It's a Digital Life

I have recently gone through the rather unpleasant experience of losing my cell phone. Not to muggers, petty opportunistic thieves, or an inopportunely placed toilet bowl, but rather to the inevitable death of these cleverly designed batteries that are created to last just long enough to get you through 2 years to your next upgrade, when you are forced to spend another few thousand of your hard earned monies on a phone with more functions than you could ever actually use or honestly even comprehend.

Anybody remember the good old days when you danced into the store with great excitement to buy the new Nokia 3310 you had been dying to get, for only a few hundred bucks, along with a simple contract that offered free minutes (or airtime) and SMS bundles? Oh, for the simple days when you could just pay for (and get) exactly what you needed, and nothing more. I am now faced with the impossible task of deciding on a new contract that I already know will offer me not nearly enough data (remember when data wasn't even a thing??), almost enough free minutes, and about 1000 SMSes I don't need and will hardly use. I could also be the lucky winner of a voucher to the value of R10 000 for some online educational thing I don't need or understand, and perhaps another whole bundle of "free" SMSes to remind me how much my patronage is "valued". Yay for free stuff? I think not...

Unfortunately it took me all of 10 minutes after the demise of my phone on Monday morning to come to the annoying realisation that I am essentially cut off from the world without it. Being a young working minion, living alone and spending almost all of my salary on life (i.e. rent, gym, petrol, food, and a completely-over-priced-and-mostly-worthless cell phone contract), I find I haven't much money left for luxuries like Wi-Fi or a home phone (home phones are, in any case, somewhat a thing of the past). My time will come for such niceties, but for now (without a cell phone) my instant communications are limited to either social networks, or e-mails - all of which I only have access to if I have either internet (which I don't) or my cell phone (which, of course, is now dead and useless). Also, the phone numbers that were, once upon a time, conveniently stored either in my memory or in a phone book, are now all sitting on the cell phone that no longer works. Yes, nowadays there are amazing services that allow you to back up all your phone data onto a "cloud" for just such a situation, but just remind me quickly how we access this cloud? Ah yes, via the internet I don't have or the deceased cell phone I can no longer use!What a fantastic system of mindless dependence.

So now we come to the reason for this post - the concept that plagues my mind and, if I'm honest, kinda pisses me off at the same time: people are so dependent on (and often also addicted to) technology these days, that the phone, television and computer companies can lump pretty much anything they want into a "bundle" and we have no choice but to fork out far more than we can afford each month for a bunch of services/goods that contains 75% unwanted rubbish, just to get the 25% of the product that we actually need and/or want.

Requests like "I just need a contract that allows me to make unlimited phone calls and send about 300 messages a month" are met with responses along the lines of "Absolutely, sir. If you just sign away your house and your car, and agree to participate in forced labour every second Saturday for the rest of eternity, you can have exactly that in our new incredible deal that also offers you unlimited free tyres (for the car you'll no longer own) and a complimentary house cleaning and gardening service every Thursday (for the house you no longer live in)". Or, one might say "I just want television channels that give me news, sports and some movies on weekends" and in response, one will hear "Yes ma'am, that's no problem. Our sports/news/movies package only costs your firstborn child and half your soul. Plus, to show you just how much we value you as a customer, we'll even throw in 200 Nollywood channels (Nigerian "Hollywood", for those who think that's a typo), the entire Asian parliamentary package and a handful of Russian soap opera channels with no subtitles, for absolutely no extra charge! Would you like to sign the contract in blood, or would you prefer a handshake with Satan himself? I believe he'll be coming in on Saturday morning to discuss next month's specials with the store manager."

