Sometimes I think I almost “came” as a Caucasian. Not that I am unhappy with my colour but some of the stuff that “my people” seem to enjoy gives me nothing but palpitations. Going by the classifications taught by Lionel (one of my coaches) – we are definitely “party asses.” Take weddings for example, just the thought of being teh subject of attention of 500 people, more or less puts me off the whole thing (chicken u!) I had rather go with fifty people or thereabouts – that should fulfill the legal bit about witnesses and also cover the necessary family and friends that would be present whether invited or not.

I think worse than that is the big burial bash that’s so common around these parts. It’s not about the gone but not forgotten – but an excuse to do what we do best – get together and be party asses. Common! I was still teething when Elvis left the building:-) Of course being man and of like-flesh, afflicted with ego in more or less the same proportion as other specimens of the specie, I am given to flights of fancy where I see myself giving an award-wining performance, but it never lasts – the palpitations – oh! How relentless they are – never letting up even for a minute.

It’s so easy to make it hell. Take the 2 opposite ends of the spectrum – that’s the “I am a hunk” spectrum. As I was saying, the lower end of the spectrum seems to be overly crowded with the guys spending their time wishing they were on the opposite end – that’s when they are not wishing they could hook up with the beaut just a couple of seats away. Now, its so easy to fantasize about that beaut that it’s a natural progression to start fantasizing about every beauty that the guy comes across. The hunks have got their own issues. It’s not easy to maintain the I-am-35-in-my-prime-a-stud-able-to-party-all-night-past-the-break-of-dawn persona. The body gets tired at some point. While the oogly ones are fantasizing, these guys are being literarily assaulted by the opposite sex – especially in the developed countries where its not exactly a taboo for a lady to take the initiative. Every one has his/her cross to bear.

It’s the little things about Windows that get my goat. Those little things can be real frustrating if they happen at certain times. Internet Explorer has got a nice feature which allows you to save a webpage as a compiled file with the “.mht” extension. The problem is that sometimes it takes a very long time for the save procedure to complete. So say, you change your mind and decide that you don’t want the page saved again and you click the “cancel” button – well nothing happens. So you click a few times more, then some more clicks … The problem is that the save dialog box has locked I.E. such that you cant do anything else with it. I was hoping this issue would have been corrected long ago but no such luck. From M$ point of view: “what you gonna now? Go ahead and be a b..ch about it. Raise your blood pressure a notch, throw a tantrum, add an ulcer on top of that. You are out of luck s..ker. We own your computer (R)”

Some other unrelated musings:
I see some women who look like they carry their fat well – but do they die well as well – when all the complications develop at some point? It’s been politically unacceptable for a while to refer to anybody as being fat – the more politically correct references include “big boned”, “muscled”, etc. So I see some women and I am tempted to go “Hi dear, you look smashing, but I think you should: throttle the beetle, stopper the mopper – I am sure you catch my drift!”

Connoisseurs come in various forms – some are fascinated with road kill (I am not but I know at least one woman who is). I saw a dog on the road on the way to the airport yesterday. It looked as if it had been well-quartered, piled up with the head placed almost upright on top. It had this half-faced death grin. It’s almost as if someone went to the pains of rigging up the gory sight right in the middle of the road for maximum impact on oncoming motorists..

My favorite bank is charging for printing account statement online. Get this – charging me for printing the statement from the comfort of my home; using my own printer and paper; on my laptop (pc). Yet the bank does not charge for viewing the statement online. But once you press the print button you activate the shylock in the banking application. Consider that the statement is already on my screen and technically already downloaded to my PC and that I can find myriad other ways to print it instead of using their print button. The bank should rather consider it as a VAS (Value Added Service) or state explicitly that they will be charging for it (it’s possibly stated in some obscure brochure which no one has a copy of anymore). And come to that, sometimes a service provider needs to look beyond immediate gratification i.e., the potential returns (after some sort of research to find out how many customers actually use the service – in this case the “print” option) to the amount of goodwill/free adverts via the happy customer exercising their bragging rights by telling friends and colleagues alike about the VASes offered by his/her bank at no extra costs to the customer. This will utlimately bring the bank more returns than the paltry hackle-raising sum they are likely to arm-twist from a few disgruntled customers who have no choice but to have the said amount debited from their accounts.

Paid good money last week to learn to drive (at a driving school). Yeah I know – I see the shock on your face – after what – years on earth? I must say it felt too much like work! Luckily I didn’t run into anyone through out the 5-day course 🙂 Reversing still has lots of kinks but I am sure with practice it will all get straightened out.

I wonder when we as a people will make great progress. Today I watched a man move his vehicle to block the tiny space between his car and the one in front of his in a bumper-to-bumper hold-up just so that according to him “why should only the bikes continue to move when others are stuck in th hold-up” – talk about twisted logic. What he seemed not to realise is that by moving forward he created space between him and the car behind him – so the bikes just had to do a little detour. Until we are happy at other’s progress (or at least accept it) we wont go far in this country – same probably goes for a lot of Africans 🙁