Life – You'll thank me later

When The FaceToilet Trumpet is being Blown

I don’t normally do this kind of thing, but I decided that it had to be done. I have done my best to hide everyone else’s identities except for mine, coz if you are reading this blog then you have a semi idea who I am on the BookFace.

Anyway this is a conversation that I had on the BookFace. A friend from school had initially commented on the recent removal of the Rhodes Statue from the University of Cape Town. Now to start off with I don’t think taking his statue down is going to make a world of difference. I don’t particularly care as it doesn’t affect me at all. Yeah he was the dude who came and colonized Southern Africa. Cool. Taking his statue down isn’t going to undo what he did and what he achieved and all the black people who died etc. Sure it will help take the memory of of him slowly disappear but this is after the fact.

As I said, not really concerned.

Here is some of the conversation:

At this point my response to the issue of the statue is "Not my country, not my problem" — At this point my response to the issue of the statue is “Not my country, not my problem”

At this point LY has come in with an angle I couldn't understand.... — At this point LY has come in with an angle I couldn’t understand….

I decided to clarify what I meant by "Not my country, not my problem." — I decided to clarify what I meant by “Not my country, not my problem.”

My biggest problem with my brief conversation with LY is that she jumped directly into a nice catch up I was having with a school mate. We were talking about mortgages and kids (I have neither at the moment) and all of a sudden it was a bout the xenophobic attacks that are happening in South Africa, to Hitler who is long dead. OK so hang on. The original post was about the Rhodes statue being taken down (which doesn’t make a difference in my life at all. Yeah it’s a bit of history that has been removed, but it doesn’t make a difference to me), how have we gone all the way to xenophobic attacks and Hilter?

You see I hate it when some people decide that they want to blow their trumpet and act like they care about certain things. Stay in your lane please. If you care about how fucked up the world is then do something about it. It’s not that I am a heartless fucker. No I know the world is fucked up. But I do realise that I have to fix one sphere at a time. I can’t be worrying about a statue being taken down in another country when the country I am in has bigger problems than the removal of a statue being news worthy. I felt like telling LY to come and live in this current Zimbabwe for a month and then tell me that she is still worried about a statue being taken down.

Sure BookFace is a great social media tool for people to express how they feel. Got it. Don’t become a trumpet that just blows and blows and blows. Sometimes you gotta listen before you start talking. There are internet trolls out there who will troll the shit outta you. I won’t say I am one, but I don’t sit back and take certain shit lightly.

I have to say LY didn’t respond after my last post. That made me smile hahaha.

Here is another example of her ramblings that were directed to someone else. Happy Monday and have a good week good (and bad) people!!!

As you can see TH deftly stepped aside from LY's initial post — As you can see TH deftly stepped aside from LY’s initial post

Return to Mordor

This is what head office feels like.... — This is what head office feels like….

For those of you who don’t know I work for a construction company. Up until recently I had been removed from head office and sent to a site that was still in the same city that I live in, but in a remote part that it actually feels like I am in the bush. For those of you familiar with Harare, you will know that most of it is built up. What you don’t know, is that there are some parts where it is literally breaking ground. There are some places where there is nothing. Literally nothing. There is so much nothing that it is perfectly normal to see a herd of cattle stroll past you and look at you as if YOU are out of place.

Occasionally when there is work that needs to be done and the guys at HQ are busy they will call me and ask if I can come and give a helping hand. I guess that means that I am valuable that they call on my specific skill sets. I feel like a special agent… except there is no awesome gadgets and exotic locations (semi exotic in terms of I wouldn’t go there out of my own choice. Once again the locations have NOTHING there….).

So I’m back here and I have been thinking about where I prefer to be. The site I am working on is 10km away from head office, I start work at 7am which means I have to wake up at 5am to be out the house at 6am.

Early morning safety meeting... like real early — Early morning safety meeting… like real early

I finish work at 430, but arrive home at 6pm, I work with an individual who has a very strong rural background (I intend on highlighting some of the exciting aspects of his character), it is filled with dust, its hot, there are no trees. However everyday is a new challenge. There is no formula that says from day one to day x we will encounter the same challenges.

