I received the letter, on 13 April 2010, which was dated 31 March 2010 saying that I have until 30 April to object to the municipal value of my property. Interestingly enough, I tried to sell the property last year and in the current situation that we find ourselves in, it is almost impossible to sell anything. The only written offer that we received was 33% below the municipal valuation! I would warn all of you to have a lookout for this, and to make sure you complete the objection, if you find yourself in a similar situation at www.joburg.org.za.

It is quite distressing to see how slow our average broadband speeds in South Africa are. According to rankings by speedtest.net, whose website you can access at www.speedtest.net , we currently rank the 109th fastest country in upload speed and 99th in download speed. Even in Africa, Ugana, Kenia and Morocco all have average download speeds faster than South Africa and when it comes to upload speeds, you can toss in Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and Gambia, all who have average upload speeds that are faster than in South Africa! The only good news is that Telkom is apparently planning to upgrade the ADSL lines in about June to 10 mbps which means uploads at least should become two and a half times faster round about then.

Shakira has teamed up with South African artist Freshlyground to bring us 'Waka Waka (This Time For Africa).' Written and co-produced by Colombian singer Shakira and long time collaborator John Hill, the song has been elected as the Official Song for the forthcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Borrowing the well-known Cameroonian marching chant used by the group Golden Voices, the track features Afro-Colombian instrumentation and Southern African guitar beats.

Shakira and Freshlyground will be performing the song at at the Closing Ceremony for the FIFA World Cup Final on July 11 at the Johannesburg Soccer City Stadium. The song will be available via digital outlets the week of May 11, where all proceeds will benefit FIFA's official 2010 World Cup campaign.

Redi Direko is certainly a major radio star of the future, if she is not already. Currently on Radio 702 during the mid-morning slot, it can only be a matter of time before she is moved to prime time – which in radio means either the early morning drive or the afternoon drive.

I went to the 3-D version of How to Train Your Dragon and found once again that the animators are excelling themselves, particularly when it comes to 3-D animation. I cannot imagine how startling it must be to see such a movie for the first time, and it obviously can have a profound effect.

We took one of our assistant’s daughter’s friends to the movies recently, and she had never been to a movie in her life, and the first movie she went to was Avatar in 3-D! She is going to find everything else for a few years a little bit of a let-down if that was her very first movie! I am told that she still has her 3-D glasses at home, where she proudly displays them to all of her friends and tells them about her first trip to the movies – watching Avatar in 3-D.

In any event, back to How To Train A Dragon – it is well suited to children and the scriptwriters are always pretty clever in that they will certainly make a theme and a story that does not bore adults either and so it is a great movie for parents to go and see with their children.
 

I always understood that the King Shaka Airport, which is opening up just outside Ballito, was going to be an additional airport for KwaZulu-Natal. In fact, the old airport, and I think it is as soon as one may, is closing down for good and apparently being sold to one of the vehicle manufacturers for one of its assembly lines and all flights will be going to the King Chaka Airport from then on. I guess, because I have heard that it was a new airport, that I expected to see three or four runway strips and something along the lines of OR Tambo, but it is much smaller and I could only see two landing strips when I flew over it but I would imagine that the buildings must be more developed and modern than the antiquated and embarrassing Durban International Airport at the moment. International seems to be Mauritius, from what I could see from the flights from there.

What will be interesting to see though is what the development of the King Chaka Airport so close to Ballito and Umhlanga does to property values there – I think that in a few years’ time, they can only rise as a result as both of those destinations are likely to become far more popular for Johannesburg people if you will now be landing only 3 or 4 minutes away from Ballito and 10 minutes, at the very most, from Umhlanga Rocks compared to currently landing basically close to Amanzimtoti and having to drive the whole way to Umhlanga Rocks. It would probably make hotel destinations in Umhlanga and Ballito more popular with time, when people realise the convenience, than the main Durban hotels who still seem to do very big business.
 

