I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

…Robert Frost

I suppose at least once in our lives, if introspective.. then more than once, we look back upon our lives and wonder about the road traveled and perhaps more so, the road not traveled. When the road diverges for us, often, we are not even aware of making a choice or a conscious decision, yet with the clarity of hindsight we can clearly see the divergence and the consequent decisions,choices and implications of your choices and decisions.
Today, sitting in a coffee shop with a friend, discussing his brother, who is in the process of a divorce and having to make some tough choices when perhaps not in the best emotional state to do so. The brother had reached a point where he was ready to throw in the towel on a successful career and expressed the desire to move down to the Garden Route. Suddenly it brought back my decision, taken some 11 years ago, to do the same and the turmoil, emotionally and financially, that followed.
Becoming a corporate refugee is not an easy thing. Turning your back on emotional and financial stability, often against the advice of family and friends, is not an easy step to make. It was in my case not financially defensible, I had share options which amounted to a small fortune, what seemed to be a fairly secure career path, a good circle of friends, a rather generous remuneration package and yet… and yet..
I can’t recall the straw that broke the camel’s back. Was it one argument to many with the managing director? One traffic jam to long? Perhaps the niggling feeling that my love interest at the time was not quite there for me? I just recall that I woke up one morning determined to find a fork in the road which would offer me a new road, new opportunities and new challenges. It was an expensive decision, I lost my share options, eventually my car and financially and emotionally I teetered on the edge for a few years.
With the benefit of hindsight it is now easy to see that the decision turned out to be the right one for me… not easy but right. However I have seen so many people trying to make a new life for themselves in the Garden Route and seeing it all turn sour for them often with ruinous consequences financially.
But for me
I took the road less traveled by

It is that time of year again. Our annual ritual for the 1st of December…putting up the Christmas tree. This has become a bit of fun involving copious amounts of champagne and a good natured argument as to what colour the tree should be this year. 
We throw a camping mattress out in front of the tree, throw out all the lights and baubles onto it, the dogs clamber on, the champagne is popped and so the ritual begins.
Last night, the arduous task completed (sarcasm) , we lay on the mattress chatting and reminiscing, as one is wont to do, then Sherpa became the topic.
Sherpa arrived at our farm a few years ago and from where, no-one knows. I was on my way to work when a dog surprised me at the garage. I should say shocked rather than surprised because the dog was in a terrible state. Fly bitten ears and hardly any fur from mange. The dog was so emaciated it could barely walk and this was exacerbated by what was obviously the start of hip dysplasia. I could see that he was once a fine specimen of white Alsatian but this dog was now a day away from death.
I would feed it and he would eat and drift away. I would find him a few kilometers away bring him back, no mean feat in itself as he was very wary of humans and would not let me touch him at all. Eventually I convinced the SPCA to keep him, nurse him back to health and I would adopt him. They were not to keen as in their opinion the dog was to far gone. 
So my relationship with Sherpa began. We would visit everyday, weekends we would fetch him for walks and slowly a relationship built. I still have the scars on my thumb from the first time I tried to give him a treat of sausage. Starving dogs don’t put much emphasis on table manners. It was almost two months before he was considered well enough to come home with us and he was by no means a well dog yet. Still scrawny and bald in patches but he was walking relatively well and his tail would wag every time he saw Alta or myself. In the mean time, there was another consequence to our daily visits to the SPCA. on our second or third visit we passed the cage of another mistreated animal that had been confiscated from her owner. A very very skinny Doberman X took one look at my wife and decided there and then it she had found her new owner. She would throw her whole body sideways at the gate of the cage, tail wagging furiously and eventually we were bringing treats for two dogs. I was adamant that we were there for Sherpa but a month after we adopted Sherpa we went back for Shakira (yiip those hips don’t lie).
Sherpa was already an old dog and he had had a hard life….it took him quite a while to trust us but he did. He was not with us long….a few months later we arrived home to find him on the lawn. He had passed away in his sleep. I buried him in the Pine Forest behind the house and I hope that he found the peace in those lasts months that he had been denied in his hard knock life. 
He joined us for only one Christmas tree ritual….and I dearly wish he could have joined us for more. Sleep well my friend.

