Its Gaddafi.........................."Duck"

Whenever I have seen photos of Muammar Gaddafi he reminds me of a cartoon character, while he may look like one for those living in his fiefdom its no laughing matter, Libyia is another country run by a Dicktator (No I have not miss spelt that word) that is seeing its citizens stand up and wanting to oust those that feel the people love them. Lybia it seems is using mercenaries because the normal men that make up the security forces are defecting or refusing to shoot unarmed civilians. Mercenaries obviously have no such compunctions; the mercenaries are probably Zimbabweans and Chadanian’s. The latest atrocity being mourners at funerals for those killed by the army bring shot at by men from helicopters. It would also seem that SA sold Lybia weapons in 2010 (we always seem to be doing business with the bad guy……just a coincidence ?)

Bahrian is going ahead with GP and here is a picture of their line up for next Sunday’s race. I will be shouting for the Red one.

The problem with all this unrest in oil rich states is that the oil price is going through the roof, this in turn means that our petrol price is increasing, since beginning of year it has gone up twice with another 43c in crease on Tuesday at midnight……….Oh happy days.

News from NZ is the recent Earth Quake (The second in 6 months) that has killed 145 and has 200 people missing the Prime minister has labelled it New Zealand’s greatest disaster, this news got me wondering how safe those South Africans in Christchurch feel now and perhaps this will not be New Zealand’s greatest disaster, that still has to come….”what is it” you may ask? The Boks beating NZ at Home in the finals of the World Cup. I find it ironic that so many South Africans have left this country for New Zealand due to the safety aspects of that country and have been injured by this earthquake. I have to say that it gets my goat when local papers (here it’s the Herald) has to go overboard about former Port Elizabeth residents who live in the affected area and we have to muddle through 2 pages of crap about the family, when they left, what they do in their new homeland and what they were doing when the quake struck………………I actually don’t care to be honest. You live there (a decision you made) you got caught in an earthquake, not nice but live with it.

While I am on the subject of NZ it seems that the love of extreme sports has moved over to the pub, I believe that in a number of establishments in that country you can now order a shooter called (Horses Sperm) “what are the ingredients” I hear you ask……….Well Horses sperm…….Yep I can see the ladies on a night out “barman” 2 apple daiquiri’s, 4 gin fizzes and a round of horse sperm please” . Tania tells me that in the states (New York) there is an ice cream parlour that is making ice cream from breast milk, now I am a big fan of the breast, but think I would be hard pressed to rush out and have a Nipple Ripple ice cream.

Had a pretty stressful week, trained on Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday afternoon when finished training was informed that I could present Intro to Samtrac to get signed off on, this means that I present the course while another trainer who has presented the course for at least a year sits in and sees how you present. I have to say that I put s lot of pressure on myself and I nearly did not do the 3^rd day training but thanks to support from family and work colleagues I got through it and I am now signed off on that particular 3 day course.

Was so great to wake up on Saturday after a full nights sleep, as did not sleep well On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, must say I do really enjoy weekends and we usually have a good one.

My dad was in Zimbabwe this week, “that reminds me, it was MAD BOB’s birthday on Monday, I think the old Fcuker is 87, another Dicktator of note”. Anyway I digress, Hi impressions of Harare where that its like the city centre in JHB and that outlying areas are very neat and tidy, the shops are full of stock with people buying and prices are not that much more expensive as SA. Companies such as Edgars, Steers, Checkers etc are well represented in Zim. My dad was doing some work up at a diamond mine that actually has diamonds lying around on the surface, part of the induction that you get when you go on site (you need a police clearance jut to get through the gate) is that if you drop anything on the floor “DO NOT’ bend over to pick it up, otherwise you could be looking down the business end of an AK47.

With regards sports, Protea’s beat the West Indies on Thursday, so a good start, on Friday the Warriors best the Dolphins in the first semi-final of the pro 20 league. The Cheetahs snatched defeat fro the jaws of victory and the Lions almost beat the Stormers. The Sharks did well to beat the Blues at home, see that in the cricket world cup there are 25 South Africans playing in the tournament.

