How to drive yourself to illness

Long story short – I got really stressed out, managed to go drinking (not to excess but enough), didn’t sleep enough, started taking caffeine again which masked what my body was telling me. Can’t say I don’t know better, because I certainly do … but it all seemed like a good idea at the time!

What’s going on at work is that in addition to the Purple Heart cost analysis, hamper design, and business plan, management refocused me from my work on the school onto writing three additional business plans: one for FoodTents which is already in operation but is looking to expand in a couple of areas, one for a web portal called Grow South Africa, and one for a voluntourism concept currently called Love to Africa. The best part is due to circumstances outside of our direct control, this needs to happen fast. Luckily I have a team of interns as well as a new intern who is starting on Monday, who can help with the research tasks here.

It was also the last week of work for two very dear, and very capable colleagues, so there was a lot of emotion involved as well. More for others than for me as I’ve only been there maybe 6 or 7 weeks – but long enough that it’s hard to lose them; there is going to be a big hole Monday morning.

Tuesday was a pretty emotionally draining day as well. My co-worker who is an ex-gangster took me around and showed me various drug houses and slums in Woodstock. It’s so interesting now to see what is going on just outside the car doors in the roads I drive down. Interesting conversation as always, talking about the difference between the drug dealers and the gangs, and how it is that three drug houses can co-exist on the same block, how recruiting happens, why it is that there are so many women involved in the drug trade, etc.

I asked him as well as a couple of the people who live there what percent of the young people are on drugs. The general answer was almost all – maybe 95%. When faced with something like that, it’s hard to know where to begin and not to become daunted by the impossibility of the problem. What I am thinking, though, is that there are almost certainly lessons to be learned from the anti-smoking campaign in the U.S. because starting from about when I was growing up, smoking somehow became uncool, and it started from a similar place as drugs here (i.e. everyone else is doing it, and it’s considered to be cool).

So. Yeah. After that I went back to work then left quite early with a co-worker (the office shut down for the day at 3pm so we could go watch Bafana Bafana). We went to Neighborhood and joined a bunch of her friends and acquaintances to watch the game. I was, I admit, hoping against hope that the team would win with a big enough goal differential to make it to the second round. Well, that didn’t happen but at halftime when it was 2-0 there was hope in the air … eh, it was good fun regardless and beating France was great. A lot of people said it was enough that the team did well for itself, and just had the one off game. While I agree, I was still disappointed.

At this point I wanted to go home but was persuaded to go to an art opening. There were 2-for-1 cocktails and the mojitos were very good. Then, someone had suggested the Mexican Shebeen which none of us had been to yet. Long story short, we ended up there for a few more drinks. I did not ride the mechanical bull, thank you very much. So we watched Nigeria lose, and then headed home.

Wednesday I was a little tired and after a mind-blowing meeting at Sandbar in Camps Bay, I didn’t manage to get all that much work done before again, leaving work relatively early (this time at 4:30) to go join my fellow Americans at the Purple Turtle. Wow, I had not seen so many Americans all together in one place since I got to Cape Town. Nor had I seen so many drunk people in one place. Drunk Americans are somehow particularly obnoxious, I now realize. Anyway the USA-Algeria game was also pretty emotionally draining, with the win coming in extra time to propel the team out of the group stage. It was a pretty happy walk back to Perspectives, and my phone was ringing off the hook with my various South African friends who had turned to supporting the U.S. sending their regards.

So I had every intention of doing work in the evening. Instead I went to go pick up an additional Netherlands-Cameroon ticket I’d bought for my friend and instead wound up drinking wine with a couple friends and telling them what was going on at work, catching up, etc. Following that, I wound up watching the evening game with my next door neighbour, who is from Zimbabwe originally. That was great, because we always passed each other in the hallway but never really talked. On the negative side, I don’t think I got to bed until nearly 1am.

Thursday I witnessed an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous sunrise while doing deadlifts (my first time actually – the first time we had them I was sick and the second time I was injured so I couldn’t go very high in weight). I finally had a productive work day and in the evening went to the Netherlands-Cameroon game. At this point it was a meaningless game as Cameroon was not advancing and the Netherlands were, but hey – at center field, 7 rows from the pitch and right next to the tunnel where the players go in, you can’t complain about much of anything. That was one heck of an experience, to be that close to a World Cup match regardless of the stakes. Of course this being my third game, the fan walk annoyed me with all the people walking slowly but on the positive side the World Cup is the one time you can just walk down the road drinking a beer in public without being hassled. Love it. On the way back, my friend and I stopped by the Mexican Shebeen. In our defense, it was on the way. Other than that I have no excuse … again much the same as a typical night out in Boston but just three days in a row, coupled with some severe stress … not the best idea.

So it was all downhill from there – I was just exhausted Friday at work and got myself so pumped up on caffeine that I didn’t even realize when I was getting ill. After pinching something in my arm that evening at the gym it finally hit me as I was making dinner and actually relaxed for the first time all week that I realized had a sore throat and really felt pretty awful.

As a result I didn’t do much on Saturday at all other than sleep, go to the Old Biscuit Mill to stock up on provisions, sleep, watch soccer, and sleep. Oh yeah, the USA lost to Ghana. I was sad, for a little while, but I’m over it. It was hard anyway to root against an African team – now I really, really, really hope they (Ghana) beat Uruguay! Feeling very bad for all my English friends all over the world just now … coming from a country where people actually really like soccer, that had to be crushing.

Sunday was better – I went for a two-hour hike with a friend, then to her parents’ house in Fish Hoek just to chill for a couple of hours. That, followed by a beautiful drive back to Cape Town, was just what I needed to unwind and get myself in a good mental state for the week to come.

Hectic Work and Soccer Weekend

The last couple days of work went by in a blur! I must say working with the interns from Norway is a pleasure – they bring both a level of enthusiasm and energy to the process that is just phenomenal.

