wtf did the week go???

I cannot believe the week has gone so quickly!!

It seems that doing two jobs allows the day to compress into an unseeing blur and maybe I should continue without my replacement and I will reach old age in but a matter of moments. – I await the flames.

I did not get to do anything in Accra given the fact I had very little money and my car was waiting for me sans fuel. A wicked joke I tell you. That said, my car had further war wounds in the shape of a cracked windscreen which falls right across my vision. My language was a little bit shocking when this was noted.

That said the trip to Tarkwa was made a lot more interesting by having Derek – our think tank man – in the car. Various topics were discussed and it did make the trip go a lot quicker.

And then!

Boom!

The running began. I tried to make the best of the available daylight time traveling between Bogoso and Tarkwa on a daily basis. Most of the end of day trips were made in the dark on a road that boasts at least 10 vehicles who have broken down in the road, fallen off the road down the hill or – my favorite – in the middle of the road on a blind rise.

I had a few beers each night to fortify myself for the trip home. * innocent look *

On Friday night our site lads were completing a milestone with a rather interesting lift of a stacker conveyor. I have written about stacker conveyors before and you will understand these are pretty hefty chunks of steel, high up in the air.

They used three cranes simultaneously to do the lift, which had the client take on a very very white shade when he walked out of his – rather interesting – meeting to see what was happening. I must admit, to do lifts of that nature requires a set of balls the size of table mountain. All I could think of was what could go wrong. My contribution to the success of the lift was “Pelican Like”

The structure lift and bolt on took all of 9 hours and was finally completed at 11pm. Two bouts of rain while this was happening did not assist our cause at all! Carl and his lads were hellishly tired when they arrived at the Bogoso house very late for the sites first “fines meeting”

Now we have a young lady engineer on site – Jeri – who is a bubbly lass and apparently on all the sites she has been on, has willingly taken on the role of social organizer. My role in the fines meeting was to procure meat for a braai, which was done with one phone call to Obuasi.

A trophy – Nuts welded onto a base, engraved et al – forms the centre piece of the evening whereby the holder of the “nut” controls the fines meeting. Jeri was the holder and our came her lil note book – do you not hate these engineering types that write everything down – and promptly proceeded to fine at will. Being construction the fine was two fingers of what ever you were drinking. (even coke).

My fines related to

- Falling into a mud hole the first day on site and “poesing down (their statement – not mine)” much to the merriment of those around.
- As project manager for been the last person to arrive on site. (The fact that I was on site before it was established was not accepted and earned me another fine)
- For sitting in a meeting with the client and using my “blonde” look when he started sprouting technical stuff.
- For overcharging the contract when I headed up small works and having to live with the consequences now that I have taken over the contract. (Once again my “Small works never overcharges” was met with derision and a further fine)

This was besides the general fines for having had malaria, been in Ghana before the contract started on other contracts, etc etc


Needless to say, the mosquitoes stayed away from me that night.

The meat was stunning, the company great and I once again do think I am going to have fun on the contract.

The downside is the communications are patchy, there is no email as yet and on a site where it rains every day, your boots weigh 20kg by the time you have done some walking on site. Mud is everywhere and driving is quite fun cause it is like you have been given free time on a skid pan. Pulling trucks out of mud holes is a thrice daily occurrence.

The house where I will be staying is comfortable and looks over a Par 3. It appears the dust will be coming off the golf clubs.

Twas Angies boifday on Thursday and I phoned her to wish her happy. – even if it was on the Friday. Bad phones and all that Ang!

I understand JHB is still cold and Nessers is coming down with the Lurgy. Best it be done and dusted in 4 weeks *wicked chuckle

Telkom phoned me while I was in SA giving me an installation date for my ADSL in July. True to form, it was installed last week. I must remember to write them a letter thanking them for under promising and over delivering.

So now my kids can email me!! Demmet!!!

Nessers has ADSL – still no Nekked Pics

Esther has a dial up – poor Esther – and it would take her too long to send me nekked pics. (Oh yes and Nessers would kill me as well *chuckle*)

So hey

*wistful look at right hand and “private folder”*

Have a fun one people. I am back to my month end!!

Back to the Jungle

After freezing my proverbial nads off in Jhb for the last few days, I boarded a SAA - we have a monopoly on the route so we can allocate a kak aircraft - flight to Accra yesterday.

It never ceases to amaze me that fly south you take 5 hours, fly north you take 6 hours, to get to your destination.

