Story Time, Artists Need Your Help, MBA Scholarship and Show News

Short Story Time with Andrew Verster

BONGANI

Bessie Venter, third wife of Bongani Smit of Spaarwater, Gauteng, says “we girls have decided that enough is enough. I am going to be the mother of his ninth child. It has got to stop.”

“Yes, imagine when they all have to go to school. Where will we get the money?,” Rose Ndlovu, wife two, says.. “I am a house-help and they pay me peanuts.”

“And who knows what he's doing on the side,”Alicia Khumalo, whom he married a year go, says.

Bongani himself refused to be drawn when interviewed by “The Mouthpiece.”

“There is something very animal about him,” Maureen Jacobs, The Mouthpiece reporter said, “He's no fairy.”

“We are taking bets on what the child will be called, Ingrid, Inez, Isabel, Ian, Izak, Ignatius...?”

“Whatever,” Bessie says, “The alphabet stops here.”

Andrew Verster is a world famous artist and writer.

Email  ANDREWVERSTER784@GMAIL.COM

Artists Need Your Help

Umcebo Design is making various large art-works and needs recycled materials.  They are looking for:

1. Empty 2l ice cream containers.
2. Old / dud CD’s.
3. Any leftover wire (any thickness).
4. Second hand cutters, players (any wirework tool).
5. Broken costume jewellery.

If you have any to donate – please contact Robin Opperman or Jackie Sewpersad. Their studio is in Glenwood, opposite the KZNSA Gallery – they would love it if you could pop them by the studio - they are 171 Bulwer Road.

Robin Opperman. Director - Umcebo Design - www.umcebodesign.co.za / Cell: 083 7933408 / Email: robin@umcebodesign.co.za / Facebook: Umcebo Design | Umcebo Trust.

(Source - Publicity Matters) 

Edinburgh Business School offers a scholarship to study for a MBA

“Edinburgh Business School has been active in Africa for over 20 years and to celebrate this long standing relationship, we established The Africa Scholarship Programme in 2010. We are very proud to recognise and celebrate all of our graduates today. They emerge equipped with skills that will enhance not only their own lives but also the wider communities around them. All of the people we are recognising at today’s event have worked hard to secure their MBA’s and will no doubt go on to achieve great things”.

Graduating student Simon Peter Kavuma from Uganda comments on the opportunity and the impact the MBA and The African Scholarship Programme has had on his life:

“Receiving the scholarship was a life changing event, and it’s difficult to see how I would have studied for the MBA without it. My MBA studies have led to career progression and possibilities that would have been impossible without it”.

Recently appointed Deputy Chief Finance Office at Citbank Uganda, Simon believes that the MBA was an important factor in securing the new position.

Graça Machel, leading educationalist and wife of the late Nelson Mandela, comments on the scholarship programme:

“Scholarship programmes offer a wonderful opportunity for students from all over Africa to learn, gain and share invaluable technical, managerial and leadership skills, as well as obtain recognised qualifications. These skills are vital in our future leaders. I hope that as the Edinburgh Business School scholars graduate, they will continue to develop leadership which promote the conditions for the full exercise of citizen’s rights
including equity and dignity for all”.

In order to apply for a place on the MBA programme, students must be a national or resident in a sub-Saharan African country, have a university degree and at least two years of full time work experience. You can find out more here www.ebsglobal.net/africa

For further details and guidance on how to apply to The African Scholarship Programme please visit www.canoncollins.org.uk/edinburghmba.html

(Source - Ideate) 

Catch A Show This Weekend

(Source - #7DeadlySins) 

Edition by +Fred Felton 

Mexican Dinners, A Big Business Conference, Interviews with Copywriters and a Short Story

Hirsch's have a cooking demo just for you.





(Source - Hirsch's)

The African Renaissance Conference is coming.




Email: info@thoughtfire.co.za for more details.

(Source - African Renaissance)

Part 2 of our interview with copywriter Cath Jenkin

A short story

MISS JONES by Andrew Verster

“Have you met Miss Jones, people asked as we passed by, to quote Noel Coward or is it Oscar Hammerstein?”

“Is she the one with the short skirts and low-cut neckline?”

“No, that’s her mother. Miss Jones is dumpy and looks as if she had got her clothes at a car-boot sale.”