There are eight total. Two are working on a business plan with the Food Tents team, two are working on a business plan for voluntourism, two are working on a business plan to make orphanages financially sustainable, and two are working on helping with the hamper and collateral design for Purple Heart, and then with an entrepreneurship competition that the Hub is going to be having next month.

What I find great about working with them, too, is to be able to provide strategic guidance but have someone else do the legwork! Quite a challenge for a perfectionist, detail-oriented person like me but it’s interesting – at each point in my working life when I have had to move further away from the trenches, or the front lines, I’ve actually found it easier to give up than I suspected I would. This is no different. It is great to have people work on business plans for some of these things, because we just haven’t had the bandwidth.

The orphanage project is particularly interesting to me because even the business model is unclear – should it be a consulting business, or should it actually buy up orphanages in order to standardise cost structures and make it easier to obtain government and donor funding, while at the same time working the revenue side at the grass roots level. This is where the feasibility study comes in – you need to do just enough operations and financial analysis to decide which path to pursue in more detail in the business plan.

I should also give a kind shout-out to the folks at Twitter, who restored a deactivated Twitter account that someone had been brand-squatting on. This was all done quickly and efficiently, despite their policy of never reactivating deactivated accounts. I figured they might make an exception in this case, and it turns out I was right!

Unfortunately throughout the whole week I had been getting more and more sleep-deprived thanks to a combination of lots of work, World Cup, and waking up early in the morning. Friday morning’s coaching session consisted of two cups of coffee (which I didn’t even feel – and this from someone who doesn’t drink caffeine except for in emergencies), and trying to explain percentages to Patrick. He was taught a formula to determine percents, which he could do on his mobile phone, but he had no idea what a percent actually meant. It was so interesting trying to step back and explain something that is as basic to me as calculating 20% of 100. We got on the subject when I tried to explain that as the model required 20% of weekly profits to going to repaying the loan for the initial inventory, and I realised that he didn’t understand the concept that as profits went up, so would the amount going to repay the loan. So I used the muffins in the center of the table (no, I didn’t eat any) to explain: if you have 10 muffins, and 10 people, how many muffins does each person get? 1. OK, so each person gets 1, and there are a total of 10 so that is 1/10 which is what percent? So if you have 100 muffins and 20 people (you get the idea). Yeah so anyway I think at least part of this sunk in; we’ll see next week!

Friday was really, really hectic – I was literally running around the entire day. At least I can run around easily now, so that’s a definite plus. It was particularly stressful because I had (er, I mean I wanted to) leave early to go watch the USA game which started at 4. Mind you work “officially” ends at 3pm on Fridays (this being Cape Town!), but boy did I feel badly running out at 2:58!

I met up with my one friend from Stellenbosch at my apartment complex, and after I borrowed a Tunisia jersey (best design I have seen, actually, shame they are not in the World Cup!) we headed to Zula, again managing to snag a table on the balcony. Really, where better to watch World Cup games than the balcony of Zula I ask you? I could seriously just move in there.

Well, that game was extremely entertaining, if nerve-wracking! My co-worker showed up about half-way through so the three of us enjoyed the game. Wow, imagine the stress of a comeback against Slovenia … on the plus side, at least Germany had an embarrassing loss earlier in the day.

So there were some English fans there. I’m sorry, actually, I think that Cape Town was pretty well invaded by English fans that day … anyway these particular fans were kind enough to paint a shield on my face. The least they could do, I suppose, having been more interested in watching Long Street for Algerians to jeer at than watching the USA game!

Not satisfied by the small-scale face paint, my friend went for the full-on face paint (one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen in my entire life!) on the way to the stadium. This after interrupting a fabulous conversation I was having about Plato with one of the bartenders – he actually knew Thucydides which was highly impressive to me! But as it was, we had to sprint to our seats to get there for the national anthems: the queue to get in was just as absurd as it had been the prior week. Suck; I’m going to have to leave work so early on Thursday.

The crowd for the match (England-Algeria) was pretty much a full-on home-field advantage for England. Which would have been a good thing had England been able to get the ball out of midfield and/or convert on any of their scoring opportunities. As it was, the crowd booed them a lot. At least we had something approaching a brass band in one of the sections near us; turning the mood of the game into something akin to a college football game. So that was pretty cool!

Despite the complete and utter lack of scoring, I thought the game was pretty entertaining. I also managed to entertain myself by refusing to eat the street food having skipped dinner and doing dishes at midnight so that I could make myself some eggs. This was all the more amusing because I had the exact same meal for breakfast the next day.

Saturday morning I went and … well enjoyed would be the wrong word a workout that managed to make me sore the next day; a bit of a rarity. Considering that my triceps were jelly for a good hour afterwards, I’d say I got off lucky. This workout was most notable by all four of us lucky enough to do it sprawling on the floor after without moving for a solid couple minutes. Ahh, lying still felt so good. Also, unlike some people, I didn’t have to push any torture device-like objects around the parking lot with a hangover. An hour and a half after my workout ended and only one “oh, you’re still here?” comment from one of the coaches I went out to meet a couple friends for lunch.

After lunch we proceeded to the fan fest (my first time there!) to catch the Ghana game (they tied). Our group had grown significantly at this point so we took a shared taxi over to the waterfront where we proceeded into some heavily-fortified compound to the rented flat of a couple from Angola who are in town for a couple of weeks with their gorgeous two-year-old daughter Stephanie. For some reason this little girl just loved me – she kept following me around and when I picked her up she refused to be put down – every time I tried to give her to someone else she would grab me. Whenever her parents took her she would start crying! I’m convinced it’s because I was having a good hair day.

