knowledgeable career-driven belter betties

Went to a girls dinner at a mate’s last night. And spent the most superb evening embarking on some intellectual finance speak.

It’s evenings like these, set about a table with super intelligent women, sipping on Diemers (the magic case has been opened), and tucking into a home made pie (my mate is a living, walking Bree Van Der Kamp. Really, you should see for yourself),

And my more economically tuned, finance friends taught me about the stock market. I know very little, even though I own a few shares. I know sweet shit actually. I just know I can’t really touch them for a few years.

Wow. But is it interesting. ‘What’s a “vesting period?” I ask tentatively, and next thing I’m being educated in ‘arbitrage’, the ins and outs of insider trading and the intricate details of the Dimension Data pull-out, why Martha Stewart went to prison, and all sorts of amazing things I had no idea my little stocks are doing. Right as we speak.

From there we merged into the root of the economic crisis, and what the American government regulations did to start it all, briefly touching then on cults, but narrowly avoiding religion, and finally ending in global issues such as ‘Do greenhouse gases really contribute to our climatic change, or is the earth naturally adapting to a new era of climate, like the Ice Age?’

Intense, hot topics, so in vogue of women of the 2000s. We touched on men and sex (fetishes to be precise) for maybe about 2 whole minutes.

But babies, marriage, all those things not helluva relatable to my humble existence, never came up. And sorry, but how refreshing. I have a new vested – geddit? Vested - interest in the stock market now.

(I’m downloading a ticker as we speak.)

I realised halfway through the incredible mulled wine pears and coconut mousse dessert, that these are conversations our grandmothers, and possibly even our mothers, would never have had back in their generation.

Stock markets intricacies? Climatic restructuring? Email recall enabler? Satellite navigation tracking systems? Er,…careers?

And not only because these things didn’t exist during their time, (well, the Internet has been going since the late 60s, but you know what I mean).

Although nowadays most of this shit – previously man’s world stuff – just wasn’t accessible to them. Men were living this existence of knowing what was what in business and global matters, women just shut up.

Generations ahead of us will be saying:
‘Shame, my grandmother had one of those Blackberry bricks and all she could see on it was a browser. Giggle giggle.’
While they will talk about their holiday houses in Bloemfontein-On-Sea and ponder what ice caps looked like.

When you really think about it, all these role changes haven’t occurred within centuries of each other, but merely decades. And that’s a mind fuck right there.

At least I think so.

Didn’t think the economy or stocks would interest me at all, but since starting at my company last year, the development in my interest has surprised me.

Now. Back to the Economic Times.

PS: Not discussed over the dinner table, but Moogs showed me this at the Vaal. I was on the floor I think it's so funny: