Big is not always better, but I think when it comes to cruise liners it most probably is. The bigger the boat, the more amenities they have and, in doing research, I have certainly been told by one of the major lines, that that is the policy to follow when taking children with you.

The bigger boats will have more for the children to do and these days, on massive ships, such as the Oasis of the Seas, that would include wave riders, ice rinks, basket ball courts, etc, in addition to all of the usual gyms, swimming pools, theatres, etc. The Oasis of the Seas is so large that it can only visit countries that have ports set up for it, and that is largely the Caribbean. Child friendly it might be, but the 24 or so hours journey time to the Caribbean would certainly not be child friendly!
 

Golf is a gentleman’s game and as a result it has very strict rules. This past week, Jim Furyk who was coming third in the FedEx Cup, and who wants to maintain his position in the top 5, so that he stands a chance to win the $10 million bonus, was eliminated from a tournament before it began – because he missed the warm-up, more social pro-am where professionals play with amateurs on the Wednesday. The PGA rules provide that if you miss a pro-am, you cannot play in the tournament and because he woke up late, he was disqualified from the entire event. It could end up having very severe financial consequences for him!

Golf is a game that you cannot possibly try to play well, if you are not feeling good about life and arrive at the course in a calm and relaxed state. For all of those people who have written off Tiger Woods, they will no doubt be in for a surprise when as time moves along, and the divorce and all the drama fades, he is able to relax and to calm himself more and turn into the player he once was.

There are many sports where anger and aggression might suit you well, but a sport that takes 5 hours to complete a round, and is filled with strategy, and is as much mental as it is physical, does not allow at home. The professionals always stress long before Tiger’s dramas began that his strength was that in the mental aspects of the game he was a league above everybody else. Now, too many people are writing him off and not remembering what it would be like to have gone through the year that he has had, and now a divorce.
 

The best-selling author of “Hot Commodities” as well as “Adventure Capitalist” has a new book called “A Gift to My Children – A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing”. Jim who now lives in Singapore, also has a daughter studying Mandarin, and such is his confidence in the fact that the 21st Century belongs to China. There is a lot of investment advice in the book but also practical advice such as that girls should not get married until they are at least 28 and they know a bit about themselves and the world. He also tells them that they should be wary of men who look old enough to be their father or grandfather – because such men will not be thinking of them as their daughter or granddaughter!

One that has always appealed to me because I always decline to go to party functions for the office is what he tells them in that respect, “It is vitally important to maintain boundaries between work and life. Skip going out for drinks with the gang after work every night. You will notice that the boss does not do it, which is one reason that he is the boss.”
 

The first step that big corporations take is to replace people with machines. Unfortunately, in trying to save the cost of people, they don’t seem to ever spend any money fixing the parking machines. On a recent visit to Sandton I walked first to one parking machine to pay, and when that did not work, I walked to another machine, which also did not work. It was only when I got to the third machine that I was actually able to pay for the parking. Of course, Nelson Mandela Square and Sandton City don’t have much competition, which is why they can get away with leaving the same parking machines in a state of disrepair, and people will still return there.

I guess that one of the problems of living in a smaller country is that there is not that much competition, and in many respects we are forced to put up with unacceptable service.
 

Speedtest.net is quite a useful site and I enjoy testing the speed of my Internet provider. I use the services of both MWeb and Telkom and recently the Telkom lines have certainly been very spotty.
Some of the download speeds I get, and this is on a computer that is not being shared with anybody else, have been very low and on www.speedtest.net , I have discovered for example that my speed has been running as low as 0,4 mbps, on what is meant to be a 4 mbps line! In other words, I am running at 10% of the full speed!

It is no wonder that one reads articles that the wealthy are seeking out the Dalmation Coast in Croatia. It is very much similar to Cape Town, in terms of its beauty, only prettier and with the warm Adriatic sea in which you can actually swim!

The water is a beautiful temperature and the town of Dubrovnik is bustling in summer, filled with energy, young confident people and overall it has a sexy vibe of summer. Whether or not there is plenty to do over 3 or 4 weeks, is another story, but my one day there certainly left me wanting to go back. Of course, only 15 to 20 years ago they were involved in a civil war fighting largely Serb forces who were raining down bombs on their city. If you walk along the wall of the old town it gives dramatic views and also leaves one thinking about how so many societies undergo dramatic changes and indeed wars.
 

Recently I read a book by Jeff Colbin, who is one of the editors of Fortune magazine, and the book which is titled, “Talent is Overrated”, basically that we need to practice hard. Practice of course is not as simple as that, and it is practice in specific ways to achieve specific goals that really counts. He gives examples of people like Mozart and Tiger Woods, both of whom essentially began practicing the fields in which they would sell, at extremely early ages and in both cases were coached by their fathers who had experience in that regard.

It seems that if pushed in the right direction, and trained properly, all of us can achieve essentially anything – naturally, if we have a desire and the capability to work hard. Of course, any book selling an inspiring message like that is going to do well!

NewsWeek chooses best countries in the world to live in (Pinny this week obviously)

The latest edition of NewsWeek will no doubt create some controversy with its list of the 100 best countries in the world to live in. Finland comes in first and South Africa is at 82 – long behind countries such as – well, even Poland, which is in the mid-20’s. We also lag considerably behind all of the former Soviet countries as well as Russia, etc. The survey takes into consideration, amongst other things, the opportunities for a child growing up in the country, the health sector, the education sector, etc and South Africa was clearly found to be lagging behind these countries in all of these aspects.
 

Over recent weeks Telkom is apparently upgrading the 4 mbps lines to 10 mbps, where the lines and exchanges support that. Obviously, the internet speeds in South Africa are really beginning to lag international standards, so a more than doubling of download speeds is really going to be fantastic, although we will still be uploading at only 1 MB. As most of the companies do get their internet capacity from Telkom in the first place, one assumes that the competitors such as Mweb will also be upgrading their speeds shortly and we will all be surfing the internet at close to two and half times the speed we are now. Once expects, in an age of technology, that speeds would increase on a regular basis, but we have waited for this increase for almost 2 or 3 years now, and one must hope that the next increase will be next year, considering the amount of international cables currently being laid to South Africa.

Whenever I see Venice I am reminded of the fact that it once was essentially the trade capital of the world, and ruled much of the world. It really must have made the most awesome and dramatic appearance for ships, when they sailed through Venice 500 years ago, because even today it is incredibly dramatic and even more so when seeing Venice from a ship – and many ships sail right through the heart of Venice for beginning or ending a cruise.

The latest edition of NewsWeek will no doubt create some controversy with its list of the 100 best countries in the world to live in. Finland comes in first and South Africa is at 82 – long behind countries such as – well, even Poland, which is in the mid-20’s. We also lag considerably behind all of the former Soviet countries as well as Russia, etc. The survey takes into consideration, amongst other things, the opportunities for a child growing up in the country, the health sector, the education sector, etc and South Africa was clearly found to be lagging behind these countries in all of these aspects.

Recently, I have been having non-stop problems with my ADSL modems, both at the office and at home. I am advised that the number to the left of the CRK number that Telkom gives you, indicates where you are in the queue and at my offices I am approximately number 520 and at my house number 322 – which probably explains why I have intermittent, on-and-off Internet, for more than 2 weeks without it being repaired. Essentially those numbers mean that there are major Telkom problems all over Johannesburg at the moment, and their technicians simply cannot get to all the places to fix them. I personally suspect it has something to do with the upgrading of the lines from 4 MBPS to 10 MBPS.