It's a jungle out there

Have you ever noticed that your work colleagues are fairly reminiscent of various jungle creatures collaborating against each other to create a corporate hell with fluorescent lighting, just for you to slog through traffic to reach every day.



Sometimes while my boss is talking to me, I try NOT to focus on her goatee wagging furiously and instead, I tune the sound of her shrill out and imagine her crouching down into a puma-like position, sprouting bob cat ears and streaking across the linoleum terrain to break up the office chimpanzees elbowing one another and giggling at the water cooler.


Also, on days when my morning is not completely dominated by unsuccessfully trying to hang my self with a piece of dental floss in one of the 1x1 office toilet cubicles, I like to cruise my Amazon and scope out my jungle brothers letting it all hang out in there respective departments.


Gorilla
Let us begin with the almighty office Gorilla.
Silverbacks are strong, dominant troop leaders. Each, typically leads a troop and is the center of the troop's attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop.
When challenged in the work place this colleague will scream, beat his chest, break computer monitors, bare his teeth, then charge forward.
These pearls of joy are famous for glancing at their watches when you arrive 1 minute late in the morning and knuckle walking through the corridors ferverently searching for ANYTHING to manage. They are also grumpy for the better part of most days because they not so secretly hate themselves for not actually having any kind of life outside of the office so to speak.
They like to spit mumbled snortings at you in the morning as an intended greeting right before they demand how far you are with the Brickfield Joint Venture deal so that they can enjoy watching you clap your gums together with your handbag still draped over your shoulder and your chair not even pulled out yet. All in all, an absolute delight to spend 80% of your week with.


Jaguar
The Jaguar is sleek and seductive and powerful.
This cunning big cat is most certainly the biggest enemy in your career but yet your most trusted confidante and most treasured wing man.
Whilst having been described as the kind of feline that pulverises its Amazon enemies with a deep throat bite and suffocation technique followed by a piercing of the skull and brain, I like to think it rather scrapes marks, urinates or defecates all over the entire office and then walks slowly down the forest path corridors between work stations, stalking conversations between prey.
The office jaguar attacks from cover and usually from a target's blind spot with a quick pounce on your promotion before you even knew you had it. The species' ambushing abilities are considered nearly peerless in both the corporate and animal kingdom because we are all so seduced by her beauty and sincerity that we almost never see her coming. She is the handful of salt at the bottom of your popcorn box and the ninja star in your back, and unfortunately the jaguar's elusive and inaccessible nature make it a difficult predator to detect swooning in for the sabotage, let alone study..


Boa Constrictor
The Boa constrictor is a large, heavy-bodied ambush predator that will often lie in wait for an appropriate prey to come along at which point they will attack.
This colleague is mean as a snake and hisses loudly and strikes repeatedly when threatened or disturbed.
He also bites in defence, and whilst this bite can be painful it is rarely dangerous because snakes don't actually have balls.
That being said unlike his lethal jaguar lunch buddy who will churn out a show stopping smile right before she twists a concealed butter knife into your neck, he is predictable and tired, and we know where we stand with him - which is nowhere. No surprises when he ambushes you in your team meeting or takes credit for your idea. This ssslithering ssssad-ass is ssssimply a ssssssssss LOSER.


Vampire Bats
These messengers of Satan are bats (never...) whose food source is your blood, sweat and tears.
They never actually thrive in the business world because they only just manage to NOT get fired by doing the absolute bare minimum amount of work from 8 to 5, whilst spending most of their time sucking the life out of unsuspecting naive do-gooder types who cruise around the office with blinkers on.
They also (quite cleverly actually) literally leech off of any and all resources at there disposal in the workplace and in life so to speak, and will even go so far as to stuff company toilet paper in the their handbags because it is, after all, FREE.
This corporate cretin is a somnolent animal which sleeps up to 18 hours a day but still manages to somehow run his private home business from his workstation. Like genuine vampire bats that only pluck up the energy to defecate about once a week near the same single tree that they live in and feed off, and then proceed to bury their excreta near the trunk of that tree to help nourish it. So this work parasite, in essence, lives off its own bullshit.

Termites
The termites are a group of eusocial soldiers with anatomical and behavioural specialisations, providing the strength and armour to undertake the labours of foraging, food storage, brood and nest maintenance and some defence duties. These are the worry warts who border on killing themselves for the job because they genuinely believe that the way in which their monthly stationery usage report is presented, makes all the DIFFERENCE. Now whilst Management love these dorks, all they really actually accomplish is making the rest of us regular joes look bad with their RA RA can-do high school musical attitude.
Having said that, they have actually unknowingly mastered the perfect harmonious equilibrium of not being ambitious or street smart enough to ever actually pose any threat of making any real progress in the business, but are yet just ambitious enough to want to OFF themselves if they can't manage to get their Excel spreadsheet columns aligned.
These types usually spend their time with their foot so far up the Manager's butt in an pathetic attempt to try to climb the corporate ladder, that his breath starts to smell like shoe polish.

Me, I think it's ludicrous to behave like Amazon creatures just because we feel we are failing miserably at trying to lead first world lives in a third world country. We are South Africa. Land of  monogamously challenged dancing presidents, the koeksister, and the Tokelosh, and home of the Springboks, Sponge-KNOB Vile-Pants Julius Malema and the BIG 5. If we are to try to emulate ANY animal-like behaviour, let it be that of the African Elephant.

