James Saunders' Blog

Shorty's Shebeen and #breaktherules

2011-05-17T12:24:00.001+02:00

Last weekend was a busy one. So busy that what should normally be two blog posts is going to have to be one. Last Friday I went to the Franschhoek Literary Festival, which was awesome. I got to see and hear a lot of my favourite South African authors as well as plenty that I hadn't read yet but seemed very cool. Unfortunately given the nature of time and space I couldn't go to all the events but the ones I did get to see were great. As brief example some of the people talking that I saw were, Lauren Buekes, Sarah Lotz, Zakes Mda, Justice Malala, Antony Altbeke, Karabo Kgoleng, Imraan Coovadia, Shubnum Khan, Sifiso Mzobe, Mike Nicol and many others.

I also used the event to sort of go public-ish with Shorty's Shebeen, the South African Short Stories site I've been working on with Jeff Webster. So I guess you guys should all check Shorty's out. The idea (as I have written to so many authors to explain) is:

Give RSA writers the thing that writers crave most, an audience.
Encourage what we see as a potentially massively creative period in South African literature.
Maybe get a publishing deal for some of the stories on the site, a Shorty's Shebeen compendium or something, which could act as a spring board for unpublished writers.
Get some awesome stories.

The awesome design was done by Jeff and I did the mildly OK backend. If there are any literary orient Techies out there that would like to contribute you can check out the code on Github. But it would be way cooler if you put up some stories and read a few that are already up. You can get a whole bunch more info in the about section of the site, so I won't waste your time repeating it here.

The other thing that happened over the weekend was #breaktherules. #breaktherules was an event organised by @jbrownbridge ,@marcog with a little input and help from yours truly. The idea of the event was to connect computer science students with local startups to do internships. The principle goal being to give students a chance to get some real world exposure in really interesting companies and to give the startups some exposure to up and coming developers. The event was one hell of a success, everyone had a great time and a lot of eyes were opened. Most of the students had no idea there were so many cool things going on in Cape Town, and honestly I don't think the companies knew there were so many good developers in training.

As a highlight Quirk used the event to launch their QuirkLabs incubator, which promises to be really interesting and is the cumulation of a lot of hard work on their part.

So thats the weekend highlights.

All there is to know about Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-02T13:04:00.000+02:00

All There Is To Know About ~~Adolph Eichmann~~ Osama Bin Laden

EYES Medium

HAIR Medium

WEIGHT Medium

HEIGHT Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES None

NUMBER OF FINGERS Ten

NUMBER OF TOES Ten

INTELLIGENCE Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize Incisors?

Green saliva?

Madness?

(Poem by Leonard Cohen)

Lest we forget.

Watching the world wake up

2011-05-02T09:29:00.003+02:00

I'm sitting here at my little metal café table in my flat, looking out my window. It's 7:37 and I have been sitting here sipping tea for about an hour just watching the world wake up and unfold. I had forgotten how peaceful the early morning is. It's been so long since I saw one. It's a time of day I have always loved, even if it is one I am rarely awake for. I have always enjoyed the slow metamorphosis that unfolds.

It starts as the dead of night, quiet. All of the revelry has been sedated, all of the shop lights are off and the clubs are closed. The streets are completely empty. The only movement is the occasional flicker of the yellow street lights. The first signs of morning are dually the faint glow on the horizon signalling the slow advance of the sun and the sluggish movements of the first delivery trucks doing their pre-dawn rounds. The slow meander of the trucks seems to made even slower in the pre-dawn haze, as if the light itself is viscous and the minimal traffic has to push through it, as if through the ether.

The first taxi's signal the start of the human activity. One taxi, maybe two go by, still sedately. There aren't any people on the roads yet, so there are no shouts, no aggressive competition. With no other cars to avoid or out manoeuvre even the taxi's seem peaceful. The few passengers that disembark move quickly out of sight, into their stores to set things up for the coming days.

It's at this point where the light is becoming strong enough to over power the street lights, but they will stay on for another few minutes. This leaves an image of a world on the cusp of transition. The lights appear as the last guardians of the peace of night from the impending chaos of the day.

I can see the first cars now, proper cars, private vehicles. The side walks are still empty though, save for the occasional ex-taxi passenger. It's going to be a cloudy day, the clouds have blocked the glare of the sunrise leaving the landscape tinged with a blue-grey hue. I think it'll be a calm day. The city seems to have absorbed the weather, settling into its rhythm. But it will slowly speed up, just like the clouds will slowly burn off.

I hear my alarm clock go off, it is time for me to wake up. It is time for the day to begin.

Road signs I wish I would see

2011-04-29T19:57:00.000+02:00

The Jolly Exclusive Whisky Society Website

2011-04-25T16:19:00.000+02:00

The gentlemen of the The Jolly Exclusive Whisky Society have commissioned a website. It can be seen here at http://www.whiskysociety.co.za.

dumb_ptr, a smart_ptr conversion class in C++ (only for programmers)

2011-03-18T05:22:00.000+02:00

Everyone reading this who is not a programmer,
STOP READING NOW!!
Seriously this post will make no sense to you, do something you will enjoy like going swimming. For those who are programmers this may interest you.

I have been using a lot of different boost smart pointers lately, as well as normal pointers. I have noticed that as you develop you tend to realise that you have to switch pointer types and memory management mechanism because you overlooks some circular dependency or some othe small annoying thing. When this happens and you change your pointer type you have to either go and change a whole bunch of you method signatures to take the new pointer type, or at each call site you have to convert between pointer types. You also have a problem if you have the same function but want it to take multiple pointer types.

I was wondering if there already existed a generic way to deal with this, i.e. write methods that are agnostic of the pointer type you pass to it?

The obvious answer is write all your simple methods (methods that don't manipulate ownership of the pointer and don't return it to anything) to take raw pointers (T*) or references (T&) as parameters. But this still means that you have to write code at each call site to extract the raw pointer, and if you change the type of smart pointers you are using then you have to change code at every call site. That's a hassle, I like to avoid hassles.

You could also overload your methods for different pointer types, but thats a huge waste of time and makes the more code difficult to read. Another way is to use a template style solution with some type inference, but this would cause some significant bloat in the compiled code and is likely to start throwing strange unsolvable template errors.

My idea was to write a new class any_ptr<T> with conversion constructors from all the major pointer types, say, T*, shared_ptr<T>, auto_ptr<T>, scoped_ptr<T> and weak_ptr<T>and then have it expose the * and -> operators. In this way it could be used in any function that does not return the pointer outside of the function and could be called with any combination of common pointer types.

The class ended up being really simple, here it is:

template<typename T>
class dumb_ptr {
 public:
  dumb_ptr(const dumb_ptr<T> & dm_ptr) : raw_ptr(dm_ptr.raw_ptr) { }  
  dumb_ptr(T* raw_ptr) : raw_ptr(raw_ptr) { }  
  dumb_ptr(const boost::shared_ptr<T> & sh_ptr) : raw_ptr(sh_ptr.get()) { }  
  dumb_ptr(const boost::weak_ptr<T> & wk_ptr) : raw_ptr(wk_ptr.lock().get()) { }  
  dumb_ptr(const boost::scoped_ptr<T> & sc_ptr) : raw_ptr(sc_ptr.get()) { }  
  dumb_ptr(const std::auto_ptr<T> & au_ptr) : raw_ptr(au_ptr.get()) { }  
  T& operator*() { return *raw_ptr; }
  T * operator->() { return raw_ptr; }
  operator T*() { return raw_ptr; }
 private:
  dumb_ptr() { } 
  dumb_ptr<T> operator=(const dumb_ptr<T> & x) { }
  T* raw_ptr;
};

It can convert from the common smart pointers automatically and can be treated as a raw T* pointer, further it can be converted automatically to a T*. The default constructor and the assignment operator (=) have been hidden to deter people from using it for anything other than function arguments. When used as a function argument the following can be done.

void some_fn(dumb_ptr<A> ptr) {
  B = ptr->b;
  A a = *ptr;
  A* raw = ptr;
  ptr==raw;
  ptr+1;
}

Which is pretty much everything you would want to do with a pointer. It has the exact same semantics as a raw pointer T*. But now it can be used with any smart pointer as the parameter without having to repeat the conversion code (.get,.lock) at each call site. Also if you change your smart pointers you don't have to go around fixing each call site.

So I think this is a pretty neat solution. The idea and most of the content for this post come from a Stackoverflow question I asked, where I presented this idea and asked if anyone saw any major problems with it. The answering parties didn't think much of it, but I think they missed the point (No offence intended) . The point is that it should be less of a hassle to program, even in languages like C++.

Well that's it, I hope someone finds it useful

Counting your way out of hell

2011-03-13T16:28:00.000+02:00

Tom Waits as your tormenting Devil

Today I have some riddles and games for you. The game is called counting your way out of hell and involves a simple a little story. You have died and been banished to hell for the many transgressions you have committed during your life (such as this or this). In any case Satan (played by Tom Waits) offers you a way out. He proposes a challenge (said in a classic Waitsian drawl):

I'm gonna think of a number, it's gonna be positive whole number like 1,2,3 or 57823. It can be as big as I want. Now you have to guess what it is, but you have as many guesses as you want.

So you think to yourself, this is a pretty sweet deal. Since you have been damned for all eternity you have time for quite a few guesses. So how do you do it?

So this is an easy one. I'm sure you've figured it out. So you start at 1, and the 2, 3, 4 and so on. And you know that eventually you are gonna get there. It may take a long time but eventually you'll get there, and you do. The Devil is marginally impressed and stroking his pointy beard proposes a slightly more difficult challenge:

So now I'm gonna think of another number, this time it can be positive or negative. Same rules, you get as many guess as you want.

This one's a bit more difficult. If you try your original strategy and Old Nick guesses a negative number you are never gonna get there. But with just a simple modification you figure it out. If you follow every positive guess with a negative one then you get there, something like 1,-1,2,-2,3,-3 and so on. Once again whatever the number is you are guaranteed to eventually guess it.

Satan grins, knowing that he has just been warming you up. He gives his final challenge:

This time I'm going to think of a fraction. It can be any positive fraction, proper or improper (i.e. ¹⁄₄ or ⁷⁄₃). You get as many guesses as you want. If you guess the right number then you get go to back to your life.

Now this one is tricky, and it takes a bit of thought. Think about it for a few minutes.

There are a couple of (wrong) ways you could try this. You could try every simple fraction with a numerator of 1, something like ¹⁄₁, ¹⁄₂, ¹⁄₃, ¹⁄₄ and so on. But then if the Devil guesses ²⁄₃ you are never gonna guess it and you'll be spending all of eternity in the fiery abyss. Similarly if you pick any other single Numerator (the top number in a fraction) or Denominator (the bottom number in a fraction) and try all of possibilities. However, there is a way.

Imagine the fractions on a grid, with the one axis being all the denominators and the other being all the numerators, such as the one shown below. Then all you have to do is count them off on each diagonal starting at the top left corner. Below is a little animation of this system for numerators and denominators between 1 and 9. Click the "Go!" Button to start it.

Denominators

N
u
m
e
r
a
t
o
r
s

It should be clear that if you continued this pattern for long enough you would eventually reach any fraction. Realising this you eventually guess the correct fraction (and really no matter how long it takes you it's a lot shorter than eternity). Reluctantly the Devil has to let you go, strangely the Devil seems bound by verbal contracts just like everyone else. And that's how you count your way out of hell.

Mathematically this is all possible because Natural Numbers, Integers and Rational Numbers(Fractions) are all Countable. What this essentially means is that you can create a system (a bijection technically) that can assign a Natural Number (1,2,3,etc.) to each and every Integer and Rational Number. With Integers it was pretty obvious how to do it but with the Rational Numbers the system explained above is called a Cantor Pairing, after the Mathematician Georg Cantor.

Countability is an important concept when we want to talk about the size of infinitely large sets. There are an infinite amount of Natural Numbers and Real Numbers, but in some sense we feel that there should be "more" Real Numbers than Natural Numbers. To define this idea we use the idea of countability. In some sense we say that the infinite amount of Natural Numbers is the same as the infinite amount of Integers and is also the same as the infinite amount of Rational Numbers - they are all countable. However, we can prove that the Real Numbers are not countable (which I will not show here, but has a simple elegant proof you can look up here), they are uncountable and strictly larger than than a countable set. The fact that Rational Numbers are countable is surprising since in between 0 and 1 there are infinitely many Rational Numbers, yet despite that we consider the set of all Natural Numbers and the set of all Rational Numbers to be the same size.

Cantor's pairing function can be seen as a way of encoding two numbers into one number, which you can see if you consider a fraction ^a⁄_b to just be a pair of numbers (a,b). The function can easily be extended to encode any amount of numbers, for example (a,b,c). It can even be used to encode tuples where you don't know the length by first encoding the length of the tuple and then encoding the the tuple in a single number and then taking the cantor pairing of those. The consequence of this is that a surprisingly large amount of sets turn out to be countable. For example:

Rational Numbers
Polynomials
Algebraic numbers
All polygons with integers length sides (I'm guessing on this but it seems obvious)
All Computer programs

Because we can number all these things we can use them much more easily in proofs, and we sometimes make very surprising relations between one and the other.

Thought Factory - A friend's new blog

2011-02-28T18:10:00.002+02:00

A friend of mine, Camaren, has started a blog, Thought Factory, that those interested in

"Thoughts on the new millenium; people, politics,economics, environment and technology. What kind of world do we live in and where is it leading to?"

should check out. The posts a well thought out and offer more analysis than the usual blogger fair of just splurging out whatever you have seen on the news. The latest posts have followed the middle east obviously and offer a good review of whats been happening as well as contextualizing some of the events more broadly.

