Weekend

This last week has been crazy - I pulled some long hours during the week because I forgot (temporarily) how to write lectures. By the time I remembered, the week was half over and I was exhausted.
On Friday I spent the day with a series of Australians and others seeing the Apartheid Museum in Gold Reef City and the Hector Pietersen Museum in Soweto. We also went to a shabeen in Soweto for lunch. I had a great time, and the people (from TEAM Monash and the Edmund Rice Centre in Freo and a couple of others) were fantastic. Plus we had a local guide. It was thoroughly exhausting, though. The emotional drain was incredible. It's so close to the present that it seems different to say the history of the Holocaust. Anyway, I had the car this week due to the kind offices of Amanda. So I decided (in a fit of hospitality) that I should take out the Edmund Rice people, since it was their last night in Jo'burg. And here the fun begins. Long story short, I got lost and managed eventually to find my way through the CBD on my own and got there after a very, very long drive. At least I now have a much better sense of where things are and how to get around.
Then on Saturday we had Open Day. Which was very, very quiet, most unlike Caulfield last year. It was a fun day - we have a new caterer, and so we had a choice for lunch other than pap (African staple, made of maize, looks like mashed potato gone hard) and pork cutlets. There were salads! Real salads! And it was great hanging out with my colleagues. I went out to the movies that night and saw 'Caramel', a Lebanese-French film at Rosebank, at the art house cinema which was in a shopping centre (of course). It was a great film and we had great (although very odd) fusion-ish Thai at an uber cliched Thai restaurant called Cranks. If you can imagine a series of Barbie dolls in various compromising positions hanging from the ceilings and a series of large bad-sci-fi movie insects hanging from the ceiling on the verandah, then you have some idea of how the place looked at least. We had fun though, and only got lost four or five times. I can't wait til I get a GPS. And I never thought I would ever hear myself say that!
Yesterday I walked 5km in the annual 'Walk the Talk' fun-run/walkathon. It was great fun, although exhausting, and the I got sun burnt. Eish. I went out to a colleague's for dinner, which was lovely, and cooked with them - so exciting!
I'm getting a cold at the moment as well - sigh. So sun-burnt, exhausted and sick - that's me. And I have all the readings to do for my lecture and my honours kids... Still, I had a great weekend, despite the hecticness. And I discovered the area I want to live in - Westdene - it's right near Melville (an area that has bits that feel and look like Melbourne, specifically the cool end of Chapel, or maybe even a bit Greville st-ish) and is not a huge distance from work. Plus I have a number of excellent colleagues who live nearby.
Right, back to work... (and refreshing facebook until it loads properly!)

Is it? and the joys of Be Bop

One of the marvelous things about being in a new country (where I speak the language) is discovering the nuances of language, tone and intonation that are different from home. In talking to my colleagues I've been informed of the joys of differentiating between 'just now' (meaning anytime in the next three hours, or perhaps three days) and 'now now' (what we would mean when we say 'right now'). There is something so lovely about not wanting to disappoint whoever you're talking to by telling them that they are going to have to wait for possibly many hours on a very uncomfortable chair while you go for a long lunch and see to the other pressing matters that might be on your desk and instead telling them with an incredibly reassuring smile that you will see to their problem, visa, bank account, etc. 'just now'.
The other linguistic quirk I have discovered and decided I really like (although it's a little bizarre at first) is the response of 'Is it?' to a statement of fact: "I went to the shops last night" response: "Is it?" My look of confusion and misunderstanding - "Umm, is what what?"
It's actually really quite endearing as far as a rhetorical response goes! Although I haven't yet encountered it yet, I'm also told than when I ask (in a truly Australian fashion, accent retained and no slippage as yet - fingers crossed) how someone is going, they will reply with their transportation options, rather than their state of wellbeing! I intend to ask as many people who are not familiar with Australian vernacular as possible until I get the response of "by Bakkie" (like a ute) or (equally fun!) "go where?"
Anyway, onto other matters - the teaching has begun. I have inundated my students with the joys of jazz - including Be Bop - making them listen to Thelonious Monk. They didn't understand it at all - their confusion was simply awesome!He was without a doubt the coolest cat ever. He just sizzles!
I mean, who wouldn't want to be as cool as him?! Just look at him! He rocks the suburbs, or rather he syncopates the urban ghetto or something jazz-like. Anyway, I felt largely like a fraud, not being the most knowledgeable jazz aficionado in my acquaintance! Still, I think I knew more than my students, which is perhaps not difficult. Sigh. The youth of today. What can you do? Play them Miles Davis, that's what!

