Do you remember my post a few weeks ago about the doctor who was using the same syringe on more than one person?

Well, he’s gotten away with it.

Yip, the South African medical fraternity has done it again, and closed ranks completely!

Apparently, even though international practises dictate that it’s not the right thing to do, in this country, it’s apparently acceptable!

Yip, that’s right.  It’s apparently “not best practise, but it’s common practise” in this country to use the same syringe on more than one person, and just change the needle (according to the Health Practitioner’s Board and a medical aid company).

So, I ask you with tears in my eyes, are you AT ALL surprised at the HIV rates in Africa?  Because after this news, I’m not surprised at all!

I lost a little bit more faith in the ethical and moral standings of certain people this week, that’s for sure.

On Friday night at the Tweet-up, Laura and I were chatting to Louisa about meeting bloggers and how actually meeting people face-to-face makes such a difference in the way you read their blogs.

It’s always funny meeting people from your online world for the first time.  No matter how many photos they post of themselves, you always have a preconceived idea about what they look like and sound like.  I’m not scared of meeting online people anymore… like I was years ago.  All the BN meetings (a local baby forum) over the last 5 years have cured me of that for good!  But as Laura and I were both saying, for some reason, meeting bloggers feels slightly different.

Bloggers tend to put more of themselves into their blog posts than forum participants do.

You know when you meet a group of people for a braai or a lunch, the first half hour or so is spent catching up on latest developments in each other’s lives.  With bloggers that almost never happens… all the news is on their blogs.  There’s no need to rehash it, and in fact, re-hashing is such a schlepp for me now.  If you want to know what I’ve been doing, read my blog damnit!  Why do I have to tell you too?!

Anyhoo, back to my point… after meeting Louisa for the first time a few weeks ago and listening to the way she speaks and watching her facial expressions, I have become an avid follower of her blog.   I find it hillarious now, because as I’m reading I imagine her dry sense of humour, the lilt in her voice and her laugh as she’s writing her posts.

And on the subject of writing in your own space… I’ve been trying to get one of my colleagues to blog for months.  I know she reads Janet’s  and my blogs, but she never comments, yet she talks to us about what she’s read on them.  Well, I’m pleased to say that she’s started one finally!

Then today she floored me!  I asked her if she’d written a post yet and I helped her with hyperlinking.  She commented about how easy it seemed to be and then proceeded to tell me that she’d got told by someone that they didn’t think she should blog because she wasn’t technical enough!!

I hate that!  Blogging isn’t about technical stuff. It’s so easy to do.  You don’t have to be a wizz-kid to get it right… all you need is something to say!  It still makes me cross thinking about what she’d been told. And it makes me determined to help her in any way that I possibly can   LOL!  And anyway, she’s proven more than once in the last few months that she can be as technical (if not more) as the rest of the IT team!  But that’s besides the point… I’m sure she’ll love this world of blogging and find her spot to ramble on and vent and then maybe finally I’ll see some pics of her kids

I realised at a traffic light this morning, that I’d yet again forgotten to lock my car doors after dropping the kids off. And it got me thinking that I’m a bit strange…

I generally only realise that my car doors are unlocked when I’ve stopped at a traffic light and there are people loitering close by.

So what do I do… I wait until the hawker or beggar or whom ever walks away, before I lock the doors.

Weird hey? You would think that I would lock immediately, but no, I feel embarrassed to do it with them right there. It’s an admission that I distrust them, and I think that’s rude.

So instead, I risk a smash and grab, and I would rather watch them until they’re far enough away from the car for them not to hear the car locking.

LOL! I know… I’m strange.

… it was AK47′s afterall!
A friend sent us an email with an extract to an Afrikaans newspaper with the story
A shopping centre very close to us was held up by 20 armed men. No wonder there was a lot of shots!!
From the sounds of it, the shots we heard were those fired when the perps ran away seemingly along the river area.

Here’s a link to the article... it’s in Afrikaans only I’m afraid

Last night Lance and I woke up to the sounds of gunshots.

Before all you non-SA people lift your eyebrows… it doesn’t happen often in my neighbourhood… which is why we woke up.

Last night, however, it sounded closer than I’ve ever heard them.  First we heard screaming.  Then we heard shots.  It was definitely from 2 different guns, they sounded very different.  And it must’ve been very close for us to have heard the screams.  And then the shots were on the move… the sounds came closer to our house… and then further away.

Lance and I were chatting about it this morning and we both feel that the strangest thing of all was that there were no police sirens AT ALL!  Weird.

They must’ve been called by people living closer to the noise.  But who knows if they ever arrived?!  I suppose I’ll have to wait for the next email from the neighbourhood watch people to see wha was going on.  If it had happened closer to us, we would have phoned the neighbourhood security and the police but we didn’t because we had no idea where the sound was coming from and we weren’t going to take a chance and go looking for it (but nothing and no-one came down our road).

My MIL phoned this afternoon though, to tell us that a friend of hers heard on the radio that there was a shootout last night in our area with AK47′s, but I can’t find any news on the net about it.

Very strange.  And so tonight, our garden alarm beams went on extra early and Lance says he’s not going to sleep well (I always sleep well ).

A friend sent me a reply to an email earlier this week, and this sentence was part of her message to me.  I’m going to make it my mantra!  I just love it.

Working from your purest self will always win out, even if it’s scary.

