Seabird

A few photos taken around a little coastal town called Seabird:

 

In 1656, 4 years after the first Dutch settlers landed in the Cape of Good Hope at the Southern tip of Africa, the Dutch East India company shipwrecked a ship called the Vergulde Draeck on the coast of Western Australia.

At the time the closest settlements were in a place called Batavia, which today is known as Jakarta, and which was a Dutch colony at the time.  Some of the survivors were successfully sent to Batavia in a small boat, but subsequent search parties never found the remaining seamen.  An interesting story.

Photos taken on the way back to Perth:

The road to Lancelin:

 

Memorial Day

When this happened last year, I still had too many other weird and wonderful things to write about, and I didn’t mention it on my blog.  But this year it happened again, and I had to write something about it.

Today was Memorial Day in Australia.  It’s not a public holiday, but it is honoured throughout the nation.  At just a little before 11h00, an announcement came over the loudspeaker system at work, which informed us that the Last Post will be played over the system at 11h00, and then there would be a minute of silence.

This tradition started after the First World War, and has been honoured in Australia every year since.

While the trumpet was playing the Last Post, it brought back some very real memories.  I immediately pictured scenes of wounded soldiers being brought in on stretchers at Ondangwa Air Force Base, after being wounded in contact with Swapo terrorists in Northern Namibia. 

This was early in 1989, a few months before the war finally ended.  I was lucky enough never to be in a combat situation myself, but I did see my fellow countrymen heavily wounded, being loaded into aeroplanes to be taken away for medical treatment.  Hearing that song immediately brought that scene back into my mind, without me even trying to do so.

Another scene that unfolded in my mind was one of a military funeral in Okahandja, in central Namibia.  Although I didn’t personally know the soldier who died, I was part of the Osona Prestige platoon.  This was during my first year of training in the SWATF (South West African Territorial Forces), and we were there to march in honour of one of our fallen countrymen. 

I will never forget the atmosphere outside the church when his family and friends came out of the building carrying the casket of this brave young man - a man who would have been in his forties if he was still alive today.  He gave his life to defend our country against murderous animals who would stop at nothing to take over control.  Those same terrorists today attempt to govern the country with such wide-spread corruption and incompetence that it staggers the imagination.

Hearing this sad trumpet tune reminded of things that will never be forgotten.  About people who died for their country, even though that same country now spits on their graves and their medals.

May this great country, Australia, never forget it’s history and the people who fought to defend it.  May they keep on remembering and honouring those who paid the highest price. 

It is a high price, indeed.

Fakebook

I had a very nice chat with one of my hundreds of friends on Facebook yesterday.  She initiated the chat, and something was different, but I couldn’t figure out what nagged at me until much later.

After a few sentences she started telling me how bad things were.  I couldn’t quite understand what was going on, because she and her family moved to Perth from South Africa a few years ago, and they were quite happy as far as I know.

So she went on and told me someone robbed her in a violent attack in a park in Kentish town.  I had no idea where Kentish town was, as I’ve never even heard of a park like that in Perth.
So I asked her where this park was.  London, she says.  So I ask her what the hell she’s doing in London?
She responded:

i went there to visit a resort
it was a brutal experience, all cash i had on me were stolen and my credit card was collected too

By now I already realised that something was not adding up.  See, this friend is Afrikaans and she would not have told me a hair-raising story like this in English.  And I seemed to remember that she was in Fremantle as recently as Sunday – it was actually still on her profile statement on Facebook.

So I responded in Afrikaans, which is her first language.  She actually responded correctly to the question, but answered me in English, which did not make sense.  She also added that her husband was with her – why would she then contact me for help, if her husband was sitting next to her and she did not mention any of his credit cards also getting stolen? 

In the meanwhile I got hold of her phone number and gave her a ring.  Yep, she’s in Perth all right - happy as can be, with no idea that someone else was busy scamming money off people on her behalf.

Imagine you would be stupid enough to help someone financially, only to find out that they’re actually not even in London, and that your money is long gone?  I wonder how many idiots fall for these scams?

