Another day in paradise

Last weekend was a true spring weekend: the weather was absolutely stunning, both days. Not too hot, not too cold, and barely a cloud in the sky. Is Cape Town heaven on earth? Hardly. But boy, I love it here.

This is a strange blog post because I actually don’t really feel much like talking about what happened the last few days. I’m out of sorts I guess, not sure whether I’m feeling insulted, angry, frustrated, or just plain annoyed. Or, all of the above. So I’ll keep it short.

In actuality I’ve been somewhat exhausted since that Filthy 100s workout. I was feeling fine until Friday when I started warming up and realized I was actually not fine. I was so not fine in fact that I was determined to take the next day as a rest day until I heard we were practicing one of the team workouts from the upcoming competition in Durban in late October. Little did I know I would get stuck doing 100 pushups! But, it beat doing 100 wall balls, I can tell you that!

These last few days were the continuation of my facebook photo essay documenting my life in pictures. And tagging people who didn’t want to be tagged. Moral of that story is, I guess, not everyone is the same. It was an interesting week: it contained a lot more drinking than normal, and none of some people who are pretty regular fixtures in my life. So while in some ways it was very representative, in some ways it wasn’t so representative at all. Come to think of it, that the more things stay the same, the more they change. These next few weeks are going to be interesting, I think.

I got the bad news on Friday that the pain in my elbows is a minor tendonitis. It went from non-existent to decently painful with those muscle-up transitions, so thanks to some advice from Roland I found a great video on Mobility WOD that explains that the origin of the pain is actually due to poor internal rotation in my shoulder. Amazing. At least I know what I have to do to correct it, and next week is a rest week. Oddly, I was able to do some decently heavy weight power snatches Monday night without pain, and I actually think I really like power snatch. There’s nothing quite like essentially throwing a heavy weight into the air above your head (in a controlled manner, mind you!).

Saturday we had a braai at Jo’s parents’ lovely place in Fish Hoek. This was fun until it turned into a bit of a repeat of the Two Minute Puzzle EP launch where I was drinking and I was fine, fine, fine, and then BAM! All of a sudden completely smashed. But it was fun. Well, mostly. At least the food was good.

The next day I woke up to some very bright sun, headache powder, water, and we cooked up the lamb chops that somehow survived without being cooked and consumed the night before (!) as well as massive quantities of paleo ice cream which probably had far more eggs in it than it was supposed to. Leptin recovery day perhaps. But I left in early afternoon and met co-workers at Muizenberg beach. I didn’t do much other than try and catch a little bit of sun and get some salt water into my wound. Afterwards we had yet another braai at Peter & Mandy’s place. This time I didn’t drink nearly so much.

Apparently tough mental work can tax the central nervous system. This may help explain my fatigue. Goodness the mental load today in particular was rough: we spent about 5 hours fine-tuning a market research questionnaire. Getting the phrasing, flow, etc. right so as to ask the questions such that they are not leading, and will actually track back to all of your objectives is hard work. Getting the objectives right is also hard work.

Looking forward to the next few weeks, though. FutureFit this weekend, which apparently includes some hardcore lateral thinking sessions. I could really use that right about now. That and some sleep. New co-worker starting next week, which is (after Monday) a rest week, followed by Rocking the Daisies, then the Commonwealth Games weightlifting champs held here in Cape Town. Will be exciting to watch Mona compete, and meet a bunch of other athletes from around the world.

• “You can see that everything in your life is moving to a higher level hey? Cool.” – Debbie
• “There’s an abundance coming.” – Debbie
• “Live like there’s no tomorrow, folks.” – Peter
• “Remind your self that while you are not putting in that extra work, someone else is!” – Chris
• “And he’s still alive?” – Jobst
• “I love how you are strictly paleo after litres of fucking wine.” – Jo
• “I didn’t realize what we were dealing with here!” – Jo
• “I’m surprised you don’t whine more, actually.” – Jo
• “Well you can’t have EVERYTHING!” – Jo
• “I think this is better. Oh no. NO.” – Jo
• “It’s not really a problem. It’s only a problem because …  – Yeah. It’s a problem.” – Ellie (I love when I say stupid shit)

Injustice

I had a new project this week, which was to document my everyday life. Every 15 minutes (or more frequently, if I saw something interesting), I would take a photo of whatever I was doing or whatever was near. This has resulted in some annoyed co-workers, some really boring photos, and some really cool ones.

Maybe because of this, or maybe completely unrelated, the week has seemed kind of crazy busy! We have no fewer than three market research projects kicking into high swing this week, so making sure we get the objectives and plans right on those is critical. It was also frustrating in a way because I spent so much time making sure everyone else was happy and productive that I had no time for my own work. And doing my own work in the evening and on weekends is not going to work long term. Oh, and on Thursday I was cooking lunch for the office for Nca Thursday. A fully paleo meal, complete with chocolate cake (a meal on which I lost money, sadly … yeah I’m still a little bitter about that, not the money but the principle of the thing). But cooking also consumed a lot of work time, so I was wondering where my entire day had gotten to.

There was also a good amount of time out of the office this week: Monday afternoon at a World Café (with the founder of the World Café methodology David Isaacs) on the subject of active citizenry in South Africa, Wednesday morning breakfast introducing some new small business trading platform then a meeting with a tutoring company in Rondebosch. I found the World Café distinctly underwhelming … talk, talk, talk, with absolutely nothing concrete as a result. It’s weird, because the World Café format can definitely be used to generate concrete results, but it wasn’t in this case. Frustrating may be a better word.

Monday night featured a lecture on positive psychology by Kevin Money, a professor at Henley in the UK. As frequent readers of this blog will know, whenever Kevin comes to town we get drunk. It’s kind of a tradition. Actually a bit of a shame because he’s such a smart dude that I should really spend more time talking to him while sober so I can remember more of the conversation. On this occasion I was far too drunk to drive home so he kindly let me sleep in his hotel room. I was so bleary-eyed that I don’t think I fully woke up until I was nearly home!

In terms of learnings out of the lecture … I didn’t really have many because I have spent a lot of time thinking into these topics. To pass along some key learnings though: it is important to focus on the positives and not just the negatives, build people up, put aces in their places, and for leaders to build teams around themselves that complement their own weaknesses. Oh, one thing I did learn: apparently research shows that if we don’t admit our weaknesses, people invent weaknesses for us that are worse than any weaknesses we do have. Hey, nobody’s perfect. It’s also interesting that research actually shows that people literally put on an act when they get to work and shut down pieces of their personality that they don’t think are appropriate for their role/job function. Interesting; not really surprising, but I guess I have never really done that. Maybe explains my mixed levels of success.

I’m not at all sure HOW, but somehow I was feeling totally fine by Tuesday evening so I went to train. We were doing Helen, which is 3 rounds for time of run 400m, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups. We did this in the gym, which involved each 400m interval consisting of running in a tight circle 12 times. As a result, this was more of an obstacle course Helen as I had to pass other runners and cut some corners and run other ones wide in an attempt to even it up. If memory serves, my time was still a 2-second PR. 

