James - Getting Away With It

For those who are new to this blog, this is my weekly list of diary entries, random ideas and general self absorbed rants.. because I can.

“Vanity is definitely my favorite sin.” — The Devil’s Advocate

• Monday, a visit to Christo’s office to chat about our party invite design, burger at Da Vinci’s, try the Brussels burger with caramelised pear.
• Tuesday, meeting at the Westin Grand hotel, drinks at Neigborhood bar with Parri and Cath.
• Wednesday, Lions Head walk for a bit of a tan, took an R8 for a spin (finally).. insanely fun, tea with Tim at Melissa’s in Constantia, flight to Jozi, sushi with the infamous Thomas.
• Thursday, Joburg, early morning run in Bryanston, ISPA media breakfast at Piccolo Mondo.. Nelson Mandela square, cruised around the Sandton malls a bit, killing time at the airport.. felt a bit like Roger Wilco in Space Quest 4. Met Thomas at Vida before my flight home.
• Friday, got a new car.. it has four seats.. goodbye frog-mobile. Dinner at home with Mia and friends.
• Saturday, Elgin organic market with the Web2 geeks, Georg and Mia, Grabouw Country Club visit, took Mia to see her grandma and play on the beach.
• Sunday, Lions Head walk with Jules, Nikki and Ben, a braai at home.. yum, Glen Beach and the Camps Bay strip with Georg, Andy and Parri. Project Mayhem.

Music the great communicator.
Sweet talk but don’t intimidate her.
Can’t stop the gods from engineering.
This life is more than ordinary.
Can I get 2 maybe even 3 of these.
This life is more than just a read thru.
– RHCP, Can’t Stop

Frogspeed crazy kids.

Friday I’m in Love — The Cure

A few random quotes I jotted down..

“Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”
Anarchy means “without leaders”; not “without order”.
– V for Vendetta

“Candy Is dandy, but liquor is quicker”
– Ogden Nash

The second shortest book ever written is: American Business Ethics,
second only to: American Culture.
– Somebody I know in Stellenbosch

“It’s deep how shallow you are”
– Could have been Andy

“If you want trouble, buy an Alfa”,
..when hearing about a friend getting married.

Vincent: A year is a long time.
Irene: Not so long. Just once around the sun.
– Gattaca

Ola, summer is here.. what an awesome week.. now is the winter of our discontent..

• Monday, Caprice in Camps Bay, pizza and drinks on the deck at home with friends, bit of a rowdy evening.
• Tuesday, Lion’s Head walk, car wash (first time in about 4 months), cable car run, wholesome veggie dinner, watched Fight Club.
• There is something about that Moby Bourne Identity song that just makes we want to go running.
• Wednesday, swim at the Long Street baths with Andy.. the place sure has character, Teraco Cape Town site visit, chaired the ISPA INX working group meeting, off to Stellenbosch to chair an Amobia meeting, burger at Cognito.
• Thursday, gym, swim, took a day off.. bit of a metrosexual day, haircut and manicure at Mooi, scalp massage while listening to Abba.. *grin*, (sorry B), they have cupcakes and wine, then tea at Mango-OMC, took the ladies a box of Cassis Pastisserie creations, an Am I Collective visit, a quick Neotel meeting, facial at Elements, run in the foresty areas at the foot of Signal Hill, wholesome veggie dinner, Asoka, Extreme Hotel.. which could be a nice bar if you could get some service there.
• Try Malibu and Peartizer. Try a few drops of Tabasco and Malibu in a shot glass.
• Friday, gym, power plate (seems to tone facial muscles more than anything else, hehe), 1km swim, took a walk down to Daily Deli to have brunch with somebody really cool, test drove a GTI DSG, then an A4 cab, Mia time, had some fun with a voting system (for a good cause), popped on to IRC for the first time in about 3 years, a friend had a DUI incident so Georg had to go bail him out the next day.
• Saturday, gym, swim with Mia, Sinn’s ice cream, braai with friends on the deck at home, took Mia to the Spring Tide (jail bait) festival on Camps Bay beach wearing her new rocker chick t-shirt. Watched JacSharp play. Cocktails with Jules, Nicola and Ben at Caprice. Mia says she wants to be rock star.
• Sunday, Tamboerskloof park swings visit, braai at home, had a bit of a moment when Mia climbed up a cupboard and swallowed a whole Barocca Calmag, she later threw up on her mom, Rafiki’s to plan our housewarming, it’s going to be a big one, watched Seven again.
• Somebody asked me on Friday if I’m changing or if I’m returning to my natural state.. interesting question, “I changed by not changing at all” — Pearl Jam, vs.