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Kismet: A predetermined or unavoidable destiny (wiktionary definition).
The hand of fate can take unexpected turns. The last time I travelled to Bloemfontein Geisha, my white alsation, took a leap out of the vehicle at 120 kilometres per hour, just outside of Aberdeen and if you wish, you can read the whole story here. So on the way to Bloemfontein for a wedding I approached Aberdeen with some trepidation, my wife however saw only relief and so it was that we visited Aberdeen again. I remembered years ago the town had a hotel but unfortunately this was now a pile of rubble. The one service station in town is not recommended for a relief stop so when I spotted a coffee shop in the main street with a parking available right in front it seemed that fate had smiled upon us. My wife could barely wait for me to open the car door for her (yes, some men do still do this, although it may seem old fashioned) before disappearing inside. I took a table outside and to my consternation a small dog, nothing more than skin, bone and fleas trotted past.
As a animal lover I can’t abide animal suffering. I will watch thousands die on screen with disinterest but will reduced to tears if a horse or dog suffers the slightest injury. We already have three SPCA rejects in our household and I after several calls from the SPCA I have made it clear, to them and to my wife, NO MORE!
On Alta’s (my wife) return, I mentioned the dog thinking it had disappeared not to return, heedless of destiny. As she stood on the sidewalk to take a picture, the little discard came trotting back. She eventually coaxed him into her arms and with trembling lower lip asked if we can take it with us.
I am no match for the trembling lower lip. I can deny my wife the credit card, the new car and on occasion even can ignore her sulking but when it comes to suffering animals combined with a trembling lower lip, I wilt, I succumb, I am a wimp.
Leaving our details at the coffee shop in case the dog had been lost and had an owner somewhere. We departed Aberdeen with our new cargo safely ensconced in the back. Alta turned to me and asked; “so what are we going to call her?” It has been custom in our household for me to name our new additions. I told her I would think about it but almost immediately it came to me.
“Kismet” I said.

With no small effort Kismet has been nursed to health in only a week. We have arrived home and introduced her tiny little frame to the three big beasts at home only to find her readily taking to play with them.

She is a four month old greyhound puppy and the most lovable puppy I have encountered. She purrs like a cat when stroked and demands to be in your arms every moment she can.

Thank you Destiny, for bringing this little bundle of joy to me. I will do my best to ensure she never has to endure abandonment or hunger ever again in her little life.

I’ve been tagged by absolutwillie (again)
and the rules are:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1) What was I doing 10 yrs ago?

Ten years ago, strangely enough, almost to the day, I made the career changing choice to become a corporate refugee. Packed by bags, quit my post as brand manager and moved from JHB to George.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

1. Give car in for service
2. Take other computer in (crashed)
3. Blog
4. Write speech for my best mate’s wedding
5. Update poker group on Facebook

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Anything chocolate, Biltong, dried fruit.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Buy an boat
2. Sail into the blue yonder never to be heard from again

5) Five of my bad habits:

1. Procrastination
2. Temper
3. Over analysing
4. Alcohol
5. No fitness regime

6) 5 places I have lived:

1. Pretoria
2.Cape Town
3. Bloemfontein
4. Amsterdam
5. London

7) 5 jobs I have had:

1. Motivational Speaker
2. Brand Manager for a medical company
3. Estate Agency Principal
4. Pizza Chef
5. Supermarket Owner

5 peeps I want to know more about:

1. Dave Duarte
2. Max Kaizen
3. Beverley  or Feisty Female
4. Charl Van Niekerk
5. Rafiq

I watched the documentary South Africa, Murder Most Foul, by John Blair and presented by Sir Antony Sher, on television this week. A bit late I know but still. It is a shocking tale even for South Africans who are inured to crime. I found myself going through the knee jerk reaction almost automatically “Aw come on” I vented at the television, “it is not that bad” But the truth is, it is. The longer the documentary went on the more I related and the statistics are shocking. It is no wonder the powers that be would like our statistics to be lost in bureaucracy. Over nineteen thousand murders per annum.
That excludes violent crimes like rape, assaults, hi-jackings and non violent crimes but violating crimes such as housebreaking, robbery and drugs.
Can you live with that number?
John Blaire in an interview with Carte Blanche stated that he had received widespread criticism for portraying this violent aspect of South Africa. I can relate to his critics. This is not how I want to see my country portrayed to the rest of the world. In the tourism industry this hard look at post apartheid South Africa post does not bode well for our future overseas visitor numbers. It does not bode well for me, my family and my friends.
The truth though is, he is right.
We hear our ministers say crime levels are unacceptable, we hear our Safety and security minister claiming that we are whinging but if we don’t like it we can leave. Neither stance is solving the problem. I am one of those whinging; I am one of those claiming that the crime rate is unacceptable. In reality we are all in denial. We have become inured. A four year old raped and murdered no longer shocks and enrages us, instead we seem to hang on in quiet desperation. A murmur and on with our lives we go.
We need to get angry, we need to be enraged. We need to hold our government officials responsible.
No!
That’s not right either. I need to be enraged, I need to get angry, I need to hold my local ministers responsible.

