Writing, Investment Club, Work and Books

Since Friday last week, I've pushed quite a bit on the work front. So today's post is going to be a list, so I can quickly touch on the issues.

Sorry, there's less narrative on this:

1. I'm having a very busy, but productive day. This put me in a good mood.
2. On Saturday I met with a group of women I went to university with. I haven't seen some of them for years. It was great to reconnect with them. And yes, they still look the same. Older, but the same.
3. These women and I are starting an investment club. Basically we each deposit a lump sum of cash into an account. Part of it goes to a designated recipient, who can use it for a big project that would normally have required one to save for months, even more than a year. The rest of the money is put into a joint investment account. Good way to access finance without having to worry about interest rates.
4. Among the stories on OneLove, we're looking at the consequences of using sex to manipulate a partner. The story is told from a manipulated husband. My feeling reading his story was that he was furious. But he's not dealing with that. Instead he's exacting his own revenge. [Read the full story.]
5. Still on OneLove, I have posted a link to a story where Robert Mugabe has some interesting things to say about polygamy and being gay. Just the usual vitriol when it comes to gays. I find sad that a leader would fail to respect the human rights of a group of people. You don't have to condone what they do, or even agree with it, but what happened to live and let live, as long as the other party is not infringing on your own human rights?
6. There's a story of a sea cadet who committed suicide ( following a lot of sexual abuse on the job) which I missed when it broke out. But the funeral was on Saturday and I linked to that story on the Shukumisa web site. It's a very disturbing story, because it seems this young lady is not the only one who suffered sexual abuse from her superiors. And the alleged rapes were not restricted to females either.
   
7. Tiah, I checked with my web master and he says the site is live and we should have no access problems. So i'm not quite sure why you were not able to access the Shukumisa site. @everyone on Storypot - please let me know if you also tried to access the site and struggled. That will tell me whether the problem is universal and I need to push my web master some more, or not.
8. Many thanks to my friend Joan Masterson of Women At Work, who has volunteered to develop the READ SA web site. Your help is so appreciated, especially as I'm guessing it was the first time you heard about this cause when I asked:-)
9. I've finally arranged the info from the corporate client into a Google Docs spreadsheet and have logged all the info I have for the project. So now I can see my workplan more clearly. It's still a lot of work, but I feel better knowing having this sense of direction.
10. ITCH Magazine has published an interview with author Richard de Nooy. Check it out! Also, Richard also recently had a story entitled "And the Hippo?" published on BOOK SA. Here's the link to that story.

Question: What are some of the tasks you need to accomplish this week? What productivity tools have you found to be extremely useful in your line of work?

Have a great week.