FIFA FAIL

Got my fix in, finally. And yes, FIFA deserves an entire blog post just to itself. As if it’s not bad enough that it’s a monopolistic entity that bans not only the poor vendors who might otherwise be able to make a buck off the tourists in town, but even bans fans from arriving at the stadium wearing branded clothing (not kidding, this is in the Ts & Cs), and strong-armed Cape Town into putting a huge stadium in Green Point rather than in Athlone, an area that needed revitalization. Oh, and … you know what, I’m going to stop now lest the FIFA marketing police insist that I cease and desist. I wouldn’t put it above them to try and figure out a way to stifle free speech. If FIFA were a country it would be a dictatorship. If it were a company it would be Apple. Most definitely.

So this morning I was assigned to heart pump, which is a little motivational starter to the day before the morning meeting gets going. I am not one that is generally motivated by the usual sort of stuff. What motivates me is accomplishment, big problems, things along those lines. As you can imagine I struggled mightily to figure out what I might do then when my friend John posted a Flyers anthem to my Facebook wall, problem solved. The YouTube video was a big hit, especially since the South Africans aren’t used to ice hockey as a sport.

On this day, FIFA released the final tranche of World Cup tickets, so I called my friend (one of three who had arrived at the ticket office at 7am; the tickets went on sale at 9am). He said that the ticketing systems were down at the moment (it was around 10am), but that they were maybe 15 minutes from the front of the line once things came back online. I was pretty sure he had bought tickets before and so this estimate would be accurate. Little did I know that the systems would be crashed pretty much all day.

When I arrived, the line was all the way through the parking lot to the street, and around the corner. One of our friends had gone to a FNB bank branch nearby (certain FNBs were also selling tickets). He and another friend decided to take a car to a branch 45 minutes outside of town, while another friend waited in the FNB line and I stayed in the main one.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. On the plus side, I met a bunch of cool guys in line, including two people both named Jared and from the same suburb, and a guy who works in data analytics for Shoprite. On the minus side, I didn’t eat lunch because I didn’t want to leave the line and the local vendor options were a bit lacking.

We did move forward, slowly … maybe 10 meters an hour or so. This was complicated by the stadium construction workers arriving to pick up the tickets that they were allocated as part of their remuneration. Why this couldn’t happen on some other day was beyond all of us.

At a certain point someone decided to move the line from through the parking lot to alongside the building. Around this time what had been an orderly queue started bunching up. When they posted a sign showing what matches had tickets in what categories still available, the crowd pressed forward even more.

It was around this time that the real sh*t show started. The first 200 people in line (presumably either last night or VERY early in the morning … there was a massive storm overnight that literally shook the building, so possibly it was last night to get the people out of the rain) were given number slips. Now in general this is a good idea. When you don’t give number slips to everyone in line and are not conscientious about collecting number slips when people get in, then you wind up with a thriving secondary market for number slips. A bunch of people were really getting steamed about this, especially as the guard at the door was literally not understanding what everyone was telling him, that the slips were being reused. The best part was when this one guy who had been complaining about the people reusing the slips got inside with one himself! Priceless.

I can speak like this because I was one of the lucky ones – our friends were able to get us tickets at the FNB branch outside of the city, so we were able to abandon the line around 3pm or so. I was pretty steamed at losing an entire day to FIFA (actually, MATCH to be specific) disorganization but so it goes.

Following that massive fail, I went home to wolf down some leftovers, then back to work to pick up my coworker.

A bunch of us had planned a surprise party for a group of people who are leaving at the end of the month, so I went to that but I was mainly still pretty beat from the illness earlier in the week, and standing around all day so when the time came to head out to Long Street I eventually demurred and headed to bed so I could work out the next morning.

However, instead of going to bed I went to the FIFA web site just for kicks, to see what tickets were still available. I found a Category 1 ticket in the third deck for the semifinal here in Cape Town for $600 but decided to pass. Then I found some tickets for the England-Algeria group match, in the first deck by the goal (along the pitch, not behind the goal – those are Category 2 and a little cheaper). But somehow by the time I got to check out the web site had lost them. So I went back to search, and got tickets for even closer to the pitch, and one section more towards center field. Can’t complain. That game is going to be fun!

Finally better

Well, almost. Woke up and was not feeling 100% so decided I should not go to the gym and instead should sleep an additional hour and a half. Probably a good choice.

Took me a bit to settle into work mentally today as my brain was still a bit foggy from the illness. At 11am local time a few of us had a conference call with some people in London talking about social media strategies. I’m pretty excited to be working on this; I can’t say I learned too much from the call but once I learn a bit more about this particular aspect of our business and get going (and training the others), it will be good.

After lunch I worked some more on a spreadsheet outlining what still needs to be done for the school. This was interrupted by a meeting I had scheduled to talk about the business plan worksheet and template, which we had downstairs in the hub and Jeff lit a fire, for the afternoon hot chocolate & social to celebrate the arrival of bad weather. Or, to have an excuse to light a fire and tell stories about Jeff since tomorrow is his last day. And break a plate. Also there is a new woman at work, from Vancouver originally but living here now. I’m excited to have gained a new member of the crew, especially one who invites me out for beer. I always say a bar date beats a coffee date.

Up next at work: finish the core business plan module Powerpoint decks, then go back to the feasibility study modules and write up facilitator notes. Not looking forward to that; I think it will be quite dull. But, unfortunately, necessary. On the plus side, we may be getting an intern MBA student from UCT in to help me out, which would be fabulous.

Then the rains started. When it rains here the roof drips but what really amused me was the driving rains creating a puddle at the foot of the metal stairs up to the office. I swear, this office environment would never fly in the U.S. – first of all, it is nowhere near ADA-compliant and secondly, there are major safety issues such as puddles of water at the bottom of metal steps! On the way out of the building, the fog was so thick that we couldn’t even see to Devils Peak, and the wind was so driving that it took my breath away!

After work I took one of my friends Laura down to Diep River. She is from the Netherlands and is going to Joburg for two weeks, then back home. But the family she was staying with is in Diep River, so I gave her a ride. Unfortunately we left at literally the worst time – the traffic was crawling to get to the N2, and better but not fast on the M3 south. The trip took like 35 minutes, and the return trip was all of 15. One thing I don’t particularly care for about this country is the lack of reflective paint or reflectors on the road, so it can be quite difficult to tell where the lanes are when it’s dark, and it’s even worse when it’s raining! But, the tires and brakes on my car are good so all is well – I just need to keep reminding myself that it’s not AWD. The kick-ass turning radius reminds me every time though, man, I love the cars in this country!