Post-Oedipul remembrance

2011-02-28T18:01:00.001+02:00

Today I was reminded by the Daily Maverick how swift we are to re-imagine our past to appease our consciences. Talking about Libya in this case they point that its about as hard to find a person that supported the Gaddafi regime as it is to find a person that voted for the National Party government during apartheid. The great re-visioning of personal histories that acts as the precursor to greater rewriting of the past has begun in earnest all through the middle east. We've seen this many times before, an obvious example being the claims of ignorance of the Nazi population with regard to the holocaust. Soon it will true that everyone was secretly working against Gaddafi, and those that supported him were only doing so out of fear. Perhaps this reinvention of the past is a requirement to move on, a type of survivalist double-think that we need to live with what many people should feel as overwhelming guilt. This sort of thinking is no stranger to South Africa.

I have no desire to see anger fester, and I hope that their will be a swift reconciliation of the middle east with out to many Salem style witch hunts. But still the inevitable and willful destruction of the truth bothers me. I am reminded of a great line from The unbearable lightness of being (actually i stole this line form the movie, but i am sure its the same). It is not exactly relevant but touches on somethign I am feeling. It is the protagonist Tomas talking about the former Czech leaders:

"I've been thinking about Oedipus. Good King Oedipus. When Oedipus realized that he had killed his father- unknowingly, unknowingly killed his father - and was sleeping with his mother and that because of his crime plagues were ravaging his city, he couldn't bear the sight of what he'd done.He plucked out his own eyes and left.He did not feel innocent.He felt he had to punish himself.

But our leaders, unlike Oedipus, they felt they were innocent. And when the atrocities of the Stalinist period became known,they cried,"We didn't know! We weren't aware of what was going on. Our conscience is clear".

But the important difference is they stayed in power. And they should have plucked their eyes out. All I'm saying is that morality has changed since Oedipus."

The Barnsley fern

2011-02-15T17:12:00.000+02:00

So I am getting into my masters again. Which means I have lots of time to distract myself with pointless side projects. Hence we are delving again into the wonderful world of fractals. This time the fractals is called the Barnsley Fern. It's also a very famous fractal (as far as fractals can be famous. I don't think its famous like Tom Cruise. But how could a lowly mathematical object compete with the crown prince of Scientology).

The fractal, unsurprisingly, looks like a fern plant, or rather a leaf of a fern. Like many fractals it is made up of smaller versions of itself that have been scaled and rotated. It is also an infinitely complex object. If you had the computational power then in theory you could zoom into any part of it and find infinitely many copies of itself.

So here it is. It is set to keep drawing in more detail. To start it from scratch again click the redraw button.

This fractal was discovered by Michael Barnsley who was really into fractals. It is an example of a Iterated Function System(IFS). The interesting thing about it (which you can see in the animation) is that it is drawn one point at a time, and that how this point moves around is randomly chosen. But never the less it always draws the same picture. The Wikipedia article has a reasonably detailed explanation of how it is constructed (which really is simple). Check it out if you are interested.

Mumbai rising

2010-12-18T17:17:00.000+02:00

Mumbai is massive. That's really the best way to describe it. Its spans endlessly in seemingly all directions. Getting your bearings seems impossible. The scale of the place compounded with the traffic mean that getting from one side of town to the other can easily take 2 or 3 hours. And the traffic, it almost defies description. I know that the traffic in India is renowned, but it really lives up to its reputation. A South African driving here would break down crying in about the first city block, thank fully I had a driver (thank you Paramin) and so had the luxury of being a fairly passive observer. The roads are a constant melee. It does not matter the time of day or night, there is a gridlock. Trucks and Buses vie for position with auto-rickshaws and scooters. The auto-rickshaws flock down the roads like huge beetles, they are really something to see.

What appeared to me at first to be complete chaos I later realised was the only workable system for traffic of this nature. The rule seems to be, take any opportunity you have (no matter how slight), but be constantly conscious that everyone else is trying to do the same. Thus if some one else has gotten there first you give up and let them through, its kind of like having right of way being set as whoever has there nose in front first. The maneuvers are death defying. Three lane roads can easily have five lanes of vehicles on them, all of different and varying size. To make a three point turn in the middle of this traffic is a completely valid maneuver. If construction barriers are too close to your car its fine to stick your hand out and push them away. But its strangely nonthreatening, perhaps I don't so easily, but the system just seems to flow. This stop start bump and bash seems to have a logic and life of its own.

The motorbikes are incredible. Families of three (or even four) jet down the road, all on a little Hero Honda 125cc. They weave through traffic with a reckless abandon, deftly avoiding certain collisions with buses and cars. The roads are full of pretty young women straddling the back of a bike holding onto their boyfriends or husbands in front, and older women behind there husbands. These women sit side saddle because they are wearing Saree's, and modesty (I think) stops them from holding onto the rider in front, so instead they just hold onto the seat they are on. No matter how sharp the turn or sudden a maneuver they never seem to to be anything but perfectly upright on the bike. It is like there is some invisible gravity that makes sure they just float along in perfect unison with the bike beneath then. It is an almost eerie sight.

The skyline is impressive. In all directions there are towering constructions of new residential towers or massive office blocks, all 50+ stories high. From my previous apartments (I am now in New Delhi) window I could see 10 of these huge towers within a few blocks, some are still being built but none of them are more than 3 years old. It is as if the city can no longer grow out (since it is on a peninsula) and the continual massive growth of the Indian economy is driving it up out of the ground.

The most striking thing about Mumbai though is the is the tangible sense of ambition. It electrifies the air, along with the scramble to survive. All the young men walk around in collared shirts, good pants and (ironically) leather shoes. They look like fields or accountants (though most of them I think work in call centers). It is so important to them to look successful and to constantly work to improve their position in life. Where western advertisers try to sell the idea of "cool", here they try to sell the idea of "success". You can see it on TV, on billboards and in the shops. The driving ambition permeates everything. Perhaps this is what America used to feel like when everyone started striving towards the American dream? In any case it is a monumentally powerful force, with a huge, young, educated workforce this ambitious it is no wonder that India grows year on year. It is an almost humbling realisation.

I wonder what Mumbai will look like in 20 years? it has the potential to become a beautiful city, right now the private spaces are exquisitely maintained but almost all the public spaces a dirty and broken. The obvious wealth of the city juxtaposed against the dirt and poverty is not strange for a person coming from South Africa, but is far more immediate a contrast. But perhaps the rising wealth will uplift the public areas, clean the streets, repaint the disastrously dirty old walls of old apartments (which are very nice inside). Right now Mumbai needs a bit of photo-shopping, but its electric will to succeed is irrepressible. This cannot but be one of the cities of the future.

Why I hate C++

2010-11-15T17:56:00.001+02:00

I was doing some C++ work today, as I do. Everything was going fine, I was making good progress. I had just recompiled, but when I ran this is the error message I got.

ideaengine: /usr/include/boost/variant/detail/visitation_impl.hpp:203: typename Visitor::result_type boost::detail::variant::visitation_impl(int, int, Visitor&, VPCV, mpl_::true_, NBF, W*, S*) [with W = boost::detail::variant::visitation_impl(int, int, Visitor&, VoidPtrCV, mpl_::false_, NoBackupFlag, Which*, step0*) [with Which = boost::variant<T0, T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T11, T12, T13, T14, T15, T16, T17, T18, T19>::internal_apply_visitor_impl(int, int, Visitor&, VoidPtrCV) [with Visitor = boost::detail::variant::copy_into, VoidPtrCV = const void*, T0_ = std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >, T1 = boost::recursive_wrapper<std::vector<json_spirit::Pair_impl<json_spirit::Config_vector<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > > >, std::allocator<json_spirit::Pair_impl<json_spirit::Config_vector<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > > > > > >, T2 = boost::recursive_wrapper<std::vector<json_spirit::Value_impl<json_spirit::Config_vector<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > > >, std::allocator<json_spirit::Value_impl<json_spirit::Config_vector<std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > > > > > >, T3 = bool, T4 = long long int, T5 = double, T6 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T7 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T8 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T9 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T10 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T11 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T12 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T13 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T14 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T15 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T16 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T17 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T18 = boost::detail::variant::void_, T19 = boost::detail::variant::void_]::first_which, step0 = boost::variant<T0, T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T11, T12, T13, T14, T15, T16, T17, T18, T19>::internal_apply_visitor_impl(int, int, Visitor&, VoidPtrCV) [with Visitor = ....

Now what the hell are you meant to do with that. Its ridiculous.

Its wiki-charity time again.

2010-11-15T00:58:00.001+02:00

Its that time of the year the again. By which I mean its Wikipedia donation time again. I doubt anyone reading this doesn't frequently use Wikipedia. I know its made an enormous contribution to my life (and help me pass a maths degree). So I've donated a little, you should to.

The Splitting Spira Mirablis

2010-09-22T00:42:00.000+02:00

Here is another spiral tree related post. This time I have used a logarithmic spiral, also known as the Spira Mirablis (Latin for the Miraculous Spiral).

This spiral appears in many places in nature and has a variety of interesting geometric properties. It was deeply studied by Jacob Bernoulli. He was infatuated with it to the point that he wanted it engraved on his tombstone along with the phrase "Eadem mutata resurgo" ("Although changed, I shall arise the same."). Unfortunately, the engraver put the wrong type of spiral on his tombstone.

South Park me

2010-09-20T19:49:00.001+02:00

I stumbled upon this awesome little flash widget at http://www.sp-studio.de/. Its a south park character creator. So I decided to make a south park me. I present south park James.

South Park James

Spiral Trees and Tim Burton's Forest

2010-09-10T15:27:00.002+02:00

A friend sent me the link to the MIT OpenCourseWare site for a 2007 summer school session on Gödel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey. I looked at the images section and saw these cool pictures (obviously from somewhere in the book that I haven't gotten to yet). So I decided to recreate them (though using a different type of spiral).

Below you will see the animation. I have made it in 2 modes, one that creates the hypnotic spiral trees and an altered form that creates haunting trees that remind me of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. Check it out and if you are interested I will explain the mathematics below.

Normal Mode
Tim Burton Mode

So the basic spiral tree works recursively in the following manner: It starts tracing out a spiral starting from the outside going to the center. At each point it has a random chance of splitting. When a split occurs a new spiral with the same radius is created, the center of this spiral is the reflection of the previous center through the point where the split occurs and the spiral is made to rotate in the opposite direction. This continues with each new spiral, in a process that is reminiscent of the L-Systems I have blogged about before.

The normal spiral I have used is a quadratic spiral, in that if the angle of rotation of a point in the spiral is θ then the radius is r=θ². I believe the spirals used in the original text are logarithmic spirals (r=e^θ), which are mathematically more interesting but visually took up too much of the limited space available.

For the Tim Burton style trees I generalized the notion of a spiral and allowed a non-monotonic relationship between angle and radius. I instead made the relationship proportional to sin(5θ)*θ². which gives it the distinctive kinks but still retains a smooth profile (since the function is differentiable).

Exploring L-Systems

2010-09-01T20:24:00.000+02:00

Another day, another dog. Another month, another piece of dangerous productivity avoided. This month I am avoided furthering my life goals by starting to read Godel, Escher, Bach", which is an awesome book. It deals with a remarkable amount of things, including formal logical systems. This got me delving into string manipulation systems again and somehow got me onto L-Systems.

L-Systems were developed by this theoretical botanist (yes such a thing exists) to codify plant growth. Later they were taken up by mathematicians to visualise and generate a variety of interesting recursive geometric patterns. Lately they have been used extensively to generate artificial life in computer science, especially tree like entities.

L-Systems are a string rewriting system. basically they take a string of characters, and then create a new string by replacing each old character with a new string, according to some rules. This continues and iterates creating increasingly more complicated and intricate strings of characters. These characters can then be interpreted by drawing program to make beautiful patterns. You can read more about L-Systems at the Wikipedia Article, I don't want to get bogged down in the details, I want to look at some cool patterns.

Below is an L-System generator I built. You can explore the different possibilities of L Systems. The string grammar is as follows:

Capital Letter: Draw a line forward
Small Letter: Do nothing
+: Turn right
-: Turn left
[:Save position to stack
]:load previously saved position from stack

The rules are defined in a simple way, for example "x->y" means replace every "x" with a "y". You can change a whole bunch of settings about how the drawing system interprets the strings in the settings below. This is a bit of a rushed explanation, but you can find lots of info online that should help you out. There is also a list of interesting presets at the bottom of this post, check them out, play around, leave any interesting rules you find in the comments.

Axiom:
Rule:	x->F-[[x]+x]+F[+Fx]-xF->FF
Number of Generations:
Starting Point:	(, )
Starting Angle:
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Interesting Examples

Fractals folding out new lands

2010-08-20T19:24:00.003+02:00

In keeping with my apparent intense dislike of doing anything constructive (like say my work or my masters), here is another fractal image. This one a bit different from the others in that it is mathematically much simpler and its construction is animated. This is called (at least by me) a divided line fractal (not to be confused with a cantor set). It is very similar to the Koch Curve but with an element of randomness that creates intricate and varied shapes that come to resemble islands or coastlines. This similarity between coast lines and fractals was one of the earliest observations by Benoît Mandelbrot, resulting in his well known paper "How Long Is the Coast of Britain?". Similar techniques are used for artificial world creation in computer simulations and games.

The fractal itself is simple to construct. Start with an initial state of two vertical lines, one from the top to the bottom and the other from the bottom to the top of the frame. The for each line take the mid point and move it to a random location around where it was, creating two new line segments. Repeat this step until all the line segments are really small.

