"Do you think that's how things are?"

"I don't know."

She glanced over his shoulder into a crimson curtain which looked almost like velvet from a distance, but without a glimmer to convince her. A waiter leant over the table directly in front of the window, contrasting the curtain with an undoubtedly black jacket. He poured what looked like a chardonnay into a middle-aged woman's glass, smiling politely while she sat back and did her best to look as though she barely noticed him.

"I think that we can change a few things if we really want to". He tipped the glass, took a slow sip, then pursed his lips to clean them as he put it down. "Only, the definition of 'a few' isn't always accepted."

She smiled. As she crossed her legs, the tip of one toe brushed his leg. He didn't flinch, even as she stared straight into his eyes without blinking.

With her glass raised to her lips, she hesitated. "Would you change things, if you could?"

"Only some things."

"And the others?"

He smiled. "Some things I wouldn't have a reason in the world to change."

I yearn for something I'm utterly convinced exists.

I yearn for a knowing smile, a private glance.

I yearn for a neck to nuzzle up to, to tell of every little delight.
In return I yearn for being a shoulder to snuggle up to, to listen to every little problem.

I yearn for sharing ability, for accomplishing more than I could alone.
In return I yearn for relishing another's achievement.

I yearn for a warm body to hold, not because it's cold, but because warmth gives life.
In return I yearn for giving safety through my warmth.

I yearn for caressing a sleeping tuft of hair, to indulge in its scent.
In return I yearn for being an object of affection.

I yearn to whisper a proposition.
In return I yearn for tacitly accepting one whispered to me.

I yearn to wake up to a smile, to smile in return, to know that that's exactly how things are supposed to be.

Most importantly, I yearn to be sure that yearning is not all there is to it.

Have you ever had a story in your head that you wanted to share? A story you were convinced was worth telling, without having to ever rationalise it to anyone? I have. Which is why, after plenty of consideration, I've decided to tell it; to whoever is interested in listening.

There's a twist, however: This story is going to be told in bits, unfolded over time to form the hopefully comprehensible whole I have in mind. Every week, I'm going to publish what I'm going to refer to as a "slice", a little snippet around a page or two in length. Don't ask me how many of these there are going to be - I can't tell you, because I don't know. What I can tell you is that what I want to bring across can't be done justice in just a few pages.

There will be no synopsis, no blurb intended to generate sales. This is a story in what I hope will be its purest form, written for no target market, edited by no one for suitability and appropriateness, sculpted and structured without the luxury of hindsight. I will not have the advantage of polishing and changing after re-consideration as traditional writers do. Once something has been read, it's cast in the reader's mind, whether their mind is stone or not. Rather, I should say whether your mind is stone or not.

Enough explanations.

This is the story.

Update: The first slice of the story starts here (the home link above will always show the very latest slice).

I thought I'd bring up something out of the ordinary for a change... Mainly because I know someone specific who'll soon be able to use what I'm about to cover, but also because it's something that I see people getting wrong so often, while it's actually quite rudimentary. I constantly get a stream of CVs (call them resumés if you must) passing through my inbox, most of them terribly badly structured, some containing irrelevant information, with only a rare few focusing on bringing across what the person they're aimed at actually wants to know.

The objective of a CV is simple: to communicate as clearly as possible to a prospective employer how you may be of value to their organisation. That's it. It's not meant to be used as a vehicle for telling people what kind of a person you are, or for regurgitating everything you've done in your life up until the point you create the document (just in case something might catch the reader's eye). Instead, a good CV:

Is concise - Think Mission Impossible. Think self-destructing messages. A CV is a message which needs to tell the reader what they want to know in 1 minute or less. If it takes longer than that to scan the first time, it's too long.

Gets to the point - Trim your language to something akin to a "Getting Started" user manual. Bullet points are called exactly that because they hit things accurately. If you have to write a paragraph, keep to a maximum of 3 sentences.

Is relevant - Try not to send a generic CV to an employer if you're sending it yourself. If you absolutely have to create a generic document because a recruitment agent is sending it out on your behalf to more than one employer, tailor the document to a specific position, never to "available positions". If you're individually sending your CV to an organisation, do some research on the company, and structure your skills to fit in with what they're looking for. A prospective employee who's done their homework scores major points.

Is written in the 3rd person - This is important for two reasons. Firstly, when something sounds like an outside perspective, it's (even if just subconsciously) perceived as objective. Secondly, writing something in the 3rd person forces you to reflect on what you're really saying, which means you'll think twice about saying silly things.

