Such a tough Life ...

Most times work is well, hard work but every now and then one gets to doing something enjoyable while still being at work. At least officially at work that is. Last week barry organised a trip down to cape town, ostensibly to wine and dine our cape town clients as well as the banks staff. Considering the amount of business that we get via capetown, we don't go down there anywhere near enough - possibly due to the allure of all those vineyards.

So thursday morning we found ourselves outside the V&A Waterfront Aquarium which, as we were to find out later, is unique amongst aquariums in that it is completely privately funded. It has no government or other public funding at all and still manages to produce research, engage in environmental education as well as conservation drives. We had organised to do our first cold water dive in the kelp tank which at 17 deg C. is certainly cold enough. Fortunately the kit that they provided us with was quite good and certainly warm enough so I didn't notice the cold too much although my mask kept fogging up. I must have cleared it at least 20 times during the 30 minute dive.

There weren't any big predators which wouldn't have worried me but I was happy to know that there weren't any turtles which, from previous experience, bite like a pit-bull (Yes, I have been bitten by both). There wasn't actually too much to see in the tank but it was great just to get wet again. We got to feed the fish from a sack of small dead fish and it was surprising how stong and solid the fish were. I tried to hold onto a few bait fish but it was hopeless, they were simply too powerful. There were some really beautiful anemones as shown below.



It was kind of wierd looking out of the tank at the public looking into the tank. I tried to take photographs of barry feeding the fish but there was such a mass of fish that, when there was a gap, by the time I had pressed the shutter - you couldn't see him anymore.
There were also two leopard catsharks in the tank which have to take the cake for a lack of intelligence, unless you basically put the food into its mouth, it won't eat. They also tried to snack on barry's legs which are about the same size as the shark. A bit like a human trying to gnaw the leg off an elephant.



The following is a picture of a perlemoen or, as it is more commonly know outside south africa, an abalone. The strange thing protruding from the perlemoen is a piece of seaweed which it is busy eating at quite a remarkable rate. We have a real problem down here with perlemoen poachers due to the demand for them principally from asia I think.



As usual, the dive was over long before I was ready to get out but that is the way it is.

We spent the afternoon working remotely and the evening entertaining customers. This consisted of a guided tour around the aquarium by the aquarium director as well as a dinner at a VERY expensive cape town restaurant which shall remain nameless. When we arrived barry asked one of the local connoisseurs to choose the wine. Bad mistake and in no time flat the magnums started arriving - great wine it must be said but (*&^(*&^ expensive. Thank goodness we don't do this often.

The next morning we were up and off back to johannesburg arriving in time to at least spend a little time in the office before everyone buggered off for the weekend. My opinion of Capetown restaurants remains intact - very expensive with average food.

That time of the year ...

Flying High

Every year at this time there is a recurring issue for smaller companies. What to do for the end of the year party? Of course we can't call it a Christmas party since we have numerous faiths or lack thereof in the company but I don't think that this is really fooling anyone. It is after all, the end of the Christian year. We've done the restaurant and the braai type thing so we decided to step outside the box so to say and take everyone on a "Canopy Tour" which is becoming quite popular here.

Of course we didn't tell anyone but subtly dropped hints that had everyone second guessing that we were doing a collective bungee jump which had certain sections of the employees in a flap. We are talking about programmers here after all - and don't even mention the Sales and Marketing.

A canopy tour, in case you haven't guessed, is a series of flying foxes or foofy slides, depending on where in the world you come from, that weave their way either through the tops of a forest or in our case zig-zag down a gorge. The slides vary from about 30m to 150m and some of them are pretty quick so you get issued with a leather glove with which you can slow yourself down. Sort of. Alternatively you can just shove a finger into the trolley that runs over the cable - that also stops you pretty quickly. Painful but definitely effective.

At the start of the tour everyone was hanging grimly onto the trolley petrified that the harness was going to break but by the end most of us had got over that and were having a great time looking around as we whizzed over the tree tops.



This is quintin showing how the sales and marketing department does it - with a degree of style and a smile. Note the right hand on the cable acting as a brake.



The whole exercise is totally safe, there are two cables and three attachment points between your harness and the cables preventing gravity from winning the day, any one of which would be more than safe enough. The only real danger of hurting oneself is to not apply any braking and making, as the guides put it, a bushman painting on the rocks at the end of the slide. Even this danger was greatly diminished because they have rigged up emergency stops to prevent one from moving onto the next world. So I think it is safe to say that the only real way to injure one's self is to jam a finger into the pulley as a couple of people found out.



I tried to take photographs of everyone as they skimmed over the tree tops but was only marginally successful. The video taken by the guides was a much better plan but it did enable me to have and excuse to go first on most of the slides. What was really great was the response to the event the day after, we got the feeling that everyone really did enjoy the day out and for some, it was an experience of a lifetime and everyone received a DVD of the day so that they could remember it forever.

Oh, well back to boerewors and rolls next year.