African Elephant
The African Elephant is a symbol of wisdom, luck and loyalty and is THE master of appropriate action. They show tenderness, compassion and sorrow and yet on the rampage, they are protective and aggressive. Although they are known mostly for their size and shape, they also live in extremely advanced social organisations and have evoked a sense of fascination in human beings for centuries.

Perhaps the most enticing quality of the elephant is its undeniable similarity to us, manifested by the close bonds they form with family members, their communication, life span, the care of their young and their emotions. Elephants experience many of the same emotions as people do, ones that are usually restricted to being that of humans’, seldom seen in animals. They are capable of sadness, joy, love, jealousy, fury, grief, compassion and distress.

The elephant’s capacity for sadness and grief is truly unique amongst members of the animal world, as it is particularly complex in terms of emotions. While most animals do not hesitate to leave the weak and young behind to die, elephants are distressed by the situation, and continue to show signs of this grieving for extended periods of time.


Because elephants live in such close-knit herds and live for about as long as humans do, they form strong bonds with those around them. When these ones die, the rest of the herd mourns that death.


They are highly revered for their strength and power and their behaviour can teach us that that wise leadership, selfless discipline and tough unconditional love is the core of any working unit.


5 Business lessons we can learn from elephants

1. An elephant's skin is extremely tough and measures about an inch thick.  Lesson - Develop your own thick skin.
2. Elephants are born with fewer survival instincts than many other animals.  Lesson - Finding a good mentor with experience is critical.
3. Elephants are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence.  Lesson - Respect can take time to earn.
4. The elephant is pregnant for 22 months.  Lesson - slow and steady is not necessarily a bad thing.
5. Elephants display a wide variety of behaviours including those associated with music, art, altruism, play, use of tools, compassion and self awareness.  Lesson - a work/life balance is important.

Woodwinked  - over & out
For Noah Nightingale
xx 

To dye for: Blondes do have more fun

I’m a proud brunette, no doubt about it. In fact I would go so far as to say that for the better part of the last 12 years I’ve gone out of my way to disprove the adage that blondes have more fun by simply having the most fun as a brunette. And I’ve had a pretty awesome time. I look at my blonde friends who have turned brunette as a reasonable compliment and as proof that I’ve turned the myth on its head.



That was until I went blonde.


Blondes don’t know what they have; and I had no idea that I was missing out but, there is no doubt in my mind that blondes do have more fun.


Research from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, points out that the majority of people around the world have black hair –and perhaps this is why blondes simply get more attention. They stand out in a crowd because that crowd is, by virtue of genetic statistics, probably going to be mostly brunette. This would account for the previously unprecedented rate of pick-ups in a crowd: from being asked for my number in charade-speech through two panes of glass and the rumbling space of peak-hour traffic at a highway intersection robot, to an attempted pick-up on a 10 000 clubber-strong dance-floor where I think (I really couldn’t hear him properly) I was being invited to Plet for the weekend.


Alternate research from an international Journal of Psychology supports the idea that men buy into the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotype –and perhaps this is why blondes both play to men’s physical and intellectual strengths, and in doing so stroke those very delicate egos, as well as why it is easier for blondes to surprise in conversation: what’s more enticing than expecting a pretty vacuous vapidity to stare blankly back at you in conversation at a dinner party and instead find yourself in deep and interesting conversation?


This expectation could account for why blondes get significantly more attention from possible partners on internet dating sites. Blondes can expect a flirtatious 14 messages a day versus a skimpy nine for brunettes. And then perhaps that is the problem –that brunettes are simply notoriously not skimpy enough. It is widely accepted that a gormless girl (as blondes are stereotypically thought to be) is more likely to trade on the only talent left to her. In which case any fun we’re talking about is confined to the bedroom. But research also shows that blondes have more fun in the boardroom – not on the boardroom table – as they are more likely to be employed in the legal profession and other such brainy fields.


Turns out though that this is not enough to keep a man interested. Ultimately, men seek dark-haired women as wives. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha.


Perhaps it is not so much about the fact that blondes are not as thick (in the head, not the girth) as Marilyn represented them and more about the fact that, like Marilyn, blondes have the audacity to stand over that drain-cover in a white dress and flaunt what they’ve got because they’ve got it, and it’s awesome to have –with less concern about who is going to see their panties and think they’re a cheap slut, than a brunette. Sometimes it is smarter to play dumb. And most times that takes balls.


For whatever reason, going blonde is supposed to:


1. Make you feel more attractive;


2. Increase your confidence at work, often in such a way that you find it easier to ask for a pay rise;


3. Make you more capable of complaining about unfair treatment; and


4. Enable you to set personal boundaries more assertively.


And since going blonde I have:


1. Started wearing less make-up because I think I’m pretty enough without it;


2. Gotten a bonus this month and an increase for next year...


3. ...for doing less work than this year because I complained about how much of my free time it was stealing;


4. And informed the extended family of how we will NOT be spending Christmas together.


I guess I can sit back smiling smugly because I have the best of both worlds. I have experienced The Blondeness and believe that I can far more successfully exploit all that being blonde brings because I can spot the advantages as they befall me. And whenever I want, I can rely on my genes to secure me the
extra 4 250 pounds a year that statistics says being a brunette, not a blonde, secures me at work.


...Oh, and brunettes are also more likely to marry millionaires...now I wonder if that means a brunette can help make a man a millionaire...?


-SoBlonde

Grrrrr.

