Aaargh! Sometimes things are just so frustrating

I read today about a $1.5 million "investment" from AECF to Monitise to "develop m-banking services" in africa. AECF which is backed by the Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations is supposedly to be helping africa to develop, which it obviously desperately needs, but I fail to see how this kind of "investment" really helps africa.

If this investment was really to help africa it should be "invested" in african companies that will develop real skills and IP that would stay in africa and be of long term benefit to africa. If it is not going to do this it just ends up being the first world gaining an aura of respectability by appearing to "invest in the development of africa". I can just hear the nay-sayers saying that an "african" company couldn't possibly develop this kind of product to which I say bullshit; there are probably at least 5 small companies in south africa alone which can and have developed mobile banking platforms and this is without even looking at zimbabwean and kenyan companies which could do just as good a job.

If you don't believe me, just ask yourself what IP this investment develops that will remain in africa? What are the software development skills that are developed that remain in africa and loading an OS and installing an application doesn't count as real skills development. My prediction is that on both counts the answer will be NONE and if this was really about the development of africa the answers should not be NONE.

Even worse, this not only takes an opportunity away from an african company but actively keeps african companies from developing by removing potential customers from what is already a small market place. The "investment" effectively subsidises first world software development and helps to ensure that third world software development can't and won't compete.

Now that the rant is over, I have to say that I really hope that AECF is doing this unwittingly and that their intentions really are what they consider "best" for africa but what they consider "best" doesn't make much sense to me.

"Don't call me stupid ..."

... as the immortal line from Kevin Kline goes in "A fish called Wanda".

Last week the UCT rag magazine had an article which insulted and basically called christians 'stupid' which led to a torrent of responses from indignant and insulted christians. What a mess and all because people fail to distinguish respect of people from respect of beliefs and ideas and then within these two domains, the stupid from the clever.

By way of example, a person with an IQ of below 100 is commonly held to be, dare I say it, 'stupid' in the same way that a person that has an IQ over 140 is commonly held to be a 'genius'. But just because someone is below average in IQ does not mean that it is acceptable to insult or be derogatory of them as people.

Illustrating a 'stupid' belief; if I was of the opinion that if I dropped a ball it would remain suspended in mid-air, people could justifiably consider my opinion to be 'stupid' even though I myself may not be 'stupid'. Unlike calling a person 'stupid'; pointing out unsubstantiated ideas and beliefs as being 'stupid' does not hurt the feelings of the beliefs or ideas. If, however, people holding those beliefs or ideas choose to feel insulted that is an emotional problem where people can't distinguish between what they are and what they believe. Unfortunately, this is a reality that needs to be addressed which isn't so easy.

So while we should not shy away from pointing out ideas and beliefs that are 'stupid' it is not the same as pointing out people to be 'stupid' - that is just insulting behavior and shouldn't be tolerated. If you need to point out the opposing person as stupid rather than the argument they are presenting as stupid; you're the one with the problem or as Desmond Tutu so succinctly put it: "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument."

http://jv.news24.com/Rapport/Suid-Afrika/0,,752-2460_2474006,00.html
or in english:
http://www.women24.com/Women24/ChatWin/Guest_Columnist/Article/0,,1-2-147-151_21738,00.html

signed kkkkkkkk...Ken

A funny thing happened on the way

In one of the newspapers this weekend there was a really great article about someone who was fed up with the number of potholes in our roads and the incompetence of the municipalities in maintaining them so he planted about 100 trees, one per pothole, in and around bloemfontein I think it was. This sounds like a great idea to highlight a problem but I didn't realise that I would fall victim to a pothole the very next day.
This morning I did a 2:45 ride with Jason and Sam and at one stage Jasons orienteering skills let him down and we ended up riding across some mowed grass to get back onto the path. I wasn't concentrating too hard and rode right into a hole dug for a tree but the digger had forgotten to plant the damn tree. The grass had grown and pretty much covered it so the first thing that I knew about it was when my front wheel went in and I went head over the handlebars - much to an oncoming mountain bikers amusement. I didn't actually fall very far; it was more like the bike just disappeared from under me and I skidded to a halt having landed chest first on the grass beyond the hole. Very undignified but nothing hurt or broken so no real problems although my head is a bit sore at the moment.
Having experience the first hand effects of tree holes without trees in them I am in complete agreement that potholes really need to be greened!

