We, the people of South Africa, Recognize the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;
Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to

* Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
* Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
* Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person
* Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso. God seen Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa. Mudzimu fhatushedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

There’s more to that over here

Landing in Mauritius in the middle of a South African winter is, well, just plain “lekka”. And on landing here, there are already memories about this little island and its inhabitants which I can carry as long as I can…

The first memory is discovering why so many people don’t want to leave. You’ve heard the stories, I’m sure. Well, I certainly don’t want to leave because I’m not sure we’re going to survive the bus trip back to the airport! The brochure said “a 45 minute drive”. The brochure didn’t say that if Shivvy was driving, at night, in the dark, it would be 26 minutes. Shivvy is an ex-NASCAR racer (I’m certain) and understands the finer points of bump-drafting all too well while preserving fuel in the slip and is the only person I know to double-clutch a diesel bus in 3rd gear going up a hill.

The other memory is the stray dogs who have graduated the school of Hard Knocks (Shivvy was a professor there, incidentally). They scatter like rats when they see headlights approaching, which, if you consider the candles dubbed “headlights”, it’s not really that much notice at all. But they manage with cat-like reflexes. Not many slow hounds about…

And from the glimpses I caught of the passing scenery, the island reminds me a lot of the Caribbean and my journeys around that part of the world- and Ecuador. So the real Mauritius is very down-to-earth, even poor and a far cry from the brochures with immaculate finery. Not to say the finery doesn’t exist. Oh, it does indeed. A strong contrast as we enter our little hideaway behind security gates and settle down into a week of “whatever” (with a bit of ocean paddling thrown in for good measure).

One keen reminder for me is just how much “sport” plays a role in my (your) life. Tom once said about sport (particularly committing and dedicating yourself to whatever sport you choose) is that it gives you two T’s in life (he may have been quoting someone else though, not entirely sure). Tools and Tickets. Tools to deal with life and Tickets to awesome places. And then Barry Lewin once tweeted along the lines: choose the races, places and faces and then go there. So sport does give me (you) that escape, that release, that adventure all the while arming you with tools; determination and focus.

Anyhoo, we’ll see what the rest of the experience brings- we’re looking forward to it- and seeing it in the bright daylight. If this hotel is anything to go by (Tamassa in a part of the island called Bel Ombre) I’m already not wanting to go back home.

The program for the week is mauritiusoceanclassic.com. And the weather is… ahhhhh.

Because i code… and code… and code… then code some more (you get the point) i tend to spend a fair amount of time with my fingers on the keyboard, an open LCD monitor staring back at me and worlds of awesomeness (all disguised as code) swirling around me. And then every so once in a while I’ll get some fresh air and go do something else “cool”.

But for the most part, i sit. Sometimes slouch. Badly.

Then a few years ago i started with regular back pain. I won’t bore you with the details. We have all back pain somewhere between the thoracic and the lumbar. It happens. And so i tried almost everything to correct my bad posture. Surfing helps keep that back flexed “the other way” but you can’t -always- surf. Ok, so you can. But unless you’re really really (really really) good or have rich grandparents, you’re not going to eat nicely (an entirely different problem altogether).

Alexander Technique, sitting on a oversized (and somewhat colorful) swiss ball, taking frequent breaks; all the tips you can throw a Google search at. Even tried changing my desk setup and “sitting correctly”. I followed the diagrams and posters on the walls of the physio to the ‘T’. None of it was that practical and most of it interfered with “me”. The ball actually made my shoulder/back problem worse.

Then I got a Mac and that all changed. Just kidding. It wasn’t the Mac

No, quite accidentally, i came across working out with kettlebells right about the time my brother started working at this gym in cape town: one80. Of course he learned a lot working there and he shared his knowledge and as he settled in, i spent some time working out with one80 here and there. The short times that I have spent in their gym inspired me to do more body-weight and kettlebell workouts. The result: no more back pain!

I can code for hours longer… i can swim way more than i used to… i feel “lighter” on my feet and i’ve had to do some pretty amazing things around the house. For example; fix a curtain rail from a very awkward angle (which, in a thousand words i won’t get right in describing) needless to say when my daughter walked into the room and saw me she said: “Wow, Mommy. What’s Daddy doing?”

No to mention the almost-daily heater-goblet-squat up and down two flights of stairs (once in the morning, once at night). Not that easy when you have a baby-gate to navigate and the gas bottle is full. And of course, playtime is so much more fun when you can squat, press and launch a 13kg toddler for 20 quick reps.

So, yes. If you just know you need to get back in shape -even if it’s just so you can code for longer or survive behind the keyboard for those extra hours- turn your life around, one80 degrees.

