One Child Too Many

Today is a year since the 3 year old boy Liyaqat went missing,friends and family held a vigil this evening. Kaylah, Liyaqat's mother, is still hopeful that the boy is still alive. Although no body has been found, the Police have charged the mother's boyfriend with murder and is still in custody awaiting trial. 

Monday Madness

Eish what madness has this Monday been. My day started off by sitting for 2 and a half hours in grid locked traffic to work in what normally takes 1 hour, madness. I had to use the pickup because my Vespa is in need of some loving care and sitting in a cage for hours in traffic is not my cup of tea.

After work I dropped my Vespa off for a service then it was me time but that is what I thought, little did I know that the Monday's manic madness would not stop here. I had just climbed out of the shower and was getting ready for bed when the call went out for volunteers. 

On Sunday there was a concert which was held at the Botanical Gardens, the Jozi Tese Festival, which did not comply to the contractual agreement and made so much noise late into the night that I even heard it loud and clear at my house 2km away. I believe the police were called in as backup to try stop the event. The Bot Gardens' security even cut the power but that did not stop the concert as they had backup generators. The wildlife in the gardens just fled and one duiker found itself in the Roodekrans neighbourhood streets. For the whole of Monday the duiker was petrified, it fled from house to house avoiding the dogs and people. By the evening a call went out from the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch to launch a rescue attempt to get the duiker back to the Botanical Gardens. 

About 30 Roodekrans neighbours answered to call for help. We managed to corner the duiker in a cul-de-sac. Luckily it next to the green belt so we cut open the fence to make a way for it to escape to safety. But we had lost the frightened buck because it had forced it's way to the rear of someone's home. When looking for where it was hiding, it got spooked and caught itself in the same gate it used to get in. The whole neighbourhood must have been woken up by traumatic squeals as the poor creature cried out for help. We safely managed to get it loose from its entanglements without anyone or the buck getting injured and released it back into the veld. 

Hopefully this will be the end of this Manic Monday.

Okay but still I have some unanswered questions:

1. I know that the Botanical Gardens need to raise funds but why are such loud concerts allowed to be held in a nature area?
2. Will the organisers of the Josi Tese Festival be held responsible?
3. Why was the rescue attempt only held late on Monday evening? The buck was 1st reported in the Kruin Community Voluntary Association WhatsApp group when it was first seen early Monday morning. Why did the KCVA do something about it then? 

What a Dump!

Riding home after work, my route took me along Okavango Road, and then I saw this! What a dump. This builder's rubble was not here yesterday but sometime today did it appear. It is this dumping along the road that makes this suburb a target for any other would be illegal dumpers. This is not going to help the broken window theory.

Another Busy Day

Another busy weekend. Today started early, down the valley to fetch a trailer and 2 labourers and then off to Pretoria to pick up Matthew from the university's residence before heading to Benoni.

Matthew's old townhouse is getting prepared for rental and his stuff needs removing. One trailer load later it is was all safely pack into the storeroom at home. Now let the weekend begin, oh is that the sun setting already?

Palm Sunrise

Now this is a sight that I haven't seen in a long time, a sunrise. I am normally still in bed having my quiet time and here I am. I just left home and this beauty of the one eyed sun peering over the ridge just made me stop in my tracks and enjoy the faint fingers of light try find me.

God in all His glory just filled me about now, my face turned to the soft warmth as the world was painted orange. It is going to be a beautiful day.

Earlier, much earlier while still in bed having my quiet time, much earlier than usual, I shared this message on my groups...

Happy Friday.  Yes I know it is the new month and everybody is running around like headless chickens. You know what, this week was the splat moment in my life when I hit the ground at terminal velocity but as I was about to go splat, a hand appeared and caught me, not the Maradona hand of god, but the real hand of God.

At the moment when I closed my eyes waiting for impact, I felt this inner peace and calmness.

For those who don't me, I am a Christian and I don't know where each one of you are so sorry for you, you getting it now. Happy Friday, yay! 

So when your world is falling apart around you, I'm going to leave you with this BOW.

