Well, I'm here. In Stellenbosch. In the real world.
I left Grahamstown on Saturday night, after much emotional goodbye-ing. I travelled by bus, and the journey was not good. My boss picked me up on Sunday morning, and took me to the house, and I unpacked. On Monday morning, I put my button-up shirt on and came in and started work.
My thesis. Yes. I wanted to hand it in on Friday. It was due in last week anyway. Apparently that was not to happen. My supervisor says it's just not polished enough. He wants it just so. I know it's not polished enough, he's right. I've got lots of references to fix. So, I'm a bit disappointed, but what can you do? I have to work on it remotely, from Stellenbosch.
My digs in Stellenbosch is not bad. My room is huge. My one digsmate is a sterling feller from George, name of Pierre. The other is a bit of a ditzy drama student from Capetown, name of Melanie. They're cool. I live with them.
Work is going well. Better today than yesterday. Yesterday I spent all day working through Enterprise Java code, Javabeans and Servlets. I hate Javabeans and Servlets. They're klunky. But today was way fun. I had to get serial console going, and write up a HOWTO, and then I had to investigate distributed filesystems for load-balancing POP servers. That's cool. It's fun. We shall see what tomorrow holds.
Apart from work... Weeeeell. Stellenbosch doesn't hold much for me right now. I don't know a single solitary soul in the whole town. So I'm sitting at work at quarter to seven in the evening, blogging about how I'm sitting at work at quarter to seven in the evening. I'll go get supper just now, then come back and try do some thesis work. Then eventually I'll go home and, well, go to bed.
It's not as bad as I make out. I'm having fun, and it's never taken me long to make friends. We'll see. Claire and Adeline are coming to visit me this weekend! Bo.
I'm afraid I lied two paragraphs ago. I do know somebody in Stellenbosch. Here's how it goes:
In my first year at Rhodes (that's 1998!), I was in Jan Smuts residence, and there was this guy that we called Big Black Pat (because he was huge, and black, and his name was Patrick, see? Not to be confused with Scottish Pat, who was from Canada). He was insane! A real gangster, always getting into fights, there were rumour that he was into one of the sisis who cleaned the residence. The police came for him once or twice, although I don't know what about. They were so quiet about it. He lost one of his front teeth in third term, got knocked over and it came out. That sort of thing. He wasn't a bad guy, you could always rely on him to beat up people who were threatening you, as well as anybody else who happened to be around. He didn't make it to second year, of course. He was gone the next year.
And then the next thing you know... I went across the road for a burger last night for supper. I ordered the "Monster Burger" and a beer. (You know what? I don't think there was real monster in that burger. It tasted just like beef.) And my waiter is this big black guy, with a missing front tooth, called Patrick. I thought it was him when I saw him through the office window, but the name-tag confirmed it. He recognised me too, and wanted to know why I hadn't gotten bigger since he'd last seen me.
Small world.
I shall now go try out somewhere else for supper. Wish me luck.
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