Well, Cape Town has been fairly uneventful really. Apart from reading five books, drinking some wine, and going out to play pool once, I've done nothing but spend masses of money SMSing hippies and TDMFs. Oh, and I watched the Animatrix.
I went to try to find Daniel Schroeder, and g'damn but the Maths Department is a maze. I swear it was designed by M.C.Escher himself. Like, you walk around for half an hour, and suddenly realise you're on a different floor, even though you've been up the same number of staircases you went down. And the exit is, of course, on the second floor, not the first floor. I did find Daniel's office, but he wasn't there. I went back once or twice, to see if he'd returned - a complicated process of going all the way along the one corridor, out, round, up, down, back up, through, behind, round, and along - but he hadn't. It was only on the last time that I went to his door that I realised that there was a hidden staircase that led straight there. I swear if I'd turned and tried walking along the wall I would have found a whole extra set of rooms, or something.
I did pop into the Compsci Department and found Matthew West (aka Lonewolf).
Oooh, I lied - I have done one thing of note in Cape Town. I went to visit Frogfoot, and met Abraham and Johann. It's actually an awesome place - I think I'd enjoy working there. They do lots of embedded stuff, and are almost as rabid and fundamentalist about what platform they use to do things as I am. Unfortunately, as soon as I set foot on the premises, the power died, so when they took me on tour to show me the data center and the satellite dishes and whatnot, we had to grope around in the dark a lot. It came back eventually, and we finished the tour.
I'm currently sitting in an office in the Red Cross Children's Hospital - my uncle's office, to be precise. Being in a hospital is weird. I think I've watched too much Scrubs. I searched for a janitor everywhere, but to no avail. I'm supposed to be doing more writeup but, as usual, it's going fairly slowly. At least I've managed to get hold of the articles and papers that I did before, that I need.
I don't know when I'll next have connectivity - various people have offered, but Cape Town is big, and I am small, and I do not have my own transport.
I leave tomorrow for Cape Town again. I am taking with me what I'll need to work while I'm there:
I'm looking forward to going to Cape Town - there's nobody really left in Grahamstown, even my hippies have disappeared in a cloud of smoke (literally). I'm going to go visit Frogfoot, and pop down to Stellenbosch to put my 'X' on Adept's piece of paper, and so on.
Anyway, there won't be much activity on this blog till I get back. Doncha know.
I completed the basic structure for my final thesis write-up a few days ago, and have now begun gradually fleshing it out, filling in the chapters, and suchlike.
I'm actually really pleased with the whole thing. Several of the chapters are actually things I'm really looking forward to writing about, and will enjoy it. The only one I'm a bit trepidatious (awesome word) about is Chapter 2 - "Related Work". Literature Surveys are for pansies and foreigners. Or something. It won't actually be that difficult - I already have several things in mind to write about. But it won't be fun.
So, in summary, the thesis is actually going pretty well. In spite of everything that everybody (me especially) has said.
I also got an official job offer for next year. A slight hiccup might arise from the fact that thesis progress aside, politics and red tape and suchlike might mean that I can only finish the thesis a week or two into February, and so won't be able to start work in the beginning of February. We shall see how that turns out, though.
As a quick side-note, Shaun Bangay's LyX style sheets and class files for Rhodes theses and whatnots, are very useful, very easy to install, and make writing up theses much easier.
Well, I've booked another driving test. On the 25th of January, nogal. I don't know why Nigerian 419ers bother with all that email stuff, when they could just charge people money for failing tests.
Also, I tried to collect Noodle's license for her, but they still don't have it. Bureaucracy se ma.
As covered a month ago and two months ago, I am trying to get South African citizenship. I just went back ("6 to 8 weeks"), and they still had no reply from Pretoria. They're going to phone 'em, and then they're going to phone me. I wait with bated breath.
So, I went for my driving test today.
It probably wasn't helpful that we had a braii at Mordor last night (Russell's new digs), and then went out until late. I ended up staying up until stupid o'clock with my new hippie digsmates, and even though they promised to make me coffee and breakfast this morning, they didn't. However, I actually felt fine for the test, not tired in the slightest. I had a lesson before the test, and drove around fine, no mistakes really (must remember to look in the blasted mirror before putting the brakes on, and to take corners in second gear), and then went to the yard and did some docking and parking and suchlike. Easy stuff. The examiner watched me doing them all, too.
Then the test itself started, I did everything just fine, pre-test inspection, hill start, docking, three-point turn, and so on. And just as I was doing the final bit, the last piece of parrallel parking, I bumped into the pavement, because I was going too fast, because my leg was shaking and I had the clutch in too far.
So, that's that. Fail. I didn't even get to go on the road. Insane. It's just so frustrating - he KNOWS I can do the parrallel parking, he KNOWS I can drive, because he's seen me do it fine. But The Rules State That You Fail If You Do Certain Things. No second chance, nothing. And there's no free spots for a second test until January the 24th or something. That really burns my bum.
Still, as Ivan says, anybody who has watched the Matrix knows that you never make the first jump.