2009 INTERNATIONAL YOUNG PUBLISHING ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR AWARD

The British Council is inviting applications for the 2009 INTERNATIONAL YOUNG PUBLISHING ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR AWARD and South Africa is looking for a finalist to compete for the the award.

To enter the South African leg of the award, you must:

• Be South Africa's top Publishing Entrepreneur
• Passionate entrepreneur in publishing
• Be an innovator who uses cutting edge entrepreneurial ways to move the publishing industry in South Africa forward
• Look to broaden your international business opportunities and to build your network

Applications close on Friday, 27 February 2009.

Applications will be considered in the following publishing fields:

• •Publishing (including e-publishing)
• •Agents
• •Literary festivals
• •Retailing (including e-tailing)
• •Consultants providing specialist services in any of the

For more detailed entry requirements, and to download the application form, visit the British Council's web site.

Win Gaile Parkin's Baking Cakes in Kigali

To launch its blog, Pengin Booksin South Africa is offering the first 75 people to respond a free copy of Gaile Parkin's book, BAKING CAKES IN KIGALI. Gaile's book will only be released in February.

To win, they ask you to read Gaile's book and review it on their new blog. Email your name to zukiswa.pikoli@za.penguingroup.com

I'd like to add that Gaile is a friend of mine and I have read her book, and it's really good. The characters are interesting, the storytelling rich and layered and every time I read it, I discover something new /or a character I want to know more about.

And yes, the story is bloody funny. I found myself reading out loud bits and pieces of it to my sister because it's the kind of humour you just have to share.

I'm not entering the competition, because it would be a total waste for me to get a copy from Penguin when I have already read the book/galleys. I'd rather one more person got the chance to read the book annd blog about it. But I'll post my own review on the site after they hit 75.

What's culture got to do with love?

I'm very tired. It's been a hectic week, and today even more so, as I attended the Community launch of the OneLove Campaign in South Africa.

But I feel that the hard work was worthwhile, so i'm not complaining. It's gratifying to see the content of the OneLove web site grow. The site is starting to make sense, and I feel good knowing that i had a strong hand in developing the site.

Today on the site we are chatting about the relationship between love and culture as well as the contradiction between OneLove and polygamy. This is a conversation that started at the community launch of the OneLove Campaign in South Africa. The event took place today at Ubuntu Kraal in Soweto.

Read the article here.

In her speech at the launch, South Africa’s Health Minister Barbara Hogan compared South Africa’s goal to reduce the number of new HIV infections by half in a couple of years to US President Barack Obama’s campaign to become president.

“Just like President Obama’s election, the reversal of the HIV rate will depend on our ability to believe in ourselves, to change as individuals, and to act together as a united force for a better life,” she said.

Read the post outlining her speech here.


If you visit the site, please leave a comment? You can also take this week's poll, which asks a very personal question:-).

The question is, are we prepared to give up some of our cultural practices so we can reduce the rate of HIV infections here in South Africa?

Housekeeping

I also think it's time I also invested time in finalising my own self-hosted Wordpress site. I'm very excited about the move to the new site; it will give me the opportunity to write about the various aspects of my writing processes, the projects that I'm working on, and issues that interest me in a more structured way.

The busy writer's healthy meal

As I've been working long hours, there was no time to really pay attention to meals. So I reverted to my favourite stand-by, braised vegetable salad with whatever else I can stick into a microwave.

Recipes

Vegetable Salad

I don't really have quantity measurements for this recipe. I take half a red pepper, green pepper, yellow pepper and one medium onion. Cut them into chunks, sprinkle salt and dried parsley on them, and braise them in a teaspoon of oil until they go soft.

Then I take a chunk of lettuce, wash and cut it into pieces, and put it in salad bowl, throw in a couple of slices of cucumber and the braised vegetables and mix together. Then I take half a teaspoon of vinegar, spinkle on the salad, mix and serve with my meal. The salad feeds four.

Vegetable and carrot casserole

For dinner tonight, I took pieces of chicken and put them in a bowl for microwaving, put in slices of carrots and half a can of tomatoes, half a teaspoon of garlic, sprinkle some salt and mixed herbs. Then I stuck the covered dish in the microwave to cook until it's done.

