Originally from South Africa’s magnificent Eastern Cape, my family and I now reside in Pennsylvania in the United States. To earn my keep I’m an executive for a multinational company in the Healthcare sector.
I’m also a serious amateur photographer. Pro-environmental and conservation views.
Elke was a week old yesterday. It is unreal how time has flown since she was born on the 27th of September. Her birth was an emotional roller coaster to say the least. I tend to get very focussed and quite grim during times of stress, so it was only a day or so afterwards that I could think about the “miracle” of life. But it still doesn’t feel like Elke is our own!
As promised, her are some photos (better than the ones that sent from the hospital).
Lene was an absolute star. I have to doff my cap to her for her courage and bravery.
Sofar Elke is perfectly healthy, but man alive she can scream!! Lene is doing sterling work with her, but it is tiring for her. Elke’s worst times of the day is between 12 and 5 in the morning.
Lene is also recovering well from the birth.
Thanks to everyone for all the support and messages.
My big gripe with Steve’s view of animals was that he saw them as many people from the East see them; as fluffy toys. Wild animals (be that a hedgehog or a fully grown male lion) are brilliant for the same reason that they are dangerous; they are NOT fluffy toys.
I have often said that Steve doesn’t treat animals with enough respect and it wouldn’t surprise me that this is how he got into trouble.
While I didn’t agree with the way that Steve “worked” with wildlife, his enthusiasm was genuine and it generated a lot of interest in all sorts of wildlife. I would much rather have him around than not.
We have been back in the country now for two and a half weeks. We took a couple of days off just to get back into things but we have been giving our new venture most of our attention for the last week and a half.
Although we had some serious shocks, I have to say that I’m very pleased with how things have gone so far.
We now have a much clearer idea of what exactly we are going to do and how much it is going to cost us. There is still some fine tuning to do but it is now beginning to feel more like a project with a budget that we can manage. This in itself is a really big step.
Our infrastructure is also now functional. We have an office and all our communication channels (phone, email, fax & ‘net) are now open. It sounds so trivial, but it is really tough to function without these things and it takes real effort to get to this stage.
We also initiated a lot of admin type things that hopefully we’ll finalise this week. It is a lot of work though so it might take until next week.
Lene has also been a star with initiating dialogue with potential product & service providers. This is something that I trust her far more than I do myself. She knows exactly what she wants and that is worth GOLD!
We are going to have to work hard over the next three months, but if we can maintain the current momentum I’m confident that we’ll be opening up the best farmstall and coffee shop this side of the equator come December!
I am finally back online with an acceptable (albeit expensive) connection. I did manage to send a few emails and to update my blog once, but all of that was done through my parents’ 56K modem with the good ol’e tone and all!
ADSL in SA is insanely expensive. Our 1MB that is capped at 3GB/month works us out at around about R800/month. That equates to about ú60/month in the UK. In the UK you can get 10MB uncapped Internet at around about ú15/month. As most other things in SA is much cheaper than in the UK we should be paying much less for Internet, but at least we have now got something. All we need now is some free market forces to be allowed to do their thing.
We’ll we’ve been back in the good old Republic of South-Africa now for a couple of days. It is winter but after some good rains in the first couple of days we have had some fantastic weather. The photo is of the Boesmansrivier (Bushman’s River), from my parents’ house. Remember this is winter!
I must say it is strange thinking of this as “home” again after being in London for 7 years. It definitely hasn’t sunk in yet. The fact that we are presently living in my parents’ home and I don’t have my own PC, telephone line, cellphone or ‘net access yet doesn’t help either. Our utmost priority is to get these things sorted out.
The business proposition, probably the main reason we moved back at the time we did, still looks as good as it did three months ago. As you’d expect there are some things we’re not entirely happy about, but there are other things that we’re really delighted about.
One thing is for sure; there is a lot of work to be done. I think this is a good thing though. It should help us to adapt to the different way things work around here. We just can’t wait to get started!
I worked on two projects; Compliance Audit as a Team Leader and Core Systems Rewrite as a Team Leader/Technical Architect. CA succesfully went live a couple of months ago, but regrettably I left before CSR’s live date.
Another part of my role was to transfer skills to the Corpy’s permanent developers. Surprisingly I found that I particularly enjoyed this aspect. My “learners” – Mandy, Mark, Gerry, Mick & Louis – were a delight to work with. If everyone is as nice as you guys I might consider this as a career! These developers are well on their way to becoming C# gurus in their own right; I hope I have played a small part in that.
Thanks Mark Lewin, Gerry Evans, Elsa Nigro, Mandy Potts, Louis Pappasryou, Mick Yates, Simon Jackson, Chris Hibbert, Joe Gonzales, Melanie Cahill, Zia Uddin, Paul, Jennifer Mingo, Tajmina Jetha, Helen Mahon, Selina Yeboah, Nella Buisson-Web, Anagha Joshi, Vasos Petrou and Ian Pollack (left already). Despite the difficulties associated with huge projects like CSR (agile or not) you all made it a joy to work at the Corpy.
To Doug Laurence, Simon Rolph, Ambika Kumar, Andriy, Capilan, Satvinder, Jyothi, Graham Thurston, Chris, John French, Steve (database guy), Alan Yardley, Steve Vinney, Rob Kelly (left already) & Adrian Rodgers (left already) from Sopra Newell & Budge I very much enjoyed working with you all. If I didn’t leave the country I would’ve been very happy to continue our association.
Man was it hot today! The thermometer went all the way up to 36.3¦C. This is the hottest day in the UK for July since records have been kept. The hottest that it has ever been in the UK is a whopping 38.5¦C. That was recorded three years ago in August 2003.
As a South-African people were asking me whether I like this heat, but I can assure you I was boiling. This did however get me wondering what South-Africa’s hottest day ever was. It is an unbelievable 51.7¦C!! It was recorded near Upington in 1948.
The hottest temperature recorded on the planet was 58¦C in El Azizia, Libya. This was recorded in 1922. Just imagine that.
The hottest temperature I’ve personally ever encountered was 43¦C at Vioolsdrif on the border of South-Africa and Namibia.
Elke was a week old yesterday. It is unreal how time has flown since she was born on the 27th of September. Her birth was an emotional roller coaster to say the least. I tend to get very focussed and quite grim during times of stress, so it was only a day or so afterwards that I could think about the “miracle” of life. But it still doesn’t feel like Elke is our own!
We’ll we’ve been back in the good old Republic of South-Africa now for a couple of days. It is winter but after some good rains in the first couple of days we have had some fantastic weather. The photo is of the Boesmansrivier (Bushman’s River), from my parents’ house. Remember this is winter!
Attie Heunis's Journey 