Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

Posted on May 19, 2010 - by Justin Hartman

In Loving Memory – Rodney John Hartman 25/02/1949 – 18/05/2010

At exactly 00:00 today my father passed away after a long battle with Cancer. Back in 1995 my father was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) and at the time I was only 15 years old. I remember thinking that my dad was going to die but the beauty, I was told, was that we’d have between 15-20 years before that would happen due to the stage they caught the disease at.

Through out the last 15 years my dad has lived a pretty normal life. He never complained once about his illness, he never lost his hair from chemotherapy and he basically never missed a day of work either. For the last 15 years it was as if CLL never existed.

This all changed at the turn of the new year.

Back in August 2009 my dad started to develop a swollen head which made him look like the elephant man and this happend a number of times since then. He became chronically fatigued, his immune system was weak and he started to lose a lot of weight in the process.

At the end of January this year they finally diagnosed my dad with a secondary cancer in the form of tumours that had become widespread and consumed most of his body. At the time they felt treatment was still possible because the tumours hadn’t appeared to spread into any vital organs.

From January until today the cancer spread and grew at such a rapid pace that it was simply eating my dad’s body up. Three weeks ago they discovered three massive tumours on his brain and the prognosis wasn’t looking good for him. A series of radiation treatment ensued and this ended just before mother’s day where my family and I flew up to Johannesburg to have lunch with him.

When we left I knew that this moment was probably the last time I’d ever see him alive again and it made me sick. Sick, quite simply because there was so much I still wanted to tell my dad before he died and I knew that I probably wasn’t going to get a chance to do so. I felt unresolved.

On Sunday morning my mother phoned me to say that my dad’s really slipping away very quickly and that I mustn’t be shocked if she calls me to say he’s gone. I knew the time had come so on the early hours of Monday morning I wrote my father a letter. This was something I had thought about doing for a number of months but now the timing seemed right. I emailed the letter to her and asked her to please read it to him – it was my way of saying goodbye.

Late Monday afternoon my mom called me again, in tears, telling me that he has asked her and my 10 year-old sister for permission to die. He told them that physically and mentally he simply hasn’t got the strength to continue and they gave him their blessing.

I asked my mom if she received my letter and alas she hadn’t. I asked only one thing and that was to please read him the letter before he goes. Later that night I sat going through emails from my father and thinking of him as already dead and I had to stop myself because he wasn’t – yet. So, on Monday night I booked a 1-way ticket to Johannesburg so that I could hopefully spend the last moments of his life with him.

I arrived yesterday at 12:00 in Johannesburg and went pretty much direct to the hospital. I was very relieved to hear that my dad had read my letter to him and I was already feeling more peaceful knowing that he at least knew how I felt.

When I saw him though I simply wasn’t prepared. He could barely talk, couldn’t hear anymore and was passing in and out of consciousness the whole time. He knew I was there and was very happy and surprised to see me but I knew the man was on deaths door.

My visit with him however was extremely special for me. I held his hand, which is something I haven’t done since I was a kid, I told him I loved him and he even asked me for a kiss when I left. I connected with my dad on a very different level and I felt like I had now finally said goodbye and I was ready for him to die.

We were told by Ali Bacher and the hospital that my dad wouldn’t make it through the night and at 00:07 we got the phone call that he had died. My first reaction was that I needed to go and see him and I convinced my reluctant mom to come with me.

Seeing my dad’s lifeless body was something that I wasn’t really prepared for. He had aged by about 20 years due to the lack of oxygen and blood supply, his skin colour had turned yellow/white, his body was warm but getting cold quickly and his facial features had already sunken in. He was not the dad that I had seen some 10 hours earlier.

The hardest part about seeing him was that he wasn’t moving. In theory we all understand that a dead person doesn’t move, breath, talk, etc. but I was fully expecting him to open his eyes and say something to us. This never happened and it was a harsh reminder of what had just happened.

