Chopsicles

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).