Nonqaba said ...

Hotel housekeeping seems to be immune from political correctness. We longer say fireman. It’s firefighter. Waitress is now a server, to accommodate both male and female. We must not say the woman who cleans your hotel room is a maid. She is a room attendant.   But, room attendants work under the banner of housekeeping departments and nobody has a problem with that. Housekeeping is an indoor activity, so it’s a women’s thing. Don’t kill me. Please don’t shoot the messenger.   Gardening is an outdoor activity, therefore male, so is driving the family car. Women don’t mind it that much because it’s the only time they get to sit down. Just think about other indoor and outdoor family activities, and label them, male or female. Housekeeping has not changed to a more politically correct them like ‘lifeline’  for example, because the sun still shines during the day and the moon at night.   What do you do?   I’m a stay-at-home mum . No . O.K. I’m into lifeline .   Housekeeping is still housekee

American Express, VISA and other credit card peddlers are after me, the small business. I don’t have a business yet, but that’s another story. What’s your point then? I thought this ‘written word’ podcast was about movies and bank managers. Yes it is. Old movies have scenes where rich characters ask bank managers for loans. They usually got them because of school ties. Both men went to institutions like Eton, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Yale or Harvard. Time evolved and credit cards strolled along, but they were for the chosen few with accountants, because they are bad in math. Poor people know exactly how much they have in the bank and it’s usually three digits max. Drake, the rapper born and raised in Canada has so much cash, it gives him a headache, so he has accountants. Modern day graduates don’t deal with bank managers because of digital banking. In fact, students have credit cards as we speak, not pocket money as in dollars and cents. Years ago, I was shocked to learn that credit

Once upon a time in Canada, when we were COVID-19 free, we voted for one party in the province we called home, and another party for our man or woman in the federal government in Ottawa. Because we didn’t have this guillotine around our necks, we were free to be colour-coded politically. We voted Bloc Quebecois, Conservative, Green, Liberal, NDP and many more. We also paid taxes. We’ve never liked it, but understand that the government needs it to take care of infrastructure, hospitals and other things we need as Canadians, as ordinary Canadians if I might add. COVID-19 came unannounced and uninvited.   We lost our jobs because businesses went out of business, schools were under padlock, hospitals carried extra weight and seniors were under attack as the major carriers despite the fact that most of them don’t travel. The mental state of the nation, of ordinary Canadians seeped with fear. The virus is so violent, we shelved that we wore different political stripes. We were, and are stil

  Introduction In 2020 and beyond learning takes place in two phases. ü  Before the cellphone ü  After the cellphone Parents provide education before the cellphone because they are like peacocks in kids’ eyes. They follow them around. They want to help them rake leaves, clean the car or bake cakes. Kids can tell when parents are getting ready to go somewhere without them. They beg to be taken along. This is the ideal time to impart survival knowledge because all is lost when they get their first cellphone. Parents are no longer peacocks. They become bugs, bugging them for this and that when all they want is to take the social media speed train like their friends. Playing With Books Once again, kids too young to have cellphones like hanging out with parents. They are curious so they ask questions. They learn quicker if learning is playful, not tied behind a desk like at school. Don’t tell them you’re going to teach them about books. Entice them with this strategy. 1.  Get notebook and p

Matt Thomas, a sharp shooter who could have reduced the  Raptors deficit. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) owns Toronto Raptors and hires staff to oversee the basketball team. It also hires players, guys in contact with water, in the swimming pool. This division of labour creates inequality because top tier staff members are not hired help, players are. Hired help usually has speed dial on the mute button. Players see and feel things because they are in the swimming pool, but cannot cry for help. Top tier staff like coaches don’t even know the water’s temperature because they just dip a foot and they are out of the water, but make decisions that negatively affect players, the hired help. It can be argued that players are not that voiceless. They have agents watching their back and Michelle Roberts, Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), speaks for them. True, but they take care of numbers, stats, contracts written in legalese and ever pres

