The Reality of Work Travel

Reflection of cars in the building across from my hotel.
I thought this pertinent since we had a +- 1 hour commute from out hotel to the pant every day.
And the same on our way back.

So, you've been working for a while and you find out that you're going to need to do some travelling for work. You find out you're going to an awesome location and start getting exited, imagining sunning yourself on the beach after work or walking along snow-brushed cobblestone streets admiring the architecture and having time to sightsee. Your friends are all jealous and wish that they could come along in your suitcase to have fun with you.

This, my friends is a myth, reserved for holiday travel and is very definitely not what work travel is all about. I've been incredibly lucky to travel to some amazing places in the last little while for work and so I thought I'd share my experiences of what work travel is really all about - it's fun as long as your expectations are not the same as that of holiday travel!

• The probability of early mornings and late nights is high, especially if you're not the only one staying at the hotel.

• You're going to spend 70-90% of your time inside. Most likely the same office.

• You're going to spend 60-80% of your time in that same office, with the same people.

• You're going to eat a lot of restaurant food, which is delicious, but you will grow to miss a simple home-cooked meal.

• If you have people hosting you, they'll be able to advise you on some typical meals and drinks of the area - so you'll get to taste the "real" food of the place that you're visiting and not some tourist equivalent.

• If you're lucky, you will be able to squeeze in some sight-seeing between travelling to and from the office - an hour here and there to catch the main tourist attractions of the area, squished in between leaving the office and going out to dinner. 

• Most of your touristy photos will be from those squeezed-in-sightseeing-tours.

• If you're an introvert like me, you're going to get home and go into hibernation-mode and not want to socialise with anyone other than the people you live with for a few days.

• If you're working in a place that doesn't speak your language, you'll be excited to get back home to hear people speaking in your home language(s).

• You're going to, most probably, get to interact and chat with colleagues/clients that you've talked to over the phone a lot - so you will finally be able to put a face to a voice and name!

• Most of your pictures with colleagues will show you either in the office working, or at a restaurant eating.

• You'll get a chance to build relationships, make new friends and get to know people outside the office. It will be fun, just a different type of fun to holiday fun!

This is me, on the only completely sunny day we had in Rio.
Luckily, it also happened to be a Saturday - so this is me,
doing some fun touristy things in Rio.

Quote #11: The Secret of...

I read a great article a while ago about a stock-broker who joined a company based in the middle of no-where and within months had grown his portion of the business so substantially that people were taking notice of him. The secret to his success? Paperclips. He started every day with 2 jars and 120 paperclips. One jar was empty but every day, he would make telephone calls and after each call he would move one paperclip into the other jar until his original jar was empty. 

It seems like such a simple thing to do, but he did it consistently and without fail, every single day. Often we see successful people only once they have already become successful. We don't see the months (or years) of consistent work that went in before the success came about. Instead, it seems as though people become successes overnight, which is not an accurate representation at all. In terms of blogging, over the years I've learnt that the blogs who do well and keep growing do one thing right - they post consistently. It's something I'm trying to get better at, one blog post at a time. And so, here's to those who work consistently, who work with purpose and who keep the end goal in mind!

PS - Instagram and Layouts let me create the background for this quote and I think I'm going to be using more of this concept in future posts, so keep an eye out for new improved images! It's amazing what mirroring an image can do and what pretty patterns you're able to create - give it a try!

Life Lately

You may have noticed that I haven't had a chance to blog much recently, but I finally managed to put up the rest of my pictures from my trip to Germany and I'm hoping to get around to editing and getting through some of the other pictures that I've taken this month, so watch this space in case I find a few more good pics to share. Since I haven't had much of a chance to blog, I thought I'd update you on what's been happening in my life lately.

