Durban Smiles Back At You

Friendly city is an understatement; in fact, I’d say that in a comparative analysis between Durban and any other South African city, moreover, any other city I have visited (which is not a small amount by any means) Durban is hands down the warmest most welcoming city. Pre-emptively, and to quell the almost certain objections regarding my previous statement; everything I write is obviously and entirely my opinion, furthermore, I do not intend on adding empirical facts and statistics in the hopes of providing groundwork for a factual argument or debate. This for two reasons; one, how inviting a cities people are is almost entirely circumstantial and contextual, secondly, any statistics that could be raised regarding this topic would for many reasons be subjective as well as inaccurate in many cases. Anyway, here’s the reason as to why I believe my introductory statement.

As I mentioned before, I’ve been to many foreign cities; London, Calgary etc. In many of these cities, the energy, by that I mean the X-factor with which a city greets you plays an important role. Now bearing this in mind, and similarly bearing in mind that I’m actively comparing Durban, when it comes to ‘energy’ if you understand what I mean by energy, Durban swallows all its competition. From the atmosphere to the general weather, and more importantly the willingness of the people to chat or talk for any reason, it’s all really inviting. When it comes to people, specifically in other (non-South African) cities, they can usually ruin a trip with their dreary or angry/violent demeanours and this when compared to the inviting nature of durbanites, is how I came to my conclusion. And again, even in the places and at the times when one wouldn’t expect any positive attitudes, the people of Durban are always willing to give a helping hand, unlike in foreign cities where I have met many an unhappy or negative reply.

This is by no means a detailed analysis of the subject matter, but instead it’s a small post that makes up a larger part of my blog’s overall theme. It is my hope that after reading everything I have to say, you will have at least (and if nothing else) a small understanding of what I like to call the advanced driving course, a.k.a. life.

Finally, Some Bandwidth

In my last blog post I talked about the many downfalls of the FIFA Wold Cup, today I have decided upon a considerably lighter topic, it’s also a topic with which I find much relation to. Yes the FIFA World Cup is going to change a lot of things in our country, and while jury is out about whether these changes will be mostly positive or negative. I am absolutely ecstatic about one of the decided upon infrastructural changes, this being the countries and more importantly Durban’s monumental bandwidth increase. The fact that the government and along with other company’s (both local and foreign), are finally addressing this issue means the world to me. I am a geek, a nerd, a gamer and techno buff, I always was and always will be, so it comes as no surprise that I need and cherish the idea of a faster internet connection.

To suit my (and the many others out there) needs, two things are required; high bandwidth and reliable connections. Now considering the obscene unreliability of wireless sources in this country, DSL is my only option; this is where Telkom, Neo Tel and the ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) come in. The ultimate underlying factor for internet speeds (and as you may have gathered from the definition of bandwidth) is international bandwidth, especially when you consider almost all servers and sites that cater to me are foreign. And unfortunately due to the short nature of this post, I doubt I would be able to fully explain all that is and that will be happening in South Africa. Fortunately, I believe this article will better explain the investments and work that is going into our country’s bandwidth infrastructure.

If you’re anything like me, the good news I bring is just what you’ve wanted. And even if you aren’t, rejoice in the fact that many new services and benefits you had never imagined will soon be available to you. Honestly, if this is done right and maintained correctly, this could be one of the biggest infrastructural changes this country has made in recent years, and to my (and my fellow geeks), this is in fact the most important change and we’re glad to see it happen.

My First News Article

My first news article went pretty well I think. Sure, our group had its problems, but then you would’ve guessed that from my last post. Choosing a story is usually an easy task for me, I had to choose one with which I would get a first and meet my varsities DP requirements. This however did not complicate things much, what did complicate things was the fact that it had to be posted on an active internet site, so now it needed relevance, not something I’m so well known for. After a lot of brain storming and gut clenching thought, we had made our final choice, for the first article we chose the ‘Early Morning Market’. Before I continue, I should probably explain that the aforementioned ‘Early Morning Market’ was a local CBD based market; its main focus in what was sold was a number of miscellaneous items you would expect from street vendors, cultural clothes and crafts, food and muthi (a local traditional medicine).

