April 2006

Been a really busy week so far but finally Friday is HERE! We have launched a new product into the golf leisure market at the the London Golf Show this week after many months of hard work. Our efforts paid off yesterday as our stand was unarguably the best of the show!

Tomorrow I fly off to Sardinia for a 3 day 4 star beach hotel holiday that is costing me £35. Heres how: Book your flight with easyJet. Allow easyJet to propose a change and then ask them what’s in it for you:

I can confirm that easyJet will in exchange be offering you all in a form of compensation the following

A full refund of all five easyJet flights to Olbia in back to the credit cards used to make the bookings
A free flight with Ryanair on the same dates to Sardinia - Alghero airport
A private taxi from your home address given to Stansted airport for all five passengers - details to follow of the pick up time
A private taxi to pick you up on your return to Stansted on the 1 May to your home address for all five passengers
Five return flights on the easyJet network, to be booked and taken within the next year - please contact me for the flights, also you don’t have to all travel together if you don’t want to.

So thats a free flight to Sardinia AND an additional free flight to any other easyJet destination, mmmmm, now where should I go?!

For those of you who don’t know, Pierre is no longer my sister Debbie’s boyfriend. He’s her fiance as they got engaged a couple of weeks ago! So congratulations to the newly engaged couple, I’m really happy for you guys

Wow what a night. I’ve just got back to my pad in Rickmansworth after a night which gave me a massive reminder if ever I needed it on why I continue to live in London.

A while back Grayskull posted about his trip to the Electic Cinema on the famous Portobello Road in Notting Hill. Well tonight I went, on the back of a spontaneous decision to purchase the last remaining ticket to see Tsotsi on the big screen.

The Electric cinema has got to be the best venue in the world to watch a film. Its been around for almost a hundred years and has gone through many different hands, inlcuding at one stage a German owner during World War 1 when local residents stoned the theatre believing that the owner was using the roof to signal enemy zeppelin raids! The theatre has now been returned to its former glory allowing the patron the comfort of large leather bound armchairs in which to enjoy your cafe latte with the latest in vogue movie. Tonight it was Tsotsi and, not only did I enjoy the experience of the theatre, but I also thoroughly appreciated the magnificence of a well made South African film.

I made it back to Marlybone station with plenty of time to spare and managed to cap off a great evening by meeting Ian Mcgeechan and his lovely wife Judy. They were waiting for the last train with me after attending a formal rugby function in the city. We chatted about a whole host of rugby related issues and obviously at some stage the discussion turned to the British Lions second test against the Springboks at Kings Park, Durban, when Jerry Guscot kicked the drop goal to secure the Lions series victory. I was there spectating, Ian was there managing the Lions! He is still managing rugby, successfully too, as he currently serves as Director of rugby at Wasps who just happen to have won the Powergen cup.

Got to get some sleep. Tomorrow night big St Georges day festivities in the city with an Albion crew reunion, Saturday fishing down in Surrey, dirty Berty’s birthday that night and then going to watch grayskull suffer through the London Marathon on Sunday. Good luck sucker!

It was really sad to see the news about Brett Goldin the star of the Crazy Monkey show regularly featured on MTV. He was found face down with a bullet in his head alongside his friend who had met the same fate. So sad, cruel and completely unnecessary. The same thing happens everyday, in fact somebody has been murdered whilst I write this post and yet we stand by and do nothing! Is it the role of the citizen or the role of the elected government to look after the citizen. Can we do anything? How many more Brett Goldin’s will die in the next year. Talented, young, productive lives wasted just because he lives in South Africa, where life is really cheap! And the ANC government tells me that I am a traitor for leaving. I am a traitor for temporarily leaving a country that doesn’t really want me around, a country that stands by and allows the persecution of its own people from within!

Picked this up over at The Fishbowl. Remarkable how our country’s government stumbles from one disaster to the next. I just can’t deal with how stupid, ignorant and downright useless the ANC government portrays itself to the rest of the world: Aids, Zimbabawe, Zuma, the list is bloody endless. Below is a section of an article written in an Israeli newspaper about the recent visit by Hamas to South Africa. It’s an acerbically stunning piece which leaves you with one word to say at the end of it …….TOUCHE!

Thus Israel is asking of South Africa, “What is there to discuss with Hamas?” What can South Africa deliver that the infinitely more powerful and influential Vladimir Putin could not? Informed Israelis may well question what South Africa hopes to achieve in talking to such a party when its own policy of “quiet diplomacy” toward the Mugabe regime has yielded nothing but embarrassment for Pretoria and further suffering for millions of Zimbabweans.

Indeed there is a strong sentiment of dismissiveness and irritation in Israel at this middle-ranking country on the tip of Africa, with a governing party strongly affiliated to the PLO, “poking its nose in” where it is not wanted. For sceptics, South Africa’s naivete and arrogance may have the unintended consequence of conferring recognition of Hamas’ policies and positions toward Israel. South African watchers may also point to President Mbeki’s own pretensions toward global statesmanship as the key to his personal involvement in facilitating dialogue between Palestinians and Israel.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few “okes” have recently got together and launched their own London based South African radio station. Good luck to them, I know quite a few people in London who continue to listen to 5fm via live streaming so maybe they can grab that market.

