Tadpole Tales

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 29 Jul, 2008

Carnivorous Cow thrust the latest Varsity under Gramsci's absent nose. "Look!" she pointed. "The Tadpole made the front page!"

Gramsci squintedat the picture. "That's no Tadpole," he muttered. "Baby Toad perhaps, but that's at least a Bull Frog!"

"Bullshit Frog, perhaps," chuckled the Cow. "Take a look at this! He's making pronouncements that are contradicted by a real expert in the field - albeit from another university - when he's not even quailfied to practice in this country!"

"I wonder what the basis of his 'knowledge' is, then?" Gramsci mused. "Disbarred from practising in the country in which he's qualified; unqualified locally; criminal charges pending... Sure sounds like the kind of basis on which to get taken seriously!"

"Or appointed to a job," the Cow pointed out. "But I guess those who did so aren't going to get taken to task for their negligence, nor for bringing the University into disrepute, either. We can only hope Mr Price introduces a culture of accountability as one of the things on his 'to do' list..."

"Hmmm..." mused Gramsci, "that would be quite a culture shock! Although, as I recall, wasn't that one of the things AIMS set out to introduce?"

The Cow twitched and shuddered at the mention. "I think someone misheard in that meeting," she said sadly. "How else do you explain that they introduced a culture of accounting, instead?"

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The Pink Peril

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 25 Jul, 2008

The Cow rolled her eyes as Twitter spat out the latest headlines. "The youth of today," she muttered. "Remember when we thought Fikile was an embarrassment? He's almost sane, compared to this Julius chap!"

Gramsci nodded sagely. "Those 'kill for Zuma' comments were just a little inflammatory," he agreed. "Especially in the current climate where there's all too much of that going on anyway!"

"Yes," the Cow sighed. "And Jon Qwelane's febrile ravings don't help much! If Julius is looking for someone to kill, uMalume has made his views on 'agtermekaar manne' all to clear on previous occasions."

"Do you think the bestiality insinuation was to get the cat-huggers on board to vote for uMalume?" Gramsci mused.

The Cow shook her head. "Julius has already blown off those types as irrelevant," she reminded him. "Though some liberal aunties bringing stew may be welcome when he's governing from jail, perhaps?" 

Gramsci chuckled. "Especially if it's goat stew," he added.  

"So why then," pondered the Cow, "did uMalume appoint one of the sisters doing it for themselves as premier in the Western Cape?"

"Well," Gramsci reminded her, "her former girlfriend was one of those Travelgate agents. He's probably hoping for parole terms like Yengeni's, and Soraya can can toss in a weekend or two away?" 

The Cow paused. "As long as she brings her kanga, it's all good for him, I guess."

 

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Broken Connections

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 19 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse was rather put out. In the middle of friending her e/merge buddies on Facebook, she lost connectivity. All around her, sites started timing out.

"I've hit my cap again," she grumbled to Bubblewrap Bob. "What a nuisance!"

Bob looked up. "But isn't it supposed to be a soft cap?" He asked. "Shouldn't you still be able to access sites, only more, s l l o o o w w w l l l l y y y y ?"

Keitu shrugged. "When you've used up your international bandwidth, you can still get some local," she said, "and sometimes international sites via that, albeit slowly, but it's easier just to top up!"

She scratched out her credit card and moments later was grumbling furiously. "Can you believe!" She fumed. "The secure payment gateway is unavailable. And they can't say when it will be back! This is almost as bad as badwidth at the Knowledge Factory on the Hill!"

"Perhaps it's a message from the Universe," Bob suggested. "Look how beautifully sunny it is outside!"

Keitu looked out of the window. "Of course!" she said. "It's a pain, but I can still access email and Facebook on my cellphone...."

 

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e/merging in colour

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 18 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse walked into the office and wished Bubblewrap Bob happy Madiba day. Bob looked up. "I'm blue, da ba de da ba die," he sang back.

"Blue?" she asked. "We should be celebrating all the colours of the Rainbow Nation today, not just blue!"

Bob shrugged. "Tell that to Stephen!" he said. "He gets to decide what colour we shoudl be. Yesterday he made Gerrit eat all his carrots so he could be orange, like Tony."

"Yes, he looked a bit like the Oros man there for a while," conceded Keitu. "And vitamin A is fat soluble too, so an overdose can have nasty complications!"

