Well, After a GREAT 11 day holiday in Saalbach, Austria skiing with my family and Sun and Ski Holidays, I have returned to sunny Cape Town, where the mercury is at least 40 degrees warmer than it was whilst in Saalbach!!! (Saalbach was sitting at close to minus 15C – damn cold) and I am ready to P-a-r-t-y with the local croud once again!!!
There is tonnes of news, but I am not going to bore all of you with all of it right here… But I will tell you some of the stories, and if you want, show you some of the pics!!! I have loaded a couple of the pics right here, but the rest will be kept for the New Year Braai that I am going to have in February some time!!! (As soon as I have a date in mind, I will send out the invites…)
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Myself: Attempting to snowboard… (Actually just getting ready to go down one of the black diamond slopes that were there !!!) | |
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A picture of the bottom of the main ski slope that was taken from my bedroom window. | |
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A picture of Saalbach taken from the Gondola while going up to the top of the mountain. You can see the town in the valley down below. | |
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Another picture of the town of Saalbach from the top of the mountain. | |
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A pic of myself and Egon out somewhere… He was in my snowboarding class and we had lots of fun on the slopes, nearly killing each other occassionaly… | |
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All of the SA guys that work at Sun and Ski Holidays… They are there for a 4 month skiing season… Quite a long time in that harsh climate I might say… (Rowan, Marty, Warren and Jarod) | |
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Getting ready to tackle one of the main slopes on my HOG… Tonnes of fun racing down the slopes… Better than skiing and snowboarding together !!!! | |
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Having to put on your ski boots each morning was a pain in the ass… But you get used to it after a few days !!!! | |
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A picture of all of the jet streams that are left behind by the many airplanes that are in the sky at any one time !!! | |
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At the back, a picture of our Pension where we stayed… and on the right is a pic of one of the many bars that are ALL located at the bottom of the ski slopes. That is where the $$$ is !!!! | |
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Aaaarrrrrgggghhhhh…. This is high !!!!! | |
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A final picture of the town from the other side of the valley… |
Bowman Gilfillan is a corporate law firm with 83 partners, more than 250 lawyers and a total staff complement of over 500. The firm operates from offices in Johannesburg (Sandton), Cape Town and London. Bowman Gilfillan is widely respected and recognized for its professionalism and for providing legal services of a high quality. It is generally regarded as one of the premier law firms in South Africa. It was voted as the 2003/2004 African Corporate Law Firm of the Year, by the UK legal publishers Chambers and Partners and was runner up in 2005/6. The firm was also recently voted as the “Top Company of the Year” in the support services category for 2005 at the South African Business Awards and as an “Ideal Employer to work for” in the legal category by a graduate survey in 2005. In addition the firm has won the International Law Office “Client Choice Award” for South Africa for 2005.
Back in May 2006 I applied to do the Winter Vacation Work programme at Bowman Gilfillan, but because they were only accepting a limited number of students, they could not offer me a position in the programme. It really crushed me since I had been wanting to visit their firm and find out about “Bowmans” as a potention company to do my legal articles at. It did not matter, I ended up spending a wonderful week at strb Smith Tabata Buchanan Boyes working with their article clerks doing some very much and enlightening work!!! So it came as a little of a suprise to me when the Human Resource lady from Bowmans, Susan Husk, gave me a call the other week asking if I was still interested in applying for their Summer Vacation Work Programme? I returned her call immediately! And I emailed. And I left a voice message. Long story short …
On the 27th November I am working for Bowman Gilfillan for the week!!! Very excited! A hell of a lot of anticipation. Probably a lack of sleep the night before, but I am sure that I will enjoy it 110%
Wish me luck !!!!
Hey all you SMSers !!!!
Lauren and I have a favour to ask all you guys out there! Before we tell you what it is, you need to PROMISE that you will help us by entering the competition 2 or 3 times, or MORE !!!!
But WHY should you help us?
Simple: Because just by voting by SMS, you stand the chance of ALSO winning a pair of these Armani sunglasses!!! Awesome hey!!!
What do you have to do?
Easy, all you need to do is SMS the following text
SPOTFEB 5 to 33753 !!!
So please vote, vote, vote for my lovely girlfriend!!! We will really appreciate all of your support if we win!!!!
Andrew & La
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SMS :SPOTFEB 5 to33753
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What is facebook.com?
Facebook.com is a website that allows you to sign-up for their service and then to create your own profile online. You can add in items like: Basic Info, Contact Info, Personal Info, Education Info, Work Info. You can add in to your friends list a list of all of your friends who are also members of Facebook! You can create albums online and then upload photos into your albums so that people who are listed as your friend can view them!!! Awesome!!!
