Spa Vouchers

When I resigned from teaching I was given a spa voucher as a farewell gift. I am not a lady of leisure so any kind of pampering (in that form) is completely foreign to me. I know pampering that comes in the form of a glass of wine while my husband makes dinner or a night out with my husband or an impromptu  shoulder massage  or when I let my six year old daughter do my make-up – make no mistake, these are things I love and thoroughly enjoy. But when it comes to pampering in the form of a spa treatment, I am a complete novice.

I will be honest and say that the whole concept of letting a stranger massage my entire body was slightly unnerving. The spa voucher stayed on my bedside table for about 3 months before I actually used it. I decided to use it two weeks before I got married; it seemed like a perfect pre-wedding activity. I had also quit smoking (again) and was feeling very healthy – these two factors resulted in me making the call and going in for my first ever full-body massage.

The day before, I prepared myself by shaving and washing my hair, straightening my hair and selecting an outfit. I realise that this may all sound unnecessary but I wanted to make sure that nothing in my appearance would give away the fact that this was not the world I lived in. The world of spa vouchers, manicures, pedicures, weekly massages, champagne lunches and Prada hand bags was not (and is still not) my world.

On arrival at the spa I was greeted with a smile and they even knew my name. I waited for a while in the waiting lounge reading a magazine. All I could hear was running water and all I could smell were scented candles and aromatherapy oils – I would recommend going to spend a few hours in the waiting room of a spa; even that experience was pretty relaxing. After handing them my spa voucher I was lead to the changing rooms.

I had my own locker key and inside this locker I would find my robe, a very very tiny pair of panties (that could have been mistaken for a hair-band) and some comfy slippers. I was told to change into the robe and slippers and then make my way to the couches by the candles.  This specific spa treatment center was made to look like a cave. The walls were only made out of large rocks and behind me were stairs leading down to, what looked like, underground rock pools. This place was heavenly.

As I was gawking, mouth open, at this amazing place, a woman came up to me with a bowl of warm water and said that she was going to wash my feet. I almost said that she didn’t have to (to me it felt like such a degrading act, you know, to wash someone else’s feet) but I stopped myself. This is what these people do for a living (and I know how much that spa voucher cost) so I sat back at let the pampering begin.

All in all, it was an unforgettable experience and I would love to do it again. But I am also so grateful that this is not a regular part of my world because then I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much. Every woman deserves to be pampered and treated like a queen once in her life, so if you are looking for a wonderful gift for a woman, this is definitely the way to go.

Wine Tasting

In my opinion, there is one essential thing that is needed when doing a day of wine tasting. You absolutely need to have a designated driver. I am not saying that is essential that you drink so much that you resemble a drunken sailor but we all know that even after four tastings you might be over the legal driving limit. So find someone who (for some bazaar reason doesn’t drink) and head off to nearest cluster of wine farms.

I would think that twelve o’clock is a good time to start. Make sure you have had a big oily breakfast of bacon and eggs and then get going. I say twelve o’clock because that seems to be the socially acceptable time to start drinking and because then, after a few wine tastings, you can buy a bottle (or two) to share with your friends while enjoying a wonderful lunch at a beautiful vineyard.

There are some wine farms that suggest you spit out the wine after tasting. You first swirl the wine around in your glass, then you take a sniff, then you take a sip and then you spit. After all of this you need say something intelligent like, “I can taste the fruit under-tone and even a hint of lavender” and then the person pouring the wine will nod and smile at your impressive knowledge of wine.

There are many types of wine that you will be trying on your wine tasting excursion. Let’s start with the white wine – Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Gewurtztraminer (never in my life have I heard of that one but it sounds like the hangover might be bad), Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Reisling and Sauvignon Blanc. Personally, I like a good Chardonnay, my favourite being Zonnebloem but I have been known to dabble in a little Sauvignon Blanc once in a while.

