Close to Home

It's one thing seeing xenophobia play itself out on the news each night. It's another to stare it in the face.

Last night the attacks started in Cape Town. Reports were flooding in to the radio station of people running for their lives on the highways, of relief organizations and police kicking into gear as their "what if" plan had to be acted upon. By the time I left for home, the township 1km away from where I live was being targeted.

ONE kilometer away. I could hear the sirens as I arrived home. I could see those who had fled setting up shelter for the night in the bushes near the busiest intersections in the hope that there they'd find safety. The Zimbabweans usually thronging around stopped cars, hawking everything from beaded ornaments to cellphone chargers are noticeably absent. Town was packed with cars and trucks carting every stick of a household's furniture and all its residents - getting out, going anywhere - just not home.

Favourite Man and I did a shop run this evening and our car guard - a refugee from Brazzaville - told of beatings, killings, violence just down the road. He and his friends are sheltering in town.

I've looked the targets of xenophobia in the face tonight. It's no longer stories on the news. It's here, right on my doorstep.

Skin

I left work later than usual yesterday, and still had to do a few things on the way home. By the time I reached my last turn before home, traffic had come to a stand-still. There was a huge accident up ahead!

Where the road from my complex joins the main road through to the next settlement, it's become a dangerous corner. Folk speed down that main road, while others are trying to cross over it - and every so often there's a smash. Yesterday's called out 3 ambulances, 4 police cars, a rescue truck, a fire engine with the jaws of life, and the usual complement of tow-trucks to deal with a head-on collision and (I think) 3 car's occupants. This morning all that remains is a few glass shards on the road.

Us humans, enclosed in our speeding hunks of metal, are fragile indeed.

Dominating the news is the xenophobic attacks happening across South Africa. (Champs has a superb post today) The situation in Zimbabwe is increasingly horrific.

We're fragile. Our microns-thick skin can be burst by sharp objects - whether in a car crash or from a chunk of concrete hurled by an angry mob. Our blood pours too easily. We're mere membranes, held together by grace and miracles - too easily broken, burnt, damaged, killed.

As unique as we are - as incredibly beautiful in our many varieties - we're fragile. We have to look out for each other, before we're spilt on unforgiving earth. Whether it's cutting back on our speed and recklessness, or letting go of anger and prejudice.

How to do the latter... I honestly don't know.

Help I've Been Rebranded!

I've been working in this office for just over a year now. Yet I've worked for 3 different companies, all while sitting on the same chair!

It's a matter of mergers and acquisitions, and all sorts of funny big company things that mean our company name has now changed for the third time.

Being in the documentation business, that gives me a whole lot more work. New logos, new colour schemes, new font guidelines, new screenshots... the whole nine yards. When I run out of things to write, there's ALWAYS some rebranding to attack.

We recently acquired our third name. I'm still trying to get the documentation to conform - but happened to glance around behind me and noticed the glass doors have been re-stickered over lunchtime... The outside of the building was done a week or two back, the parking bays just days ago.

Let's hope we can stick with this one for a while now. Please? :-)

Storm

If I have bags under my eyes this morning, I'm blaming the weather. There's been a threatening cold front hanging around for days - yesterday it hit. While at work, there were sudden strong winds carrying heavy rain, accompanied by thunder and lightening.

It had calmed a bit by evening - but in the middle of the night the wind came up, and came up with a vengance. The bedroom faces north - and the north wind is the one that brings the storms in, rattling the window frames and conjuring up half-formed dreams of the roof taking flight! Last year a storm opened the heavy gate at the front of the yard and took it right out of its moorings - this year we've secured it properly.

Last night it was very bad. That wind howled and screamed and moved the glass in its frame, making for a restless night. If this were the weekend I'd be diarising an afternoon nap to make up for it.

The previous storm took out a few branches and damaged bits of Cape Town. I think it took everything loose - this one only grabbed leaves that I can see. It rained, it blew, but there's no real damage.

Favourite Man pointed out this morning that it's a month to the winter solstice (down south) - a month before it starts getting lighter in the mornings and heads toward summer!

Unfortunately the winter storms are only just beginning....

Office cost-cutting

I'm feeling opinionated today. Have another work-related post! :-)
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Seth Godin is a wise, wise man. He has a perspective on what makes marketing and consumers tick that constantly amazes me. I'm regularly blown away by stuff he comes up with - and things he makes me think about. Even if he hasn't actually written them.