We watched the sad Cameroon loss here (yes, it really is all about the African teams), and I’ll admit by the end of the game I was getting very sleepy – sleep debt was finally catching up to me. However, the excitement of taking a bus that resembled a roller coaster back to the fan fest woke me up, and about five of us proceeded back to Long Street to … you guessed it, Zula! There we drank and danced, and I concluded that the only good thing about there being so many World Cup tourists in town is that I think I bought only one drink all night. For the most part they are tremendously boring, and ask all these ridiculous questions like “how safe is it really to live around here?” Ummm … depends how foolish you are. So eventually around 3am I went to grab a cab home, and another reason it will be a bit nice when the World Cup is over is these cabbies are a pain in the neck to negotiate with. They must think all people with American accents don’t know what’s up.

I am unable to sleep in, so I woke up, caught up on some work, went on a grocery run (typical Sunday), thought about going to the beach but decided against it because I couldn’t bring my laptop. Sad, eh? Then I proceed to watch three soccer games in a row, broken up only by taking a nap and cooking dinner in the middle. Yep, a lazy Sunday. Well, the World Cup only comes once every four years.

On to Monday! For some reason I just wasn’t mentally with it in the morning … not paying much attention to what I was doing in the workout. Sample:
“Jump up on the box and step down.” What do I do? Jump on the box and jump down.
“OK when I say bring your elbows up, don’t bring your chest forward?” What do I do? Bring my chest forward. And then I forgot that wall balls start at the bottom. I think I was distracted by the mountain of work I knew I had waiting for me at the office.

But, in positive news, I managed to accomplish everything I needed to! The best news of the day is that I took two of the Norwegian interns with me to a printing company in Pinelands and pretty well sorted out the Purple Heart hamper design in about 40 minutes, and found an existing pattern that would work for us so that we don’t need to spend R600 and wait a few weeks to have a dye made to our specifications. Updating the model to account for the hamper cost was actually good fun, and it amused me to no end to go down to the Purple Heart offices and measure the size of the candy bars so that I could calculate how we would need to cut the cellophane rolls. As my co-worker pointed out, this sort of activity is actually more challenging for me than writing some market or industry analysis, and it’s always good to stretch one’s brain in new ways.

The only other news is in Spain’s first goal of the World Cup (somehow they lost to Switzerland ???) I witnessed the most beautiful goal I have seen in my life. Stunning; this must be why they call it the beautiful game. Also as I have a bet that Spain is going to win it all, it’s nice to see them win a game!

Oops, missed a day

Guess that’s what happens when you are too busy with life to write down what’s going on! So after the Friday night soccer fever, we context-switched a bit. After some ungodly workout that I’m not inclined to remember or look up, and some lunch, a group of us headed over to Newlands to watch the Springboks (SA rugby team) take on the French in a friendly match. I drove, which was exciting mainly because we were passed on the way by the French rugby team bus and a police escort, causing great amusement in the back seat. I was amused that the team wasn’t already there 90 minutes before game time! Because I drove rather than taking a cab, we were not able to find the rest of our group for a good portion of the match, but that’s neither here nor there: I was there for the game, not to socialise. My ears were thrilled that vuvuzelas were banned at the stadium (as much fun as they are!).

So we were in the standing section behind one of the goals, as we didn’t realize there was a match on until a couple of weeks back and this was the only way a large group could all go together. Having said that, it was great because we were actually quite close to the field and packed in with the “real” fans who were more than happy to help sneak in Black Label (alcohol not being allowed in the stands – one very unfortunate aspect of this country; apparently the beer at the World Cup is FIFA again strong-arming the country) and teach me more words in Afrikaans. This mostly consisted of me listening, hearing a word I recognized way out of context and asking “why in the world are you talking about sleep (slaap)?” “We’re waiting for a French comeback; just wait, the Boks always fall asleep in the second half!” This followed by an explanation of some of the other words used. I also learned that one of the Boks is a chiropractor in Cape Town – man that would scare me, someone that strong leaning on my back!

The game? Well, it wasn’t much of a match as the French team was seriously outclassed. I think the Boks scored the first try within the first 2 minutes, and it was pretty much all downhill from there for the visitors. So, as this is the closest that I can get to American football in this country, it will do. Still, there’s nothing quite like a good NFL game!

Following the match I went to meet a friend from the U.S. and his friends over on Long Street. Oddly enough, on my way there I encountered a friend with whom I had lost a bet (yes, I bet on the Stanley Cup Finals. I’m a sucker for a bet, at least when there’s alcohol involved). So, my mission was to get my friend drunk so after he ate dinner (some damn good lasagne, I ate a bite) we headed to Zula to grab a seat on the balcony and watch the USA-England game.

Now this was amusing because the only other USA fan in the place was just embarrassingly drunk. At one point he was saying what bad luck he was, and he should just commit suicide so I suggested to my friend that he might jump off the balcony. Apparently I sounded serious, so it’s a good thing perhaps this guy didn’t hear me!

I’m sure by now everyone has seen the own-goal that the English goal keeper managed to score (credited to Clint Dempsey I believe). Now I’m a hockey fan; I’ll take a garbage goal any time but, well, still a bit embarrassed to tie the game like that. Less embarrassed writing this a week later after the USA’s lovely comeback (!) against Slovenia (!!), and England’s scoreless draw with Algeria (!!!).

Long story short, match over we drank some more then moved on to the Waiting Room (another of my faves, at least the roof deck), but it was far too cold for the roof deck. Even the guy from Calgary admitted it, but in his defence he was in a t-shirt and coming down with an illness. Then back to Zula where our friends were. Eventually I went home, realising that I had to be up in a couple of hours to meet my friends for our trip down the peninsula!

Three Mountain Challenge and Tragedy for Bafana Bafana

The plan for the day was to hike the three mountains near Cape Town – Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain, and Lion’s Head, in that order. Now, any of the two former hikes are generally considered a decent day trip. Of course, all the time I’ve been here I’ve not managed to hike any of these so I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Then again, even if I had this is right up my alley.

It was pouring overnight, and I was a bit afraid that the hike would be off. But, happily, my carpool arrived only a few minutes late and we picked up two other people before heading to the Rhodes Memorial car park by Newlands (same exit as the rugby stadium, actually, but you turn the other way off the M3. Still haven’t figured out what the M in the highways means … one of these days I’ll look it up).