Idea of the week..

The making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many Dos and Don’ts. First of all you’re using some one else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”

The making of a great compilation tape is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway… I’ve started to make a tape… in my head…
– High Fidelity

Have a fun week rock stars.

Mia, Georg and I did a Saturday road trip to Rocking the Daisies (RTD) in the Darling area.

I was given a VIP ticket, so I figure I’d give you the independent media review..

Queue

Ok, so everybody bitched about the queue. It sucked. Seems the organisers are offering a few ticket refunds and Cloof wine estate are giving away wine vouchers to make up for it. Nice move… hint, hint.

Music

The Saturday afternoon line-up was a bit rocking miss daisy (slow). Seems all the main acts were late at night.. which made us wonder if a day-trip was worth it.

I enjoyed the JacSharp set at 15:00. They rock. I’m a fan.. I now have the tshirt and the autographed album.

About two weeks ago I ran into Carl at Bambu. Carl is the JacSharp guitarist (jac == Jules and Carl). We met in the wireless industry.. running around on rooftops, his old day job.

They played an electronic set that night, Morcheeba/Groove Armada kinda stuff.. so I was a bit surprised with their rock style at RTD. Wide range of influences and styles it seems.

I met the band, Carl, Jules, Ben and Emelio. Cool people.

Bumped into a golfing buddy: Schalk. *grin*

Zoo

For some reason I was reminded of a zoo..

They were not kidding about the need for gumboots. Mud all over the place. Saw a few cool Burburry Wellies. I’ll have to work on my zoo-keeper look.

This is not a Woodstock kinda rock fest.. all the beautiful people were there, the Long Street kids, students, the punk rocker crew and the Hipsters (conformists!). The few (trancy) hippie stalls looked a bit out of place. All the groovy kids checking out the freaks.

“smoking is so 1990’s” — overheard a conversation

Offspring

The kiddies area was nice. There was a 2:1 ratio of friendly ladies to kids. Mia loves jumping castles.

“Oh. Intro- Jellyman, offspring. Offspring, Jellyman.” — Crush, Finding Nemo

Bumped into Miki and his offspring.

Only one suggestion.. they could get a bigger shade net, so I don’t need to lube Mia up with SPF so often.

Well Worth It

Ooh, I have an authentic RTD scar. Some tent peg took off the font of my leg. The very brief camping experience.

Fun event and I’m sure next year will be awesome.. just need to scale up the logistics a bit. Thanks for convincing me to go Cath.

ps. The RTD website could be better. In fact, it’s lame. Re-do it.. and add GPS details.

I became the Chairman of the ISPA PR Working Group yesterday. So I get to go to media breakfasts and meet tech journos. How cool is that..

Busy week, kinda lost track of what I as up to.. mostly because I was moving and it was school holidays so Mia was around Thursday-Sunday..

• Monday, signed the new lease, gym, swim.
• Tuesday, moving, figured out the electricity and water, moving, wine on the new deck, unpacking, pizza at Rafiki’s, entertaining story of how Miki started Rafiki’s.
• Wednesday, gym, swim, plumbers, Amobia internet install at the house, Mia time.
• Thursday, gym, swim, Stellenbosch visit to help Georg move.
• Friday, had to keep Mia, three plumbers and two carpet cleaners entertained.
• Saturday, Rocking the Daisies, jumping castles and JacSharp, thanks for the ticket Bev.
• Sunday, Waterfront outing to see the USS Theodore Roosevelt, walked down to the Daily Deli for brunch with Andy, gym, swim, Chardonnay and pizza at Adesso with Vanessa and George, I think it could work for the November GeekDinner.

