Aandiebeginwasdaar

Laugh it off productions won their highly publicised court case today. This sets a precedent that could be very important for Freedom of Speech in South Africa. Now I don’t know too much about this particular case, but my general take on matters like these is the more Freedom of Speech, the better.

In this light, I’m pretty happy about this result. The “David and Goliath” angle obviously also sweetens this victory.

I guess all that is left now is to get the offending t-shirt.

On Sunday we returned from our amazing Mediterranean cruise. My wife’s employers, Computeach, paid for us to go on this trip. Yeah I know – nice company!

Here is a mini-diary of what we got up to:

We flew into Barcelona on Wednesday. Barcelona is one of my favourite cities anyway, so I didn’t need any excuses. As an amateur photographer you can’t not love Barcelona. We stayed in the Gran Hotel Torre Catalunya for the first night. I can recommend this hotel. They have a very good restaurant on the top floor with an amazing view. We met some of Lené’s colleages in Barcelona, but we spent most of the time there wandering the streets and taking photos.

Getting on the boat the next day was a great experience. You have no idea how gigantic these boats are until you get close to them. Our boat was a 13-storey mammoth. It had 3 swimming pools, 2 discos, 5 restaurants, numerous bars, a miniture golf course, a climbing wall, a heli-pad, 3 table-tennis courts, a basketball court, a massive gym and a health spa! There was probably more stuff that we didn’t even get to see. Our room was superb. We had a cosy balcony with an awesome view as well. A bottle of chilled champagne was waiting for us in our room. I felt like royalty! I took some photos of our ship, Brilliance of the Seas, as well.

The next morning we woke up to a gorgeous view of Corsica. We took a very worthwile trip to Ajaccio, the Corsican capital. This is a very beautiful French-speaking island. I had no idea that it was such a beautiful place; the beaches are travel-brochure stuff! I would definitely consider visiting Corsica again. It also has some cultural & historical importance; Napolean Bonaporte was born here. I took some more photos on Corsica.

The next day we took another day trip to Mallorca (pronounced Mayorca). This Spanish-speaking island is also a beautiful place, but it is bigger, busier and posher than Corsica. We did a very worthwile bus trip. Palma has some very impressive architecture as well. You’ll never guess, but I took some photos of Mallorca.

Although I’m not your typical Med Cruise kinda guy, it turned out to be a very enjoyably 4 days. Yes it is indulgence in the extreme, but I’m glad we had the oppurtunity to experience it first-hand.

Today was my last day at NOP World. I am starting a new contract on Monday with Newell & Budge. I will be doing proper consultancy which something I’ve always wanted to do.

Although I am very pleased with the new setup, I will miss the people from Team Prophet. They were a great to work with. Here (from the left) is Adam Heunis (the Author), Tracey McKenzie, Rob Mason, Alastair Catto, Martin Rivierol, Mark Davidson, Simon Gibbs:

I recommend this book without hesitation. The title is slightly confusing though as this book as nothing to do with politics or conspiracy theories (ala Dan Brown).

Amazon’s synopsis is:

The narrator of this story is a boy who leaves California to attend a college in New England. He falls in with a group of students of Ancient Greek. Four of their number work themselves into a trance-like condition one night, and murder a local farmer. Bunny then tries to blackmail the others.

Donna Tart, the author, gives some great insight into what makes language students tick. She (and they) have very romantic ideas about stuff. To make things even worse they study Ancient Greek as well! I think she is a bit of a language snob though, but this doesn’t bother me as most students are snobs of their fields anyway.

I give this book a good 4½ (out of 5).

This is soooo frustrating. I had no backups either and to have this fixed is going to cost me £600+!!

Attie @ Manchester United

I had my first taste of live Premiership football today when Charlton Athletic hosted Manchester United. We were about 5 rows from the front. We were on TV for a fraction of a second for Wayne Rooney and Alan Smith’s goals.

The photo was taken with my mobile phone so it’s not good, but it does prove we were there! It is Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown in the shot.