Too many Koeks

For the first time in three months, I was forced to give up my day-time viewing pleasure (Murder, She Wrote) for a full eight hours of work.

First impressions: my new colleagues are really nice. Joking, light-hearted, welcoming... Awesome. Not so awesome... there is a total ban on all webmail use. No gmail, hotmail, yahoo. No msn. No network websites. And most definitely, no blogging. Use of these websites is a sackable offence. My blood circulation went into complete shutdown at the thought. I tried not to show it on my face.

The solid day of very intensive training was broken with a feast for lunch, and the highlight of my day... cupcakes. Yum. The sugar boost almost made up for the news of my complete cyber embargo. I'm still struggling with the concept. What do these people actually expect me to do all day? Work? Pah.

But the most interesting thing about the day was learning how common my name is - especially seeing as the company I've just joined totals about 30 employees. With my addition, there are now three 'Koekies' in the small company. There is also a Koek, Koeks, Koekmeister and Koekalina.

Can you see where there'd be a problem? I'm going to name my first child, Seventeen.. or Nine. A name like that should successfully avoid any double-naming confusion. And before you start shouting at me about how unfair it would be to bless a child with a name like that, remember that my kids are going to be fat and red-head (okay, this is the absolute LAST time I'm using that joke... this week), so they're going to have to be strong characters anyway.