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.
Liverpool played out an intially stale but ultiamtley rather exciting 2-2 draw with Birmingham this afternoon. Liverpool were defeated 2-0 in the same fixture last year so one can take a positive from teh game, but to be honest these are the games that we need to be winning to mount a serious challenge to the other team in the premiership, Chelsea. Read the rest of this entry »
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Inevitability is a factor of life. So when the worlds footballing elite descended on Monaco a few weeks back for the Champions league group stage draw, one always suspected that, with Everton put rightly back amongst the ‘also-rans’, Liverpool were bound to end up in the same group as Chelsea. Unarguably the best two teams in England, Chelsea having won the Premiership last season convincingly, and Liverpool defending champions of Europe, the two teams were only separated by a single goal at the semi-final stage of this competition last year. There are 7 or 8 people in West London who still feel that the decisive goal did not cross the line, and I was not at all suprised when UEFA set this group up. Read the rest of this entry »
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This post is specially for Chris as I am all too aware how much he enjoys David Gray…. 
Was super excited to find a new batch of CD’s (some been out for a while) in my post box on return from Ireland. I had worn out James Blunt’s ‘Back to Bedlam’ before we left, and although Coldplay’s ‘X&Y’ is still getting a lot of airtime round Clockhouse Place, i needed fresh tunes. I picked up Moby’s ‘Hotel’ before I left as well, but I am not as impressed as I was with ‘18′. Back to the post box….. I have had David Gray on pre-release for some time now, so was intrigued to listen to the new album ‘Slow Motion’. Sad some will say, and I know that I am one of only a few David Gray fans, but he has churned out another collection of decent ballards. The only dissapointing thing about the album is that there are only 10 tracks….
I am however (believe it or not) more impressed with Craig David’s latest offering ‘The Story goes…’. Its been 3 years since ‘Slicker Than Your Average’ and this new album was well overdue. The first single ‘All The Way’ didn’t hit No. 1 in the UK but lets be honest, the UK charts cannot honestly be considered a benchmark when ‘bands’ like McFly have already 2 No’ 1’s in 2005 and Tony Christie spent no less than 7 weeks perched at the summit of British music
In a rush of blood, I threw in Kelly Clarkson for sh1ts and giggles, but for those considering shelling out hard earned cash on the debut album ‘Breakaway’, the photo’s on the front and back is about as good as it gets. If you’re into collections, or composite albums, the ‘Festival’ CD is worth picking up, Green Day, Snow Patrol, U2, Keane, Coldplay, Linkin Park, Kings of Leon, REM, etc.
CD of the month though, must go to this gem I ‘bought’ on the streets of old town, Edinburgh. I was accosted by a Buddhist Monk looking for donations, and on hearing our accents, straight away idetified that we were from South Africa and proceeded to detail his recent tour of Chatsworth……..yes, the one in Natal….. lets think about this for a minute… In my line of work, I deal daily with statistics, probability, chance, etc. But, what are the chances of 2 South Africans bumping into a buddhist monk on the streets of Edinburgh who has just toured Chatsworth? I arsk u wiv tears in my eye…. So the short of it was the I gave a donation and he gave me a copy of his latest Buddhist Mosh Chants ‘The Gouranga Powered Band - Mosher 6′. This stuff is pure gold. Not available on Amazon.
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Most of you will be familiar with Google’s relatively new toy Google Earth. Well, a US company ‘C&C Techologies’ have taken the concept a step further in the wake of the Katrina disaster. C&C have taken Google Earth’s GIS mapping platform, LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) data to develop a 3-D ground model and satelite imagery to generate a flood map of New Orleans. Anecdotal evidence and records of flood depths have also been incorporated for calibration. The end result is a pretty impressive 3-D model of flood depths across the city at the peak of the flood. You can also pull up the satelite image of the city in flood. For those of you more technicaly minded and interested, go to the website and check it out, its well worth it.
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I know that all of you have been tirelessly sitting by your computers refreshing this screen awaiting more news. I apologise that there has been little forthcoming and for your dissapointment. However, ‘I is bak’ and am in the process of writing up our Ireland story. Between Sars, Barry (Sars dad) and I, we have almost 300 photos to wade through so they may take a bit longer…….
Sars has taken her folks off to the Cotswolds for a couple of days before their return to sunny (and Chris tells me already boiling hot) SA, so more to follow later in the day……
Smashleigh Pollox, it appears as though I am off the hook as I have not yet found any incrimidating evidence from our ‘blow-out’………
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I’ve managed to steal a few minutes from under the nose of hte strictly regimented tourguide, but you will have to forgive me as I have spent ’some’ itme in the Gravity bar adn on Temble Bar…. So, very briefly, from our whistle stop tour of Scotland and Dublin so far:
1. There is NO parking in Edinburgh
2. If I could live anywhere other than London, it could well be Edinburgh
3. The famed ‘accidental’ encounter with Smashleigh Pollox did occur. He won. Tactical chunders were required from the damager
4. Stirling is worth a visit
5. Loch Lomond was superb. Only hiked, definitely returning with mountain bikes and all.
6. BA operate a service between Glasgow and Dublin but be prepared to fly via propellar and not jet engine.
7. Dublin is not as great as hoped. Guinness is. Temple bar reminded me of Latin Quarter in Paris, only in Dublin I started understanding the singing after the 3rd or 4th pint.
