Category: this is south africa

Zoom

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My connection woes continue. No WWW. No phone.

Thank goodness for my tablet’s 3G connection, to which I’m currently tethered. (Not literally.)

I’m still feeling horribly out of touch though, so I thought I’d chuck in a quota photo while my plate is incubating in the lab.

Yes, rather overexposed, but I still love the colours and the concentration on my boy’s face.

This was taken at Bugz Family Playpark in Joostenbergvlakte last month on, as the exposure suggests, a very bright and sunny day.
I’d thoroughly recommend the place if you have kids below the age of about 8 or 9. Great fun.

You can see more photos from that day (and indeed that month) here.

Dry Humour

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Somewhere behind all the fuss over Nkandla and the Linkin Park drama, there’s a nation trying to get on with normal life. And if you happen to be Mitchum CEO Bob Johnson, normal life is making sure that your brand is the driest thing in South Africa. As he says:

You probably already know us as the antiperspirant that offers maximum protection against wetness and odour, but I’m here to let you know about an exciting step we are taking in the deodorant game.
A big step.
A step to becoming the driest company in the country and to transform our Mitchum family into the driest employees they can be.
Are they happy about it? I don’t really care.
At Mitchum we only do dry. Seriously dry.

To this end, he’s gone through his employees’ belongings and he’s giving away anything he’s found that’s even vaguely moist – pool noodles, jet skis etc – over on their microsite. As I write, his MD’s Island Holiday is up for grabs.

Bob Johnson is serious about this.

Sadly for Bob, there’s another South African brand which stakes a claim to desiccation: Savanna Cider. And they got in touch with Bob after a recent competition on 5FM:

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/user626130255/savanna-dry-this-for-size[/soundcloud]

As a goodwill gesture, Savanna sent over some of their product to Bob.

Bob was unimpressed, but responded kindly by draining the bottles and sending them back, together with another of his employees’ “wet” belongings:

Those last two lines killed me dead. Brilliant.

The Mitchum campaign is brilliant. It’s novel, it’s different and it really caught my attention. That Savanna also noted it and decided to interact has made things even better. I just hope that they can come back with a reply to Bob’s letter so that this can continue.

You can follow Bob Johnson on twitter: @CEOBobJohnson
Hats off to the guys at Ogilvy. Really nice work.

Disclosure (because you’re all ever so cynical): I have received no Mitchum or Savanna products – I just really like this campaign and wanted to share it.

UPDATE: And now they’re DFFs (Dry Friends Forever). Here’s the gossip from Bizcommunity.com

If govt can keep da lama out so can they keep satanis out

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YES!

Fullscreen capture 2016-05-16 112040 AM.bmp

So says michangel.justice while commenting on this channel24.com post:

The South African Council of Churches is planning to prevent Lady Gaga from performing in South Africa

Now, if this were a campaign based on her musical efforts, I could understand – I could even join in. But no. SACC are not worried about that, they’re worried about this:

The church group has now raised their concerns, stating that they are in fact worried about the “destructive impact” Lady Gaga can have on South Africa’s youth.
Reverend Mxolisi Sonti, secretary of the youth forum, told Beeld they are afraid of the extent of Satanism in South Africa at this time, and that Gaga’s visit could lead to an exponential growth of Satanism.

One wonders if anyone has told them about YouTube, DVDs or the many other ways that people can listen to Gaga’s gaga message whether or not she actually comes to South Africa. You can also find out about real Satanists on the internet, which will be available in South Africa until Uncle Jacob says its not ok any more.

SACC’s stance follows on from the Facebook group: South Africa: No to Lady Gaga and satanists [sic] which was launched when the concerts were announced and has already reached the heady heights of 378 likes. There are ample opportunities for your reading enjoyment on there. It’s like a plethora of michangel.justices attempting to justify themselves.

The group is currently planning a march to the department of Arts and Culture in Pretoria on Friday, where they will be handing over a written request to the department in a plea to stop Gaga from coming to South Africa.

Of course, I’m all for these people being able to voice their opinions. Individuals should not be gagged just because of their religious views. Sadly, for Mxolisi, michangel et al, that goes for Satanists as well – not that I believe Lady Gaga is necessarily one of them. Can you imagine if Satanists marched on Parliament calling for some Christian singer to be banned?

Uproar. Bedlam. Hilarity.

Maybe if these people want to increase support for their cause they should bring over some popular Christian singer, leading to an exponential growth of Christianity.

I wonder why that hasn’t happened yet?

Fireworks

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Ah. I miss the UK on November 5th. Specifically the fireworks. Yes, they do them here, but for all the mocking of “The Nanny State” on “Mud Island”, the rules here around fireworks are far tighter than in the UK. And, surprisingly for SA, they are generally pretty well observed.

The Isle of Man, of course, is not in the UK, but they still do fireworks and here’s Douglas Bay on Saturday night courtesy of Flickr user cabmanstu:

image

Stunning!
Many thanks to Stuart for permission to use the photo.

As ever, twitter is divided over the fireworks here. Some don’t see the need, many are enjoying them and then there are the local dog owners whose animals keep us awake each and every sodding night, but who object to people making noise for a couple of hours on one evening a year.

I hesitate to use the word “killjoys”, but only briefly.

Halo

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Spotted while watching the kids’ Sports Day this morning – a halo around the Cape Town sun.

When I say the Cape Town sun, I’m obviously aware that it’s the same sun for everyone. I’m not suggesting that there are multiple suns or that each city has its own sun. I was just in Cape Town when I saw this sun.

The halo is caused by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals which make up cirrus clouds high up in earth’s atmosphere. I’m not talking Felix Baumgartner high, just 20,000 ft or so. Allegedly, these clouds are often the precursor to stormy weather (many were seen ahead of the recent Hurricane Sandy), but our forecast looks pretty good, so it looks like this halo is cirrussy in the wrong place.