After a wait, which, in my opinion, was way too long, the Tri Nation Rugby finally goes to Cape Town, South Africa this weekend as South Africa takes on New Zealand this Saturday, on green turf!

“I’m getting slightly moist”, said my friend as he quipped in a needlessly graphic way about his excitement for this game.  I can’t tell if he means he’s going to wet himself or whether he’s referring to something more sexual.

Nevertheless (shaking-vivid-image-from-mind), at 1305 GMT this Saturday, 14 Aug, the Springboks come up again their nemesis, the All Blacks, on the green-green grass of the Newlands Stadium.

What? A little history?

Yeah, the history of the Newlands Stadium is interesting, if not colourful.  The actual grounds of the stadium was bought way back in 1888 (which must make it hugely auspicious for the Chinese) and saw the first game played in 1890 in front of a meager 2,400 people.

Today Newlands stadium can seat over 51,000 people in a relatively modern, recently’ish renovated concrete stadium.  It’s still one of South Africa’s most beautiful stadiums, set among the greenery and the slopes of the wet side of Table Mountain.

The stadium is accessible by all modes of transport, but the trains will bring you closest.  Going by car is what many people do though, in spite of the fact that you have to park blocks away and walk your way in.

The walk is often part of the game, as along the way loads of people will be throwing a braai (BBQ) and having a tipple before moving on to the stadium for some serious rugby.

Future of Newlands Stadium

Now is the time to enjoy the rugby games, especially the international ones, that are being hosted in the historic stadium of Newlands, because soon it might not be used so often anymore.

Currently in progress, and hopefully completed before the 2010 soccer world cup in South Africa, is the Greenpoint Stadium.

Until recently, possibly one of the most neglected stadiums around, the Greenpoint Stadium actually occupied some prime property in Cape Town and, to be fair, hosted some epic concerts and sporting events.

It was an obvious venue for the high-profile football matches scheduled for the 2010 world cup, but the stadium was ill equipped for the hordes of people expected and, besides, was in serious disrepair.

Somebody somewhere made the decision that it would in fact be easier to virtually rebuild the stadium instead of the substantial upgrades it would require.  The future Greenpoint Stadium is slated to be able to house 68,000 people.

Not living in Cape Town I’m not up to date with the latest goss of its progress, but I would love to know if it will be done in time for 2010 and what will be done regarding parking, access and traffic in general, as it’s literally pushed into a corner of Cape Town which isn’t traffic friendly at all.

Back to the Rugby

But I digress.  Back in Rugby land not only do the Springboks have their work cut out for them this weekend as they meet the All Blacks on their home turf, but the poor Springbok coach Pieter De Villiers does too.

There is forever an issue with colour balance in the Springbok team and I read, nearly chocking on my coffee, that black and coloured people of Cape Town traditionally support the All Blacks!  Race, I tell you, is one of those nasty dividers equaled only by religion.

Why can’t we all just see each other as human and practice a unifying religion like, say, rugby?

What I would like to see is the entire crowd at Newlands Stadium dressed in green, the way the staunch All Black supporters at the Dunedin Stadium were dressed in black when they met the Bokke there.

And no boo’ing or hissing when the All Blacks do something good or bad, just nothing but a deafening silence.  Or not, as the Bokke did break a nearly 100 year old record that day at Dunedin, but still, an all green crowd would be amazing.

The Springboks doesn’t have an easy ride either way.  They played 3 games so far and lost 2 of those, so they’re a little behind in the standings.  Check out the standings table for the dire picture.

But Bokke to the end! If it can be done, they can do it.  Go Bokke, I don’t mind what colour my Bok is, as long as he’s green!

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I’m South African. You know, from that country that sits as far south as you can go on the African continent?

You laugh, but I once got talking to a girl while I was on a bus in Ilford, east of London and when I said I was from South Africa, she went pensively quiet before she looked up and asked “South Africa? Where’s that?”. As a sidebar and for the record, because I still get this question frighteningly often: lions do not roam freely in the streets of South African cities.

