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Showing posts from June, 2010

The Silver Bullet

This was our rental car. It's a Hyundai Atos, which means "shoebox" in korean if I'm not mistaken. When I left we had put nearly 7000 km on the thing. Clocking in at a whopping 58 horsepower, we hit first gear a few times going up hills. The puzzling thing to me was that it didn't even get very good gas milage. After numerous conversions, we figured it to get about 36 miles per gallon or so. I remember my mom's 2003 Honda Accord, with 160 horsepower and about twice the space, could easily get over 40 mpg. The issue, I think, is that a car so underpowered actually becomes less efficient. Maintaining road speed with such a tiny engine makes you wind it up so much it's on a lousy place on the torque curve. About the only advantage is that they have to be dirt cheap to make.

Ivory Coast vs North Korea

This was the last game for me. Ivory Coast won but still didn't make it out of the group stage. After that we went back to Pretoria where my friends from the USA dropped me off. They have tickets to a couple more games but I'm going to a computer conference for the next week or so. Too bad about the USA team, but at least we made it out of the group stage. Now I'm rooting for Germany and Argentina.

I'm rich!

Oddly enough, this money is probably worth more now than it was back when it was real currency just in sheer bizarre factor.

Handstand of the day

At Potholes in Mpumalanga.

Handstand of the day

Just outside Kruger.

Elephants of the day

This little one in front there flapped his ears and trumpeted at us in the cutest threat imaginable.

Kruger

This is a Baobab tree, one of the iconic images of Africa. We've seen a whole pack of wildlife here, including baboons, vervet monkeys, hippos, giraffes, elephants, waterbucks, impalas, kudu, duiker, and a couple big cats, one of which was a probable lion. The best sighting of the day, though, was a mother leopard with several cubs. We never would have seen her but for a ranger who gave us the tip-off.

Ivory Coast vs Brazil

After the USA game we spent an afternoon at the Apartheid museum. That night my friends went to the Ivory Coast game. I didn't have tickets, so I stayed behind. The loss to Brazil, combined with the drubbing Portugal gave to North Korea today, basically puts Ivory Coast out of contention. Now we're in Kruger for a few days. The picture is of some Cape Buffalo we saw on the way in to the first camp.

Guest story: Samuel Manymules

[Front matter: My Dad wrote this one about a breakdown my family had in Arizona. I was present at the time and helped a bit to remember the conversation.] It’s an hour before the sudden winter darkness will overtake us. We’re off on the side of the two-lane blacktop road, sixty miles out of Kayenta on the way to Flagstaff. The ramparts of ravaged Black Mesa rise in the south not a mile away and what little traffic there is consists of Native Americans, who get their coal from the mine for free, hauling flammable rocks back to their homes. Christmas is three days away .The back of the car is jammed with presents. There’s green stuff running out of the engine into the red sands of Navajoland like some sickly holiday metaphor. A conversation I’d had years earlier with an auto mechanic is slowly coming back to me. “We changed all the belts and hoses, like you wanted, except that one there,” he’d said, pointing with disdain into the foreign-made guts of the engine compartment. “You’d h

USA vs Slovenia

After a freezing night at Cathedral Peak, we drove to Johannesburg for the game. The USA played terribly at first, but managed to pull out a two-all tie. With England's miserable performance against Algeria last night, that puts us very much in the running for the next round.

Handstand of the day

Looking at Cathedral Peak in the Drakensburg.

Ivory Coast vs Portugal

After seeing some elephants (they were quiet and mostly just seemed hungry), several jackals, a kudu, a bushbuck, and some cape buffalo at Addo, we drove into Port Elizabeth for the game. Ivory Coast put up a strong defense and fought Portugal to a draw. This was the first major sporting event I have ever attended, and it was great fun. Drogba was put in at the end to rousing cheers. After the game we drove to East London for the night. Today we're staying in Port St. John's. We had a quick swim in the ocean, which was suprisingly warm. Tonight we'll watch bafana bafana play Uruguay.

Elephants of the day

In Addo National Park.

World Cup update

From Cape Town we drove down the coast to the Tsitsikamma National Park. This morning we took a hike to this suspension bridge and then to the waterfall posted earlier. On the way back we saw Southern Right whales breaching about 100 meters off shore. After that we drove through Port Elizabeth, with some intermittent heavy rain, to the Addo Elephant National Park. Tonight we sleep here and we'll hopefully see some big mammals tomorrow before our first game in Port Elizabeth.

Handstand of the day

In Tsitsikhama National Park.

