Illusions of work

I am sitting here at the place of my employment trying to work, but my eyes is twitching nervously, it feels like my stomach is turning inside out, my jaws is sore from chewing gum all morning and blowing bubbles like a teeny bopper back in the day. Notice empty packet of gum that was bought at 9am and finished before 12

Damn, why did I ever start smoking? I blame .........
Can't blame the Islamic school I was at
Can't blame my parents
Can't blame my peers or maybe I can cause they the the ones that took me to the toilet, put a cig in my mouth and then covered my mouth so that I can inhale, and this was no ordinary cigarette, it was a John Silver that had 2.9 nicotine in it, smokers will know that anything over 1.2 is quite heavy. I was carried back to class cause I could not walk.
After that experience there was no going back cause I wanted to be cool and now that I knew that one had to inhale, I was getting use to it day by day without me knowing the addiction grew stronger and now 24 years later I am having a shit time trying to give up this evil.

When you are young, you have no care in the world and try and impress friends rather than listening to your parents about the bad effects of smoking, now that you are parent yourself, you want to tell you children the same things, Don't Smoke, Don't Drink, Don't watch blue movies etc

Trying to get my 16 yr old nephew to stop smoking before he ends up like me, cannot walk up a flight of stairs without breathing heavily, but it seems it goes in one ear and out the other, the same way it went through my ears so many moons back.
Well I am trying to to be calm and trying not to think of smoking, concentration is at an all time low so doing any work is out of the question, so I am trying read some blogs but that is also proving difficult.

Over the weekend, I did nothing much, helped the wife with washing, that is hanging up some washing, and visited Aasia on Sunday, she cooked some lekker roast chicken wiv potato and sweet corn.

I just sent some oke to da shop to get me some apples and bananas cause apparently that be good when quitting smoking.

I will keep you whoever updated with the progress, hopefully I don't fall off the wagon.



Till next we meet

Au Revoir

Alleranna K@K

So I find myself sitting in Alleranna k@k also know as Eldarado Park at Aasia's place while the wife does some beautifying of da feet. I am chewing furiously on this airwaves cause the urge to go and smoke is greater today, so I am thinking of ways not to let it get to me. So hence I am here in front of da pc. Well there is lotsa sites I could go visit, but I only have one thing on the brain and you guessed it, it is smoking so trying to browse the bloody internet is proving difficult cause your brain is so active trying to think of reasons that can be worth it to go and light a cigarette. Well I am jittery to say the least, but I am alive.
Tomorrow it is back to work, no more training till next month.
Till later, gotta go now, might edit this post later as I have no idea what I have been typing.

Little Voices

I have been trying to quit smoking over the past week and a half, and I must say it has been a bit tough.
I've set my quit date as the 22nd May 2009, seeing that I am on a program where you suppose to reduce the amount of cigs you have gradually, I am just moving in fast forward, I down to 4 a day. I wanna stop smoking as soon as possible but the little voices in my head encourages me to smoke because I am on this program of gradual reduction, there is no reason why I cannot have a puff, that is what the voices are telling me, it is almost like an internal battle of good an evil, with the lil devil urging you on " Go Toyer, lite up, Zyban is a 7 week program, you only in week 2" and the lil angel wiv wings saying " Don't succumb to temptation, you can do it".
Only the Almighty knows who I am going to listen to today, cause I have no idea, I am I going to crumble or will my will power prevail.

Curve Balls

So I have been rather quiet this week as it has been a quite shitty one but I am not complaining right?

I had a shit week, but I will live and hopefully the next week will bring some sunshine Insh'alla:)

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A new beginning

So today is suppose to be a new beginning for me, quitting smoking is not as easy as I thought it should be.
Had my last ciggie at 11pm last night. Woke up and the only thing on my mind was smoking, little voices going off in my head weighing up the pros and cons if I should light up again. The Zyban treatment says you should set your quit date in the second week of taking it, I am only on day four, that seems enough motivation to carry on smoking, but that is the smoker in me saying that, the wanna be non-smoker in me says, you set your quit date today, you going to stick to it.

So I've got 2 pieces of my mind playing up against each other, to smoke or not to.

