VirtualTourist Member jonah1
| Page Views: 3,358 | van die sypaadjie tot die strand... by jonah1 - last update: Dec 28, 2007 |
Hi guys!!
Well hardly ever on VT anymore but on Facebook quite often. Please say hi if you are ever on there. The profile name is John Cornelius by the way. Keep well and all the best for 2008!!
If you wanna say hi sometime my Messenger addy is : johncornelius5@hotmail.com
I'm a 28 year old guy from South Africa and I live in Johannesburg. I work for a large Private Bank in a Marketing position. This makes the corporate ladder a little more bearing to climb as i am allowed a certain amount of creativity and have very little need to understand anything financial!!! Passions are my country, art, music, TRAVEL, photography, movies and basically anything that stirs my saggitarian soul!! |
Travel ambitions... Well guys - very incidentally managed to stumble onto this site but how awesome to share experiences with people from all over and also love travel. I have done relatively little travel but have spent some time in europe accumalated over two years. I am feeling a renewed passion to travel and am hoping to go abroad as from beginning 2007. Also Africa holds so much so that is on my to do list - hoping to post some pics of SA soon! |  | |
Joburg and Cape Town.... Johannesburg - the City of Gold: Known as the gateway to Africa, Johannesburg is a city literally built on gold. Established in 1886 when gold was struck, the city has been rebuilt four times in the past century - it started as a tent town, worked up to a tin-shack settlement, a four-storey Edwardian settlement and finally graduated as a modern city of glass and concrete skyscrapers. It's one of the youngest major cities in the world and is a mélange of African cultures, and is quite possibly the most cosmopolitan city on the continent. Situated high on the escarpment at just over 2 000m, Johannesburg is a vibrant, energetic and bustling metropolis offering something for everyone. As South Africa's largest city and economic hub it's home to 3,2 million people, including the residents of Soweto. The young and energetic can dance the night away at one of a myriad of nightclubs - from jazz to kwaito. Cigar lounges, sophisticated eateries and world-class theatre productions are also on offer, or a more authentic South African experience can be enjoyed in the shebeens of Soweto and Alexandra. With massive inner-city renewal, the cultural precincts of Newtown and Constitution Hill - the birthplace of democratic South Africa - are high on visitor itineraries. Johannesburg offers over 150 heritage sites, and the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site is a mere 30 minutes drive from Sandton. There's also the popular weekend Rosebank Rooftop Market and MichaelMount Organic Market. Alternately, enjoy graceful Lippizaners at the only Lippizaner centre outside Austria, stargaze at the planetarium, visit the zoo or tour Soweto and see Nelson Mandela's home.
Don't miss:
Gold Reef City - an evocative recreation of the mining era. Soweto - on an organized tour. Shopping in sophisticated malls. Sterkfontein Caves - in the Cradle of Humankind. Dining out - enjoy cuisine from around the globe.
See www.joburg.org.za and www.sowetotourism.co.za
Cape Town - in the Shadow of the Mountain: Affectionately known as the Mother City, Cape Town is South Africa's oldest city. Founded in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck and his band of Dutch settlers, Cape Town is rated one of the most beautiful cities in the world - the backdrop of flat-topped Table Mountain juxtaposed by the sweep of the Atlantic Ocean in the foreground. Cape Town has a relaxed atmosphere and offers visitors a host of outdoor leisure activities, as well as all the amenities of a world-class city at the sea. Top attractions include catching the cable-car up Table Mountain to enjoy a panorama of the city and pensinsula, taking a ferry to historic Robben Island, drinking tea at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens and visiting the Castle of Good Hope. For outdoor lovers, the Cape of Good Hope, adorned in delicate indigenous fynbos, affords spectacular views over two oceans in all directions and there are numerous hikes and trails all around Cape Town for energetic visitors. The Two Oceans Aquarium will give you a glimpse of marine life along the coastline. Magnificent beaches line the Atlantic seaboard - Clifton, Camps Bay and Llandudno to name just a few, and warmer waters can be found at Muizenberg, Fish Hoek, St James and Strand. If it's pulsating nightlife you're after, go directly to Long Street and enjoy trendy dining at its absolute best.