From there, the fog was quite intense, and it was also pretty cold, so thank goodness for layers. I should also mention at this point that we had had quite the intense leg work out the day before and so while I apparently fared better than some of my comrades, my quads were burning more than they should have been the first half hour or so. So, a shout out to Cape CrossFit for making this whole thing more difficult than it had to be!

So, what to say about a hike? We climbed up three mountains, although we started with the highest climb (~700m, then Table Mountain was ~500m, and Lion’s Head 300m). Now, Devil’s Peak or at least the route we took involved climbing up some lovely rocks. Apparently “technical” is trail speak for rock climbing. Not sure that is the word I would use, because this didn’t really require any particular skills other than basic climbing. Nothing too tremendously challenging in the grand scheme of things – I think when we encountered the first one I was thinking, huh, well, now, I had expected a stroll or some steps not full-on rock-climbing but ok whatever. By one of the more difficult ones I was thinking that a) I was glad my upper body was strong enough to take some of the pressure off of my legs, b) thank goodness my tailbone is nearly healed, c) don’t look down, and d) don’t look up. Ha!!

We climbed along a route called Knife’s Edge which apparently has some pretty sheer drop-offs on either side. I say apparently because due to the fog we couldn’t see anything which may actually have been a good thing! We were lucky though in that usually the clouds hide the Newlands/Rondebosch side of the mountain but on this day we couldn’t see anything towards Cape Town but when the cloud lifted we could see Newlands pretty well, and there were plenty of Cape Town sights later on in the day.

At the top of each peak, my co-worker whose birthday it almost was (the actual birthday was Thursday), ate a piece of cake, and someone else blew a vuvuzela. Bafana Bafana’s second match against Uruguay was in the evening. Sadly (for me, at least!), this co-worker is moving back to the UK very soon, hence the mission to hike all three peaks in one day.

The climb down from Devil’s Peak was quite nice, and the hike across to Table Mountain afforded lots of photo opps of the fynbos. I saw my first blue protea, and the first yellow one I can recall seeing. We also walked past and under waterfalls, a bush/tree with flowers that smelled divine, sort of like orange blossoms, and a single oak tree.

Then we hiked up Platteklip Gorge. That was painful. I finished about the middle of the pack which I was happy with given the condition of my legs and the fact that I hadn’t been hiking in a while. Guess I need to practice more! At the top of the mountain it was absolutely frigid … we ate some late lunch outside before heading inside for some hot chocolate but it was seriously cold! Like probably 40 F. Feel it it is cold!!

After descending the same way we came up, we realized that time was short and we had to run if we were going to do Lion’s Head before the end of the day. There was a bit of amusement at this point when it was asked if anyone wanted to drop out at this point. No one volunteered, so we were off to the races. It was around this time that I quit trying to keep my feet dry and just ran. And by ran, I mean lunged around … this was not exactly a flat path; more like an obstacle course. Or a shiggy trail.

On to Lion’s Head! At the base of this mountain we met some other people who had come just for the final leg, and we set off at a good clip. I remember someone saying that Lion’s Head wasn’t remotely strenuous, and this was pretty true. By the time we reached what a friend from the UK had called “the chains of death” I was so pleased to have a) a situation in which I could use my arms to do some of the work and b) the luxury of chains to help climb the rock face that I was quite pleased.

At the top, we had champagne and still-warm shortbread, and I disappointed a bunch of Canadians who thought I was Canadian. Yes, it is a bit odd that of the four pieces of branded clothing I bring to this country one is for Canada CCM hockey (I’m still bumming I left the Flyers CCM hockey sweatshirt at home!!), and another is a Dropkick Murphy’s shirt, and I’m neither Canadian nor ethnically Irish. But, to be fair, the Dropkicks are a Boston band! As for the others, I can claim association.

Following the hike I went by the gym to do some foam rolling by way of stretching. This was absolutely key, I am convinced, to my ability to walk the next day. Also, it afforded an opportunity to explain why I wasn’t there at 17:30 like I should have been. No, I don’t have a problem or anything …

By the time I got back to my apartment around 7 everyone was heading out to watch the Bafana game. After showering and cooking dinner, it was around 8 and aside from one of my roommates who told me she was at the fan park by the Waterfront (where I would never have been able to find them), no one texted me back. I’m going to assume they couldn’t find their phones. So, I went to the tuck shop on Hope Street that I’d passed on the way home and watched there, sitting on a milk crate with a bunch of Somalians, and a handful of South Africans. I say, that was a hell of a lot more fun anyway than going and standing in some crowded bar with a bunch of Americans, so I’m glad it worked out the way it did and I got an excuse to do that. And only one person walked in and looked at me like I had three heads, so maybe the World Cup fever is making a difference, who knows?

So the game itself … not so good. RSA did not play particularly well and despite what we all wanted, they didn’t really deserve to win. However, anything would have been possible had it not been for the red card called on the goalie Khune (described by the Mail & Guardian thusly: “From the media tribune and television replays, Busacca appeared to have confused the World Cup with the Oscars, awarding the penalty for what appeared an appreciation of Uruguay striker Luis Suarez's thespian skills.”) anything could have happened. It was 1-0 Uruguay before the red card, and 2-0 and a very deflated team, stadium, and country afterwards.

Yes, I did take this harder than the Flyers loss. What is happening to me??

Cape Point, and Business Plans

Sunday I woke up after not a ton of sleep and headed over to Green Point to see an old friend from the U.S. (rather, a friend I hadn’t seen in many years) and his wife. On the agenda for the day was a repeat of last year’s tourist excursion to Boulders Beach at Simon’s Town and then Cape Point.

The drive itself down there is a reward in and of itself as it is just stunning. Also, those penguins are just adorable although it seems like there are possibly even fewer this year than there were last year. I will hope they were just hiding somewhere as the day wasn’t the nicest – a tad overcast and cloudy. That was probably the most unfortunate part of the trip, that my friends couldn’t see the full glory that is False Bay on a clear day. Well, they will just need to return.

