Foto Na Dans are a band breaking the boundaries of Afrikaans music with their sound; their signature style is that of “indie rock with a hint of electronic sounds”. The band were all in school together at DF Malan in Bellville and all the band except LeRoi were in a band called Trompie is Dood at an early age – winning the Jip! Rockspaaider competition, but “that was 5 years ago. That was a different band from Foto Na Dans. The name Foto Na Dans is “a neutral term, one that can be bound to music and visual elements “Dans” points to the music, and “Foto” to the visual aspects of the media….”

Their opinion of the music the music industry has also changed since their Rockspaaider days and Alex says “The whole industry has changed a lot. There is a lot more structure & support. There are more bands and there is more happening. It’s exciting.”

Their most heavy influences musically “names are endless…Air, Radiohead, Muse, Mew, Hot Chip, Sigur Ros…everyone has many of their own influences…so between us the list is probably 100 artists long.”

Their first self titled EP had a very raw sound to it compared to the ‘futuristic’ heavenly sound on their latest album (Pantomime op Herwinbare Klanke). Alex says “with our first EP we had no clue what we were doing. We just went into studio and laid down raw tracks as we rehearsed them in the band room…On our later recordings we had more of a clue and started experimenting with electronic sounds.”

The band is “currently busy working on a new album and they have “about 8 songs written already and it is sounding really hot. With all the previous albums we had deadlines to keep as to when the album had to be finished. We are trying a different approach this time by letting the music and the songs determine the deadlines instead of other way around..”

Their planning to work on their new album then head overseas in July. They have collaboration with Flash Republic is on the cards, “which should be quite cool and the tunes are sounding kiff…so maybe people will be dancing to our songs in clubs…that’ll be awesome.”

The band has “dreams of making it internationally” and say “our short term goal is to make our new album our best ever and believe “the potential is there as the songs are sounding better than ever…also there has been quite a bit of international interest in the band and a few people are watching our new album to see what it does…and then we’ll just have to see from there…”

Their favourite thing about performing is “the energy. And being able to see that you manage to move people’s emotions with your songs…that’s a beautiful thing.”

The latest album is very innovative and got lots of praise by the media for this. The change in sound over all three albums shows lost of progression and innovativeness; Alex says “the sound on the new album will be less experimental than our previous EP. Our song writing style has also changed and most of the songs are based around the vocal melodies. The songs are big…epic even…”

Le Roi happens to take about an hour to get ready before a gig and he was born with his afro. As for working on side projects, musically all of them pretty committed to Foto Na Dans. Dirkie always talks the most rubbish. AIex lets loose on tour and therefore the messiest of the lot. One of the craziest thing that happen at shows are hidious wipeouts…Theuns is renowned for getting his ass bruised.

The current strike happening by government employed doctors gained momentum yesterday when doctors in the Western Cape decided to join the strike action following a meeting at Groote Schuur Hospital.  As a doctor at the above institution I had mixed feelings about striking and abandoning our patients in what is seen by the general public as just a dispute over salaries.  The protest action is in fact a culmination of years of abuse that medical professionals have endured at the hands of the government.

Let’s start with working conditions.  The hospitals are over-capacity, and the doctors are overworked.  In my ward, we officially have place for 65 patients.  We had more than 85 for the best part of last week.  Doctors work 30 hour shifts when they do overtime, working a minimum of 60 hours a week in my hospital, but it’s not like this everywhere. Usually it’s worse.  Although, this certainly is an improvement since 2002 when as an intern,  I worked 100 hours a week and 30 hour shifts every third day.   We are expected to do procedures with needles potentially putting ourselves and others at risk of contracting HIV by needlestick injuries, this even after having been awake and on our feet for 24 hours and more.  Yes, just call us Jack Bauer.

If that was all there was to contend with, then it would be bad.  But add to that, unsafe working conditions. Doctors and nurses literally put their lives at risk to save others in busy casualties by working late nights, trying to save gunshot victims of gang warfare, knowing full well that someone might just overpower the lone security guard at the door and come in to finish the job.  I kid you not.  Many of my colleagues have had to dodge a flying bullet.

Supplies.  You’d think hospitals wouldn’t run of supplies right?  Nope. Gloves. Needles. Syringes. IV fluids. Linen. Antibiotics. Incubators.  Two nights ago, on call, I had to place two babies into one incubator, because we just did not have enough.  As an Intern and a Community Service doctor, I had to treat patients on the floor.  They had to sleep on the floor, because we didn’t have enough beds!  Not that there was anymore place to put any beds in the ward. It’s frustrating having to work in a SA hospital.  You have nothing to work with, yet are asked to perform miracles.  Often the doctor on call, has to decide whether to refuse one patient life-saving treatment, in the hope of saving another with a slightly better chance of survival.  This is Africa after all.

