Surfing in Finland?

Success!

Just a quick post as I don't have much time online.

I am now fully registered in CPUT! I had proper registration today (this week is Orientation Week), and I am finally at the end of all the admin I have had to do about Visas and applications and the like.

It was a bit of a mission today. I arrived at 8:30am like I should, then sped through the first few parts of the registration process. All was going well until I went to the Internationl Affairs office where I was told I had to pay R1400 as an international student and then half of my tuition fees (which is about R2300) today also. In the end I went home to meet Dad who then came back with me to pay with his card.

There wasn't much to do after that, and I eventually reached the end of the process getting my student card and some freebies at about 1pm. Lovely job :)

Three more half-hearted days in Orientation Week then it's into the nitty-gritty of the first term. It's been 9 months since I last studied properly.

End of the net

I just saw this on Tim's blog.

http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

:D

CPUT

A quick glance at what my new university is like.

Welcome Hosted on Zooomr

New home Hosted on Zooomr

Dad's here

Dad arrived yesterday morning. I went to pick him up at 9ish after getting the car cleaned. We haven't done much so far - we were both very sleepy yesterday and both napped in the afternoon. We have had two wonderful lunches out and today we drove down Chapman's Peak Drive, then over the mountains into Tokai, past the school and into Constantia to buy him a map of the city. No plans yet for tomorrow, but I guess something out and a bout. It has been mega mega hot in the past 5 days. Today was slightly cooler and cloudy, but the humidity was still there.

Visa

I got my visa today, finally. I am now set to register at the uni on Tuesday during a near-full first week there.

Syndication, multiplied

I have been playing around with SuprGlu the last two days. It is a great site which lets you add various feeds into a single website. I have added this blog, my photos and my twitters (mobile updates) into a single site here. [feed]

Today I fiddled with the CSS and layout to make the page look similar to both my twitter page and whitesock.co.uk, my own domain. Everything matches :)

It seems that being able to have everything in one place is a perfect situation and I am trying to decide whether I should point people to this blog or straight to SuprGlu due to its way of combining everything together.

Stuck up

Stuck up Hosted on Zooomr

A few updates

Firstly, Milja. Milja is having fun at her conference in Amsterdam. She has very little internet and has e-mailed me twice from a mac shop. Apparently the city is a good mix between Helsinki and Cambridge and she likes it so much we are going to move there!

Secondly, my visa. I went to the Home Affairs office again yesterday to hand in the letter (about needing the visa quickly) as asked for last week. I was told to come in again on Friday to check progress. Obviously no work had been done on my application yet, otherwise they wouldn't have had to ask me in again as they would have a clearer idea of when it would be finished.

Thirdly, uni. Today was the 'Pre-Registration' day. I was there for about one hour, getting to the right place then filling in a form. Nice and easy. I was also given a sheet with payment and fee details. It's gonna be quite a lot! I am only registered for one course (out of the four for the year) and will be given projects to do. This is due to the fact that I am only there for 6 months and so will not gain any actual qualifications from my time there. I will have a 'lighter load' than a usual student and will have these projects to keep me busy.

Fourthly, the rats. Pharaoh II arrived the day that Pharaoh I died so there was a quick transition from old to new. He is now settled in and is a lot more active and energetic than both the original Pharaoh and Basil.

Fifthly, the gym. Today is the fifth day of my new workout regime. Yesterday, at the second gym session, I nearly died I was so tired. A lot of work on arms, shoulders, chest and back. My calves still hurt from the first gym session three days ago. And today, hip-hip-hooray, is another 40 minutes of running and cycling.

Sixthly, Dad is coming. He is landing tomorrow morning at 8:50am and I am excited to have family over. Unfortunately I will have a busy week next week and uni that I wasn't expecting.

Seventhly, the new roof. I think the builders are leaving today. The thatch is finished, the bricks have been cemented over and the new gable received the finishing touches yesterday. The upright poles inside upstairs have been sawn off to finally reveal a better idea of how big the space is upstairs. It is actually rather large. Minna and Heikki will have a fun time now deciding where rooms and walls will go. Good luck :)

The Night Raider

I was woken this morning by crying and a lot of movement out in the next room. One of the dogs (no doubt Megan - looked very guilty this morning) had made it into Matias' room during the night and had somehow disrupted the rat's cage so that they had got out. Pharaoh looked dead lying on the carpet and Basil was nowhere to be seen.