She was so sweet she left candy bars for a bunch of us. Except that I’m trying to stay away from the candy bars. I’ll save it for the next time I’m ailing, because I always crave chocolate when I’m sick and that’s about the only time.

The picture? That’s dinner. I always think blog posts are more fun when there’s a picture to go along but there was nothing interesting to take a picture of today, so I thought I’d photograph my dinner: impala filet with butternut squash and pak choi. The butternut squashes I got in my veggie bag a few weeks ago are so cutely tiny – they are literally single-serve. Que adorable!

The wind and rain started in earnest this evening. My roommate was taking a shower and thought there was an earthquake because the door was rattling so hard … and this is inside the flat! By the windows, it is quite cold and the whole place is noisy from the wind and the rain. A good night to curl up with a book, and I’m aiming to get to bed early because I really want to hit the gym tomorrow. I’m in a bit of withdrawal, and today they did deadlifts and man, I like deadlifts. Bah.

... and then I got sick

Well, not immediately. Monday was pretty well a normal work day (on from business plan template to Power Point) until around 4pm when I realized I had a sore throat. I went out to dinner with a girl from UNH, who is in her first week here. That was quite enjoyable except that I could feel the illness starting to take over, so after dropping her off in Obs I went back to my flat and crashed.

Tuesday morning actually I dropped off my rental car and then went to the South African registry office (I forget the name of it now) to register the car in my name. As I didn’t have a South African driver’s license I had to go off and get some ID photos taken (which is done in a trailer for R30, and beats the heck out of the AAA customer service!). So now I have a sort of driver’s registration document, and the equivalent of the title to the car.

Now the most amazing thing to me about this whole process is that unlike in America where the DMV gives you license plates, or in the UK where the plates stay with the car for the life of the car, here you get new license plate numbers but you have to go off to a shop and have the car plates manufactured (which costs nearly as much as it does to register the car!). To top it all off, the plates are usually attached with heavy-duty double-sided tape! The place we went to get the plates was out of the tape, so I somehow need to procure some here in Cape Town. Differences …

Anyhow I was pretty feverish so I first did some targeted shopping (trying to find double-sided tape), then went home, made some lunch (Indian-spiced ground beef with eggplant and roasted potatoes), and took a nap. But I couldn’t really sleep too well, so I went downstairs to load the Flyers video my friend John had posted on my Facebook wall. The internet was quite slow so this took forever … afterwards I went upstairs to cook dinner (cob with swiss chard and quinoa).

It is killing me a little bit to have the Flyers in the finals when I’m here in South Africa! Of all the years for them to do this … I’m trying to find a way to stream the games but I suspect the bandwidth will be insufficient. I could download them next day but that seems kind of wrong somehow. Then again so does breaking my sleep into two four-hour chunks!

Some of our friends were performing at open mic night at Zula, so we headed over there. Of course it started over an hour late, which ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered me much except that I wasn’t feeling so hot. But I wasn’t about to miss the performance and I’m glad I stayed – actually everyone who performed was fantastic, our friends included. One cab ride and CrossFit recruiting session done, I caught some more of the LOST finale before going to sleep.

Woke up … still sick, but I think the fever is gone. Bleh. Today I didn’t do much besides arrange insurance cover for my car and go pick up my veggies. Soon I’ll be roasting a chicken and some butternut squash or something, and deciding if I want to go out for my friend’s last night in town or stay home and rest.

Weekend #3

Saturday dawned another beautiful day. So there’s this group of guys who always heckle me a bit on my Saturday morning walks to the gym (usually I drive as that 5 minutes makes all the difference in getting to work in the morning). This morning, after what turned out to be a very enjoyable workout (“Barbara”) they repeated their usual questioning: “Do you play hockey?”
“No.”
“Rugby?”
???? “No.” Seriously, rugby??
“Do you kick ass?”
“Hahaha, yes, that I do!”

Next up a bunch of us piled into my car and hit up the Neighbor Goods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock. Sadly I did not bring my camera but I won’t make that mistake next week. Aside from the prices, Table Mountain in the background and the fact that the people were almost all white, I would have thought I was in Berkeley. This market is a bit like a farmer’s market on steroids, minus the farmers. Imagine the food stands from the San Francisco farmer’s market – except for a whole food court of them! For some reason it seemed as though there was mostly only one vendor of a given kind (i.e. one veggie stand), but there were three places selling meat (one of which sells the Spier biodynamic chickens, therefore removing my problem of procuring such chickens), and one selling SASSI-approved fish, one selling a ton of different kinds of wild mushrooms, freshly-baked bread … the list goes on. At the food court there was even a “Boston Beer Company” selling something called Boston Lager. I didn’t try it (still on the endorphin high from the workout) but I’m intrigued.

Apparently this is the place to be Saturday morning as about probably 15 people from our building showed up at one point or another. Since the day was warm and sunny, and this was one of the last chances we’ll probably get for a while we headed over to Camps Bay beach. This was somewhat amusing as the rental car barely made it up the gap between Table Mountain and Lion’s Head in second gear! I let my crew out on the beach as I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to park. Amazingly, I found a spot at the far end of the beach right on the beach road. Not wanting to give it up, I bit the bullet and tried parallel parking for the first time on the other side of the car (and, usually I’m parallel parking on the right side of the road and not the left). I am proud to report that this was one of the best parallel parking jobs I have ever done – thanks in large part to the incredible turning radius of the otherwise-POS-Renault. Front wheel drive, FTW!

The water was quite cold so there were only two of us who went swimming. Boy that was bracing … but I wanted to be able to say I’d done it! Mainly I just lay around reading until it got cold, and was time to go back.

A bunch of us (mostly people from the UK, but me and one other American) went out for dinner at this restaurant called Pepenero (the seafood platter was amazing!), and then to the lounge to watch the UEFA Champion’s League Final, won handily by Inter Milan.

And then the fun began! We piled into a cab to a club called Jade where the bouncer was just thrilled to see Dami, for some reason. Ha! Well, what can I say, 5 hours and probably a good bottle of coffee Patron later we headed to Long Street, to the Dubliner. There we briefly saw one of our coworkers, also out pretty late, and wound up closing the place down at 4am before moving on to Marvel. I had stopped drinking much earlier than this but all that I really remember of Marvel was going up to this guy who was wearing a Cal shirt, asking him if he’d gone there (he hadn’t), and then talking to him for the next hour. I headed home after that bar closed, and slept until 11am, because a bunch of us were meeting up to head to Mzoli’s.

