So I was thinking that a #UCTWeatherUpdate every morning on my twitter stream would come in rather handy?

It would basically just be a little update of what the actual weather is like on campus…

So what i want from  you oh faithful reader is: Are you interested? Would you read it? And if you answer yes to the first two questions, what do you thing the #tag should be?

The video:

And the picture:

Congrats to @brauteseth for taking such a great photo!

Sadly I wasn’t able to get anything, because as I was focusing my camera, they suddenly went down!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday Everyone!

P.S. I will put up any more cool pics and videos that show their faces on the internet.

Or, if you’re a normal person, who has things to do and more important things to worry about (like studying an actual degree), you may not have noticed the DA DASO people sitting around looking bored on plaza, you may not have noticed the badly made posters (I refuse to vote for someone who cannot even find a picture of themselves that doesn’t get pixelated and distorted all over the place), and finally you may not have noticed the the SRC election “manifesto” is little more than a badly put together, poorly printed advertising booklet.

So, if you’re perceptive, you may have noticed that I’m not very excited about this years SRC election, in fact I wasn’t very excited about last years, but that is an ENTIRELY different story. There are a couple of reasons why I’m not jumping up and down with joy for the greatness that is SRC elections.

One of them is that the majority of the candidates are bloody USELESS! Let me treat you to some of our future leaders “achievements”:

• “Climbed Kilimanjaro ’06
• “Member of the Gauteng Golden Lions women’s Rugby Team”
• “CEO & Founder of LUMANI” (WTF is LUMANI?!)
• One of our budding politicians is a “Member of EASOC” – Now I feel better about voting you! You’re East African!
• “Volunteer District Six Museum Cape Town”
• One of the fine independent ladies has NO achievements listed…
• And of course my personal favorite “… and doing it all with a smile kissing the problem goodbye xoxo” – I kid you NOT!

The other is that I haven’t heard a single good thing that this years SRC has done… In fact, the ONLY thing that I have seen coming out of this years SRC is the new food court, really? Well done, you spent some money on new tables on chairs, well fricken done! I am so proud of you, would you like a pat on your back? What happened to the survey you sent around, asking us what food vendors we would like on campus, Steers, Nando’s etc. I don’t see any Steers! I want a Good Guy and I want one now! The TUKS Steers has a liquor licence for Christs sakes! Can’t we just have one mainstream food provider?

But I digress, like I said, this years SRC is a completely separate story!

So, SRC elections this year:

1. Boring
2. Useless bunch of tossers running
3. and SRC in general is a bit of a waste of time

So, you want a bit of advice? I have some for you!

Vote for Nick Farrar! He isn’t on the ballot because he isn’t running because he has better things to do, like being a head student, playing first team rugby for UCT and being a general all round nice oak! Buy voting for Nick Farrar, you will be spoiling the ballot, wasting everyone’s time and making a bit of a nuisance of yourself, perfect!

Some of you might actually want to vote, so you ask “Who should I vote for Almighty Richard?”

Kathleen Taylor is your best bet! I mean she is ANTON TAYLOR’s sister, what more could you want?

Random Person: Hey Richard! How are you? (How do they always remember my name?!)
Me(or you): Hey [Insert name, or if name is in doubt, "dude" or "you"], great thanks and yourself?
Random Person: I’m just aaaamazing, had such and amazing holiday, I went to [amazing sounding place that you can't even dream of going to] with [person you've never met], was so much fun and we where practically [drunk, high or suntanning depending on the person] the whole time! How was yours?

This is generally where things get a bit awkward, but don’t worry, I’ve got your back.

Me: Thats great, I’ve always wanted to goto [place]. I didn’t do much, just [boring in comparison thing that you did].

Random Person: That’s a pity, you should have come to [place] (wtf, I barely even know you!)

Now this is probably where the conversation would taper off to an awkward silence with one of you making a lame excuse to move off, but hold in there a little longer! Its time to drop the small talk bombshell!

Me: Maybe next time (insert laughter here). So, did you goto any World Cup games?

Now you can just smile and nod while they list all 20 games that they went to, while you think about more important things like whether you remembered to put underwear on this morning in your sleepy daze.

Finally when you want to extricate yourself:

Me: Listen [person] I’ve goto run, my lecture is starting soon (points at watch), was great chatting to you!

Random Person: OMG ya! I really want to speak to you soon because your smalltalk skills are so amazing (they may not actually say this, but yo can bet they are thinking it!)

So there we go folks, stick to this script and you’l be able to cruise past every shallow greeting leaving only a wake of awesomeness behind you!

The day before the World Cup Final, Soccer City in all is glory.

I just know I had to get out at night and have a bash at it. Sadly tripods are rather expensive if you want one that is even halfway decent, so alas I was stuck!

But as usual Cape Town came to the rescue! I twisted a friend who had a tripods arm to come out with me, on what turned out to be a freezing cold CT night, and we drove up to the top of signal hill and took a couple of long exposure pics as well as played around a bit with alternate lighting! Here are the results.

The Cape Town stadium, not exactly in all its glory, definitely gonna go back to take a pic on a game night!

The loading dock, closed up and quiet for the night.

Highway Movement

A long exposure pic with a friend firing the flash on her camera to light up the bike.

The last one in that set is most definitely my favorite! I love the fact that you can’t even see Jo standing right in front of the camera with her camera to help light up the bike!

