Multichoice has now released an on-demand video rental service, presumably one would assume, similar to Netflix in America. Starting this week, you will be able to rent movies for 48 hours for an introductory price of R25,00 per movie. Apparently, two new movies will be added a week to the system and one hopes that one is going to be able to rent the latest movies – apparently 4 to 6 months after they have shown on the movie circuit and long before they will actually be on TV.

Wimbledon, and tennis, will probably be more popular in South Africa than in many other countries, and I think largely because during the time of isolation, Wimbledon was one of the few sporting events that we got to see on TV. Personally I find the French Open more interesting, because it has a lot more baseline play whereas Wimbledon involves a much more smash and bash sort of approach with big booming serves and then people running up to the net. The one thing that I think must disturb Rafael Nadal is the fact that so many people probably regard Roger Federer as the greatest tennis player ever, but in all the matches they have played against each other, Nadal has won 17 times, to Federer’s 8.

They have met in the finals of Grand Slam event 8 times and again Nadal has won 6 of those. The only year in fact in which Federer has had the better of Nadal was in 2007 when he won three of the five games where they played against each other. Federer has certainly won more Grand Slams, but when it comes to matches, and big matches, when he has been up against Nadal, Rafael Nadal has been the better player with the better record. Others would say that Nadal is the greatest clay court player of all time because that is where the majority of his wins took place, and that Federer is still the greatest tennis player of all time.
 

A frequent discussion, certainly in financial circles, but as well amongst attorneys, particularly conveyancers, is the question of when the property market will recover. My personal belief is that there has not been tremendous losses when it comes to good property in excellent locations, and that is from personal experience, but if for example you take an area like Hartbeespoort, I can tell you that the falls have been as heavy as 70% over the last five years, if not more, if I consider an offer I rejected on a piece of land that I recently sold at a substantial percentage loss.

I don’t think property values are every going to soar like they did a few years ago, until the banks once again lose sight of all reality, come up with some or other new financial product, and start extending loans to people that they should not extend loans to. That may take 10 or 15 years for them to forget the most recent batch of mistakes they made. I do think however that we have already seen a recovery in properties costing under R1 million, and it appears to be more the middle market of say R1 to R4 million, a lot more damage has been done and prices will probably take quite a bit longer to recover. I don’t think quality properties in quality locations have ever really gone down very much and because they are limited in number they are not going to be as affected as the areas of the market where of course there is a lot more available – ultimately it still always gets down to supply and demand.
 

I recently had the privilege of playing a round of golf with Charl Schwartzel, the reigning US Masters champion and at the time the No 11 ranked golfer in the world. It was quite an eye opener for me, and sadly I saved my worse golf for the last two months for the occasion, which gave me less opportunity to admire a master in action than would have been if I could at least have put my ball closer to his more often!

The things that immediately impressed me were firstly, a professional like Charl simply does not miss puts under 10 feet, or certainly he did not on that day, and that on the few occasions when he gets himself into trouble, he recovers with some exceptional bunker shot or chip. Professionals massacre par 5’s, making a birdie out of each and every one, but as for the rest of their game it is much more clinical and relaxed – they don’t try to murder the ball or hit it for absolute miles that most players imagine and talk about.
If I hit my driver hard, I can hit it the same distance that Charl is hitting his but the difference is that he is hitting his in a very relaxed way, is not trying half as hard as I am, and consequently he is in the middle of the fairway much more often while most of my friends and I are busy looking for our balls! It was a fantastic privilege, and he has a wonderful mental attitude, where he is very focused on his golf, does not like to talk too much, although in a social round of golf he does, and will no doubt go on to win many more major tournaments.
 

This is the development that interests me, and clearly quite a few people from comments on my blog. Its just north of Fourways, outside of Dainfern Estate and is is a development that covers approximately 700 hectares of land, and somebody has told me I could read a lot more about it on the website of Urban Dynamics. Their website says that the project has the capacity for some 11 000 residential units and is also going to be making a contribution towards the regional bulk services being upgraded in the area, together with the roads, municipal sewers and bulk water supply. I hope that the first thing they do is to increase the width of Cedar Road as well as William Nicol, as otherwise there are going to be tremendous traffic problems in the area.

Of the 700 hectares, 260 hectares will be landscaped incorporating pedestrian routes and bird trails and they plan on having, within the estate, two private schools, office developments, convenient shopping, a retirement village and a private hospital – and that is apart from the golf course. It is no doubt going to be the biggest development ever in the Fourways area and it is going to be very much in the news whenever it is launched. The golf course, from what I can see, is not proceeding at a cracking pace, but I guess that moving and shaping all the earth is very much a bigger job than I would probably imagine.
 

I was recently referred to this site by a travel agent and told that it gives some great discounts, particular on bush lodges. You can find the website at www.mtbeds.co.za and it is well worth looking up because they really do have some very good prices for resorts that one might otherwise consider way too expensive.

