Monthly Archives: October 2012

I know how I’m going to die

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I have finally figured out how I am going to die.

I am going to have a heart attack in a bank. 
I hate banks and I see RED every time I have to go into one. My blood pressure just goes sky high the moment I walk through those funny revolving doors. Thank goodness for Internet banking in this day and age otherwise I would have come to an untimely death many years ago. 
There are certain things that really irk me when it comes to banks. I get really annoyed when drawing money from the ATM and getting R200 notes only for instance. Banks don’t seem to understand that you cannot do anything with R200 notes. When you draw cash, you invariably draw the cash to pay for incidentals – you use a card for everything else. I cannot give my children a R200 note to use at the school canteen. I cannot pay my maid or my gardener in large notes either as they cannot use it to pay for their incidentals such as taxi fares etc. 
I have not had a bank account for the last 20 years.  I got fed up one day when they gave hubby better rates and account privileges when we have always earned about the same and are both 50/50 partners in various companies.  I reluctantly opened an account about a year ago again to appease the receiver of revenue here in South Africa.
Today was another one of those occasions that I had to go into the bank personally. 
Son no 2 lives in Dubai. He sold his car in South Africa 2 years ago when he moved to Dubai. The money has been sitting in an interest bearing account here. He now wants to buy a car in Dubai and needs the money. There is no way for him to transfer the money from his account in South Africa to his account in Dubai short of getting on a plane and going to the bank personally. 
So he transferred the money into my account via Internet banking and then I went to the bank to do a telegraphic transfer to his account in Dubai. Seems simple really.
I get the relevant forms and fill them in. The lady at the counter checks everything, then says she needs to check on something. She returns about 2 minutes later asking me who transferred the money into my account. I explain my son did. She asks who I am sending the money to – I explain I am sending it to my son in Dubai. She then says she cannot do the transaction and I need to put the money back into my sons account and my son needs to appear personally and send the money himself to Dubai. I explain that he lives in Dubai and cannot appear personally.  She then insists that the forms can be emailed to him, he can fill them in and send them back via mail.  WTF – mail – there is one thing that is worse in Dubai than it is in South Africa and that is the mail system.  The bank would be lucky to ever get the forms back and best case it would take 6 months.    I just don’t see what the big deal is – he put the money into my account to send to him. She then says that it looks like I am money laundering and they cannot process the transaction. Really – me being accused of money laundering!  No cash has been used to transact with and you can trace it all back from his account to my account – and if they process the transaction, back to him. I am allowed to send up to a R1million out of the country as a gift anyway and this is well below the limit. She still says it cannot be done. 
So I ask if I can send the money from a different account. And she says yes – as long as it is not the same money he gave me. I then had to go to the ATM and transfer funds from my various other accounts into Hubby’s account and then I transferred the money to my son from hubby’s account. Not sure what the bank or the receiver of revenue achieved here short of being real dicks about it all. 
I eventually left the bank needing an ice-pack to cool me down. My HRT tablets definitely don’t work when I get irritated. Why it is that everything has to be so complicated when it comes to banks.

I’m really pissed at the World!

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I have spent the last 4 days with no Internet.  Our local Telco company (Telkom)  has decided that they no longer supply our area with ADSL connectivity. They didn’t advise me of this fact.  They just switched me off.  It took me 4 days of screaming at my ISP to eventually find this out.

So really annoyed and really pissed at the world.

I am investigating ways and means of connecting.  I can connect via 3G but this is the expensive route here in South Africa.  We don’t have many other options here.

So apologies if I have not commented on your blogs or written any new posts.  Please be patient while I investigate alternatives.

Miss you all loads!

What do I wear in bed?

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I ran out of perfume the other day. I generally keep about 3 bottles of various scents that I use on different days depending on what mood I am in.

Then I suddenly remembered I have a stash of perfume on a box somewhere.   Hubby usually buys me perfume but he never just buys me 1 bottle – he buys me 3 or 4 bottles which I either use concurrently or put in a box for future use.

