Category Archives: Business

Woolworths – good yet disappointing

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Woolworths have seriously got some good coffee, but they are an utter disappointment, when it comes to operating hours.

Amelia and I decided to go and get some coffee from Woolworths Cafe at the Garden Route Mall, quite some time before closing, but the Cafe was already “Closed” pretty lame when the rest of Woolworths is still open.

Considering we were unable to tame our desire for a good cup of Woolworths Coffee Goodness, we decided to try and find some of our favourite Tiramisu. After searching the entire refrigerated section for the good stuff we gave up and decided to ask for help. We were disappointed to find out that Woolworths have discontinued the best pre-packaged Tiramisu that we have found thus far.

Such a lot of good and such a lot of disappointment all in one visit. Woolworths, please make us happy and extend your Cafe hours and bring back the Tiramisu.

A long day in Gauteng

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I got an early start to the day and dropped Pieter at the airport. I then decided to park and head into the airport in search of some good coffee, from Woolworths.

After calming my craving, I hit the road off to centurion, for a short meeting with Marius from Balance Your Debt.

I then began my way towards the head office of the Banking Association of South Africa(BASA), where we were to have a meeting with some of the major banks and credit providers in the country. We had quite a productive session and made quite a few decisions, relating to standardisation within the Debt Review sector.

After the meeting with BASA, we decided to have a short Credit Technology Association(CTA) meeting.

Then for the long drive home in some serious traffic. You never truly understand, what is meant by peak traffic until you sit in it yourself.

I honestly believe that Gauteng people have been gifted with a surprisingly large amount of patience, if they didn’t have it, I am sure there would be far more reports of road rage. The traffic seriously moves at snails pace and a distance that would take you ten minutes to cover during the middle of the day, easily takes up to an hour to cover in peak traffic.

I hope that the Gautrain has the positive impact that it was intended to have as this could not only reduce traffic and frustration, but also reduce the amount of unnecessary fuel consumption during peak hours.

Office 2010

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First Windows 7 and now Office 2010!

Microsoft has really come to the party with a higher performance and truly worthwhile business productivity suite.

For quite some time now, I have not been using MS office at all and have been an advocate for Open Office and all things open source, but I have recently grown closer to my proprietary roots and have developed much appreciation for the work and effort that goes into bringing out products like Office 2010.

The new version of the well know business productivity suite, is simply impressive. Office 2010, loads faster, can handle more diverse file types and offers a host of functions and embedded applications, for tasks that one would previously need to perform in external programs.

I have still not managed to pull myself away from using Gmail as my mail management system and I can’t see myself moving back to Outlook anytime soon, unless Gmail and Exchange can communicate with each other directly. Gmail simply offers me the flexibility and scalability I need to manage multiple profiles and access my info instantly from multiple locations on the go.

For business use and from a corporate perspective, I think the new MS Outlook is definitely becoming a player and integrated with MS Exchange 2010, it makes for efficient management of internal work flow and cost effective email.

I am looking forward to playing around with the latest versions of Project and Visio as planning and monitoring seems to take up most of my time these days.

All in all, the new Office 2010, is most definitely worth the spend.

The Airport

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We flew up to Gauteng for a meeting that lasted about two hours.

Considering our meeting ended early and we were catching a lift to the airport, we decided to go to the airport early, that way ensuring we won’t get stuck in traffic.

We had some fish and chips and the Keg and Aviator which was pretty good. Herman also spotted Sekoati Tsubane (Kabelo Padi) from 7de Laan. We then headed down to the security check point which was busy as hell. The staff were also hasty as could be and practically threw us through the checkpoint.

After gathering my things together and getting comfortable again, I noticed I had dropped my ticket, fortunately for me it was on the floor underneath the check point.

The wait had only just begun and we heard our plane was going to be about 40min late. I looked for a decent coffee shop but only found the wimpy. Herman, who sits through hours of 7de Laan also spotted Hennie Jacobs(Diederik Greyling) and Christo Davids(Errol Pieterse) who ended up sitting right behind us on our flight to George. He also spotted Nico Panagio (George Kyriakis) who is now presenting on Top Billing. It seems that OR Tambo is the place to be if you want to spot SA Celebs. Now craving a good cuppa, little did I know that I would find I Vida E Cafe on the way to the plane, now why weren’t they placed closer to each other… Well at least I know for next time.

The trip into George felt faster than the trip to Johannesburg, but got really noisy on descent, with a few children screaming, probably due to the change in cabin pressure on their ears.

We landed just around 20:00 after getting to the airport well before 15:00, we truly spent most of our trip at the airport.

Trip to Midrand

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I haven’t been in a plane for quite some time, so the take off had me a little nervous, but before we were even all the way off the ground I was staring out of the window.

What an awesome view, we live in a beautiful country.

The flight from George to Johannesburg was pleasant and when coming in for our landing we caught site of the new soccer stadium, it was already dark and the stadium lights were on. What an awesome sight. I am not particularly excited or enthusiastic about the soccer or sport in general but the view of the stadium from the air definitely gives one the sense of awe.

Herman, Konstant, Eugene and I had supper and Rhapsody in Pretoria, the steak and conversation were great, even though business didn’t leave the table for long.

It would be great to travel without needing to deal with business, or at least being able to bring Amelia with me.