Basically my life has been a whole lot of work since I got back from Germany. Not overtime work, just busy-every-day work. It feels like I'm finally getting on top of everything that I need to do which is a really exciting feeling! In between work, the weekends have also been rather busy - for the last two weekends Frosty's folks have been in Cape Town and so we spent some wonderful times with them - chilling in Stellies and exploring Babylonstoren this last weekend and visiting Kagga Kamma Nature Reserve the weekend before last. Then the weekend before that, some very special friends of ours got married in Elgin and we had a fantastic party at the wedding reception and a lovely weekend away re-connecting with friends who we hadn't seen for a while. I always underestimate how busy October gets - the last two years it's probably been my busiest month of the entire year.

Exciting news on the work front is that in just under a month I'm going to be heading off to Rio for work (I definitely landed with my bum in the butter with the project I'm working on and this is the third awesome place that I get to go to for this project!). One exciting thing that I have learnt is that South Africans don't need a visa to go to Brazil. However, we do need to have updated Yellow Fever vaccines. They have to be done no later than 10 days before you leave, so I'm going to be getting mine either this week or next week.

In between all of this business, I've followed the student protests against fee increases last week with interest. I've read a bunch of articles, read status updates of students and wondered if I would have been part of the protests, either getting involved or watching from the sidelines, had I still been at UCT...I'll never know, but one of my favourite bloggers wrote this piece after attending the protests in Stellies on Friday, which is so beautiful.

Quote #4: I Hated Every...

On Monday and Tuesday of this last week, I attended First Aid Training Level 1 with MEC in Pinelands which I really enjoyed. It was great being able to learn some new skills and get out of the office for a few days, but as you can tell from my lack of posts last week, I've had a busy last two weeks or so...

Anyway, part of the training was allowing us time to practice the things that the trainers were teaching us. And it wasn't just 5 minutes to practice after they had demonstrated something. They gave us a good hour of practice for each demonstrated thing and then at the end of the day we had a practical "exam" where we had to demonstrate the activities again. This got me thinking on the importance of training.

All those hours, spent practising the same thing over and over again. It sometimes get monotonous. But it also starts to hard-wire those activities into our brains so that, when the time comes and we need to perform that activity in real life, we can do it automatically, without thinking and with speed. Pretty important when you're dealing with an emergency situation... It's an important lesson to learn, but definitely a worthwhile one, I think!

Quote #1: Kind Words Are...

I am one of those strange people who enjoy technology but who also enjoys good old fashioned pen and paper. One of the things that I have done since forever-ago was to get one of those daily diaries at the end of one year and use it to help plan my life and make sure I know what I need to to when. Frosty and some of my work colleagues laugh at me, preferring to use online diaries, but there's something comforting about writing down my To Do list on paper, feeling those things that are spinning around in my head streaming through my arm and spilling out through my hand, into my pen and then onto the page. Something special about noting down important dates - project deadlines, meetings, work functions, travel, parties, visits, family functions.

One of the best things about these diaries is that, at the bottom of every page they have a quote. I don't read each day's quote on the day it's written on. But when I'm bored in long meetings I have a bit of time, I like to go through the quotes and find ones that are relevant and useful. 

Recently, I have been trying to think up a good weekly feature that I can use for my blog. One that will encourage me to write and post a bit more regularly and I thought that sharing a quote and some thoughts around it, even just a few lines, would be a really good way of helping to keep my posting regular but at the same time giving it variety. 

And so, here's the first quote of the week:

Picture: Sunset from Table Mountain taken by yours truly

As a first quote, I thought that this was a goodie. I think that this concept can be applied to pretty much every aspect of life. From work to home, friends to strangers - giving people kind words is probably one of the easiest and most effective ways of making your life and other's lives easier. 

Chatting with a colleague a little while ago, we were noting how unflappable one of our clients was and admiring how he managed to deal with anything that was thrown at him with calm and graciousness. My colleague had recently spent a bit of time with this client and he shared with me that this particular client had noticed some other guy getting frustrated and made an off-hand comment that he had made a decision a long time ago to not get frustrated. Let me repeat that - he made a decision to not get frustrated. I think it's easier said than done and for some this is an easier thing to achieve than others. But even if you are able to acknowledge that you are feeling frustrated and make a conscious effort to keep your demeanour calm and pleasant, you've won half the battle.

