Tag: Cape Town

Compare and contrast

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Part 1.

I took this photograph of a rather verdant scene featuring Wynberg Hill, Newlands Forest and Table Mountain on the 21st October 2017 at 10:21:49.

Because of the precise GPS settings on the Mavic Pro, I know exactly where I took it from as well. Technology, ne?

My plan is to take another photo (or maybe more than one) on other 21sts  (or as close as weather, work and will allows) with a view to comparing just how dry and yellow/brown Cape Town gets over summer with absolutely no water to spare for the plants.

This image was taken in a week when the dam levels rose by 1.1% (to 38.5%) after some decent rain, so it marks a good time to get a green benchmark and also, in many people’s minds, the likely the last increase of the year.

Look out for part two at some other stage.

Cape Town Earthquake!

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Sort of, anyway:

That email to me (personally, see the header) from the USGS ENS, telling me about a quake just down the road ocean from Cape Agulhas. I never felt a thing. But then it was about 2000km away.

Here are the details – phew, it looks like we dodged a bullet:

Although, has anyone heard anything from Bouvet Island this morning?
Their twitter account (here) doesn’t mention anything. Mind you, it seems to have given up when Trump became US President. Perhaps understandably.

An aside: Bouvet Island looks amazing. I’d certainly visit there if it wasn’t for the earthquake danger.

Drought posters: too much?

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Local authorities in Cape Town have come under fire this week for their latest attempts to convince tourists of the severity of the drought in the Mother City, with critics saying the posters “go too far”, and are “frankly rather scary” and “wholly distasteful”.

The summer tourist season is approaching, and many residents have expressed concern that transient visitors will either be unaware of our water crisis or simply won’t care, and would therefore waste our precious resources. Tourism is huge business in the Western Cape, with 1.5 million international visitors spending a massive R18 billion in the province in 2016. It’s clear that without that money, Cape Town would be in deep trouble, but running out of water completely would obviously be a disaster.

However, those same residents were stunned at the authorities response, with shocking posters which are set to be displayed prominently in the arrivals area in the airport and at popular tourist sites around the city.

Elsie Grootbek of Newlands was aghast:

Look, of course I know that the drought is a big issue, but South Africa does have a bit of a reputation and posters like this really don’t help with that. This is terrible. Which moron actually thought that this would be a good idea?

Reaction to other posters was equally incredulous. Fanie Praatbaie, a guest house owner in Melkbosstrand, couldn’t believe the posters and was concerned what effect they might have:

It’s bad taste and really off-putting. We’ll talk to our visitors, one to one, and explain the water crisis. We don’t need this sort of thing welcoming our tourists. It might even spark vigilante action if one of our guests takes a 4 minute shower or something. It’s hugely worrying.

However, government representatives were quick to point out that this ‘shocked’ reaction was exactly what they were after.

Spokesperson Willem van der Maydup told us:

It’s really not meant to be threatening. It’s just designed to make people think when they turn the taps on in their hotel rooms. Water is the lifeblood of any city, and we want visitors to value our water as if it were their own blood.
I showed one of the posters to my 6 year old son last week and it’s clearly had an effect: he hasn’t even gone into the bathroom since then. Or slept.

It’s unclear whether the backlash will force the authorities to change their mind on the controversial campaign, but with the local tourism season just around the corner, it may be too late to come up with an alternative means of getting their important message across.

Bastille Cape Town review (2017)

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That date in the title just to differentiate this post from a similar one 3 years ago.

Right, let’s get on with this: brief and to the point can like to be my style this morning. (UPDATE from end of post: this didn’t happen, sorry.)

First off, this was a birthday gift for our 9 year old daughter, so standing tickets were out of the question: she’d get really tired and be staring at several or more student bums for 3 hours. So we were sitting right up at the back – a position which has both its advantages (comfy seats, better view, fewer bums) and disadvantages (bit distant from the action, not quite the same atmosphere).

We arrived just in time for the first support act, Opposite The Other. Local boys done good. Not my sort of music, but there’s clearly a great deal of talent here. There was a bit of a dearth of character and stage presence though. But then, this was a first act, playing to a half empty arena some 2½ hours before the main event, and South African audiences are notoriously disrespectful anyway, so I’m not sure that anyone noticed or cared.
I’ll give them a solid 6/10. Not bad, could do better.

But then after their exit, came the MC. I missed his name, but basically he was a late middle aged American gentleman; a balding and somewhat portly chap with zero personality. Good choice for the job. And here let me digress a bit: look, I’m not sure that I could MC a concert. But that’s why I don’t MC concerts. In much the same way, I’m pretty sure I can’t do open heart surgery so I go out of my way to avoid putting myself in situations where I might find myself having to do open heart surgery.

Play to your strengths, innit?

I don’t know much about the MC last night, but I have a feeling that he might be better at open heart surgery than MCing concerts.
It sounded like he was going to be doing the Durban (Friday) and Joburg (Saturday) concerts too. You guys are in for a treat. Eish.

Fortunately, the fun sponge and his monotone verbal stumbling eventually made way for Matthew Mole (who is not actually a mole) (private joke, sorry) and even more fortunately, he was very good. Tight, professional, engaging, and clearly and rightfully proud of what he was doing. One drummer, one synth and varying sizes of strummable instrumentation, plus some well-placed confidence and that voice: a really simple combination which worked really well. Let the music do the talking, as it were. The audience was also more receptive – probably aided by some Castle Lite and some better-known songs – and the performance finished with our temporary protagonist standing on the fence at the front of the crowd and banging a big drum, yielding almost iconic imagery like this (nabbed from his Facebook page):

Good work, Matthew. 9/10. Maybe even a 9½.

