Category: learning curve

Just doing your job?

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Or: “Why you need to be nice to people in Cape Town“.

This is a bit of a personal story, but there’s an important message in it (I think), so I’m going to bore you with it anyway.

A few months back, the company I worked for closed its doors “for operational reasons”, meaning that the people working for that company were summarily retrenched. Me included. It was not a pleasant time, as you might imagine and it was a particularly unpleasant process. This unpleasantness was due in no small part to the attitude of the people who employed us and the lawyer who they had hired to do the hatchet job.
Now, at this point, you can spring forth with all your “Did you really expect to meet a nice lawyer?” quotes and your perhaps more reasonable claims that I would say something like this because I’m being subjective and the matter was emotionally charged and of course I’m not going to like what’s going on, am I?
Do you want to get those things out of your systems now? I can wait.

Done? Good.

Because I have met nice lawyers before: they don’t all conform to the stereotype in the same way that not all accountants are dull and grey and not all microbiologists are good-looking, witty ex-pat bloggers.
And while it was not a nice thing to happen, I accepted that a business decision had been made and we didn’t realistically have a huge amount (read “any”) chance of reversing things. So I did my homework, spoke to some (nice) lawyers I know and made sure I understood my rights in terms of the Labour Relations Act 1995 (section 189) and Basic Conditions of Employment Act 1997 (sections 35, 37 and 41). Fascinating stuff.

Given the situation, I chose to put emotions away and went in to the discussions with my new-found knowledge and my scientific logic as my sword and shield.
Sadly, the lawyer who turned up for the other side scored highly in every category of “typical” lawyer behaviour. On the personal side, I found him pompous, arrogant, aggressive, belittling and generally unpleasant. On the professional side, he sailed very close to the wind of illegality in his actions when going through the official processes. And then he made a verbal agreement on behalf of his clients which he later went back on. Which was nice.

Anyway, to cut a long story slightly shorter, we fought back and we won.

And that’s that. Except to say that then, out of the blue, his wedding photos popped up on my Facebook stream yesterday. Because while the entire world is apparently interconnected via the famous human web of Six Degrees of Separation, in Cape Town it’s generally about 1.2 Degrees of Separation. Friend of a friend happens here very regularly.
And that’s well worth remembering before you act like an arse.

Sure – I’m aware that there’s some parts of anyone’s job that aren’t easy and aren’t pleasant. But when you are dealing with people – especially upset, vulnerable people – while “just doing your job” and you act like you don’t give a damn, try to weasel your way out of promises you made and walk all over them, well that’s when you clearly cross the line from “professional” to “arse” for me.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not asking you to care, I’m just asking you to make it less obvious that you really don’t.

Interestingly, seeing his those photos allowed me to put some pieces into my mental jigsaw and I realised that I had actually bumped into him “socially” a couple of weeks ago (through the same friend). My mind couldn’t quite work out who he was, seeing him out of context like that, but I didn’t introduce myself because there was this nagging doubt that I knew this person but I didn’t like him.
Now I know why. My mind is great and I have renewed respect for it.

So be nice, be respectful to people you meet: professionally, socially or even on the roads. Especially in Cape Town.
Because you will meet them again at some point and your previous actions could make that situation rather awkward.

Just saying.

DIY Biltong

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Ah – biltong – the staple food of South Africans since 1652.

What is it? Well, in case you don’t know and you haven’t already clicked through the link above, it’s essentially seasoned, dried meat.
But there’s more to it than that. It’s completely addictive, it keeps the South African toothpick and dental floss industries afloat and at anywhere between R150 – R350 per kilo (do the sums on the smaller packets), it’s damn expensive as well.

And it was these outrageous prices which led me to consider making my own biltong. But wouldn’t that be rather difficult?
Actually not – thanks to an article in June’s Popular Mechanics magazine. (I’m trying to keep this bit quiet because June still doesn’t know I’ve got it.) And, a couple of bits of wire, a light bulb, some dowel, a plastic box, an old computer fan and two hours later, I have my own homemade biltong dryer. And it works. Really well.

The first lot came out midweek and actually tasted very professional. And so the next lot has already gone in and will be ready by Tuesday morning: 72 hours being the current estimate for the optimum drying time.

I’m using strips (or “stokkies”) of Scotch Fillet (on offer at R60/kg at Pick n Pay) and seasoning with a mixture of black pepper, rock salt and coriander seeds. Then it’s into the dryer:

The meat is hung on bent paperclips from doweling crosspieces around a 45W light bulb. The lid goes on, the fan blows fresh air in and the timer is set.
And at night, it looks like a UFO has landed in the corner of the garage. Which is also quite cool.

