From High Level Road to the Digital Highway

This post comes to you from the soft and comfortable sofa in my very own lounge. Yes, a big milestone has been passed, I am surfing the web on my own laptop in my own flat. And it is wireless so I can sit, stand, lay wherever I want - laptop allowing of course. So who knows the next mail you get from me was sent out of my hot bath, or from a bench in a park, or from a sleazy public toilet. The options are limitless!! The speed of the connection isn't however. I am keeping a close eye on the stats as we speak (resp. write, read) and I am cruising at a mere 20 KB/s on average. But this connection can go all the way up to 7 MB/s, so boy oh boy if I find the right spot (if there is any) I'll surf at the speed

of light. (please don't conclude that the speed of light is 7 MB/s, that wouldn't be very accurate).

If I told you this is the only thing I realized in the past two weeks you would scold at me, right? Well you should because that would be a shame! So I am happy to tell you I did more than just this. One example would be hiking. I went hiking for a day, on my own. Grabbed a backpack and off I went. I had bought a map earlier and discovered there's actually a pathway that leads up to Signal Hill and the Lion's H

ead right around the corner. It's a bewildering feeling to be able to leave the city and be out in the nature so easily. I walked along Signal Hill, crossed it, went along the foot of Table Mountain, rounded the bend around Devil's Peak, descended at Newlands, disturbed a marriage, climbed up to Rhodes' memorial and went back home through the CBD. There, now you can use Google Earth to try to make sense of the previous description.

It was amazing to see how much wildlife I saw, considering you are right next to a city. I saw a mongoose, guinea fowl, a snake, a hawk eating a snake and a bug that killed a spider with a body the size of half my thumb. Granted, I don't have a big thumb but I was still awed by the bug that killed a spider that big.

A part of the road I walked along was closed for traffic. Landslides, falling rocks and the overall poor condition of the road didn't allow cars. Strictly speaking it was closed for hikers as well, but I ignored it. This boyish rebellion paid off because it was great fun to walk along that deserted road. I felt a bit like an Indiana Jones of some sort, not being scared of the snakes that slid away in front of my feet, looking at the mountain slope to assess which rock would fall down next. Staring hard at the rocks (camera in close up now), with eyes like slits, as if I could keep them at bay with my heroic stare. Completely in line with my character I took my shirt off. The sun was burning but that wouldn't stop me. You never see the movie heroes wielding a bottle of factor 20 sunscreen, but I did. As far as my arms would stretch I rubbed the protective cream on my skin. And I was ready to take on the rest of the road. Merrily I walked those miles, hoping I would get a nice tan in the process. I did, in a way. But the sun burns so hard here the factor 20 was hardly enough. A colleague chuckled and told me they invented factor 50 for the piercing rays of sunshine in South Africa. I failed to see the humor of it at

that point and thought of emptying a bucket of factor 50 in his nose. No, that was exaggerated, I wasn't in that much pain thanks to the lotion I did use. None the less my back and my legs look like regular kebaps. I can just peel off the skin and shove it in a roll with some veggies for an alternative meal (would that be cannibalism?).

I am looking for things to do, ways to make me leave my flat and at best meet other people. Ideally it should be something fun too, right? So one of the thing I started was taking up guitar lessons. The first real guitar lessons since I started playing. My teacher is a South African girl who goes to the university in Stellenbosch if I'm not mistaken. Haven't had enough lessons to say I made real progress but she is definitely helping me.

At work there were two events worth mentioning, I guess. An idea I put forward about having a visual management system for our team was approved. I suggested a layout and what the content should be and that got approved as well, without too many changes. I had a white board installed of 1m50 by 1m20 and now I can start implementing my ideas. It's a good feeling I can tell you.

Next to that I was also assigned my very first solo project. There will be contract negotiations in Maputo (Capital of Mozambique) early February. Cool stuff, I want to do a good job. But most I did so far was wait for data input... a whole week I had to wait for input, send reminders, find a way to reach the persons involved... very frustrating! I will have to find a way to make it happen faster next time.

For the past weekends I have been contemplating going surfing. It is absolutely something I would like to try although I have no aptitude for these things.