In fact sometimes they are the same, but manifested in different ways. On site the day goes WAAAAY faster coz I’m in the field, and busy organizing and having arguments with some of the people who I work with. It feels like it is exercise (mentally and physically).

Of course the head office has a few perks. I only start work at 730am, and I get home at 515pm at the end of the day. I am in a proper office, I am not wearing and PPE, if I need to speak to someone I can call them internally. Unfortunately I can’t take random naps at work coz this is HQ. Anyone could walk into my office…. I mean this is where are the directors and the CEO live. This is THEIR house. I used to like the fact that at HQ there is internets so I can…. blog and do my assignments for my diploma. But to be honest that’s not a good enough reason to like being at this place. I can pass through here. But I can’t stick around here anymore. Its BORING!!! Like what the hell man….

View from my desk... another desk — View from my desk… another desk

I know I have to endure a few more days here, but I am going to make the most of it. Hopefully I will get some blogs done, I will also do a coursework for school and maybe if I manage to find the full motivation, I may just try and do my group assignment. The internets are amazing, but you can live without them… anyway seeing as I’m back in Mordor I might as well hide under my desk….

Adult Education

So as some of you may know, i had my first round of exams this weekend. I am currently doing a post graduate diploma in project management. Fantastic some say. It seemed like a good idea at the time to go and further my education you know. I had been working for a few years and trying to decide what I actually wanted to do.

I knew that doing anything full time I would not want to do just yet, so that cancelled out most of the options I had. I also knew that enough brain cells had been nuked by too much Playstation and beer. So i had to take something that was in between a masters and a certificate. Bring on the post grad diploma. It sounded like a breeze. Classes on Saturdays and Sundays (so I would lose my weekends), each subject was four lessons (two weeks) and then it was done. Also, a year long course seemed like the perfect length. There is even a dissertation at the end of it all which I am very excited to do, because I am weird like that (I was called weird about four times last week. I have decided to accept that fact that I probably am quiet weird).

Well it started off fine. Or at least i thought it was. I told work i was at school so that immediately meant that i wouldn’t have to deal with coming on weekends and basically working for free (yaay). It did also mean that i had to be normal on Friday AND Saturday nights… so NO weekends actually. Hmmm I was sure there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

So i managed to dig my heels in for the first half of the year long experience. “Bring on the exams I can do it!!!” I thought. Well i had forgotten one basic fact that the last time i studied for exams was sometime in 2007…. My university decided to bump its “pass rate” but taking exams away and making it all totally coursework. Thank you University.

Anyway I started trying to study but a lot wasn’t going in because it was mainly after work. Trying to work after work is something not a lot of us want to even think about. I was tired, and prolly most of the time looking at words and not taking anything in. It was a bit of a struggle. Eventually i decided that the best thing to do would be to take study leave from work. So I took Tuesday till Friday off from work so i could concentrate on just absorbing what i was studying. As like is a part time comedian, it so happens that I caught the flu on the Tuesday. It was all downhill from there. I have learnt one thing, studying while sick is tough. Trying to study when you haven’t done it in a few years is ANOTHER issue.

All in all i survived the weekend onslaught of exams, which i did recovering from flu. Saturday’s exams went fine. Sunday morning’s exam was a bit of a horror movie where the good guy gets killed by the murdering half wolf half Nazi German polar bear cross fire breathing snake. Yeah it was a bit like that. The last exam gave me hope that there are still a few lecturers left on this planet who believe that the human race still has a chance at redemption.

All in all i learnt that sometimes doing the adult education needs to be done as soon as one can do it. Don’t let your brain become mundane and slow and only used to bar jokes, football, slapstick comedies and cartoons. It is a muscle that needs exercise. As the high school refs used to say, use it or lose it

Ratchet

“Imagine a woman that wears skinny clothes, bad looking heels & fishnet stalkings, blasts Drake or Waka off her phone, would go out of her way as to cop CD’s from these artists, has a bad hairdo, looks immensely disgusting as a human being, and would rather spend her time maintaining her looks, communicating among her folk, and being a jobless, gold-digging bum for the rest of her days, not even bothering to get herself a good shower, a paying career, and a damned effort to earn a diploma.

