Rowan Spazzoli

In Estonia, citizens are able to manage all their government related things on a single online portal, called E-Estonia. Here you can pay your taxes, get your passport, renew your drivers license and manage your social security details among other things. You can also register your business and do the relevant filings on the same portal. And you can use the site to vote.

As a bonus, the system is run on blockchain, making it really secure.

In South Africa, every single one of the above things I said are done through different departments. An error at the traffic department meant I couldn’t get a license for 8 weeks. Registering your business can take up to 4 weeks. It’s taken over a year to try to sort a tax issue out with SARS, which still hasn’t been resolved. And my ID documents took almost 3 years.

As a bonus, everything is done on paper, so you have to bring in certified copies of documents. And they are easily lost.

The difference of these two experiences is that in Estonia, they make it easy for citizens to do their government related activities. In South Africa, it’s a constant battle (where, for example, you’re struggling to get a tax payment to the government)

Building a new system takes time. But doing so can revolutionize the way the citizens interact with their government

Image is of the Cape Town traffic department

Blog: 318/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Live forever - third party 

One of the most difficult things I have found when it comes to writing, particularly academic writing, is constructing a narrative for a body of work.

Finding the right literature can be adventure, as you follow a rabbit hole of more and more relevant stuff that you gently collect. And data work is a series of problems that you slowly tease through until you have the right nuggets that you need. 

But these are just the building blocks. They’re the right pieces of lego, but they still need to be assembled into something coherent. 

A life of blocks

The same could be said of our lives. Some friendships, career opportunities or relationships might come naturally to us. And as such are the building blocks to our lives.

But how we build our own narrative is important. Two people with similar things in their lives could have an entirely different narrative for themselves.

In the same way a set of lego blocks could make a great structure or just be a pile on the floor. 

So much comes down to how we place them. And how we build our narrative

Image is of the Cape Town stadium, taken in Greenpoint Park 🙂

Blog: 317/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Mike Ocean - That first moment 

The opening scene in the movie “Love Actually” contains a monologue about airports. It’s all about how airports are a place of such high emotion.

A transition place. The coming and going. The jubilation and sadness.

Because of this I’m usually quite attuned to what’s going on in an airport. I’ll see people celebrating the return of loved ones or dropping someone off with a last goodbye.

This happened at a whole other level when I was at Cape Town international last week. We were picking up my Swiss friend’s boyfriend and parents (landing on two different flights).

In the space of about 15 minutes:

• A celebrity arrived and had a host of fans that sang and cheered when they walked through the doors
• A person from the army proposed to his girlfriend as she walked towards him (accompanied by balloons and fellow soldiers)… she said yes
• The entire Cape Town City football club

I think there are very few places like airports, where such magic can happen. All in the space of just a few minutes.

Image is of a marriage proposal that happened while we were waiting at Cape Town international

Blog: 316/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Billy Mac - Christmas is all around us

Note: I've been taking a little break with blog posts but will be catching up today :)

On Saturday we went to a little Italian restaurant in Woodstock called “Pesce Azzurro” where we experienced some incredible seafood and pasta. Throughout the meal, we chatted to the chef in Italian. We made jokes about various places in Italy and reminisced about some Italian things.

If you’d seen us chatting to him, you’d think we were long time family friends.

But in actual fact, we have only met him twice before.

And that’s the magic of having something in common, particularly when that something is fairly rare.

This extends to meeting fellow Zimbabweans, people from my old schools, supporters of the same football team and even South Africans when I’m overseas.

The magic of having something in common is that you have a shared experience. And shared experience is a fundamental component of friendship (that, and time).

It’s an instant connection, regardless of if you ever knew each other. Common experience enables the rapid creation of friendship.

Image is of the peri-peri prawn pasta we had at the restaurant

Blog: 315/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Cercami - Renato Zero

Today we said goodbye to our Swiss friend who has spent the last week or so with us. We dropped her off at the airport where she met up with her boyfriend and parents. Together they’ll spent the next week travelling up the coast of South Africa.

The friend’s boyfriend brought fresh chocolate from Switzerland for us. And my goodness it is beautiful.

More than just the chocolate, having this friend here reinforced the connection we have. We were close before, but now she has seen my friends and family, and will be part of my life forever.

And when she’s in South Africa, she will always have a home with us. And when we’re in Switzerland, we’ll always have a place with them.

So in there are the adventures and presents, but beyond that we are left with the most incredible connection 🙂

Image is of the chocolates we were given 🙂

Blog: 314/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Come with me - Nora en pure

Today I took my Swiss friend on a tour of the Stellenbosch winelands. We explored some of the most beautiful and prestigious wine estates in the country. And we had a spectacular experience.

We spent the majority of the time laughing, mostly at ourselves. We engaged the wine experts and spent time getting to know them. We arrived in hoodies and takkies. And we got treated like royalty.

Most of the other patrons in these places were the opposite. They were very serious when doing the wine tastings. They barely acknowledged the person serving them. They dressed really nicely and they arrived in fancy cars. 

And even though we were all at the same places, I can guarantee that we enjoyed it more. We weren’t trying to impress anyone or being pompous. We were there to have fun. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a student or a famous business person. If you want to have the best experiences, don’t take yourself too seriously 

Image is from one of the estates we visited 🙂

Blog: 313/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Maroon 5 - Girls like you ft Cardi B

This evening I had the privilege to go to an event a Youth Entrepreneurship Programme event hosted by BEE Novation at Investec. The speakers and panelists were phenomenal and so was the networking afterwards.

There was something that one of the speakers said that stuck with me. They used an analogy for BEE and diversity that compared it to each country being a soccer team.

Some countries, like Switzerland, have all their players on the field, firing at their full potential.

But in South Africa, 90% of the country spent most of the 19th and 20th century on the bench. They weren’t allowed to play in the team. They weren’t even taught how to play.

Now, after 20+ years of democracy, most of the team is still sitting on the bench. Which makes it hard for the team to function at it’s optimum level.

So the objective of policies that address transformation and diversity is to try and get everyone on the field. To motivate people already on the field to reach out and help the players on the bench into the game. To let them participate in helping our country succeed.

So when looking at these policies, keep in mind that the objective isn’t to pull the current players off the field. 

It’s to bring the marginalized ones on.

Image is of the Cape Town City vs Kaiser Chiefs game last weekend 🙂

Blog: 312/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: Winterya - A thousand smiles

One of the reasons I love taking people around Cape Town is that I get to experience it for the first time again, just through someone else’s perspective.

Today I traveled around the peninsula with a friend from Switzerland. We visited UCT, Rhodes Mem, Muizenberg, Kalk Bay, Fishhoek, Simon’s Town (and the penguins), Smitswinkel Bay, Cape Point (and the baboons, zebras, eland, ostriches), Kommetjie and Noordhoek.

The friend was blown away by the whole experience. And I got to feel that same “seeing it for the first time” feeling.

Image is of Smitswinkel bay from our drive to Cape Point today 🙂

Blog: 311/365. Click here to read about my #365of25 journey
Song of the day: I'm a believer - The Monkees