My Bucket List

Ok, so the movie The Bucket List inspired this piece.

I've decided to publish my own personal Bucket List, in no particular order.

For those that dont know, a Bucket List a list of the things you would like to do, accomplish or achieve before you "kick the bucket", so to speak. It's meant to be as whimsical or achievable as you'd like it to be.
It's your own personal Bucket List, so flights of fancy are allowed.

Now without further ado, here's my ten goals!

1) Complete writing my book (or block, as some prefer calling it).
2) Design and print T-shirts for fun.
3) Start a Charity. Feeding the Hungry by having a big fat Woolies breakfast every Sunday morning doesnt count!
4) Visit Lebanon, home of Kahlil Gibran (dont you dare ask who that is?!!)
5) Just for kicks, do stand-up comedy (of course this means i'd have to steal some material from talented friends I know, which means i'll no longer have to hang around you bunch of hillbilllys :) ) But the twist is, i'd like to be doing it at a hospital, for kids.
6) Radio. No, not own one. I've always wanted to be on Radio. Yeah yeah, I love the sound of my own voice. Im my own favourite Pop Idol. Moving on.
7) Make a total stranger cry with joy. Not sure what i'd do to make them so happy they'd be reduced to tears (maybe roll over and play dead) but yeah, just to see them so happy they shed a tear.
8) See 8 zero's in my bank account. That means "Be a millionaire, even if only for a day"
9) Take over the world.
10) Let the last cheque I write, be a really big fat one to the taxman, and have it bounce!

So, as you can see, nothing big and fancy on my list.
Start off small, at a slow trot, then work my way up to a full gallop.

Now, heres what you need to do.
Write down your Bucket List, forward it to your friends, and lets see what we can achieve and how quickly we can start ticking items off our list before the proverbial bucket arrives.

The Bucket List

Well I wasn't really planning on doing the Bucket List this soon, but my dear friend Angie poked and prodded me in the general direction and the rest, as they say, is history.
If you ever decide to get off the bottom rung and start reading quality blogs with insightful perspectives on pretty much everything, might I suggest you start with Angies Blog

I'm going to pretend that I wrote this Bucket List 2 years ago, because that's when I really started ticking items off my list of Top 10 things to achieve before I kick the proverbial bucket.
As I accomplish each item, I shall simply revert to this post and mark them as 'DONE'.
Easy enough.

So without further ado... herewith my Bucket List.

#1 Play Golf With The Pro's

DONE
I played the Vodacom ProAm which was part of the Sunshine Tour last year.I blogged about it here

#2 Go On An Ocean Cruise
DONE
I've always wanted to go on an Ocean Cruise, and finally did last year. I blogged about it here and here and a few other places if you searched for the words "cruise" or "ocean" on the blog.

#3 Do Stand-Up Comedy
DONE
This is one of the few items that was suggested to me by others more than it was an idea I sprung up all on my own. When the opportunity finally presented itself, I grabbed it with both hands and feet!
I blogged about the actual event here and the run-up to the event here and here.

#4 Travel To Vietnam
I've travelled to many places, some common and some strange and wonderful. I've swam in Lake Geneva and lived in Dubai during the boom and watched puppies being grilled for an outdoor dinner and seen the infamous sex-shows in Bangkok and donated electronic gadgets to the needy folk on the London Underground, but I'll only be truly satisfied once I've visited Vietnam. Soon. Very soon.

5# Have My Own Radio Show
Yeah, I know... who want's to do Radio when TV is where it's all at, right?
But there's something about radio that appeals to me. Even if it's late-night graveyard shift radio. I'd still like to do it. I reckon I may even be half-decent at it. So if there's anyone in Radioland out there and you're looking for a guy who talks more than he plays music, holler at me.

