I'm trying to eat healthier these days. And by healthy, I mean only visiting my favourite drivethrough four times a week instead of my regimented six or seven. It's a start at least. Ok seriously, I'm really trying hard. I have stopped eating junk food, drinking a lot more water, no tea or coffee and my conveniently packaged oats
every morning for breakfast.

It's quite boring, I must admit, but at least the cardboard oats have some sort of artificial flavouring to go with them. I try to avoid the chocolate packets, though, just a ludicrous thought that something healthy can be chocolate flavoured.

And then there is the exercise, because if you ever read the fine-print of any healthy, so-called weight loss food you will notice the very important wording. There are variations, but they all basically say the same thing. If you eat this and don't sit on a bike or run on a treadmill for at least an hour a day, this will do absolutely nothing for your figure.

Of course, the same goes for the miracle pills. Their fine print clearly states that they are only effective as part of an energy controlled diet, which means you may as well throw the pills in the bin and eat Special K and a lean cut of steak three times a day.

Back to exercise though. I used to be one of those guys in the gym who decided one day it would be a good idea to start lifting weights and pretending to be an Olympia competitor during every session. I would lift and lift and then lift a little more, always using my back for every exercise and managing quite well to push more than my body weight in every exercise. That was easy. Putting on weight is simple, even if it is muscle. Losing the fat around it, though. Now there's a challenge.

I sit on the bike, I walk on the treadmill, I climb stairs to nowhere. I lose no weight. I'm getting fit, though, but my fat cells just don't want to leave me just yet. I think they are enjoying the extra oxygen at the moment. And it's not that I'm fat or anything. I'm about a quarter American now (that's how I'd like the scales to measure weight at the gym). It's just that you can never lose too much weight. I'll stop when the six-pack starts showing again, and it's been gone since, well, pretty much since the day I walked out of my last Matric exam and discovered the joys of alcohol binges.

That's the other problem, while I'm rambling on. I have started drinking more and more water every day during work, just to try and detox. I hate that word, detox, it always makes me sound like a new age spiritual freak, but that's just what it is. I drink too much on weekends, and don't drink water at all. So I came to the conclusion, seeing as the human body is made up of a huge amount of liquid, what is the official figure, 90 percent? It stands to reason that the liquid in my body is pretty much undiluted Whisky right now. Mostly Johnny Walker black label since last Friday.

So with a couple of days of water cleansing, I reckon I'm still maxing on about 50 percent Whisky content in my cells, but it seems to be going quickly. There's one downside of course. I am spending more time in the bathroom than at my desk. I guess at least that's a motivation for a laptop now.

My favourite topic, and my least favourite industry of all. This morning I dropped my car off for it's first service since I have owned it. So maybe I shouldn't have bought a Ford but just because I can't afford a BMW with its world class service doesn't mean I shouldn't get at least second class service. At least this and the next service is paid for by the maintenance plan, so cash is not my issue, yet.

Here is how the system works. You phone in, and wait ten minutes on the line while a receptionist is filing her nails and trying to figure out where that irritating ringing is coming from. Then, you get put through to the service centre. Mechanics course didn't teach manners, or even a basic communication level above that of apes. So I get through the booking process, hoping that the grunts on the other side of the phone mean that my car is in fact booked in on the day I expect it to be. I also politely ask that a driver be able to take me to work as soon as he can, because I work quite far from the service centre. "Grunt". Alright, I guess that's a yes then.

Luckily for me, my darling fiance offered to drive with me and let me use her car for the day, after dropping her off at work. I say luckily because when I arrived there were about seven other customers all waiting to be taken to work, and they had to wait until every car had been booked in.

The system is impeccable at the service centre. On booking, they allocate you with a lane number, which they obviously forgot to tell me on the phone. Or was it that two grunts means lane 2, and three - my fault, apologies.

I was allocated lane 4, after wandering around through reception carrying a bag with my most prized possessions that I did not care to have greasy finger marks all over at the end of the day. So I get back in my car and drive over to lane 4, which obviously has the longest queue. I am trying my best keep hurry because my fiance is going to be late for work, and keep calm, and not throw my bag through the nearest window all at the same time.

