December, 2020 | Wide Eyed In Wonder

This is part of my year in review. Writing a single post for all 12 months will make it too long, so I’m breaking each month into a separate post. This is the latest instalment.

Rumours of a contagious virus in China began to ripple through to the southern tip of Africa. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ I thought. ‘It’ll be like all other viruses – contained.’

Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way!

looking out of a plane window — Hurtling down the runway on my way to Mauritius
©2020 Regina Martins

Other than that, the year started off with a bang much like an action movie. Barely 2 weeks into the month I boarded a plane to Mauritius. You’re probably thinking holiday of course! Not this time. It was a work trip, the start of a brand new engagement at our latest client. Going to Mauritius is not arduous at all: it’s only a four-hour plane trip from Joburg, a beautiful tropical paradise, and I have friends there. But I didn’t factor in how hard it would be to spend more than a few days away from my home base so soon after the Christmas holidays. This sounds like a bit of a contradiction – if you look through my blog, you’ll see that I travel. A lot.

Umbrellas at Le Caudan Waterfront provide respite from the heat of the day. They’re so pretty.
©2020 Regina Martins

I spent one week in Mauritius in January. I reconnected with many of my friends. This was so amazing! And it also felt quite strange walking the same streets and driving the same roads as I did almost 10 years ago only now I was going to different places. There are no uber-type of services on the island so we tried to make use of the local taxi services – that turned out to be unreliable. We held out for 2 days. After many hours of waiting for taxis to arrive, we decided that enough was enough and rented a car. This was the best decision that we made – we regained control over our destiny.

The week was busy and our hotel miles from the beach although we had views of the ocean from the office. After work on Friday afternoon, we drove the many miles to the beach – we couldn’t go to Mauritius and not put our feet in the water at least once. Storms threatened and were visible just a few miles offshore. On Saturday morning we boarded our flight back to Joburg.

Back in South Africa Operation Prom Dress kicked into action. I joined D&D (my sister and niece) in the search for a prom dress for my niece. She tried many on but there was a clear winner – a beautiful and elegant turquoise creation that suited her so well – which we left at the shop for alterations. We window shopped for shoes but didn’t find a suitable pair.

agile42 CSM training poster — CSM training in Joburg
©2020 Regina Martins

I also delivered my first 2-day Certified Scrum Master course after certifying as a trainer in November 2019. It was the first and only in-person course that I delivered this year – all the others were virtual.

In the meantime ‘coronavirus’ and ‘COVID-19’ became part of our daily lexicon and checking the latest infection numbers in China a diurnal obsession.

February follows …

This coffee date is long overdue. I can’t remember when we last had one – work intruded; sometimes travel did too. And this year with Covid lockdowns and stay-at-home orders I had little cognitive space for blogging and coffee sharing. So, we have lots to catch up on. Let me begin with this past week – I’ll write a 2020 review post a bit later in the month.

The week began with me delivering training to a private class. The problem with private classes (aside from the lack of richness that comes from diverse cultures and backgrounds) is that the same dysfunctions that are inherent in the organisation’s culture carry across to the training. I’m on the lookout for these which is why I started the training by being clear about the attendance requirements. I do certification training and there are minimum attendance requirements by the Scrum Alliance. This led to a couple of people dropping off because they had more important things to take care of on their projects.

This is a bad time of year for banks to send their people on training – and this was a bank – because many people are pushing to get the last software releases done before the middle of the month when the code freeze kicks in. The class shrunk by four – from ten to six people. After the class ended for the day more people dropped off which led to their manager postponing the whole training. This left me with some free time which I haven’t had much of this year. So, I ended up co-training with my colleague on training in the EST time zone – my day started at 5 pm and ended at 11 pm CAT. The last hour of the night – from 10 pm to 11 pm – was the worst. I was fine until 10 pm, but that last hour …

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Thursday was our South African coach camp, virtual of course. Working virtual is great. I love it! For me, Zoom feels like face-to-face. The camera has to be on for that and I can count on the fingers of one hand the times that I had the camera off. Friday was our company fun day. Unlike previous years when the Joburg peeps met with the Cape Town peeps in Cape Town, this year we remained in our cities and celebrated separately. I didn’t feel comfortable getting on a plane for a two-day trip. Too risky. So, us here in Joburg played a virtual escape room game (this was so much fun!) and then headed out to a country-side hotel for a picnic. It was the first time, we, the three Joburg peeps and our husbands met in person since January. The food was delicious; the venue so pretty and the conversation eclectic.

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I did all my Christmas shopping online this year and I’m still waiting for some packages. I was surprised to receive one yesterday because I didn’t think the delivery people worked on weekends. This was a Takealot delivery – I am so impressed with them this year. They’ve exceeded my expectations so far.

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It’s a lovely sunny day today, and I need to hang out the comforter in the sun to dry before the afternoon showers arrive. It’s been great catching up.

Ciao for now.

Regina

Part of Weekend Coffee Share.

Mozambican-born Portuguese South African; reflecting on travel, writing, editing, life, family and change that has social impact; chief wide eyed in wanderer, wonderer and bottlewasher