I’m sporting a stylish grey jacket today has it got anything to do with Henry Mancini or is it just a bit of grateful it is Friday dashing exuberance, I think it’s a little of both because I so seldom wear my jackets these days, they seem to require an occasion but after acquiring my Mancini boxset, I’ve been swooning for the finer things so donning a jacket makes sense especially a smart casual jacket on this Friday.
Just how far can you go? It’s not like you can walk into the office pause area at lunch time and slump onto a couch put your feet up and start a long conversation with a fellow work accomplice that before you know it the tittle tattle and the mood turns and you are sipping martinis and Mancini’s soft sounds are warming up the place. This is not a small fun consultancy of like minded people but a large corporate, I keep my Mancini to myself, I’ll share a cup of green tea and a five minute moan about the lack of plastic spoons but it’s unlikely that the conversation will turn to the finer things, it’s just not done - what a pity.
So what’s new in the wonderful world of the 302? What is a racing the motor and how doth our man cope without football and the distraction that is football gossip, well these are some of the things that help get the mind and body through the many hours of many a day:
1. Top of the pops is the new Henry Mancini boxset which is in the player, five albums: Breakfast at Tiffany’s; Combo!; Music from Peter Gun; Music from Mr. Lucky and The Pink Panther OST. Henry really still is one of the coolest cats the scene has ever produced and this snappy collection makes young master 302 smile, and he doesn’t do that to often.
2. Melissa’s espresso beans, are just the beans; never have thought that ‘they’ the crowd at Melissa’s would make such a great espresso but they do and the beans sell at the reasonable price of 250g for R49.
3. In our media player the Big Bang Theory series plays on, it’s just brilliant, why aren’t our neighbours so good looking and easy to fall head over heels in heart with instead of ( pausing and thinking happy serenity now thoughts) our bunch.
4. Yoga? Now the owner of two yoga mats; must be something about stretching with lots of ‘flexible’ people that causes a dogmatic release of stress, ideology and what-not that is most enjoyable, just not immediately after the hour class. Some days the 302 voice just can’t stop yapping on about the ‘warrior sequence’ and yes it’s boring, kind of reminiscent of describing the mannerisms of a new girlfriend to your friends over and over, ad nausea, what can you do it’s a process.
5. Finally there’s a great new-ish spot la Boheme in the Sea Point High Street right next to La Bruixa (which is great as well for Spanish Tapas and Sangria). Both restaurants are run by the same people so if you long to experience some modern cuisine of the highest order and in a lovely little space, go give it a try.
And that’s really it in the main now how many more sleeps till the pre-season begins.
The Monocle occasionally have these featured series, The best dot, dot, dot and they have varied from a Saturday night in to the design of the high street. It’s great, a collage of ideas that have been cropped from around the globe and are imaginatively pieced together to give you real ‘best of breed.’
Today as the day draws to a close, I am thinking about how I would transform this office if I had the reigns and not thinking about the payback but just about being nibble.
I think I would have Tai Chi classes to start the day.
A series of different dedicated areas where colour and light play an important part.
And greater harmonisation of pause and work areas with sport and leisure zones nimbled mixed together causing an instant blurring - for instance walking to a meeting room down a corridor you maybe required to throw or kick a ball and announce yourself.
There should be one 24 work zone but with the right comfort factors and inspiration it wouldn’t be for everybody because a life outside of the office needs to be encouraged but there’s a group of people who work best outside of the nine to five.
Investment in better food from dispensed from a few central points but also having good vending machines with decent heathy snacks scattered around, they do exist.
Every worker to get daily a big bottle of water and a piece of fruit - two apples a day keeps the doctor away.
I’d want an espresso bar which does green tea and rooibos espresso to go.
Good literature sporadically placed around the offices.
Product display areas, where new products are brought and can be played with and tested.
Better leveraging of technology in the office, the monitor needs to take a feed from the internet, the television and act as a video conferencing portal
All meetings are to be minuted and outcomes should have no more than five action points as most meeting should not exceed 60 minutes.
We’ll put off our email servers for spam free pauses during every day, 15 minutes every few hours
Managers will get a batch of 5-10 meetings a month and that’s it - anything else can be done by getting up and having a chat or jumping on a call.
Desktop yoga alerts for people to de-stress and stretch.
Did I mention better food, lighter wholesome meals and their benefits need to be encouraged.
And finally people are to be treated as adults we will message away this nanny culture where we’ve stapled our feet to the ground.
That would be some of the changes I make to this building they are not radical but rather try to maximise the considerable overlaps between work, health and leisure. The benefits I’m sure will accrue and some clever people will think of a dashboard of how we measure it all.
I chose this passage because it’s one of my favourites, it is from 31 Songs by Nick Hornby, a book which was given to me for my birthday some years ago by a very good friend.
