South Africa So Far

I arrived in South Africa on Tuesday morning. Not mutch occupied my time on the first day. I went shopping (bought some food to contribute to my host -- my brother) and got some credit for my cellphone card here in South Africa. I planned to go to the Taekwon-Do club in town but it turns out that it is still closed. Classes only resume next week, after the long holiday season.

On Wednesday I also stayed at home -- jet-lag getting the better of me.

Yesterday (Thursday) was much better. I worked a couple of hours on preparing for one of the classes I'm teaching this coming semester and basically finished the syllabus. I still have another module or two to prepare for.

Last night we (two of my brothers and I) went to watch the Afrikaans musical Liefling currently doing the South Africa cinema circuit. "Liefling" is not on my list of favourite films. I'm appreciative of the concept. They used many Afrikaans folk songs and weaved it all into an ellaborate romance. Unfortunately it all felt a bit forced. The characters were also by and large pretty shallow, even for a musical. Bobby van Jaarsveld, the Afrikaans pop-star, is the leading actor. Surprisingly, he was quite efficient, but even his performance could not save the movie. Again, its been decades since the last South African musical film, so things can only get better from here on.

Today was much busier. I went to the bank to get some stuff done, had to buy some clothes for tomorrow (I brought very little clothing with me), quickly visited with a friend, went to a cellphone shop to find out about using my Galaxy Tab in South Africa, was send to a service centre, went to an Internet shop, went back to the cell phone service centre, and am sitting now in a coffee shop waiting for my lift back to my brother's home. There, I will have to try and fix his computer. A virus caused havoc on it, so I was forced to format it last night and install a new Windows platform. The bad thing is that my brother does not have the install discs and drivers for his computer. I'm not quite sure how to remedy the situation.

Tomorrow I'm off to Potchefstroom for the weekend and then back to my brother's for a day or two before I start my journey northward -- final destination Tzaneen.

I'm thankful that I can actually use my phone now to access the Internet which will dramatically improve my stay in South Africa if I don't have to plan frequent visits to Internet cafes. The uncertain thing is how much it will cost. South African cellphone and Internet services are still ridiculously expensive.

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