I spoke freely to my dad like I’ve never done before, I touched him and held his hand and rubbed his leg and generally just looked at him in awe as a man who I regard as my hero.

I nearly didn’t book my plane ticket to Johannesburg on Monday night because I realised I was petrified of having to deal with his death but I am so grateful that I put my fears aside, got on a plane, and shared these immensely important final moments of his life.

To be honest his death has not sunken in yet but I can tell you I feel at peace with it. I did everything I needed to do with him and I’m so greatful that I don’t have any regrets around his death.

Today I remember my father as loving, dedicated and humble person who endured many hardships in his life to make our lives a little easier. The world has lost a great human being and I look forward to honouring him at his funeral.

 

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

England, thanks for ruining cricket for my son

First let me state that Luke, my 5 year-old, is a cricket fanatic. If we’re not watching cricket he’s bowling balls down the passage or setting his imaginary field and he’s driving me nuts with wanting me to purchase every piece of cricket equipment that has ever been made. It’s turning into a costly passion.

Over the last two days I’ve witnessed two jaw dropping incidents in the ICC Champions Trophy, both of which involved England, and these have had a serious impact on Luke. The first and most controversial was an incident involving Graham Smith and Andrew Strauss during the SA vs. England game on Monday evening.

Smith was on 124 runs with South Africa needing another 69 from 36 balls to stay in the ICC Champions Trophy and requested for a runner yet Strauss declined it. After the match Strauss explained that “He asked for a runner and the umpires took the view that cramp is a symptom of fatigue. Being tired does not qualify batsmen for a runner under the laws of the game”.

It is my belief that this decision by Strauss was a defining moment in the match and was a major contributing factor to our loss. After Strauss turned him down you could see Smith’s whole demeanor change. Couple that with the fact that he could barely walk and Smith was now forced to look for boundaries to try and steer our team to victory which ultimately lead to the fall of his wicket at 141.

If you asked me Strauss knew that Smith could win the game for South Africa and he wanted him off the field as his bowlers were pretty much ineffective against him. I believe that Strauss broke the rules of the gentleman’s game in a display of the worst sportsmanship I’ve ever seen in cricket in recent times.

The impact this had on Luke astounded me. He was in Graham Smith mode at the time, with pads on and bat in hand, trying to win the game and when he saw how upset Smith was he went from excitement to total disappointment. He got furiously angry with England and accused them on cheating and not being fair and this frustration ultimately brought him to tears. It took a long time to console him and explain to him that sometimes things happen in sport that prevent you from winning but he struggled to comprehend it all.

This was the first time that he’s ever understood and been exposed to injustice in sport and he didn’t like it one bit. When he went to bed he told us he’s never playing cricket again – a truly shattering moment for a child who just wants to be the next AB De Villiers. As parents this was a difficult moment for us and I’m not convinced we handled it as well as we could have. Be that as it may, Luke agreed to take up cricket again the next morning.

The second incident I witnessed was during the England vs. New Zealand match yesterday evening. Paul Collingwood, who had been declared run out after wandering out of his crease, went up to New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori and had a mini-conference with him. Soon after they shook hands and Vettori decided not to uphold the appeal and Collingwood was allowed to continue his innings.

To be honest I’m shocked that England expect every other team to honour the Spirit of Cricket ethos while they only really do so when the pressure is not on them.

It is true that Andrew Strauss had made a similar decision in England’s opening match against Sri Lanka by recalling Angelo Mathews however there wasn’t the same sense of pressure or intensity during that match. The truth is, when England are on the ropes they are simply bad sports.

If you don’t believe me then lets look at last year when Collingwood was captaining England when New Zealand’s Grant Elliott had been run out after a mid-pitch collision with Ryan Sidebottom. The umpires were obliged to rule him out, but Collingwood’s refusal to withdraw the appeal had infuriated Vettori and invited widespread criticism from the media.