I worked late last night, very late in fact. If you follow me on Twitter or Plurk, you’d know that I was at work until very late. I only got home at 00h20 in fact! It was a very long day.

Let me explain why I think I’m lucky…
I left the office at around 23h40 and had to walk to my car. In our building it generally takes me around 10 minutes to get to my car… and I walk FAST (ask any one of my friends how fast I walk). I have to go through the rabbit’s warren of the office building, and then through an underground parking garage to another garage and then up 8 floors in a lift to my car. Then I wind my way down the 8 floors to get to the booms, and under another building to finally get to the road… where there’s a robot… a very slow robot at that time of night.
Oh and, I must add, I saw none of the usual security guards in the parkade last night.

So, in my wisdom, I decided not to wait at the robot for it to turn green. I just made sure there were no cars close by, and I got onto the main road and travelled home. And I got home safely.

Then this morning, a colleague of mine tell me that his wife phoned him at 11h50 to say that someone was knocking on their door and crying. She was too scared to open, and wanted him to come home (he was still at the office). But he told her that she must be dreaming, that their block is safe.
When he finally got stopped at the complex gate half an hour late, there were loads of cops etc around. And the reason…
His neighbour was high-jacked while entering the complex and the guards were held up too. Thankfully no-one was hurt. OMG!

Now, my colleague lives one apartment building away from that VERY SLOW robot!!

Thank God I decided not to stop! Or else, it could have been me!

My little fearless warrior son, Connor, is afraid of one thing in this world. And that’s cats!

I thought about this the other day when someone on a mothers forum posted a question asking what your child is scared of. He’s definitely not afraid of heights or speed or anything like that… in fact the more dangerous the better for him. In fact, he’s already trying to walk down staircases (ie not backwards or on his bum) – bear in mind he’s only 16 months old!

But cats, that’s a no no.

He just has to see one to start screaming. LOL! And I think I’m making it worse because I’ve started feeding a stray cat that’s decided our garden is a haven. Everytime he sees it he screams and runs for cover.
The cat of course, is not interested at all, which is typical. LOL!

It’s so bad, that the other evening we were watching a program on TV and a home video of a cat came on… he screamed and performed so much that we had to change the channel!

LOL! Hope he grows out of it soon

If you want something light and fluffy to read, go to my photoblog rather (I’ve posted about Connor there today). Here however, is a different story. I feel the need to vent a bit about everything I got told today about the Xenophobia raging in Jozi.

I was quite right, yesterday, when I said that Beauty would probably be affected. She told me that they’ve been locking themselves in their flat and not going out, just in case they get attacked and harrassed. It’s really not a funny situation to be in. She’s South African. This is not only affecting the foreigners.
She was saying that groups of youths are roaming the streets in the CBD and asking random people to show their ID books to prove that they’re South African. If you don’t have it on you, you get beaten up and everything gets taken from you.
That reminds me of the Apartheid era with the pass books that the blacks had to carry on them. It blows my mind, really it does.
I’m particularly worried about her sons. They’re 18 and 16 years of age, and although they’ve applied for ID books, they’re still waiting for them. That’s damn scary!

Beauty was also saying that these groups know which shops are owned by foreigners, and they were looting a cell phone shop yesterday which is owned by a indian man!! And apparently yesterday some chinese and indian people were also attacked.

On top of worrying about her sons, Beauty’s husband didn’t come home last night. He chose to stay with family close to where he works; because people were being pulled out of taxi’s at the one taxi rank that he passes through on the way home.

It’s all just very worrying.

Elaine told me this evening, that a student friend of hers from Zimbabwe who is in res at the Varsity has got permission for her mom and baby sister to stay with her tonight.

My dad was saying that a colleague of his was saying that 3 bus loads of Zulus were bussed into the township he stays in. 5 minutes later the violence started there. That’s just damn frightening. And the question just has to get asked… who is orchestrating this? Is a group behind this? And if so, who are they?

Everyone is wondering when the army is going to be called to sort the situation out. In fact, even Beauty this morning said that she’d heard they were going to be called in, and she was happy about it.
But I doubt that’ll happen, unless it gets far worse.
We had a talk on our off-site last week by Roy Anderson who was one of the founders of Business Against Crime. He’s also a General in the army. He was saying something, that for the first time, made sense to me. He was asked whether the army would be used to sort out the crime. His answer was no. One of the biggest reasons he stated was that the army was used during Apartheid to oppress the people. And to the current regime, those uniforms are a symbol of oppression. They don’t want that to happen ever again. Makes sense, but still!

So, as citizens we all sit waiting in our homes. Waiting to see who is going to sort this mess out! It’s just not fair. Either people are running for their lives, or we’re holed up in our houses like prisoners. This is no way to live.

I just have to post about this, as a follow-up to my post about the squatter camp kangeroo courts on my photoblog a few months ago (which is incidentally one of my most viewed pages on my blog now).

Today, Beyers Naude Dr was closed to traffic. Yip, that’s the road I took the photos from. And the reason? Xenophobic violence.
In the last week or so, Alexandra has been rife with Xenophobic attacks on foreigners living there. There have been quite a few deaths as well. Well, this weekend, it spilled over into the other townships and into the CBD.

And to think… I drove past that spot yesterday on my way home from the off-site. It looked very peaceful then. It’s incredible how quickly it’s changed.

I hope Beauty has been OK this weekend, I’ll find out tomorrow morning when she comes to work. She lives in an area which is full of immigrants from other African countries.