It’s about the principle

On Monday Samba and I went to the Mall to look for a gift for one of our friends. It was an average mall visit with us finding absolutely nothing suitable for a gift but plenty of things we wouldn’t mind buying. Samba tried on roughly one-hundred pairs of shoes and I saw a couch that I might get in the near future (I know the best birthday gifts are seldom found in shoe shops and furniture stores but we were at the mall and did what came naturally).

Towards the end of our adventures at Centurion Mall, I needed the bathroom; my feet were getting sore from all the walking on my beach slops and I was just getting tired of walking around when I knew I had to get to the gym before it closed. So I moaned and groaned at Samba enough to convince her that she didn’t need another pair of shoes and we started making our way towards the parking lot.

So we got to our parking pay station and it came out to R6.00. Now I don’t like the idea of having to pay for parking at a mall. You spend enough money on whatever you buy and eat and then are still extorted by the mall owners to pay for parking infrastructure that pays off its entire capital costs with just one month of parking fees. We basically pay the money straight into the mall owner’s back pockets if you ask me.

Anyway I start digging in my wallet for the exact amount of change because I trust parking pay stations about as much as I trust the Shaik brothers.

Using a parking pay station is in many ways analogous to playing a slot machine at a casino. There are so many things that can go wrong:
a) The pay station doesn’t accept your coins. This is just great so you start rubbing your coin on that spot that everyone uses, you know that big black spot where a grey or blue layer of paint used to be when the mall just opened. Eventually the heat you generate from the rubbing starts to singe your fingers and your coin is STILL not being accepted by the pay station. Now you’ve got to walk around like a beggar asking for someone to swop coins with you. But when you do this you lose your place in the line! Now you’ve got to start at the back of the line that started forming while you were single-mindedly rubbing your coin against the pay station. Only while you were pilfering good coins from innocent passers-by the queue grew from 5 people to looking like the licensing department during mass-action.
b) It takes your money but doesn’t register it. This is heinous. So you push the button for help and it obviously doesn’t work. So now what? Do you cancel the transaction and take the loss? Do you tell everyone in the queue behind you that you’re having a problem so they should queue at the pay station next door and then try to wave a security guard over for 10 minutes; ask him to call the parking management and then spend the rest of your afternoon trying to sort out the debacle?
c) This is the most common but still really odious: you don’t get your change. Whether it’s 50 cents or R15, you still feel robbed, and it just isn’t right. It’s like losing you hard-earned money in a black hole. So you either cut your losses take your card and try and forget the whole incident; or you don’t let it slide: you write off the next hour and start trying to contact the mythical mall management, or parking management, or whoever can give you your money back.

Rats! I only had R7.00, so I broke out in a cold sweat as I prepared to slot my coins in. In they went. They registered. Yes! My card started being printed and the change binnacle started flashing. But I didn’t hear the pleasant sound of my change hitting the bottom of the binnacle. My card was done now, still no sound, just the flashing light. Okay I had just been robbed. It was time to push the help button. I pushed the button and to my amazement I heard a voice coming through the speaker. I told the parking manager dude my plight and he told me where I had to walk to go and get my money back. This was marvellous! Although I had to walk about 500m to get my change I had a real chance of actually beating the system and taking back what was rightfully mine.

So I started on my expedition and Samba said she’d drive with my car to the place while I walked because it would increase my walking distance by about a 100m to go to the car first. My journey started off well while I was still full of the excitement in knowing that I didn’t have to say goodbye to my R1.00 forever. After about 200m the sheer discomfort of my slops reminded me why I was heading home in the first place and the whole exciting adventure was turning into a bit of a chore. I persisted however and eventually made my way down some dodgy stairs. At the foot of the stairs I had to pass a little posse of rebellious teens having a crisis because two of them were not seeing eye to eye on something. It was as if their little world’s were coming to an end and one of the girls was close to tears and one of the guys was smoking a cigarette in complete angst as if Armageddon was about to befall us all. I whipped past them and started looking for the parking management office. Thanks to two massive signs with arrows I could find the miniscule passage I had to go down to find justice. This missing R1.00 started taking on a whole new meaning on my journey, it was like a long lost lamb, who needed to be found after the sheep had been counted and one found missing. I needed to rescue it from the wolves and bears in the wild and return it to the safety of my wallet.