Anyway, I opened the box to find amongst others, a big bottle of Chanel No 5.  So I thought I would use this for awhile.

And this of course brought Marilyn Monroe’s famous quote to mind “What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No 5 of course“, hinting she wore nothing else.

I wasn’t sure about the exact phrasing of her quote so I thought I would find out a bit more about her quote.  This led me to Wikipedia and I came across some very interesting facts about the origin of Chanel no 5 and of course I had blog about it.

I have included some of the information I came across here.  The following found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanel_No._5

“Back in the 1920’s fragrances were put into two basic
categories. “Respectable” women favored the pure essence of a single
garden flower and of course prostitutes, courtesans and sexually provocative women favored perfumes heavy with animal musk or jasmine.


Chanel felt the time was right for the debut of a scent that
would epitomize the boyish, modern flapper that would speak to the liberated
spirit of the 1920’s.
At the age of twelve, Chanel was handed over to the care of
nuns, and for the next six years spent a stark, disciplined existence in a
convent orphanage called Aubazine.  From
her earliest days at Aubazine, the number five had potent associations for
Chanel. Aubazine had been founded by Cistercians, a Catholic order who placed
great emphasis on numerology. The number five was especially esteemed as
signifying the pure embodiment of a thing, its spirit, its mystic meaning. The
paths that led Chanel to the cathedral for daily prayer were laid out in
circular patterns repeating the number five.

Her affinity for the number five co-mingled with the abbey
gardens, and by extension the lush surrounding hillsides abounding with cistus,
a five-petal rose. Cistercians, an ancient monastic order of Catholicism,
derived the name of their order from this flower.

In 1920, when presented with small glass vials of scent
numbered 1–5 and 20–24, for her assessment, she chose the sample composition
contained in the fifth vial. Chanel told her master perfumer, Ernest Beaux,
whom she had commissioned to develop a fragrance with modern innovations:
“I present my dress collections on the fifth of May, the fifth month of
the year and so we will let this sample number five keep the name it has
already, it will bring good luck.”
And so
Chanel no 5 was  born. I didn’t know of the history of the scent and I found it all rather interesting.  One of the few with an actual history – rather than a celebrity just putting their name to something for publicity purposes.

Marilyn wore nothing else to bed except 5 drops of Chanel no 5 it is claimed.  I have a house full of boys so I’m not sure I will ever be able to boast the same.  But wearing it has changed how I put perfume on – I usually have a bath, get dressed and then spritz here and there – now I have a bath, spritz all over with Chanel no 5, and then get dressed – Makes me feel a little more sensual doing it this way around!  

DOA

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I have told you all the story about my new printer (View original post here).

I have got quite a lot of printing to do so on Monday morning I switch it on.  It usually takes awhile to start up (Sounds like a Boeing starting its engines!) and takes about 20 minutes or so.  So I go about my usual business and look at it about an hour later – and it has still not completed its initiation sequence.

So I switch it off at the main switch and try again.  Check back later and same thing.  Switch it off again (Third time lucky perhaps?).  And nope – it does not complete the initiation sequence.

So I call for support and they said they would send out a technician.

2 Hours later they call me back to apologize for not sending out a technician as yet but there is a story and here goes….

Apparently my printer has a dent at the back (so I put the phone down and pull the printer out to check – and yeah – there is a dent!)
The installation company noticed this dent when they did the installation and reported it to HP.
HP have subsequently declared my printer DOA (Dead on Arrival)

What does this mean? It means they are replacing it – the whole thing.

So this all sounds odd to me – there is a dent on the cover – never noticed it before – would probably never have noticed it if they hadn’t mentioned it.  Why would they replace it?  So I play the 20 questions game and to sum it up – HP replace the whole machine.

And the funny thing is – they trash the old one (old meaning 2 months old).  When I say trash – not a single part gets re-used – HP actually send someone out to South Africa to actually watch it being destroyed.

So my new printer was installed yesterday and I am up and running again.  RIP old machine!