6# Finish My Book
It's taking a while, but I'll get there. Right  now I can't decide between 50 pages or 500 pages.
I have much to say, but I may just end up publishing it as a colouring-in book ;)

7# Live Near The Ocean
I'm a Joburg boy.
That means I'm all about the rat-race, and fast paced lifestyle and busy busy busy all the time.
Yet I always have this dream, no goal, that someday I'll kick off my shoes, flick my nose at the rat-race and watch the sunset with a Kola-Tonic in my hand as I relax on my verandah looking out over the ocean.

8# Do The Otter Trail
A legendary hike through some of the most beautiful trails in the world. If you've never heard of the Otter Trail, do yourself a favour and check it out here

9# Attend An F1 Grand Prix
If I had a choice, preferrably the Malaysian or the Singapore Grand Prix.
Loudest sport on earth and I would love every minute of it!

10# Watch Manchester United Play A Cup Final At Old Trafford
Doesnt matter what final.
Could be the FA Cup, Carling Cup, maybe even a European Cup.
I would die a happy man. Completely and utterly.


So there you have it.
My official Bucket List. Thak you Angie, I quite enjoyed that :)


Now your turn!

My Superhero Name : Captain Content

It's been an amazing two weeks, but then in all honesty I do say that at least once every two weeks.
It really has though.

You've probably read my previous post about having finally ticked off an item on my bucket list : Do Stand-Up Comedy.
If you haven't, it can be found here . I've been wanting to do stand-up for some time now, and mentioned it in this post , but never realized that the opportunity would present itself so soon.

So I had a re-look at my Bucket List this weekend, and everything that seemed to border on highly improbable, practically impossible, or ridiculously unachievable suddenly seemed totally within reach.
It's like somebody gave me a shot of Kryptonite and a can of Spinach.

Onward and upward.
Time to work on the next item on said Bucket List, which list I intend posting on the blog soon.

I started on a book about 3 years back, and I've been writing at such a slow pace I expect I should have it completed in time to have it published as my biography. A centenary celebration of sorts.

I reckon it's time I kick the writing into high gear.
The other item from the Bucket List which needs to be kicked into high gear is the trip to Vietnam.
The missus leaves on her annual girly holiday with Sabeen, a friend of ours from Dubai, in a weeks time. With our planned family vacation to Cape Town in December, we've decided to plan for Vietnam in the year ahead.

Watch this space for the official Bucket List.

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.

A Bucket List Of Mind-Bender Movies

Ok so I asked my Twitter pals to submit their favourite mind-bender movies for this list, after having watched Inception and literally having my grey-matter disturbed.
Brilliant movie, and an amazing storyline. I know there must be a few more out there that I possibly haven't heard of, and I'll be keen to put them on this list.

Thanks to @NooHar and @mOwaja3 for their contributions.

The list will be a work in progress, so keep checking in as it gets populated.

#1       Inception
#2       Shutter Island
#3       Seven Pounds
#4       Vanilla Sky
#5       Memento
#6       American Psycho
#7       Requim For A Dream
#8       Repo Man
#9       12 Monkeys
#10     5th Element
#11     Fight Club
#12     Black Swan
#13     Tron 2011
#14     Jacobs Ladder
#15     Donnie Darko
#16     The Matrix
#17     Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
#18     The Usual Suspects
#19     A Beautiful Mind
#20     Sixth Sense
#21     Matchstick Men

I'm hoping to reach the magical 100 number with your help. Please reply to this post, or message me on Twitter @kaloo5


Sent from my Apple iPad® wireless device

Fight The Good Fight

You know how i can tell that this post was meant to be written?

Halfway through writing it, my iPad just restarted and I lost everything I had written up to that point! That pretty much sums up 2014, and we're only 2 months into the year. My battle-weary bones are screaming for a time-out. I've heard of a lady who does spiritual healing and aligns your chakras. Maybe I'll have that done. I'm not sure what aligning the chakras are all about, but it sounds like something important. Maybe after I've had my chakras aligned I'll stop pulling to the left or suddenly start wobbling at high speed. Admittedly aligning the chakras does sound like something only a professional should be doing. Someone like Tiger Wheel & Tyre.

