My beautiful breakfast!

Thunderstorm in Johannesburg

La Mercy, Durban

Perfect day for the beach. :-)

Earth Hour 2

Guess it's not easy to persuade all to participate a good cause.

Earth Hour

Road trip... Destination 1: North West province

I'm sure all of us working people would like to go on a road trip, if we can... Well, at least I'd like to.  So I have decided to take matters into my own hands.  Since, I can't just up and go, the best alternative is to visit these places... by words.

So, today's destination, courtesy of Thisile, will be: North West province (what can I say, the child is weird).

North West is situated in the north of South Africa, sharing its border with Botswana.  West of the province is the Kalahari desert, while the economic hub of SA, Gauteng, lies in its east, and the Free State to the south.  North West is known for its platinum mines, nicknamed the Platinum Province.

The capital of North West is Mafikeng (I wonder if anyone we know lives there? For the sake of free accommodation, of course), which lies near the Botswana border.  Other big cities in the province include Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp; other main towns are Brits and Rustenburg (Thato's home town! Accommodation is sorted!).

So what can one do in North West?  It boasts the internationally famous Sun City (no, you will not see Charlize Theron walking around there), the Pilanesberg National Park, the Madikwe Game Reserve and the Rustenburg Nature Reserve.  Many would say that Sun City is not to be missed, but seriously, we are not here to see man-made structures.  Rather take a game drive that'd be more fun!  Oh, also not to be missed are the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Vredefort Dome and the Taung huminid fossil site.  The Vredefort Dome is the world's largest visible meteor-impact crater.  The Taung fossil site together with Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai form the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site.

Now as oppose to Thisile's believe that there's nothing in North West, quite to the contrary there's a lots!  Instead, the place is quite literally sitting on a "gold mine".  About 94% of South Africa's platinum is found in the Rustenburg and Brits area.  Apart from platinum, North West also produces a quarter of the country's gold, as well as granite, marble, fluorspar and diamonds.  Still think there's nothing?  Alright, fine!  So I can't take any of those, but at least I can dream, can't I!!

Anyways, so what else can one do in North West?  Well there are... white water rafting, canoeing, diving, hot air ballooning, hiking, fishing, rock climbing, abseiling, game viewing, hunting, golfing, birding, and much more!

That's all for now, folks.  Stay tune for our next destination!

Religious Tolerance? Why not try to understand?

For the past 2 weeks, instead of enjoying a peaceful Saturday morning. I've been alerted by the shrieking intercom, to jump out of bed or the bathroom... and only to find someone politely "inviting" me to join them in "commemorate the death of..." (at this point I was quite alerted by this statement, thinking who died?!) "... JESUS". At this point my thought was: I jumped out of bed and rushed over to get this??

I must admit, I'm not much of a religious person. In fact, I've never been devoted to any religion at all. My family is Buddhist, I went to a "Christian" school, I have friends who practice Muslim, and friends who are Hindu. I've come to believe that Tolerance is the best religion. Because from my understanding of all the religions I've come across, at the end of the day, all religions promote love and peace. So the events of the past 2 weeks got me thinking: can we really tolerate religious differences or maybe we ought to try to understand religious differences?

Now you may ask what is the difference between Religious tolerance and Religious understanding. By definition "tolerance" meant "a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own" or "the act or capacity of enduring". By this definition, it suggests that when one is Religious tolerance, he/she doesn't necessary share the same ideas, they can "put up" with your practice of religion. It's like me saying, I can't stand my neighbour playing their music so loud at night, but I would "tolerate" them to keep good faith between neighbours. And what's so wrong with that?! After all, it's difficult to ask everyone to have the same ideas, if that is possible we wouldn't have all the religious conflicts in the world. But is tolerance really enough? Yes, I may be able to tolerate the loud music, but I would be thinking the whole time: "These annoying people! Why can't they put the *#@$*(@ music off?!". Same with religion, it's easy to tolerate one another's religion on the surface, but things are never surface deep.

