interviewing chicken hero

monday 14th:

was that just monday? waking up late (i needed the sleep, desperately, and i was dreaming), warning the nanny about using her phone when on the job, making just enough progress to report to my coworkers, working and looking after mr smear (including literally walking him across the road and back to keep him away from the vacuum cleaner), heading to the gym and being too late to secure a room, studying for an hour then rushing home to pick up keys for my mom's and arriving there with three minutes to put the kettle on before my phone screen...

... passing the screen, rushing to pick up emergency groceries and get home in time to take mr smear swimming, shower, and leave him with my mom while gd and i went to the temple for our monthly study group

home, reading the chronicles of narnia until bedtime, working through until 1.30am and going to bed with an almost complete proof of concept

tuesday 15th:

two green teas instead of coffee, home alone with mr smear, struggling to work while he desperately wanted to play: the heartbreak and guilt was crushing
a quick swim in cold windy weather before rushing off to a lunch with some recruiters, feeling awfully tired, sudafed and a great interview for a product that i've wanted to build myself, a quick stop at home then off to the temple for our first committee meeting

mr smear being surprisingly well-behaved during the meeting

home, mom arriving for help with data recovery then disappearing, dr horrible's sing-along blog, a quick bedtime reading, then working straight through

wednesday 16th:

to 1am, taking half an hour to actually getting into bed

a tough wake-up, but green tea instead of coffee again seemed to be helping
morning traffic jam to mr smear's first day at the new school, total chaos as nobody knew what was happening, our concerns over allergy awareness and his stress over not getting a superhero sticker on his locker

working a bit then heading to the tattoo parlour, the artist not feeling well so we postponed the appointment and sat planning for an hour an a half instead, with both of us feeling excited by the end of it

running into our neighbour on the way home, poor dude's been super sick, writing up the morning's experience and working a little more before taking gd to pick up mr smear

a much-needed nap, waking up to "no! we must go without daddy!" followed by "daddy is my best friend" (i was stunned ^_^)

a great swim with mr smear and gd and really playing in the water, a good shower, delicious dinner and hook

working late, finally getting my code running on a demo server

thursday 17th:

struggling to get out of bed, getting a little work done, dropping mr smear off at school, a blank space (work? bureaucracy?), dropping gd off in sea point and settling in at my mom's for a really cool semi-technical interview, an amazing lunch from the sunshine food company, difficult personality assessments, too much renovation noise for the cognitive ability assessment so driving to the gym for that, the confidence-crush of bad time management and then rushing to sort out consent forms for the next day, two coffees later and generally feeling anxious and overwhelmed

home, dinner, mom's visit, running to our friend for interview prep and leaving feeling far more confident, home again in time to say goodnight to mr smear and have a few laughs while gd read him the witches until he passed out, hackerrank...

friday 18th:

... until 1am

a pretty decent morning, but running late with a big rush to get mr smear showered and to school before hunting for parking at the offices i was to interview at. in the middle of the rush mr smear came up to me for a hug and said "i love you, daddy" and that really made my morning!

a full day of interviews, generally engaging and pleasant, finishing the day with a (half a) beer with our friend (and realizing that i've been friends with the guys i met up with at that same bar recently for twenty years, since my first year at university)

a quick stop at gardens centre, picking up one bottle of wine but forgetting the other, getting home planning on taking mr smear to the temple but walking to pick up the forgotten bottle and deciding to just relax for a bit instead.

taking my mom and mr smear to my aunt's for a really nice friday night dinner, mr smear passing out on the couch towards the end and giving me no trouble all the way to putting him into bed at home and going to sleep myself

yesterday:

waking up but needing plenty more rest, starting the day with adventure time and eventually getting out the house around 11am, picking something up in sea point then driving to my mom's coffee shop, chilling there for a bit (mr smear napping on granny for a while), running into a cousin and his girlfriend, and then bumping into our friends and their kid and taking them with us to plant to pick up shwarma and to the eco-village at oude molan for a great afternoon with the kids both riding horses.

on the way back to the car we saw a hen and her chicks by a sewer grate, and our friend realized that some of the chicks had fallen through the grate; i jumped to lift it, only realizing just how heavy it was after i'd already gotten it off - fortunately, while i'm feeling the strain in my lower back i did pick it up with relatively decent form and it could've been a lot worse. it felt really good returning the two lost chicks to their mother.

getting everyone home, showering mr smear, watching stardust, getting mr smear to bed, falling asleep watching titans,

this morning:

jesus, netflix, where did boj and he-man go?!

this post aside, i really do have a lot of work and podcasting to catch up on in addition to family / birthday / community obligations. i'm feeling relatively relaxed, though, this weekend has so far been an enormous relief from the intensity of the past two weeks.

uneasy like sunday morning

yeeeee gawds. gd and i were both totally over today before we even got out of bed. this morning was such a struggle that my main goal was to see if i could get my computer hooked up to my monitor, which it hasn't been for the longest time. by my second-and-a-half cup of coffee i'd finally started getting some paid work done, it was a painful case of slow-and-steady-win-the-race, and eventually took a break to look after mr smear who was physically expressing his frustrations at us having been indoors all miserable day (it was a miserable day outside, too).

on a couple of occasions i threatened him with taking him back to the store and exchanging him for a new one, which i found funny at the time but in retrospect was probably not smart. later, gd and i had a fight over me threatening to give him a hiding for playing with the dangerous hinge-side of a door, in spite of the fact that i'm the flg-bearer of never beating your children: having argued about this and considered it, given the choice i would much rather traumatize him in a "standard" way than have him lose fingers, limbs, or life. i will do what i can to avoid hurting him in any way, but if he's laughing at me while doing something remarkably stupid that he knows he shouldn't be doing i'm not certain how else to approach this.

my mom came over to help out for a little bit, and we had a long discussion about what to do about purchasing the neighbour's apartment (i really hope he makes me an offer that i can afford), and then i spent some time researching my next podcast episode but got so lost in golding's translation of ovid's metamorphoses (and trying to keep track of the stories) that that's going to have to wait until later in the week.

mr smear and i watched toy story 3 over dinner, i resumed podcast prep but have recently realized that i have paid work to complete and a big interview tomorrow afternoon that i haven't begun to prepare for, so i'm calling it a night now and praying i'll be strong enough to get out of bed on time.

Y.A.W.N.

still buggered from the week, even after two pretty decent nights' rest.

friday 11th:

recruitment bureaucracy, taking mr smear to the museum

a failed attempt at a nap

the nanny taking mr smear to our friends while gd and i rearranged the apartment, which now looks pretty cool and my books are on my shelf again! and mr smear's room looks like a kid's room, with his books actually accessible to him. picking them up, bringing them home, taking her to the bus station, doing a grocery run, returning home to pick up mr smear and driving through to the temple.

a pleasant service, mr smear behaving pretty well (either in spite of or because of being tired)

hosting the new rabbi, a decent evening with only a couple of faux pas', driving her home then returning to go straight to bed.

saturday 12th:

finishing the princess bride, heading to the waterfront to sort out gd's cellular contract and failing, grabbing lunch, rushing to go through to the greyton farm animal sanctuary, realizing it was too late and too far, meeting friends at the green point park, meeting them back home after checking out our neighbour's apartment and deciding that we definitely want to buy it if we can get the financing, everybody yawning, eating gd's amazing curry, running around wildly in the company gardens, taking a walk around the block and stopping for a delicious vegan double-thick shake, getting mr smear showered and into bed, watching venom (a lot of fun), being unable to do anything productive and

now:

deciding (right now) to go to bed before 1am in spite of a podcast episode to plan, paid work to complete and a big interview on monday to prepare for

high and mighty

so... i laughed, i almost cried, i finally went back to bed around 4.30am, having finally completed the work i began on monday and feeling pretty good about it. but not about myself, because i was feeling totally wired and just ever-so-slightly hallucinating.

around 6.30am i looked online and learned that combining sudafed and caffeine is a thing. "i won't be doing that again," i told myself, "not after this one last time just before my early morning interviews."

let me tell you, i was WIRED. i don't think it helped my mental acuity much, i felt a bit slower than usual and words i needed kept drifting through my brain and fluttering off again, but overall the interviews felt good and considering the fact that they're planning on contacting my references tomorrow i'm pretty confident that i did alright.

it's funny and a bit sad that a friend at a big global company was the instigator of all this - me realizing that i need to get myself an office job in order to save my sleep / sanity - and that company has been dragging their feet so i might not even make it to the first screening i have with them on monday. i feel bad for my friend because their team needs someone like me, but if the company i sat with today makes me an offer i don't think i'm going to turn them down.

...

i walked home, ate lunch, cleaned up my code and proudly pushed it, juggled emails and invoicing and a bunch of other things, then dropped for a nap which was mostly pretty good. for a nap. mr smear and his nanny came home around 4.30, i showed him pictures of cyclops (greek, including the dude from oh, brother, where art thou) which led on to lego x-men and havok, then slowly made my exhausted way to my mom's coffee shop for a chai and a chat, did a massive grocery shopping, came home to eat dinner and watch half of the princess bride, put mr smear to bed*, got caught up temporarily in william goldman's introduction to the 30th anniversary edition of the princess bride book which i plan on reading to mr smear once we've seen the movie, then got sidelined sorting out something for gd with her ipad and am now, finally, about to go to bed.

