I still don't know what to do

"I used to try to be interesting. That passed. Now I try to be pleasant and on time. That will be impossible today."

Walter Kirn's, Ryan Bingham, introduces another chapter of his life in the book Up in the Air.

I used to try to be interesting. That passed. Now I just try to be well dressed and quietly discrete.

Today's well dressed discretion is an Icelandic, Indie pop com folk band, Seabear, they chorus love songs in my head with an ambiance of melancholy and my tea gets cold in spite of their warm intentions which resonate in my head. I feel like a child with my head phones on, I know you can see me but I feel like if I duck my head, then I'm hiding and I can't see my bum but you can see my bum and you can still see me but I think that you can't, that I'm hiding.

It's out little game.

Damn hasn't this Summer sun just been shining, the warmth that it has been radiating has left me sore, sore from mosquito bites and a bedeviling humidity drained lack of sleep. It can't go on, I tell myself but the weather's not listening, I think it too once tried to be interesting but now that has passed and it's full of scorn and extremities. I think the weather's a little bit love sick but it'll steady itself and slip into something more comfortable soon, I call it Autumn, other people prefer Fall.

This morning as I was grinding coffee beans, I got harassed by a call agent wanting for me to join their wine club, I said, "noo-thank-you," she said, "what about the coffee club, what about the olive oil club..." I said no even though I have a deep rooted insecurity about running out of coffee at the most inopportune moment but I thought how dare they play on my insecurities especially when I'm listening to Lloyd Cole, singing an old Burt Bacharach cover, I still don't know what to do.

I do love that song and it's appropriate, all of those prevailing emotions that it so descriptively describes are clawed into my current state of mind.

And I'm lost and the moment's lost.

But here I am in my original haunt.

Did you miss me?

I suspect not, I've not been sleeping that well, I would have known if you did, I would have slept like a baby.

Though I think you that you should miss me just a little.

And I promise to be back sooner.

pretty persuasion

There's this great line in the musical version of Ninotchka (Silk Stockings) and I'm not sure if the original has it, even though it starred Greta Garbo, and is infinitely better.


Julie Newmar: How can I persuade him if you
can't.

Fred Astaire: Because we are built differently...

And she
smiles wickedly and says aarh.

Sometimes you just have to see things from a slightly different perspective that's all that's required for the pretty mental persuasion to occur.


Julie Newmar stole the show in Silk Stockings, a colourful character who is noted for some tremendously astute observations, as extracted from the the wiki:

Tell me I'm beautiful, it's nothing. Tell me I'm intellectual, I know it. Tell me I'm funny and it's the greatest compliment in the world anyone could give me." — New York Times interview.

"I should have slept with the better producers. I didn’t recognize my worth." - Esquire
Magazine, 2007."

"Ecstasy and beauty are eternal."

"I had three miscarriages, then, at forty-eight, a child with serious
developmental difficulties. He is a blessing and a jewel. He is my teacher. From him I get and
give unconditional love."

"More is not necessarily better. Better is better."

"Shape up, folks. There is no death. Think of it as evolution."

"You can’t fail. The further you fall, the greater the opportunity for growth and change."

knowledge is pleasure

"...I have one thing to add, Just as a holiday, takes a little preparation, so too does day-to-day life outside work. The more you know, the better it is, knowledge is pleasure."

Edward Carr, Intelligent Life, Autumn 2007.

expanding those winter lurv handles

delegation 101

If you have got a dog why bark! This is something I learnt from a good mate in Finance.

And if you understand this bit of logic then as he says, "you've pretty much mastered the nuances of what delegation entails - allowing the dogs the liberty to make some noise every now and again."

seeing the big picture

When John Boorman embarked on the idea of filming Hope and Glory, an auto biographical memoir of his childhood set in London during World War II, he found that he would need to reconstruct the street where he lived.

His reconstruction was done through the glazed eyes of 45 years of memories and with the aid of some research but he did manage to recreate that street on some old air field land strip at the cost of over a quarter of a million pounds.