I get quite a few queries from this blog about Road Accident Fund matter, which of course my firm handles. The best place to go and look without a doubt, is our firm’s website at www.accidentclaim.co.za  and it really does have volumes of information on accident claims for people who have been injured in motor accidents and who want to claim against the Road Accident Fund or RAF (for short).

I think that one of the things that worry all of us the most, about getting older, is how one controls one’s affairs, mentally, emotionally and financially. On a financial side, there are 10 001 smooth operators running around, from one elderly person to another, trying to get them to invest their money in the latest property development that is going to be a huge hit.

Obviously, because most of them by retirement have not saved enough and do try and invest their money more conservatively, anything that gets interest rates will seem attractive and a number of these companies do so quite well. If one actually knew what each company was paying, then probably the best guide as to how risky the investment would be is how much commission they are paying. The more commission they pay their sales people, the more likely it is to be a dud investment. The elderly gets very easily trapped into investing into the latest small little regional shopping centre, where they will benefit from the “property market” and “wonderful dividend deals”. If I only look at a development close to where I live - even the Pick ‘n Pay store closed.

You can claim that you have a tenant like Pick ‘n Pay, with somebody 200 kilometres away investing in your development may not know that it is only a Pick ‘n Pay franchisee for example, which is not exactly the same thing.
 

I see that the contract for the approximately 120 Outsurance points people has been renewed for another 5 years. This must be a very costly project, but certainly one that keeps the name Outsurance in one’s mind and especially when they were revamping the William Nicol bridge you got to see them on a regular basis.

I did not realise there were so many of them, and perhaps they could get to the congested spots a little bit quicker, but this project which apparently involves the Johannesburg Municipality as well as Radio 702 is a commendable one, and one hopes that it is working well financially for Outsurance so that they keep going with it. You can SMS the traffic line on 31702 if you have any intersections you think Points People need to be sent to.
 

The Oyster Box is of course a well-known, throughout many decades, hotel at the prime position in Umhlanga Rocks opposite the Lighthouse. You actually only realise how prime the position is when you stay there, and that the other hotels that are some way down the beach, have made do with the stretch of beach that really does not offer the same attractions of the stretch immediately in front the Oyster Box and the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The Oyster Box Hotel was revamped about 7 months ago and it really is something worth seeing. The interior design in the reading room, the cocktail bar and the reception area is really stunning, and the bright red colours of the pool area, mixed with that of the red and white Lighthouse and the beautiful blue shades of the sea and the sky can look absolutely fantastic and relaxing on a clear day. To me however, what really made my very brief stay there fantastic was the excellent service. It is something that Sun International in particular, with some of the falling standards at the Palace and the other Sun City Hotels as a whole need to see. The staff truly does their best and while the service is sometimes a little bit slow on the terrace when it comes to getting a meal, the extra effort they make in terms of trying to accommodate children would make you think that they deal with toddlers all day and night. I was really, truly impressed.
 

I recently had, in two weekends, to fly from OR Tambo to Cape Town for a Law Society meeting and then from Kulula in Lanseria to Durban. If you gave me the choice, I would probably fly SAA from Lanseria, except for the fact that they are not at Lanseria. When you miss a flight on SAA, they will always accommodate you or make a plan and they have so many more flights that it does not become a problem as it is with Kulula. I did not miss my flight on this occasion but I have in the past, and I know which airline I want to be on when I am running late.

Lanseria is really a very small airport, and it did not feel much bigger, to be honest and I am not being rude, than the Victoria Falls Airport and it made me feel that I was in some small part of Africa and not just a few kilometres away from the densely populated Fourways. The Kulula flights at Lanseria are packed, but unfortunately they don’t run on time which is something my mother warned me of saying that they are “always late” and in fact my flight took off 80 minutes late – which is a bit irritating when you are waiting to simply catch a 50 minute flight to Durban.

I understand how Kulula’s business operates, with one flight hopping all over the country and if it is delayed somewhere, then your flight is going to pick up more delays, but it is not terribly convenient. I think for now that I would probably continue to fly from OR Tambo, but what I might do is return home via Lanseria. It probably requires a bit more research by me to find out what Kulula flights typically fly on time and which don’t because I do understand that there is a bit of a pattern.
 