Doesn't tiptoe around the tulips - State blandly how much money you want. If you don't know, do some research. In addition, although you may be hesitant at first, state clearly how much you have been earning. Employers are very easily reassured of your competence if they see proof of your track record in financial terms.

Puts the important things first - There cannot be enough emphasis on this point; you need to convince the reader within the first two sections (see below) that you're the person they're looking for, the rest of the document is just there to reaffirm that first impression.

OK? So the points above are generic guidelines. The thing is though, structure is the critical determinant (see the last point above), meaning that fitting all of the above into the correct framework is the only way to get close to guaranteeing success. Remember that you're telling a story; not a story of your life, but a story which proposes business value. This is how you do it:

Step 1: Start with an introductory paragraph which describes you as a news reader would introduce a guest. Try to stick to no more than 2 or 3 sentences. The first sentence should state what you are, the second detail what you do.

Step 2: Now that the reader knows what you are, tell them in a little more detail what you can offer them, in the form of a bulleted list of deliverable skills. The word "deliverable" is important, because employment is actually just a contract to buy something (the something being your skills). Tell the reader what you're going to give them.

Step 3: OK, so the reader now knows what they're going to get. How much is it going to cost them? State in CTC (cost to company, the total actual amount the company needs to budget for each month) what you expect in remuneration terms. Don't be shy, a seller is supposed to advertise a price, and nothing annoys people as much as walking into a shop where there are no price tags. If you're approaching a large corporate, state your salary in annual terms; for smaller businesses, monthly is best - cash flow is a factor in a small business, and your monthly salary figure is important from an expense point of view. Even though your qualifications shouldn't necessarily determine your income in the real world, degrees and diplomas create perceptions: state your highest qualification without fuss as part of this section.

Step 4: The reader now knows what you are, what you can offer them, and how much you want for these skills. Why should they believe you? Show that your skills are tested and proven by setting out your track record from your last job down to your first. Keep things in the same terms as up to now by listing the position and what you delivered. You don't need to state how much you were earning in all your previous positions, but being open about your current salary shows a willingness to trade. Remember, you're offering to trade your skills at a fair price.

Step 5: If the reader's come this far and is still interested, you've done well. Tell them a little more about yourself in the form of personal details such as your age, language proficiency, etc. Continue to stick to bullets, you're not writing an essay. After that, give an overview of your education, and add one or two key references. Really, after the first 4 steps, all these points are formalities - so focus on the facts themselves, rather than explaining them nicely.

That's it? Yes. If you've been sparingly applying your magic, you should by now have a document around 3 pages long (short). Here's an example which you can use as a template of you're so inclined.

So what's the trick throughout the process? Don't sell yourself, sell what you can do. It's as simple as that.

He rolled over and nuzzled his nose into her hair. It smelled sweetly like cinnamon apple oats, the kind he'd eaten most mornings of his childhood life, that his mother had put down in front of him while his eyelids were still heavy from the night before. That first spoonful gave him a feeling that said "the day has started, everything's going to be OK". He remembered how he still tasted the oats on his way to school, even after the orange juice had shuffled around in his mouth.

Now, as he breathed into the nape of her neck and wrapped his arm lazily around her waist, he felt the same thing.

As she felt his hand on her belly, she turned around to face him, her nose replacing her neck as it touched his so lightly that it felt like she had a dew drop on the tip of it, rather than another person.

"Hi."

The corners of her mouth lifted upwards so slightly that she wondered whether she actually smiled as she said this, but it didn't really matter. Running a fingertip upwards from his neck over the stubble on his jaw, tracing a line over his lips, she realised that she had to be smiling; because he was.

"So, would you like your coffee?"

"You know the answer to that." Now, she had no doubt anymore about what the corners of her mouth were doing. As she opened her eyes, he brushed his nose past hers without hesitation. Kissing her softly, he ran two fingers up her spine so lightly that she felt like leaves were rustling somewhere in the distance.

He got up, and as he walked across the expanse of the loft towards the kitchen, he turned around. As he stood in the sunlight casting a confident shadow on the wall behind him, he looked at her with certainty in his eyes. "You know what? Everything is going to be just fine".

Earlier today, I read about doom and gloom. Not the apocalyptic kind, but the kind that has the potential to send shivers down your spine once you realise that its description is far from exaggerated.

I read this.

