Last week had a mysterious touch to it.. We went to the office on Wednesday like we had agreed with our contact person. We merely "turned" there and heard that the next time we would meet, was the next Wednesday. One could call it a short week at work.. Well, it didn't take long for us to realize that the only reasonable thing to do, is to fill the car up with unleaded 93, and hit the road. Sunny Durban, here we come! 600 km to travel and sun gleaming in our retinas. Scenery en route was breathtaking. Everything went well until our trusted navigator took the wheel. The sky was lit by the ominous flash of a traffic camera and some curses might have been heard. Well, cool as ice the navigator kept on driving. I reckon we'll be hearing from the rental agency sooner or later.. It was a nice 15 minutes of driving after that and, *SNAP*. Here we go again.. The leadfooted navigator had done it again. Going slowed down a bit after that.
Arriving to Durban seven hours later was not as glamorous as originally anticipated.. Fog and rain wasn't quite like the sun we had been looking forward to.. Luckily the lodge wasn't bad at all. Patio overlooking the sea and airconditioned bedrooms, what we had been lacking in our place in Pretoria. Even thinking the scorching nights in the sixth circle of hell A.K.A. our guesthouse brings sweat to my eyebrows. We felt that it was our responsibility to check out the Suncoast Casino downtown on the Finnish independence day. What a patriotic act, I might say. Feeling proud being a Finn, we went to break the bank in the casino. And that's the end of that chapter.. We were back in our lodge at four thirty am and the undersigned went to bed dead tired, the rest of the crew went to see the sunrise to the beach, which was amazing believing what the guys said. We went to see the marine world one day in Durban, and with cameras' memory cells filled with strange animals pictures, we went back to our car just to find it washed. Of course nothing is free in this world and we had to cough up 30 rand to please the shady "carwatch" person. The outrageous part is, that he insisted that we pay him 50 rand for his troubles of keeping an eye on our trusty carriage. It wasn't even him that washed the car.. "Is nice, everything number one, my friend, fifty rand.."
After being burned in the sun we started our journey back to Pretoria. Since we didn't exactly have any hurry back and we didn't want to drive back exactly the same highways and sceneries. We just should have left some hours earlier so we would have seen the new sceneries more clearly. Luckily the moonlight was very clear that night so it's wasn't completely as dark as pitch. We followed the route on the seacoast until Swaziland border and then drived thru many small towns of which most looked like Finnish small towns e.g. Askola:) Ermelo town was the one we found most western with 24Hr hamburger restaurant plus western style bars and street culture (on Monday night). After 12 hours and a thousand bathroomstops we were back in P-town safe and sound.
Today we went to NSN to work with another project, which started pretty well, I might add. Tomorrow we have an early wakeup, for we have to storm to the airport to catch a plane to Cape Town. More of that later, though..
We started our day by going to NSN office at nine o'clock as usual. One of the NSN's secretaries had delegated nicely her outdated jobs for us. So one part of our group had to dismantle some old cardboard boxes and count the amount of stuff they contained. The funniest thing of that was that the boxes included year 2005 calendars. Just a respectable job for us after flying ten thousand kilometers. Of course the other part of our group was working with the real project. They adapted the inquiry results to a reasonable form so it would be simple and convenient to handle the results in future.
At the evening we had a meeting with all the groups from our class. SAFIPA-group had invited all of us to their residence. Luckily all groups came at the place, and we were able to exchange thoughts with other groups’ members. After hearing their thoughts we can say that all projects had got off to a good start.
29-30.11 Weekend
After the first whole week we had to leave our first accommodation, and now it was time to move to our new guest house which was Besule Guesthouse. The first impression from our guesthouse was quite contradictory because the place didn't meet our expectations. We had googled information from various websites. Sites said that there will be a swimming pool, wireless internet, a pool table and a jacuzzi. In fact there was only a "swimming pool" which diameter was like three metres. We thought that maybe they had joined the jacuzzi and the swimming pool together in that great "swimming pool". :) The wireless internet was also working but after using it for awhile, we came to know that the manners of using of Internet has totally different concept here in ZA than what we were accustomed to Finland.
