It’s that time of the year again, with votes being requested for the South African Blog Awards.  While not the best organised competition, the Awards are the only ones recognising the contribution that bloggers make to share information and opinions.

The website of the Blog Awards says it’s ‘the official showcase and recognition platform for the very best of South African blogs’.  Through the competition, the organisers want to attract attention to the thousands of local blogs amongst local as well as international readers.  They also want to interest non-bloggers to start their own blog.

We have entered two categories, neither fitting the content of our WhaleTales content perfectly as we write about Tourism, Restaurants, and Wine in the main.  Each blogger was restricted in entering only two Blog categories.  We request your support in voting for us:

*    Best Food and Wine Blog

*   Best Entertainment/Lifestyle Blog

One vote per category is allowed.  Voting closes at midnight on Friday 13 December!

The public vote will be evaluated together with the votes of judges chosen per category, and the top three ranked blogs per category will be chosen, with one ultimate winner per category.

In 2010 we were a top 10 finalist in the  ‘Most Controversial Blog’ category, but that category no longer exists.

In the past year we have:

*  provided input to the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards, to help improve their standing

*   written furiously about each MasterChef SA episode (to the irritation of some of our regular readers – with apology!)

*   exposed Michael copy-and-paste Olivier for posting media releases word for word on his blog as if they are his own writing, without acknowledgement to the PR companies, and his unethical ‘wine reviews’, for which he does not disclose that he is paid by the wine companies.

*   shared the payback Neil Pendock received for making enemies with almost everyone in the wine industry (producers as well as fellow writers), and had fun teasing him about his petite Pendock Wine Gallery of  six bottles on show per month at the Taj hotel, about which he lashes out regularly!

*   continued to be critical about the lack of marketing by the local tourism authorities Wesgro (but celebrating the appointment of its new Chief Marketing Officer Judy Lain), Cape Town Tourism (celebrating the departure of its CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold and PR and Communications Manager Sky Grove), and the City of Cape Town Tourism, Events and Marketing Directorate), which is showing in the poor business the Cape Town hospitality industry is doing!

*   shared event highlights of Delaire Graff unveiling its recently acquired ‘The Chinese Girl’ painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff, and the third anniversary of Babylonstoren.

*   awarded Sweet & Sour Service Awards every Friday.

After five years of daily blogging we are grateful for the more than 30000 unique readership our blog achieves every month, for the subscription by loyal readers, for the time taken to comment on our blogposts, and for the information and invitations we receive in generating content for the blog.

South African Blog Awards 2013, www.sablogawards.com      Twitter: @SABlogAwards

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter: @WhaleCottage