From Hluhluwe to Durban
So a week ago, I got to see my first zebra and giraffes and hyenas and elephant and such in their natural habitat.
David is awesome. And I mean David is awesome like Persis is awesome. An amazing, well-rounded person as well an established great physicist.
I need to get back to current events and such.
And then I was back to sitting in an office by myself with a project that was suggested to me. Except I have view of the Durban harbor as well as lots of sky, and the internet is slower.
I asked Kavi, will there be interaction with the other students? Perhaps a reading group? So now we have coffee at 11am every morning, and I will be presenting two of the ACT papers at a journal-club-like discussion on Tuesday. It's a start.
I need to get a bike, but even so, I don't know how much freedom it will buy me. It's hard to get anywhere without a car, and it's not safe at night. I feel confined like in Chicago.
Norene (sp?) and I went to the beach yesterday. We took the crowded minibuses to the Workshop and back, and walked btwn there and the beach. The Workshop is a big shopping center. We wandered around after the beach, and did a bit of grocery shopping. You get street-smart very fast. The color of our skin made us prime pickpocketing targets. Keep moving, be sensitive to anyone touching or brushing your bag. Norene put her cell phone, worth less than $5, in one of the netted outer pockets of her bookbag (usually for waterbottles), and it is now gone--more of a nuisance than anything else, since she had all her phone numbers on there, and was planning to go climbing today with someone she just met but now they have no way to reach each other. I was fortunate not to lose anything (my important stuff was tucked safely in my waistbelt, anyway), but an outer pocket of my bookbag was unzipped twice. It's a feeling I don't like.
Other than that, the Workshop was a delightful place, full of bustling life and bright colors and surrounded by outdoor market stands. A refreshing change from drab American malls. It was a tiny bit like like Reading Terminal Market surrounded by department stores, perhaps...
Oh, btw, Bro, if you have any questions about SA climbing, my roommate for the next week is the person to ask. And I got a shot of the motorcycles parked by the beach, but it's on my disposable camera (I made the wise decision not to bring my real camera on this particular outing). They were mostly Harleys anyway.
Friday night, Kavi said I should come here for a postdoc. They'll have the funding, he said. Later, when Norene probed for more of my thoughts on the issue, I said I'd have to think about it--my life is in the States, a day's flight away...although there's nothing locking me to Philadelphia or anything. Kavi replied, your life is there, but life is out there (or something like that). If I do come here, would you all come visit??? A year isn't terribly long, and I'd have my physics, if they follow through on having more interaction. Need to look into the music and theater. The outreach opportunities would be outstanding. SA is really up and coming, a lot of effort being put into fixing the inequities of the past. West Philadelphia won't change very much in the next few years, I think--the resources *are* there for those who realize they want them, and convincing people they want to learn is a slow process. Lastly, of course, there's the safety issue--like Chicago, it's not that I would fear for my safety or anything, but rather that the precautions needed to be safe infringe on my freedom of movement, and I happen to have a fiercely independent personality. So the question is, how much would having a car and/or a motorcycle fix this issue, and could I get used to working around it... The maths dept (where cosmology is) is moving to another campus, and rumor has it that the new campus is dodgier (in South African lingo).
Wednesday through Sunday I will be visiting Cape Town.
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