* ever since he was really little, i've been putting him to bed with a blessing / statement of family values to him in a little hebrew rhyme i came up with. tonight, for the first time, he tried to say it along with me, and words cannot express how pleased / proud / heart-warmed i am. and that's after a day that began (for him, at least) with us chilling on his bed listening to jefferson airplane and the doors while he figured out what he wanted to do with his morning**.

** oh, that's right, it actually began with his whining "i want granny!" repeatedly until i tried to record it for my mom, at which point he stopped whining and then managed to hurt himself trying to pick his nose.

...

i think i deserve a little bit of a rest.

sudafed and coffee

i forgot, i took sudafed and drank coffee thinking i was going to be up all night.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

heavy hump day

did i really begin the day with an interview? then return home to fix a door handle, work, then take gd shopping for chairs, then fight with an old man who hooted at me to get my attention, then sit down at a coffee shop to work and do a second interview, then pick up mr smear, drop him and gd at home, then return to the furniture store to pay, then take mr smear to the pool for a swim, then shower him before leaving him with my mom to take gd to the hospital, then book her in, then return home to fetch her things, then do them off and say goodnight, then call to get mr smear to pee, then learn that i have two technical interviews too early in the morning, then get a call to pick gd up (bad beds), complete some work before my mom got back, pick up gd, bring her home

and finally work until realizing that it's past 1.30am and oh shit.

heavy before hump day

these last two days have been rough, i've been having trouble focusing and i'm not sure if i've had a cold, or just been suffering from "seasonal" allergies.

monday morning i was not able to be functional until about half an hour before my meeting, which fortunately was enough to have an idea of what i was doing. unfortunately, two "days" of work and this part of the solution has proven so tricky that i'm behind on my target, and it's now past 1am and i have to be up for a morning coffee meeting with a company i probably won't be applying to work for.

i was a mess for most of monday. i worked out pretty hard at the gym, worked a couple of good hours, then suddenly my back began to hurt... i walked to the pharmacy to pick some stuff up and didn't change out of my training shoes, which turned out to be a bad idea because by the time i was done i felt old and brittle, i came home to watch the angry birds movie (it's actually a great movie), walk around the neighbourhood with gd and mr smear, then return home and feel sorry for myself before turning in early.

yesterday:

i've spent a lot of time dealing with recruiters, i've had one interview so far; and although it went well, the longer i've thought about it the less interested i am, because it doesn't seem to be a significant improvement over my present employment.

gd took mr smear to the local baths this morning for an hour or so and he's definitely into swimming. she brought him back earlier than anticipated and left him with me for an hour or two, which threw out the rest of the morning completely. i took him downstairs to play in the garden, we mostly had fun, he lost a tennis ball after throwing it at my head, and then we returned home where i got a little work done before heading to the gym where i got a lot more done. i was so into it that i returned home much later than planned, rushed a shower and dinner, picked up snacks at the grocery store and joined out bi-weekly dnd group for a highly entertaining evening.

game notes:

1. your dungeon has an office, but no toilets. WHERE IS ALL THE POO?!

2. i decided to call the halfling with amnesia "bilbo", he actually turned out to be a thief.

3. i failed a stealth check trying to sneak up on bilbo to see if i could smell anything interesting with my super-keen senses. all i could think of to say when he caught me was that i was trying to get a better look at his rune... which was hanging on his neck in front of him...

4. we had a fight with a bunch of disembodied hands. the puns got out of hand very quickly.

5. we picked up a soul trapped in a lamp, bilbo put it in his backpack. "change voice: penelope". "okay, penelope: how do we get to the bad guy". penelope's only directions were "down", i was hoping for something more in line with "in one hundred feet, turn left"

6. i stabbed into the darkness where i'd last seen the skeleton, heard a death-squeal, and pulled out my spear with the skeleton hanging off the end. and thus did i invent "spear-skeletoning".

almost enough

almost 2am. enough caffeine to be wired, but not enough to be functional. one podcast published, one jira slack integration integrated, one (paid for) problem solved. will i be more functional if i crash now and try to wake up early? will i be able to wake up early?

wall painting

HAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahaha... ah ha... aaaah... haaaa...

i thought i'd get lots of work done today, but everyone came back a lot earlier than anticipated, the two boys took everything out of me and i wasn't even supposed to be dealing with them, i ended up being sidelined with a jira box setup (at least i was finally successful), and at some point i had to just throw in the towel and go and swim with my wife and son.

which was awesome, in particular because mr smear insisted on swimming by himself (with waterwings, of course), and i couldn't be more proud! he was sad when we told him he had to go, he sat on the edge of the pool for a little while meditating on how much he didn't want to leave...

i got most of the work in for my podcast after we got back (thanks to my mom taking gd and mr smear grocery shopping after mr smear and i showered), then watched the rest of hook with mr smear, we were joined by my mom, the movie is still amazing, mr smear went straight to bed afterwards.

my mom left recently after helping me write a very formal email to my landlord, gd is playing games on the ipad (angry birds and billiards, i'm kinda pleased even if she's cursing a lot), and i'm about to drink tea, tidy up the podcast, and try and get some paid work done before going to bed.

my weekend ending early

it's sunday morning, i got a good night's sleep last night but this morning has already gone wild as our friend and her kid arrived; the two boys have redecorated mr smear's bedroom with black marker and i'm already ready for them to get out of the house so that i can get some work done. at least the kids are playing nicely. mostly.

the reason i need to work today is that friday was a complete loss; i stormed out angrily from an entirely unnecessary argument, got caught up in our neighbour's psychic adventure (stepping on a "cue" with a noose in the background just as a truck saying "REGRET nothing" drove past), straight from that conversation into a meeting with my cousin who's back from being a counselor at a summer camp, and from there going to a play-date before heading to the temple to say goodbye to the week.

mr smear fell asleep on the way home, and we woke him before we went to bed to use the toilet and that turned into an hour or so long nightmare...

yesterday started with a visit to the hardware store to learn about lock mechanisms, eat frozen yoghurt and drive off to canal walk to pray at the church of the almighty dollar; we didn't find the chairs we were looking for, but we did end up spending an inordinate amount of money on new toys for mr smear... a delicious lunch (i love seeing mr smear wolf down tofu and veggies) and returning home for a nap, a twilight swim (the water level's risen so mr smear had to stretch to stand, but he really enjoyed swimming and actually wanted me to let go while he was paddling), a hot shower and hook - i had to choose between english audio with all the subtitles, or french / english audio but no subtitles, which seems unnecessary, but at least we have another great "french" film for mr smear.

my mom coming over for a little bit, then putting mr smear to bed and falling asleep way earlier than anticipated.

payday delay and new year's re-evaluation

monday 31st december:

going to bed around 2.30am but only getting there around 4am with mr smear refusing to sleep for an hour and a nightmare half

the great playdate part 2, podcast publishing

swimming with water wings, mr smear going it alone for the first time and once again making the tattoo delay utterly worthwhile

heavy grocery shopping in 2 parts, popping loads of bloons along the way (i'm an addict, and it's become an OCD thing where once or twice a day i bring myself incrementally closer to 100%)

taking mr smear and his bicycle to the company gardens but both of us were exhausted, returning home for dinner, shower, thundercats, and to cry at the end of toy story 3 again (the others don't make me cry, but that ending gets me every time)

bedtime, bloons, road rage videos (i think i need a dashcam), then a less early night than planned

tuesday 1st january:

at least the third day with my neck threatening to spasm (left neck / shoulder)

a better night, waking up to the thundercats, our friend / playdate coming over, taking forever to get going to meet my mom and do some quick picnic shopping*, taking forever to get going to kirstenbosch, eventually arriving, finding a spot, calming down a little before managing the two boys alone in a small stream

* sandal stress on the way out

an important nap, a quick dip in the pool, thundercats followed by dinner and hunter x hunter until bedtime (fantastic teaching opportunity)

bloons until late, going to bed early-ish (11pm)

wednesday 2nd:

a grumpy morning, sitting out some maintenance tasks, still stressing about not being paid, letting in the cleaning lady, napping for twenty minutes, heading to the coffee shop to work and look for freelance jobs, protoplasm joining me and walking home for a beer, some manly venetian blind fixing and an interesting chat about sustainable architecture

gd's first curry (excellent), thundercats, hunter x hunter, an easy shower and bedtime, early to bed ourselves

thursday 3rd:

being woken by the olfactory assault of my wife spaying tabard in a closed bedroom and having to go sleep on the couch

one or two hours of snoozing my alarm, getting a bit of work done over a suspicious avocado toast breakfast, a mr smear meltdown, pinching nerves down to my calves, dropping gd and mr smear off at the castle then heading to work at the gym, an interesting chat with a "recruiter" (not exactly), some difficult hours between working and minor distractions, half an hour on the phone with my bank to (re)discover that their "wire transfer tracking division" can't track wire transfers unless they've cleared already, sending off a passive-aggressive email to our CFO saying that as i'd already borrowed money to pay rent, another couple of days wouldn't make much difference

at least coming up with a vague strategy before leaving around 4pm, taking mr smear down to the pool for a great swim, learning that he can stand by himself in the shallow end (!), gd joining us for a bit, showering, watching coco again, rushing an already sleepy mr smear through tooth brushing and bedtime, bloon destruction, settling in to work and finding the money in my account (hooray!) and sorting out repayments etc.

preparing an intro speech in case my offer to coach high school students in spoken word is accepted

today:

it's just past midnight and i'm going to try to get some work done before going to bed, it's really pathetic how exhausted i've been and i'm distracted and demoralized in general. i watched lisa feldman - you aren't at the mercy of your emotions today and i'm wondering how much control i have over this...

analyze this

it's freaking me out that i still haven't been paid, and i need to borrow money to make rent and i'm not even sure it can be transferred in time.

