I am sure that there will be more than a fair share of people who have frustrations with the RICA system. Many will have only themselves to blame. We have after all been told that we need to register our identities for our SIM cards and that we need to do this by 30 June 2011. No doubt many will be entirely to blame for missing the deadline but it is somewhat frustrating when you get a new phone on a contract when presumably they follow the process (the law came into effect on 1 July 2009) and RICA you in any event, and then take that same phone along to one of the shops, have it confirmed as being RICA’ed, and on 29 June 2011, before the deadline kicks into place, they cut your phone off in any event.
That happened to me with my BlackBerry phone, and it tells me a few things – firstly, that the records of the cellular providers are not as good as they are alleging, secondly, that people who have followed the process, who have gone in-store, like I had done, are still going to be cut off and lastly, I find it quite strange that my phone was cut off even before the deadline!

I think that the young guns have clearly now raised their hands in the golfing world, and are starting to win, not just more and more tournaments, but the majority of the bigger tournaments.
Just to take a South African perspective at the US Open, Ernie Els missed the cut and Retief Goosen, while doing well on the last day, finished fairly far back. Tied in 9th place, as the best South Africans, was the reigning US Masters champion, Charl Schwartzel, and the reigning British Open champion. Louis Oosthuizen. In other words, they are two young South African talents that once again beat the former big names in a major tournament, namely Els and Goosen.
Likewise, the best Australian at the moment is Jason Day, Rory MciIroy at 22 romped home as the winner and most of the 40 plus veterans, despite their experience of such pressure situations, did not feature as well as the young guns.
 

I think a lot of young people, who are increasingly becoming the target market for BlackBerries, would be surprised at the problems that the manufacturers, Research in Motion (RIM), are having. RIM is not able to keep pace with the iPhone in America and their Playbook is not in any way coming close to Apple’s iPad. The shares of RIM were already down by 50% this year before it announced its latest results, and their shares immediately fell with another 14% once the results, as well as profit warnings for the future, were given by the company.

I read a very interesting article in the Financial Times about football clubs now making more and more use of statisticians to collate the statistics that we see on TV, are the very least of what they are gathering, in terms of generally we are shown figures, of example, of how many kilometres a football player has run during the game.

The statisticians these days are looking at which players can run at extended bursts of more than 7 metres a second, and how often, which players retreat the fastest to get back into defence, which players complete the most passes and who makes the least mistakes. For example, their statistics indicate that any team who can keep their mistakes down to a 15% to 18% region for a game, is practically unbeatable and they are also looking at the speed that the player is running at in the final 20 or 30 minutes of a game, and many substitutions are based on the fact that certain players, as could be expected, while still running around at the end of the game, are running slower than in the first 70 minutes of a game and need to be replaced by a fresh pair of legs. It seems that a growing field of work with a lot of people sitting over computers analysing tackles, passes and a whole lot more than just shots on goal for the managers and the coaches.
 

I drove along Louis Botha Avenue, which I have not done for a year or two, and there was a dramatic display of urban decay for me. I cannot imagine this being good for property close to Louis Botha Avenue, typically a suburb such as Orange Grove, but it really is going downhill at a rapid rate, looking extremely uncared for and with numerous shops and houses all in a state of disrepair.

I was privileged to play at Leopard Creek recently, courtesy of a friend who has a property there, and it was quite treat to finally see and play the golf course rated as number 2 in the country at the moment, but rated as number 1 for about the past three years until The Links replaced it at number 1 this year.

My home course is number 6 in the country, so I do have a fairly good idea of the components of a top class golf course, and apart from the fact that it is almost a 5 hours drive away, Leopard Creek really is an exceptional course and a very privileged way of living, with the 80 or so homeowners who have built stands there, overlooking the Crocodile River and the Kruger Park. The views from the clubhouse, or the recreation centre, don’t disappoint – and if you sit and watch for only a short period of time, you will see buck, elephants, hippos and giraffe and even if you are watching the golf course, you might well come across a few giraffe strolling across the fairway, as we did. The golf course is very intimidating – I think largely mentally – because there are quite a few short holes which I would ordinarily expect to take advantage of, but I did not.