Any type of board that slides or has wheels gets the better of me. But the times was about to go out and try it the weather was bad or something else kept me from going. That "something else" included the newsflash you can read at the right hand side. I know this news traveled around the world because it is so spectacular.

You know, I bet dozens of people die every day from swallowing something weird (pebbles, an eraser, gummy bears, a pencil,...) but one guy dies of a shark attach and it's front page news. One could be more amazed by those items that got swallowed. (How did he swallow a whole pencil? which gummy bear did it? What brand of eraser was it?) Mainly because the shark did not do anything out of the ordinary. Unlike the pencil in the throat of a guy, the shark did what it is meant to do: swim, hunt, bite. Pencils are not designed to enter an esophagus, so you could say it is a lot more peculiar and worth more investigation. But then again, the pencil doesn't grow up to 7 meters big and it doesn't have three rows of razor sharp teeth. And when you see a pencil you don't start humming "tuuu du ---- tuuu du --- tu du tu du tu du etc..." do you?

But I'm getting side tracked here. My point is that a poor chap ended as shark chow in the bay where I wanted to learn to surf. It is very uncommon thing to happen, but kept me away for now regardless.

I'll end this post by saying that I am currently studying for something. It involves a book, a teacher and other teaching tools. I even have an exam soon... but for/of what?

I will tell you, later.

From the comfy three seater in my flat, via the digital highway to you behind your screen,

yours truly,

W.

Capetonian ways

Time to tuck away the Christmas decorations. They felt out of place either way. I didn’t get the point of putting up decorated trees and lighting window sills when we had the longest day in the South African summer. That shows how much is geared at the northern hemisphere still. But these happy habits die hard, don’t they? If it were up to certain political parties, they would have scrapped Christmas as a national holiday, because it is mainly a white man’s holiday. But too many people oppose that.

Latest developments included me getting a nice laundry machine, a power blender and a whole set of sofas. Yes, yes, I am steadily gathering all the household stuff I need. Every item adding a bit of luxury or independence. Which is good and necessary because I was getting accustomed to camping out in my own apartment, and that’s not really good is it?
Now as the saying goes, when you’re in Rome, do as the Romans do. Replace Rome with Cape Town etc… and that would mean I try to do what people do here, and in the way they do it.

One of such attempts included standing in a long traffic jam along the coastline to find a place at the beach on the 1st of January. It is something all Capetonians do. From townships and inland cities, people make their way to all the different beaches along the coast. And for the first time I felt the demographic numbers were represented correctly: I was the only white dude around. Whites are the minority in SA, with only 10% of the population. But where I have been so far, whites are by far the majority so it was nice to see it turned around for once.

Second attempt was a visit to the festival called “Tweede Nuwejaar” (second New Year). It was not very spectacular, but a good deal of fun. Seeing all the people dressed up in colorful clothes and playing catchy rhythms under the scorching sun was quite entertaining for a while.

A third step in the process of acting like the Capetonians was getting a house maid. Most people have a maid coming once or twice per week, and she does all kinds of chores. At first I didn’t want to do that. But the idea grew on me, and I’d be employing someone, right? I’d enjoy it and the lady would be helped as well. In a country with 48% unemployment and no welfare system I think that is a valid argument. Plus it sounds quite posh and it would be very comfortable, wouldn’t it? Ironing done, kitchen cleaned, that kind of stuff. So she came for the first time this week. And to prove that it is an interesting exercise in integration (as well as luxury won’t deny that) is that I’ve found out that you have to provide a meal for everyone you employ for an entire day. So next to the wage I pay I have to make sure there are sandwiches for the lady. I’ve heard South Africans telling stories about how their maid raided the fridge at every chance the got. From now on, if that occurs, I can put on a serious face and engage in the conversation with stories about "my maid" :-)

2010 came !!

Happy new year !!!!

2010 has finally arrived, a magic number most South Africans have been waiting for because it will be the year of the world cup and record breaking cash flows into the country... they hope.

Has it really been 20 days since I last posted something on here? My word, I reckon some of you were wondering what was going on. Especially since I left you with such big news pending last time. Well let's see how I can sum up the past weeks.