What’s Your Name Again

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I have never been particularly good with names but it is a miracle if I remember anyone’s name nowadays.

It is not just the names of people I cannot remember – it is the names of everyday typical objects as well.  This week I sat in a meeting with my IT staff asking if they have installed the “thingy” at one our our clients.  I am beginning to wonder if I should be changing my hair colour so as to avoid people thinking of me as a dizzy blond!

I have done some research and apparently it is all linked to menopause.  Seems as though menopause has taken over my whole life.  I started taking HRT a few months back and although this has improved a lot of my symptoms, it has had no effect on my memory.  Doing some more reading on the subject, some women described it the same as momnesia or pregnancy brain. Often linked to not sleeping well, being under too much stress, trying to multitask too much and of course hormone levels which are all over the show.

I could describe is as a fog which has taken up residence in my brain.  Sometime it lifts a little and other times I can’t see 2 feet in front of me. 
The funny thing is I know what I want to say or do – I have a very clear picture in my head.  But somehow I can’t verbalise any of it.  I forget the words and end up using terms such as thing or thingy or referring to someone as the person who did the following because I just cannot remember their name. 

It is all rather hilarious – not sure what else menopause can throw at me.

There’s a Romantic in all of us

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It was my 25th Wedding Anniversary 2 weeks ago.  All I got from Hubby was a bouquet of flowers.  You could say I was expecting something silver or even a few diamonds.  Hubby asked me for weeks what I wanted but in the end, I want for nothing.  So  I was not unimpressed with the flowers.  It was a nice gesture from Hubby (who never buys me flowers).

After 25 years of marriage, it is very difficult to surprise each other.  There is also nothing romantic about being married for 25 years – you have been through all life has to throw at you.

So I get home yesterday after taking the kids out for lunch and there is a gorgeous bouquet on the kitchen ledge.  So I rush to open the card (flowers can only be for me as I am the only thorn among the roses in this family).  And the flowers are from Hubby.

Flowers

So rather confused, I ask Hubby what he has done why he has sent me flowers.  I think he has sent me flowers 3 or 4 times over the last 25 years so this is definitely not typical.  He then explains that he has arranged for me to receive 25 different bouquets over the next year – 1 for each year of marriage.

I thought this was so romantic!

Insecure Writer’s Support Group Day

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It is the first Wednesday of the month and therefore it is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day.

We could debate whether I qualify as a writer or not.  I never quite thought of myself as a writer either or ever aspired to being one.  But now that I find myself blogging regularly and being serious about it, I suppose you could say I am an amateur writer.

My biggest struggle with blogging it what to blog about.  Sometimes this comes easy to me, I get an idea and I can sit and bang away at my keyboard for 10 minutes and put a new post up.  Other times I seriously struggle with what to write about and how to say it.  Very often I type something, edit it, reword it, then delete it.  Then try with another topic.

Then there are the days when I have loads to blog about, but my work schedule does not allow me the opportunity to have 10 minutes to myself.  Then the next day it just does not seem as important or topical anymore.

For example – I really wanted to blog about the Emmy awards a week ago about the best and worst dressed.  All seemed very topical then and I knew exactly what I wanted to say.  But blogging about it now is just not topical anymore.

It is also difficult to write for an audience when the audience don’t give much feedback.  I find I have quite a large number of pageviews, but very few actually leave a comment.   Not sure if this is a good thing or bad.  In a way it is a blessing in disguise as I would struggle to reply to all the comments, but at the same time this would guide me about what to blog about and what other bloggers like reading about, or not reading about as the case may be.

I am now popping over to the  Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop and see what others have to say this month.

Happy reading all!

Nude Pics

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It is not often I come across a blog I feel the urge to recommend to you all, but tonight a blog was recommended to me and I thought it was just too hilarious to not share with you all.

Pop over to Pull my Funybone and especially have a look at her Nude Pics page!  Took me a few minutes to realize what I was looking at.  (Unfortunately the pics are not naughty!)