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These cakes are a lie
My wife has been quite sick lately, and feeling a bit down. My wife also likes cream cakes, of the sort that come filled with milk soaked sugar particles and have chocolate icing on the top. So while shopping in one of Johannesburg’s better (yet surprisingly inexpensive) supermarkets for food quality (Food Lover’s Market, if…
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Just don’t Tweet and drive, alright?
Mark Graham makes awesome maps comparing the real world to the virtual, and his latest – geotagged Tweets in major African cities – is another masterwork. It’s really interesting to compare the differences in social media use between, say, Cape Town and Addis Ababa. If you know the cities even passingly well there’s some other stuff they…
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Spot the difference
Giraffe Battersea Park Power Station
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One less black rhino?
Mid-summer (ie. Christmas) is not the best time to visit the Kruger Park. Apart from the fact temperatures reach 35degrees by 11am, it’s also the rainy season. That means thick vegetation which makes game spotting virtually impossible – one second an elephant can be standing right next to your car, the next it’s invisible, blended…
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Three things I learned about Johannesburg yesterday
1 – When Cosatu block the roads in protest against e-tolls, I get home from work 20 minutes quicker. 2 – Bicycle racks do not exist outside supermarkets. 3 – We live on the top of a deceptively steep hill, if you’re cycling.
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And so it goes
Obviously I feel terribly sorry for both groups of people, but this morning’s radio was indicative of what’s wrong here. In the Eastern Cape, an inferno – caused by some guy lighting his barbecue badly (or possibly a power surge – destroyed 76 luxury homes, of which 66 were empty because they were holiday homes. Reports…
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The surrealist’s day
So far, my experiences with South African bureaucracy haven’t been too bad as bad as I was led to believe they might be. There’s been long queues and waiting around for things to get done, but my biggest issues have been with the UK company that’s handling our household goods. And the banks – but…
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An interesting start…
Is it an inauspicious start to the new life abroad? On my first day in Johannesburg I can say I’ve become an illegal immigrant, got caught up in a riot, been solicited for a bribe and been refused a bank account. All technically true. Sadly none of it quite as exciting as it sounds. For…