How are we supposed to afford this stuff? And when we can't, how are we supposed to be functional (and I don't mean brain functional, I mean business/life functional), stay connected and keep up in a world that moves at the speed of a nuclear missile and runs almost entirely on technology??? Is our only option then to move into an Amish community where this stuff is not needed to be a fully functioning and productive member of society? I honestly believe that technology is slowly sucking innumerable and invaluable life skills from people (skills like spelling, socialisation, authenticity, attention, patience, inhibition...) - and this is not just the working 30-something-year-old people who "need" 3 phones, a tablet, 2 laptops, a home PC and an Apple watch to make sure they keep up with life. This is everybody! Kids of all ages, who spend such a monumental portion of their time glued to some form of technology that the power of simple spelling and vocabulary is fast becoming a legend of old; young moms, who spend so much time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, blah blah blah blah blah that by the time they look up, their kids are in high school; young power couples who get dressed up to the nines, go on dates to the most fabulous restaurants, and spend more time staring at a screen than at each other (I have seen this time and again, and am fairly convinced that they actually chat to each other on their phones during the date); families who go out to dinner, and all four of them are on some form of phone or tablet; groups of kids "hanging out" together, without any of them interacting in person because they're all playing some online game together... The list is endless.

I know, I know, I sound like Grouchy Grandma. But I'm not necessarily wrong! The thing that makes this so highly disconcerting for me, is that this obsession with technology, social media, selfies, and apps is slowly dumbing down the humanity in us. The average person that I have encountered (and I readily admit I am sometimes guilty of this, too), finds it near to impossible to actually sit with somebody and hold an entire conversation without compulsively checking their phone every few minutes for a message or notification of some kind. Emoticons are becoming increasingly frequent in messages, because now that we have so many (what can't you say simply by stringing together a line of emoticons?), if a message is sent without one, we struggle to understand the tone behind it. For every minute that we are glued to these screens, we are missing genuine emotions, expressions, interactions with real humans. Many of us are slowly losing the ability to human (I know that's not a verb, but it's how I think - deal with it), because we are becoming so conditioned to this digital life that it's becoming harder for many people to be authentic and present in real life at all. These "emotions" with cute blushing red cheeks (happiness), fantastically large rolled eyes (annoyance), a bright red scowling face (anger), a heart coming from pursed lips (a kiss), etc. make it harder for some to identify (and react to) actual emotions that are often masked and not expressed in quite such an obvious fashion.

There are so many other aspects that are equally problematic: the digital babysitter (television) in front of which so many children grow up (a major bone of major contention for me, but that is a story for a whole new post); the number of deaths caused by really idiotic people trying to take "extreme" selfies; and let's take a moment to ponder this latest craze - Pokemon Go - that is literally causing people to get injured and/or die. Granted it's only a few deaths and mostly a lot of injuries, and given the nature of the causes (walking off a cliff, crossing a busy highway and getting hit by a truck, hitting a pedestrian who's crossing the highway, wrapping a car around a tree, to name but a few), some might be quite inclined to say that it's natural selection at work. Either way, these are reckless and self-destructive behaviours.

My point (if you've been able to keep track through the epic ramblings) is that technology is dangerous. Not in the "it could destroy the world in the wrong hands, or with one push of a button" sense of the word (although that, too, is a valid point) but in the "it could destroy the world by causing humanity to become even more deficient than the self-absorbed, self-destructive nutcases we already are" kinda way. Case in point: look what temporarily losing my cell phone did to my thoughts! :-)

Until next time...

Quote for the day: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." - Albert Einstein

Let me tell you about the bitch upstairs...

And no, this title is not an allusion to the voice in my head, or some kind of new-age deity I recently discovered. I am literally referring to the abominable creature residing in the apartment above me.

I don't know what it is about me, but every time I move (which has essentially been an annual event for me for the past 9 years) I somehow manage to find the worst neighbours in the history of ever. Every. Time. If you are reading this, you are obviously an avid fan (thanks for your support) and thus aware of the reprobates from my 2015 dwelling. I have not yet made mention of those from any of my previous dwellings in any of my posts, so I will digress shortly to bring you all up to speed, and then resume my rant about this year's model of Neighbour from Hell.

