Lala, Tata

I've now been in Dubai just over a month.
Because of how hectic and intense my training is, I haven't really had much time for anything besides sleep.
When I say intense, I mean being taught about 50 pages a day, and then being expected to know that information by the next day in order to learn the next 50 pages, and then having an exam at the end of the week, with a pass rate requirement of at least 80%.

My friends and family can tell you that I barely even have time to chat with them and catch up because any free time I can find, I use it to make myself something to eat or, more importantly, to sleep.
Because of this I haven't really allowed myself a moment to really miss home, simply as a result of me being just too busy.

Last week the news of Nelson Mandela's passing broke, and suddenly I felt that for the first time since I have been here, a wave of homesickness hit me like a ton of bricks.

My grandfather was an avid protester against Apartheid and I grew up listening to stories of how he campaigned for the ANC to get Madiba elected, and how my uncle and father would protest against Apartheid and join in on riots.

Mandela keeping his fists up in June 1964 when he was arrested.
"Amandla".

My grandfather with Madiba.

Although I was too young to feel the true weight of Apartheid, growing up in South Africa, you're taught so much about it. You hear all the stories from your parents and grandparents and teachers and fellow citizens of the hardships they faced before Mandela became president.

It's not as simple as Blacks and Whites not being allowed to mingle.
Half of my friends would not be my friends today if it weren't for Madiba.

I cannot even begin to imagine how I would react to being told I can't be friends with, or I can't love someone, because we don't look alike.

Imagine having to endure that for all of your life, being jailed and treated like you're worthless, and then being able to move past it, and forgive all those that wronged you to look towards a better tomorrow.

It takes a very special person to be able to do that, and we were blessed enough to have him be that person for us.

Nelson Mandela has impacted my life in so many ways that I cannot even begin to fathom or explain.
I think many people feel this way, but it is a feeling that South Africans especially can relate to, regardless of where they may be located in the world.
To us, Madiba transformed our lives completely, and he was more than just our nation's hero.
To us, he was like a grandfather, and to lose him impacts us more deeply than anyone else can understand.
Having said that, I know that we feel an immense sense of gratitude when we see all the tributes to Mandela being sent from around the world.

Sand art tribute in Puri

Cricket fans take a moment of silence for Madiba in Australia.

Pakistani school kids in Karachi

Nandos pays tribute to Madiba.

Table Mountain in Cape Town

The Omni Hotel in Dallas.

Apollo theatre in New York

 Empire State building lit up with the SA flag colours

Didier Drogba.
He is now facing disciplinary actions for doing this.

Eiffel Tower in Paris lit up with the SA flag colours

City Hall in Cape Town, where Madiba gave his first speech after being released from Robben Island prison.

Seeing all the tweets about Madiba from around the world; from people back home and the impact he had on their lives; the memorial services that were going to be held for him; the way South Africa as a nation just pulled together; I couldn't help but feel like I was living in an entirely different world.
Here in Dubai, it felt as if it were just an ordinary day with everyone continuing about their lives as if this massive event had not taken place.
Had I not been connected to social media or watched Al Jazeera, I would never even have known that he had passed away.

Even after I had been awake for more than 24 hours, I could not tear myself away from the only sources of what felt like a sense of home. I took comfort in hearing the familiar voice of Gareth Cliff in an attempt to try and get some sort of feeling that I was back home. I sat up for hours that night streaming 5fm online to hear the special broadcast, listening to different people call in to talk about the impact Madiba had on their lives.
Even from thousands of miles away, I could feel the emotion radiating from the country I hold so dearly.
Seeing on the news and hearing on 5fm people gathering outside Madiba's home, dancing and singing, celebrating our nation's hero, while I sat in my hotel room by myself crying my eyes out for hours, I wanted nothing more than to pack up my bags and leave.

I just wanted to be with my family and my friends.
I wanted to be with my people who knew how I was feeling.
I wanted to be home and mourn with them.

I can without a doubt say that Nelson Mandela was a greater person than most of us can ever even aspire to be.
He has created a South Africa that all of us from the Rainbow Nation can be proud of.
To the father of our nation, we thank you.
The world thanks you.

May you Rest in Peace, Tata, and may your legacy live on forever.

Lala Tata.
Hamba kahle.