I must say, I have watched the programme with fascination and have been amazed, from the start, as to how many of the contestants have not realised how manipulative Ashley has been. She really has now given them the kind of choice she would like them to have, and that is the choice between her, who has not exactly been loyal to them, but has tried to do it in a nice way, and Gigi, who they all know is a former stripper. I just wonder with the South African conservative mode of thinking whether or not, irrespective of what each individual may feel about Ashley, they will be able to bring themselves to vote for Gigi. In any event, it will make a fascinating decision on Wednesday evening and I can only imagine it is going to go Ashley’s way.

FinWeek, which is the new name of the old Finance Week has come out with its annual gated estate survey which ranks the estates in Gauteng according to the highest price achieved. There is a new estate that heads that list and that is Blair Atholl, with a record price that is at least R1 million higher in excess of the second-placed Dainfern. I don’t think Blair Atholl is anywhere near to what it is going to become, and the gap certainly between Blair Atholl and Dainfern and Dainfern Valley, can only widen in the years to come.

I always had a keen interest in wills and estates. I don’t really wind up many estates, and to tell the truth, I don’t make enough of an effort on even my own will. It is certainly something that I think is absolutely necessary for everybody, and if once a year you set aside half a day to go and do a health check-up, you should at least set aside a day to do a check-up on all your finances, as well as your will. So many people die leaving behind wills that really don’t reflect additional children they may have had, changed circumstances and all sorts of tragedies arise – the new wife and child get nothing, because the will leaves everything to the ex-wife, five years after the divorce, to whom the person who has passed away, was no longer even speaking.
I try to remind myself that I must spend some time, at least once a year, updating my will, and if nothing else, reading through the vast number of legal books I buy on the subject on a regular basis!

I always know a product is really about to take off, not when I buy it, because I am a fairly early adopter, but when my mother gets it. My mother has recently just installed HD television, so it can only be a year or so to go before it is really widespread!

My mom, Jane de Broglio, is a top rental agent, with her own company, Debro Estates, whose website you can find at www.debro.co.za and probably South Africa’s leading residential agent, given that even the Institute of Estate Agents used her to lecture to other estate agents on how to properly attend to leasing a house or townhouse and looking after the interests of the landlord and the tenant. She also told me, a little bit more than 10 years ago, that she would never, ever in her life get a cellular phone. If she is now getting HD, you must understand that it really has broken through!
 

It has taken a long time that the first company in South Africa to offer uncapped ADSL access in South Africa is M-Web. I am currently with Telkom but I am going to wait a month or so to see whether or not they come with the same option before switching if they don’t. It is about time that we got uncapped broadband in South Africa, and it is amazing that we had to wait so long.

The fact that it is still ridiculously high is also somewhat unfortunate with the M-Web all-inclusive deal for an office in R2 359,00 per month – that is the top speed uncapped and unshaped. If you don’t mind your access being uncapped and shaped, then you can get an all-inclusive package for as little as R899,00 per month from M-Web and if you already have the ADSL line from Telkom, and just want the data from M-Web, you pay R539,00 per month to have uncapped 4094 kbps Internet at home – the fastest speed available or you could take the snail speed for R349,00.
 

The SA Insurance Association’s data indicates that there are 5,7 million uninsured motorists in South Africa which essentially means that we are sharing the road with 6 out of 10 vehicles not being insured. The fact that a vehicle is not insured means, in most cases, that the person driving the vehicle cannot afford insurance premiums and what that really boils down to is they will not be able to afford to fix their car, let alone anyone else’s car they crash into, in the event of an accident.

Contrary to people’s thoughts, insurance companies are in fact not making huge profits – in fact, Santam has gone from a R498 million profit in 2004 to R164 million profit in 2007 and by 2009, they ran the year to a R29 million loss. That’s a steady decline into loss making. The less people are insured, the more the insurance companies will have to pay out to those who are insured and inevitably, despite competition, we are likely to see short-term insurance rates heading upwards quite steeply because no company will continue to run at a loss for very long.
 

