Come on in and grab a cup of coffee or tea or whatever other drink you want on this spring Sunday morning. And be happy as the photo below says – ” You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy coffee, and that’s kind of the same thing.” My coffee will not cost you anything, other than listening to me telling you about my week.

It has been a while since I last invited you in for a coffee. I was scrolling through the WordPress reader this morning and joined many of you for coffee, and realised that I had not invited you in for a coffee of my own in a long time. Well, welcome once again. I hope you are comfortable. Let’s chat…

How was your week? Mine was awesome (except for the problem with Telkom)! I spent Monday juggling traffic to Centurion, a 80km one-way trip from where I live. Without traffic it goes fairly fast. With traffic, that’s another thing. I hate 9h00 meetings in Centurion for that reason. I arrived late after overriding Waze a few times. In hindsight, had I not done that, I might have arrived on time or just a few minutes late rather than 45 minutes.

Tuesday was better because my client was closer to home and I arrived well in time for the 8h30 workshop I was facilitating. Wednesday was work-from-home day when I did preparation for the Kanban course I co-trained on Thursday and Friday.

The bunch of people we got on our course was energetic and fun. This being a public course, many people are strangers to each other, so it takes a while to build trust in the group so that they feel comfortable to be fully present and participative.

Well, there must have been something in the air on those days because this group clicked instantly. The rapport was incredible and they bounced off each other. This is a trainer’s dream because the learning is amplified when people are comfortable and visibly having fun. I must admit that I have not seen this level of rapport in a public class before. Wow!

I stayed for a couple of days at the hotel where the training was at. The alternative was juggling traffic. This made it so much easier and I got an extra 2 hours of sleep each day.

Che sent me a message of Friday saying that he’s glad I’m coming home because he’s forgotten what I look like lol! Well, I’m going off again this evening until Wednesday. This time it is me that is attending a training course in Sandton and I am staying at an Airbnb close by.

Che and I had a lovely day yesterday going to the Foodlovers Market and getting yummy supplies. They are my new favourite food-buying-place.

One annoying thing that has been happening, or not happening…we haven’t had broadband ADSL since the begining of October. It is turning out to be expensive as we keep on buying mobile data just to keep online. Because I work from home, this is a bigger issue for me than if I did not. We have logged and escalated numerous times and the service we get is astoundingly non-existent.

The level of incompetence at Telkom is unbelievable. That’s what happens when there is  a monopoly. A single provider controlling the fixed line network for the whole country. Taking things to Twitter makes no difference to these people – they don’t care – they own the infrastructure after all. South Africans are a captive market.

Each time a technician calls to check if our line is ok we tell them that it’s the ADSL that is faulty not the line. It’s like they are hearing this for the first time. This has happened 3 times with 3 different technicians. Che and I even started to second-guess ourselves and thought that maybe it was our modem that was faulty. We bought a new modem but the problem persists. It was an expensive way of ruling out that possibility but at least we are sure that the problem is on their side.

I’m investigating fibre to the home. Because we live in an outlying area the fibre service providers have not extended it to here. I can apply and it can take up to 6 months. I have no idea of the cost, nor if they will do it. They need to do a feasibility assessment first. Just for one customer. However, if they bring fibre to our area I’m sure that more people will join.

Enough of me, now how about you?

Until next week. In the meantime have a look at more coffee shares at Diana’s spot, Part Time Monster.

Regina