First of all, on the job it has been quite busy. We had very intense negotiations with our previous project. Well, they seemed intense to me because it was my first time sitting in on such a high level meeting. It looked like the boss of my manager thought differently (although he woke up at 3 am that day and was in the office around 4 am which is early even to his standards because he usually starts work at 5h30). But the negotiations went well and we were complimented on the preparation we made. Actually you could say we blew the other guys out of the water with our facts. Had it not been a sellers market, we would have gotten even more I think... but I don't want to talk too much about work. Let's just say my days are quite full and I enjoy the work I'm doing.

Other big news: my friend and colleague Florens became a proud father! He is a trainee from the Netherlands who came here just like I did, as a mise grad expat. He and his lovely wife Claudia were already several months pregnant (well she technically more than him) when they arrived here. Baby Charlotte came a bit early and was accordingly small 1800 grams and 43 cm. But other than that very healthy and growing steadily. They were very pleased with the hospital which they thought was a lot better than the one in Rotterdam. If you're thinking now: really? South Africa, a developing country, good hospitals? Then I can assure you they have top class facilities here, bearing in mind the difference between private and public hospitals. Actually, a hospital in Cape Town called "de groote schuur" did the first successful heart transplant in the world. So that can be an indication. Next to that, the Netherlands have the highest baby mortality in Europe, and Rotterdam the higest in Netherland... So Claudia and Florens weren't worried to come here in that respect. Check out the pictures below, see how proud they are (yet to come if I don't forget the damn USB-stick)!!

Other big announcement to make: I have my car! Just like I predicted, I received the car shortly after my last post. It's a VW chico 1.3 liter. Not a massive machine, but very convenient and termendously popular in South Africa, especially amongst students. You see these chico golfs everywhere you go. That is a good thing because then I am quite sure I can sell it easily before I leave, and all the other benefits of garages knowing this model well, having spare parts etc... On the flipside of that, it is one of the cars that is stolen the most. Because it is well known and not very complicated in its construction, thieves know how to crack these babies easily. That is why Shafeeka (I baptised her such) has an alarm, and I'm getting a tracking device and maybe even a gear lock to keep her safely at my side, or under my bum to be more precise. She has a cd player which I thought was a must, and I'm quite sure I'll install some more powerful speakers because I need my music when road tripping !

Road tripping is what I did from the moment I had her. I added 2000 kms on the clock in under two weeks :-) I'll let the pictures of the road trips speak for themselves...

A bit more on Shafeeka. She had only 57 000 kms when I bought her, she was born in 2001 and was carefully looked after. She needs a bit of a drink to start running (i.e. sometimes I need a choke to rev her up a bit). We have not really agreed on when and how much she needs an extra drink to start running. I gave her a bit too much in the beginning, resulting in her not wantin to start anymore because she passed out drunk. But we'll sort it out.
She was the result of weeks of car hunting, weighing out upsides to downsides and fitting the tight (?) budget I imposed on myself. She lives up to all requirements and I know we will be very happy in the coming months.

An other reason for me not posting anything in the past weeks is that I had my first visitors over. Well, they didn't stay at my place, but Kimsi and Abby (two colleagues from Antwerp) came here with a couple of other friends to explore Cape Town and surroundings. So I tried to hang out with them whenever possible, which meant going to Hout Bay often (40 min drive along a ridiculously beautiful beach road, with seals on rocks in the water, beaches etc...).
I spent a couple of nice days with Abby going out to Cape Point, a game drive, Paarl, and other touristic stuff. Great fun! Miss Abby is a very good car DJ and airco handler ;-)! The conclusion of the gang was: two weeks were not enough! So bear that in mind when you come here.

That's it for now. Keep safe, enjoy the festive season, don't put on too much weight.

moving to High Level

oki my peeps,

a long awaited update, I assume...
I left you, wondering if I would have the keys in time and if the moving company would come. Well, they did. Everything went according to plan, in spite of it being plan B obviously.

