Day 35: State of the Nation

This past weekend was very eventful, lots of fun to be had by everyone. On Saturday I wake up before 9 (ugh) to go on a wine tasting trip in Franschoek, a gorgeous wine valley a bit further out of Cape Town than Stellenbosch. I eat breakfast alone and think it odd because my roommate is also supposed to be going on this trip. I finish my bowl of museli and go knock on her door… nothing. Hm. I grab my phone and call her… nothing. I wonder if she came in last night? I go to knock on her door again and decide to open it before I panic. I open it and call her name. I look over and she’s laying in bed looking up at me with a dreamy look at her face. This freaks me out and I’m like, “Woah! Sorry, just couldn’t figure out where you were since you wouldn’t answer the phone or your door. You going to Franschoek still?” She nods and is like, “Dude, thanks for getting me up! Yes, let’s go.” We get ready and as we’re walking out the door, she gets the hiccups and starts freaking out. She is hilarious! And obviously still inebriated form the night before.

We get on the bus and drive out of town. Its rainy out, the first real rainy day we’ve had since I’ve been here. It doesn’t disappoint me though, it creates a relaxing vibe for the wine tastings and the greens of the valley are very intense against the dreary sky. The first vineyard is great, but the second is my favorite. Its called Grande Provence (http://www.grandeprovence.co.za/) and its over 300 years old. The wine is delicious, there is a beautiful garden, an art gallery, and a fancy restaurant. I could stay there exploring the gardens and wine fields all day, but we go on to the next winery for lunch. I split a bottle of Rickety Bridge Semillion (www.ricketybridgewinery.com) with my roommate who is taking the day like a champ, and another girl. For lunch I have a gigantic plate of fish. Probably should’ve gone for something more like a giant plate of bread. By time we get back on the shuttle to Cape Town, I am ready for a nap.

After waking up from my lovely nap, Cailey and I make curry for dinner. Well Cailey makes it while I sit on the couch, she’s been wanting to try out a green curry recipe. Its delicious and this seems like a great night to spend sitting on the couch. Except its Hunter’s last Saturday in Cape Town, so of course we have to go out. Much to my chagrin, I get off the couch and drag myself out. A new girl has joined us from Egypt and she doesn’t drink so I figure she’ll want to go in early like me. I find her and tell her to let me know when she wants to split and we can make that happen. Well what actually ends up happening is we finally find a cool place on Long Street called Joburg. It looks totally lame from the outside, and the first floor isn’t that special. But, somehow, we all get VIP stamps and are allowed up to this sweet room upstairs where a several hours long dance party ensues. Before I know it, Hunter and I are eating Indian and Chinese food at Food Inn at 3:45 in the morning and our other friends are trying to find another place to go out... Am I still in college? Oh well, that chicken fried rice from Food Inn lasted me 3 more meals and was delicious. And I had a great time.

The other highlight of this week has been the opening of Parliament and the State of the Nation Address (SONA), which I am currently watching. We got fliers under our doors, full page front and back, listing all the road closures that would be going on the days leading up to SONA and day of. So I googled what exactly this would entail and Parliaments website said there would be a flyover, horses, and cannons going off. I live right up the street and can see it perfectly from my building so naturally, this was all thrilling news. I went up to the roof a few times and saw them practicing. Its been quite an affair – I saw a troupe of bag pipers (in Africa??) and a lot of soldiers. The South African Air Force flyover practice happened – it was four propeller planes. Then today leading up to the speech, they shut down all the road around us. There was a red carpet rolled out at Parliament, I got to see the mounted police or soldiers or whoever they are doing their march down Plein street, and they fired off a bunch of huge cannons.  Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us on the roof to watch today (security measure?) so I had to hang out the window to do it. Oh and can I say how annoyed I was that through this whole thing, there was no schedule of events to be found anywhere, or listing for its showing on tv? Yea, so I’ve just had to hang out and watch to see what happens.