Wednesday’s workout was a bit more disappointing. I had been feeling a bit under the weather but I forgot about that, went to train, and only remembered after the workout that I hadn’t been feeling so hot. Oops. Explains why I wasn’t pushing myself 100% though, even though I realized it throughout the workout. Still managed to improve my time on the workout from 6:35 to 5:10. I was more annoyed that I was 15 seconds off the #2 time in the gym (Honorata), and only 4 seconds behind the #4 time (Lynda). Next time I’ll kill it.

I redeemed myself Thursday, however, with two near muscle-ups (my transition isn’t quite there so I get to nearly the right position, muscle myself into the deep dip but then I’m too tired to push up). Getting there: taping the rings so I could actually not lose my grip helped tremendously. I’ll admit, I was scared for some weeks to practice these but I’ve made tremendous progress in the last week or so. One good effect of my stubborn nature, I suppose. Then we did a team workout of filthy 100s. 100 reps of 10 different exercises. Hectic, to say the least, but it was quite fun!

Had some quite cool meals: Tuesday night at Headquarters with Ray, and Wednesday lunch at Bread with Hollie. Ray and I expounded on the merits of butter, were amused by our vegan waiter who wanted to try CrossFit (!), and just generally had a good time. We had a lot of catching up to do. Next time we meet it’s going to be at my meat restaurant of choice. He claims he can eat a whole t-bone by himself. He probably could, actually. Hollie is a new intern with us, she is from the UK, and is going to be working as a fundraiser. She’s a super cool girl, and it was great to get to know her a little bit better!

But on to what I really want to write about, which is injustice. People never cease to amaze me in the amazing power we have to do wonderful things, and in the depths to which we can stoop. Earlier this week I read an article about Martin Luther King. I had no idea of this, actually. I can imagine, in my own way, the horror of living in constant terror of a beating, a lynching, a rape, just because my skin was the wrong color. I mean, I can understand it in some sort of way but not really, not now and probably not ever because of the color of my skin. It makes me angry to the depths of my being, however, that people of any skin color could treat people of another that way. Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes it or ever made it ok to rape or maim or kill for fun, or because you can. Of course it’s still going on today: see such places as Darfur and Somalia. Oh, and Burma. I’ll stop now for fear I might say something I don’t really mean.

It’s something I do reflect on pretty often: how brave would I really be if my body or freedoms were on the line? Honestly, I hope I never find out. I’m all bark and no bite, I suspect (and I mean this in more ways than one).

Then on Wednesday the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis. This is a case I had been pretty involved in back in the day. To me it speaks to so many things that are wrong with the world. First of all, I fundamentally find the death penalty to be barbaric. I get the whole federal issue states’ rights thing, and yes George Ryan turned out to be a crook, but ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ is first of all not a high enough standard for me when it comes to killing someone.

Secondly, humans are fallible and the level of policing and lawyering and the people sitting on juries … well, again, not to put too fine a point on it but if you throw a couple of idiots in there and you can kill the wrong person.

Thirdly, it’s been argued many times before but actually going through with killing a death row inmate costs the state more than life imprisonment (legal fees, mainly, I think. I don’t know the facts, so I probably shouldn’t go blathering on about them. But oh well, I’m on a roll).

Fourthly, there is the politics involved. How many people in how many places could have put a stop to this but were scared, for whatever reason. This is the reason I am actually really glad that Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley a few years back. And Troy Davis is just a very public example. How many others are there like him?

Last but not least, killing the person who killed someone else doesn’t actually help anything. An eye for an eye doesn’t bring the eye back. South Africa would be a very different place right now if the likes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu hadn’t understood this very point. I didn’t fully appreciate this the first time I read Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness. I think part of it was the way he phrased his argument. But I think now I can appreciate just a little bit more.

Now this isn’t a proper essay on what’s wrong with the death penalty. Actually, I seem to recall having written one at Harvard years ago. The more things change, huh? But I’m sure it’s been done many times before by people more articulate people than I who are more passionate on the subject, and with more data. But suffice to say that for me, this Troy Davis case is a source of extreme anger and sadness all combined into one powerful feeling of illness in the pit of my stomach. But as I was just saying last blog post or so, I’m a glass half-full type person and I’m not falling into a pit of morose “humanity doesn’t deserve to exist” self-loathing.

However, sometimes we just SUCK. For every wisdom of crowds (a concept most people sadly don’t even understand properly … for the love of God, read Surowiecki’s book if you’re interested in the subject), there is mob mentality and groupthink.

One thing I have to say is that karma’s a bitch. I’m amazed at how some people can rationalise their inappropriate behaviours. Or say one thing and do just the opposite. But what goes around comes around, and the one time when my bite exceeds my bark is when I see something that I perceive as unjust. No further comment there. At least I’m not feeling sorry for myself any more like I was last week (except that my wrists are developing a great bruise from the false grip).

Speaking of my body, I can’t believe it but my knee has healed amazingly! It isn’t all the way there yet but the doctor was saying no running, jumping, etc for at least a week. That was Friday. I was running with no pain by Tuesday, squatting Wednesday, and jumping, lunging, squatting, and doing double-unders by Thursday. It is literally unrecognizable as the Halloween-costume injury of a week ago. I mean, I heal fast but this is amazing. A couple different things I’ve done, but I primarily thank my diet, healthy, fish oil, and the fact that my body took me completely out of commission last weekend to heal. The body is smart, if we only listen to it.

I don’t really have anything snappy or meaningful to say to end this blog post, other than maybe that I should step back and reflect on some positives for a little while. Nah, hell with that, I’m angry right now and I’m going to let my emotions play out as they will. I think Kevin was saying something about that: emotions are neither good nor bad, but are merely markers to help us figure out how we should react to the situations in which we find ourselves.

 • “Well, no, that’s not ‘just how it goes.’ He’s an idiot. He should have jumped at the chance.” – Sam
 • “You don’t want to be with a man where you have to wear the pants in the relationship.” – Sam
 • “Yeah but you haven’t been impressed with anything since you got here.” “That’s true, actually.” – Nicole & Christoph
 • “Onto what? A spiked stick?” – Jon (it was funnier the first time)
 • “South Africans do love to talk.” – Chris
 • “What if we create armies of social change?” – Nathan
 • “What if we could live a lifestyle of what ifs?” – overheard at World Cafe
 • “It requires humility as a leader to admit what you don’t know.” – David
 • “Well obviously, we Googled.” – Henley MBA students
 • “You can’t do everything yourself.” – Kevin
 • “Oh, you’re the American Kevin was not so subtly making fun of!” – Justin
 • “Neither have I. Oh, wait, yes I have.” [met David Cameron] – Kevin
 • “Here’s to doing everything.” – Kevin
 • “I’m not training tomorrow, am I?” “No, but I’m not sorry.” – Ellie & Kevin
 • “Between cooking, talking, and drinking, cooking only gets a third of the time. And I can drink A LOT.” – Jacques
 • “Jaco’s not very good at planning parties. He’s good at partying.” – Jacques
 • “What do you mean, shame?” “I’ve been to a braai at Jaco’s place!” – Ellie & Pete
 • “I’m sorry I even mentioned price elasticity of demand.” – Ellie • “Onto what? A meat grinder?” – Ray (and funnier the first and second times …)
 • “I’m starving! I just did Helen! …. Oh God that sounds bad.” – Ellie
 • “The worst thing in life is having a girlfriend.” – Ray
 • “Why did I say that? Cecil!” – Ray
 • “Wishing people were different does not make it so.” – Ellie
 • “Shame, Ellie, you shouldn’t make the people work so hard.” – Jacques
 • “The NGO sector is hectic buddy. It was safer in the army.” – Jacques
 • “Yeah but you’re a girl, Ellie!” – Rob
 • “You work. And you work. And you come here. And you train. And you get injured, and you heal really quickly. That’s about it.” – Jobst
 • “That’s why I was asking if you are ok. Because I can see that you are not ok.” – Catherine
 • “Too true.” – Herby

