Partaking of the Forbidden Fruitcake

hopefully those of you in america reading this find my experience with witch doctors as fascinating as i do. i haven't talked to too many people here about it yet because i'm trying to take a jane goodall, gorilla's in the mist approach to this aspect of south africa. just sit back and observe and see where it gets me. that brings me to today.

after spending the day hiking a mini nature reserve with karyn (the blond from matchmaker.com), her twin sister and mom and dad i drove home and had a little talk with richard and priscilla as i commonly do.

richard and priscilla wanted me to know that they were very concerned for me when they heard that joelene was going to see a witch doctor. i asked them, "do you think i might be asked to drink something poisonous or something?" y'see, i just ASSUME that people here, like me, who aren't practicing witchcraft see it as novel or quaint. WRONG!!!

y'see people here in south africa tend to subscribe to some sort of religion or spirituality. i never really thought about it before but i guess superstition doesn't always end at the pages of your own religious text.

personally, not being superstitious in the least i observe religion in a very disaffected manner. like watching a movie. much of it is beautiful, moving and amazing but only in the sense that i realize i'm watching ancient rituals. "i can't believe people have been doing the same stuff for thousands of years" i think to myself.

richard and priscilla are christians. the reason they are worried about joelene seeing a witch doctor isn't because they're afraid someone'll slip roofies or some sort of poison in the brew but because they see the practice as satanic. they don't want my soul being tainted or worse, for me to begin practicing witchcraft. i tried to reassure them that where i come from we have witchcraft also. except that in the states we call it "holistic medicine".

but after explaining what holistic medicine is, the two weren't satisfied with the comparison that i feel is 100% valid. richard told me that the powers conjured by the witch doctors are from satan. "don't you believe in satan". i guess i hadn't told them that i was jewish. priscilla was surprised that even as a jew i didn't believe in satan. priscilla told me if i didn't believe in satan, then who was it that gave eve the apple in eden? "jews believe that the serpent gave eve the forbidden fruit"

this led to a whole discussion about how the contents of the torah are interpreted differently by jews than they are by christians. i think richard and priscilla had a very tough time understanding how i could view witchcraft like i would view herbal tea; both pass through me and end up in the toilet while doing next to nothing on the way through.

my stance on religion remains: ignorance of ignorance is bliss.

but fear not friends. i base all my actions on what would make for the most exciting story to someday tell my grandchildren... so if there's a chance of me visiting a witch doctor, i'm taking it!

lastly, if you're interested in a surreal experience i had with a piece of grass, a breeze and a dirt road (how could you not?), go to the picasaweb page and look at this picture.

online dating in south africa: "the odds are pretty good but the goods are pretty odd"

or "ooh-ee-ooh-ah-ah ting-tang-wallah-wallah-bing-bang"

ten rand to whoever posts the next lines in each song above.

and sorry for the rocky and bullwinkle introduction.

as many of you know, i live in a small little granny flat and i'm still without a car of my own. using the company bakkie is a pain in the ass because it's a real chore to get in and out of the long steep driveway that i live at the end of. so my evenings have been pretty tame as of late. as paul simon would say, i've been taking my time but i don't know where.

in the meantime i've been spending time with virgilio but the bloke is leaving for a job site in richards bay (2 hours away) in may.

so enter the catalyst.

i joined an online dating service and told it to find me someone in maritzburg to show me around. it wasn't very long before my inbox was full of women from all over south africa wanting to chat and presumably show me around town.

let me tell you, the profiles that were showing up in my inbox were a great source of laughter and discussion and critiquing around the bridges department for days (tip: for your online dating pictures, if you're overweight, don't put a picture of you next to an elephant. should go without saying...).

being from a town near both the silicon valley and the birthplace of craigslist, online dating is something you might do without even giving it a second thought. not so here. maybe it's the high murder rate here, maybe it's the high rate of violent rape or maybe it's the aids everywhere but everybody cocked at least one eyebrow when they heard i was willing to put a picture of me online and say "email me!".

my interest was to find someone not just in kzn but within pmb. with that criterion (and one other criterion called "looks") i was left with only 2 eligible matches. i emailed them both and waited to see if i would get any response.

the first to email back was a very outgoing colored girl, joelene.

the second to email back, karyn, aka "kaz" was a petite shy blond who works as a computer administrator for stihl (think chainsaws).