We were a bit disorganized leaving so we didn’t get there until nearly 1pm by which time it was a mission to find a table! Some of us headed off to buy the food. I was prepared and had beers with me, so we drank them while waiting in line. It was great fun to see the inner workings of Mzoli’s. We tipped one of the guys doing the braai, so it was only about 40 minutes until we got our food. In the meantime we went and danced to this fabulous live band that was there – the woman singer had one of the most amazing voices I’d ever heard! And the food was, as always, just fabulous! Of course by the time dinner rolled around all I could eat was salad …

Business plans, cooking "class" and a day in Khayelitsha

Thursday morning I learned the split jerk. I think I will quite enjoy that once I get my form right and quit pushing with my arms so much. The workout ran about 7 minutes late, so I was late to work but luckily for some reason the morning meeting didn’t happen.

I kept busy finishing the work I was doing in coming up with a worksheet and template for the business plan. It’s something else trying to figure out what information should or should not be in there – as you might imagine the literature on “how to write a good business plan” is pretty extensive, and it’s all different. We also planned out Monday’s market research class then took off relatively early so we could tie up some loose ends before the evening’s activity, which was a cooking class (just back in Woodstock, oddly enough).

So the cooking class was kind of something else … instead of learning how to make everything we were divided up and some made entrees, some made desserts and spring rolls, and some of us made samosas. Cape Malay was the cuisine. After stuffing and frying all of our samosas there was a ton of meat left over so I started eating it just out of the pot (in my defense it was fabulous!). Somewhere there are photos of this. Probably on facebook, I should look. So this guy Lorenzo happens to be walking by and he says “What have you done?” so I offered him some. After one bite he was hooked! Soon he was walking from station to station eating from all the pots! Too funny.

I was quite amazed that one of the guys who is here from the UK happened to have a good working knowledge of ice hockey (well, ok, he was swearing up and down that the Pittsburgh Penguins just won the Stanley Cup). I think the funniest part of the evening was when I couldn’t remember Sidney Crosby’s name and he said he couldn’t possibly give me a hint because I would know it immediately, then ten minutes later after I had just about exhausted the trivia questions that I remembered he said “It starts with S, by the way” and then I remembered. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Thank goodness I remembered Nick Clegg’s name a heck of a lot faster than that and without a hint!

Now every other month or so heart does what’s called a Play Day where the entire company leaves the office and does something. I guess in the past it was mostly team-building types of activities. But on Friday, we went to Khayelitsha, a township maybe 20 minutes east of Cape Town. Almost everyone piled into one of the ubiquitous minibuses, one of which had been rented for the day.

Our first stop was a school where we listened to the headmaster and the assistant headmaster tell us about some of the challenges of running the school. To distill it down, the two biggest problems are hunger amongst the students (this I recall from last year – I think a decent number of the kids who did the entrepreneurship program last year did it for the Stellenbosch-provided lunches), and poor quality of teaching due to the usual suspects (availability of teachers, large class sizes, etc., etc.). This was a non-fee-paying school and was way over capacity.

Next up was a hospital, where we listened to the head of the hospital tell us about that. Well when you only have 8 doctors it’s not surprising the queues are days long! Care is free, but anyone who can remotely afford it goes to a private hospital because most people can’t afford to wait in queues for days. I think it is difficult because this woman seems like she is trying to do the right things, but it must be just an impossible task. Got my brain spinning though, wondering if perhaps there might be a market for operational consulting services to NGOs or government-run institutions like schools and hospitals. I wish I knew how to do a time and motion study but it’s funny to think how much money has gone into making sure that the operation of a KFC kitchen is as efficient as possible and yet the equivalent has probably not been done for vital services like these.

Moving on … after the hospital it was time for lunch so we went to a braai stand and had some steaks and pork (well, I didn’t have any pork). Not as good as Mzoli’s, but still quite good!

Afterwards, we went to the house of our receptionist. She lives in a relatively nice part of town, I would say – the houses are more like houses than shacks, and they have electricity and running water. No shower, though – they get water from the tap and heat it up, and bathe in a bathtub. Fires are common, though – her place had burned down last year, and one across the road had burned down just the previous weekend. Both were electrical fires, but fires are quite common at this time of year as people light them to heat their shacks. Actually when we drove out of Cape Town there was so much smoke from the fires that you couldn’t even see Table Mountain, or the mountains to the east near Somerset West. By the afternoon the mountains were visible again.

We split up and walked around the township for a while, talking to people about various aspects of their lives. A lot you might expect; the sort of thing that you would not necessarily think of but that becomes obvious when you do think about it is that there are almost exclusively sole proprietorships as township businesses. Forming partnerships is inherently risky! But there is certainly differentiation in the market. Take alcohol – you have shabeens which are unlicensed operating from literally shacks, and then you have bars that are perfectly modern (I mean, not swanky, but new, clean, etc.). We went into one bar (no, we didn’t stop for a drink) that is on the second floor of this building, and has amazing views and very, VERY loud music.

Our group ended up at a restaurant that served smileys and trotters. A smiley is a cooked sheep’s head, so named because when you cook it up I guess the skin pulls away from the teeth so it looks like it’s smiling. Yes, we were served a smiley, and yes, I ate some of it. Drew the line at the eye, though, but hey if I’ll eat a lamb’s leg why not its cheek? Didn’t much care for the skin, though.

The final thing we did was to go by an orphanage where one of our coworkers volunteers. That was great, playing with the kids. They love having their pictures taken. We practiced pullups and pushups, but they weren’t doing the pushups properly. Chest to the floor (er, ground). So there are I believe 27 orphans housed in this tiny, tiny building. It’s amazing, terrible of course but for the most part the kids seemed like kids (although neighborhood kids go and play at the orphanage so it’s not really clear which ones were orphans vs just kids). Some you could tell, the quiet ones. This one girl was absolutely beautiful, I think she was maybe one or two, but she didn’t like white people (two of us managed to make her cry just by getting too close). I’m hoping that is because we are different-looking and not because of some actual bad experience!

So, the day was interesting. I don’t see that there is any way for me really to wrap my head around what it’s really like there. You can just never know, unless you live it. But, every little bit of context helps us understand better why we’re doing what we’re doing, and who we’re doing it for.

