we hate AIDS!

here is my contribution to the fight against aids:




yeah.

a fiver on life:

1. know your status.
2. protect yourself and those you love.
3. educate the uneducated about HIV.
4. live a pos+ life.
5. always sing [the greatest love of all]* out loud.

-S.

* the greatest love of all - [whitney houston]

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

[Chorus:]
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

[Chorus]

And if by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

about the sea 'n all

today i learned that the only sea that is below sea level is the dead sea. no wonder it's dead. while on that subject, i decided to find other trivial facts about the sea. for instance: the sea is the salt waters that cover the greater part of the earth's surface. interesting.

oh, another interesting find, although this was a long time ago, was this following list of the [seven seas]*:

1. Caspian Sea
2. Black Sea
3. Adriatic Sea
4. Red Sea
5. Aegean Sea
6. Mediterranean Sea
7. Persian Gulf
8. Arabian Sea
9. Indian Ocean

there are other permutations of the above. there are other seas. like the one mentioned in the opening sentence of this post. oh, and the Atlantic Ocean as well. and the Pacific. the South Pacific and the North Pacific. and so on...

-S.

* this is also the title of a song done by Babyface, Echo & the Bunnymen, William Pint & Felicia Dale, Marcome and others. Queen did 'seven seas of rhye' while the Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark did 'sailing on the seven seas'

flymango.com or not

this low cost airline's booking system was activated at midnight to tuesday [31.10.2006]. unfortunately, i have no idea what it looks like because since then, the site either has been hogged or it has dismally crashed. shame! to me sepacially. i was hoping to score a cheap-cheap return flight to the mother city at the end of november. alas.

apparently: "The demand has been unprecedented. By 2am there were already thousands of tickets sold, with bookings all the way through to May next year." [iol]

my, and perhaps other people's, concern is: if something that is at grass-root level as the website crashes, what about the main airline itself?

-S.

when evil lurks...

on a lighter note, i got this from this dude and i was quite happy to see how evil i have become.

You Are 36% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

try it out and see how much of a bad person you have become...

-S.

when i grow up, i wanna coach bafana bafana

i mean, why not.

i think that our football association that is safa has, once again, got it all wrong. the main question that is on any sensible person's mind is: "is he really worth it?" Carlos Alberto Parreira that is. why is safa so interested in him? what is it that has given him such an advantage over all the other coaches that were inline for the job? so what if he was, at some point, successful with the world's best football team? success is not contagious unfortunately. but at R1.8m a month, i'm sure he can arrange it.

what bothers me the most is that safa now seems fairly desperate to get him on board that they are willing to do whatever he requests (basically, kiss his ass). i'm sure, if he can say that he cannot come through for the country in January and can make it only in March, safa would probably buy it. and give him a further 2oo blocks while at it. personally, i do not think that he can make it. he has failed* in Africa before (although that was early in his career and has probably picked up experience since then), but i have this urging feeling that he will fall flat on his face. safa will buy him out of his contract (they are good at it by the way) and will be embarrassed completely.

our country should wake up and realise that sports and politics were never meant to co-exist. never. the majority of sport in this country, rugby and soccer being the front-runners, has suffered immensely as a result of political interventions.

-S.

* this, of course, being a very relative term.

i'd rather die...

[caution] this material is delivered from my brain as is [aka brain dump]. at a later stage i may look at it and utter: 'who hacked my blog!?' but for now, here goes.

i hate this country. i hate South Africa and all the powers that be. i hate the president and i hate all the ministers. i hate the deputy ministers and i hate the provincial MECs. i hate the parliament and i hate Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. she is the health minister right? yah. i hate her.

