As always, lots to talk about. The hot topics today have to do with firstly, the resignation of Japanese Leader, Shinzo Abe, and my opinions on the appeals to the constitutional court about inequality in social security. I’ll also comment on a couple other random things I’ve read. The first issue, with respect to Japan is who is going to lead the country now that Abe has resigned? There are a couple of possible candidates in the Liberal Democratic Party (Abe’s...

OK so last night I was asleep in bed (because obviously one is often not asleep in one’s bed, but elsewhere). I awoke to the sounds of my dogs and the dogs next door going berserk (or bezek if you hear in South Africa). This blog is about my funny response. To give you some background, we recently had a new alarm system installed. It has detectors on the walls, in the garden outside and we hear a chime every time someone walks in the garden outside, the obvious...

So I was reading Paul Krugman’s Op-Ed today. He was talking about how the tax cuts in the US are meant to have affected your every day middle-class American. You can see the article at the following URL, or email me and I’ll put it up (though the NY Times may be a hater if I do that) http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/opinion/10krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss I stole his title 'Where's my trickle?' it was too catchy not to use it! Anyway, I thought about...

Well, things have been happening in SA of late. Mostly odd and politically dangerous in my mind, but that could just be me overreacting to that which I observe. Last week a DA parliamentarian asked for information about Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, wanting to know whether the government had known if she had a criminal record. He was thrown out of parliament. More recently, on Sunday September 9, the Mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, was arrested for taking part in a...

These have been a long time coming. As you will see, they are poems on which I have been working. I have also been working on various others, but don’t want to put them up just yet.Much love to everyone!SiThe corner of the road version 4 for SHThe corner of the roadwas where his house stoodwhen he was fourteen years oldand his father was thedo-it-yourself manon the cornerof the roadat the top ofthe hillhe learnt to drive on that hillhe bought a licence fromhis...

I’m sitting at my laptop, late at night with a rugby-injured shoulder which is preventing me from falling asleep. I should be writing an essay I have due for Prof Haresnape, but late night letter writing is far more entertaining (for me and for you I assure you – unless of course you want a diatribe on the aesthetics of structure and form.,or their lack, in contemporary South African poetry). I have been bombarded by the following in the last week or so: Don Imus...

Below is something I was planning to submit to 'Speakeasy' but then I got carried away and it got slightly longer than I intended. I wrote it a while back now, but all well and good.For a few mornings as I have driven up to my office at the University of Cape Town, I see the little sign for the filming of Disgrace on the highway before the Rosebank turnoff. “Ahah!” I think, “How are they going to portray David Lurie well? Will Mr. Malkovich play the self-pitying and...

So I haven’t written about my recent experiences in Northern KwaZulu Natal. It’s all be fairly mundane in terms of work. Mostly I have been pent up in offices with various people trying to find specific files in folders several volumes long. All I need are 3 files within these larger files – the PIRs, Designation Memos and List of Beneficiaries. Don’t worry about what that means, or why they’re relevant to me. In Vryheid I had the wonderful experience of arriving...

Well, I’ve just arrived in Durban again. This time I got to drive into Durban proper, rather than simply take the N2 directly out of the Airport to Port Shepstone. Tomorrow I drive to Vryheid. The flight here wasn’t too eventful, except for being over-populous as a result of the Cape Argus Cycle Tour. No aisle seat for me, I was squished between a madala type in a green suit, tie and hat and a Zulu woman with stick-out-backwards hair. All very cool. I was...

Traveling is interesting. In any of its aspects it is. I am not particularly accustomed to getting up before 5am to get to the airport before my flight leaves, but I did that this morning in order to go to a regional land reform office to do work on the Quality of Life project on which Malcolm Keswell and I are working for the DLA. Rocking! I arrived in Durban and it was 24 degrees at 9am. Thankfully the car that was booked for me is air-conditioned. I then...

I have a niggling hate that has become more and more obvious as time has passed. It is a hatred of split infinitives. For those of you who don’t know, an infinitive is a “to ___” word, i.e. the verb in an ‘infinite’ form, such that it can be applied readily to anyone or anything. There is no object and no subject. In languages other than English, the infinitive is normally a single word, hence it cannot be split. For example the words ‘avere’ in Italian, or...

Wind-blownThe Cape bears the scars of cling-wrap beaches tight against its shores curled grotesquely into coves, that interrupt the language of rock the speech of sea anemones. Stalks of brown kelp all broken yolk slimy and stamped on by the pale feet of Cape Town’s pick-'n-pay packet children colour the sand off-white. Discarded heads of rope and the pecked-empty skulls of once screeching gulls make a mausoleum of the coastline bucket...

Highway Driving the N1 is a baptism by fumes:Total immersion in the smoky viscera of internal combustion, their invasion of your nostrils turns your snot black and gritty as last week’s left-over ash. It was midday on a Friday in December, and the traffic was thick as turning yoghurt left out on a summer’s afternoon.My fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly the bruised leather of its contours stuck to the skin, adhered to my knuckle wrinkles...