Out Like Blixen

Rejoice, for it is the end of Abuse Linda Week

2007-07-06T11:37:00.000+02:00

Please do what I say. Find your keyboard settings. Change the command SHIFT+1 so that instead of printing an exclamation mark make it do a flower, or a kitten - or better still, make it do nothing at all. It will make the world a better place - prevent wars, hinder divorces. More children will live and fewer guns will be manufactured. Just do it.

One day I will write a Lazy Guide to journalism. And when I do, there will be one very short chapter on exclamation marks. Don't use them. Not 'Don't use them!' Just - don't use them. It makes a writer sound insane, or religious, or both. Calm down, put the pen down, take a deep breath, bugger off and stop bothering me.

Don't use it

Why all this, you might ask? Well, unbeknownst to me, this week just gone was apparently African "Abuse Linda Week". Celebrations peaked yesterday, when I received 400 words of grade A verbal abuse in my inbox from a disgruntled Kenyan who hasn't been paid yet for an article he wrote for me (coincidentally also measuring 400 words) back in May, only to be handed a fresh ladle of abuse at a nightclub in the evening.

On the first incident: Ok, so May is a while back. And we should have sorted it out before we did. And I can't say how sick I am of asking people in my office to check up on things, only to have to ask them to do it again a few days later. Only to find they've gone on holiday.

But nothing merits language such as this:

"Now iam really getting tired of this because you are giving me unconfirmed reports.Someone from the bank just called me and informed me there is no money since i had told him to check instead of me rushing there.I went and confirmed and there is NO MONEY.I was hoping to even go there tomorrow but already there is no TRUTH....But you have decided to make it my nightmare day in day out!You are telling me of things you are not sure of.One thing for sure i cannot look at your magazine anywhere again.Never." &cetera &cetera ad nauseum...

In the above, there is only one exclamation mark, although this is remedied further down the email.

Then, in the evening, I felt like soothing my shot nerves by going out on the town with Miracle-Gro and listen to a friend of ours DJ at a place called Roosevelt on Bree St. All was well until Gro got chatting to one of the owners of the place, who incidentally must have a very small manhood, since he proceeded to first insult Gro then myself in such a way as to render beyond doubt his complete lack of balls - or brain for that matter.

Recounting the whole episode would be tedious. But highlights included me getting told I was "shallow" for saying it was a pity that the excellent DJs didn't get more of a crowd. As an editor, he said, I must learn not to have expectations. Oh, and next time I should take this off. (As he unzips my light jacket) And do this... (as he tries to lift up my top).

I told him to take his club for "creative and environmentally conscious people" and drive it up his arse sideways. At least, I told him that in my head several times in my car on the way home.

So - in return I'm thinking about proclaiming next week the "Linda abuses Africa week". It's only fair.

Where's my spam?

2007-07-03T15:57:00.000+02:00

Ever since Deborah started, my work down here has taken on a new routine. Instead of doing absolutely everything myself, I now spend most of my time thinking up things for her to do, then telling her to do them. The rest of the time I spend swearing at my email account for giving me spam while keeping back the good emails.

At least it was, until today. Today Deborah is off and I've got nobody to tell what to do. What is more, my email has gone topsy turvy and will now give me all the good emails, but not the spam.

This should not be a problem.

But out of old habit, I keep clicking on 'send and receive', scanning the progress box jealously for spam emails. Old habits, and all that.

Otherwise, things are going pretty well. Deborah is getting better and better at doing everything I get paid to do. It's my ultimate goal to render myself competely surplus to requirements, then give myself a fat redundancy deal. If only...

My freelance is taking off again, since Boss in London has agreed that I can write for the Mail and Guardian down here. They pay next to nothing, but I have always been a fan of Guardian (the M&G is an arm's length subsidiary) editorial policy which is basically to let their writers get on with it. I've never had more than, say, 5 changes in any one piece I've written for the G. It's great for my feelings of self-worth. I now feel about 1 rand 50 per word more valuable than I did a week ago.

In about 3.5 weeks I'm off to Europe. I'm looking forward to all of it, especially since it's the coldest and rainiest winter in Cape Town for [enter arbitrary digit here] years. Even if I have to swim through the streets of London, dodging Al-Qaeda sleeper cells as I go, at least the water should be warmer than the icy rivulets threatening to sweep me off the slopes of Table Mountain. London floods would be a seaside holiday in comparison.

This is in South Africa, not Switzerland. Sersiously.

Find five wrongs

2007-06-28T20:24:00.000+02:00

Sorry I'm not updating this blog much, but it's cold here - bloody snowing in Johannesburg - and NOTHING happens here in winter. Well, except for the incessant cold fronts tipping lots of rain on me. But then, a friend sent me this photo from some random Web 2.0 upload-your-own-shit website. And I knew I had to say SOMETHING.

Now take a good loook at it. I swear I have no idea where this photo comes from, or who took it. But look. Look closer.

I thought at first that some kids had been to some formal do, spent all night drinking Hooch (does anybody drink Hooch anymore or have I just dated myself horribly?) and then struck gold with their digital camera on the way home in the morning. But nobody would be wearing a tied bow tie after 12 hours on the piss. So this must be BEFORE the party.

What is going on? Anywhere you start - the guy, the van, the police - you just end up somewhere that doesn't make any sense. But nothing beats the sowing machine. Was it salvaged from the van? What's in it? Cake? Gold? Is that why the chap in the foreground looks so chuffed? Or is this a weird sadist about to chuck it into the swollen river, containing his pet hamster? What? WHAT????

There, now I'm feeling nauseous again. I have to stop looking at this picture. I haven't felt this affected by art since seeing Damien Hirst's decomposing tapestry of dead flies in the Guggenheim. Somebody should call Charles Saatchi.

Media Mole at the World Economic Forum

2007-06-14T16:55:00.000+02:00

Since I'm going to be busy over the next few days getting the anniversariy issue of RA ready, I brought the Media Mole with me to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town to entertain you during my absence. - L

Media mole in the hizzouse! Yo, finally the author of this blog has allowed some talent onto these pages. World Economic Forum in Cape Town, check us out. At the CTICCTICCTTICC, fo sho!

Registratioooon... Hello pretty lady! Mole, Media - yes that's me, darling, the mole with the mostest.

Wow, you get a World Economic Forum laptop bag for free and gratis. Ka-ching! Unfortunately, we journalists lose out on the WEF tie, the WEF pen, the WEF sunhat and the WEF Wunderbaum (smells of cold, hard cash) that the real participants get to finger. Not to mention the WEF MoneyMaker. I don't even know what one looks like but I sure as hell know that most of the people round me couldn't wear the suits they do without it.

The WEF laptop bag - own it

So this is the Davos of Africa. Low on the Gluhwein if so, in my humble opinion. But who listens to a mole? People watch, people watch... Wow, people are really a lot more attractive at the WEF than at the sciency jobs I usually get dragged along to. Maybe I should start hanging out with business reporters.

Opening press conference... It's the united colours of Benetton. That's right, keep the white man on the sidelines. Yam-di-dam. Have you heard the one about the Chinese, the Indian and the South African? They would never stop talking. Bla bla bla...

Molecam: Opening press conference

ZZZzzzz...

Wonder how Linda's doing. I'm bored. Look, she's scribbling away. Amazing, I don't understand a word. Are they even speaking in English? Yam-di-dam.

Hang on! Did that Chinaman just say that Africa was "backward"? Better check Linda's notes. Hey, move the pen! "Bla bla bla bla... we used to be backwards just like the African countries are today" HA HA HA! Why aren't people laughing? This is gold!

Yum-di-dum. Where's the cafeteria? Oooh, free sarnies! With smoked salmon and caviar! Wow, Africa must be a pretty rich country to be able to afford food this expensive. Bet they all eat like princes.

Holy smokes, look over there it's Coffee Annan! He's the most honest guy in the world, no flies on him. Just look how he takes a swipe at Senegal's President Wade about buying arms instead of seeds for farmers. Hmmm... He's really quite an attractive man, Coffee. Well-preserved. Wonder what he's doing tonight.

Now they're talking about hunger. Speaking of which, where are those sandwiches? They seem to have all vanished. 30 per cent of Africans are hungry. Whatever - what about me? I'm hungry too. A little bit of hunger never killed anyone.

Oops, now it's over. Coffee doesn't let on whether he thinks it's been a success. He should play high-stakes poker in Vegas instead of chairing agriculture commissions. And then give the money to Africa.

That's enough for this time. Linda needs to "file" a "story". That's what press releases are for, dumbass! Whatever. Later dudes and mofos. Media mole has left the building!

Girl cat... you'll be a woman soon

2007-06-11T21:21:00.000+02:00

This weekend, you couldn't breathe in my humble flat for the female sex hormones flying around. And it wasn't me, I'd hasten to add, but the cat. That's right, my baby has become a grown lady. And what a lady!

It started with some odd meowing and scratching at the door. But before I could look up 'cats on heat' on wikipedia, the formerly innocent kitten herself left me in no doubt as to what was going on. Hunkering down, she was giving me and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity what can only be described as a very Lindsey Lohan view of her charms while tapdancing with her hind paws and purring like a tigress. Restricted to the balcony, she soon had a suitor circling below like some boho Romeo to her brazen take on Juliet

Wherefore art thou down there, Romeo?

Pole dancing Juliet - rated XXX

This all troubled me, since sterelisation of lady cats is neither cheap nor the work of a swift nick with a scalpel. I could take the cost, but what would the cat's real owner say if she found her with a big scar on her belly and a 18th century ruche collar to stop her performing unintentional hara kiri trying to scratch at the stitches?

There were other complications. The owner (I've spoken to her now, by the way - she knows the cat hangs out with me a lot, but not that I've fed her) namely thinks that she's a he - a Tomcat. I don't know how blind you have to be to think that, but there you go. Now, I can't really tell her that the bergies done it, can I? Not without kicking up a neighbourhood feud.

It was all resolved peacefully this afternoon, if somewhat sadly. Finding the real owner at home (for a change) I went over and knocked only to be greeted by a 'Hi, where is my cat? She keeps running away.' Hoping that my blush would pass for rosy cheeks on a brisk winter's day, I told Her Holy Blonde Absentee Catownerness that her cat was a she, that she needed a vet, and that she was being gang banged around the corner (which turned out to be true). That seemed to shut her up.

Alas, it also meant that She-Who-Is-Hated-By-Cats locked my baby up until Friday, when she'll go to the vet. So I won't see her until then - and who knows how long it will take her to get well after the op. Frankly, I miss her. And I know she misses me. Maybe I can smuggle her little kitty treats through the kitchen window when the Wicked Witch is away. She may hold the key to my baby's fortress, but I hold the key to her heart!

Complex systems

2007-06-06T17:00:00.002+02:00

This week's award for wasted effort goes to Pick'n'Pay (the South African supermarket chain whose name had my sister in stitches after she was subjected to it and those of the toy shops Tinka Tonka Toys and Plinka Plonka Play in the space of ten seconds when she arrived last October) and it's "organic" range of fruit and vegetables. After painstakingly unwrapping the cling film that swaddled the styrofoam plate that held my organic avocado in bundles of four on the supermarket shelf, I felt about as environmentally friendly as Halliburton on a cold day.

Wrapping with avocado

Wrapping without avocado

It's a funny old country. And not so old, come to think of it. But what it lacks in age it makes up for in complexity.

There are many stories worth listening to about South Africa. One of the most worthwhile is of course that about the struggle led by Mandela and others to free the country from its Apartheid opressors. Another is the tale of the HIV/Aids epidemic and its victims. A third is about the disenfranchisement of the white South Africans and their loss of identity. There is the story of the growing upwardly mobile black middle class. And there is the crime.

What still confounds me after over a year down here is how all these stories fit together. Mandela would have us think of new South Africa as a weave, where many strands make one strong whole. Some days, I think that sounds feasible - as long as it's liberally strewn with the social glue that is money and wellbeing. Others, I'm determined it's not.

Maybe it's just me. But I have a growing feeling that this disjointedness that I feel is not superficial, that it goes right to the core of new South Africa.

If it does, that would mean the new South Africa is inherently unstable, just like the chaotic systems we studied in the final year of my maths degree in London. In those systems, prediction was inherently impossible because uniform small events could have arbitrarily small or large effects - in the same way that when a small tremor occurs along a faultline in the Earth's crust, you can't say how big the earthquake will be because the earthquake itself doesn't know yet.

Take the new South African consitution. It's one of the most progressive in the world, making all men and women equal regardless of race, gender, creed etc. But, watching television on a rainy Wednesday you will realise that the VAST majority of South Africans are almost militantly set against the constitution on at least one - often several - points. People from rightwing christians to traditional tribal healers come out all bleary eyed and wonder what all this is about... "Gay marriage? I didn't know that buggery was legal, even!" and so on.

Rocks rolling down a hillside. *Plod Plod* South Africa wins the 2010 World Cup. *Plod* Zuma, despite everything he's been accused of, soars on the Zulu vote. *Plod* The government introduces a HIV/Aids plan. *Plod* A white middle-aged couple is murdered in bed, causing all their closest friends to think about moving to Australia. *Plod*

Some of the events seem positive, some negative. All seem too small to cause cataclysm. But they are all the same in a critical system, perpetually poised on the verge of a rock slide. And so predicting the future of this country, at this time, is about as futile as me trying to rid the loan-cat of fleas. It sounds like a cop out, but isn't really. Because like with the fleas, the fact that it's impossible isn't discouraging me, or anyone else for that matter, from trying.

Pass the crisps!

2007-05-30T21:41:00.000+02:00

It's nine-forty-six pee-em and I've just finished watching a film called The Holiday. It's a film about how if you're a size 6 you'll end up with somebody like Jude Law, whereas if you're a size 14 you'll end up with Jack Black.

Apparently women get some sort of kick out of wathing things like it. At a loss to see why, I must assume that it's because it simultaneously makes them feel crappy about who they are (because, judging by who they go out with they can't be knockouts and women love nothing more than a reason to hate themselves) while also reassuring them that there is a hierarchy of the beautiful and the ugly, that they can do nothing about being near the bottom, and that they therefore can sit back and help themselves to another bag of crisps.

I got this so-called "feel good" movie out only because I'd had a crappy day and thought that for some reason watching people fall in love would cure it all - I know, in hindsight I need my head examined. Besides, curled up on my sofa with the cat at arm's length and my hair just greasy enough to solicit questions about whether I'd dyed it recently, I was merely a glass of red wine short of being Bridget Jones.

Although to think of it, the glass would have come in handy - if nothing else for chucking it at the television thus ridding my living room of Jude Law's smug face. I hope Ms Diaz has enough sense to fire the nanny.

Bah, humbug. Why so glum, you might ask? Well, amidst crappy weather and problems with lost car keys, it seems that my boss in London has succumbed to paranoia and says I can't write for the Guardian anymore. At least not on education and Africa, which let's face it has been a nice little cash cow until now. It's bad news. It's such bad news that I can't be bothered to be upset about it. I just hunch my shoulders and let the gloom wash over me.

Maybe I should look at the bright side. After all, there are other magazines I could write for. Hear Worms Weekly are looking for a correspondent on annelids that live in poo.

Bloody useless.

Something else that irks me is that I have to renew my passport. The Swedish authorities found it fitting, a few years ago, to start giving out passports valid for eight years but that would only hold together for about two.

It's like this. The face page is made of plastic. A needle is used to sow that page in with the rest. The needle makes a sort of perforation that rips when a border guard so much as looks at it. Not so comforting when you're travling in third world countries, where things like stamps and passports and visas are taken seriously. (Actually, I'm impressed the Blair administration haven't thought of this - it's a great way of keeping track of people, making them file for new passports every time they leave the country.)

Of course, it wouldn't have to be so bad. I'm getting a new passport for free, which is nice. But since I live in a third world country they don't have photo booths for taking passport size photographs. Instead, they offer this service in photography shops. Stand just here just under the lamp that will make your skin pallid like a corpse's, Miss, and smile. CLICK.

I don't know about you, but I don't like that. The beauty of photo booths is that you walk in, pull the curtain, and pose. For as long as you like! The lighting is great, you can relax. You're in control.

Now, there's a reason why most people look like shit in most pictures they're in. It's because, as soon as somebody you're not completely comfortable with points a camera at you, you pull a face. It's no coincidence that the only pictures most of us think we look good in were taken by boy- or girlfriends - people we are pretty sure thought we looked alright at the time of taking the picture. And, deep within, we all know our good and bad faces.

So a few minutes with yourself will leave you looking pretty hot, at least in your eyes, which at the end of the day are ones that matter the most.

But were I to put the make up on by the trowelful, I know that walking into Kodak and being paraded in front of a minimum of five snivelling retards on minimum wage will end in disaster. I underwent the whole humiliation once down here, to get an emergency passport (hours before I found my real one), and ended up looking like somebody who'd just been rescued from Bergen-Belsen. I swear, had I not found my proper passport I would have stayed at home. I'm not handing that picture over to anybody with eyes.

So what, you might ask. It's just a passport photo. Well, it's time to own up to my vanity. It's like this. I look seriously good in my current passport, to the point where border patrol people raise their eybrows and sneak an extra peak at me as I go through. And every time they do, I feel great about myself and let me tell you, after 14 hour cross-continental, nay, cross-hemisperal flights, you need something to feel good about.

An end to those little perks would not only ruin future international travel. Since passports are called upon numerous times down here to confirm that I'm not Osama Bin Laden, that picture represents me - to the bank, the car sales people, the estate agents, that is who I am. The me that goes to work, and who wakes up every morning knowing that the sleep in my eyes and grease in my hair that meets me in the mirror is only a temporary veil that hides my charms.

And it all mounts up. Moan groan boo hoo. Poor wee me. I know it's indulgent, but let me for a moment, all right?

Hmmm... I just had a terrifying thought. Maybe this is all the success I'm entitled to, according to the Holiday rulebook of life and happiness. I've been a cute girl with a column in the Guardian for long enough, now I'm doomed to a future of greasy hair and worms?

Pass the crisp packet.

The Catnapper

2007-05-25T12:17:00.000+02:00

I've been adopted by a cat. I think I've mentioned her in previous posts. She turned up when I moved in and made it very clear from the start that she wasn't going anywhere. This has been problematic. Don't get me wrong, she's a lovely cat - if a little too keen on running noisily from the balcony to the loft via the blue chair and the spiral staircase in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.

I'm a BABY PANTHER!

The problem is that she's not mine. She's the neighbour's. A neighbour, I must add, that she seems to hate to the point where she hides in my kitchen cupboards when I go out so she won't be forced outside. This confused me. What kind of creature chooses love over food? I mean, I'd understand if we were talking about a human, or a dog. But a cat? Surely to them the two are synonymous?

It started as a stand-off. I wasn't going to feed her, I was quite adamant about it. But then one day she spent 10 hours in a cupboard and when I found her I felt so guilty I gave her some kitten biscuits (I'd bought them for emergencies, er) and now she won't leave the house even when the sun is shining except to go to the toilet (I hope, or I'll be finding a very sodden patch soon in the loft).

DON'T play with the blind coz mummy gets very annoyed at 6 am and wants to turn you into a fur collar

So it seems I'm a catnapper. Yes I know, I need to speak to my neighbour, since if she sees the food bowls on the balcony she'll get the wrong idea and think that I had a choice in all this. I didn't! The cat chose me. But what to do when I move from here? What might become of her, my little Olivia Twist. "Please, can I have some more? Miaouw??"

"What happens if I walk all over the keys like this?" Winter is a good time for working from home. Did I say home? Bed, I meant.

Well, if she doesn't stop stepping on my face when I'm asleep the problem may cease to be. She'd make some very nice gloves. Or I'll send her to China. There, they make cat's toys out of other cats. Interesting ethics, that.

Socks

2007-05-18T21:35:00.000+02:00

You know you live in Cape Town when it's May and all of a sudden you're looking for socks. Those knitted things that you put on your feet for some reason. Yeah, them. All of a sudden I don't have any. That's not surprising, seeing as my mind is like leaking sieve and the gym can house many a lost sock. But the fact that I haven't noticed my complete lack thereof for about nine months. That says something... Like, "i live in the africa" for one thing.

Today, I told my boss that I wasn't up for staying a third year. We're already going to start looking for a replacement seeing as I'm so extremely irreplaceable etc etc. Nah, not so. Any monkey could do this job. Just not this monkey! This monkey wanna go eat some bananas.

I'd love to post some pictures of my new flat but frankly I'm a bit drunk and really not in a mood to start snapping. The cat doesn't want to either, she's far too comfortable in the blue chair to drag out the camera.

Press day went well. Got a good story on the G8 and all sorts of stuff, and that was nice after the disappointing trip to Italy. Read in a norwegian magazine today that G8 was not a solution for africa, it was part of the problem. not so sure about that - the africans are good at creating and maintaining their problems on their own - but I think where the G8 talks and talks and talks, China, for example, acts. No committees, no grand gestures, just cold hard cash. I mean - G8, get a grip!

So maybe I should learn Cantonese.

Hmmm... The little black pussycat has fallen asleep on the sofa. Shame, I have to chuck her out - I promised to attend a Singstar evening and so I shall. It's friday after all and I can sleep when I'm dead. I'm assured...