Upon its completion he enthusiastically and proudly brought some of his family to view it, hoping that their response would be equally as enthusiastic.

But his sister, mother and aunt made the following observations:

The wireless is in the wrong place; you mother always had a vase on the front window sill and it's a pity that you couldn't get the right wallpaper for the lounge.

Six months of work, 1000s of pounds spent, 45 years of recollections but for a few minor missing details.

Well I am having that kind of day, where it doesn't matter how spectacular the potential of the project is, it matters little because I am dealing with people who are only focused on a few insignificant details.

Worst of all they are not family!

so this is how the system works

The Minister of Public Works wanted to remodel her office, so she invited different contractors for tenders.One was from J , one from D and the last one from S "OK gentlemen, I want a nice job ," She said, "Let's hear from J?"

The guy took out his ultrasonic measuring device and laptop and began measuring, scrawling on the computer, calculating.Eventually he said "R90 000, Madam Minister,""That seems like quite a lot of money! Why R90,000?""You see," he replied, "that's R40 000 for material, R40 000 for labour and R10 000 for my profit".

She seemed OK with that and turned to the D contractor. "So how much do you want to do the job?" she asked.The D fella took out a rusted tape measure, broken clipboard and A blunt pencil. He took some measurements, scratched some calculationson the back of his Rothmans box and came up with a figure of R70,000."That's interesting!" said Stella. "Explain the R70 000?""Simple, Madam Minister, I got a brother-in-law in the hardware trade, so that's R35 000 for materials, R30,000 for my guys, and R5,000 for my profit and all."She was amused but happy to accept the explanation.

Then she asked the S contractor for his quotation. He just smiled,looked the minister in the eyes and said, "R270 000!""Yoh Yoh Yoh!.... How did you come to that amount without even taking Your measurements? What is that amount for?""That's R100 000 for me and R100 000 for you!""So what about the remaining R70 000?""We hire that guy from D to do the job!"

somewhere south of the border

The "bump up" is one of the better things that can happen to you when are about to travel, to hear that, "Sir you no longer, in E15, you've been bumped up…"

On Friday I got one of those pleasant one liners as I was about to board for Joburg and even at seven am this person who is generally only socially decent after 11, managed a quick smile of sorts before walking to the plane.

I am always amazed at how Cape Town is perceived by Joburgers, it's the classic East Coast-West Coast, New York-San Francisco scenario playing itself out except that JHB should not be mentioned in the same sentence as New York.

JHB apparently is all zest and zeal, "red and yellow" energy, it's all pace and drive and it gets things done. I admit that Cape Town is a lovely seaside village and nobody here is really trying to complete with the land of Egoli (eagerly) perhaps this week in the 20-20 cricket final but generally we've conceded, we've chosen not to part take in that little rat race.

I guess that when JHB eventually pauses from all of the rah-rah it will discover that it's actually not that exceptional and that it is probably people from the coast (I include Durban) who are propelling it to make those "gigantic industrial" strides at great sacrifice.

Whenever I have worked with people from JHB, I have never thought that they were very exceptional, in fact I often find that it is all hot air, they talk a good game, they imagine that they are movers and shakers and much to their disappointment we kind of ignore them and quietly get on with what needs to be done. Cape Town does have a problem of leaving bundles of "urgent" work in its inbox realising that tomorrow's another day and that procrastination is easy. But as we continue to dance with time, not foolishly trying to beat that clock we do eventually get things done, it’s a dance which has a frustrating rhythm but a rhythm which we have embraced.

On Friday afternoon after a successful workshop which we managed to finish in less than three hours because I wanted to get home, I stood outside the Parktown offices waiting for my transfer, surrounded by electric fencing and anticipating a sluggish commute in the early afternoon traffic I felt vindicated, I felt glad that I wasn't in that race.