Now, if anyone else can understand this system, please explain to me. Each lane has a person allocated to it, to book the cars in. Each person stands in the lane while the cars arrive. If there is no queue, they still stand in their lane. If there are queues in the other lanes but none in their own, they still stand, in THEIR lane.

But, I try to keep calm in situations like this, there is not much sense in trying to change a system when the person you are complaining to is going to be applying a ten kilogram spanner to your most expensive possession for the rest of the day.

I suppose I can rest assured that at the end of the day, I will have a car that is starting better, the battery in my key will be replaced so that I can unlock from the other side of the shopping mall, and it will be all shiny from the complimentary car wash. I haven't even picked up the car yet and this all seems like way too much hassle.

If only I had decided to go to a technical school instead, or maybe studied to be a mechanic part-time. I could take a lazy Saturday afternoon and fix my own car, I would take better care washing it anyway. "Grunt".

I had a pretty good weekend, as usual I can’t remember what happened on Friday night, but it will come back with time. It always does, sometimes unfortunately.

Saturday was much of a non-event though. I ended up moving out of my rented place, to at least move my clothes with me to stay with my fiancé before our new house is ready to move into. It took two of us a couple of hours to pack some cheap cardboard boxes and a few small appliances. What scared me the most is how my entire life fitted into five boxes. Those boxes were quickly reduced to three though, as my better half decided that my hoarding was no good for me anymore, and clothes that I’ve had since I was sixteen were promptly loaded into bags for charity.

So after a couple of hours of heavy labour, a couple of scratches, bruises and a chicken burger later I was officially relocated, for the fourth time in as many years. And soon to move again of course, but it’s all fun, living like a nomad that is.

Oh yes, Friday night. We had a braai, drank wine and way too much whisky, and finished the evening off with a heated game of 30 seconds. It’s a simple game by the book, take a card with 5 descriptions (people, places, movies, etc) and describe as many as you can without using any words on the card in 30 seconds. Simple enough, a friendly game between friends testing each other’s knowledge and out-the-box thinking. Sure, more like World War Three had started in the living room. I thought I was personally involved in the eviction of the Gaza Strip as friends were called names I hadn’t heard since running around the playground in my nappies. But my team, of course, so I can’t complain much about that.

After doing absolutely nothing on Saturday night, except for watching the Rocky Horror Picture show, for the first time, can you believe, I woke up bright and early on Sunday morning. I tend to wake up earlier on weekends than I do during the week, maybe a defence mechanism for skipping work. I drove around for twenty minutes looking for a newspaper while almost killing a group of cyclists who decided that on Sunday mornings red robots aren’t really red for them, and cars should be stopping at every intersection to let their highnesses drive past. I was just upset that I didn’t have my portable red carpet in my boot.

I drank cocktails in the afternoon, one too many as usual and drove home way too fast. I am expecting one or two fines from that drive in the post any time soon.

Back to the grindstone for now, though. Monday mornings have never been extremely exciting, and I am sitting here trying to recover from a headache caused by lack of stress. It is going away though, as the work piles up I’m feeling more and more myself.

I get home from a long day of work, all seven and a half hours of eyes straining, sitting in front of a cheap keyboard , hacking away, making sure that my users are happy and that things are running smoothly in the virtual world. I walk through the house throwing bags, keys, cell phones and the odd jacket or two (because winter has decided to grace us again) as I make my way to the bathroom for a well deserved splash of cold water on my face. As I look into the mirror, I see it's back! I just plucked that -bleep- yesterday! My nose hairs grow at an alarming rate. Various secret agencies are trying to get hold of me constantly to try and figure out my secret, but I made a promise it will not be used for evil purposes.

The problem I have is that everything on me grows fast, mind out of the gutter for a moment please. My hair, nails, ok that's pretty all much that grows, but I even tan extremely quickly. And lose it just as fast. I shouldn't really be complaining I suppose, but the problem is this whole grooming story.