It all started going horribly wrong when they started letting men into shopping centers.
If a man was supposed to grocery shop, he would be born with a second head hidden in his neck ala-Zaphod-Beeblebrox, female of course, which would at the very least scream out directions like, "LEFT!", "RIGHT!", "STOP!" and the very necessary, "STOP PARKING YOUR TROLLEY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE YOU DIMWIT!"

It's bad enough that platteland shops are filled with a myriad shoppers who have never been in a shop bigger than the local corner cafe and whose idea of a fun-filled morning with the kids is letting them run amock amongst the pilchard tins freely attempting the decapitation of toes all around them.  Add to this a couple of old people from the local aged home allowed out for a morning to restock their wafer shelf, and any attempt of reaching for a tub of biscuits to make a baking crust for cheesecake is thwarted by a row of wheelchairs racing in slow motion and a clicking maze of walking sticks. 

The worst is that I really do go out of my way to buy only the unperishable essentials at such stores.  But this means that I am left with three packs of braai wood, one roll of puff pastry and a tub of gelato in a trolley in a queu for 10 items or less that is a hundred people strong, with four people the size of small cars jostling for the single spot in the row in front of me, all buying ELEVEN items for the same household.

I heard a single, solitary, "Excuse me.  ....Sorry..." behind me as a young lady tried to pass through my row and into the hoardes behind me.  I nearly wept at her politeness, turned and caressed her face lovingly and asked her to introduce me to her parents.
Somewhere in this mad hive of battered chicken making buyers exists a young woman with manners.  One.  And she has shown me up.  Because the hive mind is infectious and I too have spent the last hour (45 minutes of it in the 10 item or less queu) with a steely face, not saying a word but instantaneously combusting people with my eyes, boring holes into the back of their heads.  And here is someone whose actions are, I imagine, on some cosmic level, an opportunity to inspire me to be a better person in the midst of the adversity of Saturday morning grocery shopping.

Screw that.  I think my lesson of choice is:  either chop your own wood or never braai again, get a cow to make your own gelato and learn to make puff pastry from scratch. 

-Soba

An Open Letter to The Universe

Dear Universe

There seems to be club of people for whom life is, well, easy. I don’t mean to undermine their trials and tribulations – long queues, user unfriendly banking hours and the absence of any attempt at customer service in South Africa are very real frustrations.  However, I don’t really feel that this compares to some of the trials and tribulations which I seem to face.

I’m nice to bank tellers. I pay my traffic fines.  I don’t try to bribe cops. I don’t drink and drive. I work hard. I try not to badmouth my colleagues (unless the situation requires it in lieu of killing them).  I even refer to many who are technically subordinates as colleagues… I’m respectful to cold-callers who insist that I  do need a second contract.

Now the people in this club seem to have no problem finding someone to love them, marry them and have kids with (even though some of them, I’d like to point out, have a lot more viable eggs left than me).  They appear to have supportive parents.  Somehow, inspite of having a smaller income than me, they manage to buy their own homes without selling organs on the black market.

The members of this club are often skinny, sometimes effortlessly so, but I’ve often found that they seem to enjoy exercise (couldn’t I have had a little piece of that pie?).  They even have time to exercise. They don’t manage to convert their mascara into raccoon eyes within 30 minutes of application because apparently when their mascara says “waterproof” and “hypoallergenic” it actually is.  They’re often pretty – and not just to the myopic octogenarians.

I’m not a glass half empty person.  Neither am I a glass half-full person.  I’m really more of a “now where did I put my glass of wine?” person. I think that should count for something.

So, my father is terminally ill.  I’m trying really hard to stop writing eulogies in my head and I cry in traffic much less these days.  I think I’m just about getting to the point where I can bear the fact that if I ever attain (at least a partial) membership to this club and meet The One, odds are, my dad won’t walk me down the isle.  If I have kids, they won’t get to know their grandfather.  I’m even a little grateful that at least I’ve had time to show him I love him and say goodbye.

Now my Ouma has also died.  She had the death she always wanted – quick, relatively painless and without any preceding disability, but really, the timing?  Was that really necessary?

On the subject of timing… Did my dad really need to be admitted to hospital with a potentially life threatening condition the night before I started a really intensive (and expensive) 3 day course that was going to suck my soul out anyway?

Now I’m told the darkest time of night is just before the dawn.  I believe this is zen-hippie speak for “toughen the fuck up” but I can’t be sure because I’m not fluent.  I’m also a little skeptical because this night is starting to seem awfully long.

In view of the above: could I not have been spared the broken washing machine, the brake pads that need replacing, the computer that freezes at completely random intervals, the stream of beggars at my door, my work, my car – many of whom seem to think that yelling at me will work when simple begging has failed…

And possibly, just possibly, could I perhaps get away without the ingrown hairs and teenage acne?  I have, after all, not been a teenager for well over a decade thanks to your relentless and sneaky speeding up of the passage of time.

Kind Regards (Although I suspect we both know that’s not what I really want to say…)

Me

PS.  Could you please smite the people who send emails around of relentlessly cheerful invalids with only 2 arms and no legs, or no limbs – just hands and feet attached to a torso, with captions like “this is really inspiring” or something underhanded that implies your life is completely perfect because you came with all your parts and you should never ever complain again.

PPS.  Failing all of the above: could I PLEASE apply for late membership to the club?

- Gleam

I love Jack Parow! -Ja raait.

