googles of fun

as you may (or may not for that matter) know... i am a very enthusiastic, if somewhat rusty, newbie mountain biker. i love mountain biking. especially the meandering through countryside, watching the beauty unravel before me. not so much the battling up a MoUnTAin, over (yeah, right) rocks, legs unable to push any further, lungs burning, and legs too (from all the sudden rock confrontations...), nor the crazy 5m drop off into a swirling mud pool and then straight onto a pool cue thin plank spanning a gorge the size of the victoria falls (at least from my vantage)... you get the idea, and i digress.

you may also know that i am somewhat of an undercover techie - cool gadget and new technology enthusiast.

considering this, you should be able to imagine my excitement at discovering this article on google's blog... google. mountain bikers. blogging. about mountain biking. like... wow! and there's more... the team has a blog too.

awesome stuff. makes me want to go hit some dirt on my trusty giant, with google earth leading the way...

chilibean planted in the sa blog scene!

hooray for chilibean, it is featured on the south african blog directory as blog of the week! michael wrote:

Welcome back to Victoire and a new welcome to Paul -– the two contributors behind this blog. They describe themselves as: "“We are new media evangelists. We will tell you about all the tools you can use to communicate better with your clients and the people you work with. We use many of those tools ourselves and we're passionate about them. Let us share our passion with you."

chilibean is an awesome tool and should be mandatory for any business person, blogger and people who communicate with other people. OK, so basically everyone should read chilibean! Personally I thought their best post to date was the one about my blog! Other posts I also really enjoyed were Calling cards reinvented, Making sense of it all, Overzealous censorship and It'’s a Google Life: Part 1 and Part 2. Like I said, this blog should be mandatory reading.

indeed! this is exactly what we have envisaged for chilibean... a new media tool for the masses! :) as paul says, we welcome comments and suggestions from you, our readers on anything new media.

on a personal note, i have definately found my involvement in chilibean very exciting, and can't wait 'til i have more time to dedicate to it. my mind boggles at the prospects. :) happy chilibean reading!

those were the days...

it has finally come and gone... that dreaded event i had magnified beyond the worst scenario possible... my 10 year high school reunion! and guess what. it wasn't so bad. it was actually really enjoyable - in a reunion kind of way.

of course the first question on my mind was... what do i wear?! i only really decided on that on the day... when it was too late to make a dash to the shops to find a new outfit that would perfectly convey the "new me" to around 92 pairs of prying eyes, and who knows how many more when the dvd and photos emerge!

many other questions followed, including what have i done in the past 10 years? - a question answered only by a rather thorough racking of my brain as to what i had achieved. 10 years is a long time. considering that i had no clue about life or what i was going to do with it when i left school all those years ago, i would say i haven't done too badly for myself... - and on the questions went...

right up to when i arrived in the main foyer and was faced with new old faces and... more questions! how are you?! what have you been doing? what do you do? ARE YOU MARRIED? - which i found rather amusing considering that less than 10% of the "girls" there were actually wedded!

i guess the whole reunion was overwhelmingly surreal. girls one almost remembers transformed into stunning women, some of them unrecognisably so. it was wonderful to see the transformation, to see the characters formed in their own unique way, difficult to relate to people one hardly has anything in common with anymore - and yet finding so many mutual elements, delicate misty nostalgia, experiences-incidents-memories softened by time... life written on each one's face.

all in all delightful.

c'est la vie

i can't believe how hectically busy i've been since... when last did i post?

things suddenly picked up at work with me heading the roll-out / change management team for a while, and are just getting more and more stressful. so much to do, not enough time to gather oneself and just do it. i should be presenting (not only organising) demo's and training on the project soon too... it's exciting times for me, if things don't change (negatively)[1] too much. but honestly, i am thrilled to be busy, running around, doing things, speaking to users... it's so welcome after all that time i spent bored with repetitive work.

what else? i've been looking around for a place to stay, occupancy from 1 december... i've worked at 2 camps, which have been awesome and very rewarding, but very tiring too. i'm still enjoying pottery, although i'm not too sure what my next project should be... creativity and stress do not walk hand in hand. and i need to get organised for my lil sister's wedding in a month & a half! i still don't have a bridesmaid's outfit & have to arrange all the kitchen tea, hens party stuff now too. fun! oh yes! i have my 10 year high school reunion this coming weekend! should be interesting...

that's my life... ;)

[1] i have come to realise that there exists both positive and negative change. positive change (to me) is managed change, it's exciting, and well... it brings about positive things. i love positive change. negative change is disruptive, causes headaches and an enormous amount of stress, and is basically identified by the negative effects it's the cause of. i have been dealing with negative change for the past 2 years, if not more, and it's been trying to mess me around lately. not cool.