Kleinmond Old Harbour

When I was a boy, we used to come down to Kleinmond for the April holidays. What I liked about the place was that almost no-body knew about Kleinmond. It was really a kind-of sleepy-hollow. Nowadays the secret is out. People come from everywhere to spend time at this beautiful harbour town. To the degree that the streets get clogged with traffic and one have to stand in a queue of fifteen minutes just to get to the till at the supermarkets! Me and Annelie drove down to Kleinmond from MeerenBosch (about twenty minutes drive down the coast) to check things out. We settled down at a little restaurant at the old harbour and had a few glasses of Sauvignon Blanc and a plate of Sushi before we went back.

Soup in Swellendam

We traveled back to Cape Town today. Started off early in Bethlehem (just before six in the morning). Stopped for breakfast in Bloem and lunch in Graaff Reinette. We dropped Izak off at George. (He will be spending New Year with friends camping in the Baviaans Cloof). We then drove all the way back home (arriving at de Wijnlanden at just past ten in the evening). We did stop for great bowl of soup at this quaint little restaurant in Swellendam on the way.

Christmas in Bethlehem

We celebrated Christmas in the house that I grew up in (in a town called Bethlehem in the Free State). It was great to sit down for a hearty Christmas meal with my parents, wife and youngest son. We truely experienced the love of God in all the blessings. During this time, we also were thinking of the rest of our family (especially Ernst and Catherine in London) and all our friends all over the world. I thank the Lord for knowing all of you. May you all have a wonderful new year.

My parents at home

We are currently visiting my parents in the home that I grew up in. They have lived here for more than fifty years and cannot realy cope with the big house and the many stairs. We have known for some time that they will have to move to a more comfortable place, but we have tried to postpone this for as long as possible. The reality of their age have now forced us to make the decision and they will move to a comfortable two-bedroomed house in a retirement village next month.

Celebrating Izak's graduation

We had a dinner at Tokara's restaurant at the top of Helshoogte to celebrate Izak's graduation. The setting was just right, with the sun setting in the background over rolling vineyards and Table Mountain in the background. We looked back onto the lights of Stellenbosch almost as if experiencing Izak's new journey based on all that he has learned at Stellenbosch. The dinner was absolutely exquisite. I had a seared chicken salad with a curry sauce. We had a TJ Rose MCC with the starters and then for main their signature dish of Calamari tubes with shredded Lamb shank. The Vriesenhof Pinot Noir 2005 convinced me again that this is one of the best wines made in South Africa.

My brother; Ado

My younger and only brother is a brilliant professor in Bio-Physics. He is also a pilot, an accomplished horn player, an inventor and an entrepreneur. I am very proud of my brother and would love to spend more time with him, but he lives in Pretoria. He and his family spent a week in Hermanus to visit parents-in-law. I managed to see him this evening as we had to talk about arrangements for oupa and ouma's move to a retirement village. Time was too short, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

2 degrees and the sun is shining

I have just landed at Schipol (Amsterdam) and am waiting for the shuttle to the hotel. The air has a Northern Hemisphere chill to it, but the sun is friendly outside. I have an important meeting tomorrow and then back home again.

Thinus my friend

We celebrated Gretel's birthday tonight with a wonderful dinner at their house. The lamb and vegetables was ably supported by a great Matuba Cabernet. We talked till late and laughed a lot, but we were also touched by the importance of friends and how much we actually depend on each other. I ended up talking to Thinus about life and the world of business after the Chinese revolution. He recently got a new Nokia phone with great features, so I had to show him how easily I can publish a photo on my blog directly from the Ericsson K800 that I have. The joys of toys for boys...

Montagu's switching on of the lights

We are spending the weekend and a bit at the Spa in Montagu. When we arrived at the town at about 19h30, the whole town was in the streets. People were braai-ing in the street, kids were running around and a sort-of impromptu market was formed. One could feel the excitement. We had dinner at a very nice restaurant (the VIC) and asked the staff what was happening. They told us that once a year Montagu switches on the Christmas lights and then every-one come and celebrate in the streets. We were fortunate to experience this - totally by chance.

Anniversary

Me and my lovely wife celebrated our twenty -seven'th year together as husband and wife tonight. I booked a table for two at Steffany's and we had a wonderful dinner. The fact that we were placed on table 27 totally by "chance" was also special to us. Felt like a present from Him that is in control of everything.

Izak the chef

During Annelie's stay in Bloemfontein, we experimented with making food on our own. Izak showed that in addition to his many other skills, he is also a capable chef. He prepared a number of dishes: like this meatballs in sour cream and dill sauce... tasted great, especially with the Landskroon Tinta Barocca that I opened with it.

Table Mountain from the back

Annelie is in Bloemfontein with her family and me and Izak had lunch at the Snymans. As we drove back to de Wijnlanden, we once again realised how beautiful this part of the world is. We are truely blessed to live here and we feel and see the power of God in the creation.