Anyway, I’m a South African who’s mother tongue is Afrikaans, and I’m white. That doesn’t make a me white, Afrikaans, South African racists bastard though. Ok, it does make me a white, Afrikaans, South African bastard, but that’s as much as I’ll give you. Also, bastard isn’t stereotypical of the country, but it is of the gender

Afrikaans, although it looks confusingly similar compared to African, should not be confused with it. Afrikaans is pronounced ‘ah-free-kaahn-ss‘. And it’s not a plural form, don’t let the ’s’ confuse you. It’s confusing for other reasons though as Afrikaans, the language, could include people from various ethnic origins. Black and brown, or coloured people (mixed origin I guess would be the PC term), can also be Afrikaans. They would refer to themselves as black, Afrikaans South Africans, for example, although I doubt that anybody does. But Afrikaans is not just a language, it could be a people too, although the majority of Afrikaners (’ah-free-kaahn-errs‘) happens to be white, Afrikaans doesn’t denote ethnicity.

Hardcore white (possibly racist) South Africans who happen to speak Afrikaans would possibly disagree with the following statement, but in my book, an Afrikaaner is any person who was born into a Afrikaans speaking household, cheers for the Springboks or Proteas and knows how to braai a steak on a grill alongside chicken wings, mielies and boerewors and can eat pap (porridge) for dinner with the aforementioned.

Anyway, Afrikaans, the language, was Dutch about 350 years ago. The Dutch frequented what is called Cape Town today, on their way to the East for trading spices. Back then when resources were plentiful, they set up shop to supply fresh fruit, vegetables and water to passing ships and never left. Thus, the Dutch they brought with them started a fork that over the next centuries would evolve and end up as Afrikaans.

Afrikaans speakers can still communicate with the Dutch from the Netherlands though, especially those from rural areas. I once met a random somebody on the Tube in London, who described themselves as Flemish, and we had a fluent, effortless conversation in two different languages that may as well have been the same. The Dutch from Amsterdam speak a modern Dutch, which is more difficult to follow. Besides, they speak it at a speed which makes it hard to tell one word from the next, never mind what language they’re speaking.

There was a point to this post… oh yes. So, I got talking to Julia about Mielies.

A Mielie (’me-lee‘) is a corn-on-the-cob. But who the hell wants to go around calling it corn-on-the-cob when you can describe it perfectly by saying Mielie. The obvious ease of use is why many people continue to live their lives referring to that thing of yellow things growing around a white thing as Mielie.

Julia recent read Nelson Mandela’s semi-autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. For reasons that I can’t phatom beyond the fact that an English South African (or worse, a non-South African) assisted the man in writing the book, Mielies are spelled Mealies.

Of course, I understand the reasoning behind wanting to spell it as Mealie, because phonetically it seems like it has to be right. And I will relent if somebody can prove that the word has been accepted into the English vocabulary and dictionary and adapted for ease of use within the language.

In Afrikaans (the language) ‘ie‘ is pronounced ‘ee’ and thus Mielie, is pronounced Mee-lee.

Now to make me a liar, you can scour the Internet and type mealie into every dictionary you can find and you’ll find an answer. Dictionary.com says it’s “an ear of corn“. What is an ear of corn? But I will stubbornly refuse to believe that mealie is the correct form of this word.

Of course, consult any Afrikaans Dictionary, and you will soon realise that Mielie is the dominant form, and as the word is Afrikaans in origin, that’s all I have to say about that.

Unless the additional research I’m going to do after this post proves me wrong, in which case this might be the second, or even third last thing I have to say about that.

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Here’s a collection of random things that apply to multiple categories.

Rugby

The world champs went home and although politics are pissing on their parade, they have the umbrella of that longed-for euphoria to keep them dry for now. But it’s a tiny, tiny umbrella and the political piss is being blown in from all sides by the winds of change.