No really. I do. I think it’s genius that there is finally a band out there that represents a cultural response to the recession in a way that speaks to those in recession. Personally I love the way that Jack Parow and Die Antwoord are making it so very easy for me not to have to think about some things! –Hey, maybe that’s why all those other people like them too....?


I mean, like, before them, I would actually have had to get to know someone a little, maybe even have a conversation with them, before deciding whether or not to invite them round to my place. Now, I just have to make sure that they like Jack and Friends and I know for sure that I want very little to do with them. It’s like... social magic man.


During a recent evening out with friends I had the misfortune of arriving at an entrance to the mall shared with the theatre where Jack was performing. I’m surprised I managed to make it to my dinner in one piece, physically and emotionally. Between clawing my way up two flights of stairs that had been turned into a beer-tent version of a slippery-slide and darting under and between 5ft1 poppies teetering precariously on 9’’ clear plastic platforms, so precariously that a number of them threatened to dive, unsynchronised, into their equally tall pints of klippies & coke, screaming “Waahs yaaaaay? Yay’t geseh yay gaahn muy op die korner krey?!” (insert giggle, pause, slurp and “Ooo*giggle*ooops!” as most of the klippies spills down her forearm and into her Eeves And Your Aunt handbag), I found myself madly texting my girlfriends, “What the hell is going on in this place????”


And then I remembered. The other people in the basement parking lot. The teased hair. The fake luminescent fuschia and green crocodile-skin moonbag. The blue polyshorts flashing leopard-print tighty-whities. The gutteral snort of throats hacking at lugees and the distinct smack of regurgitated snot on concrete. Jack Parow was here.


Thankfully dinner was on the other side of the mall and the theatre must have realised their mistake and sound-proofed their auditorium as their doors opened, swallowed the horde and quietly spat them out two and a half hours later.


If only the same could be said for the horde. Who clearly did not realise their mistake. In fact, they were revelling in it. A tide of dispassioned, foul-mouthed, misogynistic males and bouncy boob-waving shut-me-up-and-tie-me-down girls swept past us on their way out; one couple –all that was missing was the chain and dog-collar around her neck- exited with a flourish when the male suggested loudly that his “girlfriend” “Shut the fuck up or else”. She troddled on faster behind him in her spiky heels and ripped tights. Another lady of class bounded past us flailing her t-shirt screaming, “Mei tehte!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Awesome.


Now while before Jack Parow I may very well have run the risk of looking up at said-misogynist and thinking that a polite smile and a courteous Hello may have gotten me into the parking ticket pay-station ahead of him, I now know to take a wide berth and possibly walk to the pay-station on the other side of the mall in the hope of not meeting his wrath for simply being a woman. Similarly, Mei Tehte and I may actually have had to converse before she offered to show me her boobalicious tramp stamp and I made the mental note to not have her over –whereas now, thanks to Jack, meeting people and making friends is just that much simpler. Jack Parow: the litmus test.






I have never been one for the moral high-ground –and I understand that I am supposed to appreciate the Parow/Antwoord factory as a profoundly ironic and, thus, meaningful commentary on culture spawning culture, etcetera, etcetera. But irony is not, in itself, profound and embracing everything this factory churns out is reducing us to a society that thinks it is. Just because you have the ability to comment on yourself, doesn’t make you self-aware -even a chimpanzee would look in the mirror and decide to take off that leopard-print peak-cap.

-Soba.

The 10 Steps of Unrequited Love

If I were to run around like SuperMario repeatedly banging my head against various walls hoping to find a gold coin my friends, I believe, would try to stop me.  I assume that they’d care about the safety of my brain.

Another organ they appear much less concerned about is my heart.  If the above situation were a metaphor for my quest for true love – they’re failing miserably.  I realize that as a metaphor it gets messy – it would be the princess searching for SuperMario (or any Mario for that matter, no no The Mario…) and would hopefully involve less magic mushrooms (although if I find one that makes me magically smaller: I’m Taking It).  But here my friends encourage me unceasingly to keep banging my head against those walls.

My favourite pacifier is “It’ll happen when you’re not expecting it”.  If I never find love – I’m blaming them.  Now when I’m feeling heartbroken and thinking “That’s it – I’m out.  I hate this stupid game”, their voices sneakily suggest to me that maybe now is the time… Thanks to them, I’m never not expecting it.

Let’s not forget:  “Your perfect man is out there”.  Really?  Why is he hiding?  Where is he hiding?  And again, why?  My perfect man is not a hider.  And I think I’ve given South Africa a fair chance, I’ve been here for the better part of 25 years.

As I approach The Wall (new metaphor: my rapidly approaching 30^th birthday), I find myself taking stock.  What have I achieved? What do I regret?  I certainly regret every second I've spent feeling sorry for myself because I was single, because that hasn’t bourne a single fruit (no pun intended) and casual observation of couples staring at their food in restaurants makes me glad I’m not in a relationship for the wrong reasons AND being single is smokin’ fun (except on major holidays and at the car dealership).  What of my achievements?  Besides a wonderful career doing a job I love, I have graduated summa cum laude from the School of Unrequited Love.  And herewith, I’d like to present my research conclusions.

Step 1: Possibility.

You meet someone.  Years ago this involved a moment of chemistry, with someone who checked all the right boxes: career, looks, intelligence, sense of humour…  Now it’s more like: single, no obvious prison record/tattoos.  You sense potential. Or a friend points it out.

Step 2: Spending time together.

