Lifestyle

Before I went to India, I was warned that it could potentially have a life-changing impact on me. And it did. Days after I returned from Mount Abu, via Ahmadabad, Mumbai, Doha, Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg, I am still struggling to get to grips with what I had experienced and how it has changed […]

My boyfriend and I were mugged on Monday, by two young men (probably only 19) wielding a pair of kitchen scissors as their weapon. The evening was a beautiful haze of soft light, and as we walked along the slow-moving river, we were marvelling at the beauty of nature and feeling completely at peace. It […]

In a world where things are happening faster, change is the only constant, and the rate of change is itself increasing, it seems only sensible to assess the effects that this fast-paced, communications-enhanced lifestyle might be having on how we live, work and socialise today. You do not need to look far to see the […]

The late Irving Kristol once defined a liberal as someone who, upon witnessing a fourteen-year-old girl engaging in a live sex act, worries about whether she is getting the minimum wage. It was the same Kristol who described a neo-conservative as a liberal who has been “mugged by reality”. Kristol himself is widely regarded as […]

After telling me where he was from, he grunts and looks the other way, nostrils flared as he pretends to admire the scenery. Of course, through the crowded wig-wagging of bodies, there was nothing to see. I peer at him and he reminds me of something I had seen on National Geographic. That thing about […]

I decided to write another blog on the topic to further clarify my position on a few issues and to adopt a more conciliatory tone. Too many people are worried about being wrong, they say nothing or refuse to change their position no matter how untenable. Reading the comments and debating with some of the […]

And I’m perturbed, mainly because unfriending anyone online is a big deal. It really is. Facebook, you see, has changed the nature of friendship quite profoundly for those who have entered that apparently innocuous blue and white portal, garlanded with cheery suggestions of “You haven’t talked to her lately” and such anodyne prompts as “What’s […]

In his book, The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb furthers the argument (he introduced in Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets) that in life there are rare events, normally outliers, with impacts that are decisive and often irreversible. Such events happen […]

Finally, a good excuse to act like a man that doesn’t involve getting shouted at for muddying my clothes and breaking my collar bone. Raise awareness this Movember by growing your own tash! It’s for The Cancer Association of South Africa!

You know how it happens. You sign onto Twitter. You start tweeting. Mohamed, your IT director, makes a recommendation, and you find yourself following TinkabelleTease, who offers such gems as: “Had to hot foot it back to Mayfair to give a newly divorced fella a porn star experience which was a great laugh, and then […]

I decided to write a follow-up piece to my last blog about the meat industry. I wish to clarify a few points and add to the debate some more information that is often unclear or misused. I do make a clear distinction between different types of farms and different farming practices. There are too many […]