I finally arrived at the bullet proof window to find the parking manager dude in front of a command centre with CCTV feeds from all the parking entrances at the mall. It was impressive. Eventually he came over to see what my query was and said: “You came all this way for R1.00? You really need that R1.00 hey?” I replied “Yes I do. It is my R1.00 and now I have it back.” He laughed and I started my way back to the car with a sense of accomplishment. I had restored balance in my wallet, what was mine and stolen had been returned. All was well.

PS: Maybe I am a lunatic, I walked about 500m for R1.00 which works out to 20 cents per 100m, not a very profitable scheme but hey at least I got some exercise. Now ask yourself this question: have I ever been paid to exercise?

Doin it Mr. T style

I have fluffy hair. It is generally useless besides protecting my head from UV rays. It doesn’t exactly add any aesthetic value to my appearance unless it’s an afro or number 0 brush cut. Anywhere in-between these two “styles” (yes I use the word very lightly) my hair takes on one of three looks: a) hospital grade cotton wool when brushed, b) bush or mice-trails as my dad used to affectionately call them when not, and c) uneven spikiness and mayhem when washed. When my hair reaches that uncomfortable length in between disobedient lamb’s wool and uncontrollable anarchy it’s usually time for a haircut.

One Tuesday night I decided it was time to sheer my poorly behaved lamb’s wool before heading off to young adults’ Bible study. Samba, my resident barber extraordinaire, was at the helm of my cheap and nasty clipper (or sheerer if you prefer) and was dealing decisively with my steely-willed locks of fury. Making good progress; Samba only had one half of the top of my head to rout to prevail in the battle of bush mouse so to speak. Then everything went black. Wait. Maybe I just blinked too long. What happened to the melodious sound of my clipper? Maybe the power just tripped, but why are the outside lights out too? With dread it started dawning on me that we had just been load-shed. Samba found this hilarious, and couldn’t stop laughing. I wasn’t quite as enamoured. 

Armed with a candle we went to the bathroom to inspect the damage in the mirror. It was bad, I had this off-centre, and lopsided Mohawk going on that would’ve made Mr T say “I pity the fool who walks around like that!” I needed to sit down and regroup on the barber chair. Okay, I had a few options a) sit and wait for the power to come back on, that wasn’t too difficult in fact I was doing it at that time anyway, b) get the scissors out and start finishing the job. Nah, that would take four hours and still look terrible c) wash my hair, put on a beanie and pretend my head was getting cold, or d) sit and wallow in my disgust at the whole affair. You guessed it I chose d. Samba was hysterical at this point guffawing at my plight as I sat on the barber chair with the clipper in my hands praying that the power would come back on quickly so that she could finish the job and we could still get to young adults. 

Naturally the power stayed off and Samba told me to stop being ridiculous, wash my hair, put a beanie on and get ready before it’s too late. So I did, and it was itchy and sweaty under that beanie I tell you, but it was not coming off, even under the searing heat of pastor Chris’s down lights. Eventually we got home and to my horror the lights were still not on! 

I had work the next day. I can’t wear a beanie to work. This brought a whole new set of concerns to bear: Would they possibly fall for a story of me having a head cold and needing to keep it warm? What if I told them I was bitten by a spider with a nasty neurotoxin which is causing my hair to fall out? Is it socially acceptable to wear a peak cap with formal work clothes? Can this ever be considered a fashion statement? I was in a bind, and didn’t sleep easily that night.

