Lohan on August 11th, 2009

I joined up with Lydia, my stepmom, in business. The small consultancy is called Spacets IT and we have a modest profit of about R12 million p/a. Just kidding. Its a little bit smaller than that :) . After I gave notice at the contracting house I contemplated how much time and money I would need to survive, scrape by, enjoy life or really cream it. Then I contemplated that I should’ve contemplated this before I did the Big Jump out of corporate South Africa, but like the saying goes, one cannot test the water with both feet in the boat (more about that phase later). About the basic needs index — it is a method I devised to figure out how much one really needs to keep breathing for an indefinite period on the face of this God-given earth, somewhere between being clothed in rags and eating worms, or clothed in Armani and eating frogs. The Life Surface Area model really helps in this regard because one’s existence is already mapped out for you, all you have to do is decide what’s more important and what you can live with at what quality of life scenario. Here’s how it works:
1. Take you Life Surface Area map’s main areas, here’s a simple list of main categories if you don’t have one yet:
  • Body (incl. Food, Health, Clothing)
  • Career
  • Communication (incl. Cellphone, Internet)
  • Computer
  • Finances
  • Home (incl. Water, Lights, Tax, Bond, Maid, Gardener)
  • People
  • Projects
  • Soul (incl. Pets)
  • Spirit (incl. Donations)
  • Studies
  • Travel (incl. Car Repayments, Insurance)
2. Think of your current lifestyle in terms of the above areas, then dream about what it would be like if you had more time and money to spend on any of these areas. Specifically, think of your current lifestyle, how it would be if money and time constraints were worse or worst, and finally what it would be like if it was better than what you currently experience. For example,
  • Body: Currently, have a gym contract, medical aid, eat most meals outside of home and occasionally buy clothes as the need arises. If things were worse, I’d go on a hospital plan, cancel gym, not buy clothes, buy food at Shoprite instead of Woolies and cook mostly at home. In the worst-case scenario I won’t eat out at all, skip meals and stop my medical aid. If things were better, I’d have more clothes to choose from, a full-time maid that will cook as well, and eat at smarter restaurants.
  • Communication: Currently, have a cellphone on contract and DSL at home. If things were worse, I’d go on 3G and worst-case I’d suspend all contracts and use pay-as-you go. It can’t really get better, except that I’ll have a faster DSL and a private strand of fibre in the new Seacom cable (whenever it goes live).
  • Andsoforth… while you’re busy with this exercise, attach amounts to these scenarios as well. Which brings us to the next step…
3. Fire up that old, trusty excuse for a database. Yes, I mean Excel. Now, for each area on your life surface, enter what you’d expect at each quality of life level, together with a Rand amount (standardise to a monthly figure where necessary). Here’s some thumb-suck figures… my current needs are unfortunately much higher, and yours will differ too… things like dogs, bikes, travel and other ‘lifestyle’ choices makes every scenario unique:
QOL Amount Period Category Item R/m
Worst R 30 / day Food Beans and bread R 900
Worst R 1,000 / month Travel Sell all vehicles, get scooter. R 1,000
Worst R 0 / month Clothes No new cloths R 0
Worst R 50 / month Comms Payphone use R 50
Worst R 2,000 / month Housing Share flat/room R 2,000
Worse R 1,000 / month Comms Cellphone Contract R 1,000
Worse R 100 / day Food B/feast eat out, energy drinks R 3,000
Worse R 3,000 / month Travel New bike R 3,000
Worse R 200 / month Clothes Some new clothes R 200
Worse R 4,500 / month Housing Own house and rent rooms out R 4,500
Worse R 0 / month Housing Laundry, Cleaning R 0
Current R 100 / day Food B/feast eat out, energy drinks R 3,000
Current R 3,000 / month Travel New bike R 3,000
Current R 500 / month Clothes Some new clothes R 500
Current R 1,500 / month Comms Cellphone Contract, DSL R 1,500
Current R 8,500 / month Housing Own house R 8,500
Current R 1,600 / month Housing Laundry, Cleaning R 1,600
Current R 10,000 / year Holiday Local R 833
Better R 200 / day Food Always eat out, braais, parties R 6,000
Better R 8,000 / month Travel New bike, new car R 8,000