The healing process

On Saturday my body was just wrecked. I tried to do some muscle-up attempts but I was just too tired to get the right level of explosiveness, and even my strength was lacking: I was going to try for a 5-rep max strict press strength session but after having difficulties at a relatively low weight, decided that I was going to call it a day. Unfortunately my mind was also affected: I was very tired, and not feeling too terribly social, although I did spend some time at the Hope Street market for Brandon’s birthday (and the rugby: SA beat Fiji and Ireland beat Australia, in a big upset). Was nice to talk to Les and Jon more, and talk in a more social setting to some of the newer CrossFitters who had trained in the morning.

Flattering, too; as one of them told me that they want to be like me. Not the first time I’ve heard that, and it is flattering even though in the grand scheme of things, firstly, I am not that good at all, and secondly, that the importance of fitness is really about how you yourself improve because there will always be people better than us, and people worse than us. I’m certainly never going to win the CrossFit Games but it’s interesting for me to see just exactly how good I can be. Not to mention that as I’ve said before it’s super fun to be able to do things that used to be impossible.

Having said that, when you focus as I do on all the things I want to be better at, you can sometimes lose perspective. I probably spend 90% of my time thinking about how I could be better, and I encourage other athletes to analyse their workouts and tell me how they would approach it differently the next time. When you are a competitive athlete, I suppose you have to do this, but it’s also in my nature. As much as I’m a glass-half-full person, it doesn’t escape my notice that the glass is half-empty. It’s a skill that’s served me well as a product manager, and will serve me well as a consultant because one of the key reasons companies fail is stagnation and inability to see that they need to change and grow with their customers (assuming they get to that point to begin with).

It may be flattering but I do also think that it’s actually a good thing for me to be a role model because I do take the lifestyle seriously, and I believe in why I do it, and the fact that I wasn’t an elite athlete to begin with like Rika or Mona or Honorata makes me more accessible (these particular ladies were amazed to hear that it took me 7 months to get my first pullup!). Speaking of role models, our girl Lynda is developing some serious strength! It’s so cool to see everyone getting so much better and stronger. She and I both are real examples of people who came to CrossFit as non-athletes (I was even overweight!), and after a year or so emerged completely different.

But to illustrate the point, I dug up some old photos of myself, and some more recent ones. I used to joke that my genes were so bad I could walk past the refrigerator and gain weight. Turns out I was just eating wrong. But in a way, it’s wasn’t my fault: there is so much mis-information out there about nutrition, and no one had ever let me in on the secret. Oh, and I still have body image issues, specifically, I think I need to drop my body fat percent still further. Goodness, our modern society is quite hectic in this regard.

So hey, it may be a cult but it’s a good cult, and I do have a chip on my shoulder because I spent so long not being healthy and not enjoying my body, and not being happy about it. Remember that next time you’re cross at me for showing off my latest hand rips, or I make some snide comment about the bread you’re eating harming your digestive system. Or, if you say that you still can’t do handstand pushups, and I tell you it’s probably because you’re still eating pasta.

Moving on. All in all, I think the injury plus what was actually quite a workload on Friday just drained me, and I wound up taking the weekend quite slowly, invented an awesome curry recipe, and caught up with a few friends. One of them, Charlotte, pointed out to me that I used to talk about work all the time and now I talk about CrossFit all the time. I spent a few minutes thinking about this, and I realised it’s not because I’m that much less interested in work. In a lot of ways I am a lot more motivated now than I was a year ago. It’s actually that what I’m doing now is much less accessible to explanation without a lot of other explanation. That’s the nature of management, consultancy, and systems design. I mean, who really wants to hear about the struggles I’m having trying to merge several tools into one that strips out the useless bits and adds in some things that are missing, or the details of what market research we are conducting and why, when discussing it amongst the team takes 45 minutes?

I was also exhausted today by early afternoon. Three cups of coffee had no effect whatsoever, so rather than persisting in my failed attempts to drug myself I decided to go home and rest. This is another thing I have learned from my journey into health: how to listen to my body. Now I know just how badly I handle dairy, and now when I sleep 10 hours and am again exhausted by mid-afternoon I conclude that my body is busy healing (the knee looks fantastic … relatively speaking, of course). So I’m going to rest and not go back to the gym until a day comes along when I’m not feeling absolutely drained by 2pm.

 • “You look like one of those girls from the CrossFit Games!” – Charlotte (…. I had just shown her a video of one of my failed muscle-ups!)

At least the eggs were ok

I hurt myself again. This time, I was coming home after the gym, carrying my laptop, gym bag, and groceries. The apartment block I live in is on a hill, so I was walking down the hill, rolled my right ankle a little bit, and fell onto my left knee. So it was a weighted fall, downhill, onto some rough pavement. Jagged is more like it. At first I didn’t realise how bad the injury was. It hurt some, but it was dark, and I was more worried that I had re-sprained my ankle (I hadn’t). Then I was worried about my eggs (one cracked, but didn’t completely break), and my almonds which had managed to spill all over everywhere.

By the time I got inside I saw that it was bleeding quite badly but figured that was good because it would clean the wound out. When I finally washed the wound and put on disinfectant I saw the extent of the damage. Sorry for the graphic photo. Some punk in Joburg made me take it. Actually, it is kind of amusing: it looked for all the world like something fake, from a movie or a Halloween costume! But, sadly, this was real life. I was planning on just bandaging it and getting to bed but there were enough facebook comments that I might want to get stitches, combined with a Google search indicating that I needed a tetanus booster, that I took myself to the ER at the local MediClinic.

The good news is that there was no wait, and the doctor prescribed a very different course of treatment to the one I would have selected (which was bacitracin on a non-stick bangage, but essentially keeping the wound moist). Apparently dry is the way to go. So I saved myself a couple of days of healing. Unfortunately, there were chunks missing so large that I couldn’t get stitches (!). The best statement out of the doctor’s mouth: “It’s not as bad as you think it is.” The worst: “You left some pieces of yourself on the sidewalk there.” The most ego-boosting: “And a pretty serious one [athlete], from the looks of it.” (I was asking how soon I could get back to my sport). There were also some comments about my pain threshold, but in reality because the damage was through to beneath the nerves, the pain is actually minimal. Hand rips are way worse. But while I was there, I had her check my ankle to see if there was any permanent damage from the sprain. There is, but it's quite minor.

The wound care specialist I saw Friday morning also pointed out that I was very lucky that it wasn’t worse because it wasn’t on the patella (knee cap) itself, firstly, and secondly, that there isn’t a whole heck of a lot of skin where I fell, but my wound does not go straight through to the bone. So it may look like a horror movie, but it’s actually just a flesh wound. I should be back to normal in three weeks. Which means about 2-2 ½ weeks. In the meantime I am restricted to the same sort of things I was restricted to when I had my knee tendonitis. As a result I missed doing Fight Gone Bad Friday afternoon which SUCKED.

