Burning The Midnight Oil (Happy New Year)

It's New Year's Eve. I'll be giving 2011 the nod at a braai* at a friend's place in the suburbs of the good old Mother City.
 

So many people take this night for granted. To be able to celebrate with loved ones at their side until they salute the sun as it dawns on a new year; to laze around the next day recovering from the night before.

Engineers are in the group of people who routinely work during the holidays. One may argue that you're not a real engineer if you've never worked on Christmas, Easter or New Year's. It's usually the only time that plants shut down long enough for major maintenance or installations to happen. And someone's got to do it, and get the place running again in time for the first production of the new year; Engineers are always at the helm of it.

I was lucky enough to only have to work through the holidays once; I guess I wasn't a real engineer for very long. A few years back I returned to work in Boksburg straight after Christmas. Two projects of mine were being completed and the equipment was finally being installed over Christmas break. I was the process engineer on the team and had to hang around until the end for the wet commissioning and start-up. With the ever-tightening project schedule, and the ever-dwindling laundry powder stocks, we commissioned on New Year's Day. The installation team called it quits at noon on New Year's Eve so at least we could all have our low key celebrations. And we found ourselves back at the plant the next day when half the nation was probably still sobering up and making their way home from the night before.

There were engineers on the maintenance team who were doing this for the tenth year or more. They did the same during Easter break and somehow their families had just adjusted. It wasn't that bad. It felt good to work on something so important that I had to sacrifice my New Year's, my holidays... but I didn't want to do it again.

This year my boyfriend, an emergency room doctor, was working at a private hospital in Gauteng** throughout January,  starting on 1 Jan at 8am. He caught a flight at midday on New Year's Eve; midnight ticked past with him asleep at a guesthouse in Vereeniging, a small town that exists mainly to house the brains and workforce behind the nearby steel and petrochemical plants. We had a faux New Year's Eve "party" on New Year's Eve-Eve.

Of course he was working at his regular post that night so we had it in the Casualty Doctors' tea room at a hospital in Manenburg on the Cape Flats. At 23:30 I was still sitting at the Doctors' table in the middle of the emergency ward.  While he and his colleagues worked, I  watched a drunk patient get tangled in his drip as he tried to disembark his gurney. We had a  New Year's kiss at faux New Year's midnight in the tea room, popped our faux bubbly with his two colleagues and ate our finger-food: they returned to work and I went home.

I spent the real New Year's Eve with family but it wasn't the same. The first New Year's Eve in ten years that we'd spent apart. I didn't even get to call him at midnight.

So tonight I will toast to all the people keeping society afloat while the rest of us party like it's 1999: the doctors, nurses, policemen, firemen, engineers, waiters, petrol attendants and Engen-Woolies cashiers... Even the accountants slaving away to close their books for year end.

Happy New Year everyone!!

*"braai" is a South African colloquialism for barbeque
** Gauteng (meaning "Place of Gold") is one of nine provinces of South Africa; the economic hub and home to the City of Johannesburg

Images:
New Year's Eve Ann Miller

Carnivals and Car Parks

It's been about two weeks since my office Christmas party with The Bank. (Are we allowed to call it "Christmas party" anymore?) This year we had it at a Portuguese restaurant at a well-known, trendy casino complex in Johannesburg. Last year it was at a fancy steak-house in a newer, lesser known but no less trendy casino-complex. It just struck me today how these parties are worlds away from those I endured before I left Manufacturing.

The first year was the probably the worst. I was still in Durban, working at a soap and hygiene products factory. I had heard from my head office counterparts on the grad program that they would be attending a Rio Carnivale-themed party at the Durban ICC. At first I waited patiently for an invite. Then it dawned on me that the Wharf Rats (that's what factory people were "affectionately" nicknamed since the plant was at the harbour) were not en route to Rio. Fair enough. Maybe the factory team would have a kick-ass party of our own?

 

 A few days later the invite arrived in my inbox. The glamorous venue?  The factory car park. The dream theme? Mid-day humidity. I kid you not. I almost changed my flight to leave for Cape Town before the damn thing. The organisers tried to make it suave. A marquee, some draping, table decor. But come on! The car park? In Durban Summer heat no less! And in his speech, the factory manager put the cherry on top my slamming my team (factory planning) for nearly jeopardising his efficiencies (with our insistence that they stop producing stuff that was already overstocked!).