That, my comrades, is a prime notoriety of a ratchet.

God help us all.”

This is an interesting view that is given as part of the description of ratchet, as the urbandictionary.com describes it.

However according to hiphopallstar.com, the definition of ratchet is one that is not as explicit as the urbandictionary has given us. It is less insulting, has less big words like “disgusting” and “human. Instead it has a collection of video evidence of what can be termed as “ratchet” behavior.

In my humble and all knowing opinion, ratchet behavior is not only limited to women. It has been known to manifest itself in men as well. We see it almost everyday. The guys that wanna beat everyone in their way up, the super gangster, gang sign throwing, “I don’t give a fuck” attitude guys, are the ones that I would consider to be a little (or a lot) ratchet.

I don't need to explain this picture.... it explains itself — I don’t need to explain this picture…. it explains itself

On the women’s side there are various degrees that some consider to be ratchet. Some people consider Nikki Minaj to be ratchet, and so having a blind following of her and her music could make some people ratchet. Fighting is one that will ensure that a chick is ratchet. Worldstarhiphop.com has a lot of easily identifiable ratchet chicks scattered on their website.

I'm sorry, but the whole gold teeth thing (real of not), is VERY ratchet — I’m sorry, but the whole gold teeth thing (real of not), is VERY ratchet

Of course this behavior that I speak about is not only for black women. Oh no no no. The only difference is that through the use of the internets and the new notion that recording videos on your phones and uploading them so other people can download and comment on your lack of normalcy, it is usually easier to find women of the African American variety on show, showcasing the ratchetness. I think that ratchet behavior is entirely up to ones interpretation. Chicks drinking till they throw up, then wanna fight, then kiss everybody and wake up the next morning and think that is not embarrassing what they did, that’s ratchet.

Am not sure what to say….

I know there is enough fishnet above to capture a whale and a few sharks. Its frightening, I know.

Any behavior that u think is (as far as u are concerned) not socially acceptible especially in public, is ratchet

That Awkward Moment you unfriend someone on the BookFace

I am sure it has happened to all of you at least once in your lives. You are like me and a few other people. Once a year you HAVE to cull some people from your BookFace friends list. Really, who knows 458 people? Anyway you happen to delete someone who maybe lives in your city, someone who’s number you have but you haven’t in donkeys years. In fact its been so long since you saw them and spoke to them face to face you are not even sure that they still live in the same city/town.

With one click, you have reduced your friend list down to 457. Ah you feel so much better. It was a long time coming. You had to reduce the numbers (eventhough it was only by 1) and you feel relieved, at peace, cleansed. Not there was nothing wrong with this particular person. Unfortunately when you loaded the mouse, and the crosshairs hovered over that person’s face and the BookFace told you more about that person, you ended them (on BookFace).

Lo and behold a few days later you are out in the supermarket or at a pub/bar/library/random park bench/mutual friend birthday party and there is that moment that you lock eyes with said culled individual. In your head you think that its going to be a totally harmless “hello! How are you” with a big smiley at the end of it. Instead you are confronted with an awkward conversation that I am sure approximately 74.32% of the worlds population has experienced once (if they are lucky) if not twice in their lives. The dreaded question: “Why did you delete me on the BookFace?”

I find it to be such a weird question. Its the BookFace. Do we all want to stalk other people so much that we feel offended if someone does delete us from the BookFace? We don’t. But there is that weird feeling like you have done something wrong, but you haven’t!

Its so odd how Mark Zuckerburg (or however you spell the dudes name) has some how taken over. Think about it….

Hi!!!!