Time for Mr Boring to come on again and try to evaporate any excitement or atmosphere, but amusingly, this  ime around  is  icrophone was ‘t  orking pro erly and so we were spared from much of his “witty” “banter”.

There may actually be a god, after all.

Bastille time. Volume up a notch or two. Lighting up several more. And a huge welcome as the band took to the stage, introduced by a video of their strange newcaster, who resurfaced again and again during the evening. We began with Send Them Off! and from the get go, the huge energy was evident. The familiarity of Laura Palmer – a beautiful, almost orchestral version with soaring strings reminiscent of The Sun Always Shines On TV – really got the crowd going and we were away. Even more so when Dan wandered out into the crowd while performing Flaws. And then memories of Kirstenbosch 3 years ago were stirred as the audience talked right through a beautiful rendition of Overjoyed. You rude bastards. All of you.

A good setlist of stuff followed with songs from Bad Blood and Wild World cleverly combined to not stray too far from the familiar, nor lose the energy while also showcasing their slower “massively depressing” (Dan’s words, not mine) music.

We got an emotional Durban Skies dedicated to Dan’s family (and notably only ever performed live in SA) and then an acoustic Two Evils from the balcony just down in front of us, before a really weird ending to the set, with Things We Lost To The Fire and then Pompei and then… nothing. Even though the newsreader on the big screen told us “That’s all!”, it took the house lights coming up and the roadies dismantling the drum kit before the rather confused audience started to leave.

But this oddity aside, it was a brilliant performance. Energetic, loud, entertaining and captivating. And all so hugely professional. Really amazing. About 20 songs, about 90 minutes on stage. Great value for money. They’ll be joining Matthew on a high quality 9½. (Don’t be sad. I don’t give out 10s easily.)

Oh, and before we go: a shout out to Grand West. They really do do concerts well there. Extra exits, well lit temporary pathways to the car park, helpful staff, prepaid parking tickets, brilliant traffic control. Each bit saves just a few seconds, but add that up across 7,000 strong crowd and it makes a big difference. There’s a lot that other venues could learn from them.

Doomed Cape Town

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With all the global talk being of the upcoming nuclear war between the USA (+UK, EU, South Korea) and North Korea (+China), I wondered if that was also the biggest worry on the minds of the folk all the way down here in the bottom left corner of Africa.

I chose four things which myself and my Cape Town dwelling colleagues considered particularly worrying right now and employed the most scientific method of measuring local fear that there is: a Twitter poll.

Obviously, we had to start with the whole World War Three thing. Because that’s why we got to wondering about this question in the first place.
Perhaps equally obviously, the drought is in there. Particularly as it’s a ROASTING hot day in the Mother City today and it’s basically never going to rain ever again (tomorrow’s drizzle doesn’t count).
And then, after I stumbled across this Facebook group on the weekend, the Cape Town Tsunami had to get a mention.

Just for the record, the “warnings from multiple sources” which they cite are basically a handful of people who have dreamed about a tsunami hitting Cape Town, like Debbie for example:

A truly mericaluous escape. (What happened to your son, by the way?)

…and the word of a local charlatan Pastor who wants your money “had a vision”. If you want to read more (and you do, because it’s a deep, deep rabbit hole, go and have a look at their 73 (seventy-three) page dossier, full of reasons why the tsunami will take place (not enough people being Christians, shockingly), many details of how it will occur (big wave, mostly), and what exactly will happen:

Every time I stand in Town , Milnerton God tells me and reminds me see this tall buildings they will be completely covered with water
When I stand on Sir Lowreys pass God reminds me only those who come over this pass at that given time will be safe
Snakes will be in the water and bite the people and they will die
It’s almost like those who survive water will die by shark attack or snake bites

Hectic. Milnerton God doesn’t mess around, hey?

But I digress. Often.

The fourth option was one that has plagued the province for time immemorial: the Twitter account of Lord High Empress of the Western Cape. Like here. And here. And… er… here.

Certain individuals have long believed that one of Helen Zille’s tweets would spell the end of the Western Cape… somehow. But is that something that the general public also buy into? Our poll will tell us.

The results are in:

As we can see, the religious nutcases predicting their god-driven tsunami are the least of Cape Town’s worries. Quite rightly, too. They’re not called religious nutcases for nothing.
And nuclear war – an altogether much more likely doomsday scenario – is of limited concern to Capetonians too. Could this be a geographical thing, or is it because they are actually much more panicky about one (or both, but twitter polls don’t allow for multiple voting) of the other potential apocalyptic situations?

And it’s Helen, who takes it by a head, although if I were the drought, I’d be eyeing up a coalition with that impending nuclear war to sneak top spot.

Clearly though, the two options are troubling the majority of Cape Town citizens, and I don’t really think it’s a matter of one winning through over the other. These are obviously both issues that are of huge concern to people here.

Sadly, it seems like the only thing we can do to prevent either disaster actually happening is to cut down on the amount of water we use, and cut down the amount of Twitter that Helen Zille uses. Given the numerous failed attempts by the City Council and Mmusi Maimane respectively to achieve these goals, neither seems very likely to happen any time soon.

We’re doomed, Cape Town. Doomed.