Vettori’s decision yesterday was more significant as there was no case of obstruction in this instance, and Collingwood had no one to blame but himself for venturing out his crease. In addition, it was a do-or-die match for New Zealand yet despite this Vettori still showed outstanding sportsmanship at the time.

You make your own decisions around this but I for one am disgusted by England’s tactics and the fact that the ICC continue to back this team and the decisions taken by them on the field. What example are we setting to the youth who idolize these players and the game?

 

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Why are Clocks so prominent in my life right now?

I’m struggling to find the meaning behind this but for some reason children’s clocks are featuring very prominently in my life right now.

Two days ago Colette and I went to see a psychologist about our eldest son Luke. There’s nothing wrong with him but we were asked by the pre-school to put him through a series of tests to see if he is ready for big school (i.e. Grade 1) next year. The meeting was essentially a report-back on her findings.

While the results of the tests were very interesting (more about this in a later post) the strangest thing emerged. One of the questions asked to him was if he had three wishes what would he wish for. His first answer was… a clock. Colette and I were both taken aback as was the psychologist. None of us could figure out why a five year old would wish for a clock.

During the session we also realised that we don’t have a single clock in our house. Not only that but neither of us own watches either so there is nothing apart from computers and mobile phones indicating the time. Maybe this is the only meaning around this but then some more random events happened.

Last night I received a phone call from my late best friend’s mother. We haven’t spoken in over two years and I think it’s mostly due to the fact that the context of our relationship was connected through my friend and with him not being there it was difficult to maintain the relationship when we both reminded each other of him. So, needless to say it was a pleasant and unexpected surprise to hear her voice again.

I suspected that the call was in relation to the sixth anniversary of his death (September 15th) but this wasn’t the case at all. She contacted me to tell me that she’d started making, wait for it…, children’s clocks in her spare time and wanted to know if I can help her market the kids clocks online.

Soon after the phone call I put Luke to bed. Every night Colette reads him a story before bedtime but last night I decided that I should do story-time instead. As is customary Luke choses a book and tonight was a rather large Dr. Seuss collection of five stories.

Luke opened up the book and said to me that he wants to show me his best part. He continued to page through to a particular page in the book and said look Dad, this is it. I took the book from him and asked him why this page was his best and he said, because the long hand is hanging off looking all squiggly and he was referring to the rather comical looking clock on the page.

Maybe I’m being nuts but these three, seemingly random events around clocks, kids clocks in particular have me wondering if there’s not something there. I don’t believe in co-incidence, I believe in things happening for a reason and everything has meaning but I can’t find anything online that can help me understand this better.

Hopefully you have more insight into the random events of the last two days.

 

Posted on May 12, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Getting rejected, it’s never fun

While this blog has been a lot about my good news lately, today it’s a lot about my bad. If you’ve been reading my blog then you’d know I was chosen as a nominee in the Men’s Health Best Man Awards 2009 and last week I received an update to inform me that I was not chosen as one of the three finalists. Congratulations though to Vinny Lingham who did make it as a finalist in another category and I wish him all the best because he deserves it!

To be honest I’m not disappointed about not being a finalist because if you look at who else was nominated in my category then you’ll understand why I was flattered to even be considered in the first place. I was expecting a rejection email and as such the nomination is going to make a great addition to my CV.

The second rejection I received last night and this one has been bitterly disappointing. About two months back I applied for a TED Fellowship and despite being extremely confident that I’d crack it I didn’t quite make the grade. Herewith an excerpt from said rejection email.

The response to the new Fellows program has been exceptional – far greater than we could have imagined – and winnowing down the application pool was a formidable task. Unfortunately, due the to extraordinary qualifications of all of our applicants, we are unable to offer you a Fellowship for TEDGlobal 2009.

If any of you have ever applied to be a TED Fellow you’ll know just how strenuous the application process is. To apply you need to complete an application by answering various questions that try to gain insight into how you tick as a human being and then you have to get references to fill in referee forms on your behalf. It’s kind of like writing your year-end exam only much tougher!