here's where it gets (slightly) interesting:

the family i stay with had dinner the other night with the neighbors, the sampsons. during the course of the dinner, the sampsons started asking about the american living in their granny flat. y'see, the sampsons have a niece that had somehow developed a little bit of an interest in meeting me, y'see their two level home looks into the backyard here... this is how every healthy relationship should start.

the sampsons asked my landlords if they could get my email or phone number so their niece could contact me. the niece turns out to be the same joelene. joelene emailed me explaining that she'd talked to my neighbors and landlord about meeting me but this was still news to me because my landlords never got around to telling me about it until i asked them, "why does the neighbors' niece think we're being set up?"

both wanted to meet on sunday. kaz for early coffee. joelene for dinner and a movie. when we spoke over the phone joelene was, simply put, a riot. she wanted to take me ice skating in durban.

i'll save you the details of the early morning coffee date with kaz. little chemistry. only similar interests. ended with us talking about going on some hikes with some pmb hiking groups.

joelene picked me up at my place and we were off to durban to go ice skating. i don't know how often this happens but joelene looked 1000 times better in person than in her pictures. to joelene's credit she took control of the day because god knows i didn't know where we were or what to do anywhere. i was kicking myself the whole time for not taking my camera because this ice skating rink would have been worth taking pictures of. just like back home it was full of teenagers on dates and kids having fun learning something new. joelene and i were older than anyone else on the ice by at least a decade. this girl was clever enough to plan a date where we'd have to hold hands the entire time. not clever enough to anticipate me throwing her off balance and belly-down onto the ice.

maybe diabolical would be more accurate. after ice skating we jumped in the ocean (in full clothes) which required that we dry off by walking down the shore huddled under the one towel she brought.

we missed the movie because we were busy cleaning out her remote entry keys which went in the ocean with us. joelene didn't mind because she didn't want to see a movie about people flying themselves into the sun. she wanted to see the bloodfest '300'. i obliged. she cried at the end. her aunt (whom i still haven't met) told her not to keep me out too late so after the movie we made plans to meet up for coffee on tuesday.

monday i promptly called her to change to monday so that i could watch manchester united play ac milan. she then changed coffee to dinner at her place. wine led to her (and me...) belly dancing. turns out she's a damn good belly dancer and not afraid to throw it around. the wine also led to some significantly inconvenient "bite" marks on my neck. boo hoo for me.

to hide the marks, i wore my white dress shirt and a company tie. i thought i would get a lot of compliments for dressing nice at work. instead i got asked 5 times if i had a job interview somewhere... or if i had to go to court. oh well.

now here's the good part: joelene is leaving town for most of the five day weekend coming up. why? she's a cancer survivor. she going to joburg to see a doctor. a witch doctor. and no i'm not kidding and neither is she. when i brought this up to bridgit and virgilio i learned that virgilio's home country of mozambique has decent witch doctors also. virgilio pointed out that if joelene is going all the way to joburg for a witch doctor, she must really need it.

and to answer the question on everyone's mind: "no, joelene isn't jewish."

next: NONE OF YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

culture shock really becomes evident when you sit down and try to talk about the hanky-panky. certain expressions you've been using since growing up, you suddenly realize are american terms. "i got to second base last night" means a whole lot less to people that have never heard of mickey mantle.

i'll have to find out if there are cricket terms used to describe the extent of one's heavy petting... cricket has terms like "maidens", "hitting the stumps" and "hat trick". to me those all sound like first or third base.

nonetheless, having official tea times really provides a venue for a narcissistic story-teller like me. so the pressure is on to collect stories that will entertain those abroad as well as the locals at bcp. the only universally intriguing subject seems to be adventures in online dating. i'll go with what works.

last monday morning, virgilio knocked on my door and asked about me weekend. it turns out that while i was shoulder deep in the ocean in durban, he was playing for his friend taylor's outdoor team (for the "babalaza (zulu for "hangover") league. virgilio played in the midfield and even managed to put in a goal. basil was astute enough to point out that at least one of us scored over the weekend.

tea time is also a good time to share highlights of my like, "i open this email from an old girlfriend in the states saying, 'check out my sunburn' only to find the pictures she's sent show her sunburnt... and naked.

"now THAT'S why i need 500 MB / month."