In this implementation every time a line segment is broken up the triangle that is created is filled with a translucent yellow. The resulting shape is then filled black. I like to think of the effect as looking like the world is slowly being unfolded, or fanned out from a really simple shape to complete outline

To draw a new shape hit the "Redraw" button. Once again this is done using the HTML5 canvas so you will need a decent browser (Chrome,Safari,Firefox,Opera) to get it to work. It also probably work work through an aggregator like Google reader or buzz since I think they disable scripting, so you will have to visit my original blog page to see it work.

Julia sets and more fractals

2010-06-05T16:17:00.002+02:00

Following on from my last post on the Mandelbrot set I've created a Julia set generator. Julia sets are a similar sort of fractal to the Mandelbrot set. The Julia sets I am showing are all generated using the function z_n+1 = z_n²+c. Thus for every possible value of c we get a different Julia set. In this viewer the Julia sets are shown in red. There are many other types, but these are the classic Julia sets that led to the development of the Mandelbrot set.

The Julia sets come in two varieties; connected and disconnected sets. Either all the points in the Julia set are connected to each other (forming a single central entity) or all the points are disconnected (forming a Cauchy set, also called Fatou dust). The Mandelbrot set is generated from this fact, basically the Mandelbrot set is all the values of c such that the generated Julia set. In fact the Mandelbrot set forms a pictographic index of all the connected Julia sets. If you zoom in enough into the Mandelbrot set you will eventually find a copy of every conceivable Julia set. Which is pretty cool.

Some of the Julia sets form incredibly beautiful shapes, while others can be pretty mundane, I have put a list of some interesting sets below the viewer, just click on the links and the values will load into the viewer. Otherwise please explore the space and try your own values. If you find a combination of values that looks particularly impressive please leave the values as a comment for other people to try. The instruction for use are the same as the previous Mandelbrot viewer with the addition of being able to change the values for c by giving the real and the imaginary parts.

Real:
Imaginary:
Precision:

Some interesting sets

Click links to load:

-0.8-0.1i (prec=50)
-0.8-0.2i (prec=50)
-0.62772-0.42193,50i (prec=100)
-0.7-0.3i (prec=100)
0.233+0.5378i (prec=50)

The Mandlebrot Set

2010-06-03T02:50:00.005+02:00

So I have been reading allot about fractals lately (you should start with this cool book), and of course the Everest of fractals is the Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set is (for those of your who don't know) an intriguing mathematical object, but I won't go into the math of it. Just take my word for it that this set is one of the coolest things ever discovered) Visually though it has boundary that is infinitely complicated, containing myriads of twisting patterns and curves (in fact in a sense it contains every possible curve somewhere on it boundary. You can zoom in on the curve and it will remain detailed at any level of zoom, never becoming a simple shape.

I've also been wanting to try out the HTML5 canvas for a while, so I decided to make a Mandelbrot set viewer with javascript. doing something like this in a browser would have been impossible a few years ago, but now with modern browsers (this excludes Internet Explorer, sorry this wont work for you but I don't care) even computationally difficult tasks are becoming feasible using javascript.

Anyway,play around with it, maybe you get a little interested, maybe you check out some of the ideas. Maybe not.

Instructions

Below is the Viewer (If you don't see a cool shape it probably doesn't work on your browser, you should upgrade).
You are going to want to zoom in on a specific spot on the boundary of the black object in the middle (which is the Mandelbrot set), to do this click and drag around the place you want to zoom in on.
Eventually when you zoom in too far the shape will get boring, this is simply because the computer only renders an approximation. You can increase the precision by increasing the precision value in the text box and pressing the reset button. The higher the precision the longer in takes to render the picture.
Pressing the reset button will also let you zoom all the way out and start exploring and new part of the set.

Precision:

A Masters Topic Finally

2010-05-14T01:45:00.000+02:00

So as some of you probably know I have finished my masters proposal and finally have a real topic. Basically I am taking a certain type of social-ecological model used in decision making and policy planning and trying to hook them up to real time data. I'm doing this to check:

That the models are correct
That the decisions made based on the models still make sense.

I have a project page available here, which has a longer description and various useful links (like my actual proposal) for people who are more interested. I am also releasing all my source code as open-source, and releasing all my articles/thesis material under a creative commons license (more details at the project site). So go have a look, it will help you understand what I'm saying when I am ignoring you and talking to myself (come on, we all do it sometimes).

Bring back the Airships

2010-03-05T14:54:00.002+02:00

Today I want to talk about a topic that is very close to my heart. Long ago in a far more civilized time, before twitter feeds and the blogosphere, yes before cellphones and even the internet, people were happy to do things slowly. And when these fine people needed to locomote their favored form of transport was the Airship.

Airships, also known as Zeppelins or Dirigibles (From the French "diriger" to direct plus -ible, meaning "directable" or steerable) once ruled the skies. These graceful giants floated across and between continents, ferrying the most important people to there most important business with a level of luxuriating comfort unseen in modern air travel. At their height the transatlantic route between Germany and Brazil took a leisurely 68 hours, much like a weekend in a luxury hotel.

USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) flying over southern Manhattan Island, New York City

Sadly, despite the elegance of these mighty beasts, the unquenchable desire of man for speed and stress coupled with the Armageddon of the world wars led to their eventual retirement from use.

But I feel this is a tragedy. How can we have discarded the fair Dirigibles for such filthy a replacement as the jumbo jet? In light of this, and in the same spirit as the conservation of the Panda Bear, I propose to start a political party with the sole and express purpose of bringing back the Airship. It is my firm belief that this step will start us on an unstoppable road to a more civilized and sophisticated society.

Please join me, by spreading the virtues of airships, and remember: Airships! Awesome!

Reveling in the awesomeness of technology.

2010-02-25T22:46:00.000+02:00

Below are two maps of down town New York. The one is an antique map (in French I think), the other is a Google earth image. I think sometimes we forget how awesome technology is. I thought we needed a reminder. I'm sure you can figure out which is which.

Revel.

Eventually you get desperate

2010-02-22T20:20:00.002+02:00

(Click to enlarge)

Homage or a blatant lack creativity

2010-02-16T11:41:00.004+02:00

(click for enlargement)

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

2009-07-08T13:02:00.002+02:00

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

-By Bob Dylan

He sits in your room, his tomb, with a fist full of tacks
Preoccupied with his vengeance
Cursing the dead that can't answer him back
I'm sure that he has no intentions
Of looking your way, unless it's to say
That he needs you to test his inventions.

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won't ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to.

He looks so truthful, is this how he feels
Trying to peel the moon and expose it
With his businesslike anger and his bloodhounds that kneel
If he needs a third eye he just grows it
He just needs you to talk or to hand him his chalk
Or pick it up after he throws it.

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won't ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to.

Why does he look so righteous while your face is so changed
Are you frightened of the box you keep him in
While his genocide fools and his friends rearrange
Their religion of the little ten women
That backs up their views but your face is so bruised
Come on out the dark is beginning.

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won't ruin you
How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to.

Life in Cape Town, to my Italian friend.

2009-04-07T01:53:00.002+02:00

This was a letter to an Italian friend, But I liked it enough to post.

Cape Town is just going into Autumn, but you almost can't tell. It's just the odd slight chill in the evening and the changing glare of the afternoon sun on the city that gives it away. If you look closely you'll see sun is slipping behind the mountain earlier and earlier. But the days are still beautiful and the days are still warm.

I'm still sleeping on my friends floor. They live just below the university which is on the slopes of the mountain. I spend most of my days drifting around, either in the city or in my mind. When the mood strikes I catch a taxi into town and amble around the little shops and coffee shops in the older parts. I look for other drifting strangers an talk for hours about politics and women, trying to get a little good advice about both.

Other days I spend sleeping and at night sit outside and plan to write or occasionally write down my plans. I can do this all night, tracing the progression of the Southern Cross through the sky, using it to tell how much time has passed while the coal on my shisha slowly burns down. When I feel morose I listen to Nina Simone and reminisce about old lovers and past chances.

If I can gather a small group we go to the beach and smoke while talking and catching up on each other. If we stay long enough we can watch the sun set over the ocean with a glass of wine.

When motivation strikes , which it rarely does, or my anxiety about motivation becomes great enough to urge me to action, I'll spend a bit of time looking for an apartment or lining up the odd job interview.But motivation never strikes for that long so I end up achieving very little.

Everyone else is very busy so I spend allot of time looking for company. This can end up as lunch with an old friend or tea, cake and conversation with a new friend.

Friday afternoons I spend in the university pub with my old classmates, we talk about old shared troubles and I get a chance to find out about there current ideas and lives. Every second Thursday I meet a group of guys for Whiskey Club. We all dress up in suits and sit in armchairs while drinking some good, expensive whiskey. This goes until late while we revel in our approaching manhood. We make outrageous plans to buy boats and swap advice on the economy and jobs. As the night goes on we end up swapping more bad jokes than good advice.

Everyday I end up hoping tomorrow will be a little more exciting, unless today was particularly perfect in which case I hope tomorrow will be just as enjoyable.

Notes on a young country and our best and worst from a taxi trip

2009-03-27T13:49:00.004+02:00

I took a short taxi trip to town the other day that epitomized some of the best and worst of South Africa. The human contents of the taxi were as varied as any SAB commercial could imagine; a Muslim couple on there way back from mosque in the front; a well dressed older black man behind them; next to him was a young Indian guy in clothes that showed he was clearly trying to hard; one row back was a guy in overalls holding a flat car battery and next to him was me. In a city like Cape Town diversity itself is nothing remarkable, in fact the point is that nothing I am about to describe was that remarkable.

The humans inside the taxi were not just sitting waiting for their destination to arrive. They were engaged in great and vibrant conversation. Everyone was laughing and then talking gravely, heads nodded in agreement and figers were wagged in dischord. The conversation involved everyone and was permeated by a feeling of commonality of being South Afrcian and a simple respect for each others opinions and person. When out stops began to arrive and people got out hands were shaken, cellphone numbers swapped (which will probably never be called but acts more as gesture of appreciation of one another) and good wishes flowed all around. That was the good part, that was the encouraging face of our not so fledgling country.

Not our taxi, but pretty much the same

The sad face was the topic of our discussions; corrupt politicians, broken promises and the failure of basic service delivery permeated out words, Grimaces and tears followed the sad words about the sad state of sad northern neighbour Zimbabwe and our governments sad and inept handling of the situation. The worst part about South Africa is that increasingly the point we use to find commonality as a nation is our supreme dissapointment with our leaders and government.

Someone we all decided we don't like

I was torn about whether to see the experience positively or not. We have tried for so long to discover national commonality and a common South African identity, but is this really what we want to base it on?

My trip on Google Maps

2009-03-26T11:36:00.006+02:00

So since I am obviously back I am now nostalgic about traveling. So by now I am retelling stories you will all get sick of soon. But anyway while there is still a bit of interest out there that hasn't been killed off by bad story telling I am going to take the chance to do something cool with it on my blog.

Below is my the trip I took on Google maps, Some of it is annotated, but I got a bit lazy, you should be able to see from my route that it wasn't the best planned trip ever, but it was allot of fun.

View Larger Map

By the way, I am still on the prowl for people to eat lunch with. Don't think you can get out of it.

What I have been filling my head with

2009-03-25T02:06:00.006+02:00

These the things that have entered my head from books I am reading, poems I have remembered and songs I have been listening to recently. They are all interesting, some are superb, others simply perfect in the sentiment they express. Read them, go listen to the songs, recite the poem and laugh at the comic.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning him-self to let it eat him away.

- Description of Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

I'm sure you know its true

Oh one day when you're looking back
You were young and man you were sad
When you're young you get sad
When your young you get sad then you get high

-Second verse of To Be Young, Ryan Adams

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven, W.B. Yeats

The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come

-First verse of Holland 1945, Neutral Milk Hotel

Everybody's building the big ships and boats
Som are building monuments, others jotting down notes
Everybody's in despair, every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here everybody's gonna jump for joy
Oh come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.

- First verse of Quinn the Mighty, Bob Dylan

-asofterworld 413, E Horne and J Comeau

I wish I could add something up here that I wrote, I hope to put something that you write up here one day.

My Honours Project - Robot Localization

2009-03-19T14:08:00.004+02:00

I did a small honours project last year in the University of Cape Town Robotics and Agents Research Lab. In simple terms it involved using a laser scanner mounted on a robot to perform mapping and localization. In fact it was a a new system to make previous methods more stable in rough terrain. It was developed for an Urban Search and Rescue robot, that is currently being built in the lab. I got the top mark for the project, so some one thought it was alright. If you are interested (which you should be, cause everyone knows robots are cool) you can read the full report here, there is also an associated presentation here. If you are interested enough to want the source code you can email me and I'll be happy to organize it for you. The abstract of the write up is below to give you a better idea of what it was on.

Dealing with uneven floors during planar robot localization

Traditional robot localization and mapping techniques have been developed for simple environments, making them very sensitive to uneven floors. This makes them unsuited for use in many situations, including urban search and rescue scenarios. This paper introduces a novel method that allows traditional 2D laser scanner based localization techniques to be used in environments that are not perfectly flat. The method is efficient both in terms of computation and hardware requirements, requiring only a simple hinge in addition to the laser scanner. The method works by first using multiple laser scans to calculate the relationship of the robot to the level plane, and then projecting the information of the laser scans onto the level plane, after which traditional 2D localization can take place. The method is described in detail and analyzed. Testing and experimentation is done to show that it greatly improves the accuracy of scan matching, the core method in laser scanner based localization.

A screen shot of the system (fancy hey)

I wish God loved an optimist

2009-02-21T02:15:00.005+02:00

I hate the nation state concept, I decided this today after being denied entry into Bolivia. Now as a South African I am used to my passport sucking and being a hindrance to my life, but honestly, Bolivia! And what really frustrates me is way it happened.

