PPT
I'm sorry to rant, but it's that time of month again. I've got PPT - pre-pressday tension, and as a result I'm irritable and emotional. At least the weather matches my mood. The wind is howling and the rain horizontal.
Wednesday next week is press day number three. I'd love to say I'm ship shape, but that would be a lie. Why is it that no matter how well I plan it the stories, comment pieces and news never start coming in until the end of the third week at the earliest?
For this issue, I've a couple of freelance pieces coming through. It was meant to save me time, but hasn't. I was meant to get one today, but the girl who wrote it mailed yesterday and said that, regrettably, she was giving up! She'd never done it before she promised, but she was just not able to get a line out of Ghana, where she is staying at the moment, to Zambia where the story was unfolding.
I managed to find another freelancer to do the story. But I'm kind of poaching him from another news service so we'll see what ramifications that will have.
One comment piece was due to come through at the end of last week. I'm still waiting for it. I think that in actual fact I won't get it. Luckily I commissioned another from some Americans last week, and that should come through today, so I'll have my two comment pieces. But how can people just ignore to send stuff through, when they've promised you something?
Actually, I think it's an infuriating African tradition to let people wait, in vain, for work you promised to do for them. Remember my sofa? Well the glue sniffers at the shop still can't tell me why it's not in my house, more than two months after I ordered (and paid for) it.
Meanwhile, even the presumably drug-free and literate people working at the Apple shop downtown won't call me back to say what has happened to the 20-inch monitor I've ordered and paid for.
I'm fed up with it all. I mean, it would be bad enough if I were merely European. But I'm Swedish. To illustrate my point, I've never has such good service as from the press officers at SIDA, the swedish development organisation. I almost cried when they gave me what I wanted, when they said they'd have it by.
Yesterday, however, there was a moment of light. I had lunch at the old Observatory that is located - you guessed it - in the suburb to Cape Town called Observatory. My companion was the director Observatory, although a while back his title would have been Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape. Delightfully quaint, I thought!
His wife made trout sandwiches and we ate in the sun on their stoep [porch - ed], while she told me all about this flower that grows wild nowhere else in the world except for just below their garden. A picture of it is below. It's called moraea aristata. Isn't it pretty? I'm going to try and find a bulb (bought in a shop, not dug up from their garden) for my sister to tend when she comes down. She's got green fingers... Whereas I kill everything I set eyes on.
Wednesday next week is press day number three. I'd love to say I'm ship shape, but that would be a lie. Why is it that no matter how well I plan it the stories, comment pieces and news never start coming in until the end of the third week at the earliest?
For this issue, I've a couple of freelance pieces coming through. It was meant to save me time, but hasn't. I was meant to get one today, but the girl who wrote it mailed yesterday and said that, regrettably, she was giving up! She'd never done it before she promised, but she was just not able to get a line out of Ghana, where she is staying at the moment, to Zambia where the story was unfolding.
I managed to find another freelancer to do the story. But I'm kind of poaching him from another news service so we'll see what ramifications that will have.
One comment piece was due to come through at the end of last week. I'm still waiting for it. I think that in actual fact I won't get it. Luckily I commissioned another from some Americans last week, and that should come through today, so I'll have my two comment pieces. But how can people just ignore to send stuff through, when they've promised you something?
Actually, I think it's an infuriating African tradition to let people wait, in vain, for work you promised to do for them. Remember my sofa? Well the glue sniffers at the shop still can't tell me why it's not in my house, more than two months after I ordered (and paid for) it.
Meanwhile, even the presumably drug-free and literate people working at the Apple shop downtown won't call me back to say what has happened to the 20-inch monitor I've ordered and paid for.
I'm fed up with it all. I mean, it would be bad enough if I were merely European. But I'm Swedish. To illustrate my point, I've never has such good service as from the press officers at SIDA, the swedish development organisation. I almost cried when they gave me what I wanted, when they said they'd have it by.
Yesterday, however, there was a moment of light. I had lunch at the old Observatory that is located - you guessed it - in the suburb to Cape Town called Observatory. My companion was the director Observatory, although a while back his title would have been Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape. Delightfully quaint, I thought!
His wife made trout sandwiches and we ate in the sun on their stoep [porch - ed], while she told me all about this flower that grows wild nowhere else in the world except for just below their garden. A picture of it is below. It's called moraea aristata. Isn't it pretty? I'm going to try and find a bulb (bought in a shop, not dug up from their garden) for my sister to tend when she comes down. She's got green fingers... Whereas I kill everything I set eyes on.
posted by Linda at 10:28
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