Some South African music in the cold

This past weekend I discovered the DSTV Channel MK89 that specializes in South African music. They play a wide range of music, from slow ballads to fast paced beaty music.

The one song that particularly caught my attention was "Loslap" from a band called "Snotkop". It was a mixture of Afrikaans rapping and hardcore guitars. A REALLY catchy tune.

We are now getting ready for some power outages again, since Koeberg is in the process of maintaining the one nuclear reactor and we are experiencing one of the coldest winters in a couple of years.

Today's picture shows a nice sunset with a thin layer of clouds just hovering over the mountain.

Kaptein's frosty all bran bloggings

I found a couple of my Friend's Blogs and thought I would link to them.
I hope you visit them and enjoy there sites...
Kaptein's frosty all bran bloggings
and
Stean's General Rambles

I can't make a posting without a new picture now can I. ;P

The mist over Cape Town:










A spectacular sun set here in the Cape.

Oblivion in South Africa

Well, the main reason I haven't been updating my page here is because of a game called Oblivion. One of the best role playing games that I have seen to date. Also there wasn't much to say.
I have found 2 pictures that I could place here. The one is from a golden sunset during the first rains that he have had in months.
The other is of a Strelitzia. We went on a Sunday afternoon walk through the neighborhood, I saw the Strelitzia in someone's garden and took the picture.

During the news tonight they announced that the petrol price is going up again, 39c. This will take our petrol price to the highest it has ever been. Not looking to good for us.

Climbing the mountain (cont'd.)

If you are following the site, you might remember that we went to Tablemountain to climb it. I am posting some of the pictures from that day now, since I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Hope you like ;)

Fire in the sky over Cape Town (Part 1)

After returning from Johannesburg last night, we prepared to go to Blouberg beach to enjoy the fireworks show at the Cape Town Waterfront. I setup my camera and prepared to take some long exposed pictures. I am posting 2 of the better ones. I found that we were just to far away to make it worth it. The next time the show is on we are planning to go to Cape Town it self and take some pictures there. I see that the gallery on their website has much better pictures then mine. I guess I have a lot of work to do next time. Since I will be missing this Saturday's show I will go next Wednesday.


There was a very nice sun set again last night and I took this picture...

Metallica Rocked Cape Town Last Night

Last night we went to the Coke-Cola Colab concert. This was possibly the best concert ever hosted in Cape Town. We left home at 10:00 in the morning. It was an absolutely perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky, not much wind and a Metallica concert to go to. We spent the morning sitting on the grass in the stadium, listening to some of the South African bands that played. It was a great start to the day. By late afternoon, the heavier bands started to play. The big surprise for me was Seether ( previously known as Saron Gas). They are heavy, but they got the crowd jumping and singing along. They are also previously from Cape Town. So it was a great homecoming for them and us.

When the Metallica actually started later that evening (just after 21:00) the crowd was already in a frenzy. We had been waiting for years for them to come to our country and our city. Their set was supposed to last 2 hours, but after 2 and a half hours of mind-blowing masterpieces, they were called out to do another encore. They came out and did a couple of songs more to make a total of 3 hours that they had spent on the stage for us. My voice was practically gone, my back was killing me and my knees were basically useless, but I felt GREAT. The adrenaline was still pumping when I got to bed at 3 this morning. I got one really bad picture with my cell, but I hope that they will post more on the Metallica site. I will link to it if I find any.

After they finished their show they made a promise that got the crowd to roar. “Johannesburg, Durban...Looks like we saved the best for last” and then ”...we love and and we will see you again very, very soon”. I thought that my lungs were going to jump out of my throat we were screaming so loud. If they made this an annual event and they get big bands like this to come every time, this will be a total success every time.

We were lucky here in Cape Town, that the beer didn't run out. Apparently the event in Johannesburg ran out of beer very early and there was huge problems around this. We didn't have any of this. Just one great day that I will not forget soon.

I will post the Table mountain pictures soon.

Going to take on the mountain.

Tomorrow we are going to climb this mountain. We are going through Kirstenbosch early in the morning. We are taking the Skeleton Gorge and Nursery Ravine path. We will try and take as many nice pictures and post some of them here.

Tomorrow is Human Rights Day here in South Africa. It is a public holiday that is celebrated in remembrance of Human Rights.

I hope to have more to write about tomorrow.

Pic that I could not upload through firefox.

I hope that this comes through now... ;) 

No moon.