Monday morning we had our first business coaching sessions with the Purple Heart guys. Mine is named Patrick and, like the others, is from Khayelitsha. At first we got to know each other a little bit – the best part of this is that since I am from the U.S. I had the opportunity to show him some pictures of things he had never seen; namely fall foliage, snow, and the deep green of summer. One of the most interesting insights I had from this is when I showed him a picture of my place in Bolton the first thing he asked was wasn’t I afraid to live there. I said no, why would I be, to which he replied that neighbors were nowhere in sight. So interesting – I guess it makes sense as he has been his whole life in a very densely populated environment, but that thought had never occurred to me. After that we went over the sales reporting; we couldn’t do inventory for lack of a starting inventory count. I would say the main lesson of this day was the concept of profit – Purple Heart is selling him candy bars for, for example, R8, and he is then selling them for R10, so the profit per bar is R2, and just because he has taken in R10 doesn’t mean he gets to keep all of that because he needs to restore his inventory.

On Monday also a group of eight Norwegians began volunteer work at heart, tasked with writing business plans for several of our concepts that no one has had time to write business plans for. The group is in graduate school, with a diverse set of backgrounds (mostly business, economics, finance, marketing – and one guy who studied civil engineering!). Anyway they do not require a great deal of business training, but I was tasked with giving them an overview of our business plan template. This, unsurprisingly, quickly morphed into supervising their progress and helping get them the materials they need to do what they need to do.

At the same time, I spent a good deal of time working with my co-worker on the Purple Heart business plan, getting through most of the market and industry analysis sections.

Unfortunately I haven’t had a ton of time to work on my own materials – I was doing a good job of balancing this with working on Purple Heart, but this plus supervising four groups of people is taking up nearly all my bandwidth. So, I am going to have to get more efficient for one thing.

Wednesday being a national holiday, we had the day off. My plans for the day included waking up quite early to go hiking, and I was pretty exhausted as it was I did not join my friends for a night out on the town. Apparently it was quite a good one, but as they did not get back until 3:30 in the morning and I had to be ready for pickup at 7:45 I am quite glad I went to bed relatively early!

Of course through all this is World Cup: since the games are on in prime time here I think I have watched every single evening game. The Tuesday night game between Italy and Paraguay was in Green Point and a bunch of my friends went. I would have been jealous had the weather not been absolutely freezing and pouring rain, and they had to walk all the way to and from the stadium like that, ha!

World Cup Fever

IT IS HERE!

I was to be at work at 8am on Friday for a team meeting with the Purple Heart guys (I am mentoring one of them starting now), so I had to go to the early session at the gym. Today it was rowing 3x500 meters, which wasn’t the most fun in the world with my injury … took me at least 5-6 strokes to get up to speed. At least I managed to get faster each time, so that’s a positive. Can’t wait until I’m fully recovered.

When I got to work, none of the Purple Heart people were there (actually one of the girls was there, but none of the boys). So I was quite annoyed that I had gotten up early and missed part of my workout (early session is only a half session), but it turned out that someone had cut the train lines in Khayelitsha, so they literally couldn’t get here in a timely manner. Why would someone do that? I have no idea.

So we rescheduled our meetings with our mentees for Monday morning and three of us spent some more time going over the coaching template where we enter in sales, and inventory and such. We had a nice discussion about actual vs theoretical inventory, and getting that onto the sheet. Good stuff – it’s all the same, just on a much smaller scale than I’m used to.

After that I met with my co-worker for an hour or so to review my comments on the first half of the parent support manual for the parents of recovering drug addicts. There is a lot of work for both of us to do here; I really need to do better at making time for it. It’s hard, especially with World Cup as except for the weekends when I am pretty selfish and just have a good time my time is very busy and I’m either working or working out, cooking, commuting etc. – what I’m saying is I don’t have a ton of free time until pretty late in the evening and from now on it’s going to be soccer, soccer, and more soccer! But, I’ll figure out a way. I always do.

I don’t think much work went on at work – I got a good picture of everyone listening to the K’naan Like a Waving Flag song on YouTube, except this one guy who is on the phone trying to make sales. I sure as heck couldn’t concentrate. We were told we could leave at noon but I did leave a bit early.

I took my co-worker home to Obs so she could change, then into the city. We walked around for a while gaping at the crowds until she met up with her friends and I went back to my place to get a flag drawn on my face and drink a beer. We shortly all headed out to meet our other friends, who were at a place called Tommy’s Sports Bar on Loop Street. The fan park had been closed since about noon – SO MANY people! Walking through the streets was amazing for so many reasons. First of all, everyone was super excited, about half were wearing Bafana Bafana yellow, or dressed up in some other way. People were tooting their vuvuzelas everywhere which can be quite annoying but at this time it was just fabulous. There were more non-whites around than I think I’ve ever seen, and actually I’ve never seen so many people in the streets of Cape Town, and probably never will again unless somehow Bafana make the finals or somehow a game here in Cape Town. I had just never seen the like, at least not *before* a big game.

Tommy’s was packed, and very hot – the whole experience was pretty cool, except that I was forced to keep drinking beer constantly so I didn’t dehydrate (how’s that work, right? Well, it was hot!). The mood was very, very excited. Everyone was just on the edge of their metaphorical seats all game. I can also honestly say I have never been this interested in a soccer game in my entire life.

When Tshabalala scored the Bafana goal the whole place erupted. Check that, the whole damn COUNTRY erupted. My one friend described it as pandemonium – we were jumping up and down and hugging complete strangers for what felt like minutes. Same, when Mexico scored the tying goal it was like half the air went out of a tire. I was really, really afraid Mexico would win because I knew that the feeling in the air that had been there since before the Thursday concert would just be ruined, so the result was actually OK. A win would have been better, but we were partying in the streets for a non-loss. Well, you take what you can get.

