Hello! on this beautiful Sunday. The skies are cloud-free and blue (they could be another colour), and the temperature warm enough to be outside in short sleeves. You’re assured of many types of coffees, as usual, and teas. Today there is also cake. I made a simple sponge cake yesterday, a recipe as old as time. It was the first cake I ever made as a kid, and it brought me so much joy making it again. It’s simple enough – no frosting – that you can slather it with cream, jam, or honey to enjoy with your beverage. Yummmm …

Last week in a nutshell

Last week was busy work-wise. There were no deliveries. Coffee time was the usual highlight. Evenings spent watching Arrowverse shows on Netflix. Wonderful!

Looking after Garfield

We’re looking after our neighbour’s cat for a few days. He’s really missing his humans so when we go over he greets us with frantic miaows, and when I bend down he jumps (yes, literally) into my arms for some love and attention. Of course, when the food is out he loses all interest in me focusing instead on his bowl. Garfield is Nermal’s brother so naturally, we have a very soft spot for him as well.

Vacation day tomorrow

I’ve taken tomorrow off from work. Tuesday is a public holiday here – April 27th and Freedom Day commemorating our first democratic elections. I remember South Africans spending many hours standing in queues to vote. Chè, his brother, and I went out at 9 am and left after 4 pm. But what a time it was – ALL South Africans came out to stand together for the first time.

Getting restless tech-wise

I’m getting restless tech-wise. My Macbook Air, a 2016 model is starting to show signs of wanting to slow down. I keep it clean and virus-free, and its memory clear. When I work I have many tabs and apps open at the same time – Zoom for conferencing, Miro as a collaborative white space, Slack for messaging, Notes for my notes ;), and many other tabs open on Chrome with info I need. I keep Safari closed as it takes up too many resources. The fan works overtime keeping the CPU cool which leads to slow responsiveness. This is not fun when I’m teaching a class.

I can’t do fancy virtual backgrounds nor have sophisticated camera software because I only have 2 cores. Soooo, all this to say that I’ve begun courting the Apple Mac Mini with the M1 chip (512 GB SSD with 8GB memory). Price-wise it’s ok but I’m considering whether I should rather put the money towards a generator and more batteries for the inverter.

A to Z blogging challlenge

I’m running behind as usual and playing catch-up. Here are the latest posts from this week. There are another 2 coming up shortly.

P is for Port Louis
O is for Okahandja
N is for New York
M is for Marrakesh

My orchid

I have 3 flower spikes growing and new leaves. This is the plant that I almost lost. I watched some Youtube videos from Miss Orchid Girl that were enough to save my orchid. I can’t wait for the flowers.

Cheers

I hope you’ve enjoyed our coffee on this sunny Sunday. Wishing you a great week ahead.

The Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Natalie the Explorer. Click here for more coffee shares.

Hello and welcome to this week’s coffee share. There is the usual coffee and other hot beverages. And today there is chocolate mousse. It’s my Mom’s recipe and it came out so delicious.

Last night Chè and I went to our neighbour for a braai and I took desert. It was amazing being in good company, eating delicious food and having stimulating conversation. We laughed so much, it was great fun.

It’s been an introspective week for me. I’ve spent a lot of time in my head thinking through stuff. Mainly about how Covid has changed my life, how little I see my family now and how my coffee consumption has more than doubled (so there are upsides).

These are the things that I know:

• I know that I want to work from home forever and ever, and I know that is totally possible with the work I do.
• I know that I need people to thrive, and I can’t wait until I feel safe enough to spend my Fridays working in coffee shops again.
• I know that I can do very well with online shopping and never need to go to the shops again. I did all my Christmas shopping all online.
• I know that I can’t wait for my turn to have the vaccine.
• I know that I miss travel.
• I know that reading is the most relaxing activity for me to do.
• I know that our cats love having their humans at home.
• I know that I want to speak and write eloquently and that I have a ways to go.

On Tuesday I went out to buy a new battery for Che’s car.

On Thursday I had training – this time I was the one being trained and it was so much fun.

Pretty much for the whole week I’ve been playing catch-up on the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Still, I managed to get to N. I’ll do O tomorrow. Check out my posts so far:

Blogging from A to Z posts – my favourite ones so far are D is for Durban and J is for Johannesburg:
N is for New York
M is for Marrakesh
L is for Lisbon
K is for Kanchanaburi
J is for Johannesburg
I is for Istanbul (Magnetic Istanbul)
H is for Hua Huin (party town)
G is for Ghent
F is for Flic en Flac
E is for Erawan Falls
D is for Durban (Memories)
C is for Chiang Mai
B is Bangkok
A is for Ayutthaya

The Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Natalie the Explorer. Also, click here for more coffee shares.

Until next week.