A tribute to Mrs. G

It is evident that this has been an extremely busy week considering the amount of publications I managed to get out. Luckily we have reached the end of the first full work week in a while, and the weekend ahead is much needed. Just a reminder that this coming Sunday is in fact Mothers Day so don’t hold back.

I can honestly say that I’m blessed with the best mom in the world. I know what you are thinking, I’m not just saying that because she still does my laundry and I eat there regularly, I really mean it. I’m convinced that not only is she probably the most compassionate person in the universe, but Gwen also possesses several super powers. I mean raising four boys, of which I’m one, on her own, while running businesses, studying and still manage to retain her sanity, and manage to look like she’s our sister instead of our mother is quite remarkable. I can carry on-and-on for hours but unfortunately I have work to do.

Ek is seker ek kan namens Gebroeders Gouws praat as ek sê: Ma is die beste ooit!

Me and the Queen

PS. She is definitely the best cook in the world as well, that’s the main reason I have to swim miles and miles each day to stay in shape.

Be glad you missed this bus

On my way back to Pretoria late the other night as I drove through the N1/N14 split coming up to John Vorster the night suddenly turned into an array of flashing lights reminding me of an 80’s disco. Unfortunately this was no fun affair as it was in fact the flashing lights of emergency vehicles lighting up the night.

As I approached the scene I realized it was one of those long distance Gauteng to Polokwane (Pietersburg) public busses that malfunctioned in a rather spectacular way. The bus was lying on its belly across all three lanes of the N1. The luggage (probably including live chickens) stacked on the roof of the kamikaze bus was now scattered all over the tar surface. Fortunately for the passengers of the bus, the vehicle didn’t overturn after its back wheels just mysteriously disembarked from the chassis. Unfortunately the occupants of a Chrysler Crossfire were not as lucky, because they must have ended up underneath a truck as the accident occurred. The cabin of the Crossfire was completely flattened.

I don’t get angry that easily but this made me furious, considering that I’m fined for every time I dare to drive over the speed limit but un-roadworthy vehicles like this, carrying innocent desperate civilians, are not kept from the road as they post a threat to all of us. I think it’s time that our overweight Metro Police leave their coffee and doughnuts and get off their fat asses behind the speeding cameras and start attending to real threats like this . . . . and while their up, start regulating traffic in peak hour damn-it!

92-3 need I say more.....

Optimus takes on the Nedbank Challenge

Yesterday the true blue blooded Optimus team members took up the challenge of the Nedbank Challenge held in Emmerentia Johannesburg. I am proud to report back that despite the fact that we went into the race basically unprepared as none of us really trained for the event, we al finished within good time.

John (our own Bruce Fordice) ran the 10km race as if he was warming up, didn’t even build up a sweat as he passed the finish line. He was rewarded with a medal for his effort. Me and Dawie didn’t want to steal John’s thunder and therefore only ran the 5km race and finished in 28min 12 seconds. We were rewarded with empty plastic water bottles.

Seeing that Gerhardus didn’t pitch (some lame excuse about an asthma attack :-) ) he will be rewarded with buying the rest of the team Samoosas and Jelly Tots for the rest of 2007.

Hannibal Rising

After a frightening workday on Friday, me and Freaky were brave enough to go and watch the latest in the series of thrillers surrounding the mental illness of the infamous Dr Hannibal Cannibal Lecter.

Although I agree that this is most probably not even close to being the best of the series of movies, I do feel that it is worth watching, even if it is just to make more sense out of the reasons behind Dr Lecter’s insanity. Even though the movie is filled with brutal (visual) killings combined with some human appetizers that cause you to re-taste your lunch, the director manage in a strange way to shift the sympathy from the victims being slaughtered, to the almost gentlemen like cannibal taking his revenge, by making the reasons for his behavior known by flashing back to Hannibal’s childhood..

I must admit that the presence of Anthony Hopkins is greatly missed in the movie, and the actor playing the roll of the young Hannibal need some practice in putting on a psychopathic face. What I did appreciate was Hannibal’s widowed Chinese aunt whom I can say is kind of hot!

Hannibal Rising is worth watching if you are able to keep your dinner down, and do eat before you watch the movie because you will most probably lose your appetite unless you have psychopathic and cannibalistic tendencies yourself. The movie scores a 6.

Untitled Blog

Happy Friday everyone. Unfortunately we are standing at the end of a series of short weeks and long weekends. This weekend is the weekend when team Barloworld Optimus takes on the Nedbank challenge (or at least the non-lazy one’s amongst us). To some of you this will come as a surprise that I will actually be running, something I haven’t done since school days (which is not that long ago!) and even then I was more of a sprinter than a long distance endurance junky. Nevertheless I took the challenge and will report back on Monday (that’s if I’m still alive).

I went swimming this morning at the Virgin Active in Sandton before work as I sometimes do only to find that my swim buddy (Ryk Neethling) must have decided to sleep late today, but I don’t mind as that means I’m one ahead of him now :-). I also realized that it’s not only Mooikloof Ridge that experience water related problems, as I was busy taking a shower at the gym I looked down at some stage and was surprised to see that the whole floor was completely flooded, and water was about to stream out the door. Of course I quickly pulled a disappearing act, but if you hear anything on the news about the VA in Sandton being under water or closed until further notice……IT WAS ME!!!!!........

Squashed

In my quest to find a proper running shirt for the upcoming Nedbank Challenge this Sunday, I bought almost everything I needed from Sportsmans Warehouse, just not for running but rather for squash (racket, balls etc).

So I played squash for the first time in at least 5 years. To my surprise I didn’t do too badly considering the last time I played. I do feel the consequences of my actions this morning, but that might be partly the result of the fact that apart from playing a few games of squash I also did a 5km run as training for Sundays race.

So me and John unofficially decided last night that starting a Optimus squash league might be a good idea, seeing that we already have a triathlon team, marathon team, go-carting team and a quad-biking team, adding a squash team won’t be that difficult to organize, but considering that we don’t have any sponsors for any of these sports at the moment we might have to cut down on some, but you never know someone in a higher position in this company we work for might read this blog and decide to give us some financial backing as we are such valuable employees that deserve to be rewarded for our attempt to keep the company’s name high amongst more than just work related activities.