There's more than potatoes in Napier...

This time last week I was heading out to Napier with my good friend Vuvuzella in her trusty steed, Snowey. It all seems like a lifetime ago already, but going through countless photographs (oh the life of a wannabe journo) brought it all flooding back. Good times indeed...

Here are some highlights:

• Sweet potato soup in a teacup at The Red Windmill. A novel idea that will be used at next dinner party.
  
• A very yummy baby Bunny Chow from the same place. It was apparently mildly currried, but my sinuses remained clear for the rest of the weekend.
  
• Happily discovering a bottle of wine, a block of Camembert cheese and a jar of rusks at Journey's Rest farm. We love free stuff! Especially food and alcoholic beverages.
  
• Unhappily discovering that Monster and The Viking chose to "swop" our bottle of red wine for their bottle of white wine. They can't believe we noticed. Come on guys, us girls don't miss a thing. We just let you get away with it.
  
• The heating panels at Journey's Rest were a godsend. I am going to get one next winter.
  
• Phoning the main house to organise a light for the braai area. Only to find our light charging in the kitchen after they had left.
  
• Monster and The Viking scratching at our window after midnight. Apparently it was their version of The Blair Witch Project. A drunk version...
  
• Being locked in the house by Monster after Blair Witch Project incident. Vuvuzella had to climb out the window the next morning to let us out. Glad they were drunk enough to leave the key in the door.
  
• Stomping around at 8am in the morning in the freezing cold (sorry, crisp country air) taking photographs. Sometimes "picture perfect hour" comes at a price. My slippers have never recovered.
  
• Listening to the sheep and frogs at night. Watching horses run free whilst having a morning cuppa and scratching a donkey between his ears. There's a lot to be said for simple living.
  
• Going to the local OK store to buy Milk of Magnesia. Who would've thought a childhood remedy would come back to haunt me. The design has never changed. I finished the bottle in a day.
  
• Hearing the quaint story of the Barber of Napier. Every Friday he braai's boerewors and listens to his Boer music ... just for a few hours, after work, every Friday.
  
• Buying sweet potato soup in little containers with a pink sticker on them saying "I love Napier". Packaging is everything.
  
• Eating the best damn chicken pie I have ever had from the Napier Farm Stall - get yourself one the next time you in town.
  
• Watching the parade down the main street complete with a brass band, vintage cars and tractors.
  
• Meeting Miss Napier, the best looking kid in town. Out of seven entrants...
  
• Visiting an organic cheese-making farm with 60 hand-reared goats, 100 chickens and 2 pigs. Sunrise must be quite something.
  
• Almost getting butted up the bum by a goat called Lindt. Apparently she is just really friendly, but I was not so sure. Yellow eyes and large horns should be respected.
  
• Having tea and cheesecake at Pascals. Cheesecake, my God, that cheesecake...
  
• Learning how Napier Bier is made. No wonder I don't like it much, you should smell the stuff that goes into it.
  
• Finding out that they wash out the pipes for the beer with acid. Not sure if I am going to be drinking beer again in a hurry.
  
• Attempting to take a photo of the brewery from the outside only to be thwarted by two very young girls sitting outside with a baby in a pram. Not very PC, but the photo just screams "Napier Bier, better than mother's milk".
  
• Pizza at the Suntouched Inn. It is probably the best pizza in South Africa. Make that Africa.
  
• Being asked advice on how to deal with a tummy bug and recommending Jaegermeister shots. Well, it worked for me! For a while...
  
• Being told to keep quiet during The Hedges gig. Apparently Vuvuzella and I were making more noise than the band and causing people to watch us instead of the band. Folk bands, they clearly not very loud and we are clearly much more entertaining.
  
• Asking a random group of guests at the inn if I could have a potato wedgie, "because you are not eating them".
  
• Shouting "Ooooh, I love wedgies" at the top of my voice at the bar and wondering why I was getting strange looks.
  
• Asking the owner of the inn (who is a friend, thankfully) to go get the left over potato wedges and give them to me because they still wern't eating them. This resulted in me getting my own bowl of pototo wedgies, on the house. Thanks guys! I ate ALL of them! Because I love wedgies...
  
