The Weekend Past and Present
I’ll start with the upcoming one. I’m hoping it’s going to be a relaxing one; well, as much as possible. Next week midweek is the September GEAR deadline and while I’m currently tweaking my column (God, that sounds so wrong), I also am writing a feature article for the mag of a similar length. I’ll have to make some hefty progress with that this weekend.
Otherwise my only set plans are planning boardgames tonight with Warren and Robin, Paul and myself’s usual gaming gang. I’m thinking of buying Runebound, the rival single player fantasy boardgame to World of Warcraft, but since I’ve already made my ‘luxury’ purchase for the month (Kalahari.net is having a booksale), it’ll have to wait for payday, and become my August luxury item.
On Sunday evening Paul and I are going to a kind of mini orchestral Pops at the city hall with Paul’s parents- it’s two hours of the KZN philharmonic orchestra interpreting popular rock music. It should be great.
If the weather is as warm, sunny and breezeless as it has been the past month or so, maybe we’ll be heading down to the beach as well. Last weekend, despite it being slap-bang in the middle of the South African winter, we went swimming on the Saturday, after watching Mark and his chickie playing in a touch rugby tournament in the big Beach Festival.
We also went swimming on the Sunday morning, snorkelling out at Vetch’s Pier. After a while, the chill in the water did send me trembling and slightly purple lipped (a mug of steaming Milo warmed me up later), but the crystal clear water was too difficult to resist. I’ve never seen the sea on the Durban coastline so clear. While we were out on the reef, highlights included seeing an octopus in the ‘wild’, some beautiful rainbow coloured ladderas, lots of coral and a few long skinny fish that I’m afraid I don’t know the names for.
Floating out there in the middle of schools of fish was an amazing experience. It was like the underwater equivalent of sitting in the middle of a herd of impala in the savannah. We swam out to the edge of the reef and just looked out across the sand into the main body of the sea. We were half expecting to see sharks circling out there in the distance.
What’s really sad is that the Durban municipality is considering turning Vetch’s, the only reef still growing in the KZN area (the others are stagnant), into a private yacht moll. This will kill the reef and all its sea life. Yet again it is part of a disturbing trend happening across South Africa, where our natural splendour is fenced in by developers, destroyed when it’s crowded with ostentatious homes, and then turned into a ‘theme park’ for rich people who occupy the place for only 2 weeks a year when they’re on holiday.
All this in a country where over half the population attempts to survive on just R20 a day. All this in a country where ordinary middle class people are stuck living at home with their parents into their mid-20s because they can’t afford a place of their own.
Durban city manager Mike Sutcliffe is such a fucktard!
Otherwise my only set plans are planning boardgames tonight with Warren and Robin, Paul and myself’s usual gaming gang. I’m thinking of buying Runebound, the rival single player fantasy boardgame to World of Warcraft, but since I’ve already made my ‘luxury’ purchase for the month (Kalahari.net is having a booksale), it’ll have to wait for payday, and become my August luxury item.
On Sunday evening Paul and I are going to a kind of mini orchestral Pops at the city hall with Paul’s parents- it’s two hours of the KZN philharmonic orchestra interpreting popular rock music. It should be great.
If the weather is as warm, sunny and breezeless as it has been the past month or so, maybe we’ll be heading down to the beach as well. Last weekend, despite it being slap-bang in the middle of the South African winter, we went swimming on the Saturday, after watching Mark and his chickie playing in a touch rugby tournament in the big Beach Festival.
We also went swimming on the Sunday morning, snorkelling out at Vetch’s Pier. After a while, the chill in the water did send me trembling and slightly purple lipped (a mug of steaming Milo warmed me up later), but the crystal clear water was too difficult to resist. I’ve never seen the sea on the Durban coastline so clear. While we were out on the reef, highlights included seeing an octopus in the ‘wild’, some beautiful rainbow coloured ladderas, lots of coral and a few long skinny fish that I’m afraid I don’t know the names for.
Floating out there in the middle of schools of fish was an amazing experience. It was like the underwater equivalent of sitting in the middle of a herd of impala in the savannah. We swam out to the edge of the reef and just looked out across the sand into the main body of the sea. We were half expecting to see sharks circling out there in the distance.
What’s really sad is that the Durban municipality is considering turning Vetch’s, the only reef still growing in the KZN area (the others are stagnant), into a private yacht moll. This will kill the reef and all its sea life. Yet again it is part of a disturbing trend happening across South Africa, where our natural splendour is fenced in by developers, destroyed when it’s crowded with ostentatious homes, and then turned into a ‘theme park’ for rich people who occupy the place for only 2 weeks a year when they’re on holiday.
All this in a country where over half the population attempts to survive on just R20 a day. All this in a country where ordinary middle class people are stuck living at home with their parents into their mid-20s because they can’t afford a place of their own.
Durban city manager Mike Sutcliffe is such a fucktard!
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