---

i was definitely sick on thursday and friday, more than allergies and sleep deprivation could explain.

friday 28th:

working from the waterfront while gd handled a playdate, swimming (mr smear freezing afterwards, removing his only protection from the wind then walking really slowly), a pleasant temple experience in the evening and a very serious learning experience when mr smear found himself trapped in the net of the jungle gym, great great indian curry dinner with mom, early bedtime

saturday 29th:

starting my day with half a cup of coffee and heavy grocery shopping, gd taking mr smear to a playdate while i walked the city with our neighbour for a few hours, becoming quite convinced by the end of it that he's fully paranoid delusional / schizophrenic / whatever today's psychobuzzwords are. the poor dude's been really messed with, and not in the way he thinks, to the point where he pulled rubble out of his mouth to prove his story to me and i felt my own sense of reality destabilizing... i don't think he's dangerous, but he's definitely in need of some guidance and i really, really hope that i can be a positive influence. jesus fuck, this dude is smart, lucid when he's lucid, physically solid and good looking, and a mess - it's really hard to reconcile that shit as an outsider.

going to my mom's, mr smear waking up from a five-minute nap on contact with her bed,  some time with my nieces and great-nephew before helping my mom with her furniture, then returning home for dinner, toy story (gd's not happy that it's not canadian french like it says, but it's still french and mr smear's still following along happily), and an early night

sunday 30th:

a midnight wake-up for a wet bed, then waking up in the morning to another one

resuming toy story, pancakes, a long drive to a play-date that was great fun for everyone and went on far longer than expected (the mom had made delicious vegan cake, but none of us had considered actual lunch), mr smear passing out close to home and taking a long nap, me watching a fair amount of batman: mask of the phantom

a lazy afternoon of hunter x hunter (it's awesome watching difficult stuff and having real conversations about death and danger, he's not freaking out and he seems to be following the narrative) and toy story 2, a pleasant but very late bedtime for mr smear, then working on the podcast until

monday 31st:

now, around 2am, not including an important viewing of the first episode of the original thundercats series to verify that my purchase was worthwhile and hunting for the 2011 reboot

almost useless

still coughing, but slightly better in the sinus department. tired. a bit confused - or unfocused. i managed to get some good work done this morning, finally posting the code i've been working on and *pretty* satisfied that it's production ready.

---

then the plumbers arrived, and i couldn't get into anything while they were around. and they were around a long time. i sent the following letter to our landlady:

We've finally managed to get plumbers in to sort out the mixer, there was a problem with the nut used to secure it and it was so badly rusted they needed a hacksaw to get it out; there's no reinstalling it.  I will send you the photos of the newly installed mixer and the invoices a bit later.

Additionally, we asked them to investigate regulating the water temperature (changing bathtub mixers previously didn't improve that), which has forced us to waste an enormous amount of water over the course of the past few months.

While solving that problem, they discovered that the thermostat on the geyser has been broken, and so it hasn't been shutting off when the water's heated which might explain our very high electricity bills. The T&P safety valve was blocked on installation, and between that and the thermostat, it is not only dangerous but has probably done damage to the geyser itself. And as if that's not enough - there's no drip tray installed, so any leak would damage the wardrobe and all the things we're storing there.

It must also be noted that whoever installed the geyser did so really badly, and didn't leave any room for maintenance so replacing the thermostat became a whole story. When your handyman was here however many months ago and needed to look at the geyser, he had to force the covering board that they'd used to seal the geyser in, which is a very strange design decision; I think whoever installed it must have thought that nobody would ever need to access it again and any maintenance - like replacing a thermostat, or the element - now requires draining the entire geyser, pulling it out to do the work, then replacing it. This has been expensive and time consuming, and I suggest that you seriously consider having the geyser re-installed by professionals.

I will present you with today's bill and a quote for a proper fix once I've consulted with the plumber.  Having these kinds of problems, unnecessary expenses and potential losses is not conducive to reasonable enjoyment of the premises.

to which she most elegantly responded:

You leased the flat as per what was offered and as per what was signed for .

All the changes that you keep insisting to do just causes more problems

We spoke of mixers that you wanted to replace at your own cost nothing about plumbing issues that seemed to have arisen as a result of all your changes
The fact that you requested your plumber to investigate will now be for your account as I never gave permission for this .

this idiot is claiming that we are responsible in some way for the poor and unsafe installation of the geyser. either that, or that an undiscovered and serious set of problems with said geyser didn't exist as long as we didn't investigate.

it boggles the mind.

---

taking mr smear to the pool, though the weather wasn't perfect and he didn't want to come in with me. he did enjoy goofing around in the garden and we learned an important lesson about not giving up when we fail (catching little parachute man)

our neighbour bumped into us on our way back inside, and he was in dire need of an ear to hear and some good advice. i hope the latter helped, he seems like a good guy but he's deeply troubled and we don't know if he's dangerous or not (to himself or others). i hope i manage to catch him for a cup of coffee sometime.

kubo and the two strings is WONDERFUL. mr smear was lying between my legs on the couch and he fell asleep during the credits, we had a weird experience trying to wake him up just enough to pee before going to bed when he was fast asleep and i had to keep his head propped up while he was on the bowl... eventually gd managed to wake him enough to get the job done and then he passed straight back out again.

since pushing my work this morning, i've done almost nothing of value (okay, not true exactly, but nothing work related). i'm distracted, and my wife and mother both think i need to go back to working in an office. i'm hesitant, but i'm honestly not sure i disagree with them.

biting the hand that feeds

christmas:

a lot more morning telly than i'd like, new friends coming over for lunch,  me monopolizing the conversation (although it seemed to be appreciated, i'm confused)

finalizing and posting a new page!

another early night in the hopes of getting up early

boxing day:

another morning failing to get up early, still suffering sinus and chest issues

a grumpy, stressful morning trying to get work done and snapping at anyone that interfered (i'm embarrassed), a lovely afternoon with hido and fam (and dirk diggler), coming home in time for dinner, going shopping but everything was closed, watching coco again, showering mr smear and then his new thing of not wanting to get off the toilet when he's done turning into a tantrum and we finally got him into bed around 10pm but not before having to hose him down because he fought us trying to clean him up...

oh, the joys of parenting.

working really hard and making good progress until

today:

about 20 minutes ago, now heading off to bed.

"family"

it makes me sad that people i care about feel that it's okay to make fun of us, directly or indirectly, about our life choices. that they're so deeply entrenched in their beliefs that they feel threatened by our refusal to participate in something that we know is wrong, and will find any angle they can to try and pick apart a case that decades of well-researched evidence has put together.

a long time ago we learned some very important facts, or "uncomfortable truths", and we choose to do what's right for ourselves and our child. it would be nice if we didn't have to be on the receiving end of disrespect and passive-aggressive "teasing", or have people joking about us behind our backs. this is bullying, plain and simple.

it's a difficult call to make, whether to tolerate such unpleasantness or to isolate ourselves from people we otherwise love spending time with.

most people are ready to cater for all sorts of strange things, whether it's extreme interpretations of kashrut, or pretending that santa's coming down south african chimneys, but somehow find that a refusal to eat animals crosses a line and doesn't deserve even the pretense of accommodation or understanding.

any advice or suggestions on how to navigate this would be greatly appreciated.

merry christmas!

and to celebrate, our three-and-a-half-year-old hide-and-seek champion of 2018 had us all running around in circles and saw my brother-in-law get his hands really dirty-deep into the garbage, because he decided that hiding our car / house keys would be a fun thing to do. he even pretended to help us look for them!

i started today early, but not early enough to get everything done before meeting time; it was fine, though, and although it was a bit of a stressed morning i completed an important chunk of work by lunchtime before we headed to my sister's for christmas-eve lunch (is that a thing?)

the only real irritant of the day was that the handyman - for the second time - didn't pitch and didn't bother to get in touch to let me know:
professionalism: it's not just about doing the job well, and doing it on time. it's also about communicating properly with your clients. if you can't make an appointment, or you can't meet your deadline, and you don't let your client know in advance, it doesn't matter why you couldn't.

