Thursday, December 30, 2010

A Year Of Epic Fails... & Wins



This year is officially over, and 2010 will go down in the history books as having been memorable for all the wrong reasons.

The highlights package will include the Fifa World Cup, the amazing holidays, playing in not one but two Pro-Am golf tournaments after being selected from a field of thousands, the awesome people I have met both online and in person, and finally it will include celebrating my 10th Wedding Anniversary to one of the most amazing women I have ever met.

Most married guys would say this as a cliche'.
I'm in the enviable position of being able to say this and truly mean every word of it.

All she saw in me ten years ago was a kid down on his luck but brimming with potential and ambition. She never stood back to watch, nor did she stand ahead waiting for me to catch up; instead she stood by my side and helped me lay the foundation and build the life we have today, brick by painstaking brick.

I'd like to write a really long and intense blog detailing every reason why I live a blessed life and why she's made it such bliss to come home to her every single day for the last 10 years.

Instead I'll simply say "I Love You Shakera" and leave you with this quote from my favourite author:
“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. ”- Kahlil Gibran

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Just Another Day At The Office


Like seriously, WTF is that?!!



Can you see the light?



Now THAT'S how you write a resignation letter!



This is why most serial killers and psychopaths are little guys.



This global recession is getting ridiculous people

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Boxing Day Chronicles

Boxing Day and I decided to play a round of golf since the weather was looking superb. By 6:30am I was on the tee-box waiting for my opponent to arrive. I had no idea who it would be since I booked my golf game online.
It wasn't the guy in the pic above, in case you were wondering.

It turned out to be a guy named Clive who had come straight from a Christmas party.
Let me say that again in case you didn't get it the first time.
Clive had come straight to the golf course, from a Christmas party!

The party apparently ended at 5am, whereupon our intrepid golfer went home to collect his golf bag and shoes, and then headed to the golf course. I only suspected that he was drunk when he came dressed in a tie... and a stained golf shirt... oh and the distinct smell of alcohol within a 10m radius of the guy... and also the fact that he called me Kowloon instead of Kaloo twice before he even hit his first ball. Did I mention that he stumbled onto the tee-box and farted while bending down to place his ball?
Most of my posts on the blog have a small degree of fiction in them.
Not this one.
I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

It turned out that it would just be the two of us, instead of the usual four players.
You would be amazed by how much you can learn about a person during a round of golf.
Clive is a nurse and he broke up with his girlfriend two days before Christmas. Her names Stacey. I think she must be a real bitch because he called her that at least 36 times... thats an average of twice for every hole we played. Stacey dumped him because he spent their holiday money on a Sony Playstation. How insensitive of her!? Bitch!

I'm no drinker so I don't know too much about alcohol poisoning, but thankfully with Clive being a nurse he accurately diagnosed himself with having the said affliction. I only know this because at the 4th hole he went behind a tree to take a pee, and 30 seconds later he started screaming like a girl. I asked him whats wrong and he said he thought he had alcohol poisoning. The next obvious question was "How do you know this?" and he replied with "It smells like battery acid and looks like Oros." He was talking about his pee.
Did I mention that this is a true story?
Now you're probably wondering what the pic above has to do with anything.
Well, at the end of our game one of the cleaning ladies walked out of the ladies room as we were about to walk into the mens locker rooms. She carried with her a bucket and a mop, as cleaning ladies usually do, and greeted us with a toothy "Good morning Sir."
Clive told her that her mop looked really hot on her. She almost hit him with it. I didn't want to be a witness to sexual harassment, so I ran into the mensroom.

The scary part of this story is that he beat me at golf.
I'd like to see him do that when he's sober!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Crashproof Motorbike

Check out this video of a motorbike designed to be so ingenious and sophisticated, it's virtually crashproof!



I'm guessing the designers and engineers should have focussed on 'Idiotproof' instead.

Say What?


You know how people are always making fun of the Chinese and the way they speak?
It's only when you see them write notices in English that you realize how whack it sounds.
During my trip to Hong Kong, I remember the waiter asking me "Tea or fleshly squeezed olange juice?"
I tried figuring out why she and most other Chinese people found it so hard to pronounce the letter "R", but gave up when she kept calling me  "Mr Faleed flum South Aflica".
Every single morning, it was "Good morning Mr Faleed flum South Aflica."
So on my last day I asked her "How do you make the sound of a Lions roar?"
She went "GLLLLLLL!!!!" and I almost choked on my fleshly squeezed olange juice.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Ho Ho Ho & Other Drunken Tales

So there you are at the Christmas Party when suddenly this walks in and smiles at you.


