Category: this is south africa

Saved bird

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There has been a Cape Bulbul nest in the creeper outside our living room window for a few weeks now. The parents have been very attentive, and yesterday, we saw the first sign of junior. Sadly for junior, the best that he or she could manage is to get to a bush on the side of the garden.

And then he/she got stuck.

The parents were getting quite anxious, and so, as dusk fell and the temperature along with it, I went out and took him from his perch, and placed him back into the nest so that he could be nice and warm for the night and maybe give the whole flying thing another go this morning.

The plan worked well, and this morning, fledgling and one parent were happily together in the tree across the garden.

Mum was even so relaxed with us being her babysitters that she enjoyed a bath in the sunshine.

Job done.
Happy customers.

Always happy to help out some #BackGardenWildlife

PIN (number) fun

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Here’s some interesting… oh, hang on, the power’s just tripped. Let me have a quick look at my DB board.

Sorted. I just needed to check the LCD display.

Anyway, from here, this:

Here’s some interesting data on the most common PIN (numbers) that people use.

White are ones that are used more often. Black are ones that aren’t used much at all.

Of course, with limited chances to guess your PIN (number) should your card be stolen, there’s not too much danger in choosing a white or yellow one, even though the top 20 (of 10000, obviously) make up more than a quarter of all the numbers used.

I was particularly delighted to see that 4916 – my PIN (number) for all my important things – was not one that might be easily guessed.

Happy to know that I’m pretty safe and secure.

Woolies stuff

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We all know how it works now. Buy everything you need at Checkers, but get your fresh produce at Woolies. And because your fresh produce is usually full of good things, you set up Woolies as your Discovery Healthy Eating place, and you get some money back as a lump sum at some point.

But I noticed a couple of Woolies things that didn’t quite add up (literally in one case, lol) this week.
First off, this on some puff pastry:

I’m glad it’s Made with Butter. Puff pastry is meant to be rich and buttery, and it being Made with Butter adds to at least two of those attributes.

What I don’t get is the connection between it being Made with Butter, and the image of the teacup and saucer. It’s not the first thing I think of when I think about butter. Crockery-wise, that would be the Butter Dish, and cutlery-wise, that would be the Butter Knife. Now, were it Made with Tea, personally, I’d likely go for the teapot, but there’s no way I would chastise anyone symbolising a product which was Made with Tea with a teacup and saucer. That’s absolutely fine.

But this puff pastry wasn’t Made with Tea, it was Made with Butter, and so if anyone can please explain the relevance of the teacup and saucer image in this context and on this packaging, I’m all ears.

And then this, in-store:

Diced Bacon is expensive. Here, we can see that it is priced at R84.99 for 500g. Thank goodness it’s not R85.00, which would be over my cut-off point for buying 500g of Diced Bacon. But R84.99 for 500g is the equivalent of R169.98 per kilogram.

Or so I thought.

But it you were to take a kilo of this delicious cured meat to the checkout, it appears that you would be charged a hefty INFINITY Rands. and that’s a lot. More specifically, that is:

a number greater than any assignable quantity or countable number

which is certainly more than R169.98. Even I can assign a quantity and count to that.

I know that Woolies has a reputation for being somewhat on the pricey side, but this idea of Infinity Rands for 1000g of chopped heaven would likely break the till display. To put it in perspective, it’s more PER KILO than Russia fined Google for being American naughty, and that was more than all the money in the world.

“I can’t even pronounce this number, but it is more likely imbued with symbolism,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told Russian news agencies.
“Google should not restrict the actions of our broadcasters, but it does. That said, this fine is still not as much as a couple of packets of bacon from Woolies in Cape Town, but we are not expecting to be paid in pork,” he added.

We tried to reach Mr Peskov for comment on the whole Made with Butter teacup picture thing, but his office said that he was “busy”.

Which was disappointing.

Tag shoot

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We were out for dinner on Saturday evening. The Greek place near the local shopping mall. Parking was tight, so we parked up the street and walked down to the restaurant. And as we wandered past, there in the trendy looking building on the right was a giant canvas print of one of my photos. Looking past it, and peering into the now smudged windows (sorry) in the darkness, there were several (or more) more.

Always cool to see them on display.

And there was more photographic work to be done before yesterday’s festivities (literally) kicked off. Little Miss 6000 has been putting some more of her skills to work and has come up with a range of Xmas gift tags to sell to family and friends. And you could just tell people about them, but why not show them? And you could just show them, but why not lob in just a bit more effort and show them off properly?

So we raided the Xmas decorations box early, dragged out a lamp or two, and made a mini set in the bar.
And then we took a couple of photos.

The flyer went out to appropriate contacts yesterday, and sales are booming.
It’s called the 6000.co.za Photography Effect.

I dunno. I just made that up. But it was a bit of fun to play around for a half hour and get some atmospheric Xmas shots in the middle of the sunny day. And it kept my mind busy and off the pre-game nerves which I now know I never needed.

If it helps sell gift tags as well, then we’re golden.

Sun stats

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Another lovely day here today and the forecast looks set for more lovely sunny days in the week ahead:

Those temperatures aren’t anything to email home about, but it’s nice enough and, as Mrs 6000 pointed out, it’s hardly summer, is it? Which it absolutely isn’t, no. That would only start on the 1st or the 21st of December, depending upon which system you’re using.

But we shouldn’t be complaining, especially when looking back over at the UK. This image has been doing the rounds over the last 24 hours, indicating the number of hours of sunshine around the UK, the Isle of Man and Ireland over the first 7 (seven) days of November.

Ouch. Eina. My fok. Goodness gracious.

Bearing in mind that London is sitting on an average of about 9 hours 20 minutes of daylight each day, they could have had over 65 hours of sunshine. They got 2.
The Isle of Man – averaging just over 9 hours of daylight last week – got not a single hour.

In seven whole days!

Aberdeen was the big (and rather unlikely) winner. 8¾ hours of daylight each day, and a whole 13 hours of sunshine in seven days. That’s 21% of their daylight as sunshine. Incredible. Their local Burns Unit must be bursting at the seams, just like it is in late January each year.

We made hay (not literally) while the sun shone today, with the Boy Wonder driving himself and his friends down to Agulhas for a long weekend, and LM 6000, having recovered from her singing last night, riding a horse over some big sticks, rather amazingly.

But now it’s time to sit back with a glass of local red, and catch up with the Youtube videos I haven’t had time to watch this week. I’ll be incredibly knowledgeable and a brilliant photographer in about an hour.

Just watch. Literally.