Cell C - Sound of the City

Instead of focussing on sport like the other telecoms companies in South Africa, from the start, Cell C has promoted South African culture, especially music. Their "Sound of the City" concert series basically features local music from bands based in the cities they tour. And at R50 for entry, they are great value for money.

From the outside, it seemed very disorganised and chaotic. But inside, it has to be the most organised concert I have ever been to. DJ Ready D was already spinning the decks as people filled up, and played during band set ups. Each band (there were 8) played for only 20 minutes or so, which was a bit sad, especially considering how well The Rudimentals and Springbok Nude Girls were received by the crowd.

And the Nudies, recently reformed, with their original line up, was simply heads and shoulders above the rest of the line up. They just had the extra something that others seemed to be lacking, not that Judith Spehuma and the Rudimentals didn't get the crowd going.

It was not a great end to the night unfortunately ... I had left the lights on before going in, and my battery had died. But thanks to Tim and a helpful car guard, I got it started, and is all working now! I need to remember to switch off lights next time though!

Gatecrashed

Tim and Murray had a braai on Friday night, with the occasion apparently being Tim's graduation (he graduates on Monday, so congrats to him!) and end of Murray's exams. Anyway, excuses are rarely required for a social occasion, right?

Anyway, there was a strange gatecrashing event ... which was very interesting. One of the guys at the party (sorry don't remember his name) wanted to meet up with a friend and her party, and Tim just asked him to invite them over. And so they came - a party consisting of two Americans (including the friend), a South African (also the owner of Butlers) and a Canadian of Japanese decent, who now lives in Japan.

Anyway, Mr. James Nakagawa (call me Jamie) and one of the Americans were attending the Diabetes conference at the Cape Town Convention centre, and Jamie, is the CEO of an IT firm, Lifewatcher.com, which specialises in delivering medical information on mobile phones. From things like reminding people to take drugs, to some really cool ideas (that I have previously read of) like: taking a photo of a meal, and getting an approximate estimation of calories and other important information (like, do not eat - too much sugar content for your diabetes condition). And we had an interesting conversation on the backward mobile technology in the USA to image rendering of X-Rays on mobile phones. Many of the projects are similar to some of the projects in the CVC lab (like Andrew or Marshini's telemedicine project) but what was most striking for me, was how true six degrees of separation seems to be.