wikidknickers

FUCK POLITICS

// June 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // politics

I work in politics, or rather on the edge of it, as close as I dare get. Rather like alligator wrestling or base jumping, I prefer to remain a spectator and not get my mind too bloodied – I leave that to the experts (yes, they are scary people for whom scorpion pits and lion’s dens hold no earthly terrors, and no, to the best of my knowledge, they do not wear women’s undergarments (except the women of course) and engage in strange sexual practices asDie Son would have us believe).

So upon visiting one of my all time favorite sites today (asofterworld.com), I saw this irresistible banner:

I really do find part of my job very satisfying, especially with some of the mad and surreal things that happen in politics in this country – (as I’m sure Zapiro would agree) it makes ridicule and parody all too easy at times.

But there are times when my sense of humour slips a notch and reality sets in, and I realise that although at times comical, some of the things that are happening in this country are extremely worrying. Even more so because they are, in many cases, happening in an insidious and subtle fashion, and by the time the alarm bells are ringing, it is often beyond too late.

Two examples which spring to mind are the Expropriation Bill currently before Parliament which gives the Land Affairs minister almost free reign to expropriate property at below market compensation rates, giving the owner no recourse to turn to the courts for an appeal (the only appeal process is an internal ministerial procedure).

The other is the independence of the judiciary which is taking a bruising particularly where the cases involve government officials and the well connected. There are countless examples of outright attacks on the institution as soon as any motions are brought before it which threaten to tarnish the impeccable record of the ruling party – JZ is a case in point (pardon the pun).

These are two things, which in the mind of Joe Public, are usually filed somewhere between buying toilet paper and the mating habits of the lesser spotted hermit crab. I am by no means a political commentator and compared to some of the dizzying intellects I work with my analytical ramblings probably seem about as sharp as a bowl of jelly, but it really worries me that people (and I don’t mean WASPs and NIMBY’s) aren’t getting passionate and angry about things like this.

OK some of them are – those that are directly affected maybe. For example, the disbandment of one of the strongest instruments of judicial independence in South Africa, the Scorpions, managed to garner around 100 000 signatures, but the protest organised outside the high court buildings in Pretoria only roused around 70 people off their couches and onto the streets.

I really despair sometimes when I hear about things like this – only 4000 people attended the million man march against crime in Gauteng – a well publicised event, for a cause that I’m sure has touched every single person in this country either directly or indirectly. Where was everybody? Where does the apathy stem from? Do people really believe they can’t change the world one minute at a time, or are they too self absorbed and inwardly focused to care about what’s really happening around them and where it could lead to in the next 20 years?

The brainy people here blame this lack of interest in a new ‘disease’ made up by more brainy people which they call ‘cognitive dissonance’ which is highly contagious and seems to mean in a nutshell that people don’t like to think about stuff that makes them uncomfortable (duh?) and thus tend to block out the offending thoughts. No really, it’s a seemingly obvious and very interesting theory, but I’d hate to catch it, seeing as the only cure obvious to me is a swift heavy boot up the arse (actually, I’m pretty sure I do suffer from it as do most people, especially where the size of my bum and the ever increasing tightness of my jeans are concerned for example).

A nice example…..

I sometimes envy the Americans and the level of local political awareness in that country (not that that detracts from their often astonishing arrogance, ignorance and other things ending in ‘ance’ when it comes to the rest of the world).

Ghandi once said “be the change you wish to see in the world” . . . it’s a saying which often leaves me feeling guilty that I’m not doing enough. But I’m safe in the knowledge that I’m not the only one … that’s just where it starts, isn’t it? No one else is doing it, why should I care?

I’d seriously like to bitchslap all the people I hear complaining about life in this country – 9 times out of 10 when I ask them if they voted, they say “no, what’s the point?”.

Helloooooooo people???

If you didn’t get your lazy arse off the couch on voting day and chose to stay in watching Harry Potter or whatever blows your skirt up, you have (listen closely)…FORFEITED YOUR RIGHT TO COMPLAIN

Remember that at voting time next year…you want to bitch and whine at the state of the nation? Make yourself a part of it first.

THE n00b CHRONICLES (II) – HOT TUBS AND THE HOLY GRAIL…

// May 10th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // dirt on the author, geek stuff

The first thing about the net that really hooked me was IRC – office hours were long and often dull, and i made lots of friends in the ‘hot tub’ or “truth and dare” rooms, as well as encountering plenty of strange blokes who insisted on sending me pictures of their willies (as a rule, guys, unless you really have something to brag about, don’t advertise it) – so much for my dreams of finding romance online. I quickly developed a well-honed pervert – radar, which has served me well over the years and more often than not has given me cause to be very grateful for that lifesaving “block user” button.

