Prof and the Baroness

The Prof, aka Richard is a professor at the Wits Medical School and the current owner of Anastasiya the famous black Vespa that conquered Sani Pass in the middle of winter and who took on the took on the Baviaanskloof and won. No the Prof is not here for the Baroness but for papers that I had of Anastasiya. 

It's Friday, we have no electricity at work for some obscure reason that is just a waste of  what would be a productive day. Oh well let the weekend begin.

Goodbye Anastasiya

This is the first step in getting my life back in order. Anastasiya, my black Vespa ET4/8 150, has been sitting in my garage for nearly 2 years now while I use Scarlet, my red Vespa GTS300ie Super (Please note Scarlett is also for sale).

Richard my old friend from the Joburg Photowalkers snapped Anastasiya up and will bring her back to her formal glory by changing her name back to Sophia which she was originally called. Anastasiya /Sophia comes with lots of history. She was the first Vespa and the only 2 scooters ever to do Sani in Winter (Mitilda a P150X was the other one). I know of a SYM 125 scooter doing it in the summer months but winter well that is another story. Sophia also did the Roof of Africa the very next day after Sani crossing over Lesotho along 4x4 tracks with thick snow either side.

After that Sophia became Anastasiya after her engine blew after a highway trip home after work. A few years later also along with Mitilda, she conquered Baviaanskloof Valley where the river beds became the road less travelled much to the surprise of 4x4 enthusiasts and off-road bikers.

Hello Sophia, ahhh let the adventures re-begin.

Green Richard

No Green I say, not because Richard is wearing a yellow Che Guevara t-shirt but because he may be the greenest fellow I ever met other than that green peace chap I met a long time ago. May I should say psychedelic not green as he is more into those mind bending colours of peace and love from the 60s.

Richard used to be my drug pusher quite a while back. No not the hard drugs but Ginseng and other strange Chinese herbal health products that he brought to work daily. Personally I think he was afraid of getting the flu and wanted to make sure all of his work colleagues were healthy around him. But somehow that didn’t work as I remember getting pneumonia that year, a few months before setting out on conquering Sani Pass on a Vespa in the middle of winter.

Anyway it was a surprise to see Richard again when we stopped to visit friends Gary and Anika on our way back from picking up Matthew in Benoni. Now Richard is Anika’s brother and they, Richard and his family are up from the Natal South Coast visiting for the holidays. Nice family I must say.

Clarkson, Hammond, and May

Not really my scene but Matthew loved Top Gear, a car show that aired on BBC before Jeremy Clarkson was fired and ended the show. Forget about rude Jeremy, or even slow James May, Matthew’s favourite presenter is Richard Hammond so when Craig contacted me with free tickets to the Clarkson, Hammond, and May Live in Johannesburg, how could I say no. Plus Ken Block made a guest appearance.

I kept where we were going a secret from Matthew until he saw us arriving at the parking lot outside the Dome at Northgate and the penny dropped. Ohh he was so uber excited.

All about the Birds

It is all about the birds, no trouble.

The rain is coming in waves and in the gaps the sun dries up all evidence. Being on the Vespa to and back from work, it is all about the timing so not to get wet. Richard the regional technical co-ordinator, on the other hand, is out and about checking up on his children, the birds of Bosasa. Making hay when the sun shines.

Here is Richard and Johnny a grey crowned crane, strolling up to me during my lunchtime stroll in the gardens. This sure beats taking your bird for a walk.

The Enlightened shall not pass

This evening a group of Resistance players met at Montecasino in Fourways for a Ingress Social and what Ingress players do a lot, hacking.

Standing at the back are InsaneSplash, thr4sh3r, MaxyJade, and Meekk. Around the table starting at the front and going clockwise are BioniKat, GuardianAlpha, RiggerMortiz, NymphMel, Gazzadbn, and our Ingress visitor from France Srr91919.