About 5am the next morning I was up and the first thing I did was go for the light switch. Yes! There was power! I quickly woke Samba out of the coma she’s normally in that early in the morning, and gave her the clipper. She quickly turned my haute couture Mohawk of misery into a distant memory and then returned to her comatose state in her bed. I am SO tempted to say “Now that was a close shave.” but I’ll resist. 

A Vein Attempt

About a month ago I got really sick. Can’t exactly remember where I got the debilitating disease from but it was one of the most unpleasant viral visitations I have experienced in my adult life. I started coming down with it on the Monday, so on Tuesday I couldn’t make young adults Bible study, in many ways the highlight of my week. So I SMSed Pastor Chris that I couldn’t make it and was coming down with the Ebola virus (it felt like that at the time). He replied as tersely as ever “we’ll pray for you”. Needless to say I got worse. So I replied to him the next day something like “clearly the prayer of the righteous avails much, if this is what happens when the young adults pray for me please remind me to not ask for prayer again, you might have to preside over my funeral the next day.” Not to be outdone Pastor Chris replied with “Maybe God wants to work on your character more than make you feel better.” To be honest I struggled to find the character-building qualities of having fever, nasal drip, nausea, cramps and diarrhoea all at the same time. But hey I’m still alive today and could probably identify with 1 or 2 lines from Khanye West’s “Through the Fire” now.

I always thought I’d enjoy getting a week off work but man this was not fun. Being too sick to really do anything; and Samba stuffing around on Facebook on the computers at gym instead of getting me electrolytes turned out to be a major trial in my life. 

On Friday night at about 12am I had had enough, I asked Samba and Omi to take me to casualty at the hospital so they could give me something for the pain and fever. So being fully prepared in my pyjamas, armed with just about the gayest hot water bottle in the world, and a puke bucket (just in case the drive didn’t go too well); we headed off to the hospital.

This hot water bottle requires its own paragraph. I don’t own a hot water bottle but my sisters and most girls I know do. I am waiting for the blue water bottle with “For Men” on it before I buy mine. Samba; however has a mini hot water bottle suitable for little princesses. But it does not end there, she thought it suitable to clothe it in a little tiger stuffed animal cover with arms that double as handles or straps or something. So when it all comes together it looks like a cute and fluffy little tiger handbag complete with whiskers. 

Alas the pain I was feeling at that moment did not afford me the luxury of choice, so in we walked to casualty with me in my pyjamas clutching the cute and cuddly water bottle to my stomach.

So after being admitted, I got a bed about as comfortable as those black gym mats you use to stretch on at gym. The friendly doctor eventually came and said I’ll need a drip with Buscopan to relieve the cramping. This sounded good although I had and still have my reservations about needles. 

Finally a group of nurses came to my bed, clearly they were all trainees and only the old, cantankerous, grey-haired one was experienced in this kind of thing. Which is cool, the younger nurses need to learn, I’m all for on the job training. So the older nurse put me at ease by checking my veins and rubbing alcohol on the spot where the drip needle was about to go. Usually when I’m about to be injected I look away and try and think of pleasant thoughts to avoid squirming and screaming like a little girl. So I started looking away while Nurse Grumpylump explained to the trainees how to push down on the vein below the place of injection and then inject from the side of the vein and straighten the needle into it. Lovely. 

Then she said a few words that almost made my heart stop: “Okay, now you try it.” I was mortified. Nurse Grumpylump was about to let a complete novice insert a needle into my vein! In all honesty, a trainee nurse has to learn. But does she have to on a real person? Can’t she practice on a prosthetic arm? I started breaking out in a cold sweat and waited in anticipation. First Nurse Novicita got it wrong by putting pressure above the place she had to insert the hypodermic needle and was consequently scolded by nurse Grumpylump for not using her brain. Not a good sign. Then with about three hands all over the “insertion site” nurse Novicita managed to bludgeon the drip needle into my flesh and fortunately found the vein. I am getting queasy just typing this. 

