Last time I wrote, I told you the story of John Goodman Household and his remarkable glider flight in 1876, against all odds. In this blog, thought I should share how I came to know Household’s story. A South African film producer asked me if I would write a screenplay on Household becoming arguably the […]
Let me tell you a triumphant and tragic story of John Goodman Household, born in England in the mid-1800s and who travelled to South Africa with his parents as a child. His parents were farmers. They settled in the Karkloof area of the Natal Midlands, some eighty miles from Durban. John had an idyllic childhood, […]
As the Silly Season fast approaches, our thoughts turn to more traditional activities. The mix of ancient pagan rituals and Christian tradition has for many years been the established way of celebrating a few days of family togetherness, and the giving of gifts. In a similar time frame, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah also emphasizes […]
There are so many different areas of life that have changed radically over the decades. One area that I can clearly recall from the 1950s is security. When I returned to Britain after leaving school in South Africa and spending a year in Namibia, I worked my passage on a Swiss cargo ship called the […]
I’ve lived an exciting and often adventurous life but I’m not a person to dwell on the “What ifs” of the past. However, writing these blogs has necessarily taken me down memory lane. In that lane I’ve recovered various moments that I could relate in some ways to the birth and the development of ExoBrain. […]
The most perfect expression of a person with a “one track mind” takes me back to my favorite desert, the Namib. Retired lawyer Louw Schoeman, who was born in Namibia, grew up with an abiding passion for the desert. After running a successful law practice for many years in the nation’s capital, Windhoek, he retired […]
When Alice in Wonderland immortalized the expression, “Down the rabbit hole!” it led to me exploring a fantastic new world of surprises and mysterious happenings. Many years ago, I was commissioned to make a documentary film on Speleology – caving, to the uninitiated. The area around Johannesburg, South Africa, and for some hundreds of miles […]
Talking of rugby…winning a World Cup takes a combination of skills, planning and physical attributes. Witness the World Cup that just finished in Japan. It was enormously successful for the host country’s team, proving their fitness a force to be reckoned with. South Africa’s win over England in the Finals highlighted another vital element of […]
I’m eighteen years old. I stare out from the stoep (porch) of our house overlooking the rolling sands of the Namib Desert, the oldest desert on Earth with the highest sand dunes in the world. As I sit in quiet thought, the scene is starkly beautiful and offers the sense of space and solitude I […]
Not so many years ago, before the Internet, networking was something that was done by a combination of letters, telephone calls and face-to-face communication. Back then, problems centered around who you could talk to and what you had of value to say or offer. Letters were letters, phones were phones and you could exchange real, […]