Status Update

Ok, so the meeting with Satan's Daughter did not take place last Monday. She postponed it. But, It's scheduled for this Monday, so we will see what she has to say for herself. In the meantime, I have initiated a process challenge, which if successful, will see me bring in 1/3 of her required signing target for this quarter! Want to see her explain having me on a PIP then!

On the other hand, I am of good spirits! It's the Princess;'s birthday tommorrow! She will be 42 yrs young! And the boys are almost done with exams. GMan has 3 more papers, and he's done with school, LuckyL has 3 more exams, and he's done for this year!

I have initiated dicsussions around starting something for myself from the new year. if all goes well, I could be self employed by July next year!

More to follw.
Salagatle!

Confusion?

Well, things are kind of upside down right now. A week ago last Friday the Daughter of Satan called me in for a meeting she had to have face to face. I left a client meeting to attend. At this meeting she presented me with a "Voluntary Separation Letter". Basically, they want to pay me to fuck off. Yea right. It's not like the first time I got one of these, and in each instance it was from a manager who does not know how to handle me, or does not like the fact that I take them on so to speak. Anyway, I told her to add a zero at the end of the number and I would consider!

Not going to happen though. So she added that if I did not take the offer, she was going to put me on a PIP. (Performance Improvement Plan). This is another ruse used by this Satanical Corporation to get rid of employees. They set up a PIP that is basically unachievable, so you must fail, and then they can fire you! Nice! So, I told her that she would have to ensure the criteria she used, as she could not depend on the information available online, as it is faulty! That caught her by surprise. But I got news for her, it's not the last surprise she is in for.

By 5.30 pm same day I had the name and cell number of a Labour Lawyer! He's up to speed with the current state of affairs, and as soon as I get my PIP, he gets a copy of that as well. Smacks of "Constructive dismissal"!

Anyway, the following Monday I get to work, and run into the new GM, or whatever they call him. We are on friendly terms, as I had worked with him before he went away, and we met up again when he came back as the head honcho. So when he asked how I was I replied "Stressed!", and when he asked why I told him, in short. And then asked him to join me for a cup of coffee and he gave me 35 minutes of his time, at the canteen, at lunch time! Nice. Oh, and I was spotted chatting to him by some of the people who I know will take the information back to Satans Daughter, who had flown out to the UK on the Firday she gave me the letter, and who was due back today. Will be interesting to see if she mentions knowing I met with the man, or not.

Anyway, from today, and every Monday afternoon for the next 2 months I have a feedback session with her. It's to keep track of my progress! What I don't have yet is the PIP letter, so I don't know the terms of it. But I can promise you that I am going to "negotiate" it's contents, especially if I feel it's set up for me to fail.

I have an open door to revert to the GM, and I will go the legal route if I feel I am being treated unfairly. At the end of the day, I don't care if Satans Daughter does not like me, if she does not know how to manage me, she's not going to get rid of me unless it's on my terms.

Have also started putting my feelers out there, looking around. Must say there isn't much available, but there are always options. I could start my own business, with a bit of financial assistance from some contacts. I could go and work up in Africa - there are guys doing security work for more than USD7k per month. Hey, I can do that, pass me an R1 / FN / AK47, I'll show you security!

So, life is a bit stressed right now, and I'm not too sure what will happen over the next 2 months. But, I am finding strenght in places wher I know it's always been, but I have not been drawing off from it. Time to get the mind right, both my physical and spiritual sides sorted, and forge ahead into the rewards which await me out there.

Chat soon u all,
Salagatle!

Some "light" stuff from the Princess

Teacher is explaining biology to her 4th grade students.

Human beings are the only animals that stutter,' she says.

A little girl raises her hand. 'I had a kitty-cat who stuttered.'

The teacher, knowing how precious some of these stories could become, asked the girl to describe the incident.

'Well', she began, 'I was in the back yard with my kitty. The Rottweiler that lives next door got a running start and before we knew it, he jumped over the fence into our yard!'

