Move along, nothing to read

Woke up lateish again :-). Picked up Nicollette and went to the house Jane was housesitting. Parked our car inside the property this time since we know what happened last time.

Munched snacky things, watched some cricket on TV, lounged around the swimming pool. Went out to looking for a store that was open to purchase some more foodstuffs to make our braai. Had to go to a few different stores looking for what we needed. Eventully got it all. Came back, cooked lots of meat on the braai, including a leg of lamb :-). Ate lunner (lunch+dinner) around 7pm.

Went to the video store to look for a movie, we wanted to get the new Leon Schuster film, "Mr. Bones", on DVD, but all the DVDs were out so we had to settle for VHS. I think the quality of his work has gone down. This latest one is very slapstick, and not the original incredibly funny stuff he used to do.

Had some nice chocolate ice-cream after that, and went home, dropping Nicollette off on the way.

South Africa doesn't do boxing day sales or anything like that. That stuff picks up in January of the new year instead. Boxing day is usually just used to recover from the effects of Christmas day, eating less food than usual to counteract things.

woke up later than previous days. my parents slept even later, till noon. weather did the usual south african thing. that is, fierce sun in the morning, then big storm clouds coming up from all the evaporated water, and dark skies. now tropical thunderstorm, and it's only 14h45 in the afternoon. the rain is positively bucketing down on the car, along with lightening and thunder.

went via Liberty Liqours to return some wine that had gone very off. We also purchased some more alcohol of various types to supply us for the days of christmas and boxing day. some barefoot dude in front of us at the checkout bought R1200 worth of booze, now you might think thats only CDN$200 worth, but booze is about 4-5 times cheaper here in south africa than canada.

We are on the M4 highway northbound, stuck in traffic because of a traffic accident. got passed it now. 3 vehicle pileup. here things work differently. 7 private tow-truck companies, 1 ambulence, and thats 20 odd minutes aftetr the accident. no cops or firetrucks yet. Yeah, things are different here.

We dropped Greg at Damian after that. Next we went to the new Gateway mall. It still has some way to

With the local stores at the Gateway mall I have found a few stores that bear a striking resemblence to those in North America. Mr Price is Army & Navy. Govan Mani is The Sony Store. Checkers is Superstore, right down to the colour scheme. Funny how it goes, but I suppose that is the way life is.

The Wave House is impressive, in the style of mini-water parks, it is a set of surfing wave generators. serious surfing waves (see pictures later).

the whole time we were there we saw nobody that we knew until we were nearly done, when we ran into Jane McIntosh, we finished our shopping and went with her to the house she is presently taking care of for a drink.

put our laundry in the washing machine there and went out for dinner with her to a thai resturant. came back and put the laundry in the dryer. i was sitting in the lounge playing Bejeweled on my handspring and my parents were sitting around the pool chatting to Jane.

around 01h5, we went out to leave to find our ca has been broken into. called the police flying squad, who took 15 min to get to us. they took statements and had a look. the amateur burgler smashed the rear left window cutting himself up badly in the process. he got away with our 35mm Pentax camera and a big box of peppermints. luckily he didn't get into the trunk, although he did try to, as we had a lot of stuff in there. the police stuff took half an hour, then we drove home slowly and went to bed.

Woke up earlish to get ready and everything. Sudden shopping trip out to find a shirt for my brother since he still didn't have a nice one for the wedding. We picked up some JMO's burgers on the way back to the apartment. JMO's burgers are some of the very few that I will eat. The come from an indian place that cooks them carefully, and they cook the food such that it qualifies as both Kosher and Halaal for anybody to eat. It is a fair sized piece of beef, nearing the size of a small tea saucer, not too thick. In a nice bread bun, with lots of grated vegetable bits and their special sauce. The sauce isn't even spicy, I think Marissa would even eat it. But the sauce does have a delicous flavour. It tastes like a cross of BBQ, coriander and many of the other indian flavourings.

Wore comfort clothes to go up to Augusta. Once there, we went to change into our wedding clothing. I had dark long pants, and the very colourful blue shirt seen in some photos.