I personally managed to get one of my goal here in ZA done when group5's golfMaster Visa took me to a tour to a nearby golf club. We spent a really nice day there by practising our shots, having some nice time in a lounge and at last playing a back nine at the course. Though the playing itself didn't go so well, I enjoyed my day extremely because the environment and the golf culture was so cool.
Xmas-month begins
November is now in the history books and it marks also the last month of the year, as well as our last weeks before xmas and wistful return to home. Little xmas party/class meeting from last Friday had very good timing; everybody had been accustomed to the South African way of life and also experienced many things already. It also made many of us realize that 4 and ½ weeks is really not that long time. And indeed it is not. Now it’s only half left so now it’s really a right time to revaluate our schedule and arrange it so that we will experience the things we thought about so we wouldn’t feel disappointed when it’s time to take the flight back home. Our project work schedule has not been that much favourable to us but these are the conditions we must accept.
1.12 Trip to the PilanesbergNaturePark
During the first two weekdays of December we enjoyed of “work from home”-confidence from Nokia by having all the work material in our possession. Since we had spent our entire time so far in the concrete jungle we were eager to have some “Real Africa”-experience in the form of national park where we should have pretty good chances to spot exotic animals in semi-natural conditions.Because we didn’t wish to pack in when the park had huge amount of tourists looming around we did some of our work already during weekend and moved the rest of the working hours to the evening instead since we had the opportunity to do so.
On Monday morning we woke up early and turned the wheels towards PilanesbergNational Park close to Sun City (a.k.a. LostCity) which is located 150 kilometres north-west from Pretoria. We didn’t pay much attention to the tripmeter but rough estimation is 100 kilometers of driving within the park. Not only the park offered us spectacular views from quite high mountains and all-in-all eye-pleasing landscapes, we did manage to encounter most of the classic African symbol animals such as rhinos, zebras, hippopotamus and monkeys. The highlight of the trip was when the closing time of the park was getting closer and we become little bit concerned about seeing rest of the animals the park was supposed include.It was that time when we finally saw couple giraffes eating tree-tops far in the horizon. Wish we had binoculars in gear was the thought of all of us at that moment. That time we were sure that that’s it for giraffes but then we continued driving and there it was, majestic giraffe just crossing the road in front of us. He wasn’t scared of us at all and continued eating another tree-top just on the roadside and we got our chance to take nice shots of this odd-shaped creature.
2.12 Survey aftermath
During this day we went through the survey results from the GatangSchool in Mamelodi. This turned out to be a bit difficult, since the actual survey didn’t go as we had planned. This survey was supposed to be held face-to-face on a single mathematics oriented class. We thought we had a classroom reserved and we would have time to explain things througly to the students before they started filling in the survey form. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the school the students were already leaving to enjoy their summer break. We had to catch them before they left the premises and hastily give out the forms to anyone with school uniform without having time to give them proper instructions.
Because of this, some of the answers on the forms turned out to be a bit incomprehensive and inconsistent. Though, this was very understandable since the survey was not designed to be held this way. Fortunately, most the of the forms we received back from the students contained good and solid information that we were able to analyse. All together, we acquired 86 filled forms from 100 given to the students, which in our opinion is a great result considering the difficulties. We transferred the data from the survey forms to spreadsheets for easier analysis. Next step is to create diagrams from the results and begin planning our report.