The potato also came out of the microwave! I know it loses something when you cook it like that, but I was not inclined to use a stove. Try it. The whole meal took me 30 minutes to prepare, including the slicing and dicing.

onelovesouthernafrica.org goes live

If I was a drinker, I'd have several glasses of wine. But I'm a teetotaller, so grape juice will have to do me for this private party.

And the reason for my celebration?

The web site for theOneLove Regional Campaign went live today. I still need to do a lot to populate it, but we have a shell to start with and i'm fairly happy with the result.

For the curious, OneLove is a unique campaign that aims to get us thinking and talking about our sexual behaviour in a time of HIV and AIDS.

Nine countries in southern Africa are taking part in the compaign: Tanzania, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

I'm the resident online content developer for the regional site. Anyway, I'm taking this moment to appreciate the progress made on the site so far.

Cheers!

P.S. You can follow OneLove on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook

Why we should have only One Love

Finally I can give the details of the BIG PROJECT I've been working on since mid-December.

It's a web portal of OneLove, a Southern African Campaign that began rolling out across southern Africa in October 2008.

The campaign began in Tanzania and will cover Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The campaign aims to get us thinking and talking about our sexual behaviour in a time of HIV and AIDS.

OneLove also aims to get us thinking about the values and ideas that influence how we behave, especially in our sexual relationships. The campaign is for all of us - couples, community leaders, religious leaders, traditional leaders, and policy makers.

Anyway, the portal provides content of the regional campaign, as well some content from the nine country partners. It goes live on the 14 January with basic content, with the rest of content being uploaded over the coming weeks.

Please visit the web site after the 14 January and if you have a minute, and if you can, email me your suggestions on how we can improve the content to make it more engaging.

Check out OneLove on Facebook

Follow OneLove on Twitter

The Department of Lost and Found

When work gets hectic, I sometimes wonder if blogging is a good idea, and that the time could be better spent writing more creatively or even spending time on myself and my family.

And then something happens that reminds me why I find blogging so fulfilling. Like yesterday - I received a comment from a childhood friend of a friend, asking me if I have our mutual friend's contact details. I have never met the enquirer, or spoken to her before. But I had mentioned my friend by full name on my blog before, and I guess she found the connection on Google and decided to take a chance.

As it happens, I was able to help them out, and look forward to my friend's raves about the reunion. How cool is that?

What's for dinner?

I've previously mentioned that I'm trying to live mostly on fresh foods, as my doctor recommended I cut out wheat, dairy and processed foods.

As a result, I'm constantly experimenting with food, so I don't feel too deprived. Anyway, in line with my plan to take more photos, here's a pic of dinner last night.

Nothing special was done with the rice, cucumber slices and avo.

But I tried out Eileen's gem squash + peas recipe, which she'd served for Christmas lunch. [Eileen is Baby's step-grandma].

Anyway, I didn't expect to get it exactly right, especially as I microwaved both vegetables before bringing them together. Added a very thin stick of margarine into the peas before putting in the microwave.

The meat casserole was also straighforward. I braised half a cup of meat, thinly sliced, along with onion, potato slices and carrots in a tablespoon of veg oil . Then added green, red and yellow pepper slices, a dash of salt, mixed herbs and parsley and a cup of water and let them cook for about 20 minutes. Once the potatoes were well-cooked, I mashed most of them to thicken the casserole [ as I couldn't use wheat-based thickening.]

Taking a lot of photos

For the past couple of days, I’ve been taking a lot of photos with my mobile phones.

I found the process quite soothing. Must have been because I was taking photos of little things that I like around my home - like the yellow, white and pink Chrysanthiums that I planted, the multi-coloured bouquet of flowers and my big red mug I’ll now be using to drink tea.

Over time I’m going to use many of the images to accompany my more personal blog posts.
It’s also good practice so I can make my blog posts richer.

Anyway, Happy New Year. I hope you also took some time off to recharge your mind, body and spirit.