Back by popular demand

So I've been a bit slack lately with the updating and I've had some complaints. Well, only one really, but he is a pretty popular guy, so that kind of counts. FB is kind of killing the blog, how can one compete when a picture tells a thousand words. A thousand of my words are certainly not going to be all that captivating. But more than that I think the archaic direct communication of emailing to keep in touch is world's better than by proxy vicariously living along with your friends lives. Their own words as said directly to you will be far more informative. And like post, emails that aren't trying to sell your rolexes, viagra or penis enlargements are fun to get. I've always been a firm believer of doing things for people that you would like returned, and have decided to be a bit more regular with correspondence. to that end I have been collecting postal addresses (to letter bomb you!!!!) to send postcards to, cos postcards are fun. It also appears that in the next couple of years I will be travelling all over africa if my company gets the work we're tendering for.

In the meantime, I was on site the other day and got to watch an excavator at work, which I have never actually done before since they're usually finished and off-site by the time I get there. I tell in my list of fun things to do operating an excavator would certainly be up there. I would rampage around town digging free swimming pools all over the place just for the fun of it. The gigantic hydraulic arm and the huge scoop that slices through sand and soil like a teaspoon in coffee is the coolest thing ever.

Here are some pictures to marvel at... (I've always maintained that people become what they do)

We're all going on a...

Well its not quite summer yet but I can pretend. So in just over a week I will be winging my way to Sydney. I am absolutely dreading the flight, and trying hard not to think of the 26 hour (total flying time) nightmare in cattle class that awaits me, over a period of 34 hours (total travelling time). Ah well, luckily the brain is very good at blocking out traumatic experiences, which I'm sure will be helped by large amounts of wakey and sleepy drugs that I will be consuming in an attempt to set my internal clock forward by 8 hours.
I'm really starting to get excited now, after having booked my ticket almost 5 months ago, it seemed like forever away. But now in one fell swoop have booked to go to the zoo, the opera, to go away to the mountains, and found out about surfing lessons on Bondi Beach. I also have my handy little guidebook and have already pinpointed loads of museums and galleries to see, not to mention going opal shopping!
I have also managed to collect a vast amount of pressies for the best friend, with enough spill over for her partner too. May have to get a scale from someone to make sure I'm not terribly overweight. Erm, that is my luggage, not me.
I have been running up a storm at the gym, 63 km so far, dunno if I'll manage the rest in a week and a half, should be doable, but we'll see how many more skipped days there are.

Will blog again when I am there in one piece and reasonably coherent.

More bootcamp

So I managed a whole month of bootcamp. Every day for four weeks, and I didn't skip a single day. In the freezing cold, and in the rain. Some may call it sucking up, to curry favour with the instructor, I just call it bloody minded. In the end it wasn't actually that bad. I think the first week was horrible cos I was still sick and stuggling to breathe. I don't however have that olympian body yet, I think the effect may be somewhat delayed and in fact somewhat diluted by that winter tendency to be piggy for hot square meal.
So.. I signed up again. I reckon if one did the camp for 3 to 4 months in a row, five days a week it would really make a difference. I not however, going to be able to do that just yet as I'm prolly going to be sent away for work again, so I signed up for three days a week.
Yesterday was the first weekday in a month that I didn't get up at 5:30 and had a bit of a lie in. It was weird. I've become so used to it now that it felt wrong somehow. Like I was wasting my morning.
Sigh, I'm starting to sound like a granny, getting up at the crack of dawn to torture the rest of the family with early morning radio shows. And ridiculously am now getting much more sleep than normal cos I dare not try and get up that early with only 6 hours sleep cos it really ain't gonna happen. So I guess I'll keep on with it till I have ... something.. better to do in the evenings ;)

The demise of mainstream media

I have had a few conversations recently about the effect personal news reporting on the web is having on the mainstream media. On the one hand I am more inclined to "trust" and/or support the opinions and reporting of most bloggers than I would the average newspaper. Largely because the average blogger seems to be more intelligent than the average reporter. I have completely stopped reading IOL articles because spelling mistakes, bad grammar and just plain shocking writing are the order of the day. Not to mention outrageously unsupported or unresearched content. This is also continually reflected in many articles that make blaring headlines one day and then are just as blaringly reported the next day as hoaxes (e.g. the Rent boy blog and the Kidney show). Look at how much embarrassment a reputable newspaper like the NY Times suffers if it is duped into reporting something that isn't true. It is a simple enough thing to find out that the silly rent boy was the same dude behind the Gay and Lesbian Association (to which no homosexuals, apart from himself belong) and indeed also behind the much publicised CrimeExpo website. Juan Uys is clearly a lunatic with an obsessive attention seeking disorder who will say any outlandish thing to get in the papers. What is ridiculous is how often he does get in the papers, and how often the papers have done absolutely no research as to who this man is. Just because something has been written and published on the web it is somehow more credible and requiring of less research. Frankly reporting on the rantings of any old nutter on the web is akin to interviewing a drunk bergie on the street or taking the ravings of a Falkenberg out-patient seriously and making them into headline news.

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Post-script
This blogger said what I was attempting to say far more succinctly here in a comment in reply to a librarian ranting about the rampant unregulated web.

Adventure Bootcamp - Day 2

Ah, Mein Gott in Himmel. The pain, oh the pain, oh so much pain. You know its bad, like sunburn, if you begin to feel sore mere minutes after the exercise is over. Plus I'm still recovering from my cold. At least I hope that's the reason why I couldn't breathe and had to stop moving in case I puked.
But at least I am still capable of walking to work and saving the environment. Although it was a little bit more like a stumble since I couldn't really lift my feet up very high.
They say that the stiffness is worse 2 days after the fact - if that is true I will not be able to get out of bed on Thursday, and by Friday I will be dead. I wonder if it is possible to die from pain? or if ones nerves just cave in.
I had better look like a goddamned Olympian after this (and I don't mean those indomitable female athletes who win the gold in darts) or there will be Consequences.

I won't however whine this much for the remainder of the four weeks as I'm sure by tomorrow I shan't be able to move my fingers either.

Adventures

Today I started Adventure Bootcamp. I wouldn't have minded getting up at 5 am so much if the massive storm with thunder and lightening hadn't woken me up several times last night. This is the kind of weather I was getting in Angola - waking up to loud thunder claps just above my head. Needless to say I was quite confused when I got woken up at 10 (I was in bed by 9!). The exercise this morning was fine - easy almost, but that's cos I suspect they're just making sure we come back tomorrow. Sigh, being awake for 2 hours before the sun rises has got to be unnatural in so many ways. The pic below is the extent of what passed over CT last night. (props to Myweather

cool pic

I just got the disc of pics from my bro who's on Marion Island for a year setting up a net connection amongst other things. I felt like sharing this one, which is the coolest. The seal is doped so that the researchers could weigh it. Looks like it's about 4 times the size of my bro!

