Somehow it doesn't feel right

Friday night, and again I am at home doing a whole lot of nothing. I actually have no real desire to see my friends and then at the same time I hate staying home on a Friday night. Tonight particularly because I know I will very likely be at home AGAIN tomorrow night too.

I have decided to refuse to participate in anything to do with Halloween. Neither Halloween party nor Anti-Halloween party. I don't really see the point.

I know Halloween represents a pagan tradition but I feel that the only people taking Halloween religiously seriously are wannabees. and anyone wanting to perform some ancient rite of hocus pocus... probably has other days that fit much better into their calendar.

Also, we're moving from Spring into Summer time on this side of the equator not Autumn into Winter. Spring and Summer are times of new growth and life (and rain!)

This has just become another meaningless tradition to adopt from the United States. Will we all start celebrating Thanksgiving or 4th of July in a year or two? they're both about as signnificant to South Africa.

I only notice that Halloween is around because the shops take a brief break from the 2 month run up to Christmas to change all the store decor to Black and orange.

Speaking of Christmas, I could go to the same level of comparison that the Festive season has become so much about themed shop and office decor and so little about the history that to the religiously uninformed, Halloween and Christmas bear a lot of similarities.

A colour scheme:

Halloween - Orange and Black

Christmas - Red green and white

A plant

Halloween pumpkin

Christmas pine tree

Odd characters

Halloween witches, bats and vampires

Christmas elves, reindeer and that big jolly man

Generosity

Halloween trick or treat

Christmas presents, dinner

But! But! But! There is more to Christmas than some overworked tradition. Christmas without the traditional over used symbols (I even saw Christmas decorations in Dubai- an Arab state! - However not a Nativity scene in sight!)

So I say Nay! I say nay to halloween. To the parties and the dress up and the run of scary movies on TV. I say nay to the people holding counter-revolutionary parties of light against Halloween. I say nay to the repeatitve jingle music returning to our shops and stores by Monday. I say nay to tinsel and fake snow and reindeer.

I wish I could keep The memory of Christs birth as a deeply religious celebration instead of something over sold, over-commercialised and glossed up and marketed as Halloween. I wish I didn't have to be reminded of the Festive season every minute of the day from 25 October to 25 December.

Banish the ridiculous traditions! And give Christmas back to the Christians.

And with that - I am left with the only option - to stay home tomorrow night and support neither Halloween party - nor- Anti-Halloween Party. Halloween is dead to me.

Secrets of attention span expansion and productivity

I have had to learn/explore/discover and self-teach how to make myself get 8 productive hours out of the hours between 8am and 6pm on 5 days of the week.

I have learnt that reading a lengthy document with technical discussions and formulas and results will cause me to do the Office Chair Sleeping Beauty under the following conditions:
1. If the office behind me is unoccupied (the guy is away a lot)
2. If it is overcast weather outside and all the windows are closed.
3. If I have just eaten lunch in the sunshine.
4. If the document contains a lot of explanations before arriving at the information I need.
5. If I am really struggling to understand what I am reading.

And so we must devise some ways around it. So a can of cold cola helps to sip when the attention span drifts, sitting up in the most uncomfortable position possible (i.e. not reclining in my cool springy back office chair) and flinging the window open to the chilly overcast weather. (and irritating wind that makes my papers go flap flap flap flap flap!!!)

Other secrets are leaving my Internet and facebook capable cellphone in my handbag. Leaving to-do reminders in outlook to give me little tasks to work on everyday (today is research more training, tomorrow is update forecasts, Friday is update project schedules)

If nothing else I try reorder my desk and the papers turning(hopefully) to coal there and playing with my pot plant.

The final back up attention span/productivity saver is Origami. I often have to print papers out for reference and invariably print the wrong thing on occasion (like pressing print all 100 pages instead of the current page and then sprinting to the printer to cause a paper jam to stop the waste of paper!) Anyway I started with lilies, then swans, then dragons the sparrows and are now using my idle time to make butterfly rings.

The only problem is that my supervisor can take one look at my desk and see how bored I have been of late. The lilies now adorn my desk pot plant...



Future plans for improvement:
to spend less time correcting all my "teh"'s to "the"
to try not be blogging mid afternoon at work...

Back I go to the long educational word documents!

a snatched moment of typing - The Musician

So I went out for another dinner with a new guy last night... except this time it was slightly different....

I had not exchanged much information with the gent before agreeing to meet for a drink (drink which became dinner) We had not even officially exchanged first names - Scandalous!! (I found his out with some light weight Internet searching - I am becoming a google-whizz!)

And the dinner event was precluded by some unsettling news. ThatIDon'tWantToTalkAboutHere. Unsettling news that make me want to turtle and hide and think deeply about my feelings and stuff.

So given the effect of the news, I was tense and tired and I decided to throw away the cocky-flirtatious-charming tactics and decided to simply be amenable to an nice evening.

An evening starting with the designated meet-up restaurant being closed on a Monday night! It's nice to keep things unexpected and interesting.

We didn't hit it off like a house on fire but we talked about interesting things, had a laugh or two.

I was secretly pleased he seemed as tongue-tied as me.

Nice-on-the-eyes is always a bonus too.

He is very musically capable (see earlier post about being serenaded with RHCP)

So... I am just going to say this straight out loud. ...in a very uncomplicated way, I would REALLY REALLY REALLY like to see this guy again.

There I said it!

I am petrified that my fidgeting and the occasional bouts of thoughtful silence may have been construed as boredom.

I am afraid that I did not make as good impression.

