Allchorn Design

Well, sometimes things don’t go according to plan. New offices lined up, huge amounts of effort on a house we were looking forward to spending a good while in and everything on the up and up… all changed in a phone call. That call came from my dad’s house, and it wasn’t my dad on the phone. It was his friend telling me that he’d had a stroke and was in the hospital 1600km (1000 miles) away.

I made it here one time!

Needless to say, priority number one was to get a plane ticket to Durban and tie up as many loose ends as can be tied in 2 days. Kudos to 1time for a reasonably priced ticket at such short notice. Aside from sitting on the floor in the departure lounge, it was a pretty painless trip.

Learning to speak, but the beer still flows

I’m now sitting in a room in Durban a week later. My old man is out of the hospital and we’re on what looks like is going to be a relatively lengthy recovery period. He needs to learn how to speak again, and his right hand side has lost most of it’s coordination and strength. Really though, it sounds worse than it is.

He’s fully alert (or at least as how he was) and understands all what is said to him. It’s a one way street though, as he’s struggling to say things, and writing is not much better. It’s often a guessing game and thankfully he sees the humour in it sometimes. At least some words (f***, sh** and beer) are easy for him… I think they’re ingrained in his psychi.

Internet connection?

Please sign here… in blood, and bring your first born with a DNA sample and proof of address.

Connectivity in Durban… thats a joke. I went down to the local postnet today to use their internet service. A screen, a keyboard and a mouse. Disabled start menu. No Skype, no MSN messenger, and thank f*** I migrated all my mail to the gmail interface or I’d have lost at least 3 possible projects by now.

All of my clients and prospects have been very understanding thus far and hopefully I will be back online shortly. For now, my best bet is sitting at the Musgrave Mugg & Bean and feeding off their wireless hotspot. Not ideal, but I do like their coffee. I’ll hunt down a second hand 3G modem on Gumtree or the like and buy a 1GB bundle to start with. If you’re reading this, I’ll either have done it already, or doing it as you read.

Better news to follow shortly… I hope.