A year later and I had moved  and was looking forward to a better party at the Boksburg washing powder plant. I'd heard of the legendary, rocking year-end parties... Great venues, big budget, partners welcome, dinner, dancing, drinking!

As it turns out a new factory manager had relocated there just before I had. 

An accountant. 

I'm not saying she was to blame for it, but guess where we had our Christmas party that year? No, not a marquee in the car park. They wouldn't dream of that! No... 

But they would sadden my reality with a marquee in the big powder-covered field at the back of the plant. Known as the "North Yard", it was basically a storage area for waste bins, scrapped equipment and bags of powder waiting to be re-worked. Oh and it was adjacent to the effluent-overflow dam. Glam, glam, glam, yes? 

And I can only assume this new tradition served the budget targets so well that it stuck year after year with the only change being the ever deteriorating menu and decor. In fact the year before I left for the margarine plant next door we waited about forty-five minutes for our food, eventually queued up to collect our Nando's quarter chicken and Coke and ate at tables covered with newspaper. The pages on my table happened to be the Vacancies section. 

Subtle sign from the gods? I thought so. That was my last Christmas party with that team!

MB-Eish Part 4: Deadline Detox

**"Eish" is a South African slang term expressing surprise, dismay, anger or frustration.**

As I mentioned last year, I have joined the droves of engineers who have sold out to the dark side: Banking. To make myself more comfortable in my new, murky surrounds I have decided to do an MBA part-time. This is the fourth in a series of posts about my MBA experience.

Firstly, allow me to apologize (yet again) for breaking my promise to blog regularly. I have committed the cardinal blogging sin of letting life get in the way instead of letting it be material. Unfortunately between work, business travel, MBA and all the rest I have been mentally curled into the foetal position just trying to get by with my sanity intact. And I was afraid that blogging would draw my attention to just how crazy things were.

A few days ago I handed in my last MBA assignment for the year. All through the last two months of finals, mid-terms, assignments and work deadlines I have been dreaming of that day. Deadline free! I've been daydreaming of all the books I could read, the movies I could watch, the shopping I could do, the decor projects I could finish, the days at the beach, the guilt-free time with friends through out the Summer.... and four days into this bliss...

...I'm bored out of my freaking skull!!

No deadlines, no drama, no adrenaline, no reason to stay up into the wee hours, no post-exam or post-hand-in rush! Just free time. Endless amounts of time. I find myself flipping through the TV channels aimlessly, uninspired to do any of the things I have been fantasizing about during the many hours of procrastinating that I've indulged in since September.

I've realised that I must be suffering from a rare workaholic disorder which I have dubbed: DDD

Deadline Detox Depression.

Symptoms include staring at the walls for hours, walking aimlessly around your living room in slippers and losing interest in activities that you normally enjoy while practicing work-avoidance behaviour.

And with Christmas, New Year and summer holidays looming there is not a deadline fix in sight!! How am I going to survive all this lying around?

                           Dear Santa


                           Please can I have a purpose for Christmas? 
                           I've been really nice, I swear.


                           Yours in hope,
                           Femgineer

Sleepless in Cape Town

I can't sleep. 

 Maybe it's because I've been getting by with four hours sleep lately. Suddenly presented with a night with no deadlines, no looming exam to cram for, no early morning flight... in fact nothing but nine hours up for grabs for slumber my body has like stage fright or something. My brain has swallowed its own off-button. I've always been terrible at mornings and fantastic at nights though. It’s amazing that I've managed to build any career at all up to now considering my brain usually only warms up around 6pm. 

A few years back I was working as a process engineer at a washing powder plant in Gauteng. I'd been at that plant for about a year. It was May (I think) and annual wage negotiations between management and the union had begun. (Insert announcer voice: "Let's get ready to rrrrrumble".) 

 

Apparently negotiations are always a bit of a dance -  a few steps forward, a few steps back, give a little, take a little - but this time the dancers on either side were not even agreeing on the song. And then there was a strike. A long strike. 

Engineers, managers, accountants, planners, secretaries... we got our hands dirty to run the plant. To keep South Africa's laundry clean (ok it would still have been cleaned but with competitors' products).  

