It's cold and it's snow-raining outside. But today is special and we decided to dare the cold to see this, because it happens only every 7 years. L has been living in Munich for 12 years and never saw this, the kind of famous "Schäfflertanz" -- Coopers' Dance.

The dance itself is nothing really special. It's kind of march instead of dance, to be really strict. But it's a very important tradition, so important that the event is part of the spinning music clock in the famous new city hall at the Marienplatz.


There seems not to be to much written about this tradition. According to legend, it was firstly started in 1517, when a epidemic swept Germany. People who didn't die from contagion were hiding at home even after the epidemic was gone. Some coopers decided to take the courage to go out to use dance and music to inform the Munich inhabitants that the bad time was gone.  Since 200 years, this tradition repeats itself every 7 years.

In 2019, the event starts from the 6th of January and goes on until 5th of March almost every weekend in January and almost everyday in February at different locations. Here is the complete list of the schedule.

One of the three "official" explanations of the reason why it repeats itself every 7 years is that the epidemic happens in a 7 years cycle. I am hoping that with this dance to start 2019, the bad aura in 2018 from the draught in Europe, the Brexit and international trade wars will slowly subside.

This happened when I had to call my parents via Skype. Suddenly I found the Skype app had been updated everywhere, on the phone, on my computer, literally, everywhere and I had to relog myself on. The problem was, I am used to have the log on information stored so it's been awhile since I had to manually log on to Skype. After spent half an hour digging into my old email account which I have long stop using after switching to Gmail (like, 15 years old), turned on my Taiwanese phone (which I only use once or twice when I am back in Taiwan) in order to receive the security code, update my phone number and email address, finally I was able to sign in to Skype. However the ordeal didn't stop there. At the moment I signed in by typing in what-I-thought-was my Skype name, I found that my Skype credits were all gone. So I spent another 20 minutes to search on line to see how to resolve the problem in vain and finally landed on the customer support page and started to chat with the customer support "John F."

John was nice. After I typed in my problem, he asked to see my purchase number of the Skype credit. So I did dig in my mail box and found the 5 years ago mail. But he still couldn't find the problem so he asked me to paste the entire email where the purchase number resided. So I did. When I did that, I also found out my own mistake. I actually had a different Skype name. (which made me wonder later why I could use a totally different Skype name to log on). At the same time, John F. also found that I had used different Skype names. So the problem was resolved. And I typed "Thank you John chatbot". Then John typed, "I am not a chatbot". I found myself rude by assuming him as a chatbot. But is he really not one? How can one tell whether one is talking to a droid or not?

Nowadays is relative easy to implement some AI function based on the cloud service like Amazon Web Service (Lex) or Microsoft Azure (Azure Bot Service) or IBM Watson (IBM chatbot). Though it still takes quite some efforts to build in enough data to be able to provide comprehensive answers to all kinds of possible questions.

According to the report here, quite a good portion of people are not bothered to talk to a Bot if it/she/he can help with his problem. I have almost the same opinion and am thankful that John F. helped to resolve my problem much faster than me digging around on the net. However I would also appreciate to know if I am talking to a Bot, so I know that I don't have to waste my emotional resources.

There are also not nice things on the Internet where Chatbots are used to solicit sensitive information from you. Joseph Rauch provided some tips to help to identify whether you are talking to a Chatbot or a real person.

Unfortunately I didn't read this article before I chatted with Skype online service John. But I am suspicious that he was a Chatbot. According to the brief of the Chatbot Market 2017,  I think it's not a surprise that Microsoft uses the development results in their own service hotline. Even Skype itself provides chatbot API for the business customers. 

The key players within the chatbot industry, such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Telegram, have been investing in the development of chatbot technologies for years and continue to work on major bot projects.

Welcome to the future!

It's been 12 years in Kruger National Park so it might not be that fair to compare. The memory fades along the time and sometimes one can lose complete touch of what happened. Regardlessly I found Addos very appealing, mainly due to its openness. One can see quite far without blockage of the view. It's quite different from the Savana biome in Kruger. It's the third largest national park in South Africa and is still growing. It's famous for its big 7 since it has a marine reserve in it.

The breeze sometimes is still quite fresh in the spring in this tiny town, where a small group of French refugees settled in the 17th century. When the sun shines in the vine yards, flanked by the mountains, the landscape is absolutely stunning.. Spring in Franschhoek is colored with bright green and various colors of  the new blossom.

The town is so small that one would probably not visit it if not for its wineries and famous wine tram. The wine tram is basically a hop on and hop off bus/train that take guests from one wine estate to another, so one can fully enjoy the wine tasting, pairing with chocolate and biltong (a sort if dried meat in South Africa, like beef jerky). There are 9 estates on our blue route. They give you minimum one hour to stay in one winery before one can be picked up by the bus again. What makes us wonder is, we see the same driver and conductor every time we hop on the bus. They must be driving around the circle non stopping for the whole day. For the winery hosting the guests, checks are prepaid before the bus arrived. I can’t help wondering, whether they get bored by this routine. Each of them get six rounds of tourists in one day, so they have to repeat this routine punctual like the clock.


Most of the wine estates are pretty old, established in the 17 centuries. Our last stop was a ride with the tram on an old rail track which was used for the passenger trains. We were told that from end of October, the trams are running full six days a week. We were here in mid of October so the wine crowd hasn't appeared yet.

After 12 years, I am back in South Africa. It actually started from last year, when we planned the trip, bought the tickets but forgot to get the visa two days before the departure time. So it didn't work. We have a Chinese saying, you stand up at where you fall. There is No Reason not to try again to visit this beautiful country. So here I am, after 12 years, have my feet in South Africa, with a slightly rough start.

My first experience of Joburg airport was quite funny.12 years ago, I landed around 5:30 in the early morning and the passport control officers hadn't arrived. Some guy had just waved us through without checking and stamping the passport. This time it was much more organized. But it's also very obvious that South Africa has become a very popular tourist designation, judging by the que at the passport control.

We had a 1.5 hours connecting time to our next flight to Cape Town. The que was quite long but didn't realy bother us. We thought there are plenty flights connecting Joburg to Cape Town. If we miss our flight, we would get rebooked to the next flight. At least that's what we had been told by the ground staff at South Africa Airway checking counter in Munich. In the meantime, we couldn't help but noticing that some people just tried to squeeze through the que.

Finally we got to the very front of the que and a girl came over to approach the security who was matching the crowd and counters, saying that she has a connecting flight. At first, he told the girl that everyone has a connecting flight and he can't do anything about that. To prove that, he kept pulling out the boarding pass from the hand of the good Taiwanese lady in a package tour to prove his point. But in the end he kind of let the girl and her mother jump the line.

The end of the story is that we were behaving ourselves like good world citizens and missed our flight. The South Africa Airway did rebook us to a flight that's 11 hours later with expensive rebooking fees. Lesson learn for the world trotters coming to Sout Africa. Currently the passport control point when you enter South Africa is Joburg. One has to calculate the queuing time for the custom and re-check luggage. I would say 2.5 hours connecting time is a safe bet.

So we are stuck at the airport waiting our next flight drinking my South African coffee. It's super delicious though. 😂