30 minutes with a famous person

7 August 2018
Name a famous person you would want to have a 30-minute conversation with. Dead or alive.
This is a more difficult question than I thought when I first heard it.
The thing is: I have a long list of famous people I would like to have a conversation with. Many of them I know I would like to chat much longer than just 30 minutes with. People like Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Andy Stanley, Louie Giglio, Retief Burger, Louis Brittz, Riana Nel, Michael W. Smith, Emma Watson, Kristen Kreuk and Denzel Washington (and this is not really the whole list).
I think a famous person I would love to have a conversation with, which will hopefully not be more than 30 minutes, is someone like Stephen Grootes. (If the conversation is longer than 30 minutes, it will only mean that I have to look for someone else with whom I can have a 30 minute conversation with.)
I am a rather huge fan of Stephen Grootes. He was at Talk Radio 702 for a very long time. He used to be a reporter, then became the host of the one-hour long Midday Report, and finally became a host of two three-hour long programs (first the morning drive show host and later the afternoon drive show host). He is now at one of the SABC stations, SAfm. He has a way of reporting on political stories that always sounds fair and balanced. He is one of the main reasons I like to follow our local politics. I once thought that if I could be so lucky to get onto radio or write political stories, it would be because of his inspiration. And it sounds like the guy also enjoy a good coffee.
There are other media personalities that I could also include in this list. People like Redi Thlabi, Adriaan Basson, Piet Croucamp (commentator, not reporter), Jan-Jan Joubert, Tim du Plessis, and so on.
Who would you want to have a 30-minute conversation with? He or she has to be famous. He or she may be dead or alive.

Fake and real coffee

6 August 2018
Yesterday I wrote about my favourite TV shows.
I have always been fascinated about characters in TV shows and even movies who drinks coffee.
Have you ever noticed that a character with a mug of coffee almost never take a real sip of coffee? Something else I never see, is steam coming from a mug of coffee, even if the person pours coffee from a fresh pot of coffee. Many characters from TV shows and movies drink coffee from take-away cups, usually with a lid on. Have you noticed how people carry these cups. Sometimes they carry it so careless, that you have to know that there is nothing inside; the coffee has to pour out the way it is carried by some characters.
Anyway, all this thinking and writing about coffee made me think about the coffee I drink.
I have three main coffees at my home. All three are instant coffee: Jacobs Krönung, Douwe Egberts Espresso Style and Douwe Egberts Mocha Kenya Style. These are the closest to “real” coffee in the instant coffee market, in my opinion.
What is “real” coffee? Coffee that needs some machine to bring out the real and true taste and smell of coffee. Bean coffee and ground coffee.
In my current collection of “real” coffee, I have strong roast espresso coffee beans, English Toffee flavour ground coffee, Estrela blend 100% Arabica coffee beans, Rwanda single origin ground coffee (which smells rather mild), Importers (a South African company) Mocha Java dark medium roast coffee beans, Importers Italian dark coffee beans, Baruch’s (another South African company) coffee beans that smells mild as well, Baruch’s Mocca Java coffee beans, BeanThere Fair trade coffee (also a South African company) creamy caramel flavour Tanzania beans, three more single original blends from a company that I can’t see on the packets (from Ethiopia, Brazil and Columbia), and a Starbucks medium roast ground coffee packet.
I have this smallish machine, that makes about 4 mugs of coffee in one blend. I usually use 2 table spoons of ground coffee to make my coffee, and then it will last the whole day, if I do not work at home that day.
I also like coffee at some restaurants. The big issue with coffee at restaurants is this: it is usually too strong, almost as though it was burnt. That is why, at restaurants, I sometimes have to drink sugar in my coffee. The only other coffee to which I add sugar, is those cheap types of coffee that you get in the large tins. Coffee is really to make the coffee bearable to drink. And Espresso, Mocca Java, and all the other sub-flavours I mentioned above, are good enough not to need sugar as well.
Of all the coffee I have drunk in restaurants, the two best place to get coffee, is Starbucks and Seattle Coffee Co. in South Africa. One day, when I travel the world, I would love to visit at least a Starbucks somewhere in the world.
What coffee do you drink? Where do you prefer to buy your coffee-on-the-go or sitdown-coffee? How much coffee do you drink?
Enjoy your coffee!!

Favourite TV shows

5 August 2018
Recently, I was asked: “So what are your favourite TV show? And why?”
It is difficult to answer this kind of question. I watch a lot of TV shows. I sometimes download my favourite TV shows. Mostly, I get my favourite (and sometimes other) TV shows from other people.
I like TV shows the focus on police and investigation. I think the first one of these kinds of TV shows (which I started to watch) were NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Services. I also enjoy watching the two spin-off series: NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: New Orleans. I also like the modern Hawaii 5-0. Four other series that are related to police and investigation, that I also used to watch, are CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: New York, CSI: Miami and CSI: Cyber.
I am also a big superhero fan. And I like DC Television and Marvel Television series. It seems to me that there are currently more DC superheroes than Marvel superheroes on television. I like Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl series. I also like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I also enjoy the The Defenders-related series, which include The Defenders itself, as well as Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil and The Punisher.
The Law & Order-series are sometimes very scary and sad, but I do like it as well. The two spin-offs, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (which is still showing) also include among my favourites. Shows that were created by the same creators are the series that are set in Chicago: Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med and Chicago Justice. I like all four of these Chicago-series. It is unfortunate that Chicago Justice has been cancelled.
These are some of my favourite (current) TV shows. What are your favourite (current) shows?

