Miners, Mercenaries and Millionaires

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...

Cape Town, 14 April 2020. Hello World Day 19 and under the original schedule we would be coming to the end of the lockdown. However, government has decided, quite rightly, to extend the lockdown for a further two weeks taking us to the end of April. Of course this could be extended even further but indicators are that the lockdown has contributed to a levelling off of new cases. Figures last evening showed 27 deaths and around 2200 known cases. My second venture to the shops was a rather long and drawn out affair. At least I was able to stock up for at least another week. The car needed a bit of a run too so I drove around our neighbourhood en-route keeping one eye out for the police. I doubt they would accept my protestations of getting lost on the way to the shops! Fandom continues to write and contribute to various forums. I am working on some forex stuff with GlobalWebPay. If you are reading this and need to transfer funds from the UK check out my partner link http...

Cape Town, 2 April 2020. Hello World Can you believe it’s been nearly a week since we went into lockdown? Overall I think the government and general populace have done a remarkable job. Obviously there have been the problems with queueing for social grants but this was always going to be an issue. The effects of the lockdown seem to be showing in the stats too and over the past few days the number of new cases has risen only a bit to around 1380. South Africa’s COVID-19 related deaths currently stand at 5. Markets remain volatile and the South African Rand continues to take a pounding (pardon the pun) with one British Pound buying 22 South African Rand. Of course if anyone needs to transfer funds from the UK to anywhere in the world do give me a shout as I should be able to get you a very good deal on your forex transfer. Yesterday I left the house for the first time and ventured down to the shops to stock up on supplies. There was a queue outside Checkers but this mov...

A few weeks ago we attended a school carnival. Driving into the designated car park, an uneven and pot holed sports field, I noticed a brand new Porsche parked in a rather unusual spot near the entrance. It was surrounded by orange cones. I immediately recognised that this car belonged to Sinead, a friend of mine who along with her husband owns the recruitment agency Parvana. The Porsche’s Parvana branded number plate was a dead give-away. But why was the car parked there? Well it turns out that the security personnel who were directing cars realised that the low profiled Porsche would not make it more than a few metres into the parking area. So they directed Sinead into this spot and sealed off the area with cones. We all find it very funny and suggested to Sinead that she was doing this as a means of marketing. I decided to make a cartoon of this and sent it to Sinead. That cartoon can be seen below.

Cape Town, 29 March 2020. Hello World All quiet on the Cape Town Front. Almost eerily so. Fandom and I haven’t left the house since lockdown though I plan to take a trip out to the shops on Monday to stock up on supplies. We pulled out the swingball yesterday and had a lot of fun. The windows are coming along too. A bit more sanding today and I should be able to apply the first coat to the side windows and door. I see ratings agency Moody’s downgraded South Africa to junk status late on Friday. This was not unexpected though the timing could not be worse and it will hamper any economic recovery we may have been expecting post COVID-19. Speaking of COVID-19, US death toll is now over 100,000 and Spain had something like 824 deaths in 24 hours. Stay safe.

Cape Town, 28 March 2020. Hello World Day 2 of lockdown and a long way to go. Yesterday we managed to keep ourselves fairly busy. In between the Nerf gun battles – Fandom cheated and stole all the bullets – we were engaged in a number of activities. I used the time to start sanding down some of my windows in preparation for a few coats of Woodoc. Fandom focussed his attention on reformatting Chronicles of Christmas into a paperback format. After lunch and a bit of exercise we beta tested a website on behalf of a friend of mine in the UK. That work will continue today along with more sanding (sigh!). We finished things off by making silly podcast recordings of Emma and Tracy, our female alter egos. News on the COVID-19 side was not good. By lunch time it was confirmed that South Africa had suffered its first COVID-19 related death - a woman from Cape Town. And more bad news, the number of reported cases had risen to just over 1100. There was a steady increase in cases over...