Paul Jacobson

I had a good laugh when I read this post by the guys at Google titled “Polar expression” written in response to a concerned citizen out there who felt that the doodles that were done for the festive season were inaccurate mainly because they portrayed polar bears doing stuff with hose pipes and snowballs. This whole holiday doodle thing is apparently really serious business and not a time to start confusing what bears can and can not do. Certainly wouldn’t want to mislead the browsing public into believing that a polar bear knows -

how to roll blobs of snow in almost perfect spheres. I mean, wouldn’t this require a few thousand years of mental evolution, not to mention the concept of throwing objects and the idea of guessing how much power to put behind their throw in order for the snowball to land in an acceptable radius of the target…

That is absurd, as all nature lovers know! Just the same, I am glad there are people out there who take this stuff so seriously. Were it not for them, the rest of us wouldn’t know to be lighthearted about Life. Here’s to politically correct polar bear doodles, and all that!

It is like a new day here. Just an hour or so after the sky was black and it was pouring, the sun is out and the sky is blue with hardly a patch of cloud to be seen from my office window. We may as well be at the coast. Gotta love this town and its weather.

So anyway, I am heading off to test drive the newish Apple G5 over lunch. The whole thing is a promotion of the G5 and is coupled with an opportunity to win a Special Edition U2 iPod and that, of course, is the main attraction for me. The fact that I get to fool around with a G5 is a bonus for me. I’ll use this as the opportunity to have a good look at the Apple OS. I would love to own a PowerBook one day and be able to work off that in coffee shops and stuff. Updates will follow, I am sure!

Ok, this is a little experiment given that I have now been denied access to the Blogger site at the office. The problem seems to be that there are way too many people accessing the site and the bandwidth cost is a bit too much. Those of you who are from far off lands probably won’t know that broadband hasn’t really arrived here. We have ADSL and ISDN connections available to the average Joe but they are generally too expensive to be an addition in every home. On average an ADSL line (384KB/sec and up) will cost around $100 once you take into account line rental and other monthly charges. Even then, there is a 3GB usage cap for the ‘cheaper’ lines. If you don’t want the cap on your usage then you pay way more (I stand to be corrected but it is in the region of $140 or so). The point is that I don’t think my office is using much more than a 128KB/sec or 256KB/sec line and that is shared by all who are here so when there are a few people going online to surf graphics intensive sites, there goes the available bandwidth for business stuff.

It has just rained here. Bit unusual in the morning. On the way to the office part of the sky was clear and the other part was overcast. I thought the rain would head the other direction but we just had a downpour here of note. The rain was going sideways, both ways!

IOL has reported on a series of frightful experiences by local residents in Verulam, outside Durban in the province of KwaZulu Natal. Pretty freaky stuff going on down there:

Highway Sheila shifts her haunt

By Yogas Nair

The infamous Highway Sheila has hitched a lift to Verulam under disguise. Myth or fact? I don’t know, but according to several locals “the woman in black” has been seen doing her rounds in the area on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast over the past few days.

A still terrified Jane Rajpaul, 42, of Buffelsdraai Road, Redcliffe, said she encountered Sheila (hereinafter referred to as Redcliffe Sheila for purposes of identification) on two consecutive nights and has since been having sleepless nights.

Said housewife Rajpaul: “I was returning home just before midnight last Tuesday after fetching my son from work from Gateway (shopping centre) when I spotted a grey car parked outside a shop at the entrance of Redcliffe.

The back doors were open and I saw a woman sitting outside the car, in front of the boot.”

‘Her hair was long and wild and it covered her face’

The woman was dressed in a black top and from her waist down there was just a “white glare”.

“Her hair was long and wild and it covered her face. I felt a cold shiver run down my spine and I sped off in fear that she might show her face.”

Rajpaul claimed that the following day she saw “Sheila” again in exactly the same position at the same time, while returning home after fetching her son. She was again terrified.

“I now use an alternative route because I fear seeing her again.”

She said “Sheila” was the talk of the town and word was that she had come to Verulam after “hitching a lift with a man from Chatsworth”.

‘Sheila was the talk of the town and word was that she had come to Verulam after hitching a lift’

An adamant Rajpaul said she believed in ghosts and was sure “Sheila” was a reality and not a figment of her imagination.

She said a friend, who had also encountered “Redcliffe Sheila” at night, described her as having “wild eyes and huge teeth”.

Another Redcliffe resident, Nirasha Gurwoo, 23, claimed she had also met the “spooky” lady.

Said Gurwoo: “She has untidy, had long hair and appears to be naked from her waist down. I saw her last week at about midnight, at the same spot, next to a grey car, while returning home with my family. She was dressed in black with white from the waist down. I, and others in our car, became terribly scared and drove off. I have been unable to sleep since then,” added Gurwoo, who now carries a knife for protection from evil.

Ever since Post reported on the claimed sighting of Highway Sheila in Chatsworth two weeks ago, the newspaper has been inundated with calls from people who claim to have also encountered her.

…

To read on, read the full article on IOL.