'That must have been scary,' said the teacher.

'It sure was,' said the little girl. 'My kitty raised her back, went "Ffffff!, Ffffff!, FfffffF," but before she could say 'Fuck!,' the Rottweiler ate her! The teacher had to leave the room.

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class becauseit was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

21. A backward poet writes inverse.

22. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

24. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

Salagatle!

Update on the state of the blogger

Hi all, it's been a while. Much has been going on, and I just couldn't seem to get it together. Anyway, let's give a synopsis of the current state of affairs.

We got back from a much needed vacation in Margate. Had been a yukky week on the basis that it was miserable, raining, overcast, windy most of the time. Me and GMan went down to the Wild Coast casino almost every night, and made an average of ZAR1000 every night on the poker table. Not Texas Hold'em, but 3 card poker. LIU! Paid for most of the costs for the vacation!

Got back the Friday, and GMan asks if he can use my car to go see his girlfriend.
On his way back the car broke down. I went to tow him in. After much trying, I realised this thing was dead, and needed a mechanic. Monday I towed it in to a shop near Westgate (LIU). The next day they called to inform me that the motor was stuffed, and would need a rebuild. By Thursday they confirmed that the motor was irreparable and they would have to source a second hand motor from a scrap yard. They found one from a similar car, with 75000km on the clock (so they say). Mine was just touching on 200k km.

Anyway, it seems the doos (LIU) who has been servicing my car for the last 6 years has not been a good boy. Either he never changed the oil, or just topped it up, or he has been using some suspect form of additive. Check the pics. Anyway the black stuff could not even be removed after 4 days in an acid bath. Not sure what it is, but it did block up the oil pump causing this to fail, which then caused all the knock on damage to the motor. Oh well, from now on I take the car to the official dealers for it's services. Lesson well learned. The down side for the "mechanic" is he has lost 3 clients, me, GMan, and Queenie (mom-in-law). Luckily he has only serviced GMan's car once, and Queenies a couple of times. I will be doing an oil change on Queenies car this coming weekend, and will mind to flush the motor first.

Anyway, after 2.5 weeks, I get the car back. On the way home it felt, well, kind of funny. But I thought it was due to me not having driven an auto box for a while. That night, DMDad gives me a call, says he's up here in bobejaansberg with Brutherofanothermother, and we should meet for drinks. No problem. I'm on my way. Yea right.
I made about 25km, and the gearbox died! What?!? No gears. WTF!!!

So, next day I get it in to the gearbox specialist, who took 4 days to get around to working on the car. Confirms that there is much dead stuff in the box. Not sure what the cause was, but can repair. Go ahead, get it done.

Monday this week, 2 weeks later, I get it back. Drive 6 km, and realise that whenever I stop, and pull away again, it's in 2nd gear. Not selecting 1st. So, back to the shop. It's now 2 days later, something about dirt in the selector thingy, who knows, but I should get it back today.
So, ZAR 8250 for the motor, and ZAR 6750 for the gearbox. Done.

In the meantime, LuckyL's Aprilia RS125, 2004, decided to die on him. (This was just before we went on vacation) I took it to the shop, and left it with them. it needed piston, rings, barrel redone, crank machining, the usual shit you get with High revving 2 stroke race bikes! Quote was ZAR10k.
It's still not ready! Can you believe this shit. Yea, I know they not sitting there waiting for me to bring a bike in so they can work on it, but if they planned better..... Whilst i was there they stripped down the head. We saw the barrel needed to be done, so we got that in to the relevant shop. Then they did nothing till the barrel came back. Then, once the finished what the were working on, the stripped down the rest of the motor, and found the crank needed to be done. Now another wait for 5 - 8 days. FFS!
Anyway, I'm hoping that we will get this by the end of this week, early next week. In the meantime, LuckyL is going to school on one of the Honda XR200's. No lights, no flickers, no hooter.... Eish.

