The Adventures of Jac, Andria, Cecile - and Amelie

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2011-08-24T18:06:00.002-04:00

I have never watched any reality television. Ever. Not one single episode of one singular show. And neither will I. Ever. I refuse to do so purely out of snobbish principle: I think reality TV is the biggest load of junk ever to come on television (and that is saying a lot, considering the stringent competition). I blame the Dutch – John de Mol in particular – for hatching the concept, and I vehemently blame the Americans for making it a global craze.

There are, of course, those who will be quick to point out that they only watch reality TV because of the fascinating (if horrific) perspective it gives you on human nature. Although this argument will still not convince me to be vaguely interested in any of the Kardashians, other people’s lack of fear / parenting skills / style, or other people’s love of conflict / makeovers / weight-loss testimonials, I do concede that this is a valid justification.

I concede the point because I’ve just realized that I’m inadvertently drawn do the Internet-news-junkie-equivalent of it: To my great chagrin, I cannot help but to read the comments posted below news articles and opinion pieces. Regardless of my many admonitions just to ignore them, I just have to read how shortsighted people are; how circular their arguments; how intolerant of other people’s ideas; how un-/misinformed their views; how quickly they get personal and offensive.

Is there any help for me in my self-righteousness? Please log on to leave your comment.

America, the Green?

2010-08-16T20:36:00.002-04:00

Over the past few decades, the US has established a global reputation for consuming almost everything imaginable – energy, minerals, food, water, consumer goods – without developing a counteracting ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ attitude. I was considering the merit of this criticism last week while pondering the news that China has exceeded the US as the world’s biggest energy consumer, and has overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

First off, it has to be acknowledged that there is a certain hypocrisy inherent to this criticism, especially when made from outside the US. The rest of the world has been benefiting from US consumerism because it has fuelled major global economic expansion for decades, and will continue to do so (although, again, China is vying for first place in this category too). If US consumers spend less money – and hence, consume fewer resources and reduce their environmental impact – the World collectively reaches for Prozac.

Secondly, it is untrue to say that the typical US consumer doesn’t recycle at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I, together with all my neighbours here in Farmington, have a huge garbage bin that is designated for key recyclable items only (paper, hardboard, hard plastic, aluminium cans), which is collected at my doorstep once a week together with my non-recyclable garbage. And I would hardly describe the US Southwest as a bastion for environmentalism. Sure, compared to, say, Europe, the US still has considerable advances to make; but let’s not resort to hyperbole here.

A third point relates to an observation concerning American eating-habits I’ve made a long time ago. I’m referring, of course, to Americans’ well-deserved notoriety for serving insane portions in their fast food joints and restaurants. This is certainly not a debunkable myth – the portions are, indeed, insane, if not obscene – but there is more to it than what meets the digestive track. I rarely witness Americans finishing those portions (unlike, I am sad to say, the many South Africans in South African Restaurants, who, in conjunction, are clamouring to surpass the US in this respect). And they don’t send it back to the kitchen either – no, they ask the waiter for a ‘take out’ box and take the debris home. ‘Vulgar!’, I hear the Europeans scoff, ‘not to mention all those polystyrene containers!’. Fair points, both; but the point I’m trying to make is that Americans are bargain hunters in their very hearts and kidneys – hence, the expectation that restaurant food should be cheap and the portions huge – and in the process, they are not nearly as wasteful as they are often portrayed. Whether cold pizza actually constitutes a well-balanced breakfast / lunch is not an argument I will consider right now.

My final point also relates to this bargain-hunting mentality, and is something I’ve seen consistently portrayed by Hollywood over the years without having any idea how prevalent the phenomenon really was. I’m talking about the ubiquitous suburban yard / garage sale. Well, I can now report that it is just as picketty-fencey quaint as in the movies, and just as popular (although, I concede, it might also be an indication that there isn’t all that much going on in Farmington). Now, I have absolutely no inclination to go scavenging through other people’s junk over a weekend (and often on weekdays too), but you would be surprised at the astonishingly high number of people that seemingly live for these things. The important point, of course, is that yard sales are important vehicles for reusing, reducing, and recycling. And what is eBay, after all, than a mega virtual yard sale? (Has anybody calculated, by the way, what is eBay’s – with its reported ‘hundreds of millions of registered users’ – global contribution toward, say, reducing greenhouse gas emissions?)

Perhaps all these arguments can be swooped off the table with one fell (and foul) swoop: Americans and their love for their gas-guzzling cars and their extensive aviation network make all these points I’ve made irrelevant. Perhaps. Probably. But what I’m trying to say is that Americans, probably like anyone else on this planet, has a basic inclination to reduce, reuse, recycle if the opportunity is there, and if the logistics for it is in place. And, importantly, that if environmental efforts can appeal to the average American’s propensity to go for the bargain, to make the profit, then we have a deal, baby. The Kyoto Protocol valiantly tried to incorporate these principles (which, ironically, were ultimately rejected by the Americans). Hopefully, its legal successor – whenever that miracle of international diplomacy will materialize – will do even better; and, hopefully, America can become home of the Brave and the Green by signing on, and staying signed on this time.

I Luuuuuuve Your Accent

2010-07-08T11:33:00.004-04:00

A weird phenomenon has been playing itself out repeatedly ever since we’ve hit town. And with ‘we’, I mean us Afrikaans-speaking, English-second-language folks. Wherever we go across town or in the area, the moment we open our mouths to say something, the following dialogue occurs, without fail:

Us: Can I have a tall Latte, please? / Thank you / Good bye / Yes, it’s very hot today / whatever-small-talk-one-makes-when-about-town.
Local person (interested): Hey! Where are you guys from?
Us: We are originally from South Africa.
Local person (excited): Ooooh, so what are you doing here?!
Us: We have moved here recently because of Jac’s job / something to that extent.
Local person (approvingly): Oh, I luuuuuuve your accent!

Now, the irony is going to be lost on all you non-South Africans out there, so I’d better explain. Most, if not all, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans are actually embarrassed by our English accents. Most of us won’t like to admit it, but we’d much rather sound like the Queen, than like P.W. Botha. I’m not sure where this accent-minority-complex comes from, but I suspect it goes way, way back into our verkrampte en verligte history – back to where the English first took over the Dutch colony that was the Kaap de Goede Hoop, and turned it into Cape Town. When crown English became the language of the elite, the ruling class, the educated; and kitchen-Dutch (the derogatory term for Afrikaans used at the time) was synonymous with uneducated, unpolished Boere. I’ll spare you the rest of the history lesson and fast forward to the time where guys like P.W and Pik were lecturing the world on television – in horrrrribly Afrikaans-accented English – about how our domestic policies where none of their damned business. I can distinctly remember watching this as a young child – completely oblivious to the politics, of course – and thinking: why, oh, why is their pronunciation so verrrrie bad? It certainly did not help when, as I grew older, I came to understand the politics associated with that accent. Oh, the embarrassment with (verrrrrie bad) Hollywood movies of the 80s and 90s (attempting) to portray the English accent of the Afrikaans 'bad guy' (although, kudos to Leonardo Dicaprio)! I even cringed recently at Matt Damon’s attempt to do Francois Pienaar justice – and he was portraying a 'good guy'.

So, we spend many hours to mould that accent into something better – if not the Queen, then at least Ruda Landman - and then, despite all the effort, the moment you set foot in London and open your mouth in public, the Brit you’re addressing goes: ‘You’re from South Africa, aren’t you?’ (It doesn’t help, of course that the damn place is infested nowadays with Afrikaans-speaking persons). How I hate being a bloody foregone conclusion!

Who would have thought, then, that I would have to come to the U.S Southwest – of all places – to learn to appreciate my English accent? I smile at Cecile’s first attempts at speaking English (‘thanks joe verrrie maaash, mamma!’), and it is pure P.W – for now, at least. I guess it’s just a matter of time before she is embarrassed by us, sounding like Boere, with her sounding like John Wayne.

Before we moved to Europe...

2010-07-01T20:12:00.010-04:00

Our new life here in the Four Courners couldn't be more different from the one we've had in Europe. As I'm starting to taking stock of, be amused by, and (to a large degree) enjoy these differences, I'm repeatedly reminded of the priviledge to live and work in so many different places. I don't want to sound overly blasé here, but I've always felt that, while the 'sight-seeing' aspects are amazing (yep, it's great seeing the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Vatican, the Matterhorn, Amsterdam's Red Light district - no, cancel that one; it's just gross - etc.), the really amazing things have always been the experiences: the small, seemingly insignificant things that you probably never would have picked up otherwise.

So, before the New Mexico winds wipe away too many of my European memories, I've started to compile a list of the 'small things' I've learnt in the eight or so years we've lived there.

Before we moved to Europe…

…I had no idea that one could get used to having so many hours of daylight during spring and summer.

…I did not know how many cherries I could eat before I would get sick; that you get so many varieties; and that the cherry season was quite short, so you’d better eat all you could, while you could!

…I could not appreciate a bright-sunshine-blue-sky-day as much as I do now; now I know that each such day should be treated with the utmost respect; and that if you are Dutch, you will count the number of days that are hotter than 25 C EACH SUMMER.

…I have only seen snow once, when I was five or six years old.

…I did not know that different types of snow flakes actually looked so different.

…I did not know that Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia.

…I was not sure whether Slovakia and Slovenia are the same country.

…I did not believe that you really do not ‘unlearn’ how to ride a bicycle.

…I did not realize that there are that great a variety of tulips.

…I thought you could swim in all the oceans of the world.

…I did not know how public transport systems operate.

…I have never owned a platinum frequent flyer card.

…I did not know how beautiful a real spring season could be.

…I didn’t know that ice rain and hail are not the same thing.

…I celebrated my birthday in autumn.

…I was not quite sure how ‘daylight savings time’ worked.

…I would have found it weird to have an extended vacation between June and August.

...I didn’t realize that Christmases over here are mostly wet, not white.

…I never had to scratch the windscreen of the car on winter’s mornings (partly also because my car has always stood in a garage during winters, and not on the street).

…I didn’t realize that the lucky few who did own garages used them as storage facilities, and still parked their cars on the street.

…I had my own car, and had to drive wherever I had to go.

…my brain refused to believe that it is possible to drive on the right hand of the road; and to go around traffic circles counter-clockwise.

…I didn’t know that France is the traffic circle capital of the world.

…I was unaware of how closely certain parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece resembles the third world.

…I had no idea how beautiful and amusing the songs of a Blackbird could be.

…I did not know that my husband hated the sound of a ‘draai orreltjie’; it just reminds be of ‘Boeremusiek’.

…I though it was weird not to be bothered by other people seeing into your house as they walked by.

…I didn’t know how difficult it was to actually locate Liechtenstein.

…that those European tourists we've always laughed at for wearing shorts in winter were really laughing at us for thinking it was cold.

…I didn’t know that the languages of Finland and Hungary are related.

…I didn’t know that the Russians had their own alphabet, and that their language is related to Greek.

…I didn’t know that each Swiss canton had its own constitution.

…I didn’t fully appreciate just exactly how conservative Switzerland is.

…I never took walks in my neighbourhood after dinner, or over weekends.

…I have never recycled anything before, and that is the inconvenient truth.

…I didn’t realize that the Schwarzwald is really black.

…I never had the urge to be able to see what was going on in my neighbour’s backyard.

…I was not aware of the natural rivalry between the Dutch and the Germans; or the Danish and the Swedes; the Dutch and the Belgians – to name but a few.

…I didn’t know that Norwegians and Danes could understand each other’s languages, seemingly by default.

…I had no idea that headscarves could be regarded as offensive.

…I though that the Dutch term ‘zwarte scholen’ was just a bad joke.

…I didn’t realize that there were so many American tourists in Paris and Prague.

…I didn’t know that Budapest is just as beautiful (and in my mind, even more so) as Prague.

…I was fairly convinced that only South Africans are racists.

…I had no idea that I would come to love stinky cheese.

…I didn’t have an inkling of how heterogonous the Balkans is.

…I have never seen a glacier before, and have not been able to get my head wrapped around the concept either.

…I thought it was perfectly normal for children to be barefoot during summer (and on hot winters days too, come to think of it).

…I had this naïve idea that pillows, duvets and other linen were all the same standard size wherever you went.

…that I would become one of those people who think anything above 10 C is ‘warm’.

…I couldn’t hear the difference between Dutch and Flemish.

…I didn’t know how much Athens reminded me of downtown Johannesburg (‘I have a cousin that can show you around…’).

…I didn’t know that the Portuguese generally speak a passable English (due to the centuries’ old Port trade to the Brits), while the Spanish can harldy utter a word of English.

…that, thanks to all the American tourists in Paris, and all the British tourists in Provence and Beaun, you can actually get by with quite a bit of English in France nowadays.

…I would never have believed that I would come to understand and appreciate the Dutch’s policy on soft drugs.

…that coalition governments could be the norm; neither would I have thought it to be normal.

…that a coffee shop in Holland might be serving you caffeine, but not necessarily.

…that (South) Eastern Europeans smoke as if there is no tomorrow.

…that, if you wanted milk with your coffee, you’d better ask for it specifically.

…that only the English and South Africans take milk with their tea.

…that a large number of Poles are devout Catholics.

…that the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas and Easter on different dates than the rest of Christianity.

Come to think of it, no wind will ever wipe this away; no new experiences will replace the ones I've already had. And that is more worth than all the money in the world.

Between a Rock and a Dry Place

2010-06-21T08:45:00.009-04:00

In South Africa, we always joke - with a lot of truth thrown into the jest - that 'Africa is not for sissies'. Well, I can tell you now that the US South West isn't either.

It’s dry; and dusty; and windy; and hot, damn hot. Summer temperatures around and above 35 Celsius are the norm and it has only rained once since we’ve moved here – a spectacular thunderstorm, including hailstones. Our lilywhite skins and our hair and eyes are screaming for constant hydration (Cecile is turning a nice nutty brown despite the Factor 50, though). And speaking of hydration: you leave your house without a water bottle at your own peril. Approach any minor outdoors venture without a hat, and you are toast.

And yet. The desert scenery is simply breathtaking. We’ve already fallen in love with the Pondarosa Pines, the Sage Brushes, the Pinion Pines and the Junipers – many of them downright ancient; the lizards, the Jackrabbits; and the rocks. Oh, don’t get me started on the rocks. I’ve had a thing for rocks ever since my inspiring high school geography teacher encouraged us to take notice of and to collect rocks everywhere we went. Rocks are nature’s sculptures and cathedrals: they are sure and true; they tell stories of millions of years gone by; and their beauty is honest. Most of them have been here when the Earth was still young (the lowest layer of the Grand Canyon, for example is nearly 2 billion years old – and the estimated age of the earth is 4.54 years), and they will remain here long after you and I have moved on. During our recent visit to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Southern Utah, I was struck by the thought that, if I had believed in reincarnation, I would have opted to come back as Entrada Sandstone: majestically eroding into weird and wonderful shapes while staring across the planes.

The rocks of the Colorado Plateau also remind me a lot of its people. Rarely have we come across people more open, welcoming, down-to-earth, warm, courteous, and honest-to-God friendly. Despite the obvious differences between us and them (political ideology comes to mind), barely six weeks have passed and we already feel like calling it ‘home’.

An Epic Struggle with the Admin-Monster

2010-05-26T19:32:00.020-04:00

Over the past three months, and over the past three weeks in particular, I have been forcibly reminded of the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. And, specifically, how Asterix's wit, and Obelix's strength almost failed them at Task no. 8: 'Find Permit A-38 in The Place That Sends You Mad'. The point of that scene, obviously, is to never, ever underestimate the awesome power of Admin/Bureaucracy, or whatever its modern-day equivalents. Nothing makes one so aware of the strangling effect of the modern trappings of 'civilization' than an international move.

I concede that you could rightly expect us to be experts at the game by now, since it is our third international move, after all. True experts will tell you, however, that you can never conquer the Admin-Monster because it has multiple heads; and like the mythical monster, you cut one off head and it immediately sprouts another one in its place. What is more, the Admin-Monster's heads are also interrelated. I.e., you have to cut the heads off in the exact sequence - except that you don't know what the sequence is, or whether it exists in the first place.

Let me illustrate with a random example: open a postal box. A good idea, no? You will not have a permanent address for some time, since you have not yet found a house to rent / buy; and since you have to make various address changes, since your old house has already been sold. Since you are so experienced in these matters, you figure out how to apply for the postal box online. You follow all the instructions on the website, and rock up at the Post Office with your application form (which you had to forward to your husband's office for printing since your own printer is on a ship somewhere) and your two pieces of picture ID (required because of identity theft issues), exactly as stipulated. Except that the lady at the Post Office now tells you that she also requires proof of residential address, like phone or electricity bills - and, no, it doesn't matter that it wasn't listed as a requirement on the damn website, or that you do not physically have these things right now; Homeland Security makes the rules, not she.

Okay, so now you have to figure out a way to comply with this rule. In the mean time, you cannot change your address at the European Society of International Law, which means you cannot renew your annual membership, which means you cannot register for the September conference at the discounted rate before the deadline expires, which means .... are you starting to feel the madness encroaching yet? Now imagine having, say, 25 items like this one on your Admin To Do list, and every one of them plays out in similar ways. You are now close to understanding why I (and Jac, who has had to bear most of the Admin brunt) find myself developing foam around the mouth on a regular basis.

I was in a contemplative mood on my way back from the Post Office yesterday - that is, after I have drowned my defeat in an excellent Latte from Durango Joe's (isn't Drive Thru coffee the best thing since, what, Drive Thru Drugstores [and I'm not kidding]?) - and started to think what all of this says about us as a species. Because, no, it is certainly not limited to the US or Europe; and, no, it is not (that much) better here than in developing countries. We are all aware of the staggering rate of advancements and innovation - technological and otherwise - and how it is constantly improving our lives. While this is all true, we seem to forget the 'Dark Side' of it all. It sometimes feel to me (and by now the Latte's heart-warming effect was rapidly declining) as if our world is just becoming more convoluted by the minute. The more advancement is added, the more layers of complexity is added as well.

Plus, I fear, there is no turning back. I mean: think about it. I suspect our 'global civilization' will simply continue like this - exponentially adding complexity - until we just impload under the weight of it all and is sent back to the Whatever Age.

In the mean time, I have decided to institute at least one Admin-free day a week. Think I'll spend it out in the local desert, just with some water, and food. Having wireless internet with my Blackberry and iPod nearby would be nice. Oh, and some airconditioning, obviously. And while we're at it, can I take my laptop too so that I can Twitter and blog about the experience?

Farmington, New Mexico: Let the Dust Settle

2010-05-17T14:33:00.004-04:00

After almost a year of 'will it happen? when will it happen?', it has finally happened: our entire family has now relocated to Farmington, New Mexico, where Jac has started to work for BHPBilliton's New Mexico Coal. Jac has already started here on the 1st of April, but Cecile and I have only joined him last week, after a luxurious 5-week visit to South Africa. After almost 8 years in Holland (almost 2 for Cecile), we are looking forward to a great many new adventures. I am looking forward to focusing (almost) entirely on my research while I'm here (my colleagues at Erasmus are green with envy), while Cecile has already enthusiastically taken to learning English ('fang joe verie mush') and playing outside in the glorious New Mexico sun - and dust, don't forget the dust.

As it settles, I will be posting regular updates of our new impressions, excursions, and expeditions.

The Thigh Revolution (Flash 'Em, Baby)

2009-11-13T07:16:00.004-05:00

I was in the second half-hour of my personal torture session at the gym, working to get rid of the stubborn 3 kg (okay, make that 4 kg) I’ve picked up thanks to Cecile; bored out of my mind with the quasi-reality TV they dish up nowadays on Discovery Channel – not to mention the Snooker Championship on EuroSport (how, oh how, does that even qualify as a ‘sport’?). Mercifully, a gym employee walked over and switched from EuroSport to MTV. Hallo! Now there’s something I haven’t been watching for ages. And, clearly, a revolution has occurred since I’ve last bothered – The Thigh Revolution. Every second music video featured a semi-emaciated chick flashing her thighs repeatedly, while belting out a song that I couldn’t hear (again, mercifully) since the TV was on mute.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything particular against thighs – I just don’t find them attractive; not even on somebody who clearly needed to gain 10 kg. After the second song largely devoted to thigh-flashing appeared in less than 10 minutes (this, on further inquiry, proved to be ‘Poker Face’ by Lady Gaga), I gathered my things to move over to the rowing machines (which were facing a TV screen where the Snooker was still continuing in full force). In the corner of my eye, however, I saw Beyoncé appearing on the screen, performing the weirdest, and slightly spastic, act of Thigh-Flashing I’ve ever witnessed (this, I later figured out, was ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’; boy have I been out of it, or what?). For the next 3.5 minutes or so, I stood rooted on the spot, fascinated.

My mind drifted to a discussion I’ve had with my sister over the past summer. She works at a maternity hospital in Cape Town that services a predominantly ‘coloured’ area (a politically acceptable term for people of mixed race in South Africa). She told me that the nursing staff working with her (also predominantly coloured) simply revered Beyoncé since she was everything they looked for in a female role model: successful, in a happy relationship, and – above all – she looked like a real woman of African descent with Boobs, Booty and, yes, Thighs. While I stood there watching Beyoncé strutting her Stuff, I wondered who my own role models in the Body Department were supposed to be. Nicole Kidman, who almost never looked pregnant, while being pregnant? Angelina Jolie, who, after two highly publicised pregnancies was now so thin, she was almost nothing but Eyes, Lips and Boobs (how did she manage to keep the Boobs, by the way)? And it struck me that black or coloured women were far better off in this regard. Just off the top of my head, I could think of Beyoncé, the Williams Sisters (love them or hate them), and Michelle Obama. What these women have in common, of course, is that they all look normal and healthy. Specifically, they look like they are not afraid of food – real food – but that they know how to take care of themselves. They are well-groomed, and very, very well toned. In an age where eating-disorders manifests at an ever-younger age among young girls, isn’t this the body image I would like for myself and for Cecile?

I restart the Elliptical trainer once more while Alesha Dixon flashes her ample thighs aggressively on screen. Hmmm, yes. But if she ever insists on dressing like that, she doesn’t leave the house before she is 36.

2009-09-23T06:43:00.003-04:00

Okay, so Maureen Dowd, Arianna Huffington, and I are in agreement (imaginary self-pat on shoulder). But, seriously folks: this thing should STOP.