Small tension in the air
After doing the basic research, we had an interesting conversation with our “lovely” hostess of the house. Like we earlier mentioned, the guest house didn’t meet our expectations.On the top of everything else we had got an invoice worth 325 rands because we had used their “free” wireless network. This certainly inflamed our feelings with all those other missing things because we had no idea that we should have to pay something for every megabytes that we transferred on the internet. The conversation with the hostess of the house didn’t go so well. The beginning situation of the conversation was that the lady talked and treated us like her own son who is 18 years old. In the head of the conversation our main speaker got even a threat that he will be out of the guest house next morning because the lady experienced that she was faced insulting behaviour which wasn’t exactly true. At the end we certainly paid our invoice and made at least apparently agreement with our hostess and started wait what next day brings upon.
The day before yesterday we woke up to hit the crowded streets of Pretoria, like every day this week. The route we take to get to Centurion technopark goes almost directly through Pretoria central. Well, the day went pretty much normally: wake up at 6:45, a quick shower and then an hour in the traffic on a 25km road to labour. The highlight of the day was when our Host "Keke", brought us some giraffe-curry, bananasalad, rise and broccoli. I might say, I didn't taste much because of my cold, but it sure was delicious! :P Yesterday we wisited Mamelodi area the first time, just to orientate to the place and have some lunch. Lunch was interresting, indeed. It consisted of chicken wings, chicken necks, beef, chicken feet (The actual foot cooked, not that much meat, but plenty of disgusting), chicken livers and finally, the piece de resistance: tryfe, (or that's what I heard). It was chopped intestines of a cow. Pieces of stomach, and what looked like guts. it was "delicious". Well, when in Rome.. Today we went to mamelodi to get the survey done. We arrived there around ten fifteen, just to realize the pupils we were supposed to "interrogate", were leaving already! We executed a quick "seize and question" maneuver with great precision. It wasn't a well rehearsed tactic by a long shot, but we managed to get the answers. (Quality of the answers is classified, though..) We left Mamelodi and headed back to our stronghold. The whole evening we waited for the info that, will we or will we not go to mamelodi tomorrow aswell (to visit another school). It turned out, that our contact hadn't gotten a phonecall he was waiting, so we'll go down to NSN in the morning to wait for it. Ingenious, I might add.. Well again, when in Rome.. I hear it's the African way to deal with things. One must be patient.. Like watching the paint to dry.. Yup, that's it for the day. By the way, our crew is being overwhelmed by an awful disease from the darkest africa. The undersigned is suffering from cold and our brave navigator is struck to the bottom of the bed by and evil fever. Are we going to perish in the cold grasp of malaria? How will we ever survive to the next day?
During the weekend, that felt like it last a week!:), we had got accustomed at least to the urban way of life in ZA. So far we've experienced plenty of new things every day. And there're surely lots and lots of things still left for us to discover, especially wonders of nature outside the concrete jungle. We aim to publish the highlights here, even though trying hard to recall, some things simply do not incarnate to mind at the right moment and sometimes one thinks that one thing is not worth it to publish though someone else might think it is.
During the first days we woke up rather late by African standards and so we decided to alter our habits so that we would be awake soon after sunrise and aim to finish our daily businesses by sunset because it was time to put pure leisure time activities on hold for now.
And we wanted to avoid crazy traffic jams, so we hit the road early in the morning and requested our scrupulous navigator buddy to guide us to the Nokia Siemens Networks' premises in Centurion, about 20 kilometers away from our present home neighbourhood Waverley.
We arrived to our destination on schedule and so we had time to enjoy breakfast at some local joint before entering NSN's offices. We had worked on our project during the weekend and previous weeks, so we knew what to do to get forward. We are going to do some interviews in the coming days so now the mission is to get prepared so that we will surely get the correct sort of result data to work with later on.
After working hours we had intention to do some sport but when we were supposed to go out Mother Nature decided to give us spout of rain with thunder included, not at all surprising weather condition in Gauteng province this time of the year. Hopefully tomorrow will have more energy to do some exercise or soon our physical conditions start to get worsen.
We filled up our vehicle's fuel tank first time today. In this country no need to do anything except drive next to the pump and you will get full service as long as got some rands to spare.
