The highest recorded temperature in Joburg was today – 37 degrees centigrade. It is unclear though if this was the highest recorded temperature of this year, this decade, this century or of all time! Everything is warm to the touch – even the floor tiles in the bathroom. The only respite is the pool, garden sprinkler or a cold shower. Due to the drought currently being experienced, usage of the garden sprinkler has been banned so a 10 second cold shower will have to suffice.

South African equities continued their downward move after the second Chinese exchange circuit breaker was triggered this week. Financials are down, the overall stock exchange is down. Not even the South African bond market has escaped. With foreign investors offloading emerging market stocks for better returns in less risky pastures, the only sure thing at the moment seems to be gold. Until equities recover off course! I’m not a financial guru by any means, do not use what I wrote above as being particularly accurate – it’s how I understand things and there is a lot more to the markets that I haven’t even begun to understand yet.

Netflix has launched in South Africa. And in a lot of other countries as well. The catalogue is going to be different to the US one. Probably watered down, so why should I bother with the local version of Netflix…?

The mosquitoes are having a field day with me. Bloody blood sucking vampires! They don’t even let me sleep in peace, there’s no respect! They have a thing for my ankles and wrists. Who’d thought they had a foot fetish?

Sources report that instances of writing 2016 instead of 2015 is slowly increasing although it hasn’t stabilised by any stretch of the imagination. Some days there are more instances of 2015 than there are 2016 but since it is only the first week of January this doesn’t pose any significant threat or at the very least concern. Time will tell how quickly things stabilise. We’ll keep monitoring though and trigger the date circuit breaker should instances of this show upward mobility.

New Year’s day left overs are still in plentiful supply in the fridge. It is estimated that they will finish before the end of this week. New supplies were brought into the pantry this afternoon to enable fresh cooking of meals from this weekend onwards. This has been a positive development though because there has been more time for binge-watching The X-Files rather than slaving over a hot stove during this heat wave.

And finally, a feel-good story to end this evening’s bulletin. Unknown sources report that Che’s whole wheat bread loaf has held it’s beautiful dome shape instead of sinking in the middle like it has been known to do – sometimes. It appears that a simple change to the process was successful – programme 1 (basic) was used instead of programme 3 (whole-wheat). It is believed that the authors of the recipe book have been contacted but they have provided no comment as yet.