Category: in the news

Behold The Fetch

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If you are currently residing in Cape Town, you cannot have failed to notice the somewhat extreme meteorological conditions that are prevailing this morning. The rain – and there’s a lot of rain – is travelling horizontally past our windows, assisted in no small part by the ridiculously strong and blustery northwester. It’s dark, it’s grey – dark grey – and it’s cold. Cold, dark grey.

Winter. She is here.

But where did this remarkable weather come from, I hear you ask. Well, here’s your answer: :

This was the situation at midnight last night. Now, ten hours later, Cape Town (central, “helpfully” indicated by a tiny red dot) has slipped underneath that pointy line indicating a phat cold front, linked to those double-barrel low pressure centres. And that’s why we’re getting what we’re getting right now.

But, while windguru is predicting swells of up to 7 metres for the Cape coast this weekend (and that lengthy fetch shows you why), any avid surfers will probably be disappointed, as Spike from wavescape indicates:

Gather yer nuggets Wednesday as rising 12ft beasts smack thy chops stukkend. Dik SSW surf swells in glassy sea > light NW. Epic. FB 3′ early, 4-5′ in arvi. Cooks.Thursday neargale NW smelts 10′ mess, FB 4′ in stiff offshores. By lunch, strong SW thro. DIK RAIN drench from 8am. Friday heaving 5-10′ storm sea, ragged SW winds > S. Heavy squalls subside a bit. C-c-cold. FB ragged side going onshore. Saturday heaving 5-10′ storm junk in strong S > SSE. FB kak. Sunday lekker calm, leftover 3-5′ S swell. FB fun 3′.

Thanks for that, Spike. Lucid as ever. Consider my chops smacked stukkend.

The forecast for the weekend does suggest that things will calm down a little, although if you were expecting a hefty tan by Monday morning, you may be barking up the wrong country.

Me? I’ll be heading down to Cape Agulhas, where those mad swells will hopefully bring some mad photo opportunities.
And yes, I’ll be taking my thermals along with me…

London 2012 – Want to take your camera?

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Some interesting news via PetaPixel on the rules surrounding non-professionals taking their cameras along to events at the upcoming London Olympics:

While larger venues might be more lenient, camera equipment over 30cm long (about 12in), including tripods and monopods, will not be allowed in most of the venues. In addition, attendees have also be warned that there is no storage available, so if you surrender your camera equipment to security, you’re not getting it back. If you have any doubts regarding your equipment, it’s better to leave it in your room.
The most interesting rule, however, has nothing to do with the camera equipment you use, but rather with your smartphone. Attendees, while they will be allowed to bring iPhones and Android phones into the venues, will not be allowed to use them as WiFi hotspots — in other words, if you wanted to connect your SLR (with an acceptably short lens) or WiFi enabled camera to social networks via your phone to do some on-the-fly uploading, you will not be allowed to do so.

Those size rules compare favourably with those at even minor events at the Cape Town Stadium. 30cm is assuredly big enough to satisfy anyone’s needs (said the actress to the Bishop). But the wifi thing is not only rather odd, but also surely completely unenforceable, especially since they also state that they are fine with live uploads to Facebook and the like on smartphones.

At the end of the day (or indeed at any other time), it really doesn’t bother me, since I’m not going along. But overall, I think the restrictions are a lot less draconian than many people would have expected.

SAA stops Cape Town to London flights

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Bizarre news from South Africa’s national carrier is that they are pulling their direct CPT – LHR services from August 2012. The reasons cited included:

a 24 percent drop in demand between Britain and South Africa for all carriers in the past three years, as well as dwindling passengers from Cape Town to London as a destination and for onward connections and the fact that competitors also offered cost effective routes from Cape Town.

It’s not the first time SAA has cut a high profile route from its portfolio. Back in November 2010, it dropped its Cape Town to Durban flights. But for me, this announcement is bizarre, simply because it comes just a couple of days after hugely encouraging figures from Cape Town International Airport and Western Cape Tourism, showing that:

CTIA received over 215 000 international travellers in the fourth quarter of 2011, which is a year-on-year increase of 14.5%.

Which doesn’t seem to fit with that SAA claim of falling demand.

It’s not great news for us expats (or anyone else wanting to get to the UK and back) in Cape Town as it will reduce competition on the route (not that SAA were ever really very competitive on prices anyway). Of course, you can still use the SAA service to London via Joburg, but since it adds a minimum of 4 extra hours to the journey, yet still costs as much as a direct flight, why would you want to do that?

UPDATE: Cape Town Tourism press release on the SAA announcement.

8-Nations Final

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I took the boy wonder to the Stadium last night to watch the final of the U20 8 Nations tournament. He’s still young and restless, so although there were two games on yesterday, we aimed to get down there just in time for the second one – Brazil v Argentina. However, due to the lack of traffic, combined with the 1-1 scoreline in the 3rd place game, we got there just in time to see the penalty shootout between South Africa and Japan. Amajita triumphed 7-6, which not only gave Alex the chance to cheer a bit, but also allowed us both to see a ball hitting the back of a net.

Which was nice.

  Second Half Game Over

Using the power of the doughnut, we made it safely through 90 minutes of the South American giants slugging it out using the “couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo” style of play. All the typical elements of Latin American soccer were present: flamboyant diving, flamboyant petulance and flamboyant shooting well wide of the target. If these players represent the future of the beautiful game, it’s all going (further) downhill fast.

At 90 minutes, with a delayed kick off and the prospect of another half hour of rubbish, we headed home, spotting the ISS as we left the stadium precinct. Brazil went on to win the game 2-0 aet, but having to carry an exhausted boy back to the car, I feel that we made the correct decision to leave after normal time.

13,000 turned out for the final, but the publicity for the tournament has been much criticised and the attendances have been poor. Nevertheless, we’re going to do it all again in 2014.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands…

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Lines you never thought you’d be writing on your blog:

Orville the cat’s nine lives ran out after being hit by a car last year; but rather than simply paying his respects and burying him peacefully, Orville’s owner Bart Jansen has turned him into a work of art.

Orville’s body has been stuffed, poked, prodded and turned into a remote control helicopter.

In fact, let’s just run that by you (and me) one more time:

Orville’s body has been stuffed, poked, prodded and turned into a remote control helicopter.

Here’s the story. If only there was a picture. Wait, there is!

Amazing. If only there was a video.

No – seriously?

Admit it. You’re looking at Felix and you’re thinking about jet engines, aren’t you?