If you’re ever feeling up for a challenge you should consider riding the Race Across South Africa. It’s a 2300km unsupported individual MTB race along the Freedom Trail. 50 riders set out from Pietermaritzburg and they have 26 days to reach Diemersfontein in Wellington. To finish in that time you have to average about 100km a day.

Easy right?

Besides the sheer magnitude of the event, notoriously known as SA toughest race, the other thing that makes it special is that it was broadcast exclusively over Twitter this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Crime and human tragedy have a peculiar impact on space and time. It may just be a psychological sense of impact or alternatively a very real and tangible alteration of physical space and time.

I remember when my car was broken into some years back. The thieves stole my car radio. I had a very strong sense that my ‘space’ had been invaded and that it had in some way been defiled. Sitting in my car just did’t feel the same for a long time thereafter.

Although I was still in possession of my car and the interior was not greatly altered, there was a definitive sense that the space had been altered. There was also the sense that something more than the radio had been taken from me. That sense subsided after a while, but the memory lingers. Read the rest of this entry »

[Originally published on www.rattleandmum.co.za - 20th June 2012]

I was so excited to become a dad. At times I couldn’t explain the anticipation except to say that it felt like I was about to fulfill a purpose. Sam and I had heard how difficult it was being a parent, but in the exuberance of our excitement we felt immune to such realities.

Daniel was then born.

I remember that first night in the hospital. There was a crash of reality as we put him down in his cot. This is real. This is permanent. This is a feeling I didn’t anticipate. Read the rest of this entry »

We all begin as Facebook sluts.

Those first few weeks after successfully signing onto the famed network are saturated with anxiety inducing spates of patience as you wait for long lost friends, awkward school mates, current colleagues and family members to accept your friend requests.

There’s a certain fulfillment in having your friend count expand. The slutting has begun. Read the rest of this entry »

There is certainly no shortage of ideas floating around. What is in short supply however is solid execution of those ideas.

This is the issue tackled in the new eBook, Do Ideas, from the most excellent guys at 21 Tanks. I felt honoured when they asked me to contribute to it and share my own ‘secret’ to execution.

You really should download this book. There is outstanding advice from some of the most progressive entrepreneurs and business leaders in South Africa.

Download the free eBook here.

Many friends tell me that they do not understand the appeal behind participating in social media, specifically on platforms like Twitter and the practice of blogging. “I just don’t have anything to say,” they tell me. I’ve long held the belief that you need to suffer from acute self-exhibitionist tendencies in order to engage effectively with social media. You have to want to ‘put yourself out there’ in some respects. The desire to say something and to have people engage with that ‘something’ are powerful drivers behind activity on social media. If you didn’t have that desire or urge, your writing would just fall into the category of journalling.

In reading one of the last interviews with C.S. Lewis I began to realise how important the ‘urge’ to write is, not only in social media circles, but for the sake of writing at all. Read the rest of this entry »

The consulting business that I run leads me on excursions into Pretoria about 3 times a week and into the surrounds of Johannesburg on a regular basis. Utilising the network of freeways in Gauteng is an essential component of my business travel. The drive to Pretoria takes about 40 to 45 minutes, regardless of whether I leave home in peak hour or not. Not so long ago the same return drive chewed up somewhere between 2 and 3 hours of my day. Not anymore.

The difference is this: the (nearly) completed Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project has change my life. Since late 2011 I have enjoyed the benefits associated with our expanded Freeways. This is one of the main reasons why I purchased my SANRAL e-tag today, ahead of the 30th April commencement of tolling. It’s not a popular decision I’ve made. In the midst of the public upheaval around the tolling, it’s a decision that I’m not expecting many people to understand either. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes our country is so sad that all we can do is smile.

One of the most common experiences while driving up to a traffic light is seeing a beggar standing there making a (sometimes) heartfelt plea for your small change. The majority of us have developed a fine skill in ignoring them. Stare straight ahead as if you’re contemplating life deeply, right? Or we give them a cursory wave of the hand indicating that we have no money for them, which they know is untrue, just like our conscience does.

The variety of the beggar’s plea is testament to the inventiveness (and desperation) of those in poverty. I came across this “YouTube” beggar today in Pretoria. His innovation made me smile and immediately reach for my wallet.  Read the rest of this entry »

Today is Daniel James Choles’s second birthday.

We had an amazing morning with him opening his presents. A few months ago, at Christmas time, the value in a present was not the present itself, but the wrapping paper. Today however, the wrapping paper was secondary because he knew there was a present for him inside. He pulled off the wrapping with gusto and then adorned each gift with a series of wow’s, wowee’s and ooh’s.

He may not understand the significance of this day as a life milestone, but I do. It is also the second anniversary of my fatherhood. Read the rest of this entry »

I subscribe to a daily reflection from Richard Rohr. Yesterday’s edition got me thinking (quite morbidly) about death. It said this:

We fear nothingness. That’s why we fear death, of course, which feels like nothingness. Death is the shocking realization that everything I thought was me, everything I held onto so desperately, was finally nothing.

Now, I find myself thinking about death quite often. No, not in a suicidal way, but in a way that wrestles with what death means, what comes after it, why it means so much and why we try to evade its inevitable clutch so much? Read the rest of this entry »