Ich bin ein kartoffelsalat

2007-05-12T17:34:00.000+02:00

Euch, just had a horrid rubber chicken and potato salad, which I was sharing with a big lazy fly. Munich airport - looks good, tastes rubbish. In every respect. Nicht gut.

After all that I had to leave the bloody conference 10 minutes before the discussion session on what I'd come there to listen to - science in Africa. So now I have half a story. Not great. I'll have to work hard mon, tues, wed to get it all to come together.

I'm on the same flights going back as Mosibudi Mangena, the south african science minister. He could maybe tell me what's going on, but I doubt it. I get the feeling he's not the most knowledgeable in his department when it comes to policy detail. Anyway, I should sleep. I'm knackered. Gruss gott!

Wine and snacks - Italian style

2007-05-11T20:21:00.000+02:00

I’m sitting in the most wonderful café in the world. I ordered a glass of wine, and they came with a tray of snacks – olives, black and green, crisps, small toasted sandwiches. Wonderful. I’m hiding out from the rest of the conference posse who are waiting outside the theatre where the ballet show is that we’ve all been invited to. I’m sick of them and they, I think, are sick of me. Funny how that happens. Just because I need these people to talk to me as if we were friends, I somehow expect them to enter into discussion with me on a similarly eager note. And then I remember, always at about this stage of the conference, that they actually are quite nervous around me. It's like realising you're the smelly kid at school. And I guess, I'm a backstabber. I want them to open to me so that I can use them. And when they realise, they get hurt.

Now I got the bill. 3 euro for that!!! I can't believe it. I'm returning. Definitely.

Ciao Bella!

2007-05-11T09:53:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday, I could have done the European weather. "In Madrid, it's a sunny morning. Scorchio! But stay away from Munich where the rain is making transfer between airport terminals a wet affair. Instead, head to Trieste where everything is... perfetto."

Now, Europe. Home of civilisation. My home, undoubtably. But no wonder we spent so long fighting each other. I mean, Spanish. Not the people, but the language. Did I say language? More like a couple of snare drums communicating. Tatatata-tata-tata-tataTATATAATA!?!?!? Ole! It gets a bit tiring after 10 hours on a plane.

But if the Spanish are the most annoying, the Germans are close runners up. They would queue to get out of a burning building. I've never seen such thorough security checks. I had two hours at Munich airport and I almost didn't make it. Bah.

Trieste, however, is perfetto, as I already said. Molto bellissimo! And the Italians are great looking and polite, as opposed to their cousins in Rome who have a propensity to smell and rub their sweaty crotches against you on the buses.

Heck, I could live here. Language isn't a problem. Au contraire. The pizza pie bakers are all from Algeria anyway, so they speak French. As do I. Kind of. SOrt of. And even with italian, the problem is NOT to try to speak it. I mean, I know french, I know spanish (well, I did a year of it at school and learnt the basic grammar and pronouns, and then I spent a week on a boat in the Galapagos where the ship's captain taught me much more useful things, such as how to say 'is that shark dangerous?' or 'no I dont want to have a drink in your cabin') and so I think I know Italian. But I dont. It leads to confusion.

But I could learn. I mean, already I'm grazie, prego like the rest of them.

The conference is cool, the food good, the sun is shining, I'm getting veiled job offers from organisations here and in Paris... The future is bright. The future is - Italy? Well maybe, if I can go via Thailand (as in, four months thereof)... The ski slopes are only 2 hours off...

One final word about Madrid, though. What an airport! NOt only is it extremely labyrinthine and even worse for transit than Munich, it has wonderful, cheap shops! I'll never catch my joburg connection! And then I also need to buy una crema para las bolsas en abajo de los ojos - because I'm worth it, and because this hectic jetsetting is making me very, very tired.

Arrividerci!

Stuffs and things

2007-05-03T13:57:00.000+02:00

Stop press! My sister and her husband have created a human life. It's amazing. There are pictures of little Julia at the bottom of this blog. She was born on 30 April at a quarter to eleven, and she has ten toes and ten fingers and a shock of black hair.

I stopped moving today. No, that came out wrong. I finished with the whole moving flat palaver this morning, and settling in to the new place. It was a little sad to say bye to my beautiful Art Deco flat after the final clean out. I was feeling a little morose pacing round the boxes in my new pad when I saw two yellow eyes peek out from behind the sofa. And then a face. And some whiskers.

So it turns out that I didn't move into an unoccupied flat. There's a kitten who has pretty much decided it's hers too, and we'll have to share. I'm sure we can work round our differences. For example, she loves to claw the blue armchair. I don't. We had an argument about it last night, but she didn't hold it against me this morning and we had breakfast together on the balcony. Gaining such a friend kind of makes up for the loss of Views.

Moving is also a time to take stock of all your stuffs and things, and marvel at all the completely useless items you accumulate as you meander through life. I already have two beds, a sofa, an armchair, a million dresses and twelfty bottles full of toiletries. Such a tiring prospect, having things. I kind of felt like chucking them all away instead of moving them, but then I do kind of need a sofa. Oh, I can't wait for the day I move out - I'll go all michael jackson and give all my stuff away. It will be great. But then, not sure who would be keen on a blue chair with claw marks...

Next week I'm flying to Trieste via Joburg, Madrid and Munich. Nice one. Then it'll be another three-day ramp up to the next publication and then it will be June! And then July, and then at the end of that month I'll be able to go and see little Julia and see what the fuss is all about.

Marie's wedding

2007-04-30T13:14:00.000+02:00

So, another member of my close family is lawfully married. Cousin tied the knot on Saturday and became a Bayhack in the process. The Friday and Sunday was rainy so even though the pastor was multi-denominational he must have had a favour to cash in with the big G. It was so amazingly beautiful and Cousin was so stunning and Cousin-in-law so handsome I just had to post some pictures and commiserate with the world of single men (and women). They're taken!

The Friday was wet - would it clear up?

Then Saturday dawned sunny but cold

The bridesmaids got to enjoy breakfast with the bride

It was pretty nice

At 4 o'clock, the bride walked down the aisle with Olof, the father and my uncle. It was freezing cold and there was snow on the furthest mountain tops!

And then they were married. Have you seen such scenery?

Who needs flowers???

On right is bride's brother Henrik

Some more family - uncle (on mother's side), mother, cousin and father of the bride

Everything brought tears to the grooms eyes this day, but this is during the best man speech so it's more likely to be tears of pain. Follow through indeed!

Beep beep beep

2007-04-24T10:06:00.000+02:00

I've an idea for a new product. It's like the alarm that protects my flat against intruders, but with some additions. You will be able to programme it so it checks that when you set the alarm, all the things you mean to bring with you out of the house are on you - keys, wallet, phone etc. It would save me a lot of time and grief, and the planet come to think of it, seeing as much petrol is wasted driving back from work/school/whatever to your home to retrieve missing items.

This morning, for example, I remembered to bring my phone and lunch box to work. But it happened at the expense of my gym bag and remembering to take out the rubbish.

My father will agree with me that the adult mind can only carry three, perhaps four things in it. Add another item and one of the first will fall out. This state of affairs will guarantee the success of my product, and I will get swiss scientists at the institute of Cosmoceutics in Basel to back me up on this one.

Speaking of lunch box, what I remembered to bring this morning was less that and more 'lunch bowl'. In it, I transported soup. You might think it foolish to drive down a steep hill with a bowl of tomato soup in the passenger seat wrapped only by a Pick'N'Pay bag - and you'd be right! Faster than you can say 'ketchup' there was not so much a bowl of soup as a bag of soup in my car, splashing around threatening to flood everything. The whole scene took on something of the absurd, and I remember thinking that this is exactly how accidents happen as I tried to right the upturned ember.

Another difficulty I am facing today (see, I'm procrastinating - I must be on deadline) is how to shake off Victorian prose for Guardian-speak. I'm writing a profile about this HIV scientist in Durban, and have to check myself from describing her as 'casting her gaze langorously after the tall, handsome stranger over by the water cooler'. You see, I was reading Jane Eyre into the small hours last night and these things always rub off on you. Damn. Or Deuce, as Mr Rochester would have had it. At least there are no insane spouses locked up in my attic. Or is there????

Yours, &cetera, &cetera

It's Chico time

2007-04-20T13:43:00.000+02:00

So, I've been getting some stick about this blog lately. Apparently all my posts are about how horrible it is to live on a beach where it's sunny all the time and the air is clean and so on and so forth. So all right then I'll write about something a bit more upbeat. How about, I dunno... love?

Yep, I've fallen in love down here. It's a strong bond that I fear nothing will be able to sever. And it's a bit shameful to admit it here, now, in full view of the whole Interweb but here goes.

I LOVE MY CAR. I love it so much that I would like to marry it and have little android children with it. It doesn't have a name. It doesn't need to. It is THE CAR. And i love it.

Ok I know i know I KNOW that this will give ample ammo to all those people i've harrassed for owning an automobile in the past but OK fine, that was when I was young and foolish and... hrmpff...

Everybody in Cape Town has the same car - a white CitiGolf

I LOVE my car. I love that it's so basic I dislocate my shoulder every time I try to parallel park. I love that it coughs and splutters and bounces like a gangsta car after a cold night (read 14 degrees, I wonder how it would fare in European winters), I love the feeling that it's about to tip over when I speed round the bends of De Waal drive at 2 am. And the fusty smell that lingers since that night I didn't take my gym clothes in - dammit I love it too.

There are some people down here that don't drive. Actually, strike that. No South Africans can drive. They all have fake licenses. If you want to get a license, you need to queue for a test, then queue for a learners' license, then put up with no end of bad tuition before you realise it's all a load of crap and go down the local forgery office and get one printed then and there. Just the other day, the star of the SA blockbuster Tsotsi was caught and fined for having tried to get a fake license. Everybody's at it!

In fact, I'm surprised how many people down here get by without cars. OK so I'm talking here about people who have loads of money and live privilieged lives so don't nit pick. But they either have to be very, very charming and have very patient friends - or be bulletproof, or something.

Oh, and issue 11 is in the bag - as of Wednesday this week. It was the usual nightmare to put together but then it always is and I promised not to whinge in this post so there we go.

Now I'm off to invest a few grand in carbon sequestration technology.

An offer I can't refuse!

2007-04-12T10:25:00.000+02:00

Look at what I found while flathunting. I mean, I suppose I just turned 28 so I only just qualify but... those pudgy cheeks! that freshly moussed hair so moist it's almost still under the shower! It's an offer a girl can't refuse, I say...

http://www.gumtree.co.za/capetown/07/9153307.html

Posting no 101

2007-04-10T13:54:00.000+02:00

Why thank you to those kind souls who offered to help with my cousin's hen night in exchange for petty travel expenses. Much obliged, of course, but in this case XXXX did not mean to say "full monty strip tease" but... Well, I can't say can I coz it's a surprise. And flights from the UK are very expensive so if I did acquiesce that would have to be one HELL of a show...

First day at work after my holiday hit like a ton of bricks and I'm still reeling from the impact. Turns out Deborah's visa application has gone tits up because of a problem with the application - it's taken too long to get together from the date the job ad was posted. Well, of course it took a long time, the bloody rules of Home Affairs made it thus! So now a good scenario is an acceptal after some coaxing by an (expensive no doubt) immigraiton lawyer. A bad one is having to go through the whole hiring hoo-haa again - posting an ad, doing the interviews, getting education qualifications compared and approved etc.

April press day is Wednesday next week, which is too close to bear to think about - so I don't. Instead I get on with what should be done by today, which is sending out cajoling emails to all contributors asking them to send me their stuff. The "Or Else" email will go out on Thursday afternoon.

Feeling a little out of touch as may be expected after 2 weeks out of the loop. Seems stuff's been happening but I always feel I get a very eclectic mix (bordering on random) when I sieve through the outputs of various organisations. I did a couple of the 'in the pipeline' stories that I'd been waiting for a while to do for the last issue, so I need some solid new stuff for this one. I've asked Deborah to write a piece about how scientists are faring under the circumstances in Zimbabwe - that should be interesting reading if it comes through.

The title refers to the number of posts I've so far made to this site. One hundred and one. A week ago, it was my 1 year anniversary for working for Research Africa. I've only got a year left. What to do then? Well, I have some ideas... Won't tell you yet but some of you had better measure out those sofas. I'm 1.74 cm in my socks - but I'm sure I can squeeze onto a two-seater if needs must.

Every day should be a holiday

2007-04-03T12:30:00.000+02:00

People inhabiting colder climes might wonder what it is like to permanently live in a holiday resort. Does one ever get bored of the beach and the pina coladas. The answer, to tell the truth, is no. The beach is always a treat, no matter whether you go there every day of the week. The sea views never lose their lustre, the mountain is always glorious.

I'm on holiday, as I mentioned before. After a touring the Garden Route for 6 days I'm now back in town. Free time in town is what I most need and, consequently, what I savour the least. I'll explain: When I'm beavering away in the working week I have so many immediate concerns that I don't have time to think about the bigger worries - the dentist, my soon-to-be homelessness, the still-gaping hole left by my sister in my flat, the past, the future and all the in-between. On a faraway holiday these things also fade into the distance. But here and now, with time on my hands in my own flat, they come to the fore and beg to be taken care of.

I started today by making a list. This is what I should accomplish by Friday, when the whole town goes on holiday and most of my friends with it.

- Book XXXX for Cousin's hen night
- Book dentist appointment
- Write a profile for the Guardian
- Get my tax reference number
- Organise the invoice for my $1000 Nature piece
- Buy silver shoes for Cousin's wedding
- Book accommodation for Cousin's wedding
- Varnish my outdoors furniture
- Do laundry
- Clean the house
- Buy food (my fridge holds 3 beers, 1.5 litres of Gin, 1 litre of Vodka and nothing else)
- Organise summer holidays in Europe
- Arrange to cut off electricity and alarm when move out
- FIND A NEW FLAT
- Get a cat to stop feeling lonely at home
- Write outline of novel thought up while out of town
- Watch Citizen Kane
- Book haircut
- Organise something for my birthday (its on the 7th April, FYI...)
- Work out all the whys, the whats and the wherefores
- Go to the gym (a lot)
- Bake my own bread and learn how to cook with lentils
- Relax (the biggest challenge of all)
- Write a blog

TICK...

Nicole catches crabs

2007-03-26T18:20:00.000+02:00

Well with a headline like that you would expect something a little, shall we say, saucy, in this post? And yes, if you scroll down there will be pictures of Nicole catching crabs. But first, an intro.

After kloofing, what better thing to do than to drive 3 hours north of Cape Town in a small car and lay our bruised bodies to sleep on the nippy ground - ie go camping? None, eight of us agreed and did just that. Now, I'm soon to go on holiday for two weeks so I can't write at length about the epic tantrums of Alex, the kerosene-wick surgery of Mike, the baboon-proof snoring of Goran, Julia's wedding-ring-in-rockpool nightmares, Nicole's bespoke crustacean-capturing or Luke's amazing ability to take any conversation beneath the navel with a few well-chosen words.

Instead, I leave you with pictures. Now I'm off on a two-week holiday. No doubt I'll find some down time to blog again.

The campsite, 3 hours out of Cape Town
Catch those crabs! Using a shoelace and a ringpull?
And she did... to everybody's surprise
Dr Mike trying to find the wick
Nurse Nicole helps out
The morning after the night before

Watch that Kloof!

2007-03-22T15:11:00.000+02:00

All right, all right I've been awol a while - so sue me. Sometimes living your life takes precedence over writing about it.

Last post - oh yes, that was just after my parents left. Well, that I've been very busy since then you'll have no problem imagining I'm sure. What with is what eludes me at the moment, however. On Monday I flew to Durban for a day. I was there to interview this woman who led a clinical trial on anti-HIV gels for women that was stopped a few months ago because women appeared to contract HIV more easily using the gel than not. Her name has been dragged through the mud in the press down here, and I was there to hear her side of the story which was quite different of course. The result will be published in the Guardian some time at the end of April.

Today, it's exactly a week since my sister left. It was a pretty sad affair, at least on my part, what with my flat now standing all too empty. Calling all friends to come down and visit! But make that before end of May as I might be moving out. Trying to see whether I can afford and be arsed to buy the place, but there are a lot of considerations involved.

Last Sunday I went flathunting. If I'm thinking about buying my flat, it's only good sense to see what else is out there. The answer - not much, if you're looking for cheap places. Fair enough, house prices are less here than in England. But interest rates are extremely high on mortgages - sometimes going up to 12.5 per cent! So even a small mortgage will cost a lot of money. If only I could work out a way to borrow money at home for a flat here... But then, what if the rand plummets? Risky business.

But going back to sister's exit, she was nearly arrested at Cape Town international. The reason - her visa had expired. Turned out that the 'expires 20/3/07' on her visa meant that the last day she could travel IN to South Africa was 20 March and that, once in, she could only stay 5 months. She'd stayed 5 and a half, you see... But 1000 rand saw her bypass prison and get back home to her Ricky. And mum and dad of course.

Can't remember doing much else last weekend, except NOT picking up Deborah who was coming down from Harare Sunda evening. She had an accident en route to the airport (the Research Africa curse strikes again) and only arrived on Monday, when I was already on my storm-lashed flight to Durban. It was a terribly bad week for her to come down, not only as I was going to be away the first day, but since yesterday was a public holiday and that would only leave 3 days with her in the office. But it's worked out ok, and now hopefully she will come down permanently at the end of April. But you never know, things are hairy in Zimbabwe at the moment.

My plans to visit London in May have also gone tits up due to the arrival of my editor in chief HERE the week I wanted to go. I'm going to Italy for a conference anyway and it's nice to kill a few birds with the one cramped 12-hour flight. I'll still make Trieste, though, 9-12 May so if anybody has collected enough airmiles for the flight I'd sure appreciate the company! So maybe I won't make London until June, or even July, depending on whether or not I secure tickets to Glastonbury.

Amid all the forgetfulness, I remember distinctly going canyoning (or kloofing as it's known down here) yesterday during the public holiday. Or at least my body remembers, I ache from head to toe. For those who don't know what canyoning is, it goes like this: You find a mountain river/brook that throws itself down cascading waterfalls and rapids and, in short, throw yourself after it. I've done it before in the south of France - once in the Alps and once in the Pyrenees - but this was something extra as there were no guides. Or, well, there were those on the kloof who had done it before and at least we didn't do the aptly named 'suicide gorge' in the same area where you DO need an experienced guide to avoid falling on razor sharp rocks from a great height. Still, when I've done it in the past there have been wetsuits. There were none this time, and the water was, say, 17 Celsius? At most? And we spent a good few hours in it? Hey, worse for the boys than for me!

We had our clothes and lunch wrapped in plastic in our bags, which floated along on the kloof, and it was truly exciting to unwrap them at the end and see whether your salt and vinegar crisps had in fact turned into salt and vinegar mush. Luckily they hadn't, although there were some deliciously melted winegums after the hot trek back.

The river god suffered us to pass without harm, but in return it claimed the sole camera and accompanying water housing of one of the participants. It was chucked into the water before the owner with the words 'it floated when we went diving' and let's just say that it didn't. At all. Therefore, there are no photos of the kloof. But to give you a taste of it, I've stolen some photos of a kloof in the same canyon a while ago. It was sunnier yesterday...

Is she...?

2007-03-09T16:58:00.000+02:00

A thought for today, while next week's press day rushes towards me like a speeding TGV and a dinner date with La Famiglia threatens to leave several strings untied over the weekend. Namely: Tabloids. Or more specifically, headlines asking in different clever puns whether a given female celebrity is in the family way. Now, I don't know about other laydeez out there, but I'd say that I look preggers in every other picture taken off me. It's not a fat thing. Actually maybe it's a fat thing. But more often than not it's in the posture or in the way you sit. Or in my case, slouch. If I were a celeb I'd be in the headlines every week. I'd be every red-top's dream!

Leaving you with a prime example! Actually, it's from the Oscars party - I cheated and brought a change of clothes for when the crazy clothes stopped being fun. But I wore a pair of huge Bridget Jones pants to keep to the Hollywood vibe in a small way. That created the eerily white tummy. But aren't control pants meant to keep things IN? Oh dear.
Two, four or six months, what do you reckon?

Calestous profile

2007-03-06T15:37:00.000+02:00

Oh, and the Guardian has finally published the profile I wrote about Calestous. It is here: http://education.guardian.co.uk/academicexperts/story/0,,2027121,00.html

Karma and Knysna

2007-03-06T14:25:00.000+02:00

Do you know what the bad karmic equivalent is to petting a baby cheetah? That is, the amount of crap you have to endure to spend some time with a wolly little thing in the evil quid pro quo thing we call the universe. No? Let me tell you.

It's waking up to a man standing on your balcony using a high power water thingy to take off the plaster off your building while dirty water is seeping into your kitchen. It is phoning your estate agent to ask what the hell is going on, only to hear that your landlady is planning to sell your flat. It is finding out that your future now ivolves building works at home as well as at work. It is being faced with the choice of moving out early from the flat of your dreams due to the disruption, or staying but in a building site until my lease runs out end of May.

