Left a good job in the city

Loaded yet another new thing on the old iPhone, this time for blogging, so let's see if it works...

Posted with LifeCast

Well, still more pictures of crash barriers than policemen with no seatbelts. It's remarkably difficult to take a picture of one moving vehicle from another with a phone camera. I did however enlist the help of my son to take this picture in traffic on the way to the IPL cricket. It was a good time to be illegal, since every cop in Cape Town was at Newlands, but still - a police car with no numberplate??

Since South Africa has no other crime issues to speak of, the government has decided to outlaw one or two things that you might argue don't do anyone else much harm. One is smoking in public, about which I blogged a while ago. The second is wearing seatbelts while driving. Both of these rules are often ignored by sections of the population that you would think would know better. On cigarette packs in the UK it used to say "think first - most doctors don't smoke". Presumably somebody eventually pointed out that many of them do, and most of them drink heavily too. (An alcoholic? Someone who drinks more than his doctor.)

As you might expect different behaviour from the profession that cuts out lung tumours, those who cut car crash victims from their vehicles might be expected to wear a seatbelt. Think again: most policemen don't bother. I've been conducting an informal survey, and for every one who has his belt on, 3 or 4 do not. I suppose their chances of getting stopped are lower than the general population, but the fact that it is law doesn't seem to count for much. It's the inverse of Giuliani's broken windows theory: if a policeman can't even be bothered to obey basic laws, then what chance the politicians take any notice of the big ones?

In the UK, I think there is an exemption from the seatbelt law for pregnant women and cabbies. No such exemption exists here: I called the number on the back of a Joburg police van to check - while driving, obviously - another thing that's illegal and widely ignored. I wonder if it's illegal to take photos with a phone while you're driving, of a policeman not wearing a seatbelt. I hear it is in the UK, but if I can get one I'll post it.

You couldn't make this up department, entry no 17:
Sekunjalo (JSE:SKJ) have just appointed as an executive director the Chairman's (Ego's) PA. The obvious question is: blackmail, or blowjob?

Everything you need to know about life, you learned in the playground. Of course you don't figure that out for another 30 or 40 years. Maybe as parents we can learn from kid related dilemmas. Let me give you an example.

Son no. 1 goes to the local school. It's a lovely school, but is not really big enough to support extensive facilities, and seems to be teetering perpetually on the margins of viability. The trouble is that many of the friends he has made in the past few years, with parents that we have become friends with, are now leaving to go to other, bigger, richer schools with better prospects. We've got options, and in the background is always the possibility of moving. It makes it harder to commit and to make the most of where we are now.

This blog is a Alex cartoon, and in frame four, we find out that I'm talking about moving country not school. The same things apply: looking across the mountain to see if the grass is greener, are the prospects better, is it a better place to be? There is a nervousness about being the last one left: leaving it too late and being unable to move. Then the human factor - the stickiness of relationships; all the things that made it hard to leave the UK on the first place.

In the meantime, they have just painted the road each side of the school gates. In pragmatic egalitarian fashion it mixes Afrikaans and English, so it says both 'ahead' and 'voor' on each side. It splits the two words for school, so one side reads "skool ahead voor". Three English parents have been run over this month already taking photos that crop out the 'voor'.

Just over a year since my last post. Nice going. I felt like blogging again, since blogs are the new facebook - or something - and decided to read what I last wrote before I started. Valentine's day last year was the last time I wore a tie - at that board meeting in Gaborone - until the same date this year. This time it was a bow tie.

We Poms are inclined not to take things too seriously, which is a fine and excellent way of doing things. The balance to this tendency seems to be that we take seriously some things that the rest of the world doesn't really get: cricket, making tea, evening dress. Sometimes this offers opportunity.

My current boss, who happens to be English, invited me to a black tie function on Saturday night to schmooze with some clients. He is always impeccably and fashionably dressed, although without that ragged edge of scruffiness that betrays the upper classes. I was in a cafe with him the other week when another bloke asked him where he got his jeans. That never happens to me. I had a sneaking suspicion, therefore that how I dressed would be very important.

About 15 minutes before he left home, I SMS'd him: "do you think I have to wear a tie with my suit?". His response was something like "it's black tie, but in South Africa that's open to interpretation". The missus and I donned our finery and toddled along, Bertie Wooster style. The boss saw me:
"You're in black tie!"
"Of course"
"Wanker!"
Apparently my SMS had had the intended effect, on both him and his wife, who thought I was very unprofessional. His response had been 'but he went to Durham, he should know better'.

Only later did I feel disgruntled that he thought I might not wear evening dress to a black tie function. Wanker.

Popping up to Botswana for the day again, and watching the silent movie content that South African Airways force-feeds you in cattle class. Along with the slapstick TV gags, they have a loop that runs on the TV plugging Kwa Zulu Natal. One of the features is an artist, who is apparently from an "imminent" family in KZN. Maybe she's pregnant. It reminds me of one of my old posts on a similar subject. Anyway, I was in Botswana for a client's board meeting - very interesting, more for what was not being said than what was. The interesting and important conversations take place in the bars and restaurants at the Grand Palm Hotel and the Gaborone Sun, and by the time the board meets it's a bit late to change things. It's tough for a teetotaller. If flights are anything to go by, then Botswana is booming. The plane from Gaborone to Joburg is always full - I have not seen more than 2 or 3 empty seats at a time in dozens of trips. The seats are often filled with laptop toting consultants like myself, sweating in their suits. The economy is booming because it can afford these people (people like me), and it has the confidence that there are ideas worth throwing money and consultants at. Whether the migration of consultants bodes well for the future of Botswana's economy or not is an open question.

I've just noticed that it's over a year since my last blog here. In the meantime I'd been blogging elsewhere about my work woes - elsewhere because I had got a bit liberal with the address of this blog. I don't mind complete strangers reading about my professional life, but the concern that it might get to the people it was about led me to create another one.

Anyway the upshot of the business bollocks is that I am now freelance. That means that I no longer have a permanent position or a guaranteed monthly salary. It also means that I don't have to fill in budgets, attend board meetings, go to corporate away days, do workshops, be nice people I don't like. It's great! If I'm working, I'm getting paid. If not, I'm free! And broke. Luckily so far I've been busy, with a month off over Christmas. Perfect.

Back soon. Probably