Then we get the red wines – Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Zinfandel and Shiraz are the names that sound familiar to me but the following I know nothing about - Cabernet Franc, Chianti, Barolo, Barberesco, Petite Sirah, Syrah, Sangiovese, Malbec, Tempranillo, Grenache, Bordeaux, and Côtes du Rhône. The only red wine I will gladly drink is my dad’s (he has a vineyard at the back of his house and makes only red wine). Generally, red wine’s dry after taste reminds me, for some reason, of chalk on a chalkboard. So unless it is my dad’s Klip Huis Wyn (Shiraz) I am not likely to try it, even at a wine tasting

All in all, I would say that there is quite a lot to learn on a day of wine tasting. You learn about wine, you learn about the area that you are in and about the vineyards. And most importantly, you get to have a great day out with your friends and I am sure that the more you drink, the more you will learn about them too.

Cooking School and Culinary Classes

I am not a natural cook or baker. I have a few standard recipes (mostly taken from the meals my parents used to cook for me) and some that I have invented on my own. I do not know what spices go with what food or what sauce will make a certain dish taste awesome. I just don’t have that natural cooking instinct. Baking makes me anxious because I never know if it is going to turn out OK and the messiness of baking doesn’t work well with my obsessive compulsive tidy gene.

If anybody should take culinary classes it should be me. Show me exactly how to make something and show me that the end result will be tasty and then I will be able to reproduce it at home. Reading recipes from cookbooks or magazines doesn’t work for me because I am so sure that I will miss a vital step and then instead of making potato fritters I end up making extra warm mashed potato.

Cooking school is unfortunately not a cheap way of learning how to cook. I think you need to actually have a passion for cooking to attend an actual cooking school – you need to be one of those people that feels that cooking as an art, that it is a creative process. I find nothing creative about the process of cooking, my language might get quite creative when I mess it up, but other than that it is just one of those things I need to do in order to make my tummy happy. Cooking, for me, is purely an act which results in me and my family being fed.

I wish I could be a culinary genius and have an endless amount of recipes in my head at any given moment, but right now I can only think of these – potato bake, quiche, lasagne, grilled vegetables and cous cous, pasta with creamy mushroom sauce and braai food (yes, that does count). It is not a bad start, but I think that some culinary classes will definitely be beneficial.

I must admit that baking has become more enjoyable now that my daughter gets involved. Her happiness becomes my happiness and I tend to worry less about the flour and the eggs and the sugar and the baking powder spilling on the counter and the floor and on her clothes and the dishes that keep piling up and…OK, maybe those things still bother me…but I am trying to let go and rather just experience it through her eyes. Cooking school for kids would be a great idea; Kayla would love to go to culinary classes, I would love that too - she could teach me instead.

The Collins dictionary states that to cook is “to prepare food by the action of heat, as by boiling, baking, etc, or of food to become ready for eating through such a process.” If only it could be that easy, but alas, it involves ingredients, creativity, functional taste buds and most of all the ability to enjoy the task of cooking. What I have definitely learnt (in my 7 years of cooking for myself) is that an angry cook makes yucky food but a happy cook makes delicious food, no matter how mediocre it may be.

Aerobatic Flight

When I first saw those words, aerobatic flight, I pictured a young woman in a red sparkly leotard jumping into the air, doing a summersault and landing on a tight rope. And then I Googled it…I found out that I was very very wrong. Aerobatic flight is not an acrobat flying but rather a small bi-plane that does ridiculously dangerous turny things while flying.

The website, redbaron.com, describes aerobatic flight as a “neck- numbing, adrenaline-inducing roller coaster of thrills 2000ft in the air”. Anything that gets described as neck-numbing is not OK with me; who on earth wants a numb neck? Not me. According to them “it is the best seat in the house of the best view in the world”, I beg to differ – how much of the world do you think you are going to see when you are turning and rolling and feeling nauseous  and closing your eyes out of pure “neck-numbing” fear?

In an attempt to entice you even more, they state that "from the front seat of the open-cockpit bi-plane you’ll even get a chance to do a loop and roll before you head home". Oh wow, how kind of you.  And then they have the nerve to suggest that you "fly the plane yourself! Indulge your childhood fantasy," definitely not my fantasy, "and take control of an aerobatic training aircraft. Strap yourself in", thanks for the safety tip,"for the ride of your life". I feel dizzy just writing about this.