Take yesterday's post, for example. It's all about the new standards for meetings, in this day and age of expensive travel and cheap telecommunications.

Of course, that got me thinking telecommuting again. Well... in a roundabout way.

Seth mentions this:

If you're a knowledge worker, your boss shouldn't make you come to the (expensive) office every day unless there's something there that makes it worth your trip. She needs to provide you with resources or interactions or energy you can't find at home or at Starbucks. And if she does invite you in, don't bother showing up if you're just going to sit quietly.

I've worked in three companies that had lots of people and lots of cubes, and I spent the entire day walking around. I figured that was my job. The days where I sat down and did what looked like work were my least effective days. It's hard for me to see why you'd bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.

Now sitting in a cube and typing is basically what my entire day consists of! :-)

And that doesn't actually require my presence at an office, nor an hour's commute both ways. At least not every day. And it's not just me. Every day there are a large number of folk who can (and do in fact) work from home - getting things done a lot easier and quicker than they would at the office, without having to fire up the vehicle.

I work for a high-tech company that does awesome stuff with technology - and yet there seems to be a block when it comes to implementing the same for the workers at floor level. Yes, I can understand security issues (there was an incident last year that wasn't pretty), but I can't help wondering how those balance out cost and productivity.

Let's say half the folk at the office could get in the same amount of work (or more) by working off-site*. That cuts down on required floor space by half - and cuts down on rent, electricity use, office equipment and use of the coffee machine (which I'm convinced uses more electricity than all the servers here thanks to being constantly in demand!). Make a few desks available to share for those who have to come in now and then, and you're sorted. Based on Seth's post - get them into the office when you have something important for them to do, and make sure they know why they're there. Use your face time with your workers in the best possible way, a way that will aid both you and them - no mindless ramblings, just stick to the point.

(*Note: Telecommuting takes careful planning and setting up to work. It's not for everyone - and it definitely requires discipline!)

Now... start paying per job instead of per clocked hour and see how productivity hits the roof! I have a friend who builds pools. Once he stopped paying by the hour he literally couldn't keep up with how quickly his workers powered through their contracts.

Take all that nifty technology and automate as many functions as you can. Give your workers online access to as much self-managed info as possible, then cut your HR team accordingly. Take out extra paper use by emailing all the stuff you normally print out and give to them. Encourage e-documentation, e-faxing, e-everything.

All that equipment you're currently providing? Set up each new employee with a once-off equipment allowance to buy their own computer and other stuff needed. It's theirs - theirs to insure, to fix, to replace, to keep if they leave your employ. Not yours. Runs on their electricity too, as they're working off-site.

See how nice and cost-saving this whole thing can be? Unfortunately I may be the only one who thinks this way.. :-)

Hence the lack of option to telecommute for my job, and why you'll find me battling the dark winter mornings every day. But hey, that's life.

NSFW

The Not Safe For Work concept has me a little baffled, after thinking about it in-depth on one of my mind-wandering sessions recently.

What makes something NSFW?

Well, the generally-accepted norm is things like porn or nudity or visual content that may offend random passers-by. Many workplaces actively block this, so there's no chance of accessing it by mistake. I have this image of a large red flashing light and siren that goes off in the server room every time someone hits a dodgy site, calling in the equivalent of the IT SWAT team! :-)

But if NSFW is defined as Not Safe For Work - what about other stuff?

Let's say you have to sneak around to look at a YouTube vid, or check your Facebook profile - or even blog. They may not be blocked by the server, but you're not encouraged to visit those sites - you're made to feel guilty for doing so. Which then makes them Not Safe For Work, right?

Keep with me here... there's a lot more that could fall into the category of NSFW. Perhaps it's your sideline after-hours that you're checking in on, or your rest-of-my-life GMail (instead of Official Work Mail Only). Maybe it's a document you're reading that doesn't relate directly to your job description. Anything that may have you furtively checking over your shoulder before opening, because you may be caught! Heck - go ahead and extend it to phonecalls received from your insurer or bank, to personal calls and conversations, to just about anything involved in being a living human being that you need to minimize or end quickly when the boss walks by.

See where I'm going with this one? There's a lot more to NSFW than just NSFW!

But here's the flipside of my thought process. Should there be a NSFW at all? Doesn't that fly in the face of freedom expression that most countries so love to uphold? Or in freedom of information flow? Freedom to choose how you want to live or what you see and experience? Freedom to work as you see fit?

