Well, there goes February

The great thing about having a house guest is that you are constantly busy. The bad thing about having a house guest is that you never have time to do stuff in your normal routine (in my case like sleeping more, going to yoga, writing the blog, working in the evening 2-3 times a week). So while I had an incredible time when my friend was here, and I was quite sad for a few hours after dropping him off, it was also great to see him go so that I could get back to my normal (albeit less dramatic!) routine.

So in the interests of brevity here’s the quick rundown at work and non-work for the last two (!!) weeks:
• Social entrepreneurship prize-giving competition at St George’s Mall. Some of our management team were judges in this competition put on by the Western Province.
• Fantastic Wines with Heart strategy meeting. Love the new positioning, marketing plan, and the ownership that the guy who is running it is taking. Fantastic.
• Lots and lots and LOTS of work on FoodTents generic proposal doc, and then customizing for various opportunities. From tomorrow on, I am not working on sales any more. I allowed myself to get sucked in, and as a result my actual job suffered, and quite badly. From now on I will leave sales to sales and will draw the boundary where it needs to be drawn (i.e. I will review proposal docs but won’t help draft them).
• Great planning meetings on the Hub. Very excited to have our Hub host back from Brazil, to build our membership base and systems, and sell some events to bring money in the door.
• Agrizone hand-off meeting turned up a couple of interesting things I was unaware of. Big lesson here: it’s easier to do something right to begin with or nip a problem in the bud than to try and fix it after the fact.
• Site visit to Masikhanye Food Garden with the government monitoring agency.
• Lunch with the vegetarians at icologie, who are doing some very interesting work. Lots of potential for collaboration there.
• Great meeting with a volunteer at Harvest of Hope about potential areas for collaboration between FoodTents and Abalimi/Harvest of Hope.
• Time to stop talking about collaboration and actually do it.

I found a big area of self-blindness. I am always busy criticising people who see a problem and just talk about it and don’t solve it, and I realised I was doing that and not in a small area, but in a really darn big one that is really the core of my job. Well, now that I see what I’m doing I can fix it.

On this whole concept/reality of the universe sending signals and manifesting … well, the universe has been suggesting to me that it’s time to start thinking bigger. From discussing a mutual friend whose perspective I thought would help here who then contacted me out of the blue, to an article on the ticking time bomb that is the ANC’s running of SA, to being constantly reminded of the impending massive water shortage in this country … it’s strange. What we are doing is great, yes, but it’s addressing the symptom of the problem but not the solution. It’s like popping Advil and caffeine and going home and drinking a bottle of wine every night because you don’t like your job, or your relationship, or your friends, or any combination of the above.

But enough about work. We’ll see what comes of this, destiny and all of our future is unfolding now and it’s not necessary to see the whole staircase in order to climb up it.

So I forgot to mention in the last post that my newest toy arrived with Jason: the Google phone, the Samsung Nexus S. Now I’m a late adopter and not really a gadget person but this phone has got to be about the sexiest thing in existence. I am totally in love with it, not even kidding. Sometime soon I am sure the shine will wear off but in the meantime I am enjoying it to no end. I don’t even know the limits to what it can do yet, and it seems like at least once a week I’m discovering some cool new feature.

On to the fun stuff we did before Jason left! He got food poisoning early in the week so that put a bit of a damper on things but on Wednesday night we went on a road trip up the N7 north to Citrusdal, where we had dinner at this farmhouse restaurant where they had not a wine list but a rack of wine you just go choose from, and some lovely grass-fed steaks. We stayed in a thatched-roof cottage that was quite lovely and no snakes got inside, which was good. But damn it was hot – apparently the day before we arrived it was 47. I haven’t translated that but I know it’s incredibly hot; the 42 or so I encountered in Italy I thought was bad enough. Luckily the next morning’s brunch was air conditioned at a lovely café in town, where I got the waitress to look at me like I was crazy: “OK, you want the butternut salad with the dressing on the side, but not the honey mustard dressing, rather the balsamic vinaigrette, and you want a burger patty with guacamole on the side??” The challenges of eating with someone who’s eating paleo….

Thursday was mostly spent driving around: further north, over to the west coast … until we kept hitting dirt roads and having to turn around. But beautiful, so beautiful. This country is so varied; there was terrain resembling everything from Oklahoma (plains and old-school windmills!) to Arizona (dry desert rock with scrub brush, and I now see why they call it sandveld) to Montana (big mountains, big clouds, big, BIG sky) to California (citrus trees, rocky coast, wineries), all within a few hours’ drive! We finished up that epic day with dinner in Stellenbosch with my friend who goes to university there. Good stuff: great evening, fantastic calamari and a wonderful day!

