Comments on: It’s about time…African time http://www.slowplanet.com/blog/2009/06/22/its-about-timeafrican-time/ Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:17:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: viretlj http://www.slowplanet.com/blog/2009/06/22/its-about-timeafrican-time/#comment-197 viretlj Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:23:10 +0000 http://www.slowplanet.com/blog/?p=226#comment-197 Gerrit, I wrote this slowly because I know you've started reading slowly. And guess what? Far fewer typos and in less time, not to mention frustration reduction, the safeguarding of my keyboard and huge savings in Panodols.....now thats all got to count in favour of SLOW. Having done about 13 or 16 Tours de Argus myself I found your article quite fascinating. In addition, being a S L O W cyclist in my day, I can truthfuly say that I cycled the tour purely for the fun of the event, the opportunity to help others and to kick some baboons a$$ at Smitswinkel Bay or simply trying to outscream them up Chappies (back in the days before the De-Tour), and when I went through my records to see what my quickest time was, I found it to be 3h55 minutes..strange that I couldn't recall it off-hand given the obsession of every man and his dog to break the sub-3 hour mark - if I got halfway by then I would already have had twice the fun. So in short, I have many fond memories of our good old Argie Tour and should really get back on the old rust bucket and rack up a few hundred K's in preparation for one in the coming years. Now for part 2 of my story...I worked in Africa for all but the last 4 years of my working life....I used to get extremely frustrated at the concept of African time, even to the point of locking boadroom doors to keep the late-comers out and imposed all sorts of penalties..your round at the bar on Friday...you bring lunch next week...for all of us...that sort of thing....Of course with age comes wrinkles and one of my wrinkles has been the ability to become outspoken to the point that I can easily ask the awkward questions, quickly change the direction of discussion and radically curtail time-wasting...especially when it's MY time being wasted.....I'm thinking SLOW has got to be the new FAST... :D take care mate Cheers Leon Viret Gerrit, I wrote this slowly because I know you’ve started reading slowly. And guess what? Far fewer typos and in less time, not to mention frustration reduction, the safeguarding of my keyboard and huge savings in Panodols…..now thats all got to count in favour of SLOW.
Having done about 13 or 16 Tours de Argus myself I found your article quite fascinating. In addition, being a S L O W cyclist in my day, I can truthfuly say that I cycled the tour purely for the fun of the event, the opportunity to help others and to kick some baboons a$$ at Smitswinkel Bay or simply trying to outscream them up Chappies (back in the days before the De-Tour), and when I went through my records to see what my quickest time was, I found it to be 3h55 minutes..strange that I couldn’t recall it off-hand given the obsession of every man and his dog to break the sub-3 hour mark - if I got halfway by then I would already have had twice the fun. So in short, I have many fond memories of our good old Argie Tour and should really get back on the old rust bucket and rack up a few hundred K’s in preparation for one in the coming years. Now for part 2 of my story…I worked in Africa for all but the last 4 years of my working life….I used to get extremely frustrated at the concept of African time, even to the point of locking boadroom doors to keep the late-comers out and imposed all sorts of penalties..your round at the bar on Friday…you bring lunch next week…for all of us…that sort of thing….Of course with age comes wrinkles and one of my wrinkles has been the ability to become outspoken to the point that I can easily ask the awkward questions, quickly change the direction of discussion and radically curtail time-wasting…especially when it’s MY time being wasted…..I’m thinking SLOW has got to be the new FAST… :D

take care mate

Cheers

Leon Viret

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