All this, in the face of dwindling staff.  Nobody wants to work for the state.  It’s too difficult.  Too stressful.  Dying patients you can do nothing for, in overcrowded hospitals, with nothing to help them with.

It’s no wonder so many of my colleagues have decided to jump ship.  Go to any hospital in the UK, Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, and you’ll be sure to find at least one South African.  This brain drain is going to continue, unless the government starts making amends.  It’s a one-way ticket out of South African Medical Schools and into European hospitals.  And it’s spiraling out of control.  The less doctors in government service, the rosier it looks overseas, the more doctors will leave the government service.  And if you think it’s just whites, think again.  Blacks, whites, indian, coloured doctors….all leaving in droves. Ironically, I know of many European and Canadian doctors wanting to work in South Africa, in SA hospitals, for experience not money, and the government and HPCSA have them jumping beaurocratic hurdles for years.

Add to that, the government recently doubled the internship time from 1 year to 2 years, and are now looking to increase mandatory community service from 1 year to 2 years.  Effectively, if you’re 18 when you enter Medical School, you’ll be 28 when you’d be free to make independent choices about your career.  Until then, you’ll be told where you must work and live.   This is going to force medical  graduates to do internship overseas, never to come back.

Now coming to the salaries…after having spent 6 years studying, and at least R30 000 on tuition alone yearly , one can look forward to taking home around R9000 (after tax) a month as an intern.  If you ask me, I think this was an incentive for doubling the internship time and community service time.  Where do you get skilled workers to perform life-saving procedures locked into a 4 year contract to earn R9000 a month?

To do the job I do in the hospital I have three degrees in the medical field, but earn less than a gym personal trainer. If you compare my job requirements and qualification to any other professional in the government sector, I am being underpaid by at least 50%.  In private practice I would be earning at least 300% of my current salary.

So why do I work in government and not private practice?  For most people in my position, it’s a lot more about the job than the money. It’s about the patients. It’s about advancing healthcare in this country, and advancing the field of medicine as a whole, by academic work and delivery of professional service. Medical professionals are amongst the most skilled people in society, as it is almost a process of natural selection that produces these individuals.   But they’re being walked all over.

When the Minister held that press conference on Wednesday, it was a sneaky political move.  When has any employer presented a wage offer to the public without first taking it the bargaining chamber?  It was a move that they knew would be highly publicized and designed to remove public support for the strike action.  In it they announced massive increases for Interns and Principle and Chief Specialist.  But it was the grades in the middle that basically got nothing.  To use an Army analogy, it would be giving the new recruits and the Generals something to keep them happy but everyone in between got shit.  The generals were happy, so they didn’t support the action, and the New recruits were happy so they, who are usually the youngest, most militant, out the group, would go back to work.

But they left out the people that really count.  The one’s doing the real work.  Medical Officers, Junior and Senior Specialists.  The Interns, registrars aren’t going to be around forever, they have finite contracts.  But the Medical officers and specialists working in the government have made it long-term career choices.   This is not the first time that we are being duped either. We were promised that this OSD would come into effect July 2008.  It’s now one year later, and we’re still waiting.  We want what we were promised.

And those that ask is it worth it?  Is it worth patients dying for higher salaries?  That’s a difficult one for us, but in the end, it comes down to what’ll happen if we don’t do anything.  And the simple answer is this:  Our health system is at breakpoint.  It’s close to crumbling, and the government has chosen to ignore and put band-aids on it. It’s as if they don’t care.  When Manto got her new liver, she didn’t lie in a government hospital.

So, since most of us don’t have the heart or inclination to abandon our sickest patients, doctors in the Western Cape have decided to continue running emergency services, critical care and theatres only.  All outpatients and elective surgery will have to close.  We’re not doing medical teaching either.  Sorry students, we’re fighting for your future too.

If we don’t do something now…it’s going to cost much more lives in the future.

We humbly ask that the public support us in our endeavors.  In the end it affects all of us.

Dr Y.J.

If we don’t take action now, we’ll settle for nothing later!

“We are a limping democracy, wrestling with a credit crunch and facing a world cup with intermittent electricity - if you don’t laugh, you die…” says John Vlismas and I’m inclined to agree. Never mind what I have to say about Vlismas’ profundity, why don’t you go and hear what he has to say in the flesh and blood.

Better yet, why don’t you see Vlismas, Barry Hilton, Mark Banks, Loyiso Gola, Mark Banks, Joey Rasdien and Krijay Govender? They’re all performing at Carnival City in what’s been entitled The Comedy Heavies. The Comedy Heavies is being held on the 3rd and 4th of July and for a small fee you could go watch them all in one night. Or …

If you’re one the first four to comment on this blog we’ll give you two tickets to the The Comedy Heavies. It’ll save you dollar, make you look good in front of your lady or man friend and entitle to you one fucking good time. Just thank us when you’re at the event because we’ll be there too.

