Category Archive

A friend who lives in New York sent me this awesome article by William MacNamara on the regeneration of Jozi inner city in the Financial Times. It made me realise how important it is to have outsiders saying such great, positive, optimistic things about living here. South Africans certainly aren’t going to say it!

Last weekend, at Lou and Mike’s wedding at Gwahumbe in KZN, I reconnected with old friends, the Takis brothers from Swaziland who I last saw about eight years ago on one of my very best holidays to Kariba and Sodwana. My cousin, Tash and I were planning on going to Mbabane but the Takis’s were going to be at their game farm bordering the Kruger Park just outside of Phalaborwa, so we packed up our khaki and headed off on what became a 7.5 hour drive to the farm on Friday night.

You will know how incredible it was when I say that driving 15 hours for a weekend was totally worth it. We arrived at about 3am to the sound of lions mating just outside the house. We saw giraffe, elephant, kudu, klipspringer and a very inspired dung beetle. But the best sighting from the weekend was what we later called a ‘bushy-tailed-mongoose-shaped-sheep’ but which I’m sure was actually a spotted hyena. We were almost at the farm with Tash driving when she slowed down as a shadow crossed the road. The animal was locked in the headlights as we stared each other down and he then ran off.

Life in Africa sure is good.

More pics on Flickr here.

‘Sunset’ by H Ford CC BY-SA and ‘Spotted hyena’ by Eva Hejda CC BY-SA on Wikipedia.

Have a look at these great pictures taken for the September edition of Eslite Reader at the recent Wikimania conference. They asked me to do something ‘relevant’ with my laptop for the picture. So I tried to eat my laptop.

I guess I was trying to talk about the fact that information can feed people in a way that no amount of food can. But I have a feeling that no one will get it
Pic: Eslite Reader on Flickr: CC BY-NC 2.0 GB 

Joi has kindly let me stay at the Lab in Meguro-ku, Tokyo this week while Fumi and I visit local companies to rally support for the iCommons Summit in Sapporo next July. I love Tokyo, and the area that I’m staying in is unreal. Along with the beautiful dark fiber network in the lab, there are equally unfamiliar things like the incredible ‘Three dog bakery‘ down the road (picture of doggie cakes left).

I’ve read a lot about Japanese people being over-polite and ‘crisp’, but I have loved every second of my interactions here.

When I arrived at Narita Airport, I was walking out of the bathroom when a lady stopped me to kindly and quietly pull my skirt from my underwear. ‘Sorry sorry,’ she said as I smiled at her and blushed and thanked her profusely.

The next evening when Fumi and I went to dinner at the soba restaurant that I demanded we eat at, the chef watched me intently as I drank my soup from the bowl and then rushed at me to kindly explain how to add the soba broth to it so that it wouldn’t be too salty. He ended up giving Fumi and I a pair of lovely paper fans that they were giving out at the traditional street dancing festival the night before.

Later, at the pharmacy, the young cashier first wrapped the tampons that I had bought in a brown paper bag and then painstakingly packed that and the other things I’d bought into another bag. When it didn’t fit perfectly, she giggled and blushed, and went to find another bag so that it would all fit at the bottom.

I feel a bit dumb most of the time because of my bad Japanese, but completely safe at the same time. If this is over-polite, then I’m very, very happy with over-polite - at least for now…

Picture: from www.threedog.co.jp/ (they don’t allow you to take photographs in the store and I just had to show you!)