I Didn't Quite Catch That......

I have discovered something slightly odd....when one develops a cold, people can't understand you, even though you are speaking english. It's like your congested nasal passages translates everything that comes out of your mouth into Russian. Or Ukrainian. Even though you are speaking a language that is spoken worldwide, and one that you speak every day, suddenly no-one can understand a word you are saying!

A good example would be a phone call that I had to make recently. I had to contact a call centre for product support. Unfortunately this call centre was in India, and the call centre agent's first language was not english, so I was in trouble from the opening line:

Call Centre Agent: Welcome to ***** Product Support, how may I help you?

Me: Hi, this is Adrian. I'm having issues with my ***** product. (That is what I said, but he heard "askd, haskrhahf, aioeurhasijijpanufea.)

CCA: I'm sorry Sir, please be repeating that?

Me: I said by dame ish Adrian. I'b having problems with by ***** product.

CCA: Okay Sir, what problems are you experiencing?

Me: I can't ushe the **** function. It keepsh (sniff) crashing. And when I (sniff, cough, snort) click on the (chesty cough) troubleshooting option, it (launches into coughing fit).....

CCA: I'm sorry Sir, I am not understanding the problem.

Me: I said I askrjh hfaioejnfaso fpadjkfsnajhod ap[osjkdfias!

CCA: I'm going to be putting you through to my manager Sir, please be holding....

Call cuts out

So, I got nowhere for two reasons, first I was coughing, sniffing, dying in his ear, so he was probably distracted. Second, I was doing my best to speak english but ended up just speaking snot. So his comment about putting me through to his manager was probably his excuse for dropping the call and then phoning the Centre for Disease control to report a case of Ebola.

Hopefully the cold meds will restore some semblance of spoken language to me, so that people don't look at me like I'm brain damaged when I talk. Either that or it will knock me out, leaving me drooling on my desk and thus unable to confuse people further. Seems that I just can't win!

A Day in the Life of a Baby

I woke up around 05:30 this morning and realised that I peed myself again. My lack of bladder control frustrates me, but I will master it! Decided to let Mom know I'm awake. I sent out a few verbal queues, but they went unheard, so I started kicking the crib. That achieved the desired effect. She changed my diaper and put me back in my crib with my bottle while she goes to the bathroom to stand under a mysterious stream of water that shoots from the wall. This will not do. I find that I cannot escape the crib, no matter how hard I try. After she has dressed, she puts me in my feeding chair for breakfast. I am still not sure what she's feeding me, but it's not too bad so I tolerate it. She is drinking something black that smells interesting, but refuses to share it with me. Not to worry, I'll sneak in a sip when she is not looking. I've already learned to snatch things from her plate when her attention is elsewhere, so sampling this interesting beverage is only a matter of time!

After breakfast, I am put in front of a PC with a DVD playing while Mom works. The DVD is interesting, so I don't mind too much. At some point I get bored though, and I have to let Mom know that I require alternate entertainment. She will place me in my baby gym, and I will be entertained for a short time. But I feel this is not enough. I can tolerate this on most days, but on other days I need to sit on her lap and have her undivided attention. This work thing can wait. I am quite sure that I am more important. After her work ends, we have lunch, and then it is time for my beauty sleep, or a nap, as Mom calls it. After my nap, Daddy usually comes home from work (yes, he does it too) and I bring him up to speed on the day's events.

I find it quite frustrating that my verbal communication is so ineffective. I spell things out quite clearly, but they seem not to understand a word I am saying. I've also had to modify my crying a few times in order to get their attention. I suspect I will have to stoop to their level and use the language that they use in order to communicate effectively.

I find crawling quite a challenge. It would appear that my arms and legs are determined to disobey me. I try to move forward, but almost always end up flat on my face, much to the amusement of my parents. Well, I will prove to them that I can rise to this challenge! I will be the one laughing one of these days!

Eventually, at the end of the day, after a bath and dinner, it is time to go to sleep. As I lay here in my crib, thinking through the events of today, I feel that progress is being made. And even though they frustrate me, and fail to understand a single thing I say, I find I still love both my Mommy and my Daddy......

The Cute and the Furious

Our little angel is growing up so quickly! Every day she delights us with her development. She laughs, figures things out, thinks for herself and continues to astound us with her intelligence. We love her to absolute bits, even if she does leave us a very stinky surprise every day. But last night something very different happened. At first we thought something was wrong. We had been entertaining her for about an hour or so, then we lay her down on the bed to prepare her bottle. She started screaming and flailing about. So we picked her up to check that all was well, and she was all smiles. Later when we put her down again, the same thing happened. I believe our little angel has just entered a new phase......

I have classified last night's scream as Tantrum Cry 1.0 (TM). She was......displeased about us putting her down, and let us know it in no uncertain terms! I think she was also quite frustrated about the fact that we didn't immediately catch on to the fact that she was angry at us. No, we did the new parent thing and immediately assumed something was wrong. We were convinced that something had bitten her, or her gums were bugging her, or she sensed that she lived in the same universe as Justin Bieber. Only a bit later, after some experimenting, did we realise that nothing was wrong, Her Royal Babyness just didn't want to be put to bed. I feel that the battle of the wills is starting. She will want to do what she wants to do, and we will want to do what we know is best for her. Because of her intelligence though I am convinced that she will start plotting revenge. She might drop a toy where we need to walk. In the middle of the night. Barefoot. With all the lights off. Or chew her cookies into a pulp and mash it into our bedsheets. As the saying goes "Revenge is a dish best served cold" or in her case, it might be a dish filled with baby puree that she can rub into our clothing.

