My version of hell...

...Would include eternal Chuck Norris re-runs, lots of Barry Manilow and/or Lady Gaga, fountains of custard (can't stand the stuff), pot holes the size of the one in the road near my office and, worst of all, admin.


Good grief do I hate admin! And right now I feel like that's all I'm doing. Since when did it become my fulltime job to follow up on people?! If I'd wanted to spend my time nagging folks I would have adopted a teenager by now.


Please bear in mind that I am not talking about my own personal admin here. I am not half bad at remembering to pay bills, invoice clients, and file my paperwork (ok that last one's a lie. My paperwork is a mess). The admin that is threatening to bury me at present is not mine and is for the most part avoidable if people would just do what they're supposed to do.


If I spend hours and ours drawing up the ushering roster for church (which is enough admin in itself - keeping track of 60-odd people's schedules) I would really, really appreciate it if once I hit the 'send' button I didn't receive 29 replies within the first two hours (not an exaggeration. This is an actual figure) asking me to make changes. If you can't make your duty on a given night, use the contact details sheet I attached and swap with someone else. Please. I say this with tears in my eyes. And homicide in my head.


Likewise, I would love it if just for once my clients would do their bit. It is impossible for me to send your web copy to the developer to finish your sparkly new site if you refuse to take five minutes to read it and sign it off. So please do not complain that we are running late. The copy is all sitting in your inbox.


I would also love to know how it has become my responsibility to fight neighbourhood evil. For some reason it is me that gets the joyful tasking of writing, printing and paying for notices to alert our complex of the meeting happening this week between our town planners and the major retail corporation that wants to plant one of their fugly stores on our doorstep. I'm not even on the board of trustees for our complex, for goodness' sake. How is this up to me?

Grrr.

I would whine more but I have to go. So much to do and so little medication.

Joburg and Commitment (a ramble)

It took me a long time to get used to living in Johannesburg and to actually start enjoying the energy of the city and the good stuff it offers - fast pace, great cultural and sporting events, friendly people, diversity, earning potential etc.

There is, however, something that still frustrates me enormously - the fact that people wear their busyness as a badge and can't commit to stuff.

What does that mean? Well, chances are, if you ask anyone in Joburg how they are, the answers will be busy / stressed / tired / hectic / frantic / various other synonyms. And that's usually the truth - the pace here is insane and most people are working incredibly hard. Living in Joburg can be stressful. You just have to spend five minutes on the roads here to realise that!

BUT...

(of course there's a but)

People use this busyness as an excuse for anything, from being bad at keeping in touch to forgetting a birthday or not arriving at a function. And I am guilty of this on occasion too - I have pulled out of a social event because work got too crazy at the time. It's normal, it's human and it's probably healthy.

BUT....

(oooh... another one)

It's very frustrating to try and organise a social event in Joburg when this is the norm. I recently had to organise our church ushering team year-end thank you function (we're going to see show at one of the Barnyard theatres this weekend). What a nightmare! Trying to get 50 people to RSVP was impossible. After three emails and an SMS to the people who hadn't responded, I gave up.

Then, days after the final RSVP deadline, I had people asking if they could still come. And bring a partner.

I finally bought the tickets (which the church is sponsoring). Of course, I've now had a whole host of last-minute pull-outs, even though this was organised weeks ago. Some people have good reasons (one guy had to unexpectedly fly to Kenya on business, for example), but others don't. One of the guys asked to bring his sister, who is visiting for the weekend, and now neither of them are coming because he hadn't checked with her first. So I have a bunch of tickets that have been paid for and will probably go to waste unless I can find some folks to fill the empty seats at this late date.

Grrr!

I think there's a difference between saying you can't come to a relaxed braai anymore because you have been dumped with a mammoth last-minute project for work and saying you can't come to an event you've committed to where money has already been spent on you because you found something better to do or you didn't plan your time very well.

For example, I didn't mind when someone called me on the night of my birthday party to say he was down with flu and wouldn't be there after all. Poor dude! I did, however, mind when a supposed friend RSVPed "yes" to our wedding and then simply didn't show up on the day, meaning we still had to pay for his seat and meal that had been prepared for him.

Am I making any sense?

I know this is not a Joburg-specific problem, but I do seem to find it worse here than the other places I've lived. If you organise any sort of event here, whether it's a work function or a dinner at your house or a big get-together birthday celebration, chances are that you will have a handful of people calling you on the day to cancel or just not bothering to pitch up because they are "too busy".

And we perpetuate this cycle in Joburg because (consciously or unknowingly) we judge each other and ourselves on our level of busyness, which we somehow think equates to productivity or success.

I know so many people (including me) who feel like we have to be sick or on our December holiday before we can slow down, even for one day. We pack our days with activities and engagements and run ourselves into the ground trying to get everything done.

And eventually we are so exhausted that we end up calling some poor sod who's trying to organise a church ushering year-end function and saying we can't make it anymore, because we are just too busy.

*Sigh*

Diatribe aside, I'm off to try to find some people who aren't too busy to come to a show this weekend.

Baby rant revisited

Ok... here is yesterday's rant of a post. Published due to popular demand ;-)

Wah! So frustrated with the stupid work ADSL line. It hasn't worked properly since Wed, hence the lack of a post on Fri. It's finally back up now, after they finally sent a Telkom technician to have a look. Finally. *rolls eyes*



So please forgive my lack of commenting / reading over at your blogs and my present black mood (see below). The persistent internet issues, coupled with various weekend frustrations, have left me with a personal thunder cloud over my head.