We are all L8 and upwards Resistance fighters well except for our French Resistance member who is a L6 soon to be L8. With all this muscle, this meant we quickly had a L8 popup farm and we milked it dry. Comments did the rounds that this was the most successful popup farm in a long time. Well done for the organisers.

We are the Resistance. The enlightened shall not pass!

Big Clean

At the office, to make more room for the expansions, the boardroom division was taken down which made a considerable amount of drywall dust. Here is our CEO, Richard, manning the vacuum cleaner with the amused Bakang, Marco, and Noma looking on.

Father and Daughter

This morning, Richard's daughter Isabella arrived and I couldn't resist a Father Daughter photograph so now on this Friday I give you Isabella and Richard. Okay it is Friday, and inspiration is push aside as weekend takes over.

Squinting

Another day and Friday is ever closer but the day isn't over until the work is all done. Here is Richard, battling with his Samsung laptop instead of using the way much larger Dell XPS One with its 27 inch screen. Woza Friday! Woza Weekend!

Pizza and Beer

It is Richard's birthday today and we celebrated with pizza and beers, nice. Another good thing about today is that Camera Tek sent me an SMS to let me know that my camera was repaired under warranty and that it is ready for collection. Let the weekend begin.

Cards Against Humanity

This afternoon after a morning of playing Ingress, friends met at Craig's place for an afternoon of board games and a braai. We ended up around the table playing the game Cards Against Humanity. We had a whole lot of hilarious fun. My friends in the photo above are Lynda, Anika, Anel, Craig, Thabitha, Richard, Pierre and Gary.

Ingress Sitrep: This morning thanks to Thr4sh3r a L8 Resistance member I managed to reach L4.

Upside Down World

My office world was turned on its head today as the team of installers came to put in the partitions that were ordered by Maon. I started throwing my toys out of my newly assembled cubicle but I soon learnt that no-one, and I mean no-one can hear you scream in a cubicle. Even Delia started taking photos of just my dome sticking out above the partition. I feel like I am in a padded cell.

Here is Richard, the main installer, mounting the new partitions onto the desks. Well this is it, this is war, challenge duly accepted, I will have to start talking louder or try singing in my cubicle of my now upside down world.

Humpty Rocket

We have been looking forward to this afternoon for quite some time now, our Year End Lunch. This time the restaurant Rocket in Parkhurst was chosen. As expected it was a fun time to wind down with work colleagues after a busy year with a busier year ahead. Good food and wine was on order and that is what kept coming. Louise organised a Secret Santa, where we had to pull a name from a hat and then had to buy a present for that person up to a value of R100. It was hard to choose the photo for today, from the kittens to Delia and her exotic cocktail. But I finally settled on Richard, with his Humpty Dumpty gift.

Full of Beans

Monday started with the empty fuel light coming on while riding my Vespa to work. I had to stop and fill up. I never like using BP or Shell because of their bad environmental and exploitative track record, mind all oil companies fall into this category but in my books these two are the worst. Anyway the first other garage was a Sasol one on Rivonia, so I pulled in and filled my tank with 6.66 litres of fuel. Oh dear 666, what an ominous start to the Monday.

Nothing bad actually happened today eve with the ominous start. One event which stands out is the arrival of Marcio and his Full of Beans mobile coffee vending 3 wheeler bike called Mobean 1. One interesting thing about the Mobean 1 is that it runs on a biodiesel engine. I wrote a full write up is the Mobean 1 on the Posers Scooter Club blog for those who would like to find out more about this cute Piaggio APE.

Wet Paint

The day of the big move arrived with a lorry from Reliable Removals pulling next to National Positions' offices in Astrotech just after lunch time. The labourers from Reliable Removals made short work of loading all out stuff.

Arriving at the new offices, we found the painters still finishing off the interior walls so while the lorry waited to be unloaded; we all got stuck in cleaning up a space for our stuff making sure we didn't touch the wet paint. Here is a photograph of our CEO Richard vacuuming the carpets. Not soon after the lorry was unloaded the pizza and beers arrived. Thank goodness because I was starting to get a headache from the wet paint fumes.