Perms & Conditions May Not Apply

today was another confirmation that south africa is indeed a poorly built time machine. i went to get another haircut. my last one grew out faster than usual... maybe it's the warm gentle rain mixed with the new fertilizer i've been using.

just down the block from bcp is a "gentleman's hair salon". so, with a name including "gentleman's" i half-expected nude women, so i was only half-disappointed when i found none. the place is four barber chairs with five male indian barbers. they took me the second i walked in.

this place had an 8.5x11 ("a4 sheet" here) printed out that read "WE SANITIZE - to government standards". this place did look like somewhere that might have inspired the government to enact standards. but like i've said, the only thing that comes standard around here is a lack of standards.

i was feeling brave going to this place rather than the overly posh "blue gel" i went to last time that just sucked but that bravery gave way to immense misgivings when the bloke two seats down finished his haircut as i sat down. y'see, instead of having hairdryers to blow the hair off you when you're done, here each station is equipped (yes, i said "equipped") with AN AIR HOSE like you'd use to fill up your car tires!! it gets the hair, and any spare contact lenses, out.

saleen started off by asking "how short? 2 or 3?" i said "1" and that was the last bit of instruction i had to give him. i'm in love with this place. raise your hand if (guys only) you're sick of having to cajole the stylist into cutting your hair short. "are you sure? that shows skin." reply: "skin?! showing on my head?! unacceptable! please glue any hair you cut off onto my face and ears."

this next part is only scary because it happened in lawless south africa. picture yourself in tijuana having this happen to you. after saleen puts down the scissors, he pulls a little something that looks like a razor blade out of a jar filled with, assumedly, blue disinfectant. now, i can't think of a single good reason to use a razor on me so i ask what it is that he's holding. instead of answering using words he chooses to pretend to shiv me in the shoulder with it. good thing i didn't ask what the blue stuff was.

the razor was used to shave me skin tight at all my transition areas; cutting individual hairs that, judging by the singular sounds they made, were SHOCKED to be getting cut. should i be embarrassed that i was terrified to have a razor blade close to my head? before answering, think of these three words: h.i.v.

Grayville: Take Two... and call me in the morning.

my second trip to grayville was much less eventful than the first which is not to say nothing happened. i had a "t.i.a." moment very shortly after parking the parking lot by the department of home affairs. "t.i.a." stands for "this is africa" emphasis being on "africa", used to explain occurrances here without having to explain them. here's how it works:
me: "outside the department of home affairs, i saw a bakkie with the bed filled to capacity with severed cow heads"

south african: "t.i.a., man. t.i.a."

if you're thinking, "i wonder if jonah can describe the smell of that bakkie", i've already been asked twice the question and both times i replied that i started to take a whiff to see if they were as fresh as they looked but halfway through rethought the idea. it smelled subtly like uc davis... tercero specifically. a "subtle" hit over the head.

resetting, the d.o.h.a. has a meat wholesaler next door (naturally) so that's why the bakkie was there. the cow heads weren't applying for marriage licenses if that's what you were thinking. rolly-polly cow heads. as i was sitting in the d.o.h.a., i looked out the window just as the truck was driving away. true to south african form, there was a passenger riding in the bed sitting on the heads. maybe to keep from stealing them?

and just to recreate the scene a little more, outside the d.o.h.a. there is a man selling pens. it's a living. "another day, another dollar" he might say. also, the d.o.h.a. has a metal detector you have to walk through to get in. bear in mind, this isn't an airport. the only thing it has in common with an airport is that you should show up two hours early.

i sat down in the queue for window seven and waited. half the people in the queue were not foreign nationals but just poor black south africans who couldn't find anywhere else to sit.
after a quick 20 minute wait i got to the front of the queue and i gave them my passport. they said it would take a little over an hour to take care of everything. i was torn. should i wait in the refugee camp or should i hop in the car and drive around the mardi gras / bladerunner city?

i remembered driving past a botanical garden the previous day while be lost. so i hopped in the car and drove over there. this place is a destination for anyone that makes the trip over here to visit. a quick destination compared to kew gardens in london but still amazing and just as beautiful if not more so. kew gardens was about plants of the world, placed in greenhouses so they'd survive. durban botanical was all about the trillions of plants that grow in south africa. no greenhouse needed.