Basil was found soon after and Pharaoh, although seemingly paralyzed and very shocked, managed to have a short drink. They are now huddled in their little house and haven't moved since this morning.

Online voicemail

Ever fancy leaving someone a voicemail while you're online? (Probably not actually, but this is still a great service). ODEO, online audio specialists and twitter creators, have a very simple service for sending people voice messages over the internet for free and without a signup in sight. This is great if you need to say something quickly to someone who isn't online on Skype for example (especially if they haven't paid for Skype's own voicemail service), or if you find you want to send a more personal message than an e-mail.

Try it out and send us a message!

The healthy option

I made a quiet New Years Resolution to myself this year to be more healthy and exercise more. It has been going great so far, especially on the food side - a lot more fruit and less fatty foods - and I have been doing a few exercises at home to get a bit fitter.

School started again for everyone on Wednesday. Sean joined a gym. He has also decided to be more healthy this year (neither of us knew each other's plans). Everyone left to Amsterdam on Friday and it has been just Sean and I left. We don't have too much to do, and yesterday (Saturday), we did some cardio work. Sean has a treadmill and a bicycle machine at his house and we did 40 minutes of work out. We made sure we ate a healthy lunch (at a quaint little Austrian restaurant tucked away on Hout Bay's high street) to make sure we weren't making the job harder for ourselves.

Today we carried on our new 'routine'. I met Sean at about 12ish as we were planning on playing football in a game between Hout Bay-ers and Muizenberg-ers - a regular, but informal, fixture so I'm told. In the end the game didn't happen but we had a short kick-about anyway. We then had a swim, then went to Claremont for lunch. It is quite a way to go for just food, but we went especially to go to Kauai, "Health food and Juice co." After a delicious and very very healthy meal, we went to the gym, Sean's gym.

I've never been to a gym before apart from the small one at my secondary school. It was great fun. It is in Hout Bay nearly on the beachfront so in a very convenient location for both of us. We did work on a whole range of muscle groups, abs and arms being the ones that got 'hit' the most. I am hoping to join, which is dependant of course on whether I can gather R800 (about £65) for a 5 month membership. We currently have a program of one day cardio, the next at the gym etc. I'm looking forward to seeing results and being the healthiest and fittest I have ever been.

Snow!

Helsinki is finally enjoying major (well, maybe not major) snowfall. I had a brief chat this morning with Ervo who was happy that it was snowing, commenting that it was now 'nice weather'.





Even still is has not been cold enough for the sea to freeze which is very strange. It's *always* possible to walk to the nearby small islands in the Winter.



In contrast to 'real' weather returning to Finland, today has been by far the hottest day since we arrived in August. It has been rather humid, which I think has been the major factor in it being a little 'too' hot, and even now at nearly 10pm it is still quite a bit muggy. It will be hard to sleep tonight.

She's in Europe

Milja is now in Amsterdam on her THIMUN trip. I have heard very little from her, just a quick e-mail this morning, so I guess she is very busy. She actually e-mailed from an Apple shop - jealous :) - meaning that they probably don't have internet in their hotel rooms.

Sunday she returns with my other belove 'M', my Mac :)

Geni

It's amazing how addictive a website can be. I have been on Geni.com (the family tree website I mentioned briefly on Thursday) this evening and have already added 50 people to my family tree.

What is so great about the site, is that if you submit a person's e-mail address when you add them, they can be invited to the site too, so they in turn can add people. This means that your family tree grows exponentially very, very quickly (if, of course your family is made up of tech-savvy people :P). I am hoping that my family gets a hold of this brilliant site and helps add more and more people.

Try it out and see if you get hooked.

Nokia N800, the apple of my eye

Doesn't it look amazing? (US product page here). I wonder how well it will do compared to the iPhone. The N800 is not actually a phone (although it has VoIP capabilities with Google Talk, and Skype is on its way) and so is not limited to a 2 year contract phone plan, but it has similar capabilities and enters a very similar market. I would love one for when we return to Helsinki, a city which is getting more and more WiFi hotspots (182 at the moment).

Animals

Turbo ran away again yesterday. I didn't see him all day and only just realised at about 4pm that he wasn't around when Milja asked where he was. He must have escaped through the open garage door, kept open for the builders. Matias said he had a hard time sleeping last night because he was worried for Turbo.