Ironic, firstly because I was just telling Jobst how I was the healthiest I’d been in a long while, and secondly because I was feeling super sorry for myself from Tuesday evening (frustration, impatience, confusion, and annoyance … all my issues) all the way through until this happened. Then I felt a bit more sorry for myself, and quickly realised there is no point crying over spilt milk, and sucked it up.

We definitely made some really good strides this week: got a couple market research projects kickstarted (one for educational content in schools, and one general look into staff community projects). I actually LOVE designing market research studies, and walking people through it. Yes, indeed, there are some aspects of managing that I’m really enjoying!

I also thought about what should go into a revised monthly status report, worked with two of our interns on drafting a fact sheet template, had key catch-up meetings with FoodTents, Wines with Heart, and found out what’s going on in the Greenpop world and some immediate next steps there. Trying to find the balance between managing the interns & their deliverables, figuring out the best way to help the people in the acceleration programme, and building our own systems. Need to step back and do some serious planning and goal-setting.

Oh and we got our hardware delivery from HP. A huge number of laptops, desktops, and flat screens all arrived this week: addressed to me, actually! This is going to make a huge difference to productivity.

I had quite an interesting experience Tuesday lunch, which was at The Loading Bay. Everyone there was beautiful: men, women, old, young … even the wait staff. Even the food was beautiful! This being Cape Town, I happened to run into two friends who were meeting each other, and I had a quite interesting meeting with Eran from Springleap, in advance of his trip to the U.S.

Thursday evening was also great: the first get-together of a group of really interesting and smart women, at Les’ lovely house in Higgovale. We talked about crowdsourcing (of all different flavours), drank some wine, ate butternut soup, and discussed pregnancy, childbirth, and raising children. Two very different conversations at different parts of the evening! Very cool though. On this subject, to me, crowdsourcing is best when the crowd actually either works together to solve a problem (a la Linux and Wikipedia), or when the wisdom of crowds is applied.  

So busy, busy, but very productive week. Not a bad one at the gym, all things considered. I still can’t string consecutive double-unders together but on Monday I managed to do 20 unbroken in the workout in the first round, and I wasn’t too dissatisfied with my weighted ring dip (12.5kg). My Tuesday workout on the other hand was a bit of a disaster: my mind was definitely not on my lifting, so I completely forgot how to clean, got quite frustrated, and that’s really all I want to say about that.

Wednesday, prior to my fall, we did 1 rep max bench press. I got to 60kgs and it felt easy enough that I tried for 65 and failed, which strained me enough that I failed also at 62kgs which I almost certainly could have gotten had I not tried for 65. But now I at least have a good sense of where my max is. I’m approaching that bodyweight bench press! Then we did death by pullups & kettlebell swings. The “death by” workout format is where in the first minute you do 1, second minute 2, until you can’t do the right number of reps. What happens is that in the first few minutes you stand around a lot, and laugh nervously about how easy it is and how hard you know it’s going to be. And, inevitably, there comes a time in every “death by” workout where it stops being funny and starts being hard. In this case, it was minute 8. I made it through minute 10 and failed on the pullups on minute 11 (grip issues … what else?).

In an attempt to fix my muscle-up, I was watching videos of people doing them and I realised a couple fundamental flaws in what I was trying to do. So, the good news is that practicing Wednesday and Friday night I think I have fixed my “pull” so I am now getting my hips higher and am pulling lower onto the chest (and my hanging in the false grip is much improved). I even started videotaping myself to analyse what I’m doing. Next up is to practice the transition, which I think I know how to do, and I’ll have broken the back of it, as Peter is so fond of saying. I think it helped me to figure out exactly what I was doing wrong, because it’s hard to fix something when you don’t know what’s broken. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is stupid (insane), right? The same as not practicing what you can’t do is no way to get better. It is rewarding to get better at the things you practice!

 Now it’s time for the Springboks vs Fiji!

 • “It’s so confusing!” “That’s Cape Town!” – Ellie & Nonhlanhla
 • “Sales.” “Exactly.” – Eran & Ellie
 • “I’ve got this idea of what I want. I know what I want.” – Shaun
 • “Maybe things being delayed is good for you.” – Shaun
 • “The only thing it’s good for is your pain threshold.” – Ralf
 • “And also you know what’s going to happen. You just hope it’s not going to be that bad.” – Ralf
 • “It’s not as bad as you think it is.” – ER doctor
 • “You sound almost anti-American!” – Sunel
 • “You are so pedagogically useful.” – Lilian
 • “Onto what? A knife?” – Adrian

Remembering the past

You can’t argue with the future. My one friend has these visions of the future that she swears by. At the moment I am not quite sure what to think of one she had involving me, because it doesn’t exactly reflect my vision of what I want, but then again what I want evolves and changes. Some of it, at least. I always say that if I could know the future I wouldn’t want to, because it would take all the fun away. But sometimes I do wish.

Great quote posted on facebook last night: ‎
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare." ~Mark Twain (This dude was stupid smart, though. Like for real real.)

The stupid smart bit is not me, but I love it. Sometimes if you make a bed you must lie in it. Sometimes you must stand up for what is right, and what is fair, even if it’s hard. I am trying to get better at these things as I get older. I suppose the best lesson is not to make beds you don’t want to have to lie in later. Be careful how you do what you do, what you say to whom, and who you associate with.

One of my biggest regrets, like many such regrets, is for something I didn’t do. A long time ago, in a place very far away, I didn’t quit on principle even though I should have. That’s sad, actually. If I wouldn’t stand up for a small injustice in my own small way, I wonder what I would do when the stakes were higher? Well maybe that’s where I would man up, or where maturity comes in. Well, I was young, and more scared of the unknown than I am now.

As I mentioned, last week I came into contact again with the dynamic Caitlin Sparks from my Ask Jeeves days. This past weekend, I was visited by Matthew Temple, a dear co-worker from my days at Ask Jeeves International. Those were the days: jetting around the world, getting to work with an amazing team of people, having LA and London as second homes while still living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world (San Francisco), and practicing the art of persuasion and office politics at HQ. Oh, and hanging out with computer nerds, beautiful people, angel investors, and famous rock bands (Caitlin was dating one of the guys from Cake). The dotcom boom: it was a time when everything did seem possible.

But it was an illusion of course, and saying it like that makes it sound like everything is not possible now. Both of which, of course, are silly. Read the above and all that’s really missing from my current life is the jetting around the world, but you can add dimensions of sport and the expat experience and social enterprise to the mix. Oh, and reduce the drinking. Man, we used to drink…

Saturday morning I woke up early and hit the open gym to practice muscle-ups (had some issues with false grip even, so practicing jumping up to the rings and getting into position). Then a shoulder-taxing workout of ring dips, light weight high rep overhead squats and bear crawls. Love-hate goat days. But on this one I was in a hurry to go pick up Matthew and take him to the Biscuit Mill. By the time I arrived where he was staying I realized that he was not in the hunger-induced hurry that I was. He was staying in his friends’ house. And by house I actually mean mansion. I had heard about such places existing in the Southern Suburbs (actually I’d been to one before, but not one as dramatic as this one). Although it did feel a bit like a dark, dank museum. Not a place I’d want to live even if I could afford to.