Wikipedia states that “aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flight”. I agree, aerobatic flight seems rather abnormal to me. It goes on the say that “most aerobatic maneuvers involve rotation of the aircraft about its longitudinal (roll) axis or lateral (pitch) axis. Other maneuvers, such as a spin, displace the aircraft about its vertical (yaw) axis”. Roll, pitch and raw – terms I have never heard before and terms I never wish to hear again.

Now, what are the aerobatic flight safety measures? Wikipedia offered this ‘reassuring’ comment, “in some countries, the pilot must wear a parachute when performing aerobatics”…mmm…only in some countries, why not in all? Surely all countries love their citizens, surely all countries frown upon splattered human beings in their suburbs? I guess not.

I have witnessed this craziness in the air before and I will admit that it is impressive and entertaining. But I will not be impressed or entertained if I am personally doing the rolling and the pitching. I am pretty sure that I will feel like I am dying and some or other survival instinct will kick in and, praying that I am in one of the countries that believes in parachutes, I will close my eyes and then jump.

My wonderful sparkly idea of aerobatic flight has been shattered into a million little pieces and I am now left feeling nothing but light-headed. I don’t know why I feel more comfortable with the thought of human beings flinging themselves into the air, but I will have to go with my gut (because I love and appreciate all my internal organs) and say that aerobatic flight is not for me.

Corporate Gifts and Corporate Incentives

I have never been part of the corporate rat-race and I don’t think I ever will be. There are parts of it that intrigue me and parts of it that I know I could never put up with. I think that I enjoy my quality of life too much to sit behind a desk from 8am to 5pm. I need to be moving around, doing different things and to top it all off, traffic is my least favourite thing. I also like knowing when my work day ends my family day starts, I wouldn’t want any over-lapping; work cannot come home with me.

What does intrigue me, however, is the thought of being super important; the 30-story-building-corporate-level important. I want to walk into the building and everyone greets me and holds the elevators for me and I just have to nod and smile at security and they let me in. That kind of importance is hard to find as a teacher or a writer. Corporate importance is a whole other ball game.

I also have a strong need (that must still be satisfied) to wear a power suit - a ¾ tight grey skirt with a white shirt, an awesome tailored jacket and black heels. Yip, I can see myself already. Something else that is rather splendid, when it comes to working for corporate companies, are corporate gifts and corporate incentives.

Corporate gifts can range from chill-out stress balls to a USB Coffee warmer, and mini-me paper clips to a shoe shine kit. Not sure what kind of a message you are sending your employee when you give him stress balls and a shoe shine kit but the other gifts are rather great. Oh, what I would do with a USB coffee warmer. Then there are puzzle clocks, Who-Am-I ID holders, Rubik’s memory sticks, bling memory sticks, golf umbrellas, cyberspace travel sets, and my personal favourite, a pill and plaster dispenser. So, not only do you get to wear your power suit and befriend the security staff, you also get random, but very useful gifts.

According to companyincentives.co.za, 'The Maslow theory on motivation stated that you cannot motivate a person - motivation can only come from within.  You can however use persuasion to motivate a person by either threats of dismissal or a reward.  Threats can have the opposite effect and increase stubbornness and a "don't careless attitude", which is counter productive & obviously not good for your business profits.' So this is where corporate incentives come in. It looks like these incentives are threats with pretty bows tied around them. “Jonny, if you get us this client I will take you and your wife on my yacht for the weekend.” But we all know that if Jonny doesn’t get the client he won’t be going on the yacht.

Corporate incentives, I imagine, do work wonders in the work place, maybe even more than money does. I think that if I had a very well paid corporate job and was asked if I want to go skiing in Switzerland or have R50 000 I would opt for the skiing; an experience over money. Having said all of this while pretending to be a corporate woman, I now have to return to reality and simply cheers all you ladder-climbers (with my cheap chardonnay) for living a life of corporate gifts and corporate incentives and possibly even a corporate cat.