 Most people had to be begged and cajoled into signing up for night shift to keep the plant going 24/7 but a similarly nocturnally inclined friend and I rushed to put our names down for indefinite night shifts.  This was one time in my life that my working hours were truly aligned with my inner clock. It was easily one of the most blissful two weeks of my life (until it suddenly wasn’t, but that’s a post for another day).  

I would leave home just before sunset. I felt so focused, so mentally sharp at work - which sadly hardly happens while the sun is out, seriously. For some reason working at night didn't feel that much like work. I would get home after each shift at 7am, take off my safety boots and dusty jeans, eat Cinnamon and Apple Oat-So-Easy and collapse on my couch. I can still remember it clearly… The Autumn sun shining through the blinds, the sound of people leaving for work, and then eventually the silence of the day. I found it easier to sleep during the day than I normally did at night (I still do); fading into blissful sleep thinking of all the normal people slogging away at work.

 Unfortunately most jobs that I could do at night are either dodgy or dead-ends. *sigh*

MB-Eish Part 3: This is the blogging equivalent of drunk-dialling

**"Eish" is a South African slang term expressing surprise, dismay, anger or frustration.**

As I mentioned last year, I have joined the droves of engineers who have sold out to the dark side: Banking. To make myself more comfortable in my new, murky surrounds I have decided to do an MBA part-time. This is the third in a series of posts about my MBA experience.  


I am less than 36 hours away from my MBA first exam (if you don’t count major assignments). I am a PROcrastinator. This is a little known fact because I am also an over-achiever. This is a tragic combination. Anyway, in true PROcrastinator style, I have recently become very dedicated to my day job again choosing to spend my evenings reading email and being a diligent employee instead of studying. Tonight I decided that it was very important to cook dinner for my boyfriend even though I haven’t switched on a stove in six months. I have vowed to spend the night studying and yet here I am writing a post. I suspect I am underestimating the work involved because the course is Human Resources. I am probably in denial of just how much sewerage I am in.

I am really high on Red Bull right now and thought it might be interesting to blog about my all-nighter. (To be a blogger you have to believe that the mundane details of your life are actually interesting to others, even though subconsciously you know they are not).  It might be a short post if I decide to just avoid this ugliness and find a way to sleep through the Red Bull effect. I won’t hold it against you if you decide not to read this whole post.

 23:34 Just downloaded all the lecture notes and decided that I deserve a study break. Watching The Late Show with David Letterman. Need to get through five sessions’ worth of material before tomorrow if I am to have a hope in hell. Crap. I am going to bed at 5am.

23:58 Got a bit distracted by some Latino lady on Letterman dressing pet rats up in tuxedos! Read the exam requirements and am now freaked out. I should’ve started prepping for this thing ages ago like I planned to. Time for another break.

00:05 How much studying can I cram in before the 00:50 Oprah re-run of a re-run of a re-run?

00:54 Have read one set of lecture notes. The notes do not say much. I am so screwed. Re-run of Oprah Finale Part 1. Haven’t seen it before but am so over these sobs stories. *switches to Ellen* Time for Lecture 2.

01:10 Freecell. I am an addict.

01:29 Chowed Lecture 2’s notes. I have not read any case studies yet. *sigh* I did win my Freecell game though. One cannot have genius in all areas. Break!

01:37 Does your company have a high performance culture? One of the symptoms is that you have no personal life. Favourite Devil Wears Prada lines:

Andrea: My personal life is falling apart.

Nigel: That's what happens when you start doing well at work. Let me know when your entire life goes up in smoke: then it's time for a promotion.

Do you think I can quote that in my exam as a side effect of high performance culture? How would one reference that?

02:00 Why did I let my beau take the last two Red Bulls to work with him? Time for ice-cream perhaps? I am fading but third session’s notes done and dusted. Perhaps I should go to sleep. How hard can it be to waffle through an HR exam? *Inner Slacker vs Inner Over-Achiever arm-wrestle* Break!   

02:30 Inner Over-Achiever won. She started chirping about "fear of failure" and Inner Slacker just buckled. Session 4 notes klaar. Unfortunately I have purely scratched the surface so far. Going to have to spend some quality time with some literature. Can’t I write Stats on Saturday instead? Oh flip, not “Saturday”... “tomorrow”! *fighting off the panic*

02:34 Wow, some of these Idols contestants are so deluded! ROFL...