When we got to Augusta, photos of the bride were already being done, so my father grabbed my camera and started snapping away. I took out the video camera as I had been delegated to do by Jacqui. I was tasked with being the videographer for the wedding. I had borrowed an ultra-light tripod from Allan Jackson to do that.

After taking lots of picture at Augusta, the bride got in the car taking her to the Chapel along with her father. She nearly forgot her garter. I went with Jacqui in her new Renault Cleo to the chapel, and set up next to the front row for filming, as well as filming from behind the pastor for a while.

Tristan and Emily were the ring-bearer and the flower girl. There was no best man or bridesmaid. The pastor read out the parable of Jesus turning water into wine at a marriage reception, and then the pastor claimed that he really liked wine and went on about just how mch wine there was, about 800L. Even for the old days, that is a LOT of wine. Everybody had a good laugh over that.

Afterwards the service, we went to the reception, which was held at the clubhouse in Augusta. Firstly, everybody was out on the balcony and in the bar eating pates and various other appetizers. Then the bride and groom arrived, and mingled for a while. There was one interesting idea at the start for drinks, everybody got one glass of champagne on arriving, as well as one glass of champagne for the toasts, and a glass of wine for dinner. Other than that, mixers, pop and non-alcoholic drinks were free (paid for by the groom in bridal tradition), but you had to pay for your own alcohol.

After that, we went into the main dining area (See photos), my father was the master of ceremonies, so he gave the introductions to the speakers (Neville and Derek), as well as his own speech. His speech, which he didn't really prepare for, was quite funny, relating the fact that he had a dog many years ago (before I was born), Jason, who didn't like peas at all. Judy also didn't like peas on bit, and to this day nobody has figured out if Jason taught Judy or vice versa.

There proper starters (some salad) to go with the main course, which was lamb, beef and pork on a spit with lots of vegetables.

Judy and Derek danced the first dance to Savage Garden's "Truely Madly Deeply". Desserts with the exception of the wedding cake were provided by the groom's mother, and they were very good :-). The wedding cake was a chocolate mousse and quite nice, although a bit small.

The dancing and everything went on for quite a while. I didn't catch the brides garter, but the dude that did catch it didn't want it later in the evening, so I have it around somewhere now ;-). After the reception, we went back to Jacqui's house, and had some coffee and so forth. All the family was sleeping around Augusta, so we didn't have to drive the 45 minutes back to Durban in a fairly intoxicated state :-). My immediate family were the only ones not staying in Augusta, because of a minor problem with the loft where we were going to be staying. So instead we slept in Derek's little cottage.

Got up not too late. Took Greg out to his friend Damian in Umghlanga Rocks, went to Granddad and Nana.

From there my father was talking business with Granddad, and I walked up the hill to see my old friend from kindergarten, Carlo Montemarano. I would call him my first best friend. Sat and talked to him about what's been going on with him and updated him on my life. He goes to the University of Stellenbosch, doing a B.Comm. there. His elder sister, Marisa. Since I've been away, she has graduated from Natal University with a bachelors (spinsters?) degree in English. Right after that she went and working with their family connections in Italy. She now lives in Cape Town and is working in breaking into the publishing business as that is where all the publishing companies in south africa are. Carlo has been living in residence for his first two years down at Stellenbosch, but now, he is moving into an apartment with two friends, since he is in the final year of the 3 year program. Once he is done, he plans to loan some money from his parents and go to London or Italy to work there. When I was there, the moving truck came to pick up some of Carlo's stuff. One of his new apartment mates is somebody else I went to senior elementary and high school with, Matthew Bennett. Matthew's family has a share in a moving company so they were using that to get their stuff down there for free.

