Here’s my five year old daughter’s answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Meh. The practical work is fun, but the paperwork can be annoying and the pay is lousy.
Still, it’s better than working in an office.
P.S. When asked “What is your favourite place?”, she chose the Black Oystercatcher wine farm.
We’re totally winning as parents.
Oh dear. That’s the local internet broken as REM drop one hundred and something rare, unplugged, live and “other” tracks onto iTunes.
The massive cache includes stuff from as far back as 1982, as well as live performances – such as their 2003 Glastonbury set. We were right at the front for that, having enjoyed The Darkness, Inspiral Carpets, De La Soul and Suede, amongst others. What an amazing day.
Goosebumps.
If you’re an REM fan, this is like all your Christmasses and Birthdays rolled up into one. Collections will be completed. Memories will be reignited. Wallets will be emptied.
And the local telephone exchange is going to take a hell of a beating.
While the hoi polloi continue to struggle under the hefty cosh of financial hardship, there’s some good news on the horizon. Apparently, all you have to do to avoid this sort of troublesome existence is to earn pots and pots of money.
Who knew?
But here’s the proof that those at the top of the tree aren’t really struggling very much at the moment:
TROPHY homes are back in vogue with estate agents reporting a strong increase in property sales in wealthy suburbs where price tags typically exceed R10m.
Lew Geffen, chairman of Sotheby’s International Realty in South Africa, on Tuesday described the top end of the market in Cape Town and Johannesburg as being “on fire”. Neither the upcoming election nor the prospect of further interest rate increases had done anything to slow demand for luxury housing.
Fortunately, I don’t think it’s the actual homes, so much as the market that Mr Geffen was referring to. And he’s not alone in his observation: Andrew Golding of Pam Golding Properties, Samuel Seeff of Seeff Properties and Dave Property24 of… er… well, never mind… all agree that sales of properties costing more than R10,000,000 are on the up, giving the media the opportunity to use phrases like “swanky homes” and “leafy suburbs”, in a completely irony-free piece centring around estate agents.
“Until recently, there has been little interest for properties priced above R10m in Constantia,” said Gerald Romanovsky of Rawson’s Constantia franchise. The change became evident soon after the start of this year when we suddenly found ourselves in a new ballpark, handling five or six genuine enquiries per month for this type of luxury property from both local and foreign buyers.”
For me, Gerald’s comments raise more questions than they give answers, namely as to why they haven’t been selling ballparks and exactly how many faux enquiries they’ve been handling each month around luxury property.
All in all (and heavily dependent on your political viewpoint), I suppose that it’s good news that there are still people out there with money to spend, whether it’s from within SA or from investors abroad. These people generally know what they are doing (or at least employ people who do) and if they are still happy to put large amounts of money into large houses here, then maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.
I’m no financial expert, but I think that I can pretty simply summarise the Budget speech given by SA Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan this afternoon as follows:
There we go. I hope that’s made things clearer for you.
Have a nice day.
Incoming email from Woolworths and their MySchool programme. And I feature highly:
We’re sharing the love even more this month and making a difference.
We’ve partnered with the 94.5 KFM and Radio Highveld Ground Patrol Team to give 6000 needy school kids in Cape Town and Johannesburg nutritious lunches, plus we helped these 10 schools with a donation of library books and much-needed stationery.
Through your support we’re making a difference.
And then, on top of that (not literally), this:
It’s a fact: one unsterilised female dog and her offspring can give rise to 67 000 dogs in 6 years.
But in the last 6 years at African Tails, the opposite has happened: MySchool funds have helped sterilise a whopping 6000 animals (mostly dogs, and some cats)!
You can read more about that second story here.
I’m no huge fan of Woolworths (we’ve crossed swords on more than one occasion), but I don’t see why people don’t get MySchool cards. There’s absolutely no extra cost to the customer, there are discounts on items in store and part of your spend goes towards a good cause, like those above.
You can apply online here. Go do it and help out another 6000 needy individuals.