1k and none: Post Number One Thousand!

This is my thousandth post to hashcool.tumblr.com. Now, most of it is reblogs and photos of things I like, but I have tried to use this as a place to catalogue my musings on topics that fascinate me - design and faith primarily, because these are two of the major pillars in my life - two gifts from God. The first I believe is what God built me for - to create with design. The second, faith, is not something I earned either, it’s simply another gift from the preposterously generous dad we have. He loves to give us amazing gifts, He really does.

When thinking about what I should blog about that’s worthy of my first quadruple-digit-numbered post, I guess it’s a good a reason as any to take stock, look back and look forward, and share.

When I look at my life right now, the overriding feeling I have is calm. This is wonderful - its been many years since that is a word I can describe my life with! Life has been a roller coaster these past few years!

Spiritually, I’ve been on an amazing journey the last 3 years. As I write this, I cannot believe I’ve been on this mad journey of getting to know God, falling in love (and out - and back in again) with Jesus - I’ve been on this road for 18 years this year. 1994 was the year God took me, shook me, and changed me into a different creature. He showered me with grace and forgiveness, filled right to the brim - so full, that as I walked away from that experience, still unsure why I felt taller and cleaner - I ran into another student (I was at school - detention), he said to me - “what’s with you?! What did you take???”. I didn’t know what he was on about, until I stopped in the bathroom and saw the goofy, grinning idiot staring back at me in the mirror. I was high. Amazing Grace, how sweet it was.

Wow, what a day!

And then my mind immediately goes to the darker days, the ones in 2010, where I was convinced that God not only didn’t like me - but that he was actively hating me. What a confusing terrible time - but I thank God for that awful time more than the wonderful afternoon in 1994. It was in the dark that I truly realized that I was God’s, and that He was mine. That crisis of the soul was as much my salvation as that first day.

It’s something I’ve begun to realize more - we think of “being saved”, or “becoming a Christian” as a single event, a single decision, a single moment in time. But I don’t think that way anymore. I think it’s more like the way a tree grows - every year we add another ring of growth, and our salvation is each and every ring. God saves us every day. He transforms us a little more all the time. Keeps forgiving us - cos we keep being human. Keeps turning us into new creatures.

My thoughts also go to everyone who hasn’t experienced this awesome journey with God. Many of them have been shown hate by God’s people - we are often so misguided! When non-Christians think of us, many of them think of us - as a group - as unintelligent, full of hate, and hypocritical. I’ve been all three before. Often still am. I can be dangerously stupid!

My journey, going forward, is to make sure in my own life, I get rid of these things. Focus on Grace - God gave it to me, so I need to spread it around a lot! Being informed. And lastly, to avoid being hypocritical - the way I’ve tried to fix that one is by being honest and transparent and authentic. It’s not OK to say everything is great when it’s not. We need to be honest!

These days, when people ask how I’m doing, if my bank account is empty and I’m stressed, that’s what I tell them. But I also remind them - and myself - of the 10 years of God giving me money when I needed it.

It’s not easy, being open about failure or about matters which culture deems sometimes as personal. Please understand - I know what’s appropriate and what isn’t - but often our culture of privacy means we all serve time in solitary confinement. Will someone truly open up at church about their shambles of a life when every person they meet says that they are just doing “AWESOME!!” because God is good (“all the time!!”), and that they’re just doing so well because they’re living in the favor of the Lord. Is the person racked with addiction or broken relationships going to feel like its safe to open up? There’s a reason addicts go to AA and not to church, and church has better coffee, so it’s not that. (just a disclaimer - please don’t think I’m being down on AA or mocking, or somehow suggesting church should compete with AA. I love those 12 step programs - they are God’s church on this earth, I truly believe that. Jesus sits in every AA and NA meeting around this world, I know it. Ask him when you see him. It’s true.)

So for the poor bastard who’s bank account is empty and there’s more bills than dollar bills - does that mean God’s favor is not on them? Is God not good all the time then? (I’ve been that poor bastard - so I know the answer - they feel alone and forsaken by God)

So I guess my journey going forward will be to continue to struggle and strive with God. Work out my salvation with Him. Wrestle with Him and ask Him questions. Live with Him. I’ll keep trying to live a life emulating Him.

