As a comparatively young professional with many of my peers overseas, I regularly get asked the ultimate question. No, it has nothing to do with the answer to life, the universe and everything (which, thanks to Douglas Adams, we all know by now is 42!) The question is why I still remain in South Africa. Why I don’t pack up my Samsung Tablet, my laptop, my book collection and relocate to pastures greener. Most definitely greener, with more zero’s at the end of the month’s income.

After being presented with this question repeatedly, I realised that some introspection is needed. I tenaciously cling to my home in Great Brak River, sometimes swim upstream in a highly competitive and overcrowded industry, and face it; the income is not at a level where I can finally buy that dream Harley Davidson cash. There is also of course the fear factor. Violent crime increases almost daily with bold black headlines screaming from every street pole, announcing yet another life that’s come to an end prematurely. No one can live in the zone of “it will never happen to me”. That is akin to ostrich head-in-the-sand syndrome, and will more than likely lead to disaster.

It does seem easier to join the exiting droves – there will be no blame – the future certainly seems challenging in this country. Somehow I find that it doesn’t seem like a good option to me. I’ve lived in another country for five years, and never got over the yearning of wanting to “go home”. There is something about living in South Africa that permeates one’s being, and that never quite lets go.

I love the culture of being a South African. I love the wide open spaces, the extreme contrasts, the freedom. I love biltong, and “braai-broodjies”, and I love the all-embracing hospitality of the platteland.

Also, I’m an entrepreneur. I love discovering and learning and sharing ideas. I love taking on a challenge and showing my mettle. In another country, where I will be an alien trying to make a living, I will never quite have the same rights or experiences as a citizen-born. I will probably always feel, like I did before, that I am occupying a space that by rights should’ve been someone else’s.

Here, I have clients that I’ve known for years. Familiarity will probably be the final card I play. Working with clients that have become friends is important to me. I love seeing a business grow, teaching skills to clients that empower them, and knowing that I’ve made a difference, however small.

If we all leave, what will be left for the next generation? I choose to stay and be part of the positive change that must happen.

I spend a lot of time on social media sites. For one, I like being informed of current events, and social media is an almost instant conveyer of information. I believe facebook is a platform for just that – sharing information, and chatting to other people.

Lately, however, I’ve noticed a couple of trends on facebook. The two that really got me going is the “save the rhino” campaign, and today again the “stop pet cruelty” campaign. Now I agree with both. Nobody has the right to just go on a rhino killing spree purely because of a vague rumour that the ground horn has unequalled medicinal use. And we all know that pets are helpless and of course yet again, nobody has the right to bully, harm, hurt or mutilate an animal because of some perverted reason.

The solution, apparently, is to continually spam all and sundry with bloody and graphic photographs of dead, hornless rhinos. Apparently the continual sharing and liking of these horrific photographs will somehow stop the culling of rhinos. Now, I don’t know about this. I’m not a rhino horn reseller, and I have no intention of ever shooting or harming a rhino. I sincerely doubt if anybody who does have any intention of selling rhino horn will be disuaded by these facebook messages. But still they continue – daily.

The same with the anti-pet cruelty. The latest solution is to apparently change all our facebook profile pics to pets. Let me tell you – I already feel like a dog sometimes, and I have my dog-looking days. Yet again I don’t think that changing my photograph to my dog’s mug is going to change anybody’s attitude towards pets. If a person has a cruel streak within them, we are hardly going to “cure” this by plastering facebook with pics of pets.

There are many more realistic and pro-active ways that works – initiatives that people can join if they really want to make a pro-active difference in real life. There are many ideas on http://www.savetherhino.org or even on http://www.bethecause.org, and funnily enough – none of these initiatives involve posting photographs to facebook.

If we want to use our facebook profiles to change the world, why not focus on things we can change, and that will make a difference? Motivational posts are always uplifting. What about sharing tips about being more eco-conscious?

Nobody can convey the message I am expressing here better than Mother Theresa: “I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.”

I didn’t have any specific wish for Christmas. I know some of us spend a lot of time pondering on the “All I want for Christmas”-list – but really, for me this was no priority. I enjoyed giving and receiving, and a day of rest.

So surely it is only fair that I wish to spend my non-used Christmas wish on the New Year. All I want for 2012… It is simple, it is one thing. I want a decent housekeeper. With the thousands of people out there apparently unemployed and wishing for a job, surely there is one woman who wants to come and take care of the nitty-gritty details of running my household.

I wish for someone kind and wise, who instinctively knows what brand of floor polish or window-cleaner I should get out of the myriad of choices on the shop shelf. I wish for someone who can sew on a button, fix a hem and knows where the plasters are when needed. The wisdom is necessary because I’d like to know when a much-needed household product is almost finished so I can add it to the shopping list, not when it was finished two days ago and the world will come to an end if I don’t rush out and go buy it immediately at great expense from the local supermarket.