From personal experience and observation, getting frustrated and dishing out unkind words in the heat of the moment when people bring you their issues or ask you silly questions leaves those people less likely to comfortably approach you with their problems or questions in the future. By contrast if you listen to what another person has to say and, even if you disagree with them or think they're being silly, let them finish, you can always ask for some time to process and think their comment over and get back to them later with a response.

This is something that I see the importance of more and more in my life and even though I don't always get it right, I hope that I can work on getting this right more often than I get it wrong. I would rather be seen as kind and approachable than seen as frustrated and unapproachable. Plus, if you are generally kind and unflappable, then when you do get frustrated or angry, people will take you way more seriously than they take the person who blows their top at every teeny-tiny issue.

Letter to My 16 Year Old Self

I recently read two blog posts where the authors wrote letters to their younger (21-year old) selves, you can read them here and here.

I've always loved this concept, either of writing to your past or your future self, and so I thought I would do the same. 21 feels like it's is a bit too close to be writing about, so instead I chose the age of 16*, which was probably one of my favourite years/ages at school and also quite a milestone age. I also thought that it's relevant to do this post in my birthday month, as it's been (almost) 10 years since I turned 16 and that's quite a milestone in itself!

* As I was writing this letter, it turned out to be pretty fun reminiscing about how much was still to come, so it's turned into a bit of a remembering session mixed with the odd piece of advice. Enjoy!

Dear just-turned-16-year-old-self, 

Remember when you sat at school and wondered what you would be doing 10 years from now, you tried to imagine the person you would be and the job you would be doing and who your friends would be and where you would be living and it seemed completely unfathomable to you? Well, you got there and it's pretty cool.

You're half way through Grade 10 and it turns out that your decision to choose a wide variety of subjects that would allow you to pick from a wide variety of careers after school was a good one. 

Art, English, Afrikaans and Biology Bilge turn out to be "supporter" subjects in your choice of career, but they're still useful. Especially English and Afrikaans orals. Those dreaded orals teach you incredibly valuable skills about speaking confidently in front of a group of people (you even come to enjoy talking in front of people, when it's a subject you are passionate about).

Science, Maths and Computer Science end up being the subjects that contribute the most to your current degree and career choice. Especially Computer Science. You don't end up studying forensic science (although you end up with a friend who studied it). You don't end up studying architecture, which is what you eventually decide on as your first choice of study (but you have a few friends who studied it). You do end up starting off studying computer and electrical engineering, your second choice of study. You think maybe you'll try to re-apply to architecture at university, but you don't. Ditch the hope now, put engineering as your first choice and rather get into res. You'll always be sad you never got to experience the res life at university. You do end up having some amazing times in digs though, in first and second year all your res friends would come and visit to get a taste of home life and you and your flatties would visit all your res friends to get a taste of res life. 

Do a bit more cooking at home. You find you really love cooking when you start having to cook for yourself, but a bit of a head start would definitely have helped in your first few weeks of varsity. And always remember to turn the stove off so that you don't come home after a night out, to charcoal-like mince! 

All you know about engineers at this stage is that they generally make good salaries, they work hard and a few of your cousins have engineer husbands. You imagine them fixing things underneath the hoods of cars, wearing stained overalls. Well, some engineers still wear overalls and fix things, but they're also the ones designing the cars and planes and computer programs! You don't know of any females in engineering and school never encouraged this as a viable career choice. Get out there and do a bit more research into engineers, you'll thank yourself later!

You end up being the only girl person to finish Comp Sci in your matric year. This is probably the most useful subject to you, even though it's your 7th subject. If you can, try and learn a bit more about web languages like HTML and CSS, they'll be useful later on, both personally and professionally. And Java is only one of many programming languages - you'll find out about that at varsity.

Mum gives you a book on your 16th birthday, full of advice from family and older friends. You still read it every now and then. Some of the advice is stuff you've followed. Some stuff you haven't. But you cherish the words from all the different people. A few of those special people have passed away since then. You'll remember them fondly, even more so when you read their lovely words and remember the great times you had with them.

