One's a Cunning Runt...

i'm sitting in the durban botanical gardens as i write this. ducklings are swimming in the pond and numerous brides and their grooms are wandering the grounds with a throng of best men, bridesmaids and photographers. It's four hours until yizkor services start so i'm lost and found in contemplation.
tomorrow is my first attempt at a marathon and i'm getting nervous. i've loaded onto my cellphone the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and the restaurant at the end of the universe both read by douglas adams himself. any bets which will die first? me or my battery. if my battery dies first it's gonna be a boring run. if i die, know that i died doing what i love: clutching my chest and bleeding from my ears.
but seriously folks, wish me luck. i'll need it. especially now that i know there are other qualifiers for the comrades that are accessible. giving up is now an option... I learned this when i joined the required running club so that i could get a license number and bib number. so i'm now a member of the 'the collegians harriers' running club. the exact opposite of what i set out to do. i hate running for the sake of running. i use marathons and triathlons as litmus tests for my lifestyle. should i eat less pizza? drink less beer? smoke fewer cigars? if i can complete a half iron man still, i'll assume i'm doing ok.
there's a yellow-greenish bird above me in a tree that looks like a flying tennis ball. the tree in the picture shown on this page is full of their bulbous nests.
temple services have been nice so far. joelene found me a reform synagogue in durban. lots of hebrew but lots of the prayers i'm familiar with. the rabbi, rabbi avidan, has a melodic tone to his speech and, maybe because he's relatively new to this congregation, his sermons don't try to be topical or esoteric. i've enjoyed his sermons in much the same way a math nerd such as myself loved that math program (produced by caltech i think) that explained geometry through trig through calculus. looking at the foundations and basic principles that you already are familiar with but this time through a microscope.
after the kol nidrei service i approached the bima to speak to rabbi avidan. he was welcoming three students from america. one of them was from palo alto. the other two were from new york. "JEWS FROM NEW YORK?!" i also asked him for copies of his sermons. on the backs of which i'm writing this. in his office he noticed me looking at some photos on the wall. "that's me with richard gere". in the movie "king david" a young rabbi avidan went from being religious consultant to the film to stand in for a bit part. he also shared a story with me and a friend of his, once their wives had walked ahead a bit, about the time he got a tick on his left testicle. i swear i only sort of directed conversation in that direction.

it's thursday now. after yizkor i broke the fast with the lipschitz family. they were beyond nice and i stuffed myself with every manner of fish. gefilte, lox, and mackerel i think. i stayed late watching the semis of the t20 cricket world cup (taking place a few kilometers away) between champions australia and india. i drove back to pmb, got my running stuff together, drove to joelene's and set my alarm for 03:20. you have four hours, my phone told me, until your alarm time.

moments later it was 3:20. half and hour later, joelene and i were out of bed and hitting the road for durban again. knowing that i probably couldn't keep it, i promised that if joelene drove there, i would drive back. my nerves were acting up. my 1/5 odds of finishing this race were feeling very optimistic. i felt maybe 1/1,000,000 now.
when we arrived at kings park i looked around and felt out of place. i'd bought a water belt and a bunch of gu. nobody i saw around had one. i left it all in the car. i did decide to take the cellphone with douglas adams and i made my way to the start line.

not taking any gu with me turned out to be a MAJOR mistake. every 5km or so there were stations but all they had was water and... COKE!!!

i know that gatorade's slant was "puts back what you lose when you exercise". i guess that when one exercises, they exhale carbon dioxide but i'm not sure i need to drink coke to replenish that. i usually just belched most of it back out a few steps later. beer would have been better.

before i knew i'd made a mistake i'd realized that a group of ten runners, one with a flag strapped to his head, were swapping positions every several minutes. eventually they explained they were running at the exact pace to qualify for comrades (5:00 hours) and i should join them. eventually i fell in, weary that if i should have to take a break, i would fall behind the pace. i wanted to stay a little ahead.

didn't matter. at kilometer 18 or so, my calves started tightening up and by 26 i said farewell to the two remaining runners in the group and walked... nay hobbled, back to the car. joelene hugged and kissed me and told me she was proud of me. she'd finished her 10km in sixty minutes and earned a medal. if i'd signed up for the half marathon instead of the full, i'd have earned a medal too.