And I know that while it's not a popular view but we are miles ahead of 'the game', because at least we are honest in knowing that we are a simple, little, fishing village somewhere down South of the border where we don't have to impress anybody with our feats although we sometimes do manage the odd exceptional thing.

something lush

I'll be far away and grumpy tomorrow, I'll be stuck in a day long workshop, I'll be up at five in the morning so that I can catch that iron bird to JHB but I'll have this lush bit of Francis Albert & Antonio Carlos in my noggen - Baubles, Bangles and Beads.
Bon weekend, takz care be safe.

the blurring has just begun

It's official my virtual friends, now out number my non-virtual friends. Yesterday I got my first hit on my, myspace site, and Soul Basement wanted me as a friend - absolutely - and then I went out to check just who exactly I was befriending and when I got there I wondered how someone who is the suppose know could have missed someone as cool as Soul Basement.

Thanks to the cumbersome, myspace network; I'm now linked into the Soul Basement network. I haven't used it to connect with "real" people yet, perhaps in time when I get that confidence back; I will test the functionality of making chit-chat with my friends.

The nice thing about my virtual self is that my virtual body doesn't give me a hard time like my non-virtual body has been of late, I'm all aches and pains, and then there's that non-virtual work thing that keeps me engaged, although I have been skipping out and into the virtual world every so often.

The blurring has just begun, I look forward to seeing its effects in the next year, as I begin to embrace or reject its possibilities.

My virtual network has the following updates: Air have released a new album, Pocket Symphony, last week, it’s still not in our shops and Blue Six’s new album is out, which I reckon will probably be my album of the year if historical evidence is anything to go by.

'miss golightly i protest'

So the Anti-Crime marches in JHB and Durban weren’t the quite Million Man marches which were predicted and in some circles expected. Approximately 50 concerned activists in each city vibrantly protested on our behalf for a safer living environment. Shout outz, Bigupz and kudos to you but to the organisers I suggest the following:

1.Acknowledge that it’s kinda hard to mobilise the tax paying middle class, they like to protest in boutiques.
2.You have got to glam it up, I would have gotten a few corporate sponsors; hampers which included a tres kool, yellow and red, protest t-shirt and there would have been a Platinum Card VIP area with access to special toilets – basically I would have made a few people pay for the privilege of mass protesting.
3.Finally, these marches needed to be in the middle of a working week, nothing like patriotically skipping a few hours of work for the cause.

Anyway, despite the poor turn-out, crime is a real problem and I think that it is on the political agenda. This in itself isn’t enough and we need to sensibly exert our influence in order to make this place much-much safer, I wouldn’t purport to know how we do this exactly but it should be via as many channels and forums as possible.

That’s the point really, back in the day, good ol’ protest marches were one of the better ways to exert influence and mobilise sentiment but today as a result of all of this struggle, many more platforms have been opened up for dissent, Radio; Television; The Internet; Financial Institutions placing adverts in the Sunday Papers blah de blah green tea.

This puts the subject into the public discourse, it puts it on agendas, it gets people focused and begins to build models which can be replicated to solve this multi-faceted problem. Things happen at grassroots, things happen at a macro-level and in between we complain about it not happening fast enough – “Where is all of this money that I’m paying to prevent anarchy going?”

I said before that we don’t know what we don’t know and that that is one of the major problems that we face, we don’t know what it really feels like to be safe in our own environment hence it’s very difficult to fight aggressively for that end state of which we have been robbed.

I wasn’t there, I did however wear these cool t-shirts this weekend, sometimes there is as much of a message in the accessories as there is in the means.

a spatial little nugget

There's this story that I heard, maybe it was something that I read and I hope that I do it justice by retelling it.

Taking a break from Monday's toil I was reminded of it, I was reminded that sometimes you just need to think spatially about a problem and trust the solution.

In the Thirties, a publishing company was battling to sell its quota of books, it had tried many different things, marketing campaigns and what-not but nothing consistently worked.