Matthew loved the Biscuit Mill! I loved that Salvin had some exciting selection (kudu boerwors and duck breasts!), and that the burger guys gave me two for only R10 extra. Afterwards we headed down to Kalk Bay and back via Chapman’s Peak. You don’t need to do much on a beautiful day to have a good time other than just drive around and talk! He was saying most of the weekend how the really cool part was just to get off the tourist trail and do ‘normal’ stuff. Which, in the evening, involved watching Jeremy Loops at a private recording session at the studio where he’s been recording. That was quite cool both because of what it was, and to watch Misha watching Jeremy something like a nervous and expectant parent. And I got goosebumps more than a few times and when that happens you really must not complain.

Except that it took longer than expected and we had to rush off because we were insanely late for dinner with the family who is staying in the house of Matthew’s friends. The wife had unfortunately gone to bed by the time we got there, but we had dinner with Triple S, who is a minister with a background working for a very large international corporate, and in CSI no less. An interesting conversation followed, including such topics as education, politics, Malema, Zuma, the scorpions, and the DA. He’s a very smart and insightful man, Triple S. And I was also thinking it’s interesting how people will bring things up in a round-about way and while you can’t actually necessarily tell where they are going, you can pretty much always tell that they want to talk about something other than where they start the conversation. 

Sunday dawned bright and early with a Lion’s Head hike. I hadn’t hiked the darn thing in far too long, so it was nice to get up there again! Afterwards we went to Sandbar for breakfast, then I took him to get some ice cream, and afterwards on to check the rugby World Cup at Forries in Newlands. I mean, when in Rome, you’ve gotta check the Springbok fans! Happily, the Boks won over Wales although only by one point in what turned into a very tense game. What the heck, a win is a win. After another filling lunch with Matthew, Triple S, and his wife, I was about to drive home when who pulls up in the lane next to me but Mona! So instead of going home and working, I went to her place and we hung out for the afternoon. I think she’s a bad influence though because I wound up eating chocolate and more ice cream and watching some absolutely ridiculous Hollywood movie. I guess that’s what girls do on a Sunday afternoon. But the good news is that this was such a binge that I am now not likely to crave sugar for at least a month!

The over-indulgence came the day before a planned re-commitment to diet. I’m going to start experimenting with different modes of eating, recording what I eat, and tracking how I feel training-wise. Apparently there comes a certain point where the fundamentals become even more important, so it’s time to stop taking a haphazard approach to my food intake and start actually figuring out what works for me.

A bit of a discombobulated day at work today. Maybe it’s the weather (it feels like winter again). No matter, moved the ball a little further along the field in a couple of areas, and tomorrow is another day. Should be a good one; I have two important meetings, and what should be an interesting catch-up lunch.

Yesterday was also September 11th. While I quite enjoyed being in a place where the top of the news was a ferry crash in Zanzibar, news item #2 was about the upcoming Springboks game, and only then was 9/11 mentioned. It was actually the only time all day I heard anything about it from anyone other than, well, me. In some ways I liked this, in some ways it just serves to remind how the U.S. is so not the center of the world that we sometimes think of ourselves. Just like we as individuals are the center of our own world but we are not central to others.

 Like probably almost all Americans, I remember exactly where I was on September 11th. I was asleep in my apartment in Berkeley, California when I get a call from Rob around 5:20am. The conversation went something like this:
“Are you watching TV?”
“No. I’m asleep.”
“Well, turn on the TV! A plane just hit the World Trade Center!”
“Why’d they do that?” (I wasn’t fully awake yet, obviously…)
“They think it was terrorists.”
“Oh. Yeah. That makes more sense.”

I remember watching until about 8am local time (11am Eastern). I left to take the bus to work right when the first tower collapsed. I remember thinking at the time that it looked like it had collapsed but surely not; by the time I got to work I found out that indeed it had. The internet was literally down from too much traffic so I went home, and I’m pretty sure I watched TV alone by myself until pretty much midnight, in stupefied horror. At least that’s what I remember: I don’t remember going out to join anyone else on that day, although I have vague memories of cell phone calls. It was a crazy day trying to separate out fact from fiction: I remember rumors of fires on the National Mall that turned out not to be the case.

What went through my head on that day? How could ‘they’ (any ‘they’) hate ‘us’ so much? How must it have felt to be in those planes? In those towers? I wanted to move to New York, to be part of whatever sort of healing and rebuilding. Or join the police or something. Then again, that was most likely a reaction to the media coverage: that marketing machine messaging of us against the world.

Then there was the aftermath: the war in Afghanistan (which I supported), the war in Iraq (which I did not). I remember long arguments with Rob at a Japanese restaurant in Newton Center about WMDs, moral hazard, and pre-emptive war. I remember visiting Manhattan for the first time since 9/11 and seeing that the towers weren’t there, and how that felt like a personal wound even though I have no particular personal connection to New York (and in fact I find it a bit overwhelming and uncomfortable). I remember classroom discussions at Harvard involving suicide bombers, Aristotle’s ideal form of government, conspiracy theories, a multi-polar world and the degree to which it was impossible to have such conversations without considering the context of 9/11. I remember the Howard Dean phenomenon, getting within shooting distance of John Kerry on two occasions in Florida while working for the advance team, then the rally in Copley Square in the rain to which I was so proud that I'd gotten rock star tickets, that felt more like a wake as the evening went on. I can feel the crispness of how the air is supposed to feel in mid-November, and I think of another person I know who was supposed to have been on one of those planes. How must that have felt?

As an American this is deeply rooted in my psyche, I’m sure, in ways I don’t even know. A lot of the discourse bothered me a lot but it’s very difficult to step back from the context in which you evolved, or learned. I’m not going to say anything here that someone else hasn’t said way more eloquently. But as much as I was glad to be in a place where a huge deal wasn’t made about 9/11, it actually upset me a little bit, because there was sort of an expectation that it would get more coverage than it did. The one article I saw mentioned other pivotal events that had happened on 9/11s: one in Joburg and one in Allende’s Chile. As I said, as much as we sometimes want to believe we are, America is not the center of the world. And thank goodness, actually, it takes a village, and it’s that diversity of worldview that is part of what I love about South Africa. Of course there are many things I love about South Africa. Today happens to be the 34th anniversary of Steven Biko’s death, which, of course, is more poignant in South Africa than 9/11 can ever be.

So, because in the same way that a picture tells a thousand words, a statistic is brought home by an image. Lindsay Morehouse, SPS ’96. I didn’t know her well, but she’s what makes the event somewhat personal for me. She would have been 34.