After a couple of calls and a fair amount of driving around in taxis, I held the keys to the flat in my hand at exactly 9h23. At 10h the movers would be there. That's about as close as it can get, isn't it? But it's the end result that counts, so I headed to my flat with a big smile on my face. The guys from the moving company were in time, which only made me feel more elated. So I joined the guys, basking in the sun, waiting for the truck to arrive with my stuff. After a while, still no container, the leader off the pack received a call. He broke lose of the pack, headed my way, holding out a phone. Was he holding is head down? The leader of the pack, showing signs of defeat? The voice on the line confirmed my feelings, something was wrong. They forgot to pick up the container.
One doesn't need to know much about container shipping to understand that having the actual container in the place it needs to be (preferably on time) is the essence of the whole thing.

I left the guys waiting for the container whilst the moving company (not Maersk you cheeky reader) rectified their mistake to pick up my things at the apartment I was happily abandoning. I even squeezed in a nap I think. And then, surely enough, the container arrived at 13h00 sharp and the movers could start working their magic. Well, "magic" is a massive overstatement because it was a simple matter of dragging heavy boxes up 3 flights of stairs. But I was the elated one, remember, and I saw all these things coming out of the cartons just the way they were stuffed in there, in Mechelen, thousands of miles up north and several weeks ago. So it was magical to me.
You have to take the part "just the way they were stuffed in there" very litterally. These mover guys in Mechelen did not ask a lot of questions, they just executed. So if I said "everything on this shelf", everything on the shelf
was put in a box and shipped. That includes a bowl of half eaten hazel nuts, a cup with -now moulded- tea, receipts from supermarkets, an envelop with 100 EUR worth of meal vouchers (maaltijdcheques),...

So now I am a resident of the Mazoli building, on 129 High Level Road, appartment 15 in 8005 Green Point (virtually the same as Sea Point actually).
Although the movers unpacked a lot of things for me (including the ridiculous number of glasses I had with me), still not everything is unpacked. Mainly because I took an unfurnished apartment and need to buy a nice cupboard still. And a table and chairs, couches and maybe something else... good thing it's the shopping period.

Now the next big thing to get in place, and actually the crux of any type of free/social life, is a car! It looks like I will have one next week. And I will tell you much more about it then. And I will also tell you about how I claimed the title of Nonkel Wouter because a little baby girl was born this week.

Please check out the pictures I uploaded on the move here

something wicked this way comes,

wicked, wack, weird... tomorrow should be the big day. My stuff will be delivered to my new flat tomorrow, in sound condition I hope, and in due time... The observant reader must have noticed my reserved expression. The issue is namely that I don't hold the keys to the flat in my hand. I'll save you the details, it all comes down to HR not doing their job diligently. They work thoroughly, but slow, which resulted in them paying the warranty quite late (today). But I'm not too worried about the outcome, I'm still confident I'll be in the flat tomorrow. I will just have to run around more and make an extra effort to get things organized.

Running around and making efforts, that is exactly what I did last Saturday (after my previous post). From the list of things to achieve, I succeeded in only half of them. Much to my dismay. No, in reality "dismay" is too big a word, but it's fancy... so I'll use it anyway.
Saturday started with me running around the City Bowl (center part of CPT), looking for a scooter to rent. All scooters were rented out, not that there were that many to begin with. That resulted in me being late at the bank, finding the doors closed. I comforted myself with some exquisite sushi and headed to Voortrekker Road, a long street with a lot of car dealers. It's quite a stretch so that means a taxi driver had a good day, at the expense of, well, me... To add my frustration - by know I had used quite a lot of nasty vocabulary already- most of the flippin' car dealers were closed. No progress made, money not well spent.