The actual address is on tv now (someone had to call and inform me of this as I couldn’t find a schedule anywhere). The president, Jacob Zuma, is (in my humble opinion) a very mediocre speaker; lots of awkward pauses and coughing, weird diction. I haven’t heard many positive things about him since I’ve been here. I also found out today he has 5 (!) wives and 22 children, none of whom have over an 8^th grade education (I haven’t verified this fact). But now he’s going on about education, seems like that could start at home? The president just said something about getting a Facebook message from someone about land redistribution… what is going on?

Anyway, in other news, I got sick yesterday. I woke up with a scratchy throat so I panicked at work and went to Clicks (Walgreens equivalent) and bought the closest thing to EmergenC I could find.  It must’ve been too little too late because I woke up this morning with a full-out cold. I went into work for two hours because there were some things I really needed to get done at the office today and then I went home and slept for 4.5 hours. Bummer. Kyle texted me a happy face for Valentines Day and I finished a jar of Nutella that was sitting in my cabinet stopping every now and then to blow my nose. Happy Valentines Day to me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even escape it in South Africa as there were heart shaped chocolate boxes and pink love stuff in the stores all this week.

Looks like its bed for me again very soon and hopefully I’ll get this virus thing under control so I don’t waste a precious weekend. We’re going on a trip to Cape Point this weekend, including a stop at the PENGUIN BEACH. Can’t wait!

Day 28: Fake It Til You Make It

So my blogging capacity has been greatly reduced, and the responsible culprit is work. For two reasons – 1. I sit at a desk for 8 hours just about everyday and there’s not much I can write about that that even my mom and grandma would want to read, and 2. I completely crash when I get off work and cannot make myself do anything that involves thought or a computer. Typing a blog is too much like what I do at work so I just can’t do it when I get home. They work me hard, man. I am one hardworking little intern. This is not a complaint, just a statement of the facts. I would 100% rather have a job where I always have too much to do and stress out about than a job where I don’t have enough to do and am bored.

Anyway, so this week I’m at work and am feeling particularly stressed out about this “evaluation” report I’ve been given to assess for quality and usefulness. I am to do so using a very intense and detailed rating system in a long spreadsheet called the EQAT. I think that stands for evaluation quality assessment tool or something. The particular “evaluation” report I have been given is not really an evaluation of anything, unless you want to use the term evaluation very loosely. Its about 100 pages on how the labour market, in particular, wages and wage formation, is shaped by bargaining councils. It starts with a loooooooong history and description of labour laws and bargaining councils, followed by some descriptive statistical analysis on a somewhat unclear sample of historical data. I’m still hanging in there at this point. Then it goes into a section of multivariate analysis (shoot me) using dummy variables to represent different categories such as people who are members of bargaining councils versus those who are not. Then spits out all these horrific dummy variable coefficients that I cannot for the life of me interpret into tables that take up entire pages and mean nothing to your average non-connoisseur of econometrics. I just sit at my desk and want to cry. I feel a wave of dummy variable coefficients crashing over me and drowning me and I just want to cry.

So I go eat lunch. Oh and I’m really sorry if you stuck it out and read the entirety of that paragraph. But it was therapeutic to write it. Lunch was slightly therapeutic as well. When my supervisor came in the boardroom to eat too I asked her if she understood how to interpret dummy variable coefficients. Not because I thought she would be able to, but just to whine about how hard my work was in a covert manner. And to lower her expectations for the EQAT I was about to produce.

I go back after lunch and finish reading the report, in its entirety and feel like I have a decent enough handle on this thing to do an ok job (for a non-econometric Ph.D. holder) of rating it. Yea so I did, I think I did ok. I guess I’ll find out next week when my supervisor reads it. And the good news is, I didn’t die. But the bad news is, instead of celebrating this small victory, I have to dive into the huge stack of work that I was neglecting while drowning in dummy variable coefficients. Wahh. I finally leave work and just want to crawl into a cave and be left alone for awhile. Instead I make myself go for a run in the company gardens. Its beautiful there, until a big rat runs across the path in front of me with this giant chunk of bread in its mouth! Gross.

