Category: this is south africa

Grammar

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So it turns out that getting your broken father onto a KLM 777-306(ER) at Cape Town International just before midnight on a Tuesday isn’t an absolutely straightforward experience, but can be aided by helpful staff. And so it turned out to be. Thanks to all concerned.

Still, upon returning home, I was quite reasonably expecting things to be more straightforward, but they weren’t, and 30 minutes after leaving the airport, I found myself showering our son because he was so feverish that he was having hallucinations.
A few SMSs later, and having been assured that Dad was on the flight, I settled off to sleep, only to be woken at 2, 3, 4 (thrice?) and 6 (twice) by the sound of copious vomiting from the Boy Wonder’s room.

I’m not quite with it today. The plan was to stay up and watch the footy tonight, but I’ll be lucky to make kick off.

In the meantime, here’s something that amused me this morning:

I’ve no idea if it’s grammatically correct, but I’m all about pseudo-intellectual, seasonal cartoons, especially when I’m so tired I can hardly think, so it’ll do nicely.

P.S. The boy is doing better this morning, thank you.
And Dad’s plane landed safely in Amsterdam, but I haven’t heard from him. Yet.

UPDATE: Apparently he’s on his connecting flight. I know you were all worried. Thanks for the concern.

The Groot Upload

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I extracted the SD card from the camera to upload the photos from this weekend’s Cape Town 7s experience and was immediately confronted by all (or more) of the photos I took last weekend. These hadn’t been uploaded because the intervening 7 days were chaotically busy.

So, I sorted that, and you can see the results here.

From there, it was a fairly straightforward leap to yesterday’s amazing day out at the stadium. My photos are here.

Obviously, I don’t know what sort of show the Dubai or Edinburgh or Nuuk (?) 7s put on, but I have to say that what Cape Town does seems to be very well received by all those involved. (Although of course they’re hardly likely to turn around and slag the place off in these days of mutual ego massaging.) The atmosphere was amazing, the entertainment was superb, the rugby was absorbing and even the final was balanced upon a knife-edge right up to the final kick. This being my kids first 7s experience, it was always going to be that way – never forget Alex’s first footy match was a 7-0, and their first cricket match finished with an incredible SA win off the last ball after a missed run out opportunity.

This time around, England were the beneficiaries of the last minute miss, and really the only disappointment of the day was how few people stayed around to see the trophy presentation. ‘Bad losers’ might be a bit harsh, but after the phenomenal support and sporting reception given to all the teams throughout the day, that extra 10 minutes would have made a big difference, especially given just how tight that last game was. Sadly, all the photos of England’s presentation and celebration are against a backdrop of empty seats. That’s not how it was for the previous 9 hours, nor how it should have been for the last ten minutes.

As Tom Mitchell stepped up to take this second half conversion right in front of us, I remarked on how important it was going to be, and so it proved, being the 2 point difference between the teams at the end.

Sevens

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We spent the whole day at the Cape Town Sevens at the Cape Town Stadium in Cape Town.

It was great entertainment, England won, and then the mardy Cape Town crowd deserted the Cape Town Stadium before the presentation of the trophy.

We stayed to watch. Then we had a look at the inside of a parking garage for a while.

Many photos (not of the garage). Tomorrow.

you are not alone

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…if you want to end up going to Norway.

Herewith the latest from Bergen’s Alan Walker (you may remember him from such posts as Faded Restrung), Alone:

A message sent from Alan’s laptop attracts “Walkers” from all over the world to Norway, where they gather on a hillside just to the south of Bergen city centre (you’ll have noted the Brann Stadion as the video begins).
What happens next is unclear, but what we do know is that there’s some amazing Norwegian scenery involved, backed up with an uncomplicated but catchy tune, and no small degree of positivity in the song’s message.

Decent.

Management speak

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Corporate nonsense, isn’t it?

Keep it simple, stupid. Just say what you mean. It’s a meeting, you’re not “touching base”. You wrote someone an email, you didn’t “reach out” to them. You finished that report, you didn’t “close the loop”.

I’m instantly wary of people using management speak. They’re trying to hide something, whether it’s their innate stupidity, a lack of self-confidence, or some bad news. That’s why I was suspicious when I saw this update from the Cape Wheel at the V&A Waterfront:

u wot m8?

“Restructuring your ticket options”? Those options being an adult ticket or a child ticket. That looks very similar to what’s currently on offer. That’s not “restructuring”, that’s “applying a non-varying approach”.

What has changed then, as beagle-eyed readers will already have noticed, is the price. Here’s where we stand currently:

And “focussing in on the paramount datum”:

We learn then that basically, “restructuring our ticket options” actually means increasing the prices for a ride by an impressive 20%.

As an aside, inflation in South Africa is currently running at 6.4%.

So that’s a pretty hefty restructuring.

In the spirit of these linguistically disguised augmentations, I’ve just told Mrs 6000 that I’m going to be “restructuring my alcohol consumption options” over the summer holidays. The beverages of choice will remain wine, beer and brandy, so I guess that – like the Cape Wheel’s ticketing options – some other parameter variable (see comments below) of the alcohol consumption will have to change.

I wonder what that could be.