Almost forgot…

…Mel tagged me! Better do something about that then.
What was I doing 10 years ago?
Hm. Late May 1998… I may well have been trying not to cry. That would be when I was just starting my first permanent job – secretary/office manager in a small and really dysfunctional office. The first day or so was okay; the previous incumbent was still on hand to train me up (she was leaving on some world travelling thing or other). Then she got really sick and disappeared – and so did my boss, the financial director. So I was all alone in the office, and it was a pretty complicated job, and I was clueless. It got even worse when the FD came back and realised what a cock-up I was making and yelled at me. A lot. Oh, and just for added atmosphere, picture this: the office was decorated in the company’s colour scheme. Yellow and black. Really, really, really bright yellow. On all the walls. Yellow.
Yeah, great memory there. Thanks. Huh.
(Yes, it did improve. Althouth not a whole lot – which is why I quit 8 months later to move to Joburg and get into newspapers. So it was for the best really.)
Five things on my to-do list for today:
Well, the list is huge, but for today specifically? Let’s take a random sample.
Bookkeeping
Order yarn
Order other stuff
Blog
Watch Gilmore Girls and start new jumper
Ok, that last one may not technically be on the list. But I rather think it’s going to happen. Soon, if I have anything to do with it, and I think I do.
Snacks I enjoy
In the interests of brevity, I think I’m going to have to limit this to snacks I do not (much) enjoy:
Crisps (except South African Nik Naks, those are yummy)
Peanuts
…nope, that’s it. I’m a food girl. Sweet, savoury, it’s all good.
Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Build a vast commune somewhere in Switzerland with houses (separated by respectable distances) for all my best friends. Because dammit, having everyone I love best scattered all over the world is really not working for me. I want them with me. Maybe if I bribed them with houses we could finally spend some quality time together.
Alternative plan: kidnap them all and put them on a superyacht for years of hanging around on a boat together, with cocktails and (of course) yarn, hopping from place to place. Of course, I would only be able to live with myself if the yacht were solar-powered, so some of those billions would have to go to funding R&D of really efficient renewable energy technology.
Oh, and I’d also put a lot of money into building The Ultimate Knitting Company. Gorgeous yarn cafes in the best locations around the world, stocked with our own lines of yummy handpainted yarns (I’d get to oversee the creative process, putting colours together etc, but not dealing with any of the actual messy dyeing) and perfect knitting bags and so on. I’d have a crack team of brilliant staff making the whole thing run like a well-oiled machine, so my input could be restricted to designing colourways, bags and patterns. And finding more great suppliers. And hosting events where I could meet lots of lovely customers. But not the actual running of the business, cos that’s, like, way hard work, dude.
I think I might be having way too much fun with this question, seeing as I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to get those billions in the first place. Oh well. Next.
Places you have lived:
Cape Town. Sasolburg. Johannesburg. London. An awful lot of different addresses in each of those places, but it’s really a pretty limited selection. Next up: Zurich!
(That’s by way of signalling my intention to the universe. No real moving plans as yet, but it’s a goal.)
Okay then. Who do I want to know more about? Lessee…
Jill
Huan-Hua
Wanda
I’m going to leave it at that. Most of my small blogroll seems to have been tagged already.