• Driving along the country dirt roads after midnight, listening to Bob Marley and singing along to "Easy Skanky" .... what??!!
  
• Having to stop mid-country road jaunt due to the "burning bum incident". Nope, not mine (thanks to Jaegermeister), but rather Vuvuzella. Smoking and driving can be hazardous. Especially when listening to the King of Reggae (and head lice).
  
• Seeing car headlights behind us and realising that the lads had caught up to us even though they left a good half hour after us. They blame poor driving, we blame it on the "burning bum incident". But between you and me, the speedometer did read 40 at one point.
  
• Watching Vuvuzella spread peanut butter on her toast. No wonder a jar only lasts her a few days and she's banned herself from buying it.
  
• Meeting Daniel Bourget, the French rastafarian baker. Rastafarians taught him how to speak English, which explains everything. A legend with a whole lotta dreads under a chef's hat.
  
• Eating breakfast at Napier Farm Stall, only to scoff about five croissants later at the croissant-making demonstration.
  
• If that wasn't enough, it was straight on to Pascals for their Sunday roast lunch. Roast pork .. considering we had spent the day being piggies it was quite fitting really.
  
• Being requested to review another fine establishement in Napier at a later date, with free accommodation at said establishment in return.  Which means I will have to go back to Napier. Sigh, sometimes I love my job...

The Rapture II - technology

I have been bleating on about this stuff to my long-suffering colleagues and friends for some time. Especially when I am getting cabin fever and a little tired of looking at a screen all day. Especially when I have fifty emails to answer, photos from a weekend party to upload onto Facebook and return phone calls to make. Especially when I hear people complaining that their internet is not working when they should actually be more worried about the fact that there will be no water in five year's time.

So I am going to say this again. Modern technology is ruining our lives. Gasp! Says someone who exploits social media and sends texts constantly. OK, I like to keep in touch and be in touch. But I also know that in the old days we used to keep in touch by actually phoning people, visiting people and... oooh, writing letters! Remember those days? Hell, I am not THAT old and I remember them. And it is time we went back to them. What we need is a Rapture ... but not the religious kind, the technological kind...

Internet
Fondly known as the Interwebs. World Wide Web. More commonly known simply as Google. These days you can do just about anything online. Banking and shopping being the most convenient to many. You can also find out stuff, book accommodation and even book a dvd for the night. You can also download music and movies and ringtones. The list could go on and on. And of course there's porn. Which is the backbone of the internet anyway. But that's a whole different story... Where it has gone wrong is this...

So with all this stuff we can do online, we no longer need to go into the bank, the shops, the travel agent or the dvd store. We no longer need to buy music or movies as there are means of downloading them for free. And when last did you go to a movie?? So we have people losing jobs left, right and centre, popcorn going stale in movie houses and libraries becoming obsolete. Kids these days no longer get a set of Encyclopedia's for their birthday, they get a laptop. Gone are the days when you knew the name of your local greengrocer (now there's an old-fashioned word) and gone are the days when you couldn't wait for an album by your favourite band to come out so you could go buy it. Chances are you haven't even bothered to pop into your local cafe down the road or met the owner of the dvd store as you probably downloaded a movie yesterday that isn't even on the circuit yet. It's a crying shame.

Email
The worst thing that happened in our company last year was when the email system crashed. We couldn't cope. We couldn't do our work and it felt like we had lost contact with the outside world completely. Except the outside world of course, was just that. Outside. Not in the computer. I personally loved it, I got to spend more time outside. In the real world. Don't get me wrong, I love email. I get to send and receive funny jokes and I get to keep in touch with friends and family that are miles away. But where it has gone wrong is this...

Now we send emails to a colleague who sits across from us instead of talking to them. We send emails to friends asking how they are instead of phoning them. We send emails instead of birthday cards. We break up with people on email! How sad is that?! Verbal communication has gone down the proverbial ethernet cable. And to be honest, who doesn't miss getting a phone call "just to catch up", or a birthday card or a handwritten (what!) letter in the mail...

