If you are anything like me, you have a few debts. No, you are not like me. You cannot be like me. I am bonded and mortgaged to the bones and down to the core of my very being. Yet even for one as riddled with debt as I, not all debts are equal. Some […]
Lifestyle
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Oi! That’s my Marmite!
It’s an outrage. The Danes last caused this much English angst in the year 850. (We won’t talk about those cartoons.) They’ve banned Marmite. Seriously. And not because it tastes horrible, which it does, but because they’ve banned every foodstuff fortified with vitamins. Except milk, which is now fortified with Vitamin D. Yes, it’s confusing, […]
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Steve Jobs crashed my job interview
Not too long ago a job interview was still a meeting between two people; one looking for a job the other looking for an employee. A friendly receptionist would offer you a glass of water where you sat waiting in the foyer trying to look intelligent reading Time magazine. Moments later she would show you […]
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How was the Rapture for you?
The Rapture is so last week I know, but there’s something mildly exhilarating about sipping Veuve Clicquot — someone else was paying — making origami cranes and watching two aggressively heterosexual men commiserate loudly over a woman called Margo in a restaurant in Illovo. (It’s a longish story. Don’t ask.) Naked people might not have […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
I’m tired of watching the royal family
While South Africans tallied votes from local government elections last week, the Queen of England visited Ireland. Just one of these events made most international headlines. For some reason we are expected to care what this woman does. Almost 60 years on a throne she can claim as her own simply because she had the […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
My country, my tormentor
Love’s constant companion is heartbreak. And in every enterprise that is spurred by hope, we know that disappointment is shadowing us. Cynicism is an exercise in futility, it is fundamentally anti-human; it is in the nature of every person to believe that obstacles can be overcome, that healing follows pain and challenges are, as the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Sex, jets and rock ‘n roll
This Friday is an inestimably important anniversary. Not because it’s the 13th, and therefore the subject of a whole bunch of really crap horror movies taking up space on the shelves in Mr Video. No, I have been awaiting the advent of Friday the 13th of May with breathless anticipation (no pun intended) because it […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
I feel ripped off
Bruschetta with Parma ham, brie and preserved fig. Not the most revolutionary combination of flavours and textures the culinary world has known. Nice enough, but as canapés go, not God’s gift to cocktail parties. And yet bruschetta with Parma ham, brie and preserved fig can take on an urgent and insistent significance, especially when one […]
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Another stalker (at least he’s entertaining)
“today if i go home,” writes my Facebook friend, “i will tell my mum about you sarah you are so nice to me”. Which surprises me because a) I haven’t been nice to him and b) I’d have a tough time distinguishing between him and a bar of Lux. In response to all of his […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Slow walk through Main Street
Last week-end, I experienced one of those — all too rare — refreshing periods of exhilaration that gave me renewed hope for South Africa as a country. I attended a volksfees in the platteland! Yes! A volksfees in die ware sin van die woord! I hope that, when the annual Cederberg festival in the town […]
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Sustainable fishing
Global fish production has reached an all-time high, according to Nourishing the Planet’s latest research for the Worldwatch Institute’s Vital Signs Online publication. Aquaculture, or fish farming — once a minor contributor to total fish harvest — increased 50-fold between the 1950s and 2008 and now contributes nearly half of all fish produced worldwide.According to […]
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How to love people who are a pain in the arse
Pssshhhhhh … the toilet flushing in our apartment was the most beautiful sound I have heard in a long time. I sat in our lounge, revelling in its bubbly, splashy song, grinning at myself for finding this somewhat stercoraceous moment almost sublime. We have been living in Suzhou, China for just over the month and […]