OffTheHoox.com

No one said it was going to be easy. Being back in Africa is wonderful and certainly has it’s pros like a great climate, exquisite scenery, incredible people and the likes, but God damn it’s difficult sometimes to just get the simplest things done.

I guess it’s all down to education and previous experience. What you learn along “the way” through life is vital for growth but that learning curve is usually steered by some controlling force or another. Many times it’s a business need that demands things done in a certain way, other times it’s the push of a consumer base that expects a certain level of professionalism and demands good service. This forces the service industry to strive for perfection or hand business over to your nearest competitor. This is why we like to think of ourselves in the 1st world as the leaders in customer service. The expectation of excellence. This is obviously not always the case but compare Europe or the USA to Africa and my God, we are comparing apples with pears. Here that just doesn’t quite work the same.

I can’t point fingers and tell people how it should be because it just works differently. There is the old saying out here, “T.I.A.” - This Is Africa. For a big part that is 100% correct and not always meant in a demeaning way. This IS Africa and things WILL happen differently. The local service providers have not had the past experience of pushy, high expectation customers. From time to time we will have a stand-off or show down expressing our demands and their response of what will happen. All you can do is keep up the pressure and hope that within your lifetime the level of service comes up to a standard that although not perfect, can be deemed acceptable. If you give in early you become part of the problem and then no one learns.

What brought all this on now is the fact that here I am, at 10:10am, writing this offline as our internet service provider decided that this morning, in the course of a production day, business hours, was the best time to run an upgrade on the system and bring down the entire region. I got the message last night, “We will be shutting down at 7:00am and will be down for exactly 30 minutes. You will be back online at 8:00am. Well we went down at 7:45am and are still not back online. I just got off the phone with them and the message I got was “I do not have the authority to tell you what the problem is you will just have to wait”.

If I had ever in my career as an IT professional just shut down all the communications for a scheduled outage during office hours I probably would have had my ass fired before I could have brought it back up again. That I think, is the basis of the frustration. The fact that I learnt another way. The way I see as the proper way!

The old Hoox would have boiling blood now. This new Hoox doesn’t give a rat’s ass. I’m learning to love this new Hoox!

Life is like a box of chocolates, only you get what you pay for!

Now I’m going to go outside and enjoy the wonderful African sun. Sometime I will have to explain my new mind set. It’s called “2 piles”. And I’m frikkin LOVING it!

There is a lot that can be said about life changes but some of them are better left unsaid. Everyone involved knows the score. I had so much written down and then I removed it. I have had my say and everything is going to be just fine. Things are going to be great!

Take care sweetheart. X

In the recent moment there was this song that jumped out at me. Take a listen…

Coldplay - Fix you

When you try your best, but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse

When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

High up above or down below
When you’re too in love to let it go
If you never try you’ll never know
Just what you’re worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I…

Tears stream down on your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I…

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

The art of visualization is an extremely powerful tool. Recently I have read about sports science linking athletes up to EEG machines and other monitoring equipment and have them “run the race” or “swim the heat” in their minds. Apparently it is so real in the athletes mind that the same muscles fire that would if they had actually been physically taking part. They actually feel as if they are competing.

Another great visualization is that advice that you get when making a big speech in front of many people and your ass is doing that million mile and hour pucker… “Imagine the audience naked”. Trust me, this is not always good advice. You have no idea of the scary images you could conjure up!

Choose your audience carefully!

(Click for more - NSFW)

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The only real downside to having a day off that I can see, is having to come back on Monday. I mean the whole week it’s the same old bollocks. Wake up at 5:30, S,S&S, breakfast at 6:00, make lunch sandwiches at 6:15, morning meeting at 6:30, start work at 7:00. I swear to you by Friday or Saturday you are well in the routine and it is just another start to just another day.

Then the bastards throw in a day off. One of these pesky events where we have sweet F-All to do all day cos we are not allowed out. So the day is usually spent just hanging around in bed and eating the 3 square meals. Food becomes an outing.

And all this excitement does is screw up the start to the week cos suddenly after 1 sleep in, your body adapts to it and wants more of it! Monday through Thursday is again a pain in the ass to wake up.

Saturday night however was quite a laugh. It started at 6:00pm sharp with a few bottles of cheap ass red wine, then rapidly switched to beer when the wine was all done. You can’t really be too fussy out here. The party moved indoors when it was time to eat and that’s kinda where it stayed. When I say party I mean the 3 of us that stayed drinking beer until some ungodly hour. I have no idea when it was that we called it a night but I do know there was something close to Hurricane Hilda blowing outside. It was awesome. Wind was pumping and sheet rain screaming through the camp sideways. I love a good storm.

Yesterday was spent nursing a sore head and feeling sorry for myself. I watched a few movies and slept a lot. That’s where it gets you though. Monday mornings are suddenly murder. No hangover, no exhaustion, no over exertion, no excuse, but still no will to get out of bed.

