I am back from holiday and have much to say (for a change!). This will be the first of a string of posts that I will be writing about my time away, books I've read and things I've been thinking about.Lets get started.I'm not sure if anyone reading this knows where Hartebeespoort Dam is but that's where I've been for the last five days. It was serene, calm, quiet and relaxing. I spent the week with Jen, my girlfriend as well as my cousins and aunt, Dot. Yesterday morning I decided to take my cousins out for pancakes. We chose Pick a Pancake as our weapon of choice. That was cool except Jen ordered something of the "pancake" section of the menu that didn't actually come with a pancake. What's up with that? Why put something under the pancake section if it doesn't come with a pancake? Go figure.The most interesting and irritatingly frustrating part of the drive to Pick a Pancake was the Dam wall. Crossing the wall is a joy and a tradition, going over the wall provides a magnificent view accompanied by a disgusting smell. That smell is the water. As far as my experience with dam water goes I thought that it was meant to be blue, or at least some shade of blue or possibly even, at a push, brown-ish. It wasn't. It was green. Pea green as in pea green soup kind of green. Not so attractive I can assure you. Then while we were stopped at the robot (Traffic light) we were bombarded by hawkers. Hawkers are those lovely men and women trying to sell you anything and everything on the side of the road. Now I understand the concept of hawking, selling stuff to cars driving past, stopped at the robots, sweet. But why, oh why do these people sell such random bullshit? Tennis balls the size of my head, watches, peanuts, wooden carvings that can't actually fit in my boot if I so choose to purchase one. Senseless sales I like to call them. These senseless sales serve as nothing more than an irritation to my holiday mode. I counted close on 10 different hawkers that I turned away, not one or two, 10. Why would I want to buy the same product from hawker number 4 if I turned away hawker number 2? You tell me.