Friday night was the much-anticipated U2 concert at Cape Town stadium. I think half of Cape Town was at that concert, at least according to Facebook. Amadou & Miriam were the opening act, followed by the Springbok Nude Girls (I got some great pics of the guy I met a few weeks back who plays for them), and then after a loooong wait, the main event. That was pretty mind-blowing. We were in GA and pretty close to the stage. Nice customization of the show to South Africa, and I don’t think there was a single song that I would have wanted to hear that they didn’t actually play. And they will be back. They apparently liked it here. And apparently The Edge is a poet and a priest. *sigh* Not that I’m at all jealous or anything ….

Saturday beach WOD (our girls team won!), followed by the obligatory Mexican omelette at Sandbar, then off to Stellenbosch for wine tasting. We started at Waterford, then went to Thelema, l’Avenir, and finally Kleine Zalze. Jason bought a ton of wine and I even bought a case of wine, which is unusual for me. After wine tasting we drove to Bellville for a braai and there I managed to drop my beer on the floor (only the third one, boy am I a klutz) so I had to drink a shot of some godawful thing that tasted like Everclear. Last time I drop a beer on their floor! Amazing, amazing braai, though, and the malva pudding with rum raisin ice cream. Oh. My. God. Now I knew I liked malva pudding but this, THIS, was out of this world. No joke! Great time though and some interesting answers to the question of if you could meet any historical figure who would it be. I scared the heck out of Jason by giving the same answer he did (well, considering we are basically the same person I guess that’s not so surprising….). I think the best answer we’ve heard so far is Gengis Khan.

The way home was interesting, first I made a wrong turn and we had some scary-looking dudes start heading for us so I hightailed it out of there, then I was crashing from the sugar high and it’s always true that a tired driver is much more dangerous than a drunk driver. But Jason kept me awake and we got home safe and sound!

On Sunday fantastic brunch in the shade by the river at Caveau in Newlands where the weather felt like autumn (in City Bowl it was hot again). The rest of the day I unfortunately spent working, first with my co-worker in Green Point then his place in Sea Point, then over to my boss’ house. Then we relaxed at dinner at the house of a friend in Green Point. Really good time, just chilling, and chatting to his roommate who had, oddly enough, spent time in Vermont at Killington. Small world … still, I think, cool to be able to show visitors what “normal” life is like even if it involves such boring things as working for 8 hours on a Sunday!

Monday morning I did 47 pullups as part of ½ Angie (full Angie is 100 pullups, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 squats) and ripped open both my hands. So I finished with the bands, which I am actually now finding harder to use than normal kipping pullups. They get in the way of the kip you see. We had dinner that night (which was Jason’s last night in town) with two of my girlfriends at Café Paradisio. I have to say, after all the hype this restaurant has gotten, I actually wasn’t that impressed. But, we had a lovely dinner followed by hanging out for a while longer at my place. And I proved that I actually do have female friends! For some reason I think the circles I hang out in tend to be male-dominated (CrossFit, work, techie crowds) so most of my friends wind up being men.

Tuesday took Jason to the airport, worked Tuesday and Wednesday evenings (yay!!). Thursday I had a biomimicry lecture at Stellenbosch to get to and wound up traveling there on the back of the motorbike of one of the guys from icologie. Now this was strange. On the subject of coincidence: we had been trying to schedule this lunch for weeks, then I happen to see a magazine there that mentions biomimicry, happen to mention the lecture that evening … and it is in fact the case that with traffic out of Cape Town the only way to get to Stellenbosch for 6pm is either to leave at 4pm or to go on a motorbike. On the subject of trust: I did say if anything happened to me my coach would probably kill him but lane-splitting is hectic, driving 160kph is hectic, taking those curves on the N2 at speed is hectic and I was thinking three things a lot of the time:
1. Oh my God this is the most fun EVER
2. This is a lot like a video game except it’s not
3. I trust this guy completely when it comes to driving this vehicle, even though I barely know him from Adam

Weird. The lecture itself was very cool, the guy who runs Spier’s biodynamic farm came to talk to us about their principles of farming (which are the same as those from Joel Salatin at Polyface farm, for those of you who read the Omnivore’s Dilemma). The networking was also interesting, as it always is.