So I made a bucket list at the end of 2013, and this past week I had some time to go through the list and amend it. By amend it I mean delete 95% of everything I initially put down and focus on just 2 items.

# My health (well that's kind of in a spiral that has a life form all of its own. Even my doctor has taken up smoking with all the stress my health has given him, and Discovery is considering naming a new health policy after me.)

# The New Business Venture. This is something exciting that I've always wanted to do but always second-guessed myself on. I should have done it 2 years back but alas fate led me down another path. The opportunity has presented itself again, and everybody knows opportunity never knocks twice... So here goes nothing :) 

Watch this space!

In other news, Villa Kaloo is on the market and as much as I love my home, I think it's time for change. We're considering a move to the coast. The pursuit of quality of life I guess.

Clearly there are big changes ahead. 

Moving right along. 

It's election time again, which means promises of a better life for all and a prosperous future will be sprinkled about like rice at a Chinese wedding. I'm currently working on an election post as well and I think you'll be surprised at who could potentially get my vote.

Ok I'm seriously going to have to end this post right here because Piranha 3DD is currently on the telly and it's just so shockingly bad, it's actually quite riveting!

Life Is Swell

I realized the other day that I'm one of those annoyingly positive people. Not annoying in the way that I like force-feeding joy down people's throats like foie gras. I just don't get down and depressed easily.
I do throw tantrums though.
Just ask those nice people at Nestle who overcharge for Hot Chocolate, or those Amila Ice-Tea people who sold me fermented drinks.

So when I sat down to review my 5 year Plan, which I do every so often (like once every 5 years), it dawned on me that the things which I had achieved had far outstretched my bucket-list.
Sure everybody wants to run with the bulls and jump out of a plane at 10 000 feet and swim with the dolphins, but in the absence of TV how many of us would really want to do any of those?
Would it not be infinitely more fun and exciting to spend an evening underneath the stars listening to the fish jumping in a moonlit lake?
Or maybe take the one you love to watch a sunrise upon a mountaintop?
How about attending a festival in the company of friends, and form memories that will truly leave you smiling in your golden years?

The irony is that many of us have done these and so much more, yet failed to look upon the very moment as one which we'll never get back. One so perfect at the time, that had we known we would have cherished it and hoped it would never end.
Years later, we make a list of all the things we'd like to achieve before we finally breath our last, forgetting the awesomeness of the life we've already lived.

There's a really simple rule I have about prayer.
When I get down on my knees and raise my hands skyward, it's to say "Thank You" instead of "I Want".
This simple rule when applied to our friends and family has an amazing effect. Just to be grateful for what we have, and thank those around us for being a part of our lives, makes all the difference. It is the very definition of a wealthy and successful individual. To be able to look around us and want for nothing, need for nothing, and know that we are blessed with what we have and who we have to share it with.

In an earlier blog I made mention of the fact that I am about to embark on an entirely new chapter in my life.
I know not where it will take me, but I am excited and anxious for the journey ahead, for in truth Life is about the journey and not the destination.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand

Trusting Your Instinct

This post is inspired by an interesting piece I read on my dear friend Azra's blog, which can be found here.

Every so often, when confronted with decisions, we find ourselves torn between what our heads tell us to do and what our hearts tell us to do; and sometimes our instinct is the shining beacon of light helping us make that decision. Except, being the blundering bumbling fools that we are, we choose to ignore this 6th sense to our own peril.

My Gran always said that the nagging voice inside each of us, guiding us and telling us what to do when confronted with decisions, are in fact the Angels usually found perched on our shoulders.
If I look back on some of the decisions I've made in life, and scored those made after much pondering against those made by virtue of gut instinct, I have a sneaky suspicion that the perched Angels would win by a landslide.

Sometimes we stay when we should go.
Sometimes we go when we should stay.
Sometimes our instinct taps gently , and sometimes it screams out loudly.

