Idols Season 6

Seriously, why?

Why do some folk put themselves up for embarrassment on national television?
I just know this season is going to take suckiness to a whole new level. I mean honestly, when one of the opening acts farts in her audition, you just know things are only going to get worse (or better if, like me, you rejoice in the cringe-factor!)

The runners-up every year always seem to do so much better in their singing careers than the winners do.
The first few seasons set a standard of one winner at the end of the entire show. Last year they raised the bar and we were the only country to feature two winners.No other country since then has come close to equalling this amazing feat.
This year, in an effort to cement this accolade, we may be blessed with three winners, or maybe none at all.

As I write this i'm watching the "Worst Auditions" segment of the show.
This must be my favourite part of Idols.

Between Idols and all the comedy on DSTV, it seems i'm going to be in for an awesome month of entertainment!

Watch this space...

The Weekend Warrior

I think i'm experiencing the very definition of a perfect weekend.
Friday night started off with dinner at one of my favourite restaurants.
Saturday was spent on the golf course, and in the evening we had my golfing buddy George over with his wife Katie and her best friend Sarah, along with the kids. Great company, more great food, and the perfect end to the day.

This morning I was booked to play golf again at 7:30am!
I set my alarm for 6am, and went to bed around midnight.
Promptly at 6am my alarm went off, and while the process of getting done and ready for my golf day played out in my head, my body decided to go on strike and refused to comply.

So today I plan on being a lounge lizard and do nothing but read, maybe a bit of writing, and watch some of the movies i've stored on the PVR.

Yep, definitely the definition of a perfect weekend.

The Week That Was - July 16

It's been another interesting week, as most of my weeks seem to be lately.

Monday started with me driving to Benoni to a project i've picked as my signature work.
It's a bathroom i'm renovating for my client whom i've mentioned in a previous post, and if I may say so myself it has turned out superb! I shall be uploading pics soon.
My plumber told me a rather interesting story about a previous jacuzzi installation he had worked on.
The client was not keen on hiring a contractor to undertake the project, assuming he could manage and complete the project himself if he just hired individual labourers as he required them.
Solly my plumber was asked not to bring his entire team along, as the clients gardener would help with the installation. This in an effort to save costs, of course.

So there they were, Solly the plumber and Winston the gardener, attempting to install a jacuzzi for Scrooge the client.
Now for those of you who have had the pleasure of coming face-to-tub with a jacuzzi, there are two things which you will already be familiar with. The first is that there are at least six jet pipes underneath a jacuzzi which pump air into the jacuzzi itself; the second is that a good installation usually involves a very well-built brick housing where the tub is mounted into.
About 3 hours after the housing had been built and the jets had been connected, the jacuzzi was ready to be tested.
Thats when Winston's mobile phone rang.
From somewhere underneath the newly installed jacuzzi!

It turns out Winston was using the light from his mobile phone to help him connect a jet, and while tightening the valve he forgot to remove his phone from below the tub.
By the time he realised his mistake, the supporting wall around the jacuzzi had already been built and plastered. The client decided it was cheaper to just buy his gardener a new mobile.
I guess thats what you get for being a Scrooge.

On Wednesday I decided to go car-shopping for the missus
I kept getting drawn to these moms-taxi kind of vehicles, or mini SUV's. The truth is, if I ever surprised her with one of these SUV's, she would most probably surprise me with no hot meals for a month!
She hates them and everything they stand for.
I just figure there will be another vehicle in the household that could comfortably carry my golf clubs at a moments notice.

I felt for a spicy curry this evening, which is odd as I hardly ever enjoy spicy food.
Sometimes you just have to feed the craving.
So we went to my favourite Indian restaurant called Daawat in Fordsburg (where else really?!)
I ordered a chicken korma and mentioned to the waitress that I always have my meals extremely mild, but tonight I was feeling for something spicy.
She suggested "Hot" and I said I just wanted to pacify the spicy craving, not forge another opening in my bum-region.
I asked her about the "Medium" curry.
She said "No no no, the medium is not spicy. You cant even hear it."
Cant hear it?
How spicy do they make their curry's that you can hear them?!!

So I settled on the medium, and by tomorrow while i'm on the golf course, somewhere between the 3rd and the 5th hole, I shall report back and tell you if I could hear the curry!
Right now I can hear my ears ringing. Softly, but they definitely are ringing.

Watch this space...

Our Country

As seen through the eyes of a German fan.

Our country... - Afternoon Drive Blog - Jacaranda 94.2
(click on the link above)

The Return Of Desai

After writing the title to this blog post, I received a call from one of my clients.
Not just any client.
She happens to be my single biggest client with just short of 100 residential and commercial properties in her portfolio.

This past week she contracted my company to design and build her dream bathroom.
The pressure has been immeasurable.
One screw-up, just one tiny oversight, and I could potentially be flipping pancakes for a living. Okay maybe not that drastic, but you get the point.

So everything has been going superbly and according to plan, and any project that goes along without any glitches always gets me nervous.
Even the tiniest of glitches is welcome; it's like a kind of contractors voodoo. We take the small glitches in our stride, knowing that they prevented the bigger glitches from befalling our kin.
Needless to say, with today being the completion date for the project and the voodoo still not exorcised, I was about two stages beyond "Total Panic".
Why did we still have so much material left over after the project was complete?
Why did she only want to tile halfway up the bathroom wall? Surely this was a rather old style, now outdated?
When is she going to inform me of the paint colour for the top half of the walls?

