blogging is so interesting… it took me a lot time to get my head around it, and i’m still not sure i completely understand it. certainly not everything one can do.
people have all sorts of motivations for it – sharing info on a field of interest, practicing writing of some sort… keeping a diary. the latter is one aspect of why i do it. i love writing. i think i am ok at it, and can improve. i’ve tried writing long-hand in a journal, but it doesn’t last long. if i am honest, it is because i thrive on a reaction. and this is one way to get that (if i get more hits of course).
i did stumble across a blog today in the usa that had some eerie similarities to mine… a mid-30 year old that has just come out. has had therapy recently, and is coming off anti-depressants (i have just come off completelyJ). and we’ve both just started blogging in the last few weeks. interesting hey? makes you wonder if there are others out there.
whenever i have to write something, i find that i need to let the subject matter stew in my head for a few days until i am ready to write it. i play around with wording ideas, bring in extra ideas, throw some out, and finally sit and just let it flow. if i’m in the right mood it will work, and i will be able to bring across the right emotion. what this has caused is that i will spend the latter part of the day considering how to start the blog, what to title it, and what to write that day (seeing a this is a daily blog for me). and then, depending on what has happened in the time leading up to my sitting down to write, that may all change.
like tonight. i was about to start writing, when i got a phone call which left me pretty pissed off. i knew i didn’t want to write in that mood, so i postponed it, and read this other blog instead. i now feel more positive, and can write with less anger.
today started off so well. i was in a good mood and happy to be going to the office. i went in on my motorbike, which always brings a smile to my face – especially when i can get past slow or none-moving traffic J
but as the day progressed i realized that i was losing my good mood, and started to think about why. and i realized that it mostly boiled down to a lack of communication. not necessarily on my part, but i was left to fix several problems that were caused by lack of proper communication. or lack of thinking. or both.
i don’t mind helping, i really don’t. but when i spend the best part of the day being handed one issue after another to solve, that was caused by others, i begin to lose my sense of humour.
a few examples:
1. a sentence was copied from a suppliers confirmation and sent to the client:” includes transportation to point x”. client took it as meaning their transport. supplier meant it as the transportation for her own people. the information was not checked before it was simply passed on. who has to explain the additional costs of the transportation for the clients? me.
2. most hotels & lodges will allow a child under 12 (some under 18) to share a room with their parents. often for free, sometimes at a reduced rate. we have a situation now, where a lodge is charging a (reduced) rate for the child in the party (there are 5 people: 4 adults and 1 child). but, because the party has an uneven number of members, they also need to charge the single supplement. (the single supplement is usually charged for people using a room on their own. it can be anything from 0 to 100% extra to the rate a per person sharing is paying).
this “uneven number in the party”-surcharge had never been explained as such, and in fact has never been seen by myself at all. of course, we didn’t mention this supplement to the clients, and they are refusing to pay it. who get to solve that? me.
3. when we arrange allocations with hotels (basically, a room at the hotel, every night of the year, that ‘belongs’ to us, allowing us to sell it to a client immediately, without having to check on availability first), the hotel will mention certain dates where the allocation is blocked out. this means that on those dates they mention, the allocated rooms do not apply, mainly because they could make more money on it. this would be the case over christmas and new year, say, or over times of large sporting events, or if a group had taken over the whole hotel.
sometimes, these block-out dates are not passed on to our agents overseas, and they make bookings that they immediately confirm to their clients. but the hotel cannot assist, as they are block out dates. someone has not done their job in communicating the correct block-out dates. who gets to find alternatives that the clients might accept? me.
4. sometimes the team will just not think. they will do what they assume i said, even if it does not make sense, instead of what i did say. the example i have is too complicated to explain, but suffice to say it cased several phone calls between 4 people who were trying to help, all because she didn’t think in the first place. who bears the brunt of this, cos he’s in the middle? me.
5. we book a guide to meet some clients in johannesburg at 21h00. we fly him up, so that he lands at 16h30, and has his rental car by 17h30 latest. at 20h30 he calls me to say that he cannot find the hotel he is supposed to be staying in. he is a good 30 minutes drive from the airport, and 3 hours after landing he hasn’t been to drop off his own luggage yet? this doesn’t make sense…
he is at the hotel the clients are going to stay at, trying to score an upgrade (at our expense of course) because he is too lazy to try and find his hotel. he claims to have called the hotel to ask for directions, but that he didn’t understand them.
so i need to phone another city, 1500km away, to get directions for the guide who is in that city, and only about 7km away. why the fuck didn’t he go there straight away at 17h30 when he landed… i just don’t get it. why do i have to do all the thinking around here?
it is tradition in the theatre world that one gives small gifts to each other (cast & crew) – usually on opening night, although some do it on the final night. i did my cards this evening, and i reflected again on how much i love my fountain pen. i don’t write with a pen very much at all anymore, so when i have something special to write, i find myself digging out the 21st-birthday-present fountain pen. i do enjoy that.
with all the computers and e-mails today, it is not surprising that i don’t have a clue what the handwriting of most of my friends looks like!
what bugged me today: non-thinkers
what i learnt today: that patience and charm do have benefits
what i am grateful for: my motorbike
