The diary of...

*ushers off some dust and removes spiders web*

It’s been a while since I last wrote; as usual I’ve been thinking a lot about a lot of things! I’ve also been reading a lot from fiction novels (after having read five consecutive non-fiction books, I’ve decided to take a bit of a breather) to financial publications and business articles; my latest obsession are Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

Is it not funny how social media has turned us into a transparent and secret-sharing people? I once tweeted “Before Facebook asked ‘What’s on your mind’ and Twitter tweets and BBM status, what did we do with our thoughts?” and someone (male) replied “We just had voices in our heads” while another (female) said “WE KEPT DIARIES”!

 And that’s it! There was once a time when we did not want anyone knowing what we were thinking; our private thoughts were private. I recall for my fourteenth birthday, my friend, Nikita bought me a diary. With a lock! I was so paranoid about who would lay their hands on it (even though it had a lock) that I devised codes for really hectic and intimated words like “boy” which was coded “gummy bear” and hug which was “marshmallow” and the big one; “kiss” which was coded “volcano”. Now try stringing together a sentence using all three and go ahead and judge at how ridiculous I must’ve sounded in a single diary entry! Now that all seems like a century ago! How I will explain to my children that there was once a time when we actually wrote our thoughts down when in 2013 we already not only want to tell people what we’re eating, we want them to see! The proof is in the pudding after all, or perhaps in the photo? Don’t you just love Instagram?!

*The pen is mightier than the sword…

At the moment I’m on a dairy-style-writing high!

I’m currently reading “Spud – Learning to Fly” and I find John van de Ruit so hilarious, at times I have to put the book down and just laugh. I grew up reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend so moving to Spud was only a natural progression J

I’d dedicated to reading a hundred pages of Spud a day so I could finish the book in a week but as I was half way, a friend of mine told me about a blog called **Zulu Girl Goes 2 JHB which I decided to check out, little did I know that I would be so consumed I would sacrifice my sleep to read up to the last chapter. You know that saying “The pen is mightier than the sword”? Well this blog has taken that to another level! In just under two weeks the blog as gone viral! Do not underestimate the power of social media! The issues covered have sparked discussions, some are angry, others emotional and others agitated. It speaks of the reality that we live in and will probably make a lot of parents uncomfortable about sending their daughters off to Johannesburg to study. Tomorrow morning (28 April) the author will be interviewed on Talk Radio 702 (92.7fm) so hopefully then we can all get a better understanding of how this whole concept came about?

The reason why this particular blog (Zulu Girl Goes 2 JHB ) caught my attention was because this very blog that I started was not only to share my experiences but also to keep my creative juices flowing while I work on my book which I was (or am?) hoping to get published in the near future which follows the same premise as Zulu Girl Goes 2 JHB but only half as crude and controversial. But after reading Zulu Girl Goes 2 JHB I looked at my manuscript which I’ve been working on since 2009 and thought to myself:

SHOULD I EVEN BOTHER FINISHING IT??

*“You use this proverb to say that you can solve problems or achieve your purpose better and more effectively through communication with words than by violence with weapons. Edward George Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873), an English novelist, wrote this for the first time in 1839. He wrote, ‘Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.’” (http://oels.byu.edu/student/idioms/proverbs/the_pen.html)

**Zulu Girl Goes 2 JHB can be found on the following link: http://diaryofazulugirl.tumblr.com/

I feel the need to add the disclaimer: Read at your own risk! Not for sensitive readers!

Project: Happyness

HAPPY NEW YEAR…ummm…I think?

This post is long over due, but better late than never they say...

Introducing; Project Happyness J

This is an initiative I took on at the beginning of the year from something I saw while trotting around the bloggosphere.

Life can sometimes be so overwhelming! The bad things take it upon themselves to happen all at the same time. The WRONG time! We wallow in our sorrows and forget about our blessings, yet we have so much more to be grateful for!

I started my jar of blessings & happyness in the beginning year. It's looking a little bleak appearance-wise but I'm working on "prettyfying" it.

Here are some pretty neat ones I found on the net for inspiration...

I’m challenging YOU to make 2013 your year of gratitudeJ

Peace. Love. And happyness...

Zee

Follow your heart...

A friend of mine got his third degree yesterday. I will not mention his name but those who know me and know him will know that this is about him.

Over the years we've drifted apart and somehow, somewhere along the line we reunite. No matter how far the silence periods are apart when we do communicate it's as if the gaps were never there.

I met Friend in 2006, he was young, doing well, stayed in the Jhb northern suburbs, drove a nice car and had a comfortable job there at Bank City in town. He had an intriguing and inquisitive mind, he was smart and arrogant and the ladies loved him.