Friday night we kicked off the weekend with a surprise party for a guy who’s leaving soon. We ordered a bunch of pizzas that were fabulous. One of the girls was highly amused by the concept of ordering two Mexicans. That Mexican pizza was pretty darn good, second only to the chicken tikka! At some point the party moved to Stones on Long Street for all of like one drink (seriously, I don’t much care for that place and we never stay there) then we all cabbed it right back to two blocks from our building and hit up a club called Chevelle. That’s more my kind of club, where girls get in free! It was pretty dead, but we met a couple local guys who I think would have been cool if they weren’t drunk and if you could really hear anything without shouting directly into the ear of the person you were speaking with. So, we danced for a bit then I headed home because I needed to get up the next morning.

The red pill

These are pictures from the first internal training module we delivered a week and a half ago.

Tuesday was another sunny day! I’m almost starting to take them for granted. What I’m not taking for granted is the view from my apartment, which is gorgeous … but I leave in the morning when it’s still dark, and get home at night usually just before dark. At least the view of the mountain from the gym is pretty good, when I’m actually able to notice it.

Tuesday morning we had someone from LGT Group come and talk to us about the various ventures they are funding throughout the world. One of the most interesting is a venture in Kenya where a venture is replicating very low-cost primary (and soon secondary) schools, providing standardized training for the teachers, and they can actually measure progress via standardized tests given by the government. Reminds me of something I read about in The Economist. Maybe I read about this exact venture, you never know.

The morning was next punctuated by a discussion with one of my coworkers about working on a business plan to turn the school from an internal resource to assist the incubator into an actual business. There is a lot of market analysis to be done, but I suppose I know all the theory so there’s no reason why I couldn’t work on a business plan. Just, first, I need to wrap my head around the potential customers. The rest, I am confident I can do but also it’s a good stretch for me because I haven’t actually done some of it before outside of an academic setting but, hey, it’s going to be good experience. I’m certainly not bored … a little overwhelmed, but not bored.

As a complete aside, it is possible to poach an egg in the microwave. This technique leads to some quick & easy lunches like tuna, poached egg, and swiss chard, for days when I haven’t cooked the prior night.

Just after lunch a few of us met with the sales force for one of the social enterprises we are incubating. There were three men and two women from Khayelitsha. The women were quiet which I expected; that they were relatively new didn’t help. It was quite interesting to hear their ideas about what was working and what wasn’t from both an operations and sales standpoint.

Our discussion around this enterprise filled up most of the rest of the afternoon and spilled into the evening as my coworker Dami and I went to Jeff’s place in Sea Point for dinner (preceded by a drink at a local wine bar). And may I state for the record that the Green Point stadium is HUGE. 23 days to go, or thereabouts …

Oh the other good thing that happened today is that it was confirmed that I can stay in my same flat, same room, and (perhaps most exciting of all) keep my same parking space for the duration of World Cup. There are so many people coming in that the organization we are essentially subletting from has to put some people into overflow housing. As interested as I am in Observatory (Obs), it would have made the commute back in for the gym a pain in the neck, and plus there is no way the view would be as good.

Wednesday was another lovely day. The morning meeting was free expression day and we all told amusing anecdotes along various themes. My favorites were one guy talking about how when he and his wife met their ATM PIN codes were one digit off, and another guy talking about why it’s a good idea to get car insurance. I talked about the time Jeff Oates hit me with two hockey pucks in the same game (I was in the stands). Moral of that story is, don’t get on the wrong side of a hockey player and then go to the games. Unless, I suppose, the glass is quite tall.

One of the guys I work with is a pretty serious ex-gang member. He has a self-proclaimed “hectic” background story – he was the leader of a gang, killed a bunch of people, was shot by his own brother (clean through from one side of his face to the other) … anyway to make a long story short when his brother died that was a wake-up call for him and he pulled himself out of the situation he was in. It’s not all romantic “it takes a village to raise a child” stuff that goes on in the townships, and of course I know that I don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about, really. I’ve never lived that life, or anything close to it. In any event he is now doing community outreach (which is *so* needed, for him to be a role model), and asked me to take a look at some materials he had put together for parents when their children come back from drug rehab, so they know what to look for if they relapse, how to approach them, etc. I was honored, and it was also an interesting reminder that even though we’re all working for an organization that’s trying to promote the greater good, people are still volunteering their time to do more as there is so much need.

I spent most of the day reading “how to write a business plan” documents from various sources and putting together a business plan template and associated worksheet of more detailed questions to consider. It’s actually kind of fun to sit around and make judgment calls about what data is actually going to be key to collect and write about vs being a nice-to-have. This process is not done – it will probably take me about one more day. Then I can get to work analyzing and updating the training materials that exist right now for the business plan modules. I really need to reconnect with Babson and see if I can’t get someone to review what our team puts together and offer some constructive feedback.

So I’m not sure if this term is unique to heart or whatnot, but the process of calling up various corporates and asking for donations (of anything and everything, really), is called sourcing. My one coworker asked for a ride to downtown where I live because she needed to get to Green Point (which is all of like a 5-minute drive). So of course I said don’t be silly, I’ll take you right there. Then when jokingly asked how much she was going to pay me for my services she replied “I sourced it [the ride].” I thought this was about the funniest thing I’d heard in a while, and was certainly the cleverest, ha!

As we were a bit early we stopped in Green Point for a drink at Cubana (a chain restaurant; we went to one in Stellenbosch last year). The mojitos are pretty decent there, if overpriced. It never ceases to amaze me, either, how relatively easy parking is in Cape Town … at least, most places and most times of day.

I’m now off to finish the dishes, put away my laundry and get to bed, the better to wake up early in the morning ready for another day!

Sun, Food Tents, and Mzoli’s Place

Saturday morning I discovered the absolute joy that is a handstand pushup. Wow, those are pretty fun until your arms burn like nothing else!

Following that, I headed to Scottsville High school in Brackenfell to assist with a Food Tents build. This consisted of packing a bunch of plastic bags with holes in the bottom full first of wood shavings then of topsoil, and planting spinach and beetroot (three to a bag) into each one. Then we formed a long chain and passed these off into the tent itself, and watered the whole lot using our now emptied water and soda cans. All in all, it took about three hours for three of us from heart, maybe four people from Pick’n’Pay (who were sponsoring this build), and a handful of people from the community. It was so cute to see the kids lining up and passing the bags from person to person!

Afterwards I went to Stellenbosch to pick up a friend. We tried to stop by Tokara but as it was 3:07 they were closed. Ha, well, the wine isn’t so good there anyway in my opinion. So we headed into Cape Town and pretty much immediately to the local pub where we had to sit in the garden as all the inside seats were taken up with some crazy rugby fans. Happily for the general peace and security of everyone involved, the local team (the Stormers) beat the Bulls. Or, apparently so, as I wasn’t exactly watching.

