A Productive and Fun Day

Felt like doing something light ( and totally unrelated to my usual work fare) so I volunteered to write for a colleague who is getting ready to launch the Do Movies portal, which is part of Telkom's Do Broadband portal. Do Movies essentially provides previews of upcoming movies, reviews of current ones, interviews with actors and producers and directors, etc.

My colleague and his team already do Do Gaming for the client, and have systems to get the the new site moving fast already. So I'm just an extra pair of hands and a brain. But it added a fun element to my day, and gave me a legitimate (and paying excuse) to read the movie synopses of Friday movie releases. Even read a couple of gossip sheets. Fun, fun, fun!!!. The Do Movies portal launches on Monday 1 February.

I did spend most of my day writing and updating my client sites. Marketing and promotion activities on client web sites going well, though as I've whined before, tedious. Spent quite a lot of time on Facebook, and had a good friend send me a PM me asking " shouldn't you be working?" LOL:-) It WAS work ! Lots of South Africans spend time on Facebook, so if I plan to connect with them and lure them to my client sites, have to go where they are. Also visited the blog networks by media houses like media24, ITWeb etc.

I'm also planning a Valentine's Day blog party. So if you're planning to write about love and relationships in the coming weeks, please send me your post so I can include it in the party. The blog post should have been published some time in Feb. My deadline is to receive the links is Wednesday 10th February. Underlying themes for the posts should include strengthening relationships, communication, respect, protect, trust and faithfulness. As I said previously, email me the link to your blog post at damariasenne@gmail.com

On A Promotion Drive

I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks aggressively promoting the blogs and web sites that I work on for clients.

Traffic is still coming in steadily, but I know a lot of people make resolutions at the beginning of the year ( and decide to trim their non-essentials) so I think I should remind them why they liked these sites in the first place. So I'm open to guest-blogging, republishing some of the content I have on the sites and doing interviews. Contact me at damariasenne@gmail.com

Oh, and I'll chat about sex, relationships, cheating on your partner, volunteering in your community, fundraising, writing, parenting, wheat-free and dairy-free living and gardening.

Female2Female Photo Blog Challenge: My Yellow Garden

If I was asked what my favourite colour is, I would never even think of yellow. Yet, when Laura at Female2female launched a photo blog challenge with the colour yellow as a theme, I realised that I do like the colour and have surrounded myself with it, albeit unconciously).

Anyhoo, I took a couple of pictures of my kitchen garden, which a lot of yellow flowers. There's yellow flowers on the pumpkin bushes, which have practically taken over the rest of the garden....















The small yellow flowers from my cucumber bushes......
















Not sure what this yellow flower is called, but the're scattered all over the garden
















And the marigolds of course, which I plant almost every season....

Enjoy the music

I have lots of stuff going through my mind, but nothing of substance to say. I feel as if everything I've blogged before, or want to say now, is completely dull and uniteresting. So today I'll play a music video in lieu of a post. The CD features Zambian artists Ruff Kid, P-Jay, Chocklet and Slap-Dee.

10 Free Ebooks On Love & Relationships

Went to bed late last night because I spent time on a Skype video call with Baby, doing homework. Helping her with homework was actually an excuse to spend time together:-) Morning writing activities were a bit rushed, because I had a mid-morning client meeting.

Over the past year, the OneLove campaign has published a number of ebooks on love, sex and relationships. So I put together links to the PDF formats and am making the ebooks available today. You can download the ebooklets here. You can also make the booklets freely available on your own blog.

I'm also asking people who volunteer in their communities to send me stories of their community. The stories will be published on the Kwanda web site and social networks to inspire readers to take action to make a difference in their communities. The stories should include:
Your story should include:
• Information about your community - where you’re based
• The challenges that your community faces
• What you are doing to help address these challenges
• What you plan to do to help address these challenges.

Anyhoo, enjoy the rest of your day.

Click To Help Haiti (Through Oxfam Relief Fund)

Care2 just launched a free Click to Help Haiti, partnering with respected international relief nonprofit Oxfam to help fund emergency water and sanitation services for survivors of last week's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Please click today to help the people of Haiti: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/AFt0H/zkf6/AIq3l

You can also help by publishing this link on your blog and network, so that your online community also has the opportunity to help Haiti.

Have a mid-morning meeting, but beyond that, spending the day writing and updating sites.

I'm On The Roll

Started the morning with tea at Euro Cafe at the mall nearby with my friend Gaynor Paynter. She's one of the less than handful people I actually write/edit for for free and she pays me with a pot of tea every so often.The things we do for friendship:-).

Anyhoo, we had a lovely time, and it was nice way to start the day. Then I got home, posted a poll post on the OneLove web site asking: "At what age should parents start talking to their children about love, sex and relationships?"

I'm hoping that a lot of parents have strong feelings about the issue, and that they will share their views. My view is that an empowered child will have the knowledge to be able to make smarter, healthier decisions, and no matter how hard I try, I can't always be there to point my child in the right direction.

