Gert's birthday weekend

Gert wanted a real special 40th birthday party, so he invited friends and family for a long weekend at a guest house at Zinkwazi on the South coast of KwaZulu- Natal.

On November 15th Helgard and myself picked Gert up just after 5o’clock the morning. Gert started the holiday by teaching me the refrain of “General de la Rey”, he also made an unwritten rule – when the song is playing we have to sing along, soon “General de la Rey” became the holiday song.
The first day we were like real travelers, we stop at tourist spots and we did the tourist things.
Our first stop was at Estcourt at the Wagendrift dam. Helgard and Gert saw the photo opportunities and there for it was play time with the cameras. (Please visit the site for nice photos)


Estcourt


For lunch we stop at a place called Old Halliwell close to Howick on the Natal Midlands. The food that we order looked and tasted delicious.

We planned to spend the first night in Howick at my friend’s house. Kath could only meet up with us after 5 the afternoon, so we went to the Howick Falls. It is an easy hike but the humidity made it so much harder to walk up the hill. More photos can be seen here

Howick

On the 16th we met up at the beach house in Zinkwazi with Rudi, Charmaine, RJ and Gert’s family. The house is built in an “L shape”, all the rooms have an on suite bathroom and all the rooms have sliding doors which lead to the stoep and swimming pool. Book the place and go see for yourselves.

The first day was a sunny hot day, the next two days were cloudy and rainy, even on a cloudy day a day was filled with laughter, friendliness, food, good company and so-so-so much more.



Gert’s birthday was on the 19th. The morning after we woke up we had coffee and some rusks on the sunset-veranda. While drinking coffee we decided to go for a swim. We had breakfast and the rest of the day we “chilled” at the swimming pool while Gert was making a “potjie”



Thank you Gert, we had a wonderful time!

More photos can be seen here

Under attack

It is pleasant to talk about the positive things in life, but life isn’t always a bed of roses, sometimes one-experience unpleasant things but one has to carry on living with a positive attitude.

During October I was visiting friends, like friends do we were sitting on the porch looking at the rain and drinking wine. A pleasant, friendly, lighthearted atmosphere suddenly changed when 3-armed robbers came around the corner of the porch.
For 50 minutes our hands were tied to our backs, our mouths were gagged with towels and the robbers were saying, “shhhhhh, I’ll shout”. A pistol and knives gave them power, we were forced to lie on the porch as they were robbing us from our valuable belongings. In an armed robbery things like a laptop, cell phone, gold chain, money, car has no value, you just value your life and body. A woman is more of a target in such a situation, there were moments that I was very scared but a hand from heaven protected me.

My experience and emotions were much more than the few lines I wrote, I struggled to cope and I had to call a psychologist to explain how my body and mind would react; a book by Yvonne Retief also gave more insight.

When I’m scared and having flashbacks I find comfort in people around me that care.

Bakwena Super Classic

It was a Sunday morning and I really had to kick Helgard out of bed. He is not a morning person and to make matters worse we had a party at a friend’s house the night before, so the shouters were still in his system.

I was very excited because it was my first cycling race. All the sport reports were saying “South Africa’s fastest road race”. The race was on the Bakwena highway that was closed for the morning. The highway is flat with a smooth surface and for the first 25km the wind was behind us. We turned around at the Ga-Rankuwa off ramp. Cycling against the wind on mountain bike is hard work. We tried in vine to catch up with racers that were passing us in large bunches. The last 10km we were cycling with a small bunch that helped against the wind.

I’m very proud of my first cycling metal. The refreshing sports drink at the finish line was what we needed after the 43km at 26km/h average speed.

Sylvia's “P” party

Theme Parties are a new thing for Helgard, and me but we are getting into it.

We went to Sylvia’s birthday party and we had to dress up according to the letter “P”.

Helgard when as a Photographer (just to show every one his nice camera), I had dressed up as Pippie-Longstocking. It took me sometime to get dress because I had to convince Helgard to Push the wire through my hair and not my ears; Helgard isn’t really a hairdresser so it was Painful.

Sylvia went trough a lot of effort with the Party; she decorated the house with a tribal theme. The people were Playing along, and were dresses as Prisoners, Princesses, Priest and a Policewomen. Others were more subtle with theme they were dressed as the Perfect Pair (cards).

The Party turned nasty when we were forced to drink shouters, we left early the next morning knowing that we had to cycle.

Kiddies concerts

Small things are important to small people, and for little Lerinda it was important that uncle Helgard come to her school concert – “Wild William around the world”.

“Wild William around the world” was about a young man William who traveled around the world to find the right women. The kids were singing as he was traveling from country to country. The innocence and enthusiasm of the kids were spilled over to the audience, the audience was also clapping and singing along, in the end it was difficult to say who enjoyed the concert the most.
Lerinda was dressed up as a Chinese girl and danced with her chopsticks.

After the concert there was a karate show. The instructor (shen-sen) taught the small the children to kick and scream, some of them can kick but not really scream.

After the entertainment we went to Leonard and Munda’s house for a lovely dinner. The excitement of the evening took its toll on Lerinda, when we left she was sleeping on the couch.

Hail in Pretoria

August 25 was a cold Thursday evening and we tried to have a braai. Suddenly te weather turned nasty and wind was blowing cold. The next moment it started to rain and the raindrops turned into hail. We moved our fire to safety and we mowed into the house ourselves. The hail just kept coming down and after a while our suburb looked as if it was snowing.
Ursula’s camera was fortunately in her handbag and we took a couple of shaky pictures.

