When i grow up

When I was a kid, I wanted to live in a lighthouse. I wanted to read all day, watch the ocean storms, and just be by myself. Some days I still feel that way.

Closing time

Ah we're lonely, we're romantic
and the cider's laced with acid
and the Holy Spirit's crying, "Where's the beef?"
And the moon is swimming naked
and the summer night is fragrant
with a mighty expectation of relief
So we struggle and we stagger
down the snakes and up the ladder
to the tower where the blessed hours chime
and I swear it happened just like this:
a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
the Gates of Love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
but CLOSING TIME

This is my home..

We live in a complex with 25 villas. I don't usually go for complexes becuase of the"desperate housewives" syndrome that comes with living in places like this. But we're very happy here. We don't want to move. Scatterlings has performed miracles with the garden and made it home.

In December the rent increased by 50%. This December we've been told that the rent will increase by 50% again. They say it's supply and demand - there is a huge boom, and housing is in short demand. Many people now commute to Dubai every day, a two hour trip. But I think there's a bit of greed in there too.

The complex is owned by the royal family. They have relatives that want to live here. So 4 families have been given notice of eviction. Bugger off please. I gather they are going to all the houses, taking photos of the gardens. The best gardeners get evicted. We've been left alone. So far, in spite of our garden. I don't have any influence (it's called wasta here) with the ruling family - but my daughter has. She often spends her weekends at the palace. Maybe I should start being nice to her....

I do NOT have a sunglass fetish

There are very good reasons why i bought these sunglasses at the time...

Staring from the top (not in order of purchase)..

1. The first pair I bought when I lived in Cape Town. Great for tte coffee shops, stylish, good for clear winter days. Absolutely useless for the harsh desert light.

2. So the first pair was crap in summer sun. So I need something for Clifton beach in the summer. They work well. But also crap in the desert sun - the brightness leaks in on the sides.

3. I originally bought these killer loops when I had the lenses replaced on another pair of sunglasses. It took 3 weeks to replace the lenses and I cannot survive without anything at all.

4. My Wiley-X glasses i bought for desert sandstorms. Work well, but you sweat so much behind them that they fog up. Don't use them much.

5. My oakleys - with reflective polarizing lenses. Perfect for harsh sun. And I've has them for about 6 years.

See? I do not have a fetish.

Cape Town

A friend of mine took this in Cape Town a while ago. I really miss the place - I loved living there - but economic exile means you can't always choose where you want to live.

Birthday boy

It was my son's birthday party last week. He had three of his friends sleep over. They spent the whole day playing in the pool. and the whole night watching DVDs and playing computer games. I think they finally fell asleep at about 6 in the morning...

Friday funny

It's weekend!

Do your boobs hang low?

This is still funny...

Do your boobs hang low? Brought to you by Groovin` Granny.

Butterflies

A light kiss blown in the wind
Will sooner or later
Land on your cheek
And when you feel that
Butterfly tingle
Be aware
That I am thinking
Of you right now

My work day

06:00 Alarm goes off. Switch snooze button on

06:10 Alarm. Switch it off

06:35 Overslept – shit shave shampoo and in car

07:05 Leave for work (50km away), listen to last bit of news on radio, and get told that 12% of women have painted their toenails while driving their cars. Sobering thought that. No wonder women aren’t allowed to drive in Saudi..

07:40 Arrive at work. Do drive by inspection up the mountain to see how the excavators and dump trucks are loading, how the drilling has progressed for the next blast, and whether the bastards have remembered to water the roads. So far so good.

07:55 Get down the mountain to the plant – production plant (jaw crusher, cones, VSI’s, screens) all running. Dust suppression off.

08:15 Get to workshop. Dump truck with no brakes, Excavator, with hydraulic problem (almost fixed), excavator with bucket link broken. Someone forgot to order the pin – loss of production 3 days as a result. Small pickup gearbox fucked, and someone drove a wheel loader into a conveyor belt. Police have to investigate for insurance purposes. Aircons on 3 vehicles not working, so drivers won’t go out (can’t moan, it’s early morning and already 42 deg C.

08:35 Pitstop at admin. Three companies want to buy material we don’t have, other don’t want to pay decent prices for what we do have. Two tyre loader drivers chased the clients trucks off site because the drivers pissed them off. Retraining in progress. HR guy gone back to Jordan – his family has been in car accident. Replacement HR guy can’t speak English.

09:10 Get to office, order tea. Five people phone (all sales guys) – tell them politely to deal with purchasing. Meeting with Production guys. They checking scales, removing burnt motor from dust suppression. Speak to owner – he arrived from overseas at 2 am and is still grumpy.

09:25 Decide to do surprise inspection in plant. Tools lying all over the place, pulleys with v-belts missing, water spray system U/S. but otherwise not too bad. Give them 24 hours to fix.

10:00 Caterpillar rep comes to see me – we are buying some more equipment and I need him to quote on stuff.

11:00 Send 5 faxes and 3 emails to South Africa. Make sure equipment being manufactured according to agreements in place. Two calls from head office regarding monthly finance figures and monthly production to date. Make to-discuss-list for Ops Manager who will be back in office tomorrow. Speak to
production staff re non-production of 5 – 25mm product that they promised me 3 weeks ago. Find out 6 electric motors have burnt out in last week alone. Power trips. Have to get the guys with shovels to empty all the conveyor belts.