Chanel Ball really is all it's hyped up to be. You don't know your partner yet, but he's cool. You have a great time with him and he stays a good mate of yours throughout high school. You dance with a tall blonde guy on the night of Chanel Ball. He catches your attention and it seems like you catch his attention too, as you end up dating until the beginning of your matric year. Then you break up. Your first serious boyfriend. You'll survive the heartbreak and even though you don't get back together, you stay friends.

You'll go to your first real house party in a few months. The day after, when you go to the mall and you feel a bit dizzy for no reason - that's because you got a bit tipsy, even though you didn't realise it at the time. You have lunch with that same guy at the beginning of 2015 and reminisce about that party. A lot has happened in the past 10 years and you wonder what the next 10 years will bring.

There are some close high school friends that you don't get a chance to see very often past high school. Make the most of your time with those friends now. There are some friends who you loose contact with, even though you think you'll stay in contact. There are others who you stay in contact with, even though you think you'll loose contact. And there are those friends who you don't get to see very often, but when you do it feels like you never left off. Also make the most of being surrounded by a bunch of girls, because at varsity and work you become used to being the only girl woman in the group or room. 

You meet your current boyfriend at varsity. In a maths tut (not terribly romantic, but hey, you'll learn that engineers aren't all that romantic. Just practical!). Initially he's your mate. He's the guy who you go to when you have guy troubles and to get help from when you can't do the latest maths tut. Eventually he ends up being the guy you have dated for the past 6 or so years. Just a heads up - he's a great teacher! Make use of his teaching skills earlier so that you don't have to go to extra maths lesson with your matric maths teacher in the July holidays of first year, holidays are a precious commodity when you're working! 

You'll learn at varisty that practice makes perfect when it comes to Science, Maths and Comp Sci. Instead of spending the time making notes, learning the theories and remembering the formulas rather just do past papers and past tests when learning for these subjects at school. And then do some more. And then figure out where you went wrong so you don't make the same mistake again. It'll be much better for you.

You do eventually get to see Joburg. It's not as scary as you thought and the game farms are awesome. You even end up living on the outskirts of Joburg for a bit while you work in a factory. You didn't see that one coming, did you?!

Please, don't take your privilege or the colour of your skin for granted. Your privileged high school allows you to be blind to some of these things, but I dare you to be different. Get uncomfortable and interact more with people who are different to you, even though it's more comfortable to not. Although your high school isn't all that diverse, your class at varsity is so diverse that your skin colour is now in the minority, as is your gender. Make the most of that opportunity - instead of sticking to the people you know, branch out and make more of an effort with a wider variety of your varsity classmates.

Your preoccupation with cameras and taking photos stays with you, embrace it. I would recommend joining the photographic club at school, you'll learn so much there that you haven't yet had the chance to learn (like how to develop your own photos from film). Take prettier pictures at varsity, there are only so many clubbing photos that one can have on facebook before it gets boring.

Speaking of clubs, join the SaWomEng society at UCT and get involved while you're a student. You'll get to meet other female engineers and get to partake in some pretty fun activities. Later on, for work, you'll talk to school girls about choosing a career in STEM, excited to explain to them that there is a place for women in technical, male dominated fields! You'll get to be one of the women breaking the mould and stereotype in engineering, don't be afraid to reach out to others to lend an ear, hear their story and give your support and encouragement.

You've got a really exciting 10 years coming up. Sure there will be some challenges, heart break, sadness and frustrations, that's par for the course. There will also be a lot of fun, happy, amazing, exciting times. I'm kinda jealous that you still have all of that stuff to experience and hope that my next 10 years are just as exciting as yours are going to be!

Love, 
Your almost-26-year-old-self

Blogging - Behind the Scenes

Every now and then, I get asked how I find time to write regularly on my blog. This is one of those things that everyone who blogs has to deal with and figure out. As a new blogger, I just wrote and posted when I felt like it. I had a lot more time to myself when I started out, since I lived alone in Benoni and I was able to spend a lot of my evenings preparing posts. Since moving to Cape Town, it's been a bit more of a juggling act, but I've found that the most useful thing is to have some sort of plan (ideally written down somewhere). 

