Exam results! ...... cont
After a very tense day of waiting - I finally got my results for the exams I have just written. I received the other 2 results. They were as follows:

Tax (individuals)     66%

Tax (business)         53%

So three out of 4 is not that bad! I am very happy with it actually - but with the tax especially! I (together with Carrie) put a lot of effort and time into those exams not to mention the part time lectures at Boston College in Umhlanga (Thank you Savesh!) sp its a really good feeling passing them! I did not expect to pass the individuals with 66% but I will take it!

Exam results!
After about a month of waiting - I finally got my results (or at least some of them) for the exams I have just written. I received 2 of the 4 this morning. They were as follows so far:
Commercial Law - FAILED       - 36%

Auditing                 - PASSED     - 50%

Thats the two I have received so far! The other two I am waiting for will detemine the subjects i write next semester. This is as a result of them (tax) being prerequisites for the accounts III subjects. We will wait and see!

BL 11/12/2009

Sunglasses at 5:30am - Surely not?
I got up this morning and went cycling and wore my clear lenses in my cycling glasses. I was clearly mistaken about how bright it is at that time in the morning! From now on - it will be dark lenses at 5:30 am - it sounds crazy but its true!
The ride was very good but I had to dodge all the puddles and the pot holes from the rain last night. it was pretty quick too (by my standards of course!) so i am very happy with the training so far. The stats were as follows:
Distance: 14.86 km
Max Speed: 60.2 km/h
Avg speed: 27.1 km/h
Time: 32:44

BL 10/12/2009

I wanna be a rock star...cont...
Last night was the first instalment of the recording of the dmm CD. It was put on hold last week when the sound technician (Gill) was sick. it was actually quite good fun! i was pleasantly surprised at how easy i found it! Do not get me wrong here - I also found out that I am no Pavarotti! In fact, it was more an ant on steroids who thinks he can sing like pavarotti!! Jokes aside though - we are doing our best with the limited equipment and time we have and that will suffice along with faith and prayers to produce the CD of a decent quality!
You will read more about this as it unfolds right here! the CD will be sold when it is released so watch www.gcidurban.com for more details - probably in the new year.
 

BL 10/12/2009

A journey of 1000 miles.

Well actually it was closer to 2000 km (1250 miles). As the previous post said - it was a big weekend! Saturday morning myself and my dad flew to Johannesburg and drove for about 2,5 hours to arrive at Sun City to be guests at the Old Mutual hospitality tent at the Nedbank Golf Challenge. I cannot express the emotion of having the experience of being a guest there! the tent was in sight of the main hospitality area of the tournament and it was about 22 degrees (Celsius) all day despite the mid to upper 30 degree temperature outside!

Once again we were spoilt rotten by Old Mutual and many thanks to them for the weeks and months of hard work that goes into staging such hospitality! We watched some golf that afternoon and its truly amazing to see the players in action that close! They are athletes of a different caliber indeed. Our plans for watching the players playing the 17th hole were put on hold however when we were given VIP tickets to the 18th green grand stands which we obviously took up and went! We had a good time watching all the players come in and end their rounds and saw some amazing golf shots played.

We went to the casino after the tent closed for the night and had some dinner before heading out to the Sun Down Ranch. Its about 10 km from Sun City and normally easy to find. Well without lights in that part of the world - you are lucky to find yourself let alone the Sun Down Ranch!! We managed to get in and to reception to discover that the electricity had been cut for nearly 2 days! We were certain it was because of the road works that are going on in the area. We were reassured that there were candles in the room and we found that there were. After getting ready for bed - I blew the candles out and got into bed only to hear the most dreaded sound in the night one can ever hear - the high pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee of a mozzie! The only thing worse than the noise - WE HAD NO ELECTRICITY TO POWER TO SUPPLIED VAPE MAT MACHINE!

We managed to get some sleep in beds to small with the mozzies at our heads until about 2 or 3 am (not sure exactly) when we were woken by the light coming on! I soon powered the vape mat machine up and got some sleep! Upon waking we discovered that we had 2 / 3 mozzies that were the size of my fists flying around still but I managed to kill them with small artillery fire with little damage to the building. You could have given 18 people blood transfusions with the blood in those things!

After an (as usual) awesome breakfast at the ranch we headed off to Sun City for the final days play. Before we went to the golf tent - we took a tour of the Palace of the Lost City! Wow! I had never been so my dad thought it a good idea to take me to show me around! Super impressive. The pictures (see them here) do no justice to the magnitude of the place and the details gone into it!