So after the match I went back to get my ticket and for some crazy reason (probably all the beer!) I forgot my earplugs that I had gotten from my co-worker. The vuvuzelas can cause permanent hearing damage, you see, and I wasn’t having any of that. In a panic, near Green Point, I went into a chemist just before it closed and found some earplugs. I actually got some fabulous ones – they are silicone or something and reusable, and can be shaped into whatever shape you need.

Long story short, getting into the match was absurd. Took nearly 45 minutes, I think and halfway through the power went out so we were all standing in the dark; I’m surprised there wasn’t a stampede! The lines for Budweiser were about 50 people long, so I quit drinking at this point, which was unfortunate because the game was a snooze (or as my co-worker said on Monday morning: “Yeah, it was kak!”). Ha! But the vibe was great, until the teams (France and Uruguay) decided to put us all to sleep with their boring play. I was also very grateful to have the earplugs in! I think being at the match is ok because you can hear the crowd oohing and ahhing, and only then do the vuvus start, but when you watch on TV as I later saw you can’t hear a darn thing over the constant hum of the vuvuzelas.

Some of my friends were going out after; I made a half-hearted attempt to join them but basically just went to bed around midnight. Amazingly, I was able to sleep.

Oh, speaking of which, I have already nearly forgotten the sad Flyers loss in the Stanley Cup final. I was very upset, mainly that I’d woken up in the middle of the night and lost my sleep and that they had tied it up with 4 minutes to go, only to lose in overtime. But it was funny – I got to the gym in the morning spitting nails, and by about 20 minutes in I was in a legitimately good mood, between thinking of the World Cup and just the general endorphin rush. I will say thinking about those Blackhawks helped me push through a set of pushups faster than normal. But yes, it’s true, at the moment I care more about Bafana Bafana than about the USA team or the Flyers. Perhaps not surprising from someone who roots for Canada in hockey over the U.S….

A couple moments/things I’m sure I’ll never forget:
• Driving into town on De Waal drive with the windows down singing along to Cooler as Ekke
• Masses of people on Adderley and the fan walk
• Dancing and singing Waka Waka in the bathroom with two random black women
• The feeling at the moment Bafana Bafana scored
• Walking down Long Street which was jampacked with people, partying in the streets. Like when the Pats first won the Super Bowl
• Finally turning around and seeing the pitch for the first time – my first professional soccer game!
• Everyone, and I mean everyone, grinning at each other all day.

So I don’t think the World Cup will benefit SA economically in either the short- or long-run. What I hope, what I really hope, is that some of the camaraderie and spirit that is in the air right now continues past the tournament. This country has a long way to go, and it’s going to be a rough road and it’s going to take a very, very long time. A lot more mixing, and a little more love and understanding, and just giving each other a chance will help. It’s going to be a team effort, and the easier the team plays together the easier it’s going to be. One [white] friend of mine from here was saying that he has this wishful feeling or hope that the World Cup will shatter the racial tensions. I don’t think that’s achievable but if it just makes people think twice even after the final game ends (Spain is going to win, by the way), then it will all have been worth it. Even the vuvuzelas.

In Need of a Deep Breath

Well, I’m certainly not bored. I haven’t been blogging a lot because any free time I have has been spent catching up on work (or ok, yes, on Facebook – it’s so easy and you can do it in bite-size chunks).

So this week my time was actually mainly spent on Purple Heart. This is one of heart’s social enterprises that we are incubating, and the goal is to get a business plan finished by the end of June. At the same time, the enterprise is actually up and running. On Sunday night I spent about two hours getting the franchise agreement ready for prime-time as the young entrepreneurs had to sign it around 11am Monday morning.

The concept of Purple Heart is that we take young people from the townships who have demonstrated entrepreneurial drive and have some business skills a chance to practice what they have learned through selling chocolates from stands that are placed in high-traffic pedestrian areas. This is intended to be a launching pad for these people to higher-paying and more challenging careers than street hawkers, but everyone has to start somewhere and they will learn valuable skills about sales, managing money, inventory, paying back loans, etc. The model is structured as a franchise where they will start off with a loan for the inventory and pay back the loan over time with their profits, along with paying a franchise fee. This will also teach the value of hard work – the more money they make, the more they get to take home.

Anyway Purple Heart is in a pilot phase at the moment and so as it is operating we are also refining the business model. I am working very closely with the person who is running Purple Heart on developing a business plan. As he is also running the business we are essentially trading off writing sections, and reviewing each others’ work.

A developing part of the business is to develop gift hampers (gift boxes, essentially) that can be sold to corporates for employee of the month, customer gifts, etc., or to individuals. So another project of the week was to go visit a printing company to try and figure out the design for the hamper and the cost to produce it. This was great fun – the location of the printing company is a house in the suburbs, actually about 1km from the guy from whom I bought my car! The business is relatively new, which is good because they want our business – one of the problems we had had up to this point was in getting the level of customisation we wanted at low volumes. A lot of larger printers simply refused. Also, they had a cat – cute little Siamese that was very affectionate.

Of course I still have my day job, which is to say the school, and am quite busy at the moment still working on the business plan section. I spent a good amount of time trying to find this quote that I had enjoyed from my MBA. I finally reacquired it and the quote is the following: “The skills and energy of the entrepreneur can make even a mediocre idea a success, but average people will ruin even a good idea.” – Rob Kuhling, ONSET Ventures.

I think by Thursday end of day I was a little bit overwhelmed. Well, not overwhelmed so much as feeling like I’m finally back in my element. My ex-boss had it right when he said that I was happiest when I had almost too much to do. Not really odd, I suppose – forced deadlines make you more efficient with your time.

In other news, the rest over the weekend really helped my tailbone and it’s certainly not almost back to normal or anything, but standing up is no longer excruciating, so that’s a start! Monday evening was the Fran challenge at Cape CrossFit, so I brought in some beet & avocado salad that was a big hit, and had dessert in the form of chocolate paleo “ice cream” before dinner. It was nice to talk to everyone in a bit more of a relaxed setting where I wasn’t pressed for time to need to get to work.