By the time they had it all set up and working there was a blood stain on the sheet about the size of my palm and the rest of the blood on my hand was just taped over in order to keep the drip in. It honestly looked like I had been shot in the hand. But the soothing sensation of the Buscopan coursing through my veins, easing the abdominal cramps, made me quickly forget that my hand looked like I had just come off the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Eventually the burn of the hypodermic needle in my vein eased and I started feeling better. 

I really hope I do not get that sick anytime soon, and next time I’m leaving the hot water bottle at home no matter what. Oh and thanks for the prayers young adults, I wouldn’t have this story without them.

The Arm of Jon

Since it’s almost that time of year where work starts slowing down and we all start planning our year end holidays I thought I’d share a mildly amusing story from my last holiday. That holiday was what I call a Facebook holiday. On a Facebook holiday you rush like mad to do as many things as possible, take roughly a billion photos, nearly die from exhaustion in the process; but once you’re done you load those photos on Facebook and people think you’ve spent a month in Cape Town when it’s only been 6 days. Good times.

On day 6 of my Facebook holiday, we went to Hermanus, a beautiful little coastal town, known for the southern right whales that breed there. A little known secret of the town is that the local dassies also breed quite prolifically and are almost out of control. They walk up to you like cats and want to eat whatever’s in your hands despite the fact that they’re so portly they can hardly move. I did not know this however until later.

After a lovely meal at the local Spur we decided to take a walk along the bay and take a few photos of the great views. As we walked along the bridge over one of the rock pools I spotted something strange sticking out one of the storm-water or sewage pipes leading into the pool. It looked like the head of a dassie but it was so still we couldn’t tell if it was real or just the afternoon sun playing tricks on our eyes.

Fortunately I still had my complimentary Spur mint, you know those hard glacier blue ones that look, feel, and sometimes taste like glass? What a great opportunity to put the aerodynamic abilities of my mint to the test! If I could just lob it near enough to the dassie to startle it. It might move and if it’s a little street smart it might even get to enjoy the loveliness that is Glacier blue mint. So I quickly unwrapped the mint, took aim and lobbed it towards our motionless dassie head. The mint had a very nice flight to it; it was heading in the right direction, slicing through the air like a knife through hot butter. But as we watched it started going too straight, it was on a collision path with the dassie’s head. So we all took a deep breath to see what would happen. Thwack! It nailed the poor dassie on the head with a hollow sound not too different from an acorn falling on an innocent by passer’s head. In the blink of an eye the dassie disappeared, never to be seen again by us. Ruckster uttered his standard phrase of astonishment with the eloquence only a Capetonian can muster: “Yoh!” Samba was more upset, “Jon! Why did you hit it on the head?” Candida and Ibu could only get out a nervous laugh. 

I felt like I had just inadvertently committed an offence worthy of being arrested by the SPCA for cruelty to animals. Not an awesome feeling. But that is what happens when you have the arm of Jon, it never hits anything you want but always hits everything you don’t. Now if only I could trick my arm into believing that I don’t want to hit something that I actually do want to hit.

The Metrosexual Dilemma

WordWeb©, my super-cool dictionary program which can explain just about everything (like did you know that Muzak is an actual word with a meaning? Word doesn’t but then again Word can’t even stick to SA or UK English for 5 seconds before it defaults to US spelling and starts bathing your document in that lovely red zig-zag pattern, I like to think of them as rumble strips for your words, just so they don’t dose off, whoa this is turning into a major parenthetical note), defines a metrosexual as “An urban-living fashion-conscious man; a heterosexual with many attributes commonly attributed to gay men”. Basically if you’re a guy and like wearing nail-polish like David Beckham you are a metrosexual. The question is, why are men doing more and more womanly things? Why is everything that used to be the preserve of women being shoved in a blue bottle with “For Men” on it and being sold to us at handsome profits?