So - be warned, if your “friend” contacts you on Facebook and asks for money, make sure it’s really your friend.  If it really is one of your real-life friends, chances are they wouldn’t corner you on Facebook for a few bucks.  (Not my friends, anyway.) 

And remember to change your password regularly so that you don’t end up with ex-friends beating you up about money that you supposedly owe them…

Weird science

Sometimes I really wonder how science (or scientists, rather?) actually achieved anything during the last two centuries. How did we end up in a world where technology dictates and regulates everything, considering that some of the world’s top scientists are loonies?

Thank God for engineers – those amazing people who abuse science for practical purposes. Otherwise we would all be sitting in our mud huts dreaming of floating cities and flying saucers, and lusting for hairy green women from some fictional planet, while eating raw meat that we killed with a rock.

One can only wonder how some people legally obtain their doctor’s degrees? It must be the same type of doctor’s degree that Robert Mugabe and Sam Nujoma worked so hard for. (Not doctor, but “doktah”…)

This clown says that “nature” defies the laws of nature and moves backward in time so that it can stop the Hadron Collider experiment from occurring.

This opens up a massive can of worms. (Or should that be “worm-holes”?)

After Obama won a Nobel peace prize for upscaling the war in Afghanistan and making good speeches, this guy probably realised that he would really have to go off the deep end if he wanted to win the Nobel Science prize. What better option than to advocate goofy science fiction? I’m sure the old boys in Norway are already feverishly comparing notes about their next candidate for the Nobrain Science prize.

They’ve got it all in this conspiracy – time travel, Armageddon, awesome catastrophes, a 27km tunnel and great sci-fi words like “Higgs particles”, “paradox”,”particle accelerator” and of course the ever-lurking menace that is called the “opening of black holes”.

One can only imagine what all these things could mean when they’re thrown together in a pot and mixed together in an 11.2 billion dollar machine that also boasts it’s own al-Quaeda spy.

Some of today's scientists sound a lot like the old druids and wizards, mixing a little bit of factual science with a lot of fairy tales and magic.

What is this universe coming to?

Apparently time travelling is not as far-fetched as some of us common folk would believe. Even back in 1943 the US army was able to travel back in time for 10 seconds, and they also teleported a ship 120 miles away.

This has, of course, all been filed under the Philadelphia experiment conspiracy theory archives, along with great stories from Area 51 and the fake Moon landing.

Oh, and then there is the digital television conspiracy. Apparently, “the mandatory switch to digital television is a smokescreen for a Big Brother society because of cameras built-in to set top boxes.”

Yikes, at least I can leave the kids alone at home, because the government will be looking after them while I’m gone. Shopping is going to get much easier from now on.

Maybe I should do some forward time travelling and see if this whole Global Warming thing is true…

“For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”…

So much for following the rules

I previously mentioned how I had to struggle to convert my Namibian drivers licence.

Now I see there’s a much easier way.

Just tell the magistrate that you’re from Africa, and have no idea how to catch a bus, and whalla – you’ll get issued with a special licence!

Things like this really irritate me.  I had to go through hell to convert a perfectly legitimate licence, even though I’ve never even had as much as a parking fine in WA.

This guy drives under the influence, wrecks a car, assaults a police officer (which, by the way, just the other day was made punishable by going straight to jail, directly to jail, don’t pass Go, don’t collect $200?), but he gets this rap on the fingers and the “poor old sports hero” treatment.

This sucks.  I think I should get some legal advice – I’m sure there is grounds for discrimination in all of this.  I mean, if they really believe the Hey-Hey show to be repulsively racist, this must be ranked close to genocide on a mass scale.

Nature calling?

I am one of those weird people who just absolutely hate telephones.  I hate ringing up people, and I hate answering a phone.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a landline or a mobile – I don’t wanna talk.  My wife says talking to me on the phone is like talking to a rock. 

I’ll send off thousands of emails to anyone who is not interested.  If you email me, you will get a response.  What I hate, is when people don’t respond to my emails.  That’s just plain rude.

But try ringing me, and chances are good I won’t even answer.  I do like mobile phones because they can tell me who's calling – now I know for certain that I don’t want to pick up the phone.  I just love that “silence” button – or better yet, the red one.