All this, it seems, for a few moments of bliss with two of these:

In Sweden, you can own rental contracts. Nobody can kick you out but you. Of course, there it's hard to find somewhere to live. But I'm so fed up with having to perpetually exist under the threat of landlord whims and fancies that I'm actually considering buying the place. But then I'll probably also buy a damp problem and rotting windows, my sister pointed out this morning as I fumed over my breakfast cereal completely devoid of peace and quiet.

Of course, this post was meant to be about my recent adventures, of which there have been many. There was a Catholic wedding and boy was I surprised the bride and groom didn't run out of the church as the priest started going on about how hard marriage was and how they were at the BOTTOM, not the top before going on to quote some embarrassing "erotic" passages from the bible. First and foremost, a wedding is NOT about a party. Oh well, luckily I was at the 'kool' table and there WAS wine AND a party so pffft to you, priesto!

A group of us went to see a play at the old zoo in Cape Town - you sat where the audience used to sit and watch the lions and then had dinner (a very sparse such) in the disused lion cages. Some were too tall to fit through the doors.

The day before my parents arrived last Sunday, Miracle-Gro and her flatmates held an Oscars-themed party. Since Simon is the heir of a winery it was a well lubricated event. Some took the costume thing more seriously than others. A fun game will be to play 'who are we' - so... Spot the celebs???

Linda and Luke as the main couple in a film eponymous with my character's name... Who are we? [NB both looking extremely stupid in this pic] Clue: Luke is sporting a magnificent double chin trying to look shorter than me...

Gro went all out to capture that real uppear east side flair. Who is she?

The secret is in the tache. And the chin. Also, for extra points spot Gro's fake eyeleashes. Who is Andreas?

Mr Backsberg opening a bottle of his red stuff. But who is he? The clue is on the shirt...

Sister likes it hot. Who is she?

You're allowed to make fun of dictators

Simon's girlfriend was a Valkyrie. Dunno when they won an oscar though...

My bottom in these silk trousers from the early 80s, rented from a second hand shop, must be commited to posterity - as it were. As Gro said: "Well, at least you know now what your arse will look like when you're 80..."

Then the family came.

And we went on a tour of the Garden Route... With stops in Addo Elephant park, Knysna, Outdshoorn and Montague. Very nice.

Dries, our personal safari guide. Or Gris, as we called him, which will be funny if you're swedish. Holding up a tuktuk bug

Dries looking for the elephant

Peekaboo!!!

Older bro teasing little bro

In the end we saw a lot of elephants, they all came walking past our parked jeep. And on the next day we saw giraffes and a buffalo and lots of boring antelopes... I petted the cheetah at a sanctuary where they're bred in captivity to improve the blood line.

Dad mimicking a hungry crocodile?

The best scenery, however, was in Knysna on the coast. It was the day before a tropical storm from the Indian Ocean clashed with a cold front from the Atlantic side, causing massive rains along the garden route. But when we were there, it was stunning. We spotted at least 20 hammerhead sharks in the inlet to the bay, waiting for the tide to bring fish I guess.

Mum miffed at all the signs forbidding you to do things in a Knysna national park

So I guess it hasn't been bad these past few weeks. It's just, well, I don't want it to change. But it will. Sister is leaving on Thursday, I might have to move from my beautiful flat, Gro will be off also in a few months' time. Why can't it just... Stop? For a moment. I was having such a good time.

For the ninth time...!

2007-02-16T15:38:00.000+02:00

Yikes, just sent issue number nine to the printers. It doesn't get easier. But, and this might be more important, it does get better! So that, at least, is nice. Issue 9 is my pride and joy so far! Just thought I'd show you how my desk looks where I try to work... It's all my own fault of course, but have you ever seen such a mess?

Now where is that press release?

I got a number of queries asking for a follow-up to the intrepid mountain date. Well you know about me and heights. I was scared stiff on the way up the cable car which I'm sure was all part of the plan as I had do hang on to something and I hung on to, well let's call him Skywalker. Still, from now on I'll walk—muggers or no.

Pretty views of sunset over the Atlantic from the summit

Far, far from home...

The idea to go up the mountain to avoid the dreadful couples vibe in restaurants on Valentine's Day backfired...

This weekend I'm going to a wedding in the wine paradise that is Stellenbosch, leaving sister behind to clean the flat before mum and dad arrive the following Sunday. Poor sister, she never gets to go to the ball...

Valentines day headache

2007-02-14T16:20:00.000+02:00

Valentine's day is meant to be all love and hearts and cuddling in front of the telly. Except mine has involved a near-terminal falling out with one of my most important sources, a sub-editor with a bleeding ulcer, an ice storm in Washington rendering my stringer unable to attend a conference and a Zimbabwean science minister blowing out my reporter to go to a funeral.

Press day was delayed for the sole reason of waiting for that conference. And now...

Here's to hoping that my day won't continue in the same vein with me falling off the mountain on my picnic-date. I have misgivings about that cable car...

Home sweet home

2007-02-02T15:19:00.000+02:00

All I asked for was a trim

So, after last weeks' ordeal it's great to be home. Here follows some photos I could not upload when I was out and about... (Yes, I was let out of the country. AND into South Africa despite my sister faxing me my Polio vaccination card rather than my yellow fever one, which is required for re-entry.)

The stewards on Air Ethiopia sounded like the baddies in Team America. Durka Durka.

Calestous and the $100 laptop, courtesy of MIT

Pretty useless photo of Gadafi

Another pretty useless photo of Mbeki. My camera does not have a tech or strong flash, and I was far away... No press awards for Linda

Tuesday at the summit

2007-01-30T10:13:00.000+02:00

Your average AU conference, as a rule, is chaos. AU heads of state meetings, meanshile, are like Chaos's teenage son... Where to start? I'll just take up where I left off. I went to the Ghion hotel for my accrediation on Sunday evening. They hadn't got it. Was it in the pile of soon-to-be-made ones? They didn't want to say. All of a sudden all the tricks I've picked up trying to get into cool clubs are useful in a new setting. Never give up. Smile like you've been lobotomised. Never, ever, antagonise the gatekeeper. It was looking bleak, however when up turns my guardian angel - Profesor Murenzi, science minister of Rwanda. He puts in a good word for me and hey presto, my registration is at the top of the pile. It's good to know ministers.

The dinner on Sunday was, I found out when I met Calestous at the improbably luxurious Sheraton hotel, not a tete-a-tete. Instead he'd roped me along to this thing organised by the New Partnerhip for Africa's Development (NEPAD) where 30-odd people from the science community in Africa had been hand-picked to chat about important stuff. Calestous charmed them into adding a chair at the top end of the table for me to perch next to him and we did the interview for the Guardian there - to the great chagrin I'm sure of people like the head of science at Nepad who might have wanted to have him to themselves.

Satisfied I'd got the interview in the bag, the following day I planned to focus on the summit. I got up at 6.30 and made my way to the conference venue at 7. I'd been told to expect big queues, but there wasn't one. Although people who arrived after me said they were held up at security so I guess I was just the early bird who got the proverbial worm.

As a result I was wandering around fairly aimlessly in the summit building until I found a sign with the promising words 'PRESS BAR' written on it. That's where I'm hanging out now. Say what you want about this conference, but they've got good coffee and croissants.

It was quite a rush to see the leaders file in all bonhomie and backslapping. Mbeki was there, as was Gadafi. Allegedly he'd brought two bags of gold as "gifts" to his peers, but they were confiscated in customs while the offiicals tried to work out whether it was legal to bring bullion into the country as hand luggage. I've taken pics (Linda got a bit star struck) and I'll post them when I get home and dig out the right kind of cable.

The press pack was here in full yesterday morning. They've all ebbed off now as the big story - who would be the next chair of the AU (Sudan was up for it but due to their penchant for genocide they've had the honour taken away from them in favour of goody-goody Ghana) - was over at about 4.30 pm yesterday.

I don't like the press pack, but it fascinates me. The groomed but very single-minded TV anchors, the huge turnout of local African press thirsting for an exclusive word from their leader, the Reuters and CNN people expert in soundbite journalism. They work on some sort of hive mind, adding only bits themselves to the whole that is the story as you guys read it. Although there are some fascinating characters. I was quite chuffed to see Jon Snow from Channel 4 walk past, crew in tow. They're sending live from here apparently.

I also had the privilege to sit next to this AFP hack in the press gallery. French to the teeth he seemed to be able to saunter in and out of the actual plenary hall (which was pretty harsh on journos entering), chatting to leaders and bigshots, returning to his seat only to break exclusive stories in between drags on his Gauloises. My deadlines must seem like lifetimes to these mayflies.

Most of the science stuff happened last night. Today I need to sort my stuff out for tomorrow. I need to gather proof that I've been actually attending the conference in case they decide to stop me on the way out due to my lack of visa. There will be an exodus of biblical proportions at the airport tomorrow and I know for a fact I wasn't the only one waves past immigration so hopefully they won't be too surprised. Anyway, paperwork helps. Or maybe I can get hold of my minister to vouch for me. Yes, that might be an idea...

Not in my wildest dreams

2007-01-28T15:24:00.000+02:00

Okay, so I'm in Addis safely. There's a million soldiers on the streets, for security or to show off to the other African heads of states - I dunno. I arrived yesterday after being lucky with all my flights. Upon arrival the people going to the AU summit (like me) were shooed into a special bus and sent to the VIP arrivals hall. There, I was waved past immigration and security with not so much as a visa to my name. I had been told I could get one on arrival, but they weren't interested in giving me one. Now, I really hope they'll let me out!!!

Nice of them to fix up a fast lane for us. But not so clever to not tell us where our checked-in baggage had gone to. So I took the help of a local taxi driver and went to the arrivals hall where they guards told us we had to stand in a security line to get INTO the airport. It took time. Finally, I got my box of Research Africas and even managed to find the guy who was picking me up. Good since I didn't have any Ethiopian Birr to pay a taxi driver. it would have cost me 20 USD, which is the smallest note I have. Poor taxi driver, though.

I'm staying in the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis. Or just outside. It's nice and leafy as opposed to town, although what I save in rent I pay in taxi costs to take me the 20 minutes to the city centre. And that's on a sunday. God knows how long it will take tomorrow. I'll allow an hour.

This morning, I was at a complete loss. I managed to find this internet cafe, which is free of charge which makes it superior to the Sheratons and Holiday Inns. Then I managed to find some breakfast on credit, as I don't have any good money yet. Then I managed to find a phone I could borrow as the person selling credits for the hostel phones is not here for the weekend, and phoned the media contact at the AU. It was 10 am. "There's a media meeting today at 11," she says. Although, I need to at least get my security badge to access the place it's being held.

So off to the Ghion hotel for my security badge, for which I submitted my application on time on 17 January. By email. No sign of it in the pile of ready-made ones. So after a lot of asking around I'm told to go upstairs to the room where the photographer is. Eh? So it turns out you need to register for the badge, and that making it will take until evening. Are they hiring Japanese calligraphists to paint them or what? Until evening, that is, if your name is on their list. Mine isn't.

"Try the Ministry of Information," the info lady says in broken English. Ministry? On a Sunday? I ask, but am being whisked off by some chap with no badge saying that he's "Protocol" and he'll help me out. After fearing for my life at first I eventually realise that he's kosher, and then I spend a gruellingly hot 30 minutes in the courtyard of a very desolate ministry trying to explain to the guard and a rabble of people who may or may not work there what I need. Except I don't know what I need.

So I'm finally whisked into another car with this nice lady, who takes me - lo and behold - to this guy I need to see! I spend a good hour there, explaining my story and waiting for the four secretaries to, having taken charge of one quarter of the computer's keyboard each, are filling in some excel spreadsheet. I meet a couple of guys from Swedish television whose camera is still in customs at the airport. So it seems others are worse off than I.

Eventually we get our paperwork and off we go to the registration place. I'm picking it up later on today, before I go for dinner with Calestous Juma at the Sheraton. He's headlining tomorrow's lineup of speakers, and apparently he's had similar problems as me to the extent that he's been stuck in his hotel all today.

It seems touch and go as to whether you meet people good for your stories or find out when the press conferences are held. At least I'll have all my documents in order by tomorrow for the bigwig talks. Apparently Gadafi is speaking on the United States of Africa to the great chagrin of other leaders. Nah, now I'm going to try to get hold of the photographer who's snapping Calestous for my Guardian profile (out Tuesday week probably) and then I'm gonna stalk this Kenyan, Kiamba, who I want to talk to. I know which hotel he's at...

Anxiety attack

2007-01-26T12:15:00.000+02:00

Weird. I was driving to work this morning (well, loosely morning I guess - went to a gig last night and got a bit sloshed) and there was a film shoot in the street. And there was a london bus stop there, the sight of which briefly shorted out my hung over brain. Lucky for them the heatwave has ended and today looks like a typical London smoggy glum afternoon. Speaking of which...

THE HEATWAVE! Oh. My. God. The last two days have been insupportable. The temperature climbed towards 40 C in selected parts of downtown. Last night sister and I had to chill out on the balcony after sunset as the inside of the flat was just to hot to exist in. Today it's 'only' 26 but the heat still lingers in certain sheltered spots such as, for instance, my bedroom.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Addis for the annual cuckoo's nest that is the African Union heads of state summit. I've collected all the information I could from the organisers but nowhere on the agendas does it actually say WHERE the summit is in the city or, for instance, where to pick up the press accreditation badge that I may or may not have succeeded in securing.

I always get like this before I travel. This is what we do in my family. We worry. About everything that might go wrong, and things that won't but are worrisome anyway, and things we can do nothing about, and my sister is the worst because she even worries about not being worried.

I worry about, in no particular order:
- Will I have time to change money before I arrive in Addis (maybe the ABSA at the airport will have computer problems, or a lack of currency. And somebody told me last night there are no ATMs in Addis)
- Will I get a visa to go into the country (I am attempting to get one at the airport, which should be ok in theory but oh my so many things could go wrong, better bring an extra 100 bucks in case I need to bribe somebody. And will the visa window be open at 10 pm when I land? Oy vey!)
- Will Somali terrorists bomb the Livestock Research Station where I will be staying? Maybe they're over the Sheratons...
- Will I end up getting ANY material or run round like a headless chicken like that time in Brussels when I was there to cover a competitiveness council and returned with jack?
- Will the face page on my passport break off (the Swedish ones do. It's a problem)
- Did my flight, in fact, leave today? (You'd be surprised...)

You'd expect me to be able to resolve most of these with a simple phone call but to that I say: Come try live in Africa!!!

Hopefull, though, it will be fun. I'm meant to be meeting Calestous Juma, Harvard professor extraordinaire, in Addis to do a profile for The Guardian. He's there to deliver the keynote speech. He's a great supporter so it will be good to see him and get the gossip from the closed sessions over whatever drinks they serve in Ethiopia.

I'm also feeling pretty accomplished because I did three movie reviews for my friend Tracey's lifestyle magazine. They'r only 100 words, which is a real challenge. Try summing up Truffaut's Les 400 coups in 100 words!

Who killed Kenni?

2007-01-19T15:29:00.000+02:00

So, we found the sales manager. Or he found me this morning at 8.15. I was (ahem) still sleeping when he called, from the Cape Town office, telling me they had arrested him at the airport, thinking he was another man, with the same name, who is a Fraudster in Joburg. SERIOUSLY!?!

They had not given him a phone call, and taken his cell phone to find his 'accomplices'. Now he has to go to Joburg next month to clear his name. Or, he can't, as it's not just his name, but he has to clear himself from any association with this other anti-Kenni.

What an absolute nightmare. And how embarrassing to be offloaded from a full BA plane in front of everybody and escorted out by the police. And then he had to spend hours on end in this 2mx2m South African police cell. And subjected to rude questioning and so forth. Poor Kenni.

So - it's official. The position of sales manager is cursed. Anyone looking for a job?

AWOL

2007-01-18T14:56:00.000+02:00

Something weird is going on. Our second sales manager in nine months, Kenny, has disappeared into thin air. He was meant to fly over to London last night, and hasn't appeared. BA say he was taken off the plane in Cape Town. And he is not answering his mobile or home phone. How weird is that? Especially after what happened to the last one - son hit by car and ended up moving out of the country.

The director in London thinks Kenny might have tried to travel on a Zimbabwean passport, and is now in the deportation cell... But that's a worst case scenario. Hopefully he just remembered he left the gas on. He's not the first one to miss flights. Yours truly did so spectactularly in September, remember?

Yesterday was press day and it was hectic. A lot of copy fell through and there were hiccups with software and intenet connections. Left here at 11.30 knackered beyond belief. Still, another month now before the next time.

Hey, there's a Nordling in Hollywood. Jeffrey Nordling plays one of the main characters in United 93, that wonderful and horrible film about the plane that never crashed into the Capitol on 9/11. Wonder if we're related. Maybe Onkel Olle can help?

January is still the longest month

2007-01-16T13:00:00.000+02:00

The fact that January always feels like the longest month does not matter as much when it's in the middle of summer as when the rain is horizontal and freezing on Hackney Road. Heck, if they could add an extra week or so right about now so it magically became last week, that would be good for me at this very moment in time.

I'm day before press day. It's a tricky one, the first one with my new reporter and with only a week and a half run-up after my break. What is more, all news seem to be taking a big break before the end of the month, when African leaders are gathering in Addis Ababa to talk about science. I'll be there, from the 27th to the 31st. If I can get the media accreditation, which is not at all certain at the moment. Hint to organisers of such events: If you put media contacts at the bottom of the invite, please make sure the email addresses actually work and the phone numbers are accurate...

It's also the first issue I'm putting together with Deborah, the new reporter, on board. It's wonderful to finally be able to scan the newslist, identify the boring-but-necessary stories, and go "Hey, can you write this, this and this" and then just press 'send' and they become somebody elses problem... But there are hiccups, mainly to do with distance. On account of the South African authorities being anal beyond belief, it's taking a few months to process her visa. So she's working remotely from Zimbabwe for now, and the fact that this is not causing HUGE problems is testament to her skill as a journo...

Thirdly, I'm reaching that stage you always reach after taking on a new journalistic 'beat'. The stage where everything feels, well... old. It's like, when you first pick up a beat you find news under each stone you turn. Even if it isn't news, you'll write it in such a way that it becomes news. Now everywhere I look I only see things I expect to see, which is probably the most depressing thing for a journalist. It sometimes even makes you blind to real news. Hopefully my trek to Addis this month will re-ignite my imagination.

Sister's boyfriend Ricky is down, a welcome addition to my little household on the mountain. They have been trekking around, leaving me to get on with my stuff and feeding me Swedish sweets that taste of nostalgia. My older sister sent me a photo of her pregnant belly - over halfway done now I think - and it all feels a bit freaky and surreal. Little sister thinks it looks fake. But then again, it will be real enough for her before long as she'll be home again by the time Little X pops out. I am hoping that I can make it too, but time passes so quickly these days.

Time passes. Sisters become mothers, cousins become wives (Cape Town Cousin is getting married here at about the same time as Little X is expected to arrive on this good Earth), friends become lovers and teachers turn friends, and everything... changes.

Yesterday, I came across something I wrote the moment I first decided to leave London. It made me recall how I felt back then. How big a deal, how painful, the thought of leaving London was - like breaking up a long relationship after nearly 8 years of good times, and bad.

7 October 2005: After nearly a decade in this city of lost souls and causeless rebels I've got a one-way ticket out. A ticket to ride, McCartney would have said. Or maybe Lennon. Where I'm going, and why, is for another day. Another song. This month, I'll be walking these dirty, grimy, beloved streets. I'll say goodbye to the doorman at the strip joint next to my house, the junkies that work the bars around Hoxton square, the city and its lights, the river at night. God, it's so beautiful. Round every corner, a different memory. Can I really leave it all behind?

Yes I could, and I did, and now, over nine months after I left, the sadness at losing something loved is gone. Funny, how nothing lasts. But then learning that no time, no place, will ever own you completely feels like a valuable lesson.

Holiday! Celebrate!

2007-01-09T14:26:00.000+02:00

Ok... Let's see if I can remember how to do this... Right index on J... Left index on F... tap... tap *damn* tap... tap tap taptaptaptaptaptaptap... (right, it seems I'm back).

Dearie me I've had some tellings off for not updating this but I've been on holiday so while there has been a lot to say, I have had no inclination to sit in front of a computer indoors and say it. I can't tell all that's happened in the last 3 weeks but I can say a little, and I'll say it mostly with pictures since they, as we know, say more than a thousand words. (By which logic the Guardian should have paid me 300 quid for my photo contribution... how about that, guys?)

Holiday times looked a lot like this!

So... before the holiday took off in earnest a group of us went Caving. Which basically means that you find a cave, crawl in and, hopefully, out. Sister and I were worried about this. I was worried I might panic like I did the last time I attempted something similar. That was in 1994 in the south of France. And the tunnels were narrow. And the gas lights kept going out. And our intended exit had caved in.

Sister, meanwhile, was worried there might be monsters. She freaked out when a much bewildered fly appeared, thinking it one of those nightly creatures in that horrible film The Descent. In the end, we were not eaten and I did much better controlling my various phobias than at the infamous Lion's Head climb (see post in August or September). It was fun! And the boys had brought candles and then took AGES nerding around taking no-flash photos of the main cavern as seen below, before we went to Fish Hoek beach to swim in the now 21 degree water and try not to get eaten by the sharks...