The next morning we went for a nice drive over by Sea Point to Camps Pay, and down to Hout Bay, over to near Chapman’s Peak but not along it as I didn’t want to pay the toll and besides we were due back in Cape Town. But not before stopping to climb on some rocks and look at a statue that is supposed to be a lion but looks more like a leopard to me. This road was pretty familiar as we had been here on our tour last winter.

So one of my coworkers had organized an informal get-together at Mzoli’s place in Guguletu, one of the local townships. Wikipedia describes it well, basically it’s a bunch of tables and chairs underneath an awning. In the street next to it a bunch of Namibians were the DJs for the day, playing some really loud music that after an hour or so and a couple of beers (it’s BYOB but you can also buy from a bunch of places around), most of us were dancing to. The only unfortunate thing about this was that it took so long for the meat to arrive that we were all starving and jumped on the plate of beef like a bunch of carnivores pretty much the second it arrived! The chicken and HUGE pile of sausage lasted a bit longer, at least until after I left. But if I may say so, this was some of the best tasting meat I’d eaten in a long time (secret sauce, apparently), and I don’t think it was just my hunger talking! Also, we got to meet Mr Mzoli, so that was nice as well.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera but others took pictures. I was happy that my friend Nomkita came by (she lives somewhat nearby), and it is also nice to be able to walk down the street with an open beer and not be hassled. This is technically illegal here (how uncivilized, really!) but in that environment and that close to Mzoli’s it was fine.

So that was about is for the adventure that was the weekend; I spent the evening resting and preparing myself for the week to come.

The first day back at work was actually quite mentally tiring, to the point where I literally needed to take a break about 4:30pm. After revising some slides on market research and designing some in-class workshops around the four Ps of marketing and company operations, I was analyzing the deliverables required by the incubator and mapping to that the training modules that would be required. For some reason, this was mentally taxing.

Next up tomorrow: looking over various articles on how to write a business plan and reviewing the existing business plan template to determine if it needs to be refined at all, and to start developing training materials for the business plan section from the bottom up. We are starting with what the social enterprises need to do, so that we can be sure that we are covering it from a training perspective.

A good day

Actually the sushi at Knoxville isn’t so nice.

So today dawned the same as every other one this week – foggy and rainy! This morning I learned the fun that are kettlebell swings and yes, I really don’t care for walking lunges at all, especially when I’m still hurting from workouts earlier in the week. But I will say that there is nothing quite like the feeling of walking into work in the morning after a really good workout. I think I really missed working out in the morning, but don’t generally have enough self-discipline to get myself out of bed unless I have something like a class to get to. Especially when it’s dark outside!

So in the heart offices there is a big orange canvas with a bunch of paint handprints on it, of everyone who has worked there. Apparently they haven’t gone through this exercise in a while because a bunch of us had to paint up our hands and sign the canvas before the morning meeting started. I had never noticed but Helen Zille is up there (she’s the Premier of the Western Cape province and former mayor of Cape Town). Pretty cool stuff.

I puttered around with some analysis of our current curriculum as compared to the incubator intake documents, then after lunch was beginning to put together a document overlaying the whole curriculum with the incubator timeline when the CEO tapped me on the shoulder. He finally had time for a one-on-one meeting. It was … interesting. For one thing I wasn’t exactly prepared but I am now even more impressed. Within about 20 minutes we’d mapped out a mutually agreeable plan for me for the next few months. The great thing for me is that there is a lot that needs to be done, and things that will push me in new directions and give me some great experience. My biggest frustration up to this point is that I like being able to accomplish things and I am not able to perform up to my own level I hold myself to when it comes to developing a curriculum for the school because it’s really stretching me. I haven’t taught before, I haven’t developed a mini-MBA curriculum before, and I’m constantly struggling to think about how to tune what I know to the social entrepreneurship space because things are a little more complicated here.

Anyway I’ve been here two weeks. Apparently I’ve impressed some people but I feel like I have a lot more to prove. That’s always one fun aspect of a new job – surprising people. But I’m excited both because I think I can really help, I really, really believe in the mission and the approach. It’s just the confluence of where all the thinking in the space is going and it’s amazing – I feel like I’m near the epicenter of something very big. The tension that runs through the air is literally something out of the dotcom boom, but people are motivated not by greed but, well, actually I haven’t quite figured it out yet. So I am looking forward to really helping move things forward while at the same time having some fun with things I really like to do, like strategy. There is nothing like getting out of bed in the morning excited for the day. Nothing.

Just after that we conducted our second training class. This one went much better than the first one – it was much more of a workshop and I think much more on point. What we’re trying to do, and engaging our particular audience is quite difficult because they are pretty sophisticated business people so making sure that they can get value from the same general material we will be presenting to others who are less sophisticated is challenging. We need to keep the essential framework the same, and tailor the discussion to the audience. Writing train the trainer material is going to be hugely challenging. Well, what else is there to do in Cape Town in July … er, at least once World Cup is done?

After work a couple of us went to a bar in Woodstock called Jamaica Me Crazy. ;) Since we were for some craaaazy reason working past 4pm on a Friday (this is unheard of in Cape Town, apparently …??) we arrived at 5:50 just 10 minutes before happy hour ended so we all ordered two rounds of drinks pretty much immediately. :)

While I’m on the subject may I just add that in traffic as in anything else if it’s not a little bit dangerous it’s not South Africa? It’s like an obstacle course every day during rush hour – people from the other lane in your lane, pedestrians running across the road, busses taking up two lanes, motorcycles cutting in … yeah it’s a bit hectic. I always said if I could drive in Boston I could drive anywhere and let me tell you … it’s been good training. Having good reflexes and knowing your car & clutch really help, too! Speaking of which no word from Western Union today. Wish I could just pick up the phone and call, but it’s outrageously expensive to do that.

We joined a friend of one of my coworkers at the bar, and later two other friends showed up. It was actually quite the cosmopolitan group – I’m from America, we had someone from Nigeria/UK, Switzerland, two people from Kenya, one from Mexico, and one from Spain. And no South Africans!

After that I headed back to my apartment block, grabbed a bottle of wine and headed to the roof deck where people were hanging out. Unfortunately, we got kicked off the roof by security. This is not a horrible tragedy as I need to save myself for tomorrow….. but then more adventures with the lifts. I swear … so I try to get from the third floor to the tenth. I get in, press 3. Doors close. We go down to 2. Press 10 again, we go up to 10. Then on the way down the lift decides to stop at floors 7 and 4, for no apparent reason. Maybe descending 10 flights all at once was too much for it, ha!