My blog plan involves trying to create and publish 8 blog posts per month (about twice a week). Sometimes I post more often than twice a week and sometimes I post less often. But usually, around the end of one month, or the beginning of the next, I sit down and try to brainstorm a list of 8 blog post ideas that I can share throughout the next month. I like the idea of having a total number of posts per month as it gives me a flexibility to choose what I want to post and when, as well as a tangible goal that I can look back on to see if I have accomplished it or not.

Many of the blogs I follow advocate having some sort of focus for your blog. Having a focus may at first seem limiting, but it can definitely help you to come up with good content and thus make you more inclined to find time to write. I'm still trying to figure this one out. At the beginning of this year, I started thinking about where I want to focus my blog. I have so many areas of interest that I don't really know what to include or exclude, but that's another story.

In terms of actually creating my posts, I find that free evenings and free weekends I spend a lot of time preparing for posts, getting the right pictures together, and actually writing a skeleton post that I flesh out a bit before putting on the final touches and posting. Sometimes I'll re-write a sentence or a paragraph multiple times in order to get it to read correctly. I have also found that I spend a lot more time these days editing my pictures and making them look good before I upload them to a post - looking back over my posts I like to think that the quality of my images has improved over time as I've learnt a bit more about photography and editing pictures! Knowing when I'm going to be busy allows me to plan in advance and prepare some blog posts in advance so that all I need to do is press "Publish" on the day which is a really useful trick.

Over April I didn't get around to creating a blog plan and it definitely felt as though I didn't have a plan last month. Luckily I was able to sit down last weekend and I wrote down a blog plan for May, that consists mainly of posts about our recent trip to Namibia (you can catch up on that here, here, here and here and as soon as I'm finished editing pictures, more posts will be up). Maybe I'll be proactive and even try and start my blog plan for June!

What are your best blogging tips?

Namibia Travels: Part 4

Welcome to my Namibia Travels series! If you've just joined me, you can catch up on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before making your way through today's post.

Day 5 and 6:
We woke up to a still-mizzy campsite. This called for some coffee and rusks with Frosty's folks, as well as his aunt and uncle (who very kindly let us gatecrash a night in their campsite with them at Tiger Reef) before we started packing up camp.

Luckily we didn't have too much to pack up and all too soon, 4 people's worth of camping gear was packed into my little car, we were bidding farewell to Frosty's aunt and uncle and we went on to explore Swakop a bit more before setting off on the road again. Since the weather wasn't ideal, we took a quick stroll along a promanade with a restaurant right at the end in the middle of the ocean. On our way back to the car, we encountered a very persistent and clever salesman who somehow conned convinced us to buy some carved pine nuts (on which he engraved our names amongst the pre-engraved animals while he was chatting to us). 

Restaurant in the middle of the ocean.
I love this picture - when I edited in black and white it turned out really nicely!

Another shot of the restaurant in the middle of the ocean at Spitzkoppe.

Black and white picture 

View of the land from the sea (restaurant) - the picture doesn't do the colours in the sky justice!

Before we left Swakop, we were told that Café Anton was the place to go and get coffee and Apfelstrudel. It had the most incredible looking pastries lined up on it's counters and it was just the thing to complement a cool day out on the Namibian Coast. 

On our way back to Okahandja, where we would be staying the night with a different aunt and uncle of Frosty's, we stopped off at Spitzkoppe. I wasn't exactly sure of what to expect, but a tiny pool of water surrounded by green grass in the middle of a bunch of rocks wasn't part of that expectation! We spent a lovely morning and part of the afternoon scrambling up rocks and finding a shady spot to have a picnic lunch. After arriving in Okahandja, we spent a lovely evening ensconced around a warm fire and chatting with Frosty's family. Other than our overnight stay at Savanna Guest Farm, this was the only other night when we didn't have to pitch a tent in the evening and then take it down the next morning!  

