Pizzas, Production babies, photography and a smile.

It seems that in New Zealand, you can advertise your product while putting the competition down - in the sense that you can use actual names of pizza places and plonk their pizza boxes down on the 'production table' and 'compare' who does what, when and how. We were really surprised to see that they have charts and things which show the levels of fat and salt and other such nasty ingredients and then go on to tell you that the market research has shown (market research consisting of a trio of dubious and grubby looking male students) that the 'healthiest' one is also the cheapest and the one the 'tasters' liked the best. I don't know why I thought you couldn't 'name names' - unless of course, they all belong to the same pizza magnate!
On the same note, the advertising on washing powders is also 'put down all the others' - mmm... interesting!

Faithful blog followers will have seen pictures of our first grandchild - Matilda, who lives in Vancouver, Canada. We are entirely enamoured with the fact that technology allows us to 'connect' with our special folks however far away they might be and bless the inventors of such miracles as Skype and Facebook and the like on a fairly regular basis. Here is Matilda, pictured with her Daddy and modelling for her first International Debut with the Smurfs. The movie, which was released this past week, has one Andrew van der Spuy listed in the credits as an animator and lo and behold, also listed in the credits is Matilda - as production baby! How proud her grandparents are!!

 One of the really great things about Skype is that one can 'snap' a picture in the course of your conversation and have it to keep and put up on the blog and flash about on Facebook and so on! Here is Matilda giving her best smile for her grandmother in New Zealand.
Gone are the days of a little pocket  Brag-book of photographs, each one in its plastic cover and a flippable reminder of how the grandchildren looked when the photo was taken and how they probably don't look anymore! By the time you had had the photographs developed and collected them from the chemist or the stationers, (along with the flops which were either of your foot, a photograph of total blackness, or possibly a headless family member) and had paid an exorbitant amount of money for the aforementioned flops as well, that child had had another birthday and the clothes he was wearing on that day now belonged to his younger sibling or worse, had been through the sibling and were now in the heap on the trestle table at the church to be given away to the poor.
We can now enjoy our grandchildren on-line pretty well any time and update with the click of a mouse. Amazingly brilliant!


A man was strolling along a deserted beach one afternoon and came across a rusty old lamp lying half buried in the sand. Picking it up to admire it, he spat on his shirt corner and polished a spot on the lamp, only to have a vapourous genie appear in a blaze of colour and magic! "Thank you kind sir, for releasing me from the lamp in which I have been held captive for a hundred years - I can grant you one wish, for I am eternally grateful to you - what does your heart desire?" said the genie
The man thought for a moment and then scratching his head and glancing out over the ocean, he said." I have an inordinate fear of flying - my closest family has moved ten thousand miles away and since I also get terribly seasick, I would love you to organise a bridge from this here beach in South Africa to my family in New Zealand so that I can drive over there for a visit"
The genie thought for a couple of moments and then said," you know, thinking about it, it is an awfully long way - I mean, a BRIDGE that is thousands of miles long? Surely you realise that your request is nigh on impossible to grant? I don't want to appear ungrateful - after all I am ecstatic to be out of that lamp - but um.... is there not perhaps something else I can do for you instead? It really is an engineering impossibility...... a bridge THAT long? I don't think I can manage that."
The man thought for a little while and then he said," OK -I guess there is one other thing if you REALLY can't get me that bridge - I would like to be able to understand my wife - all women actually, but specifically my wife - I have no idea how her mind works, if she even has any logic and why she makes my life so impossible sometimes. That would be a good wish for you to grant Genie"
The genie looked around and then said "How many lanes did you think you would like on that bridge?"

Dis al!