I’m rich. Wealthy. Loaded. Rolling. Abundant. I have inherited millions over the last few weeks. Millions. In euros, pounds and dollars. And not Zim dollars. I’m talking USD, GPB and EUR millions.

It all started with Microsoft awarding me, not once, not twice, but over three times in the last few weeks, USD$10K at a time. Yahoo also followed and awarded me USD$1M. Just randomly. Can you believe my luck? Then, just as I thought I was getting lucky, I got real lucky.

In the space of 2 weeks, I won the Swiss Lottery (USD$100M), Spanish Lottery (EUR30M) and the Canadian Lottery (USD$28M). At least twice each. I kid you not. I have got the emails to prove it. Then my email address got entered into a lucky draw with billions of other people around the world and you’d never guess what happened? I won. 6 times. Twice, I won EUR1M, a couple times I won some other amounts. Whew! You’ll forgive me at this stage for not keeping track of exactly how much- you can imagine my giddiness. Besides, after a while, a bar here, a bar there. Who needs to keep track?

But it didn’t end there. The Nigerian government want to give me more money for compensating any losses I may have incurred because of email scams. Fortunately, I’m way too smart to fall for some pathetic email hoax. The Mali government want to apologise, in cash, for one of their citizens stealing my ATM card and transporting it all the way to their borders only to be apprehended by diligent border patrol. Apparently, the embarassment is too much? And the Saudi government want to use my bank account to transfer gazillions out of the country- a service they are only happy to pay for with 15% of the transfer. What’s 15% of a gazillion in USD converted to ZAR anyway?

On a sad note though, it just so happened that in the same last couple of weeks, a lot of my extended family have been dying. It turns out I have uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends of the family all over the world (whom I’ve never met) just bequeathing their entire estates (often worth more millions) to me alone. I need to chat to my mom about these family members and why we were never invited on ski holidays with them. Nonetheless, wrapping up all theses estates is going to take time and money- but money i have plenty of and I’ll just pay someone else for their time to do it.

The bad news however is that my bank have been sending me a lot of urgent notices to update my details so i can continue banking with them online. At first i ignored the emails- but then my millions weren’t arriving. No surprises there i guess. Afterall, they did say in the email that if i don’t logon with my username and password, all banking activity (online and off) will be suspended. Just shows: read your emails.

Anyways, so now I decided to update my online banking details after the umpteenth urgent final notice from my bank. Woohoo! My first of many millions should start arriving any day now….

So it was an incredibly busy end-of-year (2009) with exams, lifesaving, BlackBerry and .NET projects and family life. And then the festive season came and went; New Year’s slipped by and now we’re this side of 2010 looking forward to another round of whatever may be.
And right off the bat, tax season looms. Registration for university is on the go, lifesaving competitions get into full swing with some major events, followed by mid-year exams and winter. And then 3Nut (sprog #3) arrives and then (allegedly) the exponential busy-ness kicks in. So already, the first half of the year is underway at a pace. Which is New Year’s celebrations have always been foreign to me.
There’s this air of expectation around them like something “new” and exciting will be heralded in and when you wake up the next day and everything is supposed to be “different”. And because it’s New Year, you have a milestone whereby you can mark your life’s progress. Strange. Why wait to do that only once a year?
Every day is filled with new and exciting adventures. Every day is a milestone and an accomplishment. Every day is different and is definitively the last of _that_ day you’ll ever have.
So, today is the day you make a resolution; and if you resolve to do something, it means you do it- not just think about doing it. “Carpe diem” is the old expression (which i strangely don’t hear much anymore?) so seize the carp!

If you live in Cape Town, and you need memorable photos… i mean, really memorable photos: the kind that every time you look at them you go “oooohhh”, “aaaahhh”, “wooooow”. And you can’t stop grinning and you actually get *emotional* (in a warm fuzzy kind of way) just pouring over the memories ‘cos they’re captured so incredibly … wonderfully: Sarah Wood. Look no further.

In days of yonder (although, probably more of a romantic legend) “your word” used to mean quite a bit. No legal fluff or long-winded contracts- it was your word that counted most. Today, that still is true, but we also have legal contracts because, i guess, in days of yonder, much like today, people renege on their word for various reasons. And that is a complex issue on its own, but reasonably i see it as primarily coming down to not taking your own word seriously enough. The opposite of that is interesting…

And by word i do mean commitments and promises, both explicit and implicit. Explicit as in “I promise i’ll get that done by tomorrow” and implicit as in “Sure, i can do that by end of day”.

So the opposite is that you take your own word so seriously, you check yourself at every turn and make no commitments or promises, either explicitly or implicitly. Your speech changes to “I might have that done by the end day, but no guarantee”. It is a lot better in terms of expectation management, being realistic and does give yourself room to breathe a little; even under-promise somewhat. As a default, neither are great.