Idea of the week.. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

..off to go walk up Lion’s Head. Have a fun summer kids.

A few people asked me to upload my slides from the GeekDinner at Asoka.

A bit overdue, but I was moving house.. so I’m writing this in the new place sipping a glass of Chardonnay, looking out over the city and watching Scrubs. Home sweet home.

Here you go.. Joe’s version of Lifestyle Design.

It was a nice dinner.. cosy, reminded me of the original 2006 geekdinners.

Had some good feedback from my talk. Nice to know I’m not the only crazy one.

Just a week in the life of Joe..

• Monday, interview with The Times about the VANS>ECNS mess, house shopping in Tamboerskloof, cable car run, R29 burgers at Jamaica me Crazy, OC s1 d2.
• Happy Banana Republic day.
• I now have a free subscription to Sports Illustrated. We concur: it’s pretty lame.. not even a few pics of hot woman.
• Tuesday, lunch with Jonathan, OC s1 d3, Asoka jazz night, JacSharp at Bambu, William Wallace moment.. got a phone number, whoot! Bumped into JC.
• Wednesday, Red Herring (Noordhoek) for pizza and beer, drinks at Monkey Valley, try Malibu and Appletizer.. ok, I know it’s a bit girly but it tastes like summer, drinks at Carlisle’s with friends, Graham is back from Aus, played the Nails game.
• There’s something about listening to Mr Jones at a nice pub with a cold beer.
• Track of the month, Mind Circus by Way Out West, Cream 15yr album, disc 3.
• September’s been a month without internet at home, guess I took a break, I noticed a bit of a drop in productivity, but I was looking at my September photos and it’s been a fun month.
• Thursday, gym, OC s1 d3->5, a few glasses of wine with Andy back from London.
• Thursday was odd in the sense that.. I’ve been wishing to just be bored for a while now and I managed that on Thursday for about an hour.
• Friday, Mia and I went to Lourensford to buy some wine and chase a few peacocks around, dinner at Will’s.
• Had a tough (emotional) day, but Mia and a random dinner with a good friend reminded me how lucky I am and cheered me up.
• Saturday, met up with family at the airport, lunch with Debby at Mimi’s, nice afternoon nap, gym, swim, dinner with Cath at Fabulous, drinks at Asoka. Thanks for the suggestion Jono.
• Sunday, slept late, gym, swim, got some sun, Neo moussaka for lunch, worked on my GeekDinner talk, walk by the sea, Clone Wars movie.. it was OK’ish, Kauai snack.
• I’ve been challenged to write a blog post / list (?) defining my perfect match (woman).. that could be tricky.
• Idea for the week.. sometimes it’s just easier to do the right thing.
• Somebody pretty close to me called me a hedonist.. (pure pleasure seeker).. Some days I think I’m the only normal one.
• The three men and a little lady have a new pad in Tamboerskloof, moving in on Tuesday.. “Cape Town in the summertime and the livin’ is easy”.. can’t wait for summer.

See you at Asoka tonight crazy kids..

I was introduced to the local game at Carlisle’s in Vredehoek last night. It’s called: Nails. Good fun.

You’ll find a big chunk of wood at the back (past the bar) with a few people standing around it. The object of the game is to drive your nail into the log before the other guys do. The catch is that you have to use the wrong side of the hammer.. the narrow/sharp side. The hammer must be at your side when you start your swing. The hammer gets passed around the log, one hit per player per turn..

The last guy to drive in his nail (flush) buys a round of drinks.

Simple.. yeah, but it’s not that easy. Go try it. I kicked butt (first to drive in my nail).

Ahh, the joys of bachelorhood and public holidays.