I keep my head cleanly shaved for example, not with a razor though, but with those electric shears. And the problem is I have to shave this enormous head at least once a week, before I start looking like a tennis ball, a dirty brown tennis ball, but a tennis ball nonetheless.

Luckily, my facial hair doesn't grow that much and I can get by shaving once every couple of days. My moustache ends up looking like a rugby field as my grandfather used to say. Fifteen a side.

My problem, though, is all this grooming that men are putting themselves through these days. Magazines
, web sites and shops are all promoting men's specific products and gadgets. What ever happened to the good old days when we used to shave only when the beard stopped us from getting food into our mouths, or when we took a shower only when the dog refused to come inside anymore. Now, we have three blades on our shavers, look out for the fourth early next year. Our ancestors used to get by just fine with a blunt rock and some dried leaves to sort out the cuts. And the women didn't complain then.

Now there are moisturisers, toners, tweezers, shaving GEL, after shave lotion, after shave cream, foot scrubbers, pubic hair scissors and God knows what else they will convert from the female bathroom cupboard. We are becoming a nation of metrosexual males with no clue or what it is really like to be a man, and work on a car engine just because it is there and making the slightest of irritating rattles. We can't do that anymore, you know how difficult it is to clean grease from under finger nails, never mind how bad that industrial soap is bad for your hands.

It is a conspiracy for sure, the women are taking control and whipping us more and more into shape everyday. Definitely a time to burn those jock straps, stay unshaved for days on end and bite those finger nails down to the bone. It won't happen over night, but hopefully one day, if all goes well, our children's children will be able to celebrate National Man's Day.

Well I'm back. I have started my new job, my computer has been set up and I'm managing to settle down quite well. They say changing jobs, moving house, spending time in jail, personal injury, marriage and divorce are some of the most stressful events that can happen in your life. I picked three of them for a six month period.

Some might see that as enjoying a challenge, or just being a sadist (I have been called that before), but personally I just don't see these things as particularly stressful. I mean, by biggest stresses in life have always been money, and more recently "getting the girl". Money is sorted out with the new job, and I am marrying my girl so what could be better? And as for moving house, we have found a great company that even packs our stuff up for us, perfect.

But enough of that, back to the job at hand. Or the career more accurately. I decided to make a change for the better by taking a job in a large company. And when I say large I mean it, 100 times the number of employees of my last company. Things are different I must say, I feel like a number suddenly, although each department is run as a separate business so the size of the whole thing is not really felt.

My Internet access has been severely limited as well, no more chatting online for hours at a time or bouncing "Hoff" e-mails around between the loyal fans in my address book. Although, at least I have access to the sites which matter so that I can at least post my thoughts every now and again.

I'm also feeling a lot more lonely here, you don't quite get the "Cheers" atmosphere where everybody knows your name. But on the flip side there are many advantages, I can be slightly anonymous now, not everyone knows my business and what I did on the weekend. The scores of laughter are no longer heard as I walk through the hallway on Monday morning after the news of how I made a drunken fool of myself on Saturday night spreads around the office like wildfire.

And the bonuses are priceless. The toilets, for example, are pristine. At my last company, we had access to public facilities, shared by every other office in the building, and incidentally anyone who could bypass the strict security by pressing any intercom button and being let through the security gate like royalty. There is nothing worse than feeling like you need a shower every time you take a visit to the little boys room. The only thing they could work on here is 2 ply toilet paper, we now have industrial strength roll which I think it used to deter anyone from actually using the toilets altogether.

And then! The canteen! I no longer have to drive or walk anywhere to get lunch. I have at my disposal a fully stocked canteen which provides me with all the food and refreshments I could possibly devour in one day. And its cheaper of course.

I finally have my own phone line, and this company actually has an HR department which prints salary slips. I have heard of the story of such documents, but always thought they were fairy tale folklore. Right now, I feel like I'm in a Lord of the Rings sequel with the amount of strange IT people around me, but I'll learn to deal with that as well. Hairy toes and all.