I have already travelled all through Bolivia, and I wanted to go back for Carnaval in Oruro, which is apparently awesome. I had a pose of friends ready and plans made. All I had to do was get another Visa (Which I was assured would be a simple process when I got my first Visa). So I arrive in Puno, Peru (officially my least favourite place in the world) at 5 AM with a friend, Nicole, in tow. 3 and half hours later after a terrible breakfast (apparently in Puno you don´t use egg in an omlette) being told about 20 different directions I get to the Bolivian Consulate only to be met the worlds biggest Wanker.

To imagine this small time beaurocrat think of the Effiel tower and now imagine a giant hand jerking it off. Now maybe you get the idea of how much I disliked this man. My spanish is not great, but I can tell when some one is being openly insulting to me. This is why I only like dealing with women in governmental positions, men tend to use them as a constant machoistic cock-sizing competion. so after clearly beign told (for reasons I could not completely understand yet) that I could not enter Bolivia I left to fetch Nicole whose Spanish is far better than mine. Now Nicole is a young pretty little girl, and normally older men a polite to young women, but not this wanker. The long and the short of it is that he very rudely told us that we had to travel 11 hours to another consulate who maybe could help us, now clearly he could just stamp my passport, it doesn´t even require more than one page of paper work, but as I said he is a small man syndrome wanker. If anyone has some extra tiem to kill in Puno I highly suggest you spen it by burning down his house.

It turned out to be an open faced lie that we could get helped somewhere else in Peru, but at least the second Counsular we dealt with (a women I´d like to point out) was helpful and polite. She told me that I had to travel out of Peru before I could reenter Bolivia, now in theory this should not a problem, at this stage we were in Tacna, about 30 minutes from the Chilean border (which I hope I can enter with no problems, but that´s tomorrows story). The only problem is that almost all the Bolivian Consulates in Chile are closed cause the Consulars are all at the carnaval. So its impossible for me to get to Carnaval cause I dont have a free stamp in my passport and I haven´t crossed enough lines on a map recently.

I suppose it is a an unfortunate series of events, I should have organised this earlier but I couldn´t cause I had my wallet stolen and couldn´t leave Cusco (Be careful Cusco will destry your soul, I just got out alive). And I am sure that Visa´s are important (Thats a lie, allot of the time I think Bolivia is playing at being a country).

At this time I am reminded of what I was told by Robin Esrock , a travel writer and reporter for the National Geographic channel who I spent some time in brazil with. He told me that when traveling it is important to remember that "Where you are, is where you are meant to be" (He also told me that mot being able to speak the same language as a women simply removes the need for a chat up line, also good advice).

So maybe I am meant to go to Chile, Swim at a beach in Arice (thus swimming in both South Amercian oceans), and if I can I´ll get to San Pedro de Atacama (cause I need more desert in my life). And a 3 days bus trip acorss argentina can´t be all that bad right.

Anyway thanks allot to Nicole for traipsing around Peru with me trying to get a visa, hope you enjoy carnival. Sorry to Tiago, Daan and Jamie for not being able to meet you in Oruro, have a blast.

P.S. Spell check doesn´t work, the computer at the internat cafe is too old.

An update sort of...

2009-02-17T00:27:00.005+02:00

I´m to lazy to write anything worth reading, and too apathetic to take pictures so all I´m gonna do in this post is list what happened since my last post and then link to some pictures that other people have taken. I think its an awesome plan.

Went to Isla del Sol in Bolivia, 2 Dreamy days. Stayed in a hostel that cost US$2 a night, run by a 10 year old kid.

Tavelled to Cusco in Peru, beautiful but more tourists than people.

Went on a 5 day hike to Macchu Picchu. The Hike was awesome, Macchu Picchu was underwhelming. Especially considerring that we managed to get kicked out. (After being called vagabonds). The Hike took us up snow capped mountains, down into Peruvian cloud forests, across jungle rivers and down some train tracks. Some pictures taken by a friend on the Hike are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daanliu. The slideshow is below.

Got back and had my birthday celbration. 6 Irish offering Tequilla and a dutch guy with quality vodka can do bad things to you. Woke up without my pants or my wallet.

Spent all my time living on credit in the hostel until I managed to get the bank to allow me to re-enter the economic system.

And finally I should be on my way back to Bolivia for carnaval in Oruro.

La Paz 25-01-09

2009-02-03T23:21:00.002+02:00

There are certain days that can come into being only in exceptional circumstances during specific times. The 25th of January in La Paz was one such day for me. This specific day is exceptional because it was the day of the Bolivian referendum on adopting a new constitution, however this is not about politics, it is about my day.

The day starts like any other. I wake up, go to the bathroom, hock up a flem ball and notice that it's still blood red from some blood vessel I managed to rupture a few days ago. I consider being worried but apart from occasionally sneezing blood it isn't bothering me so much. I have my pancake breakfast and go gaze at the view for a while. One of my friends is writing an article about the elections for indymedia.org so I help with the English translation, from German, and fix some of his photos. After this we set out to town, this is where the day really begins.

La Paz is normally overly busy, traffic is usually a constant jam of micros (minibus taxis) and cabs trawling for passengers and fighting with private vehicles, the sidewalks are normally bustling with hawkers and walkers and balaclava'd shoeshine boys. This is the La Paz I know but today it was like a ghost town, no cars on the roads, no one selling anything, almost no one walking. The reason, of course, is that it is election day and by law everyone has to vote, in fact it is illegal for most people to work today, including all the taxis. The sight of an empty capital city is eerie, without people even the biggest city has the atmosphere of a small town.

With everything closed finding food becomes an obstacle, but strangely we bump into some old friends of my travel companions who point us towards a quaint, yet expensive, little tourist restuarant. The food is good, and on a happy full stomach we tryfinish off the meal with a version of hot chocolate. This type of drink is essentially hot milk with a whole stick of chocolate dropeed in so it slowly melts. Sounds delicious, well it is. Except that the chocolate is made with "manis". "Mani" is an important word to me, it in one of the first spansih words I learnt, it means "peanut", but to me it is a synonym for "Mortis" or death.

Remember how I said there were no cabs running, I meant it, nada. Compound this with Bolivian directions. Bolivians like to be helpful and make people happy, even if it means telling people the wrong information so as not to disappoint someone. Like telling them the hosital is two blocks past the stadium, not ten. Distances seem very large when one is considering dieing on the streets of La Paz. And taxi drivers seem very unreasonable when they cite the law as reason not to pick you up. Its a strange feeling to contemplate death while wandering down the streets of what seems like a ghost town. In the end I obviously found the hospital and got the medication I needed. Of course they didn't actually have the medicine at the hospital so my two German friends had to go to a pharmacy to buy it while I waited in the hospital ER. I was a bit worried about medical aid and stuff like that but in the end the bill for the medicine only came to BL3.5, about R5.

By the time I got out and started walking back, remember still no cabs, it was late evening. We went to go buy some ingredients at the market, where a few shops were open illegally. In one of the shops we saw Plaza Murillo on a TV. Plaza Murillo is the plaza with the presidential residence and various other government buildings. Apparently Evo Morales was about to claim victory in the referendum.

So just out of hospital I find myself in a massive crowd beneath the balcony of the presidents house. The crowd filled most of the plaza, but we were in the first 5 rows. Everyone was lively. Chants of Evo filled the air and after a while the presidential sound system started playing some local pop songs. A bunch of women arrived selling overpriced beer and some empanandas. The ever present large Argentinian groups started playing some music and passing around some harder liquor. Fireworks started going off in th each ground. In one hour the plaza went from empty to being a fiesta.

When Evo Morales eventually did come out he could hardly speak for the cheers he got. He was simply wearing a sports jacket, no suit, no tie, much like he had just gotten back from hanging out with some friends at a bar. After the national anthem which no one really seemed to know, because it seemed like almost everyone was Argentinian not Bolivian, Evo began his speech. It was short, good humoured, suitably full of quotable phrases, accentuated by fireworks and cheers, and rousing. Even I was drawn into the mood, I who am almost completely unaffected by the politics of Bolivia. When the speah ended the party started. A stage had been hastily set up and local bands as well as some from as far away as France began to play. The atmosphere became completely festive and for a while everyone was everyones friend.

When the bands finished the police politely informed everyone that it was time to go. I don't think they reaslly thought things through, trying to get a few thousand drunk people to do anything is never easy. So they resorted to the more direct measures, formed a barricade line and just started pushing the crowd towards the exits of the plaza. Normally this would incite a riot or something, but instead everyone seemed to just form this moving carnavale, with some drums and flutes and other instruments at the lead, playing some music while chants of "Evo! Amigo! el pueblo contigo!" (Evo! My Friend! The people are with you!) rang through the streets. We wound our way through the streets, this crowd of a few hundred now, we blocked traffic and jammed up highways. Rum was being sold and Cuba Libre's were flowing.

The crowd eventually stopped under the statue of Simon Bolivar, the namesake of the country and perhaps South America's greatest liberator. It felt a fitting place to stop, considering the magnitude of the change that had just taken place. I think by that stage we were the only gringos left, in a Bolivian crowd with a large splash of Argentinians. I looked up at Simon Bolivar sitting a top his horse and wandered what he would be thinking. After liberating most of South America, then dieing a pauper without even a shirt for his funeral, then slowly to become infinitely venerated across all of South America, and now to look over the drunken reverie of of a nation about to under go a massive change. We are told that before he died he said, "There have been 3 great fools in history; Jesus Christ, Don Quixote and I", I wonder if after all the history of South America that has since past he would still limit it to only 3 great fools.

The curious case of a movie in La Paz

2009-02-03T23:07:00.002+02:00

I watched "The curious case of Benjamin Button".At the end of the movie I got up and stretched the mandatory post movie stretch. Then I realised, "Fuck I'm in Bolivia". It was a dichotomous feeling, it was at once exciting and slightly lonely. Watching a movie in English in a cinema was so reminiscent of being home that for a while I stopped feeling like I was in a foreign country. The experience underlines the way I feel right now, glad to be traveling but missing allot of home. Simple things like understanding most people when they talk and having a friend I have known for longer than a week. And then immediately after that I thought about this girl I had been traveling with. She had been living in Chile for a year and spoke Spanish. When I was traveling with her she kept on complaining about how she didn't like backpacking cause it was this really superficial experience of the different cultures and you didn't really get the traveling experience we romanticize about. I thought about that cause I was really thinking about the response I should have given. It's a game I invented in my head, its called imagine you're in Bolivia and you have a month to do what ever you want. Its a game that isn't so hard to enjoy. The travel mindset is not always easy to maintain. It can be easy to get tired, the effort required to interact the world often seems overwhelming. But then with a little effort there is so much to see and enjoy, and even the most mundane tasks can be exotic and interesting, everything offers the chance of adventure.

The state of Bolivia before the referendum

2009-01-26T16:25:00.004+02:00

Below is the english translation of an article a friend wrote on the situation in Bolivia before the referendum. The official results are not yet out but it is obvious that the constitution will change and Evo Morales claimed victory last night.

Here is the translation (original is here):

On Sunday 25.1.2009 Bolivia votes over the adoption of a new constitution. The reigning president Evo Morales wants to give Indians more rights and nationalize many of the countries industries. The public opinion is divided and the richer departments (provinces) in the west of the country are strongly opposed to the new constitution. This article contains personal impressions and makes no claim to completeness, since the local information is very poor!

Bolivia is the poorest and one of the most unstable countries in South America due to a long history of corrupt governments. Hardly any have managed to stay in power for the planned five years. Two-thirds of the around 11 million inhabitants live in poverty. Approximately 72% of the population are indigenous peoples, i.e. not of spanish descent, however the indigenous poeoples have been a historically repressed and economically depressed group.

On 18 December 2005 Evo Morales , a former coca farmer, was elected president, he is the first indigenous president of Bolivia. His party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) received 54% of the votes. In Bolivia, it is very rare that a party receives an absolute majority. In May 2006, Morales fulfilled his election promise and nationalized the gas industry. Bolivia is the second biggest producer of natural gas in South America, after Venuzuela. The move prompted fierce international protest, however Morales stood firm in his descision . In the same year, MAS announced its intentions to create a new constitution.

The main points of the new constitution include the nationalization of minerals, industry and railways.The defintion of the countries resources of the country as being considered property the state, and hence theoretically the population, clearly stated that the previous neo-liberal economic order was felt to be contrary to the interests of Bolivia. In addition the constitution recognises the indigenous population as an important part of society, it ensures their right to speak their own languages and educate their children in a language of thier choosing. Altogether there are 36 different indigenous peoples, each with their own language. The constitution also gives many more rights to women and children.

The motion by MAS faces massive opposition, especially in the richer west of the country. The four richest departaments, Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, Tarija and Beni are against change and at first refused any negotiation on the constitution. It is in these areas that the major part of the Bolivian industry and resources are found. Furthermore, the close contact between Morales and Venuzuelan President Hugo Chávez is very controversial. Many people are afraid of Bolvia becoming an authoritarian regime, as in their opinion Venuzuela has. The last two years were also marked by violent confrontations between opposition and pro-goverment supporters. The peak was a sad case of paramilitary forces attacking a MAS-demonstration near Cobija in September last year. There were at least 18 deaths and 70 people are still missing. After an official investigation the Prefect of the department, Fernández, confessed to participating in the planning of the attack.

After many protests by the opposition many parts of the proposed new constitution were changed, especially around issues of private land ownership. For example, private land ownership will be limited to at most 10,000 hectares, previously amounts aove that would be confiscated, however now they will simply be taxed at a higher rate with the revenues going towards social projects. In addition, Morales has waived his option for a second re-election. These were the key demands of the opposition.