“I prefer the sound of Mother Jones .”

“You gather she’s a hooker?”

“I would never have guessed!”

“Ultra sophisticated. Penthouse in Umhlanga. Porsche.  Salukis.”

“By the way, why did you ask if I knew her?”

“She’s coming round for Bridge tomorrow evening, and we are one short.”

“Pity. Scrabble’s my game.”

“Win some, lose some.”

“Ask her about Scrabble anyway. You never know.”

“See you. Must rush. I’m doing a brinjal lasagna. She’s a vegetarian. Which is hard to believe.”

Andrew Verster is a world famous artist and writer based in Durban. 

ANDREWVERSTER784@GMAIL.COM

Read about A Catalina Show, Catering, A Short Story and @immediaza

EASTER BUNNIES & THE STORYTELLER

These Easter Holidays will be filled with fun and laughter as Catalina Theatre brings you Easter Bunnies & The Storyteller from 28th March till the 7th of April 2013. A fairytale of Two Easter Bunnies who are hungry for Stories of which they believe will make them grow stronger and braver, do dances, songs and magic spells trying to get a Storyteller to relieve them from hunger. Mama Nomusa Xaba (www.nomusaxaba.co.za) an International Storyteller comes to their relief and tells rich and nutricious stories from abroad and interacts with audiences through song, Musical Instruments, games and poetry.

A 40 minutes magical piece worth enjoying, written and directed by an award winning Director Mpumy Ndlovu. Each ticket cost R35 and R55 including Boat Rides.

Shows begin at 11am everyday and boat rides run every hour For bookings contact 031 305 6889/ 083 764 3177, www.strictlytickets.com or visitwww.catalinatheatre.co.za

(Source - Catalina Theatre) 

Garden Room Caters & Events 

For more info email Fred Lukas fred@gardenroom.co.za 

FRICKADELL FREDA by Andrew Verster

Frickadell Freda, they called her. “They” being the boys in Ozenfont Pre-Primary School in Moira Boscombe Terrace.

“Why do you call her that?” Jeanette Pardew asked.

“Because she is sort of round and she smells like a meat pie.”

It could have been  a lot worse, for, with one leg shorter than the other after an accident on the family duck farm when she fell under a tractor driven by her elder brother “Pillage” Pardew, the doctors at Ozenfont Clinic said that,  had  Hubert Horrocks not grabbed her by both arms and pulled her out, “she would have been a goner.”

But fate was on her side as Hubert was the anchor in the Ozenfont Under Thirty Tug of War team who had a record of three victories in the past five years over teams from the other side of Ozenfont Ridge.

“I jumped in, boots and all,” he is quoted as saying.

And Freda herself? “Such things happen all the time. It’s just that it was my turn. Tomorrow someone else will be under a bus, a ten ton truck, a collapsed block of flats, or falling from the roof of a skyscraper. I save abandoned babies, I nurse pigeons with broken wings, I  teach macramé to spastics, I help pensioners with their shopping, I do aromatherapy, plant herb gardens in the neighborhood, but because of an hormonal deficiency I am famous for smelling like a pile of putrefying meat. But my bags are packed and I’m off to Botany Bay  - a second cousin once removed has a chalet on the beach – and I am going to write my memoirs. Nobody knows about Freda the hurdler, the disc-jockey, the rap-artist at the CHI-CHI PALACE,  or the carpet weaver. But they indeed WILL.

Watch this space. AND Kalahari.Com.

Andrew Verster is a World Famous Artist & Writer based in Durban. 

ANDREWVERSTER784@GMAIL.COM

Will You Be Going to #OpenNight ? 

Many of you are well aware of the post-PC revolution upon us. We'd like to explore this a bit further at our upcoming #OpenNight where radio personality and financial journalist, Hilton Tarrant will be sharing his insights.  There will also be a heated debate surrounding Android as an ecosystem.

The aim of our #OpenNights is to provide devs, designers, tech enthusiasts and all-round geeks with a platform to network and engage with one another, sharing their learnings in order to empower the Silicon Beach community. We'd like to invite you and anyone who you think might be interested to join us. Please note that this is a FREE event but we do need you to RSVP beforehand due to space and catering constraints.