As for people? I’m gonna love them, forgive them, shower them with Grace and point them to Jesus. He knows what he’s doing. His plan for them is so complex and ridiculous, if He told me what it was, I’d just say, “oh no, that’ll never work, you know what you should do? Lemme tell you…”

So I’m gonna try and show people how he loves us by loving my wife with all my strength. Showing his forgiveness and grace by doing that for others.

I’ll fail, of course, and I know that, and so does Jesus. Perfection isn’t what I’m after. It’s the journey.

Knowing that success isn’t my goal is quite liberating. (it’ll be nice, of course, but it’s not my goal). I want to finish this thing up and know that through it all, I can lay my head down knowing I did my best to get to know Jesus and live with Him. It won’t be perfect, it will be messy, but sheesh, it’ll make for a good story, and I’ll tell it to Simon Peter when I get to heaven… I think he seems the sort to have a hearty booming laugh, and I think he’ll enjoy a good story. :-)

And now, back to your regularly schedule programming of cool design, funny memes, sarcasm about politics, and the occasional glimpse into my life.

Onto post 1,001!!!!!

Joe Paterno

Sad to see this chap has died - being not American, it doesn’t affect me, but i think it’s sad that this guy had an amazing career for 40 year-odd, was beloved by everyone in the nation (They affectionately called him “Joe Pa”), and then right at the very end, he handled a situation a bit poorly, was fired in disgrace and died shortly thereafter.

What a short, sharp ending to a man’s life, huh?

If you died today, how would your story end?

What I Learned In Rome, pt 2: Excellence

The next thing I learned while in Rome, on my first visit outside of South Africa, is that we can afford to do things with the same amount of care and pride that Europeans do things. By comparison we South Africans are quite sloppy in our work. What I observed in Rome is that the Italians do everything with a level of pride and a certain aspiration towards excellence. Everything - from the way they put up neat, clean, barriers when they are renovating something (pictured below), to the way that the shop assistants in the stores handle the transactions with such care.

A good example of this - my wife Auds went to a makeup shop that would be similar to the Body Shop here - and the experience here at the Body Shop is quite good anyway, but the way the transaction was carried out really made me notice - the girl at the counter took great care in choosing the right size packet for the amount of shopping Auds had - rang it all up, was really friendly despite the awkwardness of a language barrier, when the card machine spat out the slip, she took the slip out, produced a pair of scissors, and neatly cut the slip into two - one for the merchant, and one for us. Ours was given back to us, and a small gift was popped into the bag with our shopping.

I realize this is really a small thing - using scissors instead of just kinda using the side of the table to tear the slip in two - ensuring to tear through perhaps the date or the total, making it tricky when you need to return the goods if needs be. It is small - and that’s my point. It’s a level of pride that was foreign to me. This is a level of pride that sweeps from making sure the Vatican Museums are neat and tidy in spite of constant renovation - right down to making sure the receipt in your wallet is cut nice and straight.

This level of excellence gave me a startling realisation about Africa and South Africa. We spend a lot of time telling ourselves that we are “A World Class African City”, that we are the “New York” of Africa - that South Africa is the shining example to the rest of Africa, and that we are creative, unique, and innovative, and that we are poised to - any day now, (any day now!!), hit the world stage by storm - that we will rise up and compete globally in various markets and industries.

This is comforting to hear, isn’t it? We’re living in the best country - heck, probably the best city - on our continent. We are the miracle baby of democracy. We are a shining light to the world! It’s comforting, but sadly, I don’t believe it’s true.

China knows it’s strengths - mass production and cheap labour to name but two - and they are harnessing that to allow them to compete on a global scale. They do not attempt to have the American “Go Get Em, Tiger” attitude that has inspired so much innovation and wealth generation - and they don’t have the spirit of excellence I witnessed in Europe. They really don’t - and they are OK with that - they have identified the way they can compete, and their place in the world stage. If they tried to create a luxury brand to compete with Louis Vitton or someone like that - they would fail. But they don’t do that, do they?

They are not self deluded.

We, as South Africans, I’m afraid - are. We do feel that because we are this miracle story (Madiba! Madiba!), we will get special rules applied to us. We will be treated differently, and we won’t have to be as excellent as the Europeans.

But the world’s standards won’t change to suit us. We will either need to up our game - to their level, or find out place in their world. We need to find our place in our world!

