There and Back Again (To South Africa)
March 16th, 2008 James
It’s still a case of blogging when I have time and can be bothered and so I offer another museum piece that is a previous event in my life. I’m pretty honoured that I have been asked by several people where the latest installment of my ramblings are. Some of you may notice the new look to the site, the new version of Wordpress broke the skin and I had to get a new one so I hope it’s not like using a cheesegrater on your eyes.
Having quit my old technical support role, I somehow managed to impress an interviewer enough for them to offer me a job. After accepting their…acceptance I was kindly booked 3 weeks in sunny South Africa for work training. I’m not overly sure why they do the training there, they do have a big office building there and dedicated training rooms, whereas their London office doesn’t and frankly I wasn’t to argue with their reasoning. If somebody had said to me when I was lying in hospital, that I’d be in South Africa in little over a month’s time, I would’ve thought you would be utterly off your rocker.
It started with meeting the trainees in the office in Woking. This was hard enough for me to find, armed with a Google Map printout and my belongings for the next 3 weeks, so I was slightly concerned about navigating a foreign country, even if it was English speaking. It was weird as it was my first time outside of Europe and whilst in South Africa, I didn’t find it strange to be referred to as ‘from the UK’ what I did find unusual was to be referred to as ‘European’.
It started off with the usual stuff that I was dreading, ye olde introductions. Having got past the formalities, introductions and a slap up meal, we were carted off to the airport. Experiencing the paranoia of today’s world first hand after we were scrutinized by men, machine and dogs, passport was a ‘yes-yes’ bottled water was a ‘no-no’ and there seemed to be an onus on inspecting shoes. Although they did find a tiny village of conscious people in my shoes, no chemicals or explosive devices were present or found so I was good to go. The flight was OK, despite myself being a bit apprehensive about it and I got to watch Spider-man 3 which I thought was pretty good, despite people telling me otherwise.
We changed plane in Johannesburg after a mad rush round a frankly insane airport that’s shaped like a horseshoe, except the directions tell you that the quickest way to go to your terminal, are both the long and the short way. Needless to say, we ambled our way unknowingly the long way.
We were placed in different hotels dotted around Durban and I was quite enjoying our place with frankly a lovely lady, who may have talked a bit much, but was a quoting legend almost as much as Detective John Kimble himself. The first day ended and we were shown to a lovely local restaurant called Nourish and after taking a tip off my brother to try the steak in South Africa, I wasn’t about to disagree with this. It was the stuff of dreams, the ambrosia of steaks, melt in your mouth heaven…should probably shut up about food before I turn into Jason Biggs.
We spent a vast amount of our time in the office training, which I guess is fair enough, but it was pretty intense, I mean straight after we got off our plane and went to the training centre we were instantly in for lectures and work. I remember that first night pretty well, we were all exhausted and only a few days later, we had an exam – compulsory to pass, so the stakes were pretty high.
The first weekend we were there we went to a fairly local bar in the town and on Sunday, it was a trip to the beach in Durban. It was a pretty cool day; nice and hot and we saw in a local sea life centre, lots of cool fish and some South African penguins (which I didn’t know existed) though I think they were not the gay variety, for those of you that know what I mean by that. We also got to see something which I wanted to see since I was little; a dolphin show, which I enjoyed thoroughly even if the dolphins probably weren’t the happiest, what with being in captivity and all.
The weekend after, we set off groggy in the morning to an authentic Zulu village within ‘The Valley of a Thousand Hills’. We were treated to some tribal dancing, where I thought they were going to poke my eyes out with their sticks, but they were only actors anyway. We then went to what was called a safari park, but had a disappointing handful of different animals such as zebra, wildebeest, antelope and that’s about it. The park also had a bunch of crocodiles in it which were interesting to see, especially at feeding time. We were told that the oldest croc there and also the largest was a bit grumpy then; his wife had just bitten of one of his toes and they weren’t speaking to each other. There was quite impressive array of snakes as well, including the Black Mamba of Kill Bill 2 fame.
Another day we went to action cricket, a sort of cut down version of normal cricket in an indoor arena. After a long and not too awaited return for me to sports, I proved why me and sports don’t go together, although I didn’t do too badly at bowling. Though in saying that, there’s no real way of saying if it was me that’s good at bowling, or the person batting that is rubbish.
The weekend after, we actually were still in the office on Saturday and yes I know I can’t complain as I was getting paid to be there. On Sunday, we did ‘Canopy Tours’ which consists of you going down sort of death slides, but without a seat, and you’re strapped in a harness. Some of them were pretty fast and some of them quite slow, but you could sometimes enjoy the scenery as you were zooming past. The knack of knowing when to stop on my first go failed me and I realised the hard way of how difficult it is to pull your own body-weight up an incline with your arms, when you’re a heff.
The final night came before we knew it and after the final exam, all there was to do was to celebrate in a lovely restaurant in Durban, which we were told we were lucky to have as it was a bit costly and over the normal allowance for events. It was absolutely lovely, we got free tribal markings of facepaint, a serenade from a band and some great food. Let’s be frank even though I don’t smoke, any restaurant that has a cigar menu has to be good.
The flight back went as well as can be expected when airlines go wrong and bums (which aren’t yours) are in your seats and you have to get on another flight. Durban airport was still as confusing and they even had a room to check in guns, can you believe that?! I saw Blood Diamond on the way back, which turns out is pretty good.
When I got back to London and travelled back to Kettering, I was utterly exhausted again. I went to sleep and woke up a record breaking circa 24 hours later (yes, 24 hours asleep!) when mum played an evil trick on me, saying it was Sunday and I had to move to London. The day after, Sunday, I had notime to recover from the trip and I packed all my belongings into a car and moved into London to my dad’s house, ready for my first day of work in London on the Monday.
Pictures from South Africa are available for those of you familiar with a website called ‘Facebook’. I’m sure that if you’re reading this, then you’ve probably already seen them. Also signed up for a Flickr account for those of you that are interested, but I haven’t had the patience to upload any photos from SA yet.