(Just a short excerpt from family email)
Mish wrote from Johannesburg at the beginning of April,
1998...
After finishing the Saturday morning shopping and savouring a
nice cup of Malawian coffee, I find myself home alone - amazing.
Colleen is doing her bit at a school function, Temba is at a
birthday party, and Shingi is off on a day hike with the school
environment club. So I thought I should say hello and howzit and
fill you in on a bit of news.
We are about to roll into Easter holiday season, our kids break
for school holidays next Thursday. Nice late summer days, warm
but not too hot most of the time. Not planning any major trips
but we do aim to make another trip to our favourite caves at
Cathedral Peak in the Drakensberg towards the end of the month.
Had a great weekend down at Midmar recently, I told some of you
about that - great sailing all weekend, relaxing camping by the
lake shore, and Shingi and I had the fun of swimming the Golden
Mile which went very well. I aim to put some pictures of this and
other stuff on the family website soon - will let you know.
[Hey! Just managed to get a couple of pics
ready now - have a look. More later.]
Colleen has been doing well as her own boss since taking the
package at Macmillan a few months ago, working just as hard as
before but more flexible hours, more focused than before and much
less frustrated.
She is still running her big Maths project down at UCT which is
producing books at quite a rate now, she's also writing bits of
books herself, and providing some nice high-end consultancy to
publishers. She is in quite some demand and of course now able to
work for any and all the publishers. She is managing to delegate
some of the work to others, and also has a potential partner who
is sharing some of the work.
In spite of all the work she is also spending more time with the
kids which is great for everyone. She has got them going on music
lessons again and Temba is doing great stuff on the piano, Shingi
on the guitar. Lots of after-school stuff - music, art, swimming
lessons - but at least all nice and close to home, they can walk
by themselves.
Praxis gave me quite a few new grey hairs over the last six
months or so, particularly as my department doubled in size and
my "main man" Louis decided to go overseas instead of
getting locked into major responsibilities as support manager.
But I am glad to say it looks as though the light I saw at the
end of the tunnel a month or two ago wasn't an oncoming train,
and things are looking quite bright. My department is now called
the Outsourcing Department - we have a total of 18 people in the
dept, including four outsourcing teams covering network and user
support, new system implementation, and Internet/Intranet
development.
My media stuff is growing - perhaps too much, but as the rules of
the game seem to be either grow or shrink, I haven't yet said no.
As from next week my computer show on the radio goes weekly. The
column in the paper and on the web (http://www.mg.co.za/mg/pc/pcreview.htm) is fortnightly but only about 600 words - though
as some famous guy said, it tends to take longer to write a short
piece than a long one. My articles on Microsoft "wanting the
whole damn bakery" have generated a bit of interest.
We also had some fun running part of a Wits University course on
IT - covering the networking section, it was great to see how
much depth and breadth of knowledge Praxis has now.
We are still talking about fixing up our house here and extending
it to make more space, not making much progress except that we
have done most of a nice refurbishment of our bedroom cupboards.
Talking of that, time to go and sand two more cupboard doors!
x
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