Fat Cactus, Blog Awards, Yid and Bloggers who take themselves TOO seriously

FAT CACTUS

I had a kewl evening at the Fat Cactus this evening. The people were interesting, (when the non Interneter starts rambling on about her exploits on facebook you realise the big I is starting to influence everyone on a daily basis), the music by the 2 piece jazz band was excellent, and the food was good….

WHEN I GOT IT.

I ordered a VEGETARIAN burger, and on taking my first bite, realised it was MEAT!!!! No Apology, and it took about 20 minutes to bring me my order, by which time I had eaten half the chips off everyone else’s plates, AND everyone else was finished eating.

SEARCHING FOR ERIC EDELSTEIN

Anyway, I was intrigued to see tonight that a large number of people are searching for Eric Edelstein on the search engines (as a large number of visitors to EricEdelstein.com found the site by searching on variations of my name). Now that shouldn’t surprise me, as a movie star with the SAME name as me is becoming more famous by the day, BUT people were searching “Eric Edelstein South Africa” and variations…

SOUTH AFRICAN BLOG AWARDS

The South African Blog Awards (Mike Stopforth mentioned they are around 9 187 in Technorati) have a HUGE commonality between judges and blogs in the final countdown. Yes, blogs can’t be in the finals of a category a judge is judging, but a large number of the finalists blogs are the Judges blogs. Are there so FEW bloggers in SA? Can’t the blog awards find some impartial judges? Common guys, get real? Get some system of voting which is unbiased or get non SA bloggers to judge – here’s an idea: Get International Bloggers to Judge? It seems like an old boys blog club at the moment…

YID

A few weeks ago I registered yid.co.za as I thought it would make a nice portal site sometime in the future. Today I got this mail…

“Dear Eric

We are looking to register the domain name yid.co.za and we see that it is registered in your name.

Please will you let me know if you would be prepared to let us have it, as we own the trademark to the name “yid” . We will pay you all expenses incurred.

Just some background on us, we run a Jewish dating website called “YID” which is short for Your Ideal Date. Its a not-for-profit website, and we have made about 33 matches.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

<name removed>”

What if i’m planning on setting up a website called YourIdeaDen.co.za? or YeahItsDelicious.co.za? or….

And asking me for the domain at the SAME time as dangling the LEGAL rope in front of me is CHUTZPAH!!!!

SERIOUS BLOGGERS

Talking of Chutzpah, SA is a small island in the huge mass of Internet activity, and the few bloggers in SA take themselves FAR too seriously!!

I’ve got a cell phone portal I run with a mate – we have great fun answering people’s questions about everything to do with cell phones. We’ve been doing it for about 2 years, and believe me, answering questions, and reviewing cell phones takes TIME!

But we enjoy it, and even though we haven’t made any money out of the site – it’s actually cost us to date – we are planning on it making money in the future (life isn’t all fun).

So I asked a few bloggers to give us some input telling us what they think of the site. And I encouraged the feedback by giving them a link back and some exposure on our home page. Viral simplicity straight out of the late 90′.

Maybe it was the 10 hours of reading blogs, that caused my emails to them to sound a little spammish, but admittedly they did. Even so, the result was a number of incoming links from bloggers that did see the value in Mobile-QandA. More interesting was the number of bloggers who spent their time lambasting the viral experiment (although some of the bloggers then went on to create their own viral link experiments). IT WAS FUN GUYS!!!

And one interesting side point is that interested sponsors have now approached us…

A few days after I set up this fun experiment, I read a posting by Vincent Maher who posted my email I sent him (and I definately was tired, coz too me it sounded like SPAM!)

I really do think his layout of his blog (into seperate sections for personal and his views on marketing) are a nice way of doing it, BUT the mail i sent him went something like “hey, your site is kewl, don’t you want to link to us”.

He had blocked out the URL and my name, but I thought i’d tell him that my intention was to get some honest feedback on Mobile-QandA at the same time as creating a viral experiment.