You find something you have in common – whether it’s a shared loved of the theatre or a mutual relief that the other doesn’t have a badly inked swallow with a number on their upper arm and you use this to spend time together.

Step 3: Escalation of Contact Time.

You start to see each other more regularly.  This may be by arrangement or “co-incidence”.   For example, you discover that you’ve been missing out for years on the rich comedic experience of a weekly open mike stand up comedy routine.  No really, you have.

Step 4: The SMS Conversations.

They start innocently but before you know it they last for hours and contain a fair amount of innuendo.  You try not to be the last to sms and you certainly avoid starting them.  You find a way to include a question or suggestion that forces a reply. Subtly.  You go to bed grinning.

Step 5: The Eschewing of Former Prerequisites:

You realize that your previous check boxes for a partner were very limiting and narrow-minded.  Of course you can find a way to make it work with someone who has completely different religious beliefs.  Or a genetic defect. Or a prison record….

Step 6:  The Period or Rich Imaginings.

You can’t help this period.  You know that it’s best left undone, but before you can help yourself you’ve already day-dreamed what your parents and friends will think of him, how he’ll propose, what the wedding will be like and yes, what your future offspring will look like. You’re embarrassed by this step.  You should be – for heaven’s sake you’ve googled whether or not your children will carry the genetic defect.  You never tell anyone any of this. And you never should.

Step 7:  The Stupid Smile and Nervous Laugh.

A culmination of the preceding steps – people ask you what’s happening between the two of you and you deny anything – lest you jinx it.  But the stupid smile and nervous laugh often give you away.

Step 7b:  The Realisation that Whilst Normally Rational You Now Believe in Jinxes.

Step 8: The Final Realisation.

It usually happens unexpectedly.  Although to be fair you may have missed the signs while daydreaming about weddings and children.  You find yourself in conversation with The Wall (old metaphor: head banging against) and discover that he’s still hung up on some girl he didn’t even date over a year ago - even though you’re there, clearly available, sitting on the couch opposite him. You continue the conversation for one of two reasons.  Either, while you have been building the dream relationship he has been making a great new friend OR he’s just not that into you and thinks pretending to be in love with a figment of his own imagination is a kinder way of letting you down.  And he may be right.  And of course having lost your dream, you really don’t want to lose face.  You leave and find somewhere quiet to bang your head against a wall.  No metaphor.

Step 9: Game Over

You swear off love.  You bow out of The Game.  You make plans for a rich life so full of adventure and acclaim that you couldn’t possibly have time for a relationship and frankly, marriage and children would just hold you back.

Step 10: You Renege.

You hear the voices of your friends telling you that it’ll happen when you least expect it.  You go back to Step 1.  You do not pass Go.  You do not collect $200. (Unless of course you’re one of those girls who’s found a way to make this all work for them financially.  But I’m not.)

Over and Out (of the game) OR Between Steps 10 and 1.                    - Gleam

What This Woman Wants

I have absolutely had it. I am tired of being part of an alphabet-ending generation of women who refuses to come to terms with who we are and how we have to start running our lives.


We run the market-place, we run our homes with the efficiency of Sun Tsu marshalling his armies into camps on the dawn of Monday mornings to take on The Battle of the Week –and win; and most of the single 20-something gen-Xers I know are struggling with the fact that even the men they’re trying to date know that they already run the relationship. So why can’t we run our working lives with the same efficacy?


We have an exceptionally strong work ethic but we want balance –a satisfying work and personal life. Having grown up in an economic transition which forced many families to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of a new South Africa as opened-armed as they possibly could have, watching our mothers run home finances, and then being thrust into our own recession 10 years later, our parents still succeeded in developing in us the biggest generational ego, a great self-confidence, and a real desire to have an impact. We are high-performing, highly civic-minded, highly motivated –we’re just not high maintenance enough for our employers to take notice of.


If we actually accept that we want to manage our professional lives very differently from the way our parents did and we take a look around our places of work we should see three things: 1: Talented men and women of our age who understand that they want to work, differently; 2: A generation younger than us who are driving us crazy – no, we’re not just verging on 30 and this is not just us getting older. They’re in demand and they won’t be tied down; people listen to these 20-somethings and not to us and that’s why we don’t like them. And 3: A looming talent shortage in the next 10 years.


Add to this the realisation that our world today demands a flexible working environment that means more than your boss calling you in and proudly announcing that you’re allowed to employ “flexi-time”, and arrive at work a whole two hours early if you’d like to leave at 4pm on a Friday, as if he’s offering to carry your two years from now planned twins to full term and pop them out his rear –and enjoy it. The Man’s primary fear is that we want to work less. When really, empowering employees to do their work on a schedule that works for them is recognizing a need for flexibility which will allow us to run our careers and our lives –and when has a woman ever run something unproductively?


What I’m saying is that women in particular need to make sure that the companies they are working for make creative, hard-line self-management possible. And it’s happening:


• A well known accounting firm offers its staff work-compressed workweeks, flexible hours, telecommuting, job sharing, or even reduced workloads. And workaholics beware: The firm has implemented wellness scorecards to find out whether someone is working too hard or missing vacation. If so, supervisors get in touch to urge a slowdown. Oh, and how about eight weeks fully paid maternity leave, even for adoptive parents? And two-thirds pay if you need more time.


•A midsize law firm in Chicago, started a two-tier pay scale. Hard-chargers who bill 2,000 hours a year are paid top dollar. For those who prefer to slow down and see their families and friends, they can bill 1,800 hours and earn less. More than half chose the reduced schedule.

