Oct

Professor Jay-Bee

Hello everyone,

This week was cause for lots of celebration as Mom received confirmation that she is now a fully qualified BabyGym instructor. Dad and I are so extremely proud of her, although we never ever doubted that she wouldn’t qualify. The accreditation now qualifies Mom to help babies build strong bodies and better brains through movement, as developed by Dr Melodie de Jager. So if any of my little readers out there need some fun exercises and opportunities to grow and enhance their brains, my Mom is the bomb!

Since my little brain has been offered the opportunity to develop, I seem to have adopted, very quickly, my Dad’s passion for science and technology. As a result, I have to comment on some newsworthy technology snippets from the past week. Another thing that I inherited from my Dad is his passion for following the Noble Awards annually. As most you know, my Dad elevates anyone who’s received the Noble Prize for Physics, Chemistry, Economics or Medicine to instant hero status. According to my Dad, people all over the world admire and follow sports stars, musicians, etc. My Daddy is special – he follows Noble Laureates!

So back to this past week; 40 years after its inventors invented the CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors, its inventors received the Noble Prize for Physics, namely Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith who worked at AT&T Bell Labs at the time, in 1969. It speaks volumes to those who are patient are rewarded. Reading this, most of you will be wondering what is a CCD sensor? Well, in actual fact, all my readers will have used one, and possibly even today already. But what is it? Simply put, and in its most commercial application, it is the ‘film’ in a digital camera. It uses are quite broad, though, and have proven success in astronomy (in the Hubble telescope, for example), medical fluoroscopy, spectrography, photogrammetry and many others.

It doesn’t stop there, however, as Messrs Boyle and Smith each only received a quarter of the Noble Laureate for Physics. The other half went to Charles K. Kao, who, in 1965, promoted that fibre optical cables could be used as a practical medium of communication. Even more interesting than this is that the concept of fibre optical cable was already demonstrated in Paris in the 1840’s!!! Most of you will know what fibre optic cables are, and will have seen the myriad of groves that have been cut into our roads that crisscross the city and suburbs where these cables have already been deployed for our broadband communications infrastructure.

A another noteworthy comment is that this past week also saw gold rise to its highest intra-day dollar (USD) price ever, namely USD1057.12/oz. However, it is worthwhile noting that this is not the highest Rand (ZAR) price gold has ever reached. Owing to the USD/ZAR exchange rate, the price in ZAR at the same time as it was at its highest in USD, was R7815.98/oz. The highest ZAR gold price per ounce ever recorded was during March 2009 when it reached R10 124.69/oz.

Last but not least, it seems NASA’s homesick feelings of returning to the moon have once again prevailed, and this past week saw the launch and deployment of a lunar probe into the moon’s surface in an attempt to determine if there are signs of water on the moon. The project was planned as having LCROSS (a sensing satellite) observe Centaur collide into the moon at the Cabeus crater. It seems that the initial results are a little disappointing, as the plume of dust expected from Centaur was largely exaggerated during simulations. Dad and I are now both wondering if NASA will be able to gather enough evidence for the US Government to decide to colonise the moon, to which our instant reaction was ‘Who made them the owners of the moon?’ – did we miss something? I guess seamstresses all over the world are eagerly awaiting the announcement that the moon will be America’s 51^st state, so that they can sew an extra star on their flag!

Well, enough about these interesting economic and scientific developments in the world around us, and back to my week. Sadly I did not get to breakfast with Daddy on Monday morning, nor could he attend to my cares. He had a bleak training programme in a far-far-away place (namely Pretoria, or Tshwane, take your pick), so he left before the sun came up, and before I was awake.

