Car Shopping, Men vs Women

The missus decided that she had had enough of her rust-bucket Renault Scenic which had served her like a dutiful slave for the last 4 years. More dutifully than I had served her, she remarked... which in 'Married English' simply means I was less maintenance and more reliable. Armed with a choice of colors and no cooking clue about make or model, she suggested I chug along for advice and emotional support. Personally I think I was just there to carry her handbag and sign on the dotted line.

This turned out to be an exercise in the difference between the way men and women shop for cars.

Women start off with a color.
Once they've chosen a color, it's all down to storage space, number of mirrors, cup-holders and the smell. Yes the smell is very important. It must smell like musky leather, even if it's cloth. It must smell like cookies and cream, even if it's made in Korea. If it's a French car, it must smell like David Ginola.

 

Men shop for cars slightly differently.
We start off at the BMW dealership. This is a default setting. Women should never try to change this.
Depending on age, we head straight to the Top Of The Range for our relevant bracket.
1-series for under 30's
3-series for 30-40
5-series for 40 and above
7-series for those getting the hang of sitting in a hearse.

Without giving away my age, my peer's and I would make a bee-line toward the M3 coupe' or cabrio.
Next we'd pimp it out with extras, 19inch wheels, sound system, Sat-Nav and all the bells and whistles.
Lastly we decide on color.
Then we sit down with the finance lady, 3 cups of free coffee later and we sneak out through a side-door and head toward Toyota.
If a guy tells you he doesn't shop for cars this way, he's either a gay Renault driver or he's lying. 

I guess this is why married couples make the best decisions when it comes to big ticket purchases. There's a healthy balance of practicality, sensibility and class. Left alone we'd either all be driving pretty cars with no resale value, or expensive sexy cars we can't afford.

The missus finally settled on the Peugeot 3008 pictured above.
Sure it's French, but it's also practical and sensible and smells like David Ginola.... but mostly it has a warranty and service plan no other make or model can compete with.
See! Practical and sensible.

Tomorrow we decide on color. She didn't have the right handbag with her today to make that decision.

Hello Blogger My Old Friend

This is probably the longest sabbatical I have taken from blogging, and it finally got to a point tonight where I felt like I either needed to write something or snort some coke. Since I'd never done the latter before, and also because writing is so much cheaper, well here I am.

For those who may not have known, I tore a ligament in my leg a few weeks back and the recovery has been rather slow and painful. This is partly the reason why I've been so scarce. The other being that Murphy in his infinite wisdom also decided that March will be the busiest month I have ever experienced in my business.
Back to my leg. How did I tear a ligament you ask?
The concise version is that I was trying to be a hero during a game of action cricket.

So here I am, a month later and still wobbling about on an unsteady ankle like your favorite grandfather carrying his overweight wife at a drunken orgy. While you pretend like you don't have such a relative, I'll make me a nice cup of Rooibos tea.

My sister arrived from Manchester this past weekend. She's married there and had a kid about a year ago, so this was the first time we got to see Maali. What a handsome boy he is. Reminds me so much of myself during my youth. I use the term 'my youth' very loosely, since I'm still at the prime of it. If it weren't for these damn crutches, I'd show you exactly what I mean.

Also, I closed the chapter on another long friendship this week. I may have mentioned it in a previous post. I'm too lazy to check and link right now. About my friend who kept complaining about her life and yet refused to do anything about it to make it better? Well, I finally decided that she was simply sucking my soul dry and I hated that every conversation ended with how much her life sucked. At the beginning of every year I set myself a quota of how often I want to hear and use the word 'suck', and usually I have about a 3 week supply left over by New Years eve. Lately though, she's been ravaging my quota with the grace of a hungry hippo at a House Of Cards convention. It's March and already I'm all sucked out. So it was with Ninja precision that I sliced off that umbilical chord.

Oh I almost forgot. My home renovations are going along superbly :) The new thatched roof should be complete by this weekend, and then I'll begin with the bathrooms and kitchen. It's going to be awesome once it's done, and I'll be sure to post pics, but in the interim it looks like a bomb site in Afghanistan. Last week the marines dropped a bag of rations and some medical supplies in my pool!