Dischem Ride for Sight 2009

Well, the day finally arrived after what seems like ages of training for us to ride the race. I picked Carl up at 05:30 and Hennie and Hannes were meeting us, also at carls at 05:45. Carl and I were waiting outside and we heard a motor gunning it down the road and I said to Carl "Here's Hennie" as a car roared past the front gate. "Obviously not!" quipped carl and I had to agree although i did see bicycles on the back of the car and the odds of that happening at 05:45 on a sunday morning have got to be slim. Two minutes later Hennie reversed back to the driveway looking sheepish at having missed a house he has been to dozens of times.
We drove in convoy out to Boksburg stadium for the 116km long race which fortunately doesn't contain any real hills but it is still 116km long which is a good days riding. We decided to stick together and ride as a group which we pretty much accomplished for the majority of the race.
Up until the 30 or 40km mark we just rode at our own pace and didn't realise that we had attracted a big peleton of about 50 riders all tucked in behind us; it felt quite good riding at the head instead of lurking in the pack like I normally try and do. About the first 60km is gently downhill which is great fun but at about 40km I got a puncture - the second in a month which is a lot for me as I normally get punctures quite seldom. After fixing the puncture I didn't check my brakes and as a result spent the next 70 odd kilometres riding with the brakes rubbing. I don't know how much of a difference it really made but I can say that I struggled over the last 40km. In the end; Hannes and Carl finished together with me a couple of minutes behind and Hennie another minute or so behind me which is actually great that we all finished so close together. I actually think that Carl looked the freshest afterwards. Hannes, Hennie and myself were all knackered but now that there is some distance between me and the finish line; it really is a great race to ride. Highly recommended even though I spent the rest of the day recovering and even a bit of monday.

Licenses have a habit of expiring at inconvenient times

I went to get my international drivers license last week friday for our upcoming trip which starts on 1 April only to be told by the AA (No, not Alcoholics Anonymous) that my license expires while we are away. Bugger it! Getting a new license takes some time and a lot of time queueing in government offices waiting for people to come back from their lunch break, waiting for the computer system to work, waiting for - oh, any number of totally unbelievable excuses. In addition to this I actually couldn't get my license application in because the JMPD was on strike so I had to wait until this wednesday to hand the application in. It takes 6 weeks, or so they say. I leave in 7 weeks so it sounds like I'm going to be in for a nerve wracking time during that last week.

Blood sucking

On Saturday morning I had a PR disaster in my subtle anti-smoking campaign waged on Caron. It all started innocently enough, we took Samuel and Hannah to the health shop to show them their blood under the microscope which was fascinating and entertaining. The lady operating the microscope picked up that samuel was gluten intolerant which, given his parentage, is actually quite likely and would really explain certain things. He isn't violently gluten intolerant so I don't think that is going to lead to massive changes in his diet; he just has to be a little careful. Hannah had just recovered from a bout of flu and the number of bacteria in her blood was noticeably higher than the rest of us. It's amazing to see the bacteria swimming between the blood cells; I was hoping to see a white blood cell pac-man gobble one up but it was not to be. Not really much wrong with either of their blood which is quite cool to know but it would be really nice to have a copy of the slides so that one could track the blood with time. The last to go was caron and I was hoping for another arrow to my anti-smoking armoury but I was sorely disappointed! Caron, who smokes and does no exercise had better looking blood than me who doesn't smoke (much) and exercises perhaps more than strictly required. Eish! boomerang arrow!

The builders are ....

GONE and just not having them on the property has increased the quality of life dramatically. For the last 4 months we have been building a patio as shown below which is quite a long time for a fairly small job.

but then expecting the 'quality german' builders to actually finish on time seems maybe just a bit too much. Anyway, it's done and despite the numerous imperfections it does actually look quite good at first glance.

At the moment we are both sitting at the table with out laptops connected via wireless while the cat looks on from his perch on the puke green cushion. The night is one of those perfect african evenings, cool and quiet with the sound of cicadas and the odd bird to entertain us. Sometimes life down here really is just too terrible for words!

New TOY!

