Category: this is south africa

Top Gear Live – Cape Town

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Last night we headed out to the Grand West Arena, which – in a fit of misnomers – is not particularly spectacular and lies to the east of here – to see the Top Gear Live Roadshow.  The tickets weren’t cheap, but were actually excellent value: what a hugely entertaining experience. Explosions, stunts, laughs, fun, even international Car Football, the Cool Wall and laps of the Top Gear track – it was actually like an episode of Top Gear… but Live.
I’m guessing that this is where they got the name from.

Local guest host Sasha Martinengo wasn’t anywhere near as annoying as I expected – probably because he was playing third fiddle to Jeremy and Richard, while ringleader Clarkson was his irrepressible best. The Stig didn’t feature much, but the stuff – or rather the THING – that he did do was spectacular.

Since they asked nicely, I lent them a couple of my runabouts for the evening…

I’m not hugely into cars – I can’t give you the list of engine sizes that the latest Mercedes SLK is available in or anything like that, but there were some lovely machines out there: Bentleys, Porsches, Aston Martins, Audis (over-rated: Audi Fanboys being to motoring what Mac Fanboys are to computing – irritating and blinkered) and that orange Lamborghini. Nice. 

After the show, we went on the Paddock Tour – more nice cars and some BMWs, plus a chance to see a Pagani Zonda up close, the Audi R8 being revved by a middle-aged car salesman (didn’t sound that great – and neither did the car) and a host of rather dull Chevreolets. Mrs 6000 ordered her Porsche 911 Carrera GT3 and I squeezed myself into a perfectly lovely Mini Cooper S JCW which I almost took home in my pocket.

All in all –  a brilliant night’s entertainment and if you have the chance to go and see the show in Jo’burg, Sydney or Auckland, I would highly recommend it. A couple of beers before you go in will certainly help, but then aside from perfoming brain surgery, that probably goes for most things.

Top Gear Live – Jan 10 set on flickr.

Home

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The Molton Brown Curry Club avoided curry this month (for reasons that I won’t go into) and headed out locally last night for our monthly dinner evening, this time at Home restaurant in 2nd Avenue, Kenilworth – a venue chosen by the Tall Accountant.

As Dave Gahan once put it in Depeche Mode’s song about this intimate, down-to-earth eatery:

And I thank you
For bringing me here
For showing me Home

And why?
Because their warthog ribs were a thing of beauty. Absolutely exquisite and highly recommended.

Make your booking on (021) 683 6066, ask for Jana as your waitress and make sure you mention 6000 miles… – it won’t get you a discount, but it might lead to a few more hits for me.
And that would be nice.

Other places to eat in the Harfield Village area (there are more than you think), are listed here.

Short-sighted Idiots

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As FIFA announced that 2 million tickets had been sold for the 2010 World Cup in June and took a well-justified pot shot at the idiots in the German and English media and “football family” (Uli Hoeness and Phil “Sphincter Face” Brown, they mean you) who keep taking unjustified pot shots at South Africa, [a regular reader] got in touch about the Ashanti Lodge in Gardens, Cape Town.

I actually know the place quite well – friends have stayed there (before we had a house big enough to put them up) and it’s a decent backpackers lodge like you’d find in any city across the world. Not spectacular, but then you don’t want spectacular when you’re backpacking – you want clean, comfy, basic and reasonably priced accommodation.
And that’s what you’ll get – well, until World Cup time.

See – Ashanti Lodge is one of those short-sighted businesses which has spied a quick buck ahead and is desperate to make cold hard cash as soon as possible. And it’s people like them who are putting tourists and fans off from coming to the World Cup. This short-sighted, greedy, money-grabbing behaviour also helps in discouraging those who do come out for the tournament from coming back. It is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a huge own goal.

Ashanti Rates – note that special conditions apply to the World Cup bookings as well

I’m familiar with the wonderful Capitalist ideology of Supply and Demand, and I’m also aware that a lot of people want to make Cape Town their base for the World Cup. However, in my humble opinion these two facts can not justify a 309% increase in the price of a room for the duration.

Take the En-Suite (woo!) QUAD: R3,600 is $480 or £300 – that’s R900, $120 or £75 per person to sleep in a room with 3 others.
Usually in June (remember – that’s winter here!), R900 would get you a pretty decent room in a 3 or 4 star hotel. Not a shared bed at a backpackers lodge with your wife, Farty Terry from Scunthorpe and his obnoxious brother, Jim.

I’m sure there are many other establishments out there who are going to try and rip World Cup fans off as much as possible – this one was just brought to my attention. I don’t expect any of them to change their behaviour based on this post.  But there’s still value for me in pointing out their greed, their short-sightedness and their apparent lack of business acumen.

These are fine examples of local people who are going to ruin the legacy of the World Cup for South Africa.

Getting six years older

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As we celebrated the sixth anniversary of my arrival upon these shores, we came to realise exactly how much we’d got through in those six years. Actually, when one takes into account what we’d done in the first five years, this last one has been pretty quiet.

Four jobs, one engagement, one marriage, three new cars, one new house, first child, second child, four trips to the UK and about three vineyards-worth of fairly decent red wine, I’m still here and still loving it. But of course that wasn’t always the case.
Settling into South Africa and the distinctly different way of life took a long while. When it did happen, it happened overnight, but that night was after a thousand other nights here. It came with a sudden change of mindset – an epiphany, if you will – that this wasn’t the UK and I couldn’t make it like the UK. And while that fact may please many (if not all) South Africans,  it was finally my declaration of a ceasefire against the system that brought peace to my life.
(Incidentally, it’s worth noting that since then, the system has actually become a very good friend and we regularly meet up for a beer and a chat about politics, religion and the World Cup.)

Which is nice.

And in those six years, I sadly seem to have crossed that line where things that would previously have bored me have become things that now excite me. Like, for example, the fact that I can’t wait to install the new irrigation system in my front garden. Now, I’m not so far gone that I don’t see that that might seem a bit sad to younger readers, but when I put it in – it will be awesome.
Seriously.

Still don’t believe me? Right, I’m going to take photos…