An Open Letter To My Former Workplace

By now you will probably know that I've taken a job elsewhere and will soon be moving to Dubai for it.

I sat chatting late one night with my bff Najwah about our former company (Amazon) that we both worked at for about a year, and we both had the same feeling towards it:

Working there was the hardest, best year of our lives.

When Najwah and I started there, we both came into the place thinking we were only going to work there for about 4 months to make some quick cash.
It was going to be for the seasonal period where Amazon hires extra customer service agents to help carry the load of the Dec-Jan peak.
Najwah and I didn't know each other at the time. I myself knew only one other person there, and trust me because of work schedules, running into her wasn't easy.
Even though we came into briefings for working there at different times, by some wonderful twist of fate, Najwah and I ended up signing our contracts on the same day, and ever since that day we had been in the same "groups" and work teams at Amazon almost until the end.
Looking at us on that first day, I don't think anyone would have predicted how close we would grow to become.
But God had a plan and made sure that we would be with each other for those 4 months at least.
We had our training together.
We both were placed in the same phone team together.
We both then had our chat training together, and eventually we both became chat agents at the same time.

Initially, Najwah thought I was snobby; I thought she was weird.
If you ask her she'll tell you that she thought I was quiet but interesting, and that (apparently) I had an accent. (I do not have an accent).
I've asked her once about this and she's told me that she knew there was a personality to me that I wasn't showing, and she liked that.
I on the other hand quickly grew to love her because of how un-filtered she is.
Anything she thinks, she will say. And to me, finding someone who genuinely speaks their mind is refreshing, and I absolutely love that about her.
A memory I will never forget is Najwah swearing at our new supervisor the very first time she was introduced to him because he called her 'Najwah Petersen'.
She hates that.
She immediately felt guilty afterwards and apologized for it, but the fact that she had the balls to say that to him in the first place is what I admire about her.
For the time we were at Amazon during this "temporary" phase, Naj and I had one goal, and that was to become a permanent employee.
Working at Amazon has a lot of benefits.
Secure job.
Good pay.
Opportunity for growth.
We had no idea where our lives were going to take us and had no plan, so all we knew was that was our goal, and we both needed to achieve it.
For those few months we kept our heads down and worked damn hard to make sure we reached that goal, which we eventually did.

Anyone who works between the hours of 7pm-7am can tell you that it is not an easy lifestyle to live.
Say goodbye to your friends because, honey, you'll be working; and that includes public holidays.
There were times where we were required to work overtime amounting to at least 50 hours a week, which although I wasn't a fan of, I could manage. Bringing in the new year at work was probably the most bitter pill for me to swallow.
Because you're forced to sleep in the daytime, you lose all contact with your social life.
Anyone outside of our little world couldn't truly understand what it's like to have to tell people you can't go out on a Sunday afternoon because you'll be asleep due to the fact that you need to keep your sleeping pattern.
Getting people to be quiet in the house during the daytime is a damn mission.
You start to genuinely become a different person, snapping at people for waking you up; getting upset over small little things because you're so stressed out of your mind that even someone just smiling at you could annoy you.
"Night owl" becomes an entirely new concept to you, and because of the nature of your job as a chat agent, you couldn't just sit still when you weren't at work. You always had to be multitasking, so much so to the point where you can't watch TV without doing something else at the same time.
Combine that with working in a position where all you do for hours on end is listen to people complain, and where you're driven to compete for excellent statistics, it's enough to make you sometimes feel like you're going to go crazy.

Because nobody outside of your work can understand what you're going through, you begin to rely on your teammates for so much more than even you realize.
Due to Amazon's security policies, you have to shut out the rest of the world, so you spend hours on end isolated with just your colleagues.
You're constantly asking their help on a situation, and making lunch-run requests at 11pm at night.
Through the good and the bad times, those people are right there in the trenches with you.
They know what it's like to have to force yourself into caring about the most trivial of problems for the sake of the job.
Those people become your family.
Now that both Naj and I are no longer working there, we can see that with so much more clarity.
I can say with ease that everyone there helped me in one way or another, because they did.
Thanks to Amazon, there are now some people that I can truly consider life-long friends.