The good news is South Africa is now topping the IRB’s world rugby ranking, which as World Cup Champions is their rightful place. Interesting is how Argentina jumped from 6th to 3rd (!) place, thanks mostly to the vicious salt they rubbed in France’s wounds, and is now the number 3 team in the world behind New Zealand who is number two. If, like me, you wonder how that works, it’s all explained here.

Never too old for online dating

Whilst I was surfing my favourite South African news site (favourite, because you don’t make you pay for it when you’re logging in from overseas like the other giant, Naspers, does), I came across this little gem advertised in the sidebar. It’s an online-dating web site’s advert that features random profiles.

Meant to entice you to join, it will give you a little bit of info about who you’re seeing and what they’re looking for. I had to screen-grab this one (might never see it again), because it amused me for several reasons.

First, for relatively conservative South Africa for this distinguished gentleman to date so publicly at all is a huge social achievement. Secondly, I know my mom took a good 10 years to get the hang of this online thing, so kudos to him for doing that too. Then, I think he’s quite possibly the oldest person I’ve ever seen using an online dating service.

It’s probably a bit nasty of me, but first thing I thought when I saw his profile pic was rich, lonely, and extremely rich.

Anyway, chaps to the guy. You gotta wonder how the responses he’s getting are going for him.

Water under Troubled Bridge

I think I might have been one of the first people to travel across the new flyover next to the Kadamunsing Shopping Centre the night that it was opened to the public. Have you noticed how it hangs to the right when you travel over it direction Damai?

I picked up this little morsel of goss from architect and engineering friends of mine the other day: apparently, and these are just rumours, I don’t pretend to state them as facts, they were saving costs. See, usually roads are built slightly higher (nearly imperceptible) in the middle and lower to the sides to facilitate the efficient run-off of water, but this means draining systems on both sides, which clearly is more costly than just doing it on one side. So, slant your bridge to the right and save yourself some dosh.

I’m not sure if they were cutting corners to do this, or whether they had planned it all along, but there you have it. By having the surface slant down from left to right, they only had to fit one side with drainage holes and pipes. Hmmm.

And, I’m not sure, but if there are some mathematical geniuses out there, they could calculate the difference in the volume of the earth/gravel/rubbish used to build the ramp on the Damai side of the bridge, vs. the volume that would be required to make that ramp a proper, smooth decline.

Damn, if you approached that end of the bridge going faster than 40 kph I’m convinced you’d catch some air on the way down. By making it so steep they must have saved tons of earth, or gravel or whatever it is they use to prop it up with, and I wonder how much stuff like that goes for per truck load.

KK Traffic Problems

KK doesn’t have traffic problems. KK has driver attitude problems.

It’s true, there’s possibly 2 cars for every person in KK, but I think the roads can actually handle it. The challenge we face is the every driver is only in it for himself, which is understandable, because if you give one guy a chance, the 5 behind him will take advantage.

In order to make it easier for everybody, everybody has to be kind, patient and giving on the road. If everybody doesn’t do it, nobody will do it, so I can understand that this is going to be an uphill battle. But by making small, attitude adjustments that require very little effort, everybody can contribute to alleviating the traffic situation in Kota Kinabalu.

Tip No.1: Park properly - For instance, in this picture I took today, I returned from lunch to find the car park packed. There was this space, but Mr. or Mrs. Park-I-Cant parked their car in a way which made this space unusable. You see this in car parks every, as if KK sells drivers licenses right next to Pay as You Go phone cards.

Sure, I can squeeze my car in there and then carefully slip through the narrow space I would be left with, but do you think Mr. or Mrs. Park-I-Cant will do the same? Probably not. They will come back and without much regard for my car take little bits of my car’s paint with them by scraping it with their bag / keys / small children or their own car door, thinking nothing of it. My car is already full of little nicks and cuts that mysteriously appear while it’s parked in car parks and I’m not near it.

So park properly, it’s no effort. And if you can’t expertly maneuver your car, please stay at home.