The situation in Bolivia is very unclear at the moment. Every area in the country has choosen a positon and almost every wall and every stone with is plastered with slogans (Evo sì / no, Sì al Socialismo, etc.). There are daily demonstrations and it is difficult to say how the situation will develop. Many people with whom I have talked feel strongly that there will be further confrontations, whether the new constitution is adopted or not. Evo Morales expects a clear victory, but he needs a two-thirds majority.

The whole conflict is difficult to assess. On the one hand, to the great mass of poor indigenous the new constitution offers great hope, on the other hand a very populist president making massive constitutional changes leads to bad consequences.

I will continue to report on the situation ...
Substantive additions are welcome!

Saludos
Mano Negra

Well thats it. What a crazy day the 25th was, more on it later.

Bolivian Referendum Goes Online with Facebook Ads

2009-01-22T20:42:00.007+02:00

All you web 2.0 types will love this. Bolivia, where I currently am, is about to have a referendum on accepting a new and very controversial referendum. All around the country every wall is plastered with "Vota Si" or "Vota No" posters or Grafiti. But one place I saw an add that really suprised me is on facebook when I logged in from an internet cafe in Sucre (Which is a "Vota No" strong hold).
Now I think that´s pretty impressive for a country where it took me 10 hours to travel 220km. I´ll be in La Paz for the aftermath of the referendum, so it should be a very interesting time.

P.S. A travel companion of mine has posted an article that gives some background on the referendum on indymedia.org, it is in German right now but there should be an English translation by tomorrow afternoon. You can access it here in German. In the mean time you can either learn German or use Google translate. The Google translation is readable but stumbles on the more complicated parts, I suggest you wait for the translation which I will post a link to as soon as it is up.

The coolest advert on the internet

2008-12-26T17:18:00.003+02:00

One day when I grow up I want to be as cool as the people who came up with advert. To hell with search engine optimizing and all the other numbers games that the internet has become obsessed with. What we need is more absurd humour and hidden sub-sub-references. Go to asofterworld, click on the advert, buy things, give funny people money.

How not to get from Buenos Aires to Montevideo

2008-12-18T23:36:00.002+02:00

Most people write home about their holiday experiences in a glossed over idealistic haze. I think I do the opposite. I would far rather write home about the experiences that at the time may not have been all together pleasant, but were in some way unexpected. That being said, I find pleasant unexpected experiences equally interesting. I just wanted to say that and at the same time assure everyone that I am having a great time, despite the strange aesthetic of my blog posts. So here is the story of how not to travel from Buenos Aires to Florianopolis. There are a few do's thrown in there amoung the don'ts though.

1) DON'T drink until sunrise in Buenos Aires the moring before you have to leave and then get convinced that going out for beer and bacon is a good idea when you have to leave the hostel in about 3 hours.
2) DON'T arrive at the bus station 1 hour before the bus you want to catch into another country and expect there to still be seats, there won't be, there will only be free seats in 3 days time. That will be too much of a wait for you.
3) DON'T decide that going anywhere north will be OK, and book tickets to Montevideo (which must be a cool place, its the capital of a Uruguay right, it'll be fun). The fact that you will have to kill 12 hours before the bus comes, with your stuff locked in a bus station locker and about enough money to buy 2 hotdogs (SUPER PANCHOS) should put you off this plan, but it won't. Once in tthis position there are a few do's though.
4) DO go to the Cemeteria del la Recoletta. Visit Evita's grave (It's not as big as you think it would be). Realise that these graves (Mausoleums really) are bigger than most apartments in New York. After a while start imagining the necropolis as full of zombies, maybe get a bit too involved in the fantasy. The night before is starting to kick in on your consciousness. Maybe it is time to leave.
5) DO find a park bench, first check that there are enough people around to protect you from pick pockets, see a police cop and decide that its safe enought o fall asleep.
6) DO fall asleep and kill 3 hours in a beautiful argentinian breeze.
7) DON'T wake up really hungry, it's super pancho time. Start your way back to the station.
8) DO catch the bus to Montevideo. DO Notice the moon. The moon seems unusually low for this time of the night. Its altitude leaves it with a strong red hue as the light refracts through the thick atmosphere. Looking out the bus window, the rising red gibbous orb is the sole feature on the flat plains of Argentina. There is a palpable feeling of calm over landscape, a quiet reflectiveness comming from my mind and washing over everything you see. The calm seems at odds with what should be a vaguely menacing red glow from the moon. Instead the red bleeds into the mind's pallette, finding its place amoung the other sensations, never jarring, simply complementing.
9) DON'T think that you are lucky to be sitting next to a pretty Argentinian girl who speaks english and is offering to let you stay at her flat in Uruguay. Argentinian women are tricky and are not to be trusted. Espcecially ones that are flexible looking yoga teachers.
10) DO fall asleep for as long as possible, wake up at the border post.
11) DON'T get pissed off that the border police are ruffling through your stuff and crumpling your newly cleaned and folded clothes. They work for minimum wage and will have not compunction about making you life hell.
12) DON'T go to Montevideo, this is pretty overriding, especially don't have to wait another 12 hours there. again with your stuff locked in a bus station locker and having my Uruguan Pesos.
13) DON'T get confused between US Dollar prices and Uruguan Peso prices, The locals will not find it funny when you try pay for 1/20'th of the price for a beer.
14) DO Go to the Gaucho museum, Gauchos (The south american version of a cowboy) are awesome, in my next life I want to be one. They have guns, knives (big knives), whips, bolas, lasoos and cool hats.
15) DON'T got to the national history museum, its really bad and boring, basically it's just a bunch of photo's.
16) DON'T assume that because the cops in Argentina didn't mind you sleeping on park benches the cops in Uruguay will be fine with it, but try anyway. You will get a good hour or so of sleep before getting poked with a baton and told to move off. Realise that you now look like a dirty homeless gringo, you look like what you are. Buy a beer so you can use the dirty bars dirty bathroom.
17) DO at last get on the 18 hour bus ride to Florianopolis. DO realise again how loud people from the US are. They talk so much. How do the interact around just themselves? Do they just constantly talk at each other trying to be the loudest.
18) DON'T Finish both your books and have the batteries on your Ipod and EEE PC go flat. Start having wierd bus dreams. Bus dreams are bizzarre, they last for hours at a time with you in a semi-lucid state. Your body has become so used to in action and your mind is so starved for stimulus that whole alternative realities are brewed from the dank depths of your psyche. Some of the things you dream will stick with you when you wake up, they will worry you, they will make you ask questions. Are more questions what you really need at this stage of your life?
19) DO Sleep almost all the way to Florianopolis.
20) DON'T expect all the ATM's to work with your credit card. Swear under you breath, walk across the road and try there. Contemplate robbing as stupider looking tourist, realise that tourist may be you. Finally find an ATM that works, breath a sigh of relief.
21) DON'T get off the second urbanbut at the wrong stop.
22) DO get some cigarettes from fellow travellers and give them to the slightly menacing teenagers hasnging around the very vunerable looking tourist herd. Make some friends, cigarettes work wonders everywhere.
23) DO wait another hour for the next bus, which is packed and is really unhappy about having to take you with your backpack. but at least they tell you right stop to get off.
24) DO get to an awesome backpackers, have a beer, go out for a pizza buffet, drink, sleep, go to the beach, eat about 30 prawns for almost nothing, sit out at the hostel bar and look at the view (Below, but less overexposed) while writing this.

Strikes in Buenos Aires, a good time all round

2008-12-13T22:51:00.003+02:00

Apparently Strikes have become an almost weekly event is Buenos Aires, but we didn't know this when we got there. This week Friday had 4 simultaneous demonstrations, that pretty much blocked up the entire city center. The bulk of it was a subway workers strike, but there were also bankers banging drums, street vendors protesting against the Mayor and a group celebrating 25 years of freedom from military rule.

The overarching quasi-communist revolutionary aesthetic (Complete with huge pictures of Che Guevara, communist pamphlets and books, rousing and angry Spanish Speeches and a Balaclava clad security details with massive sticks) gave the entire event an edgy feel, but at the same time the constant drumming, colorful flags, and large amount of families gave it a festive feel.

It all reached a head in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace. Its a location famous for being used by Evita Peron to rally the masses to free her husband (and soon to be president) Juan from prison. For me at least I found the whole thing hell of a novel, really quite an event. So if you are ever in Buenos Aires, try catch a strike or protest movement, if you are here for more than a week you are pretty certain to catch one.

Some protesters protesting something

So this is how the other half lives

2008-12-13T22:21:00.003+02:00

When you're backpacking around, and come from a third world country with a third world currency, you don't normally have allot of money to spend. So you end up eating in the cheap places, getting the cheap seats on the bus and sleeping in places that resemble an army barracks. This gives you a pretty skewed picture of the place your visiting and up until now this is exactly the experience we've been having. But yesterday we got to see a whole different side of Brazil, or less euphemistically, a whole different class of Brazil.

We've been staying with Eduardo, a friend of Warren's, in Vitoria. Vitoria is the capital of the state of Espirito Santo and is about a 8 hour bus trip north of Rio. Eduardo recently graduated as an environmental engineer. Each year there is a party for all the engineers in the state of Espirito Santo, and fortunately for us it happened to be on the weekend that we came. So we got all dressed up, shaved, borrowed leather shoes and put on our best shirt (our only non T-shirts) I think the phrase that best explains the evening was "Enigineer's Heaven". To all the guys that studied engineering to make money and get a pretty wife, you should have been studying in Brazil. I have never seen so many beautiful women in one room in my life, and half of them were the engineers, not the partners. I have to admit I was shocked into complete ineptitude.

It was in a huge waterfront club (club as in country club, not night club), with waiters constantly bringing around more beer, wine, cocktails and food. There was a big Italian dance demonstration (Yes I know, we're watching Italian dances in Brazil, but apparently there are allot of people of Italian descent in this part of Brazil) and later in the night a live band played Forro.

Forro (pronounced for-hor) is a type of "romantic samba". Apparently the name comes from the originator who when speaking in English claimed that this was a a type of dancing for all people. So the name is a Brazilianisation of "For-all". Apparently though I am not a apart of the "ALL" that can dance to it, even though even I could figure out that this should be the easiest dance in the history of moving feet. At its simplest you only really need to learn one step, a really easy one, but even that proved to difficult for a slightly drunk and uncoordinated James. Well win some you lose some.

I think I came away from the whole experience with 2 things. Firstly that being wealthy in Brazil is awesome, as is being wealthy everywhere else. Eduardo is on to a good wicket. Secondly is something which I have obviously suspected this for a long time but have never seen such stark empirical evidence. Beauty follows money, or maybe money creates beauty. I'm sure that the beauty genes slowly aggregate in the wealthy classes, for obvious reasons. I think if there is any good reason to get rich it is so you can enter parties with these sorts of women.

Quatro Horas em Rio Rodovario (4 Hours in the Rio bus station)

2008-12-08T11:31:00.001+02:00

Get off the metro bus. Run to the ticket office. Look at the clock. Realise you are two minutes late. Swear under your breath at the traffic in Rio. Realise that some words are pretty universally understood. Look slightly sheepish. Run to next bus company. Realise you also missed their bus. Buy a ticket for the next bus, it leaves in 4 hours. Wonder around looking for the public telephone. Phone Eduardo to tell him we'll be delayed. Get one of his relatives on the phone, they can't speak English. Use broken Portuguese to try ask for Eduardo. He isn't there. Buy a coke. Find an Internet cafe. Use sign language to get onto a computer. Email Eduardo, hope he reads his email this afternoon. Go down to the overpriced Via Rio cafe. Buy a something, you can't really tell what it is. Eat it, it's not that bad. Try stay awake in chair. It's not working. Strap your back pack on and clutch onto your day pack. Sit down by the wall. Fall asleep. Get woken up by a street kid. Check you still have wallet and passport. Relief overcomes you. Still waking up trying to figure out what the kid wants. Take out R$2 and give it to him. You are now amigos. Stand up, look around. 2 hours still to go. Lady next to you offers you some biscuits, you decline, she insists. Try to explain to her that you are allergic. Horribly mispronounce "alergico", may have said something insulting by mistake. Women looks very confused. Go buy another coke to break the tension. Sit down, try find the city you are going to in the Rough Guide. It's not there. Go look at the magazine stand, realise that the only magazine you could possibly understand is the playboy. Contemplate that for a few seconds, decide against the playboy. Read about Argentina in the rough guide. Try work out how much money you have spent. Sit. Wait. One hour to go. Write this down. Wait. Think about buying a beer. Think about how awesome it is that you can buy a beer anywhere. Decide not to buy a beer. Realise you have bought neither beer or porn. Question your masculinity. Decide to go to the bathroom to help break the monotony. They charge R$1 for the use of the sanitario. Fumble around for money. Go to the bathroom. Come out. About time for the bus to leave. Find the platform. Try to fill in little traveling form. Can't understand what all the fields require. Lend someone your pen, in return they fill in your travel form. Get on the bus.

3 Things that are everywhere in Brazil

2008-12-01T22:54:00.002+02:00

There are 3 things you find everywhere in Brazil that you don't see everywhere in South Africa. Between them they give an interesting picture of Brazil.

1) Beer
Wherever something is being sold it, it is being sold with beer. Any place, at any hour you can buy beer. The idea of a liquor store is completely foreign here. Why would you need a special store when you can just sell it anywhere? Beer is generally sold in big bottles, 600ml. When you get a a beer you get a small glass to drink it with. You don't get big beer mugs, like when you get a draught is RSA. It's a bit hard to feel manly when you're sipping beer out of a child's glass. But when the beach vendors are walking along shouting "Agua, Cerveja" (Water, Beer), I think thats pretty cool.