I also resumed publishing and daily discussions on the Kwanda web site and social networks. People are still registering as members on the networks, so clearly, the Kwanda sites do have life after the TV show. And to kick-start the new year, we're talking about new year resolutions: Did you include a plan to change/improve your community in your new year resolutions? What are you going to do this year to build your community?

And I finally resumed publising on the Read SA web site. I was starting to feel bad about the site: I had some content to put up, but somehow I couldn't get into the groove enough to start tagging and publishing it.

Check out this post by Louis Greenberg(opposite pic), who talks about Home Away, a collection of stories by emiggrant and immigrant South Africans.

"In Home Away, twenty-four chapters by twenty-four writers, set in cities all around the world, make up one global day, a mosaic reflecting on the nature of home. As the provocative stories in this collaboration suggest, often it’s when we are far away from home that we see it most clearly," says Louis on the post.

Check out the post.

Louis is also the author of The Beggars' Signwriters, published by Umuzi, an Imprint of Random House.

I Have A Big, Under-Used Resource

Most days I think my helper ( I so don't like the word maid!) Thobile is under-rated and under-utilised. She's been with me for almost 4 years now and for the most part I've been very happy with her. She's young, finished high school and I sent her to do a couple of computer courses. At first I liked her because she loves Baby. I mean, she really, trully, bonded with her. When she first came, I worked as a business technology journalist working strange hours, and travelling all over the world and I could do that knowing that Baby was safe, secure and well-cared for.

Baby grew and eventually left to live with her mother. And I was not keen to lose Thobile even though I don't really need her as much. Well, yesterday afternoon I was chatting with her about HIV/AIDS and I learnt that she is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to ARV treatment. She knows how much treatment costs when accessed through private doctors vs public health care system, the advantages and disadvantages of accessing care at various hospitals across the city, the AIDS treatment options, the effects of the ARVs, and which questions to ask if you have symptomatic illness ( e.g, TB, pneumonia) but still need ARVs. And she's no shrinking violet either, and emphasised numerous times that the key is to ask the doctor what symptoms they observe( for opportunistic infections), what this means to your health, the treatment selection, side-effects and what the treatment will accomplish. "If they don't explain enough, then you have to read your @#$%*& file and find out what they've noted in there," she said.

Her knowledge and insight on the subject left me open-mouthed. And nope, she's not HIV positive and the reason she knows for a fact is because in addition to taking adequate protection, she tests EVERY 3 MONTHS, just to make sure. The tests are free at public hospitals and clinics, and all you have to do is show up. And she says, seeing all the HIV positive and sick people who go to the clinics reminds her that she needs to be careful.

And the reason she knows so much about treatment? She's one of the millions of South Africans who have had family and friends get HIV. She notes that a huge number of people in her life used to die from AIDS. Now many of them are on treatment, and she is learning from their experiences. She also attended a short course run by Soul City ( my OneLove campaign client) years ago. We didn't know each other then. How twisted is that?

Anyhoo, back to my point: I think her knowledge and experience is wasted as a helper, and I'm going to have to do some thinking about how she better use her skills. The only downside is that her English is not very smooth, and professionally she could do with some presentation polishing. Ideas are welcome, by the way. BTW, for more information about HIV/AIDS and how to live positively, check out the OneLove web site. You can also check out this article on testing for HIV.

Planning For New Projects

Baby is doing very well, but her schedule is rather hectic. She has always loved swimming, and was doing it recreationally here in JHB for years. Her new school offers swimming practice every weekday morning at 6h00, and she has decided to join them. So starting today, she leaves the house at 5h30, so she's at the pool in time for the one hour practice session. Waking up early is not a problem for her; she's a morning person.

Spent most of the morning preparing a proposal for a web site for a government department. The good news is that, there is so much that is wrong with that site that it's easy for me to motivate why they need something new and different. Also, it is potentially a long-term project ( updating the site). But it is a government, so it's probably going to be a long while before I see money from the project. The new financial year starts in April.

Also finalised the synopsis of the romantic novel a publisher requested last year. I'm going to give it a final read through and then send it through. It's way late and it's about blooming time I got off my butt:-)

Good Writing Day

So during the December holidays the pumpkins started running through my garden and have practically taken over the space. Not that other vegetables seem to mind: they are also growing vigorously, and for the past couple of weeks, I've had more than enough spinach, beetroot, cucumber, chillies, cabbage and green beans to prepare my meals everyday and to give away some of neighbours and friends.















My planting was staggered, so there is a possibility the garden will keep me fed for the next two months as more crops mature. Yay!















Spent most of the day writing to update sites and work on a client newsletter. One of the my reader letters this morning was from a woman who suspects that her husband is cheating on her, and she was asking for advice on what she should do. Letters like this always break my heart, because she knows what she wants to do; she just doesn't want to do it because it hurts. So she asks for advice, so that she can try to rationalise the pain and devastation that is neither rational or easy to deal with. In addition to responding to her comment on the site, I wrote a short article outlining what you can do if you suspect that your partner is cheating on you. Check out the article on the OneLove regional web site.