Friday afternoon, CrossFit advanced class followed by chilling with the guys for an hour or so, then back home to force-feed myself some grass-fed meat (I was so stressed I wasn’t hungry, and actually I haven’t been eating enough this week for this reason). Then I went over to Newlands (actually Rondebosch, technically, but I’d consider it Newlands ….) for a silent concert. This consisted of bands playing outside into full audio equipment but instead of it being broadcast on loudspeakers it was broadcast into headphones we were all wearing. Super cool concept, apparently one of the guys from Tonik (one of the bands, the other being D7 the acapella group that I most recently heard opening for Imogen Heap) thought up. When bands record in the studio they can hear themselves this way, so the concept was why not let the audience in on it. Anyway it was really a blast! And I got to meet some gorgeous models, one of whom I swear looks like a young Naomi Campbell. Damn she was beautiful, I wanted to talk to them just so I could look at her! But I also learned enough about modelling to be incredibly glad I’m not one.

… and finally yesterday. The day started with a lovely sleep-in, followed by heading to the gym for the first in a series of online events called the Throwdown Series. This is both an individual and an affiliate [gym] team event with the top 3 scores for men and women being combined into a team score. The workout consisted of the following:
50 wall balls @6kg
3 rounds:
• 30 double-unders
• 15 toes-to-bar
• 10 front squats @43kg (bar must be taken from the ground)
Then, within 3 minutes of finishing, 1RM clean (clean is bar to shoulders).

So this was interesting. Wall balls are really not my thing, and I suck at double-unders when I’m tired. In this workout the double-unders were definitely my weakest point. The toes-to-bar were pretty fine. The front squats were hard but not un-doable. I was actually a bit worried going in because my 1 rep max power clean was 47kgs, so knowing I would have to clean 43 three times while tired was a bit of a mindfuck BUT at the same time we had been practicing the clean a lot and I knew I could do it. But this workout was anything but easy, and watching Rika our resident Olympic athlete struggle through it in 15 minutes on Friday made me scared (then she power cleaned a stunning 75kgs: I am quite in awe of this woman!!). My final time was 22:43 which I am not very happy with, but not so unhappy that I have any desire to repeat the workout. Ever. One of our coaches has some family visiting and he took some good photos and videos, so I’ll maybe get and share those soon. The guys after the workout were saying how they were impressed with my front squats that I did them essentially unbroken, but the truth of the matter is I had no desire to have to clean that bar again! Also didn’t hurt that from about the last round everyone in the gym was watching me and cheering me on, so you don’t really want to look like a wuss with all that audience!

Ah but then the second half of the workout, the max cleans. Now we’ve been practicing cleans for a while now and it was interesting, because I was tired my form went all to hell and I wasn’t cleaning at all, I was power cleaning. Which indicates to me that my clean could be a hell of a lot higher than this, but I first did a safety clean of the weight I’d just cleaned and front-squatted. So that was fine. Then I loaded on 5kgs more and cleaned that (ugly, but up). At this point I added another 3kgs (this, if you’re doing the math, added up to 50 which would have been a new PR). I went to lift and I got it to just above my knees before I realized I wasn’t going to make the lift and dropped it. Now usually when I fail a lift at a heavy weight I’m done for the day and my mind takes me out of it … I get myself into a mindset where I think the weight is heavy and I can’t do it so I either don’t try again or I do but there’s not much use because I no longer believe I can do it, so I can’t. So, in this scenario, there wasn’t time to think (I had about 30 second left) and I knew I could lift the weight, so I rested until there was about 10 seconds left and then made the lift. Again, very ugly … but up. So, now I have something else to practice: doing squat cleans rather than power cleans while tired!

Biscuit Mill to stock up on meat, fish, nuts, and dried fruit, then late lunch @Caprice with the gang. I proceeded to eat 400g of burger patties and finish before anyone else did. But hey, I was hungry, I hadn’t eaten all day. Back home to do some admin and work, then out to dinner at Carne with yeah, pretty much the same gang (minus one girl and plus one guy, who managed to persuade me to order the chocolate soufflé and it was out of this world…). But I’m going strict paleo after the 27dinner tonight, we have the Fittest in Cape Town competition on Saturday and I’m determined to win (or at least, not get beaten by some girl named Angelique from Somerset West).

Full schedule for today, too. Bring it.


• “We need a miracle. But we have 6 million rand worth of miracles in the pipeline.” – Peter
• “They gave me a few glasses of wine. Which you obviously shouldn’t do if you want me to be decent.” – Deon
• “They are *this big.* And HAIRY!” – Mandy
• “You say that like I’d know.” “Oh, I bet you do!” – Ellie, Peter
• “They invited you to a braai????” – Peter
• “Thank you The Edge. Wildebeest.” – Bono
• “Cape Town kicks the snot out of Joburg.” – Jason
• “That’s not a sport! It’s a drug-taking hobby!” – Gareth
• “Wow, Ellie likes to eat hey!” – Phumzile
• “Did that sound like a gunshot? They *are* in East Johannesburg.” – Nathan
• “How do you feel about riding on the back of a motorbike?” – Andy
• “That’s a lot of wine for three people.” “No it’s not.” “No it’s not.” “No it’s not.” – Grant, Chris, Wayne, Ellie (this was funny because the “no it’s nots” came one after another rather than all at the same time)s
• “…and, look at that, Ellie’s still here.” – Rob (it *was* past my bedtime)

Talking to myself

Yeah, I haven’t been writing much recently. I have been extremely busy and as I write this now I am actually procrastinating a whole host of things that I need to be doing. But I’m only human, right?

