Kemerovo is a city in Siberia in Russia and it is where my wife grew up.  It has just had a tragic fire in a shopping mall where at least 64 people died but probably more (Russian authorities tend to cover up tragedies according to people quoted in the media).  It appears that the vast majority of children who died were not able to get out, trapped inside a burning inferno with all the fire doors and escape doors locked or closed.  Apparently, about 30 of them had the time to post messages on social media saying they may not get out or to phone relatives and tell them how much they love their parents, etc.  When you read things like that it absolutely breaks your heart and we get so many stories like this around the world these days like sub-standard factories where the employees are locked in (that is something that happened in South Africa) and buildings collapsing in India and in China.  

In China of course they have a very harsh approach to these matters and the people responsible are normally, after a quick trial, executed.  That certainly takes a more serious approach to building floors and violating safety regulations.  We may say that we are more civilised than that, but certainly I think one of the problems over the years is that people who violate these types of laws, who work in buildings and close doors for their own lazy reasons or for some or other dubious reason, invariably don’t get punished to the extent they should be.  I hope all of those involved in this tragedy, and certainly the main culprits, never gets out of jail again as long as they live.  The sentences need to be harsh.  To be locked inside a shopping centre, movie theatres or children’s playground and not able to get out when a fire occurs is absolutely criminal.  

One of the sadder things, when we think of how tragic this is, is how much space has been devoted in South African media to this story, which is a real tragedy compared to absolute nonsense between Australia and South Africa as to tampering with a cricket ball.  Is it really so much important to give such attention to the normal cheating in sport, which seems to happen in every sport, everyday, compared to the deaths of more than 64 people in Russia?  

Newspaper editors will tell us that they are only telling us what people in South Africa are interested in, but have people all around the world lost their humanity to such an extent that a local sporting drama involving a piece of sticky tape and a cricket ball deserves more attention than tragedies from which we can and should learn, that happen overseas?  Our factories, our working places, as we have seen with Tiger Brands, are scandalous killing machines, but we allow ourselves to be diverted by silly little stories that don’t have any importance.

The Links golf course is just outside of George in the Fancourt Resort.  It is owned by the developers of SAP Software and is rated the number one golf course in South Africa.  It is chronically difficult course to play, and I try where possible, to play there at least once a year, but I have not been there for a few years.  It is really a superb course and the resort itself is beautiful, set at the base of some low lying mountains with spectacular scenery everywhere.  

There are two other courses that form a part of Fancourt, one is known as Outeniqua and the other one is called Montagu.  Montagu is allegedly number 6 in South Africa and Outeniqua is allegedly the 16th best rated course in South Africa.  In other words, right next to each other you have three of the top 20 golf courses in South Africa and so it is a wonderful resort for golf friends to go to, to play top courses day after day.  The one that disappointed me the most though is Montagu.  I think the assessment between my friends was that Montagu is in no way better than Outeniqua and it is certainly not even close to Sun City, where the Gary Player course at Sun City is rated number 4 in South Africa.  If Montagu really is number 6, then there is a massive gulf between number 4 and number 6.  

My opinion is that, like Blair Atholl, which is not in great condition, Montagu needs to slide down the ratings in South Africa some more.  It is just not 10 places better than Outeniqua.  It does not mean it is a bad course, but one’s experiences can be marred by bad marshalling, when people ask you to hurry up, even though you cannot hit because there are players on the course in front of you who you will hit if you hit the ball, and all sorts of largely German golf tourists, who can barely hit a ball but are trying to charge around the place at the world’s fastest pace.  If you wanted to see what a retirement home for wealthier people in South Africa looks like, Fancourt would be a great place to start!  The vast majority of people there are a minimum of 60 years of age, but what are really astounding are the prices.  Of the houses I saw on sale the cheapest one we could find, and honestly it looked very bad in the pictures, was R9,5 million.  Most of the better looking properties range from about R20 million to R50 million with quite a few in the R35 to R50 million range.  Whatever you may say about South Africa, whether you have lost confidence in South Africa or not, there does not appear to be any limit to the property prices in exclusive estates like Fancourt or indeed Pearl Valley closer to Cape Town.

5G is going to be the system around the world that will start replacing 4G networks.  5G is so fast and incredibly powerful that although every time things improve, we always say we have never seen anything like it, this really is going to take things to yet another new level!  At the moment, for example, there is a lag time on 4G networks of about 50 milliseconds before it picks up what you are requesting.  On 5G lag time is cut to 1 millisecond.  That, and other developments, are going to help devices also use less battery power once 5G networks are implemented, so all devices, regardless of whatever improvements have taken place by then, will then have more battery power as a result of a more powerful system.

5G networks will also be very important for automated cars – because they will be able to get information from other cars on the road around them, and from servers and other data centres faster – possibly helping reduce more accidents.  The companies that stand to win when 5G is introduced include Ericsson and Nokia who produce the radio access network and its base stations.  5G networks will of course bring far superior speed than we have now – huge files will be downloaded in only a few seconds and an 8Gb HD movie could be downloaded in 6 seconds on 5G instead of the alleged 7 minutes it would take on 4G.  I say alleged, because that is the statistic they give, but I have never been able to download 8Gb of anything in South Africa in 7 minutes. 

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a huge Tiger Woods fan.  When I was young I always wanted to meet Nelson Mandela and Tiger Woods.  I did not “meet” Nelson Mandela, but I did get to shake his hand over a fence at the Wanderers cricket grounds and I will never forget that.  I think if I had made more of an effort, in terms of writing him the letters that I should have, I would have had a better chance, but I didn’t do it.  I guess most people that get to shake somebody’s hand would probably say that they met them, and I guess in a sense I did, but I don’t really consider that a meeting.  I just always remember that he did boxing and boy, his hands were much bigger than mine!

In any event, I did meet Tiger Woods last year.  He was extremely kind to my son as well – playing games with him, stealing chips off his plate and teasing him and whatever the haters may say, when somebody’s nice to you and to your family, you will always like them.  Having said that, as a massive Tiger Woods fan I honestly thought that with his latest back operation, which is the fourth he has had, including a fusion, the would never, ever really make it to the top of the game again.  He is not a youngster, he is 42 now, competing against 21 year olds, 23 year olds and 27 year olds all the time – I am mentioning the ages of three of the top 10 players in the world including the number one player in the world, Justin Thomas.  Well, his comeback has surprised even the fans and two weeks ago he came second by one shot.  This week he played in the Arnold Palmer invitational, which is played at Bayhill in Orlando and he finished 5^th.

Bloomberg put out a list every year of the countries they say have the worst economies for that year and they have now issued their list for 2018.  This is apparently based on inflation and unemployment rates in a country.  The list really has a number of countries that are not doing well on it including Venezuela, who topped the list, Turkey, Egypt and Greece.  

They rated South Africa as the second most miserable economy, saying that, “Jacob Zuma has resigned, but the country faces huge challenges.  The next President needs to root out corruption to kick-start the economy.”

There is no doubt that South Africa faces a lot of challenges, but getting rid of Jacob Zuma is a great start on tackling those and hopefully people can stop going on television and making statements and suggestions that the policy of the country is still nationalisation of the land, without compensation and other idiotic comments that frighten people overseas.

The Rand has improved a lot this year and that is certainly one good sign, but we must not forget that a lot of that is simply as a result of Dollar weakness – with the Dollar weakening against currencies all around the world in the last few months.  Currencies go up and down and the Dollar is no different.

I know there is a 4DX cinema in Hyde Park, but recently, during a weekend in Cape Town I tried out the 4DX cinema at the Waterfront.  

It is unfortunate that the movie I chose to watch, which is I hope the last in the Maze Runner series, was shockingly bad.  It was so clichéd that in fact I think it is worse than the 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes it had at the time of dictating this.  I think that is too generous.  

Basically in the 4DX cinema there are rows of typically 4 seats together and those seats dip, shake, vibrate and do all sorts of things in conjunction with what you are seeing on the screen.  In other words, if there is a driving scene and they are driving along a bumpy road then your seats bump up and down – exactly the same as if you were at a theme park.  In addition to that, when people dive into water, for example a little bit of water actually gets sprayed at you!  Air blows all over as the helicopter or spaceship takes off and lands and I think it could be quite irritating if I was watching a good and serious movie to have my seat bouncing all over the place, but it certainly kept me awake during this movie!  I am not joking and it is not just a reflection on the movie – I was very tired, but every time I was starting to fall asleep the seat would have another dramatic jolt left, right, up and down and leaning me forward and back and waking me up!  It is worth trying, but whether or not it will take off at the price I paid for a 3D movie including R10 for the glasses, which was a total of R185, is another story.  I think that is too expensive but if there is a good action movie that comes out it is certainly worth trying it at least once so you know what it is about.  

I left before the end of the movie, although it already dragged on and on, and I was quite nervous to get out of the seat knowing that at any time it could start moving and possibly injure one. 

It is amazing how often children are told at school about the dangers of lice in their hair, cleaning your teeth, what to do if there is an earthquake and all sorts of issues, but not a word about child abuse.  The sad statistic is that 9 out of 10 children, who are sexually abused, are sexually abused by somebody they know.  I don’t think that topics like this should be taboo at school.  The more we talk about things like this, the more they are taught about things like this at school, the more that type of abuse will be stamped out and the more terrified abusers will be to do anything to little children.  In many respects, and I know there are some people who will say that children should have innocent childhoods and should not hear these types of things, we make it easier for abusers, simply by ensuring that children hear not a word about these types of topics.  

I have always made sure that my children are aware that not all adults are good people, and not all adults do good things and if at any stage anybody starts behaving strangely with them or trying to do strange things to them, they should tell me and my wife immediately.  There is no use in being guarded about these types of things while they will walk past, if not watch with, mom and dad watching an action movie that will involve people getting run over by motorcars, shot to death, exploded, etc and then we keep quiet about the actual kinds of abuse they are most likely to face.  

Photography has always been one of my key hobbies and I really enjoy taking pictures, in particular of my children, and also sports events as well as beautiful landscapes.  When it comes to landscapes, probably my favourite thing at the moment is to take 4 or 5 photographs and use the photomerge feature to merge them all together.  The capabilities of Photoshop in that regard are now so much more advanced than in the past, to the extent that it can even fill in parts of the sky where it might be missing with the content or colouring.  

My basic advice though to anybody who asks me is firstly, for all your kids’ videos, even if you are shooting them on your cell phone, buy yourself a mini tripod.  Keeping the camera still makes the world of difference and it will really add a more professional look even to your home videos.  Professional photographers take all of their photographs with a tripod, and while you can get away with taking a photo without a tripod, you cannot get away with video footage without a tripod.  It always looks terrible, except perhaps to you, and people are too polite to tell you, and those mini little tripods that you can pick up quite cheaply that just holds your cell phone in place really do a fairly decent job.  The other principle is just to remember the two-thirds principle and try and have the objects of interest two-thirds up the screen and sometimes one-third up the screen, but even using a grid feature on your camera to properly position people can be very useful. 

During my recent skiing holiday I experienced the coldest temperatures I have ever experienced before – such as going outside when it was -21ºC and that is not counting the wind chill factor which obviously takes it far below that!  It reminded me that the next time it is -1º or -2º in Johannesburg in mid-winter I should step outside in my costume and celebrate how warm it is!  I am exaggerating of course, but I have stepped out of a house into a hot tub in a costume in -21ºC and had to close the hot tub afterwards for another minute or two with the water that was dripping all over me turning almost to ice during that time, so I will appreciate that -1º or -2º is really not that cold.  

A few weeks later I was in the Cape winelands, close to Paarl, and by then it was 40 degrees plus – so a massive swing of over 60 degrees in a few weeks.

We are actually blessed with amazing weather in South Africa and Johannesburg has some fantastic weather. I cannot say that I enjoy late July/August when it has not rained for so long and I invariably get a chest infection or so, but the other 10 months of the year feature some world class weather and a lifestyle that very few places in the world offer.  

I recently used the British Airways business class lounge in Cape Town.  I must say I was fairly shocked.  Many people associate all sorts of luxury with business class lounges, which luxury generally does not exist, but this one was much worse than what I expected.

There were two meals available to choose from, which is not too bad, but not much, and they decided to take chips, which are normally available in packets, out of their packets and put them in a bowl. I guess that is to encourage you to take less, especially when they supply you with a small side plate to put them on.  That does not really allow you to take many.

That was not the biggest issue though for me.  The biggest issue was that they don’t have their own Wi-Fi, they seem to have an arrangement with a commercial company and so they limit you to 30 minutes or 50Mb.  Have you ever heard of a business class lounge or any service to members of the public, where the Wi-Fi is limited to 50Mb?  It is the only time I have ever come across a business class lounge that does that and when I asked them about the problem, other than buying myself some Wi-Fi, they told me no there was not, but they are aware of the problem and are planning to change it in due course!   

It is the kind of thing that just basically guarantees the next time I am in Cape Town I will make sure that I am not flying in on British Airways or out on British Airways!

I really enjoyed a recent article in the New York Times which basically went through a number of people who recently died and who had all been promoters of healthy living.  In many cases, they all stood for opposing principles (in favour of carbs, against carbs, in favour of eating more proteins in the form of meat, against eating meat etc) – and yet they all died pretty much at the same age.  That is not to belittle all the research in those areas, but it does remind you that for all the effort you make, if you get the wrong disease or you get unlucky with cancer, that will still be the end of you, regardless of what you eat or did not eat.  It is reminder that we should all aspire to healthy living, which obviously includes exercise, as well as healthy eating, but there is a limit to what we can do with what we are given and with our genetics.  

Apple continues to do well.  In its most recent results it indicated that its profit on gross revenue is 38.4%.  That is astounding.  Most people, when they go to their lawyer or their doctor, naturally look at the hourly rates, the fees and thinking all of that money is ending up in the lawyer’s pocket or the doctor’s pocket.  In reality, especially in personal injury work, and especially if you are not touting as most of my firms competitors unethically do, 35% would be exceptional.  

In other words, you would be lucky if, of every R100 that you are charged in fees, if R35 was profit and that would be before taxes and of course before individual taxes in the hands of whoever the individual is that owns the business.  

For Apple to be running a business and making such huge profits is exceptional. Some of the way it does that is not exactly in the interest of the country where it originated, namely America.  In other words, Apple makes its profits by having the highest priced cell phones and the lowest costs by largely employing people in factories in China to make its phones.  In other words, the equivalent would be me advertising that people should come to my offices, but outsourcing all of the work done by most of my departments, apart from the attorneys that go to court, to call centres in India.  That does happen already with some X-ray departments in South Africa and it is perfectly legitimate, but it is not that patriotic towards your own country and it is a good reminder that sometimes, and especially with bigger companies, it is just all about profit.  It is about how that big beast can make more money and pay its shareholders more dividends and it does not matter about moral principles such as what the working conditions are like in China or whether or not there is democracy in China – it is simply get yourself the best deal you can from workers in a factory in a communist country.