Miners, Mercenaries and Millionaires

The last year has been a crazy time for everyone. Much of it was spent readjusting and coming up with new ways of doing things. And then my son reminded me that I hadn't touched my blog for ages. Added to that I still had several images to upload for Melkkamer: A Pictorial History. So today I'm back on blogger. To be fair my writing hasn't been dormant and there is another book in the workings. More to follow on that in the future ...

The working world has been forced to change the way we operate as a direct result of COVID-19. Significantly the various enforced lockdowns have led to a realisation that certain jobs can be performed remotely, given access to appropriate tools and information. The same could be said for genealogical research. Over the years researchers in the genealogy space have benefited massively from various digitisation projects which have made documentation, previously only accessible in a physical archive building, available at the click of a mouse. Not only has this process provided greater access to a global audience but it has also ensured the preservation of archived material. Here one immediately thinks of the fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin in 1922 which destroyed numerous valuable records. The digitisation projects are mammoth and costly, with full digitisation a long way off. But the temporary closure of libraries and archives as a direct result of COVID-19 has shown tha

I’m also doing some work with GlobalWebPay a London based international money transfer company. GlobalWebPay have been responsible for transferring funds from the UK on behalf of individual and business clients f or the past ten years . They currently execute transfers to over 200 countries worldwide and offer highly competitive exchange rates . Transfers range from small payments for friends and family to large business payments such as funds for payroll and payments for services rendered abroad. Feel free to share the attached information with anyone who may need to make an international money transfer from the UK and who could benefit from such a service. Register with GlobalWebPay through my affiliate link (see below) and get your first transfer FREE .  GlobalWebPay rated EXCELLENT on Trustpilot.

I recently finished a writing job for a client through my excela WRITER business. So, if you are looking for help with documentation and presentation creation as well as content writing feel free to message me. All work can be done remotely. EMAIL : excelaWRITER@gmail.com Here's what a client had to say about  excela WRITER : " Stephen assisted my Company with the formatting and compilation of various high level documentation. The service was very professional, timeous and well executed. I will definitely make use of his services again. " Megan Britz, Employment Law Attorney Thanks to Darth Fandom for making the ad.

Just prior to the COVID-19 lockdown I completed the hardcover edition of my book Melkkamer: A Pictorial History for the De Hoop Collection . Copies of these will be placed in some of the accommodation at De Hoop Nature Reserve. While we wait for De Hoop to fully reopen for guests I thought it would be nice to make available digital copies of the pages from my book. My plan is to post four pages every Monday for the next 11 weeks. Feel free to download the pages, comment and subscribe. Read on for a bit about Melkkamer. Melkkamer was once a 7472 hectare farm situated on the western shore of Grootvlei, just opposite the De Hoop Nature Reserve, Cape, South Africa. In its heyday it was referred to as a ‘fine sporting estate’ with buildings that were ‘substantial and a credit to any part of South Africa’. Those buildings were built by an ancestor of mine, John Henry ‘Biddy’ Anderson. Over the years as farming activities declined the farm became a wonderful place for us to enjoy the mo

STEPHEN D’ALTON excelaWRITER@gmail.com There’s no denying it, I am a massive fan of James Bond. From Ian Fleming’s ‘Spy story to end all spy stories’ through to the present day Bond films. I love them all. So much so, that when our son was born we named him Timothy after actor and fourth Bond Timothy Dalton. Bond is of course no stranger to Russia. For many years he traded blows with numerous agents of KGB and SMERSH (‘Death to Spies’). In the 1995 film Goldeneye Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond meets the aptly named Georgian assassin Xenia Onatopp. She asks him if he’s ever been to Russia to which Bond replies quite casually “Not recently. I used to drop in occasionally. Shoot in and out.” Xenia in response assures Bond that Russia has changed and is now a land of opportunity. And so it was for us at Subex, and our efforts to expand our customer base in the East. An opportunity came up to perform a software trial for a state run Telco in Moscow. With projects like these it’s crucial that p

COVID-19. We hear about it all the time. It’s part of our everyday lives. A lived experience. You would be hard pressed to find anyone on this planet who hasn’t heard of COVID-19. And yet the opposite is true of its predecessor Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). According to the World Health Organisation SARS Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is a ‘virus identified in 2003. SARS-CoV is thought to be an animal virus from an as-yet-uncertain animal reservoir, perhaps bats, that spread to other animals (civet cats) and first infected humans in the Guangdong province of southern China in 2002.’ 1 Sound familiar? Although the first cases of SARS-CoV occurred in November 2002 it was only officially recognised at the end of February 2003. ‘At the time, the Chinese government was criticized for responding slowly to the outbreak and concealing the seriousness of the illness.’ 2 It took several months before they ‘started sharing information with the World Health Organization (WHO).’ 3 The Guardi