...it all began when i was watching SABC news yesterday [monday, 14.8.2006]. they showed a hospital in Brits. somewhere in the North West. who is the North West premier? yah, i hate him too! to cut the story short, i was displeased. or was i enraged? f#ck it. it's all relative. 2147,59. that's how much tax i will be paying at the end of this month. in rands. where will all that money, together with that you'll be paying, go to? i can tell you now that it will not go towards the sorry-excuse that is the money received by nurses that work for government hospitals nowadays. they get paid peanuts and they are expected to work like idiots trying to save lives. where are the resources that should be there in our government hossies? f#ck! people have their mothers and sisters taking care of them. sick people. in hospitals. what the hell is that? they bring their own blankets. some share beds. others sleep on the floor. geez. what is this?

what i saw in the news yesterday was alarmingly shocking. it moved me. maybe the is something that the government people are doing about our health system as a whole. maybe. but whatever it is, i ain't seen jack! and in my books, they've done f#ck'all. they all look like, in fact they are, power hungry individuals that care not a single bit about the country that they are apparently incharge of. they know that if they get heart attacks (most likely since they are all overfed and fat), they have a bed and a gazillion nurses waiting for them in a posh room at sunninghill private hospital or at sandton clinic. probably at a loyal tax-payer's expense.

yah, they rather take the tax-payers' money and rename airports. and towns. and pay for the trvelgate scam trial...

yah.

i love my country.

-S.

tales of a frozen car...

my German automobile finally gave in and froze overnight while i was sleeping peacefully (i'ld like to think). it took sometime for it to eventually freeze, unlike all the other cars that also park in the vicinity -- their every morning hobby is to annoy their owners who then have to grab a hose pipe or a bucket to break their car's frozen bubble with a sprinkle of eish two owe. every morning. the temperature this morning was disturbingly low (i blame the cold front and probably the war in the Middle East). in the conversation that we (my auto and i) had en route to work, my auto told me that the temparature outside was about 1 degree and that the water that cleans the windshield and the headlamps was frozen. pity. i was just feeling sorry for the individuals that i was passing along the way waiting for some or other means of transportation. while i was enjoying the 27 degrees of warmth ngaphakathi.

-S.

perplexed. yes, i am...

i cannot say much. simply because i do not know what to think of this. good idea? bad idea? all i can say is that it left me quite, uhmmm, perplexed. blown away. astonished. with a tiny pinch of confusion. maybe someday, i'll have something to say about this.

- Crime Expo SA [main site]
- Crime Expo SA [letters]

-S.

my name is now Hendrik

well, why not? i figured, since our government [or has it now become the government's government and not ours anymore?] is on this (re)naming spree, why not i rename myself as well? just for the fun of it. i mean, if i rename myself, i will not go through daunting procedures to bring the rest of my life into speed with its master's new igama. it will take only a couple of visits to the police station to get an affidavit. a couple more to the home affairs department to get a new ID book and a passport. and then another handful of visits to the traffic department for my drivers licence to catch up with my new identity. then i will need to update my policies, bank details, etc. with my spanky new name. hopefully in about half a year i will be a totally new me.

now tell me this: six* months just to fix my things as an individual; how long will it take to work through the logistics of changing a name of something as monolithic as, say, an airport? or perhaps a town? a province? bloody hell, a whole country? i'm cool having to drive down to KZN. however, it might be a different story all together if in the future i drive down to KwaZulu? maybe catch a plane from OR Tambo International to Rolihlahla International down in Cape Town? or will it be then known as just eKapa?

_the_ government should just take the money and channel it to needing sectors like our education system, health system, transport system and others, instead of tangling themselves with financial burdens of trying to correct 'the imbalances of the past.' isn't the lack of education in this country more of an imbalance of the past than the name 'Johannesburg International Airport?' there is nothing wrong with honouring the champions of the Struggle, in fact i support it. but i feel that somewhere somehow, a line should be drawn.

-S.