‘Samba Pa Ti’ – Santana
“‘Samba Pa Ti’ is an instrumental, rather than a song, but for a crucial period in my mid-teens, when I first came across it, it spoke to me as eloquently as anything that contained lyrics: I was convinced that it described sex. More specifically, ‘Samba Pa Ti’ was what I was going to hear when I lost my virginity – if not on the stereo, then in my head. It starts off slow and mysterious and beautiful, and then it gets more urgent, and then – well, then it fades out. (The track lasts four minutes and forty seven seconds, incidentally; but before I am accused of showing off, I had anticipated that we’d be doing other things – kissing, getting undressed, possibly waiting for a bus home from the cinema – during the slow bit, I was confident that I could make it through the fade.)”
We do relate to music. I have always liked that passage it reminds of the Rachel Papers by Martin Amis and of the Bossa Nova.
And we are again; sheets of rain are being aimed and fired down by the North Westerly wind, it’s bitterly cold and the only thing to warm up the setting is a little bit of Bossa Nova, it is Bossa Nova season (although every season is a Bossa Nova season).
Last year the project was completed in summer, it was a milestone project as explained, this year we offer up another set for your enjoyment.
…So there you go, our 2008 Bossa Nova project, complete and just in time for Summer. And we know that we can’t propel our self forward by patting our self on the back but we like this one lots.
It moves from classic to modern, from East to West, from young to old - 20 glorious tracks - ENJOY! Blame it on the Bossa Nova 2008.
…As we so often say Bossa Nova like ice cream is better in winter, it’s true. Over the years we’ve done many Bossa Nova compilations mostly for our friends and more recently for driving in our car - so we do know what we are doing and we have the experience. However every so often we get it just right, our finger is firmly on the pulse and synergies of the collective set leaves us smiling lika a fat, wise, ol Cheshire cat.
The 2009 set is no different; it’s right on the money and a worthy follow up to our 2008 effort. Something we still have on our vintage, one gig, iPod and refuse to delete in order to make space for the more transient sounds of the day.
The litmus test is of course you the audience but much like modern democracy your opinions count but not that much unless it’s a vote of approval.
Here are the parts one; two and three - a recipe of success. And a playlist of course, let there be order (in the arranged set).
It’s definitely winter even if the sun is out today, a tell tale sign is that things tend to break in winter, often my dvd players give up the ghost but this morning I discovered that my car’s left indicator is on the blink.
I was intending to make an appointment but I decided to bring it forward by a couple of weeks and the car will now have its annual spa treatment on Monday. This one will cost some I have been told, if you annualise it doesn’t come to much but when it hits the plastic all at once, it feels like, where the heck is my recessionary money tree.
I like my car so I need to be kind to it and I never begrudge it, its day of fine, tuning, hospitality. It’s a city car and because I live close to the city I’m very light on the mileage and hence I do time based maintenance, instead of distance travelled. I’m sure the vehicle would have liked to have be driven a little more than it has been over the years but it is what it is, man and machine are at peace with that reality. Short, sharp commutes that are heavy on the brakes and the wiper blades, the salt in the ocean air means that they are replaced annually as a necessity, Cape Town gets more rain than London and it’s expected over the next two months.
But that’s Monday.
Sunday, is Father’s Day and we are doing a lunch, it’s the easiest thing, a good restaurant and some good conversation, a lazy choice of sort but as we know from experience, a good one.
But that’s Sunday.
Saturday, what does it have in stall? I still want to try to get into a swimming pool, I have all the accessories, I needed a lock for the locker which I have acquired and now it’s all about actioning the intent. I battle with that part of the equation, I am though hoping that it’ll happen in a jiffy and not take months, that I’ll have a bee in my bonnet on Saturday afternoon and go and make a splash. I like swimming but I so rarely do, it’s ironic because I live opposite an Olympic size pool, you’d have thought, oh never mind what you’d have thought, the correlations aren’t always what they seem.
I may also try a yoga class in the morning.
Yoga?
I’m enjoying yoga, they play Astrud Gilberto while you wait to get into the studio. I bought a yoga mat two and half years ago, eventually I made it to a class this May, I’m glad that I did and I’m sorry that I disappointed the person who recommended it to me a long while ago, you were right.
Let me say that I’m not very good, all of those photographs of people in perfect balance, that’s not me, I stuck somewhere in left field, just trying to do my best. I’m far more appreciative of trying as I get older, I’m drawn to the notion of not being good at something, it’s almost liberating. I try, on many levels, the first and most important is to attend, that is now becoming part of my routine, and routine and lifestyle are a hop, skip and a jump away for me; then I try to partake as best I can to attempt to find the flexibility, the rhythm of the breathing and the endurance that a class demands and finally I try not to think just to feel and absorb things, there is an energy and a simplicity that I enjoy (mostly in hindsight). The benefits and the form will I’m sure take care itself, I just need to get there every week.
But that’s Saturday.
Today, is Friday and I never heard the noon gun sound but I’m sure it did signal the good news.
I’m in minimal spirit this afternoon glad that the working week is about to elapse and enjoying these YouTube tunes before it does.