Sunday was the exact opposite. A friend-colleague of mine ( we should definitely find a word for a colleague who is also more of a friend, like a friegue or colleand or just randomly "a clort" - should I start up a facebook group now?) took me out of the city. We ended up in a small village called Mamre. As road tripping will teach you, you can always expect unexpected things to happen. In this case we ended up in a brimful church, with us sticking out on the first row and as the only white people. This is the point where I should tell you that I was "dressed down". It is a little trick I do when I go out, to stand out a bit less. I wear simple clothes, no bag pack, nothing fancy that would entice thieves. Now in this case we were "just going out the city" so I dressed down extra. I had selectively chosen a T-shirt that didn't smell too much, and shorts I would wear to paint stuff. So there I went, into that packed church with everyone dressed up in suits and their best clothes. A moment of self awareness. The men were all in suit and tie, the children clean from head to toe, the women with nice necklaces and other subtle jewelry. The grandmothers all wore a scarf, over their head. Goodness me! Was this, in some strange twist of reality, a muslim church? No, it was clearly a christian church. But a scarf, really? Surely it's a sign of their backwardness then? Settled in their ways, these christians did not evolve like we and they did not become modern. Has to be! But the priest was a woman, quite a young one at that, and she made jokes in her sermon. That is very progressive, very modern, isn't it?
Leaving that aside, I was still on the first row in shorts, with incredibly pale legs lighting up the room, it seemed. Someone had pushed a book in our hands, which contained all the songs. They sang a lot. The entire mass was in Afrikaans, much to my benefit. The melodies and texts were just like the ones we have in church, so I felt very confident to squeal along "In genade, groot en ryk, bou U, Heer, u koninkryk" etc... (have a look at the building, it dates from 1818, could have been standing anywhere in Europe, right?)

After the very interesting mass, we headed out to a wine farm. Did the tasting, had an exuberant lunch and enjoyed the ubiquitous sunshine. You will understand I was very glad with this day out. Thanks very much to Georgina, my freague, colliend, clort...

Now wish me good luck for tomorrow! If all goes well, I should have an interesting series of pictures next time!

If you want to get a feel of where I will be staying, have a look at the inlay at the right. I will move to High Level Road in Sea point.

the first month

We have reached the very symbolic 4-week mark, meaning I am here officially one month. And I am getting restless.
As usually the case when I get a bit restless, I can't exactly tell you why. Is it because I am not in my new apartment yet? Is it because I am still spending time browsing ads, this time for a car? Is it because so many evenings look alike? No clue. Probably a bit of everything, either way I have a faint feeling of frustration.
Fortunately I have a way to cope with that: making more plans. I like having plans, primarily because I can assure myself I will do something (slightly more) useful than just hanging around. Plans serve as a benchmark : I can compare possible other activities to the one planned and see if they are better. If the activity is deemed less interesting, based on my very subjective and arbitrary judgment, I might still do them if other factors justify that: uniqueness, involving unknown third parties, overall cost (monetary, opportunity costs, search costs,...), time or other constraints. To sum up a lot of BS: I like having plans when I feel restless.

So the plans for this weekend are (non exhaustive, not compulsory list):
- finishing the book I am reading
- finding a means of personal transport, i.e. a scooter of some sort
- leaving the city bowl for a significant amount of time
- watching the rugby game on Saturday (Bokke VS Ireland)
- go and hike in Kirstenbosch Gardens (see right inlay)
- deciding on a car
- go to bank to pick up bank card
- go and check out the switching on of the X-mas lights
- to be determined

I think it is mainly because my situation hasn't changed much in the past weeks that frustration is building up. I have found a place to rent, as I mentioned before, but I still don't hold the keys in my hand. Reason being that HR are not as efficient as I would like them to be (sharp contrast to Belgian HR). My container still isn't customs cleared. I still rely on taxis to get around in the City. I still haven't found something interesting to do on weekday evenings,... and all those things are interrelated.

But the coming week is very promising: Tuesday I should get my keys, Thursday they will deliver my stuff at my apartment, Friday there is the staff party, and there is the lottery of the World Cup groups which means there will be plenty of activity around the city. Already they are putting up extra decoration and there is a sense of excitement.
Everyone knows this will be a very important moment. News stations from around the world will take this opportunity to look at how the preparations are going. Still a lot of preparations to do in these final 200 days - the organization does not take chances on safety - let's look at the stadiums - but what about those vuvuzela's -...

a place to stay

I can start this post by telling you all I have found a place to stay. I still remain a bit weary though since the paperwork is not completed yet. I will only be sure once i'm lying in my bed in that apartment.
I'm proud to say I kept my promise and I will have a nice guest room for all of you that will come over to visit Cape Town, and me. I ll give you more details on the apartment and pictures once I moved in, that should be next weekend or shortly thereafter.