This has been a rough week at work. I mean, there is the party line, and then there is the reality of the situation and the reality of the situation is, in a word, stressful. I realized last week that caffeine (which as many of you know I didn’t take at all for many years) is something I need to eliminate again because what it actually does is put stress on the body and when you are already under stress this is both unhealthy and actually can send you a bit off the deep end. You lose control on both uppers and downers.

During the last four work days I’d say these were the highlights (or major events, rather, not necessarily all highlights!)
• An almost all-day management meeting reviewing strategy, scenario planning, and, last but not least, our new logo. Psyched.
• A sales strategy session around Hub events during which I pointed out an obvious sale to Max and he pointed one out to me, and we both came out of meetings that day with solid leads (never mind that I hadn’t ever tried to sell something before but once you’re on the hook you can’t very well say you’re too scared to try it!)
• A meeting with Provincial Government and its monitoring agency (that controls the purse springs). Like being raked over hot coals; I was so unprepared because I didn’t realize the level of detail that was necessary in the proposal.
• An after-meeting during which I gained several key insights into the inter-agency politics involved.
• One coaching session and other than that, not enough time spent managing.
• An awards ceremony for a social entrepreneurship competition run by government we had helped judge
• A strategy session around Wines with Heart (the guy who runs that business did a fantastic job – talk about a natural marketer!!)
• Two great meetings discussing potential collaboration around the Hub
• An all-hands-on-deck to come up with a pre-selection form for GrowZones

I am feeling a bit out of control at the moment and spread too thin. And not sleeping enough – I am now on something like my fifth or sixth night of getting 6 hours of sleep. Not. Good. But it’s ok because I have a plan. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

On a related note, I am really scaring myself. I am seriously turning into a salesperson. Well, natural marketer to salesman isn’t that far off, and once you get going you can do almost anything if you are confident and start to see some success.

So Thursday night of last week I skipped out on the Jacob Zuma drinking game (otherwise known as the State of the Nation address which, by the by, snarled Cape Town traffic for days but was exciting because it brought out the snipers and armoured tanks!). Instead I brought some grass-fed goodness to my boss’ house where there was no TV and no radio and played the control dramas and personality types game. If anyone’s interested, I’m definitely an interrogator (this is from the Celestine Prophecy, if you didn’t get the reference) and according to Peter an analytical expressive, who is forced by circumstance to be an amiable driver. How’s that for a confused mashup? Probably true, though, I was just saying today how my absolute favourite part of business is trying to design how the company will actually work: what product and service do people really want to buy, at what price, and how do you do it. That’s an analytical mind at work, and yes, I probably would have been a scientist had I not gone this direction. But thank goodness I did.

On Friday my friend Jason arrived from the States. I was meant to pick him up at the airport but I couldn’t, and I felt really badly about this but thankfully one of my co-workers stepped in to help out. Now Jason is the fellow whose “I prefer Sandton to Cape Town” initiated a sequence of events that led to him booking a flight to Cape Town without even really knowing me. Hectic.

Now, who knows why the universe decided to make that unlikely sequence of events come together the way it did BUT, at dinner that night we discovered that we are actually very similar. Like … extremely similar. It’s actually a bit uncanny, but hey it makes things easy although I’ve almost stopped asking the question of “do you often find yourself doing this” because the answer is almost always yes. I will say that talking with him helped solidify in my own mind some of what I like about here: the freedom, the opportunity, and just the being. This is a good place for me to learn. And learning I am. I’m in the zone right now, and it’s awesome (well except that I need to get more sleep or I’m going to break).

So, just two examples. We were sitting at lunch in Hermanus on Sunday and I asked what he thought his greatest weakness was at work. He had never really thought about this much, so he thought for a bit and came out with something. So I thought to myself, ok, sure, now let me say what mine is. So I did and the first words out of his mouth? “It’s like talking to yourself!”