Last week - 21 May

So not much exciting happened in my last week. There was a troupe of monkeys on site, dunno what kind. They were very cute with lots of teeny little babies which are purely miniature versions of their elders. The big daddies are easily spotted as they are significantly larger than the rest, oh and they have red arses and giant blue balls, that also helps to identify them. They hung around for a few days. I got a few pics but the digital zoom on my camera is not great and they’re a little people shy. It was a bit upsetting to see them foraging in the scrap. The base is not supposed to be sending general refuse to the scrap yard with food amongst the tins of solvent. I sneakily tried to lure them closer with an apple but they didn’t bite. I turned my back for five seconds and the apple disappeared. I never even saw the foliage moving. Clearly some primates are sneakier than others.
I have however been counting down the days to coming home and on day 28, today, finally ran out of TV that I brought with me to watch and finished my last book. I have now read 6 books and watched 2 seasons of Prison Break and Lost. God, Lost is so annoying. I swore after the first season that I wasn’t going to carry on watching, but hey, beggars and choosing and all that. Aside from watching like it’s being made up by a stoned scriptwriter the night before shooting, there are some parts that are just plain dumb. There’s an episode where they explain how the lead character of the doctor gets his tattoo, which is four Chinese glyphs which one of the antagonists can read in flawless mandarin. So they have to turn it into some big mystery where he’s finding himself in Phuket and befriends some Thai girl who dresses like a prozzie yet instead is some mystical tattoo artist who can see into the souls of her customers. The only mystery I found was how a Thai girl in southern Thailand would be able to speak and write mandarin at all, much less translate the soul of her customer into four succinct characters.
I wouldn’t have been stuck entertainment-less if my DVD of the first season of Rome had worked. I’ve heard it’s very good. Must see if I can get it from someone else. My sis also gave me a pc game version of Mage Knight which didn’t work. I think I’m going to start collecting series to watch for when I come again, which I dread, may happen in summer. Now at the start of winter the temperature is a balmy 28 degrees, and drops to a frigid 20 at the least. I cannot even imagine how ridiculous it would be in summer. There was no work again today cos it rained the whole day. A rabid fangirl had told me that House is quite good and since I haven’t seen any of it, it must be good for at least three season of viewing. Then there’s the rest of Heroes that I much get, but I don’t know if I could bear to keep it for months and not watch it.
So tomorrow is my last day and then I fly to Luanda on Wednesday to spent the night there before flying home on Thursday. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself. I’m quite hoping that I get to see a bit of Luanda, if nothing else just the drive from airport to hotel. One month is quite long enough to spend cut off from civilisation. If only I had a net connection at the hotel I could keep myself endlessly amused but alas. Next time I will come amply prepared and bring more than 6 books. I was super disappointed that one of my 600 page monstrosities turned out to have really large writing and wide margins and was actually a mere 300 pager in disguise. I felt so cheated. But anyway, I have now run out of waffle and may have to resign myself to talking to the old white barflies that infest this hotel.

Photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bastaway/

Lost in retransliteration

So some may be wondering how I am actually communicating out here, since my command of Portuguese was a total of nil words and now extends to please, thank you and little else (as may be intimated from my voluminous posts I am also a little starved for conversation, and lack of using up my daily word quota has reached critical levels). Well the guy who represents the company removing the scrap has a passable grasp of English, not great tho, and acts as translator when needed. But most of the time I’m on site with the workers while he is elsewhere. Luckily for me, the labourers are experts with hand signals, especially since working around the noisy trucks and forklift makes speaking difficult anyway. I have felt sorely tempted, however, to add a few less than complimentary hand gestures to their repertoire when it comes to dealing with the super. Since my show-down with their boss, however they are now all a little in awe that this little scrap (ha ha) of a girl could shout him down, and I got the approving comment “you strong woman”. It does also help my standing that their well-being is one of my primary responsibilities and I have been fomenting revolutionary slogans like “no water, no work” in order to make sure they get decent refreshment on site. In this ridiculous heat and humidity the bosses have been providing a measly 30 L drum for about twenty guys. Their impression of me was further enhanced the other day when, after the message was finally received that containers must be checked before moving, we were struggling to open one that was particularly well rusted shut. So the guys, having broken off the handle, had been pushing and pulling at the vertical bolts for about an hour, five of them taking turns to see if they could force the things to turn, with no joy. Never one to give up, and a firm believer in “'n Boer maak 'n plan” mentality, I gave it a bit of a think and judiciously applied a little of that greek dude’s a-big-enough-lever-can-shift-the-world theory. The inner door was already unlocked and it was the outer one that was stuck so luckily with a bit of a shove in the right place between the handles they cracked open and the guys could crowbar it the rest of the way. But the fact that I got it open after the rest of them had failed earned me more approval with the comment “you very strong woman!” I earned uproarious laughter (for some reason) by replying that the head was stronger than the arm.

Friday was more excitement (I’m pretty desperate for entertainment) when I detected a massively radioactive pipe. The radiation was so strong the whole truck including the load of 20 pipes was glowing a sickly, cartoon-green and pulsating faintly with a distinct “wharm wharm” noise (how on earth do you spell that sound?). No, not really, but it would make my job a lot easier, and I wouldn’t need to use my little Geiger counter, if it did. Not to mention it would be seriously cool, and I could claim to be like the Hulk and say stuff like “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”, which is true anyway, but I couldn’t say it now to any effect. In actual fact it was only the one pipe at the bottom of the whole load that was radioactive but it was so strong I could detect it from 4 m away so I sent the whole truckload to the designated contamination area just to be on the safe side, them alpha rays are infectious like.
So all in all, what with containing dreaded viruses, fighting terrorist attacks, shielding the world from lethal radiation and stopping deadly meteorites from annihilating all life on the planet I’ve sure been earning my lunch money this week. I might re-think becoming a pirate and try out for super-hero instead.