7 hours later, I dragged heavily on my first ciggie, after kindly telling the customs person there was no ways she was going to check my luggage as I needed a ciggy, in 27 degree warmth and 99% humidity. That turned to 100% humidity during the night.

In an hour, I head off to the Jungle to get back into the fray.

11 weeks has started. Think I will have LOADS of fun on this trip.

Hope you all not freezing too much down in SA.

(And it is my "lil" sis's birthday this week. I have it on reminder - hehe)

Ster Kinekor - Take a bow!

I have no issue with shopping over the internet. In the past I have purchased sex toys, food and recently Nessers birthday present. All with no issue and no computer geek running up large bills on my card.

Until.

I decided to get ahead of the pack and book over the internet for “The Da Vinci Code”. This step was mainly due to the fact I wing off back to Ghana this weekend and I knew the movie was going to be fully subscribed. So off to www.sterkinekor.co.za and poof, 10 minutes later (on my painfully slow 64k ISDN) I was happily told my tickets were booked and all I needed to do was swipe my card at the Ticketline machine.

Come Friday evening, I duly swiped my card at the ticketline machine only to be advised by the colour touch screen that there was no ticket allocated to my card number. I did not swear, I did not curse (I did however do the user thing and swipe my card through at least twice more just in case the computer had made a mistake).

We toddled off to the managers office and quite obviously my problem was a regular occurence as they were unphased and could check if I had actually booked against their reports – stored offline. (ahh technology!)

Armed with an A4 page instead of a small ticket – the machine happily advised them that I had indeed booked, we found our seats. Occupied. Apparently the nice computer had sold the seats twice.

To the nice lady at Ster Kinekor , she went out of her way to help us, even going so far as to offer to put chairs in the cinema so we could watch the movie.

As luck would have it, there were two seats available for someone who did not pitch up – or they were the two seats that the computer originally allocated to me – as I could swear I originally booked isle seats – we managed to watch the entire movie, problem resolved.

Has it put me off using the internet to buy stuff? Not really but I will shy away from Ster Kinekors on line booking system.

To the management at Ster Kinekor Cresta. Congrats! You handled me well and prevented me from getting all sarcastic with you. You deserve a star!

The movie? Cannot understand why the critics panned it. I found it a bloody good movie with a compelling story.

Maybe the critics panned it cause they were treated “badly” by the distributors. A case of sour grapes methinks.

Tonight is Nessers birthday and I have been given cooking duty. Due to the fact the high today was 10 degrees and the low will be approaching 0 tonight, a hearty Ox tail is on the menu – I was not allowed to make my first choice – curry – as apparently I make it too hot and no-one wants to eat it (woeses!).

I have also made a veggie medley for the vegetarians in the cluster.

I have enough booze to ward off the cold!!

I am prepared!

Strikes and News -

While in Johannesburg on my extended trip, I am fortunate enough to be exposed to the news on a regular basis. This is made possible by the Johannesburg traffic that means at least an hour into work in the morning and a similar time back home in the evening.

One thing that has caught my ear is the Security Guard Strike and today’s COSATU general stay away. A few things do amaze me.

Before I continue, I will lay my colours firmly on the wall as not been supporters of Unions when they get involved in politics. (which they always do – read into that what you will).

COSATU called for a national stay away today to “force” the government to take action on “unemployment and poverty”. Their National Spokesman appears on a talk show to justify his actions. I curse when I cannot get through, as no-one seems to want to ask the right questions or take the lad on when statements he makes leave him open for perfectly justifiable ridicule.

The best one tonight was “COSATU Supports Democracy but its basis is on the grounds of communistic ideals” Now communism and democracy are strange bed fellows. I needed to ask the spokesman all about a body that presses the ruling party for worker protection, higher wages and better working conditions, but refuse to accept that by obtaining these goals companies are loath to employ additional workers due to how difficult it is to downsize when the going gets tough.

I smile when I think that under a COSATU based government – oh wait they are part of the tri partite alliance with the ANC – employers will be forced to employ people to ensure full employment.

Return on investment? Oh that does not fall in with our ideals so we will ignore investors to achieve our lofty goal. What we can also do is fix our exchange rate (a la Zimbabwe) and ensure that there is no black market by bringing back the death sentence and executing people (a la China). That would resolve all our ugly ills.