Week 2

Well, this week has flown by as in I’ve been busy but in many ways not a lot very exciting to talk about. You know, wake up, go work out, go to work, work, go home, make dinner, maybe go out for drinks. Dull stuff, really. So, what have I been up to this week?

My first week of CrossFit has gone fine. Monday was quite technical, Tuesday I just about died doing the … wait a minute, no one cares about this but me probably. Anyway suffice to say I was quite sore from Tuesday, and this morning I managed to finish the workout faster than anyone else (I was very proud of myself, haha). Of course when everyone finishes within 15 seconds of each other, does it really matter that much?

All sorts of fun dealing with Western Union so that I can do a money transfer to buy the car (because I can’t just transfer large sums of money into the bank account of someone I barely know, now can I?). So, I filled out an application as a resident of South Africa. But then they require ID that confirms my address, which of course I don’t have. And it’s a bit of a mission to get a local bank account here. So now today I have filled out a second application as an American resident. Hopefully that goes a little more smoothly, we’ll see.

So last night (Wednesday) I was cooking dinner and we had the window open and heard a massive sound which I thought sounded like one of the elevators crashing down a floor. Except that I happen to know that such a thing is pretty impossible, with even semi-modern elevators. Although these elevators are another story entirely: one of them refuses to stop on our floor. To go to the 10th floor you have to press both 10, and some number higher than 10. Another one, whenever you press anything, highlights 6. But it doesn’t stop at 6. Another one will often drop by about 4 inches randomly when it stops at floors. One day last week, when I was late, one of them wouldn’t close the doors no matter what I did.

Anyway turns out this was not an elevator problem, or a gunshot as some other people thought, but a cat that jumped or fell or something from the 16th floor down to a tin roof on the 2nd floor. I had gone downstairs not long after hearing the noise to send a large email (you pay by the KB here, if I haven’t mentioned before, but at the coffee shop/bar downstairs it’s free). When I headed back upstairs I saw a commotion – something small wrapped up in a towel so I went to check it out. Turns out it was a tiger striped orange cat, and some people had gathered to help the owners figure out what to do (they were a little freaked out). And yes, apparently the cat did land on its feet.

They rushed the cat off for emergency care, and apparently it showed up the next day (today, as it happens) at my roommate’s work where they x-rayed it and not even a broken bone on the thing. Amazing!

OK so after that excitement I went up to finish dinner and check Justin Stanford on Top Dogs on SABC3. I appreciate anyone who’s both smart and unconventional. Also, he’s doing his part to make the world a better place with initiatives like Silicon Cape.

Next up, Thao and I watched LOST. Downloaded, yes, streaming video doesn’t work over here as speeds aren’t fast enough. Good fun.

So today at work we met to discuss how the curriculum we are working on at the moment with how to do a feasibility study fits in with the incubator methodology. Then I spent some time incorporating feedback from our researcher into our market research slides. It scares me a bit how proficient I’m getting with making good-looking Powerpoint slides.

Dinner was Namibian boerwors, beet greens, and salad. This veggie bag is probably 20% more veggies than I would typically eat in a week, so there’s precious little room for rice, beans, and quinoa in my diet at the moment. Although the brown rice I had with yellowtail the other day did come out pretty well perfect. Maybe I should consider measuring my liquid in milliliters more often …

Heading out just now to drinks night @ Knoxville (a swanky bar in Tamboerskloof), where they have free sushi and drinks for the ladies on Wednesday. Yet today is Thursday. Clearly someone didn’t put a lot of time into planning this … but I know where I’ll find myself on some upcoming Wednesday night!

Busy day

As many of you know, I like my sleep. So, I’m trying to do the 7-8am CrossFit workout, which doesn’t actually give a lot of time to get to work by the 8:30 meeting so I may need to move to an evening workout (which would be quite unfortunate especially because at this time of year it’s solidly dark by 6:30pm which is the time I’d need to go – 5:30 is too early by far). So I am trying to figure out just how late I can sleep and still have time to eat enough protein that I can work out effectively. But in any event, this morning we practiced hang squat cleans for a good long time. My technique needs some work – quite a challenge for a first day. But it will really be great to learn the proper techniques for these things, in any event.

Every Monday morning our CEO speaks to us. This morning’s subject was how he believes that social entrepreneurship as an industry, or practice, resembles the early days of the high tech boom. This sparked an interesting debate, because a lot of what drove the tech boom was greed. But, if money flows into this or any other space, salaries will follow, and talent follows salaries (in general, at least…). Also a lot of dopes, but that’s the subject for another day!

We had another interesting rain storm today – it went from nothing to monsoon force, back to nothing, within a couple of minutes. It was actually pretty funny, as we have a metal roof when it rains hard it becomes very loud!

I feel like I made good progress today at work. Half the struggle is the mental processing power required to make Powerpoint slides look nice and not just be bullet points! Based on our first class last Friday, I revised our earlier slides, added a “roadmap” of what would be covered in the feasibility study classes, and began work on slides covering strategy and differentiation. I also completed a draft to the best of my ability of a feasibility study worksheet – once entrepreneurs can answer the questions in the worksheet, they should be well positioned to write a feasibility study document.

Now it may seem like we’re reinventing the wheel a bit here, because this material exists in other places, certainly. To a degree, we are, yes, but what we’re doing is quite custom-tailored to a process (and there are other plans for this material in the future) that it makes sense for it to be proprietary. One example – we followed quite a similar course of study at Babson last year during the Capstone of our MBA (during which our teams had to come up with a business idea, and eventually write a business plan and pitch to a panel of VCs). So in that class, the feasibility study essentially ended with whether or not the concept was viable from a market standpoint. Here, we need to analyze the financial returns as well to make sure that the venture is viable financially (when you’re trying to make a social impact, this is not a given!), and potentially to evaluate between different potential concepts that an entrepreneur might consider. So, clearly, we need financials which means we need operations and sales plans, at least at a basic level. And we are trying to weigh this against the need for these to be quick and dirty … so, again, it’s tremendously exciting for me to be able to be here, at heart, during this particular time.