Christmas was a hot affair, spent lazing around the pool at these Swedish windsurfers' place in Table View. But first we had Swedish xmas lunch at the flat of the Swedish travel agency girls (who may not have appeared here previously), seen below.

A random shot of dog, sister and Maja in the lounge of the Swedes

Traditional Swedish fare... Sister and I made the meatballs

The Christmas party proper started with a South African braai with Swedish touches and lasted into the night. I'm afraid most people were not too impressed with my DJ-ing. But that's ok because I didn't rate theirs either... Also, I didn't fancy spending Christmas eve in jail (we celebrate on the 24th) so on account of being Ms Sober Pants I did nothing at all embarrassing (so I'm not censuring anything here).

Lounging by the pool, as you do on xmas

Elin in the traditionally male role of braaimeister

Sara playing pool. We lost..

Surfer soup, or the Real Nightmare before Christmas

Then Sister and I wasted a whole day driving 3.5 hours up to Lambert's Bay on the North Coast. Its only attractions are Bird Island, where we learnt a lot about guano (mainly that it stinks) and Potato World - the alpha and omega of the perfect chip (NO I am NOT kidding).

The straightest road ever leads north, it's VERY easy to fall asleep as the crosses by the road attest

Thousands and thousands of Birds. They smell

Then, luckily, my old friend (as in longtime, not ancient) Kerry popped down for just over a week in time for New Years Eve which was spent at a rather cool (both cool-trendy and cool-cold) electronic music festival 40 minutes' drive out of town. The scenery was spectacular, but our focus was much more fixed on the glasses in our hands. It was a drunken affair.

Kerry was cold, she didn't think New Years in Cape Town would entail Arctic breezes so she hadn't packed a windbreaker. Luckily, there was a large alternative.

In terms of partying, Sister gave up first, she was back in the tent by half past midnight. Kerry lasted longer, probably until 1.30 am. I discovered a really clever way of keeping warm so I was last to bed at about 3.

Kerrry, Rebekah and the Author, being very rude to the photographer

During the night, the wind picked up so the tent of Jimi and Steve who were sleeping next door to us three gals had fallen down on top of them. Embarrrassingly, I had helped Rebekah put that tent up earlier. Oops...

Our tent, lent to us by my pregnant friend Camilla who won't be using it any time soon, held up. Just. Not that it falling down on us would have woken us up...

The rest of Kerry's time here (until day before yesterday in fact) was spent doing what you normally do here at around this time with a guest. We went to the beach, saw not one but two great whites off Cape Point, drove a bit north, drove a bit south, did some karaoke (Kerry did the sit-down, silent kind), hung out with the Evol crowd, the Armchair crowd and above all the Fiction crowd (eh, Kerry?) and also had time to visit a luxury spa for a divine massage.

There is no interesting photo evidence from all these times, on account of Kerry being shy and me taking the pictures, so I leave you with this delightful rendition of how I would look were I a character in South Park. The headset, in particular, is spot on.

Muggins? No, muggings!

2006-12-19T13:57:00.000+02:00

It's not true that accidents happen in threes, they happen in unspecified clusters and just when you think you're out in the clear another comes knocking. Wallet was number one, then the music on my Ipod vaporised as a spectacularly depressing second. Added to this, my friend Rebekah had her house burgled while her flatmate was sleeping on Friday night. And on Sunday two swedish friends got mugged at gunpoint sitting in their car in town with a window down in the middle of the day. Nice.

Not even the kitties are safe...

And that is not all there is. Courtesy of Rebekah, I'll publish a list of her friends who have been subjected to recent criminal activity.

Mimi, Japanese, mugged 5 times
Sarah, America, mugged at 9am with a gun
Joanna, Canadian, mugged twice, burgaled once
Simon, Zimbabwean, B and E on his house
Camilla, Norwegian, mugged at knife point
Brett, South African, mugged with Camilla, car broken into and robbed
Thor, Norwegian, mugged 6 times with various weapons
Dan, Canadian, has all his stuff nicked from Brett�s car
Mairin, Irish, had a burglar caught as he tried to get in through her open window while she slept
Julian, American, had his car stolen outside his flat that he shares with Mairin
Ivan, Norwegian, car stolen
Laura, Canadian, mugged twice that I know of, once at gun point
Kristen, American, mugged twice
Jethro, South African, mugged 3 times
Helga, Norgwegian, mugged outside his flat trying to get his keys in the door
Ivan, South African, attacked outside his front gate by three men
Mike, South African, car broken into and burgled while he slept
Marius, Norwegian, car stolen
Tessa, South African, purse stolen
Laura, German, wallet stolen
Mandipa, Botswana, mugged

What are we doing in this place? Really? I mean, is this going to have a happy ending? Is it worth it being shot in the vitals by some lunatic pretending to sell sunglasses over your Sony Ericsson?

Merry f-ing christmas.

Cape Town music

2006-12-15T12:45:00.000+02:00

There's a lot of stuff to do in Cape Town for the musically inclined. There is the Armchair Theatre in Observatory, where every weekend the arty set of Treacletown gather to loiter stand-offishly in their ripped jeans and listen to avant garde electronica. Or there is Mercury Live just around the corner from my house, where the fare and crowd is of a more studenty nature. Or there is Zola on Long Street, which plays.. Well, to be honest I don't know because I keep away. Think there might be drumming involved.

Waiting for the magic...

Point is, after six months here, there is no reason at all to feel bored, or miss the vast range of entertainment in London. Or the feeling of people actually bothering to coming to see great bands. Oh no, sireee not here noooo... Er.

It's not that this place lacks talent. Some of the acts are great. It's that the people here are morons. Let me give an example.

On Wednesday, a band called Harris Tweed played their first ever Cape Town gig (they are from Joburg) at Armchair. Now, they do indie pop in the Cardigans meets Tori Amos tradition, and they do it well. To illustrate how well, let me just say they have been invited to play South By SouthWest (sxsw) in the US this summer.

Don't ever start listening to rubbish bands, boy!

There was quite a crowd already when we sauntered into the venue around tennish. But they were there not for Harris Tweed, the acclaimed Joburg band that is heading, presumably, for a end-of-series prom night slot in some US telly drama like the OC. Oh no. They were there for this grinning muppet lunatic Rory Elliot, a local who plays his own crap music that he presumably wrote after reading the first fifteen pages of David Gray's bestselling book "How to make millions off simple guitar tunes" before he got to the part that reads "and now, try playing in a different key".

Gaah! I won't even link to his Myspace page because his tripe deseves NOT any more airtime. Bad enough that anybody like that gets to play on a stage anywhere. But, as I was averting my eyes from his t-shirt-and-crap-cd-throwing hideousness I saw that, around me, everybody was singing along! Not even drunkenly, but in that 'oh you sing about me. ME!' way. USELESS! Then, most of them left in time for Harris Tweed to come on. As I said, morons.

Then, of course, there are the trance parties. You can travel to South Africa and, bang, be moved back to the summer of love oh yes. Mid-1990s is what most of us associate with trance. The rest of the world has moved on, but Cape Town on new years eve (or at least the woods thereabout) revert to being Goa circa 1992.

Lark is a good SA act.

What to do? Well, there are good things. Cape-Town based Lark deserves a much bigger audience than it can get here. And a more ethic vibe comes in the guise of Freshly Ground, a band that plays afro-fusion jazz whatever and which is extremely popular down here.

Failing that, you can always make your own music. Sister and some swedes and I hung out at the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens last night to sing carols by candlelight (from whence the pictures above). Seeing as Sister and I both spent 9 years in various music schools we approach these cozy musical get togethers with cynicism. Too many turns performing xmas songs to senile old biddies in each and every one of Stockholm's old peoples homes will do that to you. But in the end, and with the help of some of Simon's excellent Rose, we got into the seasonal vibe.

Happy xmas everybody!

Merda profundo (in a bikini)

2006-12-11T17:33:00.000+02:00

Oooh affirmation... That's rather nice. I'll try to include more pictures for you Matt, but I don't have any ones from the weekend spent in Hermanus in a mate's country house. At least not any that I can publish until Elle McPherson withdraws her injunction against them since I, in my bikini, threaten to supplant her as "The Body". Chill, Elle, there is room for two!

Speaking of bikinis, a friend in the US sent this to me this morning:

I dreamed I went back to London and was visiting the RR office, and they had turned Research Fortnight into a very fancy, glossy magazine. And you had written a feature in it, and it was called “Research Africa: Writing from South Africa (in a bikini).” And there was a big artsy-fashion photo spread of you lounging about in a bikini and looking very hip and talking about African research policy.

Sorry Nicole, the swimsuit edition of Research Africa won't be out until July 2007.

The Christmas issue, however, is turning into the biggest nightmare. At this very moment in time as I am in what in ancient Rome they used to call merda profundo. Press day on Wednesday and I'm being collectively bullied by all of my contacts. The judases that promised to write pieces for me haven't, and if I survive the next forty-eight hours it will only be due to the energy that the thought of kicking their ass afterwards gives me.

If this were a Hollywood film, this would be time when I'm hanging off a cliff with twenty velociraptors snapping at my heels and bounty hunters and cannibals jumping on my fingers, with me crying: father why have you forsaken me?. And then Gandalf or Spiderman would come and turn them all into slugs crawling on a newly salted road.

Or, in my slightly less photogenic case, emails would actually appear with something other than Eggs and Spam in them... Ooh! An email! Hang on... "Louk no futher!!! C*I*A*L*I*S to your doorstep... Only $1." Hmmm... It seems that life does not imitate art.

The bags under my eyes could be patented by Louis Vuitton. All that's needed is shoulder straps and a bullet in the head. BLAM! Oh dear, blasphemy and suicide all in one post. Someone call McDreamy...

Who reads this?

2006-12-07T14:28:00.000+02:00

Hi, who are you? I mean, you get to know everything about me - but I haven't heard from some of you for ages. There is a comment function right below each post, you know. Why, you could even send me an email! Lazy... Then there are the others who I don't even know who you are. Do I know a James at the University of Manchester? Hello and welcome if not.

Quid pro quo. Or karma, which is another take on the same concept. A concept that has been on my mind a lot lately. Tell me, why is it that always when I raise something to the skies it comes back down to bite me in the arse? I had no sooner pressed 'publish' on the last post before I realised some complete bastard had stolen my wallet out of my bag. A bloody-minded thief! In my favourite cafe! So I spent the second half of yesterday ordering new credit and debit cards from all four corners of the Earth, and this morning filling in about thirty forms in triplicate to assure my South African bank I'm me and not Osama Bin Laden and that yes, I'd like a new card before the end of the decade. I'm trying my hardest not to hate my favourite cafe now because what's the point. But it's hard.

The whole episode goes under the list 'what not needed when approaching press day'. Oh, if anybody can find an email address to the the science minister of Senegal, I'd be much obliged.

Octogenarian

2006-12-06T13:39:00.000+02:00

This is, according to my new improved blog machine, the 80th post I write. So happy birthday, Out Like Blixen. Not bad. I'm celebrating with a divine latte in my new home, the cafe I've discovered about 200m down the road from work. Here you get free wireless internet AND kick-ass coffee. Sundance - big it up!

See, this free wireless thing just makes so much business sense to me. For the cafes I mean. I will spend SO MUCH MONEY in this place it's unreal just because they offer this service. I might as well put my own chair in here, and write my name on a cup with a marker pen.

Also, I work much better when there are many things to distract me. I wonder if it's to do with having grown up in a big family. At college I always used to do my coursework in the lounge of our flatshare (which housed 10, by the way) while the TV was blaring and my flatmates having their dinner. Empty, silent rooms reinforce the angst felt when opening up blank word documents that need to be filled. Busy, noisy places supress it. Or something.

Did I mention the coffee is excellent?

It's a stunning day. Hot, no wind, no cloud. Bastards. I'm a week from deadline with a backlog of interviews.

I've also agreed to write the most boring article in the history of the universe. It's a detailed account of the funding possibilities for startup biotechnology companies offered by charities in Europe.... zzzzz... For six months it's been hanging over my head, and today I'm doing the first interview. Can't believe I agreed to it... But then, I know why I did. It will pay 1000 quid, that's why. Ka-ching. I mean, that's a decent holiday. For ONE article...

And, by Dickens, do I need one.

Cruel, cruel summer

2006-12-04T14:35:00.000+02:00

What's up with the weather? It's gone back to being the same as it was in the deepest of winter - that is, 18 degrees and rainy. But still. What's up with the rain over the weekend when Cape Town's bestest street festival took place?

I spent Obz Fest doing what I do best at festivals - sit on my arse somewhere comfortable, missing all the great bands. But throwing ice on passers by was fun. As was looking after sister who was elsewhere, listening to the kin of music that makes you dance like you didn't have time to make it to the loo.

What wasn't fun was to try to find my car late at night. Was (sensibly enough) heading for MIracle-Gros just round the corner. But Observatory gets very labyrinthine after a few beers. Let's just say my companions were not too pleased when they found out that what i was looking for was a white city golf. That will only be the most commonplace car in the Cape... Er. But we FOUND IT!

Here are some pictures from the fest. They are not very good, but at least I still have my camera. Not like Elin, Swedish lady, who had both phone and camera stolen. I think a cartel of pickpockets secretly organise the festival...

Then on Sunday all the swedes met to celebrate first weekend of advent by drinking some imported glogg (strong mulled wine) and eating gingerbread biscuits. Another poor rendition of that experience below. Toby models the festive spirit before disappearing back to the great white this week. He didn't want to go...

And the dead shall walk the Earth

2006-12-01T10:37:00.000+02:00

If you hear a sharp crack like a seal breaking, or the sudden blast of a thousand trumpets, maybe you should not get out of bed. Only two days after his sudden demise, the guy in the last post is back outside the Garden Centre with an eye patch, waving cars towards empty parking spaces. The dead are walking the Earth!

Or, perhaps more likely than the end being nigh, he was never dead in the first place. Good for him. The lesson to take from this is: before proclaiming somebody dead, check their pulse. Still, I wonder whether to now give him only 1 rand as opposed to the usual 2 to watch my car, seeing as he can only keep one eye on it?

Yesterday was Heather's, the office manager's, last day. Now I'm all alone in the office, boo hoo. But not for so long. Because lo and behold, I've hired a reporter! She's a young, black, award-winning science journalist from Zimbabwe and due to start in January. I agonised over whether to hire her or this other Zim guy who is older, super experienced and very probably more qualified to do MY job than I am. But my superiors agreed with me that this it might cause tensions and so Deborah it is.

We've also found a new sales person, I hope, and heaven knows I need a new office manager to come in soon because who else will re-stock the coffee jar? Woe woe!

I've another bloody deadline coming up in less than two weeks' time. It will likely largely be about the science ministerial that took place in Cairo at the very end of last month. Egypt is really hot right now, it seems, in terms of locating meetings there. Pity that it's at the other side of the continent.

I'm going to go to the African Union summit of presidents, kings and heads of state in January. It will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and I hope to be able to corner Gadafi and probe him on Libya's science policy. Now that would be a scoop!!! Seriously, they're quite big into science at the mo I hear. haha.

On to more serious things. I heard on TV last night (although I was dozing so I might have gotten this wrong) that 50 per cent of young South Africans today will have contracted HIV before they reach 60. Either 'contracted' or 'be affected by' whatever that means. I can't remember. But fact is, it's a bleak picture that is revealed today on World Aids Day. In 2005, 30 per cent of pregnant women were infected. Antenatal clinics are the key source of HIV/Aids status info, and this is also why data on male infection is pretty unreliable.

A household survey the same year showed that the national prevalence was around 11 per cent. BUT the testing was voluntary and just under half the sample refused to take the test. Of course, infection rates are heavily skewed towards the black population. The Western Cape, where I live, has the lowest prevalence, whereas KZN on the eastern coast has the highest. Prevalence amongh Africans was 13.3 compared to among 0.6 among whites.

The estimated prevalence among South Africans is 12 per cent amongh men my age, and 33 among women. The UN and the WHO have their own estimate that about one fifth of South Africans aged 15 to 49 are infected. And a second look at mortality figures in the past few years show that in 200-2001, HIV caused the deaths of over 50,000 south africans aged 15-59.

Luckily, it seems that the government is finally sorting itself out on HIV/Aids, sacking the useless health minister and putting old wives tales back where they belong - outside of government. Question is, whether it is too late.

More on the AIDS survey: http://www.avert.org/safricastats.htm

DEAD!

2006-11-29T15:14:00.000+02:00

Hello Simon! Ha ha don't worry I am not planning to do a Heather Mills. Promise! HE HE. Oh well, if I insist on hanging out friends and family on this thing I guess I have to expect them to find their way here eventually...

Except for this guy I'm about to write this post... er... about. Because he's DEAD. Sister and I saw a DEAD man on the way to get a DVD out on Monday. It went like this:
Linda, barefoot: "walkie walkie with no shoes on, OUCH!"
Sister: "Watch out, there's blood here"
Linda: "No worries, the HIV virus dies when it hits air I've read somewhere I think and I'm not hurt anyway"
Walkie walkie
Sister: "An empty blood bag?"
Walkie walkie along a now 20m trail of blood
Sister: "Er, I think this is where it comes from."

At this point, we see this black guy lying on his back with a LOT of thick, red blood next to him, sort of dripped around his head like raspberry coulis, with bandaged eyes and a LOT of blood seeping through the bandages. The guy isn't moving. There is a policeman smoking a fag next to him, and somebody slowly bandaging his head. There is no ambulance, just some sort of small size van with signage that says 'fire services' and a police van.

He's lying just outside our local shopping centre, the main entrance. People are walking in and out.

There are no cordons, no hurry, no dignity, no NOTHING. Except for this policye guy who's on his mobile and laughing. LAUGHING. 10 minutes later we come out again, almost having to step over the dead guy's feet to get to our car, and there is no movement. And still no ambulance. I guess he went straight to the morgue without passing go. Wouldn't be surprised if the policeman nicked his trainers first, though.

Yesterday morning, the pavement had been washed clean.

One would put up with a great deal to be the mistress of Pemberley

2006-11-27T12:35:00.000+02:00

This weekend Sister and I thought we'd get a bit adventurous, so we decided to drive to the winelands east of Cape Town to have a look around and test some vino. We spent Friday night having dinner at a friend's house and Miracle-Gro (yea, she's back in the blog) mentioned that her flatmate's parents own a vineyard up there. He spends a lot of time up there now as uni is on summer break, she said, maybe he could show us around? Sister and I thought YEAH!

Now, I know Simon, he's a great chap. A bit of SMS-ing and hey, presto, we'd made a plan to come visit the following morning.

So the Saturday, after an hour's drive and a time consuming doubling back to get the guide book, we finally found his parents' place. Not that it was very hard. Pulling up at what can only be described as a tourist attraction (all in good taste, mind) we were amazed to find that this chap is not just the heir of any old wine farm. He (and his sister, it's the 21st century after all) are next in line to take over this place

Having got over our initial Lizzy Bennett moment (Simon's single after all), we got the grand tour. Simon took us up the slopes of the mountain (which is called Simonsberg - no relation) in his trusty landrover and around the wine producing 'stuff' which was all very impressive. His great grandfather, a Lithuanian jew who emigrated from increasingly unstable Europe in the early 1900s, swapped the butcher's he'd set up in Cape Town for this piece of land - not knowing the first thing about winemaking. A century later, it seems he had a knack for it. Hot damn!

In the office today I got a grim reminder that I'm in the new Africa, not the Africa of a hundred years ago. A chap had promised to write me an opinion piece, but he hasn't been in touch for a while. So last week I reminded him. And I got this back:

Sorry for the delay in my response. I was attacked a couple of weeks ago and stabbed several times. I am recovering now but had to have an operation on my right wrist to reconnect severed tendons.

His point is, he can't type for another couple of weeks... Could I wait another month for the story, apologies etc... You certainly may...

Don't you know its Christmas time?

2006-11-22T12:46:00.000+02:00

Ok, so it's a myth that it's cheaper to walk to work than take you car. At least when there are shops on the way, and cute dresses to be purchased. Oh dear. I think that Marie Antoinette flick got to me. Now where is my pink cup cake...?

Bastard journalists on this continent driving me mad! I've shortlisted eight for the position we're offering, and I seem to be able to get through to four. The rest, including the one I'm very keen on, seem to have gone awol. Some don't include their mobiles on the CVs. Some don't seem to have them. Emails are always hotmail or yahoo, and thoroughly unreliable. Most don't seem to check their emails more than once a week. I mean, how can a journalist not be accessible?

I feel so cruel. First throwing peoples CVs away after not more than a glance after all their hard work... And then putting them through a long, sweaty test. But this place is in need of some serious CV workshops. I mean, 20 pages? Or the spelling errors. Or the placing of secondary school qualifications on the first page, and work experience on the last. And cover letter - somebody sent through a letter published in a newspaper as his 'cover letter'. I mean, jesus!

It's hard to be fair. I must say that I put a girl on the shortlist after she sent a sweet message saying that she was really keen on the post. Well, gives a good impression doesn't it?

I'll try to get down to three or so candidates who I will then interview, perhaps even flying them down to Cape Town for it.

