Chopsicles

And so, I’ve made a kind of vague decision that, insofar as this blog serves as a record of my adventures, it would be a little lame to let it die and, in so doing, declare that my adventures had ended. Besides, I find it a pleasant and useful diversion to reflect upon and chronicle experiences through old bloggy as I like to call him/her/it. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed being back in Melbourne so far, though I have been surprised that my future calling hasn’t come out and slapped me on the face. Nevertheless, I need money to replace lappy which died an untimely death and to repay some small bills that have come my way, so I’ll be going for a few interviews shortly. I’m currently doing some work trying to get a site up and running for Sam and will post a link here when done. Keep well now. Oh yes, my camera is feeling better now, so I took a couple of pics of Melbourne.

Well, I’m now in the airport @ Johannesburg, finally ready to head home again after what seems like much than 4 months. The last week has been an incredible rush which has been good for avoiding those long awkward goodbyes. We ran the music seminar on Friday and Saturday and had about 150 people sit in on the classes. There were some really phenomenal musicians running the workshops, including some of the leading players in South Africa. On Friday night we had a concert on the street out front to launch the centre and that went really well.

However, last night we had another outdoor concert and it went off, as Fiona used to say, like a fish milkshake in the sun. This one was more like an extended church service, with various Christian musicians Trevor had invited, and the place was really jumping. There was an awesome moment where I overcooked the mix a little and the speakers temporarily shut down but the people kept singing. The night was filled with these African voices and it was really quite incredible. What a note to finish the trip on!

So, I guess chopsicles will be going dormant until its next incarnation but I feel there is one final acknowledgment to be made. I do call myself a follower of Christ and, though sometimes I’m not a great one, He is the reason that I might do anything noble. He is the reason I bother to get up in the morning and I feel that He is my constant companion even when in the strangest of lands or circumstances. I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to experience this trip and very fortunate to have been able to offer some service. Thank you also to everyone for the support and encouragement and I look forward to seeing you all soon. If anyone should care to attend, I’m going to be sharing about the trip this Sunday at church. It’s at Mark St Hall, 1 Mark st Fitzroy Nth at 10.30am. Finally, there are a few pics taken by a photographer at the launch here. I’ll upload more soonish.

Well, you wouldn’t believe who I ran into last night - John Howard! So anyways, he came around for dinner and we all had a lovely time. Ok, so maybe it was the John Howard from the London College of Music and not the Australian John Howard, but we had fun anyway, laughing and being friends.. laughing. He was in at the centre again today running an induction session for the teachers at the centre which went very well.

The sign I designed arrived yesterday and got put up outside the centre which was a bit of a buzz for me. Its strange to see something that I put together on the laptop come to earth in such signy fashion. I’m a little irked cos I think I should have left a bit more whitespace around the top, but I guess you have to learn these things. Tomorrow evening is the official launch of the centre as the first London College of Music examination centre outside of the UK. There’s all sorts of folk coming from government, business etc.. Its sure to be quite an evening and I’ll no doubt be pretty flat out making sure things run smoothly. Its fun being in a role so varied that days can include sound engineering, meeting and greeting, making sure refreshments are in the right places at the right time, setting up networks, washing up, graphic design, web development etc. Its like being in a small business I guess.

The next few days until I leave are set to be equally busy with outdoor concerts running on both Friday and Saturday nights, and the seminar on Friday afternoon and Saturday is expected to attract about 300 participants. I leave on the Sunday morning so somehow need to find some time to pack too. Not too much chance of being bored!

Well, went into the city with Mario on Tuesday and had a nice day wandering about (check out da pics). I had put half of today aside to sort through valentine’s day correspondence. It seems that there has been some sort of glitch in the local postal system, so that was half a day wasted. I guess they may have been overloaded, the stuff will probably come tomorrow. Anyways, I hope you got my letter and stuff.  I’ve never sent a live dove through the post before, so let me know how he goes. Just in case, I named him Squishy.

Well, we are getting ever closer to launch and quite busy. Hey look! The force of procrastination has grown so strong in me that I managed to create that countdown. Just up there ^ next to ducky poos. I think it may be a bit wrong cos its based on the US server time or something, but its close enough.

Cliff has put together a nifty video that summarises the project fairly well. You can also see it on the RTS site but I’ve included it here to save some trees.

Played cricket on saturday in 40 degrees and almost died from the heat. I took 4/46 including a couple of bowled wickets and a caught and bowled. Its a two day match so no result yet. Nothing much else to report captain.

After all the adventure of getting to Namibia, the stay there was fairly uneventful. Windhoek is a fairly quite city, for a capital, but with really good infrastructure. I hadn’t realised until just before the trip that Nambia had previously been called South West Africa and, after initially being colonised by the Germans, was put under the administration of the South African government following WWI. I don’t think Apartheid was formalised in law (as it was in South Africa) but segregation was apparently very much a part of life there. After the end of WWII, opponents of the government petitioned the UN for self-governance. In 1960 these opponents formed the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and, when South Africa refused a UN order to withdraw in 1966, SWAPO turned to armed resistance. This included guerilla warfare and bombing of white businesses (I’m not sure if it was during business hours). Independence finally came in 1990 and Sam Nujuma, the President of SWAPO, was elected as the first President of Namibia. This was 4 years prior to the last of the apartheid laws being dropped in South Africa so it provides an interesting view of what possibly lies down the road, although I’m sure there are also great differences between the nations.