c'est la vie.

joke: "what's the difference between a toned goy and an atoned jew running a marathon?" "one's running faster and the other's a fasting runner". i think i made that one up just now. pertinent to any and all marathons that take place during the high holy days.

joelene nursed my frail body until i was good enough to freely move around the house again.
i felt like my lower body had been run over by an 18-wheeler. so i guess i learned a lot about what i should do next time to stand a better chance:
a.) don't fast the day before,
b.) take gu with me,
c.) put phone in 'offline' mode so incoming messages don't crash the audio book,
d.) get plenty of sleep the night before, and
e.) train.
the only things i did right were
a.) listen to douglas adams as a distraction from the monotany and pain, and
b.) stop before i hurt myself.

to conclude, joelene and i hired the film "wonderland" a few weeks ago. it dramatically chronicles the murders in los angeles that allegedly involve porn star king, john holmes. turns out south africa had their own version of john holmes just a century earlier... here's the wikipedia article on "saartje baartman". it's quite sobering as to the exploitative (human) nature of yesteryear's english society so don't read it if you're not ready for something heavy.

lastly, tune in for the next blog entry where i explore my first interaction as well as my first "altercation" with south african law enforcement. it was everything i was told it would be.

The Seven Month Itch

Well it took me until my seventh month here but i finally jumped into a soccer game.

backstory!

in one week i run my first marathon. as mentioned in the previous entry, this race in durban is the only realistic qualifier for the comrades marathon (south africa's double marathon). so if i want to run the comrades in 10 months, i need to finish this marathon in under five hours... or thereabouts. so i've been training in earnest for almost one week now. i've bumped up my run to work once a week regimen to run to work four days a week and i'm now running from joelene's place... a distance thrice or quadrice the distance as the run from my place in scottsville.

but still that's not enough to get me ready for the 42.2km run so extreme times call for extreme measures. again, anyone that knows me knows that i hate running and biking unless i'm going somewhere (e.g. work, grocery store, soccer game, etc.) or chasing a ball. running laps around some fields somewhere. so deciding to run laps was a painful and boring decision. so joelene took me to a nice group of fields she thought would work nicely and, lo and behold, there're a group of kids (white) kicking a soccer ball around on some field hockey fields. i started running laps and, when the opportunity was there, would watch the loosely organized games.

about 40 minutes into my run, a second game started up with about eight colored kids. after an hour into my run a second group, indian, showed up and challenged the first group to a pickup match. at this point i was taking a water break and stretching my calves. i ran a few more laps and decided i would ask if i could jump in.

now bear in mind that when we play pickup in the states, hopefully everyone brings a light and dark shirt to differentiate teams. here, where it was blacks and coloreds versus the equally dark skinned indians, there was confusion over what to do with the white player. i was wearing my "the nothing" jersey with 'dangerman' on the back so it took me a second to figure out why the goalie was shouting to his teammates with hands raised in confusion, "white! white?"

i played defense because, to be quite honest, it didn't seem like anyone really had a grasp of the concept. i was flattered 20 minutes later when the goalie explained to me that aside from being called 'dangerman' i was being described as "a rock". shucks...

the scene got even weirder when a legitimate maritzburg team, "the finishers" showed up in their matching equipment, shin guards, soccer shoes, and goalie gloves and challenged us to a game. ten minutes into the game, only the rag-tag bunch of us had managed a handful of shots on goal. when i left, we were up 1 to 0.

so i now know where to play soccer. i think that leaves refried beans and ice cream sandwiches. i guess now that i can take soccer off the list i can replace it with something else i wish i could find over here: sardines in pesto.

next subject: it took me this long to remember whilst writing the blog that there's a pizza joint here called "st. elmo's pizza" and, yes, it is wood fired.

