Eight months in and finally a title that is quite good. I didn't come up with it.
This month has been dominated by sport and work, and I feel settled in to the extent that there is a monotony and routine to life creeping in. That of course comes with the caveat that life can only become so monotonous when you're surrounded by mountains, beaches, vineyards, wildlife, fauna, sunsets...okay, sunsets don't surround me as much as focus in one particular direction, but they are still stunning.
It started and ended with rowing. USSA (equivalent to BUCS in the UK) kicked off the month featuring UWC where I am a post-doc, but due to the peculiarities of South Africa, registered as a student. Given the club only started last year, and is relying on hard work and favours from people across WC rowing, a good showing was made. Certainly a good platform was there to build on in future. 12 months to work on dominating...even if the guys up in Gauteng have a 2300m altitude training advantage.
The second weekend was dominated also by sporting competition, with a 10K (actually, about 11 km since I was running back and forth with water etc) obstacle course called the Impi run, with Impi being Zulu for warrior. It was fun, in a horrible-I-don't-want-to-do-that-again-where-is-the-beer way, but it's resolved me to only row through lakes as opposed to running through them.
It hasn't all been healthy living...there has been the usual wine tastings, this time with guests visiting...
For the first time I went to the cinema here too, to see Lego Batman (it's amazing, and deep, as the accompanied picture will prove). I've been to cinemas all over the world, and not one has come close to the British cinema experience. For one, why does nowhere have sweet popcorn?! And a beer wouldn't go amiss. There's also not a single one which has seats comparable to those at Scunthorpe VUE, which to this day is the only cinema I've ever been to which has reclinable seats as standard. The only other bit of trivia that I can offer about Scunthorpe is that it caused problems for content filters in the early '90s due to the questionable word contained within itself. Perhaps the restitution regarding that from the rest of the world is why it, and it alone, gets reclinable seats, or perhaps it's just one of those peculiarities.
Another first was 'museum night', which was the third Thursday of the month. A couple of spots were explored; one, an optometrists which has been family-owned since the 19th century which was fascinating in it's own unique bizarre fashion, and the second the slave lodge. The slave lodge had an excellent exhibit, and I must pay it a visit one day again in detail, but great detail was applied to what appears on the surface to be very simple topics, such as the vexillology of South Africa. We saw the most bizarre and horrible performance piece though, which was meant to tell a story about apartheid and the SA struggle, but in reality was only meant to shock and offend by playing a gay orgy in the background as some chaps wandered around slowly wearing gags. In lieu of a photo of that, I've instead provided a mask from a Madagascan tribe.
I think it's evident that I've loved my time in South Africa so far. I wrote at the end of last month that there had been a sudden sacking of the finance minister, and since then there has been a further reshuffle. Avoiding the politics in the rest of the world for now (and the corrupt evil nature of Theresa May et al) there has been a significant push to oust Zuma, the SA president. He has dismissed it as a white conspiracy/outside influence/nothing to do with him, but it's clear to anyone with any sense that he's prepared to screw over the South African people as long as he has power and the money that comes with that. I can't effect change in Europe right now, but I felt it was my duty to join in the march on parliament here in Cape Town. I think the accompanying photo shows quite clearly that the feelings that Zuma must go cross over all people. A (hopefully) secret vote will take place in May to oust him; watch this space. One piece of good news is that due to the general political uncertainty in the world right now, the currency hasn't been too hard hit, but it's definitely cheaper to come visit now than it was last month!
This final weekend has been spent venturing out of the Western Cape for once, over to the Eastern Cape and East London, where I've been competing in the SA National Champs. Word of warning: if you have never rowed, or look at most rowing races and think 'that's easy, why are they making a huge deal of this', skip this paragraph. My 1x this morning went smoothly in choppy water, with tough competition from 35 crews and the fastest 6 reaching a final. My start was great, and I settled on about 28 after the first 150m, but with the tide coming in and increasing choppiness, a few dodgy strokes meant I dropped to about 26, and I came 8th, just missing out on the final by 8 seconds. My doubles partner fared better, finishing 3rd after making it through to the final. The 2x competition consisted of 4 heats and the winners going through, with the next 2 fastest. We comfortably won our heat, and turns out we got the fastest time, which unfortunately pegged us in the middle lane and the brunt of the wind. In the late afternoon final, we got another fantastic start, and settled in almost a boat length ahead of our competition. With 250m to go and the crowd coming in to earshot, we started our well-rehearsed build, and the lead eeked out further...right up until the shout came to hold it stroke side and our bow side blades struck one of the umpire's boats which had broken down from the previous race in the middle of our lane. Cue a frantic last 150m of the worst rowing in 8 years, and we somehow sneaked over the line with a 5s lead. I'll take it!
It's been a fun weekend, and I will follow up with some adventures starting from East London in next month's blog, since that hasn't happened yet as it will be in May*...
Song of the month: Qongqothwane, by Miriam Makeba, although it's a traditional !Xhosa song, and therefore I am never going to actually be able to learn it.
*It's going to be my birthday too!
