Last year I raved about the A1GP which came to the streets of Durban.
Last year the tickets were a fair R360 for a gold stand, which was OK, not worth every single cent, but okish.
This year, the organisers decided to be GREEDY and up the prices to R650 for the gold stands, and for the exact same stands where we sat last year, have now been changed to Platinum, which goes for a spectacular R850 !!!
Guess where I won't be this year !!!
With an overseas holiday opportunity possibly on the rise in the next couple of months, I needed to renew my passport that expired 3 years ago (I'm not much of the experienced traveller)
So below is my mini Lifehack on how to get the passport easily.
1. Skip the middleman (Costs you double the actual amount !!!)
2. Visit our very efficient Home Affairs website
3. Download the required form BI-73
4. Fill in the form, and take some pretty ID Photos
5. Fill the iPod up with some tunez.
6. Set alarm early and take leisurely drive through to nearest home affairs office, getting to be number 1 in the queue at 6:30
7. Hit play on the iPod till 8am, walk straight up to first open counter.
8. Talk nicely to the lady behind the computer, asking how her weekend was (small talk, small talk)
9. Pay your R165 and say thanks to the lady, and walk out by 8:15
Easy. All it takes is some forward thinking and some smiles :)
Add on about another 10 for discomfort, and I thank my lucky stars that I work in an airconditioned office :)
Ahh, the joys of living in Durbz
I have since found myself plenty of time, since my last post, and updated all my SA Blogs to be included into my del.icio.us bookmarks, with the tag of sablogs.
check it out here -> http://del.icio.us/marcforrest/sablogs
Media empire blogger, Jon Cherry has Announced a new blog into his stable of growing blogs.
Along comes Feverpitcher, a sports blog edited by Dan Nichol.
Feverpitcher delves into the in's and out's of the South African and world sporting arena.
Check it out at www.feverpitcher.com
As we all may know by now, our lovely Power Struggle Supplier, Eskom, is at it again.
Last year's buzzword, Load Shedding (uughh, don't want to dwell on that word for to long), is now being implemented all around the country. To see when you should stock up on candles click here.
But the irony of the situation. Reading this article this morning on MG, Eskom will be alerting us ON TV, as to when to turn off our "non-essential" appliances.
"Orange indicates an electricity strain -- consumers are prompted to switch off non-essential appliances such as tumble dryers and dishwashers."
Um, does that mean we get to keep our TV's on all the time ?
On Friday my RSS reader alerted me very nicely that Dell was going to give me a free laptop.
Word soon started spreading, and Mike Stopforth ordered 6, and was going to donate them to Baragwanath.
Until today, when I received the following mail from Dell SA.
"Dell Inspiron 640m and 9400
Dear Marc,
I am writing to you to inform you that as a result of a technical error we have inadvertently advertised the Dell Inspiron 640m and 9400 on our web store at R0. This is incorrect. The goods should have been priced at R6,990 and R10,990 respectively. As a result we are unable to fulfill your recent order for these goods. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have already paid for any associated goods, software or delivery charges forming part of your order for the Dell Inspiron 640m and/or 9400 please furnish us with your banking details and you will be reimbursed within the next few days.
We are in the process of correcting these technical issues. We hope to have this store up and running by early next week.
Please do not hesitate to contact me or your account manager if you have any questions.
Yours sincerely
Gavin Slevin
Brand Manager – Mobile Products
gavin_slevin@dell.com"
*** Warning Rant up ahead ***
As a nation, South Africans are generally quite lazy. We all know the slang, "just now" or "now now". We all use it all the time, knowing that half the time, we will never get the job done, and when we do do it, its usually a half hearted effort. I'm not saying all South African's are like this, but there is definitely more a majority than a minority. A perfect example of this a couple of years ago, was the drivers licence cards. Why was it that on the last day there were "queues around the block", of people waiting to renew their cards. Same goes for when the gun ownership legislation changed.
Why the Rant ??
Well the company I work for, deals with the dialing of International and Local numbers.
Recently Telkom and Icasa announced that when dialing an international number, you need to no longer dial 09 as we have for thousands of years, we must now conform to the "international standard" of dialling 00. Like wise when dialling a local number in the same dialing code area, you now need to dial the dialing code as well, effectively making 7 digit dialing now 10 digit dialing.
Even though our company has known about this since October when it was announced, the project to change customers side equipment only started this year. Which means yesterday when the actual change took place, all of a sudden billing figures are not what they supposed to be, and means questions get asked, to me. Eish.
We need to change our attitude as a nation and start being proactive, and doing things before they HAVE to get done. I'm pretty sure it will solve many problems in our country as well.
*** End Rant here ***
Almost 50 years ago, a little piece of plastic was moulded which has since provided millions of hours of entertainment for anyone aged 1-100. All of us have played with Lego in our lives before. Everyone.
Below is the link to the Business Week story that shows us how this ingenious invention is made.
Amazingly only 18 out of every million blocks made is found to be defective.
Read the LEGO making story here
South African people have really cottoned onto the whole blogging scene, from the intimate personal blogs, to the Mommy blogs right down to the boys will be boys blogs.
I have been told recently that I am an RSS whore, and my google reader trends don't lie to me either.
Paul from chillibean recently started the "sablogs tagging project" on del.icio.us. Although I haven't had much time & energy to do this, I have to admit its a great project, and I'm pretty sure it will grow huge.
I do however have my blogroll on the right --> full of only South African blog feeds, check them out, we defenitley have some wierd & wonderful & interesting bloggers out there !
Having a 2 year old walk down the aisle in the local spar every second day demanding bubbles, which is inevitably spilt all over the floor as soon as she gets home, or gets bored with them in 2 and half seconds, I think to myself....why didn't I think of this ???
Zubbles... The World's First Colored Bubbles!
We don't have that many podcasts in South Africa. There are a few floating around, and have just downloaded just heard Amplitude, a new podcast by Mike Stopforth and Dave Duarte's , it is a marketing podcast covering a whole lot bit of everything.
Check it out at Amplitude.co.za, and download the latest version. Some really cool inserts covering a whole lot of various topics.
The latest version can be downloaded from here.
After reading Jetstreakers account on how tigger is up for boxing a kid at Disneyworld, I came across this video of Tigger & Elmo from Sesame Street getting it on :0
Worth a laugh...
The latest version of google SketchUp has been released, and is super awesome.
For those of you that don't know what SketchUp is this is the marketing blurb from the website
"Google SketchUp 6 is a free, easy-to-learn 3D modeling tool that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse. "
In a nutshell it allows any average joe to become a super 3D designer easily. One of the new features of the latest version is that it has 3D text built in, which allows you create your own 3D words.
My attempt at the blogname above :)
via [Ogle Earth]
Came across this story on National Geographic where a Python ate a pregnant sheep.
Check the story out here
Gotta be hungry for that...eeeew (pun intended)
Well last year I officially sucked at blogging. Perhaps the year got a bit away with me. So this year, I really am going to make a concerted effort at blogging more.
as you can see there is a newish look today, and while I play a bit more with the new Blogger (out of Beta), I'm going to try and make it look all pretty.
A new addition on the right is MyBlogLog, which is really a big networking site connecting bloggers around the world.
You can check my profile out at http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/marcforrest/
Also have added my picasa album link on the right for some pictures from the silly season.
More to come soon !!!