To which my response is this:

My fellow South African, I feel implored to ask for your attention for as long as you can spare it. I ask for it not because I have delusions of grandeur about the importance of what I am about to share with you, but because I know that, like me, you're a human being who has the ability to perceive, to understand, to react. This is all I know about you, but it is enough.

Our country is, at this moment, in a state of flux as it has never been. Even though change is undeniable and will always occur, I believe that the current potential for change, whether a lack of it, or an acceleration of it in a certain direction, is unprecedented. We are about to bring about a major move in a direction which is - like the needle on a shaking compass - precariously uncertain, and balanced on a wafer thin edge. I wish I could dismiss my own diagnosis of this state as dramatic and over reactive, but I cannot with a reasonable mind do so.

As a South African, I cannot deny what is wrong with this country. I cannot deny or ignore the daily events which imprint in the minds of the few fortunate enough to be perceptive, a negativity of thought which I personally believe is increasing, rather than decreasing. I cannot deny this, as much as I want to. Wishing away negativity does not work, as much as wishing away death does not.

In turn, I cannot deny what is wonderful about this country. I cannot deny or ignore the daily enthusiasm for growing fortune and prosperity I witness in the faces of those I work with, or in the smiles I see even in the faces even of those less economically fortunate than me. Enthusiasm and happiness are as natural as breathing; I am relieved and comforted by the fact that this is so.

Yet, as I write this, I do so knowing that I would be foolish to assume that prosperity is a given. It is not. Why? Because the country that I love is being threatened by one thing, and one thing only: Apathy. Apathy about the fact that we are heading towards electing to lead a country a man who is not even fit to lead a family. Apathy about the fact that, collectively, the energy crisis we find ourselves in is solvable. Apathy about the fact that we are being terrorised by a tiny minority of criminals who feed off the fact that we fear them. Apathy about the fact that we are willingly handing over the keys to justice and relentless prosecution of crime to a few fat men and women who have no comprehension of the underlying value of the crocodile-skinned shoes they find their feet in. Apathy about the fact that we are effectively destroying this value I talk about by letting the unearned be had via continuing racism under the disguise of so-called BEE. Apathy, most of all, about the fact that we're letting all that we so vocally oppose happen without opposition.

I refuse to live in apathy. I refuse to say that something is wrong, only to become so numbed by it over time that I become complacent enough to just accept that I cannot change it. I refuse to lie down while the country that has brought me so much joy is plunged into a state which does not reflect the values I cherish like I cherish those I love. I refuse to let South Africa become like the rest of Africa, and I refuse to say "Africa's not that bad". I simply, decisively and utterly refuse to succumb to apathy.

As I write these words to you, I do so with an understanding that you may not see them as I do. I do however have hope that you do, and that they'll give you even just an inkling of the courage you need to stand up and stop accepting the delusional belief that you cannot change what you see. You know what good is, it's a natural state. Both you and I know what we need to do to make good a reality, but apathy stops us from enforcing it, so evil gains the upper hand. There is no evil as vile as the indifference of good men. Right now, I challenge you to join me in eradicating indifference. Whether you eradicate it by producing, by teaching, by connecting, by protecting or by trading, know this: individual opposition to apathy, however small, however fractional, is the only way to prevent what we know is wrong from happening.

This is my country, like it is yours. Let's save it.

He sat back into the chair, the pillows almost swallowing him, and took a sip. "So tell me, my friend, about love."

"Love? I'm afraid I can't tell you much about love. I can only tell you how I felt.

I felt reassured by the way she said 'hi' when we first met. I felt silly for being nervous when she was so totally at ease. I felt young when she curled her feet up underneath her in public places, when she explained the reason for it so matter-of-factly. I felt amused by the way her hair got in her eyes, how it annoyed her, how she swore at it, and then how she blew it away from her face with her mouth pouted. I felt like smiling when she said 'ooo, isn't that cool?', and then grinned. I felt touched by the way she spoke with pride about her father. I felt kinship when she saw little details that everyone else ignored, but that I had also noticed. On the topic of smallness, I felt protective when I looked at how tiny her hands were. Without imagined importance, I felt flattered when she told me how much she respected me. I felt impressed by her stubborn, hard-earned independence. I felt responsibility when she asked me for help, and frustration when I couldn't. I felt joy when she laughed, when she smiled, when she admitted the mischief contained in her smile. I felt strangely comforted when she tiptoed around in her socks. I felt alive when I experienced the way she smelt, the way she felt, the way she hugged. I felt humbled by her knowledge of the world when she told me about places she had explored. I felt saddened by her sense of disheartened pessimism about mistakes made. To my own detriment, I felt challenged to in some way affect her sense of indifference to possible mistakes. I felt thrilled when she got a twinkle in her eye, and greatly expectant when she added a comment that made it even more alluring. Once or twice, I felt nearly disheartened by her tendency to see joy shared with her as inconsequential. When she patronised me, I started feeling insulted, but then realised that comical amusement was better. When she ate, I felt at home because of the way she did so with obvious enjoyment. Every time she messaged me at arbitrary times with arbitrary questions about introspectively interesting things, I felt important. Every time I replied, I felt appreciated.