next subject again: i thought it would be nice for joelene to come watch the croquet scene. maybe slowly ease her into joining me and i'd have some company. not that i mind kicking it for three hours with the coffin-dodgers of the pmb croquet club but let's be honest, last week when one guy, mike, got a little rusk in his windpipe and started coughing i realized that half the club was having some sort of fit or another. i didn't know what to do. shame. they're super nice people and they can kick my ass at croquet so i shouldn't take my frustrations out on them.

and to show how nice they are at the club, they convinced joelene to play a round. ed and me versus joelene and tim. tim and joelene won, with joelene potting the last shot. the girl, a natural competitor, was ecstatic. imagine my surprise when she would consistently send the ball all the way across the pitch to knock the opposing ball away from a gimme shot on the wicket. i'd ask, "how did you manage that shot?" and she'd say, "wasn't that what i was supposed to do?". funny girl. we won our third game too also in a golden wicket game (7-6). i'm sure we'll become regulars at the club. the term "regular" being used ultra-loose.

after croquet was church for joelene. her church has a scroll of the old testament and they often read translated passages from the old testament (with a christian angle naturally) so i figured this is a close as i'm gonna get to a synagogue in pmb during the high holy days. so i got some time alone with my prayers and meditations.

after the service i wanted to show joelene the scroll at the front of the church. as i approached it i wondered, "will it be in hebrew or will it be translated?" from a few meters out i noticed something peculiar: the text was left aligned. hebrew reads right to left so a left alignment led me to believe that, for some peculiar reason, this church had an english torah... or maybe latin. when i got even closer i noticed the second peculiar thing: the letters weren't of the greek or english alphabet. they were in fact the hebrew alef-bet. the reason for the left-alignment, if you haven't cracked the mystery yet:

THE SCROLLS ARE ON DISPLAY UPSIDE DOWN!

how rich is that? one of the top guys of the church approached joelene after noticing my interest in the scrolls. i politely told him what i'd noticed and we had a little chat. the church is truly a stunning place and having the scroll there just makes it even more beautiful. south africa has no shortage of beautiful churches. joelene has a keen interest in finding one of the synagogues in durban and experiencing a service sometime. i'm game... should be interesting.

will joelene be the only non-white? i explained that there's an ancient sect of judaism in ethiopia. "you lie!" she exclaimed.

well, next week will find me in durban for the marathon. wish me luck eh?

so anyway,l'shana tova or, if you're standing on your head, "avot anahs'l"

Tonga?

the last few months have been me just living my life in south africa. nothing that I would exactly deem out of the ordinary enough to write home about. i'm still overjoyed to be seeing such a different life, perspective, etc. six months, maybe seven now, and the lustre of africa is still there. i wonder what's keeping this place so enjoyable to me...
three things methinks.
similarities between rsa and usa.
the crazy differences
new things
one thing that helps fight homesickness (and stomach sickness) is familiar foods. now those of you that know me and my... eating habits know i love my mexican food, pizza, carrot cake and ice cream sandwiches. this last week marks my finding carrot cake and carrot muffins. at a grocery store, woolworths, right down the street from my place.
exciting news, i know.
next are the differences that remind me i'm no longer in the granola-crunching town i've lived in most of my life.
today i walked home from work with joelene. at one point joelene tells me that there was a curse cast on the house coming up on the right. she'd noticed it whilst walking home the previous day. sure enough, in front of a house, butted up against the stone fence, was a dead chicken amongst some scattered debris. half a meter from the sidewalk.
a dead chicken wearing scraps of clothing scattered among a bunch of crap in front of a house means someone wants the resident of that house dead in 21 days. the process clearly smacks of voodoo.
awhile ago a similar curse was cast on joelene's mother, a saint. it must not have worked, seeing as mrs. singh still walks among us. joelene explained that the curse was broken by having a cleansing ritual carried out.
and now new things. i played croquet again. last time i played i watched the septuagenarians try these "bounce" shots when the opponent's balls were placed right in the wickets and couldn't be knocked out without knocking them through. you hit behind the ball at a 45 degree angle and the turf pops the ball up into the air. i tried it once this next time and, even though i never saw one of the triassics succeed at it, i somehow managed to sail one over the ball and through the wicket on my first try.
they made me submit to drug tests.
another new thing is finally understanding both the strategy AND the rules of rugby on a basic level. just in time for the world cup of rugby in france. usa, south africa, and england (the defending world cup champs) are in a bracket with samoa and tonga. tonga?
today i took a long lunch to watch usa play tonga. tonga? i figured it would usa's one chance to win. imagine my dismay when tonga (tonga?) scored a try in the second minute. long story short, the usa lost to a country (island) that i'd never heard of. i'm having flashbacks to germany 2006 when usa lost to that one country i can't remember. had the letter 'g' in it?
to semi end on a semi comical note, you might remember me talking about training for the comrades marathon (double marathon) which will take place in 11 months. i figured 11 eleven months will be enough time to slowly get into a serious work ethic and diet. i forgot one little thing. you have to qualify for the comrades via a small handful of qualifying races. one's in capetown and the other's in durban... IN TWO WEEKS! so i've got until the 22nd to get in good enough shape to run a 41km race (a full-marathon) in under 5.5 hours.
send ass lube!
and now to legitimately end on a legitimately comical note, i was wondering why americans are such war mongers. but then i realized, look at the foods and the brands behind them; general mills, colonel sanders, cap'n crunch, etc. d'ya see? all military figures.

