snowgoose

You know the feeling: you’re in the middle of a routine activity when you stop and smile. You’ve just realised that, despite all the stress and complications in your life, at this very moment in time; you’re happy and content.

I have these moments often.  Little affirmations of my reason for being. I call them my simple pleasures. Recently I started thinking about them and have compiled a list of a few of them (I love lists, surely you’ve noticed by now.)

Driving fast

I don’t have a fast car and in Joburg traffic I don’t often get the opportunity to but there’s something so thrilling about driving at (or slightly over) the speed limit with no obstructions and no interruptions. All my worries are pushed aside and I concentrate fully on the sensations of the road and achieving the perfect synergy of gears and acceleration that allow my little car to rocket past lumbering Mercs with 3 litre engines.  My passengers seldom feel the same way. I have a bit of a reputation for pushing the envelope but I have no intention of slowing down.

Wearing a new item of clothing for the first time

Whether it is expensive or cheap, a new jacket or just a new pair of earrings, every time I wear a new item of clothing for the first time I feel sexy and successful. It’s not the same when I wear it the second time, it may still be new but it loses some of its magic. This could be the reason I prefer to buy 5 Mr. Price shirts to one ‘designer’ shirt. I get the thrill 5 times over. It’s the same with putting on new makeup; it’s guaranteed to put me in a great mood.

Cuddling on the couch

Whether it is with my 2 cats, my boyfriend or both, vegging on my couch with a good book on a Sunday afternoon is what makes slaving away for 5 days a week worth it. Nothing else comes close to the feeling of comfort and tranquility I get when the couch, a blanket and I become one.

Enjoying a good glass of wine.

A little known fact about me is that I studied wine for 2 years. Despite only having been to the Cape Wine lands twice in my life (and never having been to any other wine lands) I know, in theory, how to make wine. Yes, I am one of those poncy people who smell “cassis, plums & leather” when I nose a good Cabernet. I am also one of those people who will give you a good talking to if you call crap like JC le Roux le Domaine ‘Champagne’. It is only champagne if it comes from Champagne in France, OK? But despite my wine snobbery, (or maybe because of it?), there are few simple pleasures which equal the feeling I get when having a glass of really good wine. It doesn’t have to be expensive or well-known, just well made and drunk in the right company. Coupled with good, honest food, a great wine is a sensory experience I live for.

Being silly

Wine, driving, new clothes & the couch are great, but there is nothing which lifts my mood higher and faster than playing the fool. Why do we have to grow up? There are times in our lives when playing practical jokes, speaking in a funny voice or acting like a dork with our friends brings back youth faster than any cream, pill or surgery can ever do. The pinnacle of my silliness is best enjoyed when at my friend Tanya’s house. We always ending up laughing until tears stream down our faces, doing innocent things like playing 30 Seconds or Guitar Hero and being complete chops without fear of ridicule.

This little list has made me realise something quite profound (for me): It may be the big things in our lives that make us happy, but it’s the little things that keep us happy.

What are your simple pleasures?

On Wednesday night a few Joburg Tweeps gathered at The Baron in Sandton to welcome Gaby Rosario to Smog City. It was a change from our normal tweetup venue of Capello in Sandton city, which we were sad to give up since Garsen left (but that’s another story altogether).

Nick Jackson & I were the first to arrive. Well, we thought we were until we realised Walter Pike had been there since 5pm and had already made enemies with one of the local bees. The rain threatened to dampen our spirits but after a few rounds of musical chairs to avoid the drops, the fantastic waiters built us a table under cover, despite us not having a booking. The guest of honour did the typical Cape Town thing and got lost (Damn Garmins!) but she managed to find it and so Gaby Rosario’s Joburg tweetup got underway.

It was really great to finally meet @Darwinshome  and @AfricanABC after months of almost daily interaction and, of course, meeting Gaby was awesome, as expected. Smart chick, she is.

@TimLunn brought these fantastic little gadgets that let you exchange your electronic business card & Social Media info (up to 30 platforms including Twitter,Facebook & LinkedIn) with other people who have them by just touching them together (“Bumping uglies” as @SnappingTurtle put it.). Perfect for tweetups, conferences and 27Dinners. They also come in the most awesome designs. They’re called “Pokens” and more info can be found here. They can be bought online either singly for R250 each or in packs of 12, working out to R150 each. @Shebeegee and I were chatting and if enough people are interested, maybe we can all put our money together to take advantage of the discount.

