Up the mountains we go

On Sunday the DNA lab flies off to Durban and then drive up to the Drakensberg for a Telkom sponsored holiday, otherwise known as SATNAC. Not presenting a paper this time, just a poster, which was done by Duncan and Marlon (the honours students I am supervising as they can reuse most of it for their honours poster). But the highlight of SATNAC is not the papers really but the dinners (the opening and the closing), the huge supply of good, free, food (and drinks) and the free bandwidth (seeing that it is sponsored by TELKOM.

On the TELKOM note, looks like the made a very quiet retreat from suing the Hellkom founder, but I think wearing a Hellkom t-shirt to SATNAC would be ill advised.

Signs : The Oracle

In the past few days, UCT has been promoting "Heritage@UCT" - a drive to let people know the history about some of UCT's main landmarks like Jameson Hall, the rugby fields (Nelson Mandela was awarded his honorary doctorate at the rugby fields to accommodate more people), the Rhodes statue etc. I think its a brilliant concept, and wish it was actually extended to some of the other buildings and places on campus (like who is Robert Leslie?). As for The Oracle - that's the name of the fountain on Jammie Plaza ... you learn something new everyday.

Movie: The Great Dictator

So Chris and I took advantage of the armchair's pizza and movie offer, and decided to go watch Charlie Chaplin's classic "The Great Dictator". The movie is a parody of Hitler revolving around Hynkal, the dictator of Tomania and a jewish barber. Produced during WW2, it carries a strong anti-war message with the famous last speech encouraging soldiers to lay down arms to build a better future for all, and is often rated as one of the best anti-war movie ever made. The comic genius, that was Charlie Chaplin shines through and the movie is a great laugh even when dealing with a very sensitive topic. Hitler had apparently watched the movie, but what he thought of it is not known.

Black Saturday of South African Sport

If you haven't heard; Bafana Bafana are out of World Cup 2006. So, even though we are hosting 2010; we won't be playing in 2006. Bafana Bafana have had a very poor run lately, they lost in the COSAFA cup semis, they lost 4-1 to Iceland and then they lost 3-1 to Burkina-Faso. Even worse is the chance that Bafana Bafana could still not qualify for the Africa cup of Nations (also in 2006). On the brighter side, the under 23s did thrash Uganda 4-1 - the 2^nd goal (from Lewis IIRC) was an amazing display of teamwork and good finishing ... maybe that's the team we should have sent to Burkina-Faso.

Also, we lost the Tri-Nations on Saturday when the All Blacks thrashed the Wallabies. For the first 20 minutes in the second half, South Africa had hope when the Aussies fought back from 20-0 to 20-19; but then a certain sub named Dunning gave away 9 points in less than 5 minutes; and after that it was all downhill. But even though we lost; this was probably the best Tri-Nations performance from the Springboks.

Oh, it was also Sarai's b'day party on Saturday ... the aftermath of alcohol consumption is best left untold.