Then I completely unwittingly recruited him to the CrossFit cult. Hey, he brought it up that he wanted to copy my lifestyle while he was here to kickstart his preparation for a half Ironman, and darned if he isn’t doing just that, including eating paleo. So on the first Monday we are doing wall balls and burpees and he does exactly what I would do which is to go and take a ball that’s too heavy for your first time. Roland, of course, told him not even to think about it and I was laughing because I was thinking to myself that it’s like watching myself. And since I find this funny after he posted to Facebook something about CrossFit the next four comments look like this:
• Oh no, not you too!
• Just don’t go all cult on us … everything in moderation (except maybe beer)
• Don’t do it! Can’t afford to lose another one.
• It’s too late guys. Sorry. (that one was me)

So the weekend was a bit of fun. We started off Saturday with the CrossFit workout, then went to the Biscuit Mill and tried most of the kinds of beers on offer as well as kudu burgers. Not the most paleo of lunches but what the heck, there is only one way to take tourists to the Biscuit Mill and that’s to do it right.

Then we went to the beach, where I did handstands which I hadn’t been practicing for a long time and just chilled for like an hour and a half. Then we ran into one of our coaches who was playing beach volleyball.

Then we went to meet my friend and, as it turns out, his sister, and walk down to the rugby game. This was a very odd thing because it was a friendly and not a very well publicized one so there were literally no crowds. And the opposing team was wearing pink uniforms. You can’t make that stuff up. The game itself was actually not too terribly interesting aside from a couple of awesome plays because first of all, it wasn’t even close, and secondly the ball handling was pretty terrible. Afterwards, dinner which was necessary because I was extremely hungry (apparently after a CrossFit workout, three beers, a burger and some biltong is not quite sufficient … imagine that!). I think by the time we got back to my car and drove back into town my jaw literally hurt from laughing so much (I mean, cupcakes, milkshakes, and “the walrus” … how can that NOT be hilarious?). That’s how you know you’ve had a really good time.

THEN we went to Mercury where first the car guard accused me of being a good driver (I presume because I made a u-turn right into a nice parking space), and the sign on the door said “Enter at your own risk.” We had been invited by a couple of my co-workers to hang with them at a dubstep party and I had no idea what to expect and I actually have no idea how to describe this music other than very, very cool. A lot of bass, and rhythm, and I can’t stand house music because it gives me a godawful headache but THIS stuff I absolutely loved. I kept thinking it was late and we should go home but I was seriously just in love with the music. Not to mention that the sound system was fantastic. So that was very, VERY cool, and nothing like discovering a whole new genre of music!

Sunday we went for a long drive: to Hermanus for lunch then out east. We were aiming for Point Agulhas but didn’t quite get there because the road ended. But we did get to see some beautiful landscape, penguins in Betty’s Bay, and a fantastic evening and sunset on the R44 by Kogelberg Nature Reserve.

• “Coincidence is the thin thread that ties the universe together.” – Peter
• “The phoenix is the focus. It quells all doubts, all fears.” – Nathan
• “There is no if in the equation, is there, Ellie?” – Peter
• “I’m totally undomesticated. I don’t buy meat for home use. “ – Rob
• “I think I like this CrossFit thing. Wake up, work out, go to the market, drink beer….” “Ummmmmmmm…..” – Jason, Ellie (I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea ….!)
• “It’s not every day that you’re surrounded by a plethora of cupcakes.” – Dan
• “The way that you love your phone, I love your liver.” – Jason (this was followed not long after by “If that phone can do video, I am going to marry it!” … and it does!)
• “Your hands are soft. That’s why they keep ripping.” – Jo (it’s true … they are soft much to my chagrin)
• “Ellie, keep your body straight. ELLIE! Keep your body STRAIGHT! Jo, keep your body straight! Thatch, keep your body straight!” – Roland (this was much funnier in the actual delivery)

It was the Strikers and the Packers, isn’t that right?

Yeah, not quite. So as anyone who has been subject to me for long enough will know, I love football. Not soccer, the European sort, but good old fashioned American football. Why? I mean, it is quite a slow game and there is this wonderful NFL invention called the TV time out. The answer is that it is the most strategic game I know, by a VERY wide margin. For better or worse, I actually really, REALLY enjoy explaining football to people who don’t understand it. This is much better when you are watching a game, either with TiVo or on a computer so you can pause the game and make people think about it … what would you do on second and long? Third and 1 in the red zone? Do you go for it on fourth down or not?

Well anyway Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl was broadcast starting at 1:30am Monday morning so needless to say, I did not watch it. But it figured in a number of my discussions over the weekend and then during the work week as I specifically tried to stay away from hearing the outcome so that I could watch on my computer. I was quite amused that the Monday morning sports clip on the radio contained not a peep about the Super Bowl. There was rugby, local soccer, European football, the race car driver whose hand was nearly severed, and the Ryder Cup. Full stop. It’s amazing, actually, how something that can be so important to so many people in one part of the world is completely ignored by another large section of the world. I suppose things like Bollywood and the Rugby World Cup are other examples.