Its been SO long since I last posted that I don’t even have an interesting pearl of wisdom to shine up and drop on your laps. It’s actually quite disturbing because I almost feel like I have started to run out of banter to punish some of you with. I fell out of the habit of taking notes on my phone of various conversations and then turning them into a claimed epiphany on my blog. So instead I am going to talk about the tab that I recently liberated from my mum.

She was given a Samsung tab by my dad recently… well more like two months ago. It hadn’t seen the light of day till two weeks ago, upon which it took a whole night to charge as it had never fully experienced what charging was like since it was given to my mum. Don’t get me wrong, my mum tries to keep up with the internets. She has a touch screen phone (which she barely uses) and still has an email account with Hotmail.

I have never seen the point of having a tab, and have in fact argued that they are ungainly, not always a nice sight, they are unpractical, essentially they are a bigger version of my phone, taking phone calls on them just looks stupid, and they are not really made for movie watching because of the difficulty that you experience trying to hold/balance the damn things.

But I like to watch vines, and I have been looking to play some chess as well so I downloaded those two apps. Then I downloaded my bookface onto the tab… then I suddenly put on a pattern lock. At that point, I realised that I had liberated it from my mum. I don’t take it to work with me because I know I will get distracted. But goodness me, when I want to internets, play my current addiction (Clash of Clans. Check the app store/play store) I can play it on a nice sized screen that doesn’t make me blind, the music player is ok, and it seems to have a lot of sound, and it’s not tiresome to carry around in all honest.

So I think I may have fallen for a tab. After years and years of not being sure where it fits in with all my other little toys, it has founds its place between my phone and my laptop!

Be who you are. Not who you want people to think you are

I remember when I was much younger you would get social acceptance from what you had. Be it the latest shoes, watch or enough money to go and eat and drink at certain places. Sometimes I would find myself subconsciously thinking “I wish I had that…”. To be honest, there was an element of jealousy to it when I was a teenager (I miss those days. Being old sucks [said the 29 year old]). At that time I didn’t realise the fact that everyone is at different stages. There really is no fascination about what someone has. So what to be honest.

There are some traits that I hate in the human race. The one I hate the most is blatant arrogance. I am not going to talk about why I hate it as this is not the subject matter. The other trait that I hate is one that I was reminded about a few days by someone who I used to consider to be my friend. That is the show off. At my humble young age of 29, telling people in a bar very loudly about what I have and what I have achieved is something that is not done. Who am I trying to impress? Gone are the days that rattling on about what countries you had been to or what you did gives you any greater social standing (as far as I am concerned). In fact as far as I am concerned it shows a very one dimensional aspect to a person.

Why do people brag? Why do they embellish stories? Ultimately we are a silly species. Sometimes we do things because it makes us feel better that we are above other people. It a bit late in life for that now. We all have various things that we have done or are doing that have gotten us to where we are. My bank balance doesn’t make me who I am. I would like to hope that all the experiences I have had in life with my family and friends make me who I am.

The thing is about the show off, he or she is generally not that bright. They may be smart, but they are not bright. The problem is they spend so much time trying to make people say “Wow!!! he’s amazing/hard worker/big spender/achiever”, that they end up tripping over their own feet in the hope of trying to make themselves sound to be amazing/hard worker/big spender/achiever. They will probably never be able to stop themselves because as they go on with these exaggerated and sometimes untrue stories, they probably start to believe their own delusions of grandeur.

Now before you shout at me for being so hard on “the show off”, there are two kinds. There is the one who generally has access to buying and doing amazing things, and talks about those things. That show off is a little more bearable. Ultimately all I can say is “keep doing what you are doing.”. The other kind of show off is the one who says things that don’t make logical and mathematical sense. Now this is the show off that I can’t stand. This particular person who I am referring to is the second kind.

In my expert medical opinion (I have been practicing and qualified for all of 0 years), this is a trait that is as a result of the inability to actually fit in to social situations. Now I think it is something that is very acceptable as a teenager. I see teenager walking around in groups and I always sit there and scratch my head wondering what they talk to each about. Hell, I can’t remember what we used to talk about when I was a teenager.

