Friday 9 June 2006

A naartjie in SA sosatie?

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.

4 comments:

  1. Hmmmm, I'm still thinking about the post title. I think I get it, but... Dit sĂȘ lekker, though.

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  2. Thanks for four good reasons katialibre!

    About 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!

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  3. 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.

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  4. "By car you can have full on countryside within an hour"

    Better 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

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