A beef with nature

When I make mistakes I am called a f*ck but when the universe f*cks up they call it nature. I say the universe because it is the one controlling everything, you might call it something else. If you call it something else then you have not read the secret, and you shouldn’t. There are so many things that happen for reasons not know to us. Nature does not give a flying f*ck, it just does what it likes. Think of a woman that is struggling to have a baby, she will do just about anything to fall pregnant. Nature just decides not to give her the pleasures of being a mother. Then to make matters more interesting, it gives children to those that can’t afford to raise them. Think of that lady you passed at the intersection begging for change or food with a child on her back in this cold weather. Maybe there is a greater plan in the cards for that child that is why it was born. If the universe listens then why does it seem to listen to the wrong people?

The good thing is that with the advancement of technology things that seemed impossible a couple of year ago, are possible now. Doctors found a way to give women who could not have children the ability to have children. I just wonder if the universe has something to do with that. Did it feel guilty about all the ‘natural’ disasters that it sent our way? I mean the gift that the doctors have to be so smart must come from somewhere. If it does come from nature then why did it have to take it so long to produce people with brains that are smart enough to give people the gift of being parents? In other cases the burden of being a parent (I know some of you were a pain in the backside for your parents). While in the topic of natural disasters, does nature really have to target mostly the poor that have to rely on grants to rebuild their towns? Think about the place that get hit by tornados and sh*t. Remember Haiti? Think of the back breaking parts of our continent. The drought that hit those places is terrible. Many of the people that live there need the rain to grow their crops and that is their livelihood. Maybe Nature does not give a toss about the poor. It’s like for months on end they will not get rain and when they eventually do, they get floods. It is almost like nature just sits there and say: ”There now stop b*tching, that should last you awhile”. Big cities get nice frequent rain, like it some kind of reward or something.

Maybe the guilt will grow to a level that will make nature decide to leave everything to the hands of man, but that is highly unlikely. Think of what would happen if mankind could control the weather and their destiny. I know you are led to believe that you do control your destiny. News flash, you don’t. Pity there is no democracy; nature just does what it feels like. No discussion just a little warning now and then if it is in a good mood. I just get frustrated sometimes about nature. There are some instances that will make you believe it has a personality and other times where you just can’t place it anywhere, can’t put your finger on it. The poaching of rhino horns, is that part of a greater plan? Is that the way to make rhinos extinct? I wonder what they could have done to deserve to be extinguished in that kind of way. Makes one wonder what really happened to dinosaurs and all the other animals that are extinct. Whatever the answer is, at the end of the day the universe is just one giant mothaf*cker and there is nothing you and I can do about it.

The King

 

The King has a dilemma

I saw a cartoon showing some guy camped by the ATM with “waiting for month end” written below it. I realised that I know that statement all too well. I always have too much month for my money. I have very good reasons why this is so and they all make sense to me. I am sure many can relate to what I have just said. I have tried budgeting and the more I seem to get it right the more frustrated I get because all it seems to do is show me exactly how long it will take me to get to a point where I have enough money for my month. I guess that is a good start. It is hard to find anybody who will tell you that they have money; those who have don’t talk about it. Those who do not have sometimes pretend they have it because of external pressures. Whatever the case, it looks like commonly, people don’t have enough money. What is enough money I ask myself? Think of your life and the things you need versus the things you want, do you still think you don’t have enough money? Are you living within your means?

Financial advisors talk about budgeting and being disciplined enough to stick to the budget. I know for sure that it takes a lot to be disciplined. They talk about saving for the short term and the long term. This is all good advice and I just started drawing up battle boards to tackle my finances, working on that discipline. Obviously for me to start saving I have to cut down on a couple of things that I ‘waste’ my money on. So I drew a list of things that I do but don’t really need to be doing. The list for me was somewhat longish. This includes going out for drinks, going to visit friends, buying impulsively and the likes. Now if you breakdown many of the things we do that takes our money away, you will realise that should the majority of those who spend impulsively decide to save money the economy of this country will be crippled and unemployment will be on the all-time high. This is why, take all the entertainment venues, and imagine if the number of people going to all these places was to be cut down by two thirds (people start saving). How many people will lose their jobs? This extends from the people that work at those places to the people who supply those places with whatever consumables they need to keep running. That will affect so many businesses.

This means that if you do the right thing for yourself, you might just be getting someone out of the job. Surely this is not what you want. So the question I guess is how do you save and at the same time make sure that you don’t push the first domino to other people’s doom? I don’t know but I do care to know and that is why I am putting it out there. You can think of anything that you can save money on and if you take an exponential figure stopping spending on the same thing it will obviously have that negative effect. This is evident now with the petrol price being so high that people don’t drive as much and as fast (we are forced to save in this instance), fewer accidents and the tow truck drivers are feeling the pinch. Yes accidents are good business too. It does feel like being caught between a rock and a hard place.

