the best R15 rand i have ever spent

(the other title of this post could be: Book Review - The Understudy by David Nicholls)

Those who know me well enough to know the inside of my room know that whist most young adults have spent money on booze and cigarettes, I have spent equivalent, and even surplus amounts, on books. Next to my king size bed I have a book shelf almost as wide as the bed and it is quite densely populated with all sorts of book titles. My books.

In order to have a book collection of your own, the first rule that you have to obey is the ‘don’t join the library’ rule. Libraries are awful places for those rare human specimens that prefer ownership to leasing. I have always resisted libraries and instead frequented 2nd hand book shops or better yet, hospice charity shops where I have personally been lucky enough to pick up hard cover Grisham’s for R10. Ten rand being my average library fine expense anyway.

Moving along with this story, before I entirely lose you, I was the most excited man in the world 4 days ago when I stumbled upon an “ALL BOOKS R15” sale at the local stationery shop. Trying not to salivate on the books, I managed to pick up a total of 4 decent looking ones, all by authors that i have never heard of before. Fully aware of the risk involved in such a purchase I was not expecting much as I opened to the first page of the book with the best cover. (the proverbial ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ is actually wrong. i believe covers mean more than the crappy sales pitch on the inside cover anyway.)

About 20 pages into The Understudy I found myself totally gripped by the story-line, the main character’s colour and the sneak -peek it gave me into London’s West End. I found myself leaving parties early so that I could read more. I also found myself getting positively annoyed with my eyelids as they began to shut at night because a part of me wanted to know what happened next. It all became a little obsessive really.

I don’t want to review the book- there are enough people in the world reviewing things, hoping that their point of view gets taken seriously... if you are interested in a review then ask Uncle Google for one, I’m dure he would be happy to deliver in record time. I do, however, know that this is not everyone’s book, but I’m glad it was mine. It sprinkled flavour into an otherwise bland week back at varsity making calculations.

I have just finished the book and now am not sure what to do with myself other than encourage people I know to ask to borrow it from me. Just remember to give it back because I will surely note it’s absence from the shelf- it has the best cover, remember....

opposite climates of the same air (port)... [...elizabeth here I come]

As I write this, I am in the place that I love more than most. I’m tucked away on a comfy couch in a full airport with no one to bother me. The only thing missing is a railway latte from Nescafe Cafe because they had no available tables when I walked past.

I love opposites. Many who know me, know my slight obsession with ambiguity. A lot of the songs I write have separate emotions right after each other. I throw in lyrics like: ‘hurt heals my wounds’ and ‘i look down to the sky’...

Stuff like that, you know. And that is why I love airports. They are a land of opposite emotion. You can stand (as I did) on at the domestic arrivals and see people re-united and happy and crying tears of joy. Then you can take the escalator 2 floors up and be struck by a totally opposite emotional climate. The air is thicker, harder to breathe. I scan for families and see pending discomfort. Someone is leaving. Fracture.

And that’s why I’m neither smiling nor frowning. I’m stuck in the middle. Not just because I’m on the 2nd floor, but because today I say goodbye to a Joburg that I love and say hello to a father I do too.

(for those who didn’t like the title of this post, i must apologise. if i were the english teacher I would tell my student to change it. thankfully i’m still very much the student.)

book review - blink

and here is the next rather negative review on a book that i would recommend that you read, but one that i would tell you to read with caution.

the subject of the book (well, the first half of the book anyway) is about the ability to make rapid decisions under pressure (or not under pressure) that will prove to be as good as, if not better, than decisions made under conditions of expert enlightenment. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, coins the concept as ‘thin-slicing’... by this he simply means that you may know the content of the whole by looking at a slice. Not just any slice but a thin one.

I give credit to the author for being able to convince himself of this theory and for the attempt to convince others.

The concept of this slicing is ‘proved’ by looking at a few carefully selected examples where the concept works in the real world. He looks at three environments. (I couldn’t help wondering if his use of limited examples was because the theory only works in 3 places?) He considers the following:

- married couples (perhaps the most complex of all cakes from which to take a thin slice from)
- military decisions (where rapid decisions have always set the average apart from the exceptional)
and
- marketing research (which i didn’t feel was too applicable and mr gladwell spent the last half of the book looking almost exclusively at it).

More than this, I enjoyed 2 specific aspects of the book:
1. The author was quick to acknowledge the limitations of his theory and was realistic in the application of it. He provided explanations as to why the theory would not work in specific environments and under certain conditions. I found these explanations to be beautifully philosophical and I enjoy well constructed philosophy.
2. It was scientific. It was an enlightening stroll into the land of behavioral science with many look out points and rest-stops.

All in all, the general philosophy of the book was a bit too much. It was like trying to fit my extra length king size bed with a single bed sheet: The author was forced to stretch things a bit far.

book review - a teenager's journey

AT LAST! a book i did NOT enjoy reading. I cannot wait to tell you a bit about why i didn’t enjoy it.