There is something about being in IT (pronounced as "it" as in "where is it?" if you're my mother-in-law) and requiring a constant stream of new toys. 'Officially' my new toy is a necessity for our upcoming travels in the first world in order to continue writing my blog whilst away from my latop which is just "too big" to lug around europe. Enter the EeePC pictured below ...

with my current laptop in the foreground for comparison. Aside from the actual size of the EeePC it has a SSD drive of 20GB which has no moving parts. When I purchased it I thought I was buying the linux version but when I booted it up the windows virus had spread and greeted me with the BSOD so I just had to nuke it and put ubuntu (being all african and that) on which had been pretty impressive. A small amount of problems with the wireless network card because of hardware drivers but fairly simply sorted out. What is really remarkable is how usable it actually is given it's tiny size of screen and keyboard. This is my first blog from my new laptop.

Professional Fortune Tellers

It seems to me that there are a significant number of professions that ought to have the tag "Professional Fortune Teller" appended to their qualifications. Here's how it works:
Everyone knows that it is not possible to predict the future however people and businesses need to know the future in order to position themselves advantageously so they hire, to avoid responsibility, these professional fortune tellers to give their opinions on the future and these opinions become quasi-reality. At some point in the future the present catches up and the predictions made are either mostly right or mostly wrong; if they were right, the fortune teller gets tick next to his/her name and the employer feels that the money invested in the prediction was justified. If however the fortune teller was wrong he/she gets a cross next to their name and the money invested is written off to experience. Either way, the next day the process starts again but the future is like a quantum state; if you observe it - it changes so who's to say that one didn't actually observe it but by doing so it changed.

Professional Fortune Tellers : Economists, Investment Advisors, Project Managers, Financial Forecasters, Traders, Budgets, Retirement Planners, Risk Assessors
Employers of Professional Fortune Tellers: You, me and everyone else.

So what is my point? There is nothing wrong with hiring Professional Fortune Tellers after all; an educated guess is better than an arbitrary guess but one should never lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day it is still just a guess.

Belated Xmas

On christmas morning we were at Kim & Laurels house watching Sage open her numerous xmas presents, one of which was a new dress which she had to try on immediately. Laurel wanted to have a photograph of her in it and when she was ready Sage struck a pose like she was a model but the way that she did it had us all in stitches. It looks like she is going to be a natural in front of the camera!

Happy New Year!

To everyone out there in cyberspace; may 2009 be better than 2008!

The tyranny of labels

We're busy building and surprise, surprise what we are getting ain't quite what we would consider acceptable so we have ended up making compromises, to a certain degree, on the quality of the workmanship. It is frustrating to the n'th degree that we get to pay someone to do something just so that we can complain at how badly it has been done. The builders of course know that some things just can't be redone without a huge cost so they play the "what will they accept" game and try to get away with as much, or little, as possible.

A strange way to start a post on "the tyranny of labels" but what got me to thinking about the labels we commonly use to simplify life and discussions was a meeting with the builders where I was complaining about the quality of the carpentry which is pretty shoddy. Surprisingly, the builder agreed that the workmanship was shoddy but blamed it on "South African Quality" and this after having vouched for the (future) quality of their workmanship. By blaming the poor quality on "South African Workmanship" they were implying that, in their particular case, that if it had been done by "Germans" it would have been of better quality. I beg to differ, quality or lack thereof has nothing to do with nationality, it has everything to do with individual training, aptitude and experience not to mention price but it is so convenient to blame it on something that everyone knows is a problem in South Africa i.e. the skills shortage.

This got me to thinking about the labels we commonly apply like "Swiss Quality", "Fat Americans", "German Humour", "Nigerian Corruption" and how really unfair and wrong it is to treat these commonly held conceptions as the rule and the converse doesn't really exist. Personally, having worked with some swiss products, they aren't as good as they should be and I have met numerous thin americans and germans with a sense of humour do exist; as long as you don't mention "the war" (joke courtesy of John Cleese).

The problem with labels is that they stick, we innately like using labels and both marketing departments and those with prejudices to share know it and abuse it. So why do we continue to make these labels? Well, it's because they are partly true but the trick is that they are not wholly true and we have a bit of a weakness for extending what may be generally true to making it absolutely true.