We make hundreds of decisions every day, and as a forex trader I'm making them in split seconds.
We need to silence the noise and listen more intently to that inner voice within each of us. Maybe it won't help me find the path to financial success, but I'm pretty sure it will help me trust myself a little more, believe in myself a little more, and feel like I'm more in control of my destiny.

My revised Bucket List should read "Trust your instinct more often."
Everything after that will simply be an affirmation of my faith in the process.

Here's To 2012

                                                   Sabreen doing what she does best.

What an awesome year it's been!
Any year that affords you the opportunity to strike items off your Bucket List and has more highlights than lowlights, is worthy of being called an awesome year. This year certainly was all of that!

There are some great things in the pipelines for 2012.
It's going to be amazeballs!

Have a super festive season, and I look forward to reading your comments in the year ahead.

The Last Kiss

WOW!!

I've never been so motivated to blog like I am right now!
I'm watching this movie and it's so amazingly powerful.
I think every guy and every girl in any sort of relationship should watch it.

The Last Kiss.

Put it on your bucket-list of movies to watch.

*This may have been better as a Facebook Status update*

Passion... That's The Secret

Who would have guessed when I woke up yesterday morning, that before my day was over I would be flat on my back connected to a heart-machine?
Certainly not me!

I usually go to bed around 1am or 2am on any given day, and even on the day's when I'm totally exhausted I still find myself climbing into bed closer to midnight.
I was up working on my laptop listening to the soft humming of Sabreen's breathing as she slept peacefully next to me on the sofa, MTV Classic's playing in the background while the missus battled demons and dragons in her subconscious in the comfort of the bedroom.
I had this burning sensation in my left shoulder which didn't bother me at first, as the nature of my job means I'm constantly bumping into things whilst on my construction sites.

An hour later and I realized that the burning sensation had now radiated downward toward my elbow.
Now I'm not one for rushing off to doctors or popping pills like jellybeans at a whim, but I have a sense of when something is wrong and requires urgent attention... and I sensed that something was wrong in my body and required urgent attention!

So I put the little one to bed, grabbed my baseball cap and a hoodie, and drove myself straight to Sunninghill Hospital. The time was 11:30pm and it took me 10 minutes to get there.

In that 10 minutes, I got to think about my life.
About the things I had achieved, and the legacy I would leave if I never made the journey back.
About the things I still hadn't ticked off my bucket list.
About the hopes and dreams I had for Sabreen and wondering if I would ever see her achieve them.
About what my late Dad would say if he had to sum up the life of a son he never got to know.

I thought these questions and their answers would make me sad and morose.
Surprisingly, I found myself smiling and content in the knowledge that I have lived a good life.
I was honestly pleased with what I had achieved, and while I knew that the years ahead of me were filled with promise and immense potential, I was satisfied with my scorecard at that very moment in time.

It's amazing and somewhat humbling to think that one's life can be summed up in it's entirety in a 10 minute drive.
An ECG and a host of blood tests later, the physician informed me that I was healthy as a teenager.
I'm guessing he doesn't quite know the state of the average teenagers health out there.
Four hours later and with no conclusive diagnosis, I was advised to monitor the pain and return in two days and sent home with a cocktail of medication to relax my muscles.

Most people say that there are experiences in life which make them stop and re-assess their priorities. Life-altering moments, so to speak.
I'd like to believe that when the 10-minute clip of "Life According To Fareed" was played to me, I stood up to rapturous applause and took a bow.
If the experience did anything, anything at all, it gave me a sense of urgency to hurry the heck up and achieve those goals I hadn't yet reached.
To chase those hopes and dreams I have for Sabreen and rejoice in watching her bloom, as I know with absolute certainty she will.

There is one thing I would like to make a concerted effort at changing though.
I'd like to be more complimentary to those who deserve it... spread the Thank You's and I Love You's around like confetti if I have to,provided they're warranted.
I do it often, more often than I did years ago when I was an even more sarcastic and acidic bastard than I am today. It made me realize that people are willing to engage more easily and openly with someone who recognizes and acknowledges them for who they are.