Work today, however, is something worth writing home about, so stick with me here. Yesterday, one of the consultants tells me about a workshop that the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME, aka the people we been doing all those stinkin’ EQATs for) is having at the Mandela Rhodes Place, a super nice hotel on Wale Street. Yes, I would LOVE to go and get out of the office! She also tells me she’ll be a little late because she refuses to give up her personal training session for this workshop. I totally get that and tell her I’ll save her a seat. I didn’t know how late she would be exactly, so this morning I find myself chillin’ in this nice hotel conference room with a bunch of government officials, university professors, m&e consultants, and free coffee. Dena is nowhere to be found still as the workshop is underway and we have been broken into small groups to review the evaluation standards document the government wants to adopt.

Something weird happens to me in small groups - it happened all the time in college and especially grad school – my personality just wants to take charge and organize everybody. And I do it again, with this small group of super adult government officials. Its kind of like an out of body experience watching myself do it , but there I go, making sure we all have the appropriate forms and starting discussions. Seriously, I am an intern who has taken one course on program evaluation last semester and have been at Southern Hemisphere under a month… who am I? But I just can’t help but raise points about clarity of some of these standards and appropriateness of placements of certain sentences, etc. Sometimes the other people in my group argue with themselves or with me about points being raised. At times its valid, at other times I think it’s a bit excessive but just sit back and think, “Oh well, if your country’s standards for evaluation aren’t that clear or awesome…..” Ha.

Small group breakout number 1 comes to an end as we’re nearing a tea break. I look at the lady from the Dept of Safety who likes to talk/argue a lot and ask her if she would like to be our spokesperson to report back to the large group. She shakes her head. I look at the next lady from the Secretary of the Treasury’s office. She shakes her head too and says, “You need to do it. You took the notes so you’ll know what to say.” Oh yikes, guess I’m headed up to the podium…

So I go up to the front of the room and get close to the mic at the podium to introduce myself and my group members. I can see in some people’s faces that they are registering my accent. I start talking about what we discussed in our group and it was the ultimate case of fake-it til ya make-it. Good thing I can speak confidently even in situations where I’m not entirely sure about what is going on. When I finish blubbering about stuff we discussed I conduct a questions/comments section and tried to pretend to answer people’s questions. This included some dramatic pauses waiting for someone else to jump in and help me out. And then I go back to my seat and think to myself about how cool yet comical that whole thing was. Oh and my consultant colleague came in in time to see me present.

After all this, we have reached the time allotted for lunch. I think this means we will have to go out and buy lunch somewhere, but then I look over as hotel staff opens the doors to the tea/coffee room which has now been turned into a totally luscious buffet. Yes!!! This is the greatest day of work ever!!

I’m gonna cut this off because its past my bedtime I am very serious about sleep now that I work a killer 9-5. But just FYI – the Mandela Rhodes Place has a FABULOUS rooftop bar and pool. I did not hang out there more than 10 minutes after the workshop however, because I went back to the office to make sure I didn’t get behind on stuff. Oh, and to finish the newsletter, because I’m the intern J

Day 23: Stellenbosch Wine Fest 2k13

After a pleasant day of work on Friday, I feel a nice way to spend my evening would be working out. Alison has been trying out this hot yoga studio lately and asks if I want to join her. I haven’t really been into yoga all that much since high school despite living in some yoga obsessed cities and some small attempts to try it out again. But everyone talks about how amazing (or terrifying) hot yoga is, so I figure I should go try it out.

We’re running a little late for class so we book it across the city centre, almost double the distance past where I work. We get there, and I find myself walking into this total hippie(/yuppie) haven. We take our shoes off at the door and put our belongings along with everyone else's just out in the open in the locker room (shocking). There are all these beautiful people walking around in expensive spandex toting their mats and 1 litre Valpre (or whatever brand it is) water bottles. I sign up for a free trial week and we head downstairs into the studio. As we descend, I feel like I’m walking out into Audobon Park on a mid-July day – it is HOT and HUMID. It feels like home and I actually quite like it. The studio is packed for this particular session of power yoga and I squeeze my mat into a spot between two middle-aged tall dudes with large muscles. I look around and wonder to myself, am I in Austin?? You know, all yoga studios are the same no matter where you go in the world. Everyone inside of them looks the same – white, fit, affluent, poured into spandex, zenned-out.