“A Teenager’s Journey chronicles the harrowing route to adulthood taken by Richard Pelzer”...

Richard Pelzer grew up in California and had an alchoholic mother who abused him both emotionally and physically. As he recounts his experiences you cannot help but be mortified with the evils that the author was forced to endure. For someone who is not familiar with abuse too much, i found the story to be slightly overwhelming and I could not keep myself from the nagging question: “is this truthful?”

Of course, there is no way of me knowing so I decided to believe eveything i read. As the book continued it became surprising to see that the author did many things to spark his mom’s anger and although these things didn’t justify the abuse, i battled to understand how the author was so easily able to overlook his own flaws while making the reader hate his mother quite zealously.

I always battle with people who are quick to overlook their mistakes and quick to point out the mistakes of others. And so I struggled to read about a troubled kid’s troublemaking and blame.

Maybe I am being too harsh here but I’d like to finish this review with a brief philosophical thought: There can be little peace whilst there is still blame. I am not scared of giving the story-line away because I doubt you will read this book now anyway. The eventual climax of the mere 200 page book came in the form of a letter that he wrote to his deceased mother. The letter contained no forgiveness, only more blame and more justification for his childhood failures. At the end of the book the author called himself ‘free at last’ but to me he still seemed very much in chains (but this is because of what i believe and is thus subjectively critical). Without forgiveness there is no freedom.

And that is perhaps my most negative review ever, and it will be closely followed by another- I just picked up another book that is only worth my while that I might dissuade others from reading it.

finished

will you go back to the start if I tell you I’m finished
the dessert sand was tough for me too
to stop is to fail and I’ve built you for greatness

to run can be easy
walking needs more balance-
the hardest of all is to sit right here

if i tell you i’m finished will you walk again
if i tell tell you I’ve won will you come to my party
if i tell you i’ve died will you think it’s old news?

i’m more on your side that what you think
killjoy I’m not- I just know what makes you smile longer

the stronger is weakness
the surface is deepness
you need me, you say-
but you didn’t want me yesterday

investment and God and what that means to me this morning

So I’m a 3rd year finance student at University of Johannesburg... And i wrote Investment Management (my last exam for the semester) this last thursday. Perhaps it was due to me being in the investment exam mindset, or maybe because university studies has trained my mind to think financially that the following passage became so meaningful to me:

“Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you- guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” 2 Tim 1:14

Hm, the GOOD DEPOSIT. like a bank deposit? yes, exactly like that... as i sat thinking about what this could mean i drew the following parallels that i’d briefly like to expound on:

Term to Maturity:
Every investment has a term to maturity, that is, a time when the policy or investment will pay out. There is a simple principle that you become very aware of the more financial calculations you do: and that is that the more you are able to sacrifice now (lets say for your pension), the more you will benefit later. So thoughts of sacrifice come to mind. We should live making constant provision for our spiritual future.

Rating:
Most investments are rated depending on their historical performance and also on the fund’s possibility of defaulting on payment. If my fund had a rating, what would it be? If there were other celestial beings keen on investing into funds (which thankfully there aren’t), would I be attractive to them based on my soundness and my tendency to always give God his due?

Initial Amount
Investments can be lump-sum amounts, monthly or periodic payments (more often known as annuities) or combinations of the two. In our case with Christ, the initial amount is HUGE. He has entrusted to us more than we deserve to have. It is a big deposit and we will be called into account for what we have done with it, i reckon... Just like the parable of the talents. And since God knew we would be stupid bankers, he has given us the Holy Spirit to help us.

Yield to Maturity:
This could be said to be the performance of the investment. It’s yield. It’s interest rate. In this case, we are the bank. We are the fund managers and the performance of this fund is entirely our responsibility. Does it lose value or does it grow? And if it grows, then at what rate does it grow? Well, that’s up to us isn’t it?

The Investor
The Investor is God. Investing always has risk (unless you invest in government bonds which are considered to be a risk-free investment cos if they don’t have cash to pay out then they can always just print some). Investing into humans must be the riskiest of all. Humans get lost. Humans become confused so easily. Humans forget they have a deposit to protect. If i were a prudent investor i would look elsewhere in the universe to open up an account. But, no, God has chosen to open the account with us on the day that we received him, and now the deposit has been made. And it is up to him what returns we give him.

So all these points came to mind, and I am aware the some of them are stretched in order to be relevant. But the Bible became more real to me this morning as I looked at it in a way that I could understand it best. I am encouraged by the fact that the Bible speaks to all sorts of people- even the bankers.

c.s. lewis on joy

“... an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy ... Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic... the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if it were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power, and pleasure often is.” (C.S. Lewis; Surprised by Joy; 1955)