Blue Is the New Black

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: September 19, 2009

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Women are getting unhappier, I told my friend Carl.

“How can you tell?” he deadpanned. “It’s always been whine-whine-whine.”

Why are we sadder? I persisted.

“Because you care,” he replied with a mock sneer. “You have feelings.”

Oh, that.

In the early ’70s, breaking out of the domestic cocoon, leaving their mothers’ circumscribed lives behind, young women felt exhilarated and bold.

But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?

According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.

Before the ’70s, there was a gender gap in America in which women felt greater well-being. Now there’s a gender gap in which men feel better about their lives.

As Arianna Huffington points out in a blog post headlined “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling”: “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.” (to continue reading...)

In a Female Funk

2009-09-01T15:06:00.002-04:00

I hate to admit it, but I was in a typical female funk last week. I won’t go into the specifics of what triggered it this time (it’s not important anyway), but it involved the familiar downward spiral of ‘reasoning’ that goes something like this: given my specific circumstances, how can I be an individual, and a wife / partner, and a mother, and have a career that enables me to fulfil my potential (since I want it all, of course)?

Whinge. Whine. Whimper.

Why is it that women are so damn hard on themselves – to the point that it becomes exasperating to everybody involved, themselves included – compared to their male counterparts? No, wait. Part of that same exasperation typically includes our female attempts to deconstruct this problem. Hence, I’m not going there today – in my experience, these deconstructivist efforts add little to practice anyway, probably because there are no overriding answers. In fact, the more I think about it, these types of problems have to be worked out on such a ‘nano-personal level’ that somebody else’s ‘advice’ is of little value. On the other hand, since the nature of the problem is so individualized, one possible key to unlocking (and consequently, unpacking) the problem potentially lies with personal empowerment in the first instance (not that I’m the first one to come to that conclusion). If this sounds like just more empty jargon, let me be more specific. I think all of us, and women in particular, can benefit from reflecting occasionally on what we have accomplished, and what that might mean for the future; and not to narrowly focus on our shortcomings and the impossibility of being perfect in perpetuity on all fronts. In other words, we need to stop fretting; think how far we have already come, how we have managed to do it, consider that the future have always taken care of itself, and have a glass of champagne, for goodness’ sake!

So, in the interest of this self-empowerment, I am going to be unabashedly self-congratulatory today, on the 1st of September 2009. This date is of some significance, because it marks exactly two years since I’ve started my employment at Erasmus University Rotterdam and formally started writing my PhD. Over the past two years I have:

completed my PhD and obtained approval from internal and external parties;
published the commercial version of my PhD at an international publisher;
co-written and published a scientific article in a peer-reviewed law journal; and
taught two Master-level courses, while helping out with four others.

But I have also:

made a baby (that particular exercise took nine months);
had a baby (that involved me taking four months off);
raised a baby to reach toddler hood (although with this item I had loads of help).

I have no idea how I did it. I can state for the record that it did not involve any drugs (definitely excluding stimulants such as caffeine), and only involved moderate levels of alcohol on occasion (specifically, those beverages with bubbles). I also know it required the assistance of some extraordinary people (e.g., it really does take a village to raise a child, Hillary). But what I can say with certainty is that I would be able to do it again. And this, I think, is what that old stalwart, Helen Reddy, tried to say with her song:

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an' pretend
'cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again

Oh yes I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

You can bend but never break me
'cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
'cause you've deepened the conviction in my soul

I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long long way to go
Until I make my brother understand

Oh yes I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to I can face anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman
Oh, I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong

I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman.

Poor "W"

2008-12-23T17:38:00.001-05:00

I hate to admit this, but I am starting to feel sorry for the man (I am such a wimp).

That's one way to think about it, I guess.

2008-12-20T15:53:00.001-05:00

I say, if the shoe fits, don't duck if it's thrown at you.

Annie Get Your Gun / You Are An Academic Mom

2008-09-10T15:02:00.004-04:00

If anybody dares to call me a ".... - mom" (as in 'soccer mom'; 'hockey mom'; 'new mom'; 'Wall-Mart mom'; 'celebrity mom'; and the BEST of all: 'frontier mom'; etc.), ever...well, I might just have to shoot 'em.

Homerun for the Braniacs!

2008-09-10T08:34:00.004-04:00

Isn't it wonderful to think that today, right here in Europe, a bunch of bespecticled, badly dressed Nerds (yes, just go ahead and complete the stereotype in your head) gets to be the heroes of the hour. And what makes it even better is the fact that almost nobody really has a clue what it is about!

CERN, Switzerland (CNN) -- Scientists Wednesday applauded as one of the most ambitious experiments ever conceived got successfully underway, with protons being fired around a 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel deep beneath the border of France and Switzerland in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider -- a $9 billion particle accelerator designed to simulate conditions of the Big Bang that created the physical Universe -- was switched on at 0732 GMT to cheers and applause from experts gathered to witness the event.
While observers were left nonplussed by the anticlimactic flashing dots on a TV screen that signalled the machine's successful test run, among teams of scientists involved around the world there were jubilant celebrations and popping champagne corks.
(to continue reading, go to http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/10/lhc.collider/index.html)

A public service announcement follwed me home the other day...

2008-09-05T02:34:00.003-04:00

Okay, it's official: from today, the 5th of September 2008, I'm zoning out of the US Presidential Elections. At least until the final results are announced, that is. But it has nothing to do with me anyway, I hear you say? Oh, if only that were true! The fact is: modern US Presidential Elections have given 'no taxation without representation' an entirely new meaning. The rest of the world is very much impacted by the outcome, but we can do absolutely nothing to influence it. Therefore, to protect my own sanity, I'm just going to make like an ostrich for the next few months. We'll just have to make do with, whatever, you know?

I just want to say one more thing before my news black-out comes into effect:

Never thought I would say this, but...

2008-08-06T06:42:00.001-04:00

WAY TO GO, PARIS HILTON!

Paris Hilton hits back at John McCain in video
Paris Hilton has issued her own video in response to a critical television advertisement by John McCain.

By Jon Swaine Last Updated: 11:30AM BST 06 Aug 2008

Paris Hilton as she appears in the video on funnyordie.com Photo: Getty
The American socialite and heiress featured in a recent commercial produced by the Republican Presidential hopeful's campaign.
Mr McCain compared his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, to celebrities such as Miss Hilton and Britney Spears, claiming he was a superficial candidate and was not ready to lead the country.
Commentators have credited the advertisement with delivering a boost in opinion polls for Mr McCain. A weekend Gallup poll showed Mr McCain and Mr Obama level, where the previous week Mr Obama had led by nine percentage points.
While Miss Hilton initially refused to comment on the publicity, she has now issued a full response, in a video released to the US comedy website Funny or Die . Follow link to continue reading.

Mother(father)hood, Apple Pie and Other Myths / Facts

2008-07-26T10:33:00.005-04:00

Cecile’s first two months have gone by in a blur of feeds, diaper changes, burps, family, laughter, a few tears, some colic – and lots of amazement from our side at how fast such a Little One grows and develops. You will forgive me for using this impersonal forum to thank all of you for the good wishes and gifts you’ve sent. We are truly blessed to have friends and family all over the globe who take such an interest in us and Cecile! We have also been very bold (or stupid, you might argue) to take Cecile on her first European road trip recently. Yep, all the way to Switzerland and Italy by car over the course of two weeks. You can go to our Flickr page to see some photos.

While I have absolutely no plans to turn this blog into a regular diatribe about babies and parenthood (I do remember how bored I used to get with the topic back in the day), I have received a few requests from some of you to share my (our) experiences thus far. For the sake of scientific research and posterity, I have decided to humour the requestors. Here follows a few personal observations about the Myths and Facts surrounding Parenthood and Apple Pie:

** The mommy / daddy instincts kick in as soon as the little newborn wonder is placed in your arms for the first time. --> Myth! It is a little stranger, after all. You'll have to get to know her / him a bit in order for your brain to arrange for the secretion of the particular juices that will turn you into a parent. The only 'instinct' you do have from the word ‘go’ is the instinct to keep the little stranger alive (and I’m talking basics here, people, such as ‘do not drop her / him’).

** A baby's cries do not all sound the same. You will learn your own baby’s ‘language’ quite fast. --> Fact! I never would have guessed it, but within days you manage to hear the difference between ‘boohoowhaa!!!’ [‘feed me, you idiot!’] and ‘boohaawhaa!!!!’ [‘what are you waiting for? pick me up!’].

** Women are born with enough guilt to last them an entire lifetime. And the moment they have a child, the guilt glands start to produce guilt juice at four times the normal rate ('does stopping to breastfeed/ going back to work / leaving her with a sitter / not buying the expensive brand diapers / etc. make me a bad mother?!'). --> Fact! And a further astonishing fact is that men will never, ever be able to fathom this phenomenon.

** Being a parent changes you / brings out the best in you. --> Myth! Have you ever wondered why having a baby rarely saves troubled marriages? You are still pretty much the same as before. Only with burp stains on your shoulders and circles below your eyes from sleep deprivation.

** Most of the time, babies do not sleep 'like babies'. --> Fact! It is actually the parents that sleep like babies if they only get a fraction of an opportunity.

** You don’t mind cleaning the nappies of your own kid – regardless of how ghastly the contents are. --> Myth! Of course you mind. But who will clean it if you don’t?

** Hearing her baby cry for a prolonged period can put a mother off her food. --> Fact! And a good thing it is too, seeing as she has to get rid of those pesky pounds. (BTW: Hearing your baby cry a lot does not put you off alcohol.)

** All babies smell like babies. --> Fact! An exact description and composition of that smell have mystified parents and grandparents through the ages.

** Most babies ‘sleep through’ from quite an early age. --> Myth! A fact, however, is that most parents lie about this. Sleeping fairly soundly from 10:30/11:00 to 05:00-ish does not constitute ‘sleeping through’ in my book anyway. 20:00 to 07:00? Now you're talking.

** You’ll be surprised how quickly other parents jump at the opportunity to comparing their baby’s developmental progress with yours ('our baby had already slept through / talked / sat / had teeth / solved elementary calculus problems). --> Fact! And be careful not to fall in the same trap – imagine the pressure by the time she / he reaches kindergarten.

** You can read whatever you need to know in books. --> Fact! Myth! Wait, did I say both? Yes I did. Frustrating isn’t it? Books can help a lot, but you will not believe the staggering heap of contradictory advice that is out there (‘use a dummy / don’t / only when baby is awake / only to soothe baby to sleep / dummies are from the devil’ / sucking her thumb will make her dumb). It has the potential to drive you ape-shit, I tell you.

** Which leads me to the biggest observation of them all: each baby is truly unique from the moment he / she is born. This realization immediately leads to the following --> FACT: Everybody’s experience as a parent, and advice based on that experienced, is just that: their own experience. I’m sure that those of you who are already parents will have read my ‘fact / myth list’ and would disagree with many / all of the statements because your experience with your baby had taught you differently. Heck, the experience is apparently not even the same if you repeat it further down the line. This is at the same time a comforting and scary though. Comforting, because nobody can judge you. ‘Normal’ is, thank goodness, a pretty relative concept. Scary, because you (and, if you are lucky enough to have a partner: the two of you) are truly on your own – with only your own unique mix of intelligence, stupidity, experience, inexperience and, hopefully, common sense to guide you through it all.

Moreover, as Jac so eloquently says: we have a responsibility to our children to mess them up sufficiently. They will not be normal, well-adjusted human beings if we don’t give them the opportunity to develop their fair share of hang-ups and –isms. The best thing about it is, of course, that we don’t need Dr. Phil / Oprah’s advice on how to accomplish this.

Cecile Fourie: 16 May 2008

2008-05-28T06:39:00.004-04:00

After 40 weeks and 4 days, it finally happened: Cecile decided to join our world…and a fast, very, FAST entrance she made too. It was like a Supersonic Stork made an express delivery. Although, as Jac remarked after witnessing a real birth: giving storks all the credit for the business was actually a major insult to women everywhere (bless him!).

I’ll give you the cursory version of the Story (I’ll spare you the detail), but if you prefer to remain in an ‘ignorance is bliss’ state (and I can’t say I’d blame you) just skip to THE END.*

Friday, 16 May 2008, proceed like any other day of the past 3 weeks. Every thing was ready for her arrival; I’ve read everything about giving birth and caring for small babies I could lay my hands on (got freaked out, chilled again, and re-read the same material); I’ve even decided not to work further on my dissertation so that I wouldn’t have excessive volumes of adrenaline in my bloodstream that might delay the birth (Knowledge is Pain). Nature also smiled upon me by blessing the Netherlands with unusually warm and sunny May weather. So, my last 3 weeks were filled with sunshine, lots of “braais” with Jac, ample exercise (yes, I've managed to get them looking slightle anxious at the gym towards the end), re-re-re-reading the entire Harry Potter series, and watching Scrubs on DVD in the evenings (we were seriously hoping that the copious laughing might trigger the birthing process…ah, well, we tried our best).

15:10 I called my mom to report that there was, still, absolutely no sign of labour.
15:20 Made myself a cup of tea, and, just as I sat down…PAIN!
15:45 Called my sister, Nadia (she is a doctor specialising in obstetrics; and in charge of a maternity ward somewhere in deep rural KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, where an average of 200 babies are delivered monthly).

My biggest problem was that I wasn’t sure whether it was the 'real thing'. It went too fast from the word ‘go’. All the books said: things start out slowly, particularly with a first child. The midwife’s official call advice said 'not to call before contractions were 3 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute – and after it’s been like that for an hour'. What I was experiencing fitted none of the official protocols.

Moreover, Nadia joked with me a few months back (when I was worried that Jac might not be in the country in time) that giving birth in real life was not like it happened in The Movies. You know, the stereotypical scene where the heroine just collapses in the middle of a frenetic storm / battle / or other mega-crisis and after a few minutes of AGONY! AGONY!!! AGONY!!!!!…and the baby is single handily delivered by the hero; after which our tired, but glowing heroine gazes lovingly in his eyes (clean, cherub-faced babe in her arms) while the storm / battle smoke / remnants of the mega-crises gently drifts away and the sun rises on a new day….Cut!!!

But I digress. Nadia told me to call the midwife immediately. (She told me afterwards that she could hear from my breathing, 11 odd thousand kilometres away, that it very much was the real thing).
15:50 Called Jac, who was in Keukenhof with a client (only about 30 minute’s drive from home, thank goodness; but he still had to drop the client off at Schiphol); told him that the process has started, but that he should finish his business first). In the mean time, I’ve decided to wait a bit longer and properly time my contractions before I called the midwife…hmmmm. Clever.
16:10 Called Jac and told him to come home AS FAST AS HE COULD.
16:15 Called the Midwife.
16:30 Entered Midwife, stage left. (AGONY!! AGONY!!!! AGONY!!!!!)
16:55 Entered Jac, stage right. (AGONY!! AGONY!!!! AGONY!!!!!)

17:00 Jac set off to break the land speed record from our house to Leiden University Hospital (normally about 15 minute’s drive; and typically not during rush hour).
17:10 Arrived at the hospital.
17:20 I’m wheeled into the delivery room (AGONY!!! AGONY!!!!! AGONY!!!!!!!)
(Unfortunately, no time for any Hollywood special effects in the form of pain killers, epidurals, or whatnot).
17:21 – 19:18: AGONY!!! ETC.
19:19 Cecile takes her first breath and gives her first (of endearingly many) yells.

I’ve just looked at the photos that were taken immediately after they’ve placed Cecile (bloody, yelling, and slightly worse for wear) on my chest. And it’s all there, etched out on my face. I can distinctly remember that I didn’t fully register that it was over; and, to be completely honest, that I was thinking: ‘WHAT THE…??’.

Fortunately, Jac Directed the entire Production Team (1 midwife, 1 trainee, 1 nurse, 1 doctor) with engineering precision and aplomb: constantly checking that, whenever they touched me with anything, it was latex free (I’m allergic). He pointed out to the trainee, who was struggling a bit to inject me with local anaesthetics for the post-delivery...ah, 'Editing', that her injection had an air bubble (he was right). And, yes, he even kissed the (by now) glowing heroine - who was gazing lovingly at his face.

‘Not like it happens in the Movies’, indeed.

* And here we are, almost two weeks on, and back to a New Reality. All I can say is that our world may have become exceedingly more complex and sleep-deprived; but it has, most definitely, become a better place just because of her. So, welcome our little Newbie. Lieve Lentekind. Klein Siela. Godspeed.

What a damn disgrace

2008-05-26T05:37:00.003-04:00

Also see this article by veteran South African journalist, Jon Qwelane, who is not...ah, let's say, inclined to criticize the ANC government lightly...

How is this going to END?

2008-04-30T05:10:00.001-04:00

From China, with Love

2008-04-11T08:56:00.002-04:00

How I love double standards...

Thank you, Richard Leakey

2008-03-18T05:21:00.002-04:00

This was exactly kind of response to South Africa's Elephant Culling policy that I was advocating in my previous entry. Thank you, Richard Leakey.

Cull concerns 'miss bigger picture'

VIEWPOINT
- Richard Leakey -

It is too soon for conservationists to ring the alarm bells over South Africa's elephant management plan that includes culling, argues Dr Richard Leakey. In this week's Green Room, he says the measures are necessary and based in animal welfare concerns.

"Last month's report on elephant management in South Africa has sent alarm bells ringing throughout the conservation and animal welfare circles, and headlines have been screaming that culling is about to be re-introduced.
This is a highly emotive issue and I have studied the government's report before making any judgment. Indeed, the report goes far beyond culling, and the headlines I have seen have been rather misleading." To continue reading...

Two Arguments of Equal Merit: In Praise of Nuance; A Plea for Responsible Speech

2008-03-04T03:38:00.010-05:00

The Problem of having Arguments of Equal Merit

Most people seem to be 'either / or' people. Either you support 'this' view, or you propagate 'that' view. You are either 'for' something; or you are 'against' it. Sometimes, I envy these people. I am, for the most part, not like that. On most issues, I have a singular knack for entertaining, and even believing in, contradictory notions / arguments simultaneously. While this ability is probably complementary to an academic career; it has the potential to drive you nuts. A famous example from my personal archives: I saw 'Dead Man Walking' as an undergrad student and completely went to pieces in the movie theatre (my poor date didn't know what had hit him...). At the time, I couldn't make sense of my (over-) reaction; but after a while I realized that the reason for my breakdown was not because of the graphic visual imagery of (1) the brutal killing (and rape) of two young, innocent people; or (2) the horror of the convicted killer as he was executed by lethal injection. It was because I could identify with both sides of the argument - pro and anti death penalty - to the same degree, and at the same time.

I've also realized over time that the real trick was to try and make sense of these contradictions; to distil it into 'something' that was more than just 'either' / 'or'. But that was a lot easier said than done. I think, for instance, that I have managed to do so with regards to the death penalty issue (ask me about it sometime if you are in the mood to have that discussion); but I still struggle with many others. A current example has to do with 'speech' - with 'the expressing of a viewpoint / argument in public'. Clearly, as you might have gathered from the entries on this blog, this is something that is very close to my heart.

In Praise of Nuance
There appears to be no room for subtlety, for nuance, anymore. Two fairly recent examples - both to do with that fabulously inflammatory subject: religion - should illustrate my point. First off, the Pope put his foot in it by - apparently - criticizing Islam as an intolerant, violence inciting religion in a lecture. The reaction was similar to the response the Danish cartoon controversy elicited. Has anybody really bothered to read what the man had actually said; to understand the context of his comments; to understand the nuances; to engage in active debate on what he really said - not what he supposedly said, or did not say? Now, clearly he is one of those academics whose articles you read / whose lectures you attend, only to conclude with the quizzical: 'huh'?But, after all, he did make those comments in the context of a well-referenced, you-can-just-visualize-all-the-footnotes lecture. And he concluded his lecture by inviting dialogue. Little did he realize at the time exactly what he did end up inviting!

Secondly, the Archbishop of Canterbury caused a huge storm in the traditional British tea cup by daring to suggest that 'certain aspects' of Sharia law would likely have to be adopted as part of UK law - similar to what is already being done with regards to Orthodox Jewish law. Now, I've read and re-read what he said - again in the context of a lecture (to UK lawyers), mind you - and I fail to understand the fury it elicited.

You (and I) might or might not agree with the Pope, the Archbishop, or the Cartoonist (does that sound like the beginning of an alcohol-inspired joke, or what?); but that is not the point I'm trying to make. The issue is that in all these examples, most public responses were almost entirely emotional - they did not focus on what these two religious leaders said; but more on what they did not say. The nuance, the subtlety of logic was steamrollered by the 'outcry!', the 'outrage!', the 'indignation!'. And in the process, any prospects for real debate was killed off instantaneously. Come to think of it, I can actually add a third example. This one, too, related to a dangerously inflammatory topic: environmentalism. The South African government has long been dogged (hmmm...'elephanted' would have been more appropriate) by the devastating environmental impact that overpopulation of elephants have on its national (read: fenced-off) game parks. Since 1995, the government has officially announced that it would stop the use of culling as a method of controlling elephant culling - only to see the elephant population exploding from 8 000 to 18 000 by end 2007. Recently, the government announced that it would resume the practice of elephant culling, but only as a measure of last resort (South African scientists have, or exampled, pioneered world class techniques on elephant birth control; however, clearly not resulting in the degree of population control that is required by the situation). Elephant culling itself is also one of those topics on which it is easy to harbour both 'pro' and 'con' sentiments; but the reactions - especially of the South African public - are again the focus here. The responses were, again, overwhelmingly emotional; with few people having picked up on the fact that 'culling' would only be used as a last resort, as part of an array of other policy mechanisms. Very few responses mentioned anything about the sound ecological (and scientific) reasoning behind controlling elephant numbers (have you seen what one elephant can do to a square kilometre of African bush?). In fact, many responses (and those were my favourites) went something like this: 'First Zuma got elected as ANC President; then Eskom dropped the ball on our power supply; en toe het die Rand sy gat gesien; then my neighbour got highjacked last week; and now the poor elephants?! What next?! I'm packing my bags for Australia.'