Better R 4,000 / month Clothes Some new clothes R 4,000
Better R 1,500 / month Comms Cellphone Contract, DSL R 1,500
Better R 12,500 / month Housing Own house, additions R 12,500
Better R 1,600 / month Housing Laundry, Cleaning R 1,600
Better R 40,000 / year Holiday Overseas R 3,333
4. Create summaries for each of the Quality of Life scenarios. I made a PivotTable by selecting my table, clicking Insert > PivotTable in Excel 2007 and adding the QOL to the Row Labels area, Category ot the Column Labels and Sum of R/m in the Values area:
Clothes
Comms
Food
Housing
Travel
Holiday
Grand Total
Worst
R 0.00
R 50.00
R 900.00
R 2,000.00
R 1,000.00
R 3,950.00
Worse
R 200.00
R 1,000.00
R 3,000.00
R 4,500.00
R 3,000.00
R 11,700.00
Current
R 500.00
R 1,500.00
R 3,000.00
R 10,100.00
R 3,000.00
R 833.33
R 18,933.33
Better
R 4,000.00
R 1,500.00
R 6,000.00
R 14,100.00
R 8,000.00
R 3,333.33
R 36,933.33
So what is the story this picture tellling us? First of all, one must understand that there’s basic needs that must be satisfied at every level — one must eat, sleep and travel whether you’re a bum or a billionaire. I also added a cellphone to my worst scenario — I cannot see myself getting by without one. Having said that, I know of people who had absolutely nothing to their name, yet survived on the streets – even with a baby to care for! – just fine for well under R4,000. But that’s not me. At four grand, I’ll live on beans and share a single room with someone (hopefully someone nice). I know that if it comes to a certain point, I can even forego the R30/day food budget and share a place, say, with 10 other nice people for R500. I guess you start with what you have. At this level, though, you’re just about down-and-out on the dole.
Having thought about the worst-case scenario, I then looked at what’s better than that (when that was just better than not being alive) but worse than what I have now. Which is a position many people find themselves in at the moment, I think. At this level, one can still hold on to the house but you must get creative about keeping the bond repayments up. You will rent out rooms, for example, give the dogs away, drain the pool, in short, make some drastic lifestyle changes that is in reach, but not nice at all. You’ll lay off the gardener and maid, do your own laundry for the first time in your life and there’s no DVDs and DSTV at this level. Also, you’ll get rid of all expendable expenditures such as gym memberships, clothing purchases, eating out, buying gifts and keeping vehicles that can otherwise be sold for profit. A sad picture, but not unusual to see this happening more and more as the credit crunch and recession drag their feet to blow over.
That leaves us with the current and better scenarios. If you did this diligently, your current situation’s not bad at all, is it? When starting a new business, I find my Current situation is the sweet spot to aspire to. The Better will come with profound customer satisfaction and diligent business practise, while I want to avoid the worse and worst at all costs — not for only for my own benefit, but also to spare the people around me the pain and embarrassment that these changes might bring about.
Having done this exercise, you can now decide what to do wit the leftover cash you may have at the end of the month. Using the example above, if your current lifestyle costs R18,933.33 — lets say R20k for ease), a hypothetical amount of R4,000 left over at the end of the month can be invested into securing the next month’s Current scenario, or used to bump your quality of life up by putting it away for an overseas trip instead of a local one for your next holiday. My advice is to save up three months of funds to maintain your current lifestyle before you bump up.
Interesting little exercise, isn’t it? I find this better than using a budget because one can see the effects of cash flow between multiple ‘budgets’, so to speak. If you have a current and active Life Surface Area map, you’ll also find a direct relation between the size of your areas and the financial outlay this brings to bear. In a future update I may add the element of time to this, but for now I’m going to rest a bit (sitting with a flu, hopefully not the flu — not that it should matter too much). In the mean time, consider giving this a go and let me know what you think.
Lohan on July 18th, 2009

