Ruminations on Homo Sapiens Non Urinat in Ventum and Launch of the Blog ruminantpinkfriday.wordpress.com

Aweh fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 335 of Re-Modified Lock Down Level 3.

Remaining Life at Sasol: 33 days

This week I am launching my blog and I wish to thank Leslie Luyt (fiancé of my niece who is an IT guru) for helping me navigate and start to learn the software involved which is WordPress. Leslie even helped me choose a hexadecimal colour for Ruminant Pink Friday™  which is #e651c3 and since there are 16.7 million hexadecimal colours this will be pretty unique to Ruminant Pink Friday™ .  https://www.mathsisfun.com/hexadecimal-decimal-colors.html .

Here is the link to the blog site: https://ruminantpinkfriday.wordpress.com/. The weekly e-mails are going to come to an end with my exit but the blog will live on. For some of you it may come as a relief that you don’t receive weekly spam from me which clogs up your junk mail but I hope that some of my groupies will sign up on the blog. The blog has a comments section so I hope our dialogue and conversation can continue there. In addition if you want to correspond with me privately my private e-mail address is bruss.young@gmail.com. I have put quite some effort into uploading some of the historical material onto the blog and this has required quite a lot of editing. I am still busy with this and the site is a work in progress. In general I am very pleased to be retiring from Sasol and my days as a corporate lance corporal are almost done and I will not work for a corporate full time again. I am going to classify myself as semi-retired and if I can find interesting gigs I will look at that. Although I’m pleased to be leaving Sasol I am sad about leaving behind many friends and some of my colleagues. I do hope that this blog could serve as a platform for those of you who might have an interest in maintaining contact with me.

This week I would like to turn to a response I received to last week’s ruminations from one of you. This relates to a Latin motto found on a building in Amsterdam. It is an appropriate motto (perhaps with some modification)

The portal between the Leidseplein nightlife area and the Max Eeuweplein is pompously accentuated by a classical looking façade, designed in 1991 by Zaanen Spanjers Architects. On the frieze, supported by columns, the architect has carved an inscription: ‘Homo sapiens non urinat in ventum’ – ‘A wise man does not piss into the wind’. A ‘wisecrack’, disguised in Latin. In general this is probably good advice particularly if you are a corporate lance corporal with ultimate aspirations of one day qualifying for the private lift. This expression probably also grates the gender sensitive but I’m  sorry the expression – “A wise person does not piss into the wind” just doesn’t have the same punch. Of course my colleague who alerted me to this expression was no doubt suggesting that many of my Ruminant Pink Friday™ submissions are pissing into the wind. This is, of course, true and may have something to do with my lance corporal status although I would hasten to add that pissing into the wind is just but one of my many deficiencies as far as the corporate meritocracy is concerned.

My days of aspiring to gain access to the private lift are long gone and post my exit I will no longer need to be cautious about being vetted by the powers that be to gain access to their continued munificence.  I am, of course, extremely grateful for the munificence I have received over the last 30 years. Post my exit the powers that be can take me as I am and withhold their munificence if that is what they want to do. Accordingly this blog will have a modified motto:

Hic erit homo sapiens defricatus urina in ventum

Since you are all educated and scholarly no need to use Google translate. I am going to reference one of my earlier submissions entitled, “articulate your truth or pay the price”. Here is the blog link. https://ruminantpinkfriday.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/articulate-your-truth-or-pay-the-price/. Should you speak up or remain quiet? The relevant quote from the controversial psychologist, Jordan Petersen is: ‘So if you are going to stand up for something stand up for your truth. It will shape you. People will respond and object and tell you why you are a fool and a biased moron and why you are ignorant and then if you listen to them you will just be that much less like that the next time you say something and if you do that for five years you will be so dammed tough and articulate and able to communicate and withstand pressure that you won’t even recognise yourself and then you will be a force to be reckoned with’. I would prefer to be a force to be reckoned with on an intellectual level than genuflect to the powers that be or the politically correct intellectual orthodoxy of the day. I will also do my very best to try to listen carefully (perhaps a weakness?).

I know that many of you are both more timid than me and have not yet reached my life stage and I look forward to you continuing to submit ideas for potential discussion.

Thank you very much for the many helpful suggestions and input which I’m researching and please keep the submission ideas flowing.

Regards

Bruce