And that's not the end of my problems. The black empowerment legislation down here is such that only South Africans qualify. So even if I get a Zimbabwean, that won't could for our BE compliance. Hard to put an international team together down here!

Almost december and sun is out all the time. It doesn't make sense to see gigs, clubs etc advertising for beach-side parties in mid-December. Who needs christmas anyway when it's 30 degrees and sunny? Not I, that is for sure... The swedes are getting together for a paarty instead, sans christmas ham and julmust.

Speak your mind

2006-11-14T16:22:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm sure this is not very moral of me but I just had to commit to this blog a clipping I got today. I'm hiring a reporter down here, and I get all sorts of very qualified people coming knocking. But this chap - well - one of the clippings is of a letters page in a local magazine and it's about the immorality of homosexuality. It speaks of how the moral fibre of Africans will be eroded, birth rates stagnate and child molestation go up if the civil union bill remains as it stands - legalising same-sex unions.

I guess if his CV is any good, I'll make sure to arrange my sister to come by when he comes in for the interview, and introduce her as my girlfriend. He may consider it part of the test...

Press day tomorrow. William off on paternity leave. Hopes high for a 5 pm finish!

Mr Miyagi

2006-11-08T13:08:00.000+02:00

One week left to press day for issue 6 and the weather is sweltering outside. It's hard to sit in the office and write words when the only ones I can think of are beach, sun, sea and pina colada.

The story from Nairobi was publiished yesterday by the Grauniad, feel free to read it here. Nothing seems to have happened to end the strike since, it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

On an aside, Britney seems to turn out like I always said she would - the new Liz Taylor. Speaking of whom, this photo has been amusing me all day. I mean, are any of them real?

Pix from the trip

2006-11-03T12:34:00.000+02:00

Ok, so I've finally reached home and thought I'd upload some pictures from the last weeks' shenanigans. First, a couple of artist's impressions of Alexandria - the first the bay and the Cornishe, the second of the new library.

Cairo, as I said, was great. Here is a picture of sunset over the Nile. And the second is a rare photo of what I actually work with - science. Here, GM potatoes in 3 stages. Usually takes up to a year to get from the green mush to the 'micrutubules' on the left. From the National Research Centre in Cairo.

And then, of course, there was Nairobi. Wonderful place, a complete surprise. Got a guided tour of the city at night, which I had been warned against seeing on foot, and even had a few local beers in a local pub with a local! The Jacarandas were in full bloom. And I did a piece for the Guardian (out next Tuesday) about the striking university lecturers. Below, the Jacaranda and a few of the students that are still being taught at the University of Nairobi.

Killing time at Cairo airport

2006-10-30T22:17:00.000+02:00

Yaaaawn I’m so tired. There’s a twelve-hour sleep looming in the imminent future, but not quite yet...

My last morning in Alex was a bit rushed. I only made it onto the 8 am Cairo train when it had started to move – something I thought only happened in movies.

I must be fitting in because I’ve been told I walk like an Egyptian. Which I think means that I waddle like a pregnant hippo in a tent. But walk like an Egyptian - isn’t that a song by the Cure? Or am I thinking about Killing an Arab?

Speaking about killing, I’ve picked up on this morbid joke favoured by central and southern Africans. “After New Year’s, anybody who organises a conference should be shot”, the head of African science policy told me in a taxi. It was a joke, I realised when everybody else laughed. And of course it was, albeit a very poor one in my opinion.

I heard it again, this time by an equally senior person in the African Union. So-and-so should be killed if they try this again. Ha ha ha. Er? Culture clash, I think it’s called. Although, if I make the same joke when I get home, you’ll at least understand.

I finally, at least, got a chance to visit the Egyptian museum that I missed last time I was in Cairo – about 13 years ago. Tutankhamen’s mask… I mean, have we advanced since then? At all? Really? Well, they didn't have battery powered nose hair trimmers, did they? So that's settled.

Right, time to board the flight to Kenya. I hope all works well, I’ll land in Nairobi tomorrow at 4.30 am. Urrrgh. Then to Joburg and home on Wednesday morning. It had better all work out, or I’ll kill all air traffic controllers in Africa. Er.

Finally in Alex

2006-10-27T20:50:00.000+02:00

Why is it that all the hottest countries in the world always have the trickiest dress codes for women? I arrived in Egypt this morning and realised that none of my clothes were appropriate. With summer on the way in Cape Town I hardly own anything with sleeves. But here, it really makes a difference. After being asked whether I was married in a way that left nothing to the imagination as to what the purpose of the inquirer was by every man starting with the guys in passport control, I wrapped a scarf around my hair and put some tights on under my long skirt. The change was astonishing! All of a sudden I felt - respectable, for lack of a more suitable word. And - not to mention - stifling hot.

Well, when in Rome, as they say...

I had help getting from the airport in Cairo to the train station and on the right train by a US navy expat stationed in Alex. Waiting for the 8 am express over a cup of hot tea, he told me his theory on the cultural evolution of the South vs the North. The people near the equator only have to reach out to get bananas, he said, so they evolve into stupider people than those in the North. Now, where did I hear that before...?

Alex is brilliant. Great food, safe to walk, lots of history everywhere. And the med - there's something special about it. I feel close to home.

From the hotel you can see the bay where the lighthouse used to stand and where the palace where Cleopatra and JC (or was it Marc Anthony) used to have their trysts. Now THAT was a romance worth writing home about...

Nowhere Near Nairobi

2006-10-25T16:09:00.000+02:00

It’s a funny sort of world when you realise that in order to be where you are, you could have stayed in your own bed another night and left for where you are today tomorrow.

Let me explain. I’m in Limbo, a sprawling wasteland also known as Gauteng [chaoteng] - the area around Johannesburg of Pretoria that looks a little bit like a piece of the American Midwest. I’m not supposed to be here. It’s all a horrible cock-up, involving hour-long delays, 40-minute transit times at Nairobi airports, and – yeah, you get the idea.

I’m on my way to Alexandria for a conference of African scientists – a big one, and I was looking forward to a leisurely day in Cairo before boarding the Nile-bank train for the Emperor’s city.

Alas, fate had other plans for me. What with the lack of flights actually connecting cities on this continent, it was either this dismal suburban guesthouse near the East Rand Mall near Johannesburg International or a night in Nairobi, risking more delays on my journey.

I’m instead catching the Air Egypt direct flight tomorrow, which leaves at 10 pm and lands in Cairo at the crack of dawn on Friday. Then I’ll catch the 3 hour train direct to Alexandria and the conference, hopefully only missing a couple of hours.

That way, I won’t have a night at the Nile Hilton, which I’m sure will be a sour loss, nor will I see the Egyptian Museum I missed when I was there over a decade ago. But at this point I will only trust non-stop flights.

It’s a headache that comes on top of other headaches. As I mentioned before, we did get the funding for a reporter, so I’m recruiting one in the coming months. But actually posting an ad in the Mail and Guardian – something which will earn them thousands of rand out of our pockets and therefore must be seen by them as a priority not to cock up – was a nightmare involving phones with nobody at the other end and undelivered messages. Sales people shouldn’t be hard to get hold of, but these were.

There was also the issue of the computer people not even having started replacing my bust optical drive by the time they had initially said it would be ready, and then getting a bollocking from London for typos in the last edition. Some weeks, it seems, you just can’t win. Oh well, at least the weather is nice (read sweltering).

Fish are friends, not food

2006-10-20T15:21:00.000+02:00

Oh my so much to tell so little energy left in fingers. In short - press day went fine this week, London was ok last week and it's getting sunnier. So much for news updates.

Now for more interesting things. This is a sight you don't want to meet you when you stick your head under water on a family snorkelling trip.

But it was exactly what happened to my sister and I this week when we went on a shark safari. Seriously cool animals.

Not so cool was I, however, when heading out to sea. A bit orange, maybe? Wonder what Anna Wintour would say. Nothing - she'd probably faint. Well, at least the sharks would have a clear site of me if I fell in. Let's say that, upon entering 'shark alley', a lifejacket does not seem like such a comfort.

Not that you look much better in the water, in full freediving gear, as my sister so kindly models on this picture. It was freezing cold - about 14 degrees in the water. We stayed in for almost an hour, as you can tell by the colour (or lack thereof) of Sister's lips.

The smell at the back of the boat was unbearable, and that was not just due to seasick passengers but because of this 'bait'. Together with some disgusting rotting Tuna chunks in a drum that would spread out downwind of the boat like a shiny red carpet for sharks these would lure the sharks close enough to the boat for us to see them through the murky water.

At first, nothing happened. Then we changed anchoring site. And then, within minutes, a massive shadow was sighted trailing up our 'chum slick' at a leisurely pace. It had a go at the bait, then disappeared as we hurried on our wetsuits. As Sister and I lowered ourselves into the cage, a metre in front a massive grey body was playing havoc with the bait.

Needless to say, we entered the cage rapidly. However, once in there it was difficult to fight the buoyancy of the suits, which in turn made it hard to keep all appendages inside the cage. If a shark had wanted to, I think it would have been able to grab my left arm on at least three occasions.

In the end, we saw 7 sharks. Seven great whites in two hours! Most of them teenagers, around 3 metres. They grow to double that size. The maximum count in one day that they've had is 37. However, 7 is apparently very good. "It doesn't get better than this" the marine biologists who was our guide said.

Funnily enough, that same night I met a surfer who has just quit after 8 years catching the waves because a great white had tried to push him off his board just two weeks ago. "When they attack, their whole bodies just start to shiver," he said. Safe on the shore, he swore off surfing, deciding that he'd had his good innings and was starting to push his luck. Can't blame him, having seen these...

Homeward bound

2006-10-11T20:52:00.000+02:00

Am at Heathrow, waiting to fly back via Joburg. London was rainy, productive and somewhat emotionally taxing. I'm looking forward to the relative simplicity and straightforwardness of Cape Town life. Not to mention missing my little sister, who's been all alone down there for three days.

I'll write a bit more about what went down in London at a later date, when airtime on this thing is not costing me (or, Research Africa) an arm and a leg.

Set on a Jet

2006-10-06T15:02:00.000+02:00

Ok, not much blogging recently because I've been looking after my little sister who arrived on Monday morning. I've been taking her round the place, wide-eyed, as she's on her own the first half of next week. Me, I'm getting on a plane to jet set to London for another 3-day jaunt. Air miles Ka-Ching! This time it's the Royal Society that's footing the bill. They're convening African learned societies and academies, and I'm invited...

In other news, a longtime dream has been fulfilled - I'm now set to review movies for hip new South African lifestyle magazine One Small Seed. I'm meant to review 3 DVDs for their upcoming issue - all I could manage as I'm going to be away next week and the deadline is like Friday. Hopefully, it will be a regular gig. I assume it's unpaid, but then I write lots of boring stuff for money so maybe it evens out.

I'm a celeb!

2006-09-27T13:43:00.000+02:00

Somebody call who's who! My old friend from the Science Communication course, Catherine Brahic, who is now working with SciDev.Net (see links next door) found it suitable to quote me in her recent piece on a science funding body in Africa. Read my erudite comments on: http://www.scidev.net/content/news/eng/africa-wide-facility-to-fund-science-takes-shape.cfm

A long, hard look at that navel

2006-09-27T13:27:00.000+02:00

As I was eating my breakfast cereal this morning on my balcony I spotted a tortoise ambling around the next door neighbour's garden. Does it live there? Is it a pet? I've no idea where it has been hiding this winter, but his appearance probably says something about the coming of spring.

Today, it's 26 degrees outside and last night was warm. First warm night since I got here. The schizoid weather poses some tough problems. Like what to wear at night. PJs or tee and shorts? To ditch or not to ditch the down duvet? It enters at Number 267 on the list of Luxury Problems of the Western World. Other recent entries include pages coming loose in your book after lying with it too long in the sauna (192) and, the long-standing chart topper, 'a wardrobe full of clothes, but nothing to wear' (1).

It has been a while since I wrote about work. I think I shall do so now. I've been pondering, for some time now, whether what we're doing here is going well, or badly. Are we reaching anyone? Are we making any money? It's hard to tell as both the sales manager and the project manager are in London. I see a trickle of subscription forms come through on the fax here (say, two or three a week) but I fear that's a drop in the ocean. As to Paul's progress on getting African universities to sign up to campus-wide subsciptions to our services I could not be more in the dark.

Maybe that is because the story is not too good at the moment. As readers of this blog will be aware, Paul the sales manager was forced to leave Cape Town and return to London because of a family crisis. Well, without going into details, he was met by another when he got back home and has been a rare sighting in the London office since. All my sympathies are with him, and of course it is not his fault that 'events, dear boy, events' happened to put us all in the position we are now. But it's very frustrating to have a bottle neck at the sales end.

Also, as we have now moved into proper subscription mode, I can't just send the PDF of the mag to every Tom, Dick and Harry who I think should have it. Man, I hate business. I just want people to read the stuff. I guess that's (one of the many, many reasons) why I'll never be rich...

In order to delve a bit deeper into my trade, I've purchased a book written by Max Hastings about being an editor. Hastings was in the 80s tasked with turning the Daily Telegraph in the UK from a 19th century conservative rag aimed at retired colonels, into a 20th century conservative rag aimed at retired colonels with the exception of those who approved of the apartheid regime in South Africa, capital punishment and objected to women's suffrage.

Although I have little in common with Hastings (the words toff, blue chip, silver spoon, grouse and pinstripe all spring to mind) we do share one crucial thing. He was a writer (a journalist and a book writer) before being asked to kick some life into the Telegraph and, like me, was confounded by the different roles an editor and a journalist hold in a publication.

Great reporters rarely make great editors. Reason: reporters and professional debaters have their being in the immediate rights and wrongs of what they see. An editor's function, by contrast, is to know and manage the long-run position of his newspaper. This frequently means holding things steady through collective hysteria or a fashionable lurch.

They are not Hasting's words, but those of his immediate superior, Andrew Knight, who had moved from the Economist to be Chief Executive of the new Telegraph. Knight's words, which FYI were prompted by a spate of strongly anti-Thatcher leaders penned by Hastings on the issue of US bombings of Libya, made me realise just how hard what I'm trying to achieve is.

As the editor and main contributor it is an impossibility to flit from one of the roles Knight describes to the other without ending up with a mess. As a trained journalist, I do want to make the splash, write the stories at their most contentious and so forth. But what kind of brain transplant will allow me, then, to pen suitably disinterested editorials?

When imagination fails, formula will have to do. So then the question becomes, what is our editorial policy?

Unlike the Telegraph we don't have any political affiliation. Yes, the parent company ResearchResearch is owned somebody who has ties to the UK Labour party. So it would be false to say there is no political influence from the top. My editor in chief usually gives my leaders the once-over and gives some much-appreciated feedback. But I refuse to pander to the incumbent UK government which is funding us, and try my hardest to avoid sounding like a white chick from Europe writing about things she's no real experience of.

But when the wind blows, on what should I lean? Everything we do has to be Africa-centred. It has to come from inside, as far as possible. But insofar as we should have any real editorial policy, I would say that it is simply pro-science. Pro-research. We look after our readers' interests. Our readers want funding. Therefore, we urge for more funding for research. And good governance of whatever means are employed to fulfil this aim.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs. Maybe nobody cares? But in a place such as Africa, where media freedom cannot be taken for granted and journalists sometimes face persecution, I reckon it's worth thinking about. I've already had some 'talkings to' from people in top positions who have opinions about what we should, and should not, meddle with. Best then to have a solid ground to stand on I think.

In the meantime, my schizophrenia seems to be in for some reprieve. Looks like the funders in the UK are happy to give us the money we (I) need to hire some helping hands. Once I've found some minions, they can do the journalistic hounding, and I can wine and dine the great and the good - and sweet talk them into thinking that Research Africa is a really, really great thing... Power of personality, it seems, is what being an editor is all about.

Spring Leviathan

2006-09-22T11:50:00.000+02:00

It is a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Leviathan, come to visit these shores to breed, calve and - it seems - splash about in a most undignified manner.

The Southern Right Whale, so called because back in the day they were the 'right' ones to harpoon as they swim slow and tend not to sink when killed, are about 15 metres long. They migrate up the coast of South Africa every winter/spring to do their thing. A bunch of them congregate in the bay of Hermanus close to the true southernmost tip of Africa: Cape Arghulas (not the Cape Point). From the cliffs you can see them breaching, standing on their heads and waving their fins.

The cliffs of Hermanus are, like the slopes of Table mountain, also home to the Rock Hyrax, or Dassie as it's commonly known.

The Dassies (Klipp Dassies as we call them) are closely related to the elephant, although they look more like slender tailless beavers, and are much cheekier than your regular rodent. This pair was not impressed with the cavorting sea creatures a mile off shore but were more interested in just chilling out in the spring sun and wait for us tourists to drop a Kit Kat or something.

On this occasion the whales did not approach just right by the cliffs, as they sometimes do. But when we drove back the 1.5 hours to Cape Town we stopped at a beach on the way, and guess what was splashing in the shallows only a hundred or so metres out? That's right, a lone whale. The water is still cold, even some way up the pacific coast side, so we didn't swim out to greet it (that, and the fact that the pregnant whales attract the sharks). But walking up and down the gorgeous beach we agreed that this was probably the most scenic nursery any of us had ever seen...

Nothing that tea and bikkies can't cure

2006-09-19T15:40:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry about the radio silence - I've been in one of those moods where you don't feel like doing anything. Not that there's much to report. Last weekend went along the lines of that joke in Annie Hall that Woody Allen attributes to Freud by way of Groucho Marx. "I don't want to be part of any club that wants to have me as a member."

So I hung out with me, myself... and Cousin, who kindly put up with my antics to take me to the beach on Sunday. There, I got tanned and Cousin got a little less so courtesy of my 30 SPF burka sunscreen. Apparently, after five years here she won't tan unless she's soaped up in baby oil for that extra crispy taste.

God knows why I'm out of sorts, because the issue went to the printers on time and the Apple people have promised me a new CD drive on my warranty. I have absolutely no right to indulge in sulking. I think maybe it's the recent cold spell we've had with ensuing head colds all round. You think it's summer, and then the rain comes back to bite your nose off.

Maybe it's also the pressure of the impending 9 month bikini season that is taking its toll. Nothing reminds you of the defects of your genetic make-up like the prospect of having to bare your limbs for months on end. In England, you can get away with being a sickly shade of green under your skinny jeans. Here, there is no such respite.

And the competition is fierce. This is the promised land of stay-at-home trophy wives. Even having bought into draconian gym routines I'm still way behind some of the botoxed fifty-somethings that seem to live in my Virgin Active, lifting 40 kgs where I can manage 20 just to spite me. May their 0 cal smoothies be laced with anthrax. Or that powdered protein that body builders take to bulk up. Moohawhawhaw!

NOT a tidal pool

2006-09-12T10:47:00.000+02:00

There's a lake on top of Table Mountain! And a beach! Photographic evidence below, taken during a 5.5 hour walk up and down the mountain on Sunday. Ok, so it's a man-made lake. They built reservoirs up there a hundred years ago to collect rainwater in winter to serve the city year round. In summer, the resevoirs are bone dry. But after a good rainy winter like this one they are full to the brim.

This place is full of surprises, I tell you. Well, at least it explains why, after a windy night, my car and the street around it is covered in a fine dusting of sand.

Tomorrow is press day and I'm suffering from a lack of time. My flitting around the world last week was fun and informative, but ultimately left me holding the baby in terms of getting the magazine ready.

Speaking of babies, something horrible has happened to mine. Last night, when I sat down to watch a DVD on my trusty Apple companion it started making horrible noises, like a terminal lung cancer patient, before spitting out the offending disk. Something horrible seems to have happened to it during the numerous packings and upackings, x-ray machines and Heathrow hand luggage restriction nightmares of last week. The whole CD drive seems buggered. Woe!

Suits me right after telling my fellow mountain-climbing companions on Sunday night that, "Had I given birth to it and shared with it my genes, I could not love it more." It's like Samson and his hair, Achilles and his heel, Icarus and his waxy wings. A damn Greek tragedy.

Speaking to Mother last night in my grief, she wisely pointed out, "At least it wasn't a tooth". Apparently, her mother (may she rest in peace) used to say that the worst thing that could happen to you was to lose a tooth. Cuts heal, things can be replaced, laptops can be repaired. But teeth don't grow back (unless you're a shark, in which case they do).

Take that, Greek philosophers! Your old mythology may be a great source of metaphor, but they all end in tragedy. Better to take on board my old Nan's words, and think more along the lines of a cheesy American movie. Samson has his hair cut off, and THINKS he's lost all his powers, but it turns out that in fact they were there all along, as inseparable from him as the colour of his eyes. So there. My ability to pull this rag together has nothing to do with my shiny Mac. I can cope without it while it's in for repairs (although I'm not handing it in until after press day). And I should CERTAINLY not think of the broken CD drive as an omen, or a metaphor. Now, let's tackle that 1200-word analysis...

By the way, below are some photos from Maputo. The chaps are doing Capoeira, in case you were wondering. One of them is upside down. There is a pic of my hotel, in which it looks nicer than in reality. And the last one is of the baggage people at the airport playing cards, waiting for the plane to land. Nice life!

