Author: Peter Stewart

Another Baby on the Way

Well, Ava went to the doctor and found out she is pregnant, at this stage, around 9 weeks.

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

This was not as expected as Christina was, but there you go. So it looks like our birthdays will all hover around the middle of the year.

I’ll certainly put up some pictures when I get a chance, and for the meantime Ava is doing quite well, and just feeling a little tired. Hope it all goes a little bit smoother than last time.

Falling into Facebook

I thought I would never have anything to do with Facebook. Hmm, things change, I’m usually shown I’m wrong.

The social networking stuff is interesting. Here’s how it’s playing out currently….

I always had the Peter and Ava blog, which is where all my life updates were before.

I found Twitter, which is almost like text messaging for the Internet. Just the sort of thing I was looking at to fill the gap between the blog (which I feel should have longer posts with a little more stuff in it) and smaller general updates and small comments.

I also went onto Friendfeed which aggragates updates from various social services online and gives a feed of all those updates, they can be seen in the sidebar on my blog. So far it gives updates on when I upload stuff to Picasa, when I update my status on Twitter and when I update my blog.

Finally I jumped into Facebook. It’s certainly got a novelty about it and great seeing people I know. I use Twitter to update my Facebook status. The interface for twitter is great for my mobile phone, so I can update on the move.

Will I lose my focus with all this extra stuff?

Probably not, the combination solves a few little things I’ve had on my mind, like keeping track of friends, making small updates to my website, so that those tasks can be done quick and I can get them out of my head, right in line with GTD guidelines.

Investigating Skype

I’ve been looking into Skype as an alternative to using a traditional telephone.

Call quality has been improving and from opinions I’ve read about call quality, it’s somewhere between a cellphone and a landline.

The Skype subscriptions page states that for US$5.99, you can get unlimited calls to landlines within your own country, which also includes cellphones in some countries (not Taiwan yet, but I suspect soon). US$12.99 gives unlimited landline calls to anywhere in the world, but unfortunately South Africa is not included, so a local package will be my first choice.

To make it convenient, we’d need a telephone which supports Skype, without the computer turned on. This kind of phone connects to the wireless router to make the Skype calls. The total savings could reduce our phone bill by about NTD1000 (US$30) which doesn’t sound like much, but adds up over time. The savings would be even more if cellphones for Taiwan get included.

Just a little something for today.

Snow

How many times have you seen snow? The other day while deleting stuff from my desktop I came across a video that Nicola had taken of the snow when the family went to Underberg last year in 2007. Well that got me thinking that I hadn’t seen it that much until I talked to my mom the other day over Skype.

So here I am jogging my memory.

The earliest time I can recall seeing snow was when we were in Giant’s Castle. I can’t remember how old I was, but must have been in Senior Primary or thereabouts. After we got to the Drakensberg it got very cold and started to rain. It was raining in the camp, but we knew that higher in the mountains it was surely snowing. The first day after the rain it was just too wet, so we didn’t attempt to go and see the snow. But the day after that we set out on a long walk to go and get to the snow. It was a long trek and the path was quite wet, but we did get to the snow. We made a little snowman, which I remember we have a picture of somewhere at home in SA.

The next time was a time when we went to Nottingham road specially to go and see the snow because it had snowed the night before. The snow was deep and there was enough to make snowballs and throw them at each other.

The most memorable time which I had completely forgotten was the time when we were at Mbona. Now Mbona is a private farm area that was converted into a holiday place. If you head out past Howick and then past Umgeni Valley and keep going until the road turns to dust and then continue another five kilometers or so, that’s about where it is. We were there for the weekend or some length of time and we had taken our bikes with us. It was raining in the night and getting colder. But the next morning we woke up to see the ground blanketed in snow. The first thing I could think to do was to get my bike and go for a ride. It was nearly impossible and it was too slippery to go far, but it was pretty excellent. The cottage we stayed in that belonged to my Dad’s friend Alan was the third highest cottage in the area and further down the hill there wasn’t any snow.

And the video I mentioned in the beginning. Dad, Mom and Nicola were actually at Nottingham Road and it snowed during the day, lucky fish. I will post the video sometime, eventually.

Fourth Wedding Anniversary

As of January 24th, 2008 we have been married for four years.

The time really does fly. I remember meeting Ava back in 2002 and the year and half before we got married. Our weddings in ZA, Tainan and Taipei, what a busy year that was. And now four years down the road, it’s the three of us rather than the two of us only.

Ava’s oldest sister and Rice looked after Christina on Thursday evening and Ava and I went to the Pot Pie Cafe for dinner. Just a relaxing evening together and a chance to sit down for a chat and focus on each other, we even went to the stationary store nearby and Ava commented how it’s a treat just being able to do that without Christina pulling everything off the shelves. Although we love her to bits of course.

Don’t forget to check our movies and photos (both recently updated).

B&B in Westville

A colleague of mine is going to Durban to meet with a customer who is on Essex Terrace at:

Suite 103, 1st Floor Kent House,
1 Neptune Rd, Essex Terrace
Westville, KZN
South Africa

Their website is at http://www.i-kiosksolutions.co.za

Can anyone suggest any good B&B’s in the area, there will be three or so people for two nights. I can’t remember exactly where Essex Terrace is (Westville North somewhere, right?) and Google maps doesn’t have great maps of Durban.

Leave your suggestions as comments on this post if possible. And links to websites if possible.