a lot to do before I leave tomorrow, but also because of the other circumstances, and the things I cannot talk about, and the things I am afraid to say. It is not fair that people who want to work should be intimidated. It is not fair that there is no recourse for them. It is not fair that the guilty go unpunished. It is not fair that so many communities are ruled by an evil, de facto minority. It is not fair that I should have to be afraid to name them in public.

Good grief. When last did the unfairness of a thing worry me this much? I thought I learned to live with the fact of unfairness long ago. Perhaps it is when I have no pragmatic solution, no recourse, that I go back to lamenting about ethics, as though it should help.

Monday

When I got there, he didn't know what day it was, or what time of the day. He had received the injection on Saturday, and he didn't realise that more than 24 hours had passed since then. He didn't remember unlatching the door for the staff. Apparently they had phoned him repeatedly when he did not respond to the knocking, and at first he had mumbled almost incomprehensibly that they should all go home, since (according to him) it was Saturday.

They did not see him, though, and just as well. He kept on falling asleep, even while getting dressed after stumbling to the bathroom with my assistance and taking a shower. Sometime on Sunday, he seems to recall, a friend had phoned him to remind him that he had a date with her. Apparently he was slurring so badly that she thought he was playing around, and she hung up in annoyance. He told me to look at the X-rays and to read the radiographer's letter to the doctor, and, forgetting that he had done so, asked me how I knew what the condition was called. He told me more than four times that the medical aid wouldn't cover the cost of the CAT scan unless it was done as part of the same hospitalisation for a surgical procedure. The procedure, which he was able to describe in detail in spite of his state, would require that they make incisions from the front and the back — in fact, they would have to temporarily remove his throat to work on his spine. I asked him whether it was considered a risky procedure, and although he said no, it was rather just going to be sore, he seemed worried anyway. After all, we both know from watching operations on TV that a master butcher is sometimes more skillful and careful with a blade than is a master surgeon. I hugged him, and he asked me to rub his back while my hands were in the neighbourhood.

I suggested that he should not attempt to do the drawings today. Somehow he got the neck brace on without my help and I went off to work, leaving minor instructions with his staff. I phoned him in the afternoon and he told me all the same stories all over again.

Buying more air time

SMS van Carol 09:32 vanoggend:
Hi! Long function [longfunksietoets by die hospitaal] is klaar gedoen dit het baie verswak ek wil nog so graag langer lewe maar die dokter kan dit nie waarborg nie

Work, play, friends: A partial update

Work

In spite of all the trouble and in spite of only managing to assemble Pavatile's stand at the eleventh hour, Pavatile won not only a gold award, but also the Organisers' Trophy at the Homemakers' Expo!


Me in my construction hat, in front of my technical graffiti. At least six people thought I was a statue, and were surprised when I started talking to them and offering to assist. Although this had not been part of the plan, after it had happened a couple of times, I decided to play up to it for a while!

ProjectManagement.co.za has grown to such a degree that I am actually thinking of getting myself an assistant next year. Of course I do interface regularly with my external associates, and the admin guys at the university complete most of the processes for me, and there are administrative employees here at the office, but I they are already fully utilised. Also, I need the kind of person whom I can train to help me with proposals for our custom courses, which currently take up a lot of my time. I've just finished a three day course for the Business School down here, and after the Sun City engagement, I am going up to teach Wits, and then in November I am scheduled to do an intro and scoping workshop for one of South Africa's leading wine companies. I also hope to get more training in PSNext while I am in Gauteng (you can contact me for a demo of the software in the meanwhile, though), and I am waiting for a response to a training proposal which I submitted to an organisation in Swaziland, and have another one to prepare for a mining support company. I quite enjoy all this experience I am getting related to the mining sector -- have done training for both Kumba and Anglo, and have had students from Mintek and other mining related businesses on my university courses. I have a fair amount of studying to do on specific Project Management methodologies over the next few weeks, so I am going to be taking a couple of afternoons off work to sit down under a duvet, with my books and a glass of milk and some Belgian chocolate.