My socks, all clean after having mayo all over them the previous day.
I loved the reflections in this pic.

The entrance to Spitzkoppe.

Pretty yellow desert flower

Pretty pink desert flowers

Black and white picture with Frosty in the background

Another desert flower - this time orangey/peach.

Curly plant with white flowers on it.

We found a few lizard friends - here's one of them. Don't you love the colours?

One of the pools at Spitzkoppe. Can you see Frosty doing his thing
(climbing to the top of the rocks) way in the distance?

Another pic of the pool - there were even fish and tadpoles inside!

Playing around with twig and mountain pictures

View from the rocks we found to climb in Spitzkoppe

And the view in the other direction - look how small the pool
looks from this view point!

Frosty and I playing around

View from the very top of the rocks.

Another lizard friend

And this guy, who we found in a tree!

Orange berries - I loved the contrast between the orange and green.

We found a great picnic spot in the shade of a big rock.

This little bird kept coming back to admire it's reflection in my car window.

Sun bird feeding (I think maybe the Dusky Sunbird)

Somewhere on the road between Spitzkoppe and Okahandja

Sunset on the road

Beautiful tree outside Frosty's aunt and uncle's place 

I may have fallen slightly in love with this clever collie! 

How Time Flies

I still almost can't believe that I'm going into my fourth year of working. It feels like the time between graduating and now has gone double or triple as fast as the time between 1st and 4th year at University. 

This really hit home on Saturday when I spent the majority of my day at a workshop hosted by EWBSA (Engineers Without Borders South Africa) for the UCT Student chapter, which had the aim of exposing the students to the EWBSA Project Methodology. There were about four of us who attended as not so recently graduated, working professionals, there to observe and chat with the students about our experiences in the working world.

It was great to be able to interact with these students and find out a bit more about the projects that they had planned for the year. We also had some interesting discussions on some of the more intangible, but nevertheless important, aspects of project management, such as how one keeps their project team motivated and the importance of defining your project correctly. 

On a personal level, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on what I have learnt since entering the working world and compare what I knew straight out of varsity with what I know now. Even though it feels like just yesterday that I graduated, I've definitely learnt a bit since then and have grown in my professional capacity. It also freaked me out a bit to think that the second years that I met would have been in Grade 7 when I was in matric - too crazy for words, surely I'm not that old?!

And on that note - I hope you all have a great week. My project at work has just stepped up a notch into the stage of "crikey, we've got 3 weeks of development left before we have to start testing" phase, so I'm going to be putting in some extra hard work before I leave for Namibia on Friday and be ready to work hard again when I get back next next Monday. If I get a chance, I'll be posting some pictures on Instagram and Facebook - so follow me if you want to see what we're getting up to!

Our camping box all packed up in preparation for our
Namibia trip!

No Comment

The other day one of my co-workers asked our office (comprising of me and another co-worker) if we'd been following the Rhodes Statue issue and whether we had read any of the comments that people leave behind on the various social media posts. Of course, being in South Africa and all 3 of us former UCT students, we'd have to be living with our heads in the sand if we hadn't heard at least a bit about this, even if it was just a passing comment from a friend. 

I often find myself going to the comments section of things and so, yes, I had read those comments. One thing that struck us both was that we couldn't believe the feelings of nastiness, venom and (dare I say it) hate that people spew forth in many of the comments that follow social media posts on this issue (and many issues like it). 

I could feel our hearts silently breaking. There we were, sitting together in their office, pondering how, in this day and age, there could still be so many people out there with absolutely no willingness to engage with others, to learn from others, the various commenters so sure that they and they alone are right. 

We chatted for a few minutes trying to put into words how unbelievable we found this. Eventually the only way that we could describe how appalled we were was to say that those comments left us speechless...

