Bella Swallows A Monkey

About three weeks ago I was travelling on the N3 Highway to Eston. About 10 kilometers before Camperdown a monkey jumped in front of my car.

I was doing about 120km/h when I saw a flash of grey, heard a thud and saw my number plate flip up. The next thing I know there's smoke coming out from the front of the car and I had to pull over.

I get of and go to the front to assess the damage and get the number plate only to find that a monkey was stuck head first in the grill! It was one of those little grey vervet monkeys you get all over Durban that like raiding unguarded kitchens and it was still alive and kicking!

I didn't know what to do! What condition was it's head in? How was I going to get this roadkill out? I couldn't drive around with a monkey stuck in my grill! I was thinking of flagging down a truck to get the driver to help me but I don't think anyone would have stopped on that part of the N3!

Eventually I gathered my wits and got a towel from my gym bag. I grabbed the monkey by it's legs, closed my eyes, pulled and flung it over the barrier! The monkey landed on it's side. It's eyes were open but blinking and I thought it would die anytime soon.

I took my towel and covered it thinking that it's end was near. I grabbed my number plate and jumped into my car. It took me a while to gather my thoughts and take in what had just happened.

To my utter surprise I saw the towel come up! The monkey sat up, pulled the towel of it's head and tried to take a few wobbly steps. I think it was still dazed from the knock. After a few minutes of watching the traffic go by it calmly got up and walked of into the bush like nothing happened!

The monkey didn't have a scratch on it. I guess the honeycomb grill of my car took most of the impact and cushioned the blow to the monkey. The smoke was actually gas from the air conditioner and besides the grill being damaged one of the heat sensors was kaput too. All in all damages came to R15 000!

Monkey 1 - Golf GTI 0

The Year Of The Bull

Sebastian Vettel showed who's boss when he comfortably won the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on Sunday. Vettel dominated in Qualifying and didn't give up his lead the entire race. All in all the 23 year old probably had quite a boring race. His RB7 was untouchable even though he didn't use his KERS system.

The rest of the contenders on the other hand had plenty of excitement during the race. Rubens took out Rosberg and Schumi went out with a flat. Alonso and Massa decided to make a Ferrari-McLaren sandwich with Button before the Englishhman got "pushed" into a run off getting ahead of Alonso and Massa. He suffered a drive through penalty.

Petrov had a good race making it for the first time in his F1 career to the podium after finishing 3rd. I guess Alonso couldn't pass him... again!

Sergio Perez had the race of his life finishing 7th after an amazing one stop race but both Saubers were disqualified for wing technicalities. Perez lost his 7th place and Kobayashi lost 8th.

Both HRT cars didn't even qualify for the race.

Race winner was Sebastian Vettel for Redbull, 2nd was Lewis Hamilton for McLaren and 3rd was Vitaly Petrov for Renault, 4th - Alonso, 5th - Webber, 6th - Button, 7th - Massa, 8th - Buemi, 9th - Sutil and 10th - Di Resta.

The race also saw the return of Pirelli to Formual 1. The drivers had to use both hard and soft compound tyres during the race.

Although the podium finishers had uneventful races the rest was pretty exciting. Some exhilaration and some disappointment but a great start to the 2011 F1 season.

Hijack!!!

On Tuesday evening I experienced my second hijacking. Yes. They tried to take away my 3 month old car!

I arrived home just after 7pm from gym and noticed 2 young boys walking up the road. They had passed my house and after parking my car and going to close the garage door I heard footsteps running towards the house.

I immediately knew something was wrong and expected trouble. When the first hijacker came around the corner I punched him in the face and kicked him in the gut. I turned around to face the second hijacker and noticed he had a gun. I decided not to tackle him and ran into the house slamming shut the gate between the garage and the house.

They kept asking me for my car keys and I just swore them back. I had my keys in my hand but they decided to check the ignition anyway. After discovering the keys were not in the car they decided to leave. Not run, they walked!

When I called 10111, South Africa's equivalent of the USA's 911 emergency number, I got through to Pinetown Police Station and they said that I called the wrong station and proceeded to give me Sydenham Police Stations number! I flipped! I insisted on not calling another number. What's the point of having an emergency number then? After taking my details the cops arrived within 5 minutes which was impressive.

The Five-O said that these guys probably had a vehicle waiting for them up the road and were long gone.

I don't know what got into me to retaliate and realize that I took a big chance. If these hijackers were more experienced I wouldn't be writing this blog right now. The SAPS need to do something about crime in Durban. People are getting fed up of living in fear. And they wonder why people want to leave our beautiful country!

Stay safe Durban!