In the small, close-knit global village (yes, we are close-knit and a global village) that we live in today, we need to go one step further to reach Religious understanding. Being able to tolerate differences is only the first step. To resolve conflicts, we need to understand the differences: why do they have certain practices? Why do some people believe in Jesus, while others believe in Allah, Jehovah, Shiva, etc (Note: strictly speaking, Buddhism is not a religion, instead it's a spiritual teaching). Once we understand our differences, then we can start appreciating these differences. Why do we need to appreciate differences and how can we appreciate them, you aks? When we are able and start to appreciate differences, only then we can realise that we are really not that different. Maybe the ways we worship our Gods are different, but the core values of all religion boils down to Peace and Love. Once we can understand that we may not be so against why the neighbour play their music so loud, and perhaps the neighbour would also realise they should turn the volume down.

By this point, you are probably thinking: "yeah! In your dreams". But is it really so difficult? Understanding stems from education. So while schools have "Religious instruction" (I don't know about now, but used to only speak about Christianity in these classes), we should really be having "Religious education", giving pupils the opportunities to learn and understand different religions. More importantly, politicans should stop using religion to inctie hatred between different religious groups. Instead, they should lead by example, by taking every opportunity available to them to educate their voters.

So, yes we may not see the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or Indo-Pakistani conflict, or Islamism vs. Christianity conflict, overnight. But we need to take conscious decisions to stop waging wars or starting conflicts "in the name of God". This all start with small steps, and constant reminder that we should all believe in Peace and Love...

A1 GP in Gauteng!

The weekend of the 22nd Feburary, 2009. The A1 GP comes to Gauteng. To my surprise, the A1 GP is actually powered by Ferrari... Yes, I didn't know that! To be honest, I've never been much of a fan for A1. For a F1 fanatic like me (although not been following the races for a long while), A1 has always seemed like F1 taken a handful of chill pills... not quite as fast and exciting. But, I was delighted to be proven wrong... or was it perhaps intoxication?!

The day started off with a bit of hype and disappointment. Disappointed because I had to leave my car at the Leeuwkop Prison parking... I prayed very hard that escapees do not find my car fast enough as their escape vehicle! Hype because we got guest passes to the pits and media parking! Hehehe... I know people who know people!

And then we were disappointed further more as to the level of readiness of the track. The race took place in Kyalami (duh! where else can they have it?!), driving up to the track was rather a mission having to pass several checking point by the organising committee, as well as the cops who justed wanted to have a closer look at your nice car... and perhaps a coke?? Once at the track... more confusion followed, parking areas were not clearly maked and signs were confusing... but let's not dwell more on that... SA still has a long way to go if they want F1 to come to Kyalami or Welkom (but then again who in their right mind want to drive to the middle of no-where to watch a race?!)

We got lost going from our parking to the stands. But good thing that came out of it is the B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L Ferraris we saw on display... Oh, how I wish I could be driving in one of those! By the time we finally got to our seats (after a long while, since it was really hard to drag ourselves away from the Ferraris...), we were just in time for the sprint race! Yeah, go!!! go!!! go!!! What? You ask who won the race? Who cares! The point was, the cars sounded amazing, and it's even more amazing to see them in action. Plus we were slightly intoxicated after a few beers while sitting in blazing hot weather (not a good idea!)

After the race we decided to grab some lunch... and then the unexpected happened. The people I know, got a call from the people he knows... long story short we were taking a stroll down the pit lane, hanging out in the SA garage (minus the car?!)... and then the even more unexpected happened: "Do you want to go onto the starting grid?" Hell, YES!!!!!!!! Next thing, we found ourselves taking a walk down the starting line-up as one of the "rich and famous" in all their nice outfits (except dear Ashlin who didn't have proper shoes on!). It is here that the cameras went crazy again. And far more importantly for the guys to take a few photos up close and personal with the parade ladies (well, with legs like those I think it's hard for them to say NO!). But not forgetting to snap a few shots of the cars and the drivers.

It was ear-drums blowing to be standing right next to the starting line (behind the fence of course), watching all 23 cars blazing pass by you kind of gives you an unexplained adrenaline and euphoria. Next stop Formula 1!!!

P.S. Thanks guys for a great Sunday... Ashlin, Ruben and Darrin.

Jule

Medinat Habu

 

 

 

The Great Pyramid, Giza