Bad Bachelor Meals Take One: Two Minute GuacaNoodly on Toast

Hehe, the trials and tribulations of bachelorhood. Guys, here’s one recipe I’ve developed that will NOT impress your date:

Ingredients:

  • 1 Avocado. Ripe. (Buy them pre-ripened from Woolworths or else you’ll end up waiting two weeks for them to kind of ripen.)
  • 1 Beer. (Amstel preferably)
  • 99 Water. (The kind that can go in a kettle)
  • +1 Beer.
  • 1 pkt Maggie Beef-flavoured two minute noodles.
  • 99 Skill.
  • 2 slices bread.
  • 1 dollop Marmite.
  • 1 teabag with tag.
  • 1 clean(ish) plate.

Method:
1. Boil water in kettle and then pour it in a pot at maximum heat on the stove.
2. Add flavouring to pot and then noodles. to pot I mean. Stir.
3. Stick bread in toaster at semi-burnt heat setting.
4. Open beer.
5. Drink beer.
6. Slather marg on toast when done. (Remove toast from toaster first)
7. Cut avo in half and each half in half again. Peel. Suck on salt shaker to try and unblock the moisture-clogged holes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
8. Stick fork into noodles, try get one to your mouth and suck it from the pot. If it’s not chewy it’s ready. (Repeat x3)
9. Strain water from pot, fork noodles onto toast.
10. Drink another beer.
11. Knife a chunk of marmite onto the noodles and mix it in as best possible.
12. Chop up avo and mush it onto the noodles.
13. Use remaining kettle water with teabag in cup to make tea. Be sure to get the tag to fall into the cup, making its existence futile.
14. Relax and enjoy GuacaNoodly Toast with Tea!

And there you have it. My most vile creation yet.
It’s not actually that bad, there’s just something that’s not right about it.

Technorati Tags: food, cooking, bachelor, meal

MTN “Everywhere You Go” ???

MTN

MTN is most certainly NOT everywhere I go. Let’s hope ASASA agrees:

Dear Sir,

MTN Group Limited is a cellular telephone network provider currently running an advertising campaign with the tag line: “Everywhere You Go”. This corporate branding strategy extends to most of MTN’s marketing campaign including various forms of media, from pamphlets to outdoor signage, television ads, cinema ads and the internet. Most recently I saw two adverts carrying this slogan prior to the 17:30 show on Saturday 16 June 2007 at Cine 2 of the Brooklyn Mall Ster Kinekor in Pretoria.

The message stated by MTN creates a natural perception that MTN provides their telephony service “Everywhere You Go”. My complaint relates more specifically to the case where MTN claimed availability and had a network presence but were not able to provide it where I went – Mozambique. This despite the fact that international roaming forms a key part of their stated claim of product availability “Everywhere You Go”.

On my trip to Ponto Malongane in Mozambique I carried my MTN cellphone with me. I had enabled and successfully used international roaming on a trip to a different international destination earlier this year so I had a reasonable expectation that the telephone network would be ‘Everywhere I Went’. Upon arrival at my destination my phone was specifically prevented from accessing the MTN Mozambique network despite me being an MTN client. Curiously, I *was* able to successfully roam on MTN Swaziland earlier in my trip. A number of other people experienced a similar problem.

The lack of access to the MTN network is contrary to the message they are portraying in their “Everywhere You Go” campaign and violates the advertising principle of honesty. The claim is also misleading in the expectation created, unsubstantiated, and advertises a product that was not available to me.

Fortunately in my case I was able to make do without telephony services for the duration of my trip, however for any traveler who is relying on the availability of the network this unavailability of something promised “Everywhere You Go” could lead to massive pecuniary loss or even physical harm.

I trust you will follow up on this complaint with due process.

Kind Regards,

Shaun Dewberry

Time to switch networks?

Technorati Tags: MTN, cellular, service, complain, standards, advertising, consumer, mozambique, access, network, mobile

I Move Out and All the Fun Starts…

“Recently the papers have reported a ‘miracle’ in Benoni. According to the papers Francesca Zackey, a 17-year old girl, claims to have had over 20 visitations from the Virgin Mary in the space of a month.”

[Link]

Hmmm, my mother’s neighboursthey live just down the street from my Mom! That’s not the Virgin Mary, that’s my senile Ouma roaming around!!!

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Why the Apple iPhone will fail miserably in Africa (and maybe elsewhere too!)

Here’s my latest on MyDigitalLife Blog: A look at the iPhone in Africa.

Update: Reposting it here for archive purposes.

Apple are lining up for an end of June launch of the much touted and discussed Apple iPhone. I don’t believe it will be a success in Africa. Here’s why:

It was just yesterday that they announced final details of how third party applications will be integrated into the iPhone without “compromising security”. Their solution: use AJAX in a standard web browser operating on the phone, with a custom phone look-and-feel instead of the “browser feel”. What a cop-out. What they’re really saying is

‘You’re gonna have to be online to use custom applications on the iPhone’.

There’s just one small problem. Online all the time is not possible in Africa!!.

For starters the coverage generally sucks. I have just returned from Mozambique where I couldn’t even roam on my own home provider’s network (MTN), despite all the necessary roaming activations being in place. Strangely enough I could roam on an opposition network!

With cellular data the price is also prohibitive. In order to get the cheapest data rates you need to spend over R1000 ($125) a month and you pay R0.20 ($0.02) per megabyte. (P.S. Steve Jobs – some people only earn R1000 a month) That’s the absolute cheapest for the highest end users. It may not seem like much but the cost will add up very quickly when you’re checking contact details, updating your todo list or schedule, sending and receiving email, checking google maps, or using the “killer-app” Youtube integration. So cellular is not really a viable option for connectivity.

What’s more, the iPhone does not have 3G. So you have to access your custom phone apps off the internet using a slow-ass GPRS/EDGE solution. Apple of course will claim that you can use the WiFi capability instead of EDGE, but the general lack of public WiFi access points means you’ll end up checking your mail or updating your schedule once a week while travelling – if you’re lucky.

In another strange move, the iPhone only has a 2 Megapixel camera. What good is that? When we send pictures of our starving children to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation we need really high resolution pictures. Oh, perhaps it’s to save on that scarce African bandwidth.

How should Apple fix this? Simple. It should be an open platform that is customisable with third party apps able to run and store data on the phone. 3G is a must – this is 2007 for heaven’s sake! A 5 megapixel camera is possible. Keep the cool browser and the WiFi and add a GPS – Africa’s an easy place to get lost. Oh wait, I’ve almost completely described the Nokia N95!

All in all the iPhone is a pretty rubbish, expensive deal for anyone in Africa with its price tag of around R8000. It’s below industry spec, short on features and really not what one would expect from Apple.

It’s only coming to South Africa at the end of November so we won’t hold our breath waiting, that’s for sure.

Technorati Tags: mydigitallife, blog, iphone, africa, apple, stevejobs, failure

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Four To Go

Following on from my previous, rather emo post, I’m happy to say it’s now just four days to go until I get my next fix!

Yay!

Yes, you have no effing clue what I’m talking about…