 • “That’s a great opening line: ‘You don’t look like you could possibly have trained today, so why are you dressed like that?’” – Matthew
 • “And you have to keep a straight face while they are saying that?” – Matthew
 • “That’s a good answer. It’s a safe answer.” – Ellie
 • “Oh Ellie, you’ve chosen well.” – Matthew
 • “I never thought, in my wildest dreams, that a white government would be better than a black one. But now … I can conceive of such a time.” – Triple S
 • “This is huge! How many eggs are in this?” – Matthew
 • “She should be a fish, or a mermaid.” – Triple S (water consumption)
 • “There are no knights in shining armour. They don’t exist.” – Ellie (kind of like unicorns)
 • “You can’t just say no. It’s not polite. Plus it’s malva pudding.” – Ellie (explaining the beginning of my sugar binge)
 • “One thing age brings is an understanding of how useless vanity is.” – Caitlin
 • “We’ll have to celebrate a little bit … carefully.” – Nathan
 • “You are visualising your hands into not ripping?” “No! I’m using grapple cream!” – Kerry & Ellie

Back in the groove!

You’d think my princess self would have figured this out by now but sometimes all it takes is just a whine session to fix things. Or maybe it was the fish at Olympia Café Sunday night. I am of the opinion that the olive tapenade there could fix just about anything.

In any event I woke up Monday morning feeling like myself again, and stronger than ever. I was telling a few people this week that once I got past the initial bumpiness of readjusting, and the fact that my time away wasn’t exactly a vacation, I can now see that the time away allowed me to gain some important perspective. Things that before would bother me peripherally are now front and center, but to the degree that I let some of them slide now it’s not because I don’t care or don’t want to go there but because I haven’t yet prioritised it. Everything in its own time.

Re-reading some of the behavioural psychology books combined with some philosophical and metaphysical discussions this week have got me thinking. Always a danger. Our brain is such a funny organism. We are wired to certain things like looking askance at people who don’t look like us (they might be from another tribe and therefore a potential danger) to wanting to see patterns where none exist. Like religions can tend to do this, but even atheism of the metaphysical “the universe has a plan” variety, which I tend to subscribe to but then I find myself wondering if it’s just my little neurons seeing things that aren’t really there. Then again, we do see what we want to see, and ignore evidence to the contrary. That’s why it can be so startling to be confronted with evidence that rocks our world view, and why we find it so hard to give up on old ways of looking at things that no longer serve us, or friends or jobs or relationships that no longer serve us. But then looking back later, well, there is a reason there is a saying that hindsight is 20/20.

One thing I do wonder about is whether I am different or similar to most other people in how I respond to relationships. Like, my one friend was saying the other week that he told his (now ex) that if she broke up with him that would be it, there would be no getting back together after that. Not sure how I feel about that one. But that got me thinking when my one friend Jules was kicked out of St Paul’s (long story, that one) and then ultimately they admitted they’d done wrong and let him back in for the next year. Hey if that were me, I would never have gone back. I would have taken my sick hockey skills over to Cushing (but I guess he missed his friends …). But this seems to be a bit of a pattern with me: not sure if anyone has ever disappointed me and recovered from it, or any close friend I have drifted apart from and then gotten super close again. I know for a fact that if I were ever interested in a guy and lose that interest (maybe he has a girlfriend, or doesn’t like me back, or makes his move once I’ve already lost interest, or somewhere along I realise I’m just no longer feeling it), it doesn’t come back. Maybe the moral of this story is that human relationships are like market windows: there is a time and a place in which there is common ground and interaction of whatever specific nature is appropriate and going to work, and past that window, no. Or maybe it just means I have a particularly bad case of confirmation bias in my little brain.

Well this is far too deep for a Saturday morning. Seeing patterns again where none exist, maybe.

Busy week, but one in which I did a decent job of drawing boundaries for myself and not staying up to all hours working. I actually got 9 hours of sleep on a couple of occasions (well and that 5 hours on Wednesday night we don’t need to talk about). It was also an odd week because on Tuesday I had an all-day workshop hosted by CPUT about business incubators in the Western Cape, and Thursday afternoon through Friday morning were spent in Gordon’s Bay at a Uconomy offsite.

The business incubator workshop was interesting because I met some interesting people, it actually helped refine my thinking around some of my future plans for our accelerator, and it reminded me of the reputation that we have around Cape Town. So, the foundation on which to build some interesting collaborations. I’m finding myself tired of talk (and I’m an even worse talker than the next person). Time to start doing.

This was Lilian’s first week of interning, and unfortunately I was away for a big chunk of it. Will make up for that next week. But she and Christoph had a very interesting idea that we are going to run with over the next several weeks. Will write about it more once we’ve ironed out the details. It’s great to be surrounded by smart, creative people. It’s a blessing, actually.

The rest of the time when I wasn’t busy socialising (lunch with Christoph & Lilian Monday, ironman Justin Wednesday, Eric after work Wednesday, and coffee with Aliwiya Friday afternoon) I ploughed through some of our paid consulting work, managed our several interns, and planned next steps around acceleration for a couple of our projects. We had a twice-postponed Hub master planning session (but we’ll get to it next week); I am quite excited for that.

On Wednesday after gym I went to another Girl Geek Dinner. Silly concept, but I was super happy to be ensconced at the end of the room with Roger and Juliet (who I met that evening, but I expect we’ll be seeing more of each other). I was underwhelmed by the first one; this one was better although the speaker apparently gave the same speech she always does (but hey it was new to me), and we actually got proper books in our goodie bags. Jury’s out on whether or not I will attend the next one, but so far I seem to be 2 for 2 in terms of either meeting or getting to know better a very cool woman so … we’ll see.

I did have to rush out of the restaurant to get home for a Skype call with the lovely and even-more-shockingly-intelligent Caitlin, a blast from my Ask Jeeves-days past. She is working on a very fascinating concept for rural development. Maybe someday I’ll be cool enough for my project to make The Economist. Anyway she wanted to pick my brain and I was happy to let her, as well as to catch up just a bit.

The Uconomy offsite was also very valuable to me. They are formulating a product & service value proposition and go-to-market approach, and it was helpful for me to go and ask a lot of questions, play informal devil’s advocate, ask a lot more questions, and point out risks. Also quite cool to meet their two interns, one of whom is from Cameroon but staying here now, and the other one South African. Two obviously intelligent although quiet ladies. We had a very pleasant and chill evening, although it was too cold to braai (much to my chagrin). The Friday afternoon drive back to Cape Town reminded me of how much I love the drivers here when there was a car broken down and taking up half the fast lane and traffic still managed to flow around it, at 60km/hour. In most places I’ve lived in America, that would have been a half hour backup!

I had a very disappointing experience with Fran on Monday night. I think the problem was that first of all I was too nervous for it, and second of all I taped my hands. I had VERY bad grip issues and was reduced to doing single pullups for the entire round of 15 and 9. Needless to say, I didn’t set a PR and was 38 seconds slower than my time at the cert last month. But, I didn’t rip my hands! Oh, and by the time I got back from retrieving my paleo chocolate cake from work where I’d left it all the food was gone, so that was a bummer. Tuesday was also not good when I strained my right hamstring doing back squat (tied my PR though), and then my toes-to-bar were not very good on that day, and my pistols have deteriorated (another goat to work, *sigh*).

Wednesday was somewhat improved as I set a PR for max kipping pullups without dropping off the bar (19 … didn’t quite get the chin over on the 20th and then I lost my grip). Well my goal was 20. New goal: 25. Then I was super tired during the workout which was 7 rounds of 5 pullups, 10 burpees, and 15 steps walking lunge. That was way more hectic than it should have been BUT I managed all rounds of pullups without dropping off the bar.