Ok, so I didn't stay up all the time to get the pictures of the moon. Kinda fell asleep and my alarm didn't wake me. So I searched google for some images to add to the site here. In my search I found a nice schedule of all the eclipses this year in South Africa. They explain in this page that it was a penumbral lunar eclipse, which doesn't actually change the "shape" of the moon.
So no pics to add.

This is the second day that I have Internet back, so far so good. I also heard that there might be a reduction in the cost of ADSL soon. I just hope that this materializes.

I took a pic over the weekend as a cold front moved in over Cape Town. I hope you like. :)

MMM, there seems to be a problem uploading pictures ... :(

The moon eclipse

Well after a week of struggling to get my Internet Up and running again, Telkom has finally sorted my Line. I can now connect and the noise is gone.
A friend informed me this weekend that there is a Lunar eclipse tonight. I will try and add some pictures of the event, if I can get up ;)
I took one picture so far.

The state of the Internet in South Africa

In South Africa Internet is a privilege, not a right. Here you pay lots of money for a telephone call or ADSL line and then you are still not guaranteed a decent connection. After the power failures got a bit better, the Internet got worse. I still use a normal dialup to get access to the Internet and have been unable to get access the net for the last 4 days, since I got disconnected. Since we still have to pay for EVERY call we make, I can't afford retrying to connect all night. Then we still have to pay for the Internet Account as well.

Then there is the ADSL limits that has been imposed by Telkom ( currently the only telecommunications provider in the country). They limit the speed at which you can download, the total amount that you can download and you don't have a static IP address. They limit you to a total of 3 gig PER MONTH. If you want to download more, you have to buy another account or get a larger one. I hope that the second National Provider ( the official competition for Telkom, that we have been waiting for about 5 years) will do something about decent prices and Internet access.

On a different note, there is a "Fly-in" in Carnavon in the Northern Cape every year. Light aircraft, Microlights and Gyro-copters get together for the weekend. There is some showing-off of skills and aircraft. Lots of partying, braaing and of course drinks. We are going through again this year and I will be posting some pics when we get back.

This weekend we took a breathtaking trip around Chapmans Peak. I have added some pictures that I took there. Over the last couple of years the road was closed because of all the rock falls. Special metal nets were installed to catch the rocks. Now it has been made a toll road and reopened.

Got the car...

We drove out to Stellenbosch early this morning to go pick up the new wheels (VW polo Classic 1.6 Comfortline). With all the power failures the whole week, it was almost impossible to organize insurance, finance and delivery, but finally everything came together this morning.

While driving home today I realized again that there are really BAD drivers here in Cape Town. I know that I have said this before, but hell you should just not be weaving through traffic chasing after someone. This one BMW almost drove into me while racing with another car.
I coincidently got a comment from someone of the K53 Blog today. There blog's title is: Help with obtaining and passing your K53 learner's license test, driver'’s license & becoming a driving school instructor. I think that I should maybe stop some of these people and give them the K53 blog URL :)

I took a nice picture from a friends house of the sunset today.

So much for Nuclear power...

Another day at work without power. We sat for 5 hours without power today. That is another whole working day gone. The government yesterday throwing accusations of sabotage around, but Koeberg Nuclear Power station and the power company Eskom says they don't know anything about this. Today the government says that they said nothing about sabotage. There has been rumors about Muslim fundamentalist groups that took responsibility for the sabotage.
There are rumors that we will still have these power problems between 6 weeks and 9 months. This is totally unacceptable. What can a person or a company do for alternative power sources?
Here are some links regarding the powerfailures:
IAfrica
Koeberg sabotage claim queried
Daily power cut shock for EC
Eskom plans to return Koeberg to full power
or you can just
Search Google News

I have added a picture from 2 days ago, we had some rain and after it cleared and just before the sun set...

Cape Town Drivers...

I have finally got a chance to say something about the way that the people drive here in Cape Town. Awful, without any skill, irritating, etc. Every time you get on a highway, you have to be on your guard, because someone that is not really supposed to possess a drivers license, tries to get to their destination in the slowest way possible. They have to drive slow in the fast lane and fast in the slow lane. Even after flashing your lights at the person driving in front of you, they seem to ignore you. Recently I read in the K53 Road Rules of South Africa, that you are allowed to flash your lights to the person driving in front of you to warn them that you are trying to over take them.
The most irritating thing that people on the Cape Town roads do, is known as drifting. They slowly drift from one lane to the next without indicating that they are changing lanes. They assume that if they do it slowly enough the person closing in from behind will see them and slowdown.
A nice saying that we use is that they drive like "old men with hats...". It is surprising how many times you pass the car and there is an old man with a HAT...

