Lifestyle

Isn’t it high time the South African government understood how to enhance our gross national happiness? South Africa is one of the unhappiest nations on this earth. We’re not as miserable as Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia or Angola, but we come in at a lowly 118 out of 143 nations measured in the Happy Planet […]

The “condition” of women and girl children remains repulsive. This is an indictment to humanity as a whole, given that the overall human condition itself is precarious. In her incomparable novel, Changes, Ama Ata Aidoo brilliantly captures the critical challenges confronting females in particular — the conversations of the two main characters, Esi and Opokuya, […]

No self-respecting African male is complete without a convincing herd boy experience in his past. It’s very “previously disadvantaged”. If you didn’t grow up in the rural areas and thus couldn’t have herded anything larger than a skinny township chicken, you can supplant the herd boy past with a taxi boy past. Truth be told […]

So often the argument I hear from anti-social media types is that it makes us worse at being social in the real world. Hell, my girlfriend has moaned at me a number of times when I wanna tweet a pic of the cool time we are having together — “why can’t you just enjoy the […]

One can only pity the wretched rugby commentator in straight-laced 1930s New Zealand who, on reading the Springbok team list, was confronted with the name “Ebbo Bastard”. “This one, I think we’ll call Smith”, was what he actually said in the end. In a previous post, I recounted my ordeal over once having to ask […]

Perhaps I am over-dutiful as a film reviewer. I often feel I have to read a famous book before I see the film adaptation, and frequently try to catch up with a filmmaker’s other work before reviewing his or her new movie. Sometimes I tell myself that the book/film comparison is unduly academic and probably […]

Having only just returned from a most eventful road tripping experience (Durban to Cape Town via the garden route), I consider myself somewhat mildly qualified to write this piece. It must, however, be said that this trip was undertaken as novices and by two young girls with only a vague idea of what they were […]

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good bitching session about People who Do Annoying Things, and it’s high time that this oversight was rectified. So, I give you my latest list of people who deserve to be cursed with a chronic infestation of pulex irritans. First up, pedestrians. Yes, South African motorists hate […]

We decided to have a lock put on our bedroom door for extra safety and I duly told our ayi, maid in Chinese, the new rule and the safe place to leave the key. I realise ayi here in China come from a very simple or rural background and need training in using washing machines, […]

Agnes is the lady who comes around every Tuesday to do our housework and make sure the house I share with a housemate, D-dog, doesn’t deteriorate to hygiene levels below that of an Eastern Cape farm’s pigsty. I think I have fallen for her and it took her being away for three months or so […]