Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Today at the Spa
My wifey and I spent the day at the Sanctuary Spa at the Twelve Apostles hotel in Cape Town (the pic insert to your left). I've had my fair share of spas in the past, some great and others not so good. Today was one of my best experiences. They're not the cheapest but our money was well spent. Our package included a Swedish massage, lunch, a pedi and an hour long facial. We also had access to (and thoroughly exploited) the spa's facilities which included a sauna, hot and cold pools, floatation tank, chill room and fruit buffet. It was a treat. Also, it was clean. A sign of a good experience is that it feels like it happened too quickly, this was how it felt with each of the treatments. No, I'm not getting paid to write this. I do, however, feel that credit should be given where it's due. Good customer service is rare.My masseuse asked me what the occassion was, why we decided to spoil ourselves? I explained that today was an opportunity for my wife and I to reconnect. We live very busy lives and spend most of our awake time working, whether to see to our kids or whether at work. The morale of the story? Make time to reconnect with your spouse. Remember, if you "lucky", the kids will move out after 20 years or so leaving you with your spouse in possibly a large empty house. Imagine how strained your relationship could be after 20 years of "no speaking or listening to each other". This is the reality of many today. Make every moment count!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Joy is...
watching my boys play nicely with each other and with their cousins. Amazing to witness the familial bonds spark and grow, enlightening. My lesson: their is value in maintaining the connection with my family, I may not always understand the dynamics though, who does anyway? Someone once told me that the only normal people are usually the people you don't know ;-) So there you have it and there it is.
Weekend Roadtrip
Returned earlier this afternoon from a weekend roadtrip along the southcoast of South Africa from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth and back. The countryside was nothing less than breathtaking, mostly a lush green with many hues of green and brown in between. Lots of roadworks, no doubt in preparation for the coming 2010 Football worldcup. We had a big family reunion, one evening of reconnecting with cousins, siblings, uncles, aunts, mom, dad, and friends of old. The experience, inspirational and rejuvinating. It was a great weekend and it's fantastic to be home again, my sanctuary.We stopped about 3 times in each direction, each time giving the kids an opportunity to "stretch" their legs (and exhaust themselves). My brother and his family accompanied us on our way back. It was lovely having them along while driving in our two-car convoy. Sometimes he kept the pace and sometimes I did. This helped with staying awake for the roughly 8 hour trip (each direction).
It was amazing to see our children playing with their cousings, wanting to be with their cousins 24x7. I remember having tons of fun with my cousins while growing up. We got up to mischief, as most kids would to. Today I have two sons and I can only imagine what they are getting up to that I'll never know about. Karma is a beach :-)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Keeping breakfast interesting...
5 things that's worked and continue to work with our two boys (2 yrs and 4 yrs old):
- Introduce breakfast cereal bars (change brands/flavours often because it gets boring very quickly). Alternate with your usual cereal varieties, make it a treat.
- Blend up a milkshake out of the cereal (if possible) and use big straws to make it even more interesting.
- Make fun shapes whenever possible, especially when there's toast, egg or whatever, e.g. you could make a smiley face. Thats right, play a bit with your food :-). Our eldest enjoys this the most given his gravitation to fantasy play.
- Serve cereal without milk some days, makes for a crunchy breakfast.
- Experiment. Surf the web for other great ideas, there's millions of them going around.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Joy is...
understands what I'm asking of him,
e.g. please throw it in the bin?
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Keeping an Eye on My Patch of Earth
I live with my family on the edge of Rietvlei, a wetlands area in Cape Town, South Africa. Rietvlei is also a bird sanctuary and is home to an amazing variety of birds, some (flamingos) who visit for a few months at a time during their breeding season. I've lived on Rietvlei for eight years now. In a way, I'm it's part-time custodian, like every other land owner along Rietvlei. The same applies to your part of the world. This is our legacy.
My plan with this section of the blog is to keep a layman's account of the impact of global warming on Rietvlei and it's surrounds. In the last 5 years there's been noticable changes in our area in terms of climate and bird-life. If you have a blog that keeps track of climate change on your patch of earth then please share your website/blog details with me.
On a more brighter side, my wife took the above picture earlier today. It shows an orange bishop (bottom) and what looks like a yellowish-green weaver on our birdfeeder in the yard?
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Future is Here, Great Intro to SocialMedia Trends and Tips
Men buy & Women Shop
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Slips in My Pockets
During the course of my work day I may or may not pay for parking as part of a client visit. I may or may not have a breakfast, lunch or dinner meeting with a client or I mighht meet a colleague for a meeting while out of the office, i.e. I collect slips/receipts during the day.
I used to loose my receipts. I did not have a consistent storage place for them, i.e. some of it was in various places in my car, some in my laptop bag, some in a jacket pocket, others on my desk, in the drawer, on a shelf in my bedroom, in my wallet and so on and son. At some point I stopped using my wallet because storing slips in my wallet lead to a swollen, uncomfortable and eventually deformed wallet that was in desperate need of replacement. So, I started keeping my slips in my work pants pockets. Each morning I transfer the slips from my previous day's pants to today's pants. I only keep slips that I use as part of my monthly work expense claim. The rest I throw awat. I also keep a monthly expense-claim envelope in the top draw of my cradenza. The idea is that I transfer my "pocket" slips to the envelope whenever I remember to do so (when I can no longer easlily find things in my pockets!). Then empty the envelope once per month as part of my monthly expense claim process. The system is not full-proof but it works (mostly)!
What does your pockets look like? Have you found a fullproof system that works for you? If so, then please share your wisdom with me?
PS: I now own a slim wallet that only takes plastic. Where did I leave my small change again??
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
A child's trust
From the day your child is born you, as the parent, very quickly become a beacon of safety to him. He trusts you completely. You are the centre of the universe to him or, in my case, my wife is nr 1 and I'm nr 4 in the "pecking" order. So, not dead-centre, but close enough. He depends on you. It is this trust that we (as parents) either strengthen or weaken over time, depending on the degree to which we invest in them. By investing in them I mean spending quality time with them, "being present" time.
The last thing my son did tonight before drifting off to sleep was slip his two Bakugan Battle Brawlers into my right-hand. That was him trusting me. He trusted me to put his brawlers up high where his younger brother could not get hold of it and then destroy it, these were and still are (at the time of writing) his most prized possessions. I hope we'll still share such a relationship of trust when he is my age one day.
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