why is it so hard to find professionals these days? is there so much work going around that nobody needs the money anymore? i'm beginning to suspect that working as a handyman is far more lucrative than what i've been doing.

i must admit that i felt a wave of bitterness on arrival, not only is it unpleasant that nobody can be bothered to cater for the vegans and that even the basic things that should be safe for mr smear (who's deathly allergic to dairy) need to be checked again and again, but a couple of cousins were straight-up making fun of vegans and the sheer audacity of wilful ignorance is particularly frustrating when it comes from people you care about.

mr smear passed out just before we arrived but woke up on contact with the bed, and it took a long time (presumably when he hid my keys) before he was ready to come out and play. eventually i convinced him to get into the pool, though, with the help of my great-nephew's infectious water enthusiasm, and mr smear had so much fun that after however long - and we were in a long time - i had to drag him out fighting because he was shivering with cold.

the ride home was lovely, a beautiful sunset (at least, it was with my rose-tinted glasses) and the whole family screaming along to foo fighters hits, a peaceful evening and gd turning a potential online fight over identity politics into a really positive human reconnection.

i've spent some time trying to find an alternative to patreon - it seems subscribestar.com is the only real option - then posting this while deliberating over whether to crash early and wake early or try to make some more progress tonight. i'll probably crash.

the sudafed helped me with my sinuses all day, but wore off soon after getting mr smear to sleep (gd read to him about steve irwin and stephen hawking, it was really fun watching his eyebrows rise in wonder just before he dozed off).. still struggling...

anyway, all in all, it was a magic day. merry christmas!

the weekend

yesterday:

easy morning
walking to the vegan market, expensive but delicious
a proper nap
beyond meat burger sharing
mom visit
the princess bride and you can say no
hunter x hunter tension
fantastic swimming experience, lots of joy and laughter
friends coming over, curry club, buying coco and not regretting it
late but easy bedtime for mr smear, taking our friends home through crazy traffic
bloons, caffeine, chocolate

today:

still sinus-y

getting into bed around 3.30am after recording the latest podcast episode, waking up straight into wrong mr smear's bum, struggling to function while or friend's kids screeched incessantly, finally posting the podcast before taking forever to get moving, visiting my mom and shopping, then a desperate nap, then some swim time (great water, not-so-great wind) and a really cool few minutes just chilling in the deck chairs with mr smear

adventure time, shower time, tantrum time, starting a batman movie, then doing various things until midnight

still sinus-y

some days things work

for the last week i've been working on a new project for my employer, and i realize now that in addition to the horrific sleep deprivation, i was struggling to get into it because, quite frankly, i've been demoralized for a very, very long time. like, years. i develop software for a living, and 99% of the tools i use just suck. over the last few days, things are progressing in a healthy way, and i'm way more excited about this than i think i should be!

to add to this, sailor and i finally switched computers yesterday, and while there were a few little hiccups the process was by and large smooth and apple's migration mechanisms really did work as advertised. i'm working on a different computer, with slightly worse hardware, and the experience overall is pretty much the same.

i... am... impressed.

yesterday:

school holidays, no nanny and gd at the chiropractor? museum time, with an awesome interactive globe that mr smear was certain was going to fall on me. then home for lunch, then working and meeting with sailor, then the temple, then a really nice dinner at sailor's mom's.

during a deep conversation about parenting, i recited role models... forgetting that i was talking to people who know my mother and knew my father, it was interesting to receive a response of genuine concern.

this morning so far:

an actual good night's sleep in spite of unpleasant sinusitis.

burned

i'm TIRED. but i'm having a much better time working on the new project, it's actually kinda fun.

this morning i opened up facebook and saw a whole bunch of pictures from my 20 year high school reunion, to which i was not invited. i have to admit, that really stings. it's not that i care about those people - i generally dislike most of them - but that i was excluded from a once-in-a-decade event by people who i suffered over twelve long years of my life with? jeez... that's harsh, dude.

wednesday:

starting my day with a few hours of verifying that i don't rely on twilio for 2nd factor authentication - i received an email in the middle of the night informing me that my numbers haven't necessarily been reachable SINCE 2016 AND NOBODY THOUGHT TO INFORM ME. cheers, twilio, it looks like i'll be migrating away as soon as i get a chance.

so that messed up my day. i finally got started coding my new project, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that aside from a documentation detail that took me a little while to figure out, express-es6-rest-api is surprisingly solid. it's been a long time since i've worked with a boilerplate project that actually made sense.

gd needed a ride to her sewing class, but it was delayed so mr smear and i rode around in circles and by the time the three of us got home he was already tired and sleepy.

i vaguely recall joining gd for a little bit of the new mowgli movie which is fantastic, but mostly i was online "doing stuff" (which may or may not have included working)

yesterday:

i got a LOT more sleep than i thought, but still struggled to wake up.

a morning overwhelmed by the patreon debacle, which i only learned about because i finally regained access to my account and went onto the unofficial patreon subreddit to thank them for the advice and support

taking mr smear into the pool for a quick dip, then taking gd to the gym, meeting a new friend (who might be a good connection) and getting practically no work done because  our whole table was engaged in interesting conversations, including gd once she was done working out.

i've been struggling with a sinus / throat thing since the late afternoon.

i sat for a long chat with sailor before we tried (and failed) to switch macbooks, i helped him pack up his desk and drove him home, saw one of my favourite trance pizza people walk a block from his house wearing nothing but a bath towel, returned home for dinner, watched charlie brown with mr smear, bought the first season of spongebob squarepants for him, showered him quickly (he was super tired) and put him to bed and passed out playing the adventure time game and then eventually got up to work

and learn that sailor's NOT leaving the country for good because he'd unwittingly locked himself into his rental contract

today:

damn, it's 2.30am already. i think i need to go to bed.

saffer santa

this "white christmas" in sunny south africa has been getting under my skin of late. not only is christmas in the middle east generally not white, but more of a desert theme, over here focusing on beach sand would be a lot more appropriate. and if you think santa's climbing down your chimney - what chimney?! how the heck is he getting through your burglar bars and trellidoors and electric fences?! how much is he bribing your security guards?! - if you think santa's climbing down your chimney in 30-degrees-celsius weather wearing snow gear while the reindeers try to fend of hijackers (do *they* wear balaclavas in summer?), you must be mad! not only that, can santa's sleigh operate in cape town's heavy winds? i can't imagine that him riding through a proper thunder-and-african-rain-storm would be good for those gifts...

... i wanted to post an image of a south african santa, but it's definitely not for everyone so if you're feeling brave just run a google image search for "santa mankini" and you'll get my drift.

remembering friday

i've just remembered what happened on friday, and why i subconsciously was probably trying to forget it. i took mr smear to a playdate in camps bay, gd wasn't able to come with and that threw out my plans to get a little work done while the kids and moms entertained themselves. around lunchtime we left, i didn't have food for mr smear and i badly needed to get to work...

... so of course, something had to go wrong with the car. a sound like grinding steel screeched from the left side of the vehicle and i pulled over on a searing hot afternoon to get advice and organize a towing in an area with little to no cellular reception. when it became clear that it would take too long for someone to reach us, i organized an uber and took mr smear home, had a quick bite to eat, then ubered back to the car to meet the tow service.

the noises continued as i drove the car up the back of the truck, but of course stopped at some point along the drive to the mechanic's. they spent a good hour or two investigating thoroughly, determined that everything was just fine and sent me home.

and by then it was friday evening, so i took mr smear to the synagogue for a pleasant service, then came home for dinner, and that was friday.

have i mentioned the fact that i HATE having to own a car? we desperately need better public transport over here.

a very, VERY weekend

i'm buggered. i've just uploaded the new podcast episode that was supposed to be up on the weekend, mostly because i've just now started recovering from the weekend.

friday:

[wtf happened to friday?] friday's over here.


saturday:

an enjoyable but short visit to the oranjezicht market to be stood up by friends whose kid passed out on the way there, a frustrating continuation at the waterfront

[afternoon missing]

driving through to hido's mom's place, heading off the the unity reunion, some great conversations and an enjoyable night of great tunes and re-meeting old buddies

sunday:

partying hard - and feeling old - until the club shut down around 3.30-4am, riding home with hido, a quick reset and driving home with difficulty (i was so tired i was having trouble focusing my eyes, so the whole ride home was a battle and i was perpetually on the verge of pulling over on the highway to rest). finally getting home, showering and passing out

a not-much-recovery day. gd managing a fair chunk of the morning, my mom coming over to babysit in the afternoon so i could go to the gym and get some work done, working a bit but then being recalled to open a jar (which ended up not being an issue), a quick visit to the pool before shower, dinner 'n bedtime

monday:

working hard from early in the morning and then discovering that the meeting was cancelled, enjoying a short pool session and realizing for the first time that i couldn't get tattooed while my son's on summer vacation (i spoke to the artist yesterday morning, he was really great about it)

leaving mr smear with my mom and driving out to wellington to a beautiful, enjoyable wedding in spite of the heavy heat (how did we survive the "hora"?), good food and an inspiring conversation about charity and education before we left

a worrying moment *just* before reaching the big gas station, but everything appearing to be alright.

arriving home just as mr smear was falling asleep, 

yesterday:

up until 2.30am struggling with various support agents, trying to regain access to my patreon account. what a freaking nightmare

a relaxed morning

actually making proper work progress

dropping mr smear off with our friends' babysitter, working from my mom's coffee shop while gd shopped, coming home and crashing for a couple of hours, heading back to pick up mr smear and chat a bit, returning home, showering mr smear and continuing the developing bad habit of playing the adventure time game, mr smear's pre-bed meltdown that turned into a learning opportunity, my relief tempered by his whispering "i want to break the world" when i recited my usual blessing that includes, in hebrew, "fix the world"...

more bloon-killing, then finally getting into the new podcast episode and really enjoying the analysis

today (wednesday morning 2.45am):

patreon support finally got back to me! let's see if they help. it looks like my youtube post will be ready in five minutes and i'm WAY overdue getting back to bed.

tools of oppression

gd was just insulted on social media by a bunch of ignorant kids, and i thought i'd share my response here:

---

wow, you guys aren't just ignorant and illiterate, but really insulting and rude. and the fact that finds your responses amusing is very telling.

let me break it down for you virtue signallers.

