Zillions of stars eyeball you from a quiet night sky as you dodge creeping goggas when using the toilet in Dilling, one of the 99 villages surrounding an equal number of Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. I’m still undecided which was more surreal: using the roofless, hole-in-the-ground toilet in the dark or finding a Pepsi bottle cut […]
Lifestyle
Posted inLifestyle
Nobody wants my dollar$?!
I feel sick in the depths of my stomach. I’ve got that I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening feeling — because I really can’t believe this is happening. I’m sitting inside my room at the Thewodros Hotel in Harar, a small town in eastern Ethiopia, and I want to get out of here. Yes, I was chirpy when I arrived […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Web 2.egO
I’ve been pondering, recently, the rise of narcissism as a disease of our world. Depression used to be the problem, everyone swallowing handfuls of Prozac and eating chocolate cake in their pyjamas. Now, I believe, fuelled by our inherent egomania and facilitated by (among many other things) Web 2.0 social-networking sites, a kind of global […]
Posted inLifestyle
Orgy on the road to Barberton?
So, did anyone else see the story of the Mpumalanga hitchhiker who was gang-raped by three women? Rape is a very serious matter — a gangrene that is eating away at the fabric of our society. There is nothing even remotely funny about it. Still, it is not too often that I read a story […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Tech
Evolution and endurance
Sometimes the things we need to learn most aren’t to be found in books, through transplanted wisdom, in lectures or by way of extraordinary mentor … there are some things not even Google can solve. The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted […]
Posted inLifestyle
Laughter yoga: Not as strange as it sounds
I went to my first laughter yoga session this weekend and I’m hooked. Call me a hippy if you will! Laughter yoga is a bit of a craze at the moment, sweeping the world one giggle at a time. There are apparently 5 000 laughter clubs in operation at the moment. What is it? Basically, a […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
Car whores
When in comes to selling cars, the badge obviously means a lot, but for buyers the nameplate often doesn’t tell the whole story. Take that good old South African favourite, the Toyota Hilux. How many of you lot know that in the 1980s Volkswagen assembled the pickup in Europe and sold it as the VW […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Satirists in desperate bid to keep Republicans in power
The US Republican Party isn’t just being kept in power by the military industrial complex, it’s being kept in power by satirists — what would they do without Bush, Huckabee or McCain? Last week Mitt Romney withdrew from the Republican race to replace George Bush as US President. Romney, who has a way of tightening […]
Posted inLifestyle
A Parktown prawn called Henry
I have a Parktown prawn called Henry living in my lounge. He is named after Henry Rollins, who I can’t wait to see tonight, because both look angry and inflated with steroids (and even Parktown prawns are more loveable when they have names). My Henry (the one without all the tattoos) has given me a […]
Posted inLifestyle
Genius cartoons
In the hopes that something here will make you smile … Pon and Zi (www.ponandzi.com) Cute but somewhat heartbreaking cartoon characters that love too hard. Cyanide and Happiness (www.explosm.net/comics/740/) From the bizarre to the macabre to the hilarious, you’re never quite sure what you’re getting with these guys, but it is (mostly) entertaining. Madam and […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Thoughts on philanthropy in South Africa
My area of interest is that big word “philanthropy”. We in South Africa take the thousands of organisations that contribute to our democracy for granted. They provide relief and welfare, they educate, they create jobs, they build, they research, they publish, they contribute towards policy, they advocate, they contest and they help ensure that we […]
Posted inLifestyle
In search of good CVs
It’s “must-find-job” season, and CVs are pouring on to my desk. With no fear of being too dramatic, I can safely say that 95% are horrendously presented. I once had a candidate tell me in his “About me” paragraph that “frankly, I am so perfect, my parents should be given a trophy”. Another informed that […]