It's time for a big change for the Johnston Clan

No, we're not pregnant...

No, it's not April Fool's...

No, I didn't win the lottery... 
(Although, having said that, I do feel like I've hit the jackpot as far as my career is concerned.)

... I've just accepted the best job in the continent for my line of work!

I'll be taking up the position of HPC Engineer at the Center for High Performance Computing, within the Advanced Computer Engineering Lab, at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. 

In other words, I'll be working in the facility that houses the fastest supercomputer in Africa, and potentially (TBC fairly soon:)) the fastest supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere.

I will be heading up the HPC ecosystems project for the region in a bid to prepare facilities to be ready for the eventual commissioning of the Square Kilometre Array. Yeah, you can tell I'm fairly excited about it :)

This means that the Johnston Clan will be semigrating to Cape Town!

It will be sad to say goodbye to our home of a collective 70+ years and to say farewell (for now) to all of our friends, our church and our family but there's an excitement stirring in us to make this move - we can't steer this ship if it's not moving and we can't wait to see what God has in store for us!

A reminder of a parent's love

Arthur puts on a brave face as
he waits to go in for surgery

This morning we took our little hero, Arthur, to the hospital to have his tonsils and adenoids removed.

Such a brave little soul - mom gave him a good preparation speech about what was going to happen at the hospital and we both have been telling him for days that the doctor would fix his breathing and snoring. We didn't go too deep into the sore throat after the surgery but we got him very ready for the actual trip to the hospital.

I've had to take my kids to the hospital a number of times - Arthur's near-death experience with the aspirating of breast milk into his lungs, Hope's near-death experience of swallowing a cowrie shell that lodged in her esophagus, Hope's grommet surgery, Arthur's broken leg - it's almost like second home for us but that never makes it any easier.

Today went smoothly at the beginning but while we were waiting in the main ward with the other parents whose kids were in ahead of ours, we started to experience the impending distress as one by one the other parents' kids were brought back from theatre, screaming, crying, wailing, and in a heck of a lot of distress. I sat quietly, observing the looks on the other parents' faces as they shifted from anxious waiting, to relief at seeing their kids, to frowns of despair and concern as their kids practically leapt into their embraces from the surgical gurneys.

The sounds in the ward quickly grew from anxious silence to horrendous weeping and wailing that resembled an emergency room after an earthquake. Such was the tumult in the ward that the emotion became too much for a mother sat next to us and she began to sob, even before her little girl was brought out to her.

Kat and I had an anxious wait for Arthur because he was forth in the queue from our doctor's surgery slate alone but when he finally was out of surgery it didn't take a moment for us to recognise his screams. The little boy was in such distress that he was fighting the vice grip of a little nurse who had given up on the idea of a gurney and was trying her best to race him to mommy before he erupted into absolute hysterics (which, by the sounds of things, was more or less achieved at that moment).

Arthur in mom's loving embrace

It took what felt like an eternity to get Arthur settled and the whole time he was sobbing and trying to stammer out all the things that were upsetting him (the blood in his nose, the drip in his hand, the pain in his throat, the loneliness of no mommy or daddy). During that period, while Kat was holding him tight, I yet again experienced the bittersweet emotions of being a dad.

My son was in anguish and there was practically nothing I could do to help him. I wanted to hold him but he wanted his mom. I felt his pain and his fears and I wanted to reassure him but he was in hysterics. I wasn't able to make the pain go away and I wasn't able to stop him crying and every time he let out a wail of misery I felt the full force of that desolation resounding in my soul.

Finally get some time with my little man

It's hard to describe unless you've ever been a father or a parent but for me I both love and hate those moments. I hate them because there's nothing I can do to make the moment less of a nightmare for my child as I share emotionally in each and every desolate moan.

But I also love those moments because it reminds me of a love that I have that I so easily lose sense of during the day-to-day monotony of trying to earn a salary and keep the house afloat. It's also at these moments that I have a brief reminder of what God must have felt like to effectively watch helplessly as his son died on the cross, or how God must feel each and every time one of us does something stupid that hurts or harms ourselves or others in the world. It's a sober reminder of what our love relationship is like between parents and children, and also of just how much God really loves each and every one of us and how massive a sacrifice it must have been for him, the one in total control and with the power to fix anything, to let go of the control and let things take their course...