Annelie and Marieke

We attended the silver wedding anniversary of our good friends Marieke and Dirk this morning. The festivities started at 07h00 and concluded with a spit roasted sheep for an early lunch. Even though we were very good friends, we did not attend the wedding 25 years ago, because Ernst was born just a few days before the wedding and it so happened that today is Ernst 25th birthday.

Owais Zaidi

We always said that their are three types of people:
a) Road Breakers that always criticize and celebrate any failures. After they finish with something, nothing is left
b) Road Users that travel the typical road - they never question or change anything. They are seldom noticed.
c) Road Makers that create a path where none existed before. They think of new ways to do things and always look for a better way. They are by far in the minority, but they are the people that change the world.
Today, I met another roadbuilder - all the way from Pakistan: Owais Zaidi.

Sippers Year-end

We celebrated a year of wine-tasting with our new wine-club tonight. We had a brief winetasting at Bloemendal (famous for their Sauvignon Blanc) and then had a three course dinner to talk about the past and dream about the future. We started this wineclub with friends last year and it has now started to develop into a group of friends that love wine and enjoy getting together to learn about our shared passion.

TriBeCa

Izak accepted a job in Pretoria and is planning to start working there this January. Me and Annelie spent the day with Izak in Pretoria to look at the place and to help him search for suitable accommodation. We had lunch at this great little restaurant in Brooklyn, called TriBeCa. They served the most amazing pizzas!

Sunset at deWijnlanden

I have lit the fire for tonight's braai and have poured some Chardonnay. Isn't the sunset on the Helderberg Mountain's beautiful?

London Sky

This picture is out of the offices of our business partners in the centre of the financial district. We spent most of the day working on elements of an important project before I flew back to Cape Town. Note the blue sky and the early morning pollution. It was also interesting to me to note the number of cranes busy with construction.

Paris Airport

Just arrived at Charles de Gaul in Paris on BA319. We had to wait for about ten minutes in the aircraft because the operators could not get the airbridge to connect with the plane. In the end we had to leave the plane via a rickety staircase and walk across to the terminal. I don't have a particular problem with this, but wanted to post this to make another point.
South Africans are so critical about their own country. Not to long ago, I had a similar experience at OR Tambo (South Africa) where the airbridge could not connect to the plane and many people made comments about how we would not be able to host the 2010 soccer world cup... well, these things also happens in Paris who just hosted the 2007 rugby world cup quite successfully.

Sunday morning Bike Ride

This morning was a beautiful day, so I was on my bike at 06h00 and had a wonderful trip up one of the hills in the vineyards, before me and Annelie went to church. I biked on my own for 20 km. This is a bicture of me with False bay in the background.

Koos Kombuis

He was one of the great Afrikaans Rock legends of the past century: Koos Kombuis. He wrote lyrics that spoke to any-one that felt passionate about living and changing South Africa. His observations about every-day life was spot-on and if you were serious about what was real he spoke to you through his songs. Today he is immensely popular and it shows.
Me and Annelie attended a live Koos Kombuis concert in Simonstown tonight and it was a big disappointment for both of us: because of two reasons: The audience was really unpleasant - almost as if they did not have any respect for this icon of South African music, and then (even more disappointing): Koos is trying to please the audience with songs that doesn't seem to come from his heart. The messages are those that the masses want to hear. It was clear that money got the better of him.

My new cellar

I always wanted my own wine cellar. This was one of the design considerations for the new house. Today I managed to get a wine barrel downstairs (I had to unscrew the door so that it could fit). I stood back and I was really thankful for this room underneath the house. The challenge now is to fill the empty space with wine...

Morning on my way to the office

This photo was taken early this morning out of the window of my car on the R300. I am not usually up this early, but this morning I joined a number of Fundamo staff at the office to go for a Bike ride in preparation for the Argus bicycle race. Cape Town is sooo cool.

View from my new office

Today was the first day at our new offices. I gave a presentation at the Card and Payment summit in the morning and then drove to the new offices. This is the view from my office - so different to the old offices.

Delta DL024 for Dakar and Johannesburg

I couldn't post to the blog while I was in Nicaragua, because GPRS or 3G was not available to me. I did take some photos of this interesting Central American country, but if I were to post them now - they will be out of sequence. I had a very productive business meeting while in Managua. I worked very hard, but had time with business associates to travel to Granada more to the south. We had dinner in this historic town and talked a lot.

While traveling back, I missed a connecting flight in Houston. Luckily, I did manage to get on the next flight, but this left me with 35 minutes to connect with the only Delta flight to Johannesburg out of Atlanta. I made it just in time!