This morning I woke up did the normal rituals before I headed out of the door, this is about 5:30am, usually I have a cigarette as I get to the car, this morning I had cadbury dairy milk chocolate, I mean chocolate at 5:30am, is that normal? Once I was on the road my mind started wondering again and that evil little voice telling me to light up, I resisted. As I pulled up to work the craving became unbearable, I stuffed my mouth with some more chocolate.

I get to the office only to find out it is corporate day and nobody informed me and that we are having a lunch meeting at The Pepper Chair in Centurion today. Although I don't eat there, it is a pub like environment and my boss smokes, It is going to be hell I tell ya, hell.

Today my trainees are writing a test which I have to mark and submit to their managers, hopefully they perform better than the last group I had, I can only hope.

Insha-Allah everything will go well today and Jumuah Mubarak to one and all. Enjoy the rest of the day.

Here I am......

Here I am sitting in a class teaching people how to do Internet Support, damn you should see the interest in their faces, I tell you there is none.
I've just given them a pop quiz to do and they have 30 minutes to answer, hope they can actually answer with some effort put into it.

Anyway, I am honestly trying to give up smoking, so much so that I am currently using Zyban. I was told that I should start losing weight so that I can be more active, how can one be active if he lives in front of a pc whole day?
It is my 3rd day on the meds and I have started cutting down quite drastically on the smoking thing, I am also on my last packet of cigs as tomorrow is my quit date, cross your fingers and toes, for the next few days my wife and I have to be on opposite sides of the house as this is a dual effort, she is a smoker too.

Once we have given up smoking we can then try and do some activities, like walking :)
Its a start I tell you. At least I did some walking while in Durban a couple of weeks back.

Anyway gotta go, these guys are almost finished with their pop quizzes and I wanna go home so let me check how they answerd it.

Catch you on the other side

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a beautiful city but I will not go back there in a hurry.
I guess it being the first international destination I visited I was not use to the culture shock I would receive.
The food smells did not help either, after 1 day of sight seeing I was crying like a baby on the phone to my wife. I was nauseous the whole day. I am a very impatient soul and don't do well in crowds and Hong Kong is a very densely populated city. Walking down the roads I got lost from the rest of my touring group because of the amount of people walking in the roads either shopping, going out to eat or youngsters having fun.
I was looking for a Halaal restaurant about 11pm in the evening, this was quite3 nice walking that late at night in Kowloon knowing you will not be mugged. Walking down the streets I noticed many foreigners including Nigerians, even they were not as intimidating as the Bangladeshis.
I walked past this one Indian restaurant called Koh-i-Noor where a bell boy almost forced me inside when enquiring whether it was a Halaal establishment or not. I received affirmation that it was indeed a Halaal restaurant, not knowing if I would find another one I proceeded to place my order:
Tikka Chicken - HK$80
Samoosas - HK$35
Stuffed Naan - HK$25
Can of Coke - HK$25
1 Hong Kong Dollar is about R1,20

The food was served and when I saw the chicken I was in 2 minds whether I should eat it or not, it certainly did not look like the South African chicken I am accustomed to. I was very hungry and took one bite and left it and just ate the naan and moon shaped samoosas as that was more edible than the chicken.

After the meal, a friend wanted to get some of the famous fake Tag watches. these fake watches come in different grades, the grade 1 fake is as close to the real thing you can get and cost between HK$1000 and HK$4000, my friend bought 2 of about 2 grand each. The place we bought it from looked like an establishment right out of Hillbrow. We were taken through some alleyways and into a dingy little flat by a Bangladeshi and then given a catalogue with various makes and models of watches. They also wanted to sell us grade 1 ladies gucci handbags, we declined.

After walking back to the hotel I realised how scared I was sitting in that flat, sweat dripping from my brow, expecting the cops to knock the door door any minute.

The next morning we left the hotel and moved on to mainland China to a city called Shenzhen. Blog to follow.

Below are some sites of Hong Kong

View from Victoria Peak


Scaffolding


Me at the avenue of stars, see how moeg I look, Like I said I was not loving the experience

Hong Kong crowds

Hong Kong at night


Till the next time we meet, Enjoy

I've been Tagged

Ten things my unborn children should know
So Aasia tagged me to do this:

1) Always listen to your father :) he does not know best
2) knowledge is power so never stop learning
3) Don't smoke, it is bad for you and use me as an example
4) Love unconditionally
5) Know that a fool and his money are soon parted - manage your finances well
6) Stay active, live a healthy lifestyle
7) Indulge in the nice things but know that too much of a good thing can be bad
8) Don't be scared to fall, I will always be there to pick you up.
9) Take risks, cause hindsight is a nice kick up the butt.
10) Your mother will be always be the most important person in your life.