Luckily this morning Minna received a call from DARG, the dog rescue centre where Turbo is from, saying that a boy had found Turbo. He is now back, a bit dirty, but safe and sound. He does, however, have a strange limp and is not comfortable sitting down. We think he has a problem with his tail and Minna has scheduled an appointment with a vet this afternoon.

For Matias' birthday present, Minna bought him two rats. They are still quite small, kind of mouse-size, but they will eventually grow quite large. It's very fun to play with them, let them crawl on you etc, but I don't think I would enjoy it so much if they were 20cm long. India loves them so much that she says they are hers and she cries when she has to leave them alone to sleep. Here is Milja and 'Basil'...

New addition Hosted on Zooomr

Happy Birthday²

Happy Birthday to Matias and Raija!

Hyvää syntymäpäivää Matiakselle ja Raijalle!

Twitter and its famous twitterers

Twitter is great and very addictive.

Just had to get that out.

In the past week or so, I have enjoyed adding some high profile people as friends on twitter (meaning I get their updates added to my stream and can have them sent to my phone).

• God - twitter.com/god
• Darth Vader - twitter.com/darthvader
• Yoda - twitter/yoda
• Deep Thought - twitter.com/deepthought

All a bit of fun of course.

A guy called Mario has also added a range of BBC news feeds which is such a brilliant hack. I enjoy being up-to-date on World Affairs and Sport and it's so handy having these nes flashes sent to your phone as text messages (for free).

It's all happening

Yesterday Matias and Milja returned to school for their second semester (which ends in June).

Tomorrow is Matias' birthday. He will turn twelve. It is also Raija's birthday. In the evening Milja will leave to The Hague for her second Model United Nations conference, THIMUN. This one is much larger than the JOMUN conference she attended in September and will have deligates from all over the world. She returns next Sunday 28th.

We missed it, but it was six months since the wedding the other day. In another six months we will hopefully be in England for a long (very overdue) visit.

Just as before, I have very little to do in the day. I have new work coming from a band to do their website and CD artwork in the next few weeks. Today, browsing around, I found a new site called Geni where you can create an on-the-fly family tree. It seems to be very popular as the servers are very slow, but I was on it for a bit this morning and it looks fun.

The builders have been busy painting some of the newly concreted walls, and have been inside painting the boarded ceilings.

It has been wet and cloudy the past two days, not nice at all, although it is always good to have a few breather days of cool in between the Summer heat.

Tilt-shift

I urge you to have a look at some of these photos. They are made to look like the subject(s) is/are in miniature scale by changing the setup of the camera - a method calle Tilt-Shift photography.

> Tilt-shift on Flickr

This one is my favourite of the photos I briefly looked through. What a cute little model village :P

More on the tilt-shift technique here and here.

Llandudno

Exactly as planned Hosted on Zooomr

Me with India on Llandudno beach on Sunday. Photo by Milja.

Visa or no visa

Yesterday Milja and I (and Heikki for some of it) had a fun time running around Cape Town trying to get all the bits sorted for my visa application. We left at 7:30am to get to the Home Affairs Office as soon as possible. Thankfully, there were only two people in the line ahead of us when we arrived so we didn't wait long.

The guy we talked to was much more helpful and actually listened to Heikki as he explained the situation. We were given a list of things to get and copies to make. I had to get a letter from CPUT saying the length of my course, and copies of passports, letters of my financial arrangements etc.

Milja and I darted off to CPUT at about 9ish. Heikki went to work. I have only been to the campus once before, in February, so I had to ask for directions. We found the correct place, the IT Centre, eventually, and it seems to be the nicest/newest building there. We found someone there, a very helpful and enthusiastic man, who told us who to go and see. Getting the letter we needed wasn't too easy - I was talking to the acting Head of Department for a bit about whether or not it was worth going there for only 6 months as I will not come away with any papers or qualifications (They suggested I go to City Varsity in the centre of town, which actually does have some good courses). Anyway I got the letter, but it said December when it should have said June blahdy blah... I had to go back later and change it.

We then went to Heikki's work to get the copies of everything, and a letter that Mum had written and sent to Heikki in the time we were at CPUT about guardianship - I still need one until I am 21. Then we went back to CPUT to change the letter, then off to the Home Affairs Office to hand in everything.