"Power corrupts," mumbled Bob. "It's part of the package."

"Hmmm...." mused Keitu. "That might explain something...."

Bob looked up, intrigued. "What?" he asked.

"Well, the background is white, and the plebs are blue and the oligarchs orange. Does that sound at all familiar?"

"Oranje, blanje, blaauw!" Bob sat bolt upright. "Do you think there's a political agenda?"

"Well, it started with the new blogspot colour scheme," Keitu reminded him. "There's a distinct pattern emerging."

Bob looked horrorstruck. "A pattern!" he gasped. "You may be right. Let's just hope it isn't.... paisley!"

 

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Please hold...

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 17 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse was a little grumpy. She arrived early for the final day of e/merge and wanted to announce to the world what was going on in her world, and was greeted by:

Twitter is currently down for maintenance.

We expect to be back in about an hour. Thanks for your patience.

 

Twitter is currently down for maintenance.

 

"How can they take Twitter down?" she asked Bubblewrap Bob. "Twitter is supposed to be at our beck and call to confirm our living state, 24 hours a day. How can we know we're alive - how can we live - if Twitter is not there to confirm, record and spread that?"

Bob shrugged. "Nice note though. Like those classic 'back in 5 min' notes lecturers leave on their doors when disappearing for the summer."

"Well," Keitu sighed, "it's not just a case in this instance of 'from when do you start counting the hour', I think it's also a case of _where_ you start counting the hour."

Bob was bemused. "An hour, surely, is an hour, although the clock might say a different time?"

"Not at all!" Keitu shook her head. "An hour on Mars is very different to an hour on Jupiter. Tweets could have reached Venus by now, where there hours mean someting else entirely. And even on earth," she paused, "time means different things. The Hindu view of time is oscillating, and the Balinese cyclical."

"You mean," Bob paused, "We could be stuck in a groundhog day with Twitter down for maintenance... forever?"

"Well, it may seem like forever," Keitu smiled, "but it's just an hour!"

 

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Repassionated

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 11 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse was having a hard time of it. Approaching the end of her time at the Knowledge Factory on the Hill she'd been slowly disengaging, letting go and feeling the zen tide of equanimity was through her as she let go.

And then, and then.

Bubblewrap Bob looked at her in puzzlement. "Why are you still here?" he asked. "I thought you didn't do these 14-hour-in-the-office days anymore? I thought you went home and had a real life?"

Keitu shrugged. "I meant it, I really did," she protested. "When I registered for e/merge I said I intended to spend around two hours a day enaging. I meant that, too!" Her voice was edged with desperation.

"But then..." she shrugged. "Sometime life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans, as John Lennon once said."

"Except in his case, he was wrong. Death was what happened to him when he was busy making other plans!" Bob pointed out ruthlessly.

Keitu sighed. "I really did mean to let it all go. But then, I just felt the undertow suck me right back out..."

"You sound like a real hippy with all that wave-and-surfing metaphor," grumbled Bob. "That is just so 70s."

"Maybe that's it," Keitu admitted. "Maybe it was exactly that notion that resonated - a kind of Woodstocky feel only with better hair and cooler clothes, and far nicer toys. But that sense of idealism, of belief, of... of passion! Somehow, although I let it go, it wouldn't let me go!"

Bob chuckled. "You're talking about Howard sitting barefooted under his plum tree! I wonder how many fermented plums you've been eating...!"

"Well," Keitu admitted, "it makes a change from all the chocolate. Hey!" she looked up. "Do you think I could be the secret love child of Nancy White and Howard Rheingold?"

 

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OOBE Dooby

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 10 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse picked up her cellphone and checked for messages as Bubblewrap Bob sauntered into the office.

"Anyone interesting?" he asked, noticing the puzzled look on Keitu's face.

"No, no one at all," she answered.

"Oh, disappointed, then?" he queried.

"No.... More like, weirded out," Keitu confessed.

Bob looked intrigued. "What's weird about no messages?" he asked.

"It's not that," Keitu stammered, clearly perplexed. "It's just... Why did I need to check for messages? I was here the entire time. I'd have heard if anyone called or texted!"

"So then?" asked Bob. "Were you expecting someone, or...?"

"No," shrugged Keitu. "It's... Well, I forgot that I was actually here. It seemed that I was somewhere... else."