Chilling with Julie

We were sitting on my back stoep, having some drinks, chatting about love, life and work.
Julie: So what do you really want to do, creatively speaking?
Damaria: You know what I want to do: Write novels. Publish them. Make lots of money.
Julie: SO WHY AREN'T YOU DOING IT? WHY AREN'T YOU MAKING TIME FOR THIS GOAL?
Damaria (pauses, tries to find an honest response that still makes her look like she's doing something productive): I am making time. But things are not moving as fast as I would like. The writing is slow, and I am second-guessing myself some of the time....
Julie (forcefully): So take more risks in your writing. Write more! Push to move things faster!
Damaria: Huh! Sounds nice. (pauses for a long while) Do you ever take your own advice?
Julie: Not really. But that doesn't mean you're excused from taking MY advice. So don't even go there!

Anyhoo, had a very productive morning today. Wrote and published three posts on the OneLove regional web site and one post on Kwanda before 10am. If you have a couple of minutes, please take a poll where I ask whether it's possible to love two people equally, at the same time.

My own view is that it's not possible. Sure you may care about the second person, maybe even love them in a way, but someone always takes precedence. I think usually people claim to love both lovers equally because they don't want to give up either one, not because of a great love.

And my discussion point is not whether it's right or wrong to love to people, but to find out from you: if you think it is possible to love two people, how would you feel if the person you're in love you told you that they love someone else just as strongly as they loved you? What would you do if they asked you not to ask them to choose?

And don't forget to download SoulSEX, a 44-page sex guide published by the Soul City Institute. The book’s contents include detailed information on the human body ( male and female), the sexual act at different stages of one’s life ( teen years, twenties, thirties, during pregnancy, after childbirth etc) and tips to enhance your sexual experience.

Suddenly I'm popular

The past three days I've had a number of unexpected guests, with friends calling to say they're in JHB for a couple of days and they'd like to come over to visit. I had a great time with Julie and her hubby (Julie motivates me to work smarter), Christelle, who arranged a girls' night complete with DVDs ( Confessions of a Geisha, Up) and Ole and partner, (I haven't had a long, cosy chat with Ole for donkey years). Also had a couple of client meetings, which gave me some direction on the 2010 work year.

Read through my LinkedIn profile and realised that it's so out of date it makes me blush. And it misrepresents who I am and what i do at the moment. So I'm going to give it some attention:-)

The writing and editing process is going very slowly, mostly because my real self would rather still be on holiday.But I'll get into the groove soon enough.

First Day of School And Independence

Today is Baby's first day at her new school. She's going to do Grade 6 this year and she's a bit worried, because it's a private school where they do self-paced work, and she has been exposed to the traditional method of teaching since she began school. "What do the teachers do, if I work independently? And what if I struggle getting through the assignments," she wanted to know. I know she'll adapt to the new system well enough. She's already an highly independent learner. She didn't seem to worried about making friends at the new school, because she's attended classes for a week or so last year as part of orientation, and the kids were very welcoming. But she did make me promise to call her when school is out to chat about how it went.

As it's the first day of the 2010 academic year across the country, Laura at Female2female asked us all to blog about our first day of school. I was 5 when I started primary school, so i don't remember anything about that day. But I do know that 2 of my cousins ( who were 6 and 7 and also starting school) were responsible for getting me to school in the mornings. Mma taught at a school outside the village, so she had to leave around 6am, and I was responsible for bathing and dressing myself and getting myself to school. I remember mornings when my cousins would be yelling for me to hurry up to get ready or we wouldn’t have time to play with the other kids before the morning bell rang. I don’t think they liked being responsible for me, so I ditched them and started walking myself to school as soon as I could that year.

Back At Work

I know the year is well underway, but Happy New Year. I hope 2010 brings you health, wealth and happiness. Didn't do a stitch of writing throughout the season, so no news from that quarter:-). And those of you who have accused me of being a workaholic, don't you think it's a lovely thing that I restrained myself from even turning the laptop on for days on end? It was lovely, very restful. The break also helped me to deal with my grief, and I'm functioning much better now. Now I'm ready to get to work and do my bit to change the world:-) And to those developers who've been waiting to hear from me, I'll get back to you as soon as I have news. I'm still catching up with emails etc.

Life Update

Spent Christmas with family, including Baby, as I do every year. Got loads of presents on the morning, including a lovely pair of PJs, garden tools, a variety of seeds for a winter garden, DVDs of movies on my wishlist and music CDs. Many thanks to Baby for Michael Buble's latest CD. Enjoying the music quite a lot as I work. I was very run-down though, so I did't enjoy the season as much as I could have. But my family spoilt me horribly - for weeks I woke up and didn't have to do a single thing except eat, sleep some more, read a book/watch TV/chat with someone. Thanks to OB and Ben for a lovely Christmas lunch.

Baby is getting used to her new life, and I can tell from the tone of her voice that she really likes. They are introducing her to new activities, new people, and it's all good. Thank God for Skype and email and cellphones, which allow us to chat quite a bit. Anyhoo, I'm going to start pulling the threads of my work routine together.