I had been told beforehand that the fairways were exceptionally narrow, but if anything, I found the greens, with huge slopes and fast speeds, far more difficult than most. The finishing 7 or 8 holes are beautiful, as you would expect when you have Kruger Park on the horizon and are able to provide at the 12th and 13th holes, for example, wonderful views of the bushveld. There is also a huge man-made lake which has a particularly picturesque par 5 hole, namely the 15th, as well as a very intimidating par 3, which is playing at close to 180 metres when I first played it, almost all of it over water.
 

It is quite amazing that Facebook, which now has more than 700 million users, has not released its own iPad application in all this time. They came out with an iPhone application almost simultaneously at the time of the launch of the iPhone but the only Facebook applications for the iPad have been made by third parties so far.
Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg has personally involved himself with this project, and Facebook is about to release an iPad application that will apparently have amazing graphics and clarity when it comes to photographs and one awaits that with some interest.
 

I have not driven down Oxford Road, towards town through Rosebank for probably a year or so, and it is quite amazing to see how far all the buildings along the road have developed, as well as the fact that the station for the Gautrain is clearly nearing to a close. It might well lead to a revitalisation of Rosebank, the Mall itself is a little bit scruffy and hopefully with all these new presumably office blocks coming up as well as the Gautrain developing in the area, we are going to see the area bustling and busy again. There is certainly a lot of office space still available in Central Rosebank with “To let” signs.

Kameraz has obviously decided, particularly with their adverts on 702 that the best marketing principle is to make the most irritating adverts. Their latest one proclaims that they are closing down and then announces that it is only a joke. It is a bit of a risky marketing strategy, but if they continue with it, one assumes that it must be working for them. I will say one thing, as somebody who has a very nice Kameraz, and loves photographic equipment, that their knowledge and assistance in the store is fantastic, so I would certainly recommend them, even if you don’t like their adverts!

I am reliably informed that Serengeti golf course has been chosen to host the SA Open for the next two years. It is a great honour for a new golf course like Serengeti, and a course that I have always enjoyed. I am sure the greens are going to frustrate a lot of the professionals, but they certainly will not struggle when it comes to distance – I would imagine they would probably going have to lengthen a few holes at Serengeti.

One has to carefully guard against the interests of the people living on the estate, together with the requirements of the PGA in holding the tournament but given that Serengeti is at an early stage of its development, and there is not too much building going on, it is probably the best time for it to host it and it will form a proud part of its history one day. There is still no official word on this, and I could not find anything about it on the Sunshine Tour website, but that is what I have been told and hopefully we will see an official announcement soon.
 

It is frightening that time passes so quickly. I watched a short video of Shakira singing the theme of the 2010 World Cup, together with some of the programs reminding us of the event last year, and I think I would be happier if I did not watch them! It made me sad, because it was a tremendously exciting time in our country, and it is gone now, and the next big event, if there is to be one, is so far away that it is somewhat depressing. It makes one happier that you committed to your 7 games, and went to everyone of them and stayed up all night in freezing temperatures, because when you do get those opportunities, you need to make the most of them – they don’t come around often, if ever, and I can always feel privileged that I attended the World Cup Final and lived and breathed the atmosphere for 4 weeks. Other memories include my staff all going out onto the road, about 4 or 5 hours before the opening game between Bafana Bafana and Mexico, and singing the National Anthem. Jan Smuts was ablaze with flags, hooting cars and more. I just hope we as a country find something else to bid on for soon!

