Ewan's Corner

Posts Tagged ‘southafrica’

Unlike most South Africans (or at least that’s how it seems sometimes) I am trying to remain positive about the electricity crisis facing this country.

I’ve learnt a ton about batteries, chargers, invertors, generators and solar panels – and learnt to better appreciate cheaply available electricity when we have it.

I have been accused of being naive overly optimistic in the past, but there is no point in gloom and doom – the damage is done, and this is a problem individual South Africans actually can influence and do something about (unlike a few other issues we face). Sometimes you need a greater perspective – this is not a problem unique to this country.

I use the unplanned downtime to have candle-lit dinners with my family, family bath times take on a whole new dimension, and ditching the PC / TV for awhile is surprisingly refreshing :-)

Links:

1. Plenty of local bloggers talking about Eskom
2. Google Trends shows the huge recent Eskom search spike (and shows how Zuma isn’t nearly as topical as Eskom right now when you compare trend searches – at least locally).

“SA will join countries such as India and China by voting against a Microsoft proposal to have Ecma Open XML (often referred to as Office Open XML or OOXML) fast-tracked to adoption as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The document format is used in Microsoft Office 2007.”

Source: FMTech

Another Proudly South African moment.

Links: The ‘Open XML formats’ seminar (Ramblings of an African Geek), Slashdot articles, Wikipedia OOXML entry.

A colleague was hijacked last week in Durban – quick thinking saw him leaving the car to the hijackers and happily escaping without harm. He called the Flying Squad who spotted the car in under an hour – a “fierce shoot-out” ensued in Umlazi, and the car was shot up badly from the rear (three hijackers – one died in the car, one died in nearby bushes and the third is still in hospital).
This is the result – his car is being repaired, and insurance want to give it back to him. If it was mine, I’d insist they pay me out – I wouldn’t want the car back, people died inside it!

Another proudly South African moment – SA is now the first African and only the 5th nation in the world to legalise same-sex marriages. Not just civil unions, but full marriage as it should be imho.

“This has been a litmus test of our constitutional values. It forced us to consider: What does equality really mean? What does it look like? Equality does not exist on a sliding scale.” – Melanie Judge, the program manager for OUT

As usual, the ACDP has something insightful ⁽¹⁾ to add:

“We are out of step with the rest of Africa and with rest of world. The international norm is civil unions, as opposed to same-sex marriages. What happened today conflicts with the views of the majority of South Africans.” – Steve Swart, a legislator with the African Christian Democratic Party

NTY article (free subscription required)
Related previous blog entry: South Africa court rules in favour of gay marriage
⁽¹⁾ not!

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Update It seems I was wrong, the original marriage legislation is still unchanged (heterosexuals only) while this new legislation creates a “civil union” (available to both heterosexual and gay couples) which is equal in the eyes of the law to a traditional marriage, but obviously not the same thing. So it’s a huge step in the right direction, but not true equality just yet.
Update Kevin has a good-read post on the subject (he has more time to post than I do, apparently :-) including a link to the Deo Gloria Family Church website (which as he says is a great source of information especially if you are a Christian and believe – incorrectly – that the bible condemns homosexuality).

South Africans murders hit scary rate – Yahoo! News. This is more than a little over the top – it makes SA seem like a veritable war zone! There are major problems, but progress is being made – I do not live in a war zone (and I don’t own a gun) despite what nutters like Charles Nqakula and Peter Gastrow seem to imply.

“The reasons seem to be unbelievably complex. There is no explanation that makes sense. The million dollar question is, ‘Why?’ If we could understand that we could start to fix it. But we can’t. All we can do now is ask religious people to pray for us.” —Peter Gastrow

As always sensationalism sells, and bad news is good news for the media. For a positive spin, and some meaningful reporting, have a look at SA : The Good News.