A Day In The Life Of A Typical South African In Gauteng Pretoria

It is 4:30am my radio alarm goes off and the early morning show on Jacaranda FM, a local music radio show starts playing its latest tune - "no repeats from 7am to 7pm" is their slogan.. Five minutes later my Cell Phone / PDA starts bonging at me. This device is strategically placed walking distance from my bed. I have to rise to still the irritating computer generated tone.

As I am up anyway I slouch off to the bathroom to do my daily wake up pee. Trying not to make too much noise as beloved is still pretending to sleep.As I return to bed for my 30 minute 'chillout' to full wakefulness, she murmurs "softer please" meaning the radio not me! I oblige.

At 5am I open the blinds of our bedroom and peer out into the darkness. It is winter now but in summer the sun would be rising and the birds in our tiny townhouse garden would be twittering and leaping about beginning their day.

I go downstairs to our kitchen and make a pot of filter coffee, a pot of tea for later and Micro wave 240grams of Oats. The prescribed daily dose for our fibre rich, low GI breakfast.

I also take my various vitamin supplements and prepare our bagged lunches. This normally consists of last nights left over supper, three fruits a pecan and banana muffin and a small low fat yogurt.

Coffee is now taken upstairs and beloved is officially woken up with coffee (for her low fat milk and sweetener - no sugar.). My coffee is taken black.

We then discuss our day ahead.Finish our coffee. She Showers etc and I put on Gym outfit or swimming costume plus tracksuit depending on the day. Alternate days for me are swim days, while the other 3 are workout days..

I take out cars out of the garage and we breakfast together unless either of us has an early appointment or breakfast meeting ( when the oats preparation does not take place). We arrange for our domestic fr the evening meal unless we are planning to eat out.

I go to Gym , she goes to work.

I do my workout . If swimming, I do 50 laps, various strokes ending wit alternating butterfly and breaststroke. If it s my workout day, i do 20 minutes treadmill at heart rate, followed by many stomach exercises, 60 press-ups, 5 minutes steps, 10 minutes cycling and cooling off with 5 minutes on rowing machine,I shower, check heart rate and blood pressure and brave the traffic to the office. I take between 20 minutes and 1.5 hours to travel the 16km to the Office depending the level of traffic chaos. See my hub "traffic in Johannesburg" for a detailed view of this aspect of my life.

I switch the car radio over to 702 a talk station "news and views" 24 X 7.

Listen to the days news, traffic reports, and various phone in discussions.

The news is the usual assortment, last nights crime, latest corruption scandal, Load shedding round up (see my Load shedding hub).The sport round up ( in summer we are all cricket fans and in winter it is Rugby) See my hub Hub South Ouch for more on the news issues in RSA)

I finally arrive at the office handle my mail and prepare for, and attend my various meetings.

Most days I eat the bagged lunch without taking break. some days I have lunch appointments, mostly at my club.

If I have no evening functions, I brave the traffic, stop at a coffee shop to wait out the traffic and finally proceed home..

I generally finish off the prepared meal which is normally Spaghetti Bolognese, chicken curry or stir fry depending on the day. Some days I prepare and grill whole chicken breasts. we generally have 3 vegetables (Rice, Pasta or sweet potato make up the starch component).the veggies are normally whatever is fresh in the market, zucchini (we call them baby marrows), beans and butternut with spinach, broccoli ) We rarely eat steak but sometimes eat grilled fish.

If we are eating out we will have sushi,steak or grilled fish with veg or salads.

I now chill out watching TV soaps, sitcoms (I love Smallville, Grays Anatomy or Crossing Jordan), Discovery or National Geographic. Once dearly beloved arrives (she has a pressure job in an IT company) we eat, work at mails (or hub pages) read a novel (at least one a week for me).

And so to bed,

It is 4:30am my radio alarm goes off and ............