well, momma okunade left earlier this week and all i have to show for it is a clean flat, lots of good food in my refrigerator, and peace of mind while i drive (my mom, who's normally tense when others are driving, was even more tense, cluthcing on to the brake for dear life and probably holding her breathe the whole time; promise i'm not that bad a driver). thanks mom.

the week was really busy, so i didn't get a chance to take time off and hang out with mom, but during the weekend we did find out where humankind originates (right here in the caves of jo-burg!...) and where humankind asserts its domination over all other species (at carnivore, the meat/game eaters' heaven). in other words, on sat we went crawling through the cradle of mankind caves and museum (my mom did it in a dress and heels...impressive):

and then we went to have lunch/dinner at this restaurant called carnivore, where they just keep bring you all kinds of meat until u put ur flag down. we had crocodile, antelope, kudu, ostrich, alligator, and the boring ones, chicken, beef, pork, etc. i was soo disappointed cuz people told me about having zebra and i was really looking forward to it, but they brought out no zebra. and when i asked them they told me they had none. too bad, i'll have to go back soon. anyway, we were both pretty full for the next 2 days:

check out the rest of the pics: here

in other news: i don't normally follow british politics that much (except for occasionally watching the absolutely hilarious british parliament session on c-span), but i just have to comment on the british foreign minister, david miliband. this dude must be one of the stupidest guys around, in my opinion. i say this on one basis only. he's here in sa, basically trying to drum up support for his zim solution. btw, he's pretty much alone in this solution he's preaching. this solution includes the following: disregard the run-off elections (fair enough) and recognize the march election, declare morgan tsvangirai as the president of zim and depose bobb mugabe (hmm...). this is stupid. thats the best way i can put it. here's the issue: if you legitimize the results of the march elections, then you MUST legitimize the rules under which those election results were received. the rules of the elections say that a candidate must get higher than 50% to win the presidency, otherwise there will be a run off. now im not defending bobb by any means (neither, btw, do i think morgan would be that great a person/leader), but i'd like to defend rational thought. now a better position would be to reject both elections and results as flawed and call for new elections or some kind of unity government. but accepting the results of one election, while making up new rules by which these results should be judged doesnt really make sense, does it. thank britain, once again, for your strong and useful insight into african politics.

back to the us: apparently b-obama is anti-dumb. check it out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/opinion/10collins.html?hp

also, what's up with all the craziness about b-obama moving to the centre? this is politics 101. plus he never claimed that he wanted to be president solely for lefties (see his 2004 convention speech). i like how the economist put it: (along the lines of) The real issue is that barack has not moved far enough to the center..."Mr Obama needs to embrace centrism as a matter of conviction rather than flirting with it as an instrument of political expediency."