I think it starts slowly, you realise that being clean is good so you buy a good bottle of shower gel, but then it’s on promotion with a loufah sponge, and next thing you know you’re exfoliating every second day, using things called moisturisers and toners, I mean it was just such a bargain to get all those extra goodies with the shower gel at the same price! How could I turn it down? 

Being clean is socially acceptable as long as you don’t have OCD about it; choice of past-times, however, is a little more debatable. Ruckster took up playing the violin, or ‘violon’ as he spells it, a week or two ago. When I first heard he was playing the violin I wanted to change his pseudonym to Gaylord; it just seemed so effeminate and like he couldn’t do it authentically without wearing those leotards, super-soft girly shoes, and puffy things around the shoulders. But after hearing some violin music and Ruckster saying that he could get into an orchestra it didn’t seem as reprehensible as I initially thought.

The ‘violon’ saga got me thinking about where we draw the line on metrosexual behaviour but what really prompted my need to speak out was the BossMan ballet fiasco. BossMan is a friend of mine, who’s about 21 going on 35. He is a strapping lad who dresses strangely enough at times to not even be considered metrosexual. 

Lastnight after young adults Bible study, I started chatting to him about maybe swapping out my turn for AWANA games. He said he couldn’t because he had some ballet thing on. Now a guy attending a ballet is kind of naff, unless his girlfriend’s in it or she likes ballet so much that he cannot, after numerous attempts, escape going with her. So I asked why he was watching ballet, and he said “No, I am in the ballet” and went on to explain how he had to play a minor role in the ballet and gave me the name (sounded something like Geezla), and how all the other male dancers were either gay or limp-wristed. And I’m thinking “Is there anything more gay than ballet? ‘violon’ aint got anything on this. Gaylord sounds like a euphemism to describe this. Can I coin a new term like ‘Gay-Emperor’ to describe this level of metrosexuality?” 

But BossMan redeemed himself. If you know BossMan well you’ll notice that nothing he ever does or has done is anything less than the best thing any human being can ever do at that point in time. If he went to a concert it was amazing; if he stayed at home and relaxed it was the most refreshing experience of his life; if he’s going on holiday it will be the best vacation anyone has ever had; if he is washing the dishes it is the most extraordinary act of service and self-sacrifice known to man. But for the first time BossMan sounded as if this ballet experience wasn’t going to be the most exciting experience of his life. In fact he said “I’m not really looking forward to it.” Man just that was enough for him to brush off the label of Gay-Emperor with ease.
 
I am not the most manly of guys you’d meet, I shave with a razor, not a bush knife, I use lotion (man that was hard to admit), and I cannot snap your neck between my bicep and forearm. But I feel obliged to start an organisation called Real men Against Metrosexual Behaviour Oh yeah, or RAMBO if you will.

RAMBO has observed men embrace metrosexual behaviour in the belief that they’ll get women that way. Paganini (the greatest violinist of all time) is cited by a certain violin fan in defence of the masculinity of playing the violin: "I am not handsome, but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet." We are not entirely convinced.

Hence, RAMBO’s first public maxim to the world is thus:

Doing womanly things does not make you more attractive to the opposite sex, it makes you queer, stop it.

Fashion Disasters

I am an engineer so I reserve the right to dress poorly at any given time. I shouldn’t be the first person to have an opinion on what is fashionable nor should my opinion carry any weight. Once when I was very little, I donned a safari suit for one of our family pictures. I rocked that little suit but it’s hard to argue that a safari suit was ever fashionable. I also never followed trends, in Cape Town I never owned a pair of Grasshoppers and in Joburg I have yet to own a pair of Chuck Taylor’s (Man those are a pair of uncomfortable sneakers, I think flip-flops have more ankle support than those do). So as you can see I am highly qualified to give style tips. 