I’m not going to waffle on for much longer, @CraigN & @Darwinshome brought their cameras and pictures are worth a thousand words.

Click here and here for @CraigN’s photos

Click here for @Darwinshome’s photos

These are the crazy tweeps that were there:

@GabyRosario, @SnowgooseSA, @ShaunCusters, @SnappingTurtle, @Peter_vs, @Rozze2, @Delta_3, @jkretzmer, @Shebeegee, @mylifescape, @8unni, @NickJackson, @slicktiger, @WalterPike, @Saulkza, @CraigN, @TimLunn, @BergenLarsen, @AfricanABC & @Darwinshome.

After the runaway success of the article @Shebeegee very kindly allowed me to write for NerdMag, I thought I’d put it up here, so if you haven’t already read it, enjoy. (Please keep in mind that this was written as a cheeky humuorous article and should not be taken too seriously – a bit like me )

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Since the advent of Twitter, and more recently, Qwitter, we have all been able to feed our strange compulsion to know exactly how popular we all are. The race to see who can gain more followers has consumed some South African Twitter users way beyond what can be considered healthy. And Qwitter makes it worse. Now we also know when people un-follow us and what tweet caused them to take such serious action.

We have all read about strategies to get you followed on Twitter, but what about those that get you unfollowed? I’ve compiled a list of 10 things that are guaranteed to shed you some followers, gleaned both from my experience of people unfollowing me and from people I’ve had to stop following to prevent me from killing them. So if you’re brave (or stupid) enough, why don’t you try a few of them?

1.    Tweet about how many followers you have
No matter how excited you are that you just got to 250 followers, nobody else gives a damn. It also feeds our sick need to steal others’ thunder by unfollowing someone when they crow about their milestone.
“Oh, really? You have 300 followers? No you don’t, you have 299! Ha!”

2.    Constantly retweet someone who has the same followers as you
We heard what they said the first time – they have over 1000 followers, what are the chances we’re not following them? There is nothing more annoying than hearing the same thing twice, apart from maybe those delightful souls who retweet themselves. Um… Okaaaaay then weirdo.

3.    “@” someone to tell them you have sent them an email or DM
The great thing about email is that it lets you know when “You got mail” and if you have email alerts enabled it even lets you know when you have a DM. You do not need to “@” someone to tell them this. Not only does it make the recipient of the message feel patronised but it makes the rest of us feel jealous and left out. What are you guys talking about that is so private that you can’t discuss it in front of everyone but not private enough that you have to broadcast that you said it?

4.    Swear on Twitter
With the notable exceptions of people like @Exmi & @Tertia, swearing in tweets will get you dropped faster than you can say “Fu…” you get the picture. It is the SA twittersphere’s pet hate. I find it amusing as we all swear when we see each other “in real life” but it seems dirty (not in a good way) and disrespectful when done on Twitter.

5.    Tweet & retweet links with no context
Clicking on links in Twitter is great. You get to see what other people are thinking/doing and you get to learn a lot. But no matter how useful your links are, if you constantly tweet things like “This is interesting: http://tinyurl.com/dgj8g2” with absolutely no indication of what your link is about, I will eventually unfollow you. You have at least another 80 characters left – could you at least give us a clue!?

6.    Spam us with 20 tweets a day asking us to Digg your latest blog post
If the content is good, we’ll Digg it. You sound needy & desperate. Please stop.

7.    Write long essays that span over 3 or more tweets
140 characters. It’s a limit, not a guideline. We have all struggled with keeping our posts within this range but we manage, why cant you?

8.    Tweet more than 50 times a day
I don’t know about you, but it frustrates the hell outta me when I grab a few minutes to check my Twitter stream, only to find that someone has filled up the first 2 screens. It doesn’t matter how much I like you or how valuable the content, when you are so prolific that I can draw your profile pic from memory, my mouse starts moving uncontrollably toward the Unfollow button. Unless you are live tweeting an event, space them tweets out OK?

9.    Tweet nothing else but what song you are listening to
We can’t actually hear the music so we don’t care what you are listening to. It’s as simple as that.