03:12 Have just sped through half the course notes and still have a pile of articles. I guess I won’t be having a rocking Friday night. Tomorrow will definitely be all about the coffee. *sigh*

Why do I have a feeling I will regret posting this when I am less sleep-deprived?






Images: 

Red bull

Devil Wear Prada

Arm wrestling

Coffee

   

Professional Nomad

Health Warning: The following post contains traces of self-pity, melodrama and cynicism. If you cannot stomach any of the above please click here and don't read this blog anymore.

Today I felt homeless! I was on a business trip and I woke up in my hotel this morning feeling miserably ill. Had I been home I would've stayed in bed, called in sick and watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians but I came into work purely because I had no bed beyond 10am check-out time; Hence the feeling of homelessness.

This is the un-glamorous side of business travel. For the last year and a bit I have traveled for work every week barring those weeks when I was on leave or attending lectures; Mostly to Johannesburg but also to other parts of South Africa.   Hotel and guest-house receptionists across the country know me by name. I have slept in more hotel room beds than a high-class call-girl. I have formed a bigger carbon footprint than Swaziland has as a country. I have spent more time talking to Anthony, the Europcar guy who carries my bags to my rental every week, than I have talking to my dad. 
 

Yes. I know the Europcar guy's name. I know that he took leave in October. I know which suburb he lives in. I know that there was a drive-by shooting at the house down the street from his house a month ago and he slipped and fell while trying to run inside. I know way too much about Anthony the Europcar guy because I see him every freaking week! To make matters more complex, I have two cats that have to be shuttled around to their cat-sitter (read “my boyfriend”) when I’m away. Throw in the common relationship issue of “your place or mine” and I pretty much end up living out of my hand luggage 24/7.  I'm just a nomad in a cuter outfit than that desert get-up.

The conundrum is that the more I travel the better I do at my job, but the more my personal life suffers. When I spend more nights at home I find myself out of the loop with work, but my relationship flourishes. I’m building a career in one city and a life in another while living out of two homes and multiple hotels. When I’m in Cape Town I miss my Johannesburg friends and when I’m in Johannesburg I miss my beau and my Cape Town crowd. My life feels like a Rubik’s cube that I cannot solve; Snippets of brilliance scattered all over the show and just not coming together. *whine*  

  

MB-Eish Part 2: Femgineer, tamed

**"Eish" is a South African slang term expressing surprise, dismay, anger or frustration.**

As I mentioned last year, I have joined the droves of engineers who have sold out to the dark side: Banking. To make myself more comfortable in my new, murky surrounds I have decided to do an MBA part-time. This is the second in a series of posts about my MBA experience.

I'm too tired to think.

Please do not have high expectations of being entertained as you read this post. I am suffering from an acute case of “sense-of-humour-failure”. There is no cynical point to be made with tongue deeply lodged in cheek. There are no quirky femgineering stories to share. There are no cutesy jibes at engineering jargon or Banking boredom. There is only exhaustion. If you’re a true fan you will keep reading anyway in the hope that this may get interesting. I apologise in advance if you are disappointed. There will be better posts again one day I’m sure...

Last weekend I watched a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew at Maynardville open air theatre. (It’s one of those la-di-da Southern Suburbs Capetonian things I like to be part of every year.) If you've never watched the play the plot goes roughly like this: man marries feisty woman for her father's money. Man tortures feisty woman into tame submission through sleep deprivation, starvation and subtle humiliation. Woman finally submits and conforms to her husband’s - and society’s - expectations of her.

After what feels like a year at business school (but in reality is only 21 days), I can relate to this tale of torture. I've been at business school for nearly three weeks now. Emotionally, physically and mentally-speaking the fuel light is on. And I have the distinct feeling that I am being squeezed, pushed and prodded into tame submission by the school. (Warning: expect this blog to take on a different tone as the brainwashing ensues.)

In my first week I was forced to run.

Let's just pause there. Who enrolls at business school to run? To run around outdoors in the sun? To climb cargo nets and leopard-crawl through pipes? To pretend to like it? Apparently I do! In the name of “team building” with my syndicate group and greater MBA class, I put on my Summer Camp Face for a week. Being cheerful is draining in and of itself. Being cheerful while running? Grueling.