What is great about the photo albums is that you can “tag” people in the pictures. This means that you can do a search for all of the photos in the world that YOU are in. So, if Bob takes a picture, uploads it to his profile, and then tags you in the pic, Facebook will then also add it into your collection of pictures.
There is also the very neat facility of having a wall where people can write short messages to you! Then, when you log onto your profile again you can read all of the posts.
Reasons to join facebook:
You can keep track of what your friends are up to in the world. You can manage your pictures online for all your friends to see. You can quickly and simply send friends notes online. You can join groups with other people who have similar interests to you! You can have fun finding people that you thought that you had lost contact with.
Check out my profile: Andrew Goldschmidt’s Profile
Facebook Homepage: http://www.facebook.com/
Hi Guys, Just a couple of quick pictures that were taken of myself and my wonderful girlfriend Lauren Kohn at our recent graduation ceremony held just before Christmas at UCT! It is such a great feeling to finally graduate from UCT (again) with my Law Degree!!! Especially since I did it with the help of my wonderful girlfriend – who graduated Magna Cum Laude!!!
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There are a few more pics if you click on the link below! See you all in the holidays!!!! For those of you who are starting Articles in 2007, Good Luck!!!!
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| Myself with Lauren’s Family | My Sister, Mom and Dad |
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| Some of the Girls in our class… | and some of the guys!!! |
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| Lauren Kohn and Myself with Prof Burchell | Lauren and I with Nicole and Megan |
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| A view of Jamie Hall in the background | Judge Dennis Davis, Dr Barnard, Lauren Kohn, Judge Albie Sachs & Julie |
See you all in Court guys !!!!
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) – A Documentary presented by Al Gore (he used to be the next President of the United States of America) – "on Al Gore’s campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide."
Well, I have just finished watching this absolutely brilliant documentary that has been presented all around the world by Al Gore. The movie takes the form of a slide show presentation that he has put together, which includes various TERRIFYING stats of global warming, global temperature levels, ocean temperature levels, hurricanes, floods, population densities, etc. He graphs out various historical data, and then compares it to current models, actual trends, and future models for the data. The results … SCARY, AMAZING, SHOCKING, but truthful??? You need to watch the movie and make your mind up about it. I, for one, am shocked …
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUiP6dqPynE
Website: http://www.aninconvenienttruth.co.uk/
You decide !!!!!!
So, I was sitting here in my room last Sunday, trying my hardest to keep my mind concentrating on the current topic at hand: Hart, Austin, Raz, Kelsen, Dworkin, et al … But I found my mind wondering off, down every ‘side road’ there was, onto other completely random topics of little or no worth. I just could not help it. My mind had a mind of its own.
At one stage I caught myself wondering about what some of my friends were currently thinking about. So I decided that I would take a quick SMS poll, and find out.
Q: Quickly, What is the FIRST thing that comes into your head when you hear the words: "Constructive Interpretation" or "Jurisprudence" ???
Jannie De Villiers: Dworkin — Straight, Simple & to the point
Philipa Pletts: Kant — I think that she is getting confused about the difference between Dworkin and Kant, or I spelt her answer incorrectly… 
Philipa Pletts: Do some work dork! I hate it all so much right now. Anyway, I know how to spell
David van Der Linde (Toks): HATE!!!!!!
Mike Slater: Uh, all nighter? B
randon Schiff: Was that quick enough for you…
Edward Pickup: Hot legal secretary ………. desk ……….. — I can’t print the rest. (Non Lawyer!)
Daniel McConnell: PAIN!!!! LOTS OF PAIN!!!!
Rowland Pickup: No Fu#$ing Idea — (Non Lawyer!)
Tamryn: A load of TRASH! 
im so tired of this! have fun — Yeah RIGHT… Have ‘fun’ 
Mark Ross-Inness: An idea generated from a witness that had not been heard before or the unwillingness of a jury to accept an alternative. — (Non Lawyer!)
Myself: Aaarrrgghhh…..
The resignation of Telkom chair Nomazizi Mtshotshisa comes after a stroke and a battle with the SA Revenue Service (Sars) over unpaid taxes.
According to sources close to the telecom corporation, Mtshotshisa has been struggling with her health since her stroke earlier this year. Another source says she has had to have a lift installed in her Johannesburg home to improve her mobility. She surprised the market with her resignation announcement last week.