Campus and Community

One of the exciting things about being here and that I really want to be a part of, is the building of a scholarly community. We started that today with our first staff seminar from a visiting academic, Dr Sue Onslow, from the Africa Institute at the LSE. She gave a great paper on what she does at the Institute. She's also an historian - and it is always lovely to meet people who understand the importance of history ("Monarch [to avoid sexist language] of the Social Sciences"!).
Anyway, it brought home to me how important it is to have a community of scholars. And how that is built person by person, talking to each, having lunch and a beer together. Plus we have a new coffee shop on campus that has a liquor licence after 5pm. It's not as flash as the Mausoleum or, indeed, as Cinque Lire or Mama Dukes, but it has cheap beer and cider and pretends to know there is more to coffee than instant and that there are more breads than white, brown, rye and panini! All kinds of good.
I'm going to update this rather rambling post with some pictures of campus later - probably tomorrow - but I thought it important to say hi and let you know that things are still keeping on. If you're too impatient to wait for then - here is a photo tour the uni does.
I also started my classes this week. My honours students are great. I am yet to talk to the second and thirdies outside of a lecture, but once I've had some tutes with them (which everyone here calls tuts - like 'tut, tut'!) , I think I'll have a better idea of how things sit and what the standards and expectations are like!
Tonight, however, I'm off to some some of the highlights of Jo'burg with two of my wonderful colleagues! Huzzah!

Developmental challenges...

So I've been trying to watch a video of Rich Stevens of Diesel Sweeties and Meredith Gran of Octopus Pie on YouTube. I'm writing a chapter on webcomics for a book on political cartoons, and what was really interesting for me was Rich's comments about the limitations placed on cartoonists in the print medium - and how liberating the web is by contrast. I thoroughly agree. However, and this is the bit I think is bizarre, the use that cartoonists make of that freedom is often not particularly innovative or radical. There are few anarchist comics that I'm aware of, or even comics that comment on the political - even in the sense of the politics of the everyday, critiquing culture or capitalism or any of the structures and rules that frame our society. I've been scouring the net for examples of webcomic artists and writers challenging 'the man', or 'the woman', or the corporation, or the government... or anybody really. While blogs have been used, with some degree of success, for activism and advocacy, there seems to be fairly little happening on the webcomic scene. Now a big part of this, I'm sure, is that as the mighty John Allison claims, he produces entertainment, not art - so the impetus to challenge the status quo that comes with producing 'art' is perhaps not as clearly articulated or even consciously understood as part of the cartoonists raison d'etre. Perhaps that's a good thing. I don't know, I suspect not. Perhaps it will come with the expansion of the webcomics realm. Perhaps as the landscape of the web includes more webcomics in it, there will emerge an underground movement, if you will allow me a gloriously intellectual reference to 1970s cinematic Italian Communism - a small mole may emerge and thus the whole edifice of capitalism (or in the Italian case Fascism) will collapse - and the glorious revolution will unfold! Or not.

Anyway, unfortunately I don't have my own house yet or my own internet connection, so it's taken me the better part of two days to watch the one hour video. Watch two minutes, pause it, let it load for twenty, watch another four minutes, pause it, let it load, watch another minute... all day. The experience of watching sucked, although the video is pretty rad - especially for someone with my interests.

That's one of the things that is a challenge about being here, especially for a web junky like me - not having fast downloads, waiting for minutes at a time while my 9 tabs open very, very, very slowly. And evidently it's good at the moment. It will get worse when the kids are here en masse. Yikes.

Anyway, other than the slowness of my interwub (it's like communing with a slightly dopey puppy - fun for a little bit and then very, very tedious), most things are slowly happening. Things just take longer here. Plus not having any transport or commercial ventures near enough to walk to is a little bit tough. Still, thems the breaks. I've also discovered I have attained a Gen Y attention span and am finding my teaching prep incredibly difficult! What is with that?

Photos! and my first weekend...

My first weekend in Jo'burg was really quite lovely. I spent the morning on Saturday helping out with the community engagement program that runs on campus. We have 50 or so kids come up from the illegal settlement near here for videos, games outside, and chess lessons! I can't play chess, so that sounds all rather awesome to me!