So in ending this post, I'd like to say a humble Thank You to all those who visit my blog and read my ramblings.
I'll keep writing if you keep visiting :)

Here's to year's of good health ahead, for me and you guys too!

The Vodacom ProAm Challenge

Last year I was selected to take part in the annual Vodacom ProAm Challenge, where amateur golfers from around the country get chosen to play against professionals in a tournament which signals the start of the Sunshine Tour.

There are 6 amateurs chosen from a field of over 6000 entrants, so you can imagine my surprise when I got the call. The pic above shows myself and Chanelle who was another of the entrants chosen.
I'm the one on the left, in case you were wondering.

In order for us amateurs to be given a taste of exactly the kind of pressure seasoned professionals are put under each time they play in these tournaments, we were treated exactly as the Pro's would get treated.
From the reserved VIP Parking bays as we entered to the sponsored gear awaiting us upon arrival and everything else in between that finally led to the awards ceremony with the Blue Bulls rugby team as guests of honour.

The final scores were tallied, and for those of you unfamiliar with reading a golfing scoreboard, let's just say it was a pretty close game.
For those of you who are familiar with golfing scoreboards, I suggest you move right along. There's nothing to see here.

In order for us to be playing on a somewhat even keel against the Pro's, we were each assigned a pro caddy. Not that it made much difference to my game on the day.

The pic above was taken during the Supersport interview which was aired on The Golf Bag two weeks later.

This was the Pro I played against, Jean Hugo.
An absolute gentleman and master of the game. He's already won the Sunshine Tour previously. I learned more from him in one afternoon than I did in an entire 3 month course of Golf lessons.

So this was certainly one item I would be knocking off my Bucket List!
To play in a tournament against seasoned professionals, now there's something an amateur golfer doesn't do every day :)

10 Things You Didn't Know About Me

#1 : I hate Parmesan cheese. I don't mean dislike or detest, I mean hate! I can't have it placed on the table while I'm having my meal, or within a 3 meter radius. It smells like old-man fart, and my food is allowed to smell like old-man fart 2 days after I've consumed it, but never before I've even eaten it.

#2 : I don't drink Coke. Never have, never will. I cramp like a teenager going through her first menstrual pains if I have even just a glass of this vile brew. No idea why, but if my body say's it's not welcome, who am I to argue. All other fizzy drinks are fine, except Coke.

                                               
#3 : I don't drink coffee or any of it's variations either. Same reason as Coke. It has me rolling around the floor in pain. I think it's an allergic reaction to caffeine. No Tiramissu cake, no lattes,no espresso's, no anything that has coffee in it. My drink of choice would be Rooibos tea, or any other herbal tea. I don't like tea's with milk anyways.

#4 : I don't touch condiment's (salt, pepper, sauce bottles etc) at restaurants or public eating areas with my bare hands. I always hold them with a napkin. Yes, I'm finicky that way.

#5 : I'm able to make friends very quickly, but I'm able to walk away from friendships even quicker once my trust has been betrayed. That's probably why I don't subscribe to the Best Friend theory. Life's too short to have just one person you'd trust with your life. It's more fun having many people trusted with little bits, than one person trusted with all of it. That's my philosophy anyways.

#6 : When I was 18, an uncle I took as a father since my own dad passed away when I was 3, said to me "You'll never make it out in the world without me." I moved out of his home that same day, and his words have been my inspiration to make a success of my life ever since. A few years later, the same uncle came to my home asking for a loan. A few times.
I guess I did make it without him after all.

#7 : I was born a lefty. Left-handed, left-footed. Until my primary school teacher forced me to start writing with my right hand.So now I'm right-handed but left-footed.

