East Rand, South Africa
Feb 15, 2009 10:11:33 GMT
Post by palesa on Feb 15, 2009 10:11:33 GMT
We live in *leafy green suburb. We have a few small retail park's in the area, often referred to a square. In these retail parks, one will find a supermarket of some sort, a few restaurants, hardware store, video store, liquor outlet, pharmacy and some will have a news agent/book shop and a bank or two. They are mostly open air and the shops are built in a U shape around the parking.
As a child growing up, we used to go to "town" on a Saturday morning to do our shopping. Town comprised streets with shops, now, we go to malls, and our "towns' are neglected and run down. (Note I speak for Gauteng, and more specifically the area I live in).
A new trend is people buying residential homes along main roads and turning them into businesses of some sort, hairdresser, dance studios, creches, accountanting and tax services and even used car dealerships.
OUr property is probably about 1/4 of an acre, with our house set slightly forward, meaning we have more space in the back than the front. OUr house is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, lounge, dining room and study, home. We also have a 1 bedroom garden cottage in the back corner of our garden, this is where our helper and he son live. We have an outside laundry and a single garage.
4 of our 5 close neighbours have dogs, and most houses of our size would have a swimming pool in the back garden. Fortunately, we don't.
I work from home, so I stumble out of bed and down the passage, sometimes stopping to brush my teeth. Zonker travels about 1 hour to work each morning, as long as there are no traffic incidents en-route and about 1hour 15 minutes home (slighlty busier time of day).
Our public transport system sucks, though they are busy bulding Gautrain, metro system between some major centres, we will see what that yields.
About 3km's away we have a dam, where people, sail, canoe and windsurf, no motor sports allowed. We don't like to take the dogs there because people fish there and leave their gut and hooks lying around.
Our nearest cinema is about 5 minutes away. Although we could probably walk there, our roads are not designed for pedestrians and we would have to cross a few main roads to get there. And risk being run over by some negligent driver.
We are about 600 km's away from the nearest bit of beach and sea and about 350 km's away from the mountains (Drakensburg).
Our winters are dry, as we have a summer rainfall, so summer is green and lush and winters dry, brown and depressing.
*leafy green suburb, is a name given to so called "white" areas, as opposed to townships where black people live, which are quite brown and dusty.
(photos to follow)
As a child growing up, we used to go to "town" on a Saturday morning to do our shopping. Town comprised streets with shops, now, we go to malls, and our "towns' are neglected and run down. (Note I speak for Gauteng, and more specifically the area I live in).
A new trend is people buying residential homes along main roads and turning them into businesses of some sort, hairdresser, dance studios, creches, accountanting and tax services and even used car dealerships.
OUr property is probably about 1/4 of an acre, with our house set slightly forward, meaning we have more space in the back than the front. OUr house is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, lounge, dining room and study, home. We also have a 1 bedroom garden cottage in the back corner of our garden, this is where our helper and he son live. We have an outside laundry and a single garage.
4 of our 5 close neighbours have dogs, and most houses of our size would have a swimming pool in the back garden. Fortunately, we don't.
I work from home, so I stumble out of bed and down the passage, sometimes stopping to brush my teeth. Zonker travels about 1 hour to work each morning, as long as there are no traffic incidents en-route and about 1hour 15 minutes home (slighlty busier time of day).
Our public transport system sucks, though they are busy bulding Gautrain, metro system between some major centres, we will see what that yields.
About 3km's away we have a dam, where people, sail, canoe and windsurf, no motor sports allowed. We don't like to take the dogs there because people fish there and leave their gut and hooks lying around.
Our nearest cinema is about 5 minutes away. Although we could probably walk there, our roads are not designed for pedestrians and we would have to cross a few main roads to get there. And risk being run over by some negligent driver.
We are about 600 km's away from the nearest bit of beach and sea and about 350 km's away from the mountains (Drakensburg).
Our winters are dry, as we have a summer rainfall, so summer is green and lush and winters dry, brown and depressing.
*leafy green suburb, is a name given to so called "white" areas, as opposed to townships where black people live, which are quite brown and dusty.
(photos to follow)