Days 4-5: Johannesburg, South Africa

Alternative title- Fortress Joburg.

The most striking thing about the city is that it appears to be on permanent lockdown. Every house is surrounded by a solid 6 foot high fence, screened by razor wire, spikes and the occassional 60,000 volt charge. Most houses also display an armed response security monitoring warning, and the nicer areas of town have a full-time armed guard stationed at the front of the block. Metal grilles cover all the doors and windows, and there are even internal lockable gates within the house.

So I guess it's fair to say that Joburg's reputation for crime is well-deserved, and the locals understandably like to keep their pants up with belts and braces.

But I still had lots of fun, and possibly had the quintessential South Africa experience of rugby and beer, with a tour of Ellis Park and a trip through the Castle Lager brewery. The real highlight however, was the running cultural commentary from Matt, who gave me the local's view of the sights and sounds. I now know that if the Metro Police mention their lunch then they're asking for a bribe, and even got some tips for knocking over an armoured cash van.

Thanks to Jax and Matt for letting me stay and showing me a great time.

Next stop: Nairobi

Days 1-3: Perth, Australia

With the possible exception of Melbourne, Australian cities are what I imagine Hamilton would be if everyone won lotto at the same time.  Sure, there's a lot of money, but that doesn't buy you class.  That's what you get in Perth, with plenty of singlets with camo shorts, big cars and cappucinos set against dozens of skyline cranes, and lush gardens in the middle of a giant desert.

Then again, with perma-sun, cloudless skies and 25 degrees in late summer, who needs to be a stylista?  Sure, Wellington has its cool kids, but when your summer consists of two sunny Tuesday afternoons and that weekend where the wind dropped to a mere 80 kph, then why wouldn't you move to Australia?  Not to mention you'll be getting paid at least 25% more than you would back home.

Now I have a 3 hour wait at the airport before a 12 hour flight to that quaint, peaceful hamlet known as Johannesburg.  It should get interesting from here...

Total fatalities 0.0

In a total anti-climax I've now made it through a full 3 week course of looney-tunes Lariam without any side effects. No psychotic disturbances, no murder-suicides- not even a lousy attempted effort. Sure, there's the residual advanced delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage, but we're only talking new symptoms here.

A paradigm

I’ve been wondering how I would characterise my time spent in the public sector. I was toying with writing something about how working here is the opposite of being a ventriloquist. The art of ventriloquism is to appear silent while saying as much as possible. In the public sector, the art is using as many words as possible while actually saying nothing at all.

I was thinking of saying something along the lines of replace verbs with meaningless terms such as enable, engage, unlock.

But I don’t need to write this, because something has happened which neatly summarised the whole experience. I recently got the results of my “360 degree review”. This is one of those asinine terms made up by human relations consultants, which essentially means getting a whole lot of people to review your performance, rather than just your direct manager. The 360 degrees in this sense refers to a complete panoramic view of your performance. It’s like poetry.

And here some actual comments I received:

• Work together as a team better to create synergy
• Be proactive
• Focus on adding value
• Find ways and opportunities to work together better
• Be seen to be communicating positively with others

There’s not a specific, tangible suggestion in there. What am I supposed to do with this? Be proactive and create synergy to add value? Jeez, am I living in freakin Dilbert cartoon? And without a shred of irony, the comment on improving communication is completely incomprehensible.

To top it all off 2 of the 3 people responsible didn’t bother to fill it out. So it wasn’t so much a 360 degree panorama taking in the landscape of my performance, as a jaundiced one-eyed squint from my jaded manager. And I got the results 6 months late. 3 days before I leave the organisation.

I’ll be sure to action those key learnings going forward.