Fallout

So as a result of our little incident, which, thank the pope, occurred completely spontaneously (honest!) and was no one’s fault, the company wanted extra safety measures put in place (I assume the acid was in a drum that finally gave in to rust and spilled it’s contents into a puddle which reacted to produce the gas). So at the daily safety meeting in the morning I informed everybody that no containers were to be touched without me inspecting them first. Unfortunately the supervisors don’t really think these little meetings apply to them as well as the labourers. So mid-morning, when the worker’s super started carting off containers without even looking inside (let alone not moving them), I told him to stop in no uncertain tones. He’s a horrible little man, who clearly has a problem understanding the purpose of my presence on site and has no concept of contamination. I’m pretty sure that most of the time when I tell him some stuff cannot be removed, he thinks I’m being ornery and merely exercising my authority out of a desire to be perverse and show him who’s boss. Needless to say he doesn’t believe that I am, in fact, his boss. Added to that, he speaks little English. So he replied to my demands to stop with a snide little comment of dismissal. I lost and started shouting at him. This is not the first time he has ignored me when I’ve said he can’t do something, and he’s tried to take non-scrap stuff off-site for his own personal use. So after I threw a tantrum, most of which admittedly probably didn’t understand, and getting in my translator in to explain the situation he eventually stormed off in a huff, and I struggled to get the workers to understand what I wanted from them. The whole thing would have ended there except a bit later a truck with a load of scrap failed to stop for my inspection, even when the other truck drivers hooted at him and I chased after him waving my arms, and drove straight out the gate. Following the events of the morning I wasn’t in a good mood and I waited through lunch for the offending driver to return. When he eventually did I made myself understood and asked him why he hadn’t stopped. He variously replied that the supervisor had told him not to. So I threw another hissy fit and contacted the bosses back home, since their authority is at least respected. I assumed that the bastard was either trying to sneak out more stuff without me seeing or he was just trying to piss me off. So all the SA bosses were notified about the moving containers and the dude showing me no respeck (word), which had become a much more serious issue in light of the potentially deadly consequences of Monday’s little poisonous gas attack (it was the one-armed al Qaeda!), and … dun dun dah … an Email was circulated.
The guys in charge, however, don’t like it when I run and tell on them to the bosses. Friday morning saw an hour long argument between the management, mostly in Portuguese so I was only included intermittently. What ensued was me being accused of being a racist (of all things), with a highly offensive statement along the lines of “Angola isn’t apartheid South Africa”. That seriously pissed me off and so I joined in the shouting and told the super’s boss what actually happened (Angolan’s seem to conduct even mundane conversations at high volume, but never fear I have more than adequate lung capacity to compete). After another half an hour of unintelligible Portuguese where all three of them were talking all at once, the entire time, and a print out of The Email was waved around and wielded like a baton by all three of them extensively, I got an apology from the super’s boss. The other two now both on my side were unable to subdue the super, who clearly believed in his own righteousness and was waving The Email around as if it was on fire. Since I know that his English is not very good I seriously doubted that he even knew what The Email actually said, which was something along the lines my boss explaining the acid incident and telling the other bosses that if they didn’t do what I said, I’d suspend operations. What resulted was the others determining that the super needs to be replaced since he’s a belligerent bugger who doesn’t actually know what’s going on. The whole situation would almost be shakespearianly comedic in its many layers of miscommunication and re-translation except for the fact that I’m on the receiving end.
The moral being: a clear case of too many bosses spoil the scrap.

Health and Safety girl to the rescue

So this intrepid adventurer has had an exciting week. Monday got off to a fairly exciting start because, well, all the equipment was working! So things proceeded as normal with me checking outgoing scrap for contamination, until the worker’s supervisor called to me to look at something. Lo and behold a nearby container was billowing with smoke. So I donned all my protective gear, which I’m supposed to wear all the time (in this heat?? I don’t think so!), including mask and motioned to the forklift director guy to grab the fire extinguisher. On getting closer to the container it became obvious that there wasn’t a fire. Now, since I’m about as messy a chemist as a I am a cook (and for anyone who’s seen me cook you can assume I’ve spewed as many chemicals all over the lab bench), I immediately recognised the corrosive smell of the vapour creeping out of the top of the slightly ajar doors. So I evacuated all personnel and called the company H&S guy, cos our piddly little cloth masks, mostly effective against dust, are not sufficient for clouds of gas. Now, all I meant to do was get some guys with proper filter masks including eye protection (yup, that whole first world war thing) to do a clean-up. What I got instead was what looked like the entire fire department … eventually (apparently there is no “emergency response” in team), with full fire retardant suits and separate air cylinder breathing apparatus. After taking another half an hour to don all this gear the guys did a reconnaissance of the offending container and came back to report that the drum was labelled Muriatic acid. A quick sms back to the office confirmed my first thoughts, by telling me that this was some weird trade name for concentrated hydrochloric acid and the gas that I recognised was in fact chlorine or in other circles fondly referred to as mustard gas. I felt quite proud of myself for recognising it and offered my advice to the fire chief, who, incidentally, had rocked up on site clutching a little procedures book, to tell him what to do, as if his life depended on it.
They decided to deal with the situation on the morrow as the light was fading (it took them long enough to get there!). So the next morning the bosses went to check it out and got further evidence of the fire department’s lack of urgency as they had, at 9 o’clock in the morning, merely started to tuck into their buffet breakfast laid out on trestle tables, as opposed to already having finished chucking the HCl in a drum and dousing the rest of the spill with loads of water. Silly me for expecting such simple measures. Nooooo, by 11 o’clock when we went back to check their progress, we found them donning full hazmat suits and bravely venturing in to subdue the enemy acid (ffs! It’s HCl not ebola!!). I couldn’t help but start laughing at this point, and we didn’t bother coming back that day to check if they had finished. The next morning, they were still clearing the stuff away and the site had to be officially reopened by the official department after being in quarantine for a day and a half. Needless to say I sat on my ass the whole day as I don’t really have anything to do when there is no scrap to check.
In conclusion I have included the following image. This is the only picture I have ever seen that comes with it’s own theme song, something rousing and heroic. Look closely and you’re bound to hear it echoing in your head. I have constantly been reminded of the movie Armageddon (where Bruce Willis and co are all off-shore oil drillers) and this just clinches the deal. Does that make me Liv? (God, I hope not, she’s so insipid).