As reported earlier, LuckyL has bought the 2009 RS 125, to rebuild and sell. Ordered parts from the Aprilia dealer, and has a 4-5 week wait for delivery. No problem.The parts arrived, and one was wrong, matt black finish instead of gloss black. I took it back to be replaced, and after 3 days, the clown in the spares dept. says that this has been discontinued, and I must take 2 x matt black so that they will match. Match what? Doos! I get onto the email to Aprilia SA, and after much discussion, they confirm they have the correct part in stock, locally, and will swop it out. Seems that there was an error with the stock numbers. I don't frigging care! Why must I get pissed off, and piss everyone off to get what I paid for!?!?! Anyway, at the same time as I ordered the parts, I gave the tank dummy, and tail piece to a guy to repair. the tank thingy needed a small repair on a bolt hole, and a scratch needed to be touched up. The tail piece also has a small scratch he said he could mask / hide / touch up. I didn't want a complete respray, cause it costs more, and would then mean having to get new stickers made. Anyway, he just stuffed around, didn't return my calls, never made one deadline. Eventually, he gave me the name of the guy who had them, and I went to see him. Man, was I pissed off. The guy I gave them to had fucked both pieces up completely! Anyway, this guy has a way to repair / salvage what has been done. So, should get this back in a day or two, and probably a grand or so later, and then we can finish the bike. Looks like we can sell it for about ZAR40k, but I'm not sure LuckyL will want to. It's a beaut. (That reminds me, I need to get the bike's papers....)

On the home front, GMan is now in his final stage of high school. Prelims are done, matric finals started yesterday, although he only writes his first paper in Nov sometime. He has applied at Wits, Pretoria, and Stellenbosch universities. All have given him conditional acceptance, subject to his final results. Let's hold thumbs. I think this is the first time I have seen him make some effort to study, if that is what he's doing. He wants to be a CA.

LuckyL seems to be coming to his peak about now. His marks have, for the past 3 terms been steadily improving. It's great. If he keeps going like this, he should do very well next year, and then in matric as well. Not sure what he wants to do, but might follow GMan into the world of money......

The Princess is really enjoying her new (not so new) job. She hasn't had this much fun in years. Lots to do, on days, but she's upto it. They just moved to new offices, which she helped refurbish. Nice to be able to do something like that, with someone else's check book. And no limit!!!
Will go check them out sometime.

Witness - my gardner, is not well. In fact, I dont think he's coming back to work. Discussed it with the Princess, and we going to pension him off. I'll pay him but he can stay at home. We never going to get his ID book replaced, the corrupt Home Affairs will never come through for him, so he will never get his state pension. And at 73 years, he shouldn't be working anymore. So, I'm getting a garden service in to do the lawns once a week, and will get casual labour once every 3 weeks to weed the garden, turn over the flower beds and stuff. And, I'll have to put in a sprinkler system as well. But Witness probably wont be back. It's a pity, cause he;s a great old man. Reliable, gets on with his work. Knows what needs to be done. But then, he's now got some chest problem, he's old, and cant do this anymore. No matter, I told him I would pension him off, and will. Last week I went down to his home, and took a couple of packets of groceries for him. And paid him for the day. No smokes though. I told him, if his chest hurts, he shouldn't be smoking. he agreed.

We haven't replaced Kaiser yet (the family dog we had to have put down). The family are still keen to get 2 x Boer Bull pups. We probably will, but I just want to get all this other crap sorted. Cars, bikes, gardners..... eish.

Nuff for now. More later

Salagatle!

IM STILL LAUGHING, PLEASE READ TO THE END .

SUBJECT: NATAL CURRY CONTEST


NATAL CURRY CONTEST If you can read this whole story without laughing I would be surprised.I was crying by the end. Note: Please take time to read this slowly.For those of you who have lived in Natal, you know how typical this is.They actually have a Curry Cook-off about June/July. It takes up a major portion of a parking lot at the Royal Show in PMB.