For the most part, people struggled to even know what South Africa was. I got some vague “Ah, lions!” and one “Ah, the World Cup 2010 was bad for us!”, but for the most part, we are from Nowhere.

I don’t have answers - i’m not sure what our place is. I’m not sure where we fit into this “Global Village” puzzle. I do know we have potential, but I now know that it isn’t unlimited potential, and it’s not even as large as I thought it was.

That may sound negative - it may sound like the words of one of our many fleeing soon-to-be expats. But I’m not - i love it here, and I love living here. But if we ignore our weaknesses, or delude ourselves by saying we have strengths we actually don’t have - we will never find our niche. We will always be one of those nameless faceless countries. You know the ones I mean - it’s the longer list of the 193 countries which you can’t think of right now.

So i guess what I learned is that we are a tiny place far from everywhere, and we need to learn what we can bring to the big people’s table if we plan to sit with them.

What do you think we can bring?

What I learned in Rome, pt 1

This trip to Rome (December 2011) was my first trip overseas (I had visited Mozambique before, but you drive there, and we share a border with them, no ocean-crossing needed, so this I classify as my first ‘overseas’ trip - and it’s the first time I left the African Continent in 31 years.)

Being my first trip out of Africa, and the many people telling me how much it would open my eyes, I’ve been giving plenty of thought to what aspects of my mindset have been altered or opened or tweaked through this trip. There’s been quite a few, mostly by way of observations about Home, Habits and Mindsets, and I’ll share these in a few “What I Learned in Rome” posts. Hope you enjoy!

What I learned in Rome, pt 1: Materialism is huge in Jozi.

Audrey and I at the truly amazing (and tiny!) Trattoria Sporga)

I was quite taken with the mindset I observed in the people of Rome - and this is all through observation, so I could be way off, but this is my sense: Johannesburgers are very materialistic. It makes us rush and hurry everyone and everything. It makes us greedy. We dwell on money and work a lot. There is unhealthy competition between companies, colleagues, and even friends. It makes us aspire to more and bigger and better.

That last one, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily bad - but I think we can learn from more relaxed places.

Another way this Materialism manifests itself quite badly, and I think this one can blanket the whole of South Africa, not just Jozi, is our way of viewing our jobs. I saw coffee bartenders (baristas) that were happy, content, and in their 40s and sometimes even 50s. Here, a 50yr old who was essentially a waiter would be drowning in sleepless nights and the scorn of the broader community, wondering how he can move up the world. We aren’t happy to stay the barista - we want to own the coffee bar.

Again, ambition is fine - we need it to go after the things we want - but I think that there comes a point where our ambition grows like an overfed monster, and begins to dictate the things we want - rather than simply drive us towards the things we truly want.

On a racial note, there’s a two-sided coin to how I feel this applies to us.

For white people, we need to stop viewing certain jobs as beneath us. Deny it all we like, we still see some jobs as ‘black’ jobs, and this is as much an after-effect of apartheid, as it is just the plain reality that poor people tend to have low-income jobs, and the majority of poor people for the most of our lives have been black - with a population of over 70% black people - this will sadly always be the case. Empowerment will not increase the white population - so this means your average poor person in South Africa will always be black.

But that is an aside, and I’ve become sidetracked - what I was saying was about white people, is that we need to stop looking down at certain jobs. In Rome, the 6 black people I saw were all french-speaking tourists, and everyone else, from the deliveryman to garbagewoman, was white. I’m sure that there is still a certain stigma attached to low paying jobs, but we need to move past that, especially in racial terms.

So as a white person, we need to view any and all means of bringing in a salary as legitimate, honourable and to be highly esteemed. Anything that you work hard at and earn a wage is something to be proud of - even if that means you become a white gardener, or white garbageman.

On the flip side of the race coin, my thoughts are that black South Africans need to stop thinking that big businesses are the way they will become financially secure. BEE will not save you. Taking over a fancy job at an old well-established firm is not the answer.

I read an interesting article over the holidays about the changing face of Capitalism, and the major point was that it’s small - not big. Big businesses are generally slow to adapt and innovate, have huge expenses, and have bureaucracy embedded into their culture that ensures that good ideas die on the floor around the water cooler.