click here for the pictures (and click on the flower too). in the pictures, you'll find a picture of a cycad called "wood's cycad" as well as its description. the circumstances surrounding this plant are totally unique to me. if you're familiar with tolkien's "lord of the rings" you may think of the ents and their entwives. otherwise you may draw parallels to the garden of eden and adam's rib. a spiritual mind will have an easier time of wrapping around wood's cycad than a scientific one. enjoy and let me know your thoughts.

after about an hour i went back to the d.o.h.a. and sat down. i got called up to the front of the queue and was handed my passport back with a work visa sticker and new stamp. i waited for them to call me back up to take my picture for south african i.d. number and do whatever else i needed next.

in line with with me was a skinny white hare krishna in salmon robes. we talked. he travels the world at the behest of his guru doing martial arts sword shows at hare krishna festivals. next stop: england.

he travels the world spreading the word of hare krishna (it's literally just three words). i warned him not to do too good a job otherwise he'd be out of a job. his philosophy is that world is full of sadness. it's tough to argue with him whilst in south africa.

the couple behind him in the queue were an american couple from san francisco. they were much more fun to talk to. a married couple that put all their stuff in storage, sold their car and moved out to a town called "compensation" by ballito up the coast from durban. they were going to do 6 more months of volunteer work building schools if the d.o.h.a. would approve their volunteer visas. The couple were jehovah's witnesses. it seems like religion is behind most of the volunteer visas being given out.

well what'ya know? south africa has a brain drain and religion is moving in.

How to Cure a Bruised Ego: Rub Alcohol On It

yesterday i got the news from pippa that i'm no longer an illegal alien in this country. my work visa, which i applied for months ago, has been going through the bureaucratic process for some time now but is now just waiting for me to go down to durban to meet with the department of home affairs and get my passport stamped and get an official south african i.d. number. i left maritzburg at about 1:45 in the company bakkie. durban is about 45 minutes away and i took a little map book (no such thing as mapquest or google.maps here).

luckily i tried to find the place on the map before i left. the index had no fewer than six "Umgeni Roads". pippa knew the one i wanted. it was one in a part of durban called grayville.
pippa's directions to "just stay to your left" don't work if you're from america and you're not even close to familiar with how the roads work here. you'll have to come here to understand but even if you manage to get off on the right "exit" here, you still have to navigate roads that make london look organized and brilliant. i'll try to remember to scan a road map for shits and giggles.
i'm not kidding when i say that instead of roads, it's just a giant parking lot with a few islands and arrows telling you which side of the island to be on. and by "island" i do mean a patch of grass with several dozen blacks standing on them like stranded shipwreck survivors.

twice on the way there i got so lost that i had to pull over and flip through pages of the map to find which page i was now on. i never once used street signs to find my way. it was by using parks; the only thing that looks in real life like it does on the map (green).

by using the process of elimination i eventually found my way to the intersection of umgeni road and drove up a road steeper than ANYTHING in san francisco... complete with stoplights of course. i was looking for 350 umgeni and the road ended at 290 of course. once i figured out i was on the wrong road (i passed a botanical garden which didn't show up as a green patch near umgeni road) i actually new where i was on the map still. it would be a short 45 minutes later of driving in smaller concentric circles, 'circling like a lion' before i would make a wrong turn and find myself on umgeni road.

i parked, took off my button up shirt, untucked my undershirt and went in search of the department of home affairs in grayville. let me tell you, "gray"ville's gonna a need a couple thousand more white guys wandering around lost before this place can even claim to be approaching a grayish color. maybe it's named after the weather?

i found the department of home affairs and walked up to the one open window, sat down and explained what i was there for. the woman said, "you want the next door."

so i went next door and walked into what i first thought was a somalian refugee camp. it's not something i'm brave enough to take out a camera and snap a shot of so you'll have to just take my word; "somalian refugee camp".

i don't mean to sound racist but i immediately thought, i doubt everyone here is here to pick up a work visa. so i asked a security guard where i should go and he pointed me into a little room the size of a walk in closet. in there two women (one white, one black) were trying to figure out a problem on their computer. they didn't acknowledge anyone until a third-term pregnant black woman came in with her mother and were asked to wait outside. eventually i got fed up and said, "i just have a quick question... etc."

i was told that the office in charge of that ("window 7") was closing. it was in fact closed. had been since 15:00 and it was now 16:30. perfect end to a perfect day. it was about to get perfect-er.