A Plea for Responsible Speech
'Freedom of speech über alles'. This seems to be the mantra of many Dutch people nowadays; especially in the aftermath of the Theo van Gogh assassination. One the one hand, this attitude is understandable. The Netherlands have long been a bastion for free speech in Europe - pretty much since the time of the Jewish Diaspora (read e.g. Karen Armstrong, 'The Battle for God') - and the Van Gogh murder rocked the very foundations of this nation. However, their society has also changed - is changing; something which I've described in a previous entry. Unfortunately, many citizens have yet to grasp this fact - and, importantly, the consequences it holds for their society. Enters one populist politician, Geert Wilders, aka: The Pointy-Haired-One (sincerest apologies to Dilbert). Wilders has been boasting / threatening / enticing / campaigning the nation for months now about having made a 'film' (read: substantial You Tube entry; 15 minutes of footage does not a 'film' make) he has made that exposes the 'vileness of Islam'. (And every week the media reports: Wilders's film is being released this week...not!) He (apparently: no one has seen 'it' yet) uses quotes from the Qur'an to show how violent and intolerant the religion is. (Has anybody bothered to quote some Old Testament scripture to the man?) The point is: he fails to realize? / care about? any consequences his 'free speech' might have for ordinary people - he has enjoyed personal protection ever since the murder on Van Gogh. Freedom of Speech Above All Else, right?

While I will certainly not deny that free speech are, in some respects, a 'special' fundamental right because it guarantees / ensures other civil and political rights, I cannot subscribe to the point of view that any human right is absolute. One human's 'right' has to stand in relation to another human's 'right'. One Pointy-Haired man's right to free speech is impacting another man / women's right to religion, to dignity - heck, maybe even to life (God forbid). Rights have to be associated with obligations / duties. And if you are a Pointy-Haired politician with the ability to entice millions of people to intolerance, hatred, and even violence, then you'd better think long and hard about the duty to exercise Responsible Speech.

Two Arguments: One (Tentative) Attempt at Fusion
As I've said, it can take a long time to reconcile two seemingly mutually exclusive arguments. How can you possibly propagate the protection of nuance, of rational debate, while simultaneously arguing for self-censorship? Honestly, I don't really know yet. My first, and tentative, attempt would be to note what both arguments have in common. Both arguments are critical of some form of absolutism; and both arguments reject a purely emotional response. Clearly, relativism, like anything else (including moderation!), can also be taken to the extreme; and clearly, there is room for emotion in debate.... Hmmm....does this bring me any closer to fusion? Perhaps yes, perhaps no... As I said: enough to drive you nuts! Maybe I should just stick to knitting pink booties for the baby (you didn't fall for that one, did you?).

Well said, Dubya!

2008-02-22T12:31:00.000-05:00

Politics / Entertainment / Politics / Entertainment

2008-01-24T04:00:00.000-05:00

Ah...you just got to love the stuff that comes out of Hollywood...eh, I mean Washington D.C....no, Hollywood...uh, D.C. ..?

Time Person of the Year

2008-01-12T08:02:00.000-05:00

....me too! Should have been JK Rowling.

The Road to Polokwane

2007-12-14T02:11:00.000-05:00

A brilliant, albeit tragic, summary of South Africa's Presidential race, by Jonathan Shapiro.

Integrate or Emigrate! We need to get real.

2007-11-20T05:19:00.000-05:00

Here in Europe and in the US, the most contentious topic nowadays seems to be 'immigration' or 'immigrants'. And it is unlikely that it will become less controversial over the next couple of years. Being an 'immigrant' myself (a 'legal alien in Oegstgeest'; you drink 'karnemelk', I take milk in my tea, my dear') the topic is of obvious interest. However, the real cause of my interest runs deeper: The world has changed, and not for the better, I'm afraid. And although most people would agree that 9/11 served as a watershed in this regard, it had started long before that fateful event.

There are, of course, differences between the immigration controversy in Europe and the US. The US has been fairly heterogeneous since the early days of its beginnings as a nation; and there have been numerous incidents of clashes and intolerance between its various ethnic groupings throughout its history. The bit that I have managed to sit through of 'Gangs of New York' served as a good illustration. Somehow, however, the US have miraculously succeeded in fusing all these cultures into the so-called 'melting pot'. It is very interesting to speculate why this has occurred in the US and not in, say, South Africa. I think it made a real difference that people of various ethnic backgrounds went to the US over the years because they had a yearning for a 'better life', to become 'part of the American dream' - however artificial those dreams might have turned out to be. But numbers have also played a big role. Immigrant groups have never become a real threat to the continuation of the American 'melting pot', because they have never been anything but minorities, albeit significant minorities at times. Up to now, that is: people from 'Hispanic' origin are quickly becoming more than just a minority. And the fact that many of them are illegally in the country does not really seem to make a difference in practice, despite the clumsy rhetoric of politicians. (The New York Times recently reported, for example, that surnames such as 'Garcia' is for the first time included as on of the ten most common surnames in the US.)

Where Europe has been been largely homogeneous within its respective nations, (except, for places like the Balkan - and just look where it's brought them), it is no longer the case. And, like the US, we are talking about significant - and still growing - numbers of immigrants. The Netherlands, for example, has a population of 16 million people; and 1 million thereof is now of Muslim origin. ('Not so', a Dutch friend corrected me recently, 'that figure is contested; it is more likely to be 900 000...' Whatever.) This situation has obviously created enormous tension and ample grounds for downright aggression; and it certainly has contributed to the clear shift to the right on the political spectrum throughout Europe.

In countries like France, Denmark and The Netherlands, it has also prompted governments to pay greater attention to so-called 'integration' - no doubt, with the (past?) success of the American 'melting pot' example in the back of their heads. For example, since the beginning of 2007, people from 'certain' countries (you can figure out which countries, I'm sure) who want to live in Holland for a while have to pass an 'inburgerings' test before they are allowed in. They get to watch a video at the Dutch embassy that informs them a bit about the history of the country, the language, the kind of housing they would be staying in, the social practices ('alleen EEN koekje bij de koffie') and they are shown a few bare-breasted women on the beaches and gay men in an embrace. Fair enough, I guess. Better know what to expect. Also since 2007, any alien who wants to become a Dutch citizen has to pass an exam that e.g. tests Dutch language ability and more indepth knowledge of the kinds of socio-cultural platitudes that I've refered to above. Also fair, I guess. It's their country, and they get to make the rules. In fact, one of the oldest principles in international law is that countries are entirely free to set their own requirements for citizenship. Jac and I recently had the opportunity to partake in this exam and, while it was clearly not targeted at people immigrating from a predominantly Western cultural and Christian religious background, the experience was mostly positive.

What does bug me, though, is this: how realistic is it of these Western host countries to expect immigrants from completely different cultural and, especially, it seems, religious backgrounds to integrate seamlessly into these existing societies? In particular as their numbers continue to increase; and as they feel increasingly alienated by post 9/11 policies and a general sphere of intolerance and suspicion aimed against them? The wife of the Dutch Crown Prince, herself an immigrant from Argentinian origin, recently made a huge blunder - so it seemed - by declaring in a public speech that true, old-fashioned Dutch identity doesn't exist anymore. While her statement was pretty much drowned by the public furore that followed, and while she probably could have put it better ('Dutch identity' obviously still exists; it is just not the only identity in the country anymore to take account of), it rings true - not only for The Netherlands, but for the 'Western' world in general.

Perhaps being born and raised in South Africa has taught me not to expect homogeny; to know that, despite the fact that people have seemingly next to nothing in common, they can still co-exist in relative peace. Which is also why I get really uptight when Europeans or Americans comment about the lack of integration between black and white in South Africa. True, more than 10 years after the abolishment of Apartheid, people of all races are pretty much keeping to themselves. And, while I personally might believe this to be a pity, I have looked around me while we were living in the US, and I am looking around me now here in Europe - and I do not see any difference.

That elusive melting pot, the holy grail of integration (or, perhaps more accurately: assimilation), seems to be only a reality as long as the math work out.

What's with the 'knocked-up' fascination?

2007-11-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

Can somebody please enlighten me: why does the media nowadays make such a fuss about pregnant women? Okay, not just ANY pregnant women, quasi-celebrity pregnant women in particular. It was crazy enough just over a year ago when the whole feeding frenzy about the Holmes-Cruise and Jolie-Pitt pregnancies reached their peak, but - sheesh! - it's just getting worse! No self-respecting news junkie can open the electronic pages on any average day without being confronted with (1) speculation that XYZ is pregnant; or (2) a leak from a publicist / mother-in-law / stylist that XYZ is pregnant; or (3) vehement denial by XYZ that she is pregnant; or (4) the 'coming-out' moment where a glowing (why are they always 'glowing?'; they look the same to me) XYZ bashfully confirms that she is, indeed, pregnant.

Don't get me wrong. Assuming it is a planned and a very much wanted pregnancy, I'm usually glad for them. There are enough women who would give anything to be in the same position. But then again, there are many, many more for whom such a happening is the very last thing they need. My question is just this: why is it news? Do we think that it's a unique human achievement? (it clearly is not: billions of women will attest to the fact) Do we think it's glamorous? (ask the same aforementioned group: decidedly the opposite) Do we really think these quasi-celebrities will have 'special, and thus newsworthy' pregnancies just because they are supposedly 'special, and thus newsworthy'? (I can't even come up with an answer to such a stupid question).

I have some sympathy - with some of them. Honestly, it cannot be easy to have the media's spotlight on you like that when all you feel like doing is puke your guts out and vegetate on the couch until you've reached 40 weeks. On the other hand, others seem to milk it (oops, unfortunate choice of expression. what the heck) for all it's worth.

As usual, these rants of mine serve absolutely no purpose other than making me feel better because I've gotten it out of my system. This rant is the exception to the rule, though. I have decided that I, too, will use the electronic pages to announce, now that my stylist has let it slip (he's fired, by the way): 'YES! I am pregnant - wasn't just packing on those pounds because I've been sitting on my behind writing like a maniac these past two months.' (and yes, I am glowing, but it is because the hormones makes my skin oily - there, I've solved another mystery for you)
(and double yes, I am; not we are; we might both be expecting a baby to come out of this project; but, trust me, it's definitely just me).

So, let the hounding of the paparazzi begin. They will have one hormone charged, hoogs bedonnerde nihil-celeb to deal with.

Defending Britney...the gods must be crazy!

2007-09-11T07:43:00.000-04:00

I have never dreamt the day would come that I would feel the need to stand up in defence of Britney Spears. I suspect hell can freeze over now; pigs will be flying as we speak and the cows will come home shortly; or something of the sort. Because I've never been a fan of the poor little slut - in any way whatsoever (I guess I can say that gleefully now).

But in a sense, this is not about Britney Spears at all. It is about the perverse satisfaction that human beings seem to get from gloating about the misfortune / misbehaviour / disasters of their fallen idols. (And by 'idol', I quite mean it in the biblical sense; no reference to an overrated, unimaginative talent competition.) How many of the people now blasting the poor woman for her recent MTV award performance were her fans until recently? I would guess by far the majority.

Do they, as her (former) fans have a right to be upset about her performance? I guess so; but firstly consider the actual criticism: (1) her not-so-in-sync-lip-syncing. Fair point. If you cannot sing, the least that can be expected of you, is to be in sync with your own studio enhanced/technologically buffeted voice. It is, however, indeed laughable that it took this unfortunate performance for many people to realize that she was indeed only lip-syncing before. (2) she wasn't throwing around her body like she used to. A moderately fair point, I guess, if seeing the Kama Sutra on stage/in music videos is your thing. She still looked the part, though, as far as I'm concerned. Which brings me to (3): she doesn't have a 'taut' belly anymore. Well, shoot me, but I think she looks amazingly 'taut', given the fact that she's had two children in two years (lets leave the wisdom of her marital and parenting choices out of this discussion).

But even if we assume all these criticisms are valid and fair and relevant, my second contention is still the way in which she is being blasted. The global news media is positively glowing and crowing with glee. Most responses from 'fans' are downright abusive. 'Fame is a fickle friend, Harry' was Gilderoy Lockhart's 'advice' to Harry Potter (Chamber of Secrets). Tony Blair was probably thinking about that too, not so long ago, when he was packing his bag in Downing Street; the closing scenes from the recent movie, 'The Queen' possibly also flashing through his mind? (it sure was flashing through mine, seeing him leave with his tail between his legs).

As much as I hate our global obsession with everything 'celebrity'; and, admittedly, as much as a little part of me, too, though: 'Ha! Look at her!'. What does all this say about us, though?

Progress

2007-09-11T04:30:00.001-04:00

Those grey cells vs. the silicon chip

2007-09-02T10:22:00.000-04:00

Very interesting article published in the FT this weekend. Paired with a cartoon from this week, it's even more interesting (and fitting, since I'm starting work on comparative constitutional law as part of my thesis this week). But is it true? Can we make consistently accurate predictions how the US Supreme Court will vote with the help of a few variables plugged into a computer? Or is it more proof that the personal ideology of individual judges on the Court (left and right) weigh too much? It is a sobering thought, though, that our common sense and our 'intelligence guided by our experience' might not be necessary anymore. Time to start seriously using the grey cells again, I think!

How computers routed the experts
By Ian Ayres
www.ft.com
1 September 2007

Six years ago, Ted Ruger, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, attended a seminar at which two political scientists, Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn, made a bold claim. They said that by using just a few variables concerning the politics of the case, they could predict how the US Supreme Court justices would vote.
Analysing historical data from 628 cases previously decided by the nine Supreme Court justices at the time, and taking into account six factors, including the circuit court of origin and the ideological direction of that lower court's ruling, Martin and Quinn developed simple flowcharts that best predicted the votes of the individual justices. For example, they predicted that if a lower court decision was considered "liberal", Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would vote to reverse it. If the decision was deemed "conservative", on the other hand, and came from the 2nd, 3rd or Washington DC circuit courts or the Federal circuit, she would vote to affirm.
Ruger wasn't buying it. As he sat in that seminar room, he didn't like the way these political scientists were describing their results. "They actually used the nomenclature of prediction," he told me. "[But] like a lot of legal or political science research, it was retrospective in nature."
After the seminar he went up to them with a suggestion: why didn't they run the test forward? As the men talked, they decided to run a horse race, to create "a friendly interdisciplinary competition" to compare the accuracy of two different ways to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases. In one corner stood the predictions of the political scientists and their flow charts, and in the other, the opinions of 83 legal experts – esteemed law professors, practitioners and pundits who would be called upon to predict the justices' votes for cases in their areas of expertise. The assignment was to predict in advance the votes of the individual justices for every case that was argued in the Supreme Court's 2002 term.
The test would implicate some of the most basic questions of what law is. In 1881, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes created the idea of legal positivism by announcing: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." For him, the law was nothing more than "a prediction of what judges in fact will do". He rejected the view of Harvard's dean at the time, Christopher Columbus Langdell, who said that "law is a science, and ... all the available materials of that science are contained in printed books".
Many insiders watched with interest as the contest played out during the course of the Court's term; both the computer's and the experts' predictions were posted publicly on a website before the decision was announced, so people could see the results as opinion after opinion was handed down.
The experts lost. For every argued case during the 2002 term, the model predicted 75 per cent of the court's affirm/reverse results correctly, while the legal experts collectively got only 59.1 per cent right. The computer was particularly effective at predicting the crucial swing votes of Justices O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. The model predicted O'Connor's vote correctly 70 per cent of the time while the experts' success rate was only 61 per cent.
The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.
How can it be that an incredibly stripped-down statistical model outpredicted legal experts with access to detailed information about the cases? Is this result just some statistical anomaly? Does it have to do with idiosyncrasies or the arrogance of the legal profession? The short answer is that Ruger's test is representative of a much wider phenomenon. Since the 1950s, social scientists have been comparing the predictive accuracies of number crunchers and traditional experts – and finding that statistical models consistently outpredict experts. But now that revelation has become a revolution in which companies, investors and policymakers use analysis of huge datasets to discover empirical correlations between seemingly unrelated things. Want to hedge a large purchase of euros? Turns out you should sell a carefully balanced portfolio of 26 other stocks and commodities that might include some shares in Wal-Mart.
In Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner showed dozens of examples of how statistical analysis of databases can reveal the secret levers of causation. Yet Freakonomics didn't talk much about the extent to which quick quantitative analysis of massive datasets – call it "super crunching" – is affecting real-world decisions. In fact, decision-makers in business and government are using statistical analysis to drive a wide variety of choices – and shunning the advice of traditional experts along the way.
Instead of simply throwing away the know-how of experts, wouldn't it be better to combine super crunching and experiential knowledge? Can't the two types of knowledge peacefully coexist? There is some evidence to support this possibility. Indeed, traditional experts are shown to make better decisions when they are provided with the results of statistical prediction.
But evidence is mounting in favour of a different and much more dehumanising mechanism for combining human and super-crunching expertise. Several studies have shown that the most accurate way to exploit traditional expertise is merely to add the expert evaluation as an additional factor in the statistical algorithm. Ruger's Supreme Court study, for example, suggested that a computer that had access to human predictions would rely on the experts to determine the votes of the more liberal members of the court (Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens, in this case) – because the unaided experts outperformed the super-crunching algorithm in predicting the votes of these justices.
Instead of having the statistics as a servant to expert choice, the expert becomes a servant of the statistical machine. Mark E. Nissen, professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, who has tested computer-versus-human procurement, sees a fundamental shift toward systems where the traditional expert is stripped of his or her power to make the final decision. "The newest space – and the one that's most exciting – is where machines are actually in charge," he says, "but they have enough awareness to seek out people to help them when they get stuck." It's best to have the man and machine in dialogue with each other, but, when the two disagree, it's usually better to give the ultimate decision to the statistical prediction.
The decline of expert discretion is particularly pronounced in the case of parole. In the past 25 years, 18 states have replaced their parole systems with sentencing guidelines. And those states that retain parole have shifted their systems to rely increasingly on super-crunching risk assessments of recidivism. Just as your credit score powerfully predicts the likelihood that you will repay a loan, parole boards now have externally validated predictions framed as numerical scores in formula. Still, even reduced discretion can give rise to serious risk when humans deviate from the statistically prescribed course of action.
Consider the case of Paul Herman Clouston. For more than 50 years, Clouston has been in and out of prison in several states for everything from car theft and burglary to escape. In 1972, he was convicted of murdering a police officer in California. In 1994, he was convicted in Virginia of aggravated sexual battery, abduction and sodomy, and of assaulting juveniles. He had been serving time in a Virginia penitentiary until April 15 2005, when he was released on mandatory parole six months before the end of his nominal sentence.
As soon as Clouston hit the streets, he fled. He failed to report for parole and failed to register as a violent sex offender. He is now one of the most-wanted men in Virginia. But why did this 72-year-old, who had served his time, flee? The answer is the Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVPA). In April 2003, Virginia became the 16th US state to enact such a statute, under which an offender, after serving his full sentence, can be found to be a "sexually violent predator" and subject to civil commitment in a state mental hospital until a judge is satisfied he no longer presents an undue risk to public safety. Clouston probably fled because he was worried that he would be deemed a sexual predator (defined in the statute as someone "who suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes the person likely to engage in the predatory acts of sexual violence").
Virginia made Clouston "most wanted" for the same reason – and because it was embarrassed that Clouston had been released. You see, Virginia's version of the SVPA contained a super-crunching innovation. The statute included a "tripwire" that automatically sets the commitment process in motion if a super-crunching algorithm predicts that the inmate has a high risk of sexual offence recidivism. Under the statute, commissioners of the Virginia Department of Corrections were directed to review for possible commitment all prisoners about to be released who "receive a score of four or more on the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offender Recidivism". The Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offender Recidivism (RRASOR, and pronounced "razor") is a points system based on a regression analysis of male offenders in Canada. A score of four or more on the RRASOR translates into a prediction that the inmate, if released, would in the next 10 years have a 55 per cent chance of committing another sex offence.
John Monahan, a leading expert in the use of risk-assessment instruments, notes: "Virginia's sexually violent predator statute is the first law ever to specify, in black letter, the use of a named actuarial prediction instrument and an exact cut-off score on that instrument." Clouston probably never should have been released: he had a RRASOR score of four. The state has refused to comment on whether they failed to assess Clouston's RRASOR score as directed by the statute or whether the committee reviewing his case chose to release him notwithstanding the statistical prediction of recidivism. Either way, the Clouston story seems to be one where human discretion led to the error of his release.
It was a mistake, that is, if we trust the RRASOR prediction. Before rushing to this conclusion, however, it's worth looking at what exactly qualified Clouston as a four on the RRASOR scale. The RRASOR system is based on just the four factors shown in the figure below. Clouston would receive one point for victimising a male, one for victimising a non-relative, and two more because he had three previous sex-offence charges. It's hard to feel any pity for Clouston, but this man could be funnelled towards lifetime commitment based in part upon crimes for which he had never been convicted.
What's more, the statutory trigger expressly discriminates based on the sex of his victims. These factors are not chosen to assess the relative blameworthiness of different inmates. They are solely about predicting the likelihood of recidivism. If it turned out that wholly innocent conduct (putting barbecue sauce on ice cream, for example) had a statistically valid, positive correlation with recidivism, the RRASOR system, at least in theory, would condition points on such behaviour.
Since the statute was passed, the attorney-general's office has sought commitments against only about 70 per cent of the inmates who scored a four or more on the risk assessment, and only about 70 per cent of the time have courts granted the state's petition to commit these inmates. The Virginia statute thus channels discretion, but it does not obliterate it. To cede complete decision-making power to lock up a human to a statistical algorithm is in many ways unthinkable.
The problem is that discretionary escape hatches have costs too. In 1961, the Mercury astronauts insisted on a literal escape hatch. They balked at the idea of being bolted inside a capsule that could only be opened from the outside. They demanded discretion. However, it was discretion that gave Liberty Bell 7 astronaut Gus Grissom the opportunity to panic upon splashdown. In Tom Wolfe's memorable account, The Right Stuff, Grissom "screwed the pooch" when he prematurely blew the 70 explosive bolts securing the hatch before the Navy SEALs were able to secure floats. The space capsule sank and Grissom nearly drowned.
In context after context, decision makers who wave off the statistical predictions tend to make poorer decisions.
Experts are overconfident in their ability to beat the system. We tend to think that the restraints are useful for the other guy but not for us. So we don't limit our overrides to the clear cases where the formula is wrong; we override where we think we know better. And that's when we get in trouble. Parole boards that make exceptions to the statistical algorithm and release inmates who are predicted to have a high probability of violence time and again find that the high probability parolees have higher recidivism rates than those predicted to have a low probability. Indeed, in Virginia only one man out of the dozens civilly committed under the SVPA has ever been subsequently released by a judge who found him – notwithstanding his RRASOR score – to no longer be a risk to society. Once freed, this man abducted and sodomised a child and now is serving a new prison sentence.
What does all this mean for human endeavour? If we care about getting the best decisions overall, there are many contexts where we need to relegate experts to supporting roles in the decision-making process. We, like the Mercury astronauts, probably can't tolerate a system that forgoes any possibility of human override, but at a minimum, we should keep track of how experts fare when they wave off the suggestions of the formulas. And we should try to limit our own discretion to places where we do better than machines.
This is in many ways a depressing story for the role of flesh-and-blood people in making decisions. It looks like a world where human discretion is sharply constrained, where humans and their decisions are controlled by the output of machines. What, if anything, in the process of prediction can we humans do better than the machines?
In a word, hypothesise. The most important thing left to humans is to use our minds and our intuition to guess at what variables should and should not be included in statistical analysis. A statistical regression can tell us the weights to place upon various factors (and simultaneously tell us how, precisely, it was able to estimate these weights). Humans, however, are crucially needed to generate the hypotheses about what causes what. The regressions can test whether there is a causal effect and estimate the size of the causal impact, but somebody (some body, some human) needs to specify the test itself.
So the machines still need us. Humans are crucial not only in deciding what to test, but also in collecting and, at times, creating the data. Radiologists provide important assessments of tissue anomalies that are then plugged into the statistical formulas. The same goes for parole officials who judge subjectively the rehabilitative success of particular inmates. In the new world of database decision-making, these assessments are merely inputs for a formula, and it is statistics – and not experts – that determine how much weight is placed on the assessments.
Still, universities are loath to accept that a computer could select better students. Book publishers would be loath to delegate the final say in acquiring manuscripts to an algorithm. But at some point, we should start admitting that the superiority of super crunching is not just about the other guy. It's not just about baseball scouts and parole officers and legal experts. Super crunching is affecting real-world decisions in many different contexts that touch us as consumers, as patients, as workers and as citizens.
Kenneth Hammond, the former director of Colorado's Center for Research on Judgment and Policy, reflects on the resistance of clinical psychologists to evidence that their predictions cannot match the accuracy of an algorithm's: "One might ask why clinical psychologists are offended by the discovery that their intuitive judgments and predictions are (almost) as good as, but (almost) never better than, a rule. We do not feel offended at learning that our excellent visual perception can often be improved in certain circumstances by the use of a tool (eg, rangefinders, telescopes, microscopes). The answer seems to be that tools are used by clerks (ie, someone without professional qualifications); if psychologists are no different, then that demeans the status of the psychologist." It may be demeaning but it's true: there has been a shift of discretion from clinicians to clerks, from traditional experts to a new breed of super crunchers, the people who control the equations.