10.    And finally, do all of the above combined.

Can you imagine someone who swears in 200 tweets a day which ask for Digg love in a series of “continued…” tweets with unexplained links? That person would be dropped like a bad habit before you could say “RT: @me @you Hey, I’ve sent you a DM telling you what song I’m listening to. & guess what? I have 300 followers, oh no, make that 299, 298…”

I love to paint. It is so therapeutic and a fantastic outlet for my creativity. I just finished a great mural… It took me 2 years to paint. Not because it’s a masterpiece or is incredibly complicated and artistic, because I am absolutely incapable of managing my personal time efficiently. I also love to blog, but if you look at this blog you will see I post less than once a week. Some of the other things I enjoy doing/should be doing but feature very little in my life of late: Interior decorating. I have a file full of ideas and bits of decor stuffed in cupboards from 3 years ago,

DIY.
I started a kitchen cupboard 2 years ago and never finished it, there has been a wall tile missing in the bathroom for over a year,

Gardening.
I started a lavender & stone garden 18 months ago – it is now overgrown with lavender & weeds and only has half the stones it should,

Keeping my car clean and in running order.
I have had a broken indicator and no back number plate for 3 weeks now, I can’t remember the last time I took it to a car wash, if it wasn’t for services it’d never get cleaned,

Keeping in touch with friends and family.
I have a reputation for being a useless friend/daughter/sister. My mother has to remind me of family members’ birthdays and my father calls me Mohammed, as in: “If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to Mohammed”,

Reading.
As I say in my About section; I am a voracious reader. well, I used to be anyway. I would go through a book a week at least. Now if I finish one every 2 months it’s a lot.

Going to galleries, scenic lunch venues and picnic spots.
I adore the outdoors and I love art. But the last time I spent more than 10 minutes outside or had any exposure to culture was… um… well, you get the point.

So what has happened to me? Why am I incapable of finishing a personal project or using my time wisely? I don’t know. I am ashamed of my utter uselessness.

The funny thing is; I’m not like that at work at all. I have a great system for organising my time, my email and my priorities at work. I pride myself on being organised and ruthless when it comes to squeezing every last drop out of my 9 or so hours a day there. So why can’t I apply the same principles to my home life? Why do I find myself staring at the screen, aimlessly clicking on links people have tweeted, when I have a precious few hours of free time?

I have no doubt that if I had just one more day a week to do whatever I wanted I would be able to do most of the things I want. I can hear you saying “No you wouldn’t, you would just spend the day sleeping and vegging in front of the TV”. I wouldn’t – the only reason I spend most Saturdays imitating a 3 toed sloth is I am so physically exhausted from 8 meetings a day for 5 days and spending my nights catching up on the work I miss while in meetings that I am not actually able to muster up the energy to move on Saturdays, and Sundays are for family: Having divorced parents, adult sisters and a live-in boyfriend means I have at least 4 different families to see on Sundays. Just one more day. That could be my “me-day”. My day to paint, to garden, to put the damn tile up on the damn bathroom wall… just one more day, please! Is that too much to ask?

It seems I have somehow become the unofficial “JHB-tweetup-organising-person” (A title I dont mind at all – I love tweetups!).

So in the grand tradition (okay, so this is only the fourth one – so what!?) of Snowgoose Tweetups I have organised a tweetup on Wednesday 18 March at The Baron in Sandton. You know; The one in the little shopping centre on Fredman drive where the Sandton News Cafe is?

We are meeting for a few drinks to celebrate Gaby Rosario foregoing the mowntin for a little while to visit us in Smog City. RSVP below or “@” me on twitter. Hope to see ya’ll there!

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UPDATE: The people tagged in this post are the ones I’d personally like to see at the tweetup. All tagged tweeps please RSVP below

@nickjackson, @choc_milk, @slicktiger, @mikestopforth, @melattree, @saulkza, @SimoneBiz, @CraigN, @Rozze2, @SnappingTurtle, @Peter_VS, @shauncusters, @Delta_3, @shebeegee, @exmi, @8unni,@Jenty, @zk, @darwinshome, @RubyGold.

And thanks to @EveD, @mylifescape & @chopman for RSVP’ing already.

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