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What do you really want out of life? Now what's stopping you?

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The streets of Harare

Did you miss me? Had a busy week at the annual ACTION conference at Celebration Church last week-lots of fun and work.

I walked around the CBD in Harare recently, I had dropped a job off that would take a little while and had half an hour to spare, so I thought I would take a wonder around. As a child visits into the centre of town were a rarity and treated with awe and intrepidation, there was always much to see, buy and then there was high tea in one of the tearooms. What did I find this time?

The primary thing that struck me was the difference in maintenance levels between buildings. You can find two buildings next to each other, one well kept and the other in a state of disrepair (and usually filled with poor quality clients). Much I think has to do with the mindset towards maintenance and value of service. Offering a cheaper service does not always mean scrimping on things like maintenance. Africa is plagued by beautiful buildings(often built with donor money) that are left to fall into dilapidation due to a lack of foresight and preventative maintenance. Easy to obtain-hard to maintain.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Figures and Fun

Here’s a little thought to cheer you, my salary today is 1 000 000 times what it was when I started work 7 years ago, and I’m not sure that it currently buys a great deal more. Isn’t Zimbabwe inflation fun?

The fact remains is that money should work for us, not us for our money, investment is one way to expand your wealth base without working your fingers (in my case literally) to the bone. Regardless of the economic climate you are in there is always a way of increasing wealth beyond your working income.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

A little vocabulary.

A ghostly miasma hung over the roads, bound by the early morning chill and concealing the bustling lifeblood of traffic that flowed sinuously through the city beneath. The artificial beauty created by the rising sun filtering through the mist concealed the death that lay in its toxic grasp.

‘Miasma’, it’s a lovely word. If you've never met it before then let it roll around your mouth and off your tongue in a delicious explosion of new found speech.

Pick up a dictionary, pick a word, any word you don’t know and learn it. Expand your vocabulary, not to baffle people with new found knowledge, but to understand more when you read and to be able to communicate better with those around you.

Monday, May 14, 2007

The joys of dial up

So there arn't any ok! At least though I have a connection to the net and can blog from the comfort of my office once again. We have a new PC and a new ISP-Zimbabwe On-line. Had very efficient and effective service from them. Managed to walk into their offices and out again with an acount within 15 minutes. Definitly a standard of excellence.

Broadband is still cost prohibitive at the moment as most of the infrastructure is still not in place. The change over is planned though-mainly because I have become increasingly frustrated with the slow dial up speeds this end of the world. Also, if I am to ever do some serious studying I will need access to the speed in order to download video feeds etc.

But for now the ponderance across the vast scape of the net continues at an infuriatingly tedious pace.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Pain in the A

I was a good boy and went to the doc for a check up-BP a little low, nothing untoward and been meaning to go for a while. Blood tests came back with a low vitamin B12. The cure-a series of jabs, the injection itself is not bad, but the pain a few minutes later...

I have come to a new level of understanding as to why the phrase 'a pin in the butt' is used to desribe a situation that makes itching powder look tame.

Ok, enough about me and my overshare.

I have a new PC (nice little athelon 3.2 processor) and spent an overly large portion of the week testing it out (on games what else). Sounds aweful to say it, but this is the first decent computer that the practice has had in its five years of existance. Sad in a world that runs on the things. There is still that unmistakable thrill though when you realise that it belongs to 'you', not somethng that has been hired or as part of another project. Next on the list a new car...?

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Values again

If your value is based on the level of your pay, and you are paid peanuts, will you not behave like a monkey? What's the best way to get values-do we make them up as we go along? How about spending hours thinking up your own? Then there is the wisdom literature route-take values from a piece of religious writing and internalise them (the 'thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery)-the catch is that you usually have to believe in the deity concerned.

Why bother with all this? The reason is that if you don't then you will value all things and actions as equal and respond to all situations with the same level of emotion. A current example-there iss a young man in the resaurant who has not caught the company value the 'the client is first'. As a result he will ignore any potential guest until his current job is done-be it washing the floor, drying glasses-he treats those with the same value as the person who pays the bill.

So what if you value family(all family even the ones you hate), work, cleanliness,maintenance, chores, the postman all the same, how will you prioritise...you get the picture!