As an adult, it is a little more than “I just bought a car worth more than $30,000. It’s outside. I did it all by myself with my hard work. Can you imagine? It was paid for one time, from my produce. My produce. That’s how successful I am at the moment.”. My response in my head is “So what? What is the point of sharing? Why are you sharing? Because I haven’t bought a car like that now, does that mean that I am a failure?”. I stopped and realized that it wasn’t me with the problem. I was fine actually. I am healthy, I am happy. Why would he be making it a point to obnoxiously share his success?

Ultimately you can’t spend your life trying to impress other people by telling stories that don’t have 100% truth. You are better off shutting up and sitting down. Life is not a sprint, neither is it a race. It is, a very long journey. Some will get to the end of their race sooner than other. However we will all know when you get to the end of your race.

It’s absurd to divide people into good and bad. They are either charming or tedious – Oscar Wilde

Inception… or possibly Deception

I had a very interesting debate a few days ago with some friends and a very drunk guy. Unfortunately I can’t remember the very drunk guy’s name, so from here on he will be refered to as TVDG (The very drunk guy). Can you steal an idea from someone? To make it simple, lets say TVDG designed the very first glass drinking container. That was his idea. He decided that he needed a container from which to drink liquid from, and he shaped it as seen below:

If I, upon seeing this design for a drinking container, decided that it didn’t have enough excitement, and decided to design a container like the one below, would I have stolen someones idea?

I don’t think that would be entirely idea theft. The fact is, the moment you tell someone about one of your idea and then they execute it down to the last letter as you have said you want to do it, then your idea has been stolen. I think that if you express an idea, and it gets worked on and made better or different, it isn’t idea theft necessarily.

The reason I don’t think that you can steal an idea, is that it is pretty much the opposite of inception. It’s not someone else putting an idea in your head. It’s you forming an idea in your head. It will never be as original when someone else does it (unless they have unwarranted access to all your working drawings, meeting notes, contact details, schematics, and video presentations) because we are not clones (at least I hope we are not clones…).

The reason it is hard to steal an idea I think, is also because people have their own visions of that idea. Hence the difference between TVDG’s drinking container and mine. The tricky part is that some ideas are formed by speaking to friends and “friends” about the idea, with the intention of trying to further form it. Sometimes your idea is nothing more that the baby steps, and you need to talk to someone who can help to turn the baby steps into a full on sprint by making you think outside the box.

For those of you afraid of having an idea pinched from you here are a few things you can do to avoid that terribly situation from happening

Don’t have ideas
Getting that intellectual property protection thing is complicated and expensive. Refer to point number 1
Only share your idea with your friends when they are drunk. They are less likely to remember
The best additions to your idea come after friends have been engaging in mind altering drugs. They are also less likely to remember.
If you do write or type an idea down, keep it in a safe, or get some encryption software, put a password on the file and then (like I did) eventually forget what the password is.

Remember, ideas are dangerous! Have a fantastic weekend

: I threw this in coz I thought it was funny… and true

The Fairy Tale by Bibi

I have managed to convince my beautiful girlfriend to come and give a guest spot on my blog. She has agreed to come in once and month and have her say. Without further delay, meet Bibi.

Before we get started, let me just say, this is not a bragging session or an ode to my (very patient) boyfriend. This is just an account of my personal feelings…

Once you become an adult, you become free to have relationships. This is an essential part of human growth. What I have come to realise, is that there is a difference between being an adult and being a woman.

If you ask all my friends, my most recent catch phrase when I speak about my bf is “I take my relationship VEEEERY seriously”. This isn’t just something I like to say (even if it does roll off the tongue quite smoothly!) This is something I live. To the outside world, I can see why my relationship may seem so “rosy” or “perfect” or whatever, but in reality, this isn’t by accident. It is hard work! I will say that I’m blessed with a person who doesn’t know how to stop talking, and therefore we talk about everything. I’m gonna just run that by you again, We. Talk. About. EVERYTHING.

