NZ vs It

Fanie;
People who live in Florida are called Floridians by people who don't live in Florida. If you were born here you are called "native Floridian". If you migrated here like me you are called "Yankee" which is ok in my case because I'm from Massachusettes. If you only come here in the winter you are a "snowbird". If you have friends from Mexico you are called "gringo" and you call them "wetbacks". If you come here to make a living and not necessarily living here you are a "carpetbagger" and if your family has been here for many generations your a "cracker". The term comes from herding cattle with a whip. It's the sound of the whip that is the "Crack". Cattle was THE big business in old Florida before the land sales boom and then the tourists. Now it's mostly tourists who arn't here because of the oil spill.
Hope that clears things up for ya Fanie. I wonder how this message gets all the way to South Africa? Pete

 

Actually the term cracker was from the whip cracking by the drivers of oxcarts.

 

LOL. Not in the least. SA have two sides in it. A more civilised crowd what used to be called 'apartheid' in the old days, and that doesn't mean it explicitly excludes blacks, many of them are civilised, and then there is the previously disadvantaged now the current advantaged but still disadvantaged. There is still this 'apartheid', it is only used as a political playball by gov to play the whites and blacks against each other - or they won't have supporters any more.

These people still live the way they did when I was a kid. Hard to believe what they brew to eat and drink. Some die of it. Battery acid in beer they brew themselves ? Ripley's believe it or not. They ripen meat in a tin untill there is worms in it.

They now try to limit these funny mixes, we now have to sign for ie methylated spirits (called blue train and mixed with bread to eat) in the shops when we buy.

 

You may not believe this, but there are actually one or two of us that is at least partly litterate. Hard to believe from Africans I know

 

...biltong is made from road kill here....naturally dries in the sun, but only eaten by Kiwis and crows......

 

http://www.bowhunting.net/susieq/jerky.htm

Some nice jerky recipes here.

 

Well Fanie I wasn't refering to the people of SA but to the mechanical means by which this message travels. Here I am sitting in my little travel trailer typing a message to someone many thousands of miles away in a different continent. I have no idea who you are,where you live,what you do, yet we are talking like old friends over an invisible medium and it hardly costs anything at all. This is a really amazing concept when you think about it especially from the stand point of a geezer 68 years old who remembers when there wasn't anything but radio and some people even had a telephone.
I'm very interested in South Africa since I'm talking to someone who is actually there.
My concept of SA which I have from TV is wide open spaces,lots of red dirt like in Georgia,USA and native people living in grass huts with mostly nothing to eat being beaten and killed by the thousands by government troops or neighboring tribes. Not to mention rampant Lions eating the children when no one is looking and elephants rampaging through the villages trampleing everything and everyone in their path.
Maybe you could enlighten me as to how you have a computer working in such an environment. I'm sure there a lot more to SA than what we see and hear about here so I'd like to know more about the place.
If this is the wrong place for this conversation I apologize for that and the mods can feel free to move me any time I'm OT. Maybe some info on your boats would suffice? Pete

 

Hoytedow I can go with ox carts as well as herding cattle. Either way the term comes from the whip right? Pete

 

So if it's a woman the term is spanking, when it's cattle it's whipping

 

OOOOOOOOO! S&M Not for me.

 

Hi Pete,

Well, the computer sends the message through the cable to the modem, from the modem it goes... yip, at the speed of light. Unless there is a bottleneck at some server the messaging is instantanuously there, or just about.

To answer your concerns Who I am is just another boat lover like some here. I live in a house in SAfrica like most others here do and I do lots of things, no really. Most people do one or maybe three different things, not me, I do them all. I sometimes scare myself, the wife says if I live to 500 years I'm not going to get it all done. Well, I'm going to give it a bloody good go.

Yes TV and the computer were marvelous inventions, and may I say thank goodness for development. The first TV's and PC's sucked

I cannot really think you have that concept about South Africa. It is a LOT like any other first world country in the world, more than you can imagine, like the US even. There are tarred roads, shops, businesses, trafic and what ever else you have is here. We even live alike. There are no wild animals in the streets.

My computer operates from a generator that sits outside in the bitter cold and is hand turned by a poor black guy with hardly any clothes on, he's that poor, and I whip him if he doesn't turn it fast enough Come on man, it's the same there as here. You plug the computer in the mains socket and the thing runs, just like in the US. If you come here it's the same except for some expected differences.