After talking to Carlo and his parents and having a small lunch there, I walked down the road to visit the Jacksons. They are long standing family friends thru many connections, grandparents on both sides went to school together and Helen trained to be a nurse alongside my mother. They are the family that had The Cat (Jimmy) that practially owned the house, since it was first bought when the the grandparents (Joy and Donald) had the house. A while after Donald died, Joy moved out, and Helen and her husband Johan moved into the house. Jimmy was still there. Helen and Johan had two daughters. Jimmy was still there. They tried to emigrate to Australia, and that caused a divorce. Johan went there, but Helen and her daughters came back. Meanwhile Allan, Helen's younger brother, a man at 50 who was still a bachelor, moved into the house, and ran his own small business from there. He was originally a newspaper journalist and later the computer columnist for one of the local the newspapers. He now does the occasional newspaper article freelance and runs a small web-design and hosting company. Helen later went back to Australia with her daughters seperetly. Allan later tried to emigrate to Ireland, but ended up in Scotland for a while. When he left, his mother (Joy) and uncle (Mory) moved into the house again. At this time, Jimmy was getting too old, and after going blind and falling into the swimming pool twice, it was decided the humane move would be to have him put down. The family still misses Jimmy and does some things like he were still there. Allan came back as his business venture in scotland didn't work out. He got there shortly after 9/11 and despite a £1000 in free startup capital from the Scottish Government, he didn't get much business and after the theft of his Laptop, Printer, Fax machine and many other bits from apartment, he decided to come back to South Africa. He now lives back in the same house running his own business in South Africa again.Helen's eldest daughter, Jo-anne had been sent over from australia to spend some time with her grandmother and family.I sat and chatted to them for a while. And then Allan gave me a lift back down the hill to my grandparents again. I found my mother cleaning Nana's kitchen, and ended up helping her a fair bit. When the grandparents get old, their eyesight isn't as good as it used to be. I remember years ago, her kitchen was literally clean enough to eat off the floor. She was a very accomplished cook, but with her advanced age (96), she isn't as active as she used to be.We took Granddad and Nana out to dinner at the local steakhouse, RJ's.

sometimes security it seems to be too efficent. Told to be at the airport 3 hrs ahead of my flight, it took only 15 min to get boarding passes, and another 10 to get thru security. Marrissa looked sorry to see me leave. I could have turned up an hour later without any ill effects.

Anchorage, Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei. Cathy Pacific seems to like flying.over or near major cities. All of the above are impressive cities. Flying such a route over Japan also means that we got an amazing aerial view of Mt. Fuji. When you are flying at 10900m, and a mountain protrudes well up into the sky, you just know it is BIG.

So now I'm in HK airput after my flight from YVR. Arrived gate 70, and i will be departing via gate 62 in about 2 hours. l wandered around the airport for a while, taking in the sights. It does seem that the airport has 802.11b wireless, but I can't connect to it. Some weird security system is in place. I wandered about, looking for various things, such as an Internet café and the price for a Gameboy Advance for Mike. Nothing of the former to be found, but I did find a jewelery store by the name of CyberSun 24/7. Yup, you heard right, a 24 hour jewelery store. Not even the W.H. Smith news vendors were open that much. The GBA I found on special for HK$ 888.

If somebody wants to trace any Hong Kong airport wireless, here are some details:
DNS Server: 218.102.23.228
Gateway, DHCP Server: 210.177.174.52
Netmask: 0xFF000000
All IP adresses allocated seemed to be in 210.177.174.0/26.

One thing that did confound me was the signal strength. Nowhere in the airport was it less than 95%! I roamed all over the airport, and it is a BIG airport.

5 and 1/2 hours into the flight. Passing over Sri Lanka, almost directly over Columbo, then on in a south western bearing, until we were south of the tip of India (Nagercoil), and east of the Maldives we hit some minor turbulence. Or if you want to judge by the actions of one of the atttendants, the baddest turbulence out there. I was waiting to go to the washroom at the time, and he just chased me back to my seat. I later heard the purser chastising him for something else so I would assume he was just a little gung-ho. 25 minutes further into the flight we passed directly over Malë, Maldives confirming my earlier observation abut this airline. Along with several others, I snuck to the washroom when the attendant wasn't looking. Looking back at the in-flight map, it seems we passed directly over Bangkok as well.

Passing the equator soon. It's a pity that airlines don't have Neptune parties. I've crossed the equator at least 10 times in my life, without a single party.

Given that it's 12:28am in south africa i'm going to try and get some more sleep now.

Slept some. Passed over the island of Victoria while sleeping according to Greg. From the map it looks like we are going to fly in via the Madasgarian (i forgot the real name) channel. The floght info says 3h25min left. Greg is leaning on my shoulder to try and sleep. He is unsucessful.

Tommorow I'm writing a certification exam for MySQL.

There is a large pile of stuff to learn