It's the toughest moments that remind us of why we signed up to be parents in the first place and I wouldn't trade any of it for anything

Brave little Arthur wheeling his little sister out
a few hours after his surgery

...

Our family +1'ed ... explained

Okay, so I know it's been a long time since I updated this post and I know most people reading this already know the latest news but for posterity's sake, I am giving the full picture here - as a studious parent, I blogged my thoughts to myself and this is an abridged rendition of those thoughts.

I first learned that we were expecting another one (or more) on the weekend of the 22nd. Kat muttered something while I was half asleep about thinking she's pregnant.

I was kinda muted about my response but also very keen. We weren't 100% sure at that point so it was a 50/50 because the second line was so faint on the pregnancy test. I recalled last time around was similar so I was fairly sure it was a yes.

As the next few days passed it became more of an exciting reality (much moreso than the first time around) probably because I know what parenthood is like. Kat BBM'ed another test picture and confirmed the initial test and it was then official in my mind.

Am thrilled Hope will have siblings but also worried this will mean our poor little adorable girl will not get 100% of our attention, although I know she'll still get 100% of our love.

I suspect it's twins, a boy and a girl, but have no concrete knowledge of this. We shall wait and see. A little Jed and a little Joanna would be awesome ;)

On the 7th of February we had a big scare - Kat suffered some minor cramping on Sunday night as well as a small amount of spotting but it was more than enough to have us concerned. On Monday she experienced even more cramps and then after a while she felt absolutely fine - and that was the worst part. She didn't feel any of the usual symptoms of pregnancy - she felt 100% fine all of a sudden.

The emotions going through your head when you think you've just lost your baby are hard to describe. Although our baby was very new he / she had already become so very precious to us. We were scheduled for a scan on the following Monday but the painful wait was almost too much to bear especially because we wouldn't know what to expect when we have the scan.

Obviously the one thought that went through our minds is that the miscarriage is a response to a genetic anomaly and we may be getting a foretaste of the future attempts at having children.

No sooner had we settled on seeing the doctor the following week when the doctor phoned and told Kat to come immediately to his office and understandably that was more than just a little bit of a freak out for us.

We were braced for the terribly sad news that we had expected - in fact, the night before we had kind of already accepted (although not understood) the outcome. Where we expected to see a sac and embryo with no heartbeat we instead found, to our amazement, everything was fine and little Baby J was alive and "kicking".

The night before Kat read a verse that reminded us that God can resurrect people and even though we expected our child to be gone and don't know His plans, we still knew that there was a plan. What happened between then and the scan we can't say for sure but we ended up being very happily surprised!

I seriously expected to see an ultrasound with a still form with a silent heart. I felt totally shattered and unprepared. Instead, without any warning, the doctor showed us a 5.7mm life form with a beating heart and I just squeezed Hope tight and wanted to cry with relief. 

Unfortunately it wasn't the last scare we had - on the 10th Kat had some serious bleeding and Kat was told by the doc her progesterone levels were very low and she was a high risk for a miscarriage. She was exhibiting all sorts of miscarriage symptoms (sore back, bleeding [not spotting]) and after doing some reading on miscarriages etc. we started to wonder if perhaps this baby was genetically anomalous and this was nature's way of purging the non-viable baby. We were given the option of taking progesterone supplements to boost her levels and most likely preserve the pregnancy but we were struggling with what decision to make. Some family members were saying "let nature take its course" and we were afraid that our child may have serious genetic defects and we would be preserving their existence when normally they wouldn't survive. 

The moral dilemma for us was heavy on our hearts and we had the history with Hope weighing heavily on our decision. Should we do what we can to save this baby? Do we assume nature should take its course? It boiled down to one thing for me - if we knew this baby was 100% fine we would not hesitate to do whatever we could to save the baby; the fact that we are doubtful of his/her genetic composition, we are starting to consider alternatives. I decided that it shouldn't hinge on what-if's but that we would love our child regardless and as parents we should do everything to fight for our kid. In the end, with much concern and uncertainty, we decided to take the supplements.