I jumped on the phone, and called him to tell him that I wanted him to get involved in my experiment (did he think Mobile-QandA was a good service or not?), and that i did think his site was kewl, AND the coffee invitation was genuine…at the end of the conversation, he said we should catch up next time I was in JHB.

So a good conversation (well, so I thought), until Dave mentioned to me earlier today that Vincent had done a follow up blog post AFTER I spoke to him and it wasn’t overly complementary…I’d link to it if I didn’t keep getting a “Timeout Error” on his Blog…

ROBBED !!!! By a “neighbour”.

YES! In hindsight I shouldn’t have done what I did letting a stranger in – BUT I stay on the top floor of a supposedly SECURE apartment block!

If a neighbour wants a cup of sugar, do I SLAM the door in their face?

Would you have done ANY differently?

So I was on a conference call around 5pm today on Skype – me at home, a client in china etc. I was focusing pretty hard on the conversation.

I looked at my door, and through the glass, saw someone standing outside, but didn’t think anything of it.

A few seconds later, the person knocked on my door. It was about 5pm and I had got home about an hour ago, and I was thinking of going to gym, so hadn’t locked the gate.

Anyway, I didn’t really think much of it, so picked up my laptop, as I didn’t want to miss the conversation, and with my headset on, opened the door.

This girl was standing outside, and in 5 seconds told me that she was visiting her sister at the end of the passage, and her sister wasn’t home, and could she use the bathroom quick. She looked like any other person – mid 20’s, jeans, tshirt, Indian girl…didn’t really give it a 2^nd thought…

I said sure, and went back to the couch to carry on the conversation.

2 minutes later the bathroom door opened, and she asked me if she could use the towel to dry her hands.

Still busy on the conversation I said sure.

Then she stood at my bar, and had an empty bottle of water, and asked if she could fill up her bottle.

I was hardly even focusing on her at this stage, as the conversation was pretty indepth, so just shook my head yes.

And then when she finished, she asked if I had a pen as she wanted to write her sister a note. I waved her to the 2^nd bedroom to get a pen.

My conversation ended at about the same time she had finished writing the note, and I asked her a few questions. What is her sisters name etc…

She said thanks and left.

After she left, about 3 minutes later, I suddenly had an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right

I suddenly remembered that I knew who lived at the end of the passage, and it wasn’t an Indian girl – it was a middle aged white guy. I had seen him a few months ago, but now that I’m thinking about it, I actually saw him earlier this week.

My first thought was where is my phone. I couldn’t see where I left it, so phoned it from my landline and it was on voicemail. At this stage I had the feeling something had gone wrong. I started looking for my wallet and couldn’t find it either.

But I kept saying to myself “you’re being stupid” – your phone and wallet are probably in the other room, or someplace else. Nevertheless, I ran to the top of the stairs, and there was a slip of paper that I assumed she had written on. Except this piece of paper was blank, so if it was the paper she was writing on, she was just pretending.

I ran down the stairs, and at the corner of my block, 2 of the residents were chatting. I asked them if they had seen the girl, and they had about 10 minutes earlier “stroll past down the road”. I said I thought I had just been robbed, and one of them said they thought the girl had acted very suspiciously. The resident had got out at the third floor, and the girl was standing there, and made up some story which didn’t sound convincing.

Anyway, I was barefoot, but thought I’d try find her – I ended up running to the promenade, didn’t spot anyone resembling her, and hobbled home, coz running on a tarred road wasn’t the best thing for my “always in shoes” feet. I now have about 5 massive blisters on each foot – bloody sore!!! I woke up this morning, and CAN’T WALK – my feet are RUINED.

So now I’ve had the cops at my place taking reports, have cancelled my credit cards, and my sim card, and am looking forward to spending tomorrow trying to get a temporary drivers license, as I leave for jhb on Tuesday, and need it to hire a car.

I’m still shocked that it all happened.

My sister spent an hour telling me how stupid I am letting strangers into my place.

And in hindsight, I shouldn’t have let anyone in, and if I did, should have kept a CLOSE watch!