* probably too over-estimated, but better that than under-estimating.

gimme a chance...

fine, i think the topic of me being bored at work has been exhausted. so, what's new? eish these days i stumble upon opportunities of doing much more things with my time than in previous months. in the last month or so, i have been to the province where the sun supposedly rises (mpumalanga), many times. i have been to the cape (western province). have been home (kwazulu-natal) and i have been to the free-state. yeah! this coming weekend i shall embark on a trip to klerksdorp (north west), so yah, my hands are full like that! with the price of petrol having risen, it's gonna cost a lot more to drive around to all these places. oh, and i'm planning on going to hartees for a picnic sometime soon. and to mozambique in spring.

right, now to the topic of this blog. i need to do some course. i was thinking along the lines of management development programme (mdp) or similar courses, obviously on a part-time basis. but my only obstacle is that most of these institutions are either i) somewhat expensive for my liking (uct's equivalent course is R50K) or ii) need me to be at least 25 years old or be in a management position for some time --- not junior management, or both (like tuks' and unisa's mdp amongst others). so, if you are sitting there and you know of a reputable institution that i can attend to satisfy my urge, lemme know. i wanna do something with my time. after all, in about a year or so, i will be a rocking manager wherever i'll be at, plus, i should start thinking about how to make money as we build and shape our nation towards the greatest spectacle in football history (aka 2010 soccer world cup south africa [here is more of 2010]), so i may as well use this time to acquire some skills that might be applicable then.

these institutions must just gimme a chance! i mean, for crying in a plastic dish, i'm not trying to do an mba or anything! well not yet at least.

-S.

old habits never die...

i remember arriving late at a computer science lecture once. i think it was the networks module of third year if my memory serves me correctly. 15 minutes late i think i was. this time around, the lecturer decided to ask for a reason for my lateness. an impromtu response was: "public transport." (oh, just to add: i was staying in res --- kopano, and between res and LT302, there was no public transport involved) that got me off the hook. at least that time at least.

now, this "flexible hours" thing is really killing me. i feel no urge to wake up in the morning. today i got to work at about 09H30 (Jay is still the winner at arriving at work late though. or is it also flexible hours for you Jay?) didn't even feel guilty. no one asked me questions. nada. so yah. one day when i start real work for a real company, i suspect this will all come back to haunt me. because it's true; old habits really never die, they probably go dormant for a long while. or even better: lapho okwake kwama khona amanzi, oyophinde ame futhi.

with that, i say kill your old habits (except possibly for sleep...)

-S.

when time hogs...

yes, time does hog. i knock off at about 16H00 daily, regardless of the time that i came in (no one is looking, so i may as well take advantage of that tiny little fact). so, i have been yawning and falling asleep infront of this notebook thing for the past 2 or so hours (this was written a little after 15H50), so i decided to use the remaining 10 minutes on something constructive. the next thing i know it will be time for me to leave. yippee. honestly though, i fall asleep and feel forever tired not because i lack something to do but because there is a wee degree of interest in things that i should be doing*. so there you go. today Brazil plays Ghana, or is it vice versa? whichever way, my bet was a 1-1 draw (with Brazil winning 5-4 on penalties), so that is something that i am looking forward to this afternoon. that and spending quality time with a woman...

-S.

* in short, i hate my job (but then again, who doesn't?)

tshwane metro police 3 - 0 ciaa

that's the running score. three traffic tickets since february. two tickets in two days (yesterday and today). what could be worse?

yesterday's ticket was just too weak. i currently do not have a parking spot at work, so i park on the street. if i arrive early enough, i get really good parking a few steps from the entrance to work. if late, i battle (to both find parking and walk the long distance from car to desk). now, i think these were new recruits trying to impress their bosses by issuing out a ridiculous amount of tickets in one day, but they were issuing tickets to all the cars that were parked on the street. ALL the cars. i was parked in a clearly demarcated area, where there was no meter that needed to be payed. nothinng. just an innocent parking bay on the side of the street. eish, when i arrived, there was the ticket in the windshield; stipulating that i was parked at a bus stop. riiiiight. i will query that. i do not have R200 to give the municipality as a pressie.

today. i had a bank appointment at 12H30. no seat belt. R200. initially, it was R400, but through negotiations, i managed to have it halved. i did not have cash. otherwise i would have bribed the hell out of that officer dude. he wanted me to. i told him that i did not have cash on me (next time i should be more prepared). he was an Afrikaner fellow, attempting a version of seTshwana so that i could see that he and i were thinking alike. i'm sure R20 would have done the trick.

so there. two fines in as many days. i hope i do not make it a hat trick.