It was packed again, like the day before. Thankfully, the guy had said that we wouldn't have to wait when we returned and so we lingered by him and waited until he was free, skipped the queue, gave him the documents, paid the R425 (about £35) fee and were glad that that part of the ordeal was over. It is now up to me to check up on the status of the visa, and I have to go in next week to give them a letter saying I need it urgently and why. I am going to go early again so to avoid the masses of people.

At night we sleep

At night we sleep Hosted on Zooomr

Running From Camera

Talk about having fun with your camera... check out Running From Camera. Every photo is the guy running away from his camera after setting the timer to two seconds. I love it. Here are some teasers...

Photos by Muggezifter

Just back from the GP

Just back from the doctor's. I had a check-up and I am "100% fit and healthy". Brill. Now back to the struggle of getting the forms done and waiting for Home Affairs to get it to me on time.

9 days and counting

I need a visa. A student visa to be able to study at CPUT. Registration is next Wednesday at 8.30am.

Today I got onto the Homw Affairs. They have had my faxed copies of my passport, Milja's passport and my acceptance letter for a month now and I haven't heard anything from them. We drove around in Cape Town trying to find the place and eventually just parked in the area I thought it was in and asked the car payment person where it was.

When we got in it didn't look promising. There were hundreds of people queuing for desks labelled Deaths and Births and Marriages. It smelt badly of B.O. It was not a place I would have liked to stand in line and queue for my turn. I asked a nearby worker where I needed to go to get a visa sorted and followed his instructions out towards the main door and up the stairs to the next floor up.

When we got there we were buzzed in, but as I began to tell my story about changin my visa, the receptionists interrupted and said that the place was a private consultancy and I would need to book a time to be seen. Not the right place.

So we headed downstairs again and turned up a the right place, signed in, went through the security turnstile and went upstairs to the second floor. We were in the right place finally. We managed to only have to wait briefly while two people were seen to and I again explained my situation. At the mention of a student visa, the ignorant secretary left me in the middle of my explanation and ran off to get some forms. She returned with a booklet to fill out and some medical forms showing I needed another chest x-ray and a check-up.

At this point I felt like just giving up. I already had a chest x-ray, in Finland, in the summer, to get my initial visa. That cost a lot. We had also be told by the South African Embassy in Helsinki that the process of changing the visa would be easy and simple - it should be seeing as it cost, refundable on entrance to CPUT, €1100 to get my visa sorted.

I came home and talked to Minna, Heikki and Raija about the situation to see what I should do. In the end I went to the hospital in Constantiaberg with Milja to get my x-ray (R350 / £25). Turns out I am fine, I thankfully have a "normal size heart" :) We then met Minna to get some bed linen, and Milja and I have just been to the doctor's clinic here in Hout Bay to schedule an appointment for 18:45 when I will have a check-up (about R250 / £18).

Even after doing all this, checking if I am well enough, filling in yet another form, it might not be able to study. I have only 9 days before I go to CPUT to register, and I need that student visa with me. This is Africa, it might take weeks.

Ratanga Junction

Yesterday, Milja, Matias, Harrison and I went to the theme park in Cape Town, Ratanga Junction. Milja and I had never been before and today it is closing for Autumn.

It is a nice place, the rides all look the part and it's only R100 (about £7) to get in. But, walking around, there didn't seem to be many rides. We walked for ages to get between the main rides, walking past empty space and bushes. When we got to the rides we had to wait for ages. For Monkey Falls (see the photo below), we had to wait for an hour and a half in the blazing sun. For the Cobra, the best ride in my opinion, a fast, twisting rollercoaster, we waited for 45 minutes. We manager to get on four rides in the four hours we were there. It seemed to make sense that there were huge queues when there weren't rides at every corner.

Even still, we had a lot of fun. Here is the photo we bought of us going down a hill on the Monkey Falls water rapid-type ride. We got very wet about 2 minutes later coming down the large finale.

Scared at Ratanga Hosted on Zooomr

Photos of us and the Hugalls

James Hugall has put up some photos he took when we took the boys to the sand dunes in Hout Bay.

SA Rowdens.

It's nice to have some good photos of me, as it's usually me taking the photos.

Helsinki, how I miss it

I have a few feeds in my feed reader of photos from and blogs based in Finland. Today I found a photographer on Flickr, aixcracker, who has some brilliant photos of Helsinki. I have saved some onto my computer and will set them as my rotating desktop background on my Mac.