zing!Publish Post

Yeah, Hi...

if you haven’t seen the mike judge film “office space”, go rent it and consider yourself cultured on the subject of cubicle life. while never having worked in the cubicle environment, i've always found the film brilliant.

however, it wasn't until recently that i found myself relating to the film on a serious level. in a seriously bad way. a couple times a week i find myself walking into the draughtsmen room of the roads section and asking for work out of them.

bear in mind on monday i wore a nice tie and white shirt. I walked in and basically said, "(yeah) wesley, i'm gonna need (you to go ahead and make me) a long-section of ramp loop A. (that'd be great,) thanks."

i'm turning into bill lumberg. it's just a matter of time before i start saying the stuff in brackets...

about a month ago i received a phone call from the woman in charge of billing asking why i was using a durban job number (10844PE or something) for this one project instead of the correct number (10483PA). i'd already caught the problem for my next timesheet but this had been wrong for the past three months. i explained i'd picked up the problem and made the correction already.

then yesterday, the head director handed me a memo alerting all staff working on this one project that henceforth, all timesheets should stop using 10844PE and instead use 10482PA. i wanted to say, "at least i put the right cover letter on the TPS reports!"

now i'm just waiting for my red swingline stapler to disappear.

the head trip to work

so my cousin amie ptak is back in the usa after a trip to build schools and teach english in tansania. she wrote extensively about her experiences in the deeper, more secluded we'll say, africa.

her experience was definitely more third-worldy whereas mine is maybe other-worldly. it's true i'm living in the beverly hills of africa and you might even go so far as to say i'm living in the los angeles of south africa. durban might be the san francisco and i've heard joburg described as the new york.

bear in mind that being the 'new york' of south africa doesn't mean lots of quaint jazz clubs, pretzel and hot dog stands on every corner and man dressed as a gorilla waiting to hug you on top of a building. and being the 'los angeles' of south africa doesn't mean taquirias, red carpets and 'pietermaritzburg' being prominently displayed in white letters on the surrounding hills. it just means sprawl. and sprawl means traffic. and traffic means pollution.

one misconception i may have fueled in my earlier blogs is that i live in an upscale, almost american, city. while true in some regards, i've elaborated at length and via pictures i've taken on my adjusting to the subtle differences and finding remnants of home (read: beer and cheese farms). it's easy to take pictures of the touristy and safe areas of pmb but the sketchier scenes don't often present the opportunity to pull out a camera.

amie's trip to tanzania was painted with a different brush than i've been painting this trip with. she talks about handing out shoes to children that have never seen a white person before. i've been been writing about joining a croquet club. so at the risk of offending any south african readers i'm going to try to paint with the same brush amie used to describe her trip.

ahem.

on the trip in to work from woodlands, joelene's side of town, we drive through a neighborhood consisting of two and three bedroom, one story houses. typical south african construction: brick with tile roof. usually one or two decent sized windows and a plaster finish with a recent paint job. the windows invariably have burglar bars over them and the property is lined with a fence usually fitted with some form of burglar prevention ranging from sharp spikes on top to the extreme of razor wire coils.