the drive out of there was more relaxing because now i could take in the scenery and not try to look for one of the six umgeni roads (which was a one way road for the first 30 yards by the way). in the united states we have 3 and 4 way intersections. durban had several 6 way intersections. maybe even more. who knows. just drive and try not to stall the bakkie.

here's where my day went sour: i was driving behind a big ass truck making sure not to get in a lane that would take me away from the N3 (N for national) route straight ahead. i was comfortable with my lane and looking around... i'd driven into a part of durban that may as well have been one of those streets in hong kong... or better yet los angeles in blade runner. hawkers selling wares out of wooden carts, concrete highway overpasses, huge semi-trailers, PACKED sidewalks, and neon everywhere. i was trying to think of what this place reminded me of when it finally hit me, "mardi gras". then it also hit me, the truck in front of me was taking a right and the light had long since turned red. so there i was in the middle of a HUGE intersection. the weird part is that the people on the sidewalks knew i was fucked before i did. those that didn't see me began walking and so far the worst experience of my time here was driving this huge bakkie through the people and coming off as an arrogant white south african.

i was so freaked i didn't say "sorry" or even gesture wildly as my hands were free downshifting and upshifting. i got some SERIOUSLY nasty looks and even shouts.
ruined my already ruined day.

i stopped in the durban office of bcp to drop off a book so that i could say i got something done on the trip and talked theater with the head engineer there, brian. word's out that i like theater so i might be going with him and his wife and some of their friends to see "the magnificent seven". i asked if it was about samurai or cowboys. he said to stop by on my way through tomorrow and he'll have one of his younger technicians drive me the rest of the way. maybe i just will.
because i'm worth it.

i'm rubbing alcohol on my wounds. i've found that the pinotage wines here, once they've breathed for a day, become much more enjoyable.

cheers.

I Cunt Explain How Confusing an Afrikaans / English Accent Can Be

i'll start off the with another catchy yakov smirnov-esque thing about south africa.

spanish words like "jalapeno" and "tortilla" are pronounced as if you'd never heard of the spanish language. at first i just thought some people here were unenlightened but it turns out the whole country, including the voices in commercials, pronounce it not "hah-luh-pain-yo" but instead "jah-luh-pee-no". throw an indian accent over it and you've got a recipe for "excuse me?". i've been asked twice, indignantly, "well, how do YOU pronounce it?"

WHAT?!!! HOW DO I PRONOUNCE IT?!!! it has a TILDE above the n! it's there for a reason!

by the way, guess how they pronounce "tortilla" here... say it out loud. it sounds like a chinchilla had sex with a tortuga.

and on that subject, my tuesday carpool ride in, andrew in roads, called up and said he was running late because his rabbit died. i was thinking he drives some weird european vehicle called the rabbit (cars are named here without consideration for how lame the vehicle sounds coming out of a guy's mouth). but it turns out his rabbit had died that morning. andrew, who's about my age has his third kid on the way. people start families pretty early around here like i said earlier.
andrew said that the rabbit dying might serve as an important learning lesson about death. now, just last week i learned that andrew, well he's pretty religious. so i thought to myself, "wasn't this weekend all about jesus' death and resurrection? the kid's probably had enough confusing lessons about death without having to bury his rabbit just days after the easter bunny leaves."
andrew asked if i knew of any causes for a bunny to just die but i kept my lips sealed. the jews had nothing to do with this one.

speaking of the effects of accents, i forgot to put on anti-perspirant this morning so i borrowed some from a coworker (who goes to the gym at lunch). when i left to put it on, phil told me not to spray it in the wrong place. bridget asked, "i think he knows not to spray it in his eyes". now bear in mind bridget's accent does a funny thing with the word "eyes".

to conclude, i survived a double-fronted moth attack last night. i put a bag over my hand and grabbed one. it kicked like i was holding a beating heart and its legs reached out of my clenched fist. i held it and waited for my heart to stop racing. if i freak out every time a kite-sized moth flies into my personal space i won't last long here so i've got to overcome this semi-irrational fear of them. after all, it would take a half dozen of them to pick me up off the ground.

and i'm not sure if i've gone into detail about "tea time" here. paul asked about it awhile ago, so here goes. it is stated in the bcp company handbook that tea is served three times a day: at 10:00, 13:00 and 15:00. bcp employs a woman whose only job is to deliver a tray with rooibos tea, hot water for coffee, clean cups, spoons, cream and sugar to every department and director. the bridges section has the plotter and server room which doubles as our tea room. for that reason, tea time is a very social event for me when i feel like i have the time.

every now and then bridget, the secretary for the bridges department (and yes, i have realized the comedy in the fact that BRIDGET works in BRIDGES) will bring in baked something-or-other for us to nosh on. the second wednesday of every month is birthday tea and whatever food or cake is left over ends up in our room. we descend like vultures.

