Monday, February 8th, 2010 | Celebration, Education, Entertainment, Fun, Funny, Personal | No Comments
The ability to pretend that nothing happened (with a straight face) and still be confused (yourself) as to whether it actually did happen.
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | Education, Friendships, Life Lesson, Photography, Questions, Tips / Learning, food, thoughts | 1 Comment
On Sunday I was invited to lunch at a friend’s parents’ home -It was her birthday the day before and so celebrations continued the next day.
(now for typing’s sake, I’m abbreviating the word Portuguese to read P…okay?)
Where I grew up, I never had a P friend, never had a P class mate nor did I ever eat at a P‘’s home before.
The area I now reside in used to be all be P owned. In the last five years of my staying here, I have only met one P guy from the area – and so still no real culture check, well at least until Sunday that is.
I felt comfortable and “at home” when I saw the food all laid out on the table. It reminded me of my mom’s Sunday lunch. Each portion in its own glass bowl, each bowl with its own spoon, each person dishes up their own plate of food, all exactly like it used to be for me when I was living with my mom.
The food was no stranger to me – so familiar – even in the taste of it. There was the sweetened butternut with cinnamon, the broccoli and cauliflower, for the meat eaters there was roast chicken, savoury rice but like savoury because its brown of the onions not using spice for rice, sweet potatoes, heck I can’t remember all of the nice stuffies – was just damn good food.
Whilst eating, I looked around in their back yard, noticed how familiar the gardening style was,this again reminded me of my grandmas garden. She used to have grapevines (but the grapes never grew THAT well), the apple tree, the peach/plum whatever tree, guava, banana (even though bananas never really grew) and more.
It got me thinking… › Continue reading
Saturday, May 30th, 2009 | Education, Tips / Learning, Useful | 4 Comments
There are currently four Mobile Network Providers in South Africa namely Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Virgin Mobile.
The services offered are alike; so are the service numbers. It can be quite a tedious task trying to remember or finding out which is the correct three digit number to use for whatever mobile service, you wish to use at the time. › Continue reading
Friday, May 8th, 2009 | Education, Opinion, Questions, Tips / Learning, Useful, thoughts | No Comments
‘Aweh’
pronounced ‘Ah-wear’
This South African word, in real context would mean:
Newsfusion describes it as A Greeting “Aweh my bru” (Hello my friend)also “howzit“, “yooit“, “hoesit“, “yo“.
Urban Dictionary describes the word as A South African slang word used to acknowledge something or greet someone. (Hey guys) , “Oh aweh man!”
The other day, I ordered my meal at this restaurant, the waiter then listened, wrote down what I wanted and “aweh’ed” me. › Continue reading
Friday, April 24th, 2009 | Education, Entertainment, Personal | No Comments
As the annual New York African Film Festival draws to a close, I realise I have not blogged about this nor congratulated a friend who’s film premiered at the festival this year.
The 16th annual film festival, was held 08 to 15 April 2009 and will continue again from 22 to 25 May 2009.
The 2009 New York African Film Festival, presented under the banner “Africa in Transition,” takes an introspective journey across the African continent with films that create a vision of Africa’s future through a deconstruction of its past.
It has been 15 years since South Africa’s first all-race democratic elections. In mid-April of this year, South Africa will go to the polls for the fourth time since the end of Apartheid.
With Nelson Mandela long retired, a new generation of leaders governs the country and grapples to maintain the grand ideals that drove the struggle against Apartheid. It is both the best of times, and the most challenging of times!
The films in this year’s New York African Film Festival speak to these challenges.
The Prodigal Son (U.S. Premiere)
Kurt Orderson, South Africa , 2008; 64m. In English and Caribbean Patois.
Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | Education, Entertainment, Music Related Links, Social Media Networking, Tips / Learning, Useful | 9 Comments
This list is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License, meaning you may freely copy and re-post the information below for any non-commercial purpose, provided that full credit is given to the original author(s) along with a link back to this page.
Please feel free to contribute to this post by using the comments section.
Last Updated 2010-02-08
The South African Music Industry community, is slowly waking up to the powers of internet marketing and starting to utilise the services that Twitter has to offer.
By Following¹ these musicians on Twitter, you can read about their upcoming gigs and last minute cancellations or venue changes, band website updates, their new blog posts, new music releases, studio sessions, new music they are working on, concerts and touring, get their links to free downloads and to the minute news updates.
I can’t think of a simpler way for bands to keep in touch with their fan-base. . .
List of South African music-related Tweeple² on Twitter thus far (including artists and bands that have relocated elsewhere):
- The Rudimentals: Afro-Ska Reggae Band (Cape Town)
- GoldFish: Electronic Duo
- 7th Son: Rock Reggae Band (Cape Town) › Continue reading
Friday, April 10th, 2009 | Education, General+Life Stuff, Health, Stirring, Tips / Learning | 2 Comments
A colleague offered me one of her chocolate marshmallow eggs the other day. I politely said thanks but rejected the offer as likely the ingredients would contain eggs and I am vegetarian.
Unconvinced, she starts to read the packaging to prove my point. Not long after that, “never mind the egg white, there’s bovine gelatin in here“; apparently I put her off eating marshmallow eggs now because of the bovine.
Do you know what Bovine Gelatin is?
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 | Celebration, Education, General+Life Stuff, Rants, Relationships, Tips / Learning | No Comments
Just when you thought traffic is becoming a breeze in the mornings, you are normally hit with that one Monday morning, where everything is just pure chaos, and naturally you would be late for work on that one day and happen to have an important business meeting scheduled. › Continue reading
Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | Celebration, Education, Fun, Music Related Links, Rants | No Comments
So… my leave has finally come to an end. I never take my leave for durations of longer than two weeks at a time. I just get SO bored the last few days even if it is just two weeks; also I fear not being able to get back into the swing of things when it’s time to return . See, Anastacia enjoys her sleep and would like nothing other than waking up at 11am daily, chill in bed on my laptop until say 12pm when the hunger kicks in, eat something and then go chill outside, lay in the sun, in my hammock, surf the net on my laptop until say 2pm…do you see where this is going? Nowhere yes. Unproductive, Inactive, Idle minded, Wasted.