Subtitled: A meek little post to break a long spell of no posts…

There’s a bit of a rabbit trail if this command does nothing:

# /etc/init.d/apache2 start
# echo $?
0

My problem was that the file /etc/init.d/apache2 was empty! To restore it, follow the tips here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-68459.html

Lohan on February 9th, 2009

Just got off the phone with Unisa, I discovered they only registered one of my five first semester courses and they sent an email telling my why the others weren’t registered. To add to the joke Unisa’s  registration process (which is becoming a bit of a joke to me), guess (a) where they sent it to, and (b) when I activated my mylife account given that (c) it takes at least two weeks to process web registrations and (d) I had to wait two days for my activation email to arrive.

In short, they mail me at my mylife.unisa.ac.za account to tell me I cannot register for some courses, when one can only activate that account at least two weeks after you’ve registered. On top of this, this is after spending best part of a morning going down to Unisa in Florida to get my curriculum validated by a student advisor. Lets hope some facetime at the Unisaplex can sort this out…

Lohan on February 8th, 2009

Unisa and Microsoft made a deal whereby all student accounts will be hosted on their Exchange Labs site. Since you are likely one of those GTD-type people who cannot stand the joy of checking yet another email account, there is an option to forward all mails to another email address. Fantastic — if it was enabled! I for one cannot find this option anywhere. Another way of getting out of this hellhole is to suck your @mylife.absa.ac.za mail from another service, such as GMail. To do this, use the following settings:

E-mail address: Enter 4234...@mylife.unisa.ac.za, use your own student number!
Enter the email password for the account
Incoming server: pop-eu.exchangelabs.com
Encryption: SSL
Port: 995

And you’re done. While I like their idea of using a single communications platform (cheap etc), I don’t like the idea of being forced into a solution that doesn’t fit my email routine. Hopefully this will help others who feels the same way.

Lohan on October 7th, 2008

“Hallo!” I shout, loud enough to hear myself through the helmet, in-ear earphones and the bike’s rumbling. “Is julle Kimberleystraat 3?” I shout knowing that if I can hear myself, the couple sitting on the red steps of a free-standing house will definitely do so too.