This is largely due to the fact that I seemed to spend the whole weekend being asked when I'm planning on having kids. This was probably because I was completely surrounded for most of it by couples who are either pregnant / trying to get pregnant or have recently spawned offspring of their own. And I have nothing against any of that. For real. I'm happy for you guys! Rock on! It makes me happy to see you so happy. I think you'll be brilliant parents.



And yes, your baby is gorgeous. She really, truly is. Cute little button nose and teensy tiny fingernails. But no, it doesn't make me broody. Not in the least. And I really don't appreciate the fact that you seem to pity me because of that.



*Sigh* I know I'm being totally over the top. But honestly, TSC and I were the only couple at a very couple-ish get-together that aren't planning on procreating at any point in the near future. And this seemed foreign to everyone else there. We were like Prawns in a friggin alien petting zoo - everyone felt the need to have a good old prod as to why we don't want a baby yet.



And after I had spent five hours straight of listening to conversations that revolved entirely around babies and being questioned on whether I ever see myself having kids at all (who knows? Certainly not me!), I got a phone call from a friend I haven't spoken to in six years. And the first thing he asked me (after "How are you?") was "So, you've been married awhile now... when are the kids coming?"



Poor bloke. After six years of not having chatted to him, that remark unleashed the fury of hell and I came down on him like a ton of bricks. I doubt I'll be speaking to him again in the next six years either.



I guess I just feel a little stuck in the middle at the moment. TSC and I aren't up for hectic partying with our single friends, but we're also not ready to have kidlets yet, like almost all of our married friends seem to be. Something that frustrates me enormously is the fact that once you're married, so many people seem to think kids are the immediate next step. We didn't get married because we wanted babies. We got married because we wanted to be married.



Slyde once blogged about how friendships happen in seven-year cycles. And maybe we're just at a point where we need to start finding a fewof friends who "get" where we're at, whether they're at the same place or not. Our friendship circles gradually changed when we got married, and they're probably going to change again now, seeing we're not following the same five-year plan everyone else in "our group" seems to be on.



And (now for the positive bit) that's part of why I'm so grateful for friends I've met online who are now friends IRL. If I hadn't met them online, our paths would probably never have crossed at all because we're all so different. And I LOVE that! I have online friends of different ages, creeds, job industries, races and opinions. I have blog friends who are parents to grown-up children, those who have young'uns, a bunch who are pregnant and some who are still trying to figure out if whether or not they're kids themselves. And I find that these people I've met through blogging tend to know me for who I am (probably because I routinely overshare my inner monologue on this blog) and accept me as I am, same or different.



So thanks to you all. You counsel me, you teach me, you take the piss out of me, you occasionally lecture me, you often make me laugh and you sometimes move me to cry. I treasure your honesty and I enjoy sharing your experiences. When I'm walking about with my thunder cloud over my head, I can come here to vent and then head over to your spaces to hear about what's going in your life. Which is what I'm going to do now.

Sometimes I wonder why I watch F1

Honestly! I mean, it's fabulously exciting (and don't even think of giving me the "it's just noisy cars going round a track" line if you've ever watched a bloody five-day cricket match, which should be listed as the dictionary definition of boring). But the shenanigans that go on in my sport are enough to make even the Ice Man (Kimi Raikkonen) grimace once in awhile.

It's like a Hollywood film, with an ancient dictator (played to perfection by Max Mosely, although closely contested by Bernie Ecklestein) controlling the reins of the world's most lucrative sport. The hero is played by either the wounded Massa, the champion rookie Hamilton (who has returned to glory), the no-longer-retired Schumacher (yes, he has returned in a red Ferrari cape to "save the day/race" in Massa's place, German Superman style) or the only-just-beginning-to-battle Button / Brawn team... it all depends on your point of view, really.

Then there is the battle of wills between FOTA (Formula One Teams Association) and the FIA (the sport's governing body)... come now, keep up with the abbreviations... and the exit of the BMW-Sauber team, which announced yesterday that it is quitting the sport, much to the dismay of its drivers (Heidfeld admitted it was a total shock to him).

Drama drama drama...

But you know what? That's the way they like it. That's how they all engineer it. Take, for example, the whole "Return of the Schumacher" saga. On Tuesday, the story titled "Manager rules out Schumi F1 return" ran, in which the German's manager Willi Weber told the Daily Mail, "Whoever sits in the car at the next race in Valencia, it will not be Michael Schumacher. I am not 100 per cent sure; I am 200 per cent sure."

He continued to dig himself a hole saying, "The pressure on him would be huge. He would be expected to win, but he has not driven this car. When Michael was racing he would get as close to perfection as possible. In this case, it would not be perfection; it would be a gamble - and that's not Michael's style."

Hardy har har... On Wednesday, not even 24 hours later, the headlines screamed "Schumi returns to F1".

On his official website, ze mighty man wrote, "The most important thing first: thank God, all the news concerning Felipe is positive. I wish him all the best again." He then went on, "I met with [team principal] Stefano Domenicali and [Ferrari chairman] Luca di Montezemolo this afternoon and together we decided that I will prepare myself to take Felipe’s place... Although it is true that the Formula 1 chapter of my life has been closed completely and for a long while, it is also true that out of loyalty to the team I cannot ignore the unfortunate situation."

It's all a grand parade, this F1 thing, isn't it? A spectacle, a circus, a farce in which we, the fans, are managed by the experienced F1 crew of actors and directors. Smoke, mirrors and the smell of burnt rubber on the track.

Did he actually ever believe he wouldn't consider a return, or has that been the very-well-managed-in-terms-of-media-hype plan all along? And does it really matter?

I may as well start watching that WWE wrestling crap.