I DisLike a Moth to a Flame

next time one of you is thinking about chaos theory (justin), think of me. you know that line (i think goldblum says it in jurassic park) "a butterfly flaps its wings in africa and it causes a hurricane in florida"... whoever came up with that description of chaos theory has been to africa. if a butterfly flaps its wings in africa, it causes a small cyclone in africa.

here's the story:

i was watching the english news and they had a stat of how many people thought the south african soccer team is good enough to make it into the world cup... and they broke it down into race: 46% of blacks, 23% of indians... naturally i wanted to take a picture of it. by the time i got my camera on, i had missed it so i switched to a zulu language news which was about 10 minutes behind... and waited... and then THIS HUGE FUCKING MOTH FLIES IN AND I GO SCREAMING AND FLAILING ALL OVER MY HOUSE. i then dove into my bathroom and slammed the door behind me... i look around for a towel to throw over the moth (it's the size of a small bird) but all the towels are outside in the bedroom... then i realize THE MOTH IS IN THE BATHROOM UNDER THE HEADER BEAM RIGHT AT MY HEAD LEVEL!!! i dove out of the bathroom faster than i dove in. and when i got back to my senses i realized i'd missed the "iindaba" version of the story with the stats i wanted to photograph.

i'm now sitting on the bed with the bathroom door closed. there's a window so maybe it'll leave. hopefully it won't be there in the morning. i've shot video and maybe i'll shoot a picture of this thing (with a dime for scale) when i get the biscuits up to chase it out of the bathroom.

look for the video in my picasaweb album.

yours in spirit,

jonah

"I Probably Play Like A Cow"

I’ve been over here for a month and haven’t written a considerable amount about soccer. Let’s try to fix that.

Soccer is very big over here just not at all with the white or even Indian population. 90% of the time I bring up that I’m looking for a soccer team I’m told that I should take up rugby, cricket, squash, or hockey. To be honest there is a part of me that wants to experience something totally different (even though ucsc does have a rugby team) but that’ll have to come later.

Virgilio (from Mozambique) told me that he has some friends playing in the Sunday league at the university and we might be able to jump on the field with them. He says it’s not very serious (it’s referred to as the ‘hangover league’ in zulu). So on Sunday we went to check it out, boots in hand. I was expecting something small but found an 11v11 match going on a FULL-SIZED field. We’re talking professional sized. When virgilio’s friend, taylor, showed up with his team they all had matching jerseys, shorts, socks etc. and when they started warming up, they used rehearsed warm-ups like the team did when I was on the wrestling team. All synchronized and disciplined. Both teams did this. Soccer is taken very seriously over here… by the players. The spectators (virgilio and I were among them) spent the 90 minutes yelling at taylor’s team (they called the tall skinny goalie “sticks”) and complained about every missed shot and missed call. I was laughing my ass off until I realized that virgilio said we might be playing for this team in several weeks. Just imagine how bad the taunting would be if there was a white guy on the field.

If you don’t think it would be that bad, let me take you back to the previous day when virg and I went to a bar with a projection tv showing the premier league matches. One of the commercials is a bunch of black kids in south Africa picking teams to play some soccer. They’re going back and forth until every kid is picked. But then… a white kid shows up on the pitch and everyone falls silent (even the kids in the stands just there to watch). Nobody knows what to say until one kid pipes up, “don’t pick him he probably plays like a cow”. It ends with them asking his name and him being invited to play. They have a commercial encouraging blacks to let whites play soccer with them. I’m not sure if that’s good for me or bad. Wait, I do know. It’s bad.

So I’m not sure how the hell I’m supposed to get on this Sunday hangover team so I’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, Richard from the Durban office has invited me to play for his outdoor team that is playing this Thursday. I’m going to borrow the company vehicle and drive to Durban on Thursday (I’ll be taking one of the secretaries, Ramona, with me to navigate). The next soccer opportunity is a different league also in durban that bcp is sponsoring. That one should be more laid back seeing as it has a bunch of engineers on the team.