We were eventually banned from IRC, after which the internet became a very boring place. After a change of jobs (for the better!), which has materialised as a change in career, thanks to some short courses, a lot of ongoing self-teaching and one very good online best friend and tutor (you know who you are), I now feel naked and alone without internet access.

I think I found my holy grail in StumbleUpon, which i discovered in 2006 –I couldn’t believe I’d found a search engine that would find me things I might like but didn’t know existed, and I wasn’t at all disappointed – many productive hours were rendered less productive but very informative. Aside from the day to day drudgery of work, I began to really feel the power of the internet and spent every spare moment investigating new and exciting developments. My passion was somewhat dampened when, as webmaster, I attempted to expound the glories of RSS feeds and online forums, only to be told repeatedly that there was no budget allocated to the website other than for routine maintenance. I eventually gave up pushing for redevelopment and placed my energies elsewhere, but remained faithful to StumbleUpon and kept an ever-growing pile of notes laden with ideas for the maybe-one-day-we’ll-consider-getting-a-new website.

THE n00b CHRONICLES (I) – THERE’S SOMETHING OUT THERE…

// April 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // dirt on the author, geek stuff

Finally I can upload pictures to my blog. Being someone who can read, but prefers looking at the pictures, I lost interest in blogging regularly when I couldn’t talk in images, but that’s all changed – yaaaay!

It feels so damn awesome to be able to sit in my (smallish, now very packed) room, watch dvd’s, surf the internet and write. AND smoke without having to go outside in the freezing cold every half an hour (meaning my coffee consumption has tripled).

My first forays into the internet came relatively late in life (circa 2003). After 8 fab years of having South Africa’s wilderness as my playground and source of scientific scrutiny, life finally offered me a choice: move to Wales and further my studies in marine biology or bite the bullet, stay in Cape Town and hope for better things. Wales was definitely out of the question – it’s reputed to be even soggier and more depressing than London where I white-knuckled one truly miserably forgettable year.

So I stuck around and sent out my CV like a fiend. The reality of the practical usefulness (or rather lack thereof) of 8 years of academic study slowly sank in over the next few months and I ended up with a solid job, as many of us masters graduates do, behind a bar. After many mind numbingly boring weeks, many drunken nights, too much bar food and one armed robbery thrown in for good measure, a close friend offered me a job working as an office manager for his company.

So I was introduced to the magical and oft-overlooked world of vacuum pumps, suction cups and dynamometers (no, that’s not a made up word) and with them, the internet. It’s funny looking back, that we never really used or needed it when I was studying marine biology – all our reference work was done in libraries and the most we used computers for was writing and number-crunching. In fact, studying as an undergraduate, the first typed document I ever handed in was a botany paper in about 1995!

SHAMELESS SERVICE ii – THE CRUX

// March 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // humour

Another of my early forays into the job market in the mid 90′s, was working nights for a Shell call center, servicing service stations (and other people requiring kilolitres of highly flammable substances at short notice). Apparently it was one of the first of it’s type in the country, allowing owners of service stations to call in and place orders 24-7, receive helpful and friendly advice, report problems and the like.

I’ll never forget the job interview. It went thusly:”it’s 3am and a panicked Frikkie calls in from Blikkiesdorp, saying a petrol tanker has just careened into his forecourt taking out two petrol pumps…what do you do?”

Barring the obvious answers like “tell him not to light a cigarette”, “throw sand on it” and “call the fire brigade”, I was stumped when the team leader kept shaking his head. The correct answer was, of course, “call someone who knows what the fuck they’re talking about”.

We had a lovely office environment, made even better by the never ending supply of hot chocolate and coffee from the Nestle dispenser in the corner (nickname “Fred: the angel of deliverance”) and the really big couch cushions which afforded us lovely nesting material for the wee hours.

The take home part of that job was that we got a two day seminar on customer service, and got to practice it on a daily (nightly, actually) basis. It’s stayed with me to this day.

I will always have fond memories of those 5am phone calls from farmers in the middle of boerewors territory. Men who got up and did 300 press ups before going to wake the family rooster. Men who had only ever heard rumors of a language called English. Hard men. Men who, when they calmly asked for 2000 litres of diesel by 7am, expected to be obeyed, all the while hinting that if they were not, some very long and firmly spoken Afrikaans words would follow.

For me, service delivery can be summed up in one line – the customer is a customer…you work for him, you’re not there to do him favours, you WORK for him..treat him as you would your boss…show some respect.

ALSO:

1. The customer IS always right.

2. Even when the customer is wrong, he’s still always right (I use he, because women are obviously never wrong)

3. No matter how much of an arsehole he is, he’s still still always right.

4. Deal with it.

5. Suck it up, breathe, put your ego in your back pocket and smile..and people can tell if you’re smiling over the phone.

6. If that doesn’t work, try Valium.