#8 : I've already lived through my greatest fear.
I was too young to remember much about my Dad's drowning, but what I've been told by everybody who knew him is that his soccer team had gone to Club Shalimar to celebrate winning the league. They arrived early in the morning, and he loved the water and swimming so he dived into the rock-pool before his team mates even unpacked the vehicles. Not long after, they joined him at the pools, but he wasn't there. They found him at the bottom of the pool shortly afterward. Apparently he had a cramp as he dived in, and hit his head at the bottom of the pool.
Needless to say, I had an intense fear of water growing up. Ironically, or as fate would have it, my mom remarried and her new husband spent every chance he could on the water! He's an avid fisherman who owns a boat. It took a while, but my fear of water was finally confronted. Water and I became friends, but the kind of friends where you always knew the other could beat you up any chance they got. So I respected the oceans and the pools.
One year we went to St Lucia on holiday. Rustic, rough, bungalows, camping on the beach, no nets in the shark-infested waters, the kind of holiday where dry socks and a toothbrush is considered a luxury.
One day four of us decided to head out into the ocean for a swim. An hour later, we realized the current had carried us out to sea. One of the girls that had joined us on this trip, suddenly panicked and couldn't swim or keep her head above water.We were about 12 years old at the time.
In an instant, thoughts of my Dad's drowning incident came rushing back. I was totally gripped by fear, but I also had my younger sister swimming by my side, in the same predicament. I couldn't have my fear known to her. So I fought on and fought through it.... and we made it back to shore safely. I don't think I've ever confessed my fear on that day to anyone, ever. So now you know.

#9 : I ran away from home once. I guess I was a troubled teenager, the kind that believed nobody understands them. I stayed under a bridge for the night. My mom somehow blocked the whole thing out of her head and doesn't believe it happened. Sometimes troubled teenagers are the result of troubled parents.

#10 : There's an item on my Bucket List which I wrote about on a previous post that I want to do before I turn 40. Even if it's just for one night only, I'd like to do Stand-Up Comedy.

Well, there you have it. 10 things you may not have known about me.

On Friendship

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity." Kahlil Gibran

We got to discussing friendship over tea the other night, and it occurred to me that I have many, maybe too many. Some dearer to me than others. Some have fallen by the wayside over the years, and many have grown closer and more cherished with time. Through it all though, I'd still like to think that if I ever bumped into any of the people I refer to as my "friends", I could pick up conversation with them as though we had never been apart.

There are very few things which annoy me to the point of my having to write about it,but having my friendship used for selfish purposes and personal gain certainly ranks way up there on the list.

Tonight's rant is about a guy I honestly once thought highly of and respected. He met me late last year and mentioned that he was looking for a place to rent, and as fate would have it a dear friend of mine just so happened to have the perfect home for him and his family. Before you could say "I'll take it!" the ink on the lease agreement was dry and he was moving in.
A perfect example of how goodness begets goodness, and positive karma attracts positive karma.
Or so I thought.

Within a month the cracks in his character began appearing, and now we're in a situation where he has defaulted on his rental obligation to the point of receiving an eviction notice.

All relevant and irrelevant excuses aside, here's my problem with this situation:
If you know that your character is wishy-washy (I looked this up in my Thesaurus and this is the best I could come up with) and you suspect that you have more flaws than the Eiffel Tower (pun intended), why in heavens name would you bring that to the table amongst friends?
If your'e going to be an asshole about your dealings, be they business or personal, surely you can have the foresight to be said asshole in the company of strangers who you don't have to face every other day at the local Spar or Post-Office. I mean even as a teenager I knew better than to date girls from my own suburb! I knew I was going to be an ass and dump them or be dumped at some point, and since I never wanted to bump into either them, their bigger bulkier dumber brothers or their licensed-to-carry-a-firearm dad's, I knew better than to date girls within the neighbourhood.
Surely that's common sense.

Be a dickhead, but just not around me. Or anyone I care about.
Now you've come to the adults pool in your Snoopy boxers, jumped in, frolicked with us, then rudely pee'd in the pool and left. Dude, you've just screwed the fun up for everyone.
Retard!