Play

I have been so busy for the past few weeks, that I decided to go out dancing last night since I hadn't done so for such a long time. I have missed a number of City of Tygerberg Choir practices due to illness, and now with the training season and all this jet-setting ahead of me, I notified my voice group leader that I would not be back for a while. I expect that I shall not be able to put in sufficient preparation to join the choir's tour to George in October, and won't be able to take part in Songs of Praise either. Tonight I think they're performing in the Endler with the university's brass band -- highlights from West Side story and I know not what else. I am going to pop in just to show support. (At least I was still there to perform in the recent Pieter van der Westhuizen tribute concert, which was a moving experience. The composer himself was there, as were many of his admirers from all over the country.)

Friends

I think some of them are feeling a bit neglected. Luckily both the Wizard and the Angel are sorted out with full time girlfriends now, but there are one or two others who still reply on me to keep them chirpy, and I haven't been doing much of that lately. Except for last night, if I haven't been alone, I have been with my parents. And I have re-established contact with a friend I hadn't heard from in 24 years. Yay! With my current workload, I just don't expect to be able to fit in a rip-roaring social life any time within the next month or two.

Presentation software

Dear Bill, I am sorry I so stubbornly refused to use PowerPoint before just because it was from Microsoft. After Freelance Graphics' very basic functions and Open Office's truck-like handling, I now finally have a vehicle which drives smoothly, gets around the bends safely and reaches the intended destination fast, without requiring detours. The custom animation features alone are worth the money. My presentation at Sun City is going to be very smart. You are allowed to say, "I told you so."

Forget, forget, forget

I wonder what he thinks he saw, but I don't want to know. I am acting as though he didn't really see, and so is he. We're not talking about it, and I don't want him to bring it up. I don't want him to think about it. I don't want him to tell anyone. I want to forget that it happened. I once dreamed that this happened. Maybe I can pretend that this was a dream too. Maybe I can make myself believe that he's not saying anything because he couldn't possibly know what I dreamed.

My Compulsive Otherwiseness Disorder

I started learning to read prior to my second birthday, and was pedantic by the age of six. My hobbies as a child included solving and inventing substitution ciphers, reading about the etymology of personal names, and drawing large decorative patterns so intricate that adults could not see the detail without using a magnifying glass. I didn't have a very passionate interest in music, but I liked playing the harmonica and singing in Latin, and I did the latter in the school corridors. (My mother, a teacher at the school, tried to dissuade me, for all the right reasons.) My poems were stucturally rigid, avoiding poetic licence in rhythm and rhyme. I came first in class until I left Kingswood at the age of 16 for 8 months as an exchange scholar to Kingswood-Oxford School in Connecticut. When I came back, I never quite caught up on what I had missed in Chemistry and Maths, and came second in class after that. (I was a finalist in the English Olympiad, though, and won a university scholarship from the 1820 Foundation, which I later squandered with shameful irresponsibility.) Most of my school friends were either plump, or struggled very badly with their schoolwork, or were otherwise not very popular for whatever reason. I was well-behaved, although I disagreed radically with the policy on uniforms. I didn't become a prefect because the headmaster's wife misunderstood what I said at a tea party about needing representation (we didn't have an SRC or similar body through which pupils could express grievances), and branded me a "Communist" and a "revolutionary". Basically she was too stupid to understand what I was talking about, and since the town was full of liberal academics, she probably classed me with them because she didn't understand them either. (I was tickled that they decided to make a prefect of Roslynn Naudé, who smoked and drank and bunked out of the hostel and back-chatted Mr. Ferreira all the time. They thought that they could reform her by giving her responsibility. Although I would not have done any of the naughty things she did, I was impressed that she did not give them up in response to the teachers' manipulatory appointment.) One of the reasons why I didn't like having to wear our uniform was because of my legs. I already had lymphoedema, but I didn't know it back then; I thought my legs were simply "ugly". I took ballet and national dancing, but I was mediocre at tennis, swimming, netball, hockey and the other compulsory sports at school.

Needless to say, with all this as a background, I was not considered a member of the dating pool. Occasionally I did have a boyfriend, but it would always be someone who was some kind of odd person who didn't fit in either. (I did once have a boyfriend who was handsome and fairly mainstream; he was a second lieutenant in the army, and, considering I was 16 and he was 22, his peers considered him a cradle-snatcher. But I was not really in love with him. My father liked him, though, and would discuss politics with him for an hour before we went out on a date.) None of the other kids was malicious towards me; I was simply ignored by most "cool" people.