IPL BID 2011: Teams

Here is a list of the players that were bought after the 2011 auctions that happened in Bangalore on the weekend of the 8-9 January 2011


CHENNAI SUPER KINGS

R. Ashwin $850,000
S. Badrinath $800,000
Doug Bollinger $700,000
Michael Hussey $425,000
Sudeep Tyagi $240,000
Scott Styris $200,000
Dwayne Bravo $200,000
Joginder Sharma $150,000
Francois du Plessis $120,000
Wriddhiman Saha $100,000
Nuwan Kulasekara $100,000
Ben Hilfenhaus $100,000
Suraj Randiv $80,000
George Bailey $50,000

Total: $4,115 million

DECCAN CHARGERS

Dale Steyn $1.2 million
Cameron White $1.1 million
Daniel Christian $900,000
Kumar Sangakkara $700,000
Kevin Pietersen $650,000
Pragyan Ojha $500,000
Ishant Sharma $450,000
J.P. Duminy $300,000
Shikhar Dhawan $300,000
Amit Mishra $300,000
Manpreet Gony $290,000
Juan Theron $85,000
Michael Lumb $80,000
Chris Lynn $20,000

Total: $6.575 million

DELHI DAREDEVILS

Irfan Pathan, $1.9 million
David Warner $750,000
Venugopal Rao $700,000
Morne Morkel $475,000
Ashok Dinda $375,000
James Hopes $350,000
Aaron Finch $300,000
Naman Ojha $270,000
Ajit Agarkar $210,000
Umesh Yadav $150,000
Mathew Wade $100,000
Colin Ingram $100,000
Andrew McDonald $80,000
R. Van der Merwe $50,000
Travis Birt $20,000
Robert Frylinck $20,000

Total: $5.85 million

KINGS XI PUNJAB

David Hussey $1.4 million
Dinesh Karthik $900,000
Adam Gilchrist $900,000
Piyush Chawla $900,000
Abhishek Nayar $800,000
Praveen Kumar $800,000
Shaun Marsh $400,000
Stuart Broad $400,000
Ryan Harris $325,000
Dmitri Mascarenhas $100,000
Nathan Rimmington $20,000

Total: $6.945 million

KOCHI

Mahela Jayawardene $1.5 million
Muttiah Muralitharan $1.1 million
Ravindra Jadeja $950,000
S. Sreesanth $900,000
R.P. Singh $500,000
R. Vinay Kumar $475,000
Brendon McCullum $475,000
Brad Hodge $425,000
V.V.S. Laxman $400,000
Parthiv Patel $290,000
Steven Smith $200,000
Owais Shah $200,000
Ramesh Powar $180,000
Thisara Perera $80,000
M. Klinger $75,000
Stephen O'Keefe $20,000
John Hastings $20,000

Total: $7.315 million

KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS

Gautam Gambhir $2.4 million
Yusuf Pathan $2.1 million
Jacques Kallis $1.1 million
L. Balaji $500,000
Manoj Tiwary $475,000
Shakib Al Hasan $425,000
Brett Lee $400,000
Eoin Morgan $350,000
Brad Haddin $325,000
Jayadev Unadkat $250,000
R. Ten Doeschate $150,000
James Pattinson $100,000

Total: $8.575 million

MUMBAI INDIANS

Rohit Sharma $2 million
Andrew Symonds $850,000
Munaf Patel $700,000
David Jacobs $190,000
Clint McKay $110,000
James Franklin $100,000
Moses Henriques $50,000
Aiden Blizzard $20,000

Total: $4,02 million

PUNE

Robin Uthappa $2.1 million
Yuvraj Singh $1.8million
Angelo Mathews $950,000
Ashish Nehra $850,000
Graeme Smith $500,000
Murali Kartik $400,000
Callum Fergusson $300,000
Mitchell Marsh $290,000
Tim Paine $270,000
Wayne Parnell $160,000
Jesse Ryder $150,000
Jerome Taylor $100,000
Alfonso Thomas $100,000
Nathan McCullum $100,000

Total: $8.07 million

RAJASTHAN ROYALS

Ross Taylor $1 million
Johan Botha $950,000
Rahul Dravid $500,000
Shaun Tait $300,000
Paul Collingwood $250,000
Pankaj Singh $95,000

Total: $3.095 million

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE

Saurabh Tiwary $1.6 million
AB de Villiers $1.1 million
Zaheer Khan $900,000
Cheteshwar Pujara $700,000
Dirk Nannes $650,000
Dilshan Tillakaratne $650,000
Daniel Vettori $550,000
A. Mithun $260,000
Charl Langeveldt $140,000
Md. Kaif $130,000
Luke Pomersbach $50,000
Johan van der Wath $50,000
R. Rossouw $20,000
Nuwan Pradeep $20,000
Jonathan Vandiar $20,000

Total: $6.840 million

Some big hitters weren’t picked: Sourav Ganguly, Sanath Jayasuria, Mark Boucher and the Windies’ Chris Gayle.