Windsor Resort, Nairobi

Lately, I seem to be gettting the strangest room-numbers. I always wanted to stay in Room 123 and this time, I was given this number at the Telecommunications Summit that I attended. The summit was very productive and I met many new frienbs and possible business associates.

The Rugby World Cup 2007

The whole of Cape Town got sport-mad on Saturday. Everyone that could was dressed in green - like this little chap at the local Pick and Pay. We watched how we won the Web Ellis trophy with the Heines and enjoyed the moment. It was always clear to me that we would win, as we really had a good tournament and one could sense that the players were confident.

I think that even the English recognised that the Springboks were a superior team, yet they played with commitment and can be very proud of how they ended the tournament. I salute them.

Reading many reports on the match afterwards, I particularly liked the Sportblog by Andy Bull in the UK Guardian. He ends with the following sentence: "As I said, defeat is easier when you've someone to blame. It is easier still when you can appreciate and enjoy what it means for the team that beat you, and how well they had to play to do it."

Fundamo Office

This is the front door of the Fundamo Office where we have been operational for the past four years. I spend a lot of time at work and enjoy it, but have actually posted very little on the blog about Fundamo. Next Saturday we will be moving to new offices and this will be the end of an era. We have also changed the logo and corporate branding. The green on the logo has now been replaced with platinum. This is much more classy and emphasise the status of a more mature and acknowledged company. But still, it is sad to move on.

Floris Hamman

We attended a formal dinner and dance tonight with old friends. I was in the army with Floris during 1980. We were officers in the Infantry Division at the Army Battle School in Lohatla. We reminiscenced about the good old days - how we played rugby against the miners in places like Blackrock and Hotazel.
The evening was very enjoyable with good food and wine (we started with a Nederberg Sauvignon Blanc and finished with a Durbanville Hills Merlot). Me and Annelie proved that we can still dance and did a few rounds on the dance floor too.

Helderberg Fire

A fire burned tonight in the Helderberg mountain. If you stood on the balcony, you could see the flames in the dark sky. It was scary on the one hand but also beautiful. A strong South Easter was blowing and that fanned the fire.

Business Dinner

After two days of very productive meetings with partners in London we had a good dinner at a Chinese restaurant in London. Gavin in this picture is explaining the benefits of his Blackberry.

London Hotel

In London at the moment for some important meetings. I thought that it was quite meaningfull that I was booked into room M5 in this budget hotel (only hotel that we could find a place in at short notice). As far as I can remember MI5 is the secret service of the British Intelligence service.

Celebration with Clients

We had dinner with senior management from one of our clients tonight. Dave is the Chief Operating Officer of Mobile Money and it is such fun to be in his company. We enjoyed the food and laughed a lot.
Why is it that some jokes are not really funny the day after: A white horse walks into a pub. The barman says: "do you know that a drink is named after you?". The horse is surprised: "Who would call a drink 'Eric'?" he says.

The user interface of lifts

I don't know if it is age, but it is as if more and more little things are starting to irritate me. It is not as if I cannot live with these things, it is just that I would really like these things to be different. Take lifts for instance. Why is it that most people cannot understand the buttons for a lift? When requesting a lift one is confronted with two buttons: an UP arrow and a DOWN arrow. This should be absolutely clear: When you want to go UP, you press the UP arrow, and so forth. Then why is it that the majority of people press both? This slows the whole operation down and we have to spend much more time in lifts than is necessary.

I think it is because people think that they have to "call" the lift to come to them, and because they don't know if the lift is above or below, they have to press both to either "call" the lift to come UP or to come DOWN. Maybe we should add "Lift Operation" as a mandatory subject in school.

Bridge Friends

JP and Maritha visited us tonight and we had dinner together. I opened a bottle of Ambeloiu MCC for no particular celebration. Afterwards we played bridge and then talked. I really got annoyed with how we play bridge - I would like us to try and play better and I told them that. I am so glad that they accepted my opinion without showing too much irritation with me. I suppose that is what real friends are. That they love you despite of yourself.

National Braaidag

Today is national braaiday. This means that as much as possible people should get together around a fire and celebrate our national pasttime of roasting meat on an open fire. We did make a fire at home and Quintes and Rielle joined us late in the afternoon. Quintes had a bottle of Virgin Earth which was excellent. I then found a Carlonet 1996 in the cellar which we had with the Lamb-chops. We finished off with Milttart and Cheeses ably supported by a Pineau from Laborie, naturally sweet wine.

Helderberg Congregation

We attended the service in the Helderberg Reformed Church this morning. Now that we have moved the Lord has not yet shown us where to go on Sundays to worship, so we have been going to a number of churches in the vicinity. This has now been the third time in a row that we attended this church and we think that we will get more involved. The church is a very large congregation with many "dominees" (pastors). They present many different sermons on a Sunday, ranging from modern (music driven worship, to classic pensive and sacred occasions).