Before we even start, I am drenched in sweat. The teacher comes in and we start going through the poses. I tend to get bored in yoga or feel like I’m not getting a great workout because my heart rate doesn’t go up all that much, but she does a great job of pacing us keeping it entertaining. I am sweating so much past any point that I ever knew was possible; my spandex is completely soaked through, like I jumped into a pool. Everyone is sweating everywhere, but surprisingly, it doesn’t smell like a gym sock in there. Halfway through, people are dropping to their mats in child’s pose. This heat is intense. But seeing that just makes me feel more competitive and I’m trying to hang with/surpass the middle-aged dudes next to me, so I push really hard. Not really the point of yoga, but it kept it things interesting.

So, all-in-all I really enjoyed my first hot yoga experience. I learned that you really need to bring a change of clothes with you, or you have to walk all the way home in soaking spandex, and that doesn’t feel good. I also think that from now on, the only way for me to do yoga is in a too-hot room. I don’t think I can go back to the other way. Ok, I’m sold, the heat makes it way better.

The next day, Saturday, is a day I have been looking forward to for awhile. Today is the Stellenbosch Wine Festival. My ticket was R 150 which includes an official Fest wine glass and unlimited tastings from 80 wine farms. It opens at noon, and we, of course, would like to get there as soon as possible. We take the train to Stellenbosch and walk to the middle of town where the Fest is set up. Walking through the gates and being handed my wine glass is like stepping into heaven. It looks like a country club – nice lawns and patio furniture, they had a nursery bring in mature trees, winery booths are everywhere, and Michael Buble is playing over the loud speakers. Oh and its sets against picturesque mountains and a bright blue sky. I go and sit down just to take it all in for a minute. Is this real?

Then I start trying wines. At first I have a strategy to methodically go down the lines of booths in a certain order, but that goes out the window soon and I just head for whichever ones have the least amount of people at them. I go mostly for sav blancs and other whites because it’s a hot summer’s day and some chilled wine sounds nice. Then I decide to branch out and try rose. I don’t think I’ve ever had rose in my life because I always thought pink wine was tacky (I’m not sure where I got this idea). And I must say, some of the roses were not half bad! Then I decide to try a sparkling rose, and that was just going a little too far. Ew, back to white. I also try a shiraz or two and this red I’ve never heard of before, pinotage. I also buy some food, delicious focaccias, fish, gelato. Oh, and spaghetti. Because this morning while I was getting ready, I decided to pack some snacks and try to save money/make sure we weren’t going to go hungry (I wasn’t quite sure what kind of fest this would be… I was thinking more picknicky and less country cluby). So I made a pot of spaghetti and put it into two containers, one for myself and one for Cailey, to have for lunch. So in the middle of this country club event, we pull out our Tupperware and start eating spaghetti. I am a little embarrassed and try to be discreet, but decide it was definitely a good call doing a little BYO food.  

As the fest goes on, the festival goers start to laugh a little more, people are taking snoozes on chairs or the lawn. Some from our group “sleep” as well or just start acting as one can when imbibing too much fermented grape juice. Ah, the dangers of wine festivals. The last train is leaving soon and a few of us realize that getting everyone out of here and back onto the train is going to be like herding cats. And it is. But finally we have everyone at the station waiting for the last train. The train is pretty empty except for one meth addict we have to avoid, and it seems like the ride back to Cape Town will be pretty uneventful. That is, until we pull into this station called Bellville and the lights shut off.

Hm, the lights going out, that’s odd. Two of us go look out the doors and see others leaving the train. For some reason (which I still am not clear on) this was the end of the line. And we’re still quite far out of Cape Town with a heard of cats. Oh and, its getting dark. Cailey thinks fast and asks two nice enough looking people walking past if they can help us figure out how to get home. They tell us yes, we should follow them and stick very close together.