In other thoughts, I forgot to mention there was heavy rainfall up the coast around New Year and some of the dams were dangerously overfull. It was a funny feeling to waste water and feel that I was doing a service to the community. I was also gonna put a countdown on the page to say how long till Melbourne but it was taking too much time. Anyways, its only 3 weeks which feels quite weird.

I played cricket again on the weekend, a far cry from the last pitiful effort. I took 4 wickets, took a catch and hit a four to get the winning runs. I was riding home and thinking life doesn’t get much better. Ah, sport is such a fickle thing.

Finally, the picture on the right is my response to a video I found very funny, check it out if you can (the video).

Well arrived in Namibia yesterday evening after 30 hours of sitting in a truck. Trevor managed to arrange a lift through a friend who owns a trucking business, so at 6pm on Friday I got into the truck (see artist’s impression on right). After an hour in the truck with my new mate Leon, he pulled something out and started putting it up his nose which I didn’t take as a particularly good sign. It turned out to be snuff and he topped up every few hours.  A few hours into the trip the truck started beeping and wouldn’t go more than about 20km/h so we had to stop and check it out. Eventually the problem just ‘went away’ and we kept going. We crashed (figuratively) at around midnight and I tried to get some sleep in my seat while Leon used the bed in the back. This was one of those times when being tall is not an asset!
We hit the road again (figuratively) at 5am and I kept offering mints to Leon when I noticed his head dipping as he fought fatigue (he’d already done the trip from Namibia to Cape Town the day before) and tried to make conversation between his broken English and my non-existent Afrikaans. Got to customs about 11 but passing through took about 2 hours as they processed all the paperwork and checked the truck’s contents and our luggage. Its funny seeing full customs on something that looks just like the Victoria/NSW border. Next on the adventure was a flat tyre which I helped to change in possibly the hottest place on earth. On the way we also picked up 2 more passenger’s, one of whom shared grapes and rasin’s after her recent work on vineyards. We were all boipping along to some local music and things seemed to be going well. However, through a series of events I was unable to contact my pick up contact (Riaan) in Windhoek, Namibia, and Leon started getting very agitated and saying “colored people, they no good”. Things were getting to a point where I thought he was just going to drop me on the side of the road when, coming down the hill into Windhoek, I saw something crossing the road and realised it was a lion (see artists’s impression on right)! Naturally, this made me even less keen to try my luck hitching by the roadside. Anyways, through several calls to Cape Town and back, we finally managed to get in touch with Riaan and I arrived safely. More update soon!

well, trevor just came in and said that i’m leaving for namibia in 3 and a half hours. not yet sure if i’m gonna take the lappy. gotta go home and pack

Well, I couldn’t think of a better title for this post, so sir will have to do. Again, I was waiting for something momentous to happen so I could write a focussed post about it, but that hasn’t eventuated so I’ll make another random collection of observations.

Check out this little dude. He’s nicknamed Worsie (Afrikaans for little sausage) and he’s often hanging around near the centre. One day Trevor invited him inside and gave him a pair of drumsticks. This was his first shot on drums and I think this effort is pretty remarkable.

I’ve mentioned before how the traffic here is rather hectic, well I heard on the radio over Christmas that the road toll in December alone was over 1,200. It’s quite a stark contrast to Australia where I think the road toll was about 40 for the same period (though maybe that was just in Victoria).

I played cricket on the weekend but got flogged in my final over and dropped an absolute sitter so we shall never talk of that match again.

Its been interesting to note that nowhere in Africa have I seen any recycling facilities, though I suspect there might be something in Cape Town CBD. All the glass etc just goes straight in the bin. Like the road toll, it seems silly to be taking such small measures in Australia when a whole continent is too busy trying to meet more basic needs to consider such long term causes. I guess its something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where we worry about food and shelter before higher level needs. Obviously its a good thing to consider our environment, but I fear it will be in vain if the developing world isn’t also helped to reach this level. In the DRC, in particular, it seemed that every second car was blowing smoke and we passed streams that were absolutely choked with plastic waste.

Finally, it looks like I’ll most probably be heading home around Feb 23rd - exactly a month away. Still waiting for confirmation of flights and stuff but definitely looking forward to seeing everyone again, except you. No, not really. The guy behind you. He looks dodgy.

Well, the last few days have been very productive and quite fun. The walls here are thick concrete and, since I didn’t want to rely on a wireless signal alone to carry throughout the building, I’ve run some networking cable to a couple of the other rooms. This meant I got to play with a big drill and make Arnie sounds - sweet. We’ve also started to set up the 3 booths adjacent to the main auditorium according to their anticipated function. Booths 1 & 2 will each have about 4 laptops on which students can follow the theory and some online aural content and will be guitar and keyboard rooms, respectively. Booth 3 is planned as a drum booth and we’ve fitted it out as such but still need to put in further sound-proofing. In addition, I’ve added a gallery to the RTS site and will keep uploading more pics there. One of the main other things I need to do is set up some sort of proxy server to control which sites the kids can get to whilst still allowing full access from staff machines. I guess I could install something on each workstation (all macs) but if anyone has any suggestions for a solution, I’d be keen to hear them.

Another thing on my to-do list is to do a hand over of the work on the network, the website and, hopefully, train some people up in the basics of video editing. I’m in the weird position of not knowing my exact return date. Its a little complicated cos:

1. My return flight is booked for Feb 17th (to arrive 6pm on 18th)

2. My visa expires on Feb 13th

3. The centre launch is on Feb 18th

I’d really like to be around for the launch so that would mean both changing the flight and extending my visa. The easiest way to extend the visa may be to leave the country for 48 hours and then renew it, so we’re checking out options there, Namibia currently looking the most likely.