Until a few days ago, I was proud to be South African, now I am not so sure.

If being South African means

• Hating my neighbour
• Forgetting the past that we came from
• Turing the rainbow nation into the xenophobic nation
• Killing people and destroying their possessions without reason
• Forgetting how our neighbours supported and helped us during the apartheid years
• Going the route of so many other African countries and indiscriminately killing people

Then, I am not proud to be South African. When being South African once again means

• Recognizing that everybody earning an income is creating jobs and contributing to the economy
• Embracing the wonderful diversity of Africa, and in particular of Southern Africa
• Entering into positive dialogue with my neighbours
• Building a better nation for all
• Supporting and helping each other to stand on our own feet
• Welcoming all who want to contribute to the rainbow nation

Then, I will once again be proud to be South African.

This is a departure sign that I saw at Port Elizabeth Airport last night. "Flight BA xxxx to Johannesburg via Johannesburg". Bizarre!

Sorry about the quality, but it is the best that I could do with the camera on my phone.

I promise you – I didn’t cheat! What bread are you? (oh, and Lois is a bulldog – go figure)

Labrador Retriever

The Caretaker

Your family is what makes you tick, and you never "flea" from an opportunity to hang out with the whole gang. A family picnic complete with hot dogs, deviled eggs and a refreshing swim in the lake is hard for you to stray from. Your sparky temperament and dogged intelligence mean you are not only a blast to hang out with, but great to work with as well. Your close pals appreciate your patience and forgiveness, knowing you’d rather let sleeping dogs lie than dwell on the mishaps of the past. Your dashing good looks may one day lead to a modelling career, if only you can tame the unfortunate clumsiness that sometimes causes you to go flailing from the catwalk.

I am getting really sick of either lugging my laptop around with me whenever I travel, or trying to read my emails on my phone – which is just a pain!

So, I decided to look on the net and see what solution I could find – and boy did I find a fantastic solution. This is an ASUS EEEPC (easy to learn, easy to work, easy to play). It is a laptop that weighs just 800grams (that is a box of matches on the keyboard)!

This little machine packs quite a punch – although it only has 512meg ram, and a 2gig (solid state) hard drive, it has three USB ports, as well as a SD slot, so with an external memory stick or external drive, you have pretty much unlimited disk space (there is also a network and Wi-Fi port). It also has a video out port, which I will test later to see how well PowerPoint works on it.

It comes pre-build running Linux (which fly’s – even though there is not much RAM), and some great applications, including Open Office, Skype and the Firefox web browser. If you click on the image below, you can see Open Office busy loading. Of course, you can install pretty much whatever Linux app you care to. For travelling it is fantastic. If you want to , you can also put Windows XP onto it, but I don’t think that I am going to bother.

I took it to Durban on Friday, and it was fantastic. I caught up with email in the lounge, and I wrote a report on the flight home.

The best part is that you can buy it from Incredible Connection for less that R3000!

Can you imaging how difficult it was to not press the start button on our new treadmill?