The Comedy Heavies isn’t just going to be a stand up feast from the cream of comedy, but the comics have been chosen to represent the wide spectrum of comedy styles, from the legendary deadpan of Barry Hilton, to the barking mad characters of Mark Banks and the righteous anger of recently-circumcised Loyiso Gola and the ever popular Joey Rasdien. Even Krijay Govender has taken time for her crazy television schedule to appear in this remarkable production.

Wow what a fascinating first two days at work at Cerebra. To fill you in I’ve moved from Submarine Depth Research, an amazing qualitative market research firm which pioneered South African digital qualitative research to Cerebra. Cerebra focuses on creating interactive marketing and social media campaigns which allow brands to meet their consumer’s minds head on in comfortable nooks online. At least that’s how I see it.

Nevertheless let’s get onto the good stuff, the people. I was rather anxious on my first day, albeit for the fact that I knew some of the Cerebrans, I still felt nervous. The feeling faded fast. Previously I’ve worked in academic, corporate and creative environments but I’ve been treated to very different first days - all of them with their own inherent structure, even in the most creative of environments. Cerebra’s greeting was a great mix of both structured and unstructured, the greetings were warm and friendly, there was a genuine sense of trying to help me find out who does what and how I can help them do it but importantly for me there was a spirit of getting stuck in which one ought to embrace.

An important part of working in a creative team, in my opinion, is to ensure that the lines of communication are open from the get-go. Added to that in a tech/creative environment it is also necessary to understand that most tech-creatives are individualistic, have a strong sense of agency and an even stronger will and thus one has to ask loads of questions in order to truly get to grips with how teams operate as units and as individual members of the team. I certainly asked a lot of questions and have so many still in store for the kick ass Cerebra team who will no doubt continue to accommodate them patiently as they seem to have a genuinely positive attitude toward knowledge sharing and idea generation.

If you know Cerebra, then you know that the development and design teams are Drupal advocates. I’ve bookmarked learning Druapal properly as an initial goal and have already been provided with learning material from Chris Dawson and Andre Ellis. I’ve made my way through some Drupal basics and will be setting up my own Drupal test server soon, the details of which I might document on this blog via weekly video posts.

Mike Stopforth and Melody Maker who I sit beside and opposite from respectively entertain me with their witty dialogue, and have an incredible method of communicating work related information in packets alongside data on twitter updates, friend requests and when I left the office, who was the lucky 500th follower on Melody’s twitter account. It’s almost a lesson on how our brains are beginning to systematise information on the fly; shelving and storing the business and social information in their own storage compartments for retrieval as an when needed. You’ll just have to trust me on this as it might sound nigh on impossible if you’re used to corporate banter which goes no further than the timid “so what are you making for dinner”conversation and hits near boiling point when confrontation arises.

I think my views on the Cerebra content team, Brandsh crew and the Mobmedia (mob ?)  are going to have to appear in another blog because I’ve already taken this journey far past the 500 word mark and no doubt you’re already frowning waiting for me to round this little diatribe up with a concluding remark. For now you’ll have to make do with my last thought on this icy Tuesday night; I will be challenged at Cerebra, forced to learn new skills and most importantly encouraged to innovate and contribute to the future of Cerebra.

Famous designer duo Dolce & Gabbana is launching their new online D&G store on June 23.

The new D&G online store will sell the brand’s men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, beachwear, eyewear, timepieces, and costume jewelry. The store will be ‘open’ in 31 countries.

Dolce & Gabbana truly are savvy businessmen as well as talented designers. Not only have they jumped into the millennium with this online store, but they have also decided to lower prices through supply chain management. In these tough times, being cutting edge is key rather than holding on to the past.

“The online boutique is like a game, a fun and immediate way to shop, without space or time limitations. We are confident it will get people even closer to D&G’s dynamic universe,” said Stefano Gabbana. (wwd)

The first D&G online store will open its virtual doors on June 23. Designed to mirror the edgy spirit of the D&G stores, dandgstore.com will sell men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, beachwear, eyewear, timepieces and costume jewelry. It is powered by Yoox Group and its offerings will be available in 31 countries worldwide. “The online boutique is like a game, a fun and immediate way to shop, without space or time limitations. We are confident it will get people even closer to D&G’s dynamic universe,” said Stefano Gabbana.

Source :

http://www.wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/on-specs-kira-redux-dg-will-open-virtual-doors-2174624?full=true