Cape Town
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
Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | Celebration, Fun, Music Related Links | 2 Comments
When I see strawberries on sale, the avocado’s are priced at under R3, the South Easter wind starts blowing … then I know it’s time… festivities has started …
You
all ready for this yet? Ready for coming out of hibernation? Yes dear
friend, it’s time to put away your winter blankies, warmers and
heaters. It’s time to open up more of your windows at home and let
that fresh scent of summer happiness into your home – with all those
open windows maybe then you will hear the music playing in the distance
- the music of a nearby festival.
The festivals haven’t even
started yet and I can see myself waving good bye to my bonus that I
have not received nor made plans for as yet. . .
- this weekend, 24-26 Oct – Khayelitsha Festival – celebrating 25 years of existence
- also its the Cape Town International Kite Festival in Muizenberg 24-25 Oct
- next week Thursday 30th Oct is the start of the Obs Night Market (first ever night one to be held)
- the Sunday 2 Nov is Obs Holistic Fair
- usually 30 Nov / 1 Dec, it’s Obs Festival
Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | Celebration, Entertainment, Fun, Music Related Links | No Comments
After a miserable day yesterday where nothing was going right, I made
my way to the ‘Fresh ta Death’ party in Woodstock. If you are familiar
with the size of Don Pedro’s in Roodebloem road; you’d be a bit worried
about pulling such crowd of friends into such a tiny place especially
if its a farewell party to a well known person! Controversy leaves the
Cape for USA later this month and hip hop heads, and the crowd that
tags with those people all joined in to bid her farewell.
I’m not feeling so fresh right now and I do feel like I am dying; head
sore, eyes still tired, nausea etc – yes too much alcohol. The party
was SO much fun and I saw all the familiar faces I normally see on
Facebook and bumped into friends that I forgot about (honestly).
The music selectors included:
- Eazy – Faculty of HipHop
- Azhul – Beatbanger extraordinaire
- Earl Scratch- Battle king
- Erefaan Pearce – Mixology master
- Tyrone Paulsen – GHFM
- Intelligent Design – USA
- Phax Mulder – Germany
There will be loads of pictures posted later … pictures up on my Facebook profile only.
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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