24 August 2002

We're everywhere (1) I was going through my early morning routine yesterday, cleaning the beach and setting out our sunbeds and umbrellas, when a guy came down early (8am) to lay out his towels on the choicest beds close to the beach.  He came over and asked me if it was OK to do that, and would his towels be safe.  I said "Sure", and added "You must be German?"  (yes, it's true, the Germans really do come down early to book the best spots, but the Brits are learning to compete).  "No", he says, "I'm from Cape Town".  Turns out he's from Table View, but he got divorced and hijacked a year ago, and has decided to make his future in Manchester.  Seems to have integrated really well, he has an English girlfriend, with child, and is sporting a Manchester United tattoo. By the way, 80% of our British visitors, male and female, seem to have tattoos, lots of them are very keen on karaoke, and there is a very high correlation between number of tattoos and karaoke expertise.  Just one more piece of unsolicited and useless sociological observation from your correspondent in Greece. Then Rory mentioned that the previous night in his bar, he was visited by a party of 8 South Africans.  That is unusual, since Zakynthos and the Ionian islands generally, are not usually on the tourist map for South Africans, who tend to head for Skiathos, or south to the Cyclades on their holidays. 2:42:01 PM    comment []

It is so uplifting to see the poor of Zimbabwe being uplifted by Mugabe's land grab policy. 2:25:22 PM    comment []

Microsoft warns about security holes So, what's new?  1:29:33 PM    comment []

The Junket in Jo'burg So, the great gabfest, about which I was aghast a few weeks ago, is about to begin. My cursory  perusal of the SA media this morning tells me that Amnesty International believes the summit's objectives cannot be achieved, the world will be in a worse condition 10 years from now than it was 10 years ago, that the summit has already killed enough trees to produce 24 tons of paper, and that delegates will contribute to global warming by generating 290 000 tons of carbon monoxide in their discussions.  Also that the cops are getting in the way of the bonanza expected by Gauteng's army of sex workers. News24 (via Reuters) tells me that "Familiar battle lines divided rich and poor nations on Friday as negotiators in Johannesburg worked to salvage plans for cutting world poverty and saving the planet at next week's mammoth Earth Summit." And BBC News asks the question: "Do world summits work?", as well as providing the the background to previous summits of this nature.   1:18:07 PM    comment []