Taking american obesity as an example, 55% of Americans have a BMI of >25 whereas there is a negligible number of Indians that are overweight; so are americans fat? Well, compared with indians, definitely and on average, yes they are, but there is still that 45% of americans who are at the ideal BMI or below it and 45% of a population is a big percentage to ignore by making a sweeping statement like "Americans are overweight"

Labels are particularly dangerous when used either derogatively to put a group of people in a negative light; for example "militant muslim" used often and indiscriminately enough leads people to believe that if you're a muslim you are therefore militant. This example is a bit more tricky than the BMI of americans because objectively assessing whether muslims, christians or any other faith or non faith are more or less prone to militant behaviour is not so easy. I would guess that we are all equally prone to militant behaviour but the point is that nobody really, I think, knows; the label is just attached to an identity and prejudice soon follows.

Some presents are more effort than one thinks

A few months ago Kim and I were standing under her large Pin Oak looking up into the branches and discussing how it was just begging to have a tree house built in it. Little did I know just how much effort building a tree house 5m off the ground actually is but now I know so my career as a builder of tree houses is officially over and emotional blackmail isn't going to bring me out of retirement.

It's not that it is that difficult, it's just really awkward working between the ground and 5m off the ground. The first thing was to build the "A" shaped structure on the ground which I then lifted into the tree with a minor whoopsy on the way but nothing broken or damaged. Once in the tree I added on the rectangular piece which one can't quite see in the picture. Having finished that I put the OSB board on and nailed it in place and rigged the suspension wires to points that weren't resting on boughs. A dash of paint and 20 hours of work later; voila! I really hope that Samuel and Hannah use it because if they don't; I'll be a bit pissed off to put it mildly.

Quote of the day

"Common sense is soluble in testosterone!"

www.cultcycling.co.za

The Toyota MTN Cycle Park

Ok, I think I'll get the embarassing end result out of the way first. The score, jump 3, roland 0.

Since all my riding partners are away having lazy holidays I thought it would be fun to go and try out "The Toyota MTN Cycle Park" located where Main road goes over the N1 so I put all the kit on and chugged off to see what gives. The entrance fee is R50.00 which is pretty steep but unlike Northern Farm which charges R10.00 the Toyota MTN cycle park really does put a lot of effort into enabling you to have a whole bunch of fun. Fun in this instance means that you have at least a chance of breaking something, most likely your bike but there is a indemnity form you have to sign before you get in to take care of liability in the event that you break yourself instead of your bike.

There is a perimeter jeep track with well marked entrances to to the single track which eventually exit back onto the perimeter track. All single track is one way which is great and hopefully nobody is going to meet someone going the wrong way. The single track is graded into green, blue and black like ski runs and like skiing, black is to be taken with caution. There are tons of arrows but I think it would have been better to have made the arrows the same colour as the grading.

I started off on some greens, then blues and finally some blacks which I found to be pretty challenging. A note on the establishments use of "caution" signs; they really mean it! It would really be best to get off and have a good look at whatever one should be cautious about and going slowly doesn't work as often you need some speed to be safe.

Next to the BMX track there are several drop off's which were great fun but there was one I didn't do because I think I would have been arse over kettle. For the record it was the one with the roots half way down. The first drop off I did was exhilarating but the first jump at the bottom caught me by surprise but no problem, a quick jump and I flew over it and almost landed straight on top of the second jump which would have been a spectacular stop. As it turned out I just used the compression from the landing from the first jump to launch me over the second one; I must have looked like a kangaroo bouncing over the jumps. Great fun!

On to the jump that I couldn't get right pictured below. The problem with this jump is that you need some speed to clear the 1.5m gap but the S curve before the jump means that although you can get the speed it puts you on a path to the bushes. Landing a little short is not an option on this jump unless you don't mind buying a new back wheel each time you visit so speed is vital. Direction is unfortunately also vital. Hmmm, eish and eina!

Note the caution signs, they aren't joking! I think that the line to take would be starting at the left of the path and take off should be just to the left of the black stump. That way you ought to land in the middle of the right curving path after the jump. I think, but not having successfully negotiated this I can't say for sure.

Note the expropriated pavement waiting to buckle some back wheels; I think the bike shops may have had a hand in constructing this jump!

First attempt I wasn't going anywhere near fast enough, being cautious and all that and the back wheel caught the pavement and I took a sideways dive into the bushes on the left. Second time, a bit more speed so I cleared the pavement easily but the aim wasn't so good and I ended up doing a forward roll over the handlebars in the bushes. Third time speed was good, direction better but landed very hard and lost it taking a dive into the bushes on the right. This is going to take a few more visits I can see. Anyway, nothing broken but I think that I'm going to be a bit sore tomorrow morning! I can however confirm that the bushes to the left and rights of the path make for a pleasantly soft landing should one get it wrong!