1. your sexual orientation and identity is your business, your right, 100%. it's cool that those rights are being protected over religious rights, about time.

2. justin trudeau's so far demonstrated that he's more interested in making buddies with canadian muslims than with protecting those gay rights you feel are so important. to the point where canada's letting that particular religion run free in spite of canada's wonderful-in-theory laws. you're cool with gay rights on paper, does that make you cool with trudeau letting honour killings and homophobic aggression continue within that one particular community? he'll listen to them before he cares about lgbtq++!#$%. ari was pointing out why it's not a good idea to get excited about him, he's a trendy new face on old politics.

3. we live in a society that's badly damaged, and instead of trying to heal the damage we're just pushing as hard as we can on the other side of the see-saw to an opposite kind of oppression.

4. identity politics is a big part of this, when you start playing that game you're literally doing precisely what gay rights was initially fighting against, which is labelling and treating minority communities differently. we should all be respectful towards one another, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, regardless of minority status. encode THAT into law. you want to fix shit, fix it. you're lgbtq+ whatever? whatever works for you.

5. your gender identity and sexual orientation do not define you. you're bigger than that. you're your culture, your values, infinitely more than those two simple, should-be-irrelevant axes. they're only relevant as tools of oppression, so instead of pandering to those who would oppress you, leave the labels and fight for human rights for everyone.

6. you might hold all the power over your little feed, flame wars and fighting soft targets like people who actually try to have a conversation with you, but in the big picture you're little people with little impact. hurling accusations? check yourself, little people. let's see you talk like this face to face. don't name-and-shame allies because you're angry with the people who really oppress you but don't have the power to deal with them directly.

rewriting history

it's been bothering me for a little while that there're a lot of posts i haven't redacted that are still linked to by my pages - so if you've ever read my post entitled "summary: the vegan hypocrisy", i've just updated it because i was very, very wrong.

quitting smoking the smart way

[this is actually a repost from june 2010]

the easy way? crap. or at least, for myself and most of the people i know: crap. we don't care about the fear, and we most certainly don't care about the health issues. how do i know this? because we wouldn't have started otherwise.

here we go with the basics: nicotine increases serotonin secretion, so when you're a smoker who's not smoking, you're less happy. or not happy at all.
what tends to happen is that a smoker will witness something that he would have enjoyed otherwise, and to compensate has a cigarette.

this way, the cigarettes become event based. first cup of coffee? cigarette. finishing a great meal? cigarette. beautiful sunset? cigarette. sex? cigarette. even those events that produce serotonin without the use of nicotine are improved by it, so experiencing the same without feels less... satisfying.

additionally, we don't actually enjoy smoking. what we enjoy is the immediate rush.

to make matters worse, the more-than-casual smoker has developed something really insidious: the internal loop that counts down to the next cigarette. whatever you're doing, you're simultaneously thinking of the next smoke break. the good news is that you take breaks - something non-smokers need a better excuse to do, and that's healthy both mentally and physically. the bad news is that when you do eventually manage to stop smoking (an aggravating procedure that only takes about two weeks*) you have a loop that keeps counting down to... nothing.

you can't stop that countdown, so you've got to re-purpose it. i can't tell you how to do that: every person has his own way. sports, art, whatever - just don't turn to food as an answer. exercise will give you the buzz; i'm guessing almost anything interesting / challenging will do.

so that's all the rationale for "the fisher king method":

step 1. pay attention to how little your body appreciates each and every cigarette. no, that's not the taste of meat and potatoes. your lungs do not appreciate the intrusion.

step 2. make sure that you have a support system in place for when you actually quit. make a mantra of "i'm irritated because i'm quitting", because you'll find yourself horrifically aware of everyone else's faults for the two weeks - and the problem is with you. go to the gym, or set up a punching bag in your living room.

step 3. take up a sport - the more extreme the better - or art, or hobby, and go for walks in pretty places. you know - live. and assign your inner loop to whatever you've chosen. hell, if you assign your loop to reading books, you'll suddenly realize that you have tons of time for the classics; the same goes for movies. i hesitate to add cooking to the list, because that could turn into a proxy for replacing smoking with eating.

if any of those steps are a real problem, then just carry on smoking. there's no point in going through life miserable.

* it takes about that much time for your system to realize that there's no external stimulus coming, and that it'll have to take back control of the serotonin release functions.

radio silence

i've been working for my present employer for four months, and for most of those i've been struggling with something that should be pretty damned basic. i've been through countless documents and tutorials and solutions online, the only thing that's worked has only worked when running on a very particular server. nobody's offered me a hand, and on the few occasions that i've posted my code and asked for a review i've received nothing but silence.

so yesterday i asked for another pair of eyes, and this morning i repeated that request - my lead's response was to take over the project and put me on something else. i'm very frustrated that he has time to take over the project, but hasn't been able to spare me a few minutes somewhere along the line to lend me some guidance.

i was excited when i signed on that i'd be working for people with a better understanding of remote cooperation, but i guess i was wrong :/

monday:

chai mitzvah, a fascinating discussion about social laws and inspiring me to see god's evolution along with man through the history of the torah. man is made in god's image, but god is made in man's, and the wrathful, vengeful god from the dawn of humanity appears to develop and mature along with us.

tuesday:

waking up with anxiety because somebody had said something deeply concerning the evening before (trying to enforce certain pronouns), writing (and rewriting) a long letter before being able to return to bed

being with gd for her epidural, arriving late and then waiting for no reason because the receptionist didn't tell us she could go, the doctor making a point of showing me what he was doing and gd feeling a lot of pain (even before he actually made contact) and going into shock

taking mr smear with me to the temple's agm

we're in the car, looking for a parking spot. "did you find a space to live, daddy?"
i was confused, and a little concerned. it took a few repetitions to realize he's confused "lachnot" (to park) with "lichyot" (to live)

wednesday:

waiting at my mom's for the unprofessionals to arrive, showing them how bad the job they'd done was and then showing them the door

mr smear's last day at school, he was pretty chilled about it and of course wouldn't say goodbye to any of his teachers, all of whom were particularly emotional because the school's shutting.

mr smear's second swimming lesson, complete disinterest and responding "no" to everything until i found the right motivation: i told him that paddling is what aquaman does, and he's now really good at it...

coffee with my mom, then home to shower and eat and sleep

today:

around 2am waking up with really bad rls, gd helping me with a painful leg massage

waking up really early to get a couple of extremely frustrating work hours in, effectively crashing when mr smear woke up but gd was out of it so i had to manage him myself until after the nanny arrived. i gulped down some coffee for the disappointing meeting i mentioned at the beginning of this post, then drove through to sea point to meet the president of our congregation for a long and interesting conversation about ideology, judaism, and things we can and should do for the benefit of the community at large. i then drove through to town to pick up the mixer that i ordered a few weeks ago which only arrived today, arranged for the handyman to come and install it soon and realized a bit later that we're not supposed to be doing any work in the apartments for the next month (i'll claim it's an emergency, which it kinda is). i then met with sailor for lunch and coffee and strategy for a couple of hours, then stopped by the mall for grocery shopping and to test a new patent screw length (worked perfectly), then came home and lay down for a bit.

massage tool + pressure point = rls relief (albeit temporary), but later mr smear had an "accident" in the shower (fortunately he jumped out of the bath bucket before it dropped) and i properly put my back out cleaning up... (although i think it's recovered a bit since then)

now i've got a whole bunch of shit to do, and zero motivation to do almost anything. i need a freakin' break.

...

i feel like crap.

a weekend with no end in sight

i refuse to work on the sabbath, unless it's work that inspires me. my sonnetcomix project inspires me, so i dedicate my "downtime" to it when i'm not actively running around after mr smear or playing games with him (video games and books are primarily daddy's domain). but this weekend's efforts were hard, i've made a whole bunch of teespring mugs only to delete them because the two people i trust most were disapproving of the results.

and then yesterday, while putting together notes for my podcast (see header above for links), i discovered that there's another important chunk of background material that one needs in order to fully "get" the sonnets, so that's gonna be a thing.