At the time Mtshotshisa was in London, involved in negotiations with Vodafone regarding the joint shareholding of Vodacom. A stock exchange news service announcement said simply that she would be “pursuing her other business interests”. Her contract still had two years to run. Sources at Telkom say the stroke followed a battle with Sars.
Until recently, Mtshotshisa was not registered as a taxpayer.
An independent source confirms her tax troubles, saying she still owes Sars an undisclosed amount. Mtshotshisa remains a board member at Mvelaphanda Resources, where she has accumulated significant wealth as an indirect shareholder.
Earlier this year the Khumama Consortium, of which she is a part, sold 3,1m shares in the mining business for R120m. She also holds R12m worth of Telkom shares. From her various directorships she earned at least R1m/year, R723000 from Telkom. Efforts to contact Mtshotshisa were unsuccessful by the time the FM went to press.
How can a person become the Chair of one of the largest companies in South Africa, in fact the biggest Telecommunications company in our country, whilst she is NOT even registered to pay TAX to the Receiver of Revenue, AND Telkom is listed on the New York Stock Exchange !!!!!
I just don’t get it … Source: My Broadband :: Telecoms : Stress takes its toll
Story: Apparently the owner of the BMW M3 (’Mr A’) was sleeping with another guy’s wife (’Mrs B’). ‘Mr B’ found out about ‘Mr A’ sleeping with his wife… was a little psycho… and decided to take this frustration out on the M3… (Not cool !!!!)
Location: North Carolina, United States of America.
Update: A little update to the story… Mr A’s brother contacted via email, and asked me to remove the licence plate numbers (so no more psychos can get to them…) and told me that my story is actually a little wrong… Mrs B was actually recently divorced. It was the psycho recent-ex-husband (’Mr B’) that trashed the car…
Click on the pictures to open a larger image in a new window.
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That is just a little scratch on the boot there, Nothing you can’t get out… Smashed Back Window… |
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Nice Dent in the middle of the bonnet… (Slightly censored image…) | |
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A couple of scrathes down the side, and a broken window… | |
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Another Nice Dent… This time in the middle of the roof… | |
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Smashed Windscreen, broken Side Mirror, Smashed windows & a fresh coat of Paint on the side… | |
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Ummm… It looks like some of that paint ended up on the inside of the M3 as well… | |
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I would say that quite a lot of that paint ended up on the inside of the M3… |
O MY GOSH !!!!!! If this ever happened to my car… I don’t even know what I would do.
(But it would not be pretty…)
Tags: funny
Well, Since Christmas is coming to a close I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday with their families!!! Big lunches, dinners and loads of presents. We just got the new LG RH7624W DVD Player with a built-in 250GB Hard Drive. So far it is an awesome unit. You can record live TV onto the Hard Drive and then edit all of the adverts out of it, then burn it to DVD that you can then play on any normal DVD player…
Awesome, No ??? What you can also do, it start taping a movie, then when you want to go to make some coffee, you can simply hit the "pause" button, go make coffee, and then when you come back, just hit the "play" button, and the ‘live TV’ will carry on from where you left off. You won’t miss a minute !!!!!!
Region Hack: (List of other DVD Hacks – click here or here) This DVD player, like most others, are limited to only being able to play DVDs from a certain region. So, this unit is set to region 2, which is South Africa. This means that it is not able to play a DVD from another region. (USA, Hong Kong, etc)
- Region 1 – The U.S., U.S. territories and Canada
- Region 2 – Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Greenland
- Region 3 – Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong
- Region 4 – Mexico, South America, Central America, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Caribbean
- Region 5 – Russia (okay, former Russia), Eastern Europe, India, most of Africa, North Korea, Mongolia
- Region 6 – China
UNLESS: You have a DVD Region Hack… Which will then allow you to play DVDs from ANY region !!!! So I found one… and I want to make it known to the world… and anyone else who has one of these units. Step 1: With the unit in DVD (Disc) mode Step 2: With drawer open Step 3: Key in "0" seven times… Step 4: The display will (should) read "Congrats" Step 5: Press enter That is it… Sorted… 100%… You can now play DVDs from any region !!!!!
UPDATE: My Unit started doing exactly what other people have also had problems with… When you turn the unit on, it says "Please Wait…" for quite some time before it eventually switches on. I think that this is a manufacturing problem, maybe there was not enough testing done on the units before they were sent out into the world !!! ??? !!! Anyway, I finally had enough of that, and returned the unit to Marko, where they swopped it out for a new one. It has been working ever since. BUT: If this one starts doing the same as the last one… then I am going to swop the LG out for a different model !!!! Will keep you posted.
Additional Link: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/archive/index.php/t-24182.html
Tags: technology