Feelings

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As parents, it’s important that we let our kids know that they will experience different feelings at different times in their lives. Some of these feelings – the vast majority, we hope – will be positive ones, but there will be times when there will be negative feelings as well. And that’s natural and normal.

It’s ok to feel these feelings. All of them. Well… most of them, anyway.

Maybe draw the line at V. And forget about X altogether.

feelings-chart

Seriously? What were well-known online kids’ reward chart producers RewardCharts4Kids dot com thinking?!

Honestly, stick anything else in there. Anything.
Stick in a feeling that doesn’t begin with X: “Bashful”, “Upset”, “Bold”, “Enlightened”.
Stick in something beginning with X that isn’t even a feeling and thus doesn’t make sense. “Xylophone”, “X-ray” “Xanthamonas maltophilia (which is obviously the previous incarnation of Stenotrophomonas maltiophilia)”.

But don’t put ‘Xenophobic’ on a list of otherwise generally acceptable feelings that I’m going to put on my 7-year-old daughter’s bedroom wall.

 

Serious note: That’s not to say that this didn’t promote some discussion about what xenophobia is, why it’s not a acceptable thing and, for the older child, some etymology as well. But still…

Definitions…

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If this isn’t on the tip of people’s tongues yet (spoiler: it is), I have a feeling it soon will (should?) be:

Fullscreen capture 2016-02-09 041041 PM.bmp

And with the State Of The Nation Address just around the corner (literally and figuratively), we might be able to see the second part of the definition demonstrated on Thursday evening as well.

Double whammy!

Those SONA protests & road closures

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That time of year again when hits can be garnered from repeating helpful information that people should have got from elsewhere, but didn’t. This year’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) is on Thursday, but the rehearsals begin this evening, disrupting your drive home and reminding you of the pomp our President so richly deserves.

Basically, anything around Parliament is going to be closed from 5pm each evening, while roads around JZ’s Cape Town place in Newlands will be shut only on Thursday evening. Here’s a helpful link to a helpful PDF with all the details:

Helpful PDF

BUT! In addition to the official SONA thing, there are three – count them and weep – THREE separate protest marches on Thursday too! And they start early:

sonademos

First off is the DA, starting at Gardens Centre Woolies Mill Street at 9am. Then Ses’Khona (minus currently jailed poo-flinger Andile Lili) from Kaizersgracht at 10.
Later (1pm) is the #ZMF movement, heading from Greenmarket Square down to the Grand Parade.
For the record, the #ZumaMustFall group has applied for 5000 marchers, Ses’Khona has applied for 1500 marchers, and the DA has applied for 500.

Look, the smart thing to do is to avoid the CBD altogether on Thursday. But if you really can’t, then plan carefully and pack adequate supplies for a night in your car.

UK travel costs

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I’m booking train tickets for a lightning quick visit to the UK, post the Cast In Steel 2016 visit to Bergen in May. And they’re expensive.

Of course, everything is expensive when you look at the tragic state of the South African Rand, but travel – especially train travel in the UK – is stupidly, near prohibitively, expensive.

But what are you supposed to do? You can’t walk.
Last time, with Mrs 6000 and the kids with me, it made more financial sense to hire a car and drive up the M1. And that’s 260km with petrol costing R24 an litre. Still pricey. But with just me going, that option seems less financially viable this time around.

It’s not just me though. Infamously, last month (as infamous as something that recent can be, anyway), Jordon Cox, aka “The Coupon Kid” travelled from Sheffield to Essex via Berlin – included a day out in the German capital – and still saved money.

flight2    flight1

Although his money-saving achievement was somewhat overlooked by The Guardian whose main concern was that it wasn’t environmentally friendly. Missing the point, much?

And then there was this, with the argument around football ticket pricing becoming a bigger and bigger thing:

footycost

And yes, maybe Mr Tyneside_Blades (if that is his real name) could choose a cheaper (and almost certainly far more enjoyable) hobby than watching Sheffield United, but saying that is merely employing Guardianesque diversion tactics. (Incidentally, someone had a go at that here, and was summarily defeated.)

The point here (again) is the comparison between travel to/from Essex/near London and travel to/from Germany.

So I looked, but I couldn’t find a suitable route via Germany. *sad face*

I did find one via Dublin though.
And here’s my maths (no, I don’t have time for stadium tours or a ham and cheese toastie):

Fullscreen capture 2016-02-08 111033 AM.bmp

My plane from Bergen arrives at LHR, so that’s my starting point for either journey. I don’t get to leave the airport at Dublin, so I won’t spend anything at the Guinness Brewery, and my Dad will pick me up from station or airport, so that bit is for his account, (but ok, for the record it’s basically 5 miles to the station and 25 miles to the airport).

A few other points:
Yes, this includes all taxes, and a minimum of 20kg luggage allowance for the planes. Heavy.
Yes, I have to allow about 3½ hours for the train journey, while the flights would take about 6 hours. Time.
Yes, the train would be more environmentally friendly. Smoky.
No, despite the graphics above, I’m not expecting to travel by Pullman Coaches or Boeing 747 on these journeys. Inaccuracy.

I probably won’t end up doing this, but the point is that I could. And it simply doesn’t make sense that I could.

I’m not really sure who to complain to about the whole thing though, so I just wrote a blog post.

Thanks for reading it.

Bird

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Loving this “new” camera.
And I like my photo of a bird that I took in Suiderstrand yesterday.
I’m not really an expert on birds, but I think that this one is a juvenile Rock Kestrel – that’s Falco [tinnunculus] rupicolis to you (or Carl Linnaeus). See how it doesn’t yet have the grey head of the adult Rock Kestrel? But equally, lacks the paler underside of the Lesser Kestrel  (Falco naumanni)?
Yeah, this one has got juvenile Rock Kestrel written all over it*.

Fortunately, I have plenty of bird experts on hand who will be happy to put me right, should I have misidentified this feathery thing.

This little guy was ever so obliging, hanging around on a window ledge for ages and ages while I pointed and shot. This sort of photogenicity is rare in wild birds of prey – they’re usually really standoffish – and is to be applauded.

 

* note to self – patent labelling system to better differentiate birds of similar appearance.