"Red" Espresso gets a green light

It came as a bit of a shock when my doctor and my cardiologist told me to stop drinking coffee, unless it was decaf. A morning pot of coffee to help me wake up has been a ritual for years. In the last two years I have taken to drinking my coffee black, with minimal sugar. What now?

I have recently experimented with Laager "Rooibos Cappuccino", a mixture of Rooibos tea and frothy milk powder, that makes an enjoyable drink pretty close to instant Cappuccino, which is a special treat. So when I visited my local supermarket, the packaging of Red Espresso caught my eye, and I decided to try it.

It's refreshing, with or without milk. So now my morning pot of coffee has been replaced with a morning pot of Red Espresso. There is no caffeine at all, but plenty of anti-oxidants instead, which I'm told is good for me. If I get the urge for coffee, I can always have decaf, but I must say I'm enjoying the Red Espresso just as much. I found more information about it on the marTea site, and there is a web site where you can buy it in several countries. Even Amazon.com sells it. It is available at most supermarkets in South Africa and online from Pick 'n Pay.

Update: It seems that their "patent" is one of those dodgy ones. See Noseweek #134, or check out a competing product at www.teaspresso.com. I can't understand how anyone would try to patent a natural product like tea.

Awesome "Change"

Four talented young musicians recently recorded this album. I gladly paid the US$15 to buy the album, and enjoyed listening to the songs and reading the lyrics. I think its pretty awesome. Last year they played at the music festival at Clarens and impressed a lot of seasoned musos with their energy and talent. This year they are even better. They even recorded, mixed and produced the album themselves. I'm seriously impressed.
The band is called "When in September"
From left to right in the photo:
Thomas Quinn - Guitar and Backup Vocals;
Levon Lock - Guitar and Lead Vocals;
Timothy Edwards - Drums and Backup Vocals;
Warren Graham - Bass and Backup Vocals;
They have a Facebook Fan Page and there are 4 extra free songs on their MySpace profile.

Pathetic Lies from Clientele Life

I finally got an evasive response from Clientele Life, and it's not good. They sent a response, retracted it, and then sent it again. Obviously they can't decide on which lies and/or half-truths they should include.

"As a company we obtain prospect information from numerous sources. We would like to assure you that this is perfectly legal ... Clientele obtain personal information to be used in our Call Centre from many different list providers. One only has to go to the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (see www.dmasa.co.org) and they will provide us with many and numerous accredited list providers, whereby we then go to these list providers and buy lists for prospecting.

This shows how cheap they are. They are not members of the DMA themselves, but claim to obtain lists from DMA members. However, my details are on the DMA's "Do Not Contact" list, so either they are lying or the DMA members are not cleaning their own lists.
They assure me that they are not breaking the law, which is a lie. Their inability to tell me who they got my details from is in itself a violation of the ECT Act. Obtaining my details from a DMA list means they already know that I don't want to be contacted. That's another violation. Failure to respond to my "stop" SMS message is a third violation.
If they duck and dive this badly with a simple request for information, what kind of ducking and diving do they do when you make a policy claim? The mind boggles. How can any organisation be this stupid?