2) Tattoos and Graffiti
Everyone has ink. Every single Brazilian has a tattoo, and most have a couple. Everywhere is also graffiti'd. It's like the tattoo's don't stop on the skin, instead they've spread over the whole city.

3) Porn
There must be 5 different versions of playboy here. And They are all displayed in the front of all the shop windows. You will have the daily newspaper and right next to it will be 20 different porno mags. If you have a fetish, any fetish, there is something for you here.

Embu-Centro

2008-11-28T12:02:00.000+02:00

Let me write this all down before I forget it. So After waking up very hung over, in a less than dignified state, I went down to get the free breakfast (Free breakfast for the win) and met up with the protagonists of the previous night. Oliver left that morning, looking much more dignified than the previous night. The rest of us followed Lisa's cue and decided to try get to the beach. So we took the metro to the rodovario (Bus station) and went looking for a bus that went beachward. A R$31 bus fare put us off that plan. So we hit plan B, which was to visit Embu. Embu was a small village outside Sao Paulo, populated by artists, hippies and bohemians. But as Soa Paulo grew it became an outlying suburb, apparently still populated by artists, hippies and bohemians though. Having no idea how to get there, apart from some not too helpful lonely planet directions, we asked some one for help. I'm sure they were well meaning, everyone in brazil is very friendly, but they weren't well informed. So we got on what was meant to be an hour bus ride to Embu-centro, but turned out to be something completely different. Firstly let me say that Sao Paulo is massive, beyond any scales I know. The bus we ended up on only went vaguely close to were we wanted to go, but first it went through every other part of the city. I mean I ad the grand tour, all the way to the favellas (Slums), where much to our shock we were dropped off. Now the favellas in Sao Paulo are not a joke. But on the up side we had had a 4 hour bus ride all around Sao Paulo (As a side note, the graveyards (Necropole) here are amazing, they are packed with these huge and ornate family crypts, which really do make it look like a necropolis, a city of the dead). Some how we did manage to catch the right bus out and eventually get to Embu, which really was a quaint as it sounded. We also has a great R$6 steak meal, a big meal, which almost made it cheaper to travel all the way there than to eat at our hostel. Embu was cool, a nice change from the hustle and bustle of the city, but after a bit of sight seeing, some antique shops and cafe we set off to try get back, which only took an hour, compared to the 4 it took to get there, and didn't go through and slums. It was a much better ride really.

First night, meat, beer and caipirinhas.

2008-11-27T14:00:00.006+02:00

Wow, right. First day/night in Brazil. So Sao Paulo is a big place, intimidatingly big when you're at the airport and need to find a random hostel in the middle of town you have no idea about. But 1 bus trip, 3 trains and a mile walk later Arun and I finally managed to find it. 1 Bus ride and 3 trains that I was really impressed with, I realise its actually the first time I've ever taken a proper subway, very cool,it makes me eagerly await the Gautrain. So we eventually got to the Casa Club Hostel Bar, much to my suprise. So far a cool place, clean safe but slightly pricey. The first night though (after 20 or so hours awake) was grand. We wound up in a room with an expat South African, a German who worked in South Africa and Dutch Girl, It was the last night for the German so we went to restaurant called Paulista's. Its a very special type of restaurant, though the proper Brazilian name escapes my hung over mind right now, which basically is an endless meet Buffet (with a capital 'B'). Well I hope I ate enough for three nights cause thats what it cost. It was fantastic, the waiters float around with huge cuts of different meats, from espetada to roast beef, constantly filling your plate. Eventually once you are fully sated you have to put up a little sign to say so, I can see I will love these places. So any after a cheap but packed taxi ride we got back to the hostel. At this point we decided to go to the supper market, which are open till 12pm (Amazing, at last) and buy a case of beer. This eventually turned into a mission for the ingredients for caipirinha's, having decided thats more truly Brazilian. Of course the super market had everything we needed at 12pm, so we set off for a night of heavy drinking and bad jokes. A good night, a full tilt first night, I can see I'm going to enjoy this country. So now I sit here, still a bit drunk, very hung over, fantastically glad I still have my wallet, wondering what I'll do today.

Tzu-Fan's Final Recital

2008-10-25T14:39:00.003+02:00

A shameless plug for a friend. Tzu-Fan is playing his final recital for the university on the 13th November. Its sure so be a mixture of awesome and mindblowing, which I will dub awe-blowing. Anyway here's the poster with the details, I also did allot of the poster (though not the awesome font), so it's also a plug for me I guess.

Another beautiful day

2008-10-25T13:25:00.004+02:00

Its a beautiful day today in Cape Town. Good enough for a good shot of the mountain. After a ridiculously long wet winter at last summer seems to be thinking about arriving. Capetonians love there mountain... I guess it is pretty cool. So here it is.

My future company

2008-10-15T12:42:00.005+02:00

I've designed the logo for my next company. I don't know what its gonna do yet, maybe sell ice cream or heavy weapons. Well who knows, but at least I have a name, and for allot of companies thats all you need. A brand and a CEO, I'm already the company of the future. Watch out soon you maybe working for, via an outsourced sweatshop franchise.

Is it bird, is it a plane, no it's a pandawhale.

Onus of the intelligent

2008-10-14T22:03:00.003+02:00

A fiend of mine told me that "it is the onus of the intelligent to be disillusioned". I like that idea. I mean I hate it in the sense that it sucks, but there is cruel truth in it that seems attractive. I feel like I should post an abstract image to qualify my feelings about the subject. But I don't have one on hand.

Photos from the roof top

2008-10-01T01:24:00.003+02:00

Some of my friends and I took trip onto the roof of my apartment block last Saturday night. It was probably the first clear night in ages. They had tripods and some fancy cameras, so we hit long exposure, took a panorama of the view and stitched the images together. It came out really well, we're probably gonna redo it at some point, to get the aperture constant between the photos, and maybe do a 2π radians (360 degree) shot. I had to reduce the image size to upload it, a pity.

I also really liked this shot we got of the intersection with Rafiki's in the background.I don't know why I like the image.

Anyway kudos to Wariner and Mr B for taking these.

In the Batman I see

2008-07-30T23:44:00.000+02:00

(Spoiler alert, If you haven't seen The Dark Knight don't read this)

The Dark Knight was awesome, there is no dispute about that. It was a perfect descent into unrelenting chaos. But it could have been even better (or at least to people who enjoy unrelenting chaos). Firstly the mass Cellphone conversion to a sonar array? Come on, don't insult us. That also goes for the bullet reconstruction. But OK, I admit it is a comic book movie and we have already accepted all of batmans other gadgets, so why not these, so I let them pass with a pained grimace. But really the only reason Batman got anywhere is cause he had really unbelievable gadgets, it was a bit thin.

The big change I would have made is at the ending. The people on the boat not blowing each other up? Thats ridiculous, of course they would have done it. But I would have changed it, we can still go through all the voting and stuff, but they pull the trigger, the trigger is connected to their own boat, so they blow themselves up. That way the big criminal dudes heroics are in complete vain, and the joker would have been proved right. He and batman would have seen it and his entire position would have been vindicated. That would have been awesome, an unrelenting end to an unrelenting movie.

That said its obvious to me that my ending wouldn't have gone down as well, people want to feel happy when they leave a cinema. But really the movie should have been called The Joker. They could have done away with batman completely.

Minus

2008-07-08T20:51:00.000+02:00

I Just found beautiful web comic strip "Minus". Apparently it's just ended, but there are 130 of them. The strips are hand drawn 'on a 15x20" piece of Illustration board.' The comic follows a young school girl with magical powers. At this point I tried to write a sentence explaining the ambiance of the strips, and I was going to use words like Surrealism and Post-Modernism, but then I realised I didn't really know what any of those words meant, so I declined to write that sentence. I get the feeling that the artist wouldn't like me boxing his work anyway. So I leave it up to you, my imaginary public, to decide for yourself.

Flight 5

2008-07-06T13:30:00.000+02:00

Flight Volume 5 is coming out, which is awesome. I can't wait. Someone I know has to preorder it. I would but, well anyway... uh ya. So there is a preview at http://www.newsarama.com/ and an interview with the editor Kazu Kibuishi .For those who don't know, Flight is the most awesome comic anthology ever created. Check it out.

The cover

Evening Breeze

2008-07-05T19:56:00.000+02:00

The gulf was made to be seen at night, you can say what you want about it during the day but the night hides many flaws and accentuates the city. The temperature on a summers night here is still in the high 30's, but after the heat of the day that seems pleasant.

Around 8:30 you can hear the start of the last prayers being announced from the minarets, the sounds engulfs the entire city. This time feels the most foreign, like you are really out of the West (where West includes South Africa) now.

On a clear night if you are in the right place the lights look fantastic, even on a dusty night they look good, though the effect is different. Lights are what makes the gulf look good at night, I don;t think anywhere else in the world does lights like they do it here.

There is an evening breeze tonight, it feels almost cool and calm tonight.

A view from the villa's roof

Bubbles, Sun and Dust

2008-07-02T08:06:00.000+02:00

I kept on waking up at night thinking I was by the ocean, or really close to the highway. As I ascended back to consciousness my surroundings reminded me it was just the air-conditioner. Air-conditioning is ever present, a constant dull hum in the ear where ever you go. The bubble world is magnified, personified by the air-conditioning. I move from the bubble home, to the bubble car, to bubble work. I return via the bubble mall. There is only the bubble, there is no natural world, no connection with the land.

The Bubble Mall

I take a 15 minute break around lunch each day to make sure I get some idea of real Saudi summer. I sit outside in the raw sun where everything radiates heat. It's a type of heat that you feel you are swimming in, it's thick, viscous. Even at night it's too hot to stay outside for long and the cold water taps still run warm.

The Air-conditioners that keep our villa cool

Last night a dust storm came up, when we woke up the entire city was in a thick fog of dust. The sky looks white, blinding initially until your eyes adjust to the glare. You vision fades after about 20m in all directions. The dust gives the surroundings an surreal texture, like everything is slightly imaginary. The dust in your lungs reminds you of the opposite. Apparently last month the entire east coast was under a dust cloud for 3 weeks. At least it cools things down a bit. The sun can't reach through the dust. Even at mid day you can stare right at it, it looks like bright white disk, or a pearl. It doesn't seem to really shine, it's more the light is a property of the mist.

The view from the office after the dust storm

GPS on a laptop linked to social media

2008-06-18T01:37:00.001+02:00

Lots of social media-ish tools could gain allot by adding location information. E.g Blogging mashed up with google earth and blogspot or a location added to twitter. What if this were done automagically by taking gps coordinates from you laptop (requiring a built in GPS in your laptop, or a wimaxish triangulation System, I wonder if any laptops currently have this). This would be awesome for travel blogs and site surveyish stuff.

My first blender experience

2008-06-18T00:32:00.000+02:00

I've tried to use blender before, but the interface always stumped me, so fifteen minutes later I would give up in frustration. But I have to do a project that requires some 3D work, so today I did the unthinkable and looked at tutorial on Blender(http://biorust.com/tutorials/detail/81/us/). It is a great tutorial, and I showed me how powerful and clever the blender interface really is (Big props to the blender designers). So here's my first attempt, it's not gonna win any prizes but I'm pretty proud of it.

Alien Christ

2008-06-07T19:15:00.000+02:00

So what if aliens do exist? Do they have the same God? Do they have the same savior and redeemer in Christ? Or do they have there own Christ, an Alien Christ. I present the Christ of the Martians, Alien Christ.
(Warning, this is a joke, if I have really offended you then I guess you should either forgive me out of friendship, or brood over my damnation or not read my blog)

The next books I want to read

2008-05-22T01:26:00.000+02:00

The Next books I want to read are Philip K Dick's Books. I've been meaning to really get my teeth into him for years. I found out Screamers was based on a short story he wrote. Screamers is the only movie I remember ever really giving me nightmares.

One of the Screamers

Hundred years

2008-03-31T11:59:00.000+02:00

I'm re-reading Hundred years of Solitude. last time I read it I was at a very interesting stage in my life, I think it gave me allot of missing perspective. I spend my summer days sitting in my office chair on my flat's balcony reading books instead of studying for exams. I feel I'm not missing out. I was asked once what book I would choose if I could only leave one book to a reborn humanity. I chose Hundred Years over Newton's Principia.

So this is my chair where I read. I sit in it and look over Cape Town and don't learn much about computers. My tan is probably better than my class mates though.
When I finally understand the last lines of the book, I think I'll get them tattooed onto my thigh. Above my shorts line.

My new flat in Cape Town

2008-03-28T12:49:00.000+02:00

These are some pictures of the views from my new flat in Cape Town. The flat is really cool.

Night view from the balcony

Day view from the balcony

Night view from my bedroom

view of my bedroom

View from the Kitchen

Thats all for now.

Back in Africa

2008-01-28T10:02:00.000+02:00

The minute I got to breath non-Arabic air I could already feel how much happier I was going to be in this country. Just driving and walking around over the last few days I have been struck by how great this country is. Simple things I never noticed before, like how you can always smell the scent of plants in the air, really make a difference.

Some sights in Khobar

2008-01-13T12:50:00.000+02:00

In the interests of education we took a short phtographic expedition around the city of Khobar to try bring back some pictures that really capture the essence of the land. We did this early on a rainy friday morning (The authorities here don't seem to be too hot on people using camera's).

Hygiene and cleanliness

As you can see here, allot of pride is taken in the cleanliness of the land. Most of Saudi looks like this. Trash strewn lots with arbitrarily placed buildings. Because the oil industry gave the country such a rapid injection of income the cities didn't grow and evolve like normal cities, so huge buildings get placed in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding area can be a desolate trash heap and and nobody cares.