One week down

Well my first week had a public holiday (Angola has a sickle and panga on their flag, of course they have Workers Day) and several machine breakdowns. So I largely spent it sitting on my ass and going through my reading material faster than I should.
The crap yard (oops slip of the finger, I swear!) is like a large toy chest. For any kid who ever went to the tip with daddy and revelled in the hidden treasures of other peoples rubbish (kids are such filthy little beasts) this place is a dream come true. I swear you could re-construct an entire off-shore drilling platform from all the bits on site. There are bizarre machines and bits of gadgets the meaning of which I can only guess at: full of gaskets and cylinders and terminals that look suspiciously like they originated in an episode of Star Trek. Yesterday I got ridiculously excited at finding a huge stash of stainless steel and aluminium hidden away down an overgrown path (it was merely overgrown not actual jungle yet). Since stainless is worth a lot more than normal steel it was like finding a hidden treasure, since I know the client will be very pleased. It might make up for the fact that the forklift on site has barely been working this week. Then there are the times when we crack open an old container and sift through all the boxes within – some which have never been opened – and find massive copper pipes (worth even more than aluminium!) amongst even more strange and unknowable equipment. It’s like one big massive treasure hunt. I’m sure one day when the sun and humidity finally fry my brains I’m going to run around with a piece of pipe shouting “Shiver me timbers!!” to the lizards and trying to make them walk the planks.
I detected my first radioactive pipe yesterday, but it was pretty low, and not about to make me sprout a third eye, nevertheless, something to make me feel important as I officiously spray painted it red and made them take it to the contamination area.
Other than that I have finished two books this week and got more sunburnt than I already am. Sun block is totally useless and it lasts as long as I step out of my air conditioned room and start to sweat. I wonder if I could get danger pay for potential skin cancer… or at the very least get them to pay for the chemical peels to get rid of the new crop of freckles I’ve sprouted. My sunglasses actually fog up when I step outside from the aircon in the car, the humidity condenses immediately and I have to wipe them clean every morning without fail.
I’m coping with my daily dozen mozzie bites or so, thank goodness for Anthisan, I think I’m going to write them a letter of appreciation. I would’ve gone stark raving already without it. I really hope I don’t get malaria. I’ve only been bitten once in the evening so far by a mozzie that rested at a 45 deg angle to my arm (classic malaria mozzie characteristic). I swatted it, but it had already stuck me, the bastard. It didn’t have black and white scales on it’s wing, which, according to Wikipedia is what a malaria mozzie has. I read up all about the malaria carriers but not at all what symptoms to watch out for or how long the bloomin parasite survives in the blood. Malaria is remarkably similar to bilary which both my cats have had, the poor blighters. They even treat humans with the same drugs as animals.
Well that’s it from me, I’m sure the next week will be far more fun-filled, seeing as tho the client is arriving on Tuesday to see how things are going.

Bom Feriadu

Iºm sure my spelling is attrocious, and by that I mean my Portugese not my English. It is Workers day here too today, so I´m availing myslef of the internet connection, which is not to bad at all. I´ll load up some pics some other time, I forgot to bring my cable today, and also I don´t think the connection is quite that good.
One thing about the tropics is that one always gets the feeling that the jungle is just a heartbeat, or perhaps a sap-beat away from reclaiming it´s own. It just takes one rainy season of non-vigilance and it´ll pounce in a slow creeping vegetative way to consume all the headway people have carved into the masses of plant. People can never claim to have conquered the jungle they´re only temporary intrusions. The housess and building are mostly all from the 60´s, very little new building has been done in the past few decades. So everything is very dilapidated and it´s very sad to see majestic Portugese villas overlooking the sea peaking out between the trees growing through the windows. But as with every emerging naton the swishest and newest building are the government edifices. Although in this kind of climate the incessant summer rains quickly make even the newest smartest structures look a little shabby.
The average driving style here is to barrel straight down the middle of the road swerving wildly to avoid oncoming cars and potholes. Although I´m being quite modest saying that, they´re more like cauldron-holes! It´s a bit like an elaborate game of chicken, where there are no winners and the loser is your car´s axel and wheel rims. I suspect that in this country one has to replace one´s wheels more often that the tyres.

Well and good more on the weekend!

In charge

My first afternoon in charge did not get off to a good start. There was a snake sighting, some dude nearly fell off a container after being hoisted up there by a forklift, another dude bumped into a truck (them trucks are sneaky things, easily hidden in the grass), and on the other site the forklift operator tried to fix his engine while it was still running and broke the whole thing. Not a good start.
And on my first weekend all plans of exploring the town and frustrating myself with the local internet connection were scuppered when the local food decided to fight back. It transpired that my driver and translator thought he had malaria anyway and had to get his blood tested. So with nothing else to do except let my gut ferment I read a paranoid novel about the polluted seas fighting back and got a surprisingly good tan by the pool. I am going to look like a refugee from a tanning salon gone horribly wrong coming back to Cape Town in the deep of winter with probably the deepest tan I’ve ever had in my life. Especially since I still have three weekends left with very little to do except lie by the pool. Thankfully I seem to have enough reading material to last out the month. And when it starts to run low I can always ration myself and do some aimless rambling on my blog.
So my impressions so far: the work in not taxing mentally, but the heat and humidity is killer when I’m outside wandering around in the equivalent of a shredded oven all day. But when the machines break down, which they do at regular intervals, and I have nothing to do except sit under the designated office tree, the surroundings are quite pleasant. The monkeys in the trees can be seen swinging around and the birds come out in force when not scared away by the noise of forklifts or trucks. Other than that I’ve seen no wildlife except the usual farm animals of the local populace, one feral cat and loads of fat lizards. And so far none of them have had more than four legs which I see as an excellent sign for the eventual good health of the area.
The people are really friendly and I’m learning to speak a few words of Portuguese, the most important of these are however the names of the different scrap metals, and would not be of much use in general conversation unfortunately. It’s hard to tell how much of the native Cabindans are Portuguese influenced or Congo influenced tho. A lot of them were born in the DRC and only speak French. This may be a gross generalisation, but to me the people seem really strongly built, a large number of the women are tall and muscular, and big boned. This may however only be from my significantly stunted view. Or perhaps I’m used to too many first world fatties. In general there is an air of optimism. Angolans have had years of devastating war but things are finally turning around. They know that their country is in a poor state but are positive that things will get better. They are developing that healthy acquisitive nature that comes when the basics are taken care of and people are no longer merely fighting to survive but can concentrate on luxuries. The workers on site (who are getting paid a good salary in dollars) keep on asking us to import things for them that they can’t get here – cellphones, camera’s – and the waiter at my hotel just offered to buy my ipod from me for $300 after I told him if was worth $350. A good deal for me since it’s more than 3 years old and will prolly conk out one of these days, not such a good deal for him since he needs a pc to operate it. I signalled as much to him (I become proficient in non-verbal communication in Taiwan), and he didn’t seem all that disappointed. I suspect that for the moment a lot of technology is coveted at the moment strictly for status value as opposed to any actual use.
The hotel is basic, I have a little cabin with bathroom to myself and the food is quite good. I can’t tell whether it was the site lunch or the roast chicken supper that disagreed with me, but hey whatever doesn’t kill you… I am going to stay away from the chicken tho. The hotel does have a pool and they will bring your meals to your cabin and apparently from what I’ve seen this evening they have a projector for the all important soccer match. So for African standards all in all four star.