It took me over two weeks to complete my answers to the questions and in it I told TED stuff that only my family know. I really shared every inner-most secret in the hope that doing so would get me a seat at the conference.

The anticipation in waiting for an answer was the real killer though. I didn’t want to entertain any negative thinking so I convinced myself that my ticket was booked and I was headed for Oxford. I realised that the risk of doing so was utter, gut-wrenching disappointment but I wasn’t going to allow myself to ruin the small chance that I had.

Unfortunately my gamble didn’t pay off and I honestly feel like a teenager who’s girlfriend has just dumped him for a smarter, better looking guy. It has long been a dream to attend a TED conference but I guess my time will have to wait…

For now I’ll continue to watch from the sidelines and I thought this latest video from Seth Godin titled Why tribes, not money or factories, will change the world would be an apt way to end this post. Enjoy the brilliant talk from Seth as he shares ideas on how tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change.

 

Posted on April 16, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

I’ve been nominated for the 2009 Men’s Health Best Man Awards

Yesterday I received a notification that I’ve been nominated for the 2009 Men’s Health Best Man Awards. To be honest I’m blown away but before I get into that here’s what the awards are all about.

Every year a few men stand out from the crowd. They inspire us, challenge us and lead us to greater heights of personal and professional achievement. Men’s Health magazine believes that these men deserve to be recognised and so the Best Man Awards was born.

As the first campaign of its kind in South Africa; Men’s Health Best Man aims to reward our country’s top achievers for the ground-breaking work they have accomplished. We’ve highlighted six categories – sports, media, business, arts and culture, public service and science and technology – and after an exhaustive process by our expert panel selected the finalists who represent the Best Man. These men were profiled in the May issue of Men’s Health from which the final three in each category are then selected. The Best Man winner in each category will then be announced at the final Best Man Awards dinner.

This year I’ve been chosen as one of eight nominees in the Media category and very shortly they’ll be narrowing this list down to three finalists. The other nominees in the Media category that I’m competing with are:

• Jonathan ‘Zapiro’ Shapiro (do I even need to tell you who Zapiro is?)
• Paul Holden (author of The Arms Deal in Your Pocket)
• Solly Philander (multi-award winning performer)
• Thabo Marera (award winning commercial director)
• Danie van der Walt (award winning journalist and executive producer of the environmental programme 50/50)
• Garwin McLuckie (award winning SA cameraman)
• Matthew Buckland (GM, Social Media 24.com)

This is an impressive list of contenders and I really am extremely grateful to the powers that be for nominating me and even considering me amongst these top professionals. It really is a nice feeling being nominated for such a prestigious award and although I’m thankful I have to warn Men’s Health that I’m not taking my shirt off for the cover photo shoot when I win!

 

Posted on April 15, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

One year old today

At 17:15 on 15 April 2008 Ben Hartman was born. It’s impossible to quantify how much Ben has changed our lives over the last 12 months and it always amazes me how quickly time flies.

Ben is our second born son and I really love to see how different each of our children are. Luke is cautious and shy by nature while Ben is a maniac who shows no fear. He’s already given me tons of new grey hair and I’m positive there’s going to be a lot more in the years to come.

While Ben can’t really understand the significance of today, Luke is completely excited that his little brother is one year old. Yesterday he said he was going to invite everyone we knew to Ben’s birthday party but as we’re recent Capetonian immigrants we don’t really have anyone to invite

We don’t want to damper Luke’s excitement so we’re off to buy Ben a really cool present this afternoon and then we’re hitting the spur for a birthday dinner.

 

Posted on January 19, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

My first Tilt-Shift photo

My good pal Gregor has been posting a series of Fake Tilt-Shift photographs and I’ve been dying to try it out myself. Wikipedia describes Tilt-Shift faking as:

Tilt-shift miniature faking is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model. By distorting the focus of the photo, the artist simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is.