In a country where the government does not own the Reserve bank and need their money to be printed in another country (Sweden) such things as saving becomes a big issue because individuals have to worry about unemployment and have to sometimes spend just to keep the fellow man in his job. The government talk but does very little to help the situation. In simple terms, unless our government change their tune in running this country then we are truly f*cked.

The King

Tuesday’s random thoughts

Top story on the news this morning was the ANC calling on all its members and supporters to go to the high court and support the president on his application to have the painting of him removed from the gallery. The court hearing will be during working hours and I am wondering who will be oiling the economic machine while all those guys are at the court house. Remember when the taxi drivers attacked some girls for wearing miniskirts? The women who went out in support of those girls wore miniskirt. Now will all those who go to support JZ expose their private part? I am just wondering out loud. I have promised to say nice things about the government and the ANC but they keep making it hard. My brain start to overheat at times when I think hard to find something nice to say about them, so naturally I stop. Brett Murray should have known better that democracy and freedom of speech in this country comes in any colour you want as long as it’s black, gold or green.

Here is a question I have always wanted to ask, where do political parties get their money to pay the people who work for them? Excuse my ignorance but I would really like to know. While on the issue of money, it seems to me that our government will do anything to have us pay more than we should. Take the e-toll for example (tired I know); we all know that one way or the other we are going to pay for the investment they made and beyond. Many have questioned what will happen to the money after that. They will make much more than they will need to improve the road infrastructure of the whole country. The good news for them is that they know that we are only going to b*tch and moan now but once we start paying, we will soon forget and they will start chowing it any way they see fit. I know this for a fact and here is why; remember some years back we started paying for plastic bags? They told us that plastic bags were an environmental hazard. They said that they will introduce brown paper bags to substitute plastic bags like they seem to do in America and all those first world countries. They said that plastics will no longer be free to make sure that people use the brown paper bags. Tell me if you remember being offered a brown paper bag when you bought groceries ever. The price of plastics has been going up steadily over the years and possibly until now you had forgotten about it. Do you know where that money goes? It is a lot of money if you think about it. Do you remember a COSATU march demanding the free paper bags? NO! We all forgot about it.

With all the money that the government is milking out of us, it is a shame that they are not delivering services. They make enough money to be able to subsidise a lot of things like petrol and electricity. With petrol and electricity prices being low, I am sure companies will be in positions to hire more people. That however is not how things work in this government. Some guy I spoke to about a week ago suggested that since we know we are going to have to pay for the investment the government made on the e-toll, why don’t we just pay for it once off, as in each person in Gauteng who owns a car pays a set amount to SANRAL and surely that will pay back the money the country borrowed that they can’t afford to default on. It seems like the government want to really make this country world class by benchmarking on first world countries, the problem is they don’t seem to do proper studies and they end up cutting and pasting. On the other hand it could be that it has very little to do with making this a world class country but just using such projects that will seem attractive to us as a cash cow because they know that we will pay for it one way or the other. Maybe it is finally time to experiment with homemade fuel and electricity.

The King

A change in political stance maybe?

Once in a while I find myself taking interest in the craziness going on in the political world. I must say that the politics of this country to me seems like an SABC drama. Take the buzzing issue surrounding the president at the moment, his portrait. I take out three things from the painting. First the artist is a good painter, second he is a disrespectful son of a b*tch and thirdly at least he had the decency to not draw JZ with a small d*ck. We all know that the only person allowed to draw the president in such ways is Zapiro. Yes JZ is somewhat violated and blah blah blah, but now those with hearts have sympathised and can he get over it already? Tselane Tambo seems to agree with me that he needs to get over it because there are more pressing issues that he should be focusing on (you can check out Tselane’s exact comment of News24).