Then, on Sunday I was taken out to the Botanical Gardens near the uni. The wind was rather bracing (it was bloody freezing), but we managed to scale up the path to the top of the waterfall!





We even managed it with the three kids (aged 5, 3 and 1!). I think we did rather well. It's a lovely spot and the gardens below, while not ornate, are pleasant and at least its somewhere I can walk around, sprawl on the grass and be relatively safe!

Then we went to one of the local malls so I could do some grocery shopping. I spent the evening watching The West Wing and cooking in my new fry pan! Yay!

My room is fairly small, but better than anything I had when I was at college!
It's pretty sunny here, even in the winter! While my room is most definitely a little stark, in the way that institutions are, I do have a glorious bunch of flowers that my colleagues sent me for when I arrived.

Which was really sweet of them! Speaking of which, my colleagues are increasingly making their way back onto campus. As are the students, so things are going to be a little noisier and perhaps more lively around here! Which doesn't bode well for my sleep patterns, but it will be great to have their energy around! Anyway, that's what I'll keep telling myself. I'll try to take some photos of the campus and things tomorrow so you, dear reader, can get an idea of what the place looks like!

Why I love the magical red plug…

So today the power went out – evidently at about 4am. Although I was asleep and so missed it. Apparently a sub-station up the road overloaded and gave up the ghost. So the campus is without power. I haven’t had a shower today (my poor colleagues and I need to wash my hair!) and had to have spreadable cheese and sugar snap peas on rye bread for first lunch (I had a second lunch, but more about that later), rather than the risotto I had planned on. Cold risotto just isn’t that much fun.

I turn up at work this morning – sans caffeine (I’m still sans caffeine actually!) and wondered how the university would function. Only to discover that due to the ‘load shedding’ that has been happening here over the last six months or so, the university is very well prepared. We have a back-up generator and in every room there is a magic red plug! Said magic red plug puts you onto the emergency grid, consequently how I am able to write this now. So I still have the interweb, but no coffee. I did, however, manage to score a second lunch with two of the Pro-VCs and one of my colleagues. Part of the whole welcoming to Monash SA thing. It was lovely, food was good and we sat in the sun, so I'm without artificial stimulants and have been partly put to sleep by sunshine!

So, I think I might have to go and investigate to see if anyone else has misappropriated the magic red plug to boil the kettle!

Arrived!

I'm here! The difficulties, which continued right up until I got on the plane (including my being asked to repack my carry on luggage as I went through the departure gates - luckily the nice departure man took pity on my teary state and let me through) have now seemed to have ended.
On arriving in Jo'burg the Customs guy barely even looked at my invitation to work letter. Mind you, he gave me the wrong visa - I think - but the HR people here seem to think it doesn't matter. And it's now up to them to sort out.
So, I'm staying on campus, in a light and airy room with a beautiful vase of flowers sitting there on my arrival! There have been *problems*, but of such a minor nature (my heater doesn't seem to work and my wardrobe doesn't lock yet) that I feel as if the difficulties are at an end. Plus, and here is the joy of globalisation, I went shopping yesterday to Woolworths (a far more upmarket version than our own Aussie version) and found a whole stack of familar brands! I even scored some Milo (evil, I know, but so tasty!). So I feel like I've not actually gone that far.
The food on campus is also familiarly bad. So, it seems that it is not so strange after all. I'm sure the culture shock will hit me at some point. But I'm just glad that it's given me a couple of days reprieve so far.
My office is light and bright and airy, and so far does not smell of wet dog - unlike the south wing of the Menzies. So despite not having some familiar and terribly missed faces along the corridor, my new colleagues are lovely - very friendly and welcoming. So all is well.
Anyway, this has been more than a little rambly. The facts in brief:
How am I? Well, thanks!
Was my flight ok? Yep, only a couple of screaming babies, and I managed to block most them out with the trashy novel Jess gave me. Thanks Jess!
How is it here so far? Really great!
Is the weather ok? Much better than Melbourne and sunnier than Perth, if that's possible.
Have I met some nice people? Absolutely, everyone has been very kind!
Is my accommodation ok? Yep, very new, light and airey. And safe.
Have I seen any lions, tigers or bears yet? Nope, but it's rather unlikely to see the bears or tigers, there are lions just up the road, evidently!

I can't think of any other hypothetical questions to ask myself. But if you have any, let me know!