...

friday:

a long, rough day trying to wrap my head around weird promievent behaviour

mr smear slept through the temple service on friday evening, but woke up for dinner.

saturday:

how did we end up going to the waterfront mall on a saturday? i was pleased to see that there's a graphic novel adaptation of the odyssey available, but mr smear's a bit young for that kind of visual violence so we went with a spongebob comic which he's now very possessive about. faraway birthday parties and gd at a friend's bachelorette. candlelighting and early bedtimes for me and mr smear, at least.

yesterday:

mr smear's learned the title sequence to he-man / masters of the universe, but...

a great plant lunch, sailor coming over for a visit and then a big and enjoyable family evening at my aunt's in memory of my grandfather. and then a very long night sorting out the latest podcast episode

today:

an early morning, achieving success before rushing to the gym and joining the weekly meeting a few minutes late, a long coffee with a gym friend discussing cryptonomics, a good workout and then... work.

birthdays and busies

let's go backwards?

the past few days have been rough, i've been exhausted and worn out no matter how much sleep i've gotten and it's been really hard to get much work done. i have had some success, work-wise, but not as much as i'd like.

this morning so far:

lots more house music reminiscing than working

yesterday:

a sudafed and a caffeinated chocolate before starting this post

unpleasant post-social-media-fail tension, mr smear falling asleep between gd reading to us and me grabbing the next book, hannukah candle lighting with a friend and her kid, the frenemies either getting along great or fighting

rushing to pick up emergency groceries before load shedding, which was cancelled

tough debugging at my mom's coffee shop

our neighbour locking himself out of his apartment without his phone

picking up mr smear late because i'd been so into publishing my work

a solid morning of work after doing some campaigning

dropping off mr smear with gd and telling the teacher how we met

a couple of hours trying and failing to wake up early to work

wednesday 5th:

drinking a strong cup of coffee before working but crashing anyway.

an enjoyable drink (and dinner) with dystopia and schpat

the most important thing was mr smear's first swimming lesson in a couple of years, after falling in the pool a few weeks ago he was terrified but i managed to negotiate him into the water, and after a lot of cautiously trying to get him to have fun he finally relaxed and by the time we were done he didn't want to leave - the relief was immense

a play-date at our house with the kids doing their thing while we talked and i got practically no work done

a decent gym session before work and hitting the punching bag for the first time in ages, getting no work done because i spent the morning discussing blockchain strategies with a friend and dealing with (and stressing about) medical insurance for gd's next epidural (turned out the timing was really lucky AND the GAP insurance proved helpful)

tuesday 4th:

the sadness learning that the arthur's road synagogue burned down

tuesday morning lost to a neurologist visit with gd and then waiting at mojo market for literally no reason and having to rush home to let the cleaning lady in

monday 3rd:

waking up early to the party still going until the rain started, but finally finishing the podcast episodes

monday / tuesday integrating and being really happy with my coworker's changes

sunday 2nd:

night partying

feeling the sunburn while running around the company gardens with mr smear

taking mr smear to see my great aunt and her daughter and granddaughter and walk along the beachfront, remembering to put sunscreen on mr smear but not on myself

saturday 1st december:

beyond meat burger at the vegan market,

friday 30th november:

running to get to the jolly roger on time, missing it, trying to work while gd shopped, rushing to return to the jolly roger and hitting heavy lunchtime traffic, missing the boat but getting a short ride after a quick bite and a refund

a big family dinner that was generally fun, my disappointment in my niece sleep-training her son, upsetting a camps bay homeowner with politics and later thinking about a solution that would've worked for both of us

the future is yesterday

how we think about superpowers and how we think about AI are very similar, our evolution has been historically fast but a lot more gradual experientially. look at us having a real time conversation with the hive mind right now, learning any skill we need as soon as we need it, telepathically pressing each others' buttons from around the world, slowly but gradually being assisted more and more by hardware and software that enhances and equalises (prosthetics, drugs)... one of the reasons most of us have a gratitude deficiency is that our baseline expectations have dramatically increased at the same time as our awareness has broadened to include ALL the issues around the world simultaneously, and our power to affect change hasn't caught up fast enough with our rapidly evolving need to be heroes.

crossover cable

managing to get up early to work, mr smear feverish and having to stay home, gd struggling with back pain, taking mr smear to the doctor and being generally quite chipper, dropping him off at home and meeting sailor for a long talk about free markets and decolonization, buying an ethernet cable and usb adaptor, heading to his "office" (shared workspace), being unable to connect to the device and then remembering that device-to-device needs a crossover cable, remembering that i had an old spare router at home, picking it up, fighting with shitty software for a long time before finally getting it right, grabbing coffee and chatting for a while before realizing that it was time to scram, an interesting chat about domestic violence with the uber driver after a seemingly successful dating intervention*, mr smear doing well in ink, a late but easy shower and bedtime, another half episode of castle, watching catch me if you can while destroying bloons, juggling finances, then finally - now, around 12.40am - trying to get some more work done.

* it worked both ways, i told sailor a story and his takeaway was enlightening: the moment a meeting is established as a date, chances are that it's either going to be successful or the end of the relationship. a date is really the wrong way to meet someone because you risk losing a potential friend. the best way to date, in my experience, is to forget about dating and focus on doing stuff that enriches and inspires you personally. you'll have richer, more meaningful experiences and you'll be more likely to form social bonds that will lead to real, healthy relationships.

building on decolonization

Cape Town is suffering from an extreme example of a syndrome that's plaguing the entire world, a syndrome that is caused by infrastructure that is geared towards supporting populations in the mid-20th century and that is woefully inadequate and inappropriate given current demands, let alone near and distant future demands. These infrastructure deficiencies - and inefficiencies - directly contribute to the extreme inequality of opportunity that plagues our nation, and while apartheid policies did have a role in determining which races are more disadvantaged the underlying mechanisms in play today are no different that in any other country where populations living in urban centres have more access to opportunity than those in the periphery. A reduction in relative poverty will also go a long way towards reducing the frightening levels of crime we face.

This is an outline of steps we need to take as a society if we're to uplift communities and move towards a reduction of poverty and general improvement of living conditions for all.

First, it must be noted that most of our economic issues can be attributed to government interference with the free market. All of our governments are plagued with selfishness, greed, ignorance and corruption, what we need is to wean ourselves off technologically as fast as possible. That's obviously easier said than done, but there are some things in the interim that our governments can do to ease burdens on both sides of the equation. The first thing is to let us solve our own problems without fining us, as we've seen in the Western Cape where we've been penalized for reducing our water use and for private solar power installations.

Second, we desperately need to let go of our ideas of “heritage"; if we're going to talk about decolonizing things, we should start with this. We don't need cities that look the way our parents remember them as much as we need cities that service its citizens. We simply do not have the resources available for people to live in houses in the middle of densely populated areas, urban areas must expand vertically and the wealthier citizens who can afford the construction and the commute costs can build their mansions in the peripheries.

Gentrification is not actually a problem, but a lack of affordable housing is. The less high-density construction we allow the less options lower income brackets will have, and we're forcing lower earners out of city centres and into expensive cars and commutes. That's an enormous unofficial tax in addition to everything else.

Any new construction in urban centres should have a minimum legal density, and as much communal gardening space must be provided as is practical, in particular rooftops and around the circumference of each level. Urban farming is an extremely important concept that must be encouraged as much as possible. It's also recommended that every large apartment complex have its own safe play areas for families; we used to play in the streets and know our neighbours, which was important for fostering healthy communities.

Low cost housing in urban centres is as counter-productive as any other kind of affirmative action, instead of equalizing populations it simply repositions inequalities along different axes. You might help a few families with low-cost housing, but at the cost of pushing higher-income families out and it doesn't make the slightest difference to the rest of the low-income families. If you're not making a positive difference for the majority of people, there's a good chance your solution is actually a part of the problem.

Government housing should be as dense as possible, and should be positioned as close to the city as possible. In Cape Town, we are very lucky to have two problems that can be solved together - that of available land close to urban centres, and that of exposed and unprotected train tracks. If we were to construct tunnels over the tracks and build large residential and commercial complexes over and around those tunnels we could not only have a defensible underground* transport network, but we could significantly reduce the load on that network by bringing people closer to their employment opportunities and infrastructure.

Third, we must embrace the remote work revolution. There are many sectors that can and should make a remote work option available, and companies should receive economic incentives to do so. There should also be incentives for companies to make products and services available online. This is not just to reduce traffic, fossil fuel waste and expenses all-round, but will go a long way to levelling the playing field for all income groups.