2007/08 he gave it all up to follow one of his many passions; journalism. He told me he wanted to work for nobody but The M&G. He became a full time student, initially staying at res then home then commuted by bus. I remember one of his former "admirers" telling what a joke it was that he came from a sports car to no car at all. She laughed. She didn't know. Great things awaited for this young man and she had no idea.

During his time as a Wits Journalism Post Graduate student he did well, naturally, enjoyed his craft and even wrote for the institution's newspaper. After graduating he went on to write for The M&G, like he had said he would.

While working as a journalist, his other passion surfaced its head. You see, in the early stages of our friendship, he told me he would one day become I judge. It was in passing so I didn't really take it seriously, I mean, I wanted to be Will Smith's housewife but some things are better left off as fairytales, you know? Turns out this dream wasn't far fetched at all. So he gave it all up. Again. And enrolled at Wits Law School as a full time student. This time he told me he wanted to work for a certain leading African law firm I will stick to naming "BG" (you never know with these law people, one mention and I find myself in jail, no thanks). Guess what? Yesterday he got his Law Degree after 3 years> His third degree and next year he will be at that very firm, like he had said.

It really sounds like a movie now that I think of it. I know he was working on an autobiography a couple of years ago and I really hope he sees it through because such a story should not go untold. I may have watered it down a bit but the message is clear; if you really set your MIND to it, you can ACHIEVE it, corny as it sounds, it's true and Friend is proof.

Now Friend may either love me or loathe me for putting his life out there like this, but if he ever happens to come across this blog post, I'll just deny it was about him...unless he likes it, of course!

A series of unfortunate events

You know what I feel like right now? I feel like going back to my childhood and smacking myself every time I played house or anything resembling being an adult. I don’t know why we were in such a rush to grow up because being an adult actually comes with this big and nasty incurable disease called “RESPONIBILITY” and ever since I started working it seems to be growing like a big fat wart on my face that won’t go away! I’ve had a couple of incidents in the past couple of months that are constant reminders, painful lessons if you must, that teach me to up my responsibility game…

Rewind to December 2011, I had barely stayed a week in my pretty two bedroom apartment in Cape Town northern suburbs when I came home from work to find that my place had got broken into and my laptop and professional camera were gone. I called the police, who came promptly after an hour at most, no finger prints were detected and I did not know the serial numbers of either of the stolen goods. Neither of the two were insured.

Lesson 1:

·         Always make sure all windows and doors are closed when leaving the house.

·         Insure all valuable items.

·         Thieves don’t care how long it took you to save up, so you can buy yourself these luxury wants.

I cried and got over it and one of the policemen who had come to take the statement asked for my friend’s BBM pin. A month later I replaced my stolen camera with a big and better one…

June 2012, exactly 6 months after my thieving incident, I’m driving out of a hotel parking lot, talking and laughing with my friend and in the process bump a tree. My bumper and spotlight came off. Did I freak out? No. Insurance was going to pay for it! Surely after paying R1250 a month for the past eight months meant everything was covered…or so I thought. After going to the police station to fill in an incident form, I called my insurance broker, Alexander Forbes at the time and sent in all other necessary documents. Everything went well, I took my car to a dealership approved panel beater and got quoted a hefty amount of R7500, but I didn’t freak out because my insurance had me covered. I joyfully sent in the quote and a rental was delivered to me. I was sorted. And then, while diligently completing my daily tasks at work, I get a call from Alexander Forbes demanding me to return the rental and notifying me that I would be covering the repairs myself because I had breached some part of the contract (one vital sentence I had overlooked). By this time my car had already been fixed. They waited a whole four days to tell me this? On top of it all the lady who spoke to me was unbelievingly rude about it. I was fuming and was not going to go down without a fight, so I went onto Hello Peter and lodged a complaint. Ultimately, A.Forbes paid 40% of the cost and I covered the rest.

Lesson 2:

·         Be vigilant when moving out of tight parking spots, especially if they are in close proximity to stationary objects.

·         Read every line of your insurance contract before signing

August 2012, excited to start practising on my camera after an insightful photography class at Vega, I made a quick stop by Chicken Licken to get some hot wings. When I got home, I opened my boot and my camera was gone! I did the usual; made an incident report and called my insurance. You see, after my first camera being stolen, I made sure that this one got insured. All was good until I got a call back from my insurance broker, now Budget Insurance (I was so angry with Alexander Forbes, I changed) telling me that they would not be covering my loss as there was no forced sign of break in. See what had happened is that the thieves sent ‘signals’ to my car that blocked the lock, so when I thought I had locked, I actually hadn’t (this is the simplest way I can explain it). Anyway, because I had been through my contract thoroughly, I caught them out and they ended up paying 50% for a mistake they had made. Based on this I should’ve stayed with Budget Insurance, they’re a decent bunch, but I have since moved to Outsurance.