On the one side you get to disappoint a lot of people through broken commitments, and on the other side, you get to disappoint yourself because you never get to challenge yourself. It’s one of those situations where neither end of the spectrum really works, and the middle ground is pretty soft. The best is to fold the spectrum back on itself.

Take your word seriously AND make big (not brash) commitments (and then pull it off). Of course, the wisdom and grace to get that perfect won’t come without a bruised ego, but, like i read once, it’s hard(er) to stumble when you’re on your knees. Don’t be scared to commit and give yourself a challenge and then take your commitment seriously enough to see it through.

The ultimate is like saying “I do”. It’s not “I might” or “I could” or “I probably should”. Commit, lock and load and make it work. The fruit is way more than you could ever positively dream of.

No, this is not an attempt at trying to revive an 80′s hit. It’s just my status quo. Watching people, watching me sort of thing. And there’s plenty going on right now. (But it’s still a pretty funky song in it’s own way)

In SA, we have an absolute mess of a political cam-pain *sic*; too boring and complicated to ever make it onto an episode of any soapie worth its suds. Politicians just blabber ****; the clamorous dings of empty gongs polluting the space inside my head and on the local internet. And i checked, our news is so boring, and so over-hyped, it doesn’t even make a small headline on bbc, sky or cnn. Let alone the Afghan Times. Apparently, the new Beatles album is more newsworthy than a southern african political party leader getting off the hook for corruption charges- despite threats to bring ‘em all down and not because he’s not guilty. And there are very big differences between “not guilty” and “innocent”. Ah well. Karma’s a bitch, right?

(And i don’t think it’s worth even touching on “the economic situation”- oh my goodness! If there ever was a phrase in danger of losing it’s vitality, meaning, pillow and marshmallow- that one deserves a righteous nomination. *Everyone* is suddenly an economist with an opinion- double you tea eff?)

On the other side of life though, tech is kinda stale. Some tech- not my tech Domains are dying (which is a funny read, btw). There’s Windows 7: the yawn version, is coming up. And more politics around that. Apparently it’s a bit of a boo-haa that you cannot upgrade from XP to 7. Shame.

But from all that fuss, i’ve learned one very important lesson: the media trashes your mind (not actively but by consequence) and robs you of your vibe- so be careful of what you fill yourself up with. They have no market in talking about the really cool things that are happening. And there’s also too much of that happening all over the world right now… but that too, it seems, remains underneath the radar.

For those of you who have (had) a 2yr-old, you will understand the following paragraph just perfectly:

Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee*. I keem peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Maw Juice peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Maw peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Look. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Juice peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Up. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Baba. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Maw?

Gotta love it!

* Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee is the common name bestowed upon both the parents by their 2-yr old and references whomever the toddler so choose at the time it is spoken.

Most of the time, when i talk about maths to anyone, i hear the same chat:
Maths is hard
You either get it or you don’t
Maths is not for everyone
Rather you than me
Oooo. Maths. Eish.

And so on… Well, maybe true but maybe not true at all. Regardless of how you feel about it, there are times when it’s very practical, almost *fun*, to know just a little about it. And you don’t need first year university maths to work some things out.

Butlers Pizza (arguably the best pizza in Cape Town) have a deal where you can buy 2 large pizzas or get a 3 for the price of 2- for roughly the same price if you get 3 mediums. Which is more pizza? Which is better value for money? And more serious questions like: how much cold pizza will i have left over for lunch/breakfast tomorrow?

A medium is 26cm, a large, 32cm in diameter. Assuming the bases and toppings are all mostly equal, you can simplify your calculations to work on the surface area of pizza presented. And given pizzas are more or less round, you use the formula for the area of a circle (π r²). Once you’ve established the area for a medium, multiply the result by 3 to get a combined pizza surface area. For the larges, repeat the exercise and multiply by 2.

You can judge at this stage which deal is going to give you more pizza. But what about best value? Well, take the total amount of pizza and divide it by the cost. Your answer is pizza/rand. So go for the deal that has the highest number. So the “Big Deal” will cost you 98.95, the 3 pizzas will cost you 2×49.95 (assuming simplest case) . You should know pretty soon which you want: more pizza or best value for money?

Of course, it gets so-called “complicated” when you start adding extra toppings and wheat-free bases. But all those “complications” are just little additions to the same steps. It’s actually not complicated at all- it’s methodical. And all the information is there, you just need a simple calculator.

Of course, some might say: why bother? Indeed. Why bother at all? Well, why not? It’ll take you less than 5 minutes to arrive at an answer which maximises your utility- which is economic speak for: get the best bang for buck. And especially when it’s close to the end of the month. But there’s also a deeper truth which you start to uncover… just how “special” is a special really? And even more grave, what’s breakfast going to be like?