So it’s finally happening. Saturday March 15, two days before St Patrick’s Day (in honour of Harry, one of my characters in Strange Nervous Laughter, and his fascination with green food and Irish heritage). Bread Milk and Honey, the coolest coffee shop/bakery in the Cape Town CBD. The World’s Largest Cupcake. Most things are deliciously […]
Lifestyle
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
IQ is dead!
Part one: Emotional Intelligence 101 The one thing that tickles me endlessly on Thought Leader is the creativity in mixing serious issues of national concern with rib-cracking humour. I find some of the humour deliciously irreverent, and often laced with allegedly life-changing “lessons” and self-deprecating tips on how to cope with crap from fellow humans, […]
Posted inLifestyle
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble …
If you had your life over again, except you could choose to have one virtue, one grace, one of the things you consider good character traits taken from you, what would it be? Think carefully now, little ones. We’re not talking about having your whole life, however long, however adventurous, however troubled, however dull, however […]
Posted inLifestyle
Me — unplugged
I’ve been off the blog a few days now. Not because of Eskom (though Telkom is trying hard to regain its status as public enemy number one), not because of threatening emails, not because I haven’t had much to say (got plenty of both). Regular readers of my blog know I have major depressive disorder […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
The headscarf girls
As a Muslim woman, I have often been asked if I would ever consider “covering up”. In my late teens and early 20s, my response was almost always a headstrong and “feminist” NO. I was motivated by my belief that Islam meant more than just your outward appearance. I also felt that such a decision […]
Posted inLifestyle, Sport
The Windies, bad anthems and Shaun Pollock
Could it really be true, as Silwane and others have alluded to in the past, that music is a mind-altering substance and a direct cause of major changes of the course of history? I wonder, because it is entirely possible, isn’t it? I know what effect music has on me, the state of my soul […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Authors with a twist
I appreciate it when writers step out of their genre boxes and do something a little inventive and out of the ordinary. Here are a few of my favourite out-of-the-boxers: Tom Robbins. My first love in fiction, and the one who taught me that rules in writing aren’t really rules at all. Not even guidelines. […]
Posted inLifestyle
How about some made-up Monday?
To ease us into a new week’s worth of work, here are a few of my favourite made-up words … schmoegel (n): a little bit Won’t you just cut me a schmoegel of that cake? nana (n): fool Good Lord (insert name here)! Must you always be such a nana in front of my colleagues? […]
Posted inLifestyle
Drug trials — in the eye of the needle
Here are some snapshots from my days as a human guinea pig. Taking part in “medical research” had a less worrying aura to it in the mid-Nineties. It was before the horribly unlucky “elephant men” in the United Kingdom with their expanding faces, and it was something that many South Africans, New Zealanders and Australians […]
Posted inLifestyle
To kiss or not to kiss?
The advent of the prohibition laws (against the brewing, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages) in the US and other countries had a long and complicated history, going back to the 19th century, and culminating in the general Prohibition law, or amendment to the US Constitution, of January 1920. For almost 14 years, until its […]
Posted inLifestyle
Is it really all that bad? (I love living here!)
With all the Eskom troubles going on lately, there’s been much talk about how the country is going to the dogs. Figuratively speaking, of course (I hope). So it was with great relief that I found the SA Rocks website this morning. It’s pretty much a collection of opinions on why South Africa is a […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Innovative sites: Original, inventive, ingenious
Here are my top three favourite inventive websites: Springwise (www.springwise.com) “New business ideas for entrepreneurial minds” they say. Only it’s so much more … Springwise has a team of 8 000 springspotters all over the world who submit interesting businesses they’ve seen at work in fields as diverse as Eco & Sustainability, Fashion, Life Hacks, Non-Profit […]