Finally, we need to completely rethink education. Most of our population lacks resources and facilities to learn and up-skill, and that makes it nigh-impossible to improve their station in life. Poor people don't need charity, they need to be empowered. Even if they could afford the time and money to learn, they wouldn't be empowered by sitting in classrooms learning theory; we need mentorship programs, available in their areas because people with no money or earning potential can't be expected to travel. Companies should be incentivized to send missions, mobile offices, into the poorer areas, to provide on-the-job training in practical skills. We need to subsidize mobile coverage for areas that telecommunications don't find lucrative, with free data available for educational websites and applications.

In conclusion, we, the people, need to effect change and create real solutions to real problems, without waiting on our government bodies to do it for us. We all deserve better, rich or poor, black or white, this is our country - and we're all in this together.

---
* artificially underground, of course.

headaches

headache? or migraine? not sure if sick, or allergic, or exhausted, or stressed, or dehydrated...

i got up super early to take the car to the mechanic, walked home thinking about homeless couriers, took mr smear to school with gd, walked down to my mom's coffee shop where we had chai while the hardware store dude took care of the patent screws, returning home, damaging a door discovering that the "professionals" who'd installed the locks hadn't used the same kinds of mechanisms at all, walking to a locksmith's and setting up my next tattoo session along the way, continuing the morning with hard, frustrating work, picking up mr smear who'd woken up from a nightmare and stayed in the mode - apparently it was about my brother being injured, so i calmed him down a bit by showing him i'd checked and he was fine - trying to get some work done at the coffee shop but the headache started, rushing out (fast, breathless walk) to the mechanic to pick up the car and learn that they'd replaced the light and spent ages on diagnostics but couldn't find anything wrong AND weren't going to charge me, chatting with my mom on the way home, detouring to the mall to do some emergency grocery shopping

godspeed you! black emperor while chilling with mr smear who wasn't feeling well

a little comics campaign progress with the illustrator, sailor not pitching so taking it easy and going to bed early (huh! it's just about midnight and i was ready to crash ages ago, why am i still here?)

argh!!

my work on a blockchain sdk is extremely frustrating, every step forward seems to come with two steps back. it's 1.30am and i have to get to bed, my head's cloudy with exhaustion and i just wanna get this damned thing DONE already...

a pleasant morning with mr smear, and a particularly joyful moment watching him beating levels in ink. driving home in a rush to get to the biokineticist when my car started beeping at me with no warning lights, prompting me to cancel my appointment and book the car in for a checkup in the morning (i need to take it there in less than six hours)

loads of distractions and general tiredness, sending future mr smear an email for the first time since just after he was born, getting some good work done before picking him up, a weird meltdown before getting in the elevator, napping when i felt dizzy (neck nerves?), taking little batman to the gardens and having a great time, convincing him to come down a wobbly ladder in spite of his fear and being super proud, but he chased that with some really pathetic behaviour after a little fall and halfway home i was losing sympathy fast, dinner and a shark documentary, a good shower and really nice bedtime (i told him his origin story), an episode of castle, then working really hard (ie continuing to bash my head against the wall)

moments

that moment at 3am yesterday morning when mr smear woke up yelling at me but before i could get to his room i hear him cry "i wanna c-calm down"... and he did.

sunday morning's coffee with my little cousin who's just got back from a year in israel, being really impressed with his views and offering him to mentor him in a project i want to get off the ground

chilli peppers for breakfast (falafel laffa) reminding me that it's been just over eight years since protoplasm and i travelled india together

the rush to get mr smear to school after a pleasant morning and him hurting himself getting out the car

calling a bike ride early because something's been hurting his abdomen and hoping it's not a hernia

slow struggles with wanchain development

putting out two more podcasts over the weekend, feeling really pleased with what this project is pushing me to do even if it did cost me a fair amount of sleep

a lot of frustration with the "theatrical three's" but also a lot of proud moments, even if i don't recall specifics

trains, planes and psychopaths

there's a stigma attached to mental illness which i find utterly bizarre. in my opinion, if you're feeling relaxed and at peace tied up with hostages riding in the back of a rickety, crowded van driving waaaaay too fast on a winding road through an empty desert that's liable to either flip or explode at any moment while everyone's yelling "slow down!" at the driver who's wearing noise-cancelling headphones and occasionally taking his hand off the wheel to point to signs on the glass behind him saying "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" and "BEWARE TERRORISTS", then you're the one who's absolutely nuts.

it's all the depressed and anxious and crazy people who have, consciously or unconsciously, taken stock of the situation and realized that something's not right but they don't quite know what to do about it.

i know most of you - some of you being the people closest to me on this planet - think i'm just full of it, and i get it, i get the desire to just dismiss unpleasantness as ramblings and get back to the day to day. what the hell are any of us going to change, anyway?

but acknowledging that there's an oncoming train really is the only way to get off the tracks. human history is one long story of evolution and revolution. there's hope on the dark side. there's always hope.

sabbath peace

yesterday:

dropping mr smear off together so i could join my meeting from the car, taking gd home, paying the plumbing supply store a visit, walking to buy paton (spelling?!) screws and working from my mom's, workman who were supposed to be there from 9am arriving at 1.45pm and expecting me to let them in, picking up mr smear and having him shadow me with his little toolkit while i fixed our bedroom door handle, coffee shop work and running into my nieces and rushing to buy stuff and get home

thanksgiving dinner with friends and a wired and tired mr smear who hadn't napped and was really rough, a pleasant evening once he fell asleep on my shoulder, working a bit before gd decided she needed a bedtime story herself (her first time hearing the written harry potter) and passing out myself

today :

waking up around 5.30 to scribble notes about city infrastructure, then working through until around 8am and becoming increasingly vexed with and stressed about my project, dropping mr smear off at school, picking up a gift for the afternoon, hitting the gym with gd, jacuzzi chats, leaving late to pick up mr smear and getting stuck in crazy traffic so he was almost the last kid left

porting my code back from the macbook to my windows laptop where it worked beautifully (!!!), checking it in before driving to a very active superhero birthday party in hout bay, a little too much sun, getting home, getting ready and taking mr smear to the gardens synagogue

an upsetting and insulting encounter with the community security, a bit of an awkward start, chasing naughty kids and then handing them over to my mom and mr smear's friend's mom while i joined his dad for the service, an odd service but overall nice enough, more chasing children but with added naughtiness, walking home through the company's garden in the dark, kiddush and struggling to get mr smear to eat dinner, showering, reading him to bed and being thrilled when he informed me that he needed to pee just as i was about to turn out the light (and he passed out right after he was done), bloons and dinner and early bedtime

after 2am

finally making good progress after two days of debugging, meeting people at the gym, lots of windy weather, a mid-week birthday party, the class party / performance not really exceeding expectations, some exciting podcast progress

kinda regret

midnight carob-covered turkish delight, tastes amazing, not sure how my digestive tract's feeling about it. that was after chocolate shot milk which chased salt water for the rls, but to be fair i think the mosquitoes were bothering me almost as much.

long day, almost missing my meeting, some work progress but struggling with bugs, sitting across the table from sailor's friend who recognized me from dinner last year and convincing the whole table to try the vegan lunch

mr smear and the case of his missing photo, a desperate nap and the struggle to make coffee after the nanny left, or brazilian friends at the super park and mr smear doing aerial obstacles without me

home for a he-man documentary and dinner and shower and bedtime and nodding off

strong weak end

it's just past 1am on a monday morning, i've just uploaded the latest episode of my podcast to soundcloud and am rendering the video for youtube (why the hell does imovie take so damned long?!)

friday 16th:

friday night at the temple mr smear wasn't the least bit interested in being inside - he was thoroughly enjoying himself running me around and playing with the rabbi's kids, and the four of us were having such fun it was ridiculous. he passed out on the way home, my mom coached us on walking him to the toilet in his sleep - the first time was weird but fine, the second time was hysterical because he was so deeply asleep he just flopped face down onto the floor and then dangled precariously off his little toilet

saturday 17th:

gd took a meditation course this weekend, which she found immensely helpful. while she was there on saturday i took mr smear to the mall to buy birthday presents and return crap microphones. i can't walk into a book store and not buy something for us, and mr smear and i started reading the graphic novel adaptation of the hobbit over a coffee and babyccino and we are IN to this stuff!

he was also quite satisfied with me being forced to exchange rather than get refunded for the microphones and picking up a captain america shield keyring. which became a learning opportunity because he loves it, but was sad about not getting a hulk action figure.

taking him home for some quiet time and lunch (and finally finishing the long earth - which is amazing until the last chapter, which was anticlimactic), then picking up gd and returning home with a sleeping mr smear, taking advantage of his downtime and resting before the rabbi, his wife and their daughter arrived for tea. translating one of rabbi nachman's texts was an interesting experience, and the kids (including gd) had a great time.

passing out getting mr smear to bed, waking up just before midnight,

sunday 18th:

and being unable to get back to sleep (rls), destroying bloons until 3am

struggling to get up and take gd to her class, driving to the other side of cape town for a birthday party, which was nice, relaxed and mr smear's allergy was taken into consideration for which i was very grateful. an amusing moment learning that the birthday girl had exclaimed "mr smear will love it" when they disneyfied her nails

rushing to leave to get all the way to gd on time - discovering i'd forgotten to strap mr smear in *just* before hitting the highway and having to find a spot to pull over - getting all the way there and receiving a message to say she'd managed to get herself home. returning home for a few minutes, then heading to mouille point for brunch at mary-ann's emporium with my mom. the food wasn't as amazing as i was led to expect, but it was definitely good and the experience was excellent.