We walk out of the train station into this very dark parking lot next to a raised highway. There are many shady characters and garbage strewn about. Some people started a fire in this parking lot and it smells. I can tell all the white people (that would just be us) are terrified, which is bad because if I can tell, so can everyone else. I’m feel quite calm, I think only because it reminded me in many ways of Port au Prince. Right, that shouldn’t make me feel ok, but it was kind of familiar and I had a good feeling about it for some reason. We walk along under this highway for awhile and then turn towards a deserted bus station. The guys leading us are like, “Oh, that’s strange,” and kind of look around. My friend says to one of them, “Wait, you’re scared?? What’s gonna happen to us!” Hm, good question. Just then, a block away, a van shows up and a guy hops out yelling, “Cape Town! Cape Town!” Perfect.

So there is a semi-formal system here to make up for lack of good public transport called taxis. The taxis are different from cabs, which are essentially the yellow cars with meters and its just you and your friends in them. Taxis, however, are big vans that drive on routes and pick up whoever and drive like maniacs. They’re usually blasting music extremely loudly and a guy hangs out the window yelling the destination or just hitting on women. We’re extremely fortunate that not many people are in this taxi and all 10 of us, or however many, pile in. At first we kind of have to sit on top of each other, but the crowd thins out a bit as we move on. In the seat in front of me, one of the guys starts talking to two ladies who aren’t with our group. They say they were very concerned when they saw a big group of white people walking around the Bellville bus station… apparently we weren’t in a great ‘hood. Oh well, we’re not dead, weren’t robbed, and are now in a taxi headed to Cape Town; so far, so good.

Just then, our friend who was sleeping at the Fest *barfs* onto the window (don’t worry its just water at this point). Hunter, who is sitting in between her and me, looks at me and his eyes are literally about to pop out of his head. Mine are too. I kind of fold over and put a hand over my mouth to hold back the disbelief noise my body wants to make. Meanwhile, on my other side, Cherie’s bladder is about to explode and she is strategizing ways to either go into her wine glass or out the window somehow. I pull out my blackberry and get on the gps to see how long its going to take until I'm out of this van. Luckily it shouldn’t be too long now… Ha, this has turned into quite the circus.

I’m sure you will be pleased to know that soon we all make it back safe and sound. The taxi guys are nice enough to drive us right up to our apartment building. They must’ve felt sorry for us or something. Anyway, although it may not seem like it there at the end, this was the BEST day ever. Can I please go to a wine festival every month? Incredible.

Miseducation

I’m sitting at work watching the Why Poverty short documentary films so I’ll know what everyone is talking about when I sort through emails for our evaluation. (Obviously can’t do that back at my apartment as the internet is so bad.)

I just watched Miseducation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0iqqj1PjyQ

I hate it. I hate that I live in the exact same city as this little girl, but practically live on another planet. I hate how unfair it is, how unjust. Sometimes I feel scared walking down the street here, but I’m not 11 years old. And the streets I walk down are nothing compared to those she walks daily to get to school. When it came to getting to school as an 11 year old, my biggest fear was missing the school bus – not gang members, not disappearing, not rape. It’s heartbreaking.

I am heartbroken that we live in a world where children live in fear, and for very legitimate reasons. #whypoverty

Day 17: "Old Khaki"

There’s a lot of racket going outside my window tonight in addition to the raging gusts of wind. A lot of yelling, cheering, and yes, the infamous vuvuzela. I’m not sure exactly what is going on, but if I had to take a guess, I’d say its AFCON – the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament. According to my latest google search, it looks like we’re playing Morocco, but I’m unaware of the African version of ESPN and I can’t find the score. Oh well, I don’t mind it keeping me up for now. I’m in bed, but it is just now 9 o’clock after all. Working full time and trying to pack in full weekends is exhausting. I have school work to do on top of that, which I have just about completely neglected…

Being tired is making me miss everyone. Because of their lack of skype, I haven’t spoken to my mom or dad once since I’ve been here. Everyone in facebook land is talking about Mardi Gras, which I’m trying very hard to ignore. (If I’m not aware of it, it doesn’t happen, right?) And I’d really like to hug my boyfriend.