But some people are the exact opposite.  Some really go off the deep end with the way they abuse the privilege of being able to use Alexander Graham Bell’s invention to it’s full extent.

The other day at work, I was busy washing my hands in the men’s room.  I heard this guy’s phone ringing inside his “cubicle”.  He actually answered it in there.  He started yapping away, like he was sitting on his couch at home or something.  And then, believe it or not, I heard him flushing the toilet – still talking happily while he was doing it, of course. 

It got worse.

He exited his cubicle, and went on to wash his hands – still yapping away without a care in the world.  He moved along to the paper towel dispenser, and somehow managed to dry off his hands while discussing some serious topic.

He finally walked out of the men’s room – still yapping.

Now this is totally uncool.  In the first place, how the hell can we be sure he really washed his hands decently?  Yuck, I don’t even want to think about it. 

I hate germs and anything unhygienic.  These blokes who just fire up their barbies with last week’s fat and oil still lying there give me the creeps.  I saw one bloke who had a garden snail on his barbie – this thing walked all over the barbeque and left a nice shiny trail all over the grill.  This bloke took his BBQ thong, grabbed hold of Mr. Snail, and chucked the old squirming snail into the bin.

He then grabbed a piece of meat and a few sausages, threw them onto the barbie, and with that same snail-removal thong he continued to turn around his meat and sausages.

Needless to say I wasn’t very hungry.

If my phone rings in the WC, you won’t find me answering it.  I know where the red button is.

“I only know revolution, …”

I promised not to use this blog to highlight the baboonistic regime in Southern Africa, but I just can’t keep my big mouth shut.

My readers from southern Africa will know what this is about, but to help those other readers, who are mainly Australians, here’s a little background to explain some of the reasons why I left that swine-infested cess-pool and decided to move my whole family to another continent and adopt a new culture.

This bloke, called Julius, is president of the ANC Youth league in South Africa. This nut does not even fill an official government position, he is just the president of the youth league of a political party. But don’t underestimate the power someone in this position has – it’s similar to the power the political officers had in Soviet Russia.

This guy is well-known for his revolutionary outlook and his hate-filled statements:

“Let me tell you my friend, I have defeated you and your apartheid regime and I'm going to defeat you again, once and for all!"

“All of you combined, you can't do anything. You are wasting your time."

“I am a child of heroes and heroines of the struggle. I am not a child of cowards and oppressors. I am not a child of an imperialist. I have defeated colonisers. I am going to defeat the children of colonisers.”

"Let us make it clear now: we are prepared to die for Zuma. Not only that, we are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma."

This bloke was born in 1981. When he was 13 years old (in 1994) South Africa was turned into a “peaceful democratic rainbow-nation”, and apartheid was abolished. When did he fight the apartheid regime, I wonder?

This dunce finished high school at the formidable age of 21, and received marks that would make even the dumbest kid in Australia look like a genius.

According to Wikipedia, “Malema told students at Walter Sisulu University, in East London, that his role in making controversial statements was that of a decoy, to “distract” the opposition while Zuma “sprinted to the Union Buildings” “

Apparently Julius is very famous throughout the world, and has even received a phone call from Barack Obama. (Hint: it’s worth listening to this one!)

Here is his TV debut:

Although it’s really great to make fun of this guy, it still is an extremely dangerous guy to make jokes of. It’s like making fun of Hitler while the gas chambers were running on full speed.

Old Julius likes to break the law and drive as fast as he can, whilst endangering other people’s lives and property. (I am not too concerned about his life, for some strange reason…)

Like a real banana republic dictator he refuses to pay his speeding fines. Like most of the “revolutionary” figures in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, he is above the law and the cops are too afraid to prosecute him for his criminal behaviour. His response to an enquiry about his speeding fines?

“I only know revolution, I don't know anything about driving.”

With people like this leading the youth of the South African masses, you can only expect the worst. It is clear that the Marxist soviet education that many of the so-called ANC heroes received during the eighties, is still alive in the hearts of these wannabe revolutionaries.

With communist-inspired comments like these, you can only but wonder when this revolution is going to take place, and against whom it will be implemented.

By the way - was South Africa not already “freed” by Mandela more than a decade ago?