Why Using Someone's Name Is Important

When I was small, I was very shy and my mum always used to struggle to get me to use peoples names when I said hello or goodbye. Saying "hello" was a push to little-me-at-5-years-old, so saying "hello Eugene" was often unfathomable. Every time I greeted someone, if I just said a quiet "hello", my mum would say "Hello who?" and I would then reply (if she was lucky) "hello Dolores" while clinging onto her leg or hand, looking down to the ground or hiding my face away.

Fast forward 17 years and I found myself sitting in a training session at the Four Seasons in Vail, being taught about the importance of greeting our guests by name and using their name in our interactions with them. I was no longer a 5 year old and I had become much better at greeting people by name (and remembering people's names), but this training session re-emphasised how important it was to use someone's name. It was so engrained in the company culture that not greeting guests by name felt incredibly wrong. Luckily, more often than not, we would at some stage either find out their name when they checked in to their spa appointment or restaurant reservation and you only had to remember someone's name for the duration of their appointment or meal. As a last resort you could get their name off their card at the end of their stay and then say something like "I hope you enjoyed your treatment Mr. So-And-So, I hope we see you again soon".

The idea behind addressing someone by name is very simple. It makes people feel important and valued and that they're a "someone", not a "no-one". If you make people feel important and valued and like a "someone" they're likely to think favourably of you (or your company) and therefore be more likely to want to interact with you (or your company) in the future. It's an easy way to make someone you just met feel important. And everyone wants to feel important. 

Rewarding People By Not Making Them Managers

My grandfather, Boet, turned 85 at the beginning of this year and we celebrated with a lovely party thrown at my folks' house. 

During his party, we got chatting to how management can be a blessing or a curse, depending on who is doing the managing and whether they're actually qualified for it or not. Back in the day my grandpa was involved in Agriculture and then he ended up working for the South African Embassy in the USA for a while - so he knows a thing or two about bureaucracy and management. 

Anyway, we had a really good chat about this and our biggest point was that all too often we see people who are doing a great job technically, moving into management because that's the only way to grow (and get a bigger paycheck - because let's face it, we all need a bit of money to survive) within a company. Sometimes these appointments work out. Sometimes they don't. When they don't work out, then the whole department or team suffers as a result.  

The question that Boet and I were chatting about was, how do we retain and reward strong technical people without pushing them into a management role if they aren't interested in management? I don't know if there's a hard and fast answer here, you probably need to take it on a case by case basis. Moving into management often means one won't have a chance to use the skills that have been learnt over the years, which is a waste of knowledge and experience. Managing people is also something that needs a particular skill set - often this is something that either comes naturally to a person or it doesn't. Putting someone without those people skills into manager positions often results in unhappy staff and a disconnect in your team. Putting someone with strong technical skills into a position of mentorship, where they can share their hard earned skills with others is probably a better way to go about things. But this will only work if people feel secure in their jobs and are thus confident in sharing their skills with others, with the objective of improving the skills of all parties.

At my current job, we have two different "management" streams within our teams. The first stream is structured around people management, project management, basic technical ability and client interactions. The other stream is structured around in-depth technical know-how, project execution, helping junior developers with technical problems and technical interactions and specifications with clients. Both "managers" are responsible for the success of the team, however their areas of focus are slightly different, allowing the technical people to retain their experience and allow the technical leads to to what they do best and share that knowledge with others.

I think this is a pretty wide topic, with many different points of view. What are your thoughts on this? Any suggestions for things that have and haven't worked for you in the past in terms of rewarding technical ability without the person having to move into a management role?

Family Picture at Boet's 85th birthday - I printed this picture for him on a canvas
as my gift to him :)

Baby, When The Lights Go Out

I read an article the other day on things to do during loadshedding, which I thought was a grand idea!

For those who aren't in South Africa, you may not be aware that we are going through some pretty hectic loadshedding. Some places have it worse than others*, but recently we've been having routine power cuts to certain areas all over the country on a regular basis so that our power distributor can perform maintenance. 

We could get into a whole political argument, point fingers and play the blame game, but the point of the matter is that loadshedding is here for a while, so we may as well suck it up and find something productive to do while we have no power.