-S.

so foul and fair the Cape i have not seen

June 16 was important. but more so was June 15. the day i was admitted to the degree of Master of Science (Computer Science) at the University of Cape Town.

...it all started in February 2004. the MSc began. i had no idea as to who my supervisor would be nor had i even thought of a topic. all i knew was that i had more than enough funding + i did not want to go and work*. so, to cut 2 years short, i found a master (Hussein Suleman - nice fellow), i found a course (Flexible Packaging Methodologies for Rapid Deployment of Customisable Digital Libraries) and i got the degree. [oh, i had a very Wanda-ful girlfriend# throughout the 2 years. always there for support and all, and for that i will forever be greatful to her, wherever life takes her]

it was good to be in the mother city again. i really miss it. the atmosphere is completely different to what Gauteng has to offer. obviously. met some friends. had fun. the most fun i had was hunting for an outfit. did V&A waterfront, Canal Walk, Cavendish Square (all more than once).

the ceremony was splendind, save for it being somewhat longer that initially anticipated. the most disappointing part about the whole graduation thing was that there was no RAG wine for sale after the ceremony. a BIG down.

stayed up all night after grad, with the company of Johny Black (Johny Walker - black label) until my flight on Friday morning at 7. no, i did not miss it.

yah, there goes my summary.

-S.

* work is something that shouldn't be done unless it's absolutely necessary. note the recursive nature of this definition.

# a girlfriend is _something_ that must just be there, not be trusted and always provide for you (pardon my oblong definition, but that's how i felt at the time of writting this log)

...the return baba...

yes, i have returned. i now have access to all the sites that i previously did not have access to here at work. i guess there is a lot of 'catching up' stories that i must still scribble. the joys of life. i have been sad. i have been happy. and i guess i have been everything inbetween...

so yah. watch this space. lots more is yet to come. but for now, adios...

-S.

Simpler is Better than Faster...

so there i was, going to deposit an insane amount of coins at a standard bank branch at eMpangeni a week or so ago --- pity one cannot do this sort of transaction over the wire (or is it air these days?) anyway, it was interesting to see the distinctions that the bank has progressed into. there are normal tellers as you would expect, and then there is a 'coins deposit' teller (which does a deposit of coins --- even if it's five cents, and the rest of the money) note that other normal tellers do not take coins at all, they simply refer you to this particular teller. and then there is a business side. it states 'business transactions by prior arrangement' --- imagine how many people are prepared enough to do this sort of arrangement before hand. oh, and there is a 'blue bags only' teller --- these are the bags that you dump everything inside and hope that the counter will do correct calculations.

so, where do all these distinctions leave illiterate people? consider this scenario: an average illiterate person (not sure what that is exactly) will walk into the bank to deposit some cash (R27,25) for his nephew at, say, 10h07, yeah? will stand in a queue to 'enquires/imibuzo' until met by a service person at 10h21. the person will then be told to go and furnish a deposit slip and stand in a separate queue. at 10h33 the person will be done filling in the darn slip and will be in a queue until a teller meets him at 10h51. this teller will take one look at this man's deposit slip and do some random scribblings on the slip, telling him that the slip has been incorrectly filled in. after struggling to correct the slip, the man falls in the queue again at 11h01. meets a different teller at 11h09 who tells him that he needs to go to the 'coins deposit' and gestures the location of the 'coins deposit' teller with her hand. doing exactly that, the man is relieved at seeing that there is only one person at the coins deposits, but his excitement is short lived upon realising that the only person in that queue holds coins to the sum of about R5000, yet to be counted. at 11h32, the man finally makes it to the teller who then tells him that the coins that he is here to deposit are not sorted and the man must therefore do the sorting and stand the queue again.

the man finally completes his banking at 12h04. now, if there was a tiny flavour of simplicity in this whole scenario, the man would have been out of the bank and smiling 20 mins after he walked in. trust me, these scenarios DO exist.

AIM meetings are a waste of time...

