1 Jan – New Years Day
21 Mar – Human Rights Day
29 Mar – Good Friday
1 Apr – Family Day
27 Apr – Freedom Day
1 May – Workers’ Day
16 Jun – Youth Day
17 Jun – Public Holiday
9 Aug – National Women’s Day
24 Sep – Heritage Day
16 Dec – Day of Reconciliation
25 Dec – Christmas Day
26 Dec – Day of Goodwill

Here is a downloadable file of the 2013 South African Public Holidays for importing into Outlook and GCal.

2013 SA Public Holidays Calendar

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To experience the campaign, click on the ad block below

This is based on the phenomenon of South Africa’s burning and destroying expensive items as a show of success as a social event.

Watch the video of what happened when they decided to surprise their “guests” at their inaugural flight.

The campaign managed to trend in SA within an hour of the surprised guests landing in Cape Town, which is pretty awesome. kulula proving once again that it is possible for brands to have a sense of humour.

I’m excited to show you pre-announcement screen shots of the latest version of Ovi Maps with 3D view, 3D Buildings and Routing and Navigation for both Car and Walk mode.

Here are a few screen shots that I just took using the service for the first time, with my first impressions:

Ovi Maps Homepage defaults to Cape Town. This must be done by using my IP as I have not set up any other profiling information regarding my location.

Ovi Maps requires a browser plug in to be installed.

Ovi Maps Map View Options, include the standard that we have to come love on Ovi Maps on Mobile, Map View, Satellite and Terrain.

Check after the break for more screen shots, including the 3D Landmarks of Cape Town.

Ovi Maps 3D and 2D Toggling is made easy by the button on the top right-hand corner.

Ovi Maps More… Allows for management of Night Mode/Day Mode toggling, inclusion of 3D Landmarks and the ability to set the default language of Ovi Maps.

That’s right, those 3D buildings are of Cape Town’s foreshore and include the CTICC, MetLife and the Cullinan Inn. How cool is THAT?

Ovi Maps Navigation with Turn by Turn Directions for both Drive and Walk Mode.

Ovi Maps Good Stuff Content Sharing. Here I have added Urban Khana HQ to the map and it is now publicly available globally to view and navigate to. I particular like the function “Share This Good Thing”, which gives you a URL to share on the Ovi Platform.

Today, Kulula strikes back with another brilliant mockery ad that will once again give Kulula the edge in humorous advertising that we have come to love from them.

Click on it to make it full screen.

South Africa finds itself months away from hosting what can be considered to be the greatest sporting event on the calendar next year, the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Months ago, the country was laced with skeptics and rumours that FIFA has instantiated a back up plan to move the World Cup event to Germany were rife and only supported by the typical propaganda loving media. FIFA and the South African President later made announcements that these rumours were untrue and FIFA had further backed their pledge to host the games in South Africa.

Since then, we have all been stuck in traffic jams as we scramble to complete a 20 or 30 year transport overhaul plan in a space of 4 years, by introducing the Gautrain, new highways, road resurfacing and the nightmares caused at airports are no secret to most of us. Stadium development strikes, crime and property price increases are only a few of the issues that we have had to deal with.

The truth is, though, that in less than 250 days, our flag will fly high above our stadiums proud. Proud that we have risen from turmoil that we experiences here less than 20 years ago. Proud that we as a nation have taken an infrastructure designed purely for a sub-sector of our population and opened it up to the masses and managed to make it work. Proud that we as a nation sing a national anthem made up of five languages. Our flag can fly proud knowing that we, the people of South Africa are proud to stand under it.

The truest achievement that we will witness when Sepp Blatter makes the announcement that the World Cup is open is the achievement of knowing that we have risen. Well done South Africa!

Its an absolute marvel and the history behind the wall is simply amazing. Spanning a total length of about 6700 km end to end and during its peak, the wall guarded by about 1 million soldiers of the Ming Dynasty at any single given time.

It was build as a defensive structure to safe guard the empire from attack from the Mongolians and the enormity of the structure is simply mind-boggling to imagine a wall wrapping an entire nation. It is also said to be the only man-made structure that is visible on Earth from the Moon!

The wall was a great cost to the empire and as a result the Ming Dynasty lost millions on building the wall, but it deemed it a necessary expense in assuring the safety of the of the dynasty from raids from the north eastern neighbours.

I saw the wall during a national holiday. I highly recommend that you avoid these days, as the wall is bustling with local tourists who come to share in the oogling of the masterpiece. It makes for a crowded trip and is not desirable.

A tour to the wall at Badaling came with a trip to the Ming Tombs (which is not great), a stop at a silk factory (which was pretty interesting for the first 20 minutes before I got bored) and a trip to a Jade factory (this was very cool and i really did enjoy it!).

The tour cost us CYR180 each and included pick up and drop off at the hotel and an authentic Chinese lunch. We had an English speaking tour guide who was friendly and fairly knowledgeable of the sights. She did try to crack a few jokes that I just didn’t get, but all in all it was cool. The bus was air-conditioned and decently comfortable!

I’ll post the tour companies details as soon as I find it again