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Habibti dragged me off to the “Fanwalk for Peace and Unity on Mandela Day Sunday 18th July 2010” and in typical Cape Town shoowa style it took forever to get started. This was actually very cool as it allowed us to meet up with some great friends and family before things got moving. Personal highlight was the Caramel Popcorn that I got from one of the stands, the fact that half the Cape Town police force rocked up to escort a few hundred people and the singing of our national anthem at the end. The only down side was the fucken vuvuzlias that pfaaaaped next to me head.

What I find amazing about the whole things was that it started off as a Tweet from Charly’s Bakery and grew from there. People took it up and expanded the idea to Facebook, blog posts and news articles. Much as I hate the whole social media thing, this just underlines the power and potential.

Walking for Peace with Habibti, the Noodles (3/4 of them in the above photo), Brother-In-Law, my NBF and her mom was worth the wait and a great way to spend a Sunday in Cape Town.

I’ll be upfront and say that I’m not attending any live matches of the Soccer World Cup. Reasons are:

• Cost – I can’t afford it.
• Apathy – I really left things way too late.
• Crowds – I just don’t do them.
• Noise – Vuvuzela (need I say more?)
• I’m just not that in to her – even though she is the beautiful game.
• Italy – If I want to watch people fall down dramatically I’d watch TheatreSports

With Habibti’s involvement with the Fan Park I admit that I’ve become a lot more active in reading most of the news articles, blog posts and Twitter feeds on the subject and as a result I feel some regret now. Maybe one match would have been fun to go and watch. We’ve done our bit to buy in by decorating our house with flags and little balls. Habibti has flags on her car, to the point where we feel guilty going out sans flags. We’ve watched some of the warm up matches on TV and started short listing our “other teams” should Bafana get knocked out.

But the more I read about the bungling FIFA the more I’m starting to believe that they are doing everything possible to make this a failure come what may. Now I read that “FIFA deceives hundreds of fans” and last week it was FIFA blocking access to condoms and HIV education materials at World Cup stadiums and fan parks. We all know that there are two reasons why the Arian fans are happy about the World Cup taking place in South Africa:

• Soccer
• ? (Hint – It’s not babotie)

South Africa is the HIV/Aids capital of the world!!

We’ve just found out that the World Cup is coming to good old SA, so we went out and got some paraphernalia for 14 Duke street. We’re proudly South African!

So we are into the Teens. What can I say that hasn’t been said about the last decade? Not much, so I’m not going to wax lyrical about how much better things will be this year and decade, it will be what it will be.

We managed to get to Camps Bay before 7 this morning which was great. Dogs had a blast, as you can see.

All I can say is, life is tough here in Africa but if you don’t sweat the small stuff then everything comes up roses.