  Photo Credit: Online pic. Child neglect. Working from home. Working from distractions is more like it because, home is not Victorian England serenity in a castle. Home distractions are one of the reasons why we’re mad at COVID-19, the primary reason being the fear of catching it and dying. Definition : a distraction is something that prevents you from doing what you like. Surfing the internet for example. You have shares in wi-fi. That is why you live for social media, keeping tabs on the business competition, your ex, developing an app you hope Facebook will buy, playing online games and visiting certain sites every ten minutes. We’re mad at the virus because it exposes the lie that we relish the idea of working from a place full of distractions, such as taking out garbage, listening to in-house partners we long discovered are a mistake, grocery shopping with the same partners and the main distraction, kids. Kids want company. It’s nature’s way. They adore you, mimic you and smile f

We worship success and it comes in numbers. In these heady days of following strangers online, we follow people with impressive stats because they have no clothes on; people who sing in front of thousands, play sports or act in front of movie cameras but are watched by millions, via television and the internet. People who are successful in life have numbers, quantity, size, capacity. Events are measured by how many people showed up. For COVID-19, the more the merrier. It increases the possibility of the virus hitching a ride on as many people as possible. It is therefore time to tweak English, in fact all languages, and make them COVID-19 compliant, which means the following expressions must be thrown in the dinosaur bin. 1.  The more the merrier. 2.  It was standing room only. 3.  The place is jumping. 4.  It is a sold out concert. 5.  It’s house full tonight. 6.  It was wild man! 7.  There were butts in every seat. 8.  It was packed to the rafters. 9.  We were packed like sardines. B

  Can COVID-19 force Toronto Raptors to move its administration to the U.S.? Memphis Grizzlies, Ja Morant 2020 Rookie of the Year. It can be done. Canada had the Vancouver Grizzlies, a basketball team based in British Columbia Province. It relocated to Tennessee after the 2000-2001 season and the name changed to Memphis Grizzlies. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE), which owns Toronto Raptors, might consider moving the basketball team to the U.S. because of COVID-19. Canada demands that anybody entering the country, citizen and non-citizen, must self quarantine for 14 days. Stay at home or somewhere, as long it’s inside away from other people. No exception. Players are not above quarantine requirements. That is why Toronto Raptors’ General Manager Bobby Webster and President Masai Ujiri packed their shaving kits and laptops in July and joined players in the ‘bubble’ in Florida. They are there for the duration. They had to be ‘on site’ because the 14 day quarantine militates aga

Photo: Nonqaba waka Msimang. Urban women might revert to roles they had fifty years ago, if COVID-19 makes it difficult for kids to be safe in school. There is no doubt about legal equality of the sexes in industrialized countries like Canada and U.S. but the reality is, when it comes to kids, women feel the pain more than men.   Zulu  is a language spoken mainly in southern Africa and this is how women put it: ku ya sika  (it cuts). When a child cries, the woman is reminded of labour pains she experienced to bring it to this world. Schools have their phone numbers in case kids get sick. They go shopping for school uniforms. They schedule birthday parties. They drive here and there to drop off and pick up kids for school related events. In other parts of the world, raising kids is not a problem because mothers are primary caregivers aided by aunts, female cousins, neighbors and grandmothers. Grandmothers are super important because they are the granary of knowledge and have command of

Girls Trip, directed by Malcolm D. Lee. The virus has decimated the art of conversation because we no longer meet for coffee, lunch or dinner. We send text messages, photos with clothes on or bare, GIF’s like ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith nursing avocado juice, videos and even emoji’s. Can an emoji pick up a joke, just by looking at me? Conversation with your friends is not language only. The way they look at you tells you that what you just said is unbelievable or spot on. There’s a certain look that says: are you serious? I once saw it on a bus when a woman who is known as a ‘working girl’ tried to pick up a blind man. She did in fact, because he gave her his number. The woman sitting across looked at me. I returned the look, and we were sad that he did not know what she looked like. How cruel can one be? Friends detect things you can get away with in text messages. When you are face to face, they know you’re lying through your teeth to protect a loved one who is very dis-loving. Is that a