When I first saw this pic, I thought the guy on the floor was a human step, for others to reach the counter. I love how everyone else in the store simply couldn't be bothered. Must be America.


"Sexy cool crinkle cloth for those hot nights to come." Except they forgot to mention that it would take you an hour to get out of this ridonkulous outfit...an hour too long in the heat of the moment.


Her Dad took this picture. Future son-in-law material right there.


Check out the label on that bowl on the table. "Cultural Videos Donations". Really? What culture?

Saturday, December 18, 2010

The Year That Was : 2010

What an awesome year it's been!

I contemplated giving you a play-by-play of all the greatest moments of this year, but it would simply be an entire days worth of writing, and possibly half a days reading (since I type half as slow as most of you read.)

The highlights and lowlights in no particular order :
2010 FIFA World Cup
No true-blooded South African would mention the greatest moments of this year, let alone their lives, without mentioning our hosting of footballs greatest spectacle.
From the opening ceremony down to the final whistle, our nation put on an amazing show second to none. We stood proud as we welcomed the world to our shores and held our heads up with dignity and pride as we let the event prove our naysayers wrong. When the final whistle blew, we rose as a united South Africa and showed the world that we may have our challengers for competing with the best in the world on the field, but there is none that could challenge us for national pride off it.
Well done to all my fellow South Africans. We did ourselves proud!

The Bucket List
For those that know me and those that visit my blog regularly, you will know that my passion is Golf.
I preach it, play it, eat and breath it. Now if only I could do it justice when I'm out there on the fairways and greens...
I've always wondered what it would be like to be a Pro golfer, or at least play against one. Earlier this year, I was one of 6 lucky individuals chosen nationwide to compete against the Pro's during a Vodacom sponsored event as part of the Sunshine Tour. The tournament was called 
So You Think You Can Beat Me? and I played against local Pro Jean Hugo, who taught me more in one day of golf than I could ever have learned in an entire month of lessons!

Next on my Bucket List was an Ocean Cruise. I've been wanting to do one for as long as I can remember.
I finally booked the missus and I on the Portugeuse Islands cruise, and it certainly lived up to it's reputation of being an excellent holiday!
You can read more about it here and here.

One of the most glaring items on my Bucket List and one which has been a monkey on my back ever since I started Sikama Contracting four years ago has been the business debt I took on to start the venture. It was like waking up every morning and having to fight a Tyrannosaurus Rex before I even had my first cup of tea.
So you can only imagine my glee when I finally paid off the last cent and my company became debt free!
I immediately went out and bought a Porsche.
No of course I didn't.
I'm Indian.
I figured for the price of a Porsche I could get 14 Tata Indicas!

Friends & Family
It's been a good year for members of my family with a few of them moving onward and upward into their new homes.It's also been good in this regard with some of my friends having done the same. Particular mention to dear friends of mine from Cape Town, who moved back to the Mother City after having been in Jozi for a few years. Badeeah and Abdullah along with their daughter Milla bought a Morrocan-styled villa overlooking the ocean a few months back, which now means we have a second-home in the Cape! YAY!!!

It was also a year in which I closed the book on a friendship which spanned almost six years. It's never easy to walk away from those kind of bonds. It's almost like uprooting a tree and hoping it will survive its new environment. Over the year's I've become adapt at recognizing fractured or cancerous aspects which sometimes creep in to a friendship, and I'm admittedly pretty selfish that way in that I would sooner walk away before things get worse, than stick around and try to fix it. I guess the "Life's too short" philosophy comes to mind here.
I've said it in previous posts and somebody actually called me about it and asked how in heaven's name I could simply walk away from friendships like that.
It's not a skill or a survival technique. It's just me being me. It's me looking out for myself. It's me putting a value on who I am, what I'm all about and how much I value my time and energy. I walk away when I feel I'm no longer respected as a person, or if the time and energy needed to repair the cracks are simply not worth it.
I've got friends who know and understand this about me, and have been around for many many years, comfortable in the knowledge that the bonds we share are like two comets in the sky: Never needing each other constantly to blaze our own trails in the night, but when we do meet again it's explosive and magical and memorable.

*If you're reading this post and thinking it's about you, I dedicate the following song to you...





Then there are the Internet, Blog, Facebook and Twitter friendships I have made this year, which have all been great and interesting in their own way.

To each of you I wish you an extraordinary 2011, and may the best of this year be the worst of the year ahead.

Be safe over the festive season, and let's make 2011 a year to remember for all the right reasons.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Theres A Family On My Stoep!


I love this pic.
It just has the most awesome family feeling about it. It reminds me of a time way back in the day when the festive season was all about getting together with friends and family and a zillion cousins just to have a great time.
A time when we could have the most amazing fun without worrying about crime or being kidnapped or mugged or raped.
It reminds me of youth and the innocence of growing up.