Luke Donald has certainly been the form man, for the last six months, and it was no surprise to see him finally make it to number 1 in the world. His great strength is his iron play and to get there in a sudden death play-off with Lee Westwood certainly made it tremendously exciting. I am quite sure that Lee, who is in tremendous form, is going to try and get that position back, and in the meantime Blair Atholl’s Charl Schwartzel has now climbed to number 7 in the world, and Tiger Woods, who is suffering from a leg injury which simply does not seem to get any better, is now down to number 12 in the world, and continuing to drop.

It is only every time that there is a scare such as the e.coli scare with the Spanish cucumbers (which turned out not to be the source) in recent times that killed so many people in Germany, that one realises that so much of what you do, purchase and eat is all based on trust. In other words, you buy vegetables and you assume that they are not covered in e.coli and will kill you. When you buy those eye drops, you assume that they have not been tampered with, and that whichever experts that particular firm hires are constantly checking the product quality and making sure there is nothing in the eye drops which will permanently blind you. Unfortunately, as product liability cases show, far too often the reality is somewhat different, and you are parting with money to a brand or company that you trust, that is selling you a product that will actually injure or kill you. It may be just a part in a car that leads to the car automatically accelerating and it may be a food item that you eat, but one has to be so careful, because the legal remedies are often not going to be good enough – there is a limit to what money can achieve and it certainly does not help you when either you or someone you love dies.

The Government is now going to be setting up training centres for taxi drivers. I am sure we will hear a fair share of jokes about that, but any improvement with regard to road safety will lead to huge savings for the Road Accident Fund, and such steps are to be welcomed. If the whole industry was properly regulated, and I mean in every respect, including with regard to tax, the society as a whole would be a lot better of as thousands of people over the years have died, not only in taxi accidents, but as a result of taxi wars, shootings and route disputes.

I am sure it is one of the dirty little secrets of the parking payment machines that a huge amount of profit is made from the change that they don’t give you. A computerised device like this must surely be able to be programmed quite easily to warn the owner, or the centre operator, that for example they are down to their last twenty R2,00 coins, but invariably you will put R10,00 in, and instead of getting R3,00 change, a receipt will be printed for you and another sign, somewhere else on the machine will indicate that you must then go to the central management, which is probably a kilometre from where you parked, and they will then refund you your R3,00!

As a point in principle, one should go more often to go and collect one’s change, but no doubt this works on the basis that the vast majority of people are either surrounded by crying children, or have other meetings or commitments or perhaps they are just too lazy, but one way or another, your 45 minutes parking ends up costing R10,00!
 

Bearing in mind all the fraud that goes on with bank accounts and credit cards, I think that the SMS functionality of most of these accounts is wonderful. You can arrange with your bank to get an SMS on any purchase or debit put through to your credit card or you can arrange it to only get notified when it exceeds a certain amount, and I think, unless you are spending all day and night and are going to get irritated by the SMS’s, this is one of the features that everyone should take advantage of, and if you don’t already have it, arrange it with your bank!

The other issue that is terribly concerning, but that is a topic for another blog article, is the number of spam e-mails one gets, from people who obviously are trying to empty out your bank account asking one to log in to one’s banking profile, or to download a piece of software, etc, and I can only imagine how many people have been caught because I must get 3 or 4 e-mails like that a week.
 

I think that Eskom went out of their way last year, whether it was buying lots of coal, or with plans with big industry, to somehow keep the electricity going throughout the World Cup. Either this winter or next winter, we are going to see a lot more load shedding and hopefully I will eventually get to use the huge generator I installed at my offices three years ago!

That, along with solar panels for the hot water at our offices and various other green techniques were done so that we would not have to be totally reliant on electricity – the only problem that I discovered is that you cannot totally rely on your generators either! They forever need some or other sort of maintenance, replacement batteries, not to mention running back and forth to purchase fuel. That is apart from the fact that my architect designed the separate building for the generator incorrectly, and it required expensive and lengthy modification.