Today is Saturday 4 October 2008; to think that today was the first day I started working at the university back in 2002. Six years of accumulating half my annual leave left me with some compulsory leave to take this year. Which explains my feelings of boredom now because I already had my leave in May this year to visit my mother up in Johannesburg.
I remember that day, Friday 4 October 2002 as if it were just last week. They wanted me to start working earlier but I already had a hike planned for that week. The ‘Die Hell‘ trail was my last BIG hike that I done since and I really wish to get back into that.
So Monday its back to the hell hole for me. I was contemplating whether or not I should get the preparation work started or not but instead I chose to have some more me time.
By the time that you read this post, I will be rocking the daisies out of their roots in Darling. This is the second annual eco-friendly music festival but it will be a first for me to attend. The bands/artists that I look forward to seeing are 340ml, 7th Son, Eagle Eye Cherry, Tidal Waves and much more.
On Monday I went shopping with @ch00n to Builders Warehouse and picked up all sorts of crafty things there. This included mosaic tiles, the glue, clear varnishing paint, wood, paint brushes, fabric. . .you will have to wait and see what ideas have been sparked hence the urge for all those materials…
We also popped in at Game Stores to pick up the much needed camping gear for the Rocking the Daisies Festival. Had this been a Vortex we were attending, I don’t think we would have opted to buy an eco-friendly camping stove. The Bio-ethanol gel is poured into the stove and lit and is flammable but eco-friendly.
As any other blogger, geek, web addict on this planet would do (assuming), if they were to go to a camp they take along their laptops…so then these questions would be raised:
1) How do you power it up if your laptop if the battery life has depleted? an inverter of course
2) How would you connect to the internet? #Skyrove wifi connection …
3) How would you charge the cell phone, (flip stop asking me SO many questions!) Wind up torch and cell battery charger if need be
So enough of this blogging thing already cause this post is making me even later to get to the festival … I’m posting at 4pm so that I can really be there by the time you read this … We taking the Elantra so wish us luck in actually getting there cause I hate this car! AND IT JERKS! but its taken us to Durban and back many times…so ya…crossing fingers..
Saturday, September 27th, 2008 | Education, Facebook, Opinion, Rants | No Comments
Facebook is a platform that I use daily and I have become dependent on it over time – whether it be for event planning, reminding me its a friends’ birthday or whatever.
I have read many many articles on flaws of Facebook and the privacy lapse and other people feeling rather uneasy about using the platform. Still I continued using it and just ensuring that I remained on top of activity occurring on my profile (checking wall messages etc) and ensuring that my privacy settings is still intact.
Today I was really surprised to see how far Facebook is actually going with this “People You May Know” tool. I have included a screen shot below to explain. The “People You May Know” tool has now been developed to give other users even more information about you than before. In the past it never included the grey text section that reads “You and Sulaiman both live in Cape Town” but suggested your name and picture only. If your profile is set to be hidden, it would be hidden when the user clicked on your name. Knowing that there is now an even bigger risk of my information being leaked to others is really scaring me. . .
The People You May Know section on my Facebook Home Page
At the recent annual Facebook conference, Mark Zuckerberg the founder and CEO of Facebook, told an audience which consisted of 1 000 industry executives, software makers and the media, how the company’s features will run on affiliated sites outside its own. “Facebook’s mission … is to give people the power to share information in order to make the world more open and connected. By giving people the power to share, it makes it more transparent,” Zuckerberg told the audience. . .
. . . so how exactly is Facebook giving us the “power to share” when something like this creeps up on your home page one day without warning? Often I found that any changes to site are firstly implemented then days later I get to read about it on The Facebook Blog. Whatever happened to opting into a new feature before it is implemented?
. . . giving me the “power to share information” should include the option to add a feed to my own blog page – this could include my status updates and notifications – the sharing should be two fold to be “more transparent” so why can I only import?
Screenshot: My Basic Information Settings Page on Facebook
As you can see, my Privacy Settings do not allow people not currently on my Friend List to see my Basic Information (and this includes Location/Hometown). I find myself wondering if this Sulaiman person allows their Basic Information to be viewed by everyone on Facebook? I surely hope that no unauthorised person out there is seeing my location!!! Yes your location is a petty thing if you live in Cape Town but I will remind you of the open letter to the Facebook community from Mark Zuckerberg back in September 2006.
In his letter he was apologising for the sudden unwelcome feature, providing new privacy options, but ultimately defending the feature and his belief in free information flow. In his letter he included that his vision was “to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with.
…BUT at the same time it is hilarious to think that in Cape Town we have a population of around 3.5 million people, yet Facebook seems to think that I might just know that person? (Population Statistics courtesy of Wikipedia). Facebook is the second most popular browsed site here in South Africa which happens to also be is one of the top five countries actively using Facebook, don’t you think that we just too busy on FACEBOOK the internet to get to know the public also? LOL
On a serious note though, just because the two of us are from Cape Town Africa does not mean that we share the same kraal ¹. Given the recent rumors that Facebook will be opening up shop in Cape Town, one would have thought they would have done just a little bit of research into the city’s population before deciding to use “which city you from” as an indicator to link how people know one another . . .
¹ kraal (krôl, kräl)n. South African- A rural village, typically consisting of huts surrounded by a stockade.
- An enclosure for livestock
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