Further tweaking of my methods and repertoire will obviously follow, but I think this must surely be the final step in my integration into South African society.

UPDATE: And here they are – ready to eat (remove paper clips first).

Chairs, Cups, Cheats, Chumps

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No one thing grabbed my attention from the information overload that I now find myself happily facing on a daily basis. This is actually a good thing for you, my reader, because it is unlikely that I will rant about the paranoia and misconceptions of an irritated acrophobe, celebrate my good fortune at the hands of David Cameron or mourn the demise of an unfortunate giraffe.

No, today has been far more relaxed and it is in that laid-back frame of mind that I give you the following items for you perusal:

Via the ever entertaining Brian Micklethwait, a chair that rolls into exactly the correct shape.
Brian has (entirely justified) concerns over the longevity of this design, but as he says:

But what the hell, it’s only a chair, and if it goes wrong, it goes wrong.  It still made for a pretty set of pictures. 

Next up, a brilliant story from South Yorkshire Police about how the European Cup – currently in Milan and already booked for Madrid next year – came to arrive in their West Bar headquarters in Sheffield, having been “borrowed” by an aggrieved pub visitor in Birmingham.

The tale is from 1982 after Aston Villa FC won the European Cup.
The players had been celebrating at a pub in the West Midlands and, as the night wore on, the players had allegedly become more boisterous. A young man at the venue with his girlfriend took exception to their behaviour and asked them to show some respect for other customers. His request was allegedly met with more abuse. And so the man decided to play a prank on them. As no-one seemed to be paying attention to the European Cup, he decided to pick it up and see how far he could walk away with it before anyone noticed.

It’s a great story, made even more entertaining for me by SYP’s refusal – almost 30 years on – to commit that the Villa players had actually become more boisterous or had actually abused the young man in question.

Finally, another World Cup warning for the weary England fans who have already had to contend with race wars, earthquakes, snakes and tropical diseases. This time, it’s a reasonable request to be aware of online ticket scams.

According to the Office of Fair Trading, one in 12 ticket buyers are caught out by fraud each year.
Research from online ticket marketplace viagogo suggests almost half a million Britons have been duped by a bogus ticket sellers in the past 12 months.

I’m forever deleting spam from illegal ticket vendors on my World Cup posts. But the only frustration for ticket buyers here was the fact that FIFA’s systems failed yet again when the last 90,000 World Cup tickets went on sale in South Africa this morning.

As someone – I can’t remember who – pointed out on twitter:

FIFA – You keep asking if South Africa is ready. We are – so why weren’t you?

Broken

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I went to gym today for the first time in ages. Not literally ages, as in Mesolithic, Jurassic, Paleolithic etc. That would just be silly. Blokes fought off velociraptors and dragged women around by their hair for exercise back in those days: there was no need for gym. Oh – and men had beards and said “Ug!” a lot.
Thus, those were obviously good days.

Back to the present.
I don’t like gym and, generally speaking, I don’t like the sort of people who do like gym. Therefore, I’ve had many, many reasons for this hiatus. Some have been good, some appallingly bad, several were brilliantly made up on the spur of the moment.
Many have been related to my children and at least fourteen had some form of alcohol as their foundation stone. But I’ve finally run out of excuses and it was time to face my fears at Virgin Active in Claremont. 

For some reason, I decided that a nice gentle easing of my body back in to fitness would be a 25km cycle ride without going anywhere while watching Manchester United and Blackburn, neither of whom were going anywhere either. 
At least the bike kept my heart rate up. At least the scoreline made me smile.  
Can you see how utterly desperate I am for something positive?

After that, I incomprehensibly headed for the incomprehensible torture weights machines and lifted more than I should have rightfully been able to in order to break myself some more. If you are passing Chez 6000, I would very much like you to pop in and touch me on my studio please, because I cannot currently bend down far enough to do it myself.

Sadly, I fear tomorrow may bring with it a new dimension of musculoskeletal agony and there’s precisely bugger all I can do about it.

Next year…

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Damn. Don’t you hate it when good ideas come along just too late?

This one came to my attention about 7 weeks too late for Valentine’s Day this year, but I can only imagine how overwhelmed Mrs 6000 will be to find that I have arranged her funeral for her as a romantic gift next February.

Valentine's gift idea

The brilliant bit about this gift is that once you’ve sorted it all out for the wonderful woman in your life, you will never have to get her another Valentine’s Day gift again – because you definitely won’t be together anymore.