Day 12/67 Blue Monday turns pink

Not the greatest start to the day when a student came into my office at 8am, and asked...is that your silver Toyota parked outside the Design building.... you can guess where this is going..... a taxi reversing carelessly had dinged my bumper in front of so many students that there was no escape for him. Short story- an immigrant man with no insurance leasing the car from the taxi company, and him promising to pay me back when he had the money. I found myself feeling sorry for him, he was so apologetic. After I had unleashed a little colourful language.

Breakdowns. That one got me over the insignificance of my colleagues' piggy tendency to leave the staffroom full of their dirty dishes.

My institution is hosting a two day Catalytic Design Summit, and I picked up a few anecdotal morsels from the two first speakers. While I don't agree that just because Twitter uses 140 characters we should redesign our curriculum to consist of 30 second learning experiences, Prof Cronje does know how to stir things up. I think people need to be seen as more than just brains, and multitasking is myth. I'm all for teaching students the skills to calm down, focus and relax, through meditation or other means, and engage with the problems of the world in a humane, integrated, ethical way. I shudder when I hear word like "innovation" used as stand-alone concepts. Of what? For whom? To what ends? Why? 

Prof Pitika Ntuli, my former HOD from University of Durban-Westville, was the keynote speaker. I loved his anecdote of his Grandmother, who was asked by a European visitor when painting walls in Ndebele patterns, why she was using natural oxides, and why she didn't rather use enamel, as it would last forever. She responded by saying 

" you want to create little forevers, whereas in Africa, we want to forever create". 

Wouldn't it be nice if that value was embedded in how we approach other things we do, whether it concerns contesting the assumed permanence of public art, or affirming the value of the process, the act of doing, making, responding and creating?

And to wrap up the day, I pushed very hard on the stepper, the bike, the cross trainer and the treadmill. Fabulous day, feeling stronger, and see? Blue Monday went pink.