Now wish me a speedy recovery with my leg and I promise to blog again soon.

Revolutionizing Revolutions

It's been a while since I did a post about politics and revolutions and health.
So today's post is dedicated to revolutionary smoothies. People like Che Guava RaRa and Malcolm Eggs and Chris Honey.

Not a day goes by when we're not hearing about another scandal involving bribes and ministers or their wives, daughters, sons or pimps. I don't mean "not a day" as a figure of speech. I mean that literally. Even Sundays. The good Lord in his infinite wisdom rested on Sundays. Not so our corrupt government officials. Two years ago there was a story about tender rigging that broke on Christmas Day!
Nothing is sacred anymore.

Speaking of Sacred, what's up with the crappy quality of Sparletta 2L plastic bottles?
Yesterday I had some guests over, and since I'm a classy and sophisticated kind of guy, I poured them some cool refreshing Pine-Nut. Everything was going splendidly until the damn neck of the bottle caved in!
I looked completely ridiculous in my silk gown and snakeskin slippers with damn Pine-Nut spilling all over my vinyl floors!

Normally I would write them a sternly worded letter and escalate the matter all the way to the board of directors at Sparletta, but I heard somewhere that school comes out at 1pm and they are not allowed to use the Internet when they get home.

On the topic of directors, what the heck is up with these scammy pool maintenance companies?
I had one that started in the beginning of Feb. They promised to keep my pool sparkling blue. A month later and the pool is neither sparkling nor blue. They come once a week, usually on a Monday, get the pool looking brilliantly, and by Friday it looks like I was using the pool as a dip-tank for Mad Cow diseased death-row bulls. You know there's something wrong with your pool when you dive in and come face to face with a bullfrog taking his kids to frog school!

Finally, I need to voice my opinion on this whole American primary elections issue.
They're all a bunch of douchebags.
That's my opinion.

Until next time....

Here's To Goodness

People are always talking about Karma, but how many truly know what it means or how powerful it really is?
The word Karma has become like the phrase 'Social Responsibility' or 'Going Green.' We all sort of kind of know what it means, and we'd like to think we're doing it somehow, but the truth is that if Social Responsibility or Going Green were a train and we were laying naked tied to the tracks, we still wouldn't know what hit us.

One of the people that I have known for a few years now in the business environment proved to me this week why I regard him so highly as a person. There are a handful of people, just a handful, who are doused in as much ethics as my grandad was in Old Spice. They just reek of ethics and integrity. They're almost annoyingly good and ethical and so full of integrity, you just want to smack them and then shag them.
Except in this case it was a dude.

I want people to regard me that way someday.
There goes Kaloo. So full of integrity and ethics, I want to shag him and smack him.

Not like the guy I met on one of my building sites last week.
He came over and introduced himself as one of the sub-contractors. He hardly turned to walk away and answer a call when everyone in the group started talking about what a deceitful shady character he is.

It's the one thing I constantly tell my loved ones.
You can lose everything you own, but never lose your name and the value that goes with it.

Break A Leg

I guess it was inevitable.
All those years of playing sports and getting through unscathed, my luck was bound to run out sometime. I just wish it happened while I was playing Chess or Poker. Is poker regarded as a sport? I don't know. I'm sure I read somewhere that someone once received a gash to the head during a game of poker.

Friday night at the Action Cricket arena was supposed to be like every other night of cricket I've played for the past few years. I get there, we kick some ass, we celebrate, I come home and brag about how brilliant our team is over a hot meal, I shower and go to bed.
I've played for a few teams over the years, and each one has been better than it's predecessor. This season's team is no exception. What makes it different though is that this team comprises of 6 Pakistanis and just two of us local boys. (There's 8 team members in an action cricket team, for those who didn't know)

On Friday night, we were scheduled to play against a team comprising of 8 Indian nationals!
That's not 8 Indians from Durban or 8 Indians from Fordsburg.
That's 8 Indians from India, the motherland, who look Indian, speak Indian, and play cricket like Indians. The fact that they now live in South Africa matters not.