I was relieved when lectures began. Temporarily relieved. I expected to sit and listen, ask the occasional intelligent question and engage in the odd debate. But alas! There were classes purely built around digging into memories, emotions, values... and sharing them with people I’d known for less than two weeks. Once again, draining!

Adding to the fatigue, I've been doing work for The Bank - after hours, before class and during lunch - and trying to keep my head above the sea of MBA readings swelling up around me. Three weeks down the line I have had too many nights with minimal sleep, on average four hours. I have abandoned all efforts to eat healthily and have gravitated to my drug of choice: potato chips (“crisps” for the international audience). I could sleep for a week.

That is just the physical side. To get where I'm coming from emotionally and mentally, I need you to use your imagination. Imagine for a minute a world where play dough has feelings. Now imagine that play dough in the hands of a bouncy, bumbling brat. Imagine how that play dough would feel being pulled apart, stretched to breaking point, and squashed in that brat's sticky hands. Emotionally and intellectually I feel like play dough. As this first module draws to a close I feel like a half-formed creation molded by sticky academic hands – my brains hanging by a thread and my heart somewhere around my toes.

But for now... Best that I get on with panel-beating the dents out of my Game Face and catching up on sleep before I get back to work.

PPE Part 3: If you thought bras were bad...

PPE stands for Personal Protection Equipment (and Philosophy, Politics and Economics, but not on this blog). PPE, as the name suggests, is meant to protect you from injury and long-term damage to your senses as a result of exposure to operational health and safety risks. As a female engineer, it also protects you from flattery and compliments, and can cause long-term damage to your sense of femininity and style if you're not vigilant. This is part 3 in a series of posts dedicated to the joys of wearing PPE.

Black leather stilettos.

These are the first of my mother’s shoes that I remember trying on as a little girl. Well I remember them as stilettos - probably because I couldn't walk in them – but maybe they were just heels. She was a grade 1 teacher with a modest sense of style; her shoe collection was a conservative display of mostly black and navy blue heels... But I thought they were so glamorous! I'd see her dressed for work every morning in a dress or a skirt and heels - all lady-like - and I'd daydream of the day that that would be me.

Fast-forward a few years to my first real job.

I was a production planner at a factory. I thought I was avoiding the beaten path by going into Supply Chain rather than an engineering role. Naively, I also thought this was my turn to wear "glamorous" clothes and footwear. But the flaw in the plan was that I was still based at a factory...

And walking through a factory is to your feet as facing a fast bowler is to a batsman's balls: they stand to get hurt without protection.

So I got issued with my very first pair of safety shoes and I wore them whenever I entered the plant. They were hideous. They resembled Toughees (boys’ school shoes). They nearly scarred me for life. A few weeks later I got a pair of the funkier variety that made a feeble attempt to look like sneakers. At least they looked better than the "Toughees" but they were still uncomfortable and un-stylish.

A year later I took on an engineering role at another plant and things just got worse.

My new plant's safety department did not acknowledge my pseudo-sneakers as safe enough! I had to switch to Bovas: hard core, kick-your-shins-in-with-these-if-you-mess-with-me, steel-toed boots. Bovas are designed to withstand ridiculous tonnages of heavy things that could fall on your feet. The idea being that the steel toe protects the most vulnerable part of your foot, and if you have an incident your toes will break... and not break right off.

Walking with safety boots on is like walking through water with weights around your ankles. Also, they also have zero cushioning inside so in essence it feels like your feet are strapped to a pair of bricks. At first I tried to wear them only when required but as a process engineer in production support, I lived in the plant! So to avoid switching shoes ten times a day, I got over my vanity and the discomfort. After a while I got so “comfortable” being uncomfortable, and being seen in safety boots, that I wore them home in the evenings. And to work in the morning. And - horror of horrors - even to the mall during lunch or after hours. Of course it helped that I lived in Boksburg where the only people who knew me were fellow engineers...

In a nutshell, safety boots are to feet as bras are to breasts: necessary but terribly stifling even if they fit well. I wonder what most femgineers take off first when they get home: bra or safety boots? Naturally, the effect is worse in Summer. But one cannot expect to trot about a manufacturing plant in pink strappy sandals, now can you?