I had the very rare opportunity to play the number one golf course in South Africa, The Links at Fancourt recently. The Links recently replaced Leopard Creek as the number one rated golf course in South Africa and I was lucky enough to play the two golf courses six days apart, allowing me the rare opportunity to compare them, as well as the number six rated golf course, Blair Atholl.

The Links is a pure quality golf course where no expense has been spared and which has beautiful views of the mountains overlooking George. The course does not have that many rounds, with membership costing $100 000,00, and you need to be invited by a member, or have some other special occasion in order to play The Links, so the course is in an extremely good condition with very little wear and tear. Every hole is a challenge and on the day I played, a strong wind, which is apparently unusual for The Links, did not make things any easier. If you miss the fairway, you will not find your ball and so it requires extreme concentration when driving and hitting it fairly straight. Working out the wind, the distances at low altitude and where to try and land on various greens made it quite a challenge and there is no doubt that this golf course will get the better of players.

The greens are in superb condition and the attention to detail between the holes and on the holes are incredible to the extent that the small tees are hand-mown, as opposed to the normal use of machines. A fabulous experience and one that I certainly hope to have again. A special thanks to the Golf GM, Lloyd Martindale, for his incredible hospitality.
 

The job of public protector of South Africa, and probably in many other countries, is clearly not a very desirable one. As the public protector herself pointed out, at the end of the day you would ultimately always end up investigating the ruling government of the day, and that is going to bring you in conflict with them.
It seems not a day goes by whereby we don’t have a counter-accusation as to her being investigated by the police or a denial by somebody that she has done anything wrong in a previous job and of course there were no accusations of anything at all, until she started investigating police involving Police Commissioner Cele. The job is never going to be offered to me, but I would not even look sideways at it, because I think whoever holds this position, if they are conscientious and achieve results in uncovering corruption, which will always exist in any country, they are going to put themselves in the firing line.
 

I was dragged along to see Kylie Minogue at the Super Bowl, and I enjoyed her concert more than I thought I would have. She is a very professional performer, as I guess one would expect of anybody who has lasted as long as she has from first entering the pop scene in 1988, and her strength is quite clearly her vocal range and the way she sings. I think she is quite proud of her voice and she tries to use it in a number of different ways during her show, showing off her ability.

The Super Bowl is a great place for a concert, especially if you are staying over, because you only have to walk 400 metres or so back to your room, or less depending on which hotel you are booked in and the acoustics are good and the venue warm, especially in winter. The one thing that I did learn was that Kylie is very popular in the gay community, and she certainly caters for them in the imagery of her show.
 

I recently attended a wedding at the Avianto wedding venue, and I was very impressed by the venue, which really provides an all-in-one package for people getting married, although, and certainly based on what my friend paid, at quite a small fortune.
It is located in Muldersdrift, and I see they are also going to turn some of their land into a residential estate, including sectional title units as well as a retirement village. There are certainly a lot of developments now getting developed alongside the Crocodile River, and there is no doubt that the vegetation and the lifestyle is the kind of one that one dreams of for bringing one’s children up in, although for practical purposes one is often quite far away from one’s work.
 

The Open takes place this weekend and on Sunday we will presumably have a new champion assuming Louis Oosthuizen does not repeat his wonderful performance of a year ago. The Open of course rotates from one course to another, and the fact that Louis won it on a different course last year, does not really give him any advantage.
It was a magnificent time for South Africa, and since then we had Charl Schwartzel win the Masters as well, so we will all be hoping that somehow, from our small country, yet another South African can win a major tournament. There are four Majors a year, and this is the third of them – with just one more remaining this year but presumably by then, we will also have Tiger Woods back from injury.

I see from some of the prices that have been advertised, that the price wars that other retailers feared, have begun. Walmart bought Massmart and now Makro is already beginning to sell some television sets, cameras and even bread at prices 10% to 15% below to what the other retailers are selling them at.

Although some people ultimately say this puts people out of jobs, you cannot keep prices artificially high, and while lower prices in one area invariably might mean job losses in that area, they generally lead to job creation in another area. You cannot keep an industry artificially afloat and at a certain time anybody that has a job in a video store, for example, will lose that, because times and technologies change and the way people spend their money changes. At the end of the day, all of us as consumers are certainly better off, because prices go down while for less money we get better and improved technology.

One needs merely think as to how many extra secretaries would have been needed a few years ago, before voicemail, simply to take down voice messages but now you can not only receive a voice message while you are on holiday in the Kruger National Park, but you can also have software that automatically transcribes it for you and gives you a fairly accurate typewritten version of what the voice message says.
 

There have been a few varying reports recently as to whether or not the airlines would be allowed by the CAA to start allowing passengers to have their cell phones on. A friend of mine, who has his pilot’s licence, has always told me that the rule is absolute nonsense – the cell phones don’t interfere in any way with any of the equipment of the plane, and the rule is more a question of controlling passengers and not having everybody on their phones the entire time. I would imagine that the ban will remain, but I think that the concerns would probably, without them telling us that, be more to do with security than with anything else.