BUT in the situation, if someone looks trusting, it’s easy to let your guard down – WARNING – DON’T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by the way, my good friend Max is involved in a website called SA Rocks about all the GOOD in South Africa. I guess i’ll go read it before stepping out to remind me…

brass bell in kalk bay

i took my folks on a day trip today.

we visited muzinberg, kalk bay, fishhoek, st james, and boulders beach.

one of the most chilled places in the cape must be kalk bay.

it has wonderful restaurants, antique shops, and the pier, fresh fish, and the seals (are they seals?) in the kalk bay can keep you entertained for many a hour.

we had lunch at the brass bell restaurant.

the brass bell has been an institute in kalk bay for many a year, and i expected a musician to be playing in the short walk under the train line to get to the restaurant. i wasn’t disappointed – an acoustic guitarist was strumming when we strolled past.

we were lucky to get a great table at brass bell, as someone cancelled as we inquired, and so we had the perfect spot to enjoy the yellowtail.

the picture above was taken from the brass bell.

we also visited the olympia cafe, which has been mentioned in every foodie and eat out guide in recent years.

i’m constantly surprised when i visit, as i’m never blown away by the food, and the service is usually passable at best.

but you can’t go to kalk bay without visiting olympia cafe. today it was relatively quiet when we visited.

i like the ecentric quirky nature of olympia cafe, but at the same time, i just don’t get why it’s SO popular.

anyway, burnt from a good day out in the sun, we quickly visited boulders beach, and although we didn’t go in as it was already late, we managed to spot the penguins sunning on the rock.

cape town summer

the weather has been really hot in cape town the last few days, but i haven’t had much time to enjoy it. i’ve been working hard on our 2nd clothing shop which opened in sea point a few weeks ago. to see what is happening on that front, visit eSquared Fashion.

i also decided it’s time to get a little fitter, and so have been hitting the gym every day doing tons of cardio.

and i decided to cycle around as much as possible (and although it’s mainly to get more fit, i’m also feeling good about doing my little bit to conserve energy and help the anti global warming campaign (as an aside, one of my good friends, gareth, is putting up a site on global warming. i’ve taken a sneak preview at it, and he’s put a lot of effort into the research – i’ll mention it when it goes live).

so back to the cycling – i bought this mountain bike about 2 years ago, thinking i would go on mountain bike trails every week or 2. and in the last 2 years, i’ve cycled ONCE!!!
that’s right – from my place to a braai at a beach house nearly 2 years ago.

anyway, today was my 2nd cycle in 2 days!

the big issue – thoughts on the magazine and sellers

i try buy a copy of the big issue every now and then, but every time i see the guys on the street selling the latest copy, i feel that they are trying to sell “the big issue” in the wrong way.

the magazine should be WANTED. people should WANT to buy a copy every month, and yet the only place you can get it, is from the street sellers

sure, a number of people say they enjoy reading it, and i feel the quality has risen over the last few years, but the vast majority of people that purchase “the big issue” (and i have to admit that i’m included in that figure), buy a copy coz we want to help the sellers or feel sorry for them, and then:

1. either leave the copy of the “big issue” in the boot, as it’s not high up on our essential reading material OR

2. place it on the dashboard or on the passenger seat, so we can point out to all the other sellers of “the big issue” for the rest of the month that we already have bought a copy.

what should the content be? in my opinion, the best selling mags in the world / country are the gossip / entertainment type mags such as Heat, People, or YOU. I would have the content of “the big issue” 80% in this way (gossip, news, events etc) and 20% of the editorial can be dedicated to more serious type articles about world events, and also trying to show the “face” behind the sellers. or maybe 90/10 but you get my point!

the ultimate would be if people were driving around trying to get a copy of the latest “big issue” but they have been sold out as they are in such demand.

easier said than done, i know, and it’s still an INCREDIBLE achievement what the guys behind “the big issue” have accomplished!!!!

the other small gripe i have with the “big issue” sellers, is that they should never ask for small change, or cigarettes etc – if the people in the cars want to offer small change or cigarettes, that is wonderful of them, but it is downgrading the whole image of the sellers when they ask if you want to buy a copy, you decline, and then they start asking for change etc.