The only difference is, due to events out of our control, we have a bit of a corrupt gov who think and act and make laws like third world country leaders do. Oh they like the money and the BMW and the cellphones but they are no ready yet to govern a country like South Africa in a first world fashion. So they have blamed 'apartheid' for being incompetent, for making stupid decisions etc etc with the result we are in a recession like you are, but for a very different reason. Maintenance and service is a totally new concept to them, with the result that we are sliding backwards instead of developing.

The younger people in SA think this is how things are supposed to be but they never lived in a place where you can pic up a phone and actually get service, any kind of service. This does hardly exist any more. Our roads are full of potholes, we have water problems, we went from exporters of maize to importers and we have power problems. All developed over the last 16 years, while crime and corruption ran rampid and too many people that does not understand the consequence of what's going on.

The gov we have is probably the most pathetic ever, good grief school kids can do better. The only tactic they have to stay in power is to play the whites and blacks against each other by the julius malema's they get to flame the old 'apartheid' feelings up and so keep their voters. Black people are slowly coming round, but too slow. We do not know if SA can be fixed up, and the biggest part of the population is illiterates too dumb to know what is going on. For instance gov promissed them all houses to get their vote. Very few got houses, corrupt officials pocketed the funds, and whites get blamed for it. We hear of the corruption but it disappears quietly.

We have exactly the same racial issues you have. Only black this and black that organizations ( you have like 250 of them) and not a single white organization - same as there by you, if ONE white one starts all the blacks begin to shout racism and discrimination. So as you can see it's the same there and here.

As for the boat, I'm working on it. It is however too cold to get much done, you have to remember anything under 15oC here is like sub arctic weather for me.

Anything I missed ?

 

Don't think you missed anything. Thanks for the description of life in SA and I forgot your in the southern hemisphere so it is winter for you right now. It's 96.3F here and I'm staying in the house with the AC running.
It's a shame that some good government can't be arranged for you. SA is a huge area with loads of people and huge natural resources. It would be a very wealthy country if the government treated the people right. Education is the key to productive clear thinking people and if the gov doesn't insist on that then the people get led around by the nose. Keep the masses dummied up and you get to rule forever. OUr gov would like to see that here too but it isn't going to happen. At least we have the opportunity to say who gets to go make the laws and if we don't use it then we get what we have now. This November should say somehting to all the politicians that want to sell us down the drain. They are going down big time this fall.
I don't see any big problems with the blacks anymore but I saw plenty back in the 60's. Now it's the blacks and whites against the browns who think they can come here and demand we give them schooling,medical care and a place to live and a job. That isn't going to work either. We don't have any white organizations but we do have white voters that way outnumber the rest. They now see what happens when they don't go and vote so I'm looking forward to some big upsets in the next few years.
Good to talk with you Fanie. I enjoy learning about places that I will never get to see. As for my perception of SA it all comes from the movies and TV. Ya don't get to see the good things about over there. Pete

 

Yes. You could hear the teamsters cracking their whips from a great distance as the land is so flat. Probably some Seminole chief said, "Here come more of those Crackers!"

 

The problem is the gov thought they were doing great. Now that things are beginning to create serious problems. they want to take control of all the financial resources like the mines and some others. They think if they control that - exactly what mugabe in zim does - then they will have ultimate power and will remain in charge - same way mugabe does. They really don't care how poor the rest of the people become or what state the country is in.

Have a Texas joke for you. Texan meets girl and brags all the time about how big anything and everything in Texas is. So one thing after another they end up in a motel room, the guy still bragging how beeeeg everything in Texas is. Then when they undress, the girl looks very disappointed, asking exactly which part of Texas are you from ?

Old joke. At your age you probably heard them all.

Oh yeah, I saw some of those 'freedom struggle' movies. Don't know where all those excessive brutalities played off, I was in the military as well and never saw the likes myself. You must keep in mind South Africa is the only country in the world where the blacks struggle, no where else. Blame apartheid.

My yard is on a slant, it's a lot more work to level an area to work on, now I also blame apartheid.

 

When I was in school still my grandfather gave me a real 'voorslag'. It is a whip with about a 700mm handle, then leather strips woven a ways and it tapers down to a fine thin end. If I remember right it was about 7 or 8m long.
When that whip cracks is when the tip goes through the sound barrier. Was good at it too.