Christmas 2008 at the Vaal

Caron and I have given up trying to second guess what the other actually wants and solved the annual gift buying conundrum by going shopping together; the one chooses and the other pays. It takes the surprise out of opening one's present but there can be nobody other than yourself to blame if you don't get what you actually wanted and having to wait until christmas to actually open the present made it still feel like a gift.

The morning started with the holmes tribe for early morning coffee and breakfast which was a bit of a quiet affair since there was only one child, sage, at home and there is a limit as to how much noise a single child can generate. Put another child into the equation and all bets are off; it is not a linear equation.

After breakfast we drove down to the Marina Letata on the Vaal to have lunch with Kirsten, Carl, Bruce, Charmaine, my parents and assorted children which was very noisy and chaotic especially in comparison. After lunch charmaine and I took the children down to have a swim which started out innocently enough but ended up as shown below:

From left to right Liam, Jordynne, Austin, Alistair and Megan

Alistair, Liam and Austin leapard crawling through the mud. Alistair looking a bit confused as to whether this really was fun or not. Megan on the other hand had no such qualms and really got into the swing of things.

The five mud monsters.

This looks like one of those photos to be buried away and resurrected on someone's 21st.


As the children progressed from clean to completely filthy charmaine was worrying what grandma was going to say when she saw the demise of jordynnes brand new red and white costume. Nothing as it turned out and I got the distinct impression that somehow we, as adults, are missing out on a whole bunch of fun because we collectively refuse to be children again. Towards the end of the mud bath Austin and Liam were running down the banks and diving headfirst into the mud and sliding a few metres and right into the water; I would do this as well but I think I might break my back.

After the photo session everyone waded out to relatively deep water to wash the mud off and out of their costumes before the rest of the parents saw them. Megan managed to drop her bikini top so there was this frantic search by everyone to locate it while megan kept her modesty intact by keeping her shoulders well below the water surface. The whole episode was very funny as viewed from the sidelines of course.

That was pretty much christmas for 2008; I think that the mud wallow is going to be remembered for a long time to come.

Boep Club 2008

It's a terrible thing to have to admit but I get together with a few like minded guys while the wives are at book club to drink whisky, smoke cigars and generally chew the fat. After a while this acquired the unfortunate name of "boet" meaning "brother" club which has since been corrupted into "boep" meaning paunch club. I think the book club think that they're very clever! At the end of each year we have taken to going away for a weekend which is proving to be quite a win. This year we buggered off to Sondela for the weekend; five christians and me, the token atheist.

Sondela proved to be an inspired choice of venue because it's actually a game reserve but with no predators so one can walk, run and cycle everywhere so the mornings would start off with a two or three hour cycle followed by loads of nothing, a braai for supper before we settled down to the real reason for coming to Sondela ...


The first cycle ride on the saturday we had but a small taste of the sand that was to come on the sunday; fortunately we were blissfully unaware of our fate at that stage so we thought the deep sand was pretty cool and experiential. The wildlife at sondela is pretty chilled and you can get quite close to them before they move off as you can see from the next photograph.

Although this looks quite far away they weren't more than 20m. We saw nyala, zebra, giraffe, kudu, eland, warthog and wildebeest which made for quite a satisfying morning. Actually one can't lose by cycling in the park, if you see game it makes the ride and if you don't you still get a great ride to enjoy. The afternoons were spent slumming it at the pool which as you can see looks decidedly dodgy ...

Just next to the pool in the picture was a large heated spa pool with jets'n all which we migrated to in order to get out of the sun of course. We were all sitting in the pool when a group of young afrikaans boys (approx 13 years old or so) asked to jump in and when they did so the pool overflowed which led to the usual jokes about fat people and water and in one of the lulls in the conversation we heard a quiet "Ja rynauw" from one of the boys to another which had us all laughing. There is definitely something about afrikaans and humour that english just doesn't have, I can't quite put my finger on it but somehow jokes and banter are just that much funnier in afrikaans.

Back to the lodge for the traditional bush supper of meat suitably singed; oh and a potato and some green stuff as a concession to me. Here we have hennie striking the traditional south african pose as he tends to the fire.