This is an edited extract from 'Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted' by Ian Ayres, published this month by John Murray.

Crunch time: when the computer gets it wrong
Once upon a time – say, a whole three decades ago – academics who studied maths and science tended to be divorced from the financial world. Wall Street and the City of London were wary of excessive academic zeal, or an overly numerical approach to allocating cash, writes Gillian Tett, Financial Times Capital Markets editor.
No longer. If there is one essential factor that has marked the rise of 21st-century finance, it is the relentless ascent of the so-called "quant" – a financier who can employ quantitative (or highly numerical) skills to develop computer-based strategies, often using techniques transplanted from academic research in science or maths.
This quant trend first got underway three decades ago, with the mass production of computers, and just as some economists were starting to apply their rigorous numerical approaches to finance for the first time - and moving over to Wall Street. In the 1980s and 1990s, the use of quantitative approaches in finance became more widespread, helping to create complex products such as derivatives. Indeed, this field could not exist without "quants", since it is impossible to trade or value these products without numerical skills.
But this decade, the role of the "quant" has been turbo-charged. These days, "quants" do not simply create models to value markets: they also invent computer programs that can search the markets for trading opportunities – and then execute these trades too. When times are good in the financial markets – as they have been for much of this decade – these techniques have often been extremely lucrative, enabling the "quants" to make vast fortunes for themselves and their banks. But this summer the markets turned sour, and some of the quants' models went haywire, creating equally vast losses. Indeed, some observers blame much of the recent market storm on quant problems. And while this finger-pointing might be unfair, one thing is clear: these days the geeks are truly inheriting the earth – or at least, grabbing the limelight in 21st-century finance.

Grape expectations: the price of wine
Orley Ashenfelter is an economist at Princeton university, a former editor of the prestigious American Economic Review and a wine enthusiast. About 30 years ago, that led to some trouble. He decided that instead of using the "swishing and spitting" approach of wine gurus such as Robert Parker to predict auction prices, he would use statistics. Bordeaux are best when the grapes are ripe and their juice is concentrated. In years when the summer is hot, grapes get ripe. And, in years of below-average rainfall, the fruit gets concentrated. So it's in the hot and dry years that you tend to get the legendary vintages, says Ian Ayres.
Ashenfelter put these facts into a formula: Wine quality = 12.145 + 0.00117 winter rainfall + 0.0614 average growing season temperature - 0.00386 harvest rainfall.
By plugging the weather statistics for any year into this equation, he was able to predict the general quality of any vintage.
Ashenfelter started publishing his predictions in a newsletter called Liquid Assets. But his ideas reached a much larger audience in 1990, when The New York Times published a front-page article about his prediction machine. Where Parker had rated the 1986 Bordeaux as "very good and sometimes exceptional", Ashenfelter disagreed. Moreover, he predicted the 1989 Bordeaux, barely three months in the cask and yet to be tasted by critics, would be "the wine of the century". And, he said, 1990 was going to be even better.
Traditional wine critics were not pleased. Britain's Wine magazine said "the formula's self-evident silliness invite[s] disrespect". When Ashenfelter gave a wine presentation at Christie's wine department, dealers in the back hissed.
And Parker said Ashenfelter was "rather like a movie critic who never goes to see the movie but tells you how good it is based on the actors and the director".
He had a point. Just as it's more accurate to see the movie, shouldn't it be more accurate to actually taste the wine? But because Bordeaux spend 18-24 months in oak casks before they are set aside for ageing in bottles, experts have to wait four months just to have a first taste, after the wine is placed in barrels. And even then it's a rather foul, fermenting mixture. It's far from clear that tasting this undrinkable early wine offers accurate information about the wine's future quality.
What was clear was this: Ashenfelter's predictions were astonishingly accurate. The 1989s turned out to be a truly excellent vintage and the 1990s were even better. And while few wine experts have publicly acknowledged the power of Ashenfelter's predictions, their own forecasts now correspond much more closely to his simple equation results. Take that, Robert Parker.

Summer Workin'

2007-07-24T08:08:00.000-04:00

(Click on it to enlarge. And thanks to PhD Comics, for keeping me sane. )

Summarizing the Impossible: Our Wild West Road Trip

2007-07-09T04:24:00.000-04:00

Death Valley National Park, California (Jac is standing in the Devil's Golf Course)

I've been receiving a few thinly veiled threats from certain corners about the absence of updates on this blog, in particular with regards to our big US Wild West Road Trip.

Yes, yes, guilty as charged. But a few mitigating circumstances should be taken into consideration before you summarily write me off - like bad to non-existent Internet connections, and - above all - the fact that it was such an overwhelming experience, and of such gigantic proportions, that one feels a bit intimidated to summarize it in a few paragraphs.

Consider the following statistics:

Total number of days on tour: 40
Total kilometres travelled: 11 004.6 km (6 838 miles)
Total number of 100 gram packs of Beef Jerky consumed by Andria: 16
Total number of National Parks visited: 12
Total number of times we’ve visited an REI: 6
Total number of states visited: 9 (Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington)
Total number of Starbucks espresso-based beverages consumed between the two of us: 38
Weather-related statistics:
Coldest temperature measured: minus 3 degrees Celsius
Warmest temperature measured: 45 degrees Celsius
Snow storms: 1
Dust storms: 1
Thunder storms: 1
Days of heavy fog and/or soft, continuous rain: 3
Total number of wineries we’ve visited: 10 (5 in Napa, 5 in Willamette)
Total number of 750 ml bottles of Port consumed by the two of us: 5
Total number of 750 ml bottles of Bubbly consumed by the two of us: (a modest) 2
Total period of geological history we’ve witnessed: 1.6 billion years (with the oldest rock formations at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and the youngest rock formations the volcanic rock on the Northwest Pacific Coast)
Total number of visits we’ve payed to a Laundromat: 4
Total number of times we set up camp (and broke it up again): 10
Total number of serious fights we’ve had: 1 (about an undisclosed topic)
Total number of traffic warnings: 1
Total number of ‘Mountain House Freeze-Dried Peas’ consumed by the two of us: 11
Total number of CDs we’ve listened to (all home-made playlists, with average 20 tracks on a CD): 67

Sequoia National Park, California
(Andria is standing next to a Sequoiadendrum Giganteum, aka - the Giant Sequoia)

We've also taken thousands of photos. Don't worry, we don't expect you to look through all of them, but if you want to get a taste of our adventures, go to our new service provider, Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8734011@N03/ (Note: there is an album for each National Park / area we've visited to your right as you open the website).

Yosemite National Park, California (El Capitan, Half Dome & Bridal Veil Fall)

It was a life-altering experience in so many respects. We've learnt a great deal about the geology, ecology and history of a vast area of the US; we've experienced the marked differences between different states and its people; we've figured out a way to reconcile Jac's adventurous/close-to-nature streak with my...well, preference for indoor plumbing and comfortable sleeping arrangements (no small feat, let me tell you); and - above all - we've become avid environmental activists.

You don't have a choice, really, driving through the country and seeing how incredibly ugly the landscapes are that surround the Parks - how full of car wrecks (some people seem to farm with car wrecks), how full of quasi-farm plundering, how over-exploited the natural resources...One's only conclusion is that human beings are, by nature, destructive. Of course, it was much worse in the past. As one Yosemite brochure commented: the ‘Wild West’ was something to be ‘conquered’, and natural resources were considered to be ‘infinite’. Even in protected areas, like Yosemite, they used the precious meadows for live stock grazing – almost destroying it completely in the process – and essentially settled this fragile valley with hotels, casinos, resorts and the like. Since the late 1800s, landholders in Yosemite suppressed the natural fires to protect their property, and also prohibited the Indians (who’ve inhabited the area for thousands of years) to set controlled fires (the Indians, of course, have long figured out what crucial role fire plays in the ecology; something white settlers have only realized as recent as the late 1980s). If it were not for passionate preservationists such as John Muir, the whole place would have ended up being Junkville/Sprallville/Smellville.

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (Grand Teton Range)

Now, it has to be said that the National Park Service has pulled their act together a lot over the past few years. The Yosemite meadows are now protected and camped off; in the meadows, they’ve filled the drainage ditches, ripped up the asphalt paths and replaced it with a few boardwalks (so that the water can still pass through); they’re introducing shuttles in most Parks to reduce the number of [massive] cars and RVs on the roads. They’ve even re-introduced a few of the species to the area that were once extinct (like Bighorn Sheep and Californian Condors). But, and here’s the rub, the National Park Service is clearly not lavishly funded (there’s a War Against Terror to run, remember!) so they don’t have nearly enough people to enforce their regulations. They also don’t have the mandate to control the numbers that come in. (In reality, they need to enforce a strict quota system in places like Yosemite and Zion).

And here’s the biggest problem of them all: people are either absolute idiots who cannot read, and / or they are bloody ignorant fools who cannot care less. No matter how many signs / pamphlets / brochures / postures (and, believe me, there are HUNDREDS of these) say things like: Stay On The Trails; Give Plants a Chance; Don’t Gather Firewood, Including Pine Cones and Dead Branches; Don’t Litter, Leave Only Your Footsteps; Only Throw Your Waste Water in the Drain Provided for It; Don’t Feed The Animals – you always have the Mindless Fools who will walk wherever they want; gather and burn as much fire wood as it pleases them; throw their cigarette butts and other junk down whenever they’re done with it; throw their waste water out without thinking of the groundwater pollution; and, wait for the drum roll: they keep on feeding the animals, because oh! they are so cute and fluffy! no matter that it is endlessly explained that A Fed Animal is a Dead Animal because they cannot digest our food so they DIE (especially the cute, furry ones); and / or they become completely dependent on human food so they become complete nuisances and have to be put down.

Sigh.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah (Inspiration Point)

We have to think again what we're doing. And I'm not just talking about global warming - that's just the tip of the iceberg (pun absolutely intended). In the words of Wendell Barry: "We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . . We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it." Barry's final conclusion is also mine: “To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.”

Arches National Park, Utah (Windows Area)

I cannot end this summary without making special mention (in no particular order):

Wal-Mart (yes, yes, this makes us official cheapskates)
Jack Link’s Beef Jerky (since I had to do without biltong)
Wikipedia (I hereby promise to make regular financial contributions as soon as I have a regular source of income again!)
Burger King (because their Whoppers do not taste like pressed wood)
REI (what would we have done without Recreational Equipment Inc. ? I had to drag Jac out of the place, kicking and screaming…)
Starbucks, including their Drive Thru facility (‘n Grande Cappuccino for me, with cinnamon; and a Grande Wet Cappuccino for Jac, please)
Purell Hand Sanitizer (the primary reason we didn't encounter serious jippo guts)

Next time, we want to be sponsored!

Redwood National Park, California

Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks (Wyoming)

2007-05-12T23:15:00.000-04:00

The first week of our Wild West Road Trip TM went by so fast like a Rancher overtaking your Dude Rental Car with his well-weathered pickup. On the other hand, it simultaneously feels like months ago since we've left Philadelphia. My English Second Language vocabulary doesn't allow me to satisfactorily describe the experiences we've had in Grand Teton and Yellowstone - our first stop - so I will have to refer you to the photos we've taken. And even then I wouldn't blame you if you secretly suspected we've 'Photoshopped' them!

(I'm sporadically dumping most of our photos on Shutterfly - mainly as a risk mitigating action, but feel free to have a look: http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/).

Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone (Wyoming)

The early Caucasian explorers of the region had the same problem as I have: a sceptical public back East (and South, in my case) that simply couldn't believe the tales of 'fire and brimstone'; accusing the adventurers of being 'spinners of yarn'. Now, I have been known to exaggerate a teensy bit every now and then (I inherited this from my Mom - Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to Die Ma end Die SkoonMa), but seriously folks: I am agog with what I see. My 'sensory pixels' are already filled to capacity and we haven't even reached Southern Utah yet. (We are heading for the famed Moab region next - Arches and Canyonlands - followed by the Grand Canyon by route of Monument valley.)

The visionaries who made it pretty much their life goals to get these most extraordinary places protected as national parks (and you wouldn't believe what a tough time they've had; e.g. John D. Rockefeller, Jr practically had to beg - and finally threaten - successive administrations to take (read: for free/mahala/verniet) the land that he'd bought with the purpose of establishing Grand Teton National Park) made this one important argument: what this country lacked in terms of history - as reflected in ancient ruins, medieval towns, majestic cathedrals, etc. - was more than compensated for by the absolutely awe-inspiring natural beauty of the West.

I have to say, after spending just one week in two of its National Parks, I couldn't agree more.

And goodbye, Wharton

2007-05-01T09:47:00.000-04:00

I can still remember the conditions under which Jac submitted his MBA application: we were on holiday in Cape Town and between drawn-out, exquisite meals and elaborate wine tastings, we had truncated discussions about his application essays (“describe a major success / failure you’ve had; explain to us why you are more of a genius than the other gazillion geniuses that are applying too; elaborate why you are way more philanthropic than Mother Theresa was; briefly outline through how many hoops you are willing to jump in order to get into this school, and why”). Needless to say, between all the food, wine and (es-)Cape Town’s laid-back ambiance (including the fact that he had to upload his application through a dialup connection that took hours…), I thought he was way too casual about the whole thing. He’ll admit that he could have spent a bit more time on it, but, as it turned out – he was right: (1) he got admitted to his school of choice; (2) his application process was actually a pretty good simulation of the conditions under which he would complete his MBA, that is: ample good wine, good food at Philly’s BYOBs* and cooked-up in our miserable little kitchen, great friends, enough time to relax and exercise – with time to spare for his brilliance to come through when it mattered!

*Bring Your Own Bottle - at no corkage fee; and the single reason we could afford to eat out at all. Philly's BYOBs: we salute you!

(Left to right: Healy & Jac - Wine Club Co-Conspirators)

As you know, I only joined Jac at the last quarter of his first year. My primary objective was to get my PhD off the ground (which I’ve managed to do satisfactorily, I might add), but I also set out to find one thing that would be my Wharton experience. Which is how I ended up being a member of The Whartones (aka, Wharton’s only a cappella group). I’ve been singing all my life – mostly in choirs and small ensembles – but it was one of the many things that sadly dropped out of my life since I’ve started working after University. And the problem with singing is this: yes, you don’t completely ‘lose it’ (it's like riding a bicycle, which I've also empirically proven when we've moved to Holland 5 years ago), but if you don’t exercise regularly, your voice starts to sound so crap to your own ears you are discouraged to sing altogether. So it was sheer joy to be able to pick it up again, get my ears tuned-in, experience the challenges of a cappella singing, perform in front of (highly appreciative, if slightly drunk) audiences – and even doing a recording. Not to mention the new friends I’ve made.

(Clock-wise from the top: Rachel, Andria, Victoria, Janet & Tammy - Whartones' Girls)

(To get a taste for some of our experiences, have a look at some of our photos on Shutterfly)

I’ll admit to you here and now – I was very sceptical about the business case of the whole MBA thing: two years’ of forfeited income and advancement at work; the enormous expenditure of the undertaking (although, hats off to BHBP…); the schlep of keeping two households operational; filling taxes in two countries; the complicated move here and back – I could continue, but even if I’d list another 10 major costs, the benefits will always outweigh it. Because, how can you even come up with an adequate valuation of things like personal development, new friendships, time to dedicate to your marriage and your health, seeing new places and experiencing new things? Not even to mention what good it does for your perspective: yes, we can get by comfortably on a small budget; yes, we can still cook great food with the minimum; yes (although this one was a lot tougher), we can drink chea(per) wine if we have to; no, we don’t need a lot of stuff; yes, Andria, it is humanly possible to get fit (but it will take you a year); yes, Jac, when ankles break, they do take at least 3-5 months to heal.

All in all, to quote that old MasterCard ad: priceless (although not in the exact way they mean it!).

I’ll conclude with somebody else’s words:

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."
- François-René de Chateaubriand -

Do South Africans really exist?

2007-04-29T22:46:00.000-04:00

South Africa has just celebrated the 13th anniversary of our famous turn to democracy and the rule of law. However, the quest for a unifying national identity still remains pretty elusive (an example of the kinds of issues we are dealing with is reflected in my recent blog entry on Afrikaner identity). The Mail & Guardian published a series of interviews with young professionals on the topic of national identity. Very insightful, if you're interested in this kind of stuff.

Do South Africans really exist?
Mail & Guardian
26 April 2007 11:59

The Mail & Guardian asked young professionals to describe their national identities and Ivor Chipkin, author of Do South Africans Exist?, to evaluate the responses.

Zweli Twalo
“To be very simplistic I am a South African because black people like me survived police brutality and I am South African because I am a child of Mandela,” laughs writer and artist Zweli Twalo, a self-professed Rastafarian and co-founder of Sounds of Edutainment. Twalo unpacks his complex identity by describing himself as a human first with “every other label trailing behind”. Although he is proud to be South African he sees himself as part and parcel of Africa and is adamant that South Africans are not yet unified because of the economic inequalities and a lack of cultural and religious acceptance. As a young Rastafarian from the Eastern Cape he does not believe his religious and philosophical roots are recognised in the country’s new dispensation. “In terms of politics we all appear unified but on closer inspection you will see that we are not mobilising for the same goal.”

Rukeya Slamang
“Although I am Muslim and colored, I’m not the kind of girl who speaks softly, cast my eyes down and wears a doek. I’m a South African. And I’m uniquely different, because I’m not one thing only and I refuse to be stereotyped,” says 25-year-old Rukeya Slamang, who is a champion in Muaythai -- a type of Thai boxing. Slamang who works for a recruitment agency in town, says Cape Town is not conducive to being a South African. “Cape Town is incredibly groupie and people stick to their groups -- coloureds mix with other coloureds and blacks with blacks and whites with whites. That’s how this town still operates. Most people still see themselves either as blacks or Muslims or coloureds or whites -- most people describe themselves in terms of their religion and their ethnicity,” she says. “If you tell people you’re Muslim, they expect a soft-spoken girl with a doek on her head, while I’m loud and outspoken and make a lot of noise.” Slamang says her parents had wanted her to be different, but over the years have come to accept the way she is. “My parents are religious people. They only look at themselves through the eyes of their religion. They see themselves as Muslim first and finally. That’s not who I am. I’m a South African and a Muslim and coloured. But I am mainly Rukeya. That’s my citizenship.”

Hendrikus Vorster
Hendrikus Vorster (27) sits surrounded by the knick-knacks of Tant Malie se Winkel, an antique shop and restaurant he manages, just beyond the Hartbeespoort dam wall. An old stove against one wall, shelves lined with tin cups and old photos of the area serve as a backdrop to Vorster, as he talks quietly and deliberately about what he thinks it means to be a South African. “I lived in London for two and a half years and the way I knew what a South African was, it didn’t matter whether they were black, English whatever; they all say lekker, they know what a braai is,” he says Vorster says that being in another country made him more positive about South Africa. “When foreigners ask you about your county and you tell them how you experience it, they all go ‘Wow, that is so great’.” He says the process of describing his home got him thinking about what South Africa has to offer: “Over there you really start missing what you have here, the sunshine, all that stuff,” he continues. Vorster describes himself as Afrikaans first, “being an ordinary guy” second and a South African third. He is getting ready to start his own carpentry and specialised furniture business next month and says South Africa is a country he wants to start a family and raise children in.

(To read the rest of the article, click here)

And, further to this, also see article by Anne-Marie Mischke - in Afrikaans.