I bought some wine with my last Mitikai

2006-09-09T15:11:00.001+02:00

If corrugated iron were the national currency Mozambique would be a rich country. The shacks and shanties of its suburbs are plated with the stuff, half-buried, it seems, in the intermittent malaria-ridden swamps that encircle the city of Maputo. I’m actually on my way out now, waiting for the South African airways flight that will take me back to Jozi and my transfer to Cape Town.

My two nights in Maputo have been somewhat of a drag. But an intriguing drag, if drags can be intriguing without becoming something more interesting. The conference wasn’t much use. I’ll didn’t get a scoop, just a bog standard and even somewhat old-news story.

But, I feel, I gained something much more important. Exposure with the bods who call the shots in the African Union, who so far have seemed somewhat suspicious of my little venture. Now I’ve got an invitation secured for the congress of scientists in Alexandria at the end of October – and face-to-name time with people like Dr Tema, director of the AU Human Resources, Science and Technology directorate. I’ve realized that, with most of the stuff being written about Africa coming from outside of Africa, being THERE is what really counts with these guys.

This is a lovely place, I will come back. The light is altogether softer than in South Africa. It must be the humidity tempering the sun. And the seas are warm and calm. At high tide, barely a foot-high wall keeps the ocean at bay. It makes it feel like the city is sinking.

It reminds me of Goa. The palm trees, the warm seas, the low-rise buildings, the potholed roads. And, in the place you’d least expect it – Maputo airport, little more than a barn – a free wireless internet connection…

Pictures coming soon!

Random facts

2006-09-07T23:13:00.000+02:00

Here are some random facts for you.

Time it takes to get from Holiday Inn to Heathrow terminal 4 - 1 hour

The check-in closes for the 19.20 Cape Town BA flight 45 minutes before takeoff

Time it takes to realise that you've left your passport in the hotel safe - 0.001 seconds

Time it takes to stop panicking about said fact - five minutes

Time it takes for a taxi to drive a passport from said hotel to Heathrow terminal 1 - a little over one hour

Cost of said taxi trip - 40 GBP

Time the stand-by check in for the Johannesburg BA flight (21.15) closes before departure - 45 minutes

Time the taxi arrives with passport before standby check-in closes - 10 minutes

Likelihood of getting a seat from the standby list - slim to none

Seat you get when you make stand-by - 40K, the end of the baby row on a BA Jumbo Jet

Time you sleep on a 12-hour flight, despite not being able to sleep on them usually, when you haven't slept for almost two days (for non-passport related reasons) and spent the past 3 hours having panick attacks at Heathrow - 7 hours (missing breakfast)

Comfort factor of the armchair in Jozi where you spend four hours eating french toast, drinking lattes and catching up on work - 10 out of 10

Likelihood of the whole story solving itself with the protagonist spending less time at airports than originally planned - slim to none (but the fact was that I missed out on the 2.5 hour flight from Cape Town to Jozi and made the early afternoon connection to Maputo no problem)

Panic factor when you realise, at passport control in Maputo, that you don't have a visa to go into the country - 9 out of 10

Elation when you find out that you can get one at the airport, that they take South African rands, and that you have enough cash - 8 out of 10

Hours you intend to sleep in your mosquito-repellant-smelling Maputo hotel room after 24 hours of hassle - 10

Well, at least it took my mind off the scarily imminent deadline...

At the airport again

2006-09-03T18:44:00.002+02:00

Right, I’m here again. So what happened? Well, yesterday a woman from the Open University with whom I’m in contact for a story phoned me. A work contact calling on a Saturday morning isn’t always good news. But this time, it was.

She said that she’s is in charge of this conference next week in London – something to do with genetic manipulation and development - and one of the South African delegates had cancelled at the last minute. They had a flight booking, a hotel booking all set. All they needed was somebody who could jump on a plane without needing a visa. I’m flattered to say that they thought of me – not to mention glad to get a three-day all expenses paid trip back home.

So here I am, about to board a BA flight to Heathrow. CNN business travella! Breakfast meeting in Cape Town, lunch meeting in New York. That sort of thing. BA 58 – just in case more planes fall out of the sky and anybody out there wants to know whether or not I was on it. What was it this morning? A UK army transport in Afghanistan? But I digress.

The hand luggage restrictions don’t seem to apply on inbound flights to the UK. I’m bringing ALL my luggage into the cabin. Not that it’s much. I must be a contender for the Guinness book of records – if it were a question of checking in the biggest luggage item I reckon it’d be my laptop bag…

I’ll be in London until Wednesday night, when I’ll go back here only to do an about-turn and fly out to Jo-burg and on to Maputo, Mozambique, for a conference on education. Back in Cape Town properly on Saturday next week.
I’m a little worried about getting issue number four together in time for my deadline on Wednesday the week after. But the conferences should give me access to some key people and I’ll be able to polish off a fair bit of the news pages at airports and flights. Thank god for wi-fi! At least that’s the plan.

A tiny baby is complaining behind me in the departure lounge – I hope I’m not next to it on the flight. It would be just my luck… I wonder if there is ANY way for me to slip some of the sedatives I bought for myself into its formula. But it’s too small to be on formula. And there must be a law against injecting strange women with tranquilizer to shut up their children or everybody would be doing it.

Back in London this week

2006-09-03T12:34:00.000+02:00

Ok, no time gotta rush but I'm flying to London tonight and staying till Wed night. Work, not play (or even emergencies) but if you have my UK phone number give me a call.

Mountains and molehills

2006-08-24T11:50:00.000+02:00

If indigestion ever took human form, it would be in the shapes I encountered yesterday while trying to pay for my overdue couch, and today when it was delivered.

Did I tell the story? At the dawn of time, I placed an order for a sofa I saw in a magazine for a shop down here called Mr Price @ Home. Just to set the scene, Mr Price also has a clothes line. Everything bought from it will shrink 3 sizes in the first wash - in the rare case that it survives. And they seem to only hire the mentally challenged. So you shouldn't approach Mr Price with high expectations of service or timeliness.

Nevertheless, the sofa was really nice. So I went ahead and ordered it. It was not stocked by the shops in Cape Town, they said, so I'd need to wait for it to be trucked down from Durban. No problemo, I said. As long as it gets here.

Three weeks later, and still no sign of it, I emailed head office. Um... said the lady, I'm afraid that item has been discontinued. Right, I said, do you have anything else - anything - in white leather? Well, we have the SOHO sleeper couch in eggshell. Is it a light eggshell, I asked. Is it a nice sofa? Ummm... said she, apparently unable to give even the most perfunctory description of its physical appearance. I was sent a photo of it in brown. Either way, I was so fed up I went for it. Also, it was 2000 rand cheaper than my original choice so that, at least, was something.

They gave me a delivery time of just under two months from my original order. The time came and went. I went back to head office. Hmmm, she says. We're sorry, there was a delivery but there weren't enough for everybody. Apparently, my order - though having been mucked up seriously - did not deserve to jump the queue oh no.

Anyway, last week they said it had arrived. Praise be! So I got a delivery time of Tuesday. They phoned - on Tuesday - and said that the delivery truck was waiting for new registration plates (?) and could not make it until Thursday. And, they said, I needed to go in and settle the rest of what I owed them. I'd paid just over 3000 rand for the first couch as a deposit. So I only had to pay another grand, I thought.

As if! I arrived yesterday at the shop. They called up my order. Right, they said, that will be 6800 rand. I'm very sorry but that's impossible, I said. Not only was it more than what this sofa cost, but it was more than the original sofa had cost! And yet she said it with a straight face. I did not know whether to laugh along or call a doctor.

Anyway, she called her supervisor, who called her supervisor, who went and called the district manager, who luckily was still around at the office at just before 6 pm. After an hour of mind-numbing dithering, they worked out that they could cancel my order, make a new one for the new couch and deduct what I'd paid. THANK YOU! I sighed. But the price they quoted for the new couch was just shy of 5000. Fine, I thought, maybe the head office lady quoted me wrong. These things happen.

I pay, and off I go. This morning, to their credit, they did call me at the office and said the delivery men would be there in five minutes. I rushed off and saw them sat in outside the wrong house in my street. They had a paper, saying they were to deliver a sofa to a Miss Northlink (!) in Vredebree or something (I live in Vredehoek) so they'd already been all around Cape Town.

The sofa was a monster. Luckily I had asked for the measurements and made sure it would go through the front door by folding down the backrests. Needless to say, I had to point this out to the delivery men, and show them how to do it and which way up to turn it before they accepted that it ACTUALLY was possible. We should hire you, they said. I blamed it on the BSc in maths, but honestly - it's not rocket science.

Anyway, after a sweaty ten minutes ripping the wrapping off the sofa I realised it almost, but not quite, ruined my until now quite pretty living room. Oh well, it's something to sit on anyway. But it didn't have any legs. And, it said on the price sticker in red '3999 - never pay 4999'.

So I'm back onto head office, demanding legs and my grand back. The saga continues...

Namaqualand blooms

2006-08-22T11:39:00.000+02:00

Every year, when the winter rains fall, the arid plains of the Northern Cape explode with colour. The flowers of Namaqualand only bloom over a period of a few weeks, and when they do people travel there from far and wide to see the spectacle.

Unfortunately I think I'll have missed the show this year. Lucky that I'm still likely to be here the next. But to my delight, I found that a similar, albeit smaller in scale, event was taking place on my balcony.

Each year, when the winter rains fall, the arid plains of my flower box explode with colour. Ok, so maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But what I thought was weeds were in fact pretty yellow flowers that now are blooming in all their glory. There is a second green sprout sticking out of the dirt for which I have high hopes. There also is what seems to be a stem of dill which, though not pretty, might prove useful for boiling potatoes, Scandinavian-style.

All this time, this microcosm has been lying dormant, waiting for spring. The surprise kind of makes up for my missing Namaqualand this year.

In other news, I'm hoping to go to Maputo (mozambique) in early September for a couple of African Union meetings. It's just round the corner - but as there are no direct flights I'll have to change in Jo-burg. Debating whether to start eating malaria pills. They are strongly recommended for the country per se, but I hear that staying in the city centre you're safe enough without.

I've also managed to lose my UK debit card. Doubtless I hid it in some 'safe place' because no money is missing. A bloody hassle.

Oh, and the sofa doth arrive! On Thursday. But visiting Century City at the weekend and checking out its black sibling (mine is 'eggshell' - I hope in a nice, bleached hen kind of way rather than, say, an eco-friendly brown way with bits of hay and feathers stuck on) I realised it's actually quite ugly. Oh well.

The hemuls are coming!

2006-08-18T13:34:00.000+02:00

This morning, we had a run-through of Research Africa's human resources procedures and guidelines. HR regulations in South Africa are very enlightened and as a result I have a 50-page wad on my desk now telling me what to do if an employee is insubordinate, if I get ill or if I spill a cup of tea over my laptop.

Right now, I'm infringing on paragraphs 2.1 of our electronic communications policy by using the company's e-facilities for non-work related and timewasting activities. Yesterday I infringed on paragraph 3.1.5 of the same by sending emails pertaining to my freelance work ('for personal gain'). On wednesday I was in breach of paragraph 4.2.3 of our code of good practice by working more than 12 hours in a day. And I also found out that I'm pretty permanenty completely off the charts when it comes to following company dress code (para 5.8.2, 'neat and presentable') and keeping the office tidy to uphold the company image (para 5.7.1, 'professional image').

In other words, dad and the rest of the Mumin fanatics out there, the hemuls are strong in this place. For all you others, that is pretty much the same as 'the man'...

I was disappointed to find a rule against carrying spears to work (para 6.2.3.4). I always think that a good spear sets off my shoes and bag nicely.

There is also a 10-page HIV/Aids policy which certainly sobered up our jolly HR meeting. According to it, we may not request testing of prospective or existing employees under ANY circumstances. Nor are you allowed to fire a HIV/Aids positive employee at will. Firing somebody in this country is a nightmare. But firing a HIV/Aids infected person seems near impossible. You have, by law, to give sufferers the extra leave they require to manage their illness, and look into changing their job descriptions as their health deteriorates. It's when you read things like that that you realise what challenges face some of the public sector and industries here.

As a future manager of at least one, probably two journalists, I find the prospect of having to pay heed to these regulations (all of them, not just the HIRV/Aids provisions) daunting. Personally, I view such regulations as more guidelines really. Does this mean I have to start counting the hours I work, start dressing properly and clear my desk? Gee, I hope not.

Third time lucky

2006-08-16T20:29:00.000+02:00

Well, that wasn't so hard now was it? A slight shortage of copy meant some briefs should have been cut but were not, and the cover piece really misses a strong critical quote - oh and the back page was a bit of a last minute job. But I made it for 8! And it all prints the right size and so on and so forth. Just need the go-ahead from the printers and I can go down there and check the proofs... Toodeloo!

Be shark-wise!

2006-08-14T10:48:00.000+02:00

Sunny weekends at the Cape. There's nothing like it! You can chill on the beach in Clifton....

...watch as the majestic waves pound the rocks on the Atlantic coast side....

...and be struck by the sheer beauty of a 5-metre white shark charging out of the depths...

This sign adorns all the beaches around the Cape. The first time I saw it I couldn't stop laughing. It's so South African. Anywhere else in the world, the presence of a few great whites around the beaches would be toned down. Ok, in Australia there are warning signs. But I doubt they're like this.

"In the event that you get bitten, keep your limb high."

"Most swimmers have in fact, without knowing it, been in close proximity to a shark."

That's reassuring!!!? Especially for the 17-year old lifeguard who yesterday had his foot chopped off by great white chompers at Muizenberg in False Bay round the mountain from where I live.

There are, in fact great whites in the Med. But I've been scuba diving there, and in NO diving books do you see them included among the natural fauna. Same in Florida. A great big Tiger shark on your divers' card is probably not good for business. Here, they signpost them on the beach. Launching out of the sea like the proverbial Kraken.

They just don't care. It's like the cars, and the crime, and the climbing up precipitious mountain sides without any form of security or safety nets. It's your own risk. 'Swim! Just don't blame us if you get bitten - dumbass... Why you swimming in these cold seas anyhow?'

It's a refreshing mindset, for somebody who's grown up in a nanny state. Still, I wouldn't object to a shark net or two around here. I went in to my thighs on sunday, then remembered that most shark attacks happen in knee-deep water and got out again... The water was a bit murky... And I was alone... Just like the poster warned against. Damn signs!

PPT

2006-08-11T10:28:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry to rant, but it's that time of month again. I've got PPT - pre-pressday tension, and as a result I'm irritable and emotional. At least the weather matches my mood. The wind is howling and the rain horizontal.

Wednesday next week is press day number three. I'd love to say I'm ship shape, but that would be a lie. Why is it that no matter how well I plan it the stories, comment pieces and news never start coming in until the end of the third week at the earliest?

For this issue, I've a couple of freelance pieces coming through. It was meant to save me time, but hasn't. I was meant to get one today, but the girl who wrote it mailed yesterday and said that, regrettably, she was giving up! She'd never done it before she promised, but she was just not able to get a line out of Ghana, where she is staying at the moment, to Zambia where the story was unfolding.

I managed to find another freelancer to do the story. But I'm kind of poaching him from another news service so we'll see what ramifications that will have.

One comment piece was due to come through at the end of last week. I'm still waiting for it. I think that in actual fact I won't get it. Luckily I commissioned another from some Americans last week, and that should come through today, so I'll have my two comment pieces. But how can people just ignore to send stuff through, when they've promised you something?

Actually, I think it's an infuriating African tradition to let people wait, in vain, for work you promised to do for them. Remember my sofa? Well the glue sniffers at the shop still can't tell me why it's not in my house, more than two months after I ordered (and paid for) it.

Meanwhile, even the presumably drug-free and literate people working at the Apple shop downtown won't call me back to say what has happened to the 20-inch monitor I've ordered and paid for.

I'm fed up with it all. I mean, it would be bad enough if I were merely European. But I'm Swedish. To illustrate my point, I've never has such good service as from the press officers at SIDA, the swedish development organisation. I almost cried when they gave me what I wanted, when they said they'd have it by.

Yesterday, however, there was a moment of light. I had lunch at the old Observatory that is located - you guessed it - in the suburb to Cape Town called Observatory. My companion was the director Observatory, although a while back his title would have been Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape. Delightfully quaint, I thought!

His wife made trout sandwiches and we ate in the sun on their stoep [porch - ed], while she told me all about this flower that grows wild nowhere else in the world except for just below their garden. A picture of it is below. It's called moraea aristata. Isn't it pretty? I'm going to try and find a bulb (bought in a shop, not dug up from their garden) for my sister to tend when she comes down. She's got green fingers... Whereas I kill everything I set eyes on.

I'm not afraid?

2006-08-07T12:46:00.000+02:00

Who's a chicken, scaredy cat, mummy's girl, sissy coward? I am! Let me explain. There's a peak next to Table Mountain. It's called Lion's Head and towers approximately 1000 above sea level. Seeing as I've got Hanna (of Grahamstown fame) and her boyfriend over for a long weekend, we decided to climb it. Joining us was Hanna's (and my) Swedish fellow Cape-Town based friend Anna and, more importantly, her climber friend Guillaume (not French, Huguenot) and a rock climber extraordinaire.

Below is a photo of the two.

Now, the route to the summit snakes round and round the peak until it gets to the top. Children and pensioners do it! It's meant to be easy enough. But the curious sugar-cone shape of the peak makes it a pretty surreal walk. The smooth slopes make you lose al sense of perspective. The city below looks more like Legoland than a full-scale metropolis.

Alex walking along the precarious path, with Sea Point or Clifton on the Atlantic seabord sprawling on the right.

Hanna. In the distance you can actually see the area where I live. In between the dam and the three tower blocks.

I don't know when in the past few years I developed vertigo. As a child I loved climbing. Trees, cliffs, buildings. But yesterday when the walk up the hill became more of a scramble, and we had to hold on to crampons and chains bolted into the rock with sheer drops on at least one, sometimes two sides, my head just started spinning. I fought off one or two panic attacks. But 50 or so metres from the top, I couldn't go any further. While the otheres climbed up to the summit, I remained on a 9 square metre ledge in a fetal position, eyes closed, trying not to hyperventilate.

In short, I panicked. Here is a photo from below of the ledge (halfway up the remaining cliff approximately) where I could go no further. If you look closely, you might be able to see the four others on their way down from the top. (actually, you can't. It's too far. but that gives some sense of the scale)

I don't know if it was the large vultures soaring below us, or the uninterrupted view straight down into the Atlantic, or the huge expanse of sky and air around. I was terrified. My legs shook. I felt sick. TI had this returning vision of skull cracking open against rock, limbs flailing as my lifeless body bounds off the rocky promontaries. And that nauseating compulsion to jump out into the nothingness...

Still, the view was beautiful, even from where I sat. And maybe I'll try it again... It might be a case of repeated exposure making it a little less frightening. On the way down, the bits that made me cringe on the way up felt like nothing compared to the windswept eyrie of the summit. Another picture of the view:

I commemorated my defeat with the following photo of me looking very scared. Below that is a photo of me and Hanna looking strangely similar before the ordeal that separated the mouse from the men.

Mon capitaine

2006-08-03T10:51:00.001+02:00

Is it just me or is Jack Davenport channelling the spirit of that hero of all heroes, Errol Flynn, in the latest Pirates instalment?

Here's Jack...

And here's Flynn in Captain Blood...

Davenport was born in 1973. Flynn died in 1959. With Chevy Chase as the missing link (look at The Adventures of Robin Hood - it's Chase in drag) it all fits nicely...

95 octane unleaded

2006-08-01T13:46:00.000+02:00

Oh where, oh where is the petrol to my car? Oh where, oh where can it be? There's a fuel shortage in Cape Town. I had to roll down the hill, petrol gauge beeping, and cross my fingers that one of the downhill garages would have my type of petrol. The third did. Don't quite know why there is a shortage - can't have anything to do with the middle east as Nigeria is practically alight with oil. But maybe they don't want to supply the neo-colonial southern neighbour?

Reminiscing about the summer house

Meanwhile, this place is cold and rainy. But nobody had tried to break into my flat, or my car, while I've been away. So that's good. A kind mechanic even fixed my slightly broken windscreen wipers free of charge. Still no sight of my sofa, however, which now brings it to 8 weeks delivery time flat.

I might come back to London for a flying stop at the end of October. That is, if the Royal Society feels rich in conjunction with a meeting they are hosting of African learned societies and academies. On the way back I'd likely pop to Alexandria for a large meeting of policymakers and scientists. I'll go looking for the library, although they all reckon it's at the bottom of the sea. But just one forgotten manuscript under a cracked bit of two-thousand year old pavement? My hopes are high.

Met another younger cousin in London (she's usually in Canada - my, we're a globetrotting bunch) and she joined a last stand barbecue on a Shoreditch rooftop as the heatwave came to a close and the rainclouds rolled in. Ten brave souls and a bottle (or three) of rhum, aye!

Some photos from the barbecue.

The cousin is the blonde one with the pout in the second picture.

Malou (far left) is still a contender for the 'darkest person north of the Sahara' award, more than two weeks after her sojourn in Croatia.

The host and hostess with the mostest.

