For a blog with four members we suck at posting... (no comments allowed to pick up on that)
My excuse for not posting is that I had a hectic time at work and socially. (Pollen's excuse is that he is trying to break into the ex-Soviet Union, not sure about Cerebus' schedule, and Thespian... well... I am sure Thespian has a very good reason... Jo'burg is probably too exciting).
I spent some time in Johannesburg, my best friend got married, I worked at a conference thingie in Cape Town, and afterward I played tour-guide for the cool people I worked with.
Reflecting on it afterwards, I realised that although South Africa is cool, we still live in a very strange society. You don't notice it while living here, but if you drive around with foreigners you see the "everyday" from a little more distance and suddenly it does not look so "everyday" anymore.
We are basically an immature society - naive, aggressive, self-important, over-ambitious, etc. It is not all bad -- in a weird way our country is probably much more free than most established democracies -- we have much less state and social surveillance and most of our laws are more like "guidelines". But the price is of course a little randomness in the domain of personal safety and a few other disasters.
There is a Hobbes' (Thomas, not the stuffed tiger) quote that will fit in here somewhere. Anyway, I thought I'd share this thought. Feel free to post comments about why you'd prefer living in Cape Town to London.
Hmmmm, I'm still thinking about the post title. I think I get it, but... Dit sê lekker, though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for four good reasons katialibre!
ReplyDeleteAbout your bobotie comment, a friend of mine living in Copenhagen for the past 8 years commented on how one misses the things that you did not think you'd miss.
In his case it meant Ouma Beskuit - Apparently it can be bought in Denmark for something around ZAR80!
what catches me about SA is that we still have big open spaces, even in cities. London is big and built up, it takes you a while to get into the country or mountain. It takes me a maximum of 20 minutes, on a bicycle, when I'm in Cape Town. By car you can have full on countryside within an hour. Gotta love it.
ReplyDelete"By car you can have full on countryside within an hour"
ReplyDeleteBetter get that licence then ;-)
U're right though - and within 3 hours driving you can go from a mediterranean climate, to alpine-like mountains, to semi-desert. Add another 3 hours and you can have full-on coastal forest or grasslands (depending on ur direction).
PS. Imagine what you can do with that fly-suit pictured on your blog. Just attach two little booster rockets >>>>>>>>>>>> wow wow wow :-)
Alternatively - use a large motorcycle :P