“Ja, ons is!” skree die vrou terug, “wie is jy?” which is a polite Westrand way of saying “Wat soek jy hierso?!” now that I think about it. “Ek is Lohan en my oupa en ouma het jarre terug hier gebly.” I switch the bike off and put it on its stand so we can talk like normal people. The oom says something but I interrupt him — “Sorrie oom, ek kan niks hoor nie!” — while taking the helmet off my head and the ipod out of my ears. Now we meet at the hekkie. “I’m on my way to a braai in the area and stumbled on this part of the dorp”, I continue in Afrikaans. “My grandparents lived here and I last seen this place when I was about 10, maybe even younger.” The oom and tannie’s faces lights up. Its Friday afternoon and they’re enjoying the outside air while Night is slowly dropping her karos on the highveld. The jasmine bush is in full bloom, as they are at the start of summer, and a cool, sweet scent can be enjoyed all over this part of town. I re-introduce myself and we get down to the business of finding out what’s been happening the past 20 years to this little house. There’s somethng not right with the oom — he’s in his 50s but is slow of speech and it seems that his head is not allowing him to be as sociable as his heart wants to, but the tannie, also about 50-something, is friendly and doesnt’ stop talking and laughing. I later learnt that he’s been working underground in a Westonarea mine for over 30 years, when an underground train hit him, almost killing him and putting him on early pension. The tannie shows me around while I tell her how big everything looked when I was last in the yard as a laaite, how the apricots were always dropping fruit and how ouma made jam, juice concentrate, dried apricots, biscuits and who knows what else with the appelkoosmoes — apricot pulp — no wonder they decided to take the trees out, the stink alone was enough to drive one to the back in late-summer.
The single garage is as I remember it next to the brown facebrick wall that we did our balancing tricks on. Next to the garage there was an Andy Capp painted but this is long gone with a few brown layers of paint now gentrifying the corner wall where the compost heap was. The tannie now opens the gate to the back yard, and I can’t believe how not-big the yard is! I remember that when I was small I didn’t even want to go to the back of the yard. The grapevine is still there, as is the original vine that is now a spreading canopy over the silver-painted wire and steel structure under which we often braaied and spent time playing with Dassie and Liesl. The steps which Dassie so liked to bake in the sun on is all of 11 steps, I remember it as a friggin staircase that started waay up there and ended a breakneck mile below! Turned out to be less than 2 meters of climb, how disappointing. The house itself is repainted and still has a tin roof with pressed ceilings inside. The inside of the house is covered in carpet — the original wooden floors are still under it but looks bad, so the tannie says. The dining room is now also part of the kitchen, or rather, it is the kitchen, which makes sense as Ouma didn’t really have too much by way of a kitchen as I remembered it. Oupa seemed to have spent most of his time in this room watching TV, smoking Gold Dollar (when he still smoked, there was a Dick Tracy-like vibe in this room with sunrays beaming through horizontal blinds into the blue smoke), but mostly I remember him doing crosswords — he was the king of crosswords! — and listening to Radio Suid Afrika. Oupa Daan had a degenerative bone disease which calsified his spine, so he lost use of his arms for most part of my life that I can remember. In fact, I can’t remember him ever hugging me so it must have been very long. The single bathroom is pretty with the pressed celing intact, but the basin, toilet and bath were replaced at some stage, and I guess it was high time too as I remember the bath being rough to the touch even as a kid. The master bedroom is still the same room, and the other bedroom was turned into a second lounge. The second spare room is a spare bedroom/linen room and the tannie also confessed to not ever throwing magazines away when I told her how this room was a veritable treasure trove for us kids to get lost in when it came to exploring and discovering stuff. My grandparents never seemed to have thrown anything away and it ended up mostly here. There was even a pram of 19-voertsek with a spring suspension, holding a stack of Huisgenote of the sixties or seventies in it.
We’re now back in the hallway after I told her how upset my Mom was when I ran up and down the passge and caused the sideboard’s glass panes to break with my stomping. In the hallway there’s trophy cabinets stacked with, of all things, pigeon competition trophies. The oom was an avid aviary enthusiast, tumblers being his speciality (these are pidgeons that literally tumbles in flight, probably to dodge bullets or eagles, who knows). And the golden watch from the mine for 28 years of service. The lounge, where the oom is now sitting, is much the same with thick wooden doorposts and the round porthole — where another Andy Capp figure featured a long time ago — is still there.
I had to leave and thanked the oom and tannie for their time. They have children in Cambridge, too, when I told them of my sister in London. Its a pity I couldn’t take pictures — my phone was out of memory, again — but it was a lovely detour down memory lane on my way to an otherwise forgettable weekend. The oom doesn’t stop asking questions about my bike and for a second I contemplate taking him for a spin — knowing that he’ll be excited like a little kid if I do, I make an inner commitment to drop by again when its still light with a spare helmet packed. I was all smiles, and a bit nostalgic as I rode off glad that my free hour or two in the West went off like it did (even though tannie Ina and Ansie weren’t home when I was giving out hugs, dalk volgende keer, hoor!). Hope it brought some memories back to the Van Rensburgs, Schroeders and Johnsons out there (and who knows what other surnames my cousins all have by now, I’m too lazy to look it up!) What can you remember of Oupa and Ouma’s house?
Lohan on September 10th, 2008

Remember, she was the locked-up daughter of Josef Fritzl. Read how she was “raped up to three times a week”, how Josef Fritzl “threatened to leave them to die” and how Fritzl now is expected to face up to 3000 rape charges: Elisabeth Fritzl tells of dungeon life | NEWS.com.au.

