Most of this afternoon was spent at Kenilworth Racecourse, watching the racehorsing.
The last race was especially fun. I won rather a lot of money, which was quite unexpected, but ever so welcome.
Author: 6000
Welcome to Cape Town, Africa
No, we don’t have lions roaming the CBD or elephants in our back gardens (most of the time) like what they do up North, but Cape Town still likes to remind us from time to time that it is still officially in Africa.
Like when a caracal is killing penguins just down the road, for example.
Wouldn’t get that in the Kruger National Park, now would you?
A spate of penguin fatalities has occurred in Simon’s Town over the past two weeks. The City has identified the predator by installing trap cameras in the area. The images confirmed the presence of a large caracal.
Caracals are great. They look really cool and that is primarily because actually, they are really cool.
Sadly though, our African penguins are endangered (although the caracal probably isn’t aware of that fact), and so this penguin killing has got to stop.
In its efforts to protect the penguins, while at the same time managing the sensitive ecosystem as carefully as possible, the City will be closing off a portion of the Simon’s Town shoreline to members of the public from 13:00 today 8 July 2016 until further notice.
The area which will be closed off stretches from Windmill Beach to Froggy Pond in Simons Town. The area will be marked off with tape and City Law Enforcement will be monitoring the site to ensure that no member of the public accesses the area during this time.
‘We ask that members of the public exercise patience during this time. The City hopes to trap the caracal, collar the animal with a radio tracking device and to move it away from the penguin colony, but still within its current home range. Cordoning off the area will also help us to deploy other passive mitigation measures to discourage the return of the caracal to the Burghers Walk to Froggy Pond area,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Environmental and Spatial Planning, Councillor Johan van der Merwe.
Epic. Can you imagine Johan getting home this evening?
“Oh, hello Johan dear, how was work today?”
“Actually pretty good, thanks. I closed off a section of local shoreline to prevent a large predatory wildcat from eating any more loveable and endangered seabirds. You?”
“We… well, we had a 2 hour meeting about July’s sales targets. And there were some quite nice biscuits on the trolley.”
Johan wins again. Despite only having lemon creams with his coffee.
More local caracal news as and when we get it.
Quota fjord
On an unexpectedly wet day in Cape Town, when I’d rather be doing most anything rather than writing up reports on experiments, it seems like a good time to relive the fjords twixt Flåm and Bergen. Amazing to think that this was only two months ago.
As I was remarking just yesterday: I’ve been lucky enough to have done Norway, the UK and Mauritius in the last few weeks, but suddenly find myself without any future travel plans. That would never have been a problem before, but suddenly, I feel the need to get out of here.
That may be down to the rain and the experiment reports though.
Boxes ticked
Wait – could this be a timelapse [tick] video of an Emirates [tick] A380 [tick] being repainted?
Yep, and obviously, as with every A380-related thing, it comes with some ridiculous stats:
Seven coats of paint weighing 1,100 kilograms were applied on ‘Echo Delta Delta’, covering an area of 3,076 square meters. The entire exterior of the A380 including the fuselage, wings, engines as well as vertical and horizontal stabilizers received a makeover. The paint coats on the fuselage comprised of one layer each of a primer and sealer, followed by three coats of Brilliant White, which is the custom Emirates color, and then two layers of clear coat and decorative paints for the Emirates insignia and logo.
There’s a full description of the process here.
3am eternal
Well, 3:03am to be exact. I was awoken from a troubling dream about Douglas Carswell complaining about a pontoon bridge. Scary stuff.
It was our 7-year-old daughter, calling from her room next door. I went through to see what the problem was.
“Well, there are three things actually, Daddy.”
I raised an eyebrow in the near darkness.
“Go on.”
“Firstly, I had a bad dream,”
Well, as you’ll just have read above, I knew all about that. I chose not to ask if Douglas was involved in her nightmares as well. I simply didn’t want to know.
“Oh dear, but it’s gone now you’re awake. What else?”
“I need to go to the loo, and also, I’ve been time-travelling.”
At this point, she indicated her clock, which said 3:03.
“Before, it said 3:37. Now it says 3:03. So I’ve been time-travelling.”
Kids, hey? They’re nuts. But it was the middle of the night and I needed to get back to the House of Commons.
I took her to the loo, and then tucked her back into bed at exactly 2:58am.
Sorted.
Hang on a second…