companies we passed today where I wouldn't mind working as a secretary

Hyper Meat
Hyper Meat & Chicken
Mush-vroom


I'm listening to:
Beach Boys- Surfer Girl / Shut Down Vol. 2

still no life skills

This should be what is keeping me from getting my traffic register certificate number as validation of my foreign license. I failed the driver's test 4 times, once for failing to come to a complete stop before the big white line that opens the exam, good reason to believe that I would be unable to execute the following maneuvers:

Based on Britain’s national driving exam, the K53 effectively requires an applicant to imagine that he is driving a live claymore mine under assault by guerrillas in bumper cars. The hand brake must be engaged silently at all stops (ratchet-clicking is strictly forbidden), and all mirrors must be checked every seven seconds. Points are deducted for glancing at the gearshift, driving too slowly, failing to ensure that head- and taillights are securely attached, failing to check the play on the clutch pedal, failing to look beneath the car for leaks and several score other sins.

Nope. Instead I left my emergently certified documents at home this morning. Please forget anything I mentioned regarding improved life skills.


I'm listening to:
Justice- Cross

second coming

Steeze this:

Excel can operate on 2 different start dates: Jan 1 1900 and Jan 2 2004. That's why the dates got screwy when I merged the two spreadsheets together! (I make sparse use of the exclamation point, but this totally deserves it. I may or may not have lost sleep over this issue.) My challenge for today is to figure out how to shrink a picture in powerpoint while in tandem shrinking the markings I have overlaid on it. (I post this for insight into my insights on what it's like to have a j-o-b. And because I've had to put off until tomorrow my first real bureaucratic challenge here, validating my foreign drivers license by obtaining a Traffic Register Number Certificate.)


I'm listening to:
Radiohead- No Surprises/Running from Demons

Suit Up

The community hospital to which the specialized hospital at which we're enrolling patients is now annexing TB patients has some infection control issues. As a proxy for actually solving the problem with expenses like new ventilation and UV lighting, we wore surgical gowns while working there today. It was fun to gown myself after a few months: shaking out the gown and attaching it behind my neck before inserting my arms. It wasn't meant to be sterile but it was still nice to remember the routine. Funny how normal waste looks in the OR and how quickly perceptions change when even the grocery store charges for a plastic bag.

I need to get myself some N90-small masks. I am fit-tested (mother approved!) for the N90S, but they stock only larges here. Given that we spent the whole day dataforming in the TB wing, I wore my mask all day. The metal bit rests right at the bridge of my nose, on top of the broken bit, in an attempt to keep all those mutant bacilli out of my respiratory system. Today was the first time in a long time I gave serious thought to my grandmother's open offer to pay for my nosejob. I would argue that 'occupational hazard' should rank above 'deviated septum' in the spoiled brat's excuse to have a perfect nose.

no life skills

I feel like my boss is some shitty boy I'm dating who doesn't call and strings me along, ignoring my semi-urgent emails and midweek updates when out of the blue, he swoops in with flowers or concert tickets, and all of my doubts and misgivings are swept right away and I'm back in love with him. He got me a computer and my contract is going through and he apologized for not calling (you couldn't make this up: "I'm very sorry about the missed phone call last Friday.  My bad.") and he's going to pay for my worst-business-trip-ever (even I don't believe that last promise, but it hardly matters). Also, I have a silly grin on my face.


I'm listening to:
Stars- Set Yourself on Fire
I am trying to say / what I want to say / without having to say / I love you

beach trip

I got to walk along the beach this afternoon after we got home from the hospital. There were hundreds of clam-things on one part of the beach. They would clam-walk back towards the water at every chance, only to be washed a bit further ashore with each wave.

That in and of itself was mostly enough to relax me during this, the worst-business-trip-ever, worst mainly in the sense that I am paying for it myself before my contract comes through, but also because I put my life in peril every time I get in the car with my coworker and she's actually from this country of the to-the-left-to-the-left. Yesterday I escaped death 5 (five!) times, only to close the day with our rental car getting pulled over for having expired tags. I'm not going to calculate the odds of that happening on a backroad in a smallish-town in a thirdworld country immediately before the close of business, but I bet Douglas Adams would have something amusing/astronomical to share. Oh, and there's also the work part of the trip, which is mindblowing in its vastness and humbling in its incompleteness.


I'm listening to:
The Long Blondes- Someone to Drive You Home
it came to me today that possibly the 19 year old steals her boyfriend and then in turn gets dumped, and that's the theme to the album. I'm overthinking this, but I'll add that I find it interesting how much the long blondes can sound like the 4-nonblondes song 'he-e-ey what's going on'

I know the literature supports circumcising infants to prevent the transmission of HIV later, but I haven't yet decided how I feel about the same procedure in adult men. I do hope those clinics make use of their captive audience with PSAs on the ABCs and rapid HIV tests, especially if they're hoping to get such a high response rate. That said, I know I support surgeons working to improve infrastructure in developing countries, and so I love this here article. It's a less straightforward path to combine surgery and global health, but here's another way to do it.

guh

Hello. Am raucously hungover this morning secondary to yesterday's awesome rugby result. I woke up this morning to 2 pink fingernails and had to think for 15 minutes before I realized I drank a lot of sambuca last night. Seriously, who am I? It was a nice day yesterday: I went coffeeshopping at the mall to read and peoplewatch everyone in their various safrica jerseys. The mood here is good.