once i take a right and stop running parallel to the city of pbm, i roll down a hill overlooking the whole city. on a map and even from with the city itself, to me, it never looks a thing like it does from outside. scattered throughout are several multi-storey buildings but they don't create a sense of denseness. moreso a sense of legitimacy as the province's capitol. from afar the town center of pmb looks like it could take quite awhile to drive through seeing as no freeway runs through it but provided a steady flow to the traffic, one can pass through on commercial road, the busiest road through the center of town, or even speed along on one of the side streets.

but before i make it into the first road in the city center of pmb, i pass by a pocket of industrial factories. one road over is a more serious industrial area which, if you drive by with the windows down, will smell like the pet food it's turning out. while this industrial area may have once been technically outside of town, pietermaritzburg has grown out to meet it. pmb's poorest have taken advantage of the adjacent factories' impact on land value as well as a small river that passes by and created a squatter camp. of course the surrounding square miles of pmb contain dozens of such camps, this one is pushed up to within a few dozen meters of east street, the street that constitutes pmb central's eastern perimeter.

the houses are made of stolen corrugated metal panel and wood planks. some are identical to those you would find hundreds of kilometers away, far from a city like pietermaritzburg. a home built entirely from mud and stone with horizontal branches at six inch spacing running the perimeter to hold the walls together. laundry hangs from clotheslines endlessly and residents turn into pedestrians the moment they set foot outside their front doors.

sharing the road with me, and making frequent unannounced stops, is south africa's post-apartheid version of mass transit: the koombi. i've spoken about this already but this time i'll try to spare everyone the jaded perspective. imagine taking the aggressive driving tactics of new york taxi drivers, degregulating it, multiplying it by ten and then putting it behind the wheel of a squareback van. then mix in a little mexican lowrider look and you've got the koombi. the most extreme of which are bass-thumping, minivans with full-body paintjobs depicting american models in bikinis. the middle ground is a white van with some urbanized, quasi-ghetto expression painted in a pink or blue font with some silver glitter around the edges. unfortunately, most of these expression stick to my brain like an egg to teflon. think jonah...

"TOKYO DRIFT"
"IN MEMORY OF "
and my personal favorite:
"ONCE TASTED NEVER WASTED"

some even sport religious quotes, not necessarily biblical, but something an evangelical might spout on a television show. bear in mind that since routes aren't assigned by any governing metro body, territoriality does exist. conflicts between drivers are resolved with automatic weapons.

oops, looks like the jaded perspective crept in there at the end.

speaking of jaded though, i became unjaded this last weekend during a trip to the beach with joelene and her niece and nephew. as some of you may have heard from me, the beaches in durban stretch wide and far but swimming is only allowed in little 20 meter sections ever half kilometer or so where lifeguards sit and watch. the reason: riptides and strong currents. i thought it was just because 90% of the people in this country can't swim but it turns out the riptides are pretty serious.

i took the nephew pretty far out (on my back) and pretty quick found it difficult to paddle in. we were swept outside the 20 meter wide swath and we must have looked ridiculous enough to warrant a rescue with me walking along the bottom when i could and joelene's little nephew's head the only thing above the water after each wave. we were back in waist deep water by the time the life guard got to us but i learned my lesson: don't swim with children on your back.

there are PLENTY of stories that came out of that trip to the beach with joelene. the basic jist is that we looked like the proud parents of two children whose skin color didn't match that of their parents. she and i had a great time looking watching the kids throw themselves around in the shallow water and every now and then we even found time to steal ourselves a kiss. but by the end of the day, after we'd dropped the kids off back at her brother's place, we were too tired to even take off our clothes. "we ARE getting old" joelene remarked at one point.

so next chance i get to write, i'll relate the weird and funny stories about the beach trip.

in related news, at a company costume contest joelene won a weekend at a nice hotel in durban. so that'll be later this month. just the two of us. stories from that weekend might not be suitable for this family blog.

ahem.