We took a bus to the golf and started our day at the golf. It was super hot by the time we got to the tent and I downed almost a litre of water before even starting anything! After we had cooled down a little, we headed off to the 4th hole to watch the players play the short hole. Its a very good hole to watch. Its a par 3 with an elevated tee, a fairly large green protected by a lake that covers about two thirds of the green as the players look at it. The pin placement was at the front of the green on the right hand side - they had to go over the biggest part of the water to get it close. The 4th hole is probably the furthest part of the course you can go to so it was quite a walk to get there and back. The hot weather really took its toll during the day on Sunday but nothing that loads of water and good food could not fix. After lunch we headed to the 17th green to watch the player come through but not all of them because otherwise we would not see the finish so after the 2nd last group we headed back to watch in the tent and the end was fantastic - ending in a 3 hole play off.

After the golf was finished we hung around the tent until it pretty much closed down after another good year and we headed off to the Sun City hotel for dinner at out favourite restaurant (I have no clue what its called!). It was good AGAIN! We then headed off to the kids section of the casino with the mission to win a stuffed toy for Carrie. We arrived and found that we were not the only adults in the kids section actually playing the games! We managed to work out which toy we wanted to grab out of the pile and much to our amazement got a pink elephant on the first go! We were very happy and did not scream and shout about it but almost! We had never won (or seen anyone win) anything on those machines before. We went on to win and loose some cash at the casino and found our way back to the Sundown ranch after a long day.

All the photos are here.

BL 08/12/2009

Big weekend ahead!!
Its that time of year again - Nedbank Challenge time! Myself and my dad have the absolute honour of being guests of Old Mutual at their hospitality tent at the Nedbank Challenge. This is second time I am going - last year was the first time I went. Prior to that my younger brother, Murray, and my dad went as Murray is the golfing fanatic. I have happily taken his place but have only done so because he is now living and working in London.
I am getting super keen for this weekend because its a very different experience watching golf live and even better when you have an air-conditioned hospitality tent to go and relax in! Thank you to Old Mutual for last year and I am sure they are going to pull out all the stops this to make it an awesome experience!
Watch this space!

BL 04/12/2009

When I grow up I wanna be a rock star!
The music ministry at our church aka dmm (Durban Music Ministry) are working on another CD to be released in the new year. The CD will be made up of all original Christian praise and worship songs written and arranged by the members of dmm. The CD has been in the making for a while now and tonight marks the first attempt of myself adding vocals to the music track already laid down. This is the first time I will be involved in the making of a CD in any shape or form and should be an interesting experience!
This is not the first CD released by dmm as they have already released two CD's in years gone by.
Unfortunately, due to one of the members of dmm being sick the recording session was called off and the first one will only be next Wednesday!

BL 04/12/2009

The Tour
2010 is a big year for the Laister family - Both my parents turn 60 years old as well as being my 30th birthday. To add to the already big year during which the world cup is in South Africa. On top of all this and all the rest of the plans - the Laister family that live in South Africa (my parents, my wife and I) are doing an overseas trip to the UK in June!
It is my (and Carrie's) first trip to the UK and only our second trip overseas at all - the first being our honeymoon to Zanzibar. As of last week the tickets have been booked for the 29 May 2010 so its all pretty exciting! Lots of plans have been thought of for the trip and over the next 6 months or so they will be made and remade and revised. Watch this space for the developments!

BL 02/12/2009

Tour of the South Coast
Another thing planned for 2010 is a personal goal. I would like to cycle from my house in Glenashley to Port Edward about 188 km away. I have done this before and have wanted to redo it ever since. It was done in 2003. It took almost 8 hours of riding time to do which was a long long time in the saddle but well worth it. The plan is to do it as part of a long weekend away. I think that the first real opportunity is the 9th of august 2010. The plan would be to ride on the Saturday and then stay down there somewhere till Monday and drive back. We will see what happens - again watch this space!

BL 02/12/2009
 

An afternoon outing (28/11/2009)

This weekend started off pretty badly so on Saturday just before lunch time we decided to get out of the house and go somewhere. This is what happened!
We went from home to a local restaurant called Pasha's and got a take away lunch. We then drove to Morningside in Durban and sat in a park (I think its a reservoir for water but not sure) over looking the city of Durban on the northern side.
The lunch was awesome and I completely recommend the food to anyone! We had a view of the new stadium that has been built for the 2010 world cup as well as the good old "Kings Park Stadium". it was a magnificent day and the photos show that.
From there we headed of to the habour side of Durban along the beach front. This is an old haunt for us from many training rides on our tandem bicycle. It is being extensively redone at the moment (all to do with the 2010 preparations) so we could not drive all the way along the "golden mile" but eventually made it to the point. We got out and walked along the canal towards uShaka Marine world. The canal is the link between the tanks in the aquarium and the ocean. Its a really up market looking area and very modern buildings stand either side of the canal. One can pay for a Gondola boat ride along the canal too. I was a little upset to see the "gondola" is motorized!! It looks pretty good fun though.
We walked all the way to uShaka and grabbed an ice-cream walked back to the car. We decided to head along to Wilson's Wharf because the harbour was so clear. It was a brief visit but well worth it! The whole outing was great fun, cost us very little and we have great photos and memories too.

See the photos here!