Reading the local newspaper’s letters column over the December period has left me wondering whether some local Georgians plainly have their heads up their proverbial  collective asses.
To illustrate
Every year our local NG Moederkerk has a market. This year a lady selling fairies, pewter products and dragons, was told by the minister of the NG church, to remove her products as they could not be sold at the church market.  To date, the minister has remained silent on the issue despite a hot debate in the local paper, the organiser of the market has stressed the fact that they reserved the right to approve product and exercised this right.
Now, I have no problem with a church exercising its rights, however should such approval not be exercised prior to a stallholder going to the time and expense of erecting and displaying their wares just to be told:  “Pack it up.” Secondly I am truly baffled as to why selling such items would contradict any of the edits of the Christian belief. It seems as if even the minister in question, is also having a hard time explaining his behaviour, hence his silence. The old adage, “rather remain silent and appear a fool, than open your mouth and prove it beyond doubt” applies.
I work closely with local tourism bodies, who over the last few years have tried to create the image of George as a happening and vibrant place to visit, but this type of ultra conservative religious fervour does our tourism image no good and strongly reinforces our conservative retirement village image.
Another contributor to the letters column questioned the local municipality’s decision to remove the driftwood littering the beaches, after the recent floods, just prior to the holiday season starting. He claimed nature would have taken care of the driftwood in due course and at no cost to the ratepayer. Now what do you say to someone who does not care if thousands of holidaymakers arrive, expecting pristine beaches as displayed in the marketing materials to find instead a beach literally covered in driftwood and a sea unsafe to swim in because of drift material in the water. What would you say to someone who would rather see thousands of holiday makers in future select other destinations as they would rather avoid the risk of repeating the mistake, costing our tourism dependant economy millions, to save the proportionately miniscule cost of cleaning the beaches prior to the first holidaymakers arriving.
Perhaps said person just does not understand how competitive the tourism industry is, we vie with so many destinations that are closer, cheaper, warmer and drier. With so much negative publicity generated by the floods it is essential to ensure that visitors who choose the Garden Route, become evangelists for the Garden Route and hopefully, visit repeatedly in times to come. I assure them the average Georgian welcomes and appreciates them.

My favourite sporting event in George is the annual sevens tournament. Not yet on the scale of the Hong Kong sevens tournament it has however grown phenomenally since it moved to George from Durban 4 years ago. This year I had received an invite to the George and Wilderness hospitality area which gives me an excellent view of the players as they move from the player’s enclosure to the field. If tournaments are won by focus alone I can already tip the New Zealand team as the winners this year.

From the image you can see they move as a focused single entity and you can see the steely determination in their eyes. So today will tell if they emerge the winners or not. Australia by contrast seem to be in deep trouble drawing to the Tunisia and losing to Scotland and so are eliminated from the race for the cup. South Africa looked in form against a strong Argentinean side and qualified easily for the quarter finals beating Wales 31 -0.

  Two surprises in the Quarter finals. USA ran in a surprise victory over France and Kenya shocked England to qualify.

The quarter final line up below

\nNew Zealand – USA
\nSamoa – Argentina
\nSouth Africa – Scotland
\nFiji – Kenya
\nBetween Samoa and Argentina should be interesting but as for the rest it should be fairly predictable but who knows perhaps Kenya or USA can provide another surprise but I doubt it.
Personally I am looking forward to a day in the sun with a beer in the hand and the wonderful atmosphere that the sevens format provides.

Business reveals all aspects of human nature and most of it is unpleasant. This may sound harsh but the first thing you learn in business is that you can’t trust people. They will not do what they say, pay when they are supposed to and when confronted about it will turn defensive and avoid you. So in effect not only are you out of pocket but you have lost a customer too. I have learned some expensive lessons during the course of the last ten years as an entrepreneur. By implementing a few basics you can avoid paying expensive school fees too.
1.) Make sure that all undertakings by both parties are clearly spelt out in a written agreement. It does not have to be a 20 page legal document but it should clearly spell out each parties role and the costs involved. The fact that a verbal agreement is binding is not worth the paper it isn’t written on. If you don’t have a written agreement you are setting yourself up for an expensive lesson in legal procedures.

2.) Whenever possible get payment first before providing the goods or services. This may sound more difficult than it is to implement. A simple phrase like:“ I will send you the invoice and as soon as I receive proof of payment we can proceed “ Will save you hours of time on the phone and legal fees pursuing payments. A retail outlet never lets you have goods without payment, a mechanic won’t let you have your car until you have paid, so why should you provide goods or services without receiving payment. It is not always possible to implement this with bigger corporations but they will often pay a large deposit without qualm.

3) Make sure the client understands the nature of your services and the limitations. The client may assume you are including certain services when in fact they are optional and on a pay for basis.

4) Things go wrong. Plan for it and spell out clearly what the penalties are should deadlines not be met.

5) Don’t do additional work unless you are being paid for it. Freebies set you up for a cycle of abuse. If the client wants x additional, immediately tell him what the cost implications will be.