Lohan on September 10th, 2008

An oldie but a goodie! In this story, read how Supernanny’s naughty chair disciplinarian tactics couldn’t stop a thre-year old kid from putting his family out on the street. The last paragraph is the funniest… Supernanny kid burns down family home | NEWS.com.au.

Lohan on September 4th, 2008

This HelloPeter complaint doesn’t make sense: Bangkok Wok – U ALMOST KILLED ME! – Complaint

Lohan on September 1st, 2008

Taken at the Narnia stop by Jamestown. This time the ride was for something more meaningful – Wayne and Natasha got married on Saturday me and Jani went down to party it up in Slummies. I left Thursday at 9pm, with the idea of snoozing over in Bloemfontein. What happened in reality is that I got there at midnight, started to shoot some pool with 2 crazy-fun Egyptian brothers, and before knowing it I was chatting outside to Hitler and his buddy (yes, Hitler! Knows quite a lot about bikes as it turns out, should too as he wears a Buffalo Rally belt buckle, you know the one with the head and horns) and it was 5am already. Not feeling like laying over for an hour or two (I wanted to be in EL at noon and its still 600km away) I filled up and took the road.

This was on the way down. -5 is a new record!! Sheesh it was cold. Here’s a pic of what the temperature was other side of Reddersburg.

I arrived in Slummies just after 12 bells, hanged around Deon’s office until he finished work, got clean undies (Gugu hasn’t come in for weeks) and finally laid my head to rest for an hour or so before the bacherlor fun started. I’ll try to get pics of Wayne’s White Chicks move that Wayne pulled over at Bucs, it was hilarious to see him (dressed with huge boobs, wig and rugbyshorts, in fact like something resembling Vicky Pollard of Little Britain) drop it and get down with some breakdancing on the floor.. Anywhoo, got home at 5, slept another 3 hours and then Jani arrived (she flew down). Had lunch in Gonubie and raced off to the wedding which ended pretty early. Off we went to Numbers for a 90s party, then to bed for a few hours of sleep, then to Nahoon for breakfast and walkies on the beach, then left at 2pm Sunday to return home. Like, yeah yeah no essay today; my brain is still recovering. And then on the way home the wind was strong from the left, which is not cool as you’re thrown across the lane with every gust coming from the side, then it started to rain, which is cool, then the rain stopped and it started to snow which is even cooler. Its not that tricky to ride in the snow but visibility — and the cold!! — is a big problem. Because the snow doesn’t blow off your visor or windshield, but instead forms a sludge that you must wipe off, your hands get miserably cold even with the heated grips turned all the way. Leaving Aliwal after some chow at Wimpy the storm was so bad I had to turn around and wait it out because I couldn’t see a thing behind wet glasses, fog, ice on the visor, snow on the screen and snow in the lights (it was 7pm I think then). Luckily it didn’t last long and I arrived in Bloem at midnight, where I filled up again, had a Red Bull and pushed through to get home. I was in bed at 2am and had to be up at 7 for a project meeting. So there, four days, 2000kms, -5C, snow and liters of Redbull with 12 hours sleep. I feel great =)

Check the piccies here.

Lessons learnt:

  • Listening to The Hobbit audiobook while riding through the Eastern Cape is awesome and you forget about time while imagining little Hobbits, ferocious goblins and howling wolves all around you while riding through the mountains not too far from where Tolkien was born.
  • Ipods don’t do 16 hours. Not having music (or Frodo) for 1/2 the trip was a bit sucky.
  • Never eat yellow snow.
  • I now know what a ‘undercut’ on a bikini top is. Thanks Deon and Wayne!
  • There’s no 95 petrol in Bloem or Aliwal. Unless you spend an hour riding around in Bloem, but definitely not in Aliwal. Next time I’ll pack a jerry can under the seat.

Cheers

Lohan on September 1st, 2008