Then one day a wise old man on overhearing the problem said that he knew the solution. Sceptical and amused the management thought that they had nothing to loose so they gave the old man a chance at solving their conundrum.

He disappeared into the world of construction, appealing to Architects and Interior Designers to include book shelves in the living and bedrooms of the many new apartments that where being built. It wasn’t long after the families who owned these homes made their way to bookstores to fill up their empty shelves.

The old man shelved the problem, so to speak. I could use a few shelves myself, but I am too lazy to spatially react to my conundrum of having to many books.

south america take it away

So here it is again - Friday and as Edmundo Ros says today, South America take it away!"

One cap? Check.
Mancini? Tick.
Sneakers? Yip.
Espresso? Done that.
Ocean? Looks good.
Protection? Deny that cap.
Sound check? Sinatra's, Tender Trap.
Intellectual stimulation? Steinbeck on the radar.

I think I'm ready for the weekend and that tender trap.

linked in

We know/think/guess it's rubbish but we can't be sure because we may (hopefully not) need it one day - linked-in networking.

Proof that two minds are better than one in the morning, it's a thread read it from the bottom up:

From:302
Subject RE:RE: James Neophytou has recommended you on LinkedIn

spot on - i'm blogging that - i have/had/have those same insecurities.

trying to get ahead never seems to be on my hidden agenda.

From: James Neophytou To: 302

RE: James Neophytou has recommended you on LinkedIn

I know mate. Linked-In is bollocks. It is the work ethic in me, and the immigrant insecurity aspect that thinks, one day I might need a job from someone on my contacts list. Or I might help someone make a connection that helps them. 1% effective. I think.


Subject RE: James Neophytou has recommended you on LinkedIn

thanks - i've given you bigupz on my blog counts for much more - not to sure about linked in man.

From: James Neophytou Sent: Wed 2007/02/28 07:49 To: 302
Subject: James Neophytou has recommended you on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Recommendations

James Neophytou has endorsed your work as Assets Information Manager at . ..
Dear 302,I've written this recommendation of your work to share with other LinkedIn users.Details of the Recommendation:"302 is a model client, and a true projects person - creative and collaborative. We agree on our aspirations, namely "exceeding expectations is the minimum requirement". We have presented together in the USA at industry conferences."

look into my eyes do i look bovvered

Every so often I get a snotty, stroppy little email which strikes a chord and provokes a need for a sharp professional but strongly worded rebuff.

Here's the blue print: always start with a subtle spelling mistake - your respondent's name - that's bound to piss them off and even in this modern world the spell checker is not going to pick it up, so you can't really be blamed e.g. Sandy becomes Cindy.

Then say thank-you, that your are dealing with it, that it will be resolved, that the problem is in hand, that it is unlikely to grow, stress your awareness of whatever it is that they have pounced on in no uncertain terms. Rub it in a little by saying that although it's not the highest priority item you now want to get it resolved - now it's hardly personal and you couldn't give a hoot (yeah tis Lent, my language has improved without alcohol but I am finding this little twitchy shudder a bit annoying) but it's the thought that counts. Then blame somebody or something else in part for the delay...as soon as so-and-so responds, then we can take the appropriate action it always helps if that person is higher up on the food chain than the complainee.

Then delegate the action - Andy will keep you informed, (if you can) otherwise just say that you will pass on the appropriate updates.

Regards,

......

And all of this after my dentist told me to be careful not to bite my tongue, I may have been momentarily conversationally numb but I know how to bite back in the mail, snotty, snotty snotty me.

time for one of those "bad boys"

Bon weekend and be safe.

Piano falls from the sky

Saying you deal well with change is like saying there’s a time and a place for spontaneity, on a certain level it makes absolute sense but on another you know that you’ve missed something obvious.

The only thing that I will say is that I like to anticipate spontaneous change in the organisation, I don’t like walking in on a Monday morning and finding out that le grande fromage is moving on, a man who is neither spontaneous nor variable by nature – how could I have missed this occurrence... And how does it impact me?