I've met some of the most interesting personalities there (looking at you, Sasman), and I've learned what it takes to be a good leader (thanks, Titus).
I've learned to not judge a book by its cover; and that people you previously would not have paid attention to can surprise you.
I've learned that the world is not as black and white as I once thought (names shall not be mentioned but you know who you are :)).

As I've now closed that chapter of my life and am looking towards to the new one, I can't help but reflect back on my time there and smile.
I know that working there has taught me so much, not just about people, but also about what it really takes to run a good business; how to be successful in general; and most importantly how to work hard and take charge of a situation.
Working there has taught me about life and how the world works.
As someone who was pretty much straight out of university, I had dabbled in working for other companies, but never learned nearly as much as I did from my time at Amazon.
I believe that working there in one year has taught me so much more than I would have learned at any other company, and that I know would have taken years to get to learn if anything.
These are life lessons I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
Working there was hard, it was sometimes painful, but I would never change that experience for anything, and I would highly recommend working there to anyone.

My friends, I will miss you more than you know.
I will miss our daily banter and making fun of the stupidity we had to deal with.
I will miss your stories of crazy weekend antics at some party.
I will miss our competitiveness over trying to be better than each other and almost always kicking the other teams asses.
I will definitely miss the free food and incredible parties that Amazon throws.
Amazon knows how to treat their customers, both external and internal, and I'll always carry the value of that with me no matter where I go.

I wish you all the best of success, and I know we'll keep in touch.
I can't wait to see who we all are 20 years from now :)

I thank you.
I love you.
I'll miss you.

Rasheeda xx

Perks of Being a Wallflower

Let me start off by saying that if you haven't seen the movie or read the book, this isn't really about that so there won't be any spoilers in this.
This is actually quite a personal post for me, but it is a beautiful Sunday day, so I will try and keep it as light as possible, but forgive me in advance for being a little self-indulgent in this one because it's largely about myself.

I wanted to talk about what it means to be a wallflower because I think so many people out there are wallflowers and their side of the story isn't really heard much.
I know this because I was a wallflower myself.

Anyone from my past can tell you that who I am today is not who I was back when I was younger.
I wasn't "cool" or popular; I wasn't really much anything except someone who goes to the same school as everyone else.
I'm more than okay with this.

To give you some background, I went to 4 different schools, so I learned to never really attach myself to people. A simple hello, hi, I am here for a while, let's just get through this, and I'll be gone soon again, was all that was needed from me and my classmates.
That's sort of how I lived my life and how I largely am today still.
Because of that, I was never really included in many things, and I never really had many friends.
I would just like to point out that I did make some really great friends in High school. It's important for me to say this because I need you to know that I was basically a normal kid; I didn't have the toughest of childhoods, and although I went through primary school pretty much a loner, I know how to befriend people if I want to or if given the chance.
You need to know this because anyone can be a wallflower; there doesn't need to be a big traumatic experience in your past for you to be one.

When you're a wallflower people don't tend to pay you much attention.
You could have the greatests opinion on something, but because you're not really "important", what you have to say is not really important.
It's unfortunate but that is the world we live in.
Not everyone can speak up, so you learn to keep your opinions to yourself and let others take the lead.

There are definitely perks in being a wallflower.
As long as you don't do anything to make you stand out, you can do pretty much whatever you want to do and people won't really notice.
Yes they won't really care if you do something great, but at the same time they won't really care if you mess up either, because like I said, you just slip by under everyone's radar.
Being a wallflower gives you the ability to really grow up and be who you want to be, without the worry of being criticized for your actions or opinions.

Yes we all know that people who dress weird, or dye their hair crazy colours, or get weird piercings or tattoos, do it as a way to get people to notice them. They want to stand out to have their voice heard, and they are trying to force people to acknowledge them.
Maybe if someone just paid them some attention they wouldn't feel the need to go to more extreme measures.

I try not to take people by their word because we're all actors in life.

I know that majority of us are just trying to be perceived as normal to fit in, so we behave socially acceptable when in public because we want to feel a part of the group.
Because of this it's easy to let pain and the real side of us go unnoticed.
I watch reality TV because it helps hone my 'skills' of recognizing when someone is pretending to be something they aren't, not because they want to, but because they don't know how to trust people with their real selves.

Charlie: There is so much pain. And I-I-I don't know how not to notice it.
Dr. Burton: What's hurting you?
Charlie: No, not... not me. It's them! It's... it's everyone. It never stops. Do you understand?