B= Bow before your God. Bring yourself before the cross and know that Jesus the Messiah is God and that He loves you.

O= Offload your angst at the cross. Humbly hold each thought up to the Word of God. Take your worry, your anxiety, your fear, your unbelief, your anger and bring them to the Lord.  Lay them at the feet of Jesus. Humble yourself before Him. 

W= Worship the Lord. Fix your eyes upon Him. Let there be a new song on your lips. Praise the almighty God who is a good good father and a great God. Take your eyes off of yourself and off of your circumstances and set them securely upon your Lord. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and come into His courts with praise. Thank Him from the bottom of your heart. Humbly acknowledge that you can't see all things, but He can. Worship Him in the spirit of holiness, praising and thanking God because He knows what is best. He is all powerful. He is in control. He knows what He is doing. No one can stay His hand. And He has you in the palm of that mighty hand.

Wow that was long. Okay to finish up. I'll leave you with today's verse... 

I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead. I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory-prize through the anointing of Jesus.

Philippians 3:13‭-‬14 The Passion 

Enjoy your Friday and don't forget to BOW

Where's Mike?

Where's Mike? Well here's Mike wearing a shirt not quite un-similar to Wally's shirt the cartoon puzzle book's Where's Wally?

So here is Michael aka Mike sitting in the morning sun outside the 24/7 call centre of the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch where he does shift duty manning the OPS Room. With a membership of over 1,800 households of which there are 700 radio users, it is quite a task to operate a OPS Room for 24 hiurs, 7 days a week. And from my interaction with Mike, he is doing a good job, give the man a Bells!

Franki I don’t give a Damn

Oh boy, yesterday while at Decorex, I heard the news that a contractor had seriously damaged a main water artery in Constantia Kloof, about 10km to the South East from our home. At first I thought that it was too far and not affect us but someone forgot to tell Joburg Water as they decided to turn off all the water supplies across the entire ridge system so that they could drain the site.

Our water pipes ran dry in the early evening and the news coming through the media did not look good. One of the main contractors on site working when the accident occurred was Franki Africa which I assume is the main culprit as no one is giving us any information as to who is responsible. I have a lot of questions as to why I am sitting without water so far from the problem.

• Who is the contractor responsible for this? 

• Why didn’t anyone have plans to where this main water artery was? It is a 750mm pipeline for Frankie’s sake, not a small water pipe. 

• The system is designed interconnected to feed each sector if one reservoir goes down, but surely these interconnecting sections can be isolated and why isn’t there anyone in Joburg Water that knows how to and where to isolate each section from the other as not to affect nearly all the West Rand which is now without water? Come on chaps, really? Did you really have to turn off such a large area?

So news in is that finally the area around the pipe is clear of water and sometime this evening repairs will start. Hopefully if all goes well we will have water again towards the end of tomorrow.

Grrrrrrr !!!! Feel my pain. Frankie Africa, if it was you or whoever the contractor is, I want nothing short of a big public apology and for you to cover any damage costs that might arise from having no water such as burst pipes or damaged geysers for about a week after the water is switched on. I am now inconvenienced big time and I don’t give a damn.

Roodekrans Sunsets

Yip Roodekrans is in Africa, hence the spectacular sunsets from my very own patio. Somehow I don’t think I am able to write long posts everyday, sorry Gary, I know that you want more meatier posts with less cats and sunsets. But my long controversial posts of late seem to get more traction. Oh well I better start looking for some ideas or topics of more longer posts. I have 1 post in mind that might stir up the masses but to do this I have to hike back down into the kloof a few times and find the action I am thinking about. Time to do this is a problem but for now I will contend putting my feet up and enjoy the beauty of the African sunset.

Cheap and Nasty

It is the last day of July and finally the timber poles are being erected in my street for the fibre rollout in Helderkruin, Roodekrans, and Wilro Park suburbs of Roodepoort. Just 1 month to go to the Go-Live date, and I am excited as a pig in Philistine but there is already such a who ah about it in the social media, that I feel I should give my 2 cents worth.