Dr House Fails

Well Dr House, not his real name, gave up today after exhausting the entire medical journal of all known illnesses, diseases and syndromes. Or maybe with all the people praying for Theresa, that she has been miraculously healed because when they went in with the endoscope all they found was bruising. Not even a sign of the possible hernia, nothing. Dr House was at a loss for words.

Theresa is so bruised that she still can't eat other than slowing sipping on jelly and health shakes. Not sure if she can eat again, Theresa is to be discharged tomorrow and Dr House has made another appointment for her with another specialist in Pretoria next week. Dr House, it seems has past her on to another Dr House, let's call him Dr House 2, as don't we all like sequels.

With what's happening with Theresa, it is all uncertain, just like Johannesburg's weather. I mean I have all about forgotten about the highveld summer thunderstorm and in the last few days it has struck with awesome feistiness. This afternoon it didn't just rain, it hailed. With me even being not certain about my job, this is certainly uncertain times.

Richard

With news of Sophia's new clutch parts arriving today and that she may be ready by this afternoon kept my spirits up throughout Monday but towards the end of the day the news came in that the mechanic didn't have time to get to her, suddenly I wanted to unlike Monday, unfriend her or even block her but Monday was nearly over so all I could do was limp home with my tail between my legs.

Ahh but I shouldn't forget, my boss, the CEO of National Positions South Africa did allow me to take a photograph of him. So this Monday wasn't so bad after all. On this rare occasion Richard must have let his guard down or got tired of me pestering for a photograph or even felt sorry for me that my Vespa was still out of commission, anyway whatever the reason it was nice of him. Thanks, for the silver lining on what would have been a unlikeable Monday.

Morphic Fields

Saturday has being a weird day for me. Firstly I had to meet an old work colleague then go join other friends for a lazy Saturday afternoon braai in the garden. But things started to unravel.

The colleague phone to inform me that could not meet at the agreed location and wanted to meet at my home instead. Then another friend phone, he had car trouble and need help. Sounding like an infomercial, let me say that's not all; my brother phoned and wanted to visit. So I had to shuffle everyone around so I could still get to my lazy afternoon braai. It was hectic but all I was aiming for was spending quality time with friends.

The lazy afternoon started slightly late because someone forgot to give Paulo a hour earlier time but it was a great afternoon which turned into evening and somehow the conversation touched on this sub-consciousness that people have between each other. For example one of my friend's mom had connection with her loved ones and knew instantaneously when something disastrous happened to them. Another friend had this connection to her parrot and graphically described events which led her to think that.

At the time I knew that I recently came across a theory by Sheldrake that described just this but for the life of me could not remember the name. When I got home later I had to look it up. It is the Morphic Field. This is a field that links humans including animals to each other, like when a dog knows when their owner is coming home or when you feel that something tragic has happened to your loved one only to find out later that they died.

Interesting topic for a group of friends to discuss on a lazy Saturday afternoon but they are my friends and I am connected to them morphogeneticly or not.

Love From The Office

The stronger medicine I am on seems to be helping as I am feeling much better. Maybe it is because I can work at home and simply pop into the office late in the morning to hand over the previous day's work and collect more. This helps me avoid the cold air in the mornings and evenings and of course it helps to be just 15 minutes drive away especially in light of the fuel crisis in Johannesburg. With no interruptions I can put in longer hours but somehow found that I missed my lunch. So while in the office, the SEO team wished me a healthy recovery and I took this shot of them while there of Louwellen, Vincent and Richard. My computer is still not fixed so working from home has given the support team time to get to the bottom of my computer's issues. Hopefully like me no more pick elephants.

Oogle

Yes this is the SEO team that I have been working with the last couple of months.From left to right is Richard, Ockert, Vincent, George, Louwellen and me at the back. This is the team that is bringing home the bacon for George's plumbing and electrical companies. There is talk of a SEO company but is this the birth of Oogle?