Trouble is, NSFW is implemented - and implemented so thoroughly that it's accepted as the norm. We're cookie-cutter workers in the machine of big business, not daring step outside the boundaries and just Be - without even realizing it. Losing our productivity because we have to sneak to get things done - and sneaking takes time.

Don't believe me? Try it at home and see whether you feel as guilty as you would at work doing whatever it is that's NSFW in your office.

See? Big difference. Now tell me why you'd want to spend your entire life like that.

(yes, this was blogged sneakily over a good few hours)

Photoblog: Office Sunrise

Cellphone camera doesn't do it justice...

Extreme Surfing

You've got to be kidding me!

Pause

Sitting in a lengthy (and poorly-ventilated) staff meeting earlier today, I found my mind wandering, as my mind often does.

I started thinking about steps on the life journey, about goals and dreams and things I'm working toward, and where most of my energy, time and focus is being put.

And something struck me quite forcibly.

The tasks I'm not putting energy into or giving less than my best, I've been seeing as mere stepping stones. A pause on the road, a rock to leap onto and off again in the middle of the river before my path continues. I'm not spending time or energy on them simply because they're not a permanent place to be. Mentally I've already moved on.

It's that deep-seated, quietly buried perception that has determined a lot of what I've done in the last few years. Or rather, how I've done it.

This one's going to need more mental exploration... bring on the next staff meeting! :-)

Photoblog: Vista

Facebook Wishlist

I've been at the Facebook thing for a while now... And I'm starting to develop a wishlist of features.

I'd really like an app that allows you to stalk old boyfriends, way-back-when crushes, sworn enemies and those chicks you simply didn't get along with - you know, "watch" them without having to add them as friends. Something that perhaps comes with a geo-locater and an alert button so you can see what they're up to and escape if they get too close. As long as it's not used on me.

I'd like a mind reader too - "find everyone I've forgotten about" - perhaps something that can dig into my buried memories to remember the name of my best friend in grade 5 and seek her out. And then sift through the results to find the exact person I was after. Or perhaps go by location - in case there's someone living close by I didn't know was in the area but would have loved to connect with.

I think perhaps I've become too used to the functionality of the Web At Large - able to Google up images and information in seconds, collect all my documents/emails/data in one place, integrate nifty little things like Foxmarks to access whatever, whenever - or simply subscribe to a blog (hey - there's my stalker app! it's RSS-based!). When perfectly funtional features like Facebook turn up, I somehow expect miracles.

But hey, it's not too bad as is. Especially now that I know how to block those annoying Hotties ;-)

The case of the disappearing dogs

The weirdest thing happened this morning.

I left for work at my usual hour, and about an hour and a half later, Favourite Man ducked out of the house to go get electricity at a nearby shop. When he came back my dogs were sitting at the front gate of the complex.

Now this is where it gets weird.

The dogs live in a high-walled yard at the back of the house. There is no way for them to get out. The only way would be through the back door, through the house, through the front door and out the closed gate - which one of them can't fit through. Only then would they end up inside the complex, waiting for the electric gate to open and show them freedom.

So they either got out over the neighbour's wall, or through the house. There's no other way for them to get to where they were.

Trouble is, we can't figure out how it happened.

I didn't open the back door this morning. Favourite Man didn't either. I don't know if they were in the back yard when I left for work, as it was too dark to tell. No-one came in through the house and let them out, that we know of - the back door was still locked when Favourite Man checked and anyone coming through the front would be both seen and heard - there's nothing missing in the house either. There are no boot marks on the walls of our yard or the neighbours, and the security guard across the road saw nothing. If a stranger had lifted them over the wall, they would have bit him. We would have heard barking if someone had even tried. They can't jump the walls - they're too high. They can't dig under them - it's all bricked up.

So how did they get out?

And even more frighteningly - why?

There's one explanation I can think of. If you want to rob a house, you first disable the alarm. Take the dogs out the back yard and you have easy access to that part of the house, provided the back door is left unlocked (there are no windows near ground level except for the barred kitchen one) and you can escape security guard notice.

But again... how?! If someone grabbed them they'd have resisted. Favourite Man got chewed up putting them back - and they know him!

Needless to say, we're on high alert now. We're keeping an eye on the yard to see if anything else weird happens. And making sure the house is locked up tight at all times.