Dizzy-Dee's deliciously delightful, dainty and dangerous, daring and dazzling dark dungeon…

The weather is miserable in South Africa, and has been for the past week. After spending the whole Saturday tidying my cupboard, and packing away my winter clothes, I had to pull them all out this week!

Its raining, the wind is blowing, and its flippin cold! Typical winter in Cape Town, only I’m in Gauteng – and its not supposed to be winter!

Though this weather brings back incredible memories from my time in the UK, it also brings a nostalgia with it which makes me realize how quickly time runs out, which is sad.
I took some photo’s to show you how gloomy it is outside.

On Sunday I baked a banana bread, and for the first time used a silicone bread pan.  Is it better than a tin pan?  I don’t really know, but its easier to wash!

The bread came out looking fine, and tasting yummy.  The only limitation that the silicone bake-ware has is that it can’t resist heat of over 220 degrees Celsius.  Now I don’t know if anyone ever bakes a bread over 180 degrees Celsius, so that doesn’t really hinder me from using the pan for any bread.  The pro’s are that it bakes slightly shorter than in a tin pan – you save about 10 minutes on 1 hour baking time.

The pan does however change shape a bit if you fill it up with dough / batter, and my banana bread did come out looking a bit pregnant – LOL.

Here are some photos…

Part of a commercial pilot’s license is night flying hours, and that’s what we did last Saturday night. I got some nice photo’s of Pretoria CBD, Menlyn and the highways…  The photo’s don’t do the views justice though.  Its simply indescribable.  We flew over my parents’ house too, and since its close to impossible to recognize a house from the air in the night, they flickered the outside lights for us to be able to spot them – it was so amazing to know that its their little light flickering among the thousand of other lights.

Phew.  What is there to say after a long day of cleaning and tidying!?  For the first time since being married I had someone to help me clean the house, and what pleasure.

For those who don’t live in South Africa, let me explain a bit more.  In SA its the norm to have someone clean your house for you, do your washing, ironing and pretty much all other household chores.  When we were in the UK a few years back I realized for the first time that this wasn’t so common in all other countries.

Now having lived here for my whole life, I must admit that I am one of the odd ones out to not have a domestic worker, and I’ve had to get used to people’s reactions when I tell then that I do all the housework myself, on top of working at the office for a full day.  Now this is not some kind of noble act to gain favor with anyone, or some money saving plan.  Instead I am just too distrusting to allow anyone strange into my home to come and clean & organize it for me.

I’ve been having these arguments with myself, and even with my husband about who we should pick, who we can trust, and who would be able to work with such care that our perfectionism will be satisfied.

Well, we have now finally found someone, and she did excellent for a first day.  I’m hoping that she will continue to be so thorough in future as well, as the trend is to slack as soon as you’re settled in – in many jobs that is.

For now, I am ecstatic with a lovely clean home, and NO IRONING – Yay!! So I’m going to busy myself with baking a banana bread.

Happy “rest of the” weekend all

I’ve been a member of Amatomu for quite some time now – I’m guessing over 2 years, and today when I wanted to log in, I found this message:

Amatomu facilitates blog networking specifically in South Africa, and has been the catalyst in many online acquainting, friendships and obviously the increase of traffic for many of us.

Its sad to see such a brilliant project come to an end, but at the same time I want to say thank you to all those involved up until this point. Thank you Mail & Guardian for you effort, time and passion for this project – it was a huge success.

I’m hoping that someone will take this project over, or at least that it will still be successfully maintained by the community.

Apparently the Dead Fly Art has been around for a while, but I have only found it today!! I think this is so brilliantly done, I just have to share it!! If you’re the original artist; please contact me so that I can credit you.

I’ve been longing to put up a proper post about this, but time has just not allowed me yet! As you may, or may not know, my husband is a pilot, currently still private whilst building his hours to complete his commercial license. For this reason, we are fortunate enough to fly very often, and to places where I have never been, and probably never would have been if it wasn’t for this!

This past weekend we went flying twice, and though I am getting used to all the strange movements which are associated with a “small” aircraft, it is still one of the most amazing experiences!!

I will be posting photo’s here more often now of places where we go, and what we see there.

Hope you enjoy

I need help with a Googlebomb please.

Not your usual googlebomb but one that distorts image listings.

Anyone familiar with Schnappi (Das kleine krokodil)?
Well I have a colleague who HATES Schnappi and it would be so cool to
have his photo show up for the result “Schnappi”

I would also like to track the progress of this effort.

If you’re curious, check the blog dedicated to this experiment @
Schnappi Experiment Blog

Please help by copying the following code and pasting it on your
blog’s sidebar or footer and retweeting this request please or even
posting about it.

<p>Schnappi </p>

<p><a href=”http://www.dizzy-dee.com/experiment/schnappi“><img
src=”http://www.dizzy-dee.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Schnappi.jpg“></a></p>

Regards,
Danette

And now, on a more serious note…

• Where a man can rule a “democratic” country from before his son’s birth until the son is old enough to take over from his dad.
• Where a watch is worn as a decorative status symbol while time is seen as an European invention that is still used as a form of slavery.
• Where crime actually pays better than any other respectable job
• Where it is safer to ask directions from a dodgy figure in a back street alley than from anyone in a police uniform
• Where the election results are known before the Election Day
• Where flexi-time means coming to work later in the morning and leaving earlier in the afternoon
• Where bribery and corruption is more transparent than the national elections
• Where it is safer to travel by car (or bicycle) than by plane
• Where the whole population agrees that the current government is corrupt, but still votes for that same government at the next elections
• Where the offense of racism can be viewed as a more serious crime than murder
• Where the local government can trace back any problem in its own country to any another country in the world
• Where children can learn to use an AK-47 before they learn how to use a fork and knife
• Where the poorest country has the richest president
• Where you are considered to be cool when wearing your sunglasses after sunset
• Where you have more chance of picking up a deadly disease in a hospital than by having unprotected sex
• Where candles replaced electric lights

As promised here is another set of photos – not sure where they were taken, but I am suspecting it may have been taken in the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve, where you can go and view the Lions being fed.