Before I start, a quick disclaimer (this is the part that makes it all ok, and proves I'm not just whining). This post is not a complaint, but rather a commentary on the nature of subhuman creatures. They are a fascinating breed to me, and it's becoming somewhat of a hobby for me to find and observe them (I suppose it could be as a consequence of my love for psychology and puzzles). So I'd like to share my preliminary findings with you.

2008 to 2010 - Neighbour from Hell version 1.0. My undergrad student years. Shitty neighbours are to be expected in this scenario, as most are students and all are usually permanently fluctuating between tipsy and comatose on the "drunk" scale. So I had my fair share of noise, obscene behaviours, and people hot-boxing my flat (for the "innocents" who are reading this, it means that my flat was the hub of the weed smokers, due to my lovely but eccentric room mate). I survived.

2011 - Neighbour from Hell version 2.0. An interesting year. I moved into a flat with a friend who proceeded to move out, and into the boyfriend's flat (Boyfriend lived in the same complex), pretty much the week I moved in. A lovely enough complex in a very central area. I was quite happy. Anyway, I essentially lived alone, although my "buddy" still made frequent trips to the flat to make sure I didn't so much as place a candle in the living room (my belongings and I were strictly confined to my bedroom), and to scold me for leaving my coffee mug, cereal bowl, lunch plate, etc. in the sink all day and only washing dishes every evening rather than washing each dish immediately after using it. (This coming from someone who accumulated so many dishes before washing them, that the oven became a hiding place for dishes when guests came to visit). I mean, really. Anyway, we lived on the ground floor, and the flat above us was occupied by some Indian fellows fresh out of Durbs. They obviously had very bad feng shui in their place, because they moved their furniture around almost daily (and lifting was not a concept they had grasped yet - it was all pushed along the floor). They also appeared to have really unreliable cars, as they spent the whole of every single Sunday (from 6am to about 7pm) "working" on their cars, with all four doors open, and the music blaring (and we all know how intense the sound systems are in Durban-Indian cars). It was a tad annoying, to say the least.

2012 - Neighbour from Hell version 3.0. Let's not even go there. (I lived in a room in a boarding house, adjacent to approximately 50 preteen female boarders). HORRENDOUS. Need I say more? 

2013 - The best neighbours thus far, and this is because I didn't have any. I was travelling (see previous blog for those stories) and life was good!

2014 - Neighbour from Hell version 4.0. I lived alone in a little flat. It was in a lovely new-ish complex. Very secure, great location, awesome facilities... And then came the neighbours. Now I can't back this up with any evidence, (although since this is a rant, and I can say what I like, evidence is irrelevant) but I am almost certain that these were drug dealers, or maybe pimps. There were about 4-5 people staying in the flat at any one time (a one bedroom flat. Just saying.), they drove a top-of-the-range Mercedes, the men wore very fancy clothes, and they had a sound system to rival Woodstock... Yet their balcony furniture consisted of two broken camping chairs, some cooler boxes, and other square-shaped things for sitting on, their house had very little, if any, furniture in it (judging from how clearly their conversations could be heard from anywhere in the complex), and the women used to come out onto the balcony to smoke dressed as though they had scavenged some scraps of really old material from the teeth of a raging bear and stuck these together with sticky tape to cover the essentials (and let me tell you, sometimes it didn't even do that!). Plus they were loud, obnoxious a$$holes. Naturally, I wasn't a fan.

2016 - Neighbour from Hell version 6.0. My latest adventure. I was so excited to find a cute and quaint little apartment about 2.5km from work (such a boon when dealing with Sandton traffic!). I was assured that this complex had very stringent rules and regulations, and the inhabitants are all from the very upper echelons of the young Sandton elite (i.e. they're snobs.). You can imagine my joy to hear all of this. Unfortunately, it was a massive exaggeration. The truth is, this place is just like any other and the bitch upstairs (hereafter referred to as Bitch) is testament to this fact.