Mostly it reminds me that I need to learn how to scan pictures straight ;)

Disclaimer: I'm not sure who all these cute kids in the photo are, as it was sent to me by a good friend.
So if you recognize yourself here, feel free to tag yourself and holler.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Now You Know

funny-face-book-osama

Some of the funniest stuff on the internet can be found right here on Facebook.
Like this afternoon when I was going through a friends holiday pics, and saw one of him dressed in panties and a Santa hat! True story!
So I mailed him to ask him about it, and he freaked out saying his girlfriend had uploaded all the pics and obviously hadn't sorted them out before putting them on Facebook.

I couldn't even make stuff like that up if I tried!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Zuma vs Lady Justice

This is the cartoon which has our President pitted against Zapiro the political cartoonist in a remake of David & Goliath.

The question being asked ever since the President announced he was suing Zapiro and Avusa Media over his depiction as a rapist about to take advantage of Lady Justice is, "Should the President, or any member of parliament of political figure for that matter, take legal action for their depiction in cartoons?"

Quite frankly I think if you put yourself in the public domain in any manner or form, you should be aware of what comes with the territory.

My question over this whole issue is why the President waited two full years before deciding to take legal action. Were they waiting for the Protection Of Privacy bill to be signed and sealed before making their move?
I'd hate to think the day has come when we will no longer be allowed to poke fun or ridicule our political figures. That would signal the end of careers for many journaists, stand-up comediennes and satirical tv shows, and not to mention my blog!

I See Stupid People

The news headlines today, Suicidal man jumps off bridge. , had me intrigued about what could possibly drive a person to commit suicide a few days before Christmas. Not that there's ever a good or bad time to kill yourself, but I guess right before the holiday's must be right up there with stupid choices.
Before you accuse me of being judgmental (spellcheck says that's the correct spelling... I'm not convinced) think about the loved one's preparing for a wonderful holiday season, and how easily and quickly that can go to pot by a family member who decides to check-out early.

The comments on the article were interesting to say the least.
People talking about the selfishness of the act itself, other's sympathizing with the attempted suicide victim, and then there were those who felt the guy was a despicable human being for trying to cause a traffic jam while people were rushing off to work in peak hour traffic.
We're such a difficult species to please, aren't we?

I cannot even begin to understand the anguish of somebody at the end of their rope with no hope in sight, so I'll reserve my comment on suicide. I'm an extremely positive person; so positive in fact that it can annoy those around me to the point of wanting to kill me, or themselves sometimes.
I try as best I can not to be in the company of soul-killers & whiners, people who bitch and moan all the time about how crap their lives are or how pathetic they feel as human beings. Grinds me to no end.
I've even been accused of being a lousy friend to those who found themselves wallowing in self-pity & depression. I make no excuses for it. Life is too short to spend it club-hopping at pity-parties.

Anyways, my favourite comment came from this lady.
Read the article before checking out her comments. It will make more sense. Or not.

avatar
Sindile 8 hours ago
I m not supriced that he is found not guilty. corruption has played a big roll in this. thats what happens in SA no justice. He is lucky I m not the mother of those children
avatar
Makutu 7 hours ago
What are you talking about? You want to comment on the Jub Jub case?
avatar
gmck21 7 hours ago
FAIL
avatar
DaveD 6 hours ago
You are the weakest link, goodbye...
avatar
AGENT 6 hours ago
EPIC FAIL.
avatar
stivvler 6 hours ago
NICE LANDING.... WRONG AIRPORT

Top Ten Facebook Status Update #Fails

So my blogs been a hive of activity lately and it seem's to my new fans & reader's that I'm all about the politics and religion and not enough about the sex & sleaze.
Well this post is meant to set the record straight once and for all.
I'm all about the balanced approach, a little bit of everything if you like.

Without further ado, I present to you my Top Ten Facebook Status Update #Fails.


Guest List FAIL
see more Failbook



Good Luck
see more Failbook



"I'm Here to Make a Deposit..."
see more Failbook



A Niche Bizniz Idea
see more Failbook



Miss Lament
see more Failbook



Spamming the Kitty
see more Failbook



Aaand Scene.
see more Failbook



The Wedding is Off
see more Failbook



They'll Be Fine Until They Read Your Status
see more Failbook



You Know it's Bad When...
see more Failbook

Monday, December 13, 2010

Conrad Koch's Response To Gareth Cliff's Arrogance

This response by Conrad Koch to Gareth Cliff (a local DJ on 5FM) was so good, I simply had to repost it in it's entirety.
To visit his website, simply click here.