When I watched the film for the first time, this part stood out for me the most.

There is so much pain in the world.
Everyone has their own form of pain.

It's incredibly sad that only some of us see it, while the rest look past it completely.

I think that's part of why I have a 'saviour complex'.

I don't really know when or how it happened, but gradually I just became less and less of a wallflower and got people to notice me. I think it's because I started voicing my opinion more and chose to publicly show people that I too had input, and that maybe they should start listening.

Now that I have (somewhat) of a voice, all I want to do is help others try and find theirs too.

In school, I was that person who befriended the new kid because I wanted to make them feel a part of our school.

In life, I'm that person who wants to invite everyone to the party because I want them to feel invited.
Nobody wants to be that kid that gets picked last.

I know what it's like to not get invited to parties, or to feel purposefully left out, so I know now to try to not make anyone feel that way.
What difference will it really make to you if you invite someone to your function and they aren't "cool" enough?
For one moment you can make that person feel special, so who cares if people don't think they will add "value" to your party?
That sort of high school mentality is what I can't stand about so many people today; that desire to only appreciate what others will think is cool.
I know it's meant to be taken as a joke, but it even bugs me so much when people use the Mean Girls quote: "You can't sit with us", because it encourages this mentality that "we're better than you", and I absolutely hate that.

Popularity is a strange, funny thing. 

Many people want to be popular, but I think that those that aim for popularity are actually really insecure and it's rather sad.
They want to feel special, but they don't know how to feel validated without someone else telling them they are valuable.
See kids, even the popular people have their own type of pain.

Personally I don't need to feel popular.

When you grow up as your own cheerleader in life, you grow to value yourself.
You know you are important, so what others think doesn't really matter, and as a result you learn to not pay attention to when others are cheering for you too.

You learn to value yourself for who you are.
And that, my friends, is the true beauty of being a wallflower.

I try not to give attention to popular people because that is exactly what they want and need to thrive.
Think about all those people you know that are considered to be "cool" or "famous"; do you think they would still be doing what they are doing if people thought it was uncool?
If the answer is yes, then you know that person is being themself, and they just happen to have a large audience.
But if you find yourself thinking: "Hmm, maybe not", then you know that person is only in it for the fame of it, and you liking all their photo's is like feeding animals at the zoo- you enable them in a bad way, which doesn't help anyone, especially not them.

There are more than enough people fawning over those who are popular, so they don't need me to add more to it.
I want to be the person that sits by the loner.
I want to help them gain recognition and self-confidence that they are valuable.
Helping someone realize their worth is what makes me feel like I am making an impact in the world.

There is another blog that I help write on.
It's pretty popular, but I don't publicly advertise too much the fact that I work on it for two reasons:
Firstly, the blog wouldn't be nearly as popular coming from me as it is coming from that other person, who is rather popular.

I can sit back and appreciate the compliments it gets because I don't need the recognition to be happy.

I'm happy knowing that people are reading it and they like what I have to say, even if they don't really know that some of it comes from me.

Secondly, it shows people another side of that popular person, a deeper side; a side most never would have noticed because all they see is the 'persona' that is put on.
When I initially told him he should blog his thoughts, I knew the other side of him, and I wanted to help share that with the world.
Reading through the comments on the blog only proves to me that people are genuinely surprised that he could think that way, and are only now getting to know the real him, and I love that.

I don't need to stand out. I'm more than happy to help others take the spotlight if it helps people to show their true worth to the world.

I'm glad that I was never popular growing up.
I'm glad that I was a wallflower.
It's helped me to see life from a different perspective and because like recognizes like, I know how important simply making someone feel included can be.
When I was in school, a girl in my class was slowly having a nervous breakdown and nobody could see it. Not even her closest friends saw that she was in trouble until I pushed them to go talk to her.
Because we were not close, she never would have trusted me enough to want to talk to me, so instead of me stepping in directly, I subtly forced her friends into recognizing there was an issue, and eventually they helped her through that.
Nobody recognizes that I helped, but it doesn't matter. She got help, she's okay, and that's really all that counts.

