Are we there yet ? ...

Well.. almost.. a fairly large milestone was hit today. My funds that I transfered from the UK into SA account to pay off all my creditcard debt.. it cleared into my cheque account and so I quickly logged in this morning to do some transfers and pay off the budget account and those kind of stuffs.

I am officially creditcard debt free. I have paid off my UK creditcard ( which was used to live of for a month) on Monday when I got paid and so today marks the end of an era in debt stuff.. (for the time being, but I think that buying house and the likes will be a little way off still)..

I however still owe my dad a fair chunk of money, but he's keen that I work with that for him over here in some mid to long term investment options.. which I'm looking into myself as well, hopefully soon to be able to make some little extra here and there on a few stocks over the next 10 - 15 years... but will play that idea around a few other people I've met up with lately.

Will do a nice long post over the weekend again with a little more time.

Greets to all..
Z

Life.. it is good

In all fairness I could rant and rave about how I still don't have broadband at home, how I still have debt to pay off to both bank and family and how I should have done this or should have done that, and should not have done that... but we all have those...we all have tough times and we all have things we shouldn't have really done.

Today this mini post aint about that, is just to say that things are actually fine, life is really actually good. I've got a bit of a scratchy throat, and Grieks might be hitting a bit of a cold, but there are no real big dramas in our lives at the moment. We have a great place to stay (roof over our heads, more like ceiling though), great flatmate who's planned a "wee" whirlwind tour of her home called Scotland for mid August ( she's even taking us with on the sailing boat she's chartered for her dad's 60th birthday). We've promised to go show her the sites and sounds of Cape Town come end of 2007 when she'll be making a turn in CT, of which we'll make sure now won't we.

Feeling more and more positive about work and everything around me than I had the last 2 weeks or so. It's amazing what a change of project/responsibility can do to a person's sense of belonging.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel I belong here, just feel a little more in place though :)

Hope everyone else out there is having a nice day, even if it is a rainy one.

10-4

Home...

.. missing it and the likes does get to one over here. No matter how tough your skin is and how hard you think you are, everyone sometimes gets that pang that hits us all as we think back to home, where we came from.

That said, this just really made me sad : http://www.theherald.co.za/herald/news/n03_14072006.htm . Here the police were doing their duty and the mentality in SA is that they are causing trouble, when all they are doing is stopping another person destabilising the SA electricity grid illegally, something which has lately (the last6 months or so) just caused loads of trouble.

For SA to survive and move forward there is going to have to be a huge mental shift for the masses. It seems unfortunate that we haven't been able to trust our goverment to help all of the people of our country to make that mind shift from "The world owes me this and that because of history.." to "We need to work together to make for a progressive South African nation".

Just an arb post after having read an arb article.

Till another time.
Z

Time to pick it all up again..

Have been having a bit of a downer week, and things like work and personal esteem has been suffering a bit under it, not due to home sickness or anything like that, just a general feeling of not being good enough for the job that I'm being paid a fair salary for. Everyone else I talk to keeps on telling me I'm talking through my nose, that I'm good enough to be paid the amount I am, and in some sense I tend to believe them, but the perfectionist in me never sleep, and I mean never, sometimes wake up in middle of the night thinking some really sad things like ... "I could have coded that stored proc so much better by doing this and that and blah blah..." and the weird thing is that I tend to get back to the code I wrote, reviewing it (normally on own time), and thinking.. actually.. it's very good code cause I can use it somewhere else again..

All that said ( this aint going to be a long post though), there are loads of things I wish to learn and I have a bit of a plan on how to do it. I'll be testing it over the next 2 - 3 weeks to see if I can keep at it for as long as I need to make it all habit.

There will be a little bit of a glitch in the making of the habit, the London Motorshow on the 21st of July, being that I've taken the day off work as well, to go look at some really really kewl cars :) And then in the evening go to UB40 concert... I know I know.. it's not my normal music, but I've heard they are really good live, and to be honest, they were the only concert that jumped out when I was looking at the concert list.

Had been keen on going to the Air Tattoo (http://www.airtattoo.com) next weekend, but in all fairness don't really have the finances to do so.And on the other hand I really don't have a nice camera with kewl lens to make it worth the while either.

Anyhoo ppl, it's late ( relatively speaking ) and I have a new regime to start.

Hope all will have a great remainding week ahead.

Greets
Z

Been a week...

since previous posting, actually, think it's been a bit longer than that.. ah well.