Here's my list of things to do when the lights go out.

1. Make fire your friend. Light some candles. Light a fire for a braai. In winter, light a fire in your fireplace. There's something so cozy about a fire that allows you to enjoy your home an a slightly different ambiance.
2. Read a book once you've lit up some candles. Or don't light up candles and use a reading device with a backlight, such as a kindle fire or ipad.
3. Tell a story. Make one up or tell one that everyone is familiar with. To make it even more fun, break out your torches and tell stories next to a fire.
4. In summer, it may still be light enough to enjoy some time outside. So take your drinks, sit on your lawn and enjoy watching the transition from light to dark without the distraction of electric lights.
5. Go for a drive. Just because your lights are out, it doesn't mean lights are out everywhere. So go for a drive and explore your city.
6. Do some sort of exercise. Go for a run, play that game of tennis or squash you've been meaning to play. Even just take a walk around the block.
7. Have a nap. When there's nothing else for you to do, and it's cold and dark outside, you may as well use this as an excuse to catch up on your beauty sleep.
8. Take up a hobby that you don't need electricity for. Knitting or fly-tying anyone?
9. Get a pen and paper out and write or draw. It can be fantasy or true life, abstract or life-like. There's something calming about getting words or pictures on to a piece of paper with pen and ink.
10. Just sit and chat. Use loadshedding as an excuse to chill out with your friends or family and catch up on life, dreams, things to get excited about or your next holiday.
11. Break out the old musical instrument you haven't played in years and make some music. You can go with the old classics, or the more contemporary pieces, but either way, jamming with some people is a great way to spend an evening. And if you can't play anything, why not use it as an opportunity to learn!
12. Take a blanket and go stargazing. When was the last time you took a good long look at the skies and tried your best to find that elusive shooting star?

So, that's my list - what are your suggestions for activities to do when you've got no power?

* I haven't had too many power cuts in my part of the world, but I know that in my folks area they sometimes go for days without power (and sometimes water, but that's another story!)

A Reflection on 2014

Camping at Balloch Cave Dec 2014.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you! I've been away for the last two weeks without any internet connection or cell reception and it was absolutely wonderful! Of course, this has meant that I've been very quiet on the blogging front, but now I'm back and ready to see what 2015 will bring. 

With a week of holiday in KZN still left, I thought this would give me a good opportunity to reflect on 2014 and do some quiet thinking before I get back to work and Cape Town.

With this in mind - here's a recap of my year for 2014:

• January - I commenced 2014 with a great road trip around part of the country and got to explore some amazing places!
  
• February - I spent an amazing weekend away at Mabula and reflected on the good and bad of long distance relationships.
  
• March - I moved from Benoni to Cape Town, started a new job and took part in the Grape Escape my first weekend back in the Cape.
  
• April - I got to explore a bit of the Karoo when we visited for a friends wedding and explored a bit of Cape Town along the Pipe Trail Walk.
  
• May - Attended a wedding at Balloch and explored Clanwilliam.
  
• June - I gave Practical Cookie it's own mascot, visited the Berg and went to Italy for work! Also, I celebrated my birthday - a busy month in June.
  
• July - Practical Cookie celebrated it's first birthday!
  
• August - Hiked to Wolfberg Arch in the Cedarberg with my Adventure Time pals and I posted a series written by a friend of mine on the 7 Deadly Sins of Falling in Like.
  
• September - I experimented with taking pictures of the moon and saw Emma Watsons #HeForShe speech which has still got me thinking.
  
• October - I guest posted over at Engineering in Style which was very exciting and we had a weekend Camping at Kogel Bay.
  
• November - I took part in the indieBerries Instagram Challenge (which was such fun) and also took part in an epic cycle around Cape Point.
  
• December - I didn't blog very much, but I did enter the Africa Geographic Photographer of the Year Competition and spent Christmas and New Year in Balloch. This year I even managed to convince my parents to come camping, so photos of this will be following shortly!

What was your 2014 like and what are you hoping 2015 will bring you?