Judge #3 was an inexperienced food critic named Frank, who was visiting from America.Frank: 'Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a Curry Cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Beer Garden when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Natal Indians) that the curry wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted'.Here are the scorecard notes from the event:

CURRY # 1 - SEELAN'S MANIAC MONSTER TOMATO CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick
Judge # 2 -- Nice smooth tomato flavor. Very mild.
Judge # 3 (Frank) -- Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These people are crazy.

CURRY #2 - PHOENIX BBQ CHICKEN CURRY.
Judge # 1 -- Smoky, with a hint of chicken. Slight chilli tang.
Judge # 2 -- Exciting BBQ flavour, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.
Judge # 3 -- Keep this out of the reach of children. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich manoeuvre! They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.

CURRY # 3 - SHAMILA'S FAMOUS 'BURN DOWN THE GARAGE' CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- Excellent firehouse curry. Great kick.
Judge # 2 -- A bit salty, good use of chilli peppers.
Judge # 3 -- Call 911. I've located a uranium pill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drain Cleaner. Everyone knows the routine by now; get me more beer before I ignite. Barmaid pounded me on the back, now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting pissed from all the beer.

CURRY # 4 - BABOO'S BLACK MAGIC BEAN CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- Black bean curry with almost no spice. Disappointing.
Judge # 2 -- Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a curry
Judge # 3 -- I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds? Shareen, the beer maid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 200kg woman is starting to look HOT...just like this nuclear waste I'm eating! Is chilli an aphrodisiac?

CURRY # 5 LALL'S LEGAL LIP REMOVER...
Judge # 1 -- Meaty, strong curry. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.
Judge # 2 -- Average beef curry, could use more tomato. Must admit the chilli peppers make a strong statement.
Judge # 3 -- My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her curry had given me brain damage, Shareen saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from the pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw them.

CURRY # 6 - VERISHNEE'S VEGETARIAN VARIETY...
Judge # 1 -- Thin yet bold vegetarian variety curry. Good balance of spices and peppers.
Judge # 2 -- The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.
Judge # 3 -- My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulphuric flames. I am definitely going to shit myself if I fart and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that Shareen. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone.

CURRY # 7 - SELINA'S 'MOTHER-IN-LAW'S-TONGUE' CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- A mediocre curry with too much reliance on canned peppers.
Judge # 2 -- Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chilli peppers at the last moment. (I should take note at this stage that I am worried about Judge # 3. He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably).
Judge # 3 -- You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a thing. I've lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with curry which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava to match my shirt. At least, during the autopsy, they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing- it's too painful. Screw it; I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.

CURRY # 8 - NAIDOO'S TOENAIL CURLING CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- The perfect ending. This is a nice blend curry. Not too bold but spicy enough to declare its existence.
Judge # 2 -- This final entry is a good, balanced curry. Neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 farted, passed out, fell over and pulled the curry pot down on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. Poor man, wonder how he'd have reacted to really hot curry?
Judge # 3 - No Report

Salagatle!

Action Photo

Surely this must rate as the best ever action / motorcycling photo of all time. And the "pilot" in this case, Mr. Valentino Rossi himself, must rate as the best ever motorcyclist.

Enlarge the above pic, and look at how low down he is. Elbow is riding hard into the curb, knee is scraping, and probably not much more than 2 postage stamp sized rubber of the tyre in contact with the road. There can never be anything to better this. A millimeter or two lower, and you lose the bike.

Salagatle!

I've been Thinking

A lot since I took some days off work. In fact, maybe too much. However,

I was born into an institution which I have admired all of my life. I have resisted the draw to get involved, to take up my place, so to speak. But no more.

I have decided that for the short / medium term I will persue this avenue, and see if it delivers all that it's made out to be.

So, for the next short while, I won't be posting much here, but keep checking back, every 14 dyas or so.

Salagatle!