The online home of Guy Laister, containing news of past, current and future activities as well as photo’s of trips far and wide. I was born in South Africa with the benefit of Her Majesty’s passport, and I am currently living in Surrey with my wife. I am a civil/environmental engineer and a founding director of an engineering consultancy in London.
Check out the latest online game. Unforutantley this one requires a level of thought inversely proportional to your IQ - the more stupid you are the harder you’re gonna have to try! Read the rest of this entry »
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The majority of you will know Tree63 and the inspiration behind South Africa’s best music band, John Ellis. The purpose of this post is not to give a detailed description of Tree63 or John, as I would probably get all the details wrong and could not possibly do John or the band justice. For those of you who are not familiar with Tree63, get yourself one the albums and have a listen - it is worth your while. Unfortunately I only have a copy of the latest album ‘The answer to the question’ in the UK as my brothers are wearing out the earlier albums in SA. Better still than borrowing, go out a buy a copy for yourself!!!
Back to the point of this post, on a recent tour of Canada, John was interviewed by Josh McConnell of Renown Magazine. The interview can be read at John Ellis Interview. Also, if you are not familiar with Tree63, there is an awesome review of the bands history at Tree63 history.
Check it out, see what John and the band have been up to.
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The teams are beginning to take the starting blocks for the big Tri-Nations fantasy league. At last check we were approaching double figures and with several end of week entries likely, the competition for that case of beers is getting fierce. Sort it out and get an entry in if you haven’t already.
Congratulations to whoever chose ‘Michael Hunt’ - a superb effort. A pint of warm soapy ale is now up for grabs for the best team name.
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Quick post just to let those know who care, that despite the middle eastern worlds wishes, all is well in London. Following the tragedy of 52 fatalities (I exclude the 4 who blew themselves up) on Thursday 7th July, a further 4 pratts tried to cause mayhem again yesterday, but thankfully failed (Sky News or BBC news).
Moving on, got a big date tonight, Sars not telling me where we’re going and it is an absolutely cracking evening so the weekend looks like kicking off to the perfect start.
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Here’s your big oppurtunity to play in premier international rugby union competition, no, not in reality but in virtual reality! There are several fantasy rugby leagues out there but our games master has scoured the electropnic highway to find the best of them and directed me to Test Rugby. The aim of the game is to pick you team given a limited financial budget and a break down of player values, and then sit back and collect points as your chosen superstars go about scoring tries, kicking penalties and breaking bones. Chris has set up a private league for us to enter into so all you have to do is log onto Test Rugby, select ‘Play Tri Nations’, register and then choose to enter the private league aptly named ‘Chateautoby’.
Last years competition saw me take the wooden spoon (literally as Chris and Ozzy were kind enough to present me with a freakin’ wooden spoon) but in this Ashes year (yes, there is major hype over here cos the poms actually think they can win), I hope to burn the wooden spoon and ship an urn of the Ashes to an address in South Africa. The particular address? Well thats up to you, log on, join in and let the banter begin!!!!!
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The majority of us are resigned to checking the ‘local’ news on the Independant On Line website. Amy has found an alternative, not only to check out the news in sunny SA, but from 225 newspapers in 55 different countries worldwide. Check out Press Display Very cool website.
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Tiger Woods lived up to all expectations on the weekend and captured his second Open Championship, with both open wins coming at the home of golf. This brings his majors total to 10 and at the age of only 29 it appears that overhauling Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 is well within his grasp.
St Andrews is possibly the greatest challenge in the game of golf and once again proved that you cannot walk into your local supermarket and buy a can of experience. Those challenging Tiger included Jose Maria Olazabal (40 in February) and Colin Montgomery (42). Other ‘older’ players near the top end of the leaderboard included Fred Couples (46 this year), Nick Faldo (48) and Bernhard Langer (48 and Ryder Cup captain for last triumphant European team).
We now look forward to the final major of the year on the 2nd weekend of August and the finale of the spread betting competiution. On that note, things appear to be hotting up near the top with most players getting their grubby paws on points, besides me! Well done to Murray who successfull picked Tiger and Monty and unluckily had little known Grameme McDowell finish 11th, 1 place out of the points. More information when the tournament organising committee releases the official results.
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Birthday wishes sounding out to Kelly Ann Maxwell aka KAM, who turned 28 today. Thanks as well for organising a superb evening on Saturday night in Kingston - the second blow-out weekend in a row!! John has photographic evidence of the festivities, but there seems to be a problem in uploading the photo’s to the website, I will have my IT guy look into it 
Kam and John, have lots of fun on the weekend in Madrid, and take lots of photo’s with that new fancy camera of yours - I’m sure I will have fixed the upload problem by then…
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We have great honour and pleasure in posting this note, following the sensational announcement that our close friends Ross Williams and Sarah Roberts are engaged to be married.
Sarah accepted Ross’s proposal of marriage last evening, Thursday 14th July 2005, in Johannesburg, South Africa. From two tobes’ to another, we would like to take this oppurtunity to say congratulations to both Willow and Sarah on this special occasion. Needless to say, Sarah and I are gutted that we’re can’t celebrate with you now, but are already looking forward to coming back to South Africa to celebrate your wedding day with you.
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The Open golf has returned to the home of golf, St Andrews, for the 2005 event with the rest of the world watching that man, Tiger Woods. There seems to be no better current game for the old course and it is difficult to see anyone beating the Tiger. Golf is a strange game though and has thrown up more than 1 or 2 suprises in the majors recently. Who knew Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis or Shaun Mikeel before they won majors. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve got the spelling of names correct!
In the ongoing fight for precious Rands in Paul Browns spread betting competition for the four golf majors, the leaderboard sees Chris still heading the field after the US Open although the old stalwart, Nick Price (at 125/1)came in for me and Chris can smell by garlic infested breath on his neck. Very briefly, the game is to select 5 players for each major with players finishing in the top ten on Sunday earning points. The amount of points a chosen player is awarded is related to their odds of winning at the start of the tournament, so for e.g. Tiger Woods and Ernie Els would collect far fewer points for finishing in the top ten than Nick Price or Rod Pampling. So the key is to select players with good value that have a chance of finishing in the top ten.
For the record and so that all of you can either celebrate with, or laugh at, me on Sunday evening as the final list is drawn up. My 5 players for the Open are as follows:
Tiger Woods
Ernie Els
Tim Clark
Angel Cabrera
Thomas Bjorn
Following the first round today, Tiger has met all expectations and has ’shot’ out in front already. Bjorn and Clark are ready to pounce but it was not a pretty day for the big easy or for BIG Angel. With the cut likely to be pretty low given the conditions, Els and Cabrera better shot their lights out tomorrow!!
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