I felt something I'd wondered about up until then and had never felt before. I loved her."

"And now?"

"Now, I just miss her."

Sometimes, when you think about happiness, you think about things you've enjoyed in the past. Enjoyed in a way which, when you remember them, gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. Memories like these are good to keep around.

A few years ago, I stood looking down at the vineyards below me. I could see cars moving around like ants a little further, where the outskirts of town began. The sky was totally cloudless, that shade of blue you usually only see in high-budget photographs of expensive properties. The air was hot enough for a drop of sweat to form on my chin, just waiting to drip onto my arm. There was very little sound, I was above the pine forest and the animals in it. I was alone at the top of a very long climb.

At that moment, I looked down at my bike, lent onto my handlebar, and smiled.

Happiness can be selfishly attained, I thought. Without wealth, without romance, without any large degree of material success. Without relying on anyone but oneself.

As I turned around to head back down into the valley below, I thought about what I'd just accomplished. I thought about how I'd reached the top of a hellishly steep and high climb with nothing but my own motive power, how the bike below me converted every ounce of energy I'd given it into forward motion. How the meticulous attention I paid to drivetrain setup and the proportionate adjustment of my seat, my pedals, my handlebar, was affecting how quickly I could get to the top (and the bottom, after that). I thought about my suspension, about how much time I'd spent tweaking the spring and dampening rates, about how my tire pressure was affecting how I was drifting sideways across the pine needles below me.

Cycling - in all its forms - has always made me happy, ever since I rode without side-wheels for the first time when I was 2. Everything about it thrills me, from pushing further and harder than I thought was possible, to setting a bike up with the ridiculous attention to detail I'm regularly mocked about, to the way I feel completely drained and hungry for muesli and yoghurt (strange, I know) after a long ride.

And so, a little while ago, I decided I was going to spend more time, money and effort on stuff that I know makes me happy. Mountain biking, and my serious return to it, is the start.

Check out my new toy :-)

So how do I end this year in writing?

Do I say something about love? I can't. Not because I don't want to; but because this year, for the first time in 29 years, I confirmed without a doubt that I know nothing about it, and possibly never will. As deeply disturbing as it is to be close to conceding that I may never understand something which seems so natural to the majority of my fellow human beings, I have forced myself to become accustomed to the feeling. As Alfonso Cuarón wisely said: "There either is or is not a way things are". This I have come to accept.

Instead, I've decided to quote what has been the most inspiring piece of writing I've been lucky enough to discover in a long time. I've often referred to perspective as an incredibly valuable frame of mind, and this piece illustrates the concept beautifully. It's a few paragraphs taken from Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot, which he wrote after looking at an image taken by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As Voyager moved increasingly further away from earth on its journey of inter-planetary discovery, engineers turned it around for one last look at us. The spacecraft was about 6.4 billion kilometres away from our home world as it captured an image of earth as simply a tiny point of light only 0.12 pixels in size. This is what Sagan had to say:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Some define it in the way something around their neck sparkles in the morning light. Some see it as the degree of isolation they can achieve from the ho-hum of traffic. Others find it in the fit around their waist. Many believe it to be in the effectiveness of their differentiation from those less capable. Some even find it in the taste of a glass too costly to waste a drop of.

Me? I like stuff I can feel.

In the world of sleep, there's linen. There's also 100% cotton linen. Then, there's 100% cotton percale, which is cotton with a thread count of at least 200. On the end of the scale however, there's 400 thread count Egyptian cotton.

Oh yes.

Forget about spending money on jewellery, executive transport, designer shoes or single malt whiskey. Lay yourself down in the plush environment of high thread count Egyptian cotton, and all that other stuff will seem silly as you drift away into dreamland. It's hard to describe how the feelings of crispness and softness can go together, but they just do. It's awesome. Seriously, you haven't slept until you've slept in this stuff.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's past my bedtime.