Things I learnt this weekend

In the tradition of this lovely blogger's weekend posts, I give you a list:

• Sometimes people will let you down. This is especially true of possible interviewees for magazine stories, who have a tendency to fall off the planet just before the deadline.


• Really special memories can be made anytime, anywhere.


• The blueberry cosmopolitan cocktail at Bottega Cafe in Fourways Crossing does wonders on a weary Friday afternoon.


• Ask (or even mention) and you may just receive. I happened to say that I would like a pair of decent sunglasses, and when TSC went to order his prescription lenses and somes frames on Friday, he got to choose a free pair of Daniel Hechter sunglasses. Seeing he already has lovely glasses, he let me choose a pair instead. Love my man and his amazing generosity!


• China Mall offers great bargains but also big headaches.


• Going out on the roads during the 94.7 Cycle Challenge is a bad, bad idea.


• The Rosebank Rooftop Craft Market is a great place to do Christmas shopping. But you need lots of time!


• Sunday lunch spent laughing and chatting with awesome friends is the best way to recover from horrible Cycle Challenge traffic.


• My concentration span is ridiculously short on a Sunday evening.


• Sometimes it's good to be reminded of the bigger picture.

What did you learn this weekend?

PS: ANOTHER friend of mine from real life has started blogging. So exciting! Please go visit Kimmi (Brettuce Lettuce's other half) and welcome her to the blogoverse.

Lessons learned this week

I have learned two very important things this week.

Like yesterday, I decided to go for a brisk 30 minute morning walk before work. This is nothing unusual. But it was cold. Very cold. And wet. So I missioned along for a while and then decided to warm up by breaking into a jog. This is unusual - I am NOT a runner.

After just more than five minutes of steady jogging, I got a mammoth stitch that felt like someone had punctured my right lung. It was horrible. Sheer agony, I tell you.

I moaned like a wounded beast and two spandex-clad old ladies out for their own exercise moved hastily to the opposite side of the road.

I slowed back to a walk. My one ear started to hurt from the cold (I have rubbish ears. Had grommets three times as a kid). This turned into a dull headache on the right side of my head. I completed my walk in misery and thankfulyl jumped into the shower as soon as I arrived home.

Lesson: I dislike running.

This is not news to me. If you've known me long enough you'll have heard me say the following at least a million times:

"Show me two people in a row who are out jogging and look like they're actually enjoying it and I'll take it up. Until then, no thanks."

Really... Give me a gym full of other sweaty people who look as ridiculous as I do going nowhere on the stairmaster.

Give me group classes where the butch instructor at the front tells me exactly what to do and when.

Give me my lounge and Billy Blanks shouting daft encouragements from my TV screen in his Taebo workout (good grief, that man is ANNOYING).

But don't give me a slippery, cold open road with lines of bored morning motorists staring at me while I try to jog and at the same time avoid the scores of domestic workers on their way to work who snigger at this mad masochistic woman breathing like a cow in labour as she attempts to do something she's clearly not cut out for.

Another lesson I learned is that I still take water for granted. When I lived in Broadacres, our water would get turned off without warning on an almost weekly basis. We once went without it for four days and were flushing our toilet with mineral water.

Since we've been in the new house, we haven't had this problem at all. Until last night.

When I arrived home at 18h00, the water was off and my mad Italian neighbour was awaiting me to point this fact out a million times over accompanied by grand hand gestures and lots of tutting.

Thankfully, since our experiences in Broadacres, we've been prepared and always have two 5-litre bottles of water on standby. With the water in our kettle and the 2-litre bottle we fill up regularly in our fridge, we were able to manage just fine.

But my sponge bath could in no way match up to the long bubblebath with TSC that I had planned. And brushing your teeth with ice-cold water from the fridge is not fun.

Lesson: I realised again how precious water is.

TSC always says that you can tell a man's wealth by how freely he uses water. The low-earning labourers on local buidling sites can wash up with the water they fill their hard hats with. Those of us spoilt suburb-dwellers used to having water on tap are outraged when we have no water for just one evening.

It makes one think.

What about YOU, dear reader? Learned anything interesting this week?

Have a great weekend, btw.

What I learnt last night

For those of you not in the know, TSC and I lead a church small group at our home every week. This term our group decided to investigate other world religions to try an gain insight into the different beliefs and find any common ground. Last night we invited K, TSC's Muslim friend, to talk to us about his faith. Here is what I learnt:

• I can cook Halaal! K enjoyed my chicken roast, and aside from the slight awkwardness in the beginning (he's definitely not used to chatting to women), I had a good time.
• K is a Shi'ite Muslim. He prays in a different way to people from other Islamic sects, and although he says there are many similarities, there are also differences in the interpretation of the Qur'an and in various religious practices. It's kind of like the way that within Christianity there are various denominations... Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans and so on.
• In Shi'ite law and religion, women and men are equal although different. K was quite funny about this - he's been living in Saudi Arabia, and when I asked him about why women there wear burkas, aren't allowed to drive and are treated as inferior, he said something along the lines of, "That's not in the Qur'an. They are overreacting to what is written." He believes the teachings have been misinterpreted and "stretched too far".
• In K's culture, "love marriages" are permitted, although arranged marriages are also common. K will have an arranged marriage and says he prefers it this way. When asked why, he replied, "If you saw the girl my father has found for me you would agree!" He added that women are allowed to veto the marriage if they don't want to wed the man chosen for them, and that they can also disagree with the bride price that has been suggested. He has known the girl he will marry since childhood. He is currently 19 and she is 17, and discussions have begun, although the marriage will only take place once he's finished studying (in three years time). K stresses that this is a cultural rather than a religious practise - both arranged and love marriages are allowed in Islam.
• Polygamy is also allowed in Islam - a man may have up to four wives at any time. K's great grandfather had a total of seven in his life, and K explains that this was because, in a religion where family and community are of vital importance, men may marry widows or vulnerable women in order to assure them of security and shelter.
• There are different types of Jihad in Shi'ite Islam. Jihad is a religious duty and means "struggle". K says that he is required to "struggle" against those who try to hinder him from practising his faith; against those who assault him (for example, if someone breaks into his house and threatens him or his family he is entitled to defend himself through violence) and against a state that is attempting to force its religion on its people, as people should be free to choose their own faith. In the third case, he notes that Islam retains respect for the Jewish and Christian faiths, as they are based on some of the same holy books as Islam.
• Muslims believe that your kismet (fate, destiny or luck) is predetermined by Allah. In other words, your life is already written and you are following along a pre-planned path. Your kismet can, however, be changed according to your behaviour - if you follow the will of God and do good things, you will be rewarded.
• K finds aspects of our culture unnerving. He had many questions for us, especially about how women dress and the use of alcohol in our society. Our group had some nice debates going answering these. It was great fun.

Things I've learnt about clients

• They will always turn what should be a simple process into the most convoluted and confusing plan possible.
• They will not communicate properly with you and then will assume that you can read their minds.
• They will take forever and ever to answer a question or resolve an issue (or just never respond) and then blame you when a deadline is missed.
• In fact, they'll blame you for anything and everything that goes wrong, whether it's something work-related or if it's their car that has started sprouting weeds out of the exhaust pipe.
• They will believe that you have no life aside from serving their every need and will insist on calling you outside of working hours and sometimes on weekends.
• They will also believe that it is absolutely necessary for you to trek halfway across the world to meet them for 15 minutes to discuss something that could quite easily have been sorted out on the phone.

And then there's the rare one or two clients who will actually stick to boundaries, pay you on time, thank you for your hard work and even treat you like a person. Thank goodness for those clients. Without them I think I'd have jumped off a bridge many moons ago.