My initial reaction to the announcement of the Google+ project was that they were really going to find it impossible to compete with Facebook. We should never rule out Google and more I read about the project on the official blog of Google, the more I think that they have some very good points which are going to help them considerably. They take quite a few digs at Facebook, as well as BlackBerry’s BBM instant message service, without naming them, saying for example, with reference to BlackBerry’s BBM, “They are annoying, for starters. You can ping everyone that is ‘available’, but you are bound to interrupt someone’s plans. They are also really awkward. When someone does not respond, you don’t know if they are just not there, or just not interested.”

Google+ has created hangouts to compete with that and you have casual meetings alive multi-person videos. If you set your phone to allow it, any picture that you take will automatically be added to Private Cloud album. The part that I enjoyed the most was their dig at Facebook, and basically they say that not all relationships are created equally, “… so in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents and almost nothing with our boss. The problem is that today’s online services turn friendship into fast food – wrapping everyone in ‘friend’ paper – and sharing really suffers.” To combat this, Google has created circles where you can put people into the circles that they belong – so most of my staff would put me under workers, and the people they don’t want to share anything with, and you can create circles for your friends and family – so you can automatically put people into different groups and essentially allow them to see different things.

This is obviously a direct go at Facebook, without naming them, and Google says of the Facebook approach, where everyone is your friend, “It’s sloppy … it’s scary … it’s insensitive.” They say every online conversation is public performance, because you got well over 100 “friends” reading it, and we are forced to hear, online, from people all the time including those that we only have time for once a week, if that.
 

May will remember that MySpace came before Facebook and then in 2005, a news corporation bought it for $580 000 000,00. Apparently, it has now just been sold, 50% of the staff will be cut, the site will focus on music in the future, and from being bought for $580 000 000,00 in 2005, it has been sold for a mere $35 000 000,00 in 2011. It is a reminder how, something that seems so big now, that could not possibly ever be overtaken (like Facebook, for example) can end fairly quickly

Wimbledon, and tennis, will probably be more popular in South Africa than in many other countries, and I think largely because during the time of isolation, Wimbledon was one of the few sporting events that we got to see on TV. Personally I find the French Open more interesting, because it has a lot more baseline play whereas Wimbledon involves a much more smash and bash sort of approach with big booming serves and then people running up to the net. The one thing that I think must disturb Rafael Nadal is the fact that so many people probably regard Roger Federer as the greatest tennis player ever, but in all the matches they have played against each other, Nadal has won 17 times, to Federer’s 8.

They have met in the finals of Grand Slam event 8 times and again Nadal has won 6 of those. The only year in fact in which Federer has had the better of Nadal was in 2007 when he won three of the five games where they played against each other. Federer has certainly won more Grand Slams, but when it comes to matches, and big matches, when he has been up against Nadal, Rafael Nadal has been the better player with the better record. Others would say that Nadal is the greatest clay court player of all time because that is where the majority of his wins took place, and that Federer is still the greatest tennis player of all time.
 

Google is now launching a new social network to take on Facebook. It is apparently called Google+ at the moment and will have all the usual profile pictures, newsfeeds but where it will differ from Facebook is that you will group your friends or contacts into specific circles. Obviously, they are entering the battle after Facebook has already reached 700 million members, and it will be an uphill battle, but one should not forget that MySpace was first, and yet their leadership and their 150 000 000 members at the time, ultimately counted for nothing. People do sometimes like a new product and there are many privacy issues about Facebook that the Google products may see an opportunity to address and also offer a special video chat feature.

Swine Flu has really taken off in South Africa this year. There are many diseases and stories that you hear and read about, but you never actually know anybody who is suffering from it, whereas swine flu this year is affecting people in our office, people at the same schools as our children and many people I know.
So far, most of the people that I know and who have largely been vaccinated beforehand, have had relatively mild symptoms, but it is certainly a worry insofar as small children and pregnant women are concerned and at my offices, where the staff all get vaccinated every year, we have already lost more people to flu this year than in any other previous year, so there is obviously some particularly bad strains about, and possibly some that are also not covered by the vaccines. The other argument of course is that whatever period of time they are ill for, and however severe that illness is, it would have been far worse without the vaccination.

It is July Handicap time again, and on this day, apart from the Met, is the day when horseracing gets the most interest from the general public. I think one of the good innovations that Phumelela has made this year is that if you take a place bet on the July Handicap, and your horse finishes in the first six positions, they will pay you out. Typically, in normal races only for the first three positions, so this special exception makes it easier for people to have a bet and win and hopefully many of them will give it a go, because the play school in the July Handicap normally plays fairly well, because it is a Handicap after all, and most of the horses have a good chance. My personal favourite Pierre Jordaan, but I only get the July Handicap winner right once every 7 or 8 years, so my tips can generally be safely ignored!