Big Day
22 April , 2009Today is Voting Day in South Africa’s election, as well as Earth Day. Let’s do them one at a time?
Voting Day:
We didn’t get up that early this morning, voting started at 07:00 but we only arrived at 09:00. The people who got there at 07:00 were still there anyway, so it wasn’t to bad. Our whole family is registered to vote at the local school and we always make a day of it. Usually we just walk up two blocks and wait together. It took us 3,5 hours to get to the front but once we got there it was smooth sailing and over in minutes. Here are a couple of photos I took of the queue along the way – one is of the people in front of us and one of the people behind us after about an hour of waiting. I don’t mind the wait so much, it’s nice to see such a great turn out. Also we got to chat to some pretty entertaining people along the way.
A few companies really saw an opportunity and made use of it for marketing. In the queue itself there were Neotel people trying to target folks who had no choice but to stand and take it – a bit annoying really. After the vote we headed over to Wimpy who were giving out free coffee to anyone who voted, and I know Nando’s were offering a free “Voter’s roll” with every meal today too, but we didn’t take them up on that since we had our hearts set on a Wimpy breakfast.
From the looks of it the queues stayed pretty much this way all day long, you were going to end up waiting no matter what time you went. Now we wait (again) for the results. Let’s hope there aren’t too many discrepancies to upset the process. Free and fair, that’s what we all want after all.
Earth Day:
Today is also Earth Day as you all know. A day where we put a bit of extra thought into the wellness of our lovely planet. The Google people had a very nice doodle up this morning in honour of the big day.
I also saw a few Earth Day emails doing the rounds. One of them had cartoons in it and this is my favourite one of those. 
Hope you spent your Earth Day in a sensible way? Did you take any photos along the way? If you did you might want to head over to the Earth Day Mosaic. They are putting together a mosaic of pictures all over the globe taken on Earth Day. (You might have to compress it first or you’ll get an error loading).
This is what I decided to submit for my Earth Day photo. New life, it’s my latest bonsai and as you can see it’s still a baby. Doesn’t look like much yet, but it will be magnificent when it grows up. (Included a piccie for you of what that should look like too).
It’s all about potential. 
3.5 hours!!!!!!!!! GOOD HEAVENS!!! We waited just under an hour!!
LOVE your earth mosaic pics
Yip Laura, 3,5 hours! Hahahaha, usually it doesn’t take that long – in previous elections we literally walk straight in but they had some problem with their equipment this morning and I think the turn out might be “slightly” better than they were expecting too.
I want to see your Earth Mosaic piccie too, are you going to post it?
I really like the Google doodle. I think I’m a fan of anything with water … especially if there’s dolphins. Dolphins are just too cool.
JD, I agree. This is one of their better doodles recently.
Well done for staying in that queue for so long!
Jenty, how long did you end up waiting to cast your vote? I thought ours were long till I watched the reports on E-tv last night. Some people waited up to 8 hours because they ran out of ballot papers!
I waited 2 1/2 hours!… and I didn’t enjoy it.
Wenchy, we were lucky I guess. The people in the queue with us were all very friendly and chatty, so the wait didn’t feel that terrible.
45mins & I was done
All in all it was a pleasant experiance, even though I did it in my cyclin kit
DA ftw!
CJC, cycling kit? It was way too cold to try anything like that up here. Everyone was dressed up like eskimos.
Wow, you grow your bonsais from seed? I am impressed!
We queued for 90 minutes, and also had some entertaining conversation along the way.
Angel, not all of them. Some I get fully grown already as gifts and I’ve
trimmed down a few from young normal size plants too on occasion. I had a
really pretty Chinese Maple like that but it died in one of my moves
unfortunately.
[...] reduce your carbon footprint – checkout Louisa’s post on Earth Day, she uploaded a rather funny comic strip about carbon foot prints. Needless to say I am already reducing my carbon foot print, albeit temporarily. How? Well, you all [...]
[...] reduce your carbon footprint – checkout Louisa’s post on Earth Day, she uploaded a rather funny comic strip about carbon foot prints. Needless to say I am already reducing my carbon foot print, albeit temporarily. How? Well, you all [...]