Generally, people who live in flats and apartments have some semblance of an idea as to the etiquette of close-quarter dwelling. Bitch is evidently new to this game. The first thing she has apparently never been taught is how to use a door. I am waiting for the day that this thing literally just falls off its hinges, or shatters. She slams it so hard (at whatever hour of the day or night that she happens to arrive or leave) that my windows actually rattle. A most wonderful noise to wake up to at 3am on a work night. She also seems to be under the impression that everybody in the complex is very deprived of music, and it is her duty to share her "music" (read "crappy noise") with us. No matter the hour, Bitch will sit in her car (which, by the way, she cannot drive or park properly - I'm sure she just leaves it wherever it comes to a stop when she gets home) and listen to her garbage at volume 5000, despite the fact that she knows the parking area is right outside multiple bedroom windows (including her own). Then, once she has managed to wake up the whole of Sandton with her noise, she will STOMP up the four flights of stairs to her apartment as though she weighs the equivalent of an adult hippopotamus (and then of course, assault the door). But the most unforgettable experience thus far (I am contemplating hypnotherapy to try and erase this memory) is the Sunday morning that I woke up to the sound of her copulating.

I couldn't believe Bitch had managed to find a male of her species (I know it was male because I could hear both of them), as I really thought she was a genetic error of some sort, but somehow she found one (although, I have since decided that she is actually paid for these services, if you catch my drift). The sounds that came through my bedroom roof actually made my ears bleed a little, and I'm pretty sure a part of my soul died that day. I don't even imagine that the lowest grade, no-budget, home-made video could ever come close to the horror.

Anyway, I could go on for a good while longer about the things I have survived, but it takes a lot of energy to write about so much stupidity and lack of human decency (and probably equally as much to read about it), and I'd like to end with a smile... So here's the very large silver lining on that itty-bitty little cloud in my blue sky: in spite of Bitch's best efforts, 2016 is shaping up to be a really fantastic year. I have got a job at a great company where I am learning so much, every single day, and I work with a really lovely bunch of peeps. I recently put together a really fun and successful Quiz evening for us, which I will probably mention in more detail in my next post. I have also set my sights on completing a Warrior Race in August this year (eeek!). So I have started training to make sure I don't die at the Start line. Quite chuffed with my progress so far. I think I might even make it to the first obstacle!

Well, that's all I have to say for now. Except, here's to Neighbour 7.0 being a magical combination of dumb, deaf and miniature (a sort of Helen Keller midget, if you will). Wouldn't that be dandy?

Until next time...

Quote for the day: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." - G. K. Chesterton

2015: The Long and Short of It

Well, 2015 was by no means a boring or average year. As may have been apparent in my previous post, The Fellowship of the Commune was not to be. The behaviour of the two creatures of darkness that inhabited the living room quickly spiraled from annoying to illegal, and we were left with no choice but to reinvent the naughty corner and send them there with an almighty kick up the rear (by which I mean we had them evicted and waved them off with all the middle fingers at our disposal).

It started out innocently enough: the usual 2am arguments about keeping the noise down; constant requests that they please keep their filthy, revolting (probably highly infested) bong out of the living room; endless house meetings about their unsanitary kitchen habits (such as the food that was left in dishes in the sink for five days because it was a long weekend and the maid wasn't there to wipe their derrieres for them; or the raw, rotten meat that they threw out in the kitchen dustbin on a Friday morning that transformed our kitchen floor into a writhing mass of maggots by Sunday afternoon); and daily complaints about all the food they "borrowed" from us and never replaced (surprise surprise). They were also very offended that nobody wanted to share food with them, because they said they had no problem with us taking food from their fridges if we needed anything. See, the slight hitch here, is that their fridges generally contained an array of the following: a pickle jar with no pickles in it, a Tupperware (that once belonged to one of us!) with an ecosystem growing on top of some unidentifiable substance (safe to guess that it was food at some point a long while ago), a jar of solidified mustard, a bag of mushy vegetables, some mouldy bread, and something that resembled a block of cheese. Sadly, we were all on diets that did not allow us to eat these particular substances, so their generosity and desire for mutual fridge sharing really didn't benefit us that much. Despite all our complaints, however, the landlord said he was unable to get rid of them, as they had not breached the contract. This changed fairly quickly though.