Surely it is not too much to ask that my housekeeper has a rudimentary knowledge of cooking, cleaning and ironing – I don’t expect miracles. Any task can be learned – as long as there is a willingness to learn. A love of animals would be fantastic. I can understand fear if I kept a large savage brute, but my dogs are tiny, fluffy bundles of joy.

Added to my list of wants is someone who has a non-allergy to Mondays, and who actually comes in to work when the week starts. Someone who is not clock-conscious; who doesn’t spend half the day either checking her cellphone or her wristwatch to make sure that neither has stopped, and the day is in fact, not yet over.

I don’t begrudge anybody a drink now and then, but overindulgence is a no-no for me when it comes to my housekeeper. I have a sensitive nose, and cannot cope with alcohol fumes developing an individual personality and sharing my space. I also seem to find that I have a problem with someone who does not understand that my expensive collection of wines, amassed over the years, is not to be opened and drunk, with the contents replaced with water. I do happen to know the difference between red wine and tap water.

Through the years I have worked hard to earn money in order to buy beautiful things. I have travelled and collected memorabilia which means nothing to someone else, but to me, at a touch, brings back smells and sounds long-forgotten. I’d like to keep these things if possible. And I’d like someone who respects my love of stuff. Someone who doesn’t take without asking. Someone who doesn’t think because I have so much, I won’t miss anything.

And lastly, please, someone who knows the value of silence. I work in a creative field, where I need harmony and quiet around me in order to think. It may seem that I am sitting in front of my computer, doing nothing, but my mind is running a million miles per second. I cannot work when there is a constant chatter aimed at me from someone who expects me to respond.

So please, whoever is in charge of granting wishes – I’ve never wanted much. Grant me this one boon. All I want for 2012 is a housekeeper, heaven-sent, who wants to be part of my journey.

I didn’t have any specific wish for Christmas. I know some of us spend a lot of time pondering on the “All I want for Christmas”-list – but really, for me this was no priority. I enjoyed giving and receiving, and a day of rest.

So surely it is only fair that I wish to spend my non-used Christmas wish on the New Year. All I want for 2012… It is simple, it is one thing. I want a decent housekeeper. With the thousands of people out there apparently unemployed and wishing for a job, surely there is one woman who wants to come and take care of the nitty-gritty details of running my household.

I wish for someone kind and wise, who instinctively knows what brand of floor polish or window-cleaner I should get out of the myriad of choices on the shop shelf. I wish for someone who can sew on a button, fix a hem and knows where the plasters are when needed. The wisdom is necessary because I’d like to know when a much-needed household product is almost finished so I can add it to the shopping list, not when it was finished two days ago and the world will come to an end if I don’t rush out and go buy it immediately at great expense from the local supermarket.

Surely it is not too much to ask that my housekeeper has a rudimentary knowledge of cooking, cleaning and ironing – I don’t expect miracles. Any task can be learned – as long as there is a willingness to learn. A love of animals would be fantastic. I can understand fear if I kept a large savage brute, but my dogs are tiny, fluffy bundles of joy.

Added to my list of wants is someone who has a non-allergy to Mondays, and who actually comes in to work when the week starts. Someone who is not clock-conscious; who doesn’t spend half the day either checking her cellphone or her wristwatch to make sure that neither has stopped, and the day is in fact, not yet over.

I don’t begrudge anybody a drink now and then, but overindulgence is a no-no for me when it comes to my housekeeper. I have a sensitive nose, and cannot cope with alcohol fumes developing an individual personality and sharing my space. I also seem to find that I have a problem with someone who does not understand that my expensive collection of wines, amassed over the years, is not to be opened and drunk, with the contents replaced with water. I do happen to know the difference between red wine and tap water.

Through the years I have worked hard to earn money in order to buy beautiful things. I have travelled and collected memorabilia which means nothing to someone else, but to me, at a touch, brings back smells and sounds long-forgotten. I’d like to keep these things if possible. And I’d like someone who respects my love of stuff. Someone who doesn’t take without asking. Someone who doesn’t think because I have so much, I won’t miss anything.

And lastly, please, someone who knows the value of silence. I work in a creative field, where I need harmony and quiet around me in order to think. It may seem that I am sitting in front of my computer, doing nothing, but my mind is running a million miles per second. I cannot work when there is a constant chatter aimed at me from someone who expects me to respond.

So please, whoever is in charge of granting wishes – I’ve never wanted much. Grant me this one boon. All I want for 2012 is a housekeeper, heaven-sent, who wants to be part of my journey.