Don't miss:
Going by cable-car up Table Mountain. Robben Island. Sundowners on the Atlantic seaboard. Seafood at the three harbours and the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. Standing on the end of the peninsula at Cape Point.
The photogenic historic Malay Quarter of the Bo-Kaap.
See www.cape-town.org | | |
Howzit my bru Some South African Slang:
Although 99% of South Africans speak english we are very prone to "mix" our language by using words that are borrowed from any of our other 10 official languages. In effect this could render many foreigners useless when it come to understanding what we are saying. Here are some tips (funny but true): Will post a new letter category every week!
N
Naff - (Wimp) A naff is somebody lacking backbone, a complete wimp or wuss. The adjective is naffy, as in "Cecil is such a naffy name."
Naafi - (No ambition and f ' all interest) "After we lost the World Cup, I felt naafi."
Nooit ('Noy-t') - (Afrikaans – never) No way, oh no!)Another way of saying no, but also a sign of incredulous response. If you have just heard that someone won the Lottery, you would say, "Nooit! Are you serious?"
Now Now - (In a little while) "We're going shopping now now." (We're about to go shopping. Exactly when? Well, that depends on how long we take to finish watching the dvd). The good thing about Now Now is that it is probably going to happen quicker than the even more flexi-time "Just now." | | | a picture of innocence...hahaha whatever..... |
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O Oke ('Oak'), ou, o (as in “owe) - (Guy, chap, bloke) Despite being low on letters, oke or ou are huge words. This word, or its variant, is one of South Africa's most common words for a male human. Probably comes from the Afrikaans "Ou pel" (Old mate), but the adjective became the noun after the "pel" was dropped. Only a male can be an "oke" or an "ou", pronounced "Oh." "That ou says he can organise some 1st grade Prawns for Mozambique for us."
On a mission - (A quest to complete a task) When you’re determined to complete a task, you are "on a mission". If you try and persuade your "bru" to "pull in" to the "jorl" with you, he might say, "Nooit bru, it's exam time, I'm on a mission."
One time - (Nice one) You are lank cool if you say "One time". You're super cool if you say "One time, shoeshine". Commonly used by young urban types.
Only - (Utility adjective) It is not used to paint a picture of "uniqueness", but rather as an extra adjective meaning "lank" or "kiff". When you say "She was only charfing him!", you are NOT saying "She was charfing only him", or "Only she was charfing him." You are actually saying "She was charfing him vigorously." | | | Pissed with some friends hehehe!! |
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I am an African "I am an African" - Thabo Mbeki ... 8 May 1996
On 8 May 1996, Thabo Mbeki made a speech to the people of Africa and the world. Mr Mbeki is now the President of South Africa. The speech tells of Mr Mbeki’s belief in the capacity of all people from Africa.
"Friends, on an occasion such as this, we should, perhaps, start from the beginning. So, let me begin.
I am an African!
I owe by being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope… The dramatic shapes of the [landscape] have… been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.
At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito. A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African! …
Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again. I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done… My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert…. | | |
I have seen our country torn asunder as … my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible. I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image.
I know what it signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who, sub-human. I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy. I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest.
I have seen the corruption of minds and souls [in] the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity. I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings. There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain. Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare…
All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!
Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines. I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression. I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice. The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric. Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.
Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be… As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit…
But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!
Today it feels good to be an African… |
I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa. The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear. The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share. The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair. This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned. This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes…
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!
Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now! " |
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 Comments for jonah1 | | | | |
jumanuel Sun Dec 30, 2007 11:31 UTC
My best wishes for this New Year! Have fun and keep on traveling! Cheers! JM | cleocat Fri Dec 21, 2007 19:12 UTC
Hope you have a lovely birthday and wonderful Christmas time. | kit_mc Thu Dec 20, 2007 22:58 UTC
Happy Birthday mister! Seems like you've dropped off the face of the earth mate! Chris | Maxus Thu Dec 20, 2007 08:57 UTC
27, you lucky sod….by the way, where the **** are you? |
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