Then again since the Pats weren’t in the game I didn’t really care that much anyway. Shame, I’m still smarting that they lost to the Jets. Well, there’s always next year and in between the Celtics and the Flyers.

The weekend I had was incredibly chilled, save for that I sprained my ankle Sunday morning but I’ll get to that in a bit. Saturday dinner at Carne was as good as always; I have now eaten there three times and have yet to walk away in any way disappointed. Although the first time with the Henley crew was still the best because the food and wine was free.

Sunday, Sunday. Sunday began bright and early with a lovely walk on Camps Bay beach (Lion’s Head was shrouded in cloud anyway), and all I will say at this point is that I think I get far too much credit for the simple knowledge that mid-field and 20 rows up is the ideal place to watch a sports game. But hey, some people are impressed by my ability to drink beer. Feeling like I’d been awake for about 6 hours at this point I went off to get bendy at yoga, and then I immediately met up with a crew to hike to crystal pools. Now I hadn’t planned very well because I didn’t allocate time to eat breakfast in all of this, and so I was munching biltong, almonds, and dried cranberries in the car ride.

When we parked I proved yet again what a klutz I am (so much for the CrossFit competencies of balance, agility, etc.!) when I managed to sprain my ankle walking down the road. It wasn’t bad though so I did the hike anyway but I wasn’t able to jump off any cliffs or even swim very much because the ankle was tender. And I fell down about 6 more times because my ankle just couldn’t take normal movements. Still, it was great fun! Afterwards, we sampled “the best” fish & chip shop around, although we all had very paleo non-battered, non-floured, fish.

Then I iced my ankle about 10 times.

This work week has been quite busy and stressful and it’s only half done. Other than the usual activities, I had, in no particular order, the return of our Hub host, several hours of presentations at the V&A Waterfront, a number of tours of the Hub, a mini-management team meeting, a visit to Mama Rosie’s GrowZone, and filming of a video about the Hub. Guess that’s the big stuff. Then this evening I was busy refining a proposal to government (love how they meet on Monday, don’t give you feedback until after COB on Wednesday then you must revise the document ASAP … well, no different than any other startup I suppose), and working on sales collateral. A special thanks to Kate Mosteller who imparted some kick-ass marketing and competitive positioning wisdom to me in the Exit41 days.

Speaking of Exit41, some big layoffs there recently. This is my old company. Interesting times, certainly; I don’t really have access to the inside scoop and what I do know or have heard is obviously not for public consumption but it’s definitely interesting to watch your old company from afar.

Strange week; my friend from America gets in Friday so this week I had tried not to plan too much and so of course wound up working too much. Monday afternoon at the V&A I had the strange distinction of bumping into someone in the halls who swore she knew me (turns out she recognized me from the Trail Series!), and then had a stunning evening with one of my friends from the gym sitting on the patio talking about work, work permits, mutual friends, CrossFit, and a host of other things. Part of this conversation was discussing what I was just musing on in my last blog post about how we are often the last to see in ourselves the behaviour that we see in others. This is coming up as an extremely recurring theme this last week or so for me. I wonder if I have some huge blind spot that someone is going to point out soon and I am just becoming prepared?

I finally watched the Super Bowl Tuesday night. Steelers, Packers, and an incredibly good game, as I had heard. Thanks to Tim for first of all downloading the game, and secondly for providing me with some tasty home brewed beer (ok, yes, I had smuggled in some key ingredients, granted). But football without beer, well, it just wouldn’t be quite right now would it?

In other news my ankle was nearly healed by Tuesday, and swelling almost gone by Wednesday. Apparently if I were a super hero, my super power would be fast healing.

• “What happens now, do you move on to the next level?” “It doesn’t work that way – this isn’t a computer game!” – Dan, Ellie
• “There’s nothing average about you.” – Jobst (this was meant as a compliment but came out more like “you’re not at all normal”!)
• “There is no emoticon for this.” – Wayne (when I told him I twisted my ankle)
• “I tell you this, I’ve been here many many years and that’s what I’ve learned – everything happens for a reason.” – Jacques
• “Alcohol and spreadsheets do not mix. Trust me.” – Ellie
• “A double-headed phoenix.” – Peter
• “Coffee, muffins, yes. Torture, rape, no. Not on a Friday morning at least, I’m not really a morning person.” – Jacques
• “Just because you’re rationalizing doesn’t make it wrong.” – Ellie
• “… teams called the Packers and the Steelers? I mean, it sounds like a shipping company!” – Jaco
• “Don’t get me started.” “HAHAHAHAHAHA!” – Ellie, Jaco

Ever feel like you know what’s going to happen before it does?

