The Part of Life often Forgotten

I type this blog post, sitting on a King size bed, looking out over the veranda, at the sun slowly setting over the mountains, with the underfloor heating generating a cozy heat… Very different from my Durban life, where underfloor heating is unheard of, the view is of the sea, rather than the mountains, and I can almost see where I work from the flat balcony. Work stress is never quite forgotten.

This weekend we travelled to Curry’s Post in the KZN midlands and stayed at Mulberry Hill B&B, as a friend, Lauren, was getting married in the vicinity. What a pleasure! We were placed in a cottage, overlooking a trout dam. There was a little Bistro on site, where you could have almost any pancake you could think of during the day, both sweet and savoury. The cottage was beautifully kept, even providing a cat for our entertainment. I’ve never seen such an active cat out on the prowl. Someone had innocently left some biltong in a packet out on the veranda and the cat hunted it down and boy did he moan when I closed the packet so he couldn’t get to it. He followed us all the way from breakfast on the sunny veranda to our cottage and proceeded to hide under the bed spread and meeau if we happened to lift the bed spread up.

The wedding was interesting. The bride looked lovely and the Pastor who married them gave such a simple, yet profound sermon and explained everything beautifully.

He explained how the bride had to include “she will obey the husband” in her vows but that for 99% of the decisions made, they should discuss them and agree together, but for the 1% where that is not possible, the wife has to obey the husband. He explained that in order to make it through the ups and downs of life, you need God. I really wish I had a copy of the sermon to really take it in again. He made it clear that a Quiet Time was necessary.

Interestingly, the Pastor used to come to our church, many many years ago. He was selected to marry the couple as he Pastors in the region that they were getting married. He apparently gets any couple that he marries to sign a document that they are happy for him to preach the gospel at their wedding. If they refuse then he declines to marry them. I hope that my friend does come to have a meaningful relationship with God.

We were eating our main course at the wedding at 6.15pm. It was pretty early, for which we were grateful, as it was cold and dark long before that. There were fireplaces in the big room and tastefully elegant bouquets of expensive red roses on each table. The guests each received a box of handmade nougat.

I think that due to the early hour, the DJ panicked a bit and got 12 of the guests to play a game – never seen that at a wedding before – They had to collect certain items from guests, the last one back was out each time and their forfeit was to buy the married couple a gift on their monthly anniversary eg. the 4th person out had to buy a gift for them on their fourth month anniversary. The bridal couple had to send a bottle of wine to the person that won, on their 1 year – anniversary – interestingly different.

I really enjoyed the weekend – and the next day we proceeded onwards to the Cavern Resort in the Drakensburg – from where I am typing this blog post.

Voting Day

Wednesday 22nd April dawned, our alarm clock went off and I tumbled out of bed... (I tumbled out because I was pushed out... ) Nevertheless I jumped in the warm shower, got dressed and went off to vote before the crowds got there... Andrew was due to vote at one station and me at another... We drove past mine first, in order for me to drop Andrew off at his voting station... and there was much laughter at the amount of cars outside mine by one person, as it was jam-packed...When we arrived at Andrew's there was much laughter from the other person in the car as it was even worse... so we decided to head back home and tackle the voting queues later... We however were very happy that so many people were voting...

Later in the day my friends from school and I met up at the Beverly Hills hotel for some 5 star pampering - we started off with cappucino's on the terrace overlooking the sea and then moved inside to the lounge and had "High Tea" for lunch... It is so amazing meeting up with the girls. We are doing such different things, yet still totally bond. The best part for me is that we can be honest with one another and don't have to pretend anything. One is married with a baby, one is just married (that would be me), one bought a house with their boyfriend 6 years ago, one is seriously dating for the first time, and one is happily single (but keeping her eyes open). One is a travel agent, two are teachers, one is a physio and one an accountant. (When the others are there then we have a Chiro, another accountant and an insurance agent too).

The best is being able to hear what it is really like giving birth, not just the "all the pain was worth it" line. And being able to talk through the issues of being married in the current age and how the expectations need to be different to those that our parents had. And discussing the challenges of living with your boyfriend from the beginning vs dating and being able to have some space with your boyfriend when you have arguments (I believe the second way is more what God intended).

It was just so refreshing to be able to chill for a couple of hours and just chat "Girl Chat"...

In the evening off we went back to vote... this time we made it out the car and into the queues - taking 30 - 40 minutes to vote. I felt proud to be making my mark and I must say, after voting twice before, this time I really felt like my vote would mean something and I was glad to see a long queue, even at 7pm...

My thumb didn't fare so well, but it was a small price to pay... the next day, the indelible ink had made my ENTIRE thumb nail brown...

Where have you been?

So, I don't know if you have noticed, but there is this *tongue in cheek* slight inconvenience in the world and South Africa at the moment that is called "an economic crisis".

People reactions to this are amazing... One person said -"It won't affect South Africa" and 100 000 to 300 000 people lost jobs in SOUTH AFRICA...

At my company we are not getting increases this year in order to save costs so we can all preserve our jobs - if we don't do this, it is predicted that before the year is out, 6 000 of us will have lost our jobs - accounting for one fifth of our workforce.

So, the Group CEO flew down from Joburg to address the management in the Durban area today and explain everything to us. He gave a brilliant, simple presentation, backed up with evidence, explained the plan in the pipelines, the strategy, the problems, the solutions, the focus - everything necessary for management to understand what is going on.

I was proud to know that the person at the helm was thinking strategically, that the plan made sense, that jobs were being preserved, that the interests of the country were being taken into account. At the end, the forum was opened up to questions from the floor.

The thing that was most interesting for me at this time was how clear it was that some people just can't understand the economic crisis. To them, it is not happening. Even after being presented with hard facts. So for them, the decisions being taken are incomprehensible and totally negative. For all of our good, I hope they do start to understand or at least follow the strategy presented otherwise jobs will be lost. No matter how good the leader is at the helm, if the rest of the team don't work towards the same goal, the ship will be lost...

I thank God that at the moment I have my job, income, a place to stay and food on the table. The more I watch and read the more I don't take them for granted.

The Wii

Andrew and I have purchased a Wii with some hard earned cash and some Wedding Giftmoney... We are enjoying coming home and spending some time - us against the computer!

Wii Sports has proved to be a lot more fun than we anticipated - with the training sections helping us to improve -especially with Baseball - which seemed totally useless at first - it is still pretty annoying, but once you improve it does have some promise.

My favourite game is Mario Kart so far where I've managed to unlock some of the Cups and new Courses...

We are in the middle of Year End at work at the moment so it is providing some welcome distraction when I come home from work.

At the moment I'm typing this block, half watching Andrew playing baseball and hearing all his sound effects as he enjoys his game...

One or two of our friends have Wii's so we are looking forward to swapping games with them when we get bored of ours.

Year End is going fairly well at the moment - some careful prep from our side and the side of the Auditors is hopefully going to pay off some dividends with limited overtime. I'm almost excited, but am trying not to be, cos it takes with one thing to turn everything into a nightmare. Yesterday I was plotting my exit from the office at 4.10pm (I'm supposed to finish work at 4pm - govt Dept :) :) but that doesn't exactly always happen. At 4.11pm, one of my colleagues came out of a meeting with the Auditors and suddenly we had a whole lot of info to gather for them - I left work at about 5pm and then today at 6.20pm - amazing the impact of 1min...

Anyway... off to join Andrew in his endeavours to beat the Wii at the Tennis Game...