AIM [Advanced Information Management] is a research laboratory that i am currently part of. it is 1 of 3 (soon to be four) research laboratories in the Computer Science Department, at the University of Cape Town. every wednesday, there is a meeting which all the members of the research group attend (or are supposed to attend). more often than not, we usually do a round-robin, each introducing ourselves, our research as well as our supervisors (of course, for the benefit of all the attendees that are setting foot for the first time in the AIM meeting or for visitors --- yes, we usually have those) . a crucial element of the meeting though is that each of us, still in a round-robin manner, need to report back on what it is that we have been doing since that last AIM meeting (the previous wednesday) --- this is where most people fabricate their doings, trying to save face.

now coming to my point, in all that i have said above about the AIM meetings, is there an obvious redundancy? (besides the AIM meeting as a whole?) there is only one reason i attend these meetings: the group is headed by my supervisor and he is always there meaning that it is only logical that i too be there, for if i am not there, he will ask me "why were you not in the AIM meeting?" during our meeting which coincidentally falls directly after an AIM meeting.

maybe it's all the anger of doing one thing for two years (a MSc degree) coming out, i'm not sure, but i do know that AIM meetings are weak!

uSathadeyi

it was an interesting Saturday morning, [17.9.2005]. at about 09H23 (mind you that at this time, i usually am still asleep suffering the repercussions of the preceding Friday), i received a call on my mobile from TMR whom i had promised that i will be joining a group of rather mundane male creatures with a primary intent to attempt to kick a spherical object (somewhat resembling a soccer ball), poorly simulating what is commonly known as 'playing soccer'. well, off i drove. the destination was a cricket-turned-soccer field opposite my former place of dwelling during the early years of me at UCT, a.k.a. Kopano. i arrived first and as i was thinking that i was late and it was all over, the majority of the gang pulled off.

after kicking the darn spherical object around for a while, we concurred that we should maybe separate into two teams and play this soccer thing, and because there were a handful of us (six to be precise), we settled for a ‘small poles’ game in a 75 square meter piece of land. whether what we afterwards called first half went by in a flash or i simply passed out after the first minute, i am not sure. what i am sure of though is that a few mysterious gentlemen (was it three of them?) arrived in a mysteriously looking black (eclipse-black) automobile, all dressed up in an irrelevant genre considering the occasion we were so eagerly gathered there for.

after these gentlemen assured us that they were indeed hither for the same cause as we were, we decided to begin what we then termed ‘second half’ in a space more elaborate than the former piece of land. this second half saw a team of five vs four (of which i was part of the four). the rest of the happenings of this half are much rather left untold, although i can quote someone describing something mimicking a “A MAN-SIZE RUGBY BALL ROLL DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS”, i'm not quite sure what that was…

‘third half’ was a breeze, it was about 20 minutes long, with an avalanche of goals and perchance one-sided.

all in all, Saturday was good. i think it was a beginning of something good. as someone has already stressed this point, summer is before us and we need to welcome it without the blubber that has accumulated over the winter period and beer drinking sessions.

Jacob Zuma (Jay Zee) Joins NADECO

former president of the Republic of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, has, at the eve of the culmination of the floor crossing window which opened on 1.9.2005 and for 15 days since, joined the infant of the political movements in South Africa, NADECO (National Democratic Convention). Jiyane, former IFP chairperson, founder and president of this two-month old was quoted saying "NADECO is no more based on three pillars, but three pillars and Jay Zee and his [Jay Zee] actions could not have come at any other revolutionary time than the present in the politics of South Africa." the president of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki, was not available for comment as he is away trying to solve the problems of poverty in the African continent with the president of the United States and the British prime minister, however, presidential spokes person said that "this [Jay Zee's crossing over] will take a lot of stress off the president's shoulders which will enable him [Mbeki] to take more calculated decisions about the future of this country."

...welcome!

finally i have decided to start with this blogging thing. i am not yet sure what it will be blogging about, hence the somewhat general topic [Life, Work and Everything Else (Lwee pronounced loo-wei) --- it is so cool to acronymise everything by the way]. yah, sometimes i will comment about the weather and sometimes about being broke. sometimes about the politics of my country and about the stuff i heard on the radio. so, brace yourselves, whoever you may be.