Visitation Hours: Mondays10-11 am

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Long post today, I have much to cover.

Went to the first rugby practice last night. I’m sore as hell, but alive with all organs intact. I should have expected as much, but man, South Africans are good at rugby. And they’re huge too. I was placed in the under 20 yr. old squad and I’m still one of the smallest five – nothing new for me I suppose. Size aside, the skill of the players is sublime. They keep the ball flowing with offloads and no-looks, precision pops and perfectly spun misses all running at a pace I have never seen back home (apologies for the rugby jargon. I’ll be done in a minute.) Luckily, there are several under 20 teams, of which I made the last. I am proud to officially be a UCT Cub, the pride and joy of UCT under-twenty B-sides (there’s only one) that doubles, or so I am told, as the varsity drinking team… should be a gong show of a semester. I’m happy though that I’m on a squad that more closely approximates my size so that I no longer must fear for my life and because it is also clear I’m at an extreme skill disadvantage. The coaching, thankfully, is superb and I anticipate coming back a much improved rugger.

Now, a subject I’ve been e-mailed about endlessly (not once) by adoring fans of my blog (myself) the world over (my dorm room) - my living situation. I live in a UCT residence hall that we’ve affectionately come to call Oz, after the HBO prison drama. Once I get the pictures up you’ll understand, but for the meantime words will have to do. The dorm is a giant rectangle, six stories high with a concrete ‘yard’ in the middle. This arrangement makes it so that from one corner of the building you can see all the way up and across the dorm. If you watch people walk across the other side of the building during the day the place looks kind of like an ant farm. The manager of the facility is appropriately titled the “warden” (no joke) and on the bulletin boards around the halls we are constantly reminded that there are nightly squatter raids, to ensure we aren’t housing any vagabonds. I’ve never experienced one, nor have I heard from anyone who has, so my guess is that it is mostly scare tactic (as if they needed to frighten us more.) The cleaning crew wears convincing blue jumpsuits and you can often in the middle of the night hear shrieks coming from inside the yard (whether of laughter or the unbearable pain of being shanked in the gut with a sharpened spatula for screwing up the latest package, I don’t know.) Despite its crude appearance and management, I’ve come to really like the place. Well, maybe not really like the place, but every day it starts to feel more and more like home.

It helps that I get along well with my roommates, even if we aren’t best buds. I live with one American from Virginia who is really nice, but runs with a different crowd so I don’t see much of him. My two other flatmates are girls, Tammy from East London, South Africa, and Pamela from Botswana. They are both very sweet, Tammy a little less so than Pamela, but Tammy has an attitude that makes her oddly both fun to be around and teeth grindingly irritating at the same time. Luckily I’ve made it on to her good side by doing a few loads of dishes and cooking every now and again and have thus far escaped Tammy’s wrath. I expect to be in her doghouse shortly however, as I am a notorious fridge and pantry raider and have yet to find a cure that doesn’t involve buying my own food (can you imagine!)

Tammy loves to blast American R&B at odd times of the day (like early in the morning and late at night) and likes to sing along with all her friends. She makes up for it by being a fantastic cook even though she rarely does the dishes (all the while barking at me for not helping out around the flat). Luckily, Pamela is the neutral force between the American males and Tammy and keeps any beef between us to a simmer. For the most part though, we all get along well. Just the other day in fact Tammy and I had a long icebreaking conversation in the kitchen about her many boyfriends of which I’ll spare you the details.

Anyway, they’re fumigating our rooms today which should be fun.