Cool Flight

It was an emotional time for family 6000 yesterday afternoon, as we said goodbye to Grandma and Granddad, who were (well, are, actually) flying back to the UK via Dubai. Checking on their check in though, I spotted this:

DSC_0053

Yes, at 2330 yesterday evening, you could get a flight from Cape Town to Amsterdam or… Antarctica.
Who knew?

Better make sure you get on the right plane to avoid confusion though:

Hey. Shomething ish not right. Why ish dare sho much shnow at Schipol?
Where are the buildingsh? And where did doze penguinsh come from?

The whole destination thing is a bit vague, and since the total area of Antarctica is 14,000,000km², you might find yourself some distance from the bit of Antarctica you actually want to be in, but on the plus side, at least you’re virtually guaranteed a daylight landing.

Beautiful phone, beautiful city

As these things do, my “new” Sony Xperia T smartphone – the flagship of the Xperia range – has been superseded by the new flagship of the Xperia range, the Xperia Z. It is an absolutely beautiful device, and the advert is filmed in Cape Town, which (obviously) is also absolutely beautiful.
Together, these two facts make it unavoidable blog fodder:

To be honest, aside from a slightly larger screen (not something I wanted anyway) and a couple of video enhancements on the Z, it does appear that there’s not an awful lot to choose between the two handsets, and thus I remain very happy with my phone.

UPDATE: Dammit. Just seen that it has 2GB RAM. OK, that’s quite a lot to choose. But I still remain very happy with my phone.
*seethes quietly*

In terms of units sold, Sony certainly isn’t Samsung just yet, but once users onto the fact that it keeps producing really, really good top-end mobile hardware like this, surely its market share will deservedly increase.

Three times nothing is still nothing…

I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations again.

During January – November 2012 (remember back then?), I was stopped a total of zero times in roadblocks in and around Cape Town. But hey, I’m an individual case with a propensity to stay home with my family on Saturday nights, so maybe that – while demonstrating that if I had been doing anything naughty on the roads (which I wasn’t), I would have got away with it – is actually fine.

Then, early last month, we were informed in an interview by Robin Carlisle, MEC for Transport in the Western Cape, on a local radio station that motorists were “three times more likely” to be stopped in a roadblock in the province during the “holiday season”. During that “holiday season”, I racked up well over 2,000km on the roads of the Western Cape. I was stopped a total of zero times.

Those rudimentary mathematicians among you will have already done the sums (or read the title of the post) and worked out, like me, that Robin was absolutely right.
The upshot of his worryingly accurate prediction has been a 6% increase in the number of deaths on the Western Cape roads during December, something Robin refers to as “disheartening”.

I’m well aware that the issues of drink driving, dangerous driving, cellphone use and not using seatbelts should be negated by sensible and responsible individual choices. Sadly, we also all know that that’s not going to happen.

But that aside, as we have mentioned many times before, it’s all very well for the authorities to go making these promises and commitments, but unless they’re actually going to back them up with solid action, things are not going to improve.

“Fun” “Run”

I’m getting up at 0530 on the last day of my summer holiday to do a Fun Run tomorrow. It’s just 5km and it seems very poorly organised, but – thanks to the handy addition of some residing grandparents – it’s one of the very few chances that myself and Mrs 6k get to run together, so it has to be done.

On the upside, it will also give our resident mosquitoes less opportunity to feast upon me. On the downside, I’ve been using that lack of available blood as a fairly believable excuse for some poor average times lately.

So yes, it seems annoying to get up so early for such a short run, but at least we’ll be done before it gets ridiculously hot. We braved the Waterfront earlier and were amazed at the number of roasted tourists. It’s been a very warm December. Thankfully, there are still 13 weeks for it to cool down before the Two Oceans.