My response to @GarethCliff and his Eurocentric arrogance towards Muslim women


Mr. Cliff, purveyor of the truth, I am responding to our little twitter chat this Saturday where you displayed the profound depths of your cultural wisdom. You started it off with:
  “I feel dreadfully sorry for any woman who has to cover herself up for religious reasons in the heat of summer. Very cruel.”
  Now I did assume you were talking about Islamic female clothing as opposed to Hasidic Jewish, Parsee or Hindu gear. You didn’t challenge me on this on twitter, so I’ll continue in this vein. My entire argument is summed up by Lila Abu-Lughod, who unlike you and I is actually a woman, and is actually Muslim, and actually has a PhD (gasp, they can think for themselves!!!). See the link [1] to her article below,“Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others”.
  Aside from the fact that your above statement is just plain ignorant (Islamic clothing was designed for the desert smartypants – its makes you feel cooler. Watch Lawrence of Arabia for a reference), it is also packed with prejudice. I am going to attempt to help you understand why.
  You say you “feel dreadfully sorry for any woman who has to cover herself up”. The important points here are that you a) feel sorry for them, and b) see them as having to do this. I have never heard you feeling sorry for Western women who ‘have to’ pour hot wax on their genital area and legs to make themselves more socially acceptable, or feeling sorry for female Idols contestants who ‘have to’ have near anemic figures to fit into the tight clothing we prefer them to wear, or for African women who are forced into the cultural practice of genital mutilation, so I need to ask, why the special sorrow for poor suffering Muslim women?
  The academics reckon the reason white guys like us are so obsessed with Muslim women is because they have come to occupy a special place in our symbolism. George Bush calls them ‘women of cover’ (at least his prejudice is mildly entertaining, Gareth). They form part of a discourse of how the West has justified its exploits in the Middle East… they are the primary example for how weird and oppressive these crazy Muslim men are, or in Chakravorty Spivak’s (1988 in Abu-Lughod, 2002: 784) words: “White men saving brown women from brown men”.
  The second issue is what your statement says about what you think of the women themselves. They have to wear these silly clothes, i.e. if they could choose they would wear something else. The problem with this could and has filled several theses, but let me try and explain it in language that even an Idols-judging-vodka-pouring DJ can understand.
  1)   By your choice of language you are implying that these women are incapable of making their own choices; that they are just passive objects waiting for The Cliffanator to save them. They’re not. (Obviously Islam, like the rest of us, has its loonies. You certainly can’t generalize Taliban behaviour to a religion of billions). The trouble, Baby G, is that this passive image of non-western ‘Others’ (this is anthropology talk for people who wear funny hats and talk in funny languages) is exactly what we used to justify colonialism. It’s VERY out of date.

2)   Your statement implies that these women would prefer to be uncovered. I think Abu-Lughod (2002: 788) says it best: “I have done fieldwork in Egypt over more than 20 years and I cannot think of a single woman I know, from the poorest rural to the most educated cosmopolitan, who has ever expressed envy of U.S. women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulnerable to sexual violence and social anomie [big word Gareth, get Fresh to explain it to you], driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of god.”

An issue, my famous friend, is that you believe that these funny clothes Muslim women have (for the most part) chosen to wear are purely religious. They are not. The idea you expressed on twitter that their religion is not cultural is so silly as to be absurd. Culture is everything we do, and the symbolism, etc, that goes with it [2]. Read Abu-Lughod’s explanation if you want to know more, but suffice to say clothing says a lot more about these women than ‘Allah Akbar!’

  Finally, my most serious issue with your outlandish take on culture is how you are influencing our own South African social norms. In our twitter debate you said:
  “I reserve the right, on a Saturday, to say Fuck you @conradkoch, and your bleating cultural relativism. I've debated your like before”
  You are aware that we have one of the most discriminatory societies on earth? You are aware that the justification we (European types) used to create this situation was cultural? ‘Cultural relativism’ [3] is just the idea that I should try understand why people do things from THEIR point of view as well as my own. That you think this is ‘bleating cultural relativism’ cuts to the core of your profoundly Eurocentric view on the world. I ain’t saying let’s set up an Islamic state and live by sharia. I’m just saying, lets make everyone feel at home, because I don’t want this place to turn into France.
  I refer you to Abu-Lughod once again:
  “We need to have as little dogmatic faith in secular humanism as in Islamism, and as open a mind to the complex possibilities of human projects undertaken in one tradition as the other.”
  Gareth, you have in excess of 77000 followers on twitter. You throw this kind of Eurocentric bullshit out and think it doesn’t influence our SA culture for the worse? Come now my guy, I know you are struggling but I reckon you are cleverer than that.
  Stay cool, and try not to use ‘fuck you’ in debates… it makes you seem desperate.
 