As captain of the team, I knew that the game would be tense. If the handshakes before the game were anything to go by, this game might as well have been the Cricket World Cup Final between Pakistan and India. The only thing missing was the threat of bombs and the heightened security, and maybe the smell of Biryani being cooked court side.

We won the toss and decided to field first.
Just before the end of the 4th over, I dived to the right to field a ball at arms length above my head and was in mid-flight when I knew I was in trouble. My trajectory was not in sync with my landing gear, and I crashed to the ground landing on my knee, twisting it in the process. I think I may have screamed before I even hit the ground.

It's the most pain I have ever felt, and I have felt tremendous pain during my time in Vietnam in my first few years of marriage.
When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by my team-mates, the umpire, Jesus and Elvis. Three of them asked how I was feeling, while one of them offered me some crack. I won't mention names.

The rest of the night was a blur, but I do recall my team trying to lift me into the air after we won, then there was a painful moment when I tried to remove my clothes before climbing into bed, and finally this morning I woke up and realized I'd be walking on crutches for a while.

The highlight of my weekend was bumping into an 80year old geezer also sporting crutches, who hobbled toward me and asked "So what happened to you then?"
I was tempted to tell him it was a sex-related injury, but kept silent when he said he hurt his knee years back riding a motorbike.
I guess I'll be hobbling about on these crutches for the next few weeks at best.

Bring on Monday already. I've experienced pain. There's nothing Monday could possibly do to scare me now.

Adventures Of An 80yr Old Boob

I was halfway through a post earlier today when I hit 'Save' and figured the world could hold on just a little longer to hear my views on this whole Syrian revolution and Iranian nuclear crisis.

I had to rush off to a meeting with an 80year old client whom I've been servicing for about 5 years now.
Wait. Let me rephrase that!
I've been the contractor to all of her commercial properties; her Go-To guy if you must.

Today was supposed to be a quick in-and-out. Any meeting that lasts less than 30 minutes is a quickie. I've had meetings that lasted longer than some marriages. Well, in this day and age that doesn't really say much about the length of the meetings, but you get what I'm trying to say.

So anyways, there I was with said client, when she decides to lean sideways in her summery flimsy teenage dress (did I mention she's about 80?) and the thin strippy thingy that's supposed to hold her dress up on her shoulders decides to slide off.
Out pops this wrinkly old boob and glares at me like an angry baby crocodile who hasn't been fed for weeks!
Like that's my fault!

Her little poodle goes batshit crazy (and NO! That's NOT a sexual innuendo!) and starts yapping at me like I just exposed her masters boob.

Now normally I'm pretty good at maintaining composure, but I've never been accosted by an angry poodle or an angrier wrinkled boob before, so I did the polite thing since that's the way I was brought up, and I vomited all over her carpet (and NO! Thats NOT a sexual innuendo!)
Ok no seriously, I gagged but stopped short of vomiting.

She just looked at me, popped that bad boy back into it's cave, said "Oops" and gave me this grin that reminded me of Darth Vader for some reason. She even sounded a bit like him.

Anyways, just thought I'd throw my afternoon sojourn with an 80yr old boob out there in the hope that I'll sleep better tonight.

Now back to my piece on the Syrians and Iranians and world peace.

The Power Of The Twitter Activist

Can we as South Africans please attempt to go a week, just one week, without some racial incident rearing it's ugly head?
Is that too much to ask?
Can all the racists just pipe it down or piss off to New Zealand so that the rest of us can get on with making this country a better place?

It turns out two racist pigs at the Morningside branch of Virgin Active hurled insults and slurs at a fellow gym member, simply because she was shouting out 'Yebo!' during her spinning class.

Seems as though this didn't go down too well with these two white guys in the spinning class.
You can read the article here

So Virgin Active were rather inactive in their response and handling of the matter, possibly hoping that it would simply go away. Kudos to Liz Hleza for insisting her story be told, and not taking the abuse lying down.

There's really only one correct response from Virgin Active : Cancel the membership of these racist pigs and ban them from ever joining the gym or any of it's affiliates again.

I'll be following this story with a keen interest, and if these guys think they will simply fly under the radar, they have seriously under-estimated the power of Twitter and other social networks.