Jarrot found the taste of the hail particularly pleasing, his first hail experience…

New PC (again)

I don’t know what it is but my luck with PC’s are running out, last week our LabPC refused to boot and with Blue screen of Death it reboots every time it tries to load Win98. It is particularly disturbing because the old hardware is failing and it just moves closer to a day where none of our lab test software is going to work any more since we use serial and parallel ports and old things like Turbo C to compile small and simple programs.

On Saturday my work PC froze up as I tried to get some projects finalized. It turned out that the motherboard just stopped working, and I was completely stranded, such a waste of time! I planted the old HDD in a new machine, but soon realized that I had another problem when I tried to access files on “Documents and Settings” now I did not have access to my own files any more.

My brother was not answering his phone so I searched the internet and found the following two articles that deals with the issue.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874/

I took ownership and now I own my own files again!

Something else I came accross was a good way of remembering a strong password

Cheryl 21 birthday

Cheryl my niggie het besluit om 21 te word, en maar die grootmens lewe trompop te loop. Haar ma Ariette het dit goed gedink om die hele familie na die verjaardag parytjie te nooi, voorwaar ‘n goeie idée. Ek is geva om ‘n paar fotos te neem, en dit is eintlik baie lekker want dan het mens weer iets waarna jy kan kyk en aan almal te dink.

Soos dit nou maar gaan in die lewe was daar ‘n paar gesigte minder die jaar en as ek so na die famielie foto kyk mis ek hulle nogal, hulle sou die partytjie ook geniet het. Daar is ‘n nuwe gesig of twee wat begin kuier of wat besig is om ernstig te kuier, en dis ook goed om te sien. Ons moet maar werk om die kringetjie groter te maak.



Die party was nou regtig lekker, die DJ ken sy storie en daar was heeltyd iemand besig om lyf te ruk. Ons het lekker ge-eet en gekuier, ag man dit was net sommer lekker.

Een voordeel van so ‘n party waar mens in slaap is dat jy kan gaan slaap as jy wil, so teen 1h00 in die oggend is mens maar flou. Een nadeel van so party waar mens in slaap is dat die pary nie ophou as jy gaan slaap nie, so teen 3h00 was die dansbaan nog lekker aan die gang. Ek is bly ek was nie die DJ nie, want Rudie het hom streng opdrag gegee dat hy sal besluit wanneer die musiek stop, en Rudie het nie genade nie. :-)

Ons moet verskoning vra dat ons so in kortbroek en plakkies kom party hou het, toe ons uit Pretoria weg is was dit winter en ons het langbroeke en lang hemde ingepak, op die party was dit somer en ons moes maar die laaste skoon klere na ons Eland vakansie aantrek.

Ek dink die was een verjaardag wat Cheryl nog lank gaan onthou. Dankie aan almal wat dit moontlik gemaak het.

Ek het baie fotos geneem, Ariette het al die fotos laat ontwikkel maar as jy ‘n CD wil he laat my weet.

Holidays!

In winter time some animals hibernate and others migrate. Last week we came out of hibernation and migrated for a week up north to the Limpopo province. This time we were going to camp for more than a week, so we invested a bit in camping gear….my car is too small now. For our next trip I think we will have to invest in a trailer for all the gear, and goods and toys. On the photo below you can see that we are “sorted” and camped in luxury.

We camped at the Eiland Health Spa close to Tzaneen. The main attraction is huge heated swimming pool and since it was low season we were the first people in the pool in the mornings and the last people to leave the pool on most days. The water is heated in a boiler room to around 30 degrees and that is warm enough to stay the whole day in the pool.

I took a lot of pictures of the Cape Glossy Starlings that camped with us; they kept our camp site clean of anything that is remotely edible. We were visited by a pair of squirrels that helped themselves to our cookies; the byte marks on the plastic lid gave it away, at least they posed for a nice photo the previous day.




One evening we were preparing a fire and we saw branches move behind us, I recognized the silhouette and ran for my camera. It had only the 17-85mm IS lens on it and I took a picture with the Speedlight attached. The eyes of the bush baby lit up like two headlights and the picture looks surprisingly good.

We took magazines and books along to read but we did not get round to it. We don’t know where the time went but we came back from our migration at least a bit rested.

More photos can be seen here

70's Party

Saturday evening we attended a 70's theme party. It was Talita’s 30 birthdays and she celebrated it in style. I was volunteered by my partner in crime as the official photographer.

The party was a bit untimely since, I’m in the process of buying/importing a proper flash for the camera (Canon EX580). Gert also bought toys and since the bulk of the order is his he have to pay for it. Unfortunately we are experiencing credit card and bank issues which lead to a delay in shipment and I had to make do with an old flash (EX540) that is not automatic. So some of the photos were a little bit overexposed, since I had to manually set the flash intensity according to distance from the subject.

Ursula hired big afro wigs for us and we tried to dress as 70’s as possible from what we have in the cupboard. The only problem is that it is winter here and it is cold so you can’t wear what you want you have to keep warm also. One side effect of the wig is that it keeps your head nice and warm so you don’t feel so cold. My hair is thinning year by year and it is as if each winter is colder than the previous.

If you judge by how late we got home, how we felt the next morning and how much photos were taken, we must have enjoyed the party a lot.

My favorite photos can be seen here