12:00 Plant stopped. Instructions from government, not enough power on the grid, so all crushers have to stop operations from 12:00 to 16:00. Everyone does maintenance, has lunch, hides from the sun. Quarry department brings boulders down from the mountain. We chuck those in the sea to make islands.

12:50 Inspection times – quarry, workshop, welding shop. Find someone totally screwed up the excavator boom will trying to attach the bucket. Accident investigation – turns out the failed to report accident. One final warning, one dismissal. Excavator down for an additional 36 hours. Damage cost, $400. Lost time cost, $100,000.

14:00 Cup of tea number 2, quick peek at newspaper, attempt no 5 to check email (dialup affected by shamal winds, or the heat). One spam, one nude pic, one note from head office, one unsolicited CV (resume) full of spelling and grammar errors. Cannot access blog. Email software tells me that head office does not exist anymore.

14:15 Visit crusher area via outside temp guage. Only 47 degrees (117 F). Humidity at 52%. One of these days it will be summer.

15:00 Write two internal reports for head office, one regarding increase, and the other regarding financial due diligence on new capital expenditures. Reboot computer. Head office exists again.

16:00 Plant production starts up again. Check on quarry manager, he standing sweating in the sun, teaching Philipino dozer driver how to push rocks, and how to swear in Afrikaans. We measure angle of new incline road. It has to drop by 6 metres to get to the 1:10 ratio. Discuss Wednesday’s blast. Get water truck to spray roads. Roll a rock down the cliff face.

17:15 Go home, make 3 phone calls, receive 4.

17:50 Arrive at home. Say hi to family, kick the dog (not really), play with ferrets, have supper.

18:30 Help daughter with homework, write this blog.

Making sense of it all

I lied. I feel crap today. This morning I lost a very important chunk of my life. And in retrospect, the chunk that I have left is not exactly a bowl of roses. Time to rethink. Figure out what's importatn. And what's not.

East African roads

The road from Mwanza to Geita runs along the Southern end of Lake Victoria. But first you had to get a ferry over the sound. There was a private ferry company that operated out of Mwanza, and the government one that operated from a small landing further south. Both ferries were unpredictable, and the chances of you getting over to the other side on the day that you planned to, were about 40%.

Sometimes the ferry just didn’t arrive, or you’d get halfway across and either the diesel would run out, or the engines would crap themselves. This of course would result in an aimless drift on Lake Vic for a few hours. Or they could just sink. Most people sat on top of their Land Rovers (those that can swim) so they could jump free if the ferry turned turtle.

Once you get to the other side (Don’t pay the ferry man by Chris de Burgh comes to mind), the real journey begins. The road from here heads west to the mining town of Geita, and ultimately on to Ruanda/Burundi. It’s the main highway westwards. In summer, the 100km (60 mile) road to Geita takes 2 to 3 hours. In the rainy season, it becomes an adventure. Ever seen the camel trophy clips? This is worse. Nine hours to two days is normal. Potholes are often 6 feet deep and filled with water (Land Rovers don’t float well) and the clay on the roads from the weathered granites makes traction almost impossible.

Did you know Land Rovers have a built in leak? Right on your right foot. Little drips. Like Chinese torture. The engineers spent a lot of time designing it – it’s been in Land Rovers since I was a kid. And it still leaks. And the bonnet (hood) is specially designed to catch muddy water in a scoop-like design. When you brake, it all runs forward, and just as it starts to fall off the front, the wind scoops it up and deposits it right on top of the square windshield with the shitty little wiper blades that never work. Another cool design feature….

Sunset

Sunsets do it for me. I much prefer them to sunrise. I'm usually on my way to work at sunrise, so i get to see both. but sunset is better. It's the end of the day. Time to think for a moment, to relax, to think of friends. I took this pic last week in Dubai

Reading

I haven't been blogging. i've been reading. When i read I'll stay up till 3 in the morning to finish a book. I'm an (almost) obesessive reader. I've immersed myself in books since i was a small kid, often reading under the blankets with a torch when i thought my parents wouldn't catch me. I usually end up reading 3 or 4 books at the same time, and I ignore the spousoid (trademark goes to maire), and the kids, and the telephone. It's escapism too. I can ignore my own world for a while.

At the moment I'm reading:
(i) Greg Iles - True Evil
(ii) Jon Ronson - The men who stare at goats
(iii) Tony Manning - Value management (3rd time)
(iv) National Geographic magazine
(v) Lee Child - Bad luck and trouble

Our social reality

sleep doesnt come easy
when the mind is restless
I am but
scattered thoughts
stressed bones
and hands that shake

I work I come home
only to end up working once again
I laugh aloud
not because I am amused
but because I am disturbed at the fact that I cannot stay in one place
that I have to always have change

I want to leave again
so badly
Im not running from problems
to be honest, there really arent any

just my need to be free
this craving inside of me
to see something outside of this place
just for a month or so
somehow,someday

because

I want to camp
I want to fish
I want to fly
I want to sail
I want to run down desolate roads
I want a park, where I can write
I want a library where I can sit
the biggest library in the entire world
all to myself
to read until I fall asleep
I want to play in snow
taste the rain
throw myself in a pile of mud
just to say I got dirty
go back to merry-go-rounds
and swinging as high as one can swing
seashells against my ear
the smell of sunblock
the crickets outside the window
the chirping of the birds in their bird sanctuarys
I want to see everything
and feel everything
touch everything
and taste everything

and if I stay here much longer
doing nothing but working
Ill surely go crazy
Ill surely go crazy.

By my blog friend Mist..