Small businesses are the way to go - what I saw in Rome as the most visible creators of money were newspaper stands, run by one or two people, tiny (and even tinier) restaurants, sandwich shops, small retail shops, and the like, just about all run by their owners (obviously all these examples are in the retail sector, but I think the rule can apply to all).

Where we have such a big population, and so much need, and such a huge requirement for “jobs” - jobs are not the answer. Find out what you love, and do something tiny about it. If you like flowers, plant a few flowers and sell them and see where it goes.

Spaza shops and tiny little businesses have the power to transform the lives of South Africans, I truly believe - and I think BEE & BBBEE are not going to work - and adding yet more B’s to the front of it isn’t the answer. We need to think small.

So what does that mean for me? After all, the original idea behind this post was what I learned!

I think for me it means I need to be more aware of the culture of the city I live in. We Joburgers are much ruder than the Europeans I came into contact with - and I realised that smiling at a stranger isn’t weird, and it costs nothing to be nice to people we come across.

It means I want to drive slower. Allow people to join the flow of traffic ahead of me instead of behind me. If we want to build a society, we need to start with the people we come in contact with on a daily basis.

It is hard to smile at the cashier who’s scowling and growling at you at the Spar - but it must be done. We need to break the cycle.

For me and my business, it has reminded me to keep on the path I struck out on over 2 years ago now - I need to keep my focus on quality of life as much as income. Income is important, but so is living life and enjoying every day, because life is short and difficult.

Being more aware of Jozi’s culture also means making sure to root out the negative aspects of the materialism we’re enveloped in. We are not competing - we are living together in a city. So we need to stop comparing, we need to stop striving so much, and when we set our goals and our sights, we need to make sure that money isn’t the factor that drives our decisions.

Quality of Life is more important that cashflow.

Let’s live like we really believe that!

Take cover folks…

Over the next few many posts I’ll be posting my photos and some thoughts from the trip to Rome I did with Auds.

We saw so much, walked all over, and loved every second. I’ll try and give you a sense of our trip through the pics and the thoughts!

Humane Executions

I was just listening to a very interesting podcast (‘How Stuff Works’ - thanks rickycatto!) about whether you know and can see what’s going on after they cut off your head (yes), and for how long (4 seconds… pretty long, huh?), and the presenters were going on about how important it is for someone being executed to feel no pain, and no fear - which are the two requirements for modern-day executions by a government, it seems.

Now that’s great, but I find it a bit ironic. Are we saying that there are certain people we don’t want to allow to live (my thoughts on the death penalty are immaterial here, but for now i’ll say i agree with it in principle), so we do want to be able to kill certain people, but it’s vital that they feel no fear or pain when we do kill them.

Isn’t that odd? Does anyone else find a large hint of hypocrisy here? We are ending someone’s life, the most drastic punishment we can think of, and we want to cuddle them into it. Like if we could devise a way to have lovely kittens snuggle them and then they slowly drift into death, we would do it that way. A nice peppermint foot rub that stops your heart perhaps?

I find this odd - either we want to punish them, or protect them - surely we can’t honestly believe we’re doing both - at the very same time?

I’l love to hear some of your thoughts on this - it intrigues me. I think this must be a form of political correctness - yes, we kill people, but they don’t feel pain or fear, so it’s barbaric or anything! We’re not sinking to their level, because we didn’t inflict pain or fear when we inflicted death - and they did. Our society is fascinating, isn’t it?

What do you think?

Our new Toyota Aygo!

EDIT: After finding very cool images, I failed to notice that they were all for the 2 door version, and ours is the 4 door, so i have replaced the pics with the right ones where possible!

So after owing Opel cars for a long time, we decided to make the switch to Toyota, and we did a proper job of it!

We decided to do this because our aging Opel Astra was starting to give problems, and our 2006 Corsa was not handling the amount of standing in the garage it’s doing, now that I work from home - the battery doesn’t hold up if you don’t use the car often.

So we decided to sell them both, and I’ve bought my mom’s Tazz, which is great for standing and a nice little run-around for me, and then we traded the Astra in on a brand new Toyota Aygo. It’s tiny - a one litre engine! But it’s new, and it has a full warranty and service plan to keep it going with very low cost for the next 6 years, so it’s going to be great. Here are some pics of the car i found, seen as though it is a new model, not many people have seen it! Ours is a silver one, very nice!