Tip No.2: You’re not the only road user, be considerate - I was forced to drive to KK’s CBD in the middle of the day. I didn’t want to, but I had to. And then what I knew would happen, happened. Stuck in a jam, crawling along at two steps per minute, little grandma’s with walking sticks looking like they’re running past my car.

So cars were pushing and shoving and not respecting yellow boxes and not letting anyone in, but I was patient. Aircon, music, I was ok. Then I circled the Capital Hotel block to look for parking, all the while crawling, when suddenly the Kinabalu Daya Hotel mini-bus in front of me stops. More traffic, I thought, but no - this driver gets out, opens the back and starts to unload supplies, linen, flowers and other rubbish for the hotel from his van.

My incredulous look, hands up asking wtf was only met with a smile and wave of the hand. What could I do? And while he gingerly took his time unpacking the stuff onto the sidewalk, traffic was building up behind me and spilling into the road in front of Little Italy, causing yet more traffic. Eventually, after a good 6 minutes of seeing how many eggs the Daya Hotel uses per day, he hopped in and crawled off. A little further down the road a parking space opened up and he rolled in. I was fuming.

Anyway, watch out for my How-to-solve-KK’s-traffic Tips Series coming up soon.

The Doulos has Left the Building

We went to visit the Doulos last night. Got there, long snaking line of course. Armed with our secret weapon, Julia, we just waltzed straight past and went to the staff entrance where Julia hooked us up with the main man, the Director of the ship, who in turn hooked us up with Marli, the very easy-on-the-eye Media Relations Officer of the ship. She took us through the staff entrance and gave us the skinny on the Doulos.

Check out that article coming up soon too. They left the KK harbour this morning, but they’ll be spending it at Sepangar Bay today, because that’s where they will be refueling before they leave for Brunei, their home for the next 7 days. After that it’s off to the Philippines for some down-time to do a 10 day dry-dock stint for repairs.

The Doulos is a worthwhile project, and if I could afford to go without pay for so long, I would actually consider joining it. If you can afford to live on the ship, do good is many different countries while you live off sponsorship, then do go check out their website at www.mvdoulos.org for the requirements.

And that wraps it up for Issue I of Random Snippets.

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I’m not sure whether Manto Tshaballala-Msimang, South Africa’s Minister of Health, is trying to ruin South Africa’s reputation in the health care arena, whether she studied to achieve this, set a goal or whether perhaps this is something hereditary passed down to her from some grandma or grandpa several generations ago that is manifesting itself in the most publicly humiliating ways possible; but whatever the motivation slash reason is, she’s doing a damn fine job of it.

I keep up to date with South African news (every now an again) . This has been a long running issue. Get ready for some Manto-bashing.

Since she was appointed as Minister of Health in 1999, she, as the head of her portfolio, have been ridiculed, embarrassed, humiliated (the last two were mostly self-inflicted) and mocked by all streams of media both nationally throughout South Africa and in the International arena.

She first drew loads of attention to herself, embarrassing the government and Thabo Mbeki himself (actually, he did it to himself) in the process, when she claimed that HIV didn’t cause AIDS. The recommended a diet of beetroot, garlic, lemons and African potatoes as way to control AIDS and refused to distribute ARVs to AIDS patients defending her stance with alleged toxicity of the drugs. The vegetable diet was how she earned herself the name of Dr. Beetroot and virtually made her a star in this condom advert.

She openlt endorsed Matthias Rath, a fraud claiming to be medical doctor, being able to cure or control AIDS with a herbal diet and also warning the poor about the toxicity of ARVs.

Considering South Africa has the highest count of HIV carriers in the world, her ministry had done it’s best to ignore the gravity of the situation. She repeatedly refused spending money on drugs and facilities for HIV sufferers, trying to sweep the issue under the carpet saying it is but one of South Africa’s many health problems and refused to pay it the serious attention it needed. Yet, under her instruction, the Department of Health (notice the acronym, DoH!) remains so delusional they can’t seem to grasp the irony of the first paragraph of her bio on their website.