The time past : (anyone who's ever written me an email and gotten a reply should recognise this format.. those who don't.. welcome to Zodan standard answer mode).
Back to the point.. time past since previous post. Uhmm, ja, not much really to say though.. work has been moving forward, although on Thursday things started to take a dive for the bad side of living in the UK. The british in general (and by that I mean the English, generally not the Irish/Scottish, have a tendancy to be slackers of note... it seems the virus which infects them hit me for a short stint of a cold over Thursday and Friday. Not proud of this, I enjoy my work to pieces, and enjoy learning new things every day, which I have to admit I should give Mr Doswaul a lot of credit, he's a good teacher ( though not mentor, there being a fair difference there, my previous coding boss is a mentor ). He ( Mr D), points one in the general direction and then allows the padawon to learn on his own, without showing to much, but generally giving a good idea of what is to be done.

Since then a few things have happend though. Previous friend has contacted me in regards to a possible partnership in a few business models that he is interested in going into. Knowing that said friend has a fair amount of investment capital would be a tad of an understatement.

The development though has put me into thinking mode, not that I haven't been in the mode for a long time though, this just kind of moved it up a notch I suppose.

Blah blah, time to just babble.

It's 23:45. Sitting in the living room looking out over the view, only person awake in the flat. Lights on dim in the living room, great open London night, great view as well. DLR going past on the King George V line, listening to calm relaxed tunes on notebook, in contemplative mood. Especially about the things I really miss. My two best buddies in Cape Town. The really great times that were had on numerous occasions, from going to huge lan in a town where you'd never expect it to just lanning at Oct's place, introducing Grieks to the guys at a lan, [ John Mayer - Comfortable ] , to going out and getting completely clobbered on my b-day with the guys and Grieks (who had saved me from a lot of embarresment for hiding the "extra" drinks :) Thanx my lovely, still owe you big for that one :), to playing risk with everyone and drinking Vodka, staying up really late on week nights and just chatting about the games we were going to write, checking out the stars and Saturn @ Micon's place with the telescope. Going to the beach with Oct and flying kites, screwing it up and getting lines cut.. going to Corner House on Friday nights, going home at really great hours in the morn on a Sat morning, and then having a cuppa at Oct's place before taking that leisurely walk up to my parent's place to go put down my head on a pillow, just before the sun would pick up his from his slumber.

:) Having Cledan lay in the living room waiting for me, and then snugging into bed with me if even for just a few hours of laying at my feet, while my senses tried to loose the smell of ciggies that would be klinging to my shirt and other clothes. Small price to pay for really good times with the ones really close to the point of my heart.

I miss my friends, more over, I miss having them together and enjoying those great times together, even if just playing pool in Durbanville, or Risk nights at Oct's place, or Lans.

Reality will hit me some or other time I suppose. Until that happens one day, those are the times that I hang on to in my memories.

Other one that sticks so vividly in my mind was the drive at 23:00 at night over the Gordon's Bay pass towards Kleinbaai (favourite kuier place), on the night of Grieks' graduation last year. Was such a beautiful, wind-silent, full moon evening. Had driven the whole day though, so was a bit tired, but the views at night with a full moon was just absolutely stunning, one of those few moments in life where you forget about all the worries in the world that you have or might have (and this was a fair huge feat considering I was worried about freelance work I was doing, having to organise everything for the few days that Grieks' family was down in Cape Town for, and then organising everything to fly up to JHB and have tickets and visas and the likes all ready for going to the UK.. a lot of things to worry about in short).

Memories since being here ? You might ask, or might not.

In no particular order : Taking Grieks to the pub at Founder's Arms, going to the Queen Mary with her and friends, the way I tickted her off by having us walk all the way from London Bridge to Bermondsey station on our 3 year anniversary, uhmm, ja not a good one, seeing Grieks smile when she's happy either by friends coming to visit or us just taking a stroll down here and there in London, Grieks finding the flat, going to movies with Grieks, the London Dive show. There are a lot more though.

Anyone who's gotten this far in this particular post should really go get a nice cup of coffee now.. back already ? Was a quick cuppa ? :) Take a nice long sip, close your eyes as you savour that taste..... nice hey ? Get that very same sensation almost every morning when I wake up and walk out the room and at night while sitting like this and staring out the big window into the wide open view.

[Sidenote]: Having a bit of a trouble installing RedHat 7.0 with Microsoft Virtual PC (they took over Connectix who wrote it up to version 7 I think). Why only RedHat 7.0 you might ask, being that Fedora and Enterprise is out there... well, it's a server config for a business opportunity,need to set it up on my notebook and sort out how I'll be interacting with it from Windows as well :).. feels really nice to get back into new things again, last month or so at work hasn't been like that.

Well, it be late, and I should really be getting into bed for a nice little lay in tomorrow, hopefully that is. There are some plans to go visit some friends. Maybe I should just get up early and sort out some life things.

Have a good one all.. and to all those in SA, we keep you all in our hearts and miss you all a lot.

Z, out.