Friday brought 1 rep max deadlifts. I was excited but apprehensive since I haven’t been deadlifting really at all so I knew my PR was months old and aching to be broken but I have felt like my deadlift is pretty weak so I was afraid that I would only be able to get a few kgs more. In the end, 19kgs more and form deteriorated a bit on the last lift but actually given a bit more time and fewer attempts at intermediate weights, I feel I could definitely get more weight up. Then, to add injury to injury our lovely coach Chris decided to have us advanced athletes do an all-out 500m row which we had to complete within 3 minutes of finishing our metcon. I knew my 500m row is below 2 minutes so I rested 3 minutes and then went and I set a PR by over 3 seconds: 1:45.7. One of my other goals is a sub-1:45 row which I now know I can get if I’m approaching it fresh.

However after this rowing attempt I had some issues walking. My poor legs. Seriously, I couldn’t get up for a few minutes then I walked across the room and collapsed. Believe it or not, I’m bragging not whining.

Dinner was at Cattle Baron in Constantia with Mona. It was a necessary catch-up, and this lady has similar instincts to me. They say that your gut feeling is nothing more than your emotional brain processing the data around it (which is why emotions are guides to the things we perceive more broadly than with just our rational brains). But when she told me she had a gut feeling and my gut had been telling me the same thing, even if neither of us can explain it; well, we very well might be right. Or not.

If you want something and don't actually take concrete steps to go get it, either you don't really want it or you don't deserve it.

Anyway! Things are going so great with work and I’m refocusing on my diet and training now. Also, the weather is turning. Spring is arriving, and I’m excited for that and all that it brings: flowers, beach workouts, swimming in the ocean, hikes amongst the blooming fynbos.

By the way, funniest referral string of the week: “crossfit and social entrepreneurship.” Close second: “rich froning peanut butter.”

 • “I can fix it, but it’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” – Ellie
 • “You seem like the sort of person where when you decide to do something, it happens.” – Charlotte
 • “She seemed normal enough. And then she started talking.” – Christoph
 • “Most people are babies. They don’t know how to clean …” – Catherine
 • “How would we get out of bed in the morning if we actually saw the world as it really is?” – Ellie
 • “It [social enterprise] is like pornography. You can’t define it but you know it when you see it.” – Ellie
 • “Yes. I love the term ‘institutional sedimentation.’” – Johannes (me too!)
 • “I think you’ll find that you are very well positioned.” – Eric
 • “It’s attitude.” – Juliet
 • “I think it takes longer to change attitude than to change reality.” – Florian

Catching up and slowing down

I cannot believe I forgot the best quote from the Level 1 cert, so I’m including it here, because I can: “Not everybody could pull that shirt off. You can.” I was proudly wearing my latest CCF gear. For those of you not familiar, the shirt says “Harden the f*ck up.” AND this came from one of the trainers, quite a kick-ass woman in her own right!

Unfortunately, I’ve been feeling the need to tell myself that a lot these last few weeks since I’ve been back. It actually feels like a new year to me, a new beginning. But not one I’ve been happy with my performance in so far. Some physical failings yes (I’ll blame jetlag) but more to the point I haven’t really been naturally in the right headspace much, and I’ve had to keep pulling myself back to my center. It’s like there’s a bit of a battle inside myself between how things are and how I want them to be. But, that’s normal in a way, isn’t it? We’re constantly striving for something else even no matter how happy and satisfied we may be with life as we are currently living it. And anyway, how we feel is all just chemicals in the brain in any event, when it comes right down to it. But I’m usually a glass half full kind of person, but I’ve been having a lot of glass half empty thoughts recently, and not only that but have been straying from my diet a bit, drinking too much sometimes, and just generally in the wrong state of mind.

So it’s actually not a matter of hardening up so much as of remembering who I am, what I want, and remembering Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Yes, there is an element of only wanting to see what we want to see, and that horrible thing known as confirmation bias … but a good thing to remind ourselves. Sometimes when we try to get too smart or play it too safe, we actually lose out.

Too much went on in these last few weeks to do a full blow-by-blow, so here are some of the highlights of what stood out (in no particular order):

• Seeing lovely Mandy when she picked me up at the airport, and my first dinner back at Peter & Mandy's
• Dinner at Carne with my coach on my first night back (and thinking when I walked in the door and they offered me a drink how what I really wanted to say was “goodness no, I can’t drink in front of him!” when the truth was more complicated).
• Feeling like quitting 5 minutes into a 20 minute CrossFit workout; the important point being …. That almost NEVER happens. Feeling like I’m going to die, yes, feeling like I want to stop, not so much! This was the Friday after I got back and I was still jetlagged so the workout that would have been bad on a good day was absolutely awful, in large part because my body just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do, or I guess what I felt it should have been capable of. The workout definitely made my top 5 most painful workouts ever. It was 20 minutes where every minute on the minute you had to do 5 burpees, then as many thrusters as you could the remainder of the minute (29kgs was my weight). In the first minute I did my burpees in like 10 seconds and I did 14 thrusters. I think my worst minute I did 2 thrusters, and the burpees were taking me 25 seconds. I really wanted to get to 100 and I wound up with 102. Thrusters are a thing invented by the devil himself I am quite sure.
• Meggie’s birthday party in Nordhoek, complete with the tequila Chris so kindly brought along … that was fun, if a bit of a train wreck and luckily I fell asleep at home instead of continuing the evening later!
• My own birthday party at Beluga, continued at Cubana. That was great because I did it on a Sunday night and I was first of all happy because I really didn’t want a big party but I didn’t want to not invite people, either. So between it being a bad night and a lot of people bailing out at the last minute (or no fewer than three people had flu!) the crowd that showed up was just perfect in size. Also the gifts I got were ones I would want, which was kind of the idea. And, importantly also, I came to a realisation that evening (well, actually the next morning… when the hangover was at its worst). Bottom line, my own behaviour was contributing to a situation that I didn’t particularly care for. Time at least to adjust my own self and take responsibility; we don’t exist in a vacuum now do we?
• My birthday workout! Last year on my birthday we did a workout called Spealler Special, which is 1 clean & jerk @43kgs followed by 5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats. Last year I couldn’t do the workout as prescribed because I couldn’t do pullups and 43kg clean & jerk was probably near my max (if not my actual max, and speaking of my max, 60kgs I have you in my sights darn it!). So last year I did it with something called ring rows and 29kg clean & jerk in 25:13. This year, 26:02 albeit a totally different workout. And even at that I didn’t feel super strong at all …. So, lots of room for improvement for next year, when my goal is sub-20 minutes. It’s always good to have goals, right?
• Wine tasting with Mandy, and seeing this beautiful old couple still very much in love and enjoying the weather, view, and wine.
• Finally getting back to yoga (I hadn’t dropped off the edge of the earth). There is something just so calming about Ilana, even when she’s telling you to keep doing something incredibly painful for longer, or go deeper. Yowzers.
• Learning the butterfly pullup. I won’t say I’m proficient yet but I went from being able to do 0 to 2 in one session, then from 2 to 4 in the next … hardest thing is keeping the rhythm going because the movement feels SO weird. OTOH, my double-unders still suck and I can’t do them consecutively. Trying to break those bad old neural pathways is hard. I’m probably over-thinking it, but how do you stop over-analysing? At least I’m practicing almost every day because avoiding things you suck at is no way to improve.
• Going from the States where I was constantly in fear of getting a moving violation for ignoring most of the traffic laws (No u-turn? No texting while driving? What?) to Cape Town where I was a hazard my first two days or so on the roads because I wasn’t aggressive enough.
• A trio of fun concerts: the first was a benefit concert at the Upper East Side hotel featuring the beautiful Louise Day, D7, Ard Matthews (right after his humiliation in the public spotlight for forgetting the words to the national anthem in the middle of singing it for the Springbok team announcement), Zolani, some of the guys from A.King, and the always amusing Jack Parow.
• A show by Digby & Roochi (formerly Diesel Vanilla: apparently the name didn’t market test well in the U.S. which shocks the hell out of me) in their apartment in Century City. Beautiful as always.
• Jeremy Loops & co headlining at the new Zula. This was quite exciting, although I was bummed to have to leave Hermann’s birthday bash to go. And I was bummed to have to leave the party to get some sleep, which wasn’t enough in any event.
• A braai in Kommetjie where I met a bunch of new people and had a great time despite not having gotten enough sleep the night before.
• Watching Graham & Jobst play around with one-armed handstands (against a wall, but still …)
• My first omelette with Roland at the new Sandbar. So glad I can continue eating those. I am not sure life in Cape Town would be quite the same without them. Actually I am writing this right now from Sandbar, which is where I come to do work when I need to clear my head and get out of the house. It’s not the same as the old Sandbar, and the new Zula isn’t the same as the old Zula. Well, things change: it’s that old cliché, right?
• A CrossFit workout so intense it left me sore for days and amused me because I think Ralf and I scared the newbies a bit, between coach Chris yelling at us not to drop the weights or drop off the bar, and us frantically stretching our forearms in rest periods. We did 5 rep max push press … I was aiming for doing 5 reps at my previous 1RM of 50kgs. I got 48 and failed at my third rep of 53 … but anyway the soreness came in with the second part of the workout, which was 5 rounds of 30 seconds on, then 1 minute rest alternating between dumbbell push press (I was using 12.5kgs because the 15s felt heavy after all that other lifting!) and pullups. It was the pullups that killed me. I did 12 in the first set, then 12, then 13 (!), then my grip died so my last 2 sets were 10 and 11, respectively, because I couldn’t hold onto the bar very well. I was actually pretty pleased with myself for getting 13 pullups in 30 seconds; still plenty of room to improve but not too terrible either! But the funny thing was the look on the faces of the newbies (Ralf and Chris were coaching them in the basics course after our workout was done): something between admiration and fear. When I first started at CCF there certainly weren’t girls across the room rocking out pullups like that, so it’s actually a whole other level of intimidating for new people starting now. But hey I’ve come a long way in a year, and we’ll see where the next year takes me. 