Why the ‘Early Morning Market’? We chose it for a number of reasons, but these, at least to us, seemed like the most important criteria with which the ‘Early Morning Market’ obviously met. First of all, it had to relate to the subject matter of the news portal site, that of course being the FIFA 2010 World Cup which is to be held here in South Africa. And due to the infrastructure improvements that our cities require in order to cope with FIFA, much of the old is being demolished in order to make way for the new. Unfortunately, that means the possible moving (abolishing) of the ‘Early Morning Market’ and its immediate area in order to make way for a new shopping mall. Secondly, the subject(s) of our article had to be associated with Durban, alone this would have been completely reasonable, especially considering the sheer amount of possibilities with which we could choose. Our problem came in our groups sub-choice, such that, our group had to try stay within the confines of the ‘stuff’ category. I bet your now as confused as I was, let me explain, each tut group consisted of multiple smaller groups who would have to separate articles within the range of our chosen category. Sounds simple enough, unfortunately being tut group five, we got stuck with the category so creatively named stuff, and in other words miscellaneous (left over’s). Hmm, so we had to try stay away from the categories of transport, livelihoods, food or fashion; is there anything left? Regardless of the leash we found ourselves in, and regardless of the fact that we were chained to a fence, we found a topic.

The ‘Early Morning Market’ did in fact turn out to be an interesting topic. So we set about getting this article together, I, being the writing genius that I am (sarcastic laugh), was allotted to writing this story. And with enough research, we had found our angle; because regardless of the promises that our government made to us, many of the informal businesses (hence the ‘Early Moring Market’) won’t be effected in any positive way. And in fact, if the plans for the mall are put through, the only effects will be seriously negative ones. So, what did I need to make this article viable? Well photos would be a good start, and here they are, I was hoping for more surrounding area shots and more concise angles, but considering that the other group members left me to my own devices, this one time I would do the same for them. An interview would be the next step; we got one in that we interviewed a Miss Mguni, who at the time and for the foreseeable future, a market vendor was selling clothes, muthi and other handmade craft items. And as she conveyed to us, even if the ‘Early Morning Market’ remains, she would not be at all surprised if her business did pick up at the time of the FIFA World Cup. Because this is all in my relatively short article here, I won’t repeat myself.

Being the writer that I am, and considering that it was indeed my task to do this articles writing, I decided to put an ethical spin on the article. This spin dealt with the negative effects that we might see during and after the FIFA World Cup, strange that the government doesn’t seem at all disturbed with these facts. When we consider the strangely and overly positive facts we’ve been hearing from the government, and again, taking into consideration the fact that academic studies and analysts have put an almost opposite view of FIFA and the World Cup, such that the balance of effects will in fact negative. It seems that the World Cup is only beneficial to the few rather than the many, this of course goes against everything the government has been telling us. The question we have to ask ourselves is, why would the government lie like that to us? We should carefully consider what I’ve said in this post, because people have a right to know why their futures are being compromised for something like the FIFA World Cup, which on the grand scheme of things is relatively trivial. I just can’t help but think that all these infrastructural improvements in transportation, bandwidth, municipal services, and everything else are definitely good. But much of the capital spent on the stadiums, advertising and measures to allow foreign company’s access (which could have been easily met by local alternatives) could have been better spent on the problems we already have.

Articles Can Be A Drag

My experience of our first news portal article was, as I expected a little exciting, unfortunately, it soon became a bit of an annoyance. When writing an article, I really dislike the notion of being forced into writing something in which I don’t enjoy writing about. Writing something I’m not keen about creates a pseudo distance between me and the topic. Now don’t get me wrong, while I am a journalist at heart, it’s the idea of electronic media (gaming especially) where my passion lies. My other blog demonstrates this fact, and while I was not completely unmotivated by the topic, which pertained to writing about an interesting event or place in Durban by the way. The sources, in which I would gather material for our group’s article, were unwilling to give us a chance.

For our article, we had chosen a curio shop for foreign tourists. This shop had the reputation of being the largest curio shop in the southern hemisphere. Naturally, when our article relates to the tourists of Durban in the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup, this shop would have been perfect for our article. Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite the way we planned. I understand why they did not want to let us take pictures, for security reasons as far as I can gather, but their refusal to do the interview had no outstanding reasons to be declined. So in the end, what was achieved? Well, not only did they lose out on potentially very strong advertising, but we need a new topic and the deadline is approaching fast.