Tuesday, August 25, 2009

"Bunch of animals" This is just one of the comments on the CPUT strikes. What is yours?

The strikes at CPUT are really getting worst each year. This is my fourth year now at CPUT – Cape Town campus, so I had the “luxury” of experiencing these strikes first hand. This year, was the worst. It ended in me, not having class for a whole week, because it was too dangerous to go to class.

This is not the way things are done. If you want to strike about something do it in an ordered, legal way. These people are the future of our country, and they way they behaved gave me a fright for the future. They raided the canteen, steeling food and breaking down. The canteen is privately owned, it does not even have anything to do with CPUT. They broke windows, disrupted class, assaulted students, and mugged others. This is unacceptable. What excuse do they have for this? It has nothing to do with getting your point across, it is plainly barbaric.

There are ways certain things are done, and the CPUT strikes are not the right way. It is getting way out of hand. These students need to rethink what they did and realise that it is not the civilised way of doing things. They would have gained more respect if they protested in a legal and ordered way. Instead they threw a tantrum like a two-year old and lost a lot of respect from other students on the campus. I was disgusted when I saw photos on the internet of how these students were behaving. I understand why they were unhappy and wanted to strike, I am just saying there are better ways of doing things. It is the way I was brought up.

The social network addiction

The other day I went on Facebook to find that most of my working friends online, chatting away. The same thing happened when I visited Twitter. This got me thinking...is this addiction affecting our work?

I don’t think one can truly focus on your work if you are constantly chatting or updating your status or Tweeting. First of all, when chatting you will need to keep the window open, which mean you will constantly interrupt yourself with what you are doing to check if you got a knew message and to reply. Same with twitter, you will constantly read what others are tweeting and update yours. In the first place I can’t see why you have to Tweet every 10 minutes. Seriously, there are more important things to do. This will only affect your work performance and end up in you not doing the best you can do. Even worst is how rude people can be, while you are in a meeting with them, they will Tweet or be on Facebook. This is very unprofessional!

Also, It is not a clever idea to invite all your colleagues and superiors as friends on both Facebook and Twitter and whatever other social network. There are boundaries, these people are not your friends and they might just loose respect for you when they see what you do in your free time. You should separate your work environment from your home environment. A woman found this out the hard way. She updated her Facebook status, stating how boring her work is and how much she hates her job. Her boss commented, in that case, if she felt that way she did not bother coming in again.

Facebook and Twitter have indeed become an addiction. Just the other day I heard on the radio how a women electrocuted herself while she was taking a bath, just because she had to Tweet and her laptop fell into the bathtub.

People need to break away from social networks a bit. There is a time and place for everything. Focus on what you need to do at work and put everything into that. There will always be time for “Facebooking” and Tweeting when you get home or during your lunch break.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

10 most unexpected consequences of being online

1. Finding out your new boyfriend is already married/in a relationship on Facebook
2. Finding love
3. Being dumped
4. Downloading a virus onto your computer
5. Entering faceNook instead of FaceBook and finding a pornsite
6. Finding out one of your friends are following your every move on facebook – STAKLER!
7. Realising how many people are online during working hours
8. Finding your dream house or job
9. Winning a million dollar in an online poker game you just happened to come across
10. Becoming a famous model/actor because someone saw your photo and saw potential