I met 2 med students at the braai last night. Surprise: the med students here are as generically boring as those in the states. What a relief to know that pre-doctors the world over are dullards psyched to compare notes on anatomy and dressing changes. (I'm really only being a jerk this morning because my body hates me, and I need to project the hatred outwards.) A braai is a safrican barbeque. It involves lots of meat, which is why we're friends.

Excellerator

I very seriously thought I was the second coming of Bill Gates yesterday morning when I managed to merge 2 spreadsheets together. The high lasted all the way to the TB hospital when I went to use my new spreadsheet and discovered that all the patients' hosptial discharge dates had gone wacko: they went from dates in the 2005-2007 range to all in the 2000-2001 range, and with no relation between the day and month. Reality bites.


I'm listening to:
The Long Blondes- Someone to Drive You Home
which I've recently decided I quite like. Track 3, once and never again, inspired a mini-dance party in my office (small because I think I'm going to rent a room from the guy who works in the office next to me, and he seems kindof staid) and I really like the way there's another reference to the same 19 yearold who doesn't need a boyfriend in the other song I like, Heaven Help the New Girl.

Happy Bosses Day

I'd love to meet the egomaniac who decided that bosses don't get enough ass-kissing every other day of the year and thus felt the need to institute a Bosses Day wherein underpaid underlings have to treat their bosses to flowers and lunch.

I'd like to thank him for allowing me a nice glass of white wine with my lunch.


I'm listening to:
Radiohead- In Rainbows
thus far it's sortof backgroundy easylistening. Faust Arp is the only song I really like, and even that only as a poor man's Wolf at the Door

a new woman

I got up at 5 this morning to go run a 10k. It seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least a way to spend time with one of the cheeses visiting from the states. Also, a safe way to work out when I'm still figuring out which streets here are safe. So we went running, as part of one of the weekly organized runs here. My coworker here is in a running club, she let us know about today's race. There's some sort of ongoing competition between the running clubs and today's was scottish themed so there were men and women who got to run for free for wearing kilts. Either way, we were late and didn't register and I probably managed to run 1 km before I felt like dying, so we walked the rest of the way. American accents are nice.

I was excited to hope to watch The Bachelor over the internet while abroad, but it turns out that abc doesn't sponsor the show to other countries. In retrospect not surprising, but disappointing. I miss bachelor nights.

I pretty much suck at blogging. Sorry guys. I'm hoping to find an apartment this afternoon, as the situation with my guesthouse owner has gotten kind of tense. I'll let you know.

to the left

It's a good thing I find the song Irreplaceable captivating, as chanting 'to the left' to myself is the only way I can remember which side of the road the cars drive on.

looking for a dare to be great situation

I'd been worried that my immediate dislike for my guesthouse owner, Jan, was a function of his Afrikaner accent. It's not my favorite, with its germanic gutteral noises. That didn't bode well for my year here: in the office, they will apparently all speak Afrikaner to one another. My fears were exacerbated when the Norwegian couple staying in the guesthouse proceeded to gush about the friendliness of the owners.

You can imagine my relief when I realized last night that he looks just like the extortionist dad from Say Anything. So I'm on racist, I just rely too much on fictional character guides. *whew*

impalalala

I am here and safe. The rain is currently impeding my find-an-apartment-stat mission, but I do at least have a cellphone now. Funny how even though my new boss is the only person to have called me, I immediately feel more grounded.

On the drive away from the airport, we made our way past a small nature reserve. My driver is a tourguide by training, so he was kind enough to point out the running impala inbetween quoting local weather highs and lows. And to think, only months ago I only knew of the impala as a car.

audi 500

So maybe I really am going to open this thing up? There's an inevitability hanging around me, around allowing you all see my blurbs (to be honest, I wouldn't spend too much time on the archives, they're both irrelevant and actively uninteresting). I figured I would let this thing die a lonely death by starvation at some point in the distant future. Not to be melodramatic (though is that not what blogs are for?), but the distant future has arrived. In 6ish hours I fly to Safrica for the year. I'm not sure how technological I'll be able to be, but I guess this post is a start.


I'm listening to:
M.I.A.- Kala
thus far only I'm only really enjoying Paper Planes. That suddenly just struck me as ominous, which reminds me of the fortune cookie I had in Samerica last week: You aren't meant to travel all rivers. Hmm. Well, see you all from the flip side of the equator.