On a different light, I was in Durban this past weekend, flew there on Friday. DA’s Helen Zille was in the same plane as me, she was in the business class of cause. For the first time in my adult life I wanted to take a picture with a famous person and that person at that moment was Helen Zille. I waited patiently for the plane to touch down at King Shaka. As we were getting out of the plane, I hurried to get to her so I could ask if I could take a picture with her, to my disappointment, she used a different exit to the rest of us. So that was the end of that. As luck would have it, the following morning as I went to breakfast at the City Lodge where I stayed, there was Helen Zille having breakfast. Technology failed me because at this time my battery was flat and I could not get a picture. Right there and then I decided to get the next best thing, an audience with her. I sat there thinking how I was going to approach her and how I was going to get past her bodyguards. My minds built so many obstacles and told me so many reasons why I will not be able to speak to her and as I was about to listen, I saw her walking alone towards her room, this was my opportunity and I took it. I ran after her and as I turned the corner I called out to her. She stopped and started walking back towards me. I must say that she was very nice and she listened to what I had to say for a good ten minutes. I am sure she had better things to do but she did not rush me. I am sure by now you are wondering what my encounter with Helen has to do with political drama and sh*t. Well I will tell you there was none, which was refreshing. Helen Zille is the premier of the Western Cape and the leader of the official opposition party this you know. She stayed at the City Lodge. What that said to me was that she is trying to tell her followers that she is not going to waste their money and she is not afraid to go where the people are. She has all the privileges but she chooses to use the money where it is really needed. Her political approach from what I saw was spot on. I did tell her that the only problem she has is that she is white. There is nothing she can do about that but maybe; just maybe she can drum up enough support to make sure the ANC gets off its butt and start delivering services.

I had been in the same place with political leaders before but could never get as close as I did to Helen. I am sure that you can tell that I was very impressed with her and that is because I was. I know for a fact that they (DA) will not win the next elections but I hope they do better than they did before. I must say that it is about time we have strong competition to the ANC in this country and hopefully the government will start doing what we put them there to do. I told Helen that I believe that for the DA to improve its chances they need to focus on telling us what they are going to do rather than focus on stopping the ANC. I must say that from the municipalities that they won over from the ANC last year you can already see the change. Food for thought.

The King

It is ok to question culture…

You know when you are sitting in the bus and as other passengers come in you start looking to guess who will be coming to sit next to you? You sit there and hope it will be some interesting person and not someone who will talk to you about topics that make you want to slit your wrists. Well it happened to me yesterday. I was in the bus from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The one thing about public transport is that if you are travelling alone it becomes tricky to choose who you sit next to. I was sitting there watching to see who will come and sit next to me. I was seriously wishing for someone who will just come and sit down and mind their own business. I was very tired and in no mood for making small talk. You got to understand that a two hour trip is a long trip. Well I got the opposite. A guy came and sat next to me. He must have been in his early to mid-forties. The first thing he said was: ”What is the difference between us and the people in the business class?” to which I replied, the types of animals printed in their money. After my response I realised that actually that is not necessarily the difference. As if he read my thoughts, he said money is not necessarily the difference, that there might be people there who have less money than me but plan better than me. This was going to be an interesting flight I thought to myself, now already forgot about my tiredness.

We spoke about how we plan as blacks and what we usually plan for and how long in advance we do that planning. He said, to which I agreed, that one of the reasons we might find it harder to plan too long in advance like white people seem to do is that if someone dies and you have your trip planned, you might just have to cancel as we all know that some people refuse to be buried when some family members are not in attendance. This brought us to talk about culture and how we cling to it and try to defend it with all we got. Yes culture does need to be defended, but we just must understand what we are actually defending. Is it the culture or is it a way of life that lets us get away with silly sh*t? Sometimes the culture we so much try to preserve does not even make sense anymore. The one part of culture that we talked about in a bit of detail was circumcision. The question is; is it necessary to still do things the way it was done way back when? I see you taking up arms, but hear me out here he said. Back in the day, our forefathers understood that it was important to have the foreskin chopped off. They were also smart enough to understand that to reduce the risk of infections and blood loss; they had to do this in winter because blood does not flow that freely when you are cold. So if you really look at the history of how it was done, you will realise that it had little to do with making you a man. They had to play the psychology game to get guys to do it. It was all about your health. Now they did not have access to medical facilities that we have today, and that is why they were blessed with the knowledge that they had to make sure there were no casualties. These days we all know what happens to half the boys that go there. We have the facilities, is it necessary to put our boys lives in danger in the name of culture?

The way that guy looks at life was quite refreshing. I had never thought of circumcision that way. If you think of taboo things, most of them were to protect us against ourselves. He is one of those guys that believe that we know what went wrong and how we were wronged but we cannot keep on looking back because we are afraid to push forward. We need to take charge of our future because we have the chance to do so. I did not even get his name but I learned new things from that man. Had I just closed my eyes and pretended to be sleeping I would not have had the opportunity to learn the things I learned. My way of thinking shifted somehow. A stranger can be a teacher you do not know.

The King

The world keeps rearranging

Looking back to the time you were young and had friends but then you had to go away to school or whatever, when you came back and your old friends said you changed. Did that not make you feel bad? I mean for some reason you could not accept that you changed because, I believe, you still wanted to be the friend you were before you left. The fact of the matter is that you did change and that does not make you a bad person at all. When you left, you went to a different place that exposed you to different things and you found another way of living your life which was best suited for you. There was nothing wrong with you that you needed to change. You changed because that is what should happen when you grow up and get exposed to new things. You adapt and that adaptation is change. This change happens in many areas of our lives and how we turn out in the end has a lot to do with our ability to deal with it.