Op soek na die ware Suid-Afrikaner

“Hulle glimlag, hulle loop trots regop. Hulle het ontdek dat hulle almal Suid-Afrikaners is. . . Hulle het saam tougestaan by die stembusse – wit, swart, gekleurd en Indiër – en hulle het ontdek hulle is landgenote.”
Só jubel emeritus-aartsbiskop Desmond Tutu ná stemdag op 27 April 1994. ’n Geruime tyd daar-na was “nasiebou” hoog op die agenda.
Maar nou, dertien jaar later, sit ’n stuk of vyftig mense onlangs een Saterdagmiddag op Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg mekaar en vra: wat is ’n Suid-Afrikaner? Ís daar iets soos ’n Suid-Afrikaner? Het ons ’n Suid-Afrikaanse identiteit?
Dis na aanleiding van Ivor Chipkin se nuwe boek, Do South Africans Exist?

(om verder te lees, kliek hier)

So Long, Philadelphia

2007-04-26T16:10:00.000-04:00

Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia

(Click to enlarge)

Funny, how the place grows on you. Our last few days in Philly has crept up on us and we find ourselves more than just a little bit sad that we're leaving.

Apology (Not) Accepted

2007-04-12T12:36:00.000-04:00

Over the past two years I've frequently observed, mostly in sheer wonderment, the very strange American phenomenon of the Profuse and Repeated Public Apology by the (Quasi- / Pseudo-) Celebrity. It works more or less like this:

(Quasi- / Pseudo-) Celebrity says / does something in public that is deemed offensive.
There is a public outcry of indignation.
Said (Quasi- / Pseudo-) Celebrity -
(A): tries to justify / play play down said verbal indiscretion; or, goes straight to
(B): the Profuse Public Apology TM -
which has to be made in public ...
involves grovelling ...
has to be repeated on as many Radio and TV talk shows, magazines, newspapers, and newscasts as humanly possible ...
will be summarized, analyzed and dissected for weeks by said Radio and TV talk shows, magazines, newspapers, and newscasts ...
will at first be rejected by said offended group as being 'not sincere / dramatic / humiliating / enough' ...
will be repeated even more profusely by said Offender ...
which, in turn, will be summarized, analyzed and dissected for weeks by said Radio and TV talk shows, magazines, newspapers, and newscasts ...
which, finally, will be accepted by said Offended group - graciously, but still with enough indignity so as to underline the everlasting suffering and emotional damage said verbal indiscretion has caused.
Longer term repercussions might include:
said Offender to get fired / suffer at the box office...
book deals for said Offender and / or Offendee ...
highly publicized rehab stints ...
tear-filled interviews with Larry King and / or Oprah and / or Doctor Phil.
The next verbal indiscretion appears on the horizon.
Repeat said process.

The nature of the indiscretion isn't really important in order for the Profuse Public Apology TM process to be triggered. A sample of some of the past year's incidents includes the usual suspects -- racial slurs, ethnic affronts, sexist and/or racial comments, homophobic taunts -- but also the more unusual examples such as posing-for-a-photo-with-a-student-dressed-as-a-suicide-bomber (read: Halloween costume); criticizing the use of anti-depressants for post-natal depression; boozing-while-wearing-the-crown and organizing a tax-free raise for your girlfriend. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I'm seriously entertaining the idea that 'The Media' is behind it all. Consider the following scenario: a secret society, consisting of representatives of all major news and entertainment companies, gets together every, say, two months. They identify the appropriate (Quasi- / Pseudo-) Celebrity and target him / her with a proposal that he / she cannot refuse: commit [specified] indiscretion for [undisclosed] amount, with guaranteed [unlimited] publicity to sweeten the deal. Not so far-fetched, no?

So, you might ask, what is my problem with all this? It makes for bad TV (which, per definition, is good TV), it keeps the masses occupied (including me, in the gym, engaged in a cardiovascular workout), it keeps a few activists / NGOs in business. A win-win situation, right?

In fact, as you might have guessed, I have a few problems with said Profuse Public Apology TM. Firstly, isn't it ironic that a country that prides itself in its history of freedom of speech has gotten so entangled in political correctness that no one is allowed to make a public spectacle of him/herself anymore? Furthermore, there is very often more than just a slight stench of hypocrisy involved ...

My biggest issue, however, is this: do I think that the people who were offended in the examples I've mentioned above had reason to be offended? In most cases, yes. Do I think the poor fool who committed the indiscretion was 'wrong', normatively speaking? In most of the examples, yes (my exceptions, and I'm more than willing to debate this, would include Amy Gutmann's Halloween photo, Larry Summers's comment about science and women, and Tom Cruise's anti-depressant rant). Do I think the Profuse Public Apology TM served any real purpose (besides the ones I've listed above)? Not on your life. So, whatever happened to sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me, or it takes one to know one, or let it slide off you like water from a duck's back, or even right back at ya, you pathetic loser and so is your mother or if you say that again I will kick you where the sun never shines?

I am perfectly aware of how and why we came to be this situation. All the -isms and -phobias have always been with us and, dare I say it, will always be. Being so incredibly thin-skinned, however, is not going to rid the world of all the idiots who think they are somehow better that another race / sex / social class / take-your-pick. The only thing that phenomena such the Profuse Public Apology TM accomplish, is to create a nice, phony, politically correct world in which everybody can - and does - think exactly what they want as long as they don't say it.

So, the next time a guy makes a sexist joke / comment in my presense, I will (a) laugh at the joke; or (b) kick him in the crown jewels - whatever is more appropriate - but, I swear, I will not demand an apology.

Going West

2007-03-24T15:21:00.000-04:00

"So, what do you think of America?"

I've grown weary to explain that, by no stretch of the imagination, have I seen (not even to mention experienced) America. I can comment about Philadelphia and surroundings (not much of a story, actually), I can elaborate about New York, I can get quite enthusiastic about Washington DC and Chicago, I can write essays about the shantytowns (if this were South Africa, it would have been called 'townships'...) that you can see from the train between New York and DC (Trenton, South Philly, Baltimore...and they call this a First World Country?), but that is about it. American friends are quick to point out that many (most?) Americans don't see much of this huge country either, and that this fact does not disqualify them from being American. Which is all true, but it still doesn't mean an outsider has free licence to comment about things unseen and not experienced.

So, what to see? Given that we can impossibly experience everything in 5 weeks' time, it was quite an easy decision. We've both been dreaming of seeing the National Parks out West ever since we were old enough to read/watch National Geographic. Obviously, being at the very end of our student budget cycle, it helps that we can do it on the cheap by camping in true Dutch style (i.e. with a car and a tent), with the occasional H/Motel stop to freshen up. Without further ado, let me reveal the itinerary of our upcoming Wild West Adventure:

6 May 2007: Fly from Newark (New Jersey), via Chicago, to Salt Lake City (Utah)
We toyed with the idea of driving West, cross-country - or at least from Chicago; but in the end decided that we would rather spend those extra days in the bigger national parks. A part of me is slightly disappointed that I will not experience the vast expanses where the Nothingness grows 6 feet high, and where the endless billboards are the only signs of life for miles on end (or, so it has been described by the American friends who advised us to skip a cross-country journey). Then again, I've driven through middle-South Africa a few times en route from Johannesburg to Cape Town (and that is just like crossing Texas) and that was bad enough. It will be pretty ironic, though, if we get stranded on the airport and it takes us just as long to fly than it would have if we drove. And given our experience with American aviation over the past two years, that it not such a far-fetched notion.

7 - 11 May: Yellowstone & Grand Teton (Wyoming, Montana, Idaho)
Our first stop, appropriately, is at the grand daddy of all National Parks in the world, namely: Yellowstone (more) and Grand Teton (more) - next door.

12 May: Salt Lake City (Utah)
After this excursion, we will do a bit of site seeing in Salt Lake City (more), but we will be primarily restocking and refuelling for the next canyon/arch-filled leg of our trip.

13 - 15 May: Arches & Canyonlands (Utah)
We cannot visit all the National Parks, but we are going to do our damnest to visit most of the Parks in Utah, starting off with Arches (more), and then Canyonlands (more). We will make a slight detour on our way to the Grand Canyon to make sure we drive through Monument Valley - the scene of so many famous / infamous movies, it would be a sacrilege to miss it.

16 - 17 May: Grand Canyon (Arizona)
No one in his/her right mind will miss the Grand Canyon (more) on a trip like this. Being on a student budget, I doubt whether we will fork out the $75 (per person) to walk on the new (controversial, for some) skywalk that recently opened, but if we do, you will be the first to know. 18 - 19 May: Bryce Canyon (Utah)
We will then head back to Utah to visit Bryce Canyon (more) and ...

20 - 22 May: Zion National Park (Utah)
...our Mormon friends (and for some reason we have made lots of them over the past few years) will not speak to us again if we don't conclude our visit to Utah by stopping over in Zion (more).

23 - 24 May: Las Vegas (Nevada)
One can think of many reasons to visit Vegas : One, we could seriously boost the old student budget (but then again, it is most likely to go the other way around). Two, how can you opt out of the experience to see the tackiest collection of landmarks in the world (think 'pyramid' and 'Eiffel Tower' in the middle of the desert)? Three, and this was something suggested by our friend Walle, you could get married in one of its many sordid little Wedding Chapels by an Elvis Presley impersonator. Four, being a fan of CSI (the original only, thanks very much), I have to go and experience the oh-so familiar skyline and scenery myself (with the strong possibility, I know, that I will discover that most of the skyline/scenery is manufactured in a Hollywood basement, but I like to live dangerously).

Oh, and in honour of my high school history teacher (she was a New Deal romantic), I will drop by the Hoover Dam, while we're in the vicinity.

25 - 27 May: Sequoia and Kings Canyon (California)
Next, we're heading for California, and specifically Sequoia and Kings Canyon (more).

28 May - 1 June: Yosemite (California)
We count ourselves lucky that we've managed to get a reservation at Yosemite (more) - no small feat, let me assure you. Since this is a trip focused on the National Parks of the West, Jac and I have to go and pay homage to the place that inspired some of Ansel Adams's most beautiful work.

2 - 3 June: San Fransisco & Napa Valley (California)
Being the wine nerds we are, you might have expected us to make an extensive stop over in San Fransisco (more) and the nearby Napa Valley (more) . Truth be told, we decided we would rather come back when we are not on a student budget. So, this is just a wine scouting trip. And now that we will have a few dear friends who will be living here (hint! hint!), we have an additional excuse to come back.

4 - 5 June: Redwood (California)
We will visit our last National Park, Redwood (more) on our way North to Oregon.

6 - 7 June: Willamette (Oregon)
Another segment of our wine scouting trip includes our visit to the Willamette valley (more), where some of our most favourite wines are being made.

8 - 9 June: Seattle (Washington)
We end this Odyssey in Seattle (more), because, I guess, you have to end somewhere. And yes, it would have been really easy to go over the border for a visit to Vancouver, but, as I've said, you have to END at some stage. There is also the trifling matter that, as South African passport holders, we would have to get Canadian Visas to enter and - given that we're drowning in admin already - I balked at that idea.

Total estimated distance: 9258 kilometres (5680 miles). Barely a walk in the Park, eh?

All Roads Lead to Oegstgeest

2007-03-19T20:06:00.000-04:00

Oegstgeest (Haaswijk)

(click to enlarge)

The removal company has sent its final quote for the move, we have given notice on our apartment here in Philly, other job offers have been kindly declined, CV's have been updated - it's official: we are moving back to the Netherlands (full-time, that is, since were were still, actually, living there. Don't try living in two places at once, kids) as of July/August 2007. Or, to be more specific, Oegstgeest is going to be full-time 'home' for me, and 'home-base' for Jac, as his new job at BHPBilliton will require extensive travel to weird and wonderful places.

This is the best possible outcome for both of us. For me, it means I can be close to my enigmatic supervisors at Erasmus and finish my PhD over the next two years. The kind of job that Jac will be doing over the next couple of years at BHPB will require regular cross-continental travel, so he might just as well be based near good European airport hubs. And, for both of us, it will be absolutely bliss to live in our house in Oegstgeest again - not to mention how much of Europe we still want to explore: The Nordics (including Iceland)! The British Isles! Greece! Also not forgetting to re-(re-) visit other favourite places: Piedmont! Switzerland! Tuscany! The Douro Valley! Burgos and Andalusia! How, you might well ask, do we intend to get any work done? Hmmm. (Quasi-) Europeans would know the answer to that one.

In the mean time, the Admin is trying to suffocate us like a three-headed hydra; but we will persevere like Asterix in 'The Twelve Tasks of Asterix' (see task no. 8 for reference). Jac still has one round of exams left in April, and I have to hand in a chapter or two (or three...) before our container gets shipped on the 30th of April. No pressure.

On the 3rd of May, Jac and I will leave for Salt Lake City to start our 5 week long epic Wild West Adventure (I'll tell you more about that soon). Afterwards, Jac still has plans to go on a 3-week mountaineering course in Washington State from 11 June, despite his recent broken ankle (on which he is still not allowed to place weight for another two weeks), so the jury is still out on that one (but don't tell him I said that). Jac will start his new job somewhere around mid July. His 'long vacation', as somebody at BHPB recently called his MBA stint, finally, sadly, but also gladly, over.

In the mean time, I will leave from Seattle, via Chicago, via Amsterdam to Johannesburg, to Durban, to Uvongo, and back to Johannesburg/Pretoria - via Durban - to spend a solid 6 weeks with family and friends. I will pack my (by then very well-worn clothes) one last time, and will be back in the Netherlands early August.

Around the world in 80 days, or something like that.

Silence = Approval

2007-03-14T10:24:00.000-04:00

This is so ironic, given South Africa's own history, I don't even want to talk about it.

Shocking news about Captain America...

2007-03-12T17:06:00.000-04:00

Shocking event for Captain America

From Larry Holmes, Jonathan O'Beirne and Glenn Perreira CNN

He fought and triumphed over Hitler, Tojo, international Communism and a host of supervillains, but he could not dodge a sniper's bullet.
Comic book hero Captain America is dead.
After close to 60 years in print, Marvel Comics has killed off Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, one of its most famous and beloved superheroes amid an already controversial story line, "Civil War," which is pitting the heroes of Marvel's universe against one another.
In the comic series, Rogers was to stand trial for defying a superhero registration law passed after a hero's tragic mistake causes a 9/11-like event.
Steve Rogers eventually surrenders to police. He is later mortally wounded as he climbs the courthouse steps.

Marvel says the comic story line was intentionally written as an allegory to current real-life issues like the Patriot Act, the War on Terror and the September 11 attacks.

(To continue reading, click here)

Yep, shocking indeed. And from more than just a comic lover's perspective....

Another reason not to take fluids on board...

2007-03-02T14:00:00.000-05:00

Who am I? (how do I know? and why does it matter?)

2007-02-27T08:06:00.000-05:00

Posted by: Andria

Amidst other news and non-news of Iraq, Anna Nicole, Iran, and Britney's shaved head, a debate has been escalating in the most southern tip of Africa. First among people who, collectively or individually, call themselves 'Afrikaners / Afrikaanses / Afrikane / Afrikaans-speaking South Africans / Boere / Born-Again Boere / Whatever (herein, obviously, lies a lot of the rub); but increasingly amongst South Africans of other ethnic, cultural, religious and language origins (for the lack of a better and single term).

Some dude wrote a song about a dead Boer general that fought in the Anglo-Boer War (i.e. general Koos 'de la Rey'), which triggered (or, re-triggered I should say) a nation-wide pow-wow about Afrikaner / Boer / Whatever identity: who are we; how do we define it; who belongs to it (and who doesn't or shouldn't); what does it entail (and what not); how do we fit into the 'new' South Africa (or not, and why - take your pick); does defining and associating with an ethnic-cultural identity necessarily mean you are a racist (or racially / ethnically / culturally superior - again, take your pick); how Afrikaners / Boere / Whatever need a strong leader; does wanting a strong Afrikaner / Boer / Whatever leader mean you are a racist because you imply black South Africans are not fit to rule ('this country is going to the dogs, Dog'); does the song entice Afrikaners / Boer / Whatever to commit treason; and (dare I use the language of a dead civilization who once thought themselves to be superior) et cetera, et cetera ???

I've followed this 'multi-faceted' debate (which have been raging mostly in the Afrikaans press and blogosphere) primarily because I'm interested in these kinds of controversies, that is: debates that are provocative, controversial, soul-searching, and - especially - honest (what a novel concept). However, I have also been following the debate from a distance - literally, but also figuratively speaking - for the following reasons. Firstly, I'm not there and I have not been living there for more than five years. I read the South African press daily to try and keep my finger on the pulse, but once you have lived in a foreign country, you become acutely aware of the shortcomings of this medium. For example, it is always fun to compare news articles of something that occurred in Holland with how it is portrayed by the Dutch press versus, say, the British press (the British version invariably paints the picture as 'unruly' and 'out of control'). Secondly, Everybody and his Dog have been commenting about this for weeks - to the point where it has indeed become trite. My motto has always been: if I cannot add something new to the throng of voices, I'd rather shut up. So I have. But I have been brewing about it. Thirdly, this is an issue that is specific to South Africa and I don't want to bore my non-South African friends with it.

However, on seeing that the debate has reached the front page of today's New York Times (see below), I have realized that I have changed my opinion: I have something new to say about it; not living in South Africa has, I believe, contributed to my ability of formulating this opinion; and it is not only relevant for South Africans.

Song Wakens Injured Pride of Afrikaners
JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 26 — “Proudly South African” is this nation’s E Pluribus Unum, a slogan stamped on products, echoed in radio commercials and inculcated into the new South African DNA. Much as America’s motto celebrates melding many into one, South Africa’s says that it doesn’t matter what you look like — we can all be proud of our young country.
Enter Louis Pepler [aka 'Bok van Blerk'], who, perhaps inadvertently, has cast the notion of South African pride in a whole new light. He and two friends penned an unlikely rock ballad about an Afrikaner general named De la Rey who battled British forces a century ago, and it instantly became an Afrikaner anthem.
Mr. Pepler calls the song, “De la Rey,” a testament to Afrikaner pride. “I’m part of this rainbow country of ours,” he said. “But I’m one of the colors, and I’m sticking up for who I am. I’m proud of who I am.”
Which would be fine, except that nobody, not even Afrikaners themselves, agrees on what an Afrikaner is these days. [to continue reading the rest of the article (and I recommend you do - to get an overview of the story, but also to see a non-South African perspective on the topic), click here]

This debate indeed covers a lot of things that I will not deal with here (I'll leave that to Everybody and their Dog), but it is also about personal identity: how we choose to define it, and why it matters. And these are very relevant questions in an ever-increasing multi-cultural/ethnic/religious world where immigrant societies are steadily refusing to be absorbed in the (in-)famous cultural / religious / ethnic 'melting pot' of their host nations. (As an aside, this topic is dealt with poignantly by this year's Man Booker Prize winner, The Inheritance of Loss. If you have not already read it, do so, but don't expect an easy ride).

If I reflect very carefully on who I am and - importantly - who and what has influenced this identity, I can come up with various 'sources'. I am who and what I am because of the ethnic, cultural, religious, and language groups into which I was born. To deny it would be futile. Because the ethnic, cultural, religious and language groups into which I was born happen to come with serious moral baggage, it complicates matters. Many people in my position, myself included, have gone (and occasionally still go) through stages where you want to reject your ethnic, cultural, religious and language heritage because of the aforementioned moral baggage. In many respects, these are identity forming processes in itself that are also impossible to refute. But - and this is my point - I am much more than just the sum total of my ethnic, cultural, religious and language heritage. I am who I am, also because of the influence of specific people, specific life experiences, and my own specific - if not always articulated - opinions.

I want to take it a step further. If I were to prioritise these 'sources' of my identity, I would most definitely put the influence of specific people (e.g. parents, siblings, teachers, mentors, friends, husband/wife, strangers that come across your path) and specific experiences (e.g. giving birth, raising a child, writing a dissertation, getting / not getting the lead role in the primary school concert) above the influence of my ethnic / cultural / religious / language origins. Heck, I would even put my ethnic / cultural / religious / language origins below the influence that my gender and all its ramifications have had on my identity.

Living outside the country where I was born, raised and where I have spent the forming years of early adulthood has certainly provided me with the perspective I needed to articulate this opinion, but, in all honesty, I have always felt this way.

For many people, this prioritization of mine would cause no problems. For many others, it would be totally unacceptable. And herein, I believe, lies one of the root causes of our current problems: if you cannot see yourself as an individual whose identity is shaped and defined not only, or primarily, by religion, culture, gender, ethnicity; but also, and perhaps foremost, by a myriad of people, experiences and opinions, you will never be able to look past the apparent differences between people. You will never be able to see that, underneath all the different clothes, skin colours, body odours, languages, religious beliefs, cultural and ethical heritages (treasured as they may be) we are all, quite ridiculously, similar in our needs, our wants, our fears, our insecurities. And the more I see of this world, the more I become certain of this fact: I may revel in diversity, I may on occasion poke fun at the differences between societies / groups, but underneath it all, we are essentially the same.

This knowledge also lessens (although not necessarily obviates) the need (or even the obligation) to 'fit in'. Because, essentially, as Andria (who happens to be South African born, Afrikaans speaking, Protestant, female, etc. - and not denying, refuting or apologizing for it), I can fit in anywhere. And I can still be me. First and foremost.*

*Hmmm...klink in retrospek nogal baie soos 'n ander historiese (alhoewel fiktiewe) Afrikaner / Boere / Watookal figuur: 'Ek is Bart Nel van toe af, en ek is nog Hy'.

The 'Anna Nicole Phenomenon'

2007-02-26T17:47:00.000-05:00

On Ice

2007-02-16T17:14:00.000-05:00

It has been an ice-filled two weeks. Pennsylvania was covered under ice, so Jac used the opportunity to go ice climbing. On his very last rappel (the non-American version is abseil, Jac tells me), he had a bit of a freak accident and broke his ankle - both the fibula and tibula. So his ankle ended on ice, and the chapter I'm working on at the moment too.

That is obviously the short version. Get Jac to tell you the longer version over a beer when you see him. I've heard him tell the story at least eight times to his ice climbing / mountaineering buddies, and I still don't get it. It sounds like a silly accident, and, while breaking an ankle that badly is no joke, I'm just happy it wasn't more serious.