This has, of course, led to a number of tense conversations (which by the way people rarely see because we have a rule about not fighting in public). This is the thing though: loving someone may (or may not) be a choice, but being with them is. I know who, and what I have chosen. The things I don’t know, well I can only have FAITH.

They say “Love is about giving someone the power to hurt you, and just hoping that they won’t.” We all know that when embarking on a relationship, there is the possibility of being hurt. What I have come to find out is that there can be real power in a relationship. I have grown into a woman, through to this relationship. I would love to say I did it all for him, I’m just not that selfless. The astounding part is that I actually want this for me too.

It might seem like an odd thing to say, but I am a NUTCASE. I never thought I’d find someone who thought my bad temper, my (stealth) moodiness or my tendency to say inappropriate things, were lovable qualities. To be honest I question his sanity a lil bit. He is however, also willing to work at this relationship with me. That’s where the power is. We have never had a “deal breaker” argument. Does that mean we don’t have boundaries? Absolutely not. It means that we – and yes in this I’m speaking on his behalf (we talked about it) never end an argument thinking that it’s over. Sounds easy…

When the sound of your partner breathing makes you want to strangle them, this simple task becomes a bit harder.

The way we run our relationship is based on constant communication. This does not work for everyone, but it works for us. The key part of all of this is that IT IS WORK. I feel like, if you want to have a successful relationship you have to put in the work. Full stop.

I am not expecting for our Happy Ending to just fall into our laps. We are going to fight, kick, scream and maybe even hurt each other’s feeling sometimes to get there. In the end though, it’s not the destination. It’s the person you choose to share the ride with.

The Home Situation

I would like to start by apologizing for not ranting as regularly as I try and do. Unfortunately my paymasters have decided that work needs to get busier and as a result I have less work time to deal with personal non work related work.

Zimbabwe is very different from a lot of other countries. If you grow up in, say the UK, there is a specific road you travel on. You are born, you go to school, you go to university (if you are fortunate and smart enough. But with the loans that they give out that side you just go to uni) which means you move out of home, and you go home during the holidays (or you don’t depending on where uni is, if you can find a job or if you wanna lengthen the whole “freedom” thing). After uni you then get a job and only go visit your parents when you want to. Some people never go visit their parents coz they will be living their lives.

Here at home, there is a group of us who are still at home, and going on 30. The reason some of us are still at home is maybe because things haven’t properly worked out for us to make it easy for us to move out. Also (these aren’t excuses by the way) since some of us have been home for a shorter time than other (there is also the few who didn’t leave at all), being at home has sort of become easy. It is also kinda scary to know that unlike some of our/my peers I’m still at home, but also it’s comforting to know that our parents are still willing to help us out. Obviously it’s not forever, and I won’t lie I am eternally grateful. The scary thought is, what is it gonna be like when I am now under my own roof and living to my own rules. I mean my rules will be similar to the ones I have under my parent’s roof, but I will also have to invent my own rules.

It is important to be mindful that being at home with the parents is not a curse, but actually a blessing. It’s nice to see them every morning, to chase them out of their own house on weekends, to be harassed about random things like “I tried to look for something in your room and I got frightened by the mess that was on your bed”.

Part of me doesn’t want to leave but not because its rent free. But I like the old fogies. With my brothers having all left, I like being around them especially since I am the last born. The random conversations they have with each other, and with me, the complaints, the jokes, the insight all make it worth being at home with them. The day is fast approaching when I move out. I know that it’s going to be as hard as it was for my older brother when he made the escape.

It’s also nice to always know that there is a home for me. I wouldn’t be able to go for years without seeing my parents. I don’t know how some people do it. Where they kinda say “why should I?”. I feel I have to. Its’s important to cherish the old fogies. One day it will be our turn. No chance in hell that I want to be lonely and wondering where my kids are. In life you can be blessed with more than two siblings, dozens of cousins, many aunts and uncles. But you will always only have one mother and one father (not including the other uncles and aunts who also wanna be called mum and dad hehhehe)

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them – Oscar Wilde