Back to school, and Dads still don’t care

South African children went back to school today, and Woolworths were quick to send out an email including some great ideas for lunchbox snacks:

lbsDid you get that? Yep – “moms will love them too”. Not dads though. Oh no. Dads want their kids to get as many added preservatives and artificial flavours down them as possible, because… because… well, I don’t know why any dad would want that, actually. 

Perhaps we should ask Woolies.

Because we’ve been here before with Woolworths, haven’t we? But evidently, old habits die hard and Dads just don’t count, even if they’re the ones making the packed lunches each day.

FFS. This isn’t the 1950s anymore. It’s 2014. Get enlightened. Don’t you think it’s about time we stopped stereotyping and used the term “parents” when it comes to those individuals charged with the responsibility of looking after children, instead of continually making the assumption that it’s just mom’s domain – an assumption that’s insulting to both moms and dads.

UPDATE: A tweet from Woolies:

Which is nice.

New Exhibit for Aquarium

Cape Town’s Two Oceans Aquarium has announced that they will have a new predator exhibit open by the end of the year. As regular visitors (and “Solemates”), our family is particularly delighted at this news.

Tunnel_1-620x414

The new exhibit will hold 1.5 million litres of water and will feature – as demonstrated above – a 10 metre long tunnel, made from a single acrylic panel, meaning a seamless window into the six metre deep tank.

It’s going to be spectacular. Cannot wait.

Some of the species will include spotted eagle rays, honeycomb rays, smooth hound and spotted gully sharks as well as Yoshi the loggerhead turtle and Cannelloni the green turtle. “I am particularly excited about the possibility of displaying skipjack and longfin tuna. In the early days of the Aquarium we displayed these fast-swimming fish, but the ragged-tooth sharks ate them! This time they will be safe as the raggies will be in a different display” says Technical Manager Mike de Maine.

We have similar woes – albeit on a slightly smaller scale – with our fishtank at home.

Building work is due to start by the end of this month and it’s hoped that the exhibit will be open by the end of the year.
Follow their progress on Facebook and Twitter.

Taking tea with the President

Number 1 in a series of 1. Probably, anyway.

A nice piece by Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic descibing the day that he was in a cafe in er… America (he doesn’t say exactly where he was), when he was joined by the President. Of the country. The big cheese, le grand fromage, die grootste kaas [That’s enough cheese now – Ed.].

I had been there for a few hours when youthful, vigorous men and women wearing Business Semi-Formal started quietly going one by one among the customers sitting near me. They would crouch, adopt an expression of deep sympathy, and say something. The customer would look a little confused, pick up laptop and coat, and move to another table.

Next to me, cafe staff had made a long table by pushing three smaller tables together. Five Millennials sat around it. They were well-dressed like Ryan Seacrest is well-dressed, and they seemed nervous. The head of their table hadn’t been filled. I had assumed someone important, someone hoity-toity, would be coming, someone like a foundation executive director.

Except, as I’ve already hinted, it’s Barack Obama that turns up to have a chat with them.

Meyer’s account is interesting as it’s clear that while he was (perhaps understandably) overwhelmed by POTUS popping into his local cafe, he is also very objective about the way that Obama “works the crowd”, including the author:

The president makes eye contact with me.
“Great to see you,” says the president.

The president extends his hand while simultaneously pivoting on his right foot.
His hands grasp mine. They feel like the rough surface of your favorite baseball.

Eye contact was broken mid-handshake. His hand trailed his turned body *which has already turned on the pivoted foot.* He greeted a couple across the way from me.

This concludes my communication with the president of the United States.

Obviously, the whole thing is just one big PR exercise, otherwise the meeting would have been held somewhere private, not in a downtown cafe in… America. But that fairly obvious observation doesn’t mean that it isn’t a special or memorable moment for those present. The whole post is definitely worth a read, if just to see how this sort of thing operates.

I do have a bit of a story in this regard as well. Back in the day when I used to frequent the excellent Quod Brasserie on the High Street in Oxford, even on a Friday or Saturday when the queue outside would be down to Longwall Street, suddenly – astoundingly – 3 empty tables would be found. Two of these tables would be taken by… well… as Meyer describes above: “youthful, vigorous men and women wearing Business Semi-Formal”, and a few moments later, in would walk Chelsea Clinton with her friend/friends/colleagues and take the third table.
We would glance across at her over our Bloody Marys and rib-eye steaks, but not for too long, in case the youthful, vigorous men and women got antsy – this was just after 9/11, after all – but she seemed very down to earth and quiet, and thus, so were we.

I bumped into Chelsea at Quod on several occasions, which either indicates that she also has excellent taste in restaurants and she was hoping to see me or that it was just very convenient for her security detail to get her to, in and out of, since it’s virtually next door to University College where she was studying.

Nice video; Pretty storm

Remember a little while back, I shared a quick photo of the storm surge hitting Port St Mary in the Isle of Man?

Well, the good news is that now someone has whipped out their GoPro, shot and edited a video of the waves and chucked a bit of Sigur Rós in the background. Sadly, it’s currently unavailable to put on the blog [I’m working on this], so you’ll have to go and watch on Vimeo for the moment.

Despite the raw power at play here, it’s actually rather relaxing. Stick it on fullscreen and have a cup of coffee while you watch the sunlit Irish Sea attempt the destroy my beautiful island.

Ring

This is pretty: Mint Royale, featuring the vocal talents of Willem Dafoe, with what’s been described as “this year’s version of Baz Luhrmann’s Everyone’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)“:

All very inspiring, but it does lack the practical advice of the original. It’s all very well “lead[ing] yourself by the hand into the unknown”, but what good is that if you’ve forgotten to “stretch” or “floss”?