Families and Work Institute of America, Award Winners 2009


We have known for a long time that the one size fits all work-place does not work; it never has spoken to our generation – and it’s time we speak up. We have lived with a notion that working full-time year in and year out on a single, linear career trajectory was vanishing beneath our parents’ feet leaving us treading water and we haven’t known who to tell or what to do about it. What to do is to tell your boss that you need and you want to work in a different way.


More than ever before women I know are killing themselves trying manufacture more Time and fighting for Control over the time they do have; it’s time to redefine our working lives. Money has always come in a close second to having the choice to make less of it –if doing that is actually going to give you the time you want to do what you need. How many of us would trade money for a day off? Not a week, not a month, not a sabbatical –a day. A couple of hours. A couple of hundred rands –less. A couple of moments where you look after who you are and enjoy having made a choice that keeps you, you –more.


-Soba

Paint your love a different colour

These days relationships are apparently all about compromise.

The generally accepted view is that a sign of a healthy relationship is when couples have the ability to compromise. The compromise is an arrangement involving mutual concessions in order to make a combination of two rival systems. Part of each system is therefore sacrificed to make the combination possible. People are supposed to be able to let go of what they want in order to get what is best for both people involved. So it seems as though you should come half way, and I will come half way and we can meet somewhere in the middle.
If I'm at a braai with my man, and 9:00pm rolls round finding me bored to tears and sleeping with my eyes open, and he is standing outside with the boys by the fire guzzling down beer number 38 with no sign of relenting until at least 1:00am-ish, then we revert to the compromise and we leave around 11:00pm.
Well excuse me, but what a crock of shit.


This sounds to me like an agreement whereby both parties get what neither of them wanted. ALL THE TIME.

My theory is that if I am always coming half way and you are always coming half way, neither of us are ever actually winning are we?
Now I realise we're supposed to tell ourselves that it's not about winning, but how you play the game, and sacrificing for the good of the relationship and being selfless, and etc. etc. etc. SNORE. This is a delusion. And the delusion is bullshit. And we know it.


Human nature dictates that we are instinctively programmed to want to win or have our own way at least MOST of the time.  We need it. We crave it. We will sadly even hurt the ones we love to satisfy it, feed it, and surrender to it. This is because at heart, we are primitive and basic and we cannot help ourselves. Man has never needed to stop to contemplate necessity.
THIS is necessity.

On some days we have to force a WIN.
This is how we defy our loved ones in sometimes even the cruellest or most humiliating way, no matter how great we appreciate the consequences to be ahead of time.  We cheat, we lie, we betray and we hurt. 
We almost feel we have to take the power back because we are so incredibly nauseated by having to leave that braai at 11:00pm and deny our own desires for the 40 billionth time, that our primal nature can no longer be contained.

This is the man who stays out until sunrise when he has promised to be home by midnight or the man who talks down to his girlfriend in company.  
This is the woman who blows R3000 on their joint credit card because she must have those red Aldo sling backs, or the woman who explodes irrationally over the most miniscule insignificant detail in the relationship. This is a power play.


You see it in the small things, you feel it in the big things and we all do it to each other.  And I know that some of you ladies out there are thinking "oh no no..... not MY man!" But yes my girls..... YOUR MAN TOO.
Your man especially, because MURPHY himself finds you're self righteous attitude to be just the kind of example he wants to make for the rest of us.


So if this is the case, then how can this ridiculous concept ever work?  We will all constantly feel dissatisfied and subconsciously resentful of the other.  And resentment my friends, is like relationship wood rot on heat.
It creeps into the cracks of your union like a determined horrific cancer and it very slowly, but very calculatedly, eats its way through the fabric of all the layers of memories, and support, and sacrifices, and childbirth, and tears, and commitment, until you are both so tremendously blind with rage, that you can't even remember why you're together anymore or what you even like about each other.
No my friends, unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.

My brilliant alternative since I am such a relationship expert these days, you ask?
INTREGRATION.
By domination only one side gets what it wants.
By compromise neither side gets what it wants.
By integration we find a way by which both sides win & both sides love it.

This means ladies, that sometimes you suck it up, quit whining and you party with your man like it's 1999 until 4:00 in the morning with his friends by the fire or on the dance floor, if his heart so desires.
You know.......... like maybe the person you were when he met and fell in love with you?
I mean, NO nagging, NO tapping your foot, NO standing around looking bored or henpecking every move he makes and how many beers he's had and how rude his jokes are getting. No, I mean a full blown authentic double whammy of a WIN my girls, where you take your den mother badge off, you remove the firmly lodged stick from your ass and you lighten the f*ck up.

This does NOT of course include passive aggressive manipulation like yawning and smiling and being all so very good natured about the whole thing, whilst you actually don't really participate. This also does not include sulking in the corner until he finally gets the hint or alternatively going home early or sleeping on the couch until he's had enough. This is not a TOTAL win ladies.
This is a SEMI, and men don't appreciate a SEMI any more in a partner, than they do in their pants.  It's the equivalent of starting to get excited over nothing and it's a buzz kill.
However vacant men may appear, they know when you're trying to steal from their WIN, and it brings on the wood rot.


Sometimes you need to tell him to take a day for himself, play golf with his buds, crush beer cans on his forehead, (or whatever it is they do) and relax and just be a man. No incessant phone calls and psychotic texting to promote guilt or vent frustration or even tell him you love him, just your pure unadulterated blessing.
NO emotional blackmail as a side salad.