Cabinda – Chagida Day 1

Well the flight to Luanda was uneventful, aside from the tres rude steward. The plane was a big one with an upstairs area as well. There were a large amount of asian people on the flight as well, I think Malaysian. The customs area was chaos with a large number of whities/foreigners all funnelled into two queues and the Angolan passport holders into four others. The aircon was of course not working, in fact it was so not working, the water was dripping through a hole it had eaten away in the ceiling above our heads, which was surrounded by a rainbow assortment of beautiful coloured fungus rings from green to orange to grey. They had moved a pot plant underneath to catch the drip. The guys from the Angolan office were waiting outside for me and proceeded to drive me a block around the corner to domestic departures. It’s hard to tell what a city is like from seeing the neighbourhood around the airport since invariably it’s the poorest part of town. The little I saw had a very shanty-town feel to it. The roads were dirt, and the stormwater had carved its own drainage path through them and flowed along with the array of garbage. The houses were however all made from concrete blocks and all had electricity. I don’t know if they have running water or sewerage, but I suspect not. I was then checked in to my flight to Cabinda, no one speaks English and Portuguese is a strange mix of sounds. It sounds very much like French and one feels that more words should be intelligible but are somehow out of reach. I was informed by Berto the assistant from the office that my flight would leave in approximately 20 minutes and was ushered into the waiting lounge by another security guard who checked my passport again. This waiting lounge thankfully had large industrial sized aircon units as well as a separate smoking area with it's own aircon, so the place was at least not smelly. Various flights were announced over the intercom, but of course were all in Portuguese. I had been warned about this by my boss who told me to look out for people who had the same colour boarding passes as they were all colour coded. My boarding pass was red. Several announcements came and went and I strained to hear the word Cabinda in all of them, but didn’t manage to spot any red boarding passes. A large consignment of greens went out the door, followed half an hour later by smaller crowd of yellows. It had now been longer than 20 minutes and I was starting to worry that I had missed my flight. The waiting lounge was looking considerably more empty, and I had earlier seen a plane from my designated airline going down the runway. It was impossible to say whether it was landing or taking off however. The reason that I was a bit more worried was because for this leg of the journey I was completely out of contact with people since my #%$@% network couldn’t put me on roaming. So I was wondering how long I would wait before deciding that I had missed my flight and going in search of some phone cards, a pay phone and someone who could speak enough English to direct me to either, when a gentleman with a Gemini Air ticket clutched in his hand sat down next to me. I was much relieved as this meant that either the flight hadn’t left yet, or here at least was someone else who had also missed it. Misery loves company, or so they say. I resolved to stick to my new best friend like glue. It seemed that the flight was in fact delayed and after another half an hour the rest of us in the waiting room eventually boarded the plane after being given red and yellow caps in the same colours of the airline’s logo of two elephant heads in profile facing one another.
Everybody put their bright red and yellow caps on and made the plane look very festive. It was a bit disconcerting when the pilot made an announcement as a strident alarm could be heard in the background presumably coming from the cockpit.
But we made it to the ground ok in the middle of a downpour.

Bast goes bundu bashing

I'm off to Cabinda tomorrow morning early, so contact will be sparse. I'll try to put up some pics and amusing anecdotes - I'm sure there'll be many - but I can't promise reliable access.
Back in a month.
If you haven't heard anything by June send a search party.

Licences for free

I had another post about my first week in CT and my new housemates, but it didn't want to load from home cos the connection was too slow and Blogger kept on timing out. So oh well.

But I just have to post about my recent neighbourly introduction. I met my neighbour two houses down this morning. I went up to her and introduced myself. In fact I was so keen to meet her I especially got up early and was waiting for her outside her house at 7 am this morning. Now for those of you who know and love me know that I am not usually this friendly. Alas she is not famous, well not yet anyway, but I'm sure one day she'll make headlines. Probably something along the lines of "Local woman kills 20 in horror motor accident".
Because I now live in one of these old, victorian housed areas the roads are predictably narrow and the verges non-existent. I have no other option either but to park my car in the road. I walk to work every morning and so am not really using my car much. The first week I was here I got some scratches on my car, not that bad and possibly fixed with some wax, and a tell-tale blue paint streak from the other car. I was suitably upset that the bugger hadn't left a note, but hey, shit happens.
So yesterday my car was parked in the same spot as a couple of weeks ago, and on my home yesterday evening I see that I now have massive scratches, some minor denting and more of the same blue paint. Now once could've been some random asshole, but twice and it's someone who lives in the opposite house. And there was no note. So while I stood there cursing and exclaiming a guy walked past who lived in the house, and he told me about another woman who lives there and who drives a blue Palio.
So I called the cops and laid a charge of malicious damage. But the driver of the blue car was not yet home.
So this morning while lying in wait I see her get into her car and eagerly awaited her passage down the driveway. After 5 minutes of waiting for her to reverse I look around the corner and see her doing a 24 000 point maneuver down a straight drive - first to the right then the left then the right then...etc.
So I go up to her and introduce myself as the driver of the white corsa. She says "oh, you must be very angry?" and expresses her intentions eventually to find out who I am. She admits going into me, twice, and says she'll pay for the damages but doesn't want to go through her insurance. She gives me her name, number and I ask for her insurance company. I have her registration number (ND car), but I forgot to ask for her ID.
So while I'm standing there taking pics of the scratches on her car, she announces she's quickly going to finish getting out of the driveway so the other dude can go to work. She proceeds to continue to reverse at a 45deg angle to the wall and takes out her passenger mirror and a large chunk of panel on the drain pipe attached to the wall. At this point I decided to bail wondering how the hell this woman got a license. I've assumed she has a license because she gave me the name of her insurance company.
When I got to work this morning I contacted my insurance and let them know about the situation - turns out her alleged insurance company doesn't actually exist.
I neglected to mention to her that I've laid charges of malicious damage. If she fails to pay, I will not drop the charges, and I know where she lives. Although if she is driving around without a license I am fully going to let the police remove her from the roads.

Big sky

The road to Ladybrand

Well I’ve been kind of absent from my own life of late. The week before last I did a tour of some service stations in the Free State and came back to a minor procedure in hospital to end off the weekend. I’m fine, nothing major, and it’s all sorted out now, but there go my plans for 40-year old boob ops. Man, anaesthetic sux! I was awake for about 3/24 hours that whole day, and moving around made me feel dizzy and pukey. After my sis took me home I lay on the couch in a half awake cricket coma, I totally slept through Gibbs’s six sextet. The rest of the weekend was uneventful and on Monday morning I was told I going back to the FS to do phase 2. So spent the whole day in a frenzy running around organising and reserving. I really hate this project, it’s on a ridiculously tight schedule and there has been the absolute minimum of organisation. And, even more depressingly, I am not going to be leaving it behind when I leave PE, in fact I’ll probably be in charge of it. Although at least that way it’ll prolly be more organised.