From Signal Hill we also got a bit of a peak at the new Big Wheel down by the waterfront, so we decided to extend our trip a little and head past there, what a great idea! Something with that many lights on it can only look cool in a night time photo!

The movement of the light really makes this picture

So I have to say that was a rather constructive evening considering Varsity hasn’t even started yet!

P.S. Remember folks you can see larger images just by clicking on the little baby ones!

Woah, a tree! In black and white? How arty!

Why helloooo there my Giraffe

Run little leopard run! (it is really small though, yet not a baby/cub, weird!)

This is one of those 1000 words pictures... (hint, click on it to see the full size pic)

Them stripped horses are mighty pretty!

Remember children, when your being charged my an angry elephant, make sure you take a picture before driving off!

This lioness is so close I can practically touch i.... Aaaargh my arm!!

Zazu decided to come say hi!

So trip to Kruger = Great

Drinking before 8 in the morning = Awesome

Driving down no entry roads and getting lost (refer to last point) = Superb

Having EVERY single member of the big five cross the road right in front of the car = Priceless!

See you all in CT tomorrow!

P.S. There will be LOTS of photos for you guys to enjoy when I get back so hold onto your pants!

Instead I will be writing about comments, they things that go on the end of blog posts and make bloggers feel very happy and wanted… They are the life affirming, ego stroking, motivation boosting lifeblood of any blogger. When you haven’t posted anything for over a week because, well you just don’t have anything interesting to say, comments are the motivation that gets you to trawl the web for the latest lolcats with which you can entertain your readers. When everyone else is reacting in panic to strikers attacking you in your dinning hall, comments are the suit of armour that gives you the courage to not flee in panic, but stand your ground, whip out your iPhone and take photos.

So people of z interwebz (see what I did there? seeing as z Germanz just gave z English a huge clap!) be kind to your favorite friendly bloggers, comment on their work, it will only take a couple of seconds and it makes a world of difference to the blogger!

And if the blogger doesn’t respond, don’t bother commenting again, they don’t deserve your readership. Any piece of writing is only as good as the people who read it and if you don’t look after your readers, they don’t look after you.

HIS IS A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT ABOUT COMMUNICATION. IT IS HUMAN NATURE TO LOOK AT SOMETHING AND TRY TO MAKE MEANING OUT OF IT. NO MATTER HOW MUCH MEANING YOU THINK THERE IS IN THESE PIECES, THERE REALLY ISN’T. IN FACT, I WORE ONE OF THESE IMAGES ON A T-SHIRT THE OTHER DAY AND COULD SEE PEOPLE LOOK AT MY SHIRT AND TRY TO FIGURE IT OUT. THE JOKE IS ON THEM BECAUSE…IT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING.

Basically these images are put together to completely MESS with your mind! More so if you don’t know that they aren’t ment to have any meaning! I’m seriously considering putting a couple of these on shirts just so that I can check peoples reactions!

The reason behind all the open seats in Port Elizabeth is pretty obvious, PE is kak far away from any of the other major centers in South Africa and (lets not beat around the bush here) its a bit of a hole. I was actually chatting to a ticketing agent from MATCH the other day and they estimated that if they moved all the games up from PE just a week before kick-off they would have sold more tickets. But sadly there is nothing we can do about the except for heading off to PE to watch some games! (run people run!)

Now for the exciting stuff (did I say exciting? Sorry…) There are without a doubt open seats at many if not all of the games at all the big stadiums such as, Soccer City, Cape Town Stadium and Ellis Park, even the amazing Moses Mabhida Stadium (Durban Stadium) had a worrying amount of open seats. What you might be saying right now is: “So what? People didn’t want to goto the games, big deal they are expensive.” Now I want you to go tell that to all of the people who where unable to get tickets because the stadium was “Sold Out” or because their ticket application was denied.

So whats happening to the tickets you ask?

First let me explain  what I’ve been up to these holidays that has allowed me to figure a thing or two about FIFA and MATCH out…

I’m currently working for an English “Tour Operator” and as far as I can tell he knows EVERYONE that has anything even remotely to do with FIFA and The World Cup. My job is to drive him wherever and whenever as well as whatever odd jobs he needs done (fetching tickets, I haven’t stood in a single line, or picking up buss passes, the under sale of MATCH hospitality packages is a whole other story!). Being around him all this time means I spend a lot of time listening to his conversations with all the big wigs.

So back to the tickets…

Basically in December last year when the draw took place, the entire world was gripped by football/world cup fever and many tour operators (who pay a premium to have access to large amounts of tickets) snapped up a huge amount of tickets to whatever games they could, about half of all the tickets to the world cup are sold like this.

This normally would not have been a problem as they would have been able to sell all the tickets that they bought, but a combination of The Recession and “The Icelandic Volcano that no one actually knows the name of”, interest in the world cup, as well as any other international travel waned.

This left our dear tour operators with a bit of a problem, reselling of tickets is illegal (they are ment to “sell” the tickets as part of packages) but there was still a demand in South Africa for just about any tickets. This led to a mad rush to get rid of all their extra tickets, and because they could not go through their normal/legal channels, they couldn’t even get the cost price of the tickets.

So in a nutshell(after a lot of waffling, sorry again…) although they have done a great job at getting most of those tickets back on the market, there are inevitable some that could not be sold and thus we have the empty seats in what are essentially sold out stadiums.

So if you see a foreigner wallpapering the side of his hotel with match tickets, you know he was one of the few responsible for the empty seats.