A week went by and we had no knowledge of whether the supplement was working or not. We wanted to believe Baby J was still with us but we were resigned to the possibility that he/she had gone. It made enjoying the pregnancy a bit difficult with a hollow uncertainty hovering over us again. On the 20th Kat started to see old blood which meant she was still bleeding internally and we still had to wait until the Wednesday scan. Kat didn't feel at all pregnant and I just expected now to find a much more developed baby corpse. It was dreadful.

After we had our scan I left feeling totally dumbfounded and in shock (a good shock). Baby J was alive and well and we were going to have a baby!

The most amazing news to know that after all the early trials our baby was well on the way to growing healthy and strong and we were totally in awe of the blessings of another child and the journey we had gone on to get there. Still not knowing for sure if s/he had any genetic complications, the mere fact that s/he was alive was all that mattered.

Even more amazing news - and funny coincidences - were to follow soon after that...

It's about time

Hello World.

This blog is stirring.

How ironic that the active updates about our family life would cease just around the same time that we take our latest addition to the (new) Johnston family home. And that was eleven months ago!

I had plenty of ambitions to include a wonderful chronology of Hope's life at home as she grew up but being the perfectionist that I am, it's led to paralysis rather than development. Instead, I have decided that rather than trying to catch up eleven months of life in one go I'll just start updating you on our lives (and Hope's development) from now onwards. The actual chronology of Hope's life will be saved for her blog, which we have already established (as in, grabbed the URL) but I'll get around to that as soon as I can.

Hold on to your horses - things will surely get a little more interesting around this neck of the woods, and hopefully soon :)

Take it easy...

WHAT were we thinking??

Often there are moments in life that at the time seem so naturally innocent and hold no potential for problems or misunderstandings, but when looking back on those moments (usually with the benefit not only of hindsight but additional or alternative perspectives) we can see just how crazy we were and how close we actually came to being in some sort of trouble.

While revisiting some of our USA holiday pictures, I came across a couple that immediately upon first glance made me think of something a little deviant from the original "momentary context" of the pictures. 

When you look at these pictures, keep in mind our momentary context - it was freezing cold (like below zero), we were tired and excited tourists, and we were in the USA's capitol. What we forgot at the time was that fewer than two weeks earlier an attempted Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist tried to destroy a commercial passenger aircraft and subsequently the nation's DHS was on high alert. 

I'm quite surprised that we didn't land up in any trouble at the time, or at the very least, get some strange enquiries from the security forces around the capitol, but the pictures below reveal how suspicious we must have looked at the time...

Infiltrating Washington DC with our "gear".

Bryan-balah and Kat-zbalah in front of one of their targets, the Washington Monument.

(note the backpack with "gear" strapped over my right shoulder)

We saved the rabbit

Big news all ("new") Johnston fans! If we were living in the 1920's or 1930's and I proclaimed the words "The Rabbit Died", everyone would almost certainly understand what is going on in our lives. You see, back in those days there was a "Rabbit test" to test for certain conditions - take the lady's urine, inject it in some poor unsuspecting rabbit, and then cut the rabbit open and see what happened inside. The results would either indicate a positive or a negative result. 

Thankfully, our conscience is clear: modern medicine and advances in technology have empowered us to perform this test another, far less murderous way. In other words, we have still found out the same information, but we saved the rabbit. 

Oh yes: the result is positive.

Truth be told, we knew this information back around 17 April 2010, but Kat didn't want to spread the word until we had more clarity on things (apparently it's quite common amongst ladies). Well, when we finally obtained confirmation (and made it "out of the woods") a whole lot of extra stuff happened, and we've only slowly managed to recover from all of that - I'll certainly be posting more information as time goes on, but for now this post should actually have landed around 17 April 2010, so it's very late. Sorry!

