Archive for December, 2008
Friday, December 26th, 2008
If Christmas is about family, friends, presents, delicious food, Father Christmas and Christmas trees, then Boxing day in Cape Town is about the beach.
Many families and groups of friends gather their picnic hampers and blankets and head for the beaches by car, train, taxi or any other means of transport – with yesterday’s leftovers and enough ‘luxuries’ (sweets) to feed half the people there. Usually it does!
On the Cape Flats, growing up during the last years of apartheid, meant being able to go to only certain beaches. My family started off going to Kalk Bay and ended up at Maiden’s Cove, on the Atlantic Coast. We avoided Strandfontein Pavilion on Boxing Day, because of its reputation of blue bottles and drunken patrons. What a day when beaches were opened to all. We headed for Gordon’s Bay…for regular beach visits, not only the holidays.
I stopped going to the beach on Boxing Day when my parents allowed me to stay home alone. Boxing Day became test match cricket day – watching the game on tv in peace, without having to fight for the remote control.
This year I will miss sitting in the stands at Newlands on Tweede Nuwejaar (2 January), but fortunately the Proteas won’t be going to Australia over the Festive Season again without a reciprocal visit from the Aussies.
Boxing Day has now been renamed Family Day in this country, although it’s still Boxing Day to us. Sounds so much more like the day after Christmas.
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
This time of the year, news dry up all of a sudden. Isn’t that weird?
Throughout the year criminals do their thing, politicians do their thing, the stockmarkets go up and down, celebrities do what they do, inventors create new things – leaving us saturated with news.
Come December – whether in the icy cold northern hemisphere or sun drenched, sweltering Southern Hemisphere, news stories become more frivolous.
Like clockwork, the nearer we get to the end of year, the less substantial news becomes, instead out comes the dreaded Top Best of/Worst of Lists of everything under the sun. For a news junkie this is bad news!
One list that annoys me more than most- probably because it’s local – is from the Sunday Times who once again show their bias against the ANC with their Mampara of the Year list. I could think of a certain former Sunday Times columnist and the usual controversial people rugby offers up each year who could have joined Julius Malema and Thabo Mbeki on that list, but of course the Sunday Times editorial team doesn’t have any scores to settle with them.
Thanks CapeTalk for rousing me from my holiday chilled mode for mentioning this one, because the Sunday Times won’t find me navigating my way to their rag on my own!
Fortunately the silly season lasts for a few weeks before the next news cycle start.
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Every Christmas I swear “never again”!
- Never again will I leave my shopping until the last minute. Literally the last minute!
- Never again will I spend the holidays in Cape Town with family and screaming nieces and nephew and fighting siblings!
- Never again will I attend a Christmas or for that matter any function out of obligation.
Here we are again. I did everything I said I wouldn’t do!
The shops were not as full as other years, so shopping was at least bearable.
This morning while trying to stall the inevitable last minute trip to the mall across the road, I had one of my (scarce) brainwaves!
As if from the gods above I was struck by the idea to go get gift cards for each child. So that’s what I did. I got a gift card for each of the 5 children belonging to my brother, sister and friend.
Why had I not thought of this years ago and saved myself from the agony of pounding the pavements looking for the perfect gift for children who tossed it aside after 5 minutes so they could pummel each other?
As for Christmas lunch…I can’t escape it this year since my mother is overseas for 3 months, leaving the family feeling more fragile than usual.
Next year though while planning my escape from Christmas in Cape Town, I will have one less list to worry about. Gift cards it is!
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
The start of the end of the year is always exciting.
Many companies close down their offices for a few days in December and it’s no different for the NGO who employs me! We close for a month from the second Friday in December. So I have been on holiday for nearly two weeks already! Time sure flies faster when you are at home rather than work!
I brought along my 2009 diary, incase I got in the mood to start planning for the New Year. Each year we get a diary and each year I start off with good intentions of getting down to time-planning. By March entries become more scattered, until June when diary entries all but dries up!
December though is for relaxing and perhaps looking back over the year…and what a year it was!
I got my feet wet in January with my first blog at blogs.24.com. What an easy way to learn the ropes for someone who hadn’t even considered reading a blog! It helped that the regulars over there were friendly and helpful!
By July I was ready to move on to a blogspot blog. This blog gave me a bit more freedom to write without the obligatory reciprocal visits that community blogs necessitated.
Finally I migrated to a WordPress blog with my own domain. Wow! is all I can say! The freedom to do and write as I please is very attractive for someone who likes being in control of their own destiny! It does help that my webhost Afrihost, made the move so easy!
In between the blog moving:
I learned a lot about internet marketing and even earned a few Rand for good measure. After trying different affiliate programmes, I ended up mainly promoting Bidorbuy directly and received a monthly payout each month since September 2008.
I read everything I could, especially through subcribes to RSS feeds of favourite blogs. Microsoft Outlook 2007 was the best thing to happen to me and my enormous amount of incoming feeds! I have now stopped at a few mostly international technology and local and overseas general news feeds, because there is just so much information one can process in a day. For internet marketing, a local one I read is at iMod.
Towards the end of the year, I received some valuable advice : to go with my own experiences on my blog. I was told that most of Tech news is there for all to see – on aggregator sites. Great advice that turned out – and also a turning point for me.
Google tools like Analytics, Adsense, SKtool, etc. came in handy and added to the thrill of blogging.
And then there was the US elections featuring glamour candidates Barack Obama – as in Obama Cool! – and Sarah (Say it Aint So Joe!) Palin and the run up to our very own South African elections in 2009! I love the drama of politics, but politicians…not so much – except for Obama of course!
Bring on 2009…but not quite yet.
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Sunday, December 21st, 2008
Wow! Who could have thought victory for Graeme Smith and the rest of the Proteas team would be this emotional and taste so sweet!
This win nearly makes up for the 15 years of emotion of another kind…of almost always being on the losing side to an Australian cricket team that obviously had the mental toughness to beat the South African team into submission on a regular basis.
All that changed this past five days even when everything seemed to go according to the usual script. Great starts by the Proteas, and then letting the Aussies off the hook. For four days it seemed like we would find ourselves lamenting another good start turned into a loss.
On Day 4 though we started to believe while Graeme Smith was batting with Neil Mckenzie and then Hashim Amla. By the end of Day 4, neither Smith nor his other top 3 batsmen were any longer at the crease!
Many people felt that as long as Smith was batting, South Africa would win. They were right – in a way. It turned out that Smith’s attitude and mental toughness had been adopted by his entire team – especially AB De Villiers and JP Duminy today!
We had of course seen this same mental strength portrayed in India and England during the last year when the team posted huge 4th innings totals to win one test and draw another.
So not only did the team win for the first time since 1994, but they also achieved the second highest test run chase in a fourth innings. Good going, Proteas!
South African cricketers and fans have had to endure a lot of ridicule downunder, so we will take this moment and savour this victory for a while!
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