Sunday Night Cricket

January 09, 2011 was the perfect day in Durban to host the Indian cricket team in a spectacular T20 match against the Proteas. The Indians won the match by 21 runs but the South African flags still flew high as they said goodbye to one of cricket’s greatest contributors to the sport, Makhaya Ntini.

This was the first international cricket match at the Moses Mabhida Stadium. The crowd, 50000 strong, couldn’t stop cheering as a golf car took Ntini around the stadium thus ending his career innings.

The cricket wasn’t the only entertainment that evening. There was a concert commemorating 150 years Indians have been in South Africa. Spectators were treated to stunning performances by Bollywood Stars Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Malaika Arora and Shahid Kapoor. The best part of the friendship concert was when SRK called up some of the SA cricket players to demonstrate some their other talents. AB de Villiers stunned people when he belted out the classic “Yeh Dosti” from the movie Sholay!

The worst part of the concert had to be the emcees, Tarina Patel and Claudia Henkel. There’s no question that both these women looked beautiful on stage but someone forgot to tell them that they were holding mics and they didn’t need to scream for the crowd to hear them. After spending almost 9 hours in their seats people had no energy to scream when requested by Tarina and Claudia. They just wanted to see the stars perform!

As the concert ended with a spectacular fireworks display and people were heading out the stadium it looked like what our forefathers might have looked like when they disembarked the ship 150 years ago. People looked tired as it was a long day but they all looked happy and it was interesting listening to their experiences of that day as they headed home.

IPL Bids 2011

The bidding for IPL teams for 2011 began yesterday with a few upsets and surprises. Some big stars went unsold and some unexpected players went for really high prices! I think the biggest shocker was Sourav Ganguly went unsold! Gautum Ghambir was the most expensive player sold to Kolkata Knight Riders for $2.4 million.

Here are the most expensive players sold yesterday:

Gautam Gambhir Kolkata Knight Riders $2.4 million
Yusuf Pathan Kolkata Knight Riders $2.1 million
Robin Uthappa Pune $2.1 million
Rohit Sharma Mumbai Indians $2 million
Irfan Pathan Delhi Daredevils $1.9 million
Yuvraj Singh Pune $1.8million
Saurabh Tiwary Royal Challengers Bangalore $1.6 million
Mahela Jayawardene Kochi $1.5 million
Dale Steyn Deccan Chargers $1.2 million
AB de Villiers RCB $1.1 million
Cameron White Deccan Chargers $1.1 million
Jacques Kallis Kolkata Knight Riders $1.1 million
Muttiah Muralitharan Team Kochi $1.1 million
Ross Taylor Rajasthan Royals $1 million


By the end of today all 10 teams should finalize their players. I will post a list later today. In the meantime I am looking forward to watching the friendly T20 match between India and South Africa’s Proteas today at the Moses Mabhida Stadium. This will be the first cricket match to be played at this world class sports venue and I am looking forward to being a part of it!

Looking Back At 2010

The year that has just passed must have been the most eventful in my life so far. So much has happened that it has to be documented in some way besides Twitter and Facebook. Hence here is a list as far as I can remember.

1. Went to my second Top Gear Live/MPH show.
2. Celebrated my 32nd birthday
3. Had an awesome St. Patrick’s Day at Waxy O’Connor’s
4. Met Miss India Worldwide Kajal Lutchminarian
5. Pig and Beer Festival!
6. Test drove the then new Mercedes Benz C63 AMG (awesome monster)
7. Spent an awesome long weekend in Cape Town with the boys
8. Did the big swing at the Moses Mabhida Stadium not once but 3 times!
9. Went to a few matches for the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010 (Spain lift the cup for the first time while the world is introduced to the Vuvuzela and Paul The Psychic Octopus)
10. Won an ice sculpturing competition
11. Met the girl of my dreams but she put me in the friend zone! (I’m a big Ryan Reynolds fan!)
12. Lost about 5-6kgs
13. Bought a new car (2010 Golf VI GTI aka Bella)
14. Attended a few Airtel Champions League matches (T20 cricket)
15. Sharks win the Currie Cup (Rugby)
16. Red Bull win the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship and Sebastian Vettel wins the Drivers’ Championship becoming the youngest driver to do so at the age of 23
17. Played my first round of golf ever and scored a 106
18. Got my first iPhone 4G and instantly became an Apple fan
19. Made a whole lot of new friends on Twitter
20. Had my first Eggs Benedict
21. Survived 2010

Bring on 2011. According to the Mayans and a few other ancient civilizations we only have 2 years left in this universe so let’s make the most of it!