And I picked up my grass-fed ground beef, which I was unable to locate in a grocery store. There is something a bit hilarious about buying my meat from the guys who run my gym, but I’ll take it where I can get it and darn did I make a good stew out of it, although I had to modify the recipe heavily to account for what I had on hand. There are pros and cons to the availability of items, packaging, etc. here – one big plus is that tomatoes are sold in paper containers like milk cartons rather than the PBA-lined cans we get back in the States.

So I had bought an iBurst modem from my ex-coworker, but I was unable to get it to work on my 64-bit Windows, because the software was not available for download online. I went to a reseller to get them to install the software; 30 minutes later the guy told me I had to call iBurst because he wasn’t able to help me. Luckily for me, he left the CD in the drive so I was able to get it working later. Unluckily for me, I got trapped in the elevator on the way out of the building and had to force the door open. It was actually more amusing than anything – I was only afraid because that was the day of the Fran challenge and I had somewhere I needed to be!

I spent Thursday night at home watching the World Cup kickoff concert. There was a big party in the streets down by the fan fest, but to me the World Cup doesn't start until the first kickoff so I stayed at home to chill. But the anticipation was so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife!

Wacky Wine

So I had reinjured myself a bit at Thursday night at drinks night when someone hit me from behind in a crowded bar and I had to catch myself. As a result, I was unable to launch myself off the floor to get into a headstand, much to my chagrin. And, I had to use the heavy bands to support myself getting into the handstand position so I was forced to do long sets of handstand pushups (30, then 25). I must be quite weird, I really enjoy doing handstand pushups. But my coach started a sentence with “After seeing you train today I think you should rest – “ and I saw my life flash before my eyes as I thought he was going to say “for a week.” But luckily he said “for the weekend.”

I was quite pleased with myself that I managed to finish the workout of the day in under 5 minutes. Of course, I still managed to be late to work …

Work continued at a hectic pace as there is a lot of work to do by the end of next week! I spent much of the day working on new material, and reviewing and editing the fantastic material my coworker has been pumping out.

In the afternoon one of my coworkers did an intro session on Excel, as he is quite knowledgeable about it. The intro session didn’t really teach me much, but I did learn COUNTIF. I probably should have skipped it and just gone to the later sessions, but that’s ok.

I was a bit annoyed that one of my other coworkers had not made any progress on the franchise agreement that we need to have completed by 11am on Monday and I found this out at 4pm on Friday. C’est la vie I suppose.

A few of us went out for drinks after work at Buena Vista Social Club (yes, it’s really called that …) in Green Point just by the stadium. We had a visitor from Switzerland here for the week, so these were goodbye drinks. Pretty good mojitos, too, although they should be for the price they were charging. Yes, I know it’s like $4.50 but that’s expensive for here. I think all the prices are already jacked up for World Cup.

My friend Warric had come into town for the evening, so he and I met up and had a few beers before joining some others in my building for a few more. We eventually headed out to Long Street to a bar called The Waiting Room which has a fabulous roof deck. There we ran into a couple of my coworkers, and some friends from the building showed up. We didn’t stay too terribly long though as the bar was closing and the Flyers game was about to be on. Unfortunately my computer picked that exact time to lock up. When I restarted it Windows needed to repair the disk or something which it said could take over an hour. Eventually I got sick of waiting for it and fell asleep … but the Flyers won 4-2, tying up the series. Unfortunately they are going to need a road win in Chicago …. Hopefully that comes in the next game!

The next morning we packed up and headed onto a bus to Robertson Valley for the Wacky Wine festival. Our first stop was Van Lovering where we sampled the wines. This place has a fantastic Sauvignon Blanc for all of R35 (yes, the same price as my mojito). I’m not a white wine person at all, but I liked this one!

The group split into two; some went on a boat cruise and the rest of us did wine blending at Excelsior. Well, sort of. Someone had poured me a whole glass of wine just as we got there so I had to drink that before beginning to sample the blends … anyway at the end of that we made our own blend, bottled it up, and hit the road for Arbella winery where we had individual tents pitched up. The most fabulous thing was that the tents had mattresses in them! That was absolutely key, given my injury (which is feeling much better, by the way).

So at Arbella there was a band. And/or DJs, I’m not really sure. Wasn’t paying that much attention. So here, we continued drinking and dancing. I was kind of annoyed because some people were so drunk they were spilling wine all over me, and someone broke my wine glass (twice). After the second glass broke I figured I’d had about enough of crazy drunk people. Some of our friends were drinking tequila out in the parking lot but I wanted nothing to do with that … for some reason wine mixes particularly poorly with other liquors, for me. So a note to myself is that next time I should get out my sleeping bag while it’s still light out, because it was really hard to do in the dark with the little cell phone flashlight!

Eh, anyway woke up the next morning around dawn which was absolutely stunning. There was a coffee stand that had possibly the most fantastic latte I’ve had in a long time. Who would have thought? We basically just hung out until around 10:30 when we headed back home. A lot of people looked a bit the worse for wear, and most people slept on the way back. I was (am) extremely relieved that my tailbone is feeling much better – I was even able to jog a little bit today (over to a white horse that I wanted to pet) without feeling any pain.

I’m almost done icing myself (I bought some bags of peas at Pick n Pay on sale) so now I can get started on this work that I have to do, sigh …

In the deep end

So if I was concerned yesterday about being bored for a little while … no more. First of all, I am now getting involved with one of the in-house social enterprises called Purple Heart. Its entire business and operational model are being changed, and there are a couple of things that need to be done like yesterday, such as putting together a franchise agreement for the young entrepreneurs it will be working with. But, actually, this needs to be done before Monday so not a lot of time.