"Where would that be?" Bob looked very puzzled.

"Well, we were having this online conversation - but a live one, with voice and everything, at e/merge... and it really was like I was there, with everyone else, not here in my office. And so, when I left the meeting room and returned to my office, I checked my cell for messages - but I was actually here all the time!"

"Ah!" cried Bob. "An Out Of Body Experience - an OOBE! Most people have to do drugs to get that effect!"

Keitu paused. It certainly did feel like she was coming down from something, some kind of high...

"Maybe I really am e/merging," she said tentatively. "Maybe the body I was emerging from is my old pupa, and my new wings will soon be dry and ready to fly me off somewhere else entirely?"

Bob chuckled. "Just be careful with those wings," he cautioned. "You don't want to cause any tornados in Brazil..."

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Digital Wonderbras and Soggy Electrons

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 9 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse was cursing the intermittent connectivity that saw her email fading in and out like an ambivalent ghost. Her frustrated bellow brought Bubblewrap Bob over to assist.

"Yo! Wazzup?" he asked, breathlessly.

Keitu pointed at a message she was trying to open. Still working, the system shrugged. Keitu grimaced. "This badwidth really sucks wet dogs!" she grumbled."It's like, now you see it, now you don't!"

"Perhaps that's what Celia was referring to with digital wonder bras," Bob suggested.

"Well, I don't feel very uplifted," Keitu muttered. "Nor displayed to my best advantage. Having no email isn't exactly an advertisement for a world class African university, now is it?"

"You could always go and get some coffee while you waited for it to make contact and load?" suggested Bob. The coffee outlet across the road would likely be open by this time, and with campus deserted, the queue ought not to be too long.

"It's raining cats and dogs," protested Keitu. "My hair would mince. And I might miss the microsecond of connectivity!"

And sure enough, her mailbox opened. In it was an ominous looking email from the ICT Services Department. Keitu clicked on the message and read:

Dear ICTS Customer,

The current bad weather is negatively affecting our Internet link.  This results in intermittent connection problems which may affect your Internet access.

 
Our Internet service provider is aware of the problem. Together we are looking at alternative options and work has been scheduled for the monthly maintenance slot on Sunday, 20th July.

The Internet problem will also affect connections to certain services on campus.
  • Mail from outside hosts (like Gmail,Hotmail, etc,) might be delayed.
  • Connections to services like WebAccess, IMAP and iFolder might also intermittently be lost. 
  • Access to websites hosted on campus may be affected.
Regards
ICTS Communications

Bob chuckled. "It's not only you who's reluctant to go anywhere in the wet weather," he shook his head. "It seems the electrons want to stay warm and cosy too!"

 

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e/merging

Posted by Vicki Scholtz | 8 Jul, 2008

Keyboard Keitumetse hit enter and sighed happily.

"Wazzup?" Bubblewrap Bob looked up, startled.

"I'm going to e/merge," Keitu smiled happily. It had taken her a little while to organise, what with badwidth issues and frozen fingers, but she'd finally gotten there.

"Emerge from what?" Bob scratched his head.

Keitu paused. She'd always considered emergence to be an opening up, a state of excited novelty and fulfilled expectation. She'd never really given much thought to what preceeded the emergence. But on reflection the e- would refer to a Latin root, like ex-, meaning from or out of, she suspected.

She reached across for her dictionary. Sure enough, the root was Latin. She read:

emerge v. (-ging) 1 come up or out into view 2 (of facts etc) become known, be revealed 3 become recognized or prominent 4 (of a question, difficulty etc) become apparent

emergence n. emergent adj. [Latin: related to merge]

Merge, she knew well, meant join. So emerging meant, etymologically, joining out of...? Out of what, she wondered.

Bob took the dictionary and paged. "Merge is from the Latin mergo, meaning  dip. So you've got a blending out of, or..." he chuckled mischievously, "a causing to lose character and identity in..." He met Keitu's startled gaze. "Really, it does say so, right here. Though admittedly it's the second definition, so not the most common usage."

Keitu frowned. "That's merge. So emerge would be the state out of that!"

"Causing to lose character and identity out of?" suggested Bob slyly.

Keitu looked confused. "How does any of this relate?" she asked.

Bob whooped. "Looks like we've got an emergency!"

"Well then," Keitu remarked tiredly. "Why don't you also e/merge, and see?"

 

 

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