In 2003 a report found that HIV is such a burden on public funds that putting proper measures in place would actually save the Government money. The report was hidden and only made public when it was somehow leaked by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).

Eventually the Government accepted the report and forced her to give ARVs to HIV patients and she remained in charge of rolling out the campaign to snub HIV. In 2005, COSATU discovered that of the R 30 million available to her through the Government’s AIDS Trust since 2002, she had spent only R 520,000, much of which were wasted on rent for empty offices and went unspent for idiotic reasons beyond comprehension.

In 2006 at an International AIDS Conference in Toronto, the South African government was openly criticized for their HIV Policies and afterwards over 60 leading AIDS scientists requested from President Thabo Mbeki that Manto Tshaballala-Msimang be dismissed. And then she goes in moans about her position in future AIDS conference.

But she remains in power today.

In February this year (2007) she was admitted to hospital and in March she received a liver transplant. The Sunday Times, a large national newspaper, revealed that in 2005 when she was also in hospital, she had sent the staff out to buy wine, liquor and food. There was also speculation that her liver problems involved alcohol abuse. She threaten to sue the newspaper, but the newspaper declined as much as a retraction.

In August this year (2007) the same newspaper reported that she has a status of prohibited immigrant in Botswana, which came about after she was deported following a conviction of theft. She was convicted of stealing items from patients in a hospital in Botswana. Since then all sorts of skeletons (beetroot still lodged in the ribs) fell out of her closet.

Yet, inexplicably, she remains in her post as Health Minister.

This month (October) a condom scandal was revealed. Several companies were contracted by the Health Ministry to produce condoms to be given away for free by the Health Department. Not two months ago it was discovered that an official of the South African Bureau of Standards was bribed to approve sub-standard and defective condoms. 20 million condoms were recalled and they started show up in random places across South Africa. They were improperly discarded and many were still in the boxes.

And as the numbers of sub-standard condoms are getting ever bigger, her department is once again embroiled in a sex slash HIV related issue, albeit, at this time, only marginally (but there is still plenty to dig). Yet again the question of whether she is fit for office will be brought to Parliament.

Has the cat-like Health Minister used up all her lives, or will she come out the otherside of yet another scandal, still standing and still in the position of Health Minister of South Africa? Speculation is rife.

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A man’s gotta have his tea.

It’s chock full of anti-oxidants, and with more and more people telling me I have hairline wrinkles, I need all the help I can get to stop the aging process.

So from my beloved South Africa comes Rooibos Tea (let me know if you find the official official website). Chock full of anti-oxidants, no calories and no caffeine. It’s a pretty decent drink - yes, the taste is a bit odd for your Earl Gray lover, but it’s very palatable.

I’ve been looking for Rooibos (literally translated means red bush) for a while, and the stash that I got with the package (see previous post) that my sister sent me, has tied me over. But being in the same packaging as the ill fated beer, has made the taste a little… odd.

The other day I was Kota Kinabalu’s newest operating-although-not-fully-occupied mall, City Mall, when my friend disappeared, only to re-appear with a box of Rooibos Tea. Obviously I struggled to contain myself, but somehow managed.

The tea was from, not where, Waitrose in the UK, packaged in Malaysia (with a big Made in Malaysia sticker on the box) - but we all know Rooibos only comes from one place: the Western Cape region in South Africa. So there.

Anyway, with a fresh supply of Rooibos, suddenly South African products were coming out of the woodwork in the most odd places. Giant stocks a variety of South African products (go Giant!), my corner shop, aptly named ‘Pick n Pay’ (a big chain supermarket in South Africa) has a range of fruits from South Africa, and even Merdeka Supermarket imports canned fruit and fresh fruit from there.

The best discovery though was this Red Lipton Tea. My friend Julia had been drinking it for ages before she discovered it was ‘Red Tea‘, actually made with Rooibos Tea. Of course, now it’s the drink of choice!

Grab yourself some, good stuff actually.

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