I find it sad that people watch the film and all they see is some cute teenage love story, because it's barely even about that.
In so many ways Charlie represents all of us.
Throughout Perks of Being a Wallflower Charlie would drop subtle hints that he needed someone.
He needed someone to just be there for him.
He needed someone to make him feel included.
He needed someone to make him feel loved so that he could control himself and be a normal person.
Once he found that, he was able to be happy.
In the end he was even able to say goodbye to his friends because he knew they were happy, and their happiness made him happy.
That's how you know when someone loves you for the right reasons, when all they want is to see you happy.

I think that the main message about the movie was people see what they want to see.
People subtly tell or show us all the time who they are.
I tweeted it earlier so I won't say much without giving away the film, but the movie has a much darker meaning behind it.
Some people were actually surprised when I pointed it out because they themselves had not realized it.
I think that's exactly what the author was trying to say, that all the signs are given to us, but it's up to us to choose to see it.

All I'm saying is, try and pay more attention to people.
Pay more attention to what they are really telling you.
Try to see past the facade people put on and see who they really are.

Try and help to notice when someone needs a hug, or just someone to listen to them.
Even if someone is shy, talk to them. You can do the hard work by keeping the conversation going.
People just want to feel included. Make them feel included.

Tell people you appreciate them and what they do for you. It makes them feel valued.

Try and make people feel like they count. 

Show people that they are important.

You'll be surprised by what true beauty can be very well hidden, if you only paid attention.

Do You Want To Exist In Your Life?

Recently I was watching The Real Housewives of Orange County (I'm a sucker for reality TV and the RH series is my crack), and the topic of happiness resonated with me, enough to inspire writing this post.

One of the ladies was having trouble with her marriage in that she and her husband had reached a place in their life where they had everything they could possibly "need", but they were unhappy.
A big house, a boat, expensive clothing, trips around the world; they have all of this, and yet they aren't happy.

Why is that?
Isn't society teaching us that these are the key ingredients to the happily-ever-after formula?
Isn't it practically written somewhere that if you follow a specific, responsible path, it will lead to having money, a family, status, and that you will be happy?
Isn't that why parents push their kids to do well in school so that they can get into a university to be backed up by a piece of paper that will eventually allow them to sustain such a life, thus resulting in the "key" to happiness?

I can say that I've been to university.
I have a degree. As a matter of fact I have two.
I worked at a job that paid well, a job that had all the benefits needed in order to be "secure" in life.
At the risk of sounding cocky, yes I was very good at my job and I could with time grow into a higher-ranking position at the company. Just before I left I was offered a higher position with better pay.
So why did I leave?

From a young age I've always realized that nothing can make you happy but you.
Money doesn't buy you happiness. Money buys you things.
How you utilize these things in your life is what makes you happy.

We create our own happiness.
As Oprah-ish at it sounds, what we want from life is what we put out there.

If you eat an entire chocolate cake by yourself, there are two ways you can feel after you eat it.
You can either choose to think:
"Man, that was a damn good cake. I'm so going to get fat from it, but I'll try and work it off. Or maybe I won't, I don't really care. All I know is, I enjoyed that cake".
Or you can think:
"Wow, that cake was good. Crap. Now I'm going to get fat from it. Damn it, I have to go to the gym. What if I don't go to they gym? What if I can't work off that cake? Oh no, I really AM going to get fat from it. WHY did I eat that cake?? All of this could have been avoided if I had just not eaten the cake!"

The money bought you the cake; either way you look at it, the cake is destined to have the same effect on your body. You can go to they gym or you can not go to the gym, it doesn't matter.
Your attitude towards the cake after you have eaten it is what determines your happiness, because life is what you make of it.
The chocolate cake will always be there, whether you take it or not.
The question is do you try to take it, and once you have had it, what is your reaction to it?

Whenever I look at my family or my friends going about their lives, trying to work towards that certain "happiness goal", I can't help but think that our life paths could not be more different.
That's not to say that I don't want the same outcome as they do, because I do.
Eventually I would like to settle down and get married and have kids and lead a simple life.
But for now, I want to stir things up a bit.

I want to scare myself.
I want to challenge myself.
I want to do things no one expects me to do.

Why? Because, where is the fun in life if you're just going to do what everyone else does?
If at the end of our lives we all look back and say we've followed the same path, what interesting stories will we have to talk about?

