Category: this is south africa

Three or Floor days

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We’re replacing a bit of flooring at home. The kitchen was looking scruffy and needed some work. The laundry is attached to the kitchen and so that now needs doing too. The study tiles are being replaced which would have meant that the guest bathroom stood out like a sore tiled thumb and so that’s being done too.

Apparently, it’s going to take three days. That’s also what they said last time when they did the floor in the living and dining rooms.

It took nine.

We’re lucky enough that we can manage without the guest bathroom for a few days, and with work winding down and school wound down, we don’t need the study much either at the moment. The kitchen is kind of a different matter though. Three days without a sink or a cooker is going to make me grumpy. (Hello, Uber Eats). Nine days will make me angry.

Of course, when it’s all done, I’m sure that it will look great. And the heavy duty option we’ve chosen (see: kids, beagle) means that we won’t have to do it again for 25 years. Or something.

Soon there will also be a new handrail in the kitchen (the beagle chose to teeter on the edge of the unguarded garage steps as soon as I removed the old one this morning) and repainted cupboards. A new desk will follow in the study and then we are all done on house renovations until Mrs 6000 gets itchy feet once again.

Next week, then.

Safety

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Our little corner of Africa is a long way from anywhere important, which can sometimes be a bit of an inconvenience. It’s about 8 hours driving or 2 hours flying to even get out of the country. And then you’re going to find yourself in Namibia, which is lovely, but which is also rather a long way from anywhere important.

However, this geographical solitude seems to have paid some dividends when it comes to avoid nuclear holocaust:

Yep. Unless your Spanish and/or Portuguese is up to scratch, or you really, really like snow, it looks like Cape Town (ok, and a bit of Namibia too) is the place to be once Kim Jong-Un starts throwing his metaphorical toys out of his metaphorical cot.

Aquarium blog inclusion (part II)

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After my Pink Meanie photos illustrated the Aquarium’s Pink Meanie blog post a couple of months ago, some of my Yoshi photos (and a bit of my blog) (the bit mentioning a beagle) have made it onto their Yoshi memories blog post.

All of which is… you know… turtley brilliant.

Water plan

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So it seems that Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille didn’t go for my amazing plan which would have solved Cape Town’s water worries for the next 25,000 years.  Who on earth knows why, but never mind. I’m not about to give up just yet.

Using some of the science from that post, but leaving the chunk of ice the size of Wales out of the equation, I’ve come up with another idea. Obviously, this one won’t help us out for quite as long as the whole 25,000 years thing, but if you’re going to leave a chunk of ice the size of Wales out of the equation, there are clearly going to have to be a few compromises made.

So here goes…

We’ve all popped a bottle of wine or a can of beer into the freezer to get it chilled quickly, and then forgotten about it. The result is both upsetting and messy – wasted beverage, exploded glass, split can, sticky freezer.
That happens because the major constituent in both wine and beer is (sadly) water. And chemistry tells us that water increases in volume by 9.05% when it’s frozen, whereas bottles and cans just… don’t. Oops.

That increase in volume is key to my plan though. The Cape dams are short of water volume at the moment – that’s literally the issue which is concerning us all going into the summer – so why not freeze all the water that’s in there, and get us an extra 9.05% of volume straight away?

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations, and I’ve worked out that with the current liquid volume of stored water standing at 324,455Ml, freezing it all  would give us an extra 29,363,177,500 litres in solid volume. Best bit – we don’t even have to destroy Franschhoek like we were going to do with the iceberg – this extra icy volume will easily fit within our existing dams.

It’s certainly not 25,000 years worth of water, but equally, it’s not to be sniffed at either.

I’m going to pop into the CBD this afternoon and present this plan to Ms de Lille. This is neither rocket science, nor brain surgery. In fact, my biggest issue is which music to do my presentation to: I wondered about Ice, Ice Baby, but I think that Pump Up The Volume suits it better.

If Patricia wasn’t willing to listen before maybe she will now. I can’t be reasonably expected to keep coming up with plans of this level of genius forever.

Weekend event

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On the way to the lab this morning, I spotted a poster for a horticultural event which is coming up this weekend, based specifically around a single sort of plant.

So yes, there’s not long to go now before this show is due to happen.
I suppose that you could say that it’s coming up in the very near fuchsia.

 

I’m so sorry.