I’ve hit my mid-thirties. I need no more reminder of this – but thank you anyway, for everybody who chooses to be so solititious and go out of your way to find little ways to refresh my non-failing memory. To the people who ask if my young assistant is my daughter – no, she isn’t. And *gasp* – do I look THAT old? She is a mere 16 years younger than I!

Of course that mid-thirties slump goes hand-in-hand with weight-gain. So after, yet again, standing in front of my cupboard, staring at clothes that I could’ve sworn fit me last year, I had a good long think about all this. And suffice it to say, the answer was not pretty. Somewhere over the last decade I had “let myself go”. There is no responsibility to be laid at someone else’s door. It is me, all me. I’ve have let the siren call of convenient food snare me into a trap from which I did not want to escape. Five-minute drive-through vs an hour slaving away in front of a hot stove? No contest.

Now it is all-out war. I have joined the ranks of the weight-shedders. It is a swelling rank, that swells all the time. It is a rank of people who have had enough of ugly clothes for fat people, of sniggers and mocking glares. Yes, it is also a rank of quitters. Face it – it is easy for us to quit on self-discipline and have that chocolate brownie or that slab of illicit mouth-orgasmic joy. So most of us will probably join, leave, join again, give up, rejoin…. been there – got the t-shirt. This is also not my first membership allocation. But hey, I’ve never been this ANGRY at myself. The previous times I’ve wanted to lose weight for a variety of wrong reasons. Now I have one reason – I want to lose this extra me… for me.

I want to feel awake and energetic again. I want to be able to run up a flight of stairs and not fall down, gasping for breath. I want to feel exuberant, fabulous, fantastic. I want to run and walk and swim and cycle and do all sorts of wonderful never-ending active things – all without feeling like a lump of breathless lard.

So not only have I joined the ranks of the weight-shedders – I have joined the crowds of people worldwide who use Herbalife. I’ve dug deep into my pockets and invested in my first Herbalife shake, and some other wonderful, expensive products. It’s all gone way above my head, but I can read the instructions. I may not know what everything is for, but I’m guzzling it all down. And I must say, I am pleasantly surprised. After hearing about how awful the shake tastes, I was dreading the first sip. I held my nose, tongue-tip-tasted the contents, and wow – promptly drank the entire glass.

Having embarked on my journey towards being slim and trim, I will endeavour to keep you posted as to my progress. The added expectation of readers waiting for me to stray from the path, will probably help keep me on it!

I’m shamelessly borrowing this from one of my facebook friends – it certainly made me think about whether new is necessarily better.

Anyone over the age of 35 should read this.

Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. I apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.” She was right about one thing — our generation didn’t have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on “Our” day here’s what I remembered we did have…. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day. We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day. Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Yorkshire. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then. Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then? Please share this so another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smarty-pants young person can add to this.

I’m a huge U2 fan, which is why I didn’t mind standing in a Computicket line for 2 hours to get tickets for the U2 show in Cape Town next year. When I was younger, I often used to think that Bono should concentrate more on being an artist and less on saving the world. I listened to Sunday Bloody Sunday so many times that you could shake me awake at 2am, intone “This is not a rebel song” (the line Bono uses to introduce the song at live concerts) and I would launch into…

Yes

I can’t believe the news today

Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away

How long, how long must we sing this song?

How long? How long?

Although the song is about violence in Irish history, it is so very applicable to povery in South Africa. And yes, I’ve grown up and now wish that more people thought like Bono and want to save the world. How long must we plead for help with the poverty situation? It is certainly not going to go away by itself – and apathy only makes the situation worse.

Why is it that we watch television, read newspapers and magazines, listen to the radio – where we are constantly exposed to the message of misery, but so few of us feel moved to take action to make a difference? Is it because the message is so overwhelming that we feel no action can stem the tsunami of suffering?

Every little action can make a difference. You don’t have to rush out and buy twenty loaves of bread for your local crowd of hungry children. You certainly don’t have to spend four hours cooking a pot of soup to go and feed waiting TB patients to ease the working of their medication. Not everyone can train as a first-aider or a care-giver or even a missionary. You can, however, visit one lonely elderly person for half an hour every month, share some titbits from a magazine, and maybe some fruit and flowers. You can ask after the health and well-being of your housekeepers child/ren, and perhaps give a little gift with love this Christmas. You can make some sandwiches for the legless beggar who sits in the sun all day on the corner, crying out for help. Who knows, you may even find some time to volunteer at an existing organisation, where another pair of hands will certainly make all the difference in the world to a few overworked volunteers.

If every one of us do one little thing maybe once a week, or even once a month, this will add up to thousands of loving deeds, and this WILL make a difference.