Time to get me some direction!

I don't know about you, but 2012 was not the best year for me!

There were, of course, numerous highlights - overseas travel, my brother J getting back from South America, solidifying friendships old and new and growing closer to my wonderful extended family.
But there were a few sad events to throw a dampener over the whole year....my dad passing away, friends moving away (both overseas and just away into a different life stage) and not really getting anywhere in terms of career.

But with the turning over of another calendar year, it's time for me to turn over a new leaf.

For 2013, my hope - and plan - is to PURSUE LIFE

with direction 

                           with God at the helm

and the support of friends and family like wind in my sails

                                   to ENJOY the frivolity of life

to have courage to face the storms

and above all,

be content to ride the waves of life

                                                        with no more complaining!

White winter wonderland...in Jozi?

Outside our office

A scattering of white

swirling

           dancing

      spinning

a bird crashes into a branch, stunned.

Excitement bubbles

the kettle boils

big 

snow flakes start to fall

                                   flutter

        what fun!

Me dancing in excitement as the snow starts to fall

I has an issue...

Sleep-Time on Louis Botha Avenue

...with people not understanding when to use HAVE and when to use HAS.

So just in case the error can't be spotted...it should read 'Sleep-Time HAS moved across the road'.

After all, it is one shop, one company - even though the mattresses available are in plural.

Btw, they have really good prices on their beds (and there I go personifying a company!). I sleep soundly on a queen sized bed I bought from there two years ago.

Coca-Cola promotes drug use

Ok, not really! But ambiguous labels really can give that impression!

Can't you spell?

Spelling and grammar mistakes make me mad. I suppose it's just as well then that my role as editor is to make sure that our magazines and website showcase flawless copy all the time (well make that 99.9% just to cover my ass for those little typos!)

It absolutely amazes me how companies can place so little importance on this and have no problem having a menu littered with typos (don't you love the chocolate mousse desert option...must be some kind of delicious oasis!)

So here begins a new part of my blog: Can't you spell?
In it I am going to showcase examples of signs, menus, shopfronts, billboards and product labels that indicate a serious lack of spelling or grammar or are just very very ambiguous.

Yes, I am a nerd, but showcasing their embarrassing errors make me feel a little better about the lack of proper spelling and punctuation in this world :)







First up we have this very informative sign that appears in the Maxi's Restaurant in Newcastle, northern KZN.

I'd say any patron who accidentally enters that private place would be forgiven...

Who has failed a generation?

In an article in Business Day today, Cosatu general secretary secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi calls the Limpopo textbook "fiasco" a national "own goal"..."and showed how the working class and the poor suffered when leaders "defocussed" from challenges ordinary people faced daily".
Absolutely. And that would not just be the leaders in the teachers union, SADTU, which should have been first to know that textbooks had not been delivered in Limpopo. But the Department of Education too. Considering education and health are the two biggest items on the national budget, one would think that making sure that the millions spent on textbooks was actually seeing a return on investment. So let's wait to see whose heads will roll for this.
I'm pretty sure Angie won't be staying in her role as Minister of Basic Education.
But let's look to the teachers at these schools now. Did they go through the correct channels in complaining about the lack of resources? Did they try and make a plan, taking the initiative to finding materials themselves? Or has the handout mentality also reached those people expected to teach the leaders of tomorrow?
To be fair, teachers have it tough. Not only do they have to deal with rowdy children, some schools don't have running water, electricity - or even enough desks and pens for children.
And then we get the changed curriculum.
Over 10 years on, the Department of Education  realised that Outcomes Based Education (OBC) doesn't work and it's time to go back to the traditional input-based system that we were thankfully still part of.You think!! Especially considering it has been tried and tested in various other countries - and ultimately considered a failure (Canada and Australia are just two examples).

In a thought leader piece published in 2009 Why OBE has not worked in South Africa, Bert Oliver points out the following:

• "The way that OBE has been implemented in South Africa seems to me to have had the effect of having systematically shifted the focus away from the actual teaching to all the (to my mind largely redundant) administration, archiving, reporting, and all the rest of it, which comprise nothing less than what Foucault called a system of panoptical surveillance".

• "OBE seems to be blindly predicated on the assumption that teachers can teach like machines, in a time and space unaffected by normal, to-be-expected eventualities. But such things do occur in the normal course of events — that is what it means to be (finitely) human."

In Youth sacrificed for OBE (July 2010), Times Live journalists reported that "after 12 years of massive educational failures and the waste of millions of rands, the ANC has dumped Outcomes-Based Education.

And so OBE was replaced with Caps - the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement. According to the education department's website, Caps is:

"a single, comprehensive and concise policy document, which will replace the current Subject and Learning Area Statements, Learning Programme Guidelines and Subject Assessment Guidelines for all the subjects listed in the National Curriculum Statement Grades R - 12.  Interestingly, there hasn't been an update on the curriculum newsletter since May 2011..... Right so there's a new curriculum that teachers have to be trained in to be able to teach. Of course, there are problems like Gauteng teachers taking time off their winter holidays to be training on Caps only to find that there were no workbooks when they got there.  - Glitches at curriculum training sites  So where am I going with this? Basically, I wish for the following: 1. Government admit that they were wrong in trying to implement such a silly system 2. Now provide the resources for teachers to (a) be proficient in teaching to then (b) teach the curriculum  3. Go back to the days of old and push money into standalone teaching colleges and begin a drive to promote teaching as a viable and noble profession - both at school and university level 4. Pay teachers enough to allow them to live at a comfortable level and not give up trying because there's just no point 5. De-unionise the profession. Teaching needs to become an essential service thus not allowing strikes - which have long-term and disastrous effects 6. Provide resources for schools....yes, that would include text books please! 7. Everyone - government and citizens of South Africa to declare a state of emergency on education - and actively seek to do something about it. Because if they - and we - don't, what hope is there for the future of our country?

Become a whiz at words

Or is it whizz?

Definitions

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To make a humming or hissing sound, like that of an arrow or ball flying through the air.
2. To move, rush, or fly with a sibilant humming sound.
3. n. A sound between hissing and humming; a sibilant or whistling hum, such as that made by the rapid flight of an arrow, a bullet, or other missile through the air.

Wiktionary

1. n. alternative spelling of whiz.
2. v. alternative spelling of whiz.

 whiz

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To make a whirring or hissing sound, as of an object speeding through air.
2. v. To move swiftly with or as if with such a sound; rush: whizzed past on a ten-speed bike; as the days whizzed by.
3. v. To throw or spin rapidly: The pitcher whizzed the ball to first.
4. n. A whirring or hissing sound, as of an object speeding through air.
5. n. A rapid passage or journey.
6. n. Informal One who has remarkable skill: a whiz at all sorts of games.
7. idiom. take a whiz Vulgar Slang To urinate.

So I officially love 

What is Wordnik? (according to Wordnik)

"Wordnik is a new way to discover meaning. This page will give you a quick overview of what you can do, learn, and share with Wordnik."

Wordnik provides definitions, examples, related words and lists and lists of synonyms, homonyms, hypernyms etc.

You can share, discuss, see visuals and add to your list of favourite words and phrases.

In short, every writer's dream resource.

And best of all...it's free!