Farewell to London, and Sweden from the far side of the world, across deserts, jungles and seas...

Farenheit 7/11

2006-07-28T11:39:00.000+02:00

The heatwave has relented for long enough for my brain to unscramble and form some sentences again. All of London is rotting, there is a stench in the streets, the roads are melting, tourists are keeling over left right and centre with heat stroke and there is an ice cream shortage! If this is climate change, where will it end?

In a few days, I'll be returning to the pleasantly chilly nights of South Africa. There's something I never thought I'd say.

Some complete dick has piloted a submarine into the Galapagos archipelago without permission. God I hate people who think their right to do whatever they please supercedes whatever rules might be in place to save the world from idiots like them. I was there in August a couple of years ago, and immediately felt guilty about it. I mean, it's the kind of place we just shouldn't be. Leave it alone, for god's sake, no matter how beautiful it is. Apparently they're thinking about allowing massive cruise ships to dock there on round the world trips. Boats bigger than the bloody islands they're to visit!

Slight crisis back in Cape Town as well. Paul sales manager is facing an ultimatum from his wife after the accident with his son. So he's going back to England. And we need another sales manager. Crap for me, as I will be producing a product with nobody selling it. Or almost. It will take time to get the new person familiar with the product. And Paul had promised to get me a raise...

I'll be on my own. In Cape Town. Please send me some emails or I'll go absolutely mad and start talking to myself. Oops, too late for that...

Tranny Lip Sync

2006-07-21T11:28:00.000+02:00

What is that, a tranny lip sync competition?

Tin Pan Alley

2006-07-18T17:48:00.000+02:00

London is in the middle of a heat wave! Only one thing for it, and that's to go to a free festival in Denmark street and have beers with the rest of the underage drinkers.

Cape Town International

2006-07-15T21:47:00.000+02:00

The departure lounge at Cape Town International probably has one of the most beautiful airport views in the world. The setting sun is reflected in the Drakensberg mountain range making for a Tolkienesque backdrop for the Boeings and Airbuses lined up waiting for passengers to board.

I’m en route to London. Tomorrow at 7 I’ll be trying to cope with the bustle of the Eastbound Piccadilly Line. I doubt I’ll get views like this one for another two weeks.

Driving here with Cousin who is baby sitting my car for me while I’m away, I thought about how much I have changed since I got here. How much has happened, how much I have rediscovered. New places do that to you. They make you remember things other places made you forget.

Speaking of forgetting, I’d very much like to forget yesterday. Packing up my stuff yesterday morning, I couldn’t find my passport. Not at home, not at work. So I panicked.

The Swedish consulate closed at 1 pm, so I had to give up looking, throw myself in my car and drive there via a shopping centre to pick up eight horrendous passport size photos of myself. They’re a wonderful memento of the day as I look mightily pissed off.

The consulate staff took my application for a temporary passport and processed it while I ran to the closes police station (like the wind, it was already ten to one) to report it lost and drawing out 1000 rand to pay for the bloody thing. I tried not to think about the hassle I’d have to go through to get a new passport, PLUS a new work permit to put in it from Home Affairs who aren’t exactly known for their expediency or customer service.

Mine was not a happy prospect.

Of course, when I got home that evening I found the passport. I’d hidden it in a ‘safe place’ when I went to Grahamstown a few weeks ago in case my flat was broken into. I can un-block it by phoning Swedish police on Monday. Piece of cake, and of mind.

I think the same thing happened when I moved to London eight years ago. I had a pretty in pink temp passport then too. That I never learn…

Now, I’m en route and that is the most important thing. It will be lovely to be home. Or, I’m so confused about that word. This is home. But so is London, and Stockholm (where I’m off to next weekend).

How many homes can one heart hold? The problem with multiple homes is that wherever you are, part of you always wishes it were somewhere else. And already now, with another 22 months to go of my contract down here, I still feel acutely that I’ll miss this. I’ll miss the views. The vistas of South Africa have already claimed my heart.

Little ironies

2006-07-13T13:39:00.000+02:00

Life is full of little ironies. For example, they are building a restaurant next to my gym called "Sinns". I'll be able to go straight from heaven to hell without passing Go. Convenient.

Yesterday, as I mentioned in the last post, was press day. Another little irony was that yesterday was also the day the company back in London picked for their annual summer picnic. So when I faced urgent software problems at around 8pm last night, they were all too sloshed to care.

Before that my boss back home, William, had spent a few rushed minutes looking over the editorial, cover and analysis piece for me. But when he sent them back he forgot to attach the file with his comments. And left the office. I had to take his directions over the phone from whatever park they were all frolicking in. Doubtless by that time there was a glass of Pimms in his hand.

I had to deal with it myself. Luckily, I'm quite resourceful in a tight spot. But constructing an advert from scratch when I don't really know what I'm doing and with the printers' deadline ticking over was not FUN. I wouldn't call it fun, no.

Operation Botch Job ended at about 10.30pm. An hour earlier than last month, so that would count as a success. But OH MY GOD it's so seriously urgent for me to take a course in Indesign NOW that it's not funny.

Press day 2

2006-07-12T21:26:00.000+02:00

Hmmm. Press day sucks. Would have been 8 o'clock if the bastard template had not given me a hard time. Missing fonts my bottom. Off to check proof now, then home to bed and a lie-in. I hope. The proof is probably going to look shit, and I'll have to get out of bed before I have time to get in. Hmmm. Over and out.

Sticks and stones

2006-07-11T18:50:00.000+02:00

Today, finally, I was interviewed by the police in regards to that accident I witnessed a few posts down. The boy was fine in the end, apparently, but the driver of the speeding car is being sued for 60,000 rand worth of damages. Suits him right.

Accidents is not a happy topic, however, as I come in yesterday to the office to meet a very distressed Paul. His son had been hit by a minibus outside his school in a hit-and-run and mangled up his right arm badly. He was in surgery today, and Paul and his wife, Lucy, are naturally beside themselves. Let's hope for Jamie's speedy recovery.

In other news, tomorrow is press day - again! Where do the weeks go? I'm in good shape for an early finish. But then I said that last time. This time there might be a graphic on the front page. How exciting!

Hulk fish and lottery

2006-07-05T15:25:00.000+02:00

For a gambling junkie like myself, this job has some strange satisfactions. Every morning I come in, sit down, and see which emails or telephone messages have hit their mark. I'd say I've a hit rate of 1 in 6. That is, one in six people who I try to contact will ever get back to me, or have provided me with the right email address or phone number.

My newest impossible task is to find a telephone number to the Chinese ministry for science and technology. I think it's a lost cause. My only hope now is that the embassy will at least deliver SOMETHING.

Paul in Sales told me today about this fish that lives in the Amazon. It's a carnivore, but not a shark, can grow up to 13 foot and when the Amazon floods it will headbutt the swamped trees to knock down monkeys and eat them. Poor little monkeys. But clever fish! Check out a photo of this mighty pissed-off pike:

Grahamstown

2006-07-03T15:31:00.000+02:00

Right, so I spent the weekend in Grahamstown, a 12 hour (!) bus ride up the coast towards Mozambique. Or, in my case, an 18 hour bus journey as we were plagued on the outward leg by breakdowns. Welcome to Africa.

I left on the Thursday evening. The bus was late getting out of the station. It waited just outside town for an hour and a half for a mechanic to come and tie shut a door that wouldn't close with a piece of string. And at midnight, we were stranded in Mossel Bay (just under half way) for three hours waiting for a replacement bus after ours had filled up with smoke.

I managed to get to G-town in the end, after a long story involving rides with people from the bus company the last 100 kms which I won't bore you with. Once there, however, I met up with Hanna who I know from London. She's in East London (on the SA coast, not Whitechapel) doing some development work and was in G-town visiting others from her Swedish development course. So with the numerous Swedish jazz bands that were there visiting, there was a large Scando contingent.

Grahamstown looks like a Home Counties village that has been uprooted and moved to the South African veld. It's a university town, and once a year it plays host to the biggest arts festival of SA, possibly of the continent. It's a little bit like the Edinburgh festival in terms of what's on, and people come from far and wide to see plays, comedy, music shows.

We saw a modern dance company, a theatre production, a jazz band. But the best, I think we all agreed, was sitting in the festival field with a beer watching some random Zulu tribal dance while the sun beat down hard on our faces. Still, it wasn't warm. At night, it creeps below 10 degrees in Grahamstown, and there is no heating.

Hanna and co's SA experience is very different from my own. They see what I don't the poverty, the villages, the hiv/aids and so on. It is amazing how it all exists side by side. One girl had been at the pre-circumcision party for a boy in a local tribe. Xhosa boys are circumsised in their teens, when they officially become men. And it's a big deal. They have to spend weeks alone in the bush after the 'procedure' which is done with no anasthaetics. And infection can be a problem, leading to death.

I was immensely impressed by how one of Hannas friends in particular - Markus - had learned a bit of Xhosa, one of the main non-colonial languages of SA. This is the click language I spoke of before. There is a click that sounds like you are trying to move a horse, a 'tsk' noise that sounds very disapproving but isn't, and a Q click which sounds like a wine bottle being uncorked. He could do them all, and without contorting his face to look constipated, which the rest of us did.

And going through the game reserves between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, I even managed to do some roadside safari. I saw wildebeest, zebra, antelopes and to my joy some giraffes.

The busride home was not so eventful. At 6.30 this morning we pulled in to Cape Town station and I went home to get a well deserved rest before coming in to work. That was only half an hour late. But next year, I think I'll catch a plane.

Some photos: Hanna looking pretty; Actors exploring their masculinity (yes, seriously); Apparently you can train your man; Markus who was good with click languages; The street where the swedes lived. A bit Desperate Housewives?; Zulu dancer; and YOURS TRULY.

Photo time!

2006-06-28T16:34:00.000+02:00

After the harrowing realism of the last post, let's take a chill pill and watch some pretty pictures from said trip before it turned into Road Carnage. This is the view across False Bay, aka the most Great White-dense sea in the world, from Cape Point.

Cape Point is not the southernmost point of Africa, contrary to common belief. That honour can only be bestowed on some unassuming rock in between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Coast. But it's here that the warm current from the Indian Ocean mingles with the icy cold Antarctic current, and it's where Magellan and company turned a corner en route to the Orient. All that history does not stop yours truly from looking spectacularly stupid in this pic, however. Note that it was windy. It's always windy here. And the green boulder behind me is, in fact, the cape point.

You can climb a hill to the light house and stand and stare at the ocean that stretches uninterrupted all the way to Antarctica.

This all reminds you how far away you are from home. According to this sign post, I'm exactly 9623 km from London.

The Cape Point is a nature reserve, but its only exciting fauna is an animal the size of a large guniea pig, whose closest living relative is the elephant!

And finally, a picture of Miracle-Gro performing one of her miracles using a very large gun that somebody had left standing around. She's gone off to Mozambique for 3 weeks now, and I hope she will watch out for the land mines.

The boy in the road

2006-06-26T10:14:00.000+02:00

I drove very slowly to work today. I looked twice in the side mirrors before turning, checking my blind spot whenever appropriate. I gave way, I slowed down. I repeatedly got beeped at, but that does not concern me anymore. I don't want to be that boy in the road.

Yesterday, on Sunday, I drove Gro and her friend Marius who is visiting from Norway down to Cape Point. It was a beautiful day, but there was a feeling. I don't know. I almost scraped the side of my car driving to pick them up to go. Gro had her wallet stolen in town the night before. A friend who also lives in Gro's road was out by her car sweeping up broken glass deposited there by somebody who had smashed her window to steal nothing more than a few CDs.

It felt like one of those days.

Still, even when there are ominous signs around, the beauty of the peninsula soothes you. This place truly is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I'll post some pictures soon. It's the contradiction of the place, which bugs you out of your mind. Everything is lovely, warm, pleasant. Until something happens.

The thing about the sheer cliffs and dramatic nature is that the roads are all but straightforward to negotiate. Often you have a drop on one side, and a cliff on the other. Sometimes the speed limit is 90 kph on these roads. I can't drive 70 on them, nor could Marius who was co-pilot on this 4 hour trek south and back.

We were driving pretty conscienciously through the reserve, as a huge 4X4 pick up truck - the kind that you'll see rednecks drive when they go out to hund deer or something - overtooks us at an insane speed before disappearing around a bend. We slowed down, and followed. Then things happened very quickly.

In front of us, the bend was blocked by two things. One was the pick-up truck, all but unrecognisable, its entire front smashed in, petrol gushing out across the road and smoke coming out the back. It had careered into a large tourist bus - not a normal bus, but a heavy thing that looked like it could charge an elephant - and which had only been pushed a metre or so sideways by the impact.

We screeched to a halt. In time. Behind, people followed suit. I don't know how close we were to each other behind the speeding car. But I am inclined to think that the fact that we were keeping a sensible speed limit at the front of this slight tailback may have saved us all from a serious serial collision.

The first thing you want to do when you are metres away from a car that gushes petrol and smoke is to reverse. There was a car behind, so we couldn't. Instead we all got out and watched. The people in the car behind were not so taken aback. Presumably, they've seen more accidents like this. A group of men ran up to the totalled car, helped out the driver, the person in the passenger seat who had what seemed like a leg injury.

And then they pulled out the boy.

According to the people who had been on the bus, the boy had not worn a seatbelt. He was bleeding profusely from lacerations to his face. Somebody found blankets, a first aid kit, even a woman with medical training. But nothing could stop the fact that at first, the kid was making noises. And then he wasn't.

It took the ambulance over 30 minutes to get there. We all had to double back, eventually, seeking another way out of the cape point nature reserve across dirt tracks and potholes. I had left my details with the policeman, as I can testify to the driver of the truck speeding.

I have no idea what happened to the boy. These things don't reach even the local news.

What strikes you is the pointlessness of it all. What would the driver have gained? Two minutes? And what may he have lost?

And all the memories flood back to you about the times that you went into a bend a bit too fast. maybe you veered slighly into the lane that - luckily- was empty of oncoming traffic. Maybe the wheels just kept you on the road. Maybe you came out of a junction and didn't see the motorcyclist until the very last minute. Maybe you accellerated unneccessarily down a steep hill because it made you feel alive. Maybe you were trying to impress the person with you in the car.

All those moments when your heart stopped. And you think, god that was close. And then you keep going. And do it again. And there's just too many of them to count. Or even to control. Who do we think we are, risking not only our own lives but those of our passengers, our fellow motorists, pedestrians. And you feel, when you see something like we did yesterday, so stupid. So juvenile. I mean, don't we ever grow up?

So I braked today. Let them beep.

Online!

2006-06-22T15:00:00.000+02:00

The good news is that Research Africa is online. The bad news is that there are bugs. So... check it out here, but don't be surprised if you have a rough ride...

If you don't care about the site, but only my noble journalism, check it online here here. There should be a pdf on the site, but I don't know where. If you want one, send me an email and I'll make sure you get it.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly good. Here are some endorsements:

A valuable resource on Africa's scientific rennaisance that should be on the desk of every policy maker.
Calestous Juma, Harvard professor of international development and UN rapporteur on science in Africa

Research Africa is an excellent initiative. It should enable African researchers to access news, views, advanced skills courses and funding easily and quickly. It should help the continent unify its research strategies and bring scattered researchers closer together. All speed to Research Africa's electrogigabyte flows!
Renfrew Christie, dean of research at the University of the Western Cape (SA)

It's so nice of them to be so nice to me.

And today, I went to Parliament for a launch of the annual R&D survey. All the movers and shakers were there, and all of them were very encouraging. I think they're just really happy that somebody is shining a light on this kind of news for once.

In other news, I've received the container with my stuff. Just as I was beginning to wish that a fortuitous storm would come along and sink the ship, and consequently my things, into the abyss. After they had finished carrying my stuff into my flat, the place felt all cramped. How will I now be able to do cartwheels in the lounge?

Into the night

2006-06-21T11:04:00.000+02:00

Tonight is the longest night of the year. Midwinter. Suitably, it rains. Cats and dogs. Or maybe cheetas and hyenas, or whatever.

The website is due to come online today, and suitably (again) it is not without problems. Mainly, the front page - ie the page you hit when you go to RA.net - is like a big questionmark. The London team has worked on the website for a week now, how could they not make sure there was something to look at on the front page????

Sorry, I'm venting. It's a little frustrating when nobody thinks of the most obvious things.

Paul has a tummy bug. His son has a tummy bug. His wife came down with it last night. I feel like a chicken in Indonesia, when the one next to me gets a runny nose...

Speaking of being ill, poor Michael Owen, that looked like it hurt. There were three Swedish girls in the pub last night, and a gazillion english boys. They didn't mind, though. I think they saw us as a curiosity. Girls watching football without husbands in tow? Who actually know the offside rule? You must be joking!

I missed the first goal, because I was texting Miracle-Gro moaning about the performance of my team. So there... Thing is, the pub went quiet. there wasn't even a groan from the England supporters. Or else I went momentarily deaf. In any case, we all three of us had a bit of a blonde moment, going 'what happened', 'was that a goal', 'yes it was', 'oh my god' ... YAAAAAYYYY! about two minutes late... Er...

The Chinese aren't answering their phones. Do they have something to hide?

Born to cruise

2006-06-19T14:31:00.000+02:00

I've got my car. It coughs in the mornings and splutters but I just need to master the choke. It doesn't like the cold, poor mite. Here is a picture of one just like it... I told you it wasn't pretty!

The long weekend that was due to national 'youth day' on Friday was sunny and lovely, but in the end I stayed in Cape Town. There is so much to see with a car! Next weekend I'll venture down the cape peninsula, or up to the vineyards. Cousin is very keen on not having to be the designated driver and I need the practice.

I'm slowly recovering after last week's hiatus and am thinking about what to put in my next issue. There's a chinese premier minister travelling around the continent shaking hands and announcing things, so I thought I'd take an in-depth look at their financing of African science. It's no secret that China is VERY interested in Africa's natural resources - its oil in particular. Presumably they are interested in Africa's brains as well...

There's all sorts of delays to do with printing the cover letter to go with the first issue mail outs. So I don't think those of you who are reading this from the UK or elsewhere will get your hands on a copy until early next week. But I'll say when the site goes online and you should be able to download pdf versions.

For those of you who are interested, SciDev.net has an interesting editorial about science in Africa. http://www.scidev.net/content/editorials/eng/african-science-now-is-the-time-to-deliver.cfm

Heja Sverige

2006-06-15T10:15:00.000+02:00

When did footballers turn from plain boys with stocky legs and bad haircuts to adonis-like hunks with good ones? Soccer players were seriously ugly when I was a teenager. Maybe it's late-onset puberty.

Come on Sweden! And Spain, as I drew you in the office sweepstakes.

Cockroach poo

2006-06-14T10:53:00.000+02:00

Yesterday - well what to say? Highlights included Miracle-Gro helping me to transcribe a near-unintelligible interview with what sounded like Manuel from Fawlty Towers, dithering with William about the cover way past my self-imposed deadline and realising at about 7pm that I needed to go on a layout course.

The proof has some glitches, which are being sorted today. But my chest swells with pride when I look at the sorry little rag. A mother-child bond cemented by a painful birth perhaps?

It's a public holiday on Friday, and I might be going away with some friends of Gro's for the weekend. If Lost doesn't arrive... But I think it's stuck in a post office somewhere. Letters seem to take about a month to arrive.

I may be allowed to take home the car today. Brave new world.

Oh, and when I got back home last night there was an insect the size of a small pony waiting for me in the bath tub. It had left little presents for me that I had to wash away before engaging in a long hot soak. I've never met an insect large enough to produce visible do-dos. It minged. But I got my revenge. The roach is now at the bottom of the bath drain contemplating its sins in an acid bath of insecticide.

It's in

2006-06-13T22:20:00.000+02:00

It's in. Half ten. I'm too tired to type. Tell all tomorrow. Soon, I'll be off to the printers to check the proof. And then I'll go home to sleep the sleep of the righteous.

Burning the midnight oil

2006-06-13T08:31:00.000+02:00

It’s 21.30 [last night, at time of posting - ed], dark outside like only the African night can be, and raining as if Cape Town were God’s personal window box and today was watering day. I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up tomorrow with my slippers bobbing past my bed and the mountain in my back garden having turned into an island. Not that it will change anything. Decked out in scuba gear or not, tomorrow I’m going to press.

I don’t know whether to laugh, or to faint, or do both, although it might be hard to achieve both to satisfaction simultaneously. So I’ll just keep typing. Yesterday, I worked. I worked until late at night. Today, I’ve worked. And panicked. And now I’m working some more. Tomorrow night there will be no more ‘more’. There will either be a magazine. Or there will not.

I’m meant to be writing the editorial. I hate editorials. There’s a reason. You may not think it from the way I’m going on here, but I’m actually pretty lazy. I don’t like using my whole brain if I can get away with using half.

News articles, now, they are like IKEA furniture. You collect the pieces, and with a little bit of luck and the odd forceful nudge if there’s a particularly stubborn joint, hey presto, a wardrobe! You can write news stories in any state of mind – death in the family, team sucks at the world cup (yeah, what’s up with you Ibrahimovic, the ball goes IN the net!), your favourite jumper has just been eaten by your cat – it’s all right, you’ll still get there.