Our highly respected Chef's flu from few weeks back made comeback, but regardless of that he still bravely cooked amazingly delicious dinner for all of us, occasion that the undersigned has to amend some day.
But now gotta get some sleep to have energy to operate efficiently next day.
GPS navigator is a wonderful gadget. Just pick a location you want to go and it will give you directions and guide you while driving. Above all, it doesn't get mad after taking a wrong turn.. The little technological wonder has allowed us to explore and see different, yet fascinating things in this wonderful country.
Our contact person from Nokia suggested that we should spend the weekend orienting to our surroundings. And that we have. With our rental car, cheap gasoline and GPS navigation at our service, we have seen the Voortrekker monument in Pretoria, wealthy malls in Sandton and the streets of downtown Pretoria. All this within two days..
After the meeting with the other group we started to plan something to do for Sunday. After quick wiki we decided to visit the Voortrekker monument, built in memory for the European settlers who came here in 1830's in search for fertile farming lands and bright future. The monument was build on top of a hill in 1940's in the Art Deco style. The monument itself was quite impressive not to mention the beautiful scenery that opened from the top viewing neighbouring surroundings. Inside the monument, museum enlightened us about the history of these pioneers.
After visiting the monument, we picked a random spot on Sandton near Johannesburg in hope of finding a place to dine. After stepping out of the parking hall, we encountered a huge bronze statue which turned out to portray Nelson Mandela himself. To our surprise there happened to be a charity event, in which supposed celebrities played football in a tournament in the middle of the square. Around the square there were restaurants in which people were watching the event. Since we didn't really care to stay there among so many people we decided to head in the depths of the shopping mall. All the luxury clothes and electronics stores were closed, but we managed to find a nice looking Italian restaurant, in which we decided to eat. The food was quite good and above all it was not that expensive. Overall, the last few days have gone quite nicely without any major problems.
So, the flight from Istanbul to Johannesburg was murder. Trying to sleep in an upright position with punctured eardrum, thus being unable to wear earplugs, was not the most comfortable thing I've encountered. With the two hours or so sleep, we were set loose to the heat of South-Africa.
Getting the car Teemu had hired was not hard. Getting us five, our luggage and the car to southern Pretoria was. We had an hour to the meeting we had with our Nokia contact when we started our car. Little did we know, the freeway was packed with people trying to migrate from J-burg to Pretoria. Yup, 1 hour equals 4 kilometers. Well, when we got it going the 40 km trip went relatively fast. We were at NSN at around two o'clock. We had our meeting, and left with our heads filled with ideas. Next thing: Find the house. Thanks to our navigator assisted with Antons "vision" and expertise, we managed to find the venue. Looks nice. Refrigerator, microwave-oven, beds, what else do you need? Oh, yeah.. Digital satellite television with "300" channels. We were all set, indeed.
With a good nights sleep and an "applied" english breakfast, we embarked on the road to Pretoria central in the hunt of prepaid simcards and a portable internet. After hours of walking in the scorching sun we aquired all the goods. We got the attention of the ladies with our shemagh scarves, Anton and I. After all the roaming around in Pretoria, we got back to Gratia and started relaxing. We share the house with couple of Gekkos, I hope they keep quiet climbing the walls and ceilings. Apart from the room-mates, the place is cosy and homelike. We will enjoy our stay of eight days in Gratia. Tomorrow we'll meet up with the other Nokia group and hit our wise heads together. That's pretty much all for the start, keep tuned to the blog. We'll try to update it frequently.
We felt that it was our responsibility to check out the Suncoast Casino downtown on the Finnish independence day. What a patriotic act, I might say. Feeling proud being a Finn, we went to break the bank in the casino. And that's the end of that chapter.. We were back in our lodge at four thirty am and the undersigned went to bed dead tired, the rest of the crew went to see the sunrise to the beach, which was amazing believing what the guys said.