I actually don’t mind the field trippies, though. Last Thursday I was in Ladybrand, which is on the border with Lesotho. We were in Maseru last friday, (one mad courier stuff up with passport, and much swearing and shouting at courier manager by me, later), which interesting. It’s much like SA, and yet not. And then there was a mad dash back to Jhb to try and make our flight at 8. We stayed in a very snazzy place, it’s not even a B&B anymore but a “wellness spa” (may the gods of grammar smite thee down thou mangler of adjectives) and I was in the honeymoon suite all by myself, which was quite fancy.

My furniture left on Tuesday and I will be leaving early Saturday morning with the kitties in tow. I’m actually of the opinion that driving with them for 8 hours is actually less traumatic for them than being in a noisy, dark and scary pressurised hold on a plane. I’m not really in the mood to do much work at the office, especially since my boss has shown no interest in me at all to give him the low down on where his projects stand in terms of what work needs to be done etc. and who’s taking over my duties. Oh well, that really is his problem at this point.

So everyone keeps on asking me if I’m excited about going back to CT, or whether I’m looking forward to it. Well, neither really, at this point the last couple of weeks have just been so stressful that all I really want is a holiday. I am so glad the easter long weekend is coming up, cos all I really want to do is crawl under the covers and hope that the world goes away.

The Northern Free State

That's where I'm going to be next week. I am taking a tour of the service stations in Heilbron, Senekal and Kroonstad. I can't really think of anything more exciting, except maybe living in PE.

As if my life wasn't stressed out enough, I've been arranging my move which is now only three weeks away, arranging this damn trip next week which is totally disorganised. Thank the pope for Mapsource! I am totally addicted, it is the greatest programme since Google Earth.

And it also looks like I'll only be heading toward Angola at the end of April, so at least I'll have a month to settle down and make sure the kitties aren't going to run away. I also have a month to swindle my new house-mates into looking after the little darlings while I'm away. (Well, hey, they are using all my furniture and stuff!)

So more, later, about my riveting adventures in the khaki land that colour forgot, except the colour Oranje, that is.

State of the nation

We all know that the state of education in this country is pretty bad and that matriculations from rural ill-equipped schools are probably not worth the paper they're printed on. We know this in theory. But it's quite hard to conceptualise what that means. Even the dodgiest Model C "traditionally white" school like Fish Hoek is probably streets ahead of your average 50 kids in one shack for a classroom in Limpopo, but I have found out just how big the difference is. I am training my "replacement". The quotes are because the boss told me that he doesn't actually expect her to do what I do. (What the hell is she going to do then?!?).
Over the last few weeks I have started off explaining the kind of work that I do. Now the stuff I do is not conceptually difficult to understand if one has at least first year level science courses. The post-grad stuff comes in the interpretation of the data, and spotting anomalies, and then coming up with a plausible explanation. But one can get the gist pretty easily. So I started off explaining to my trainee about hydrocarbon contamination.
Now we certainly don't go very in depth with this stuff, it's pretty standard - petrol/diesel tank leaks, one has to take it out, assess the soil contamination put a new non-leaky one back with clean soil. The hydrocarbon analyses are also not rocket science, most of the time we just need a total concentration to compare to a standard limit for contamination. My trainee was however not really getting the concept that millions of organic molecules are divided into groups according to their properties so you can say stuff about them. In other words our samples are classified according to petrol and diesel range organics, and more volatile and less volatile compounds. I asked her if it was a language barrier, she said not, and proudly informed of the fact that she took 1st language english at school and all her lectures were also in english. So I was myself having a bit of trouble understanding her difficulties.
So I got her doing some reading on her own from a textbook and wikipedia, and when she came back to me with questions I started to get an inkling of just how bad it was.

She came to ask me how to calculate the mass of SO4, because she didn't know that it was sulphur plus _4_ oxygens. I tried to explain how samples are analysed, and why it's important to know what the common problems are, like with mass spectrometry isotopes of elements can interfere in the concentration of other elements with the same mass. She looked blank, so I asked her if she knew what an isotope was. She didn't. She didn't, in fact, know what the structure of an atom is or about protons and neutrons. She didn't know what a mole is or how compounds bond together. She didn't know what cations and anions are, or even about valence electrons. The words "electron" and "ionic" were familiar to her but she didn't know what they are. After that conversation I dug out my Std 9 & 10 science textbooks and have given them to her to read. (Looking back Science was actually pretty difficult at school).
So basically from what I can tell her chemistry, and science in general, is at what I hope is a Std 7 level. The problem being how the hell did she pass these subjects in matric?? And then go on to pass and do a post-grad degree at University???!??! (Nevermind that it's Fort Hare, there should be some basic standard) I suspect that her Honours thesis which is about the weathering rates of minerals is largely taken from a textbook.
She seems to have a good ability to repeat back to me what I've just said without any understanding of what it means, or ability to answer a question about it. I mean I know our school system is bad, but that the university system didn't catch on to her complete lack of fundamental understanding is appalling.

What this ultimately means to me is that any degrees from non-internationally recognised institutions like UCT, Wits or Stellies are essentially completely worthless, and are just on fancier, costlier paper than those matric certificates

Menotaur

Well removal plans are going smoothly, more or less. I have a place to stay in Claremont right behind Cavendish, which means I can walk to work and shops and gym and etc. For some reason the prospect of being able to walk everywhere is making me inordinately excited. I got Synk to take some pics of the house and he said was cool, and that my house-mates are hot. Synk as always getting his priorities straight. (The girl who's moving out is apparently a german model).
Now I'm collecting moving van quotes. They all seem to be more or less exactly the same price, despite the one being called "Budget". Maybe I can play them off against each other and cause a price war.
I am still debating whether or not to fly the kitties. Is 8 hours in a car more traumatic than 2 hours on a loud scary, pressurised airoplane, preceeded and followed by a few hours of being cooped up in a box and being handled by strangers? (Not to mention the extra grand or so).

But aside from that I am "mentoring" my replacement. The ironic quotes denote the fact that I am instead lecturing her matric through to 1st or 2nd year chem. She's a Fort Hare graduate straight out of varsity where she did an Hons in Geol. She also allegedly did 1st year chem but remembers nothing of it. I literally had to explain to her what the word organic meant. Sigh, I'm all for transformation, but I can't turn this girl into a masters graduate in a month and a half. My boss is expecting her to be able to do my job when I leave. He's delusional. I'm sort of at a loss at what to do. I had a plan to get her trained before I learned what her level really is, now I have her reading textbooks, which I somehow don't think is really going to work. And the boss is going away and dumping it completely in my lap (as well as my other work!).
Ah well, such is life.

NLP?

In other, happier news: I practised some minor manipulation on my boss and scored a free ticket to the ODI at St Georges on friday! wheeee!

In addition it starts at 14:30!!! Wheeee.