After about a month of escalating requests and complaints from the other seven house mates, these two reprobates lashed out. They threatened some of the female house mates with physical violence and, of course, threw in the old favourite "my daddy's a lawyer, I'll sue you" for good measure (although we were never sure what exactly they thought they could sue any of us for), and when this didn't have the desired effect (due to us having a lawyer daddy on our side too), they turned to vandalism. They started breaking, scratching, tearing and defacing the property of the house mates who had dared to confront them about any of their misdemeanours, ultimately vandalising the one girl's car by snapping off a hubcap and slashing the fuel line to her petrol tank. Luckily, this was exactly what we needed. Since our landlord had not been able to do much on our behalf, we decided to bypass him and use the law to get our way. Enter the police. We notified their parents that we had opened four separate cases against their demon spawn, and if they didn't remove said spawn from the house, it would be taken to court and prosecuted. Being the smart bunch that we are (hehe) we had photographic evidence of everything they had done, so they didn't have so much as a big toe left to stand on.

With much fuss and disgraceful behaviour (from the parents too! They came in guns blazing, swearing at us and threatening all sorts of things. No wonder the kids are the way they are...), we eventually got rid of them, and proceeded to live (mostly) happily for the rest of the year. Thus ends the saga of the house mates from hell.

As for the rest of the year, it went rather swimmingly in comparison. I decided to take up Ninjutsu (Ninja) about halfway through the year. This is a form of martial arts (duh) that focuses on practical training that would be helpful in real-life situations. A little bit of history for the sake of interest - ninjas were actually assassins. Although often confused with the samurai by those not in the know, the samurai had a strict code of conduct to adhere to in terms of honour and behaviour, etc. Ninjas, not so much. This was such a fun class and I really enjoyed everything I learnt over the course of the year. Unfortunately, as with all contact sports, it was not without its drawbacks. We were doing a shuriken (ninja throwing stars) course in early December, and a stray star ended up in the side of my foot. No big deal, but I'm sure it's the coolest injury I'll ever have! How many people, in the world ever, are going to be able to say they got stabbed by a flying ninja star? Pretty much none, unless they live in ancient Japan!

Obviously, the biggest and most important part of my year was my Honours degree. I had set myself the goal of passing the course with distinction, so I really had to knuckle down and put my serious face on! (Spoiler alert, I graduated on Wednesday). I spent many nights burning the candle at both ends, often staying in the library until 3 or 4am and rolling into bed for a 2 hour nap before getting up to go to class/a test/an exam; I decorated half my bedroom wall with pages upon pages of disorders (I called it my Wall of Weird, lolsies) many of which I'm sure I developed during the course of last year; and sacrificed many social plans for the cold discomfort of my desk and textbooks (and let me tell you, some of these babies were dull!). I am totally convinced that the authors do that on purpose though, like some kind of twisted inside joke. I can just picture a group of creepy old guys with some yellow teeth (the rest are missing), crooked eyes, and balding heads sitting around a table and wheezing over the books while gleefully muttering something about "This should do the trick! Stay awake through this, why don't you? Muahahaha." Evil old bastards. Anyway, it was all worth it! Now for Masters and PhD... KIDDING! That's still a few years away... 

Anyway, I'm sure that's more than enough reading for you all (for now). I have finally managed to catch you up on the rest of 2015. Let's see what 2016 brings, shall we? 

Until next time...

Quote for the day:

"Whatever you are, be a good one." - Abraham Lincoln