The Great Embarrassment

As previously mentioned, I went to China recently. Now no visit to the Peoples Republic would be complete without a visit to to the Great Wall.
As the tour party departed and with excitement filled in our bellies we headed from our hotel in Beijing to this majestic piece of architecture. It is approximately 50Kms outside Beijing however it was only noticeable from about 5km because of the altitude and mist/clouds/smog.
Climbing the great wall is not for the feint hearted especially if your overweight, unfit and smoke about a pack of ciggies a day.
My adventure started at one of the starting points.


As can be seen from the picture above, it is quite a climb, the little rest stop seen at the top is about quarter way up.
Look at the size of those steps, at this point everything was going hunky dory, I was marveling at the sights and wondering how simple men put this structure together even if one person died for *every meter that was built*.

As I said, I am very unfit the further I got up the more my legs turned into jelly and the less and less I could breathe. Because of the altitude the air is quite thin and because it was March, winter had just finished but the chill was still in the air.
When I reached the quarter way mark ( to me it was half way in my head ) I tried to lift my leg for the next step. Try as I might, my leg would not lift. My heart was pounding out of my chest and behind me was an elderly couple wanting to pass me. Here I am a thirty something year old suppose to be in the prime of his life being overtaken by grannies and grandpas. My heart sunk to the ground as well as my body. For the next hour or so I just sat there getting my breath back and taking a few pics. I then started my descent which was a bit easier than going up but one still has to be careful as at some points the drop is vertical. When I reached the bottom, I went to a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino which I paid 25RMB for, this equates to about R40. Once done I phoned the tour guide and told he not to look for me as I was waiting for the tour party back at our bus.

So my embarrassment would be that I could not climb the great wall because I am unfit and NOT because I smoke . Here are some more pics I tool while regaining my composure.



It seems as if I was quite high up, in reality it was only about the quarter of the way up.

PS. The lil bit in ** is a statement that might be incorrect but that was what I was told by our tour guide.

Interesting Signs

I had the pleasure of visiting China recently and came across an interesting sign in a *Muslim Restaurants'* bathroom, please be reminded that the majority of bathrooms at so called *Muslim Restaurants* are those flatbed toilets. I found this sign quite amusing:

This sign was placed above the regular toilets we have, it basically says people should not stand on the toilet but rather use the arses, I did not do either, as it was not the most appealing bathroom, hence, I knuiped till I reached the hotel.
Are there any any other interesting signs you've come across on your travels?

Welcome to myself

Over the past couple of months I've been reading different blogs and it has now become a daily ritual to first go to my cuzzie's blog, namely Aasia, and then click on on every other blog and start reading. I've now resorted to try and follow this phenomenon by creating my own so that I am not disappointed when seeing that nobody has posted anything for a couple of hours.
So who am I?
I am a middle aged man/guy/nut who outwardly seems not to fear anything but has an internal battle with fear itself.
I have a mind of a teenager and a body of a 50 yr old which proves difficult when trying to do cartwheels with my daughter or go down these super slides kids go on.
Was in Durban recently and my daughter wanted to go on that lift thingie at the fun park, being the outwardly fearless guy that I am I agreed, once on this thing, my 5 yr old daughter could see the terror in my face and she calmly took my hand and said, Dad, nothing will happen, doesn't it look beautiful out there? I had to to fake a smile at that point. My heart melted, yet the fear still gripped, with one sweaty palm I held onto the handle bar and with the other I held my daughter.
The following evening I found myself at the fun park again, this time Aasia wanted to go on that ship thingie, and being this outwardly courageous guy, I obliged. I put on a brave face, but believe me the tummy was turning and the heart was racing double time.

I guess it is in our nature to put on a brave face seeing that we of the male species and need to be the power figure within the household/community however some of us are just human after all and fear some of the smallest things :)

Well that is all for now, more of getting to know me later.