Big Malls Everywhere

This is Khobar Mall, about 5 km away is the Mall of Dhahran. They're both huge. All malls everywhere in the world are the same (At least thats my theory) and somewhere there a rediculously rich italian that sold the fake marble florrs for all of them. Malls are the only thing here that borders on entertainment, except taht they don't have cinema's (To much like fun) but do have tons of womens clothing shops, and lots of mens clothing shops selling the exact same item of clothing.

Really Long Road Names

This is one of the major roads in Khobar. It's name after the King. Of course the couldn't just call it King Abdullah Rd (Previously Prince Abdullah Rd), the kings full title must be used when ever he is referenced ("Custodian of The Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz"), listening to news reports here is also funny, it takes almost the whole report to just say who its about. So when a king dies they have to rename all the streets named after the king and any of the princes whose status subtely changes. pretty much every road here is named after a memeber of the royal family. SO please don't complain about minor road renamnings in South Africa.

Driving

This is the sign for the "Khobar Model School for Car Driving". I don't think its a very successful educational institute. But if the sign were true it would be a great place, a school where they can teach Saudi's to STOP DRIVING!!!

Frame of reference

2008-01-10T13:49:00.000+02:00

Yesterday at a tech support centre I saw a male employee helping and talking to a female customer. I thought, "Wow, that's really liberal". Your frame of reference changes fast here.

Highlights of Dubai

2008-01-07T12:25:00.000+02:00

Dubai is a strange place, thats much is obvious, I was only there for 8 hours (After having to rent a hotel room in-order to get a Visa) but these are the three pictures I thought were the most interesting. I could go one ad-nauseum about how ridiculous Dubai is, but it would bore me. But in a way it reminded me of the Dune books, I felt like at any moment a spice feighter was going to dock with the top of one of the buildings.

Burg-Dubia

This is the tallest Building in the world, twice the height of the empire state building. When it's finished it will stand around 820m high. You can pick it out from miles away when you're flying in, it makes the surrounding 50+ story buildings look flat and squat.

Burg Dubai from up close

In comparison to the surrounding city

Ski Dubai

The worlds first in door ski slope, why do you need a ski slope in the desert? No one cares, you don't need reasons for massive pointless investments here. This is from a restaurant over looking it. We tried to get a picture of it from the outside but couldn't get a clear shot.

Ski Dubai

Dusty in Khobar and Freezing in Riyadh

2008-01-07T11:36:00.000+02:00

A Sand storm came through yesterday and washed the clean off all my plants. After the sand storm the air looks like a dirty fog and when you walk outside you can feel the dust when you breath. The dust gets everywhere, a room with a window left open will have a layer of dust over everything, like a prematurely aged ruin. The temperature dropped today, it's cold (2°C min - 12°C max). It will hit freezing in Riyadh tonight. I have an odd desert experience.

Clean Skies

2008-01-06T10:13:00.000+02:00

The Saudi rainy season started yesterday. Rainfall was uncharacteristically high last year in this region, I suspect that will be repeated. The rains have cleared the air and stabilised the temperature. The sky is clear from dust for the first time in months, it's a beautiful light blue without a cloud in sight. Even the plants are green again, the rain washed away the coat of dust. I was beaten to the mark, damn.

With so little rain each year the government decided it was pointless to build any drainage into the countries infrastructure, so the rains turn the the streets into flowing slews of filth and litter. With no drainage these form cesspools that slowly ferment until the sun dries the roads out. Everywhere there is a more distinct stench of rot in the air. It's a pity because other wise it would be a beautiful day.

I spent my midday break (a short walk around in fresh air) looking at all the clean plants, no different from any plant back home, but they change the palette of the country. Suddenly I'm not surrounded by shades of dull beige and yellow, but bright blues and greens and surface level dark brown muck.

The slicked streets have caused havoc with the traffic. I saw a car mounted on top of the concrete barrier in the middle of the highway, Five lanes away on the other side was a delivery van on the brink of an explosion. No one here knows how to drive anyway, driving when it's raining is unsettling, you fear for your life.

Slowly slip into the routine, forget weekends and womens company.

A sunset from my office window

2008-01-05T12:14:00.000+02:00

A sunset from my office window

Like in Johannesburg the sunsets here can look really good. Its all the dust and pollution in the air.

Sexualizing Everything

2008-01-03T10:18:00.000+02:00

Walking around the shopping center I see allot of women, all draped head to toe in black. At first they all look the same but I begin to notice differences. There is a range of black garments, some bhurkas which have thick veils, but the majority are a type of cloak with only eye-slits left free. Of these there are two types. The first has a separate head piece, which is tied close to the head by a mask that covers face. The second is a cloak that goes from over the head all the way to the ground as a single piece of fabric. The first type leaves the shape of the womens shoulders exposed, and with the tight head scarf it makes me think of an eastern ninja princess, I imagine a lithe warriors body beneath the black folds of the cloak. The second type reminds me of something that failed to evolve shoulders, a Neanderthalic protohuman. I stop and marvel at my ability to sexualize any situation. Part of me smirks. I can't decide how I should judge this.

Washing Plants

2008-01-02T09:50:00.000+02:00

We have two Satellite TV networks in the villa and there's still nothing worth watching. I contemplate reading my book but can't really figure out who the characters are anymore. I do more work.

Today I considered getting a bucket of water and washing all the plants round the office. They would only stay clean for about an our before the dust turned there leaves a pale and white again, but in the long run all cleaning is futile anyway. I am still fascinated by the colours. Over here the whole palette is different, duller, paler. It is so at odds with the modern buildings you see. All over the gulf the favoured architectural style is the shining glass monolith, huge reflective towers. Glass has to be the worst building material imaginable here, it's impossible to keep it clean. All the windows are opaqued by the dust, leaving these theoretically gleaming monoliths fading into the desert like dirty wind screens. Everything fades away.

Back in the Kingdom

2008-01-01T09:00:00.000+02:00

The view outside office window looks like a mixture of Iraq on during the Gulf War and Welkom. Everything is dull and light brown. Nothing escapes the dust. Even the sunset looks pale, like colour is only a faded memory here. At midday it go and sit on the steps outside to get some sun. Its a cold desert winter here and my fingers and eyes are beginning to hurt. The sun feels warm on my new jersey, the only clean piece of clothing I had for three days since the airline lost my suitcase. Some one starts riding down the wrong lane of the road in front of me, into oncoming traffic. No one stops they just hoot at each other and swear in Arabic. Its a country full of angry people.

The View From my office window

The Arabic restaurant that I used to eat at each day has closed. I cant understand why, last time I was there the place was constantly full, the had just bought big shiny new sign for there menu, when it came in I never had the heart to tell the proud owner the had misspelled description, spelling it "discription" instead. I see English everywhere, but know for a fact that most people can't read it. English on your sign raises the status of your shop, giving it a slick modern appeal.

With my old favourite eating house gone I am reduced to sandwiches for lunch and take out for supper. For take out I will go to one of the various Identically Huge malls that litter the city scape. Which ever Italian is selling marble flooring here must be a rich man. I try to have a different take out each night, its not a difficult task. Today I will have a subway sandwich, the polite Filipino at the counter will ask for my order, he will tell the Indian cook to prepare it, somewhere at the back a Bangaldeshi will be cleaning the floors. Everything will be conducted in a mangled dialect of English. I would like to say thank you in another language but cannot figure out what would be appropriate, I will retreat to English feeling sadly uneducated. I will walk through the massive marble interior of the mall slowly feeling more claustrophobic. I laugh to myself, the last time I remember when going to the mall was the only fun thing I had to do I was 12, I look around and see an ocean of veiled people that are still stuck in 12 year old me's idea of fun. Slowly a theory of about the arabic mall hysteria will formulate in my mind, When I think out my theory it will disturb me as being xenophobic and ill informed, but I wont be able to shake the feeling that I might be right.

Happy halloween. New years ticks by and I don't even notice, times and days have little relevance here unless you are trying to miss prayer when you go out to eat. Morning turns to midday turns to evening to night, work moves from the home to the office to the home. I think about starting an exercise routine, press ups in the morning and a run in the evening. I have delusions of coming back to South Africa sober,clean and healthy, primed to throw it away as quickly as I can.

Tomorrow I will investigate Saudi Arabia's second biggest industry. I will take an hour off in the evening and go try every type of date I can find. I don't even like dates. My grand father put me off them when he told me they were pressed by people squashing them under their armpits. On Friday we plan a clandestine operation to photograph the street signs of the city and maybe a few of the houses on millionaires row. we will have to wake up early, before the police. People here aren't big on cameras in public.

Verse(9x2)-Chorus(2)-Verse(9x2)

2007-11-07T00:30:00.000+02:00

I used to listen to allot of "Modern Rock" on radio , what ever the fuck that is. But lately when on occasion I hear a radio I find the songs to be very simple. Now I don't have anything against the standard verse-chorus-verse approach to song writing, but its getting ridiculous. The verses are something like 2 lines long and the chorus is the same 2 sentences repeated 8 or 9 times. Its just really boring. Not bad songs, just boring.

I am Working too hard

2007-10-18T18:19:00.000+02:00

My arms hurt from typing too much. Oh god, I'm such a fucking loser. Less than 2 months too go. Shit.

Listen to the Care bears

2007-10-10T01:57:00.001+02:00

Click for full size version

A birthday in Saudi and a night in Bahrain

2007-10-09T22:13:00.001+02:00

Hi all,

So it was my Birthday about a week or 2 ago. Thanks to everyone who phoned/emailed/GTalked me or got in touch in some way, was really cool to hear from you guys. I hear you are all partying it up, I'm not quite so lucky. But I did manage to do something for my birthday. I got a glass of real (Not Homebrew Sadeek) Johnnie Walker whiskey, which is the equivalent of cocaine or something here. So that was cool. Then got then to this restaurant that I can only describe as pan-asian, it served food literally from every place in between Arabia and Japan. The food was really cool, we got a dish each and then shared. Odd thing is restaurants here don't seem to ever have music, which doesn't sound like it should strike me as really odd, but it did.

After that we went to a furniture store to look at some furniture for the place they want to move allot of the company employees into. You see there really isn't much to do in terms of fun here, so westerners begin to look for fun in more obscure places, like shopping. So shopping here turns into a huge quest, where every single show must be checked, and then every shop owner must be haggled with, and then this must be repeated until the absolute lowest price has been found. this process can take several months. But its made easier by the layout of the shops. Geographically shops are grouped by function. So all the tailor are together, all the gold shops are together, all the food stores are together. Hence the street of dress makers from the last email. allot of really huge Malls have been built here too, I try to stay away from them cause they seem like a weird little plastic America, and malls without cinemas or bars are pretty boring.

So my birthday was pretty uneventful, luckily I got a chance to make up for that.

One of the guys I'm working for, Stuart, had to go back to RSA, he flew out on Valentines day, from Bahrain. Whenever anyone goes to Bahrain its an excuse for all of us to tag along. Because as you should remember Bahrain is allot cooler than Saudi. Once again I was hit by the difference between Bahrain and KSA immediately. Bahrain is clean, and nice, and the new buildings aren't all modeled after a borg cube. Bahrain is like Saudi's play park, but their economy is being diversified away from oil (Which ran out in Bahrain a while ago I think).

There are 2 types of bars (Proper bars, not dancing girl clubs) in Bahrain, Hotel bars and the other type. Generally you start the day at a hotel bar, and end at the other type. We started the day at the Ritz Bahrain. Which looks like an awesome hotel, but I found out that the Beachside Villas cost 1000 dinars a night, which is about R20 000. A round of drinks, 5 beers cost 13 BHD (Bahrain dinar) which is about R260. after that I stopped keeping tabs on how expensive everything was going to be.

We went to the Souk (market is closest translation), which is huge warren of tiny streets all filled with tiny shops. Its a place where you can buy just about anything, covering a few city blocks. The buildings are all 3 or 4 stories tall and old. I'm not sure how you are meant to find anything you're looking for, and in a way I'm surprised I ever found my way out. I stopped and had tea at this tiny Indian cafe place, I think I was the first white person to evr step inside it. When i say tiny I literally mean I had to bend down to stand. But I found out they serve like 500 cups of tea a day, it was good tea though.

Our next stop was the pub at the Radisson Hotel in the diplomatic quarter, where apparently you have to be diplomatic to everyone you meet. It was a cool pub, but could have been anywhere in the world. I got pretty drunk. But that is what you do when you go to Bahrain from Saudi. All the good bars in this part of the world have DSTV (Illegally), cause the satellite here is all American and crap.

Then we went on to the next bar, Diggers,a perfect example of the other type of bar. Diggers is allot of fun. But there are somethings you notice as you go in. Mainly that every single women in the bar, that isn't in the band or working as a bar girl, is a chinese prostitue. And I mean every single one, and there were lots of them. Which is a bizarre sight, come to the middle east to be surrounded by broken engrish. Its also hell of a creepy to see allot of Fat old english/american expats with a young Asian girl hanging on their arm, caue you know that relationship is of only one type, the fincanicial type.

The band was awesome, like all the rock bands here they were Filipino, but were hitting covers from sheryl crow to led zeppelin. They had a girl guitarist, who was amazing, she seemed like one of the best guitarists I'd ever seen (But that may be skewed cause I was really drunk). I ended up singing 'stairway to heaven" with the lead girl singer (These bands seem to have lots of singers, cause they do covers, normally two girls and a guy, the bands have about 7 or more members). It was good to see some live rock music again.