So, we essentially spent all-day the next day waiting to see an Orthopaedic Surgeon. Late that afternoon we've finally made it. His exact words after he'd looked at Jac's X-Rays were: 'You did quite a number on this, didn't you?'

On Tuesday, February 13, Jac's birthday, he had surgery to repare the damage. As Jac said afterwards, it is one birthday that he is never going to forget of which he has absolutely no recollection. Jac being Jac, as soon as he was lucid enough after his last dose of post-surgery morphene, he googled 'fractured ankles' to read absolutely everything about the treatment. This is a good representation of what his ankle looks like at the moment, except that he has plates on both sides.

He even posed for a few photos after the anasthesia wore of [if you need to enter a password, it is 'tungsten']. (Please take note of the ice axe sticker on his orthopaedic boot and the climbing magazine.)

Happy Birthday, Jac. Stay away from ice next year.

But is it HEADLINE news (cont.) ?

2007-02-10T11:15:00.000-05:00

And to complete a truly embarrassing week for the media....

VIDEO COMPILATION: Anna Nicole Smith And Our National Media Embarrassment
The death of Anna Nicole Smith yesterday was a feeding frenzy for the national media, and coverage of the war was drowned out: NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3 minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522% more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708% more references to Anna Nicole than Iraq.
The lop-sided coverage largely ignored many key developments in Iraq, including the sixth downing of a U.S. helicopter in the past three weeks, the allegations that a deputy Iraqi health minister was aiding a Shiite militia in its attacks against U.S. troops, and the death of four Marines.
ThinkProgress has collected some of the many, many lowlights of yesterday’s coverage (i.e., Larry King: “The death of Anna Nicole Smith is the number one story around the world tonight”), along with a lone highlight provided by CNN’s Jack Cafferty. Watch it: [click here to continue reading]

For another take on the subject, see...

How Smith's death hit Page 1
TIM RUTTEN, LA Times
February 10, 2007

THIS column is either part of the problem or a thought on its solution.We comment; you decide. The late Murray Kempton once described editorial writers as "the people who come down from the hill after the battle to shoot the wounded." Nowadays, media analysts are the guys who follow behind them, going through the pockets of the dead looking for loose change. So, yes, this column is about Anna Nicole Smith.Friday morning, less than 24 hours after she died in a Florida hotel room, the Drudge Report — our media culture's digital arbiter of all things tacky and prurient — had 12 items posted on the onetime topless dancer. That would account for some of the media frenzy surrounding her death. It's a little-known fact, but certain sectors of the broadcast media have long believed that if a dozen items on Anna Nicole Smith ever were posted on Drudge simultaneously, it would herald the onset of the apocalypse. Who knew? This is the way the world ends — neither with a bang nor a whimper but with cleavage.
[To continue reading, click here]

My Point Exactly...

2007-02-09T19:47:00.000-05:00

(...see previous post)

But is it NEWS...?

2007-02-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Posted by: Andria

I've been a certifiable 'news junkie' long before the dawn of the Internet. (Since the advent of wireless, broadband Internet, I've become, of course, beyond certifiable.) I should probably blame it on my mother. I still see her, every day, pen in the hand, scissors next to the newspaper / magazine: scanning for relevant articles that we can use in the next speech or debate; studiously filing the clipping away under the relevant heading in the file, with her comments scribbled in the margin. Today, I scan the widest selection of news papers, magazines, blogs and possible - at least twice every day (okay, more, if I'm procrastinating), file them in the appropriate folder on my PC and forward the ones of interest to my mom, to Jac, to friends who I know have an interest in the particular topic, or even post them on this Blog. Barking mad, you say. How I love it, I reply.

So, it really pains me to have say this: the quality of news everywhere is going downhill, faster than ever before. And it is not so much the quality of reporting (there are enough culprits for this accusation though), as it is what is considered to be newsworthy in the first place.

Consider, for example, the headlines of two regulars - BBC News and CNN: how can you have '125 dead in Baghdad car bomb' / 'climate change report contains damning evidence' / 'can India eradicate poverty' next to or beneath 'Paris Hilton charged with DUI' / 'Lindsay Whatsherface in rehab' / 'Pseudo-Star and Quasi-Starlet file for divorce' ? And I'm not referring to what is posted in the 'Entertainment' section or 'And in Other News', I'm talking about headlines people. Seriously.

Or, look at today's 'top story': NASA astronaut charged with attempted murder. In the greater scheme of things, this would be mildly newsworthy at best - there are lots of attempted murders and kidnappings that do not grab the headlines. Why is it front page material just because it is a NASA astronaut? Why is a carjacking or robbery more newsworthy to South African newspapers when the victim (one out of hundreds of others for the day / week) happens to be a wannabe singer / actor / actress / ex-rugby player / ex-beauty queen?

Granted, its always been like this to some extent; and, sure, there has always been some publications more prone to this kind of thing than others - watching Chicago again recently has reminded me of that.

(Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em
Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give 'em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather 'em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
What if your hinges all are rusting?
What if, in fact, you're just disgusting?
Razzle dazzle 'em
And they;ll never catch wise!
Give 'em the old Razzle dazzle 'em
Give 'em a show that's so splendiferous
Row after row will crow vociferous
Give 'em the old flim flam flummox
Fool and fracture 'em
How can they hear the truth above the roar?
Throw 'em a fake and a finagle
They'll never know you're just a bagel,
Razzle dazzle 'em
And they'll beg you for more!
Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em
Back since the days of old Methuselah
Everyone loves the big bambooz-a-ler
Give 'em the old three ring circus
Stun and stagger 'em
When you're in trouble, go into your dance
Though you are stiffer than a girder
They let you get away with murder
Razzle dazzle 'em
And you've got a romance
Give 'em the oldRazzle Dazzle
Razzle dazzle 'em
Give 'em an act that's unassailable
They'll wait a year 'till you're available!
Give 'em the old Double whammy
Daze and dizzy'em
Show 'em the first rate sorcerer you are
Long as you keep 'em way off balance
How can they spot you got no talents?
Razzle dazzle 'em
And they'll make you a star!)

However, when CNN, BBC and other household names are going down this road on a regular basis, it is worrying - precisely because so many people read / watch it. It makes me anxious for that one morning when I open the FT and see 'Exclusive! Tony Bares It All' on the front page.

F is for Feminist and Fat A..ses

2007-02-02T21:14:00.000-05:00

Posted by: Andria, for obvious reasons

I am a feminist, and unapologetically so. Nothing infuriates me more than women whose reply, on being questioned about their views on women's rights, comes down to something along the lines of: "I'm not a feminist, but.... " and then they try to salvage their answer by explaining that "women should have equal rights and opportunities than men", well, sort of. Feminism, according to the dictionary, is a 'doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men'. A secondary meaning of the word refers to the 'organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women', and this, I suspect, is why many women backpaddle on the issue. For dear life, they don't want to be associated with bra-burning, lefty-hippy chicks who don't shave their legs or under their armpits. Fine. I am not necessarily like that either; or at least, I don't want to be (mind you, there are a few things other than bras that I would happily set fire to...hmmm, let's not go there right now). But it doesn't make me less of a feminist (with or without the capital 'F'). There are many other people whose causes I'm sympathetic to or which I even support fervently which I don't necessarily want to invite over for dinner.

I've been a feminist for as long as I can remember; because, you see, my sister and I were raised to believe - by both my parents - that we could do absolutely anything - and should do everything we could to fulfil our potential. Consequently, I've married a feminist as well. That is, someone who believes that gender should not be a determinant factor in determining an individual's potential or actual worth, whether it is in a social or professional setting. Nothing, in today's politically correct world, earth-shattering about that. And yet, despite all the 'glass' and 'marble' ceilings that have been shattered (or, at least cracked) by brave women in the decades, years, months and days before us, we are still being held back by one major constraint: our society's constant obsession with how women look. Elfi Pallis wrote an insightful piece in The Guardian today:

Progress is skin deep

Really to accept women in public life is to accept how they look, and that includes the wrinkles.

Female ambition is a relatively new thing. Well into the 1980s, British school libraries would stock thin books with titles like Careers For Girls, which described the qualities needed by dental assistants or secretaries. Looking nice and well groomed was frequently the key one. Women who aimed higher encountered the same demands. I still recall the barrage of insults heaped by the press on the co-founder of the Social Democratic party, Shirley (now Lady) Williams, for her frizzy hair.
The rules have not altered much since, partly thanks to Margaret Thatcher's willingness to abide by them as the country's first female prime minister. As late as 2003, Tony Blair's election gurus would not allow any female MP to be seen without a blow dry and pink skirt suit. When the escalating Middle East crisis raised the profile of the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, this winter, the internet buzzed with debates over just how frumpy she looked.
Across the pond the same aesthetic requirements for career success apply, and Hillary Clinton has worked hard to meet them. She has morphed from a curly, bare-faced brunette into a straight-haired blonde wearing bright red lipstick. Now that she has declared her candidacy for the US presidency, male journalists have taken the scrutiny of her appearance further by asking: does she look young enough to run?

(To read the rest of the article, click here)

And just in case you've missed it, the 'Dossier Against Hillary' (there is actually a small publishing industry on this topic with a turnover equal to the GDP of a mid-sized African country) grew substantially thicker recently with the following addition: besides being the Wicked Witch of the West, she is actually - gasp! - ugly too. No way she can run this country, dude.

I mean, really, have you looked at Bill Clinton? Hey, no hard feelings, Bill, great president and all that - but you are no oil painting. Not even to mention our friend George. Or Tony. Or Jacques. Or the entire gang of male politicians or CEOs, for that matter.

Bill, on a good day, about 10 years ago

But, like I've said in a previous posting, I will be the first to admit that women are guilty of aiding or abetting the perpetuation of this sad situation. Therefore, women should also be the first to put their foot (in heels, boots or flats - you decide) down. Which is why I want you all to stand up and raise your glasses to a former top model, one Tara Banks, who put her foot down this week: This is to you, girl. As we say in Afrikaans: So 'n bek moet jam kry.

Love at first Sight

2007-01-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

It is a strange thing, this. You visit a place for the first time and you either like it, or you don't. As if the town / city is a person you meet and of whom you form your first - and usually lasting, no matter how biased - impressions. I don't think we often change our first opinions / impressions about a place either. The only exception to this rule I can think of right now is my own feelings about Rotterdam. I went there in April 2001 for the first time, and I hated it. It was such a let down after all the quaint, quitesy towns in the rest of the country. As I continued to go back, first for work, later for studies as well, I was quite startled to realize after a year or so that I had grown really fond of the place. A few years ago, I read in a magazine article (which promoted the city) that Amsterdam was a 'dog-city' and Rotterdam a 'cat-city'. Most people immediately love Amsterdam and the city loves them right back; but Rotterdam takes a while to first decide whether or not it likes you. Once it has accepted you, you can start to build a meaningful, albeit quirky, relationship.

And the size of the place / where it is located / attractions / whether / not you are supposed to like it, etc. has nothing to do with it. There is no logical explanation why I love London, Leiden, Pretoria, Chicago, Gent, Uvongo, Graaff Reinett, Oegstgeest, Washington DC, Rome, Budapest, Madrid...but Paris, New York, Brugge, Barcelona, Potchefstroom leaves me fairly cold.

I'm sure there is enough psychology behind it; but, somehow, I cannot be bothered. Life is complex enough as we are forced - pretty much all the time -to get along with people because they sign our paychecks; or they have a say in whether we will get promoted or not; or just because it it is 'bad' to have an irrational dislike in somebody. If I like Chicago and I don't like New York - you'll just have to deal with it!

The Sacred Chicken

2007-01-16T22:48:00.000-05:00

This week’s story comes from South Africa. It is the story of the Sacred Chicken. Speaking of ‘Africa’… allow me to rant for a moment, before I continue.

Americans have a terrible habit of lumping The Rest Of the World Outside the USA (TROTWOUSA) into huge, amorphous chunks or folders. ‘How was your Christmas break?’ I would ask innocently. ‘Oh awesome! I’ve just returned from AFRICA!’ comes the answer. ‘Did you have a good holiday?’ I would ask, by now, wearily. ‘We’ve just returned from EUROPE and it was, like, totally awesome!’ By this time, I’m grinding my back teeth to smithereens. WHERE in Africa? WHERE in Europe? Say you were in Tanzania / Mozambique / Kenia / Uganda, for goodness’s sake; or in Portugal / Belgium / Sweden / Hungary, for crying in a bucket. As, in, like: completely different places...Ya think? A South African friend once explained that he can spot his name tag in under 2 seconds when arriving at the registration table of conferences held in the US - his name tag will invariably say: ‘Dr. N. van der Merwe, Morningside Clinic, AFRICA’. So, to get back to the story of the Sacred Chicken: it might be applicable to the broader sub-content, at least, or it might not. I do not know. I do know that the story of the Sacred Chicken comes from South Africa (name of a country, not geographical concept).

Whenever you ask the second-graders in my mom’s class what their favourite meal is, the answer comes in a sing-song chorus: ‘The Kentâk, Mêm!’ It is, as we would say in Aflish, an ‘opên secrêt’ that black South Africans love ‘shiekên’. Other countries or (sub-) continents may have their sacred cows, dung beetles, baboons, and whatnot - we have the Chicken.

(By the way, while I've already interrupted my story once, let me do it once more just for luck: I’m neither going to apologize for being politically incorrect with my phonetic description of Aflish, nor am I going to break my neck in justifying it. Suffice to say that it makes the story more accurate, and that I speak my own version of Aflish - first corrupted by Afrikaans, later buggered-up by white South African English, further confused by Dutch, and now completely screwed by American English. However, if I were to imitate my own accent on this Blog just in order to be fair, joe woeld hêf êbsiloetlie nou bladdie cloe wat Aai was syieng moust ôf de taaim. For further clarification, see http://www.southafrica.info/plan_trip/travel_tips/questions/saenglish.htm)

One of my sister Nadia’s South African colleagues (who is of, how shall we put this, ‘fairly recent Anglo-Saxon decent’) experienced last year during their residency in Pietermaritzburg exactly how sacred the chicken is. At the end of each rotation, the new doctors had to give a small reception to the medical staff of the department. Tradition had it that you bought three or four roasted chickens for the occasion from a place (of dubious hygiene) close by. When it was his turn, he decided ‘Bugger this! I will show them How It Is Done’ and bought really scrumptious finger food at a Place With Scrupulous Hygiene. He set out the spread and waited for the staff to arrive, seriously chuffed with himself. The first doctor of non-European / non-Anglo Saxon descent (recent or otherwise) that entered the room gave the whole setup just one look, and said with obvious disdain: 'Where is the shiekên?'

Since the beginning of this year, Nadia and her South African-English boyfriend are working at Manguzi Hospital, which is located just south of South Africa’s border with Mozambique. For those of you who have an idea where it is, yes - it is as ‘rural’ as ‘rural’ gets in South Africa. For those of you who don’t know, think ‘Beyond Borders.’ Although Nadia says the two of them are way better looking than Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen. I’ve spoken to her over the (cell) phone recently (yes, while it is [darkest] South Africa, its cellphone reception is far better than the US) and asked how her day was. Just fine, she said, her biggest problem was to keep a particular chicken out of the ward she was working in. Out? I asked, how did it get 'in?’ ‘What do you mean “how did it get in”?’ she asked with audible irony in her voice. ‘There are chickens everywhere – in the surrounding village, on the hospital grounds and in the hospital building. As highly respected members of society, they have the Freedom to Roam.' I must have sounded completely baffled – after all, being seven time zones away, far removed from the realities of, ahem, AFRICA – so she explained. It is, Nadia said, like one of the nurses patiently explained to her the other day when she made a derogatory comment about these ‘free range hospital chickens’. ‘Docta,’ the nurse said, ‘a shiekên is a wââââââânderful thing. You can use êêêêêêêêverything of a shiekên. You can use its bôôôôôôôôônes, you can use its hââââârt, you can use its intestyyyyynes, you can use its fethââââââs. A shiekên, docta, is a Gift From Gôdt.’

We were getting guests over for dinner tonight and Jac, incidentally, bought a whole chicken home for us to roast in the oven. It was one of these humongously over-sized, obese, ‘hormonized’ chickens you can only get here in the States. I took the chicken out of its packaging and just stood there, smiling, thinking what the good nurse would have said about this shiekên; and how many households it could have fed in KwaNgwanase. Jac, of course, didn't understand my weird behaviour. So I told him the story of the Sacred Chicken.

A Hotchpotch of News

2007-01-13T10:32:00.000-05:00

I will not try to make all the usual excuses for not writing more regularly - they dó apply, but it is so boring to cover such a well-worn topic. The only thing I will say, is that all my creative juices are currently flowing into the ruddy chapter I'm working on. It is supposidly my most complex (conceptually, that is) chapter. Well, it'd better be, because if the others are worse, or even the same, I don't know if I'm up to it! Forgive me, therefore, for the erratic jumble of news and the left-brain format. All are sure signs of a mind slightly overtasked...

We (meaning: most of the US East Coast) are experiencing the warmest winter in, practically, history. The general scientific consensus is that it is being caused by the El Niňo phenomenon, compounded by global warming. And since this is the first time that the average American is starting to think that, maybe...just MAYBE there really is something like 'global warming', it is probably a good thing. I had this thought last week when my hairstylist said something along the line of, "I cannot believe this hot weather. This global warming thingy is quite scary, huh?". The downside of it, is that I cannot wear my super-duper-delux parka that Jac bought me early in the Fall, in anticipation of my usual groans and complaints during winter. We are going to Chicago next weekend, and, if you can believe the winter weather picture that is painted by ER, I will get ample opportunity to inaugurate it.

Jac has started with his very last semester here at Wharton, and all of a sudden, the 'class of 2007' thing doesn't sound so far-fetched anymore. He has almost reached the maximum number of credits that he is allowed to take, so he is going to have a very relaxed last semester. Which is probably a good thing, because he just has one thing on the brain right now: Mountaineering. Our appartment is slowely but surely being invaded by mountaineering gear - ordered via the Internet (Gawd Bless America). For example, he has THREE different kinds of boots he is trying out at the moment, TWO types of ice axes, SIX pairs of gortex pants, SEVEN pairs of gloves ...okay, I got carried away a bit there, but you get the picture. He has signed up for two consequitive mountaineering courses in the Cascades (in Washington state) over four weeks in June-July. How he is going to adapt to our flat little Holland, if it comes to that, I honestly don't know (at least the Alps are flying-distance - heck, theyr'e even driving distance, now that we are used to crazy distances again). Which brings me to the next topic: Where are we going next?

The short answer: we don't know yet, still up in the air (how did you guess?!). The Chicago (McKinsey) move is still a real option, and so is Europe (BHPBilliton). I will not go public on my personal preferences, but I think most of you can guess. I am, however, opening bets on this one: my current bet is that we will only know for sure by end of April (when our furniture has to be moved to '....' [fill in the blanks]). If anyone else is interested: see me, and raise me.

As I've already alluded: we're outta here (Philly) by end of April. Our original rental contract expires only end of May, but our building is being rennovated and turned into 'condos' (i.e. being sold to the general public), so we've figured that Management wouldn't mind if we give up the lease one month earlier - and we were right. We've weighed the importance of hanging around two more weeks in Philly (while paying rent for another full month) just to attend the graduation seremony in mid-May, against using the money and leaving early for our EXTREME Wild West Road Trip Adventure (more about that below). Neither one of us has ever been overly sentimental about graduation seremonies (a huge anti-climax as far as we're concerned), so we've decided to skip it. We already have the photo, silly hat and all (they are very organized here at Wharton). I'll go and take a photo of Jac on his last day of class / exams in front of the building, next to the 'no solicitations' sign that he finds so funny (the joke being: Wharton is the biggest job-seeking outfit on the US East Coast).

As for our Extreme Wild West Adventure: you ain't seen nothin' yet! The plan is to take 5 weeks and cover as many of the great National Parks in the west as we can fit in, while stopping by places like Las Vegas, San Fransciso / Napa Valley and ending it in Seattle (where Jac has to be for the start of his mountaineering courses). We're just starting to finalize it, making reservations etc, but I can tell you now: it is gonna be HUGE (huge being the operative word, and in this sense quite a fitting end to our stay in the US). I'll tell you more about the details soon.

Oh, and one more thing: I'll be in South Africa while Jac is climbing mountains in June-July - hope to see as many of our South African friends at the time as possible. It also looks like we will be spending Christmas-New Year in Cape Town / Nature's Valley this year. Watch this space.

I have to get back to my crazy, mad dash for the finish line: Chapter 2 (the first chapter I'm handing in, just for sake of clarity), version 1 is due on Monday. I'll close-off by sharing the quote that I've got currently pasted up on the wall where I'm working:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
Calvin Coolidge

Nothing wrong with a bit of good-ol' World War II-like motivational speak to beat the mid-January exhaustion!

2007: Just 'wing it'

2006-12-30T16:04:00.000-05:00

2007 didn't really start with a bang ór a whimper for me. It just happened. I had no urge for the usual introspection, re-prioritization, resolutions, blues. I suspect the fact that I'm currently working on a difficult chapter of my book had a lot to do with this; but then again - I haven't been working THAT hard over the holiday period. It worried me, at first, but I've subsequently decided that it isn't necessarily a bad thing because, in the end, we will all just have to 'wing it', as usual.

We both wish all of you everything that is good for this new year. May all your dreams come true and your hopes be fulfilled. And even if they don't, there is always next year.

Aaaawh! Ag Shame! Ag Foeitog! Haibo!

2006-12-20T07:04:00.000-05:00

I've had the intense pleasure of seeing this news conference yesterday while I was on the rowing machine in the gym. It certainly was the highlight of my workout. No, make that 'one of the highlights of my life'. I must have been channeling my thoughts to David Segal...

A Remorseful Queen Plays the Trump Card
Troubled Miss USA Earns Pardon From Pageant Owner
By David SegalWashington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, December 20, 2006; Page C01

NEW YORK, Dec. 19 -- Donald Trump's business acumen and net worth have been fervently debated for as long as he and his inexplicable hairdo have preoccupied this city. But there can be little question about the guy's hunches as a publicity-ravenous egomaniac and preening huckster. In that department, the man is an artist -- and Tuesday, quite frankly, he made his masterpiece.
Amid a cascade of camera flashes and surrounded by the "Inside Edition" branch of America's media family, Mr. You're Fired granted a dramatic reprieve to Tara Conner, the Miss USA crowned in April who had imperiled her reign after reports that she'd failed a drug test and been caught drinking while underage at various Manhattan nightspots. For a few days there it looked as though Ms. Conner and her sparkly tiara were about to part ways.