Piano falls from the sky.

This is what the first fun filled day of the new week had entailed, an acceptance of the new order, except we don’t know what this new sect’s doctrine involves, is it a doctrine mandating more change, are the deck chairs on the Titanic being reorganized?

Irrespective, we have got one month to get cracking to put a few more coins in the machine so that we are playing the games prior to it all unfolding– Is this how the Republicans are feeling now that Bush’s time is up? Our agenda though is nothing so sinister it’s simply one of continuity and managing ourselves in the uncertainty which will soon present itself.

It’s been more modern livin’ that I can handle, quiet martinis have been a gracious post work companion but until we get closer to a resolution as to what the future holds in stall for us, it's going to be quite a tiring process of looking up at that sky and trying to dodge the next potential piano which maybe on its way down.

no i haven't been drinking

They say that there are two sure ways of increasing your blog readership - sell t-shirts and do mailbags. Since neither increasing my readership nor selling t-shirts appeal to me I thought I'd do a faux mailbag. The following questions have been generated by the random monster dot com question tool. Here's how to effectively deal with this sort of question and more.

Give me an example of a time that you felt you went above and
beyond the call of duty in your previous employment.

Well this year I shall be pimping my letterbox before the 14th arrives,
I'm thinking of a chute of sorts, you know that post-office theft is on the
decline so there is every chance that I will receive all of my teddy bears, chocolates and kisses blah de blah valentines day. I don't want to be accused of not being pro-active about this sentimental tid-bit of commercialization, you know I'm a go getter by nature.

What do you see yourself doing within the first 30 days of this
job?

How about drawing a salary after 22 working days, visiting the toilets,
surfing the net, firing off random mails to large lists with
don't reply to all at the bottom - ooh you know, I just plan to blend in, make
the odd mistake but nothing to disastrous, I do want to draw that salary.

Why is there fuzz on a tennis ball?

No idea, try googling, maybe the wiki has the answer, see tennis balls.

Can you describe a time when your work was
criticized?

I have got this dandy cellphone ring, which has its melodic roots in some
Scandinavian nu-jazz tune, it's pretty funky. I caught a bit of flak for that,
it was just too cool, people felt a bit left out and I didn't want that, so I
kept the tune but made the ring tone softer, now I miss more calls but at least
my fellow workers are happy.

Do you think Gnarls is crazy about all that cellphone ring tone ?

Do you have plans to have children in the near
future?

Biologically that's going to be a problem, I know you are
thinking snip, but blokes can still only have metaphoric babies in this day and age. Although you never know, maybe I will go adopt a Hollywood celebrity baby, a kinda cultural exchange programme of sorts.

Why should we hire you?

Because the competition might take a flyer.

What’s your salary history?

Interesting and with room for improvement.


Give examples of ideas that you had or that you
implemented?

I have compiled some great playlists for my itunes shuffle, gyming is so much better with good music and it requires a fair amount of conceptualization to get it right, weights, treadmill, looking cool, it's not as easy as it appears.

Why are you leaving your present job?

For that improvement that we spoke about earlier, yes you were all writing
so I suspect you've got it.

What did you least like about your last job?

In the interest of time and social harmony lets just say - the
work - (sigh) - would suffice by way of answer.

What do you look for in terms of culture - structured or entrepreneurial?

I think the correct answer would be a bit of both, and somebody said to say that, "I prioritize people," and this would be as good a time as any to mention that I do, do that - I am a people's person.

What are you most proud of?

The fact it's the 9th and I already have a date for the 14th, ok I'll spill the beans, I will be visiting my dentist at two, she'll be filling me in, I like the ambiguity of that last statement but it's a check up.

How would you go about establishing your credibility
quickly with the team?

From the first espresso that we share together, I shall stress, quality, bean and attitude of the drink. I will also tell them to look out for the new Blue Six album and that I know who's going to win the Champions League.

