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Anyone who's been to Cape Town recently will know that the city seems to have largely forgotten it's meant to be in winter's icy grip. The last three weeks have largely been sunny and mild... the perfect excuse, we thought last Sunday, to head out to Kirstenbosch.
The annual spring flower display was out along the paved avenue up from the hothouse, families picnicked on the grass, a mongoose scuttled along the edge of the lawns and francolin wandered about looking confused. Sunny skies and slip-slops on, we could have been heading for one of the Sunday evening summer concerts.
And then a strange new addition to the Gardens caught my eye. A wide rusty iron roof and earthen walls sprouting plants. The grass around it was roped off, so we presumed it was a work in progress.
Happily the ropes are just to let the grass recover, and this unusual structure is most certainly open to the public. It’s an art exhibition (with no extra entry fee) called UNTAMED, and is a collaborative exhibition between Dylan Lewis (a South African sculptor renowned for capturing human and animal forms in bronze), Enrico Daffonchio (an architect specialising in sustainable design), Ian McCallum (poet, psychologist and specialist wilderness guide) and Kirstenbosch.
It's a small exhibition of half-a-dozen sculptures, but the wonderful 'living wall' architecture and raw animalistic pieces, paired with McCallum's thought-provoking poetry on the nature of man and wilderness, is wonderfully engaging. It's worth visiting Kirstenbosch just to wander through UNTAMED, but with the vygies and Namaqualand daisies in full bloom you can also get your spring flower fix. And all this for just 35 bucks per person... what a deal. |
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Fri 23 Jul 2010 |
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Those little 'black boxes' |
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An interesting little story caught my eye on the newswires this week, which seemed to get overlooked by the daily papers (well, the ones that I picked up at least) and is really worth sharing.
It was from our AFP wire, and covered the death this week of Dr. David Warren, who passed away in Australia at the age of 85.
Now, you've probably never heard of Warren, but chances are that if you've ever flown in a passenger jet and arrived safely on the other side you have him to thank for it.
You see, Dr. Warren is the man who invented the flight data recorder for passenger aircraft — the device that records technical info and cockpit conversations and stores them in the erroneously named 'black boxes' housed towards the tail of the plane.
Today, the moment there's any form of aircraft accident, the black boxes (which are actually orange) are whisked away to help explain why the plane came down. Air France is currently spending millions of euros trying to locate the recorders from AF447, which crashed into the Atlantic last year.
Warren came up with the revolutionary idea while investigating the crash of the world's first commercial jet, the de Havilland Comet, in 1953. He — quite rightly — reasoned that if they could have heard what the pilots were saying they’d have a better chance of solving why the plane came down. And, crucially, make sure it didn't happen again.
In a visionary piece of engineering he spent three years building a prototype black box that was able to store four hours of voice recordings and instrument readings. Incredibly, the idea was initially rejected and it would take 10 years before data recorders became standard on commercial jets, with Australia leading the way.
It's changed the face of commercial jets, and I reckon he deserves a quiet salute from iafrica.com. Next time you're zipping along at 34 000 feet, spare a thought for the quiet Australian who quietly transformed airliners into the safe, predictable machines they are. |
I absol
utely love this new public art project that launched in New York.
"Play Me, I'm Yours" is the brainchild of artist Luke Jerram, and who has been touring the project globally since 2008. It sees 60 pianos (following in the hoofsteps of the cow parade?) placed in public parks and on busy pavements across New York City, and are available for the public to play on from 9am-10pm each day. Ivories tinkle overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge, in the canyons of Manhattan and the up-and-coming squares of the Bronx.
Anyone want to bring it to Cape Town? Pianos on top of Table Mountain? Perhaps one on Clifton 3rd? Echoing around Greenmarket Square…
I'd love to see (and hear) that happen. Find out more at http://www.streetpianos.com/nyc2010/
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Thu 24 Jun 2010 |
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A round of applause for Lufthansa |
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Regular readers (and if you're reading this, that probably means you) of this site, and my iafrica.com newsletter, will know that I've been grumbling about airline service the last few weeks. Surly clerks, poor food, bad service... all in all enough to make me question why I spend so much time in planes.
Which is why my experience at Frankfurt airport last month came as such a pleasant surprise. Travelling as a guest of Lufthansa to welcome their new A380 'superjumbo', I enjoyed the rare chance to sit up at the sharp end of the plane. As you'd expect; great food, efficient service and a very comfortable flight. Surprised that they haven't gone for completely lie-flat beds in business class, but I'm sure there's a reason.
Anyway, so we land in Frankfurt and I discover that some light-fingered baggage handler (most likely in Johannesburg) has snapped off a zip on my suitcase and rifled through the case. One thing I am meticulous about is never having valuables in my hold luggage, so luckily they scored precisely zero.
But there was still the matter of the broken suitcase. So off I go to Lufthansa's baggage counter to report the damage. "No problem," says the super-friendly (even at 5.45am) clerk. "Just take this voucher to the luggage repair shop at carousel 11 and they'll fix it for you on the spot."
I beg your pardon? Repair shop? In the airport? On the spot? Surely not...
But it's true! It exists! In the airport! Well, all true, except for the part about repair. Turns out they couldn't fix the case on the spot, so they offered to either send it away to be fixed, or replace it on the spot from their stock of brand-new suitcases kept on hand just in case. I went for the latter and walked out of Frankfurt a smiling, not irate, passenger. Now that's what I call service... |
Mon 03 May 2010 |
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Heading for Herold's Bay... |
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I reckon Dante got it all wrong when he wrote his 'Divine Comedy'. He left out a level of Hell – Somerset West. Or, more specifically, the N2 through Somerset West on a Friday afternoon. What, oh what, were they thinking when they decided to put a freeway through the middle of a retirement suburb? Throw in some robots, road works and road-trippers and it was almost enough to make me turn around and go home.
Almost enough, but not quite. Not when there's the prospect of a long weekend lounging our way through the Garden Route on offer. With Somerset West mercifully disappearing into the rearview mirror the N2 stretched out ahead of us.
Bands of Harley bikers thundered past on their way to the Buffalo Rally in Mossel Bay while family-wagons — packed to the gills with bikes and forlorn family dogs — laboured up the hills. Through the dry wheat fields, a quick stop at Riviersonderend for the best droë wors in the Cape, another at the Blue Crane farm stall near Heidelberg for bread and chicken pies, and eventually I saw a light in the east. Ah yes, the flickering flame of MossGas. A quick zip along the broad sweep of N2 towards George and a slip road off to the coast; Herolds Bay, we have arrived.
Read the full story at http://travel.iafrica.com/searchsa/gardenroute/2343153.htm...
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Or just a sign of commercialism heading south? Refuse to shop at Melissa's nowadays: overpriced and average
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