perplexed. yes, i am...

i cannot say much. simply because i do not know what to think of this. good idea? bad idea? all i can say is that it left me quite, uhmmm, perplexed. blown away. astonished. with a tiny pinch of confusion. maybe someday, i'll have something to say about this.

- Crime Expo SA [main site]
- Crime Expo SA [letters]

-S.

my name is now Hendrik

well, why not? i figured, since our government [or has it now become the government's government and not ours anymore?] is on this (re)naming spree, why not i rename myself as well? just for the fun of it. i mean, if i rename myself, i will not go through daunting procedures to bring the rest of my life into speed with its master's new igama. it will take only a couple of visits to the police station to get an affidavit. a couple more to the home affairs department to get a new ID book and a passport. and then another handful of visits to the traffic department for my drivers licence to catch up with my new identity. then i will need to update my policies, bank details, etc. with my spanky new name. hopefully in about half a year i will be a totally new me.

now tell me this: six* months just to fix my things as an individual; how long will it take to work through the logistics of changing a name of something as monolithic as, say, an airport? or perhaps a town? a province? bloody hell, a whole country? i'm cool having to drive down to KZN. however, it might be a different story all together if in the future i drive down to KwaZulu? maybe catch a plane from OR Tambo International to Rolihlahla International down in Cape Town? or will it be then known as just eKapa?

_the_ government should just take the money and channel it to needing sectors like our education system, health system, transport system and others, instead of tangling themselves with financial burdens of trying to correct 'the imbalances of the past.' isn't the lack of education in this country more of an imbalance of the past than the name 'Johannesburg International Airport?' there is nothing wrong with honouring the champions of the Struggle, in fact i support it. but i feel that somewhere somehow, a line should be drawn.

-S.

* probably too over-estimated, but better that than under-estimating.

gimme a chance...

fine, i think the topic of me being bored at work has been exhausted. so, what's new? eish these days i stumble upon opportunities of doing much more things with my time than in previous months. in the last month or so, i have been to the province where the sun supposedly rises (mpumalanga), many times. i have been to the cape (western province). have been home (kwazulu-natal) and i have been to the free-state. yeah! this coming weekend i shall embark on a trip to klerksdorp (north west), so yah, my hands are full like that! with the price of petrol having risen, it's gonna cost a lot more to drive around to all these places. oh, and i'm planning on going to hartees for a picnic sometime soon. and to mozambique in spring.

right, now to the topic of this blog. i need to do some course. i was thinking along the lines of management development programme (mdp) or similar courses, obviously on a part-time basis. but my only obstacle is that most of these institutions are either i) somewhat expensive for my liking (uct's equivalent course is R50K) or ii) need me to be at least 25 years old or be in a management position for some time --- not junior management, or both (like tuks' and unisa's mdp amongst others). so, if you are sitting there and you know of a reputable institution that i can attend to satisfy my urge, lemme know. i wanna do something with my time. after all, in about a year or so, i will be a rocking manager wherever i'll be at, plus, i should start thinking about how to make money as we build and shape our nation towards the greatest spectacle in football history (aka 2010 soccer world cup south africa [here is more of 2010]), so i may as well use this time to acquire some skills that might be applicable then.

these institutions must just gimme a chance! i mean, for crying in a plastic dish, i'm not trying to do an mba or anything! well not yet at least.

-S.