Other times, you need to whip on a pair of sexy shorts and sunnies, and go with him to the race track or the rugby field to take an interest in what he loves and be the playful goddess he fell in love with and not just his boring kitchen bitch. This, is even if you can’t understand the purpose of a bunch of Neanderthals running around in the mud chasing after a piece of leather. This is the kind of "compromise" I believe was intended.


Guys, you also bring your end of the bargain by treating your woman like the queen she is ALL the time.
You traipse through shopping centres from Material World to Scrapfinity and you LIKE it.
You take an interest in the difference between tank tops and turtle necks and your bottom lip does not pooch out like a 3 year old until you are finally banished to WONDERLAND to entertain yourself while she rushes around alone and ends up forfeiting most of the shopping she had planned. You DO NOT moan like a stuffed pig every step of the way and ruin the experience for her. This is not a full WIN.

This means some Saturday mornings you give up Rugby with the boys and you offer (yes OFFER) to take the kids out for the morning so she can go to the beauty salon or for brunch with her girlfriends. This also means you sometimes select a romantic comedy in the video shop and instead of rolling your eyes or snoring with your hand in your crotch during the screening, you actually watch and take a tip or two, or just plain get a clue.

You also sometimes leave a braai early if you can see your lady is tired because she has been running all week long.
RUNNING after your children, RUNNING water for their bathes, RUNNING up and down to the grocery store, RUNNING out of patience, RUNNING out of time, RUNNING on a treadmill so that you don't look elsewhere, and generally RUNNING your life because most days you don't know your ass from your elbow and she keeps it all together.


This does NOT include throwing your partner under the bus and rolling your eyes in front of the guys while you mumble witty little intelligent ball-and-chain diatribes like "my chick is giving me a theory again" "I suppose I have to go". Yes you actually grow a pair and muster up some "That's it for me tonight guys, having an early one".
OH THE SHAME OF IT ALL!
You do this because what matters to you most is bundled up and waiting in the car, and she deserves to know it.



So some days HE wins and some days SHE wins, and when it's your turn to win, you win all the way. 
The kind of pleasure you will watch your partner take from your life together in this kind of relationship, is so awesomely rewarding, you’ll start to forget you were ever even compromising in the first place.
Your WIN's feel like authentic WIN's.
Your losses even start to feel like WIN's, because you will see it on partner’s face, witness it in their actions and feel it in your heart and theirs. The blissful fulfilment from a love this solid, will be more than you can bear and more than any of us deserve in this lifetime.


News flash for those of you that think that the grass is always greener on the other side.
At some point in life, everyone looks at their circumstances and thinks, If only… If only I had a better job. If only my spouse were more like the slutty, thick waitress at work who strokes my ego, or the easy white trash girlfriend of my dead best friend (sick much) who is so terrifically sad and pathetic, that I can only but FINALLY feel superior, and so forth:) If only I had gone to Varsity. If only I had the opportunities so-and-so had or if only my parents gave hand-outs and set me up the way he or she has been. We look around and think everyone else has it better than we do.

See, I don't believe the grass is greener on the other side; I believe the grass is greener where you water it. 
We have to tend to the things that are important to us if we want to see those things thrive.

If you want better relationships, quit dicking around and making excuses, and invest in the people around you.


Woodwinked - over & out  
xx

Care Bear Stare

So, home at a respectable hour on a Friday afternoon I trawl the net on an instantly beloved new laptop to find that really, I prefer life with my blinkers on.


I have managed to stay as far away from news on the Haitian crisis thanks to a home which runs without television, a selfish taste for news which is immediately relevant to Me and a husband who reads the highlights of international news to his sleepy wife late at night off an internet connection via his pda phone. Our experience of the news is almost always coloured with the lumenescent green ping of progress bars indicating the successful upload of our newly awaited favourite youtube advert, made in a country we’ve never visited for a product we’ll never see in our own.


The irony does not escape me, entirely.


Add to this the fact that two weeks ago I managed to drive into the garage, on one side of the house, at precisely the same time as my husband sat down on the bed with his set of house keys and alarm buttons in his back trouser pockets, on the other side of the house –resulting in the electric garage door closing slowly and very painfully onto the roof of the car I was parking and snapping the radio aerial. Leaving me radio-less on the way to work and completely isolated from any daily news breaking between 6:30 and 7:30am.


The bottom line is that my first interaction with the current international crisis was a Saturday morning 5FM countdown – soundtrack to what I’d like to call an aerobic workout but is just me dragging a confused broom across the kitchen floor – where Sheryl Crowe featured in a chart-topping Haitian Salvation Hymn and Madonna was praised for her financial contribution to the disaster fund.


Without the context to engender some kind of empathic response, all I thought was that Sheryl Crowe has indeed not had a hit for some time now and that jumping on some bandwagon is better than being left at the side of the road with mud on your shoes – and Madonna, well I thought she was hoping to be offered a bevy of Haitian babies for adoption post proffering a financial contribution that just about doubled the entire country of Haiti’s GDP for the last three years.


And then today, on my afternoon off, on the afternoon when I have three hours to enjoy not having to contemplate anything at all, The Mail and Guardian runs a side story accompanied by the most vivid images of children being rescued from the rubble of the Haitian devastation. 10 years ago those images would have been banned. Now, dying children are a side-story on a flashing five second banner in the middle of an international news agency’s website; because that’s what it takes to get my attention.