So that was all the stuff outside of work. What happened at work you might ask?

• Spending more time managing our interns. This was low-hanging fruit for improvement. We actually have a couple of new ones, including Christoph from the Netherlands, Jeff from the U.S. and Lilian from Germany. All very smart, and interesting people and I look forward to working with them more and accomplishing some of the things that have been outstanding for a while.
• Checking in with most of the organisations in the acceleration program. I am now putting together a forward plan for some of them, and once we start marching down that to the speed we are able things will feel better. But without actual goals and plans it’s easy to feel rudderless and anchorless because, well, because you probably are.
• Some of the organisations are undergoing some sea change, which is necessary but disruptive of course, and we also do need to tie the conversation back to the fundamentals: money, customer value proposition, social impact.
• A jumpstart and multiple meetings with a corporate for whom we are doing some consulting work
• Realising the difficulty in starting a company, any company, without good sales capacity
• A fun Hub movie night where I ran out right afterwards because I was exhausted (!) 

I’m finding consulting hard. Not by the nature of it, but because ultimately you don’t have control. So it’s an interesting struggle for the control freak in me. It seems like working smarter, not harder, is the order of the day both for me and for a couple of the different enterprises I am working with.

Somehow the natural disasters occurring on the East Coast of the U.S. (I’m still waiting to hear of Irene totalled my car…) combined with some things going on with my family life, and probably also my recent visit to both the east and west coast making me feel closer to and thus miss more my friends there, I’ve been feeling nostalgic a bit recently. Gabriel Garcia Marquez described this beautifully in 100 Years of Solitude as something like mirrors pointed towards each other, and while you are in one place you long for aspects of another, even if you don’t want to be there. In his book there was a Colombian who had lived in Barcelona and sometimes he would miss the crisp autumn air, or walking down the sidewalk to the coffee shop, or the leaves as they started to turn bright colors of yellow. But when he had been in Barcelona he had missed the flowering almond trees, the smell of the earth after the rain. Or something like that.

Well, when I was in the U.S. I missed (aside from people of course) the smell of the air, the lights of City Bowl, training at CCF, the security of the brick of the Old Castle Brewery, the taste of the grassfed beef, and Table Mountain.

At the moment I am missing the anticipation of that twang of autumn air, pumpkin beer (although I wouldn’t drink much), the start of football season, the changing of the seasons (it is turning to spring here but it’s not as extreme a turn as what happens in New England). And the fog of the Bay Area, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the wide boulevards and avenues and palm trees of California. Oddly enough, because I was only there once, and briefly, I’m also feeling a bit of nostalgia for late nights along the Nile in Cairo. There is something just so magical about that part of the world (I think!). “Home is wherever I’m with you.” True enough, that.

So, where does this all leave me? Obviously not feeling grounded. I’m battling with doubt in pretty much all areas of my life right now. Actually, scratch that, probably ALL areas. But this is natural, too. I’ll pull out of it, and pull out of it stronger.

• “Once you’ve been bitten by the bug, well, you’re screwed.” – Peter
• “The only reason I kept going is because no one else was stopping!” – Graham
• “I need to go and get some alcohol. I mean some drinks for tonight.” – Mandy
• “I wish that people would do what they say.” – Jacques
• “Oh my goodness I nearly just said, ‘thank goodness, the wine has arrived.’ That’s terrible, in so many ways.” – Peter (Word.)
• “How would you describe our relationship?” “Oh my goodness. I don’t know what to say.” – Ellie & Rob
• “It’s a weird cult.” – Chris
• “You do rip your hands open, yes, but you also see all the good in things.” – Chris
• “Well, you do see the good in everything, don’t you?” – Chris (another Chris … that’s what was weird about it!)
• “We’ve lost Chris. And we’re in Khayelitsha.” – Louise
• “The world is driven by fear.” – Heinrich
• “If we didn’t have these problems, what would we do? Really. What would we do?” – Peter
• “It’s never a good thing when the weight starts to look intimidating while it’s still on the rack!” –Ralf
• “Congratulations. It’s not that bad.” – Lilian
• “They are sharp guys and love to have fun. I think you would hit it off with them.” – Roland
• “You’re good. But you’re not THAT good.” – Peter (ha!)
• “Vermont. I’ve heard of that. In movies.” – Danie
• “You don’t want a grumpy stripper.” – Jo
• “I didn't think you'd miss a gig.” – Devin
• “You could die any day here.” – Anke
• “This wine might change your life.” – Ronnie