Event details:

Date: Tuesday, 26 March

Time: 18:00

Venue: immedia HQ

Agenda: 

• The state of mobile in South Africa - Hilton Tarrant
• Debate: Should Android be considered an ecosystem?
• Hot Hardware segment: showcasing some of the coolest toys currently available 

We welcome external speakers, who would like to showcase their projects or a topic they think would be of interest so please feel free to contact me if you would like to present at one of our #OpenNights. 

To RSVP for this #OpenNight, please fill out the application here.

(Source - immedia) 

Events, Tales of Coffee and a great Short Story this week

Events

Pat Fleuriot started working 1 week after finishing High School. He completed his Articles of Workmanship through Price Waterhouse, spent 18 years in Accountancy and has been a Certified Financial Planner since 2007. 

Pat is currently a Fellow Partner, Financial Advisor at Fleuriot and Associates and is passionate about ascertaining client’s needs, assessing their financial strength, challenging and guiding them to protect and create wealth. 

He has been married to Jacqueline, for only 26 years. They have a pigeon pair – Richard, his son and partner in F&A and Danielle, his daughter is doing her Masters in USA. 

Pat is a skilled learner, analytic, disciplinarian and activator – which is sure to challenge you! 

Come and join us as Pat shares his journey with us: 

Date: 15th March 2013 
Time: 7:30am-9:30am 
Venue: Three Peaks House, 22A Underwood Road, Pinetown 
Cost: R 114.00 incl. VAT. (Healthy breakfast and coffee incl.) 

Bring a business associate or customer who has never attended one of our workshops before and only pay for one seat. 

Seats are limited to encourage the interactive nature of this event so BOOK NOW to avoid disappointment. 

To book: Contact Janis on 0861 373 257 or email: janism@threepeaks.co.za

(Source - Threepeaks)


A Profusion of Café Society by Timothy Sparks
Relinquish forty minutes in your day, alight from your vehicle and follow the lure of café society. Woody Allen’s charming film ‘Midnight in Paris’ celebrates this break in the cloud that art, dreams and alluring company can give on a pavement near  where you live. You may not wish to rub shoulders with the likes of the “Water drinkers” immortalised in the life, and loves of Henry Murger whose charmed existence was retold in Puccini’s Opera, La Boheme. Place your order and stimulate your senses through these café’s in your city…   

Durban has one coffee shop in the old part of the City. The House of Coffees lies across the street, well almost, from the Royal Hotel and is a place of secrets. The entire area was once an impenetrable labyrinth. Empty commerce and broken dreams whisper from the walls.

In this balmy atmosphere poetry is very far away. Within a fall of masonry from the City Hall, this denizen of café’s blazes a trail of coffee and chocolate cake. Echoes abide, the Bookshop of Steve and Tony’s (now gone) entices one with memories of the old elegance, not out of place in the tale of ‘The Shadow of the Wind’- by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, there are ghosts here; some not worth remembering. The Victoria Boer War Memorial seems to sigh under the blue sky drawing the onlookers, but dispersing doves. House of Coffees is a port of call for businessmen yoked to their coffee by force of habit. Yes, haunts such as these still exist in Smith Street. 

So much for History! No fancy, huddled Umhlangans crowding themselves in banks of sunglasses, and wit. This cavern of melancholy has to be dreamed to be believed. Speaking of sunglasses when last did you visit Vide e Caffé with their red truffle chairs, falling a bit short of Lisbon on a good day?
My first visit to Vida e Caffé was on foot, and sans atmosphere with my newspapers folding at all angles like a meringue. Without these columns and conversation on Saturday morning in Innes Road, I thought Russian-Roulette was in the offing.  Luckily gallery chatting brought Art into view and Durban was compared to Salisbury (Harare) for anyone who was counting. Conversation made the red chairs seem like a surreal statement, an existential meditation of epic proportions. Paintings are missing from this café without any sense of being robbed. 

After all, Harvey’s is next door. Unfortunately said restaurant obscures its true heart. Emotions of great importance are entertained here, and filters through like the minds who dreamt up a building named ‘Best on Seventh’ but the cappuccinos seem harmless enough.

