Waking up early and Traffic

For those of you that are interested there is now a south african overlay available for Google earth

http://earth.southafrica.net/

I don't know how much extra you will be seeing other than 2010 Soccer World Cup specific things. At any rate it is good to see the progress in this area. Unfortunately most of the country is still pretty much only available in low-res images.

Technology and time wasting

I'm a bit of a nutter for technology and as such I spend a fair amount of time reading articles online (sometimes this reading time will bring out the anger in the wife). It is actually a bit of an obsession and can sometimes lead me to the point where I cannot remember what I began researching - damn the net :-).

Some of my favourite sites to waste time include:

http://www.myadsl.co.za (Broadband News)

http://news.google.co.za (General News)

http://www.youtube.com (Frivolous time wasting site)

http://www.wiiza.co.za (Love my wii)

Let me know your thoughts.

What is fuelling the oil price?

You know I wish there was a way that we could stop being reliant on fossil fuels. I mean look at this article from 2004 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3708951.stm) from the BBC trying to explain why oil prices are so high - back when it was $50 a barrel. Look forward four years later and we are hovering at around $130 a barrel.

Now I am fortunate on the one hand that I do not pay for my own petrol but what about the price of diesel. This has a direct impact on the price of groceries, which in turn fuels inflation. I bought a house at the beginning of the interest rate increases. I am now paying around R4500 more per month than I was paying two years ago.

Hopefully we will make it through the 200 basis points and some further fuel hikes.

Lets keep positive :-)

Surreal nature of it all

Having spent six years abroad in Australia I returned with my family in tow to restart my life in my land of birth. Let me state at the outset that this was a spur of the moment decision to return to the country and had emotion not got the better of me I would probably still be living down under.

So here I am now following the age old adage of if life gives you lemons you might as well make lemonade. I am not letting things get me down but here in short what has hit us since returning in 2006:

1. Inflation (what a pain that is - Can't keep up with average trolley price anymore as it is too depressing)
2. Interest rates (I am no economist but surely we can't sustain this upward trend for much longer - working with some of the banks it is quite clear that bad debts are surging)
3. Crime (Fortunately not directly - but having spent 6 years virtually isolated from violent gun crime it took about a year to desensitise to the level of violence in our society)
4. Brain drain (Having been a part of the brain drain and now suffering at the hands of it with severe shortages of skills)
5. People asking me why did I come back (as if South Africa has nothing to offer - and believe me this comes from all race groups)

So I continue and move forward hopefully things will get better if I persevere.

Let me know your thoughts?