All’s well that ends Fifth

The Louis Group sure can throw a big ol’ party! After twisting my parents arms into coming along to my Graduation, the famdamily trotted off to the CTICC on Tuesday, formally attired and ready to celebrate! Delicious food, an insane digital projection system, gowns and a Stellenbosch certificate made the evening one to remember.

I sadly did not scoop the top spot, but I did finish 5th overall – which from a pool of 200 students is, I suppose, a respectable result. It does have a certain bittersweet to it though: having worked my backside off, and invested quite heavily timewise, it felt tantalisingly close. However, the value is obviously what I learnt, and as such this course has been tremendous. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to business, and hope for opportunities to apply the many insights and lessons in the future. For what it’s worth – thank you Louis Group.

Musical Chairs

Ah. History is a fun thing to revisit! This past weekend more-or-less started with a braai at the Flynn’s, with a number of esteemed travellers in attendance. Without over-doing the detail, we had all the members from the Virgin Apple Skins (Damo [UK], Dave, James [Chicago], Pete), None-of-us (VAS + Captain Awesome), and then most recently union (Al [East London], Ant, Pete and the Captain).

So after a some “good times”, union hoisted their respective instruments to their respective laps, and the music did flow. And pretty tightly too.

It therefore didn’t come as a surprise when the union wives siezed the opportunity to arrange an impromptu ‘gig’ on Sunday morning at Al’s birthday breakfast. Which went off well. And so it therefore didn’t come as a surprise when the wives siezed another opportunity for a gig at the church coffee-bar that evening. Which, too, went off well.

However, it was rather surprising when another gig was arranged to open (er… what the heck!) for another band on the Monday night. Having never been subjected to ‘open’ for anyone before, we experienced first hand what it was to not have lights, to not have good sound, to not have a drummer, and to not play well.

It therefore didn’t come as a surprise when the gigging stopped! Hehehe…

Anyway, for old times sake, here are MP3 versions of “This Way Up”, our critically acclaimed foray as professional touring rock band of fame and misfortune.

Speed (and other things that kill me) | Union | What I got | Verisimilitude (a word that we certainly DON’T use!) | Silly Sounding Sweetness | Calling You (LIVE)

Yes, I know these files are huge, I didn’t have time to resample them smaller. Find a broadband connection if you’re battling! Sorry!

Good Cellular Reception

We had our annual end-of-year do-dat at our place on Monday. We were extremely blessed with awesome weather, and from my vantage point it was a great day! Hope everyone enjoyed it and um… er… will continue coming to cell next year! Thanks to those who made it from ‘the other cellular provider’

Hat-trick of happiness

OK, indeed nothing to do with sports, but Peet se Plek delivered yet another wonderful holiday, complete with sun, lazy days on the water, heli-flying, fruit-picking, Settlers of Catan-ing, braaing and many alternate (yet exciting) consumptions of vast quantities of food.

Unlike other visits we had our families along this time, celebrating my mom-in-law’s birthday, and it was great to hang out with them and introduce them to one of our favourite spots. Their baby-sitting prowess was also greatly appreciated, as Jamie is tirelessly curious about everything, and is seldom satisfied with a “um, Jamie… let’s chill for a while”, preferring to drag one around by a randomly selected finger at his every whim.

Sounds cute eh? Damn tiring!

Nevertheless, Vere was back from a 3-month stint up-country, and it was nice catching up. The photo below of him blasting his eyeball out with a hosepipe was his self-inflicted penance after mistakenly doing the same to Jamie in a game-gone-bad. You kinda had to be there, but it’s a fun picture anyway!

So, memorable events: Jamie drove the Wild Dagger, Captain Awesome flew the heli, Trev painted, Vere, Junaid and I retrieved a sunken canoe, Jan the farmer took us for a long tour of the orchards/vineyards and we of course celebrated a cool Mom-in-law! Looking forward to the next time!

The upside of broken toys

In other (almost breaking) news, I finally possess a real camera again (no offence to Nokia). After having reported a CCD issue about 2 months ago, my trusty Canon S1IS spent a long time in JHB before I was told that they couldn’t find a replacement part. A few days later, I was offered a replacement SX100, which in an act of daring I declined, pointing out that it wasn’t in fact an equivalent to what I was loosing.

The end result – last Wednesday I took delivery of my new S5IS, which although isn’t a radically new model, is many, many times better than my (presumably) deceased S1IS. So I’m certainly grateful to Canon and ORMS for seeing to this whole thing, and I can say that having spent my weekend at the inimitable Peet se Plek, it produces extremely nice photos. I’ll post a few when I sort through them.

Mission Accomplished

I went. I busted my ass. I handed-in. It’s hard to believe that 6 months have passed, but the Louis Group Business Academy is finished. The accumulation of my new-found business acumen was submitted as a business plan on the 27th, and presented (while sitting in a wheelchair…) to a panel on the 4th. Overall, the course was exactly what I’d hoped it would be – eye-opening and thought-provoking. Graduation is next Tuesday at CTICC, and promises to be quite a do – complete with Helen Zille as speaker. There are also prizes attached to individual results, but although mine have been pretty good, there’re still too many variables for me to get overly excited. So I wait…