So I guess it was, in fact, a commitment thing rather than anything more insidious. After I decided I wasn’t going to take my under-performance at work any more I all of a sudden improved. Tuesday was a great day, Wednesday I was kind of running around like a crazy chicken but I’m very excited for the video on the Hub that Adin’s film school is working on; we should be getting some work from them on the actual contents early next week which is tremendously exciting.

Thursday was also a very busy day and taught me a lesson, which is that when I get mentally tired I revert back to old behaviors. So in the morning we had a great FoodTents meeting talking about various different routes to market and I did what I thought was a decent job of not telling the team the next steps but guiding them and letting them figure it out. By the afternoon (maybe it was the sugar from the expired Snackers …) I was too tired and just told the team what our next steps should be around developing this franchise model further. I was a bit annoyed at myself later, but it is what it is, and I did learn a valuable lesson.

Friday was good fun: a long company meeting talking about FoodTents in some detail, followed by brainstorming Hub events strategy, and then a Heart Capital sales/strategy/equity structure discussion. So we’re constrained by our ability to raise funds and to execute. What else is new, but raising funds would help us hire people to problem-solve and execute. Sometimes it’s a bit lonely, but it will come, and it’s exciting, and as I’ve said before the real difference this time is that this is legitimately hard, so I/we will appreciate success that much more. I had fun during the Ask Jeeves days but I didn’t properly appreciate it first of all because I was young and second of all because we didn’t really deserve it. Right place, right time; easy come, easy go. Although I guess that happened for a reason, too, because it gave me some great skills and contacts, and a reasonable level of financial cushion.

This week was also pretty chilled; on Tuesday I went to see Pecha Kucha again. For the most part I was again tremendously underwhelmed with the quality of the presentations. I need to quit talking about it and actually plan out my own presentation next time around, which I think is in April. But, I did meet a guy from a very interesting company that is taking quite a holistic approach to, well, I’m not quite sure how to characterize what they are doing. You can check out their web site here. So, maybe that’s the reason I went instead of getting to sleep super early.

Speaking of sleeping this Trail Series has left me trashed. I have been sleeping 8-8.5 hours per night and am still exhausted! I meant to train at CrossFit on Monday but just couldn’t get out of bed, as I think I mentioned above. Tuesday (day before the race), and Thursday (day after the race) were planned rest days, and then there was Wednesday’s race itself. I am a bit embarrassed to say that there was just nothing left in the tank. I soundly beat the other girls who had raced 3-4 other times, and fresher legs beat us, but I was running significantly slower than any of the other races. About 3kms in or so I decided just to take it as a training run and not kill myself, so I think I wound up placing 11th which was my discard, and I won the series 14 points to 30 (not a bad margin actually). Come the Winter Trail Series where the races are a week apart I will make sure I am better prepared. But it was pretty cool to get to go up there and collect a trophy (not that I like trophies – I brought it the next day to the gym as the start of a trophy wall for their athletes). The post-race party was kinda chilled; I celebrated with some Sauvignon Blanc and prawn curry. First time I’d had rice since I can remember, but what the heck.

I was still quite tired for Friday and Saturday’s workouts. I feel like I forgot everything I learned at CrossFit Fenway on clean technique. I just need to practice that stuff like every day. When your form isn’t perfect, muscle memory isn’t very helpful. Then we learned wall climbs which were fun except that my wrists started to hurt, and then I woke up very sore the next day in my mid-section! Can’t complain though, and it’s nice to have some variety back in the workout. Saturday’s beach workout was great fun, Hoover ball (we somehow won!), and then a really fun team workout where two members would do exercises between runs while the other two held plank position. Super long and chilled lunch at Sandbar was also exactly what I needed.

My main non-work, non-Trail Series obsession this week was my opera singing car guard. I used Max’s Mac to get the video off my camera, then we posted the video to Facebook and it pretty quickly went viral. Love that. The guy has raw talent although he needs training. But boy, what a great story if he somehow gets discovered!