The irony does not escape me, entirely.


As it turns out, I couldn’t read the article. I was gutted by the flood of my sudden compassion and I didn’t like the way it felt.


There is always a way to turn an international crisis into a personal one.

-Soba

What are little girls made of?

I tend to do most of my musing in the shower & climbing to the top of the charts this week in terms of “most obsessed over psychotic theory” is definitely the idea that I might in fact, BE what I eat.
If I were edible, what kind of food would I be? hmmmm…..
Or do those close to you get to decide?

I have for sometime now set about convincing fellow bloggers Soba & Gleam, that I am in fact an onion (like Shrek), and that this is because I have many layers which you might miss at first glance, but actually make my nature fairly multi-dimensional & keep me adapting all the time.  But what else does this boring bulb say about my character I wonder? That I intimidate people to tears or that I can be likened to a bad taste or smell that lingers on your breath, clothes & hands long after I’m gone?? Apparently, insects don’t like onions either. When rubbed all over your body, onion can actually act as an insect repellent. This is interesting. NOT. 
Even the most hated organisms in the universe are REPELLED by my food rep.


Ok…… So what about the concept that “You are what you eat?”
If there’s any truth to this idea, then I am in fact the new limited edition Cadburys Mint Flake.
Now like the chocolate itself, this notion tantalises you into believing this to be a great idea at first. I mean the stuff quite literally melts in your mouth, and it does so with just a hint of minty mystery, which only intensifies as you sink deeper into the hypnotic chocolatey-ness. Towards the end, if you're like me, you might even be shameless enough to throw your head back like a commoner, open your mouth, & tilt the mesmerising metallic packaging towards your lips to allow the final crumbs to tumble down your throat in order to bring your closer to God himself. Realistically speaking though, most of the stuff either ends up on the floor or stuck to your car seat and I would like to think that it would take a little more than somebody metaphorically gently puffing smoke in my face, before my entire existence is irreparably blown to pieces. Fragile much? I would certainly like to believe that I’m a touch tougher than that. What's flakier than a flake? 

And what of my regard for friends & family?
I’ve always seen my mother as something of a Zoo Biscuit. Simple, understated, a timeless classic that ages 8 through to 80 still get a kick out of. This biscuit has also stood the test of time along with it’s Marie & Tennis buddies & therefore clearly possesses the kind of charisma that made the (all flash no fibre) Romany Cream frantically alternate between 42 billion flavours in order to try break back into the market. I mean, Classic Choc, Mint Choc, Vanilla Choc, Choc Fudge, Coffee???? Can you spell DES-PER-RATION?!
But if “You are what you eat” then my Mom simply cannot be a Zoo biscuit.  I would wager a bet to  volunteer for electric shock therapy before catching a squiz of a box in her shopping basket. 
No, this theory leaves my mother more like a Lays plain salted crisp or a Manhattan Milk Bottle.  No analysis required.

My two very best friends from as far back as Primary School, are like pink champagne & sweet melon wrapped in Parma ham. These of course, are at their most spectacular when served together preferably on the beach and in the sand, where, if I were to represent the purple sunset, we could encapsulate a small glimpse of heaven, whose synergy quite simply makes others swoon and can build you up to 10 feet taller than you actually are. With this kind of support you can conquer the world.
Mrs Parma-melon is unpredictable & yet obvious & classy & DEEP. She's like a stylish little bittersweet treat with a hint of sophistication wrapped around good old fashioned loyalty that you just don't come by anymore. But this girlfriend has the appetite of a sleek runway model & she gnaws on twigs and dried fruit and birdseed and stuff. How should I see her then? As a lentil or celery shoot? Not exactly the food of champions in my book.
Mrs Pink-champagne on the other hand is vibrant & trendy & courageous. She's like that contagious bubbly that seduces you into sipping on it for hours because its light & sweet & REAL. But as far as I know, her daily diet is more like a couple of rusks & a jungle oat bar while she's on the run after her 1 year old. Now whilst I'm sure this keeps the energy up & has the fibre under control, it's not exactly the kind of sultry snack I imagined representing her.


Personally I'm not enjoying this theory at all. I would like to believe that I can decide to be anything I want to be and so can the rest of you. “Master of my fate,” “Captain of my soul,” and so forth.
I’d opt for a cherry. Down to earth enough to kick it in an orchard amongst fellow cherry trees hanging in the simple life, but yet surprisingly romantic enough to bloom in Pablo Neruda poetry and still pretentious enough to splash around in a Cosmopolitan or sexy enough to be kissed with cream & passed from mouth to mouth by lovers in the moonlight.
Yet I feel like my cherry is sounding suspiciously like a dressed up Shrek onion? With its oh so very many layers….
Maybe we are what we are, even when we’re not or even when we glam it up.
Maybe the beauty is in the simplicity of working with what you’ve got. 
I suppose I could learn to work with the onion. One could always clean the oniony smell from your hands with a dry salt & lemon juice exfoliating type scrub? Then your hands would look 10 years younger & smell like margarita instead:) The onion was also an ancient symbol of eternity because of the concentric circles that it contains. I'd like to think my integrity can aspire to being that consistent. Glass is half full & all of that.


Life is like an onion.
You peel it off one layer at a time;
And sometimes you weep.”
—Carl Sandburg, American poet

Woodwinked - over & out
xx