Facebook
Being the queen of socialising, nothing has come along that is more fun to me than Facebook. I will be the first to admit it. I constantly tell people what I am up to, what I was up to and if all else fails, just find some nonsense to write on my status update. I love knowing what gigs are happening, what everyone else is doing and looking at their photographs. But where it has gone wrong is this ...

We no longer send personal invitations to friend's for parties, we put it on FB. Sending photos to friends and family is a thing of the past, we now make albums on FB. And God-forbid you actually PRINT them! Friends and family who are not on FB lose out on our lives completely. How many times has someone said "How was your weekend away" and you respond by saying "Oh it was great. I put updates on Facebook and I uploaded the photos yesterday. You see, if you were on Facebook you would have seen them already."

And then there are FB friends. Sending a "friend request" has to be the funniest thing ever. Bit like being at school and saying to the new girl "Can I be your friend?" Then there's the angst of what to do if someone wants to be your friend and you don't really want to be theirs. So you spinelessly stick them in Facebook purgatory. Now, how many friends do you have on FB that you actually know personally? How many FB friends do you have that you actually know where they live? Then there's the removing of FB friends if you no longer like them or have had a fallout. You don't have to give a reason, you can just quietly remove them from your page. My pal Monster got upset the other day when he noticed that he had lost two FB friends. He wondered what he had said. What!!!? I think we should be worrying more about keeping our good friends. The ones that actually phone us, invite us over to dinner and just pop in to visit when they are in the hood. In other words, real friends...

Mobile phones
The best thing Virgin Mobile ever did was give me 1 000 free smses a month. Yup, one thousand! I can sms everyone about everything, which of course I do. The worst thing they have done is not get their act together with getting in Blackberry. Everybody these days has a Blackberry and everyone is busy BBM'ing everyone else about everything. So I basically feel that I am missing out and I hate that. Mobile phones are useful, fun and great when you get lost or are running late. But where it has gone wrong is this ...

Notice when people get together at a restaurant, or any gathering around a table for that matter, how they immediately get their phones out and put them on the table. In front of them and between you and them. They glance at it constantly and their face lights up when it flashes with a message or a call. Now unless that call is urgent, I consider this to be rude. You are with me, or in good company of others, so be present dammit! Then you get those that feel a constant need to check Facebook from their phones. Or constantly update their status on FB whilst they are out at said gathering. Which means they are not entirely there.. they would rather be on Facebook. The online world being so much more exciting than actually being with real people. And don't get me started on how many people have been dumped via sms. It's sick.

I generally have my phone on silent mode, because I selfishly don't like the interruption of a ringing or bleeping phone when I am involved in something. It messes with my concentration and sometimes upsets the little harmonic world I am in at the time. Which upsets my friends when they can't get hold of me. They do have a point in some cases and I was recently victim of not being able to get hold of some of my friends when I really needed to. But what happened to the days when you only had a landline and when you were out, you were out? Now people can find you anytime and anywhere. Even if you are in hospital, the office will call you and forget about going on holiday and getting away from it all if you take your cellphone.


So, to sum up a very long blog (I had a lot to say), there are a myriad of articles out there talking about times have changed and how we are in fact more lonely in a world of social networking and instant communication than ever before. Of course we are. We spend so much time immersed in all this technology that we have forgotten how to talk to one another in the flesh. We have no idea how to reach out to someone unless it's via a text, BBM or online dating. People are even having cybersex?!! What's next, cyber dinner with a downloadable movie?

We are more worried about losing the movie and music downloads on our portable hard drives than we are about global warming and animal abuse. No longer able to meet a potential partner through friends and social gatherings, we are resorting to finding them online. We are more interested in checking our Facebook updates on our phones than actually listening to the conversation taking place around the dinner table. We get more upset about our laptop crashing than the fact we are going to run out of food in ten years time (my personal favourite rampage).

Technology and devices are being updated at a rapid rate to make our lives more simple, yet it has become more complicated. We are now working later and spending our days checking emails, smses and Facebook. We seem to have less time for our friends, less time to socialise and less time for ourselves.

It all needs to go and soon! A world ruled by robots is suddenly not such a ridiculous prediction after all. Because it seems that it is the human race that are becoming the robots. And that scares the crap out of me...