That's why I think once every so often, we should do an inventory of all the people we call friends, put all the names in a bucket, throw in some HTH, and purge all the crap that floats to the top.

Here endeth the rant.

In other news, I am seriously considering buying an iPad2.
Not because I need it, but because Steve Jobs and the good people at Apple say it will vastly improve the quality of my life. Apparently all that I am and all that I have been doing over the last 30 odd years is in fact truly worthless, because I have been doing it without an iPad2.
Turns out the Sony Playstation people who used the same marketing tactic were just setting us up for the iPad people.

I don't want my life to be worthless.

50 Shades Of Brown

I've done a few blog posts on some amazing adventures available to fellow South Africans right in our own backyards, and this weekends Quad Biking Trail ranks high up on that list.

Unlike most adventure weekends which require some extensive planning and possibly expensive gear, this weekends adventure was organized in a week and required no more than the love of the outdoors and two platters of chicken tikka. The joys of travelling with Indians :)

The day started off with a brief but important safety talk considering that we were about to mount these massive quad bikes and only a lucky few in our group had ever had the experience of having that much power between our legs. I don't recall all of the safety talk except the bit about "It's not how you stand by your bike, it's how you ride your bike" and the other bit about "When in doubt, accelerate!"

Next it was on to a grazing pasture to familiarize ourselves with the bikes and terrain, and also to get used to the taste of Kudu poop getting flung at you from the bike in front. nomnomnom.....
The best way to experience quad biking in the wild is to ride with your tongue sticking out. That way you get to feel, smell and taste the experience.

The entire ride lasts anywhere between an hour and 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how many pain-killers you take and what their dosage is. Since there are set trails to follow, it's almost impossible to get lost. I use that term almost very loosely since two of our intrepid adventurers managed to do exactly that. In Faaiq's defence though, he simply went to look for Shenaaz who had strayed from the path of those whom Thou has favoured and found herself on the path of those who go astray.
Think Adam, Eve and Apple and you'll know what I mean.

I would have been happy to see two or three animals, so you can imagine my surprise when we got to get up close to Zebra, Giraffe, Kudu, Wildebeest and some other spotted beast that looked like a leopard. Maybe a cheetah. I couldn't tell because at the time I was going at full throttle on a steep downhill while chewing a mouthful of Kudu poop.

We're always wondering where to go and what to do come the weekend, but with a little bit of effort we suddenly realize how truly blessed we really are to be living in this awesome and amazing country. How many other places in the world afford you the opportunity to drive for less than an hour north to get to nature and the sunny outdoors at it's very best, or 5 hours south and find yourself on a pristine Indian Ocean beach, or maybe even a ski trip in authentic snow in the Drakensberg in less time than it would take to walk through a Dubai shopping mall?

Get yourself a fun group of like-minded people (this lots already taken :) ).
Pack your kit-bag.
Get your butt out there!

You know you had a good time when you get back home and your family don't recognise you because you're two shades darker and one day away from looking like a homeless drunk.
We were like 10 Indians rewriting 50 Shades Of Brown.

Come the end of the day, nothing says 'SANHA Approved Sundowner' quite like Hot Chocolate on a mountain overlooking the Haartebeespoort Dam.
For white folk, that translates to "A moerste lekker weekend without any dop!"
Notice the absence of a cup in my hand. That's because the Hot Chocolate place were out of Hot Chocolate. That's their story and they were sticking by it.

Life's too short to spend it making Bucket Lists. Go out there and start enjoying yourself instead. You can either talk about the adventure, or live it.

What are you waiting for?
GO GO GO!!!

Not The Learning Channel

So my friend Azra chose me to partake in the 7 Links project by Tripbase and dare I say it got me thinking about the contents of my blog, the things I say, the reason why people have been visiting since I first started blogging, and mostly it got me thinking about what appeal my random thoughts and ramblings could possibly have.