So, tonight dinner is chicken legs with salad and sweet potatoes, which I only mention because sweet potatoes in this country are quite different! For one thing, the flesh is yellowish, and very pale. Also they are less moist than back in the States. Eh, whatever, they are tasty. And that is half the fun of a CSA, is to be forced to cook whatever is in your bag that week. I’m looking forward to this week – we get the season’s first avocados, and satsumas! It’s a bit off topic but boy the yogurt is fabulous here …

Last night after the cricket and the news ended Terminator 3 came on SABC1 (long story but our DSTV won’t work because we don’t have a remote and so we can’t reset the channels). It has gotten to the point where driving on the right seems weird to me! I think I actually prefer driving on the left, possibly because I can shift with my left hand which, once you’re used to it, I think is easier as I can keep my right hand on the wheel. I don’t know … the only problem I’m still having is remembering to keep left on highways! Well, and finding my way around new neighborhoods. That’s always hard, but I’m slowly learning Cape Town. Bring on the World Cup – 31 days to go!

Car hunting

The theme for this weekend was car hunting. On Saturday morning, though, I had signed up for a hike with a program called Youth Empowerment Programme, that pulls kids out of the townships in Khayelitsha and does various activities with them. This particular activity was hiking in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and up Table Mountain a little bit. We were split up into groups, and it was pretty fun although as I knew from before these kids are quite shy and it takes longer than 3 hours to get them to open up a bit!

In the afternoon I went to check out a car (a Nissan) in Somerset West. My plan is to buy a car then sell it when I leave because car rentals here are quite expensive! After that I went to the Tallahassee Spur (for some reason all the Spurs have different American names – the one in Stellenbosch is Arizona Spur) for burgers and drinks with Deon. We met at one end of a very large mall and then I drove. He wanted to see my driving, and I did better than when I was driving Warric around and drove right through a red light … the lights are beside the intersections here which is not where my peripheral vision is used to them being, so if I’m distracted which I must have been, yeah it’s not good. Just another thing that gets easier with practice I suppose! Yes, so Deon reminds me quite a bit of myself a couple of years ago. For some reason we didn’t talk too much when I was here last year but we chatted online quite a bit. He is going to be writing exams for the next month or so, so I’m very glad I had a chance to see him before that as he’ll be quite busy now for a while.

I was also pleased to receive my first Afrikaans grammar lesson, which consisted of telling me how to construct the past tense, e.g. ek et gedrunk (I was drunk). I need to take lessons or something, so that I can have a working understanding of Afrikaans and Xhosa. Of course if I can’t even make that rolling r sound properly I can’t imagine I’ll be able to click properly! Well, we’ll just have to see.

Later in the evening we watched some rugby in the downstairs coffee shop/bar, and finally someone taught me how cricket works. Now I actually understand what a wicket is!

I went to bed quite early as my throat was feeling scratchy and as multiple people I’d been in contact with had recently been a bit sick I felt discretion was the better part of valor.

Sunday was a pretty crazy day weather-wise. It was pouring, then it cleared up, then the sun came out for a minute, then it was pouring again within minutes … gave a whole new meaning for me to the saying “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” Actually in mid-afternoon it was sunny for a good long while and we could see the mountain. That mountain is something else – it is absolutely massive. I wonder if that view ever gets old. I suspect it doesn’t.

Anyway I drove down to Diep River again to test drive a VW. This one really didn’t feel right to me. Cars have a feel, and this one wasn’t mine. In the afternoon, I drove up this time to Brackenfell in the northern suburbs to check an older Audi. This one reminds me quite a lot of my car back home (much older of course!), and is actually quite close in price to the Nissan. So, I think I’ll most likely be getting that one. I’ve always wanted an Audi, actually, so this is quite cool – almost like I’m leasing one for a while.

As I write this now on Sunday night Skyrove is down. Again. How 1998. Now it’s about time to make dinner which, this evening, is spaghetti & meatballs, and salad. It’s great to be able to cook here although the kitchen implements are a bit lacking … also, it just occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve seen ground turkey in the Pick’n’Pay. Maybe haven’t looked hard enough. I finally found parmesan cheese (which is insanely expensive!!) by looking in the fancy cheese section. Silly me, I assumed all cheese would be together. Once I get more organized (getting a car will be a huge weight off my shoulders) I’ll figure out how to get more meat of the grass-fed variety. But at this point, just being able to cook is a win. It’s amazing how much more expensive it is to eat out here relative to cooking at home, and this is before World Cup! For example, I bought a pack of 3 chicken legs for R35.13 (yes, that’s about $4.75). Now, to eat out I would say a meal of chicken breast and starch (they aren’t much for the veg in this country, generally) would be something like maybe R60.

It is interesting noting the little things that are different. For example, there are very few street lights here, for one thing. For another, the lane dividers are not painted with reflective paint, so staying in your lane at night can be quite difficult, especially if it’s raining! Moral of that story is, you have to be much more careful driving after dark!

All right, time to see if I can get the DSTV working and make dinner! I’m going to try and update this every other day or so, rather than once every two weeks.

The first week

That's the view from my 10th floor flat, BTW.

Monday was my first day of work! As I had a rental car, I picked up Dami who works with me and lives in the same building. Dami is Nigerian-born but has been living in London for quite some time. So, the first day of work is always interesting because you are not quite sure what you have gotten yourself into, and what the culture is like. This is going to be a long post already so I won’t say much more at this point other than to note that my impressions of the place were right: if you took a dotcom startup and stuck it in South Africa in the social entrepreneurial space, you’d have heart (and I’ll have everyone know I’m staying on brand thank you very much). Except that it is a bit more laid back. This is Cape Town, after all!

Interestingly on the first day the morning activity was to describe what had brought everyone to heart and why they stayed. The consensus seemed to be the people, and the mission, in that order. Not a bad start. Plus, the office space in the Old Castle Brewery building is very nice …. very Silicon Valley. Er, I’m sorry, Silicon Cape!

The CEO, Peter, is quite interesting. I hope to get to know him better but from the brief interactions I had with him by my second day I was highly impressed. Now as many of you know, I am not easily impressed. He appears both intelligent and knowledgeable, and he is driven.

So heart is building an incubator for social entrepreneurial startups. They will come in, receive funding, mentoring, and training. My job is to help provide the material for the training, and to help deliver the material until the school grows to the point that this can be done by a facilitator. heart is planning to replicate this model throughout Africa, really as quickly as possible, but first we need to get it right here, in Cape Town. I came at a very exciting time because everything is happening and is being developed right now – by the end of the week we had delivered our first class (the first class in the Feasibility Study module, about industry and market analysis). It is good also that we are first testing out the incubator methodology on in-house projects because the feedback we got was solidly constructive criticism. You can’t improve without criticism, and one of the things I like is that people speak their mind.