Sharp,
Conrad
  Ps, if this came across mildly sarcastic and arrogant, go read your letter to the government.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Wikileaks vs The American House Of Cards



Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell


I was watching Carte Blanche earlier this evening and they aired an interview from the BBC with Julian Assange, founder of 
Wikileaks who undoubtedly needs no introduction. If you're a regular visitor to the blog you will already be aware of my intense distrust and loathing of the American government and all that it signifies.

As the self-proclaimed gatekeeper of morals and diplomacy, and defender of democracies worldwide, the American government has the dubious distinction of being at the pinnacle of all that is evil and dishonest.

They had an amazing opportunity of galvanizing the entire world during the September 11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks and harvesting that immense support into something positive. They had the opportunity of converting the pain and suffering of a nation into a united force against terrorism and barbaric acts of cowardice. They would have had the unequivocal support of every nation on earth if they simply went about their response in a just and honest manner.

Instead they fucked it up and turned it into a roadshow for state-sanctioned killings and torture. They took what the terrorists had done, cloaked it in the robe of nationalism and patriotism, and went about on a killing spree of their own.
They convinced their troops and allies that they were fighting some kind of holy war in the name of democracy, ridding the world of evil.
"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

When their atrocities were exposed to the world for what they truly were, suddenly people were being labelled as being unpatriotic to America.
Suddenly it was like being back in the earlier part of the century where you were marked for ridicule or death if you carried the Jewish label, or Black label, and later on even the Gay label. Being unpatriotic was another label the American people became afraid of, so afraid in fact that speaking up against injustice and blatant lies was tantamount to being labelled a traitor. Silence against the atrocities of Americas leaders seemed like a better option.

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Martin Luther King jnr



When Wikileaks first released some of the classified documents which rocked the political world, I hoped that it would be an eye-opener for citizens of every country to realise that their governments are not always as they seem.
It should have been the very moment when those amongst us who do not care about the politics of our nations, started caring about their futures and those of their children in the years ahead Instead we've seen the American spin-doctors try to discredit Wikileaks for being a whistleblowing website with no concern for the safety of the troops fighting wars just and unjust across the border's of Lady Liberty's shores. Ironic that more people have been killed in the name of America's  war on terrorism and promotion of democracy than 100 Wikileaks or Julian Assange's ever could.

Why is it that whenever we hear the word "Terrorist" we immediately think of evil dictators and their henchmen willing to kill innocent people at all costs, but never stop to think who arms these madmen, or who trains them or who finances them?
In the court of justice, I am as guilty of murder for supplying the gun and bullets to kill someone as the killer who pulled the trigger is. The same rules obviously don't apply to America and her allies.
I wrote in a previous post about hackers worldwide turning on corporate America and supporters of her bullshit version of democracy, and unleashing their venom as a sign of protest against the censoring of Wikileaks. No sooner had I posted the piece on my blog and the news was abuzz with attacks on Mastercard, Paypal, Amazon and others.
To those hackers, I salute you.

For too long we have been led to believe that America's version of righteous and evil and good and bad was all that really mattered. Everything contrary to this fell into the category of "Unpatriotic".

To America I say "Fuck you and your partriotism."
The reason open-minded and educated people hate you is because that rancid stench which emanates from your White House is akin to a leaking sewer at your Superbowl; the truth stinks, and the truth about your deceit and heinous acts of rubber-stamped terrorism committed under your banner of progress will not go away.
The world watches while your nation decays, morally and completely in all respects.

Someone once asked me if I ever considered the fact that I may never be allowed into the United States due to all the rants I've made against America.

My response was "They can take that visa and shove it up their arses if they think I'd ever want to spend my money in that shit hole."

I've met some really great American people in my travels, and this post is in no way intended to be a generalisation, but until their leaders and politicians of that once great nation begin the journey of truth and integrity, myself and millions like me will never trust anything America stands for.



Excerpt from Three Kings, the movie
Archie Gates
: What's the most important thing in life? 
Troy Barlow: Respect. 
Archie Gates: Too dependent on other people. 
Conrad Vig: What, love? 
Archie Gates: A little Disneyland, isn't it? 
Chief Elgin: God's will. 
Archie Gates: Close. 
Troy Barlow: What is it then? 
Archie Gates: Necessity. 
Troy Barlow: As in? 
Archie Gates: As in people do what is most necessary to them at any given moment

The people of the United States believe that it is necessary to accept the lies their government feeds them, because the alternative is too scary an option.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.