Posts Tagged ‘Life’

Posted on December 21, 2010 - by Justin Hartman

My Tattoo, what, where and why I did it

When I was 16 my father gave me a framed copy of the Rudyard Kipling poem titled “IF” which hung on my wall for the entire duration of my high-school career. This poem was very special to him and when I was 21 he read me the poem in his speech at my 21st birthday celebrations. The day before he died I wrote him a letter in which I quoted the poem in reference to him “finally being a Man” and I also had the privilege of reading my final letter to my father at his funeral. This poem is one that has a very deep and special meaning to me. Forever.

Couple this special meaning with the fact that I really do want to be a Man of the stature and integrity that Kipling refers to and because I saw my father living out most of these principals in every day life it has only motivated me more to attempt to be this Man.

So, after much planning and preperation, I broke my tattoo virginity on Sunday and had the final sentence in the Kipling poem, “You’ll be a man, my son.”, tattooed around my wrist. I also had a few ink splotches added because my father, in his writing, would often refer to himself (and that of the journalists from his era) as an ink-stained reporter.

I never want to forget my father and the splotches will always ensure that this never happens and the poem around my wrist is now a constant reminder to me of how I must strive to be the Man I am supposed to be. It took my father neigh on 60 years to get it right but get it right he did. If this is the only thing I am successful at in my life please God let this be it.

 

Posted on November 7, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

Thoughts on my first month in Cape Town

To be honest I have to say that I can’t believe it’s only been a month since we moved to Cape Town. So much has happened this past month that I feel like an old pro navigating my way through the Mother City and living the relaxed life.

Well, not sure if that’s all entirely true but we are all settling in very nicely which is hugely positive for me. I certainly feel like we’ve made the right decision coming here.

On the work front I’m amazed at how much we’ve managed to achieve in the last 30 days. For the first time ever Stii and I have been in the same place for longer than a couple drinks and having Lester on board has been a blessing in disguise.

Lester has managed to turn the Afrigator Blog into an entertaining read and people are actually enjoying it. His skills from a marketing and product perspective has been invaluable and he’s really helping to humanise Afrigator in a way that I don’t think we were able to do.

In total, Lester and I have done 24 meetings this past month, Stii lectured at Nomadic Marketing and I did a brief session at the Graduate School of Business and we’ve meet some great people along the way. As a result we’ve established some really exciting partnerships and some of these are going to filter through in the next month.

Stii has been working very aggressively on rewriting Afrigator once again. We got to a point with Afrigator where we realised that a lot of what we plan to do in the coming months were not possible on our current framework so Stii’s been living off coffee and beer ever since. We joke and say that Stii does the only real work in this company and in truth, without him I don’t think we’d be as good as we are!

This month has been fantastic but the real reward has been seeing how a focused approach has really helped Afrigator gain some traction and growth. To give you an idea we increased our unique user base by 83% and our traffic to the site increased by 181% from September. We had a record breaking month which should make our shareholders happy.

I do realise that every month is probably not going to be as good as this past one but I feel extremely positive about our business and the direction it is going. While most of you can’t yet see the fruits of our labour it will become visible very soon.

 

Posted on October 16, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

This kind of thing makes me sick

Picked this up on Muti only moments ago. Read the tag highlighted in blue.

To be honest I just have no time for people like this. It’s disgraceful, inhumane and shows a total disrespect for human life. I know we live in a culture that still breeds this type of racism but really… doing this in a public forum is just not on.

Sick…