*sigh* being fined for not having updated the car license :(

trying and failing to nap, then going to a park in heavy winds for our friends' kid's birthday party. for a couple of reasons we were the only people to show up, one of them being the wind, the other being the lack of warning, but the birthday boy's adopted grandparents offered to host us when things got too hectic and we not only had a nice time but our hostess turned out to be an editor and connected me with someone who might be able to assist with my sonnet project!

bringing the party back to our place, a freaky experience fleeing our apartment because our neighbour allegedly spilled turpentine and we thought there was a gas leak (i kinda suspect he's running a meth lab), a really fun evening that went on till late, eventually giving them a ride home and coming back to write and record the new podcast episode and get some paid work done.

quickly, it's the weekend!

this morning i heard a noise in the toilet and went to investigate - i found mr smear wiping the potty clean after peeing and emptying it into the toilet. i don't even know where to put all this weird pride. when i brought him home from school in the afternoon, he wanted to jump off a four foot high wall but didn't want to let go off my hands - until i explained to him that being brave means being strong even when you're scared, and he freaking DID IT.

on the other hand, he did suddenly throw an inexplicable tantrum when we got into the elevator. he's only three.

speaking of which! i republished my first recording - the background to reading the sonnets - as a podcast today and i'm REALLY excited by how it came out. please give it a listen!

---

it's been a rough week and i've had a really tough time getting any work done; both with the amount of functional hours i've had and with wrapping my head around what it is i'm supposed to be doing. i've had some breakthroughs today and that's a great way to hit the weekend :)

sailor came over last night, we had to sit in the garden for a while because we wouldn't let him bring dairy product into the apartment, and then we discovered that the security camera we've taken months to sit down and work with didn't come with a power supply or network cable in the packaging. wtf.

---

gd and i had a couple of trying incidents over the last couple of day and we were in the thick of it yesterday when i had a revelation: not giving a f*** is possible in a positive way. i've been saying for a while that people need to welcome diversity, but celebrate unity, and that's as true between a husband and wife as it is on a national level. the moment we had that idea in words, we simply stopped letting about our fundamental disagreement rule our relationship. long may this last.

---

my tattoo is officially past the three week mark, which is a huge relief even though it's another week to go before i can swim. and another three weeks to go before i do this again - what have i gotten myself into?! (O_o)

---

right, weekend.

not quite journaling

i feel the need to share my frustrations with gd's neurosurgeon, who never invoiced us (the emails magically went missing) and then set debt collectors on us with the wrong contact information. now he's accusing us of fraud, i'm ready for an entirely unnecessary legal fight and gd's freaking out because she's worried he'll interfere with her getting the medical attention she needs.

while i'm here...

i've been having a really hard time the last few days with a lack of energy, and i haven't gotten nearly as much work done as i should have. that hasn't been helped by really stupid obstacles to using source control (using sourcetree to connect to github on a mac is tricky).

today's tuesday 13th, mr smear wet his bed this morning for the first time since he began sleeping in undies and i'm pretty sure it's only because he wouldn't pee before going to sleep - otherwise he's been amazing the last few days, the potty training is finally done and his attitude and mood have greatly improved across the board.

on sunday i created my first audio podcast, which i'm really proud of, and i'm beginning to script the remakes of my campaign videos in the new format because it's so much easier to consume!

the weekend was mostly a long playdate with our friends who even joined us at the temple on friday night.

last week ended with finally beginning to make progress on the frontend project (for work) and selling the damned couch, so that was great. i think that not keeping track of the details has been healthy, if i've forgotten anything important, then **** it.

...

politics - more disappointment at the current activity in israel :(

boxing on a tightrope

i've just unfriended someone for racist comments, i find it ridiculous that from an entire history of humans being shitty to each other the takeaway by minorities who have suffered from it is "well, it's okay when WE do it". there's no shame in examining and even laughing at differences between races, sexes, and anything else, and no shame in enjoying the good ones. but there shouldn't be any "punching down" or "punching up" going on, not either direction. it doesn't take us forward. it shouldn't make us feel good about ourselves.

we should welcome diversity, we should acknowledge and accept what makes us different... but we should celebrate what unites us, we should look for our common causes. i don't care how unfair the world has been to you, if your response is to perpetuate the sickness rather than heal the wound you're not welcome in my feed, and not welcome in my physical space either.

the naughty corner

there's a level of awfulness i wasn't expecting to feel today, a day that started off around 3am with gd accidentally spilling fruit juice from her bedside table and then continued with a 6am wakeup by smear and his whining about which shirt he wanted to wear... he was uncooperative when i became time to leave and made me carry him to the car, then spent the entire drive to school yelling at me that he wanted his sandals on (which he'd refused to put on at the door) and to stop singing (i really hate that), and then launched into his now-usual whine of "i don't want to play with my friends". so i told him he didn't have to play with them, that if he continued to behave this way he wouldn't have any friends, and that he could spend his day by himself in the corner if he wanted to.

when i said goodbye, he was literally sitting on the floor in the corner feeling sorry for himself. i'm not sure if i did the right thing or not, but it really, really feels shitty.

---wednesday 31st october:

starting the day well, and slowly, lice drama when dropping mr smear off, driving gd to her not-hypnotherapy session and unproductively spending the hour fiddling with ssl certificates

sudden exhaustion striking on the ride home in spite of plenty of coffee, crashing for an hour, waking up feeling ill and learning that gd had been giving me decaf coffee all day without telling me we'd run out of the real thing

shopping (for coffee) on the way to picking up mr smear, finding him having an allergic reaction to something (minor, just a bit of a rash), dropping the two of them at home and heading to the coffee shop to figure out how redux works, chatting with the tattoo artist along the way (he's happy, which made me happy, although i'm beginning to be bothered by the shadow of the quill)

coming home to dinner and playing toy story 3 on the ps3, playing with mr smear for a good while and getting motion sickness (he was fine, if course), gd suddenly breaking out in a rash herself and having to rush her to the hospital, mr smear and i being forced to wait outside and entertain ourselves (fortunately he enjoyed my reading to him and playing hide and seek with a security guard)

getting home late, putting him to bed and crashing for an hour or two, then getting up with rls to care for my tattoo and create a campaign subreddit

thursday 1st november:

setting my computer to install a vm with elementaryos and going back to bed just before 1am with a sensitive neck, waking up restless with the rudimentals - soundboy killa in my head for an hour or two and then sleeping until just before 7am

[scribbling notes three days later, missing a lot and being confused by some of my phone's mis-captured words]

a good work meeting but a frustrating day at work, working out of the gym and the frontend code demoralising me, leaving the gym just after 4pm and traffic being so bad it took half an hour just to get out of the parking lot...

sailor visiting to work, too much talking but getting a little bit of sonnet comix strategizing going

friday 2nd:

a full morning of sonnet comix planning with sailor, intending to work in the afternoon but after picking up mr smear having to do a bunch of things (including shopping and take care of mr smear while gd got a haircut), then all going to the temple together

mr smear making us so proud, standing on the bimah for quite a few songs facing a packed congregation and singing at the top of his voice, then having a great time with the rabbi's kid and a bunch of other children

my mom joining us for dinner, watching daniel sloss' brilliant netflix special "dark"

saturday 3rd:

a full morning at the mall, promising mr smear a pirate ship cruise for my birthday, a really fun busking pair (and awkwardly but enthusiastically participating with a funny dance), nap time, joining hyperviper and his wife and buddies for drinks at rick's, falling asleep while waiting for sailor who never pitched

sunday 4th:

a pancake playdate for breakfast, gd helping me with a campaign video before we headed out to my sister's for a lovely afternoon braai and finally meeting my great-nephew (awesome little guy), shopping and gummi bears and a pleasant bedtime, crashing for a bit, working for half an hour,

monday 5th:

writing these notes for half an hour then returning to work (study) until 1.45am

a pretty decent sleep, a bit of difficulty waking up, mr smear waking up in good spirits but being really shitty when we arrived at school, being rude and not wanting to go to his classroom, then eventually (after i carried him over my shoulder from the playground) giving up once his teacher got hold of him

stressed for my meeting, but sharing my frustrations and receiving support, a little bit of sloss' dark with gd before heading to the gym for a miserable couple of hours (both the work and my sinuses), a really nice moment picking up mr smear who jumped into my arms, then a sad one as we arrived home and he got sulky...

a really good (virtual) meeting at the coffee shop, working while listening to joe rogan stand-up, coming home to dinner and half playing with mr smear and half working on my next tattoos, with gd giving me a hand

showertime ending in tears, followed by a surprising and sad conversation with mr smear who told us he didn't have a home - apparently he was satisfied with our response, but only time will tell...

bloons, downtime, pirates of the caribbean, mindless time, bedtime