Consolatory PPE Perks: (1) Shoe preservation and appreciation – By wearing your safety boots to work every day, your ordinary pretty, feminine shoes last much longer and you find yourself utterly delighted and appreciative when you do get to wear them. (2) Pseudo-wellies – Safety boots are great in rainy weather. They are water-proof and have thick soles which make you taller, so your pants never drag on the floor and get wet.

Alternative uses: Image management tool – When people see an engineer at a factory walking around in the office area in ordinary shoes, they unconsciously assume that the engineer in question is not hands-on enough. After some time I cottoned onto this and started wearing my safety boots with pride - the dirtier the better. Dirty safety boots project the idea that you are working hard. So do dirty jeans. Complement this by consistently carrying a notebook around under your arm, and you’re golden.

MB-Eish Part 1: Hoops

**"Eish" is a South African slang term expressing surprise, dismay, anger or frustration.



This is the first in a series of posts about my MBA experience. Of course, from what I've heard about the pressures that this course brings my blog may not be updated again for about two years, so I'd better make this post good. And you'd better read it slowly.



As I mentioned last year, I have joined the droves of engineers who have sold out to the dark side:



Banking.



To make myself more comfortable in my new, murky surrounds I have decided to do an MBA part-time. I admit this is becoming cliché for engineers, and I hate clichés. But here I am, clambering onto the bandwagon anyway and preparing for an exhausting but exciting ride. The program starts tomorrow but the torture started last year...



In October I started the process of trying to get in.

Chinese Olympic gymnasts have jumped through fewer hoops! Entrance test, monstrous application forms, essays and an interview. And then of course the loooong wait to hear the good or bad news.



First came the GMAT. A four-hour test designed to obliterate self-esteem, make you doubt your own intelligence and question your desire to do an MBA in the first place. Computer-based with thirty-odd Maths Olympiad type MCQ’s (and no calculator) with about 2 minutes per question, followed by about fifty grammar questions with about a minute each to answer. And all of this takes place under full camera supervision with biometric scans of your palm before and after the test and breaks. Did I mention it costs US$ 750 to endure this? Brave, arrogant and stubborn as I am - against all advice - I left a week to prepare and booked the test date just before applications closed. Luckily a preparation (spoon-feeding) course offered by the business school dragged me to success. Well, that and six late nights straight.



Second, there was the tree-killer of an application form. Urgh! I won't bore you with the details, but the most inconvenient thing was that it involved introspection. "How are you going to handle your family obligations during the program?", "What are your goals in life and how do your work goals support them?"... Everything short of "How are you going to end world hunger, cure AIDS and bring about world peace?"



And then the interview... This was the most painless part I guess. More like a chat over a cup of coffee.



Then waiting...



And more waiting...



And more waiting...



I started calling admissions every few days. I felt like the girl who'd gone on a fabulous date and then the bad-boy, emotionally withholding-type guy didn't call - desperate, rejected and needy.



Just when I'd decided that I was better off not studying this year, I got the "Congratulations, well done..." letter. And that is right about when the panic set in! As in, "Oh crap! What have I signed up for?" .



A week later I collected my reading material. Yes, sir. Yes, sir two bags full... of textbooks, and an unsuspecting little flash drive.



After Christmas I opened the flash. It should've been labeled "Pandora's" because my, oh my, were there some nasty surprises on there. More than 600 pages of readings!! I then spent my last week of annual leave in a reading frenzy and on a speed-reading workshop trying to get a head start. There were even two assignments due before classes start!



Well, there’s no turning back now. And all the other overalls-turned-suits tell me they realised during the course that engineers have superior intellect anyway and can cruise through an MBA like a ten year old through Grade 1.



Just kidding!



(Ok, the engineers know I’m not kidding *grin*)

Mea Culpa

Readers, forgive me for I have sinned.

I have been a bad, bad blogger. I have let life get in the way and neglected by bloggerly duties. For this I am truly sorry. Please post any suggestions for my penance in the comments field.

But it is a new year! Among other New Years’ resolutions, I have promised myself that I will blog every week!

Yes, I realise the first three weeks have already passed post-less… Be that as it may, here I am… typing away, trying to think of witty things to say.

Anyhooo… Here’s to an eventful year full of new material, and to making time to rummage through my memories for “old” material.