Editorials are a bit like that, except where the flatpack box was before there is now a lump of wood and an axe. If you’re lucky, the nails will be included and you won’t have to smelt your own.

With editorials, you have to start someplace and, using your own sorry-ass mind, end up somewhere that makes sense. And not just in cloud cuckoo land where you’ve just spent the past six hours writing an editorial.

Editorials are prime targets for plagiarism. In fact, a successful Guardian reporter once told me that editorials were the easiest thing in the world. “You just talk to someone sensible, and then you go back and write that opinion as your own.”

My problem is that I was blessed and cursed with a preternatural ability to see both sides of an argument. Nice trait, you might say. I guess, if you work at the UN. But you try to argue a point in text when the half of your brain that is not currently ruling your fingers is busy constructing a pretty convincing counter-argument.

Now, for fear of sounding a drama queen - I’m still doing ok. Nothing has happened since the last post to really bugger up the timeline for tomorrow. It’s just that today vanished in a puff of mis-sent emails and layout issues. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow just can’t. That Tema woman can’t get back to me and say she’s not happy with the second way I’ve edited her comment piece. The interview with Monsieur Siegler at the European Commission can’t not happen at 11.30. The tape on which I’ll record said interview (a veteran in the game as I can’t [read haven’t bothered to] find a shop that sells the type of tape I need) can’t pick that particular time to kick the bucket.

Nor can there be a problem with the cover story, or with the funny (well as funny as Research Africa goes) bits on the back page, or – god forbid – with the software I’m working on. And email CAN’T pick tomorrow to conk out. It can’t, it can’t, it can’t! And tonight I can’t go to bed. No matter how much I’d like to.

At this point it’s fear, pure fear, that’s keeping me awake and typing. The fear of that place tomorrow night, which know I won’t find myself in – but still, that place where I have to admit that I just wasn’t up to the challenge.

But that won’t happen. I’ll climb the mountain, as usual, because there’s no going round, and no going back down. That’s the thing. If you’re lazy but ambitious like me, you need to make sure you’re high enough when you get to this point that you just keep going.

And, of course, I know how high I will feel after it’s all over. It’s like that guy said: - Why do you keep hitting yourself with that hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.

It's Friday night and it's all right

2006-06-09T18:20:00.000+02:00

I'm amazed to be saying it, but I'm doing well for time for Tuesday. Editing a new newspaper? Pah! Piece of cake! There are only three more stories to write, a lot of laying out to do and the whole printing palaver, and then that's it for another month.

I'm pretty proud, I must say. This time last week, things were not looking so rosy. But I'm happy with the spread of stories, I'm happy with the comment pieces, I'm well on my way to being happy with the cover...

And Miracle-Gro (Gro Haram, my trusty Norwegian freelance copyeditor and proofreader) has proved to be speedy gonzales. We'll make the Tuesday 6 pm deadline no problem.

Touch wood...

Basically, it all came unstuck this week. People picked up their phones, they told me reasonably intelligent things and answered my emails. Everybody I talk to is really positive about the magazine, and interested in receiving a copy, which is really good for motivation. Paul reckons he can make the July sales target no problem, and has promised to sort me out with a raise!

Also, the car money arrived yesterday so all that is in motion. Probably still Linda no-car this weekend, but come Monday... I'll be cruisin. Perhaps better leave taking it home until after deadline. If anything were to happen to me (see Death in a tin can below) I'm not sure the deadline for the mag could be met with love nor money.

Only slight irk is that William (boss in London) spotted some libel-type things in one of my best stories. An African research organisation that has been found to have used project grants to subsidise salaries and operational costs etc (fair enough, they were going bankrupt, but the funders were pretty miffed)... I'm going to buy a book tomorrow on South African libel law and see how far I can push it. Shame, it's such a juicy story. But I don't want to be sued in my first issue.

Anyway, it's all under control. I can't believe I am feeling more relaxed this weekend than I was feeling last one. Bring on the football, and dinner and bar-hopping with Miracle-Gro tonight. I feel like celebrating.

Maids, tummy bugs and other local fauna

2006-06-06T09:37:00.000+02:00

The cleaner seems to think the only reason I exist is to provide her with the opportunity to polish my desk. She scowls at me now because I'm not keeping my desk tidy enough for her to do her job. Oh well, she can scowl.

Cape Town's a clean place, eh? Every morning at about the time I leave for work, taxis come driving up my street (the communal taxi vans that cost 2 rand, not the metered ones I use) and drop off little black ladies everywhere. They are the domestics. Everyone in my house has one, even the sloppy oversized teenager downstais. Especially him, in fact.

I don't know. I think there's something extremely healthy in learning to clean up your own mess. You can tell the people here - men and women alike, but especially the blokes - have never had to scrub their own toilet. Or wash their own clothes. I find it deeply unsympathetic.

We've had splendid sunny weather for four days running now. Today, however, there is the precursor of rain. The Berg wind - hot air whooshing out of the North from the Kalahari Desert - is a sure sign that things are about to get wet. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after. But as they say down here - you don't complain about the rain.

Unfortunately, my disposition has not been as sunny as the weather. On Thursday last week, I ate something I shouldn't, and suffered the consequences. I'm only just getting able to eat properly again today.

Speaking of the local fauna, it struck me the other day that I've been here a month and not seen so much as a gnu. I'm in Africa, for God's sake, there must be more to being on Safari than the odd cockroach behind the sink!

Well yes, there are the dogs. Everyone's got one. There's three in my building alone, and they are nice enough. But there is also a Hound of Baskerville lurking around my part of town, crying away into the night and interrupting my sleep. I don't know. Dogs smell. And they have no integrity. On the other hand, they keep the burglars out. Unless the burglars shoot the dogs with their 9mms.

The cash transfusion coming over from the UK to pay the deposit on my car is experiencing some problems, meaning that I'm still hitching rides to work. It's a pain. But I was talking about it to Rosemary yesterday. Everyone talks about the freedom of owning, and driving, a car. But where I come from freedom is an Oyster card that will allow you to go anywhere, at any time without worrying abot congestion charges and parking. I just dont see it. But Rosemary assures me it's much simpler, and cheaper, here.

And today I've got a week. A week! Until I have to hand the first issue to the printers. Hell, what am I even doing writing this stuff here... i should be writing proper articles... Oh, and for those of you who are interested, my first 'international' Guardian column is published today. Here.

This Saturday also gave me my first real pang of home sickness. I was sipping a Pina Colada in Camps Bay by the beach (as you do in the middle of winter) as I noticed they were showing the England friendly on the TV inside. I went to see Eng-ur-land thrash Jamaica 5-0 at 70 minutes, and for a second I remembered sitting in a pub, pint in hand, alongside fifty other expat Swedes cheering as Zlatan heads it into the net... For the first time I realised just how far away I am from home.

So I'm buying a TV. To watch the games. It feels important.

The Political Prisoner

2006-06-01T11:55:00.000+02:00

Last night I went for dinner with an exceedingly interesting man. Renfrew Christie was a spy for the ANC during apartheid, he spied on the regime's nuclear weapons programme. After spending the late 70s in Oxford doing his PhD he came back to South Africa. He was caught, and spent seven years in prison, including spells in solitary confinement and on death row.

Christie is now dean of research at the University of the Western Cape, out by the airport. His institution is a success story in that it has gone from being one of the country's poor universities to being one of its most successful research universities, and its student body is still largely black.

The dinner was basically me bribing Christie to take me under his wing, to invite me into his exstensive network of powerful friends and allies. Therefore I took him to a rather nice place in the Waterfront. So what if it cost me half my monthly expense budget!

He didn't disappoint. He gave me over 20 names of people I should get in touch with, enough anecdotes to write a book with and a ride home. He also gave me his own personal view of the NEPAD (New Parntnership for Africa's Development) science investment scheme (what Blair's Commission for Africa report fed into and which is being run by the Africa Union from Addis). Basically, he reckons, it's a lame duck. It's become bureaucratised, and if it benefits anybody it will only be 6 countries, not 56 as intended. But more about that in the first issue of my magazine...

This is bad news for NEPAD, but good news for me in the way that bad news is good news for journalists. Either way, it's a story and one that will unfold over the next two years no doubt.

Renfrew also invited me to the monthly sessions with the South African Royal Society, of which he is the director general. They take tea and biscuits, listen to a presentation by a prominent thinker, then round off with a glass of sherry in the Company's Gardens - the old gardens of the East India Company. All this at the very civilised time of 4.30 for 5 on a Wednesday.

He also reckons I need to meet the horsey set - they run the place apparently. No problems, as soon as my hard hat arrives from the UK...

A third inroad into Africa is the Embassies, he said. SA is the diplomatic gateway to Africa, and they've all got consuls in Cape Town. It's a nice way of getting round the endless red tape of the ministries. On the other hand, diplomats are slippery buggers...

I've finally also bit the automotive bullet and paid a holding deposit on a white CitiGolf. It's no beauty but it drives, was cheap and is only three years old. I might be able to take it home before the weekend, else, I'll take it home on Monday. Then, I'll be 100 per cent Capetonian at last. And drive to see my next door neighbour.

Clever Livia

2006-05-31T11:57:00.000+02:00

Ok, this completely random, but my friend Olivia is the cleverest person in the world. I asked her this morning for an example of early international scientific collaboration for my Guardian column. This is what I got back, about ten minutes later:

Well Kepler and Gallileo used to correspond and share stuff. That’s from about 1600-1615. and an italian with a german protestant #(weird sect –you will have to check I can’t remember)…

The thing is that it is hard to know in ancient times (ie the hellenestic age of science) who corresponded with whom but there must have been correspondance and in those days scientists/philosophers were often teachers with their band of disciples. There was almost certainly correspondance but I don’t know if anyone can cite particular examples of what was corresponded about..

After the hellenistic and roman ages, there is nothing to speak of in science until the growth of the abbeys (begin to be founded around early 4th century with the important scholastic orders being benedictine and franciscan). It is these orders/abbeys that became the first universities. I think the earliest interesting science correspondance might be in the end of the 11th beginning of the 12th when Robert Grossteste who I believe trained in Paris went to Oxford and became Roger Bacon’s teacher…or he may have been Bacon’s distant mentor in Paris but I think if you look this two guys up on the St Andrews history of maths/science site you might get something. If Bacon and Grossteste were both always in Oxford then clearly there is no correspondance but if one were in Oxford and the other in Paris there is a good chance of some correspondance on optics. Also, Bacon wrote to the Pope and said that someone should write an Encyclopaedia (not in those terms but basically that) and he was hoping that the Pope woul give him some cash for his work but instead he wrote back saying ‘good idea for this book thing- you write it’. which kinda put him in it a little.

Another one that might have some possible correpondance is Parcelsus writing to someone or other- maybe the rich and famous.

Kepler used to ask gallileo for telescopic observations and would share some of his data also. So it was communication about celestial observation.

I think that something to stress is that the roots of science in monasticism meant that science grew up in a culture of writing letters and associations with distanmt insitutions. And then from 1500 onwards if you want to do science you have to get cash which means at the very least doing a few lectures, writing letters or pamplhlets dedicated to trich folk. Also if you want to do science you need to know where everyone else was at before wasting your time. Another source of keeping distant relations with people is alchemy. So you might find some alchemists corresponding in some garbled way before 1600. Otherwise look up the people who lectured in anatomy at Padua at the end of the 16th just before Harvey. Begins with ‘V’.

But really all people who could write nad had an intellectual mission wrote letters and sought out like minds of which there were very few before 1650. so maybe the kepler galileo one is best because most people have heard of them and telescopic observation is pretty basic stuff. However I should say that the greatest science corresponder, might also be that greatest of science’s wheeler and dealer’s, Robert Hooke, curator of experiments at the RS before Newton took over the presidency. Without hooke’s spreading of correspondance the steam engine might have been a lot longer in coming. He shared knowledge between pretty much all scientists but the steam engine story c omes about via correspondance with Denis Papin (french and then I think became one of Boyle’s experimentalists) and on the English side I think Newcomen but it maybe Newcomen’s technological precursor, I cant remember.

Oh but you remember so much, my dear.

I'm embarrassed to say that this is what made it into my article:

Kepler and Galileo used to correspond about their findings, and scientists haven’t stopped talking across borders since.

View my flat

2006-05-29T13:30:00.000+02:00

I moved in on Saturday to my lovely new house. Hurrah! Therefore, this post will be littered with photos like this one of the view from my balcony.

Yes those are mountains in the far distance. And in between is the bay. This photo does not do the views justice. They are breathtaking. I could stand and stare for days. Actually, that is pretty much what I did yesterday. The aspect is due north, which is good in these parts. I get sun from when the sun rises until the sun sets (well, almost. Signal hill is in the way in the West. But the sun does not disapppera behind it until 5 in the winter. Probably after 6 in the summer.

As far as the flat goes, it's still a bit bare, but filling up quickly (at the same rate as my bank balance is diminishing, fancy that!).

I also have a master bedroom with views. The bed in there is going in the spare bedroom later, but until my container arrives from the UK (which is delayed 14 days and won't be until end of June, surprise surprise) I'll be breaking it in.

This is a taster of the bedroom views. You can see all of Table Mountain, sort of 'from underneath'.... You can climb up to the top from my 'back garden' but it's a little bit dangerous. People disappear on the mountain every year.

There are also the "Bergies" - the people who live on the mountain. Before you go too far the Wes Craven association route, these are pretty harmless drunks who come down from the mountain every now and then to go through your rubbish and recycle anything useful. Plastic, cardboard, any old stuff. They serve a pretty useful purpose - although I wouldn't wish their fate on anyone.

Here is also the spare bedroom. It's empty now. And very blue! It should do for the sister, as well as others who want to come and stay. It doesn't have views of the mountain (well not if you don't lean out the window) but beggars can't be choosers. And it's not as blue as...

...my lounge. Which is pretty damn fab. It's got some seriously funky wallpaper on one wall. (you can just see it) but have it from me, it works! Door on the right leads to the bathroom. Which is green, just in case you were wondering. Although not the porcelain, thank god!

Then there's the kitchen/exit to the garden and balcony. And that's pretty much it for this time! I'll post a booking sheet so that everyone who wants to come and stay can book their slot... ;-)

Singing in the Sun

2006-05-25T10:00:00.000+02:00

Another thing that strikes you as odd when you first arrive here in South Africa is that people actually pay attention to the weather forecasts. "There is a cold front coming in on Saturday afternoon at four-oh-three, give or take, so we should plan to have the BBQ food done by four-oh-two at the latest."

Ok, so I exaggerate. But the fact is that the forecasts are reliable. Days in advance! So now, for example, I know that the weekend will be rubbish (again - check here for why that is) and that Friday will be wet, but saturday and sunday are unlikely to be.

Which makes a difference from London, where torrential rain at noon not neccessarily means wellies and waterproofs needed at one.

Of course, the weather of Cape Town has a reputation for being good - and its people are of an outdoorsy persuasion. So it matters, more, here. They worry about it (see previous posts about moaning). And, I am starting to realise, so do I. Last weekend I couldn't care less about the rain. But I'm slowly connecting to the local mindset, tuning in to the vibes, and right now, as blue sky domes unbroken over the city with its stuffy office buildings, I can hear it whisper 'Dang. Another weekend watching re-runs of Law&Order'.

Yes, they really show it here. Prime time.

I've given up

2006-05-23T16:03:00.000+02:00

This week I'm getting a feel for the connectivity of the continent. For two hours now I've been trying to find out the coordinates of a certain Lidia R Arthur Brito, the former higher education minister of mozambique. After failing to reach either the ministry or her university over the phone (they seem to have changed area codes in reality if not on the websites) I emailed the central contact address for the ministry in desperation.

This is the reply I got from the server:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at smtp2.teledata.mz. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

Who gave Marvin a job?!?! God help me.

Lost

2006-05-23T10:14:00.000+02:00

It's time to own up. Cousin and I have been spending the past 10-odd evenings racing through episode after episode of abc's mind-numbingly cryptic desert island series, and last night we reached the end of series one.

Today, our minds reel with questions. Who are the others? Why hasn't Hurley lost weight? How come they're all so impossibly hot? What's up with the baby? And when, goddam it, will Jack and Freckles EVER GET IT ON?

Sorry, but in the twilight, with the rain lashing at our windows and beaches not dissimilar to the ones depicted on my laptop screen just around the corner, the boundaries between what's real and what's fictional blur... In fact, I swear I saw Sawyer driving a red pick-up truck past my taxi on the way in to work.

This is all just as well, however, as South African television leaves a lot to be desired. Of course, having been spoiled by the BBC et al (who, let's face it, do the best TV on Earth, largely due to the complete shitness of the weather and the general misanthrophy of the population) I am falling from a lofty height...

In fact, I think I just won't bother with getting a TV for my new flat. I've turned Cousin's on every now and then, only to see the United Colours of Benetton slugging it out in about three different languages (one of which involves clicking your tongue) in the ubiquitous soaps that litter the channels.

Then there's your usual american relity TV nonsense, and some unintelligible chat shows where a black magic priest, a lawyer and a christian preacher will battle it out over some gruesome topic like child abuse, managing to do nothing more than to illustrate the entrenched positions of the vastly different cultures that inhabit this country side by side.

I've now written a job description for the reporter that will join me, hopefully from August. It will be advertised as soon as possible, and I'll do interviews in the last two weeks of June, just after the first issue is published. It's another thing I've never done before, but how hard can it be? Interviewing, I can do.

Still haven't heard from the Today programme about my interview. Maybe the whole Blair leaving furore took precedence. That's too bad, but these things happen. "That's showbusiness" as my Guardian editor used to say.

So heaven knows what my Cousin and I will do from now on with our evenings. At least until you can spend them on the beach again, which is a good three months! Maybe we can start a knitting club, or something.

Views

2006-05-22T14:54:00.000+02:00

It appears that over the weekend I've caught bird flu with a side order of lethargy. My brain seems to be operating at a tenth of its normal capacity, and therefore there will be no large posting today. Instead, I leave you with a picture - the view from Cousin's balcony at dusk.

If you're bored, and speak Swedish, check out this new blog by my partner in crime, Monika: http://diverse-krafs.blogspot.com/

Twosomes

2006-05-20T12:17:00.000+02:00

Walking down to Long Street yesterday afternoon I was asked out on a date by some guy who works in my building. He just came running after me in the rain (very Four Weddings) and wanted my name and number, and asked if we could have coffee some time.
I said yes and gave him my number. Declining him would have been rude, especially since he went to such trouble.

But it will be ruder still when I ignore his phone calls because I actually have no interest in going for coffee with him.

The problem is that I have no idea how to deal with these situations. In London, if you like someone, you usually try to work out whether they like you back before you make any kind of move. Here, the guys pounce.

But then, it seems that the locals regard any 27-year old unmarried girl as a bit of a freak. 'You don't have kids? No husband? Why?' Well, where do you want me to start?!?

It's going to rain all weekend. The garage is flooded. Everything is wet. Quite nice, really.

Hectic

2006-05-18T17:19:00.000+02:00

The mot de choix of Cape Town's under-25s also serves to describe my reaction to the thought that I'm no more than four weeks away from my first press day. The thought came to me at about half ten last night, and lasted until well after midnight.

As a result, I got a lot of work done today. What with my flat sorted and all, I'm pretty much on home stretch as far as settling in is concerned so I can finally concentrate on the paper properly.

A very good lunch meeting with a chap from the SA Humanities Sciences Research Council left me with a much clearer picture of what I want to do with the mag, and how. The focus should be on empowerment for African scientists and the nitty-gritty that researchers have to deal with every day. Boosting excellence, building a team spirit, that sort of thing. Then, there will be scoops, there will be scandals, and I will cover them. But they will come. Core at the moment is to understand what researchers in this country need to know to improve their performance and pack a stronger punch on the world stage.

Then I had an encouraging couple of emails waiting for me in my Inbox when I got back from lunch. One of them was from none other than Calestous Juma, an influential Kenyan academic working out of Harvard who wrote a report for the UN on science and developing Africa a few years back, before Live 8 and all that crap. I'd met him at a conference in Manchester just before the publication of his report, and he'd sent me an advance copy to scoop.

I'd thought of him to write an opinion piece for the first issue - a 'two years down the line - what's happened' type story, hopefully not too forgiving on the international community on whether or not it has been making good on their promises. As it turns out, he remembers me! We had a nice chat over email, and he promised to write me something next week, as he has a long flight to Japan during which he'll have time to kill (!). All of which is excellent news.

He also asked me whether my name meant the 'little Nord' (see post from a few days ago!!!) and I explained about the Afrikaans interpretation but said that in Swedish it didn't mean anything. At least not that I know, but Onkel Olle might be able to put me right on this count!

He then told me that he'd met another Nordling in Kiruna when he'd been there one some experiment that brought equatorial region reporters to the far north of the world to give them a hands-on idea of the potential effects of climate change (fancy that!) and he'd drunk himself silly on Aquavit at some restaurant called 'Dirty Dishes'. Sweden saves all her fun for the foreigners.

Hopefully, he'll mention it all in the article. But I doubt it. Either way, I'll sleep better tonight. But it may be also due to the frozen margarita I just drank with Caite while waiting for the computer guy to set up a backup schedule. Ole!