Friday afternoon off at the cricket!

What to do when you find your stalker's blog...

It seems everyone has to tell the world their thoughts these days. There are now people to whom I have never spoken and probably never will, who's blogs I now read for whatever reason. When one is bored at work or slacking off following blog links on other people's blogs is a way to pass the time. Sometimes you find people you know. I occasionally read Kyknoord's blog cos he's a frequent commenter on Moonflake's blog, and he's been to one of my parties and we know some of the same people in PE. I find it quite surreal to be acquainted with someone online and to have real world connections with a virtual stranger.
But anyway, there's this guy in PE who offered to be my friend at the begining of last year. When I went away the one weekend I asked him to housesit for me and he was totally weird around me afterwards. So I sort of avoided him for a bit and things seemed to go back to normal. Then I was in CT for my course in Nov and again asked him to housesit. He was very creepy about it again and _told_ me that I was going to dinner with him. I politely declined and he hasn't spoken to me since. I just found his blog, which details his apparent obsession with me. From the latest entry...
"The focus of my aggression ( see " and I quote and previous blogs" ) is apparently moving back to Cape Town where she origanally comes from." "...I feel like I am being robbed of my revenge."
From when he was house-sitting...
"The immediate problem is that her whole house smells just like her - so damn good, and it's driving me out of my mind - I can't even sleep."

There are also several posts containing a count down to him asking me out to dinner (which he did via sms).While this is all very freaky, I am mostly sure that he is harmless. I rather hope.
Well the answer to my question is: leave a comment and enquire as to the nature of his revenge, and if I may assist him in being less obsessed in as painless (for me) a way as possible. Chances are he'll die of embarrassment, which might not actually be such a good idea in that case... hmm.

Seems MySpace doesn't want me either, signing up for an account seems not to be happening, maybe for the best.

Any ideas?

BDay

I love birthdays. It's the one day of the year you get to feel unashamedly special and everyone pays attention to you. I like spoiling people for their bday's and being spoilt.
This year I was trying not to think about mine cos I'm feeling old. But since I've had very little work to do at the office the boss organised for me and a colleague to go to CT tomorrow and come back on friday. Wheee!! I get to have dinner with the folks on my bday and drinks out with my friends.
On sat I'm having a braai and Ork_khrist is visiting for the weekend.
Hooray!

Genderose

This one's for you Jim! Once and for all you can set the record straight (no pun intended).

Via the Cow I have a got a link that allows one to test the gender of a block of text to determine the sex of the author. It gives you options for different kinds of text fiction, non-fiction and blog text and searches for occurences of common words. The algorithm's writers claim 80% accuracy but the testers say that it's only 50% accurate.

Well it picked me as female and it works better with more words.

Sharing is caring

This is so funny I just had to share. Now I don't really give a toss about Big Brother (the show) but the celebrity BB has been in the news lately cos some of the housemates have been accused of racism towards the Bollywood actress. Largely the housemates consist of old has-beens or new famous-for-being-famous types. Among the inmates is Dirk Benedict. Remember him? Name rings a bell, but you don't know where? Here's what wikipedia has to say about him and his introduction...

"Dirk Benedict (born March 1, 1945) is an American actor who played Face in The A-Team and Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica. Dirk made a unique entrance to the house by arriving via (a replica of) The A-Team van, smoking a cigar and with the theme tune playing in the background. A memorable moment occurred a few minutes after he arrived in the house, when a drunk Donny said "It's Dirk fucking Benedict", to which Dirk responded "I seldom use my middle name". ...."

Who the hell knew he was in the original BG?!? All he needs now is a singing career and he'd be cooler than The Hoff!

Ego Power Boost!

My boss has resorted to begging me to stay. He's been telling me how wonderful I am and how he despairs of finding anyone of my calibur willing to come to PE (I'm paraphrasing here). While this is at the same time gratifying and somewhat embarrassing, these urgent pleas are not accompanied by any concrete incentives to stay, like more money. Although I'm not sure I would stay even then, unless it was significantly more money, which it wouldn't be. Instead his version of an incentive is telling me that I'm making a mistake followed by the dire and vague warning that the CT office "is not like here".
I have taken this to mean that there is a lot of office politics, which is the reason _he_ moved from CT to PE many moons ago. Honestly, sometimes I think men are bigger girls blouses than those found on Roseanne Barr! My company is structured to maximise competition and minimise efficiency and staff training. But I gather that this is somewhat the norm everywhere.

Smooth sailing

I have a new theory, instantly invented a second ago. My theory is that the manner in which you spend your new year's predicts how the year will progress. NY 2005 was a very chilled affair with R&H and Ork_Khrist, and hence last year was super chilled (to be euphamistic).
And so like this NY's the next three months, at least appear to be going well. I was stressed at first but now everything appears to be working out.

I put my house up for lease on PrivateProperty.co.za and within a week have had 4 responses, 2.5 months before it is available, I am totally amazed. I interviewed my first prospective tenants last night. A 25 yo couple (altho the wife looked younger) with a teeny little baby. Man I still can't believe how young people get married here. PE may be big enough to be a city, but it's still got a small town mentality. So it looks like renting won't be such a problem.

And I was surveying the gumtree.co.za website and there are loads of places advertised to share. So getting a place to stay in CT won't be that much of a hassle either. Altho I'll prolly have to put all my furniture in storage which sux.

And I won't be going to Angola until after I've transferred, hooray! And my company is sponsering my transfer! Hooray! Now all I have to do is organise which I am the queen of, so no worries there.

But, I'm wondering, does the freezing cold wind experienced on the boat bode ill for my social life?

Chinese curses invoked

Here we go again. There are those that promote change as a healthy neccessary in everybody's life, promoting the evolution of self through the pressures of stress, blah blah blah. There's a reason it's difficult to leave your comfort zone. While I am understandably proud of what I accomplished a little more than a year ago in uprooting my staid life and organising my relocation into the wild blue yonder of PE in less than a month, it becomes less of an achievement the second time around.
While I am fairly happy about going back to Cape Town I will not become excited until I am actually there as the next three months are going to involve much stress at once again having to move my life with the added bonus of finding a tenant for my house. This is coupled with the fact that I may be sent to Angola for a month, where it will be extrodinarily difficult even to organise a fly out of a cup of tea.
If change is as good as a holiday, I'd rather go on holiday and let someone else deal witht he stress of changing cities.

She shoots - score!

I played some friendly games of Poker Lie Dice with some friends last night. We put some money on the chips but they were very low scoring games. Apparently the game is played extensively in Belgium drinking halls. After that we moved on to some real poker.