This is one of my favourites from his Helsinki set. It is of Esplanadi, in the centre of the city. I don't think I have ever been to Esplanadi at night, so the image feels fresh even though I have visited there many times.

Java Assessment One

I finally got back my result from my first Assessment of my online Java course. I got 82 out of 100, so 82%, which is about what I was hoping for. That first assessment is worth 40% of the overall grade, so I currently have 32.8% of the total 200 marks from assessments 1 and 2. I am currently finishing off the second assessment which is due on Monday.

No way forgotten

On Wednesday our friends' mum passed away suddenly. She was taken into the emergency ward and apparently died from liver failure. She had had liposuction the previous week and it seemed it was a factor in her passing.

Yesterday, everyone was spaced out and very reflective. It is such a shock for someone to suddenly go like that. I have only met the mum a few times but still, the news that she had died was a great shock and very hard to absorb.

Today was a memorial service held for her. Work colleagues and friends gathered in the garden at the family's home. The service was wonderful and very emotional. It was an amazing day, very fitting for someone who is regarded as cheerful, friendly and a beautiful person.

Our best to the family, especially the girls who have to go on without their mum and friend.

Jaiku and all things Status

Status is becoming quite a thing on the Internet at the moment. People love letting others know what they are doing or where they are. Social websites (eg: Facebook) have implemented statuses into their sites, and Instant Messaging clients (eg: MSN, AIM) have had this feature for a while.

I have been using twitter for a few months (my page here). I can text from my phone, update through GMail or an IM client, or from the twitter website. It is like a mini blog, but for short snippets and thoughts rather than long posts. And it is bloomin' fun (and free). You can subscribe to other people's updates too to keep in touch with friends and see what they are up to. You can also use twitter for direct messaging (for free!) - I can text Annie in England for the price of one normal message (for free if I use the web or an IM client). Its brilliant.

I had seen this other status-type website, Jaiku, just after I started using twitter and kind of ignored it as I was settled using twitter. Jaiku is a Finnish company doing a very similar thing as twitter - you can set updates from the web or your phone, you can follow friends etc. I joined the website yesterday to really see what it is about (my page here). I am now using it as a base for all my feeds, as you can add photo, blog and bookmark etc. feeds to your status stream. Now, if someone wants to check what I am up to they get a range of different information, not just short updates. I am integrating my twitter, this blog, and my Zooomr photos. A brilliant way of keeping information together in one place. Unfortunately I have not yet found if Jaiku supports feeds themselves; I am hoping they do.

I am planning to use Jaiku exclusively (no twitter) when I return to Finland in the Summer.

UPDATE: I found my Jaiku feed, and I fed it through FeedBurner. If you want to subscribe to it, it is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/jaiku_danr.

Dogs and their mess

Since Minna and co. have been gone, the dogs have been very very messy. There have been numerous occasions where a stench has filtered through the door and we have scowered the house to locate the 'problem'. Megan relieved herself inside three times yesterday. Even Turbo can't help himself. He was inside for about 2 minutes this morning before finding our carpeted bedroom and hurling instantly. I don't know what he had eaten. It did not look like dog food.

It has been tiresome cleaning up all the time. Its like there are children here all the time. I am glad, though, that dogs fall asleep in an instant and the place falls quiet.

Photo opportunity

Will Sell Wife for Beer Hosted on Zooomr

A photo by Thomas Hawk, prolific Zooomr photographer.

iPhone

Apple announced their latest product, the iPhone. There have been rumours for years about them bringing out a mobile device, and they finally did, about 2 hours ago.



This thing is amazing. It has already been dubbed the iPod killer. It is a mobile phone, internet device and music player all in one. It has a huge screen, touch-screen cntrols, and a beautiful user interface. You can browse the Internet with the Safari browser, look on Google Maps, use email, pretty much anything you use the internet for on a regular basis, it can do. Pretty much the perfect mobile device for today's wireless Internet age.

Look at more photos here - Engadget.

I'm not sure I will ever be able to afford the $500 price tag, but I can dream, can't I :)

Photo update

I have just finished uploading the last photos that I have taken. Finally all photos are up from around Christmas. I have made a SmartSet on Zooomr here for those photos.

I have also finished adding photos to Dan's Daily Photo, so that is now up-to-date. It took a while!

Enjoy!

Milja

Muse Hosted on Zooomr

One of my all time fave photos of Milja.

