Have got my new laptop-type thing, but need to charge the battery for 16 hours, and I'm also working on juicing up the SIM card with credits for my wireless access. In the meantime, I'm back using my uncle Joey's computer. He's not technically my uncle, but to work out his exact relationship to me would require a master's degree in geneology and enough hyphens to cause Norman Mailer to faint dead away. "Uncle" will do just fine for now. Ditto for the majority of relatives over here. Just close your eyes and swallow the inaccuracy along with all of my purple hyperbole.
After the darkest moments of South Africa's short World Cup™ history, the sun came out this morning, and the sub-Antarctic conditions finally broke.
Last night was the prime lesson in Uruguay 101 — how to transform a minor bit of incidental contact into a full-blooded rendition of the stations of the cross, the rape of the Sabine women, and the fall of the twin towers as an interpretive dance. I agree with James that the red card was a very harsh decision, as indeed was the penalty. There were some very sad South Africans about this morning. I tried to be as jolly and cheering as possible, but trust my father's penchant for the odd tactless bit of humour to undo anything I may have done to lift somebody's spirits.
In any event, the temperatures this morning shot upward, driving the mercury of thousands of thermometers over that precious 10°C mark, and thawing some of our bones. Considering that most houses in Port Elizabeth don't have clothes-drying machines (why should they?), we can now use the ultra-modern washing machines, and then air-dry our laundry. Just in the bloody nick of time. Considering that I've been wearing half my wardrobe to sleep each night for insulation, I'm sure that some of the wardrobe items are starting to pong a bit.
Heard some family stories last night that reinforced what I saw again in the Greenacres mall today: the Rainbow Nation is not just some sort of mythologized concept that people use when lionizing Nelson Mandela. It appears throughout South Africa as people of all races, colours, and creeds merrily interact, in the case of my family, when they marry one another. Just found out last night that we have a Muslim Arabic branch of the family to complement the Jewish, the Boer, the French, etc., etc.
I was under the impression that Jo'berg was the hive of scum, villainy, carjackings, kidnappings, drive-by shootings, muggings, parking offences, and bank teller fraud, and that Cape Town was the cosmopolitan centre of the universe, and the rest of South Africa was rapidly descending into the gaping maw of history that has already swallowed up most of Mozambique.
Granted, Cape Town is awesome and liberal and all that sort of thing. I was warned not to wear any football paraphernalia (i.e., scarves) on the street, or carry any pieces of technology about, lest I be mugged. Bah. On Long Street, I saw a gorgeously curvy blonde lady wearing nothing but a Dutch scarf, a skin-tight orange body-leotard, and a micro-apron flounce up to a group of Dutch fans with vuvuzelas and kiss them in the rain before flouncing off again. Bring on that sort of attention, I says. I then turned around and went into the Long Street Lunchroom, which is basically a big cafeteria. The number of laptops, netbooks, iPhones, etc. was staggering.
Fine, I thought. Cape Town is obviously an exception. Nuts to that. Port Elizabeth is packed with laptop-toting young adults of all sorts of description. The KFC in "The Bridge" mall has a Bluetooth special, where you can download coupons from the Bluetooth network and present them using your Blackberry at the till.
Bottom line, and I'm not going to harp on this again — South Africa is a first-world nation. The roads and rail lines are better than Canada's, and the mountain ranges make the Rocky Mountains look pedestrian. There is a 3G wireless network nation-wide, and the P.E. "Happy Valley" tourist resort area by the bay could give Monte Carlo a solid run for its money. Particularly the casinos, which managed to fleece me out of a couple of hundred Rand today before the Korea match.
Must run again. The Nigeria-Greece match is on, my father just hired a vehicle, and I've got to plot out how we're going to get to East London on Saturday morning and then back in less than 48 hours. It's 300 km away, and we've got to be back in P.E. before the Chile-Switzerland game on Monday. It's looking to be the only trip that we'll make out there, so we've got to try and cram as much activity into the time as possible. As we've done since we arrive here last week. At some point, I'm sure that I'll get a second's rest. Eventually.
Cheers,
—mARKUS
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