After spending allot of time at diggers we finished off the night with a whiskey at one of those Russian dancing girl places. I'm suprised we managed to crawl back across the causeway into Saudi in one piece. My body was not prepared for the hangover the next day. Total Cost per a person for the evening R1000 about, I didn't even bother keeping a proper count. Fun is expensive here.

Otherwise I have been working allot. So not much more to report. Except that people here find it very strange that I'm South African. At first everyone says british and then when I south African, they look surprised and say things like, "But you're white. I thought Africans were black". One guy at the local food joint wouldn't believe me until I eventually showed him my passport.

A week and a half in KSA

2007-10-09T22:12:00.001+02:00

Hi everyone,

I've been here in KSA for about a week and a half now, I've been meaning to write this mail for a long time but I just haven't had a chance. So this is a few things I've noticed or thought about.

The two guys that are directly in charge of me, Dino and Stuart, live in a compound. Pretty much all the westerners that stay here permanently live in compounds. Compounds remind me allot of the cluster home complexes in South Africa, except way more hard core. I've been to a few compounds now and all of them have the same sort of security. When driving in first you get to speed bumps where you have to slow down in good shooting range of the pillbox at the first gate, once you get through there you have to stop for them to check your papers and scan the bottom of your car for bombs. Then you enter through the armored gat and the 15 ft walls. Inside the walls the compounds are really nice, green grass and trees everywhere, nice big houses and civil liberties. At all the compounds I've been to the houses are referred to as villas, a bit grandiose perhaps. Only people with "western" passports are allowed to live in compounds, thats a Saudi law. But realistically the compounds are some of the nicest places to live so allot of Syrians and Lebanese and the like go and pull some strings to get an American or British passport, and can then legitimately claim to be a westerner. So in Dino and Stuart's compound I haven't seen another "white" face walking around. That specific compound is also only meant to be for married couples, they got in there because the big boss knows the owner, so the running joke is that they're the resident gays (Which in reality they aren't, since they couldn't be, since they'd have been executed already, since they're in Saudi Arabia and homosexuality is illegal).

Life inside the compound is much like America or Britain, I've specifically spent allot of time in the British Aerospace compounds. British Aerospace maintains the Saudi air force, so they have 900 employees in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi police cannot come into a compound without the express permission of the crown prince in charge of the region, which would never be given. This gives rise to the possibility for a truly western past time, drinking. almost every compound operates a pub. These pubs have to make there own drinks since they can't import them, so each compound has something akin to a brew master who makes sid.

The local liquor is called Sadeek, which means "my friend" in Arabic, its shortened to "Sid". Sid is pretty much 90% alcohol. They get really creative with it though and in a compound pub you can buy beer, drought, whiskey, vodka, gin, rum, Malibu and clear. These drinks don't really taste the same as there names though, for example "whiskey" is really just sid thats been diluted and then soaked with wood chips to give it colour (Which is how real whiskey gets its colour), and the beer tastes more like a cider or ale. But its still damn good and fucking strong. If you've been drinking sid then you make sure you have allot of water before you got to bed or the next day you will have a headache sent by Allah to punish you, I know.

The brewmaster at the British Aerospace compound I last drank at brews 18000 litres of beer a year, which is about 50 litres a day. It takes at least a two weeks to brew and distill, which means at any one time there are over 700 litres of sid lying around in spare rooms of the compound, and thats just for the beer. He makes more money off beer than off his day job, and he gets paid allot to fix fighter jets. Like they say in Jurassic Park, " Life will find a way"

I went to a car dealership sometime last week, the company needed cars and I came along for the ride. Cars are allot cheaper here, its not because Saudi has cheap cars, its because in South Africa we get ripped off. A car that costs the equivalent of R90 000 in Saudi costs about R160 000 in South Africa. Its ridiculous. While I was at the dealership I saw a group of teenage girls dressed in the traditional dress. I could see they were teenagers because of the way they sat, which was slightly awkward and bored, with the same posed lack of comfort you can see in a group of underage girls trying to look cool and old in a club in RSA. When I saw them I thought how basically similar we all are, how stupis these divisions we create between us really are.

I was fortunate yesterday to get invited to the house of the big boss yesterday. Ahmed seems like a really smart nice guy. He entertained us in a tent in the front yard of his house, I say tent because basically thats what it is, but it was a really nice tent with air conditioning and a TV. We ate on the floor. The food here is very good and I think its pretty healthy. There was way too much food, as is the tradition when entertaining, the Saudi's are very hospitable when the entertain. It was really interesting to talk to him, since he is Saudi but was educated in America and in private is willing to talk about pretty much any subject openly, something that is very rare to find here.

The traditional drinks here are sweet tea, Arabic coffee and ginger milk. Arabic is made with un-roasted coffee beans and a spice I wasn't familiar with, so it tastes very different to western coffee. The tea here is served very sweet. The other popular drink is what it sounds like, warm milk with blocks of ginger inside it, its very nice.

Today was my day off, so after waking up at about 2 pm I decided to go for a walk around Khobar, the town I'm staying in. The streets of Khobar are a grid, with numbers going the one way (e.g. 4th Street) and princes going the other way ( e.g. Prince Hamoud Rd), finding your way around is pretty easy and the inner city, where I stay, is fairly well sign posted in English and Arabic. When I started walking one of the five daily prayers had just started, so all the shops were closed and the streets were all but deserted. It was eerie to walk around this foreign ghost town. It was as if i was the only thing there with eyes, the only witness to its existence except for the slow wailing from the minarets of the mosques. The weather has cleared up, the skies are a perfect blue as far as the eye can see and slowly the puddles are drying up. Much like Johannesburg in the winter there is a late afternoon glare on everything here, giving the city a strange aura, making everything look slightly out of focus, or like a film that has aged. As the prayers ended I found myself standing outside a mosque. The difference was immediate, in minutes the streets were buzzing with people dodging cars. The shops opened up and business resumed as normal. The romance of the moment was lost.

I continued on my way and eventually got onto the main road that runs through the city. This road is called "The custodian of the two holy mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Rd", thats the official name of the road, and since road signs here are in Arabic and English the road name takes up four lines on a road sign. It used to be "Prince Abdullah Rd" but when he crowned they had to include his official title every time his name was said or used. This makes Saudi news reports very long winded, since they use official titles for everyone important. It's a nice road though, with a big public park where it crosses another major road. The park (Whose name I don't know) is a bright emerald green right now because of all the rain, I saw a family having a picnic and playing soccer, soccer seems to be the only popular sport here, no girl teams yet though.

A little way on I turned down a side road. I'm not very well traveled so sometimes things that may be pretty ordinary tend to surprise or amaze me, this may have been one of them but I thought it was incredible. The whole street was full of tailors, dress makers and jewelers. It was the dress makers that amazed me. They were all small shops, with rolls of fabric on the back wall, but in the front window they put there display dresses. They were beautiful, made of bright vivid materials with sequins and jewels sown into them everywhere. I don't have the gift necessary to describe the scene to you. The dresses were exquisitely made and when displayed on mannequins the dresses didn't simply hang, they very pinned and drawn out to make it seem as if the mannequins were constantly spinning or dancing. Shop after shop it was the same, like a strange ball room full of invisible dancers. I would walk by and then see a Saudi women dresses in her Abaya and hijab and niqab (The Abaya is the Robe, the hijab is the head scarf and the niqah covers the face, leaving only a long slit open for the eyes), these women would stop and look at the clothes,point some of them out to there friends and walk on. I had to find this odd, since these clothes in no way conformed to the Islamic hadith, but they were there, and in great quantity, so there must be a market. If a women were to buy one of these dresses then she could only be seen in it by her husband (and male relatives). But despite that people put so much effort into creating these beautiful pieces.

2 days in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)

2007-10-09T22:11:00.000+02:00

2 Days in KSA

So I've been working here for 2 days. There are somethings everyone should know about Saudi Arabia. The most important is "EVERYONE DRIVES LIKE AN IDIOT", come here for a day and you will never complain about south African drivers again. Its not like the seething madness of India (which barely resembles driving, and only happens at 50km/h), from a distance it looks like normal driving except imagine every irritating dick of a thing to do in traffic, and that will happen to you, people cut each other off, cross 4 lanes at an intersection swerving in front of everybody. All night in my room I can hear faint hooting from somewhere, some would say its like having every car being a RSA taxi. And if there is an accident then the law states that the drivers have to leave the cars exactly as they were when they crashed, so even if its a small bumper bashing the drivers have to get out the cars and wait for the police, even if it blocks an entire highway. To enforce this its impossible to get a car fixed if you don't have police approval.

Here is something else to know. It has money, Exxon Mobil (The biggest private oil company in the world) just posted record profits of $39.5 billion. Saudi Aramco (the Saudi National Producer) makes about $500 Million (Costs $10 a barrel to pull out the ground, sells at $60, they sells 10 Million a day) profit a day, thats a massive $182.5 Billion a year(Thats an estimate not an official figure, but should be pretty accurate). Thats around $6000 a second. But if you looked around you really wouldn't think so. Saudi is a dirty country, there is trash and rubble everywhere, the roads are not well maintained, all the big buildings look something like Borg Cubes. And then you look over to Bahrain which has only a tiny amount of oil compared to KSA, Bahrain is nice and clean and modern looking, well maintained. There just isn't re-investment in KSA by the government (Except for lots of signs about Islam).

All the work in the country is done by foreigners. The country is full of foreigners of various types. The different groups of expatriates tend to do different things, for instance (and this is a vast generalization, there are obviously lots of exceptions) the huge amount of Filipino's here are ussually artisans or mechanics or something like that. The Indians generally have computer and tech jobs, as well as some lower level engineers, the Europeans, British, Americans and South Africans are Engineers and the people from Bangladesh (Cant think of the right word) are cleaners and office boys or manual Labour. Most saudi's do not work, unemployment is officially around 40%, but I'm told it is probably higher than that (The stats are skewed by fake jobs created for Saudiasation, the Saudi version of BEE). To make a point, the division of the company where I am working has only 3 Saudi's of the 27 people there. The one is the owner of the company (Who i haven't met but by all accounts is a really good guy), the other 2 are paid to deal with the government (getting Visa's, stamping forms, customs etc). Now this is a Saudi owned company, so its not racism or colonialism. Its just that there are no skills in the local population, there are only 7 universities in the country and 4 of those only teach religion, which means Islam. By all accounts the other 3 teach mainly Islam with side subjects in other things.

The first thing you see here as you cross the border post from Bahrain, only 100 meters in is a McDonald's. No anti-American attitudes when it comes to fast food. They also like really big department stores here. They make really good fresh bread here, there's a little cafeteria down the road from where I work that makes traditional-ish food. It looks like a dump (Referring back to Saudi Arabia being a dirty place), but it cooks really well. Humus tastes allot better here, it has more of a tang, and with most meals you get lots of bread. It also helps that the owner can speak English so you can know sort of what you're ordering.

The weather has been really strange here, its been raining allot. No one knows how to drive in the rain. since there is usually so little rain the country has no drainage and if it rains mildly for 20 minutes then the roads start to flood in the middle because they aren't convex. It was 17 Degrees today, but it'll be 27 degrees by Wednesday (relying on my trusty forecast fox), I think i came at the best time of year weather wise.

The weekend runs from Thursday to Friday, which only leaves 3 days a week to work in common with western countries. Bahrain saw this was a problem and changed theirs to Friday-Saturday. Saudi Arabia is just waiting for everyone to convert to Islam.

An important thing to learn in Saudi Arabia is that every answer has two answers: In theory and In practice. For example: In theory its impossible to get alcohol here, in practice the compounds have parties. In theory rape is punished by death and is completely socially unacceptable, in practice it takes 4 eye witnesses to the act (Not circumstantial evidence, its gotta be seen in the act) to convict some one. In theory this is the richest country in the Middle East, in practice most of the money gets siphoned off to the 14000 members of the royal family.

But despite (and because of) all that its a bizarre and interesting country. I'm going out tomorrow (my day off) to walk around town (I'm not in a compound) and see some more of the country and stuff.

The Saudi Posts

2007-10-09T22:10:00.000+02:00

These are emails I sent out while I was in Saudi Arabia, I figure they're the type of thing that should go on a blog. I went to work in Saudi for February and a bit of March 2007. The next three posts were posted from there.

JHB

2007-09-27T01:09:00.000+02:00

I went up to Joburg for the weekend, It was my mom's 60th. Every time I go back I'm sure that the traffic has gotten worse. Its insane. Becuase of this, I figure, they are building the Gautrain (Which has flattened 2 of my friends houses and threatened mine). Now South Africans are a fairly negative group of people, so of course everyone is complaining bitterly about the train. But what I think is "Look at the traffic idiots" or course we need a a train. In fact I really can't see it failing. People in RSA really need to stop having such a loser mentality, it's just silly.

Claremont seems like a real shitty place to go out

2007-09-13T23:45:00.000+02:00

This really shouldn't be such a short entry, but I don't have the time to write more right now. But I was just thinking how shitty Claremont is as a place to go out. I mean come on you're in Capetown and you decide to repetitively go out to this same boring sterile cultureless mall hole? Why?

Profile Picture

2007-09-10T19:01:00.001+02:00

I had to post this so I could get a profile picture. Seems like a bit of a hack.

Acid Blues

2007-09-09T01:50:00.001+02:00

I went to Long street last night. At the carnival court backpackers I saw Acid Blues playing, like they do every Friday. It was the best live gig I had seen in a long time, gave me faith in live music again. I bought on of their CDs, something I haven't done in about 3 years or something. The drummer is really old. He told one of my friends that he was playing drums before Hendrix picked up a guitar. When he plays it's always with a really straight back, real stiff. They have a website but I can't remember what it is now.