Celebration for Thana

A number of friends organised a surprise birthday party at the Bistro at Meerendal. Although it was some days after her birthday, it was the first time that she was in the Cape and we enjoyed spending time with her and the others that was also there. It was a beautiful day and the food, wine and being-together made this a memorable occasion. I had a pasta-based vegetarian dish with pesto and Annelie a home-made burger. As a group we started off with a Tradition from Villiera (still one of the best MCC's made) and had a Meerendal Sauvignon Blanc 2007 and a Merlot to accompany the lunch.

Smiles

We attended a black-tie dinner tonight in support of Operation Smile. Bob and Rosemarie invited us to the Hummer table. (Bob is the product manager for Hummer in South Africa). Operation Smile is an international initiative that works toward helping kids with cleft lips. It struck me how terrible a cleft lip can be for a little child and how it impacts their whole life in terms of self image and inter-personal relationships.... yet we have the means to fix it in 45 minutes.

Graham Back tasting

We had one of the most amazing tastings tonight. One of the visionaries of the South African wine industry presented his wines and cheeses to us at his home. Graham Back (owner of Fairview) Afterwards we sat down to a lovely dinner accompanied by some of his best wines (like for instance the Spice Route Malabar). It is so special to actually see (and experience) the people behind the wines. I specifically liked his humble confidence in what he is doing, the energy in doing whjat he does, but specifically his passion - or as he put it: "my soul is in my business".

Dinner before the Rugby

By now it is old news: we beat the English in the pool match today by 36 to 0. The lowest score that England ever had in a RWC match. Before the match, we braaied a few steaks and sat down for a good dinner. We started the evening with a Morgenhof Cap Classique 2003 to celebrate Izak's prize for the best presentation at the SA process Engineering conference, a big deal that we have closed at work and Catherine's birthday. We finished the steak with a Neetlingshof Laurentius 1997.

Fundamo at Gitex

Reg, Adriaan and Richard is in Dubai preparing for Gitex (one of the biggest IT shows in the world). Reg sent me the picture of how our stand will look. The exhibition starts tomorrow. This will be our biggest show to date and the new branding (clouds and ice-bergs) seems to be looking great. We are holding thumbs that this is a very successful show.

Fred en Elmarie

Fred and Elmarie came to visit today and we cooked breakfast together. We calculated for how long we have known each other and realised that it must be close to twenty years. We have some great memories during that time, but it also shows that one can make friends that last for a long time.

Marike's birthday

We had dinner tonight at the home of Dirk and Marike - to celebrate Marike's birthday. We had marinated chicken with Couscous, and an excellent bottle of Durbanville Hills Pinotage. Fanie and his wife was also present and we talk about Africa, getting old and our children. It was a most enjoyable night.

Magdalena House function

We attended a show and dinner as a fund-raiser for Magdalena House. I invited some of the executives from work and we had a great time. We listened to this amazing show presented by Rory Rootenberg (a star from the local production of "Phantom of the Opera" - but he can do much more). At the end of the evening, we all realised how fortunate we are to be able to enjoy evenings like this.

Craig on Large Companies

I was speaking to Craig on Skype from Atlanta just now. Always enjoy his thoughts. He has such a way of making the English language work for him. He agreed that I could blog the following that he said:

"Its amazing how a large company works. Seems that it has its own momentum and that the system sweeps people forward at its own pace. Sometimes I think that large comapnies will progress simply by virtue of their momentum, not so much because of its people. Great people get diluted to be average and average people are sustained despite themselves. Only every now and again can an individual have a real impact that is noticeable on the short-term."

Well said, not so?

Mischa Wine Estate

Our wine club (actually "wine gild") usually have one tasting weekend per year. This year we discovered the wonderful world of the wines of Wellington. We had a great tasting at Mischa Estate and also had lunch on the farm. This is a picture of Nico (in the middle from our club), with Andrew (the winemaker) and his wife.

City Lodge breakfast

I am in Johannesburg for a few meetings and will be interviewing a possible employee just now. I looked at the fruit and muesli that I usually have and the small bouquet of synthetic roses. Something in this simple set-up made me feel great about being alive. It is even in small (and unimportant) detail that God can reveal Himself.

Moyo's at Spier

Had a business dinner with clients at Moyo's tonight. I met Jason (one of the founders of Moyo's) a few nights ago and just loved his philosophy of "taking Africa to the world". With this is mind we had to go to Moyo's and I looked at it with different eyes now. I could see how the singing, dancing and food all work together towards a "total experience", rather than just another restaurant. Through this blog, I would like to give Jason and his team my best wishes and hope that he will go from strength to strength.

Bird's Nest in the City

I noticed a bird's nest next to the window of one of our meeting rooms today. The size of the nest indicate that this must be quite a sizable bird - probably a crow or something like that. It was awesome to realise that a wild animal could feel comfortable enough to embrace our office in such a way.