I know that you are running late - I don't have any questions but if I think of any I will email them to you.

Thank-you and bon weekend.

And I apologize in advance if you battled to get through to the site today but with all the hits, I don't think that blogger could quite frankly cope.

my iQ tRip - a theory on beauty and happiness

I am finding it near impossible to hit a groove, I am bored at work, so bored that I have been faffing around with IQ tests.

The first few questions spike my interest but then it very quickly becomes apparent that nothing has changed, be it online, complex or short and dirty. I still end up in that 92-97 percentile range, a worker bee, one below the queen bee geniuses, and I conclude (again I might add) that I'd rather be beautiful than bright if I had the choice.

Why? Because society rewards beauty and the body beautiful (I'm a slight exception here) who tend to fall into the lower IQ percentile ranges are utterly happy. No! beauty and brains is a molotov cocktail and trust me on this one you will only intellectually suffer, hence it's gotz ta be beauty on it's own that's all that counts.

So reward and happiness, fuck all this abstract intellectualisation that sounds like the lottery to me (clichéd hair toss).

Perhaps if I was breast fed for that six weeks and not four, I'd be up there with Albert E, theorising my life away, mind over matter, is all that would matter. Because you know what they say, yes they, say that if you breast feed a baby for six weeks you add up to 30 IQ points to their intellect, but I only got a buggery four weeks of my mother's milk.

Anyway, I am finished with IQ tests for the moment and can tell you what's in the green tea this afternoon:

I am reading, Martini a Memoir by Frank Moorhouse, I'm 20 pages in and it makes me want to drink copiously so it's proving to be a fine read. And I have finally completed my version of the trip which rivals Tom Middleton's second effort.

Mine goes a little something like this: Shuggie Otis - pling + Hajime Yoshizawa - i'm not in love + Jimpster - distant light + Yazoo - ode to a boy + Nouvelle Vague - heart of glass + Dimitri from Paris - toi mon auto + Martin Deny - misirilou + Chet Baker & Astrud Gilberto - far away + Mel Torme - strangers in the night + Smokey Robinson - quietstorm (groove bootique remix) + The Rebirth - walk talkin Mizell + Digible planets - for corners + DJ Einstein & Zaakir - have and have nots + David Byrne - dance on vaseline + Stereolab - cybele's reverie + Kraftwerk - the robots.

Ask nicely and I'll trip you a copy via the good ol' fashioned post but I will also be putting it in the box over the next couple of weeks.

nasa gets its diapers in a knot

"This is our independence day!" The movie proclaimed and then we sent the Fresh Prince and the Fly to save us from the alien force (not to be confused with the alien workforce). In the end they triumphed, a dazzling victory, and instantaneously boosted NASA budgets, reported to be a staggering $17 billion this year.

Then you read this on the CNN website, you re-read it and then you check that the site has not been phished and that you are not actually at The Onion. Yeah sometimes reality can be stranger than fiction, it almost makes it highly plausible that the Fresh Prince and the Fly could indeed save planet earth.

I suggest that you go and read the entire report about this comical NASA astronaut love triangle, from wigs to diapers, it's beyond surreal.

...They also found a wig and a plastic bag containing a carbon
dioxide-powered BB pistol in a nearby trash can, the report said.

Inside a bag Nowak was carrying, the officer found a tan
trench coat, a new steel mallet, a new folding knife with a 4-inch blade, 3 to 4
feet of rubber tubing, several large plastic garbage bags and about $600 in
cash, the report said.

Nowak admitted the details of Shipman's story, according
to the police report, and permitted a search of her car.

Inside the car, police found an a half dozen latex gloves,
MapQuest directions from Houston to Orlando International Airport, e-mails from
Shipman to Oefelein, diapers Nowak said she wore to reduce stops along the highway and a letter indicating how much she loved Oefelein.
It is standard
procedure for astronauts to wear diapers when they suit up for launch and
re-entry...CNN

And now back to a somewhat more mundane reality.