musings

"Have you got any butter?" I asked the barista at the Slow XS Lounge in Lanseria. He had just passed me a double espresso. "Sure," he said, and passed me a couple of single serve tubs. He then watched in fascination as I tipped both into the espresso.

"I bet you've never seen this before," I said. He shook his head slowly.

"Is that Bullet Coffee?" asked the woman in line behind me. "Sort of a poor man's version," I said.

"Why?" asked the barista.

"It stops you getting hungry," said the woman. "Exactly," said I.

Yesterday, I said there are three very simple things President Ramaphosa can do today that will immediately give an uptick to our economy:

1. Let SAA fail
2. Take the money that would be spent on SAA and use it to upgrade Metrorail rolling stock and stations
3. Hand over control of Metrorail to the municipalities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban

Here's what he said in the State of the Nation address:

When the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project trotted out the new interchange at the intersection of the N1 and William Nicol, there were many oohs and aahs around how beautiful it was.

Actually, it's stupid. It is responsible for creating what is possibly the single biggest logjam on the road from Cape Town to Beit Bridge.

Here's the problem: Any intersection with traffic lights can only allow cars to pass through as lomg as the light is green.

(Minibus taxis have their own rules. We're not talking about them.)

I found out this morning that "Mad Mike" Hoare had passed away on 2 February, aged 100.

There's a pile of books on my bedside table in various stages of being read; ditto the guest bathroom at my home which doubles as my personal reading room every so often. 

But you will still find me prowling second hand bookshops looking for things that pique my curiosity. This is how I acquired some of David Bullard's "Out To Lunch" compilations which are long out of print.

Second hand bookshops are doomed to extinction in my country because of aliteracy – unwillingness to read even though one is able to do so.

For some time now, I have had an app on my iPhone called Day One which prompts me every morning at 8h15 to write an entry in my journal.

@Anatinus asked me this morning what that was all about, and I told her that this was a way of reminding myself that someday, I needed to start writing down occasional thoughts or discussion threads that do not fit into any of the spaces where I usually publish.

So, here I sit at the Sleepers restaurant in Hoedspruit and have taken 5 minutes to configure Drupal's blog module to type these words. It's a start!