I Told You So!

My lovely companion and I really look forward to a very special occasion every year......our cell phone upgrades. She, predictably, went for the latest Samsung Galaxy, whereas I decided to stick with Nokia. I like Nokia a lot. It's always been beautifully designed, and very dependable. Up until now. I decided to get myself a Nokia Lumia 920. Now I spend most of my days doing this...

This phone causes me a lot of headaches! There are times where I want to answer it, and it has just decided "No, you may not!" and refuses to let me pick up the call. Other times I turn on the internet or connect it to the wi-fi and it just locks up completely, for no reason other than to piss me off. And, being a Lumia, it has a fixed battery, so you can't even take that out to reset it. Thankfully, Google rescued me (and the freaking phone). I now know how to do a reset. And this phone does this for one simple reason, it runs Windows. They should've given me a keypad that slides out the bottom with just 3 buttons on it; Ctrl+Alt+Del. That would've made my life so much easier!

But, it is a well designed phone. And apart from its inherent Microsoftness, it has a few handy functions. It is also not too bad to look at.

It looks especially beautiful while flying through the air, with my lovely companion in the background going "I told you so"......

No Time to Waste!

My lovely companion posted the following on my Facebook page recently:

That got me thinking; few statements in this world are as true as that one. Before our little angel came along we could take our time, start the evening off slow. Maybe a nice dinner, a movie, some deep gazes into each others eyes (not during the movie, afterwards), and then build up to a nice luxurious end to the evening. One of those where even the neighbours would need cigarettes when we're done. That is the way it used to be.

After our little angel arrived, however, things have changed a bit. We've learned to time our more romantic inclinations with her sleeping patterns. This is after learning the hard (no pun intended) way that taking our time just doesn't work any more. It would be the usual build-up, the loving gazes, the naughty smiles, the soft kisses, the tender undressing, the foreplay, and just when things are really getting going, you'd hear a sigh from the direction of the crib. All action is paused while we assess how awake she is. Then with a gurgle or a little sniffle from our little angel, we'd realise that our time is up. So now our romantic evenings are scheduled around when the little angel visits grandma. Then we can take our time and stretch out the enjoyment. But while our little angel is with us, quickies are all we'll have.....

Let it Snow!

It seems that it is impossible to turn on the radio, even here in South Africa, and not hear about the cold weather in America. It's even harder to imagine what that would be like when it's so hot that your eggs get hard boiled on the way back from the supermarket. When I think of winter, I don't think of mountains of snow burying people alive. I think of this....

SOME of the trees lose their leaves, the rest haven't noticed that it's cold yet. We walk out in the morning and think to ourselves "My, it's slightly chilly, maybe I'll wear a jersey or something." We don't have blizzards, or snowstorms. We have a slightly cold wind and maybe some rain. We definitely never have a Polar Vortex! That sounds like something a super villain would use.

Super Villain: "I demand 5 billion dollars, or something bad will happen!"

UN: "But we don't have that kind of money! We spent it all trying to solve world hunger and assassinate Justin Bieber!"

Super Villain: "Do I look like I care?! You will pay me, or I will unleash.....(dramatic pause)....my Polar Vortex! MWA HA HA HA HA!"

UN: "Argh! Not that! Anything but that!"

I'm convinced that a polar vortex is actually just the weather guys trying to make the cold weather sound more dramatic. But then, here in SA, we don't have things like that. Or tsunamis. Or massive city-levelling earthquakes. Or tornadoes. Or hurricanes. In fact, we don't have natural disasters here. That's probably why, in every disaster movie you will ever see, if they show the earth from space, Africa is completely untouched. If a meteor hits the earth and destroys America (as tends to happen in every disaster movie) we'll be sitting here, sipping a cold beer, wondering what that loud bang was....

Happy New Year!

To all my readers, I wish you a happy new year! And if you are looking for a specific reason to be happy, ponder this.......we've been doing pretty well since the world ended in 2012!

For some reason some confused people decided that December 2012 was the end of the world, but they couldn't accurately explain why. They found some obscure calendar from the long dead Mayan culture and based everything on the fact that the calendar ends in December 2012. I think there are many reasons for this; one, they might have just run out of space on the stone tablet the calendar was carved into, and two, the Mayans are dead, there was no-one left to bring out an updated calendar!

I'm not sure what these doomsayers were expecting? Were we supposed to just sort of pop out of existence? Poof! All gone! Was the planet supposed to explode? They seemed to expect the absolute worst! Meteors wiping out entire continents, tsunamis wiping out entire cities, earthquakes devastating most of the planet, Justin Bieber announcing a secret lesbian relationship with Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus doing something useful like solving world hunger instead of taking her clothes off (again), KFC announcing they would stock nothing but corn bowls. The world was going to go mad!

But, alas, none of this happened. Although I am still quite convinced about the Justin Bieber - Lady Gaga angle. Then there is the supposed Zombie Apocalypse. Some virus or something turning the entire planet into mindless flesh-eating killers. Now, if any zombie movie or series is to be believed, apart from walking around moaning and having the constant desire to bite something (like most of the cast of Twilight), zombies aren't exactly going to break any land speed records. Plus they aren't what you'd call bright, so outwitting them shouldn't be much of a challenge. I was astounded to learn that certain colleges and universities in America (why am I surprised) are actually presenting Zombie survival courses. The mind boggles!

You know what, in spite of all this, I firmly believe we'll all be alright. As the song goes: "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!"