Lifestyle

There’s an aspect of medicine called family medicine. It’s the part medical students love to hate. It’s the touchy feely bit where we care (or at least pretend to) about the things that can’t really be treated with a pill. We’re concerned about the impact your job is having on your life, we wonder how […]

For my sins I have a sister who lives in Perth(fontein), Australia and family tradition dictates that Christmas every year is spent in Perth(fontein). So yes, you guessed it, I will soon be packing my bag and heading off down under for yet another Christmas in a country that has long since forgotten how to […]

“Well, I’m from Mars,” the professor says, “It’s not too far from Venus, you know”. His Gandalf-like appearance certainly endeared him to me before, but as he speaks he starts to look more Lord of Ward C than Lord of the Ring. And Mars is light years from Venus! Is he insane AND astronomically misguided? […]

Being an emigrant means always being in a state of limbo. When you’re planning to emigrate, you’re not really here. You put off purchasing a house; the car you buy must be something you can get rid of quickly. Everything is a matter of “when the visa comes through” or “when we move to xyz”. […]

My best friend lives in Australia. This mattered today, a lot, because I was utterly miserable and wanted to confide in him. We chatted on Facebook for half an hour or so, but he had to go out, or go to bed, or whatever it is that people who live on the other side of […]

It was a normally lonely Wednesday evening for me as I sat on the couch rapturously gulping down a dozen Castle Lagers in order to be drunk enough to pass out and fall asleep some time before midnight. I have a problem sleeping, you see, and since I think sleeping tablets are the preserve of […]

There are two main points that really get my goat about the current Ukweshwama debacle (Ukweshwama, for those who don’t know, is a traditional Zulu ceremony involving the ritualistic slaying of a bull). The first is the unbridled cruelty to the animal involved, and the second is the most widely used justification for the ritual’s […]

It’s December again (“hello, hello Dezember” to my Joburg folk), and your thoughts right now are probably filled with the incredibly arduous job of buying Christmas gifts, fattening the Christmas turkey and stocking the Christmas-hosting house with the appropriate foods and liquids. Good on you. Oh, by the way. If anyone has a direct number […]

Copenhagen is around the corner. Unfortunately it is unlikely that there will be any final treaty coming out of the Danish capital. Two weeks ago Barack Obama already warned that there is not enough time to secure a legally binding deal at the conference and hopes are set instead on making it a first-stage series […]

In a popular Sandton watering hole the other night I walked up to a table of complete strangers because I thought they were friends of my date. “Hi,” I smiled. They looked at me, faces blank. As it verrrrrry gradually dawned on me that they knew neither of us from Adam, I yearned for the […]