Montecasino is one of the many beneficiaries of people’s aversion to crime. It is so much safer to go out at night to a restaurant in a safe and secure casino, or in a shopping mall like Sandton Square than it is to go to your local small shopping complex, which let’s face it, is far more likely to be held up or have some of other incident outside. That is always the problem, because it leads to the small local businesses suffering while the big large entity ultimately becomes more and more successful, irrespective of the quality of the offerings there. I guess it still gets down to the three golden rules of property – location, location, location.

The World Cup had a total of 2,9 million tickets available and of those already 2,2 million have been sold. I have only got 12 of them, but I am going to the semi-final in Durban and of course we all dream about a ticket to the final. We are going to have to wait until 15 April to discover how many tickets will be available for that, because FIFA is still waiting for tickets that sponsor or other participating countries have not sold. If there are some that they have not sold, those will then come back into the fold.

It is surprising in this day and age of electronic document management that our courts have not introduced this. There can hardly be a week that goes by, where my staff is not told of at least 10 missing files at the court. Court orders cannot be typed because the court file cannot be found. Court dates cannot be applied for because the file cannot be found and you have to go back and forth four times and be told that the file is missing four times, before you can do an affidavit and open a duplicate file. An astounding number of files seem to be permanently missing.

If you are a computer geek, or interested in computers like I am, then you will be excited to hear that the new Microsoft Office 2010 package is going to be released in South Africa in June 2010. You can already download the BETA version, but no doubt the emphasis in Office 2010 is going to be on something that competes a bit more with Google Docs, and allows you to collaborate online with regard to, for example your Excel spreadsheets as well as your Word documents.

Sometimes you need to have children to reread books that you may have read when you were very small and then appreciate the absolute genius of a man such as Dr Seuss.
His books are magnificently written, and the stories he tells, whether the themes are covering Nazi Germany and totalitarianism or the dangers of harming the environment as he sets out in his wonderful book, “The Lorax”.

Another one of his books, and perhaps his best in my opinion is “Oh, The Places You Will Go” which encourages children to climb their mountain, face their challenges and accept that there will be bad days. It is not that different to the creators of the wonderful children’s movies that you get these days – where the storytellers are able to tell a story that on one level appeals to adults because of the intelligence and humour behind the lessons and on another level, can teach children a wonderful moral story. Dr Seuss was certainly the pioneer and it is no surprise that his books continue, some 50 years later, to be major bestsellers.
 

My favourite TV programme or series of the last few years, has been Lost, and it returns on our screens on 12 April 2010. I am a bit disappointed that, whereas in the past we have sometimes trailed the American pilots by as little as a week or two, on this occasion season 6 premiered in America on 2 February 2010. When Lost debuted in 2004, it became the biggest critical and commercial success of the 2004 television season according to Wikipedia with the first episode being the most expensive in the history of the ABC network.

Julius Malema certainly has made himself a big name in recent times and looking through Google’s insight research, he first started being searched for on Google at the end of the first quarter in 2008 and in recent times, there are approximately 5 times more searches for him than there were approximately 6 months ago. The other person in break out mode on Google, with rapidly rising searches is Jub Jub, the Soweto singer and survivor contestant, who was involved in the motor accident that killed 4 schoolchildren.

There was obviously a lot of noise over the Easter weekend as to the songs Julius Malema has taken to singing, as well as his visits, and praise of, Robert Mugabe. Then we had the murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche, the AWB leader, and that was a bit of a shock. Personally I hope that the Constitutional Court rules the signing of such songs as hate speech, because I don’t think they are necessary or good for South Africa, but on the other hand I really don’t think they had anything to do with the murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche. 