USA vs England

Yesterday we drove down to the Cape of Good Hope. We saw penguins, baboons, and an ostrich. On the way back we stopped for fish and chips in Fish Hoek, which were greasy and delicious. The whole cape area has been one towering spectacle after another; we almost feel unable to appreciate so much beauty in one go. Last night we went to the Cape Town fan park to watch the USA game. We America fans were badly outnumbered, but the England fans were good sports, save for some chants of "USA! You are gay!" I thought we played very well, especially considering the quality of the opposition. Today we're driving toward Port Elizabeth and resting our vocal cords from screaming ourselves hoarse.

Handstand of the day

Cape Point, looking across False Bay.

Guest story: Nechako

[Front matter: Today we've got yet another wonderful story from my father. This one is pure action.] It was Vince who made me promise to follow through for once. “You’ve got to write it down before it fades to nothing,” he’d said. “Promise me that you’ll do it.” I promised. It was long ago already, and the central event took perhaps only five minutes to play out. Still, it was one of those occurrences around which the personal histories of the witness and participants are dated. This is particularly true in my own case, though I’d begun as a player of a very minor part. Vince thought I should call it “The Price of Friendship,” but I thought a better title might be “My Biggest Wreck”. It all started when our trip leader, RD, was out reassuring himself of the location of the “goalpost” run in Unkar Rapid, all by himself. He slipped on a rock, fell down and busted his thumb. He couldn’t hold a fork, never mind an oar, and we had to pull Vince off the trainee raft to replace

Cape Town

We arrived here Wednesday afternoon and went to the most bizarre parade I've seen in quite some time. It was kind of a San Francisco vibe. Yesterday we climbed Table Mountain. It's the rainy season, and we were lucky to have it clear, warm, and dead calm. Cape Town has about the most spectacular setting I've seen for a city. My friends compared it to Rio de Jainero. Today my calves are aching from all the climbing. We spent last night at Long Street watching the South Africa-Mexico game outside a bar. The energy was unbelievable. When South Africa scored I thought the vuvuzelas would shatter my eardrums. Even with the tie it's still a great start for bafana bafana. The police presence is very heavy. Even with all the craziness I still feel quite safe.

First look at Western Cape

This is wine country. It looks like a cross between northern California and Austria.

Road trip!

I'm on the road with my friends from high school. We took the N14 across the top of Northern Cape and spent the night at a campground in Springbok. It was a bit out of the way but it turned out to be a splendid idea as it's some spectacular country, reminiscent of New Mexico and Utah. Today we're taking the N7 down the coast to Cape Town, which has been beautiful so far. Stay tuned.

2010 World Cup!

Today I leave on a trip to Cape Town and a few other places to see a couple soccer matches, so updates here will probably get pretty sporadic. This will actually be the first professional or world-league game I've ever seen. I'm going with some friends from back home that I haven't seen in a long time. I'll try to post at least occasional updates, but hopefully I can talk my family into keeping this place alive. Wish me luck!

Book review: A Scanner Darkly

Up today: A Scanner Darkly , by Philip K. Dick. (It's been a bit of a binge on the PKD, I know.) Yet another audiobook, this one recorded by Paul Giamatti . It is a bit odd to hear a big-name actor reading to you, and Giamatti really acts some of the more intense scenes, more so than the average reader. But once I got used to his voice, he did an excellent job. This is again classic Dick, introspective, paranoid, and philosophical. It consists of several interrelated topics. The first is the paranoid story of Bob Arctor, an undercover police officer who, due to infiltration, wears an "scramble suit," which hides his identity even from his police colleagues. He is addicted to "Substance D," which causes the hemispheres of his brain to split. Arctor develops two personalities, one police, one druggie, and begins to forget he is not the same person, and Dick provides some deeply creepy internal thoughts of Arctor as he slowly loses his mind. Dick propos

Album of the week

LP4 , by Ratatat. It comes out today. See here for a sample track. As they say, this is an album to be preferably played through some massive speakers, wired for heavy bass; anyway at least through a decent set of earbuds. I've always been a huge fan of Ratatat; their album Classics is among my favorites of all time. It's totally instrumental, but fairly accessible for electronic music. I highly recommend. Here's "Nostrand" from that album:

