Pat Kayongo

6 steps to becoming part of the broke middle class

Are you tired of having to live a responsible life and be disciplined with your finances? Are you tired of preparing for the future, and making sure you have enough for tomorrow? Do you want to live in the now!? A life of temporary freedom and fun!? If that’s you, this post is for you!!!

Dreaming in slow motion

Lots of kids have interesting dreams of what they would like to be when they grow up. Some little boys dream of being firefighters, policemen, sportsmen, or hip hop video stars. Little girls dream of being princesses, 50 cent video girls, baby mamas, and the like. (I actually don’t know what little girls dream of becoming. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was not a little girl, and therefore did not have the dreams that little girls have). What did I want to become: A computer programmer!

Boot Camp

Moving to Johannesburg has been interesting. New sites and new sounds. New weaves (people, there is actually a LARGE variety) and new faces.

Arriving here was an interesting challenge. I am generally a socialite, except in unfamiliar ground. I kind of shrink back because I don’t know how people may respond to my random comments, or if they will even like me. For some reason, it’s difficult to be myself completely.

Personal Hygiene

I’m a private guy. I don’t like being vulnerable in public, and I don’t like doing things that I would normally be doing in private, in a public area. I think that just opens you up to a whole lot of public attention and public scrutiny. Why do I think this? Because this is what I do in public places. Especially in one of the public places that I avoid the most, where people are forced to do things they should only do in private: THE PUBLIC TOILET!

The Man

I enjoy music. I enjoy music a whole lot. Music has the ability to completely change my mood and alter my thoughts.

Growing up, I used to listen to the good stuff, you know, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, you know, the sounds of the sounds of the upper class who have enough taste and class to enjoy this kind of sound…

Greener Grass

When my family moved to South Africa in 1989, we got a cream Toyota Corolla. It was hot. So so so hot. I remember when I first got the “privilege” of washing the car. I say privilege carefully because as young kids we were always looking to take up responsibility. Once it becomes a chore, we become so over it. Anyway, after washing it, each and every time I would stop and say WOW. This car is amazing… Shining like new. Reaching supersonic speeds of 180 km/h. Cassette player. AM/FM Radio. Wow, absolutely amazing. It doesn’t get better than that. (Yes ladies and gentlemen, I made it through the stone age).

Weight Training

So I go to gym. I’ve been going to gym since high school. That’s why I am so hot, built and sexy.

Actually, thats a lie I tell everyone I meet for the first time. If you see me, you’ll know I’m not really built (hot and sexy still apply though). At the beginning of every “season” in my life, I look around me, and it seems like everyone is getting bigger. Problem is, I’m not getting bigger. One of the biggest lies that guys say all the time is that they go to gym to stay healthy. If you really wanted to stay healthy, you wouldn’t do half the things you do. The real reason guys go to gym is that everyone is getting bigger, and a situation might arise that there might cause a confrontation with these bigger guys. If you’re the smaller guy, you are going to be re-engineered. You will be beaten. 3 year old kids will laugh at you. Your dog will leave you because it’s too embarassed to be walked by you on the road. When all the other dogs are barking, they’re not really barking. They too are laughing.

Will the real Patty please stand up

I was raised by two loving but strict Ugandan parents. One of the things one needs to realise about Ugandan parents is that they put the fear of God in you. When you decide not to mess up, it’s not because you have a true perception of wrong and right, but its because if you do something stupid, the fear of a torturous death far outweighed the momentary pleasure of whatever I was about to do, whether it be stealing sugar (which I never actually wanted to do, but I hear it’s what most kids do – can’t seem to understand why) or sneaking out of school for a period of time (which I actually did in grade 2, and received the hiding of my life, and the next life, and the 9 after that).

Ceteris Paribus

Back to my first year of university, in economics, we had the option of choosing from a number of lecturers. My first choice was a 30-something lady who seemed to be living life hard. She seemed to be an older version of a university student. As the lecture started, she would update us on her previous night at Tiger Tiger, and ask us what we did for fun, to which most people lied (sitting in your room with a group of nerdy-who-are-trying-to-be-cool guys rating other girls isn’t the most exciting of stories for what you did on a Thursday night).

Outsourcing life

In my first year of University, in the first semester, I was lectured economics by this German guy. Honestly, to this day, he’s been one of my best lecturer. He was a middle aged man, who had lame jokes, but because of our respect for him (and most of us just came from high school therefore sucking up seemed like an option), we laughed at his jokes.