The same alliance that introduced SETA’s that took money from business and applied it in training people. What they have trained is a whole load of office staff that is required to run the SETA’s. South Africa is bemoaning that artisans are in short supply. Maybe they need to realise that in the old days to become an artisan you signed a apprenticeship for x amount of years at a piss poor salary and trained under old timers who were happy to teach you all they knew. (After spending the first year carrying their tool box, getting them coffee and having practical jokes played on you).

Now you have learnerships which require the same artisan that trained 30 appies in his life time to attend the SETA and train to train people. Of course while he is training to train people, his job cannot be done through the shortage of people on the ground and you happily burden a person who is a tradesman due to the fact he hates paperwork with a whole load of paperwork.

What I am getting at in my long winded diatribe is that I have a problem with people who cannot see the big picture. Who live only to justify their existence. To people who are hell bent to, instead of uplifting people, achieve “upliftment” by bringing others down.

Education is a perfect example. We are faced with our education system being reduced to worthless pieces of paper due to the standards been reduced and effectively not having a concrete system of measurement. All in the name of upliftment.

Take our security strike. Non striking guards are thrown off trains. SATAWU – the union on strike – state glibly that the union is not involved. They happily expect Joe public to say “yup – cannot be due to the strike, must be some other reason why these people are been tossed off trains”. Have a march in Cape Town. Marchers trash the place and cause all sorts of damage. Unions response. “agent provocateurs are responsible” The best response I heard from one Union Spokesman was “the police did not do enough to prevent the damage” followed closely by “the police unjustifiably opened fire on our members injuring them”

Union Officials have to believe that we are bloody stupid! The have to. Why would they say such things if they do not believe that they are going to be believed.

By the same token, Pick and Pay had “industrial action” whereby their union members rocked up at work in pyjamas and happily took their time to serve customers and embarked on a go slow. Pick and Pays reaction – after going to court and having the action declared illegal – took 12 of their employees who had won a trip to Disneyland for been outstanding employees off the plane and refusing to allow them to go on the trip.

Way to Go! The lad who made that decision at Pick and Pay wins the prize for Tony’s Asshole of the Month. If he is on the negotiating team at Pick and Pay, there is now no surprise that industrial action is taking place and settlements are hard to come by.

So yeah – we have some really interesting people in positions of authority. Maybe the skills shortage is worse then we realise which allows people who have very little clue to rise to these positions of authority. And believe it or not – all the spokesman I have mentioned – with the exception of the faceless Pick and Pay arsehole – are white males. Endangered Species no longer!

Exams!!!

I have not written exams for some 20 years – yup I am that old. I am however this week writing three hour exams on arb subjects like Strategic Management, operations management, marketing and the ilk.

I wandered into the exam hall on Monday complete with Bioplus, chewing gums, USN Energy Drinks and chewing gum. Three hours sans a ciggy was my first worry.

I must mention that I was not sure where the exam venue was so duly left home at 7.00am only to find the Sisulu Hall at 7.30am. This for an exam starting at 9.00am.

Needless to say I was bored by the time the doors opened at 8.50.

The exam was a breeze. Open book exams are so much better than having to remember all the nitty gritty.

Wednesday’s exam was a tad more challenging and the multiple choice questions were so ambiguous as to make passing not a certainty. However the written part was tackled well enough to give me a fighting chance. I must confess I needed 60% to pass the exam courtesy of not handing in the 1st assignment. Not my fault I add, but my problem.

Today’s exam was not a major train smash. The multiple choice was straight enough and the one case study for 60% was on a part of the course that I understood.

However.

Cue major panic, While doing the multiple choice questions – after the case study – it suddenly dawned on me that when asking the question “evaluate and do a plan of action” what they actually wanted was a Marketing Plan. A marketing plan has a format. My “bull in a china shop approach” evaluated and did a plan of action. No executive summary, no SWOT analysis no nada.

Ask man for more paper and I spent the next 30 mins forcing a format together.

I cursed a few times, drank both my energy drinks and walked out feeling rather depressed that I missed the boat.

Chalked up to experience.

I am back at work – am I the only idiot that comes into work after writing an exam – and responding to all the mail that has backed up over the last two days. (I did take the whole day off to study yesterday instead of the ½ day that I took for the other exam)

HR on Monday. One thing that really gets my goat about these exams is you have no idea what you are preparing for. When I was young (and virile) we used to crunch through old exam papers so by the time you got to the exam you had your strategy in place and it was a breeze. Now I look at the exam with trepidation each time the paper is handed to me.

Not a good way to do things.

BUT

Loads of sex this weekend will help!!!