8. Off to Cork via Kilkenny and Waterford in morning. After a morning run. WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Until the detailed review, ….. um…….. good night….. (the gaelic word for ‘Good Health’ escapes me at the moment)
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On a lighter note, Sars arrived from SA for 3 weeks last Friday morning. We had a superb weekend, cycling southwest London, sampling Brick Lane’s finest (If you ever go to Brick Lane try ‘Reema’, down one of the sideroads to the right towards the top end of Brick Lane, it was the best curry I’ve had), partaking in the Regent Street festival and braaing Sunday evening away.
Sars folk are currently taking a leisurely drive through England whilst Sars and I rack up hard earned cash to support the impending tour of the home nations. Sars and I fly up to Edinburgh on a sparrows fart tomorrow morning to meet her folks and to stay in Edinbugh for 2 nights. We have booked a self catering 1st floor flat on the Royal Mile, which looks absolutely superb Bridge Apartment. I am ‘planning’ to ‘accidently’ bump in to Smashleigh Pollox so there should be at least a couple stories on the site from that……………..
Saturday we head to Loch Lomond and surrounding areas, before flying on Sunday from Glasgow to Dublin. 2 nights staying in a castle Clontarf Castleat the home of Guinness follow, before we make tracks south through Waterford and Kilkenny to Cork. Sars is attending a 2 day conference in Cork, during which time me and the in-laws will be touring the coutryside in search of more stout. The tour ends the following weekend as we make our way round the southern tip of Ireland, staying in Kenmare, visiting the Ring of Kerry, and proceeding on to Shannon and hopefully Galway. Should be a cracker.
So, I will be off the electronic highway until next Sunday 18th September, but I hope to post the odd note and upload photo’s as we go along. This of course all depends on exactly how much whisky, Guiness and Kilkenny I drink…….. Until then, I will be thinking of you all!
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Pretty shocking news that Etienne Botha, Blue Bulls centre, died this morning in a car accident. The only information I have is coutersy of IOL (read the story here so most of you in SA probably know more than I do. A player considered by many as unlucky not yet to be called into the Bok side, he’s scored more tries from centre than any other player in the Currie Cup last year - an impressive record. Anyone with more details, let me know.
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I have had a horendous week at the office, pulling at least 8 hour days , and havent managed to rave about Sars’ and my weekend away with Kam and the Kiwi. The bank holiday weekend just gone, Sars and I joined Kam and John on a superb weekend away in the Cotswolds. We set off Friday night to our self catering cottage in Broadwell, a MINOR village not far from Stow-On-The-Wold. Kam’s 2 litre, 2 door, Honda Accord managed to take 4 peoples, 4 peoples kit, all our food as well as 4 peoples mountain bikes, a remarkable effort. The main impetus behind the weekend was to catch Tree63 live at a concert in Cheltenham on Saturdya night. Unfortunatley we (sorry, I!) had a disastrous day with punctures nd delayed our return by about 2 hours, signalling the end to any ambition to get down to Cheltenhem. We did have a fanttastic weekend in general though, traversing the north Cotswolds on our mtb bikes, picking up towns and villages along the way, as well as doing our best to San Miguel and braai ourselves to death. We did get faily close to death on Saturday night with some stupid card game John ‘invented’.
Tips from our trip: Avoid Bourton-on-the-water on long weekends, always carry a spare inner tube, definitely do go on holiday to the Cotswolds, even if its for the weekend - its only 2 hours away, and there is no traffic on a Friday night of a long weekend. What I will take away from the road trip: Never being able to listen to Damien Rice with a straight face anymore. It’s disgusting.
Check out the photo gallery for all the best pics from the road trip.
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I didnt write after South Africa’s narrow yet pulsating loss to the All Blacks in Dunedin last weekend, and thought I’d await the result of the big finale at Eden Park. Just at a time when we needed the canary yellow of the Aussies to pull through for us, true to form, it was not forthcoming. Despite a big come back at the beginning of the 2nd half, the AB’s eventually pulled away to a comfortable win in the end by 10. A decent preformance though by the Aussies who were fielding a seriously understrength side away from home. So the much spoken about back-to-back Tri Nations win for the Boks did not materialise and the AB’s win back the trophy by 2 points in an truely exciting competition. The AB’s also retained their slendor lead over South Africa in the IRB world rankings. It will be very interesting to see the performances of the respective teams in the in over rated ‘end-of-season’ money making tours to the Northern Hemisphere.
The end of the Tri-Nations also brought about the end of 2 fantasy rugby competitions. Read the rest of this entry »
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