Vide e Caffé should be upstairs through a corridor, and in an antechamber with a false bottom, propped up against the books of Fernando Pessoa. These simple red chairs seem to hypnotise the pretentious crowd, but I am told this is the positive side. A miniature Balkanised café of Umhlanga’s fringes, nestles on the corner of Tender Road surface paid by Apparatchiks or Aperitifs of Zuma:  “infants of the storm,” - we are all fugitives sipping cappuccinos amid waves of subtle and supple maidens, flouting conventions by discussing the foliage outside Villa Shaik, the hairstyle of poodles and the mating habits of sardines.
One of my finest Portuguese friends left South Africa for a run in London. An architect by day, friend of Lisbon by evening, I imagine he would love to chat about the subject of coffee shop revival. 

My conversation with my new friend was punctuated by talk about Colombo Tea and Coffee Co. now dubbed the Factory Café. Does anyone call it The Factory Café? Never mind, I can remember the coffee, fresh and strong; bruising stuff. French Press, Guatemalan Pouring Coffee- heavy brews tapering off, into a distant purple part of the brain. Echoes of sublime evenings in dim bars, paintings of light distilled in the four corners. Talk was stretched out like filter paper:  a canvas of unspoken and unknown provenance. Drinking coffee at The Factory Café is a bit like a Merlot tasting in Cato Manor, unexpected but the atmosphere is muted like a scene from a David Lynch movie.

From this haven in Glenwood, we move to a café of French Resistance created near the fabled Sutton Park. Something draws one to the coffee. The new café set in a rather remarkable garden, is tended by Monsieur Jean-Francois who has both heart and character much like the zesty name, Café  Saint-Germain. French flair pours from the kitchen and the service is prompt and has its eye on detail. In this somewhat hidden cradle of French pastries, Gallic abandon fills the air with joie de vivre. Shapes and contrasts rub green swaths of tablecloths into this subdued place of French charms.

The next café might have been designed by the Poet de Nerval in a good mood. Style is almost everything, but we are eclipsed by the constants of time, coffee and the ambience that draws every part of the soul into the embrace of carpentry, coffee and conversation. Dream of the Athénée at the Palais Royal, where Apollinaire embroiders the crowd with mad stories, amidst the vanishing point of the piano. Solace and detail, expression and passion, demand every breath and coffee sends one into raptures: one day one may relish a coffee from Naples, stirring the senses. The expresso makes you sit bolt upright on another. Drink and take in these charms, this café is really beautiful and the small garden is an oasis, known amongst the cognoscenti.  Proprietor Senoré Stephano Toffoli   believes in the vision of the Café des Artistes, a galvanising dream that distinguishes his café from the run-of the mill, duplicating cafes that pervade the atmosphere in the city. One is reminded that in the middle of Berlin’s winter, coffee shops are full of artists and people thronging the Strasse. In a short time, Churchill’s seems to have created a place where fashion, Art and finesse jolt the scene in the bustling atmosphere that is Durban.   

This opinion piece written by Timothy Sparks.  He is a Freelance Writer and Part-Time Teacher.
email tpwsparks@hotmail.com

(Source - Durban Chamber of Commerce) 

Vedanta World Durban Golf Day 

Details:

 COURSE:               Royal Durban Golf Club              

  DATE:                     Friday, 05 April 2013                    

  TIME:                     10:30am (Two tees)

  FORMAT:              Four-Ball Betterball Stableford

  ENTRY FEE:          R3000 per Four-Ball (incl. green fee & dinner) 

      For Registration Details: Please contact Sumi  071 111 5505 email: admin@vedanta.org.za

(Source - Vedanta) 

OH JOHNNY by Andrew Verster

“Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, where have you been?”

“Up to London to see the Queen.”

“And what was she like?”

“I didn’t actually see her as she was in India launching a ship or opening a crèche.”

“So what did you do?”

“I sent postcards to all my friends and said how marvellous it was seeing her. That is what they wanted to hear and I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

“So what if they find out?”

“I’ll cover it up with more lies. There’s plenty of time to invent a few.”

“Is that honest?”

“Truth is relative.”

“And lies?”

“Likewise.”

“So what WAS she like?”

“Marvellous. Even better than in her photographs.”

Andrew Verster is a world famous artist and writer based in Durban.

 email:

ANDREWVERSTER784@GMAIL.COM