Update on our lives

It appears that some people may not know the entirely current status of our lives, so here's a brief update to get people "up to some level of speed" with the (new) Johnstons:

• We own a flat (well, we own about 25% of it, and ABSA the other 75%)* in Westville
• I am presently the re-elected chairman of the trustees for this mixed commercial / residential complex
• Some guy from Israel and a few other wallies have made life in the complex a veritable hell for the other (and only honest) owners
• Amongst other things, property has essentially been taken and sold without our permission, rules have been broken (not minor things either, but rather serious things that are causing the residential units to lose real estate value or any potential rental income they may derive because no-one wants to live in the flats any more thanks to the unhappy climate and conditions), electricity has been illegally tapped off for the Thai restaurant (I better not mention the name... what's the capital of Thailand and what do you thwow at a wabbit?), our communal water supply is being used to drive the commercial ventures (and laundromats and restaurants use a lot of water, let's be honest), people ram gates when they refuse to sign for a remote control, and I've been threatened several times and assaulted because I am the chairman representing the Body Corporate in a High Court battle against the transgressors. 
• * The Thai restaurant and the Israeli oke own a portion now too, since they took some of it :-/

Blogs gone private

Well it's been a long time since our last post to this blog: sadly, it's been two months of silence and the main reason for this has been that a very sorry group of people have found it worth their while and  (apparently limitless time) to scour through our blogs and extract any tidbits of information that they can use to harass us and generally just cause headaches. Yes, these people are connected to our High Court case, so it's no surprise that they've resorted to this nefarious (and based on the logs indicating their time spent on the site and their browsing habits, also desperately sad) approach in order to somehow "gain the upper hand". In order to err on the side of caution, we've had to take our blogs "off the grid" for the time being, but rather than keep you all in the dark, and because of popular demand, we've opened it up to a select list of readers (you should feel honoured that you made the cut!).

Don't expect much coming from us at the moment anyway, because we've been so used to NOT posting news that it's going to require some changes of habit, and also Kat and I are both presently desperately sick, so we're not really in the mood right now :)

A lot has happened in the past two months, and hopefully over the course of the next several weeks we'll be able to catch those that care back up to speed!

Final posts of holiday are up

The final posts (with more photo's than text) from our holiday blog are up:

Day 18 is up: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-18-san-francisco-penultimate-day-of.html
Day 19 is up: http://bratandkat.blogspot.com/2010/01/day-19-final-day-san-francisco-new-york.html

Final Day

Goodbye USA!

We are presently sitting at JFK awaiting the boarding call for SA flight 204 to JHB. The time here is 7 hours before the time on this post (US Eastern time). We took off from San Francisco around 10:20pm Western Time (is it Pacific Western time?), and landed here 6am'ish in JFK. It was about 6 hours of flying, but it was actually very comfortable - the Boeing 757-3 cabin flight we were on had ample leg room (even for under-seat storage AND legs), and the arm rests folded all the way back. It was very pleasant! Best flight I've ever had. Congratulations to United Airlines!

Day 19 (Final Day) - San Francisco - New York

Well everyone, it is with great sadness that I type this final post and bring an end (almost) to our USA 2009/2010 holiday. It's been a wonderful experience and made even moreso by my trusty travel companion, my sweet BlackBerry Katherine. Since this is going to be a long "day" (wake up 10am on Thursday morning, land in Durban 11:30am Saturday), we will do our best to keep the post as close to a picture-story (with captions) as possible, for your reading pleasure. For those that have endured my lengthy accounts of our holiday, thank you for taking the time - it was a joy feeling like people that we value were sharing in our day-to-day adventures. Thanks too for your comments!

Day 18 - San Francisco (Penultimate day of our holiday)

Stayed up late last night to get ideas about camcorders, but got up 8:50am to escort Kat to work. I have to say, it's quite a romantic experience for me to know that we don't have to rely on our own transport to/from work, and that it's actually safe enough for Kat to go to/from work on her own too. Nonetheless, it's awesome to just get up, go with her on the bus, and then come home, and know she's going to be fine. The proximity to the bus stop from our hotel also helps immensely.

San Francisco has all sorts of funky people.

Check this girl with her devil's ears and tank goggles...

TRAVEL TIP: it's a good idea to book hotels near to metro stations (if you intend to use the metro a lot) and to buy a muni-pass; it saves you a lot of time! Prime reason to discriminate about choice of hotels!

Day 17 - San Francisco (Kat's first day of work)

Woke up 8am to get Kat ready on time for her first official day of work (and the wonderful reason why we have had this holiday at all).

We missed the bus by half a block so we had to take the next one, but made it to her work in CHINA BASIN about ten or fifteen minutes late (ie. 9:45am'ish). Work seems to start at around 9am or 9:30am in SFO.