I can’t pretend that I didn’t have a great weekend though. I slept in late both Saturday and Sunday. I’ve been meaning to go to the big Methodist church downtown. It was the first Methodist church in the country (maybe the continent?) and is very beautiful. But I find trying out new churches to be the most intimidating thing… I’d like to try and make a friend go with me. Or maybe I’ll keep chickening out on that, give up, and go to Catholic church across the street with Cailey.

Saturday I took the train with a group of friends I like very much to a beach over on the Indian Ocean side, just past Muizenburg, called Fish Hoek (sounds like hook). Its so beautiful over there, I don’t think I could ever tire of going. Then we went out on Long Street as one of the Connectors is leaving this week and its where she wanted to go for her last night out. Typical Long Street night out – drinks, bad trance music, interesting people watching from balconies, and late night eating. I split a fantastic pizza with dear Sivert. He doesn’t sound much like an Australian anymore, I think he’s been away from Sydney long enough to sound purely Norwegian again. Oh I neglected to mention that Cailey and I went to try out the expensive gym up the hill, Virgin Active, with Sivert and Hunter Friday night. It was a BEAUTIFUL gym. The best part was the treadmills. That is saying a lot because I really hate treadmills, but there was no jogging track and I don’t like running in the city very much. Anyway, the treadmills had a built in air conditioner and touch screen complete with games! I played connect four while running a few Ks and totally didn’t notice I was doing it until the end. Turns out the computer opponent was quite formidable, kept it interesting. It costs around $100/month to join this gym, however, and I will not be paying that.

Sunday, sometime after noon, I tore myself away from the book I’m reading and my comfy couch to go to the mall with some friends. Cherie just got a car and volunteered to drive us. I don’t really enjoy shopping, but I figured I’d come along and do some exploring; plus I needed a few more pants options for work. I didn’t bring any in-between jean and dressy/nice work pants and so have been wearing dresses to work everyday just about. So we drove to the mall in Tableview, and I must say, it was a very impressive mall. Also, it was totally fun and interesting to me because of the change in mall scenery. The first store we went into looked like an American Eagle and was called “Old Khaki.” HAHAHA, I got the biggest kick out of that! Old Khaki?? We were in an American Eagle/Old Navy rip-off called Old Khaki! I actually liked their clothes a lot, but they were incredibly cheap so I didn’t buy anything. We kept going and next up we stumbled upon something amazing: Pick n Pay CLOTHING store! It looked like an Old Navy inside (how funny since we had just come from Old Khaki, pahaha). To my immense delight, PnP loves jeggings!! You probably know that I have an extreme affinity for wearing pants that aren’t actually pants. I find the button/zipper/tight waist thing to be so restrictive, crampy, and just uncomfortable. So I wear things with waistbands as much as possible. And the more my waistband pants look like real pants, the better. Well these jeggings have a button, zipper, and are still completely comfortable! I also found a super cute top I can wear on weekends or to work and a pair of charcoal work capris. So set! All that for around $50. I also found some reasonably priced dental floss and bought weights to work out with upstairs in our apartment’s “life style centre” (i.e. a workout room with two bikes and a broken BowFlex machine in it). That way I can get in a full workout without having to pay $100 to join Virgin Active (although I would really like to).

Table Mountain and Lion's Head from across Table Bay

After shopping, we went to a tiki bar right across the street from the beach in Blouberg that has amazing views of Table Mountain and the city bowl across the bay. Liliya and I split nachos and ordered the house brewed beer, Pakalolo I think the place was called. The nachos would’ve been great, however, they put them on Doritos instead of tortilla chips. This was very gross, like some weird Taco Bell concept, but I was so hungry I didn’t care.  

So now here I am, in bed. I can’t believe another week of work is starting tomorrow. Most exciting part of that is wearing my new jeggings to the office.
... I just had a great idea for a new retail concept - I'd like to start up a new store and call it "Old Jeggings." I think it would be a great success and I can franchise to all my favorite countries and have houses there. Any interested investors?