I say we just cancel weekends. I know I know… Hoox for president!

4 weekends left. 4 little Sundays. 4 pesky Mondays.

Spoken by Great Men:

“Give me 20 divisions American soldiers and I will beach Europe. Give me 15 consisting of Englishmen, and I will advance to the borders of Berlin. Give me two divisions of those marvelous fighting Boers (Meaning Farmer, originating from the Boer War) and I will remove Germany from the face of the earth.”

~ Field Marshall Bernard L. Montgomery, Commander of the Allied forces during WWII.

“The Americans fight for a free world, the English mostly for honor and glory and medals, the French and Canadians decide too late that they have to participate. The Italians are too scared to fight; the Russians have no choice. The Germans for the Fatherland. The Boers? Those sons of bitches fight for the hell of it!”

~ American General, George “Guts and Glory” Patton -

“Take a community of Dutchman of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world.
Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots, who gave up their name and left their country forever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon the face of the earth. Take these formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances in which no weakling could survive; place them so that they acquire skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is immanently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman and the rider. Then, finally, put a fine temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism.
Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual and you have the modern Boer.”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - (And for those who don’t know, he wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories)

After uploading a HipCast song (which is how I put media into posts) for the first time in a really long time, I realized that I wasn’t as slick at doing it anymore. I added the song, tried to change something and WHAM, it was all gone. I wanted to cry. Take a look at the page and you will see why. There’s a LOT to recreate!

I had to rebuild it ALL almost from scratch.

Fortunately for me WordPress, who hosts this blog, has a fantastic search tool as a add-on widget and I was able to find all previous posts and then it was just down to some time consuming fancy copy and paste.

This however made me view everything again and fortunately so since it seems I had been lazy from time to time and not added some media as I posted it. It is now completely up to date and working perfectly again. Until I mess around with it again.

Take a look while it’s still alive.

I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am about my new life. It’s like a highway of open and endless opportunities. Something I welcome with arms wide open!

 (Creed - With arms wide open)

To be perfectly honest I haven’t really even worked anything out. I mean I have like a 2 month look ahead plan and that’s really about it. I have no idea how I am going to achieve it, pay for it, how its’s going to be done or what I am going to do with it. All I know is that I am going to do it and I am going to have a great time doing it.

But that is half the beauty of it. The unknowing. The excitement of the new experiences.

I am so very grateful for all the opportunities and circumstances that have led me to this exact point. Friends, family, work. Even the stresses that finally pushed me over the edge and made me see what I needed to see. I am grateful for it all. It has brought me here, now. Awesome!

Thank you all so very much for your support and direction! Any further support can be made in the form of donations to the “Hoox New Life As A Pilot Fund”.

~~~

Creed - With arms wide open

Well I just heard the news today
It seems my life is going to change
I closed my eyes, begin to pray
Then tears of joy stream down my face

With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I’ll show you everything
With arms wide open
With arms wide open

LARIAM® brand of mefloquine hydrochloride TABLETS

Whoopee. Just as you think the week can’t get any worse is right about when you discover that today is the day for your weekly dose of that all inspiring drug Lariam. If you were depressed yesterday, wait for today to kick in. Hey if nothing else, there will be some pretty wicked dreams tonight!

If you have a minute or two to kill, check out the write-ups and even worse, the ratings!

It’s such a good thing that I am in such a great mood these days. Nothing will get me down, not even a crappy side-effect of a silly drug that supposed to stop me from dying of Malaria. These something really uplifting about allowing everything to bypass your “Give-a-shit-o-meter”.

If I don’t see you again before Monday, have an AWESOME weekend.

Again I ask, let me know what you been up to. Send photos and I will put them online. Let’s see what others around the world get up to on their time off…..

OffTheHoox@gmail.com

“I’ve always said you can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word.” ~ Babylon 5 - J. Michael Straczynski.

I have been begging and pleading for our service provider to provide us with a service since I got here 2 weeks ago. It has been painful to say the least. Unfortunately in this day and age, you can’t just show up with a two-by-four or equivalent baseball bat and get your point across. You have to be diplomatic. To hell with that!

Yesterday I threw my toys out the cot. As they say the pen is mightier than the sword so I decided to give that a shot before oiling up the baseball bat. I went to the top. There was no more asking or begging. It was now down to insisting and threatening to walk away with $millions of business. Result. Within 30 minutes I had a visit from 2 people, an email from the senior manager and 3 phone calls asking if I can give them a few hours to resolve the issues. By mid afternoon we were humming again.

Why does the service industry have to wait until the wheels fall off to get anything done. I know its not just here. Its everywhere! So annoying!

Good news is though, the internet on site is fixed. For now. Holding thumbs!