Then she called.

"Kaloo, when are you tiling the rest of my wall?"

The penny dropped.
She had never informed me of the top half of the wall; I had naturally assumed that she only wanted mid-wall tiling as we call it, only because every time we spoke about the detail as regards the wall, she always stopped at mid-level.
She assumed I would go to the top.
I assumed she only wanted mid-level.
The misunderstanding is proof that no question is ever a stupid question!

So tomorrow we take her current smile and convert it into a full-blown orgasmic grin!
She's thrilled with what she's seen so far. I can only imagine what she's going to think when I finally sign off on the project.

Ironic that the post was supposed to be about Desai, and for those who know him, the post ends up being about my Desai-moment!

I guess it could have been worse.
A friend of mine who also happens to be a construction contractor called me a few months back in a state of panic.
It turns out he was given the keys to a clients home to renovate the guest bathroom to look like the en-suite bathroom. The clients were at their holiday home in Cape Town.
He took his team to site, showed them both bathrooms, gave them instructions for the day and left.
When he returned, they had demolished the en-suite bathroom!
How do you demolish the wrong bathroom?

Imagine the panic in his voice when he called me after realising he now had to complete not one, but two bathrooms in the space of a week!

I'd say it happens to the best of us but the truth is that my worst nightmare as regards my projects has never been that crazy or drastic, touch wood!

So tomorrow I write about Desai, since i've had numerous inquiries about his well-being.

Watch this space....

Sleep Deprivation

I planned to write tonight. I really did.
I had it all mapped out in my head. I had a topic, an introduction, a great body, and an enthralling end.

Then the tiredness hit me.
I am uber-exhausted from all the projects I seem to be handling at once.
I've always had a passion for bathroom renovations; being that I own a maintenance and construction company one would think that I have endless opportunities to indulge my passion.
Sadly I am contracted to commercial companies, and only ever get to enjoy bathroom renovations on the odd occasion when I have a private client.

As fate would have it, this month I have four such clients!

So as much as I am like a kid in a candy-store, it also means that I am running on pure adrenalin and very little sleep.

Oh wow!
Don't look now but I just wrote on the blog!
This could get addictive :)

The Language Of Friendship

The language of Friendship is not words but meanings
                                                                HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I had an interesting discussion with the missus earlier today on the topic of friendship.
She has few and regards them highly. The relationship she has with her closest friends is almost as tightly-knit as the those she has with her sisters.
I, on the other hand, have many friends; but I do occasionally allow one into my inner sanctum.

It took me some time to figure out why I didn't subscribe to the idea of a "best friend", but the epiphany when it finally struck me was akin to walking through a dense rain-forest and suddenly finding a sunlit clearing; a moment of enlightenment almost.

From as far back as I can remember, about as far back as my earliest school days, my folks would move house or town more often than most kids would regard as being normal.
If they didn't move house, or move towns, they would move me from my school and i'd have to learn to make new friends all over again. This went on almost every year until I graduated from school. The reality was that I had never been in the same school for longer than 2 years at most.
The downside is pretty obvious. Never in one place long enough to develop a childhood bond with friends; never given the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with my peers; always feeling unsettled and in a constant state of "New Kid Syndrome."
The upsides were not evident at first. It was really only during my analysis of my schooling and upbringing that I realised certain things, both positive and negative.
The constant change of schooling environment allowed me to interact with a larger range of personalities over a shorter period of time; it forced me to make friends sooner than most kids, as they usually knew each other from having been together the year before; and so it was that I found myself able and capable of entering a room full of strangers and leaving shortly thereafter with a pocketful of new friends.
I find it amazingly easy to make new friends. Conversation comes easily to me, it really does.

The human psyche being what it is, it also made me realise the futility of getting too close or forming too strong a bond with any of these new-found friends, since I never expected to be around them the following year.
This meant I had to learn to detach myself from people on a regular basis, and learn to be totally comfortable with the consequences.
I never had a best friend growing up. Sure I had friends I got close to, but never one close enough that the potential for detachment strayed too far away from the recesses of my mind.

Over the years I would find myself testing this resolve, and free-wheeling as I experienced levels of friendship I had never felt before. Issues of trust, loyalty and honour would constantly come into question, and I would learn to deal with them at an age when most guys had formed unbreakable  bonds with their inner circle already.
The very first time I called someone my best-friend felt weird to me.
But I laughed about it when he moved abroad a few months later.
The next time I referred to someone as my best-friend, I ended up moving towns shortly thereafter.
Third time lucky I hoped, and my latest best-friend passed away in a car accident!
True-story.

By this point I had lost all faith in the "best-friend" ideology.

This is the reason I continue to make friends very easily, but i'm extremely wary once in a friendship. I'm always looking out for signs of disloyalty, deceit or distrust.
As soon as I spot it, I head for the hills and never look back.

The missus can never understand why I can so easily walk away from a friendship i've invested months or even years in.
The truth is, i've been programmed to do exactly that as a defense mechanism from being disappointed by a friend.

Sure it's a cold hard way of looking at life.
But sometimes we are the sum of our parts, and our parts are never the same as those of others.
We don't always see the same things in the same way.

My favourite author says it best ...


On Friendship
 Kahlil Gibran
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.


When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.


And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.