I'm writing a novel

Well, not quite, but it is a kind of story....

There is a website, recently started, called Word Count Journal, where you write a post one word longer than the day before's, starting with one word. It's quite fun. I'm going to have a bash at writing a 'story' and see where it leads. Lots can change in a day, so the story will be very unpredictable! You can find my 'novel' here.

Feel free to check back to see how the story goes, or subscribe to the feed for instant updates.

I wonder where the roads will lead!

Small, small world

Milja and I just came back from a small shopping trip to Canal Walk to get her some hair appliances (and for some lunch, of course). She bought some awesome wireless straighteners and a funky little fold-up hairdryer. Great fun.

I was just looking through the manual for the straighteners, and I looked to see if there was a place in Finland to return them to if they broke after we go back in the Summer. Low and behold, the address to send them to is a PO Box at Niittykatu 8, Espoo - the flat where we will live is Niittykatu 2, Espoo. How very strange. We could deliver them by hand if needed :) I couldn't believe it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

happy birthday to minna and james for today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
love, m&d
xx

New Blogger working fine

Yesterday I realised the problem I was having with the new Blogger and fixed it. All is working perfectly (and now better!) again.

QPR sign Finn

QPR.co.uk:

QPR have completed the free transfer signing of MyPa utility-man Sampsa Timoska.

The 27 year-old Finland international has put pen to paper on an 18 month contract with the Club.

Rated highly in his homeland having accrued a wealth of experience in the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup and Finnish Veikkausliiga, Timoska is set to go straight into the R's squad for the FA Cup third round tie against Luton Town on Saturday afternoon, subject to receiving international clearance.

I have actually seen Timoska play twice while I was in Finland. He is a decent player and I'm looking forward to seeing how he fairs in England. Paljon onnea Sampsa!

Hattie came and we tidied up

Today was filled with the last few episodes of Lost 2, which ended quite well and we are looking forward to Season 3. We went out to buy curtains and paint, but returned with neither. Milja then wanted to move our room around, so we basically mirror-imaged the furniture, and then we cleaned the house until it sparkled.

Hattie came round at about 9ish and we played board games. Life is brill. I could play it for hours. We also had a go at Inkan Aarre (Inca's Treasure), a South American adaptation of the popular Finnish game, Afrikan Tähti. I was in luck in each of the games we played and had a winning streak this evening.

This is not what we do in our spare time

Check these photos out - click here. Traditional Fist Fighting in South Africa. I've never seen or heard about it, but obviously this is a popular 'sport' here.

Mastering

Mastering Hosted on Zooomr

India's first unaided swim.

Photos with James

I have finally been able to upload all the photos from when James was here.

There is a set here. Enjoy.

Watchaholics

We have been watching a few DVDs while the house is quiet and the first, more hectic, weeks of the holidays have passed. The last few days we have been watching Lost Season 2, which is getting more and more interesting. We have to watch it in black and white, though, as it is Region 1, and out DVD player is, I guess, Region 2.

We have also finished watching Desperate Housewives Season 2, Just Friends, Monster House, Saved at Sean's and Deuce Bigalow.

At the cinema we have seen Night at the Museum, which is a great holiday film to watch and quite entertaining, and She's The Man.

The broken car

We went to Sean's last night with his friend Laban who is down from Johannesburg , Sean's home town, for this week. We played fussball, watched Saved, and we were about to play 30 Seconds when Jamie B rang from the bottom of Sean's hill. His car had conked out, so we all went to help.

We took a torch so we could check the engine (it was dark already). The accelarator pedal was limp, and eventually the snapped wire was located. We drove up to Sean's, after Jamie had made sure to take everything from inside the car with him, but as we arrived back in Sean's drive, it was decided that we were going to attempt to push the car up the hill...

Sean's hill is quite steep, especially near the top. We pushed and heaved and managed to push the car maybe 20-30 metres up the hill, including a few breaks, but as momentum slowed, we let the car roll back down slightly into a side road with parking spaces. It was never going to get any further up the hill, even with four guys pushing a tiny Fiat Uno.

I hope it's still there.

New Year

Happy New Year everyone / Hyvää Uutta Vuotta kaikille



This year promises to be another great one with more twists and turns than the last.



We hope everyone had a good night last night. We watched fireworks with friends high above Hout Bay at Sean's house.