The last time I played poker was after we gave Ork Khrist a whole bunch of chips for his birthday a couple of years ago. I was really bored and didn't win anything. Last night I played about 10 hands and cleaned up. We were only playing about R2 a chip and I must have won about R200 in an hour (I didn't want to count it cos the others were quite bitter). I have never been so lucky in my life! I got two flushes, and two straights and 3 of a kind of kings. This amazing luck has renewed my interest in the game.

Blogger was advertising this really cool blog today - it's the chemistry and science of food - very cool: http://curiouscook.blogspot.com/

So long and thanks for all the fish

The deed is done, the dye is cast.
I have requested a transfer back to Cape Town. Dunno when this will happen, prolly Marchish next year. The boss had no idea that I wasn't planning on staying more than 2 years in this place. I'm relieved that the Conversation is over, I'm not excited yet about the prospect of coming back (altho that'll change when things get finalised), and I feel a bit guilty about leaving, like I am being a quitter. But hey, it's for the best.

In the meantime I should try to find somewhere to live .... anyone wanna share digs with me and 2 kitties in CT? I have a lot of stuff.

So hopefully the NY will bring bigger and better things, in CT, yay.

Life goes on

And so I have put out a massive outlay on lots of security. Alarm, blinds on the windows that didn't have, locks on my inner doors, and spikes on the walls. I like my spikes they are very shiny. For some reason the birds seem to like them too. I suspect the Butcher bird is soon going to be decorating them with worm biltong. I am slowly starting to feel safer, but I'm still having nightmares, and the damn fridge cracking and creaking in the night is driving me bonkers. I got an sms from a lady in my complex to say that they tried to break into someon else's house last night while she was in the bath! Eish, I'm starting to feel like I'm under seige. Maybe it's time to start building the moat, I'll line it with vicious guard cats.
I can't believe it's November already. The end of this year is picking up speed on it's way out. But I'll be in CT in a few weeks (24th - 3rd) on a course. But I'm looking forward to seeing people again on the weekends.

The Halloween party a few weeks ago was fun, not as many people as I was hoping for cos there was lots of other stuff happening that weekend. Check out the pics here, some of them are very cool.

Burglarised and traumatised

Tuesday 25th Oct 3:30 am: Man with brick and pole smashes spare bedroom window, grabs monitor, destroying it in the process, and peripheries. PC, scratched but mostly unhurt. Occupant terrified, with only some glass in foot, and much much poorer due to massive outlay on security systems etc. Cats also terrified and awol for a day but unhurt.

Dark ages

Here are the pics taken at the last party. They are not on the site cos it's shit and as soon as I wrestle the code and ftp from their sticky inept little fingers I'm going to get Synk to do it properly. There's a really cute pic of Ardi and Ryan.

Went to see Arno Carstens and his band New Porn last night. It was cool, brought back lots of memories associated with the Nudies, but they're not nearly as good. They're a very slick band but the music just isn't as interesting or cool.

I'm going to a medieval fair that is held once a year tomorrow. Will take pictures and suggest to the people who do it to join the SCA. I have a jeweler friend who lives for the fair every year and has made his own full plate armour. Altho since it's made from aluminium I don't think it would hold up at heavy combat practice. In the evening there's a feast where people dress up and stuff (Damn my garb really is coming in handy) but I have a feeling it's just an excuse for a piss up. Apparently there's home made mead (altho I'm gonna have to quiz the dude and find out whether he discards the first distillate which is methanol, before I drink it).

D2

The second DamNation event got off to a great start thanks to my partner in crime (who I have given the styling pretentious DJ name of DJ J00 - and yes he's jewish - I think it's hilarious, he just looked pained) helping me out lots more this time. I got my friends to distribute flyers so that I didn't have to do so much work and there were 3 of us DJing (DJ's Yellow Shoes, Bast and J00 - don't you just love pretentious DJ names!) so I was able to mingle with people and have loads of fun.
Ardi had tons of fun taking pictures and is already booked to come back for Halloween, and so did 2nd eldest sister Innana, who with her black hair, when dressed up looked remarkably like a dominatrix.
I haven't yet put up the pics on the site, that'll hopefully happen tomorrow (or I can try and get my flunkies to do it for me).

The end of the month party will be totally awesome, I'm looking forward to Halloween and I know that people in PE like to dress up (I'm going as Marilyn. Monroe, not Manson). All my profit from this party is going to go towards prizes and decorations and a smoke machine. The second party attracted about R160 people which is up from last month and it was a different crowd. It would be totally fabulous if I could hit 200 for the Halloween party and I'm going all out with marketing. Although with my profit I'm going to see if I can't hire a poor student to do flyering for me - much less work and hassle that way! You'd be amazed what students will do for minimal amounts of money (I know I am, I feel shockingly guilty paying them R10 an hour!)

Registered

I am now officially a Professional Natural Scientist, registered with the council and all. And now get to put Pr. Sci. Nat. after my name. They even sent me a little laminated card saying that I'm officially registered. I mean really what the hell am I going to do with a little card? Rock up at a petrol leak and flash it around like I'm CSI or something?
But anyway I'm quite proud. Ordinarily I wouldn't have thought much of it, cos it's just a registration that you pay through the nose for (or at least the company does), and I think they might also indemnify you legally in case you really screw something up, but my colleague who has been working for longer but only has an honours degree can't get hers. The reason she can't register as a professional scientist is that she managed to graduate as a geologist with _no_ other science subjects. She didn't even do math in first year. Sheesh! How the hell did she manage that you may ask? Well that's what you get for going to UPE (or NMMU as it's now known). (Having been to/worked at two other universities you really appreciate what "world class" means when applied to UCT).
So in order to get registered my colleague has to go and do a first year course, either physics, chem or math. She wants to do chem, but that's a hell of a lot of time spent away from the office doing pracs and things. Well at least she can ask me for help if she does chem.

Had a nice relaxing weekend away. Did bugger all except read and watch DVD's. A must see is "How I met your mother" (on Sun evenings) watched the whole series over the weekend and it's hilarious. It's all about a 27 year old guy who's trying to find his true love in the big bad city, it's much less lame than it sounds from that description.

This weekend is going to be MAD however. Ardi is coming for a visit and I'm hosting bookclub on Sat afternoon and the second Damnation party is on Sat night aargh!
I was planning on having bookclub on sat the 7th but I remembered a week ago that I'm flying to Pretoria for a seminar: "Characterisation on groundwater flow in fractured rock aquifers and selecion of remediation alternatives with special emphasis on NAPLS" It should be good, very relevant to what I do.

My sis is moved in and installed altho not exactly unpacked (might just schnaffle one of the 20 boxes of wine she has b4 it gets locked away - cept for the fact that she reads my blog, she'll never notice) and starts work next week monday. I get to show her the ropes, heehee. How wierd.