The weather changed for the good. It has been warm and cloudless for the past week, and 30 C every day without fault. Luckily there is a cool ocean breaze that makes it very pleasant to walk around.

I was invited by a colleague to go and see a movie in premiere. I confess that I am a bit of a social slut these days, in the sense that I jump at every chance I get to go out and do something with someone. In this case I was also informed that there would be 8 other women. So I double jumped. And there were indeed a lot of other women: there was the mother in law, the 15 year old daughter and her friend, the sister in law... Needless to say my expectations lied in a different age category. But it was a fun night out none the less.

Yesterday I helped Nelis, a Belgian colleague who has been here for a year already, move. He lived out in one of the further suburbs and had a nice house for him, his wife and their two cats. He's now moving because his wife has found work in a suburb on the other side of Cape Town. In all fairness: the move was not a lot of work. The lion share of the work was done by the moving company who had a large truck and 6 guys to fill it.

It was a big rugby day yesterday. There were lots of games on, so I parked my butt on a chair in the Irish pub down at the Waterfront and watched all of them (Scotland won from Australia, yey!). The nice thing is that you usually can have a bit of a chat with other spectators. This time I got more than I bargained for. I ended up with four guys who work in a restaurant in an other part of Town. Nic was by far the most talkative one, Tony is from Angola and Louis and Levy are originally from Congo. It was their night out because they work 6 days a week and not on a Sunday. So they go out, talk, have a few beers and just have a good time. And that is exactly what we did.
It was great to see how easily they took me up in their group. I was very relaxed the whole time, but still on my guard. It is one of those situations where I'm sceptical because some things are happening that I (western individualist) am not used to. The thoughts that are quietly yet noticeably in the back of my mind are: Would they want me to pay for the whole bill (a popular scam in Shanghai)? Do they want to take over this table? Do they just want to pick my pockets? Do they want to find out where I live so they can come and empty my apartment? It is not something one does deliberately, and I can feel very ashamed by it if is dominating my thoughts. But nothing those guys did indicated they would want to do such things so we just had a couple of rounds together.

They filled up the hours effortlesly with their simple stories brought with too much drama and big gestures. What was an epiphany to me was that they were quite demanding to the staff. I don't like asking waiters for too much, I even have difficulties sending back cold soup, but they were asking a whole lot of things. Nic wanted to change his glass because he was given a low glass with a handle, like a german beer glass. "That spoils my evening! It is not a manly glass. I need a tall glass, bruh. This is a glass for coffee!" Tony wanted to change channels on the TV and asked about 5 waiters to do that... and on and on. So here you had guys, waiters themselves, demanding a lot. And I started to realize that I feel akward whenever a waiter is serving me. Usually, halfway through your meal, the waiter comes to ask if everything is ok. I just nod or say "yes yes" so convincingly that it is probably clear that I don't want him to be bothered by what I want. Is it because I am afraid a master - servant relationship would occur?
I had a cold lasagna the other day but still told the waitress everything was perfect, and here you had Nic asking for a vuvuzela (the horn that makes a lot of noise) or the waitresses' number in exchange for his money... So I figured I will have to ease up and be more relaxed when waiters are around.

Louis is the only one not working at the restaurant and would best be described as the uptight guy that wants to come across as the intelligent type. He craves attention and goes to look for a new "audience" whenever he is not part of the conversation. To illustrate: he started dancing in front of the musicians at the Waterfront, where around a hundred tourists were gathered to look at the street musicians. Then he continued to take over one of the xylophones after he had asked a 60+ old women to dance with him.
When we were introduced and he found out that I am Belgian, he started talking about the relation between Belgium and Congo. A topic that unsettles me slightly as I don't really know what to say or do (see right hand side why). He called me his uncle and he was my nephew. And he tried to drag me in a discussion about why the Congolese were never given Belgian nationality although they were part of the Belgian kingdom. And that Belgium should be more involved in Congo just like the UK, US and China are doing good business. I guess I should make the suggestion to Karel De Gucht to start up the dialogue (?) with Congo again.