He did not live a distinguished life, assaulting one of his farm workers until the man was left with brain damage and Terre’Blanche got a deserved criminal record and went to jail. The part of the story that amazed me is, and there is no justification ever for assaulting or killing anyone, is that the wages are alleged to be only a scandalous R300 a month and top of that he was not paying. It is absolutely appalling that any farmer would not be paying at least a semi-decent wage.
 

Giving you tips for something that is viewed as a major golf tournament is a sure way to look like a fool. Golf depends not only on incredible talent, but on the bounce of the ball, and sometimes it simply does not go in for you. Having said that, I always hope for either Tiger Woods or a South African in most of the tournaments that I watch and I can certainly say that the South Africans are in cracking form at the moment. Ernie Els is in the best form he has been in for 7 or 8 years and Charl Schwartzel followed up a recent second to Ernie in an American tournament, with a third last week. Betting sites have Charl Schwartzel at 70 to 1, and I certainly like those odds. I don’t say he is going to win, but I really think he must have a better chance than 70 to 1, so I took a small bet on him along with a bet on Tiger.

I am not sure if it is a sign of the first blooms of an improving economy, but I just received a phone call from Woolworths asking me if I would like to take advantage of their revolving credit facility. I cannot remember when last I was offered finance, but it must have been at least a year and a half or two years ago and at that stage of course, we were all receiving shop cards in the post, phone calls offering all sorts of policies, credit and money all day, from every bank, shop and institution. A big booming business was people giving up their jobs to become mortgage originators and just to receive an unsolicited call offering me finance must mean things are improving for some – Woolworths at least.

We all have our own opinions as to when prices will “return to normal”. My attitude is somewhat more negative as, what got us into the financial state that economies around the world find themselves in, was banking institutions lending money to people who could not in reality afford those loans. The more they lent, the more prices inflated and now that they have stopped lending those prices have deflated.

I don’t think that prices will return to where they were, until banks start lending money recklessly again, and I don’t foresee banks lending money recklessly for at least 10 to 20 years. In other words, I would take a view that the property prices of say 4 years ago were inflated, not real, and I would not be comparing the current market to them and waiting for a “return to normal”. On the other hand, our property market never did reach the heights of the overseas market, and the National Credit Act had started cooling our property market before the economy slumped.
 

I recently saw the Hurt Locker which won the Oscar for best picture and perhaps because I enjoy war movies, I found it to be a very gritty, well filmed movie. It is filmed as if it is a documentary and the filming style gives one a sense that one is in the battle zone and keeps you nervous about the next set of shots or explosions all of the time! The characters are well developed and it really gives you an impression of an Iraq where basically at every corner there is somebody waiting to set off a bomb or kill people. I particularly enjoyed the battle scene in the desert where the US and British forces come under fire from some snipers. If you enjoy war movies, you will certainly love the movie.

The Masters takes place at Augusta Golf Course, close to Atlanta from 7 to 11 April 2010 and I guess it was always a no-brainer that Tiger would choose this as his return tournament. At the end of the day, he wants to be considered the greatest golfer ever to have played this game, a title that I personally would give him now, and to do that he needs to win another four majors.

There are only four majors a year and assuming he could win for another 8 to 10 years, that only gives him 32 to 40 chances. I say “only” because if somebody like Ernie Els can remain a top 10 ranked golfer in the world, and not have won a major in 5 or 6 years or only one tournament until just the other day in 2 years, you need to appreciate how hard it is to win any golf tournament, let alone majors where there are only four a year. The Masters has a very controlled environment, and it has never traditionally welcomed non-golfing media, so Tiger is not going to be harassed by the tabloids, and the golfing media really has an interest in golf only, as with most men who actually play golf and really could not care too much about whatever he may or may not have been up to in his personal life.

Before Tiger’s announcement that he was coming back to the Masters, resale tickets, although they are known as “badges” at the Masters, were retailing for $1 200,00 for the final three days of the tournament. I can only imagine that they’ve probably taken another hike now! He has won the Masters four times, and while I don’t expect him to do it in his first return to golf, where he may be a little bit shaky, it is certainly going to be fantastic to have the world’s number one golfer back in action.