Shortly after I left school I was on holiday at Kenton-on-Sea, and I ran into one or two people who had not associated with me at school and who knew me only by sight and by name. I was greeted with great friendliness -- "How are you, what are you doing these days?" At a New Year's disco, one of them even gave me a big hug and a kiss. It was absolutely horrible! Why on earth could they not have spoken to me with such enthusiasm -- or even just spoken to me at all -- in all the years that I was at school, when it really would have mattered to me?

I got some kind of knock from that, and have never quite managed to shake off my distrust of people whom I perceive as acceptable to the acceptable, and popular with the popular. I get along with them just fine as customers, suppliers, neighbours or bottle-store salesmen. But as soon as they want to be my friend, I get suspicious. I reason that if they really knew me, they wouldn't want me to be their friend, so to save everybody time and bother, I automatically start trying to thwart them. This perhaps also accounts for the fact that, with a few exceptions, I tend to turn down the opportunity of meeting famous people. I have a small number of friends who have the kind of ambitions which would best be served by being celebrities, and one or two who have already made significant strides towards achieving this goal. While I have done my best as a friend to assist them in this, I have constantly had to battle annoying, petty critical feelings, which, based on the symptoms, can probably best be described as jealousy. Being well-known for something professional is useful, and I don't mind that. I know how to maintain an expedient decorum and I don't wear anything wacky when I am lecturing. I have also realised that sometimes when I have written openly about relationships or about spiritual and psychological things on this blog, some people have responded in a manner that tells me they have been helped by it. That kind of publicity is good, because it does good. But the worst thing imaginable for me is to wake up one morning and discover that I have become a fashionable socialite. I wouldn't necessarily cancel the next engagement, but I would try to ensure that I find out what others will be wearing, so that I can contravene the unwritten dress code, and I'd make sure that I drag along as many unfashionable companions as possible. I once said to someone (or maybe it was to myself) that if I ever got famous for having my home featured in a décor magazine, I would know that I had missed the point of life.

I can't fully account for my behaviour, and it is certainly inconsistent and paradoxical too. It's not that I don't care what people think. On the contrary, I care immensely what some people think, and get very insecure if I start thinking that they don't like me, or if I think they think I am weird. (With others, I prefer it if they think I am weird, because then the men won't pressure me for a date, and the women won't ask me questions based on stupid assumptions, stuff like, "Why haven't you had children?") In spite of a desperate need for acceptance on one level, on another I have never felt the urge to do some of the typical things that people do to "fit in": I have never smoked, I am practically a teetotaller, and I don't want a TV or a plasma screen or an ostentatious car. (Unfortunately, I can't claim to be entirely unmaterialistic though, since I currently own 12 tank tops, 6 knitwear tops, 8 spaghetti strap tops, 8 t-shirts, 8 three-quarter sleeve t-shirts, 9 long-sleeve t-shirts including vests worn as t-shirts, 3 sleeveless jerseys worn as tank tops, 6 knitwear tops with buttons or zips, 1 knitwear hoodie, one or two cap-sleeve tops, and a number of uncounted mesh tops, which is certainly more than anyone who is not a pop-star needs in a lifetime.) Although to some degree it's a "like attracts like" thing, it certainly doesn't explain the entire phenomenon of my choice of friends, since many of my close friends do smoke both cigarettes and dagga (to my great consternation), and enjoy wine and beer (I usually keep a six-pack of Tafel in stock for visitors). And I can't imagine that any of them have nearly as many items of clothing in the broader "t-shirt" category. So I'd be tempted to think that it's probably more of an existentialist attraction, a respect for contrariness itself, since my friends are all a bit off-beat in some way or the other (except for Robbie). But I don't usually get on very well with people who are evangelistic about astrology and crystals, or with sadists, so just all being "different" together doesn't explain it either.

A piece of writing of this length usually creates in the reader an expectation of some conclusion, the result of reasoned contemplation. But here the road ends abruptly. I have no conclusion. Perhaps because I have not made the least attempt to actually solve the problem. It is a problem though, isn't it?