Cue the Donald. ...

There, there. Let "the Donald" get his big paws around you. Everything'll be just fine.

(To read further, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121900983.html )

It's simple, really

2006-12-19T15:03:00.000-05:00

Deck the Halls...

2006-12-15T22:38:00.000-05:00

(Click to enlarge)

I've had to sing all 3 verses of this recently, for the first time that is, and let me tell you: this version is much better. Merry Christmas!

The Mind Boggles

2006-12-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

The ability of the human brain to adapt to changing circumstances is, if you would pardon the obvious pun, mind-blowing. Mine has had to make five major adjustments (and many minor ones) since we've first moved to the Northern hemisphere (first to the Netherlands [that's 'Holland', for the folks here in the States], and now to the US):

1) The summer holiday period is June / July - August; not November / December - January.

It took me at least two years not to feel guilty taking an extended holiday in the middle of the year. It just felt WRONG. Like skipping school; like not studying for an exam; like using your mother's expensive perfume and filling it up with water so that she wouldn't notice. A guilty pleasure, but just a matter of time before you have to face the consequences. Now, I can take weeks at a time like a true European whenever the temperature has reached 20º (that's 68º for the Yanks) for more than one day in a row.

2) You can (in fact, you must!) drive on the right-hand side of the road.

This is just plain freaky. When driving: the blind-spots are in the wrong places, you have to shift gears with a dumb hand not used to it, and you constantly veer to the shoulder of the road. When you are a passenger: you regularly want to get in the car on the driver's side, and oncoming traffic makes you cringe (and even grab an imaginary steering wheel like an idiot, trying to avoid a head-on collision). I was very proud of myself that I've mastered driving on the right side (that is, the 'wrong' side for South Africans) of the road, only to be horrified when I tried to drive on the left-hand side again while back in South Africa. This one took some coaxing, but my brain has finally accepted that it is, indeed, possible to drive on both sides of the road.

3) You cannot look at the position of the sun to tell the time.

In South Africa (Latitude: 29º00´ South of the Equator; Longitude: 24º00´ East of Greenwich), you can get by without a watch throughout the year (or at least, I can, since I don't like wearing a wrist-watch). Speaking of coordinates. Somebody recently sent me this photo, taken probably somewhere in the North-Western Cape desert area, near the border with Namibia.

(A quick translation of the Afrikaans; the joke is probably lost on non-South Africans but here goes:

Boesmanland Plaaskombuis = Bushmanland [semi-desert area in South Africa / Namibia] Farm Kitchen [it is an ad for a farmstall];

Etosha Panne: Etosha wetlands in Namibia; [http://www.southerndestinations.com/destinations/namibia/etosha_national_park;

Huis toe: To Home

Maan toe / Moer toe: To Moon / To Smithereens or To #$$%&! [profanity]. Jac says, the (politically incorrect) US version would be to say: "Drop of / F... of")

In the Netherlands (Latitude: 52º30´ North of the Equator; Longitude: 5º45´East of Greenwich), it is quite a different story. During winter, the sun never seems to rise higher than a few measly degrees above the horizon. If it looks and feels like 17:00 (5 PM, for the Yanks), it is probably just after 13:00 (1 PM). And in summer...well, we had to line our bedroom curtains with the darkest, thickest black lining that exists on that side of the Equator in order to get some sleep. I now rely on my mobile to check the time (that's a cell phone, for the Yanks and the South Africans), and my digestive track has accepted the fact that you don't eat dinner in summer before dusk (that is, around 22:00 for the South Africans).

4) The academic year starts in September, and ends in May / June.

Innocent as it may sound, you cannot believe how this one threw me off. My university (that's 'college' in Yank terms) biorhythm dictates that October (spring and Jacaranda time in Pretoria - see picture below) is final exams - with the prospect of a looooooong summer holiday ahead of you. Not soggy fall (that's autumn for the rest of you) and a time when things are just getting nasty with mid-term exams and papers due.
Mid-January / Beginning February is supposed to be the beginning of an exciting new study year (and nothing really happens until after JOOL* anyway), not the bleak, dark, depressing post-Christmas period when that final thesis deadline suddenly looks a lot closer than it did before the Christmas break.

Now, if somebody refers to 'the first semester', I remember to ask: of which year? Although, I keep on referring to the previous academic year as 'last year'....

*Two weeks of excessive student partying, all in the name of raising millions of South African Rands for charity (which, to be fair, it does)

5) Christmas is cold, dark - usually wet, mostly not white.

Numerous Northern hemispherers have told me that they are incapable of picturing a summer Christmas. It cannot be 'right', they assert, to have a barbecue (that is, 'braai' for the South Africans) on Christmas day. Hmmm. And when you start telling them that Christmas traditionally starts with a sweltering hot early morning church service, followed by an afternoon of languishing on the beach; and that Santa probably will arrive on a jet ski; that we often have decorated thorn bush branches to service as a Christmas tree; or that the shop fronts in the dorpies throughout semi-desert / sub-tropical-South-Africa have fake snow and reindeer in their windows - you can just see their eyes glossing over with incomprehension. Eish! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_African_slang_words)

My brain has accepted - or rather, conceded - to cold, dark, wet Christmases. It sure has its benefits. One, the lights, the lights! Two, you can eat festive portions and you don't have to fit into a bikini directly afterwards (hmmm, some might say this does not constitute a 'benefit'). Three, it feels right to huddle indoors with family and gifts around the (conifer) tree, drinking heart and cheek-warming stuff.

But, amazing as the brain is, I will probably always yearn for a summer-Christmas while I'm living here in the Northern hemisphere. In the words of a South African carol, written by our beloved Koos du Plessis:

'Welkom o stille nag van vrede ['Welcome, o silent night of peace]
onder die suiderkruis [underneath the southern cross]
wyl stemme uit die ou verlede [while voices from the old past]
oor sterrevelde ruis: [sound from starry skies:]
Kersfees kom, Kersfees kom - [Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming - ]
gee aan God die eer. [glory be to God.]
Skenk ons 'n helder Somerkersfees [Grant us a bright, sunny Summer-Christmas]
in hierdie land, o Heer' [in this country, o Lord']

Whether we have to wish you a White / Wet / Windy / Warm Christmas - may it be a Bright and a Blessed one!

BLOG Responsibly, this Festive Season

2006-11-28T08:56:00.000-05:00

Let Us Be ThankFUL(L)

2006-11-25T09:59:00.000-05:00

We've celebrated a cold and rainy Thanksgiving this past Thursday (my first ever) with a bunch of friends from school. Since I'm still too full to formulate elaborate sentences, let me summarize it for you in bite sizes: We went, we ate, we ate some more, we watched American Football, we ate still some more, we watched movie reruns, we ate a bit more, we played poker, we ate YET some more, we crawled home, we slept. Truly an American Experience.

The next day was filled with brilliant sunshine and mild weather. It was also 'Black Friday', the single largest bargain hunting day of the year. I only knew about 'Black Thursday' (which refers to the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash), so I've had this truly fascinating bit of Americana explained to me: legend has it that, way back, this was the first day of the financial year when retailers started to make profits (i.e. in accounting terms, they moved out of the 'red' into the 'black'). I personally think that the term can also refer to the colour of the sky when these shops open. Most stores open at 05:00 (that's AM, in US terms), and some even open shortly after midnight on Friday morning. It would certainly describe my mood if I had to get up at this hour in order to go shopping like a mouth-fuming lemming.
(I went to my own trusted source to read more about this rara avis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping). As Obelix used to say: 'These Americans are crazy.' Check out CNN for some photos of this phenomenon: 29 http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/consumer/blackfriday_usa/index.html?cnn=yes)

Since we have way too much student debt to be even in the bargain-hunting business, we hit the gym instead to start the detox process (which will take at least one week). Not feeling quite comfortable yet, we went for a long walk through the city to make the most of the good weather. We forgot to take our camera along, however, so I'll just have to direct you to our friend Kurt's Blog - who, fortunately, did take a few great Philly photos(http://kurtjohnson.net/blog/index.php).

By late Saturday (and another gym session later), we started to feel less full - so we could start focussing more on the 'giving thanks' aspect of the holiday. It's practically impossible to limit yourself to just one entry, but we've both agreed that the opportunity of spending so much time together tops our list this year. We're approaching the eight year mark on the 5th of December(Seven Year Itch? What Seven Year Itch?) - something to be truly THANKFUL for.

The lady doth think too much, methinks?

2006-11-12T12:36:00.000-05:00

After months of thinking, reading, modifying, thinking some more, re-reading, doubting, (re-)starting from scratch, nail-biting (starting and stopping this particular vice 4 times already), pondering, having misgivings, coming full-circle, thinking and reading yet some more, I am now ready - finally - to commit my ideas to paper. And now the fun really begins. This treacherous journey on which I have embarked, it is known as 'The Scientific Method'. However, some bright-spark over at PhD comics recently came up with a more accurate version of the truth:

During this process, your brain regularly feels as though it is being attacked by a meat processor; your self-confidence frequently dips to amoebic levels; and your IQ oscillates between triple and single digits. A few souls (bless there little nerdy hearts) have even likened this journey to the quest in The Lord of the Rings: http://www.jacobite.org.uk/dave/odd/lotr.htm

('It's a dangerous business,' Bilbo used to say, "going out your door. You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.')

And as if the process itself isn't enough to make you despair, there is a strong likelihood that the end-product isn't going to be worth much more than the amount you've paid to have it published. Lynn Truss has recently summarised the problem with research succinctly: '...it's not worth saying; it's already been said; and it's impossible to say anything adequate in any case.'*
You can rightly ask, why even bother?

Well, ultimately it is about getting an official piece of paper and it is important not to lose this perspective. This piece of paper will give you the dubious priviledge to select 'Doctor' on the sensus form; or to get your bank or frequent flyer club to address you as 'Dr. XYZ' on their useless correspendence. You might even use the title to try and intimidate an annyoing call centre agent ('that's DOCTOR XYZ for you, ...and let me speak to your supervisor, pronto! [not!]) And if you want to belong to the Academic club, getting that PhD (or whatever the equivalent - you cannot believe how this differ, within the same discipline, throughout the world) is your compulsory Rite of Passage. Yes-ja-no-well-okay-fine. Unfortunately, quasi-snob value and access to an exclusive brother/sisterhood are not good enough reasons to sustain you through this grinding process. Neither is the opportunity of becoming a super-duper-delux-expert on one (often obscure) aspect within a field.

It certainly helps if you actually find your topic interesting; and it is invaluable if you have found the right promotor / supervisor. I happen to have struck solid gold on both (although I cannot claim any credit for it), but even this isn't enough. For me, the PhD process is about solidifying and refining my ability to think: about thinking (how you think, how others think, how we ought to think); about my topic; and, while I'm at it, about Life, the Universe, and Everything.

A while ago, Fortune Magazine asked a few prominent business people what the best advice was that they've ever received. Brian Grazer's advice struck a particular chord with me (He is a movie & TV producer that has produced many acclaimed films including A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13. He is also the executive producer of 24.):

All you really own, are your ideas and the confidence to write them down.
‘In order for you to be in the [fill in your specific field] business, you have to have leverage'. If you have none, that is, 'no money, no pedigree, no valuable relationships', you must have 'creative leverage'. That exists only in your mind. So you need to write – put what’s in your mind on paper. Then you’ll own a piece of paper. That’s leverage. For years, I sent registered letters to myself…[containing concepts, ideas]…so that I had my ideas officially on paper. I have about 1000 letters in a vault. To this day, I feel that my real power is only that – ideas and the confidence to write them down.'

Perhaps the essence of what makes us human is reflected in the old adage, 'I think, therefore I am' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_think_therefore_I_am). My recent thinking has made me think, however, that 'thinking' as such is just the first part of self-realization. Having the courage to share our thoughts, whether it is on just one more blog among millions; in a stuffy dissertation; or over a cup of coffee, is not just what makes the definition of humanity complete, it is also a bridge between the seemingly contradictory ideologies of 'I think, therefore I am' and 'I am because we are' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28ideology%29).

So, remember to ask me, in about two years' time when I have that official piece of paper in my hand, whether I'm still thinking about thinking; and whether I still believe in the courage to share my thoughts. I may give you an answer that contains an Executive Summary, a Table of Cases, 60 564 footnotes, and a Bibliography; but that will be the ultimate criterion to measure the success of this project.

*Lynn Truss, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. (Be grateful that I've only added one footnote [although this comment probably makes it two]. I dream in footnotes now. I even have footnotes to footnotes, as you can see.)

A collective sigh of releave that the US elections are over...

2006-11-09T10:32:00.000-05:00

....now, back to the normal tabloid sleaze.

Cheers to those mice!

2006-11-03T22:47:00.000-05:00

And you thought we just had some silly, pompous thing going with all the wine sniffing, swirling and quaffing? Bah! It is part of a meticulously drafted, grand scientific strategy:

Study: Fat, boozing mice stay healthy

POSTED: 1705 GMT (0105 HKT), November 1, 2006
By: cnn.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Huge amounts of a red wine extract seemed to help obese mice eat a high-fat diet and still live a long and healthy life, suggests a new study that some experts are calling "landmark" research.
The big question is, can it work the same magic in humans?
Scientists say it's far too early to start swilling barrels of red wine. But they are calling the latest research promising and even "spectacular." ...

You can read the entire story at http://edition.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/11/01/fat.fightingwine.ap/index.html.

Don't anybody DARE call us "wine nerds" again.

Cut Mads some slack, will you?

2006-11-01T20:59:00.000-05:00

Madonna and child welfare
By Christopher Caldwell
Published: November 3 2006 19:59 Last updated: November 3 2006 19:59
From: FT.com

If the appellation “basket case” could be reserved for just one corner of Africa, Malawi might be it. With a gross domestic product of $600 per capita, it is the fourth-poorest country in the world. A majority of the workforce labours for less than a dollar a day. A seventh of the population is infected with HIV, including a third of young adults – a main reason that life expectancy there has dipped towards 40. Among the country’s 12m people are a million orphans. Last month, a Malawian court granted the pop singer Madonna and her husband, the film director Guy Ritchie, an 18-month trial period as foster parents to one of them. One-year-old David Banda’s mother died six days after he was born. Two earlier sons had died in infancy – whether of Aids, malaria or something else depends on the report you read. David’s father, an illiterate farmer, committed him to a Presbyterian orphanage. Mr and Mrs Ritchie brought the boy home to England and hope to raise him as their own. In two influential communities – the (primarily African) milieu of non-governmental organisations and the (primarily English) tabloid press – the adoption has so enraged people that they are trying to sabotage it.
Newspapers have made much of the alleged chic-ness of black people. “You’ll have to excuse me for wondering if it’s a child they want, or an achingly cool rainbow family perfect for a Benetton ad,” wrote Janie Lawrence in the Daily Telegraph. “‘And what colour would madam like her child?’” A Hollywood blogger wrote that “it smacks of going to your local animal shelter”. The news that Madonna would like to start her own orphanage in Malawi, to care for 4,000 children, did nothing to quell the rage. On the contrary, an activist in Malawi told the Daily Mail that this was “tantamount to buying a baby”. The New York Post’s description of the adoption (a “freakish slave auction”) found an echo in the Spectator (“We will come to see cross-border adoption as we now view the slave trade”). This story has struck some qualm or phobia deep in the public unconscious. What is it?

Some people complain that Mr and Mrs Ritchie were able to sidestep Malawi’s legal system – not exactly a stable and time-honoured structure. The complaints sound a bit opportunistic. Human rights groups that oppose the adoption fault the Ritchies sometimes for flouting the law and sometimes for following it, since Malawi is not yet in full compliance with the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption.
Others present the adoption as having been carried out against the will of Yohane Banda, the boy’s father. Mr Banda first greeted Madonna as a “blessing from God” but later vented certain misgivings. “What we agreed with Madonna,” he said, “was that she looks after my child until he finishes school, becomes independent and comes back home to us.” But at that point David will be a man. His movements will not be Madonna’s either to command or forbid. Mr Banda’s second thoughts have clearly been whipped up by mischievous story editors. His quarrel is not with his son’s foster mother but with the human condition.
Another line of complaint is that it is unfair to remove the boy from his culture. The writer Hannah Pool, herself born in Africa and adopted to the west, thinks international adopting “smacks of missionary-like behaviour”. But this is a specious argument. The boy is 13 months old – he does not have a culture. Depending on where his Anglo-American parents raise him, his culture will involve either shopping on the King’s Road or grilling cheeseburgers. In Malawi, where a quarter of people die before they reach five, too much punctiliousness about respecting foreign cultures can miss the point. Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption in the US, wrote recently: “Children are suffering and even dying as a result of not being adopted internationally.” That is Madonna’s view. She describes Africa today as being in a “state of emergency”.
That characterisation is what bothers editorialists, even if they do not realise it. A state of emergency renders certain things compulsory. You cannot opt out of an emergency and say you would rather do something else. If Malawi’s predicament is an emergency, and the case can be made that it is, then Madonna’s ability to buy education and healthcare – put more crassly, her money – overrides any consideration of Malawian values.
Less obviously, it overrides certain western values, too, and there is a sneaking sense among the Ritchies’ opponents that the Ritchies benefit from this shift. To watch her videos is to suspect that Madonna is the sort of person whom adoption red tape was intended to screen out a generation ago, back when inculcating sexual morality was a primary goal of parenting. When saving children from various plagues becomes the goal, different virtues come to the fore: Madonna’s virtues, rather than ours. That is why, more through innuendo than through argument, Madonna’s act has been cast as selfish.
Heightened “awareness” about Africa may change the west more than it does Africa. There is precedent in many African cultures for the brutal bargain of sacrificing your offspring’s proximity for his material well-being. “The canny African parent,” wrote the knowledgeable Michaela Wrong in the New Statesman, “identifies which member of the extended family or network of friends has done best, then piggybacks on their success by sending them a child to raise”. The poor have often had to send their vulnerable children off to learn a trade or “into service” before they are grown. It has been generations since Europeans and Americans were that poor, or even had to look such things straight in the face. Today, information technology and episodes such as this adoption are forcing us to. Not everyone will be grateful for that.

Pumpkins, Politics and a (Sur)Prize

2006-10-30T09:26:00.000-05:00

Posted by: Andria

Fall is in the air and in the leaves, the clocks have moved one hour back - earlier than usual (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700709.html), pumpkins are everywhere, politicians are heading for all-time lows, and dogs go 'trick-or-treating'... October has been one strange month.

Trick or cheat?
I've heard about negative political campaigning, I've seen two or three such ads on previous visits to the US, but nothing could have prepared me for the 2006 Mid-Term elections campaign. Negative campaigning seems to reached record lows, even by American standards(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/26/AR2006102601811.html).

And, just for the record, since we are part of the 0.00000228% of households who don't have cable, I'm only exposed to this torture twice or three times a week while I'm suffering away in the gym (I will watch anything to distract me from the monotony that is exercise). I cannot decide what is scarier: (1) that there are people out there who might actually believe these ads; or (2) that the people who "approve of these messages" are going to end up in government.

Furthermore, the substance of both campaigns seems, once again, to boil down to nothing but "who do you find scarier: Bush and his GOP or Bin Laden"?

But, hey, who am I to criticize? It seems South Africa is heading for its own political Halloween any time soon.

Speaking of Halloween
I've been agonizing for weeks now what wear. Jac has settled early on being 'Dracula' (done to death, I know, but don't you think he will make a particularly scary Vlad?) I hate costume parties. It is as if all the creative juices drain straight out of my body whenever I have to come up with a costume. Perhaps it's in the genes, and my sister got all the costume-party-dress-up DNA (last time I heard, she was dressed for a Heroes and Villains party as an 'Austin Powers Fembot', fitted with a pink heroine's cape, Madonna cones and all...). In the end, I'll probably be the one wearing Harry's Invisibility Cloak and stealing the children's candy. How can I anyway outdo the guy we saw on Saturday: he dressed his dog in a green monster suit. Green fins, pointed tail - the works.

And in Other News...

Just when we thought this month could not get any weirder, Jac got an e-mail announcing that he is the 2006 Ford Scholar at Wharton. This means that he had the hightest average in their 1st Year MBA class.* It also means that months of painstaking image building has been destroyed in one devistating swoop. He has worked so hard at the new cool-easy-going-Jac-Tom Ford-image**, and now its being reduced to either
(1) he worked himself to pieces behind his desk and has no life; or
(2) he is too clever for what is generally considered to be good taste.

I tell you, the world is a weird place.

*His mom and me are allowed a bit of cheap bragging.
** I've told Jac he should just tell people he's won the TOM Ford Scholarship. But then again, most people didn't catch the joke. How sad. Go and check old Tom out, won't you?( http://www.askmen.com/men/apr00/18_tom_ford.html )

Eish! It's hard to stay focussed...

2006-10-19T15:46:00.000-04:00

...and, of course, I should be reading Wellens, Remedies Against International Organizations and not reading cartoons about the power of procrastination. Then again, as Ellen DeGeneres has said:
"Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, don't put it off."

Do I look fat in these trousers…?

2006-10-05T13:14:00.000-04:00

…'Nooooo, vroutjie…', he said with such a long sigh and a wistful look on his face that I had to burst out laughing. I know full well that this is an exasperating question to ask your man, and that you know he knows you’re only asking it because you are expecting a reassuring answer; but he has never had that particular look on his face before. What, I asked, was that all about? ‘No’, he said with another heart-wrenching sigh, 'I was just thinking that if one of my brothers was asking that kind of question, I would have said: “Not more than usual,” and that would have been the end of it.'

Maybe that’s just what he should have said in the first place; but then again: it could well have triggered an erratic reaction.

My latest do-I-look-fat-rants have largely been triggered by being back in Philly. Americans (like South Africans) may have an obesity problem, but here in Ivy League’ville they are few and far between. To make matters worse, I feel like a giant over here. I am of average height in South Africa, and in Holland I am considered to be short (they really are the tallest people in the world – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height and http://www.vwl.uni-muenchen.de/ls_komlos/covereu.html), but the average female pipsqueak here on campus barely reaches my shoulder. The situation is further exacerbated by the multitude of Asian female students roaming the streets – I counted nine the other day while walking from the gym to Starbucks (it is two blocks), and another two inside while I was waiting for my cappuccino.

