Lifestyle

“Excuse me,” the bloke says with an Aussie drawl at a local watering hole, Big Bamboo, near Jing’an temple, one of Shanghai’s few remaining Buddhist temples. (The building survived the tender mercies of the Mao era because the monks astutely pasted pictures of Chairman Mao across its doors along with heaps of praise for China’s […]

South Africans take words like bakkie and doos and tsotsi for granted. We say things that make no sense to anyone else on the planet, like, “I’ll be there just now. No, not now-now, just now.” Similarly, while Australians might speak English, they have a vocabulary all of their own; one which may be quite […]

I was struck by a lot of things about Australia on my visit there a couple of years ago. Such as the fact that it took only fifteen minutes from my arrival for someone to call me “mate”. Then there was the bus driver who brusquely refused my offer to give him a hand in […]

As you browse through a menu in China, sometimes courteously translated for you into a version of English we all fondly know here as Chinglish, imagine savouring “ants climbing the tree” or “seafood custard”. (“Ants climbing the tree” is tasty, spicy fried vermicelli with finely chopped pork; I haven’t tried the seafood custard.) Either you […]

Am I the only one who derives pleasure from things that I really don’t have any business enjoying? On these very pages I have shared the incredible joy I experience each time I take a shower with a brand-new cake of soap, fresh from the wrapper. I wrote about the fact that the intensity of […]

Recently, Cape Town Metrorail commuters have been subjected to more than just the customary overcrowded carriages, which during rush hour make sardine cans seem spacious. A few weeks ago there were delays of an hour or more thanks to cable thieves having vandalised a signal box at Woodstock station. Thankfully the bastards were caught. Then […]

I do. What’s not to love? Stunning scenery with a splash of the unspoilt about it, fabulous swimming beaches, friendly people, cows, more cows, and a taste of South Africa that doesn’t taste like anywhere else in the country. What I don’t love about the Transkei is that it’s about to be ruined. Pretty conclusively […]

People are sure to be offended by this piece, people who refuse to see past their prejudices and make intellectual counters, if that may be, to my ideas expressed on this piece. Therefore, the disclaimer just below is probably null, but I feel strongly that people should know that I offer this piece in the […]