Winter is on its way, but at this time of the year you often step out of the house with not enough protection in terms of warmth. Outside it looks bright and sunny, and based on the previous day’s temperature you don’t think that it will be too cold until you are then, to your horror, exposed to the wind and the wind chill factor.
It is amazing at how much the wind can reduce the effective temperature so what you are seeing on websites or hearing on the radio and what your are experiencing are two different temperatures altogether and certainly on these cold windy days I would much rather be putting in 12 hours in the office than being on the golf course for 4 hours when it can be truly unpleasant!

The July Handicap takes place on the first Saturday in July and given that I own a few horses, it is the one time of the year that people suddenly express an interest and asks me if I have a horse running in the July. Very few seem to appreciate that there are approximately 4000 horses in training in South Africa at any given time, and only 20 of them run in the July.

Your horse may not be running for a number of reasons, including the fact that it is not good enough to have qualified for the July, but there are other reasons such as that the July is run over 2 200 m and maybe your horse is a sprinter (1 000 m) or a middle distance horse (1 600 – 1 800 m). At the end of the day, the July Handicap is not necessarily won by the best horse in the country at all. Once you get into the July, it is then a handicap where the better horse is carrying more weight and so being the best horse in the country could cost you a lot more weight on your back. They then have a draw to determine which box you jump from and if you draw too much on the inside you can be squashed by other horses as the race starts and if you draw too much on the outside, you will end up running 4 or 5 lengths more than any other horse in the race – which is a huge distance and typically the race is won by one length or less.

In other words, factors like the handicap, as well as absolute luck in terms of which draw you are allocated, play a huge role in what your chances are in the race, and then once you are in the race you have to hope for luck, and a clear break in the traffic – your jockey can be sitting on the best horse in the world, but if he has 4 horses in front of him and no gap between them, he cannot get through and win the race. 

I have recently finished a fascinating book by an award winning journalist who specialises in science books, by the name of Gary Taubes. Essentially, and this is a very brief summary, while the book is not a diet book, he goes into the history of the various diets and the problems that have beset various populations once certain foods have been introduced to them. To summarise what he has to say very quickly, it is essentially that cancer, heart disease and obesity are all related to the same thing – white flour and sugar.

Carbohydrates are far too big a portion of our diets now and should basically not be eaten at all and there is nothing wrong with eating good fats. For example, butter is a good fat whereas margarine would not be. Essentially, one is encouraged to eat proteins all day which would mean, for example, eggs and bacon for breakfast, fish or chicken for lunch and possibly meat for dinner. He throws conventional wisdom on its head and pretty much set out a scientific and factual basis for all of his arguments, making it very hard to dispute what he says. Ultimately, he says that basically any diet that is in the media that restricts carbohydrates, or makes you diet and thus minimises what you eat, and thus reduces the carbohydrates, is going to work because you are reducing carbohydrates and not because you are eating less. His book basically says that it is not how much you eat at all, but it is what you eat and in that regard he is quite open about the fact that he is not coming up with any new theory at all – this is same theory that has been espoused, for example, for years in the Atkins Diet.

I see Srixon is running quite an aggressive campaign for their new golf balls on television at the moment saying that their balls are the best, with the biggest core and the thinnest cover. It will be interesting to see if any other golf ball manufacturers respond with adverts on television in South Africa because one would assume that Srixon is going after what is quite a lucrative and big market with over 50 000 weekly golf players in South Africa, and balls retailing at about R35,00 a ball, not to mention how many we lose each round, this is clearly no small market!

Eight or nine months later I still really have not been able to find out much information about the Steyn City development just outside of Dainfern in Fourways. All we know it has a golf course which is currently being designed by Golf Data and every now and then I see there are a few complaints from cyclists and motorcyclists who are riding in the area as to the security guards, etc.
It is such a huge property development that I am surprised that there is not a website with more information available, but no doubt we will hear more of it in time to come. The golf course seems to be coming along nicely, with the mounds of earth being shaped and carried away by huge trucks on a daily basis. If you have any information about the development you are welcome to e-mail me at [email protected].