MR. CALIFORNIA

SSI's saturday school started this last saturday. for those of you who don't know, SSI, the company that bought my old company BCP, has a forward thinking CEO that, in the interest of developing future engineers, has organized, at SSI's own expense, a saturday school for underpriveledged students. the three subjects covered are maths, physical sciences, and engineering and drafting. the teachers are volunteers from SSI and now BCP.
i'd hoped to teach math (known as 'maths' here) but instead got stuck teaching physical sciences and e.g.d. (engineering and graphic design). i've since learned that i've never taken the actual coursework for e.g.d. god knows how i'm gonna teach it for 80 minutes this coming saturday. i will say this though, the physics textbook is unique to south africa. i'll include some pictures of the problems when they finally give me a textbook. i'm signed on to teach two saturdays a month for the next year. when i first got to this country i contacted habitat for humanity and enquired about helping out. they said they don't work on weekends. until this saturday school opportunity came along, i felt that i would have to quit my job to do something charitable in this country.
about the students at this saturday school; seeing them takes me back to my own youth. "does 0.2844445 round up to 0.285?" i took joelene with me to the first introductory day. i'd heard that i would be given a nickname by the kids in zulu that i wouldn't learn. so joelene was brought to be a spy and to, and this sounds messed up, show the kids one of their teachers has a coloured girlfriend. joelene echoed my sentiments when she said seeing the two of us together would probably gain more respect from the kids. i think i'm gonna need all the help i can get.
when the first of the kids rocked up, they approached joelene first. she greeted them, "sowebona" and they answered, "um, we're good. fine. punjane. is this SSI's saturday school?"

and yes, joelene is back in my life. all the coworkers that said we would get back together were right. i hate being wrong but the healing process for me and the relationship was stuck in limbo. a quick summary would be that i contacted her under the pretense that we should try to be friends again. just friends. i thought i would be able to maintain the boundaries but i'm a sucker for that girl. this blog isn't a forum for my mushy feelings so if you want to hear about all the romance and gushy stuff, you'll have to email or call me.
however, if you want a feeling for what my life was like in the interim, youtube hosts the fruits of my labors as a once again single guy here. it should be quite clear that i had a lot of free time on my hands.

the latest is that i've added sound to the cartoon i animated using fantavision back at uc davis
secondly, i created a complilation of my footage driving the INSANE roads of easter rsa, swaz, and mozambique.

luckily for me, with this new saturday school, my masters degree exam and joelene, my hands are back to being full.