We were there for three nights and each night the menu was identical and did anyone complain? No, did anyone even notice that we'd eaten the same on all three nights? Again no, but if there were the wives with us would there have been complaints? Absolutely and not because the food wasn't good nor balanced but it simply wasn't different; guys just don't get this need to have different food all the time. We're actually quite happy to have the same meal for at least 3 or 4 nights at a time. Two weeks might be pushing it but changing every night definitely isn't necessary as long as the food is good.

The next morning hennie, carl and myself went for another ride which would prove to be quite a learning curve about riding in deep sand. There is only one word for it; don't! We struggled up these gently sloping hills sweating like pigs in the hot morning sunshine and sucking in great lungfuls of air, the heart rate monitor going peep, peep, peep or in english "slow down, you're about to die!". Hennie had the narrowest tyres so he was battling the most and fell a little bit behind so carl and I waited halfway up a hill only for him to come cruising past us like he was on tar. Big lesson to learn here, when riding in soft sand let your tyres down to 1 bar and it is impossible to describe how much easier it makes the riding. Amazing! and even more amazing is that we, all three of us, should have known this because we have all looked at people in 4x4 struggling in the sand because they stupidly hadn't let their tyres down. At the top of the hill we climbed up to the trig beacon which had an awesome view over the valley.

After recovering from the ride we read, ate and slept before venturing out to the pool in the middle of the afternoon only to have to endure the sight of two teletubbies cavorting in the pool. Whatever happened to the svelte young damsels in bikini's - very disappointing. Some of the people really did look like they had swallowed a webber braai. Back home we went for the final braai

Packing up the house the next morning carl picked up a plastic bag and was just about to throw it away when something made him look inside only to find a mouse looking very dead. That was until one eye opened, didn't like what it saw and went straight back to playing dead. Very cute indeed.

So that was it; what a great weekend.

Builders

Builder v. 1. The process of turning good quality input materials into poor quality products.

Jupiter, Venus and the Moon

I got a phone call this evening from both my parents and my brother to tell me to rush outside with my camera and capture the moon as this only happens once every 500 years or some other very infrequent period so out I went and this is what I shot.



Pretty cool I think. You can find more information here

So very metrosexual

It's that time of year again when management of companies sit around and scratch their collective pate's and try to decide what to do for the year end (very pc) function. Fortunately I am not generally involved in these deliberations, so it was with some curiosity that everyone arrived at work, swimming costume at the ready, to be whisked away to destinations unknown. Rumour was rife as to why we needed to bring swimming costumes but no hats nor suntan creme; my personal favourite was that we were going to indulge in a spot of mud wrestling.

After all the anticipation we ended up at a day spa; for an end of year party? at a day spa. You could see that everyone was a little uncomfortable to start with since it is not the kind of thing that guys tend to do, even if they are in IT. Manicures, pedicures, facials, massages, sauna, jacuzzi and plunge pools kept everyone entertained and amused the whole day and it was fascinating to watch how everyone, guys especially really got into the swing of things; even the ones that I thought would be reluctant. Before we knew it, the day was done and we had to leave the peace and tranquillity to get back to the hubbub of life.

That evening I drove through to pretoria to meet some people in hatfield which is pretty studenty happening kind of a place and used my tomtom for the first time and I must say that it passed with flying colours. The home stretch was particularly great because I came out of a parking lot in a different direction to that which I went in and was completely disorientated but the GPS had me on the motorway going home in no time at all. Fantastic, what a toy!

Saturday morning broke at 05:00; time to get up and ride and the very last thing I felt like doing was just that but get out I did and carl and I did a 94km ride including krugersdorp hill. We did it at a rather slow 23km/hr but it was still quite a ride, significantly more difficult than the 94.7 and I definitely felt much better for it. When I got back, caron was at work so I had a great lunch at woolies while I read the newspaper and then caron met me at a sports bar, another novel cultural experience, to watch new zealand annihilate england. New zealand are just awesome, how they haven't won every single world cup is beyond me and I am starting to think that winning it requires a substantial amount of luck as well as being a pretty good team.

From the sports bar we went out to movies to see "body of lies" which was reasonable and that brought to a close a very satisfying and enjoyable two days. Sometimes life down here just really sucks; I think that we have to put up with so much crap that when things do actually go right we savour it just that much more.