Next week Friday we will arrive in Wroclaw. And then in May I will be taking a train to Kyiv. I have daily communications with friends in Kyiv and when you listen to them they sound calm and normal. I hear about kids going to school, new restaurants opening, cultural events, sporting activities, and daily routines that sound normal. But of course, things are not normal. There are air raid sirens and the evil Russian invasion is far from over.

I also chat with friends here in South Africa and I also hear about kids, sports, restaurants and all kinds of normal sounding things. But things are not normal here either. The electricity is off half the day. The murder rate is the highest ever. And there are so many poverty stricken people living in hell all over the place.

Where is it normal … ?

What is normal … ?

I wonder if I am normal. I am not sure anymore.

Wroclaw, this beautiful city in Poland, to which we have never been before, sure does have a challenging name. Most people who read this word on the page pronounce it, as I did at first, like it reads, “Wroc-law”. But when you hear it being spoken out loud it sounds quite different. It is “Vrot-slav”. In two weeks time we arrive in this city in Western Poland. We have a rented flat there until year end, and in May I will take the train and head to Kyiv. Besides returning to a place I love, and to our home, there is much to be done in Kyiv on our current film project which has a working title of “Rewriting The Code”. This is a film adventure we started on in 2018 and if we only knew where this story was going to take us … what a journey. This project has become way more important than it was when it first started and if we get it right it could do some good in the world. Please God.

Fancourt has been good to us, to the Bunster especially. Marta and I have had lots of time to reflect, think, heal, and grow. One thing is for sure family and health are everything. The war has fundamentally changed everyone connected to Ukraine and when the war is over I am going to go offline. Real life is analogue, not digital, and I want to embrace as much of it as I can. Also, the Bunster is all about the analogue. The real magic of life is not online. I imagine I will have less time from when we leave SA and I will try update my small blog once or twice a month, if I can. But the truth is, I need to talk less and listen more.

I met a few fascinating people in Fancourt. Chance encounters with golf lovers, holiday makers, and adventurous souls. I am not a golfer but golf sure is a beautiful game. I posted some text about the wisdom of golf many years ago. Here is a reminder – https://prettyapt.com/2013/06/14/the-many-lessons-of-golf/ – I read this again recently and a few important thoughts were good to ponder again.

One of the folk I met recently at the coffee shop in Fancourt, while I was feeding the Bunster some toast with sliced avo, was talking about work and he said,  “Work hard until you no longer need to introduce yourself.” It reminded me of that line from that text about the wisdom of golf, “Golf teaches that when you are good you can tell people, but when you are great they will tell you.”

I have been doing a lot of soul searching on the film project because if we make a good film it won’t work – it needs to be an excellent film. I believe we are on the right path but to make something truly remarkable it is going to take everything we got. One word is the key for today’s rambling : focus.

Focus is fundamental to any success in life. A film that is not in focus is never good. Ok ok, a silly joke.

Enough said.

Focus.

We have been at Fancourt in George for almost a year now. And this insane war is still going on. Towards the end of this month we leave SA and head to Wroclaw in Poland. We are renting a flat there until the end of this year and in May I will be heading to Kyiv.

Sometime in May Ukraine will begin their big counteroffensive. This is what we all believe is going to happen. We can guess on what is going to unfold. My view is that Ukraine is going to push the Russians back and give them a proper hiding. But this will result in further action on behalf of that insane Putin. Either he will catch a wake up and finally grasp that he is in shit, or, he will realize that he has lost and decide to try take us all with him into the abyss. Of course, no one knows what is going to happen, but my gut feel is that May is going to be a decisive month not just in this war, but in the world. There is also another theoretical outcome, where Ukraine’s counteroffensive is not successful and that they lose the war. I don’t believe this is possible. In that scenario it means that evil has triumphed over good and then the world is going to hell. So yes, I can’t believe in such an outcome.

I am really excited to return to Kyiv next month. At least the electricity there works well. Here in SA the load shedding is depressing. But that is a discussion for another day. Maybe. One thing is for sure, the Bunster is going to miss Fancourt.

Everyone is asking about the zebras. Take a peek here : https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/04/askania-nova-ukraines-serengeti-is-a-stunning-refuge-for-zebras-buffaloes-and-wildebeests-on-the-edge-of-a-war-zone.html

I watched this video last night and I loved it. Some of us have been speaking about a love letter to Kyiv, well, this was a love song to Kyiv, literally. It could have been 10 to 15 mins shorter, in my view, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Totally original and inspired.

It is about a bunch of street musicians and a composer and how the composer takes these different character’s musical sounds and puts them together for the ending, which is a song : the sound of Kyiv.

It is shot in winter in the war time but they don’t really talk about the war much. The main character, the hero of the story, the composer, is very likeable and cool. Kyiv is cool.

Really and truly different. Made quite an impression.