So as the lines are being drawn into the social sand, I feel it is a little too late to change the current course and do I want to... nah. We have be watching the fibre roll outs in other suburbs with a enviousness that could amount me moving to greener connected areas. A few months back this all changed as on the 14 June the company Vumatel and the local community met to discuss the matter of rolling out fibre here. This is what I know but please correct me if I am wrong. There are a few companies rolling out fibre into the neighbourhoods. Vuma one of the leading companies was bought out by Fibrehoods and formed Vumatel.

Like the rest of the fibre backbone companies the race was on, Vumatel operating under the profit principle are looking for areas of higher returns to roll out the fibre first, hence we are way down the list as there are more single stand dwellings compared to multi units such as town houses and clusters in Roodekrans, plus to make things worse it is very rocky here especially where I live.

Anyway, at the June meeting, Vumatel said that they only considered this area viable if they go aerial. This means that they will with the blessing of the City of Joburg, use the existing street light poles to run fibre aerially to each home and put where there is no street light poles these treated timber poles. Now this is where someone stood up and said that they have seen Vumatel’s aerial installations in Constantia Kloof and to them the aerial route is "cheap and nasty" and I quote verbatim. Cheap and nasty, wow that was rather harsh but I understand as in our area only one side of the road has street lights and the other side, well they would need the timber poles.

This small vocal group argued that digging trenches and lying the fibre underground was a better solution as aerial destroyed the beauty of the suburbs. Telkom laid trenching why couldn’t Vunmatel? But they are forgetting that Telkom was forced to trench as copper cable theft was rife and they were loosing money. In fact Telkom too is now installing aerial in Kloofendal. The nature of fibre optics does not have any monetary valve for thieves hence aerial is the cheaper, cost effective, and faster way.

Playing the Devil’s Advocate here, I would like to state for the other side of the coin, have you seen Vumatel’s trenching solution in Randpark Ridge? It took way too long and while digging trenches the sub-contractors cut power and water lines left right and centre.

Holding us by the short and curlies, Vumatel stated at the June meeting that they have only considered aerial in this area, trenching to them is a no go and they would look somewhere else more profitable. After a bit of back and forth, the final consensus was that fibre is needed and we cannot wait for another few years before another company comes along to offer us a trench solution. So yay we were given a Go-Live date of end of August, I can't wait.

For me trenching would be ideal but at what cost and when. So roll on the cheap and nasty please, we can argue about the semantics later.

Herald the Coming

You better watch out; you better not cry; better not pout; I’m telling you why; Fibre is coming to town.

Yes fibre’s ETA is end of August and it is about time. We have being lagging in bandwidth from the rest of the world for a long time, struggling with antiquated DSL, LTE, and microwave systems. Okay not quite obsolete but very expensive none the less. Having fibre optics in my suburb during my lifetime, awesome.

Like a child waiting for Christmas, fibre is coming as these 3 workers herald the coming of Christmas a little early this year.

The Other Side

This is view of my home from the other side of the kloof. Somehow you can't see the scale of things that is seen from my deck but this is a rare view to me. Somehow the Protea trees don't seem so many from this vantage point. I wish I can get this area protected and stop the itinerants moving in, as they dig for gold in the sides of the cliffs, dig up medicinal tubers that are thousands of years old, and not to mention cut down the Protea trees for use as firewood.

Sunset Competition

After Matthew’s awesome photographs on Sunday with the sunsets in the kloof, I would be hard pressed to compete but today’s sunset just happened to present itself to me and I could not help myself.

Living on the edge

Part 2 of my 50th birthday celebrations is a Photowalk into the wilds that are my back garden ending off in a Cheese and Wine Sundowner. I invited the Joburg Photowalkers and my friends to this event which was aptly called Living on the Edge and quite a number did turn up.

Since I was the host and tour guide into the kloof, I gave Matthew my son my camera and these are a few of his images that he took except the bottom one of me and my Tardis cake which was taken by my friend Zoe. The Tardis cake was difficult to cut on Friday because it was so beautiful. Anyway we did get round to cutting the cake this evening after the Cheese and Wine. More of Matthew’s photos can be seen on my Facebook album Living on the Edge.