Last night i got another pic to add here :)

Today was also voting day here in South Africa. We had local elections. Hope you voted if you are South Africa ;)


I have been listening to 2 podcasts here from South Africa and thought to list them here . I will add them as perminant links on the right here. Sound republic has some nice tunes from Derek the Bandit. The ZA Show is from Glen and Bridgitte here in Cape Town.

To vote or not To Vote

Another weekend almost over and nothing to write about. I have been checking that we are registered to vote on Wednesday. We are having local government elections here in South Africa on the 1st of March. A lot of people are fed up with the current government not performing and not delivering on their promises. They think that their vote will not make a difference, so they are not going to vote at all. This is the reason there is no change. People don't realize that their vote can make a difference.

Here is a nice pic of yesterday's sunset.

The weekend is here...

Yesterday I just caught a glimpse of Table mountain burning again. Strange that I didn't see anything on the news about this. Lately they have been blaming things like this for the power failures here in Cape Town. ;)

Since yesterday, we haven't had a power failure yet and we had to do some work. :( Eskom says that there shouldn't be any other unscheduled power failures again, but I will believe it when I see it. I took a nice pic of the sunset tonight. Hope you like it. Tomorrow I will try and rant on about our internet infrastructure here in South Africa.

Another day in a powerless Cape Town

Well this was the third day in a row that we were without power at work. We had to sit there for 3 hours waiting for the power to come back on. I took some pictures at work of anything I could point my camera at. Got a nice picture of Table Mountain from work. I also took another one from home while there was still some light.

I just wonder what the hell we can do about the power cuts. They are now cutting random areas for random times during the day. Apparently there is a schedule, but our area is not even on the schedule. Even the Medical Research Council's at Tygerberg's power was cut this afternoon. Experiments were screwed and lots of time and money wasted. How can they just cut power of an area where there is a Hospital. That is a life threatening situation... And just sick. I really feel so powerless ( pun intended)

I have to give a shoutout to Derek the Bandit from The Sound Republic. Derek has been a institution here in South Africa when it comes to dance music. Have a listen to his podcast and enjoy some nice dance music.

Still no power in Cape Town.

Another day without power here in the mother city. I got up this morning with everything still working. As I drove to work I was met with non-functioning traffic lights. The traffic was just plain hell. Everywhere the power was down, but at the office all the power was still on. ( Damn I thought.) About 2 hours later the power went out (from 10:00 till about 14:00). The power was cut in most residential areas and our office just so happens to fall in a residential area. :(

Eskom just says that we will experience more power failures for the next couple of days.

Just before we went to Tai-Chi I took some more pictures of an amazing sunset here in Cape Town.

Missing Power

Last night while surfing we experienced some brownouts. They got worse and worse till my PC rebooted and my connection to the Internet failed. So we went to bed. I woke up at 03:30 this morning with the noise of some welcome rain. At this point the power was out already. This morning at 08:30 the power was still out. So I grabbed the cellphone and checked news.google.com for some related news. Now this is probably the most ri­dicu­lous excuse for a power failure I have heard in a long time: Mist and the residue of the last couple of veld fires has caused the power grid of the whole Western Cape to fail. This was the official excuse by Escom (The only company in South Africa that is allowed to provide elec­tri­city to the public.)

So since there was nothing much to do here this morning we took a drive out to Cape Town to go and take some more pictures. As my luck has it, the mist rolled in from the sea before I even got to town and pictures where out of the question. I did find a picture that I took of Table mountian from Signal Hill.

I just took some pictures after the sun set. :)

New car coming soon...

Finally I got to see my new car today. Drove through to Stellenbosch to see and drive the new Polo Classic. I am selling my Jetta 3 ( CSX 1995 model) and buying the Polo Classic 2006. I love that the radio now has a standard MP3 playback facility. Spent the rest of the afternoon in Stellenbosch. Had a great lunch at the Dros in the town centre. A place that most people will recommend if you do visit Stellenbosch for the first time. On our way to Stellenbosch this morning, we were stuck in a short traffic jam. When we got the cause, it was a person that was run over when he tried to cross the highway. This is not really the kind of thing you want to see.

The heat wave is still persisting. It was 32C again today.