Many say that if it is not broken then don’t fix it. I guess there in no need to fix something that is not broken in the literal sense but I feel that saying is often used when people are afraid of changing. Take in a relationship for example. If two people are used to doing the same thing over and over again it must get to a point where it is boring. Usually when it gets to that point, only one partner is going to seek to change things. It could be insecurities but the other partner is likely to want things to stay the same. Some people always want to stick to what they know. A funny thing is that it is advised to constantly work on your relationship to keep the fire burning. Can this be translated to keep on fixing or is it just preventative maintenance? Whatever it is, the thing is that you have to keep changing the way you do things to maintain the happiness in the relationship. I guess the trick here is how the change is introduced. There are just some surprises that are a recipe for disaster. If you know your partner well then you will know how to introduce change for the better in your relationship without them thinking you are seeing somebody else or giving them a heart attack.

I think change in a relationship, be it friendship or romance, is easier to manage than in a professional situation. Usually in a work situation people find it hard to change because as soon as new systems are introduced they fear that they will lose their jobs. It is important to note that companies will continuously change to keep up with the times so as to continue being relevant and keep making profit which is the primary goal. When I really think about it, it is mainly just the fear of the unknown for most people. The fear that if you have to do things differently to the way you have been doing it for year, how will you cope. It could be looked at as if though the company is trying to work you out. In some cases I must admit that this is true. Luckily for most, companies that give a sh*t about their employees introduce change by taking those employees through the change process. They do change management. Cool thing really.

Change is inevitable and I believe that as long as it is change for the better then it should be embraced. It is important to keep yourself informed so that when changes come you are prepared for them. To prepare for change will keep you relevant in the industry or be it in a relationship. Let’s face it; no one wants to be stuck in the 80’s. I might have spoken too soon, think of fashion, the more it changes the more it stays the same. Things people used to wear in the 70’s are in fashion today. I wonder what that says about change. Good this technology is going forward and not repeating itself.

The King

A thought about love

I woke up thinking about love this morning. I had love songs ringing in my head and could not figure out what was going on. With that weird way to start my morning I got to thinking about love and what we think we know about it. Do we know what love really is? Does such a thing exist? Could it be that since we like to quantify things as human beings, we decided to call the attraction love? I mean if you really think about it, we need things to make sense and for that to happen we give them names, we call them something. Whoever started this love thing decided how people in love should act and thus we have been following suit for all these years. I just wonder if you know what it means to love and be loved. If you were to be asked how you want to be loved, would you know the answer to that question? I am sure you will probably come up with an answer along the lines of the points below, but do you really understand what they mean?

My partner must have a sense of humour.

This is top on many people’s list. They are looking for someone who is not easily offended. This comes in handy because it acts as some kind of disclaimer, the partner must be able to laugh off your silliness and not take it personal when you do dumb things. The person must be able to get your f*cked up jokes. The partner must not take life too seriously, understand that your opposite sex friends are just that even if you sleep over sometimes. That is sense of humour right there.

They must be able to communicate with me.

This is my favourite one. It seems to me that everyone agrees that when you love someone you must be able to communicate with them. I have found through my research that many of us don’t really understand this communication story. If you think of the times where you realised that communication was lacking in your relationship, it was during that time when things started to go south. We often assume that we know how to love because we have loved before, forgetting that you have not loved this person before. Just because she is a woman does not mean she will like what the other women you have dated loved. Often people say that a person should be spontaneous and not ask everything and I believe it is because they don’t know the answer themselves so if you explore you will not be the only one discovering what works. How about telling me what you like or what to try so we can have more time enjoying each other than getting things wrong before I get them right? Communicate with me, you must remember that you just might not stick around for me to finally get things right.

My partner must care about me.

This is one of those tricky ones and it gets more complex because it is closely linked to communication. What does it really mean to care about somebody? Has anybody ever thought about that and put it into perspective? I mean for some if you cook for them it tells them you care but on the other hand you might be feeling like they want a slave. To some if you buy them gifts it tells them you care and you might be looking at it differently. I think caring for some someone in however way you do it should bring you a warm and fuzzy feeling and not resentment. It all comes back to communication.

There are many attributes that we look for in the person we love and just going back to what I wrote here it somehow becomes clear that love is not just an entity on its own, it is a couple of things fussed together. I therefore think that it is not possible to be in love if one of the attributes is missing.  At the end of the day it is up to you to define what attributes make up love for you. If you and your partner both understand that the same way then you are in love. If you cannot agree on that then love is simply just an excuse to hang around while waiting for someone who will love you. Getting out is usually not as easy.

The King