Sure I realized early on that there are a small group or sect of people that my writing appeals to, but in any society there will always be the fringe groups. That's my niche market. Most 'normal' people who stumble upon this page are merely collateral damage.
So if you're reading this right now, you're either a nutjob looking for a home, or you haven't set your internet surfing filters or 'NetNanny' software quite high enough.

So how does the 7 Links project work? In the words of it's author, quite simply :
The idea is simple: bloggers publish 7 links from their blog to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again. Without further ado, herewith my 7 Links as best as I can recall.

1) My Most Beautiful Post
A Tale Of Two Friends
Still one of the most heartfelt and honest posts I have ever written. Strangely it required no drafts, not that my posts usually do. But I find that I write a piece and then tweak it and buff it up a bit before hitting "Publish".
Not so with this post. It came from the heart, and I still find myself reading it every so often.

2) My Most Popular Post
Beauty Is Only Mullet Deep
I'm not entirely sure why this is the most popular post on my blog, but it is.
I know I have a large number of visitors from America. I'm guessing that's the reason; but it's purely a guess and yours is as good as mine.

3) My Most Controversial Post
The Silence Of The Ham
I'd have to say my take on the whole halaal issue, and my opinion that all these certifying bodies dictating to us gullible South Africans is nothing more than a money-making scheme was the most controversial post I had written. Not ever. But certainly in a long while.
My all-time most controversial writing would probably be the open-letter I wrote to my school principle back when open-letters were unheard of. I still have the scars of his response :)

4) My Most Helpful Post
My Open Letter To Nestle'
This was my first attempt at an open-letter from the blog. Interestingly it got me a huge response from people who have had their fair share of consumer-related issues, and most found my idea of an open-letter rather refreshing. Well, maybe it was the letter itself that they found refreshing. I even had people mail me and ask if I would write letters to companies on their behalf!
I'm guessing there's a business idea there somewhere.
Read it and let me know what you think :)

5) A Post Whose Success Surprised Me
Passion.... That's The Secret
Sometimes all you really need to be inspired or achieve or get the job done is a good dose of Passion.
Imagine how amazing it would be if there was this massive central database were people could simply log into and swop jobs with someone who didn't really have the love for what they were doing.
For example, a Dentist who really wanted to be a Tour Guide could simply look for that position on the database, and be that which he loves and become a Tour Guide, and likewise a Circus Clown who really had a passion to be a dentist could simply..... wait, on second thought I can see where this could get ugly.

6) A Post I Feel Didn't Get The Attention It Deserved
For The Love Of Writing
There's always that one post that's bound to get lost when you've written just under 400 blog posts in just over a year. Well technically that's not correct, because I copied many of my old posts from my previous blog and had them reposted here... but yes, one is always bound to get lost amongst the noise.
I think this is that post.

7) The Post That I Am Most Proud Of
In The Name Of Religion
Only because this post pretty much sums up my writing style.
I'll push those barriers. I'll test peoples thinking. I'll challenge an idea or opinion I don't agree with.
Most importantly, I'll do all of this and still be able to sit across visitors to my blog and share a cup of coffee and some milk-tart.

Ok, so now I get to choose fellow bloggers to do their own versions of 7 Links and join in the project.
 In no particular order, these are the bloggers who's posts and answers I'm most looking forward to:


Akona Ndungane at Mosaic
Paige Nick at A Million Miles From Normal
Saaleha at Afrocentric Muslimah
Che at IndieBerries
Amith at The Bucket

I could think of a few more blogger's who should be nominated, but I realize that blogging is hard work and not everybody can do it with enough consistency to captivate an audience. That's a compliment to the amazing blogger's I've listed above who seem to be able to write with such ease on a weekly basis.


Anyways, compiling this list was no easy task and choosing from so many of my past posts made the challenge daunting. As with most things, once you get started it really tends to flow with ease until before you realize it, you're done and still have so much left to say.

This is where I stop writing, and look forward to your responses.