Day 16 - San Francisco

Woke up 8:45am and was ready and out by 9:15am to pick up and return car. The hotel doesn't offer breakfast but does do complimentary cookies all day, as well as tea / coffee in the reception hall. I suppose there's pro's and con's to this method.

Not dressed properly for the weather in SFO though, because it was still rather chilly and we were in T-shirts (no jackets), so we hot-footed it back to the hotel.

Kat needed a nap because she was still exhausted from the long and stressful drive, so I put her to bed and then hit the wifi internet (freaking fast ... Must be 20mbps again but I haven't tested it here) to plan our day and also update the blogs. Kat managed about forty minutes before she was woken up.

Days 8 and 9 posted (and now 10)

Hello from brisk San Francisco!

We've updated posts for Day 8 and Day 9 (and now Day 10) - check them out - more to come as we find time!

Time to explore San Francisco!

Day 15 - A picture story of San Francisco

I know I blog a lot. I find my blog posts to be more of a diary account for our benefit than a reading experience for those that actually are brave enough to read this blog. I apologise for being long-winded, so to update on our first day (evening, actually) in San Francisco, I intend only to post pictures with little captions! Perhaps I should have attempted this method a lot earlier? Sorry for the inconvenience!

Day 15 - Pacific Coast to San Francisco!

This Masterpiece motel continues to impress! Fresh orange juice, hot chocolate, and even hard-boiled eggs and cinnamon chelsea bread for breakfast!

When we were packed and done, we left +-9:30am (that's pretty early based on our track record) and topped up on gasoline at the AM/PM. It cost $2.99 a gallon, and it's all self-service. When I asked for help in the station shop the lady almost fell over!

Fuel-drenched and summarily humbled by how much we take for granted in South Africa, I proceeded to use the change from the gas cash deposit (no credit here!) to purchase my next big American delicacy, a corn dog. On special for 79c, I enjoyed a cheesy jalapeno corn dog on a stick. I have to admit it was pleasantly good, but again I fear the oily snack would reduce my lifespan by several decades! As a rare novelty, it's a bargain at 79c!

Day 14 - Driving up the Pacific Coast

We woke up about ten minutes before the complimentary continental breakfast at the Best Western Inn at Oxnard. They had little tubs of peanut butter like we'd have jam at home, as well as sachets of honey! Score! The most interesting thing available was, wait for it, ROOIBOS tea, and it was even labelled ROOIBOS! Apparently the founder of the hotel (or the chain) is South African, so I guess his influence has rubbed off on their facilities!

I took my first stint at driving on the "right" side (not right as in NOT WRONG, but right as in NOT LEFT). My very first absolutest first ever moment on the road was driving out of the motel and into a funky FIVE-WAY intersection with a railway track down the centre. Yeah. Go figure.

Day 13 - LA (Lost Africanos)

EEEEK! Today is Friday the THIRTEENTH of our holiday!!

Enjoyed a continental breakfast sans the majority of Texan / Alabaman folk that were abounding the hotel the day before, and then printed out our wad of prepared google maps directions and checked out.

(TRAVEL TIP: some hotels, such as LA QUINTA LAX, gives free wifi internet as well as providing a complimentary desktop PC at reception. We used the wifi in our room to plan our directions using google maps [remember to include a displayed map when using this method] and then printed them at the front desk for free)

Day 12 - LA (dee dah)

(NOTE: Day 7 has been posted, finally!)

Woke up 7:30, grabbed complimentary breakfast (was okay, but at least it's free, so that automatically qualifies it as good).

The building is loaded with Texans coming for some college championship game called the Rose Bowl (football; it's Alabama vs. Texas but the final is played every year in LA). Since boarding the Milwaukee flight yesterday we could spot them a mile away with their CRIMSON TIDE Alabama outfits, and they were all over the place. It felt like there was a Southern invasion going down (get it? Down?)!

On the way down to breakfast we waited for ages for the elevator, and when we got it, so did everyone else, since it appeared to be the only one working. From floor 9 we went down to almost each floor for someone else to hop on (by floor seven this became "cram" on). By floor five the doors opened and the Texans waiting outside just gave up trying to get on, and said "we hope you get stuck" and left it at that. It was all in good jest - these Texans are a real hoot!