Much more will come on this subject, of course, but I will say that I like the mission, and I like a lot of the approach. I’m so new that I can’t really judge but I hope (and at this point believe) that it will work, and it will have an impact. But boy, there is a lot of work to be done. As much as I am hopeful that this will turn into a great learning experience for me, I am a little disappointed in myself in this first week. I was distracted by settling in, learning the new company, searching online to find a car to buy, etc. that I didn’t put 110% of myself into my work. So, I don’t want to have to look myself in the mirror and be disappointed with myself next week. Time to step my game up.

Of course, the week wasn’t all work! Monday night I went out to Somerset West to see Warric, and we went to a bar called The Old Bridge, which was quite nice, I thought. Although I’m sure it gets old if you go there all the time. Warric and I also taught at Hector Peterson, and I always enjoy his company. Afterwards, I took him back to Stellenbosch because his car was in the shop. Then we had another beer and somehow it got to be 1am so I headed back to Cape Town and went right to bed!

I had discovered online an organic grocery store in Woodstock, near where I work. I went there on Wednesday to pick up my weekly bag of groceries (it’s basically a CSA). I got there just fine but one of the roads I had driven was a one-way and it was quite a mission to get back, especially seeing as it’s quite difficult to make any right-hand turns in this town unless there is a robot (traffic light). This is one of the local terms I intend to pick up because I find it quite hilarious. Anyway the bag itself is awesome, for R130 (which is about $17 at the most recent exchange rate) you get an entire bag of groceries! The first week I had a bag of applies, a bunch of sweet potatoes, 2 mangoes, the world’s tiniest pineapple, scallions, broccoli, radishes, arugula, lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes, and I can’t remember what all else. Either way, it’s a great deal, especially since quinoa is like R60 for a bag (oddly the red is cheaper than the white!). Hopefully I can find that cheaper somewhere! I find myself quite quickly not translating back to dollars at all, just judging what is relatively cheap and relatively expensive in rand terms.

Wednesday night I went to a hash in Diep River which is southeast of Cape Town, in what’s known collectively as the Southern Suburbs. But there wasn’t a trail, we just ran. And then we ate at a nice restaurant so we didn’t do circle although they did buy me a drink and made me drink it all down just like that and sang the most innocuous song anyone could think of, very quietly. I suspect the Sunday runs are a bit more of what I’m used to, but I guess in about a month there are going to be like 50 people from Hong Kong coming in for a Wednesday run, so that should be quite interesting, to say the least!

Thursday morning I had my “orientation” session at Cape CrossFit. Yes, time to join the cult … I’m already trying to recruit others! At lunch Dami and I went down to the FIFA ticket office and I bought a ticket for the France/Uruguay match on opening night. The slogan used here in SA is “Feel it, it is here.” You can definitely feel the excitement building. 32 days to go, as I write this. I think it will be pretty cool to watch the opening parade or whatnot in the fan park in downtown then go out to Green Point and watch the match (it’s match #2; match #1 in Joburg, of course).

Thursday night was drinks night and as we got kicked off the top floor public area, we went to this guy John’s room as his roommates weren’t in yet. He has a much nicer kitchen than I do, I’m quite jealous! He’s from Texas and worked in the oil industry (he’s now working in microfinance), so we had quite an interesting discussion. I’ve always found the mechanical engineering portion of the oil industry completely fascinating.

Friday night was pub golf. This is essentially a pub crawl with rules – there are 9 holes (although I suppose you could do 18); each bar is a “hole” and to make each hole you need to drink the drink that the organizers have specified for that bar. I was a bit freaked out by a shot of either whiskey or tequila on the 8th hole, but it went down easier than I thought. Maybe it was the two double vodka limes I’d had a bit earlier. Eh, Long Street is a bit hectic. I do prefer quieter bars but it’s OK once in a while.

On to the first weekend!

Settling in

Well, better late than never. Settling in has been a bit hectic, as is said around here, and I’ve been quite busy. So, here is a quick summary of what I have done over the last week and a half:

I arrived on a Wednesday, picked up a rental car at the airport and drove out to Stellenbosch. Yes, I drove on the left. No, I didn’t hit anything. That night I had dinner at a local pizza chain called Col’Cacchio with Archie, who is one of the guys I taught with last year at Hector Peterson High School. OK now I rather miss my cat …
The next day I woke up for breakfast then went back to sleep as I was actually quite jetlagged. Then I practiced driving – first around Stellenbosch then over to Franschoek, and towards Paarl although I headed back instead of driving to Paarl. So that was my big adventure for the day!

Friday I had coffee with Nomkita in the morning at the Neelsie (she is another person I taught with last year, and the Neelsie is the student center at Stellenbosch University). Then I was again scandalized by the sweatshirt prices at the Maties shop and didn’t buy anything. This time, at least. Next, I went to a couple of wineries which, if memory serves, were Rustenberg (where I walked around the gardens), Simonsig (where I had a fabulous if expensive lunch), and finally Tokara because I needed to buy some olive oil. Then, I went for a quick run (about 40 minutes maybe) and went out to meet Sne at Bohemia. After that, a house party! That was quite fun but I was still quite jetlagged, so I went to sleep pretty early.

Saturday morning I went to Rust en Vrede winery which could easily compete with Napa Valley for both quality and snobbery, then headed into Cape Town. This was a little intimidating as it was my first time driving in the city. But, I found where I was going ok, and my garage space is literally right next to the elevator. Randomly assigned rock star parking, how do you like that? The apartment is ok – the view is nice although the foreground is a bit blocked by another part of the building so you can’t see Lion’s Head very well. But Table Mountain really is something – I rearranged the bed in the living room specifically so that I would wake up to see it every morning (when there is not fog, that is, as I discovered a few days later!). I think the quality is just OK – I know for a fact that I could get a much nicer place for not too much more money on my own, so in a way I can’t wait for World Cup to be over so I can move on, but it’s also nice to have roommates. Only one of them, Katie, was in the same day I was. The other one, Thao, arrived on Wednesday I think. They are sharing a room and I have a single, which is nice. However, in keeping with SA, there is only one shower. I have a tub (real useful, right??).

That night I went out to dinner at Rafiki’s in Tamboerskloof with Jeff, who is my manager at heart, until he leaves at the end of the month. After that we will see what happens. We did not discuss work so much as life in SA, and the financial crisis. Jeff is certainly well read, and very interesting to talk to!

The next day a bunch of us gathered together to use our free ticket on the tourist bus. This was mainly useful as it took us to Camp’s Bay where we hung out on the beach for a while then had lunch. I had kob, which is a kind of fish. It was very tasty, although as I found out later, overfished. That evening Katie and I went out to dinner (rather, I went out and she accompanied me for a few beers). All in all, a pretty low-key day.