Lesson 3:

Always double check your doors after locking your car

October 2012, just over a month after moving back to Jhb, I wake up and the cap of my review mirror on the passenger’s side is gone. There are no other signs of damage. Till this day I have no idea how this came about but suspect it may have been stolen while I was at Fourways Mall the previous day. Next day I take the car to a dealership, I mean, it’s just the cover, it can’t cost me that much! When I get there I’m quoted an estimate of R2600. I nearly fainted, told them I would go home and think about it. After several phone calls to panel beaters all over Jhb, my only option was the dealership as the panel beaters don’t have this part. I decided to go back to the dealership, this time I was quoted a whooping R4800! Now I am driving around with a review mirror that has wires sticking out, looking like a reckless driver (or possibly even a thief)! It shall remain like this till I sum up the courage to cough up that amount.

The mystery of the missing mirror cap

Lesson 4:

 I have learnt no lesson here but that cars are such an expense and that if I was born in another era, it probably would have been cheaper to repair a donkey (plus donkeys don’t need petrol to keep going)!

Honestly, I’m tired of this growing up business! I’m tired of being taught lessons and I’m tired of Responsibility! Seriously, I want out, where’s the Suggestion Box???

Childhood Games

I often wonder how life for my kids will be growing up and most times I can't help but have that moment when I'm randomly smiling by myself thinking back to my childhood days.

You see I grew up in a township called Ngwelezane in KZN. We had no fence nor gate at home, our yard was literally shared with my neighbours from either side. I was the first one to go to a multiracial school in my *hood but soon as I got out of **malume's car, I'd throw my bag in the passage, quickly have some cornflakes and rush to go play with my friends who went to a school just down the road from my house. Yes, I played in my uniform and yes, I ate corn flakes because my mom would be at work and I'd rebel against our helper who would try shove a sandwich down my throat. Who would pick peanut butter and jam over Kellogs anyway?

The games we played were silly and didn't make sense, especially the lyrics. My two favourite were "By sure" and "My Jenny"...no, English-speaking people, do not be fooled by the titles, the English was just a front, let me demonstrate by sampling extracts of the songs:

1. "By sure" is a song we'd sing while playing, what my white friends called "Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake, Baker's man" and it went a little something like this:

"By sure I love you baby, the baby on the sun, the sun put the yona, the yona put the man, the man booray booraaay.."

**please kindly loosen face and clear confusion, there's no translation, and what that was suppose to mean remains a mystery**

2. "My Jenny" was a game we'd play where we would all circle "Jenny's mom" and sing a song asking where Jenny was (Jenny had gone missing). Anyway, after every round we'd stop and ask her "weh ma ka Jenny, uphi uJenny?" (Where is Jenny) till the final round where she'd tell us that Jenny is dead (tragically) and is now a ghost. At this point, Jenny's mom would run after us and the first person she'd catch would be the next Jenny's mom...Sounds like catches much?

My Jenny theme song:

"I want to see my Jenny, my Jenny, my Jenny...I want to see my Jenny, my Jen, Jen, Jen...weh ma ka Jenny, uphi uJenny?"

I've probably confuse the crap out of a lot of people but if you grew up in a township in KZN in the 90's you'll get it and drift off to Nostalgiaville like I just did.

The point I'm trying to make is, we're losing a lot of our past. I watch my little brother switching between playing consoles all day and watching movies or DSTV. I didn't have that growing up and wouldn't have had it any other way! The closest thing my older siblings and I had to a Play Station or XBox was those old school TV games with games like Pac Man, Battle Field, Contra, Street Fighter, Mario Bros, Tetris etc. And because my mom was convinced that TV games messed up the television, she bought us a small black and white TV to play on. Do you have any idea how boring Pac Man is without colour?? But, we played and we survived and it was fun. Oh, and don't even get me started on toys! While my best friends Lyndi and Lauren had proper Barbie dolls, I had those silly imitations with half a head of hair missing *weeps in memory of*

That was childhood for me. Playing outside all day, singing songs that didn't make sense, making mud pies, playing house with a 5 piece tea set that my mom had bought me which I had to share with all 200 of my friends, climbing trees and riding bicycles. Life was simple, and cheap and probably something my children will never understand. Oh! I feel old already! *grabs hair dye*

*hood = neighbourhood

** malume = uncle (the designated driver of the neighbourhood 'car pool')

xx
Zee

Day 30

Apologies for not rounding up my 30 Day Challenge properly. Day 30 coincided with my life taking a 180 degree turn. I shall blog about that in the near future.

***

Thank you for stopping by :)

Day 29

Task: A picture of yourself


Honey...

Sifiso...

Meeeee....