I also agreed to be a business coach/mentor for two hours a week for one of five young entrepreneurs. These five have been with us for a while, and we met with a few of them a couple weeks back in a round-table discussion. I am actually quite looking forward to this – I know learned a lot last year by working directly with the students in the townships, and I will learn a lot by working with these guys, hectic backgrounds and all. But at least I know not to insult their pride!

I was reminded as we had a very productive two-hour meeting in the Purple Heart offices how much I enjoyed my time at Ask Jeeves International, where we had a small, tight-knit group of people and we (pretty much) all liked and trusted one another. This feels the same. Also the nature of our open plan space area and very limited real estate makes the work much more collaborative by definition than at my last company where we were portioned off into offices.

Anyway as if that wasn’t hectic enough, taking up most of my afternoon coming up to speed, then working through the operational model, and trying to get my head around the level of sales that would be required to make the business model work I met with the CBDO to talk about how the school will work with Purple Heart over the next three weeks. Apparently by the time the project manager in charge leaves at the end of June, he is supposed to have written a business plan. It is most likely the case that there will not be enough time to put him through the full business plan school module (if it were developed, that is … I am currently working on class 1 out of 10 that I have to do!), so we will probably need to do a needs assessment and then tailor what we teach him. Talk about just-in-time product delivery, I am going to have to step up my pace of development even from what I had planned.

In brighter news, the Flyers won game 3 in OT. Again I didn’t watch the game as it occurred during the middle of a school night and I wanted to be at the gym bright and early, but I woke up just after 5am local time and I knew the Flyers had won. Boy, if they had lost I would really have been surprised. Sometimes you just know things.

Tonight is welcome drinks at some bar in Observatory for all the new people. At the moment I am icing myself and now that I’m done writing this up will move on to reviewing the parent support module I said I would review for my coworker.

Bruised tailbone

Yes, I bruised my tailbone. And no, I’m not going to tell the gory details of how I did it. Some things are better left to the imagination. Ag. One thing I can say is that the workouts of the day are quite a bit less enjoyable when jumping around is painful … hopefully this heals quickly. Apparently ice helps so I am giving that a try.

I also have a bruise on my chest from the chest-to-bar pullups (jumping pullups to be exact, seriously …) we did at one of the workouts, and my first opened blister due to the many repetitive knees-to-chest I had to do in lieu of situps which hurt my tailbone too much. Yes, I am proud of this. Yes, I know, I’m starting to think I was right all along that this CrossFit thing is a bit of a cult …

The first half of this week was punctuated by errands – getting my car inspected for insurance purposes, and a trip to the U.S. Consulate in Tokai to get a document notarized. I scored some free double-sided tape from the guys at GlasFit, and attached my registration plates to my car. That was probably the most fun I’ve ever had or ever will have involving license plates.

The trip to the Consulate was worth the $30 fee just to get to check the Consulate out, and I actually got to meet the Consul General (through bulletproof glass, though, ha!) as he is the notary public. I was a little afraid when I got there and saw about 15 people sitting in chairs waiting for various things but I guess their needs must have been complication because I was waved right through to citizen services and was out of there as quickly as could be expected under the circumstances.

Back at work, we’ve been wrapping up the facilitator notes for the Feasibility Study, and I’ve been working on fleshing out the Business Plan presentations and facilitator notes. If it sounds boring, it’s because it sort of is … I mean, it’s absolutely necessary work, and it’s great to get to put my own spin on what is and is not important in a business plan. Having said that, it’s not terribly challenging work.

We did have a good meeting on Wednesday to review our current state and discuss next steps with the CEO and the Chief Business Development Officer, and I’m going to be getting more involved in the business model shaping of one of the internal ventures.

Super 14 final, Springboks, and Camps Bay (again)

Saturday’s morning workout was “the bear.” After that, I felt like I could conquer the world. Instead, I took my roommate to the Old Biscuit Mill for lunch (mixed schwarma again … I couldn’t resist it!) and to stock up on meat since next weekend we are away and I wouldn’t be able to go shopping. I also bought a whole fish (red roman).

In the afternoon we didn’t really do much except walk down with a friend to pick up World Cup tickets. Now, THAT was a seamless process. Internet sales FTW, and FIFA wonders why … all right, that story has been told a million times already, never mind.

Today was this guy Ian’s 21st birthday and it also happened to be the date of the Super 14 rugby final between the local Stormers and the Pretoria Bulls. Blue Bulls, even. So I texted Ian and he and I headed to the local pub to catch the game. At this pub I drank a beer that tasted like the dregs from a popcorn machine. Well, it was a local microbrew so at least it was something different. Oh yeah and the Stormers lost, something about more than one movement in the first half when they nearly had a try (that’s kind of the equivalent of a touchdown in football), which meant they weren’t ever really very close. Might have been a different game had the score been tighter. But one Bull move that resulted in a try was quite something elegant to behold, I must say! As you might or might not imagine, the pub was SRO for the entire game. Kinda fun, though, to be in that environment.

Afterwards, we had a birthday dinner/going away dinner for someone who was leaving at Hudson’s burger joint on Kloof Street. I am pleased to report that I had my first real beer in South Africa at this restaurant! Hudson’s Pale Ale. Now I know where to go! The burgers were pretty good, too, even if it took forever to get them.

A party in Ian’s flat was quickly followed by a sojourn to Long Street. One highlight of the evening was one of our compatriots ordering something like 40 Springbok shots at one time. The mixed blessings of photographic evidence …

Sunday morning I slept in. It feels quite odd to sleep past 8am … as I am used to getting up at 6, or 8 on Saturday sleeping until 10 literally feels like I’m sleeping until noon. As there is not much to do on Sundays I cooked my fish, nursed my hangover, and drove a crew of people to the beach where I lay around reading for a bit. Nothing very interesting, but that’s a chill Sunday. Time to start branching out to different beaches, though … although I’m not convinced a more perfect beach exists. I can’t wait for October and Saturday morning beach workouts (ok, I may be getting a little obsessed).