What would you do with R140million?

3 August 2018
I think just about every country has at least one lottery competition.
South Africa as well. And South Africa has a Lotto and a PowerBall competition. I don’t really play PowerBall. I like SportStake (a competition where a person can bet as little as R2 on 13 soccer match results; and I like to follow soccer).
Today the possible PowerBall pay-out is apparently a guaranteed R140million. So I bought myself two tickets. For R10 each. I’m not saying I am going to win anything.
I thought I will ask the question anyway… What would you do with R140million? What would I do with R140million?
I have heard that it is clever to not say anything about winning (or getting) a large amount of money at once.
I will do my best to stay silent about winning the money.
I have, however thought about sharing money like that with some people before. I will for sure give the first R40million to my nearest family members and some of my other near family members and friends. I will, of course, make them promise not to say where they got the money. At least for six months.
I will find a place to deposit the money somewhere where I can get a good interest rate. I am guessing a good interest rate is about 5% per year (it could be more; hopefully not less). At 5% per year, you could get about R215000 per month (if taxes are to be deducted).
If that is true, I could travel the world, work almost anywhere for no salary, and share a lot of money with many people.
I have never really dreamed of living in a R10million mansion. But I might buy that FerrariF40 I always dreamed about. A nice little R2million house won’t be too bad.
I also have a small business. At the moments it is more like a registered hobby. I would like to use that money to help build the business. I also have this dream to build this business into something that can help to other people jobs.
I would also like to use some of the money to travel a little. Firstly, I would like to travel in South Africa. I would also like to travel around the world. I always wanted to see places like New York City, Scotland, Ireland, Barcelona and Egypt. In South Africa, I have seen Table Mountain, but I won’t mind to actually stand on Table Mountain one day. And I would like to travel through Namakwaland when it is the flower season, as well as to go somewhere during snow-season, while it is snowing.
That is about as far as I can think to spend R140million.
If I do not win PowerBall tonight, and you were the winner, what would you do with that money? How will you spend of save it?

Talking about prayer

2 August 2018
I spoke at a venue this morning. About prayer. And specifically about the model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer .
This prayer starts with “Our Father”.
I always try to have a little bit of a conversation with this particular crowd I was speaking to. In this conversation this morning, we learned that Jesus want to teach us that we are not only praying on our own behalf. We always pray for others’ as well.
I do believe that when we are serious about praying, we have to realise that prayer is a meeting-“event” with a God that wants to change us, even if the change is just a little bit of change. In Christianity, according to me, we believe that God wants to transform us to become more like Jesus. Every time we meet God in prayer, He will challenge us to change a little, to become more like Jesus.
In relation to the Lord’s Prayer, it seems that every time we pray, there has to be a little bit of our words and actions that will be different, so that it will make a difference in our relationships with other people.
The challenge to me, after today, is this: How does my own actions and words change after I meet God in prayer?

Where is our power? Where is Eskom?

1 August 2018

In South Africa, we have a power supplier that struggles to supply power. The name of the company is Eskom

Eskom logo

Yesterday Eskom started load shedding again.
Load shedding is all about switching some parts of a cities’ or towns’ off so that power is saved. People are basically forced to save power. Sounds a little crazy, right? In South Africa, we are so used to this, that we don’t find it strange at all any more. It is become a “normal” part of our lives.
The schedule is usually for three hours at a time. At least in the area where I live.
BUT. In the area I live in, we do not only suffer power outages during load shedding times. We lose power for more or less any reason. Sometimes when the wind blows hard or five drops of rain fall, we have a power outage. When this happens, we can be without power for at least 3-4 hours at a time. We have these power outages at least two times in a month. Our municipality also seems unable to fix whatever causes these outages.
This is day one of my “one post a day” experiment. I did not really want to moan about something on my first post. Unfortunately it had to start this way. I hope I will not be complaining about some kind of lack of service provision for the rest of this month.

Blog a day in August

31 July 2018
I tried this before. In fact, I tried to do this just two months ago. I wanted to write one blog post every day, and publish these posts as soon as possible.
August is my favourite month of the year. I will write about the reason for that soon. That is why I am going to try to write one blog post every day for a month. Again.
I can write a post every day. I will be writing about any kind of topic that I think of. Sometimes I read a meme and it triggers an idea. I hope that happens throughout this coming month. Sometimes I hear a song and it triggers an idea, or I see a news story, and that triggers an idea to write about. I don’t have fixed topic I write about, although I do have some pet loves that I write about more than others. Those readers who have been following me for a while – if there are any – would have notices a long time ago that I do not have a fixed topic that I write about. I am all over the place when it comes to topics, really.
I do not, however, have reliable and available wifi spots. I use these, because my only alternative is mobile data, and that is to expensive. So I can’t publish my posts every day.
In any case. Join me on this ride of daily writing. Please follow me, comment on my posts, and share it if you want to and/or if you enjoy the writing.

31 July 2018: Introduction to August 2018 in my blogging evolution [Or: Blog a day in August]
01 August 2018: Where is our power? Where is Eskom?
02 August 2018: Talking about prayer