Department of WTF, soccer bureau

The folks from the Kalahari Experience left a few sports balls here when they left. There were three soccer balls, a basketball, three volleyballs, and a rugby ball. The only one left is the rugby ball (because they don't play rugby). Every other one has been destroyed; in fact, they lasted about two weeks total. I was a bit stunned when I found the shredded remains of a soccer ball on the way back from a run the other day. I thought back to the days when I used to play--I was never anywhere close to as soccer-mad as the kids here, but I played pretty frequently and consistently for a number of years when I was growing up. (Let's not start a discussion about how bad I was. Suffice to say that after seven years of play, I was worse than when I started out.) I remember a particular ball that I had for at least four years, probably more, and while it was beat to hell, it still held air. I know there are a lot of thorns around here, and the kids have no easy way to top up t

I've been in South Africa for awhile

While reading this amusing (but rather entitled) rant from a Porsche Boxter driver, I noticed this picture: The first thought that popped into my head: why the hell is he driving on the wrong side of the road?! Whoo.

The oil spill

Today the NYT has a must-read article on the Gulf spill. It lays out, blow-by-blow, the numerous exceptions and foolish decisions that led to the spill: Investigators have focused on the minute-to-minute decisions and breakdowns to understand what led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 people and setting off the largest oil spill in United States history and an environmental disaster. But the lack of coordination was not limited to the day of the explosion. New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were not always in sync. And in the aftermath, arguments about who is in charge of the cleanup — often a signal that no one is in charge — have led to delays, di

Book review: The Man in the High Castle

Up today: The Man in the High Castle , by Philip K. Dick. It's an alternate history piece, one of the most influential. Though it wasn't the first of its kind, it brought that kind of novel into the popular consciousness, especially the kind where Germany and Japan won World War II. It won the Hugo Award in 1962. Side note: once again, I didn't read this, rather I listened to it. The reading was by George Guidall , an amazingly prolific guy who's turned up all over the place. I think this is the sixth performance of his I've experienced, and he has yet to disappoint. The setting is post WWII. Japan has taken the west coast of America, the Reich the east coast, while the middle has been left as a nominally independent buffer zone. Dick is absolutely fantastic at describing the situation, weaving just enough details and hints through the narrative and internal thoughts of his characters to make a totally convincing world, while your imagination is left to roa

KFC

Ezra Klein just got back from a trip he took with Yglesias to China. At the end of his post about Chinese food, he includes this little tidbit: Apparently, the most popular chain restaurant in China is KFC. It's killing McDonald's. Here are four reasons why . This is also true in South Africa. I can't tell you exactly why, but I can speculate. First, people here (black and white) love fried chicken, much more than hamburgers. Second, KFC is much better-run here, or at least better than I remember from back home. The restaurants are clean, the food is fresh and delicious, and the service good. I'm not kidding, though. KFC here really is delicious. Best fast food in South Africa (with Fish Place a close second). As Chappelle says, if you don't like chicken, there's something wrong with you!

Peace Corps post of the week

My friend Noah runs into some trouble : The people in the villages in this dirt road area have been asking for an asphalt road, or a tar road as it is called here, to be put in for some time. I have heard that they had been promised this road for years. Apparently it was all set to happen this year and the money was even allocated. Then the money was unallocated by some unexplained event and now the road is not going to be built. This made people angry, above all it made the taxi owners and operators very angry. The taxis don't last very long on the wash-boarded and rutted dirt roads which end up costing more for the taxis than travel on the tar roads. Money is a powerful motivator and the taxis were fed up so the next step they decided was to strike. [...] It really was not a good time for school to be let out because all of this week the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th graders are taking national tests. So I felt that we should at least try to let the learners finish the test. Alas, abou

Hibernophobia

TNC has a great series of posts going on historical racism against the Irish compared to the black equivalent. It's a bit staggering to look at some of the primary sources he has unearthed. I'm about 25% Irish myself, as a matter of fact. It seems like practically everyone in the US, it seems (shoot, even Barack Obama is part Irish). See here for more.

My five favorite books

I once got a question similar to this, and it seemed like a good post topic. (There were a plague of similar posts floating around the blogosphere awhile back too. I encourage other PCVs with blogs to post their list!) I'm not saying this is the best five books ever written, rather the ones that have influenced me the most. 5) Slaughterhouse-Five , by Kurt Vonnegut. This little sci-fi classic upended my worldview the first time I read it. Vonnegut's views on writing are still some of the most profound that I know. (See here to see what I mean.) 4) Blood Meridian , by Cormac McCarthy. This astonishingly brutal story is written with equally astonishing lyricism. It's also one of the few books that improves with the audiobook version. I highly recommend this version read by Richard Poe. 3) Cadillac Desert , by Marc Reisner. This was the first really good nonfiction book I ever read, and the one that remains dearest to my heart. It was the first unarguable demons