cape town toastmasters
March 16, 2007
public speaking isn’t as easy as it seems, so i’ve been attending toastmasters.
the conversation is fantastic, the food is great, and it’s a fun night out.
if anyone is looking to practice public speaking, and it comes in useful in so many areas, whether you are looking to become a public speaker, speak at conferences and seminars, or just want to improve your sales skills, i highly recommend toastmasters.
although i’m still a guest, i’m seriously considering joining the ernst and young toastmasters club in cape town.
as an aside, guy lundy was one of the speakers tonight and is quickly becoming a sought after public speaker. after his talk tonight, i know why…
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…
saigon vietnamese restaurant
October 13, 2006
8 of us went for dinner to saigon restaurant last night, and true to form, the restaurant was full!
perhaps the great consistent food, excellent service, and views of table mountain can explain why it gets a full house day after day.
before i forget, always remember to use the term “interval” when describing the break in the middle when going to the theatre, rather than “half time” – apparently it’s essential to use the right terminology…
saigon restaurant is described as a vietnamese restaurant which is different to many of the other asian restaurants around cape town such as chef ponds asian kitchen in gardens which caters for all, by offering vietnamese, alongside mongolian, thai and a number of other asian areas.
the vegetarian spring rolls i shared as a starter, was nice but nothing to write home about, the pumkin soup was steaming hot when it arrived, and tasted good, but was missing that kick that would have made it memorable.
the rest of the table tried various of the meat dishes, and i didn’t hear a single complaint.
dessert was incredible – most of us opted for sharing the chocolate mousse, and the white chocolate is worth a visit to saigon restaurant alone – but be warned – it’s RICH!
also try the green tea, as it’s comes in a traditional cast metal tea pot and carved tea cup – with fresh tea leaves in a strainer in the cast metal pot. it was enough for 3 small cups of green tea and is the perfect way to end the meal.
try get to saigon when there is not too much cloud in the sky as it was difficult to spot the moutain amongst the haze.
we all placed money in the middle for the bill, and were just right – but no tip – we were all about to start adding more, when we realised the tip was included in the bill – i wonder how many parties of people don’t realise this and double tip.
overall, saigon restaurant is consistently good.
Sinn @ Wembley Square
October 11, 2006
Wembley Square has become high on the list of “must visits” for Capetonians. It’s an old building in the Gardens area, which has been renovated, and which houses the trendy new virgin active gym (yeah – the one which everyone is buzzing about as there are tv’s on the running machines! ps: take a video ipod to the gym and you’ll be entertained for hours).
Wembley Square also has a number of trendy clothing shops, including the first “Tough” store (I have a tough belt which I was actually wearing tonight), and a number of other boutique type shops.
And Wembley Square has a few trendy (okay – just a little pretentious!!) restaurants.
I was at one a few days ago, and it was pleasant, but quiet.
Tonight, Wembley Square was packed – we ate at Sinn Restaurant which takes up one entire side of the atrium type space that the eating area is in. (the other side has Vida cafe coffee shop, a sushi restaurant, and a “fast fresh food” restaurant, similar to Rovuma which I was involved in a number of months back).
So about a third of the side is Sinn Restaurant and the other part is the S Bar – which is Sinn’s companion when you want to be seen, but don’t feel like eating (or splashing out).
Sinn Restaurant is very trendy – the right decor, interior design etc. I took my digital with to take a picture, and forgot to take – sorry!
The chef is a well known personality in Cape Town – but not being a fanatic “know the chef” type person, I was told his name, and it went straight over my head.
Pricy? Yeah – it’s not cheap if you go for the signature dishes, where they’re just under the R100 mark, but if you’re opting for a salad or pasta, the prices are extremely reasonable. I had a pasta, which came as a HUGE portion – a fetticini pasta with a sauce – lol – i can’t remember the name of the sauce. come to think of it, i’m sure my pasta was suppose to have cashew nuts, and i don’t remember any cashew nuts in the pasta.
Anyway, carrying on about Sinn, the waiter was slick (a little too self assured, but that’s expected at a place like this), and rattled off the most expensive “recommendations” and “specials” with ease. His favourite saying was “it’s too die for”…so I didn’t choose any of his recommendations.
there were 5 of us eating, and no complaints, which is highly unusual when I eat out, so that’s a 5 thumbs up.
And as you’re eating @ Sinn in Wembley Square, you can look up through the large glass windows of Virgin Active and watch the people training. I felt inspired to get to the gym, but I thought it would be a little rude to leave the rest of the table eating while I hopped over to the gym.
The bill came in a Gustav Klimpt covered box, and as one of his paintings was recently bought by the Nuwe Gallery and Ronald Lauder (son of Estee – I didn’t click till I read it a number of times) for $125M, it’s a finishing touch to a classy restaurant.
Rating for Sinn – will become the “IT” restaurant for a couple of months, and will coin it over the summer season.
upstairs restaurant asian fusion
October 9, 2006
it was cold in cape town last night – actually, it was freezing!
but i was meeting Lisa in the upstairs restaurant in claremont, just round the corner from the cavendish center.
so 2 things came to mind as i walked into the restaurant:
1. it was warmer than outside – now i was content!!
2. there was no-one there. – the restaurant was empty!!!
anyway, lisa was at a table round the corner and she was the only table full in the whole restaurant.
the food was good – i had a mild vegetable soup, and we all shared a wonderful strawberry type ice-cream – so the only explanation must be…
sunday night, cold cape town, still hibernating, summer hasn’t yet arrived, rather watch carte blanche and the 8pm movie on mnet.
