Shiko-Msa

The following takes place between 7.30 am and 5.00 pm. First order of the day I check 3 email accounts.  On a bad day I come face to face with a cute smiling teddy asking me to please forward it to 10 people and I will miraculously reconnect with people from my past who I miss dearly. If I’m really unlucky there’ll also be a peaceful dove staring into yonder after drinking peaceful water from a fountain. That up there would be yours truly waiting for the miracle years after forwarding some mail.

In the course of the morning I have twitter, skype, gtalk, a download going on, numerous blogs, and more news tabs than I can count. All the while I’ve got itunes on shuffle zapping anywhere from Eminem to Chibalonza. Yet somehow this is still not enough for wired me. I need more. Onana has good beats and a nice video. I miss Teddy Pendergrass. Jennifer Hudson has a new one out. Long story short, add three tabs of YouTube to the mix.

Libya is burning. Japan is sliding. The US Internal Security Department has created some new strange gizmos. Someone wore an ugly dress to the oscars. Paris Hilton has done something dumb. It is of paramount importance that I eat some rare berries from South Canada. Kim Kardashian can sing. The styrofoam coffee cup on my desk is potentially carcinogenic. So is my lip-gloss…

By now my morning is near cooked. A text message here and mobile call there. I need to sort out something for family and that means more phone calls that beget more phone calls.

This is the point at which the desk phone rings. I pick the stapler and start prattling away. Yes, its only morning and I’m exhibiting the first signs of brain freeze.  The call is from the kindly company banker insisting that we need to close that deal soonest, otherwise at the current rates, the dollar could be at 100 bob tomorrow. That would be the stuff changed dynamics of a transaction are made of. To that end, excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. And quite a bit of work to do actually. The fact that I’m in the office means that the day is, or should be, all about my employer.

The hours between tea time and afternoon, including lunch hour disappear in a haze of office work, interspersed by the occasional tweet that often leads to a site that leads to another.  Suddenly its 4pm. OMG its 4. With just one hour left, I realize that I need to urgently reply so and so’s email, complete that article on google docs, and call so and so to arrange for a 5.30pm meeting for my side hustle. Only then can I go home and continue with my ‘always on’ life. This is the point at which I try to open my drawers using car central lock.

Angry and short of time, I vow to cut out some of this switched on ness. First culprit would be gtalk and twitter. Skype stays. Blogs……  Just when I’m thinking of hanging my blithering blogging boots, I come across this comment from one of Biko Zulu’s readers:  ‘That is how I established my reading list. ie my favourite blogger is http://shikomsa.com/. She’s intelligent, mature, writes well and has a sense of humor. She attracts like minded bloggers, who I read often.

Madam, I’ve been reading your blog for years even through the various site migrations. And the bloggers who you follow and in turn follow you are just as fascinating. Keep doing your thing for our sakes’.

Haiya! Boots back on.

Thankfully this demon of a day is not so common place for me. A lot of times I manage to nip it in the bud and have a normal working day. Once in a while I fail.

Hail the power of marketers. The other day I got convinced to buy Algae and Chlorophyll supplements.

I’ll be the first to admit that I need less convincing to eat an artery clogger here and there than I need to pop supplement pills. But I do pop them every once in a while.

One, because I believe there’s something more than hype there. I’d like to firmly hold on to the hope that someone did not just pack hogwash and ship it for exorbitant sale worldwide. I still believe in humanity you see. Yes, the same humanity that put melamine in baby formula.

Two, because the scare mongering sessions are intense. You get told in graphic detail how your system is wrecking havoc unto self right that minute. You feel the free radicals grow tentacles and crawl menacingly in your body, and an urgent urge to purge them. You get convinced that you’re that tired, not because you’re unfit, not because you’ve put in a full day at work and then some, but because you have abused your body with wrong food and it has gone whack on you.

Of course it may all be true.

Then you’re presented with  a solution. A few pills, tonics and high fibre cereal fortified with even more algae, calcium and soybean and voila! A sparkling colon and the resultant bouncy health and crystal clear skin. Porcelain much? That is if I can call it cereal. Like weetabix right? Wrong. It mixes into a slimy goo which I’ll live at that.

Usually I stick to vitamins, minerals and especially omega oils which I’ve taken since I was age zero. (Read Seven Seas cod liver oil). I prefer pills and shakes to foul-tasting oils and tonics. Therefore, I’ve never bought Chlorophyll or Algae. As for these, my sales rep battered me with a 100 words a minute tirade to a point where in utter exhaustion, I asked her to just bring whatever it was she was selling. And that’s how I ended up with enough to run a fish pond. Except they were for human consumption. My consumption.

Goo or no goo I shall consume the whole lot. Eventually.