New Years Resolution #1 - be better at emailing people! I've decided that the easiest way to keep in touch with you all is to start a blog for you to dip in and out of and to allow personal emails to be short and chatty, thereby making it much more likely that I will actually send them... I'm meeting up with friends with whom I've had no contact for 2 years and whilst it's like I've never been away in terms of the friendship, it would have been better if I wasn't so totally crap at keeping in touch!
After getting no sleep on the plane due to the fantastic Virgin movie A-Z, my sister (Mary Anne) fetched me from the airport on Tuesday morning.
We got back to her flat and standing on the balcony in glorious sunshine (~30degC) looking out over the mountain I wondered how I had managed to live in London for as long as I did!!
I've spent the past few days pottering around catching up with people, going to the beach (got a way to go on the tan before I'm level with the locals but we'll get there!), shopping and observing a load of little things that I'd either forgotten or are totally different from the way things work in England!
It's very strange being back... In some ways things haven't changed - same TV presenters and radio DJs, main shopping centres, the mountain and the sea but in others, everything is different... The parking lot at the Waterfront is now more shops and a multi-story parkade, the 3 separate shopping centres in Claremont have turned into one enormous Cavandish complex and our beloved Cloudbreak backpackers appears to have closed/moved... I think part of it is that I'm not on holiday and trying to pack it all in in a week but I'm also not living here yet so don't feel settled in any way... I reckon I'm just going to have to go around for the next few weeks going "this is so weird" as I did as I was leaving London!
I'm settling well though - most of my friends work in the theatre and are free during the day so I've been keeping myself busy catching up with them... Went to the beach yesterday and am going again tomorrow - working on the tan slowly but surely!! I've got comps to tomorrow's opening night performance of Merchant of Venice (open air theatre) which has a couple of friends in so that will be good...
I'm off to Durban on Sunday to see my Mom - it's her birthday on Monday so it will be nice to spend it with her for the first time in about 10 years! We'll be on a mission to buy me a car so that we can drive back to Cape Town (taking about 24 hours!) at the end of the week. I'll then be on a mission to find somewhere to live and a job - I received an email from one of my contacts saying they may have some contract work for me which is great! I've also been offered the job of sound operator on a musical for the next 8 weeks by my friend Louis who is the musical director and desperate for someone with experience! Doesn't pay much but would be fun to get back into the theatre thing!
I must remember to take a holiday in amongst all the organising! I won't get the opportunity to take this much time off for a while so should make the most of it! Reckon I might try get a job and then say I'll start 3-4 weeks later to give me freedom without the thought of the stress to come... First things first - I need a car - having to take my sister to and from work curbs my freedom!; I also need somewhere to live! My sister and I haven't killed each other yet, and I'm enjoying living with her insane cat Spike, but I'm on the sofa with my stuff spread about the living room and I just want my own space - it's easier to deal with when you're on holiday but I just want to get settled and sorted... The sooner I have a place to call home the sooner I can really begin to feel like I live here...
- The stars are amazing!! I went outside at about 10pm last night and the sight of them took my breath away - you forget when you see the few sparkles in the orange London night sky that it's not like that everywhere!
- Table Mountain is the spiritual heart of this city and it feels so good to be back! It is so huge and solid and beautiful! (The photo above is of Devils Peak and with the eastern end of TM on the left)
- The weather has been amazing - rather windy at times but that's to be expected and the good old "Cape Doctor" will hopefully reduce the number of colds I have this year! The rest of the country has been pretty miserable all week so I count myself lucky!
- There are bugs and ants all over the place! Not annoying ones like in the UK but ones that share our living space - the ants are tiny and carry huge bits of food, they're so cute!
- The men (and probably the women too) in this city are just gorgeous!!
- There's a club advertising a "rand a brand" on shooters which makes me laugh given the binge drinking problems in the UK (R1 = 7.5p)
- Radio stations play a much broader range of music than in the UK (particularly than XFM which I listened to the whole time I was there) and they're about 3 months behind - Hey There Delilah and Young Folks (the whistling song by Peter Bjorn and John) are pretty big, as is kwaito, a uniquely South African music style difficult to describe (have a read of the article at the link below and listen to Nkalakhata by Mandoza if you're interested: http://www.southafrica.info/what_happening/news/features/kwaitomental.htm)
- I've been researching bank accounts and was shocked to learn how expensive they are! They charge for everything! To have one, to use internet banking, to deposit, transfer, withdraw (double if at bank or non-bank specific cash machine), you name it you pay for it! But the perversity of it all is that in order to attract customers, one bank is offering R2000 (~£150) worth of funeral insurance!! Funeral insurance is advertised quite a lot over here which is quite sad...
- In contrast to the number of South Africans using Facebook, not many use the internet and it's not easy to buy things or research products, venues, directions, businesses etc as most aren't well represented in google searches if they in fact have websites! I'm finding it really frustrating so hopefully things will change as broadband is becoming cheaper...
- The cheddar cheese is rubbish and tastes like plastic
- The wine is fantastic!
Right, I think that's quite enough given I've only been here 4 days! Hope everyone is well and those in the UK aren't too depressed with the weather!
Take careLisa xx
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