There comes a time, however, when I see crises in personal style that make my teeth hurt. Now for something to be that bogus that it makes my anti-style teeth hurt; it has to be a monumental error of judgement on the part of the person I happen to see.  

On Sunday, we went to my grandmother’s birthday somewhere in Florida. Now Florida isn’t really a hotspot for fashion but I wasn’t expecting to see such a high level of disastrousness. My first hint that things were going awry was when Sarah and I were waiting for Naomi and my mom at the garage. Four teenage looking guys pull up next to me in an old school BMW 3-series convertible. The first thing I notice is that all of them have peroxided their hair “emoticon yellow”, not just one, all of them. The next thing that strikes me is that they’re also wearing almost identical apparel. And we all know the benefits of wearing black t-shirts when it’s about 32 degrees outside. But it didn’t end there; they were bedecked in layers of cheap jewellery that would’ve looked better on the branches of a Christmas tree than on their necks and fingers. Add to that a few gold teeth and you’ve got yourself and you’ve got a reading of 5 on the bogus-Richter scale. 

That was a pretty heavy start to the Florida expedition of style and class but we pushed onwards to my aunt’s place. It was a cool family party, the people were relaxed; everyone was happy to see each other; there were those awkward silences when you see people that are in your family but you have no idea who they are. Good times. Then Sarah noticed one of our apparent nephews and whispered to me “Fashion disaster!” Curious to see if this kid could beat the previous reading I thought I’d have a look at what he was wearing.

I’ll start with the shoes, Buckster (I can’t remember his name and this sounds quite appropriate) was wearing stylish Superga moccasins, which are cool shoes to wear, if you own a yacht and are about to sail it off the Italian coast. But then he was wearing them with white anklet socks, which I shouldn’t be seeing because no-one wears moccasins with shorts. He wasn’t wearing shorts, in an effort to look cool; he had hiked up his tracksuit to just under calf height and tightened it there. This is quite silly but unfortunately not that uncommon, I’ve seen way too many guys hike up one leg of their tracksuit and leave the other leg down. I am not sure if it aids in mobility but it appears so. To match his 100% nylon tracksuit pants, Buckster donned a shiny red golf shirt complete with the gold chain on the outside. Nice touch Buckster. To match his gold chain he was sporting a silver earring in the shape of the Puma logo. Classy. Buckster seemed to think that God didn’t do a good job of making his hair brown, as he much preferred that lovely eye-piercing yellow that we’ve all come to know and love at the end of our emails. The clincher in the deal though, was that Buckster thought that a sideways beanie was the most appropriate headgear for a sunny 32 degree summer’s day. And there you have it, a well deserved 7 on the bogus-Richter scale.

I honestly wanted to grab Buckster and ask him “What were you thinking when you looked in the mirror this morning?!”

A Message from the Feed Jon Foundation

Dear Readers

The Feed Jon Foundation would like to apologise to Cedric and his family on behalf of one of their more enthusiastic writers, namely JonTheMan, for his post "Sitting next to an ADDHD Champion". The article in question has been repealed and JonTheMan truly regrets any hurt caused. In an effort to be humorous and yet factual, the story ended up portraying Cedric in a negative light. This portrayal was never the purpose of the post but merely an unintentional by-product of it. JonTheMan is truly sorry for that.

The post attempted to create a caricature of Cedric, which exaggerates certain characteristics and downplays others, it was never intended to be offensive and JonTheMan apologises for any offense taken.

As a token of the Feed Jon Foundation’s remorse, JonTheMan has retrieved the ADDHD Champion trophy from Cedric and conferred it upon Rowan (the Ruckster); a truly deserving candidate.

The Feed Jon Foundation is truly regretful about the anguish caused and has taken steps to mitigate against this occurring again. These include employing more stringent peer-review on posts before they are published and the protection of the identities of people mentioned via nom de plums or other socially acceptable means. We believe these mechanisms will protect the relationships which we have built over the years with the friends and family of the Foundation.

The Management Team