Of course, this can only mean one thing: like all women (with the possible exception of Asian ones, but I’m not even willing to bet money on that one), I grudgingly have to admit that I have insecurities about my weight. (‘Hallo, Andria!’ chants a chorus of females at Do-I-Look-Fat Anonymous.Com) Acceptance may be the first step to resolving a problem, but my common sense tells me that I will never be able to overcome this entirely if I don’t understand the root causes. And, for the life of me, I do not understand how emancipated women of normal intelligence can succumb to this weakness.

It is perhaps appropriate to blame the fashion and entertainment industry – I certainly applaud the can of worms opened recently by some players in these industries (see http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=2899).

These are especially important developments for young girls and teenagers who are very impressionable and I salute influential people like J.K. Rowling for saying it like it is (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/06/nrowl06.xml). However, it still doesn’t explain my problem. I’ve stopped buying any fashion magazines years ago because I’ve decided that most of their so-called ‘fashion shoots’ just look disgusting (who, besides a few freaks, can ever fit into those clothes anyway?), and I have never (secretly) aspired to look anything like Nicole Richie (Catherine Zeta Jones, hmmm…now that’s a different story). In any case, can you picture me with a rat-sized dog under my arm?

So if I cannot blame the fashion / entertainment industry, who else are to blame? Men? Hmmm, that’s tempting…; but as Jac has pointed out: just look at the kinds of women that feature on the front (and middle) pages of men’s magazines. The objects of men’s fantasies look nothing like the stick figures that strut the catwalks and red carpets nowadays. But, and this is the important part, they don’t look like Miss Crispy Crème Doughnut either – they look like some goddess in-between and, damn it!, it’s difficult to find your own median.

Some women say we are our own biggest enemy, and that it is just a matter of getting the skinny bitch in your head to shut up. I buy that to some extent, but I also suspect there are some evolutionary biology and psychology at work. Women, me very much included, want to feel good about the way they look. They want to feel that they are desirable for men – for obvious reasons. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with that, and the survivial of our species probably depends on this. The tricky part is getting to a point where you feel comfortable in your own skin, design errors and all (and then staying there, which is even harder). To put it differently: the skinny bitch may have a point, but she probably should have a more voluptuous twin sister too. While I’m not going to fret about not looking like Sarah Jessica What’s-her-face, there is nothing wrong with wanting to look like Catherine Zeta Jones.

I might never reach this glorious equilibrium in one lifetime; but I have made peace with the fact that I will never reach it without being active. And by ‘active’, I mean seriously active by Andria's standards. With Jac’s help, I’ve slowly started to change my natural couch potato habits over the past months (here is the part where those of you who have seen me recently must send an e-mail to say that you’ve absolutely noticed the difference). For now, I’m largely content with just trying to be healthy. And, besides, there is nothing better for my own insecurities than to find Jac in front of the mirror, after we've returned from a grueling gym session, complaining pitifully that he will never have real biceps or shoulder muscles. There is some justice after all.

"Improvement"

2006-10-03T08:47:00.000-04:00

Geneva Convention Under Threat

2006-09-28T13:08:00.000-04:00

Geneva Convention is still law until changed

Letter to Financial Times, September 27 2006

Sir, In your interview "US needs 'advice not criticism' on terror suspects" (September 21), John Bellinger is quoted as saying: "It's not that you have to throw out the rules. But is it clear that what all our countries invented in 1949 (presumably a reference to the Geneva conventions of 1949) is the immutable legal holy grail as to what the rules ought to be in the 21st century?"

The answer is of course not - but they are the law until they are changed by the accepted procedures of international law, and the Geneva conventions have been updated a number of times since the first Geneva convention of 1864.

To argue that unilateral suspension of international law as it stands is acceptable on the grounds that it dates from 1949, and is therefore out of date, is rather like arguing that a constitution originally drafted in 1776 is, by definition, even more out of date and should be altered or suspended at will without wasting time on a procedure known as a constitutional amendment.

Count John de Salis,
Grandson, Switzerland

PS by Andria: What's not to love about this argument - eloquent in its simplicity?

Hair Stylists: A Lament

2006-09-24T22:33:00.000-04:00

Posted by: Andria

Sometimes you just have to manage your marital risks / hedge your marital bets. Consequently, Jac and I have established a set of rules over the years to ensure the durability of our relationship - you can call it one of those 'many-a-true-word-spoken-in-jest’ things. During our first six years of marriage, we were both studying part-time, working full-time at one time or another, hence, the first rule:

#1: We will never divorce on academic grounds / for academic related reasons.

Later on, we added rule number two during our first major home improvement project (for supporting evidence, see the photos at http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b332c6976582 and http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b332dcae65b6 – password: tungsten):

#2: We will never divorce due to home renovations.

We have moved to two continents over the past five years, which have recently forced me to add a third rule:

#3: We will never divorce on account of being forced to find a new hairstylist due to relocation.

Of all the traumatic experiences associated with relocation (packing, unpacking, heckling with the removals company about damage claims, completing forms, canceling telephones / internet service providers / gym subscriptions, subscribing for new services, figuring out the public transport system, dealing with incompetent immigration bureaucrats) having to find a new hairstylist tops my list by far. In case you consider this to be a trivial point, let me put it in context.

Hair is a sensitive issue in my family. My parental grandmother drew thick penciled eyebrows with her contorted arthritis hands every day of her life, until the day she’d died, to compensate for the deficiencies of her own (and I do the same, although a little less heavy-handed, I might add). Her nickname in the family was ‘ou tien draadjies / draaitjies’ – a dual reference to her excruciating habit of finding a million things to do at the last minute when the family was ready and waiting to leave; and, her thin hair. My maternal grandmother herself had little more than ‘ten hairs’, but it was always set in a Perm, and she was always complaining about the results. I have many fond memories of my mother coming home from a hairstylist appointment, goed die moer in, sticking her head under the tap in the bathroom sink, and then grabbing the scissors to undo the damage, VOWING never to set her foot in another hairdresser’s salon – only to repeat the scenario in a few months’ time.

Why, oh why, is it so difficult to find a hairstylist that LISTENS to what you want and that actually FOLLOWS your instructions?! And why, oh why, can you never strike it lucky with your first shot? After four excruciating attempts, I thought I’ve FINALLY sorted it out shortly before the summer holidays (only to have to do it again in about 10 months’ time, I know, but I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it) when I landed with this pink-haired chick, roses tattooed on her forearms. (Always a good sign, I find: the worse they look, the better they will make you look. Never trust a hairstylist with a good haircut. Ask him / her who does his / her hair, and go to that person instead.) I called the salon this week to make an appointment, only to find out that Trinity / Liberty / Sorority / Pink-Haired-Chick’ety doesn’t work there anymore.

Desperate times call for desperate measures: I had no choice but to restart the entire sad cycle. Although the outcome of the latest experiment had me seriously considering taking OTHER desperate measures – similar to the ones employed by Demi Moore in GI Jane or Natalie Portman in V For Vendetta.

Maybe I’ve made that third rule too fast…

The World, Ag, the World...

2006-09-20T23:52:00.000-04:00

A Brush with Nature

2006-09-17T19:45:00.000-04:00

Posted by: Andria

Regular readers will recall previous cynical remarks I've made on this blog about the inevitable brush with Nature. Jac and I have been together for almost 10 years and we've managed to avoid the subject, quite successfully I might add. Well, the past weekend was het zover. We went hiking and backcountry camping on a part of the historic Appalachian Trail that runs through the Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area. For those of you outside the US not familiar with the term 'backcountry camping', this means: there is nothing, niets, bôggerol - just Nature, you, and whatever you can manage to carry. Some of you might also recall me saying that I will not attempt such a feat without the Gadget. Jac took me to an outdoor shop to show me the model that was available; but I must say, and the Queen would have concurred, I was not amused. I pondered the matter for a while and in the end decided that if the Voortrekker women, of whom I am a proud decendant and who would rather trek barefoot over the Drakensberg mountains than to remain under British rule, could do it - so could I. Retoric aside, however, if there are any young, budding FEMALE scientists / engineers out there looking for a challenge that will earn you megabucks, just leave your name and number in the comment section below.

Our trip started as all prototype hiking trips should: as wet as it can possibly get. This had the benefit of proving to me that my new gifappeltjie yellow rain jacket and, importantly, our tent are really, REALLY, really waterproof. And I'm talking about some serious rain here, people. The other benefit of cool, rainy wheather was proven to me on Day Two - when the sun came out with a vengance and it was hot and humid. We spent a peaceful night with the rain drumming romantically on our little tent without managing to infiltrate it and crickets singing their little lungs (?) out. The only downside was two annoying insects of unknown origin taking turns to make irritatingly screeching sounds (spaced exactly two seconds, with a five-second pause every 10 minutes or so) in the tree right next to our tent. WHAT they were trying to accomplish...let's not entertain that thought any further.

The rest of the trail flew just flew by without incident ... well, not exactly* ... but I have to say that I've managed to enjoy it tremendously, no small part thanks to Jac being extremely considerate, patient, well-organized and well-equipped (should all hell ever break loose due to the polar ice caps melting / the gulfstream changing it course / other unimaginable natural disasters, make sure you know where and how to find him). If you are, by now, suspicious that I'm making all of this up as I write, have a look at our photos (password = tungsten): http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/.

Go in Green Peace this week. And never mind hugging a tree. Hug your flushing toilet.

*Small Print: there was this one insignificant little incident of me throwing a tantrum about the lack of shower facilities after a 10 km+ trudge in hot and humid conditions; and the other trifling episode of me stroking a passing hiker's dog - who happen to have brushed against poison ivy (Jac Inc. to the rescue); and Jac cultivating some interesting bacteria in his small intestines that the water purification chemicals didn't quite kill; and us unknowingly kidnapping a cricket in our tent - doing our little bit for biological diversity by releasing it in the Philadelphia wilderness to go forth and be fruitful.

Try that for size

2006-09-17T19:09:00.000-04:00

Conspiracy Theory?

2006-09-08T12:54:00.000-04:00

There And Back Again

2006-09-06T17:29:00.000-04:00

An Odyssey Through Glaciers, Forests, Corporate Thicket, Bushveld, Beaches, Lakes, Subtropical Lusciousness, Midlands Meanders, Farms, Mountains, Gangster’s Paradise, Polders, Champagne Vineyards – and AIRPORTS

--Posted by: Andria

Reference books define an ‘odyssey’ as ‘a long series of travels and adventures’, which is an accurate description of what Jac and I were up to over the past three months. To recap: Jac stayed in the US to do his summer internship with McKinsey, while I visited South Africa. We reconnected in Europe mid-August and arrived back in Philly on 3 September – just before the start of the academic year on 6 September. This is, of course, the abbreviated, and boring, version. I will do my best to give a more interesting account, but feel free to speed-read or skip to the end – others’ holiday stories usually belong in the same category as cute grandchildren, dogs and ailments. One disclaimer: my rendition of Jac’s adventures is obviously second-hand. I’m working on the lazy bugger to make a more regular appearance on the blog.

Jac’s Alaska Trek
Jac’s Alaska Trek exceeded his expectations by far, which were (roughly in order of priority): a physically and mentally demanding challenge; new skills; camaraderie and new friendships; breathtaking nature scenes. He came back eyes glistening, leaner and stronger muscles, damage to the nerve tissue in his two big toes (this is what happens if you carry an overloaded pack straight downhill for over three hours! Fortunately, all damage repaired itself after about two months…), and intensely inspired to pursue further outdoor ventures (see below) and to convert Andria to the wonders of the Great Outdoors (watch this space…). You can look at some of his photos (password: tungsten): http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dc924c449

Family, Dogs, Sun, Avocado Pears, and Some Serious Work in Uvongo
I was joyfully reunited with my mother, farther and sister on Durban’s airport – and received an enthusiastic welcome from our dogs at home in Uvongo (isn’t it wonderful that dogs don’t forget?). I spent two wonderful and, believe it or not, productive months with my family: working next to the pool in the sun, eating loads of avocado pears (bought dirt cheap from the ladies at Margate’s beach front), eating my dad’s braaivleis and my mum’s salads, seeing as much of possible of Nadia – who is doing her internship at the three state hospitals in Pietermaritzburg (and if she is not working, she is playing – they don’t sleep, those crazy medics). Also managed to see our dear friend Cecile who was also on holiday in KZN. Life was bliss. The photo’s tell the story (password: tungsten): http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dca89847d and also http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dca7d8489

Jac: McKinsey Summer Associate and Budding Camel Man
Meanwhile, Jac was doing his thing in true Jac-style: burning the candle at all three ends (impossible you say? do you really know Jac?). During the week he worked at McKinsey that would take him to locations in Chicago, Hartford, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Colorado, New York, Louisiana; and over weekends he would be cycling, kayak’ing and rock climbing. All these physical activities couldn’t have had a negative influence on his work because he ended his summer associate stint with a job offer safely in his back pocket. Not to mention some serious shoulder muscles! The only downside of his summer work is that he has been earning enough money to start buying me outdoor gear. I am now the proud owner of: a rain jacket and trousers; a rucksack; an outdoor sleeping mattress; a headlamp; a bear-bell (it scares them away, apparently); a funky water bottle that fits in your backpack with an external tube that enables you to drink water without reaching for a water bottle…I still want the gadget that enables a woman to stand upright like a man doing you-know-what before I will agree to face the Great Outdoors. Jac says he is working on it. No photos of Jac’s US adventures, unfortunately, as I had the camera. But I promise you there will be photos to document the first Great Outdoors expedition. Including photos of the last-mentioned gadget (just the gadget, not the practice).

Two weeks in Gangster’s Paradise
I spent the first two weeks of August in Pretoria (Gauteng Province, otherwise known as Gangster’s Paradise thanks to its skyrocketing crime rate – don’t get me started on this topic), visiting my adopted family: the Van der Westhuizens / Bothas, Mynie Barwise and Jac’s mom, Anita. I also had a long overdue sojourn in Modderfontein (District Delmas, Mpumalanga) where my cousin, Jannie Neuhoff, and his son, Francois, are continuing the family tradition with some Serious Maize Farming. I have reconnected deeply with the importance of family (adopted and otherwise) over the past three months. Friends that are close-by are often worth more than a brother who is far away; but you cannot escape the importance of people who have known you ever since you (or they) were born / that have seen you develop through critical stages in your life / with whom you share the most happiest and saddest times. Maybe it is just because I’m getting old, or because we live so far away. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful to have made this discovery. Fond memories represented in these photos (password: tungsten): http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dcb0bc467 and also http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dcb93c4ff

Terug naar Oegstgeest
This is the title of a well known Dutch novel written by Jan Wolkers, and it is a motto to which we both subscribe. Jac and I arrived back in Oegstgeest in mid-August, having barely survived our first Battle of the Airports – victims of the latest airport security restrictions. (Note: avoid London Heathrow like the plague. Note: make that all airports, except Schiphol). All belligerent thoughts disappeared like luggage in transit the moment we landed at Schiphol. We were back in the dear little plat land where everything is goed geregeld and, above all, where people are pragmatic and don’t overreact. Our house and garden were still standing – in fact, not a thing out of place thanks to our wonderful neighbours and friends – and we enjoyed the silence, the fresh produce, the ducks and the resident swan, the cyclists, Friesland with Walle & Maya, 14-course meals with Ingrid & Dennis, the Argentinean Steakhouse in Wassenaar with Gideon & Chantal…hey, even the crappy weather was bearable! I also met with my supervisor, the enigmatic Ellen, to discuss work progress and had a highly interesting and stimulating three days with her, Zoltan and Aleksandar (her other external PhD students) in Rotterdam on accountability in the international legal order, how-the-heck-do-I-write-a-PhD?; the difference and relationship between theory and practice; and other intriguing topics! (it was just as exhausting as it sounds)

May our only pain be Champagne
This is Walle’s corny joke (it is a toast, in fact, from some obscure movie); but there is some serious truth in it. My feelings about champagne (dry bubbly in general) are well-known to most of you. In fact, I would have responded in exactly the same was as Mme Lily Bollinger if somebody had bothered to ask me first. On the question: "When do you drink champagne?" she famously replied: "I drink champagne when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty." Jac and I hopped into Gideon & Chatal’s little groen gevaarte (which they were kind enough to lend to us) and drove to the Champagne region in France (Reims and Epérnay) for two bubbly-filled days. The photos tell the story best (password: tungsten): http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dc4de842d
(Be sure not to miss the ones of Jac & me eating leftover padkos and bubbly in our hotel room like proper students / eurotrash.)

The Second Battle of the Airports and the Long Wait for Freedom
Jac and I traveled via different routes from Amsterdam to Philadelphia. As we’ve had this question a few times now, let me confirm: no, we don’t organize it deliberately so that we never travel together, in order to prove our independence (although I honestly cannot blame anybody for thinking this). We are currently using air miles to travel; and since I’ve been flying with KLM and Jac with BA / Virgin for work ever week over the past four years, well, you get the picture. Jac flew Saturday evening out of London Heathrow, having spent the day with his brother, Rudolf. I left Sunday morning, traveling via Paris Charles de Gaulle. I was convinced that I had a horror story to tell him (won’t torture you with the details, just think endless queues, delays, ridiculous security measures and incompetent staff); but he won hands down with the Trip from Hell. I managed to get the story out of him slowly, bit by bit, over lots of cheap Californian Chardonnay (again, just cursory facts only; if I commit the whole story to words you will wake up tomorrow with foam around your mouth): the normal 10 minutes or so by car to Heathrow took more than an hour; the queue for Terminal 3 Check In snaked out the door, the full length of the terminal building; having made it through the queue, his flight to Newark was cancelled; after delays, got a flight to New York JFK; finally landed in NY around midnight Sunday morning; couldn’t find the ground staff who were to organize the promised bus to Newark airport; finally managed to convince said ground staff not to wait hours until all passengers (from original cancelled flight) was in bus (they had some difficulty to understand that some people might actually have made other arrangements); arrived at Newark airport around 03:00 AM; slept in the arrivals area until 05:00 AM to catch the train to Philly; missed the train to Philly because there was only one airport shuttle in service (not the usual 2/3) and the 10 minute trip to the station terminal took 30 minutes; finally arrived in Philly around 08:00 – fit to fight yet another Airport battle in future.

Home is Where the Heart is
If you’ve managed to read up to here: thank you and congratulations. If you’ve skipped to this part: probably a wise decision. Let me just say three more things: first, a big thank you to all the wonderful people that supported, housed, fed, transported and endured me and Jac over the past three months. A special word of thanks to our friends in Oegstgeest who are keeping an eye over Erasmuslaan 83. Second, Apologies to all the friends we have NOT managed to see this time around. We know you will not hold it against us / or see it as a reflection of our friendship. If you would, you wouldn’t have become friends with us in the first place! Third, on my arrival here in Philly, I was struck by this thought: home is, indeed, where the heart is. Philly is mostly ‘home’ for now (for some photos of our home here in Philly see [password: tungsten] http://andriaandjac.amazon.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33dc4f48407), but in our case, ‘home’ is in a large number of places – because that is where you all are.

Fondest wishes / alles vannie beste / groetjes

Jac and Andria

The First Prize goes to...Zapiro (South African cartoonist)

2006-05-30T16:59:00.000-04:00

And the Dutch, once again, comes to the rescue

2006-05-29T14:45:00.000-04:00

"A civilization can trivialize itself to death." Marilynne Robinson

2006-05-11T17:18:00.000-04:00

Three months past, three months ahead.

2006-05-11T11:49:00.000-04:00

Posted by: Andria

It is weird how time can drag on when you want it to pass quickly, and vice versa. In short, I cannot believe how fast the last three months have gone by, and also not how much has happened: New babies of friends were born, a very dear aunt of mine died, old friends got engaged, new friends were made, autumn has turned into spring (or the other way 'round), birthdays were celebrated, good friends came to visit, exams were written, I have surpassed my previous record (set up in my undergrad days) of going to the gym regularly (you should see my arm muscles), Jac and I have re-re-re-(re-)-discovered why we married each other in the first place, I have downloaded all the journal articles in the universe and have bought a small truckload of books for my dissertation from Amazon, I have figured out basketball (and I think it is absolutely 'awesome'), our American-English accents are making good progress (if only to use for party tricks in later life), I got a Kitchen Aid Mixer for my birthday (at long last), I've found somebody to cut my hair properly (after one dramatic misfire), we have walked hundreds of miles across Phillly (cars are so overrated), we have managed NOT to use LIKE, like in every sentence we formulate (I personally give all of you permission to slap us every time we, inadvertently, like, use the word, like, out of context), Jac has re-discovered his love for the great outdoors, and has reconnected with his deep affection for toys...I mean outdoor gear / equipment / gadgets, we have discovered exactly who Jack Bauer is (and lost a lot of sleep in the process), and we have learnt to sing the Star-Spangled Banner in Spanish (okay, that is just a joke, but there is an unofficial-official version of it on the local airways - to the chagrin of President Bush).

So what lies ahead for the next few months? Jac is on his way to a 10-day hiking tour to Alaska, with some Whartonites. They are trekking over a glacier, and he is personally hoping for extremely adverse weather conditions (I mean, why bother going there if you cannot tell stories of hardship afterwards?). I'm heading off to DC for another round of interviews (I'm starting to feel like Condi, minus the entourage or the hairdo). During June, July to mid-August, Jac will be working at McKinsey in Chicago - during which he also intends to become an expert Kayak'ker (all puns intended) on lake Michigan. I will be using the time to visit family and friends in sunny South Africa. I am also planning to get some real work done, since my mother will be doing my washing. Mid-August, we are both heading for Holland to make sure our house still stands, to eat as much good cheese, kwark and yogurt as we possibly can, and to visit our good Dutch friends. In September, it's back to Philly for the last year - and the whole thing starts again!

To all of you: have a great summer / winter. Hope work is treating you well, that all the babies are allowing you enough sleep (keep the photos coming, it might help to condition us for the inevitable), that all the new houses are getting renovated without too much anguish, and that all projects get completed on time and on budget.

Have a nice day / groetjes / cheers-vir-eers.

Andria (and Jac)

PS: New Photos on our Shutterfly link - p/word TUNGSTEN