Talking about sports Gabby has managed to get chosen for the schools paddling ream, which is pretty impressive considering that before she had gone to trials Gabby had never (as far as I am aware) ever paddled a canoe/kyak/paddleski before.

What I have noticed is that the sun is getting lazy in the morning and is taking longer, like me to drag its ass out of bed, this means that Autumn and winter is on its way……..Sucks. I have to admit though that Winter in PE s not half as bad s that in Clarens or Europe. Hopefully we will get rain this winter, if not I think we are going to be in deep Siht. At present the combined dam levels are 35%. Everywhere else there are floods and more rain that they can remember. Water is even being stolen in PE, yep people are going around and emptying pools and then selling the water to people who want to top up their pools the question I want to know is how the police would prove that you are in possession of stolen water? The stealing is even done while people are sleeping , the water thieves seem to put the pool pump onto waste and suck out all the water from the pool into tanks on the back of bakkies or trucks, others throw a water pipe over the wall into the pool and pump the water out that way. (Only in South Africa).

Nicole (Tania’s sister) posted a message on her Facebook profile this week that she misses and loves her family (can only be her SA family) as the majority of Doug’s are in London, or the UK, nice to know that we are missed Nicole I am sure that you will enjoy seeing dad when he comes over for a couple of weeks mid year. While Doug’s family are Nicole’s as well, must be hard not to see “your own” family on a regular basis, especially if you are close to them. Nicole knows we miss and love her and that we also miss seeing Amber growing up, she seems to be such a character and while Skype, Facebook and Mixit are effective means of communication compared to years ago, it’s still just not the same as interacting one on one.

Port Elizabeth is called the Friendly city as well as the Windy city and it also has the honour of being known as the cleanest city in South Africa. (or at least it was in 2009, not sure who won in 2010). We also rank 6^th with regards size of municipality (Gauteng comes 1^st)

Regards PE being the windiest place in SA this is not 100% true

A Weather Services study of 128 recording stations over 30 years, East London's percentage of wind-free days was so low that it was rounded off to zero percent.
However, when it comes to wind speed and frequency of strong winds, the city loses its breezier-than-thou status. "East London has the least calm but if you take all three into consideration and add it all together you'll find Cape Point is the windiest station and PE is the windiest city," said Hugh van Niekerk, station manager of the South African Weather Service in Port Elizabeth.

East London did not even make the top five windiest places in South Africa. The average wind speed in East London was 4,1 metres per second, and nine percent of the city's wind blew at eight metres per second. In comparison, the average speed at Cape Point was 6,9 metres per second and 42%of its wind blew at eight or more metres per second. Port Elizabeth notched an average speed of 4,3 metres per second and had the country's second most frequent strong winds. The study was done after airline kulula.com claimed Port Elizabeth was South Africa's windiest city.

Calm was measured at absolute zero wind movement. Winds that were not noticeable to people are regarded as "uncalm". According to sailing members of the Algoa Bay Yacht Club a basic rule of thumb is that every month with an R in it will have wind in it in Port Elizabeth. i.e. the winter months of May to August are relatively wind free and the months of September to April coincide with the sailing season in Algoa Bay.

On Saturday Ryan, Gabby and I joined by Kirsten’s cousin from the States (we wont hold that against him) also called Ryan by the way had a great body boarding session at Hobie beach, great waves and we had some fun, I felt like I had been hit by a truck this morning (Sunday 27^th) but was worth it, when we left home the weather was glorious and as we got to the beachfront we had a fog bank hovering over the sea, it was weird because one street back it was hot and sunny and over the road was cold and foggy.

Busy watching India playing the Pom’s in the World Cup, hopefully they will beat them, cant stand the likes of Peterson and the other South Africans who have turned their back on this country, but that’s a complete other story.

Well that’s about if for this week

Ciao

Spad