I love my friends and family. We all have our roles to play in life, and I am sincerely happy and love that they have found and are walking the paths they have chosen in their lives.
I just think it's not for me.
I'm too much of a wild soul, a nomad by nature, to be settling this early in my life.

All my life I have always said that no matter what career path I choose, all I want to do is travel.
I've been fortunate enough to say that I love travelling.
Through travelling I have been exposed to so much more wealth and knowledge than money can ever buy me.
There is no greater teacher than mankind itself.
The world is our textbook and life is our degree.

I wanted to travel, but in order to do so, I needed money. I was always searching for ways that would combine the two, without even realizing that there was one clear option staring me in the face.
So, for those of you that have asked, this is the reason as to why I chose to pursue a career as a flight attendant. At least for the next few years, until another crazy idea takes hold of me.

Yes I'll be moving thousands of miles away to another country.
Yes I'll be saying goodbye to everyone and everything in my life that I love.
Yes, I'll be removed from my comfort zone.

But that is exactly what I want.

I want to be in an environment where I don't already know where the nearest place to go buy airtime is.
I want to be completely anonymous in a city; I want the city to swallow me up and allow me to disappear into it.
Let's face it, everyone knows everyone in Cape Town, and everyone has an opinion on everyone.

As much as I adore Cape Town, I've grown tired of it and the same repeated drama and stories in it.
I need a change of scenery.
I need to try new types of food.
I need new faces.
I need new people and the new stories that come with them.
I need new adventures.

People ask me: "Aren't you scared?" To be honest, no not really.
What would I be scared of?
I'm not moving to the middle of the jungle where there is no hospital or cell phone reception nearby.
Dubai has doctors and internet, you know.
If I need to speak to my family or friends, that's why I have Skype / Facebook / Twitter/ Whatsapp / Instagram / BBM/ Emails.
There are so many ways to be connected with people, and with modern medicine there really isn't anything to be afraid of.

Then I get the question: "Aren't you going to miss everyone?"
Of course I will.
But doesn't absence make the heart grow fonder?
I think being away from someone allows you to appreciate them that much more.
Too much of something is overkill, and soon you can't help but grow tired of it.

I don't even look at this as a challenge, because it isn't one.
I'm not really a fan of using the word "challenge" outside of the context of a sporting environment.
Things can be 'challenging' without actually being a 'challenge' per se.
A challenge is the breeding ground for competition, and this is life we're talking about.
You cannot 'win' at life because no matter what we do, at the end of it all we all have the same fate.

As with almost all things in life, I look at this as an experience.
Whether any experience is good or bad, I will learn from it.
I've always lived by the notion that one should not focus on what was the best or worst part about an experience, but rather focus on what it is that you learned from it.
That way you gain knowledge from it, and through knowledge is how we grow as people.

I know that for some reason people are afraid of dying.
Personally, I'm not afraid of death. I have no fear of dying whatsoever. Why would I fear death?
After you're dead, you're literally just dead. What's so scary about that?
No, I'm not afraid of death.
But I am terrified of not living.
I try not to think too much about the good or bad outcomes of a choice or path in life, but rather try and think of how I will feel if I don't go for it in the first place.
For example, in the past when an international act would come to Cape Town to perform and the concert tickets were pricey, I would always ask myself is not going worth more than losing a few hundreds?
Would I regret not having the memory of that night more than I would regret spending the cash?
That's pretty much the reason why I have been to every concert that I have been to.
That's the sort of "happiness" formula that I apply to my life.
I don't want to have life FOMO.

So to you I pose the question, do you want to exist in your life?
Or do you want to go out there and actually LIVE?

Whether it be with regards to this new chapter in my life, or anything else that comes up in the future, I personally feel that it's not about the end goal or the journey even.
For me, it's about looking back and thinking that no matter what, I can say that I did it.

And isn't that really the whole point of life?
:)

How To Shower A Baby Momma

My cousin Saajidah is the first grand kid in my dad's side of the family to get married and to be pregnant. 

This was the first Baby Shower I attended and of course I was not about to miss it, even if I was running on just 5 hours of sleep.

Baby momma is here!

I kicked ass on the nursery rhyme quiz.

The lack of sleep got the better of me when it came to unscrambling the words of this all-things-baby quiz.

WINNERS' SWAG.

My granny's face is totes trolling.

In just a few weeks we'll see the behbeh!