6) Do not continue supplying services or goods to a client that is behind on payments. Contact the client, tell them you will be happy to provide the goods or services once the outstanding payment is made. It is the old adage of throwing good money after bad.

7) Leopards don’t change their spots. Don’t take chances on people with bad payment reputations.

Whenever I ignore the above I am inevitably disappointed and out of pocket. When I do implement I find the whole process runs smoothly and the client and I am happy. It is a jungle out there for small businesses and cash flow is the major reason for small businesses failing. I hope these few pointers can make a difference in your business.

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So you are thinking of starting a blog either for business or personal reasons. Before you do you might want to think about what is involved. The blog aggregator sites have got their act together and submit their stats to World Wide Worx for collation. Arthur Goldstuck recently published the first instalment on Mail and Guardian’s Thought Leader.

Number of blogs at end of August: 25 037

Number of active blogs (updated in last two weeks): 2 953

Percent of active blogs: 11%

Number of posts in August: 39 938

Page views in August: 5 198 693

Unique visitors in August: 621 204

Source: World Wide Worx

This makes for interesting reading but also signals a few warning signs for wannabe bloggers.

Fact one. The Drop out rate for bloggers is exceptionally high.

It seems from the stats above that about 89% of bloggers drop out or radically decrease the frequency of posting. Many bloggers, when starting do not factor in the commitment a blog takes. Not only in time to create regular posts but also in the time spent becoming part of the blogging community. You have to read and comment on other blogs in order to generate links and readers to your blog. Regular posting is crucial to the success of a blog.

Fact two. You have to market your blog outside of the blogging community.

Of the 621204 unique visitors to blogs, only 25 037 could in the wider sense be counted as bloggers. Although one has to take into account that many of the readers could potentially be from other countries and could be bloggers. However if one looks at the popular blogs like Keo and Though Leader then, in my opinion, a large portion of their readers are not bloggers themselves but have migrated from  traditional media or are finding niches not filled by traditional media.

Fact three. Generating traffic to a blog is a difficult as generating traffic to a website.

In May 2007 Technorati reported tracking 71 million blogs worldwide. The blogosphere is becoming increasingly competitive. According to Arthur the top nine blogs have more readers than the rest combined and the four media sites have more traffic than all of the blogs combined. With about 40000 posts in 31 days readers have plenty of choice so care has to be taken in terms of topic choice and headlines. Blogging for the sake of blogging is fine but don’t expect a huge readership base.



If you are still convinced that a blog is for you then perhaps the following posts could help you minimise your school fees in time and effort.

Josh Dorkin : Top 77 mistakes new bloggers make  ( I wish I had found this when I started, I still haven’t rectified all my mistakes.)

David Airey : Top 7 blog mistakes to avoid (Short and to the point )

If at this point you are going ahead with your blog I can just say welcome and let me know I could just be just be your first subscriber.



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Four good reasons not to eat at The Lookout Restaurant in Plettenberg Bay.

They are overpriced.

The food is terrible

The service is pathetic

The management could not care less.

This upsets me no end. The restaurant is situated in a prime spot on Lookout Beach, on the beach, with a fantastic view. My wife and I used to drive through from George just to be able to enjoy good food and a fantastic view. Over the last few 2 years the owners either got greedy or they have lost touch because prices gradually migrated to expensive and food quality kept pace but in the opposite direction. Net result ….. TOURIST TRAP.

On Saturday, week before last, on our way to Port Elizabeth we once again stopped over at The Lookout in the hope that things might have changed.

It was a glorious day and my hopes soared with the availability of Perroni on tap which I have a particular fondness for. Shortly afterwards a whale breached right in front of us so took that as another sign of good fortune.

But I fear the day soon lost its lustre. My wife received her food and just as I was about to get antsy the manager came to apologise claiming that they were not happy with the portion of calamari steak the chef served and that they preparing a larger portion for me. This impressed me and I patiently settled back to wait. Five minutes later I was served a delicious looking plate of grilled rubber masquerading as calamari steak. After several minutes of chewing I gave up and tried to get the attention of the waiter to tell them this was frankly inedible. No luck. I eventually stood up, found the manager and complained. The rubber was whisked away and after another wait I received an equally appetising looking but inedible calamari steak. Perhaps I was being unreasonable so I asked my wife who by then had finished her food to try it. I watched her chomp and chomp and eventually give up and delicately spit out the unappetising morsel into her serviette. Again no waiter to be found. When he finally did put in an appearance I grumbled bitterly and told him to just forget about a meal for me. Now at this point I would expect a seriously concerned manager to put in an appearance and try to rectify matters but nooo, my bill arrived and management disappeared.

My advice in future when visiting Plett, drink a drink at The Lookout, enjoy the view but eat elsewhere.

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