So Imogen Heap was in town this week. I’d heard the name and some of her songs but hadn’t really put 2 and 2 together. She and her partner Thomas were in our offices on Tuesday and I spent a good amount of time with them on the phone on Wednesday, discussing potential future collaborations around FoodTents. They did a charity concert on Thursday night that I could have attended for a big discount but I was far too tired. I did go to the Friday evening show, though (after dropping by the dinner I was supposed to go to that night!). Kind of fun to get to say “I don’t have a ticket, I’m on the guest list.” Thanks to my co-worker Max for that one, and the show was actually kind of mind-blowingly amazing, and then we had some wine afterwards with Thomas until the Paul Cluver staff came to quite politely tell us in Afrikaans that it was time for us to get the heck out of there so they could close up for the evening. Their 2009 Pinot Noir is surprisingly good, and it was surprisingly not too surreal to be at the same venue twice in less than a week for two very different events! Also, the stars are absolutely gorgeous out there in Grabouw (it’s about an hour’s drive east from Cape Town). One of these days I’ve really got to go camping …

So I’m excited for this week to come, and actually the next few after that. Sunday is going to be fun with a walk on the beach at sunrise (was supposed to be a Lion’s Head climb but, well, someone wasn’t very careful with his feet!), yoga, Crystal Pools, and then work. The work week starts off with some intense planning then a meeting at the V&A I’ve been looking forward to for about 6 weeks now. I feel like the FoodTents work is finally starting to come together and the team is starting to gel. That’s extremely encouraging but it also reiterates the amount of focus and attention required to do something right. Imagine that, starting multiple businesses at the same time is way harder than starting one; and there is probably a critical mass somewhere in there: more than about three and you’re going to fail unless you have super strong manager/entrepreneurs on the ground. Then on Friday my friend Jason from America arrives, so this week is quite the calm before the proverbial storm (plus he’s bringing with him the much anticipated Nexus S!!). After he leaves I’m going to go into quite an intense period of disciplined training both out of necessity (the CrossFit competition season is starting) and because I’m quite sure my liver and body will need the rest and I’ll want nothing more than a self-imposed nutrition challenge!

Because it’s been weighing on my mind I will repeat how worried I am for my friends in Egypt. Seeing pictures of Hany show up on Facebook in an album titled “Defending our property” carrying a rifle, and with kids in the album armed with guns and knives … scary. Thinking of Sherif potentially not being able to get to his insulin … also scary. What scares me the most actually is that I can’t really think immediately of what a safe solution would be. Mubarak steps down, who takes over? The military? Bad answer. The Muslim Brotherhood? Bad answer. So what happens when there is no credible opposition because the ruling party has so effectively stifled them? Maybe this is part of the problem Iran had; much as there was an uprising there wasn’t actually a credible political alternative. I mean Mir Hossein Mousavi was really only the political leader of the Green Revolution because he was cheated out of office but I don’t think he’s actually the ideological choice of a lot of the revolutionaries.

Similar in South Africa; people of all colors can be scandalized by Jacob Zuma telling voters in Zulu that voting for the ANC would take them to heaven and voting for any other party would lead to hell. Although my editorial comment here is that George Bush took much the same approach in the lead up to the Iraq war just a hell of a lot more subtly. A vote for the Republicans is a vote for safety and against terrorism, a vote for the Democrats will lead us down a slippery slope towards appeasement and Muslim extremism. Is it really that different? But anyway, no credible opposition: COPE is going nowhere fast, and the DA has a big perception problem. Big. So what are disillusioned ANC voters to do?

Random thought and not actually related to anything in particular, but it’s great to have friends who can see through you, and set you straight, and bust your chops when necessary. What is hard, though, is when you see people struggling and you actually do know quite well what is the source of their problems but they are not yet ready to hear it. I was asking a new friend last Sunday how to get rid of my workaholisim, and he basically told me it wasn’t that easy and there was no secret but I had to get there on my own. I have a friend now who I kind of want to slap over the head because he’s kind of being a dumbass and can’t even see it. Well, we trip over our own feet a lot but I guess that’s how we learn, and just like with my team at work you can’t tell someone what they are doing wrong, you must just ask the right questions so that hopefully they figure it out on their own at some point. But hey, the answer is inside you, and you’ll get where you need to get eventually.

• “You think America is SECULAR? And SANE? HAHAHAHAHAHA!” – Damon
• “At some point you just need to stop eating the chocolate cake.” – Peter
• “Fearless people don’t wait for other people to tell them what to do.” – Annette
• “Martin Luther King didn’t start the civil rights movement by saying I have a nightmare, did he?” – Andy
• “Whatever Toronto has on TV, San Fran has in real life, all screwed up.” – Pieter
• “Quit staring at Owen Middleton!” – Keith (for the record, I was doing no such thing)
• “Total infestation is damning to a farmer.” – Phumzile
• “If anyone can sell vaporware it’s you two.” – Ellie
• “Well, if you weren’t [drinking] you’d probably be winning these races by like 14 miles!” – Grant