We have our own newspapers, our own bars/nightclubs, shops selling stuff from home on practically every corner, until recently our own SKY TV channel and now our own radio station! Don’t we come to London to get away from SA, hell no, we come here to work long, play hard and travel far!

Oh yeah, and my favourite, Nando’s on every street corner!

Made it up to Sheffield to the famous crucible to watch the snooker this weekend. The seats were unbelievable and as you can imagine being seated in the front row we were on TV regularly! We weren’t allowed camera’s inside but I managed to get my mobile out for a sneaky shot. Unfortunately the Monks ugly mug got in the way but you can just make out the snooker table and TV cameras.

A quick update for you on Party Gaming. The share opened today at 156 pence. It went up by 5 pence without a single trade going through on the back of extremely strong 1st quarter results. Party Gaming have increased their revenue by 54% this quarter - and with that my gamble paid off!!!

OK, all well and good, I had a few meetings in the morning so wasn’t too worried but was hoping to return to see punters buying the share and pushing the price above 160. That didn’t happen, instead the price went down to 153 before I sold out, took my profit and went and hid before it dropped down to 145, which was still above the level I bought. It rallied back to 149 before close of play today leaving me with the ideal opportunity to get back in tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow it will go up towards the 160 level!

Any other share in any other market in the world would have gone through the roof! No Ftse 100 company could even begin to post these kind of returns and yet everyone is running scared. Actually, its called profit taking and a lot of that took place today by the big institutions. Along with the market makers, they try and manipulate the share down by selling and so realise their profits instantly and then buy back low and bring the share price up. Bastards, but without them there would be little fluctuation and therefore little room in which to make mula!

You don’t get a much better start to the Easter weekend than the one I’ve just had. Went long on Partgaming CFD’s yesterday when the FTSE 100 was hammered and today they were the second highest traded share on the FTSE 100 and ended up 8 points higher. Roll on Tuesday (now that I can’t lose) when they annonce their first quarter KPI’s.

This might sound sad to those who have no idea what I’m talking about but I haven’t experienced something as exciting as this in a long time. Holding a long CFD position over an Easter weekend in anticipation of an optimistic Tuesday announcement. I’m getting up from the edge of my seat now to head into Covent Garden for a few cold ones with the Gloryhunter, Fingers and Blondbaron.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t read newspapers, or you don’t really care what the government does with your tax money, and if extreme corruption, nepotism and fraud don’t really get up your nose then I suggest you stop reading now. Stop reading also if you don’t know who Brett Kebble is. Read the rest of this entry »

What a massive weekend just gone. A big night in London on Friday, a full day fly fishing in the english countryside on saturday, another monster night out on Saturday and then up early on Sunday to Manchester to watch the destruction of Arsenal by the mighty Red Devils.

Every time I go back to Old Trafford I marvel at the magnificence of this countrys most spectacular club stadium. This weekend Man United played Arsenal and it was no surprise that, with one of the new redeveloped stands open, a record attendance crowd was there to watch it. The biggest premiership game of all time - 70,907 plus me! If you’ve never been to a proper premiership game then you’ve never lived.

Nobody really watches snooker right?! Well this weekend there’s a reason to have a shifty at the telly ‘cos I’ll be there! Yup you read it right, three tickets to watch the World Snooker Championships have recently fell into my hands, opening weekend FRONT ROW tickets - REEESULT.

The Monk, Gloryhunter and myself are heading up to Sheffield on Saturday for the opening weekend at the famous Crucible theatre. We will see the World Champ Shaun Murphy and one of the greatest ever Steve Davis all on Saturday. If we get up early enough, after the bender we’re anticipating, then we might even make it down for the Sunday session.

Get in quick! Packages are now on general sale for the 2007 World Cup, I have just bought 2 for all SA games including Quarter and Semi final.

To get a final ticket you need to buy a package to go into the ballot. Hurry up if you want to watch SA become world champions again!

Edit: Just bought another two packages, wtf, theres loads of people who will need tickets.

Here is our schedule:

South Africa V Samoa - Paris - 9th September 2007
South Africa V England - Saint-Denis - 14th September 2007
South Africa V Repechage 2 - Lens - 22nd September 2007
South Africa V America 3 - Montpellier - 30th September 2007
Plus Quarter Final in Marseille & Semi Final in Saint-Denis.

Baseball season kicked off in the states last night. For those of you that don’t know a regular Baseball seasons sees each team play a game approximately 6 times a week and ultimately playing over 160 games a season.

Last night the Baltimore Orioles, my team in the American league, had a good opening victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In the National League the Washington Nationals lost but hopefully, in their second year of competion ever,  they’ll be able to continue the success they achieved in last year.

My predictions for this year - the LA Angels or the Oakland Atheletics will win the World Series.

So, it’s either the A’s or the A’s  but unfortunately not the O’s and definitely neither of the sox’s.

This Sunday was reserved for the annual Oxford - Cambridge boat race which is basically a euphemism for “monday morning hangover”.

After a 4 in the morning bender on Saturday night we gathered at Simon and Carla’s house prior to the short walk down to the Thames. We got down to Barnes bridge only to find the place busier than the home supporters end when India are playing a test match in Calcutta. I have watched the race before from Hammersmith and although Barnes was crowded it is a lot better than anywere else. Read the rest of this entry »