I am worried he thinks I am too young and immature.

But that may be all self-esteem speaking so the rational-Frank plans to be practical and proactive instead. (When I am finished being a turtle of course)


How do men feel about being actively pursued by a woman?

Coming Clean...

So I joined a dating website a little while ago. Partly out of curiosity, partly out of boredom on a quiet Saturday evening at home and partly for the novelty of taking a personality quiz and getting a tactless answer.

What landed up happening was I got some conflicting answers as to what my personality was and a barrage of messages from all the lonely/equally curious/equally bored singles in the Johannesburg region and surrounds (Does Meyerton count?)

And so spurred on by curiosity(my excuse for now) I replied to the interesting sounding people and ignored the ones that my inner academic snob disdained. (i lik cars wat do u do?), and against my mothers-style of common sense... I am still there.

And it has been overall a more or less positive experience. Barring of course the Capetonian who invited me to fulfill his wild dreams and a religious fanatic....

I met two of the guys I met on the site and only after some very careful vetting of who they are (They both landed up being friends of friends so I could verify some level of non-serial-killerness) One was a business man discussed earlier on the site. (not the use of "was) The other is a fine strapping young man ("nice") of a scientific persuasion ("double nice!") who has two kittens ("BONUS!!! ting ting ting ting ting!!!") Anyway, That story isn't text ready for here yet

I have been corresponding with a few others and one in particular was telling me how he has only had one girlfriend and that he hates his job. So I said the typical "Aaah shames" and "Chin up soldier". Then we got discussing that he wants to study and I imparted some wisdom picked up over the years.

Anyway while I am going on and on and on like a life skills coach about choosing a career and choosing what to study, I realise I have made a mistake in thinking this chap was younger than me and only a few years out of school. In fact, he's 30 years old... So, potentially unemployed, still living with his parents, willing to let me be bossy, and oh! oh! oh! he asked me if I play Call of Chtulhu (ummm... RPG?) all at 30 years old....

My horrible shallow fickle heart is waving a placard... I am a mean judgmental person... but I'll say the long term prospects here are probably limited...

...a...w...k...w...a...r...d....

Good bye October

As cliched as this may sound, I can't believe it is already the end of October. I officially saw my first tv advert with bells and red santa hats and the summer storms have started.

On an aside, I must say that storms make me really crazy-happy. It's something about the power and orchestra of the strong wind and the tree branches dancing wildly and the thunder and the lightning. And then those first big fat rain drops that fall on my windscreen and make a sound like "pop... ... pop ... pop ... pop pop.... pop... Pop pop pop!" For me it makes me feel small and at the same time I admire the great enormous strength behind created nature.

Anyway back to October! It just seems like so much has happened this year. I was expecting a lot of it but it's still like looking back and seeing a long section of uphill and going "No way! I just did all that?"

And I think what I regret is that I have been so busy having everything happen that I haven't gotten to do a lot of things I meant to do. There were some people I met for a short amount of time at the start of the year and I really wanted to drop them a line to say hello. But forgetting them for 10 months might be a bit of a long time lapse to account for. I regret that I have been to quick with the things happening and not fully immersed myself in the change itself. Somedays still I am staggering along. Other days I admire the view. I think it would help if I stopped loosing my to do lists before they're completed!

On a good news note, I FINALLY started drawing again. Not particularly well or anything exciting drawn, but I finally started! Next challenge is to stay started and continue. Techniques next!

I told you so!

I had a kinda stressful day today. Basic low down is that I found a problem in April and I alerted teh relevant authorities and did a whack of research into looking at the problem and evaluating the exact extent of it.

Now finally 6 months down the line the relevant authorities have woken up that something needs to be done and are panicing about it.

i think I should take up a new job in forensic paper work. As in looking at all teh paper work done by all the people that left before you started and figure out what they were thinking when they did these seemingly silly things.

In truth I think If I met the culprit and I knew what he looked like, I would quite like to walk up to him and give him a good kick in the shins. I think it is really irresponsible to leave a project halfway through especially when the thread of the project is coming loose because you didn't do a proper job managing things.

I think a solid kick in the shins with a hard toed boot would be quite satisfying. The kind of kick that leaves a dent for a few hours and a big blue bruise for a few weeks.

Savage yes. but I am annoyed, sorting this mess out is wasting my time!

Unproductivity - Brains like Frozen Syrup

I decided to not start a habit of early mornings. Yesterdays 10 hour day was exhausting. I managed to tick of a whole handful of little things off my to-do list this morning. And then proceeded to have a virtually brain dead afternoon. Hence the blog posting/redecorating.

I had a 100 and something long page document open to read and i just couldn't focus to read it - I think I should analyse when my best time of the day for concentrating on reading is and assign it to then. It certainly isn't straight after lunch.

I am also trying to break some habits

1. No more coffee at work - Coffee-Breath is tres-gross.
2. I am going to try more often to arrive at work before 8am - which means getting up before 7am - which means trying to get to bed before midnight - should be interesting.
3. I am going to try stop checking Facebook 15 times a day (it's like the attention span filler) No body cares - It's like tres-lame to update your status too often anyway
4. I am going to stop using the word tres - it's like so tres-teen-american
(tres - very in french FYI okay?)
5 . I am going to stop thinking about needing to start dating again - I really don't want to and my self-esteem says "No Thank You!" Why bother - my heart isn't in it anyway.

I have a planning meeting this evening for the training we will present this weekend about the trip to Germany. I would give anything to get out the house... and the lady meeting me doesn't want to go out for coffee... sigh... another evening at home again.