I recently acquired a new Canon 55mm-250mm IS lens for my 400D and with new lens in hand I was able to take some cool shots from our balcony at work.

I took a number of different shots and then tried to follow this online tilt-shift tutorial to create my first masterpiece but the results were not fantastic. I was not happy with the output as it didn’t seem to create the miniature effect I was hoping for.

So, I created my own selection band by manually selecting the road, carefully following the natural curve and shadows, as well as other elements like the flags and robots to give it more precision. It literally took me hours to do but I am more than happy with the output.

 

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

Moving to the Mother City

It’s been 13 days since I shipped my entire family down to Cape Town and what an experience it has been. We’ve gone from this chaos in Johannesburg:-

To this ordered chaos in our new home in Cape Town:-

I have to say that moving to a new city is really not as easy as it seems and proved to be an immense challenge for all of us.

When we knew that we’d have to move it really seemed like an awesome idea at the time. I mean, who wouldn’t want to move to a city with reduced crime, beautiful oceans, mountains and a better overall quality of life?

While I am not regretting the move at all I didn’t/couldn’t anticipate how trying this would be both emotionally and physically to all of us – including the people we left behind. Packing boxes is no fun, unpacking even less, but the really difficult aspect has been the emotional loss of our families and friends.

As adults, Colette and I are able to understand our emotions and deal with them accordingly but what we’ve found with Luke, our five year old, is that this is not so easy to do. While Luke is content about 90% of the time there are moments when he’s tired and run down and it’s then that he yearns for his family and our domestic worker left in Johannesburg.

This is gut wrenching stuff for us but we’ve just tried to make it fun for him to try and mitigate the loneliness and heart-ache he’s experiencing.

On the work front I’m loving every minute of being involved in a startup. These are exciting times for Afrigator and at the moment we’ve been working hard on setting up relationships with people here in Cape Town as well as working on some interesting developments for the website and community.

There is a new and different kind of stress being involved in Afrigator but at the end of the day I’m doing this for myself which makes it very motivating and highly exciting. I really think we’re going to do some awesome things over the next two years.

Finally, on the blog front, I’ve decided to change my writing style and theme somewhat. Moving forward this blog will highlight my experiences running a startup which I’m doing mainly to alleviate some of the stress and I’ll also be writing more about my personal life and the adjustment to life after Jo’burg.

In short this blog is about startups, technology and life and you can expect this to be the core focus moving forward. Not sure how much I can post these days as things are pretty busy but I’ll do what I can when I can.

 

Posted on September 30, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

The end of an era

Today is my last day at Avusa iLab. At the beginning of September we announced that MIH Print Africa had acquired a stake in Afrigator – a project I’ve been working on since early 2007 – and as a result I’ve been finishing up work and preparing for the big move down to Cape Town.

Making the decision to leave was simple to make in that Afrigator is a passion of mine and I’ve now been given the opportunity to work on my passion full time but on the flip-side it was also extremely difficult. Over the last 14 months I’ve built up very special relationships with Colin, Gregor, Ian and Robin and we’ve grown very close as a team and as a friends.

Together I believe we have provided immense value to the company and I know that I am leaving the iLab in very capable and safe hands. I will now have the opportunity to sit back and watch what the guys produce over the coming months and I look forward to seeing them assist in helping the company reach its goals and objectives.

All I can say is that they will all be sorely missed.

Moving to Cape Town is something I and my family welcome and are looking forward to and while we’ll all miss our family and friends this move will be a life-changing experience for us all. As a parent I couldn’t ask for more than to bring my kids up in a city that has so much to offer and our quality of life is going to improve dramatically as a result.

Packing is now well on its way and on Sunday morning we move into our new home in Claremont. I don’t think we can yet quantify what this all means but I’ll post my experiences on the blog in the coming days and weeks.

Wish us all luck.