On Monday the day was a little cooler than usual for this time of year, so it took us a while to get going. We headed off to OT once we were ready, and after a good session, Mom and I headed off to Benmore Gardens, as Mom wanted to buy Dad a game for his PSP. She settled on Need For Speed: Shift, and, while browsing around, Mom found an awesome little treasure for me – an In The Night Garden DVD, which she immediately got for me. It’s my current favourite programme on TV. Afterward we settled in for some quiet time at home. During my afternoon snooze, the builders once again woke me up with their shouting and screaming. They arrived completely unannounced to deal with some final snag list items, however, I do believe this was the last time they would be on site. So, major celebrations are in order as they have finally finished. Dad arrived a little later than usual, as he was being held captive in Pretoria by intellectual transmitters – as usual, he was very bleak about this. I gave him an extra big smile when he walked in the house, and pretty soon his demeanour changed. Mom presented him with his new game, and I could see he was torn – he desperately wanted to spend time with me, but at the same time he wanted to play.

Tuesday Mom and I headed off to Mom’s group; afterward Mom had an appointment, and then we visited Tammy who was not feeling well. I brought her a chocolate to cheer her up. Dad arrived even later than the day before, and even more bleak. His intellectual transmission captors had held him captive even longer than the day before.

A new term started at Be Sharp Beetles on Wednesday. I was really excited to meet up with my little friends again, and an added mega bonus, Aunty Bev came to the lesson as well. I drummed extra hard to show off my talent to her, and she really enjoyed being at the lesson. We all had tea together after the lesson at the school. At the school Mom bought me a djembe drum (pronounced dem-bee, just like Jay-Bee). In the afternoon, back home, Mom held her last BabyGym class with my little friends Ryan, Joseph, Claire and Joshua. During the session I heard the In The Night Garden music start; Dad has programmed the decoder to switch to ITNG every time it comes on. I didn’t need a second invitation, I just turned around and stormed down the passage to where the TV was on. I spent the next half an hour mesmerised by Iggle Piggle and his friends, Upsy Daisy and Makkapakka. As ITNG ended I realised how rude I’d been to leave all my friends in the lounge, so I stormed back up the passage and gave them all loves as an apology.

I started Thursday morning by launching myself out the escape hatch on the camp cot, only to discover the wooden floors were not all that well sprung. As a result I have a massive shiner on my forehead, and a slight black eye. What can I say, I’m a boy! After I’d recovered, Mom and I headed to Di at Crawford Pre-Primary for some physio. After a good session, we visited Lynnette at the NNICU ward at Morningside Medi Clinic. I love seeing my nurses that took care of me for so long, as I am ever grateful to them for caring for me so well, round the clock. We stopped in at The Wedge on the way home to get a migraine cocktail for Mom, as she had been headachy for quite some time.

During breakfast on Firday morning I threw up all my food, and for the rest of the day I vomited every time I tried to eat something. It had been 24 hours since I bumped my head, so I knew that wasn’t the cause. A visit to Dr Anthony in the afternoon revealed that I had a bug. Just after Dad arrived in the afternoon, Opa arrived for a visit. I still wasn’t feeling well, but I tried my best to entertain him. We had a nice long visit, and Opa even stayed for my bath.

I still wasn’t feeling better by Saturday, but I really needed to get out the house, so the three of us headed off to Sandton City where Dad spent some gift vouchers he’d received for his birthday. He settled on a macro lens for his camera, which allows him to take nice close-up pictures. Owing to my still feeling under the weather, we opted to miss my swimming lesson; the swimming school is really strict about us not being allowed to swim with tummy bugs, I gracefully obliged.

By Sunday my stomach bug was operating at full force, resulting in my feeling totally miserable. We stayed home most of the day, apart from going to Full Throttle to get Dad some over-pants for his bike. Back home we all snoozed, as all of us were feeling really tired – the last two days had taken their toll on us. Late in the afternoon Dad and I headed down to Robin and Di’s place to drop off some baby clothes. We visited for a while and pretty soon I had Caitlin crawling around with me and helping me to lock and unlock their security gate. By late afternoon I was starting to feel much better, but unfortunately I had passed my bug onto Mom and Dad, and both were wondering around the house looking a little green.

Ok, that’s it for this week. I hope you all have an awesome week as we head deeper into summer.

Lots of love,

Jarrod