Hey So... it's on. Almost all on. Almost completely sorted out. Almost 100% done and dusted. Almost. Not quite, though - 1 or two little bits to still iron out. But almost. At the moment, the big trip north-west is 99% sorted. It goes a little something like this: 1. 1 April: Cape Town - (Joburg 3 hour stopover) - (Noo Yawk City 2 hour stopover) - Washington DC Dulles. 1a. 3 days there, give or take a half-day; hopefully manage to interview for a post-doc at NIH or WRAIR. 2. 4 April Dulles - Noo Yawk City. 2a. 4 days with my old friend Ryan and his current bird; hopefully a post-doc interview at Albert Einstein College of Medicine 3. 8 April Noo Yawk City La Guardia - Denver, Co. 3a. Overnight in Denver, catch the shuttle to Copper Mountain Ski resort Saturday 9 April bright and early. 3b. 9-12 April Keystone Symposium X6: Parasites and cool stuff like that. Present PhD research data, wow everyone, get short-listed for Nobel prize, snowboard a lot. This time, attempt to not fuck up ankle in the first 45 minutes on the snow (a long story from August 2000 involving me, a hot,saucy minx of a snowboarding instructress called Nicole, and a rope ski-lift. And piles of my legendary non-coordination, of course). 3c. 13 April 05h30 shuttle back to Denver. 4. 13 April 09h00 Denver - San Diego. 4a. Hook up with me ol' mucker Ands, the poetic accountant, who is in SD on business (he deals in wigs. Rather, he is the top finance guy in a company dealing in wigs and other hair-related stuff), go out on the town, catch a concert or something, try to not miss interview at Scripps Institute for post-doc on the 14th. 4a i). Wow the Scripps Institute people. 4b. Bus/train/drive to Los Angeles evening the 14th of April. 4c. Paint LA red for three days - Disneyland, Rodeo Drive, Walk of Fame, Dogtown etc. Hopefully have post-doc interview at UCLA on the 15th. 5. Midnight flight out of LAX for Noo Yawk, arriving 7am the morning of the 17th. 5a. Spend two-odd days on various touristy things with Ands and Ryan - Staten Island, Empire State, shopping etc - my big sister turns 30 on the 20th, after all, and is expecting a bag o' swag from me. 6. 18 April 5.55pm South African Airways flight 204 Kennedy to Joburg and 367 Joburg to Cape Town, arriving 9pm on the 19th, theoretically worn out. Exciting times. The only downside: 17 hours each way plus an hour fuel stop in Senegal or Cape Verde crammed into the new Pride-of-the-SAA-fleet Airbus A340. According to reports, normal-sized people have their knees rammed into the seat in front of them; anyone over 6 foot tall can barely fit in there with legs akimbo. And here is me at 6'3". Sardine can, anyone? -d-

hey Was assaulted this morning at 07h00. It was quiet, pretty light outside. I stumbled to the kitchen to make coffee since my sister - who normally is up first and makes us all coffee - is on spring break. The perks of being a school teacher, hey? The kettle - on. The cups - ready. The cat - hungry; yowling for food. The milk - out, chilling on the counter. The sugarbowl - empty; I need two heaped teaspoons in my coffee (as well as an almost equivalent amount of coffee in my coffee). Me - bleary eyes, half-blind without my glasses on, floppy hair, cotton boxers. The sugar - in the cupboard. The cupboard - closed. I opened the cupboard. I got the sugar.. I opened the sugar. I poured it into the sugarbowl. I closed the sugar. I put it back into the cupboard. I closed the cupboard. I wondered. I re-opened the cupboard. I retrieved the sugar. I scaneed it - no sign of you-know-who. Then I made the mistake of looking on the back. That little bastard was biding his time, waiting for me. Same story - "I'm Huley the sugarbowl. But I'm no ordinary sugarbowl because I know a lot about sugar." I appreciate that the mascot of a product has to be related to the product, or at least prattle on at length about the product. But seriously, people - get a grip already. That's what I told myself as I stuffed the packet back into the cupboard, pulse racing, and slammed the door shut. What I should have done - and what I might do tonight, before this fascination becomes something unhealthy - is used some scissors, or even better, my bare hands, to tear him off the side of the packet and burn him in the toaster. In other news, formally resigned form Virgin last night. 30 days to go as of today. I sent them an expectionally snotty, sarcastic and downright accusatory letter. Can't imagine they'll get back to me on it; but I hope they do... Fuckers. yay yay it's Friday! -^^^D^^^-

hey wow - would you beleive the builders of SITDiary actually have "Antsy" as a mood built into the machine? Cool! Developed my first spool yesterday, having had a flash of brilliance and decided to take a few (eleven, it turns out) trendy, arty shots of The J and the rest of my gear. Oh - that's right - you don't know The J, do you? The J is my shiny red electric guitar - Japetus in full; those in the know will recgonise that as one of the larger satellites of Saturn. It is the yang to the yin of Callisto (my old beaten-up Spanish classical guitar; named after one of the major satellites of Jupiter). Needless to say, some of the pics kinda fucked out a bit - haven't quite got the steadiest hands to hold the camera as yet - I would a put a withdrawing junkie to shame in that department - and the autofocus seems to be a little more sensitive to movement than I'd anticipated, so some of the shots ended up a little pear-shaped; still, it's all good. My wrist, though, is all bad. It hurts. A lot. I tend to exist in a void filled with wrist-action - no, not that kind - guitar playing, writing, lab-work, horrifically violent computer games and karate all being rather wear-and-tear heavy on the ol' carpals and metacarpals and related goods; and my right wrist has been tender in a whisper-to-a-scream kind of way since Hell Night in June. Last night, though... man, did I hurt it opening a Coke bottle for my mom. While it was only sore beforehand if I bent it at right angles - like doing push-ups, say (in fact, I've had to do those on my knuckles for the last 3 weeks as a result of the pain) - it is now just a dull, throbbing drum'n'bass ache at rest, and a sharp, stabbing Iron Maiden guitar-solo agony when I move it. Please please please don't be carpal tunnel syndrome... Couple that with the recurrent ailments - sore ankle (snowboarding tragedy in 2000), sore knee (Hell Day 2004), sore throat/chest (winter 2004), sore shoulder (karate injury 1994), sore brain (looooong time) and whatever else - I think I'm breaking. What's the warranty on a human, anyone? laters

Day 12: Copper Mountain/Denver/San Diego - 13 April 2005 Awoke early as planned and got my shit together. Did the telephonic check-out – very convenient; I had not accrued any additional charges so they literally just signed me out of their system and asked me to leave my key-cards on the table – and went to go wait for the CME. It was still pitch-black outside, the snow an eerie blue under the moon. Although the snow had stopped falling the previous day – my last day on the slopes had been in blazing sunshine – the air still had that dense muffledness about it. I took the opportunity to snap a few last shots of the place – there were fairy lights in some of the fir trees – and reveled in the crisp smell of the frozen ground. It gives you an appreciation of silence, being out and about in a remote location at the crack of dawn. Bit by bit, a few other people also arrived for the shuttle. It seems the CME’s pick-up spot is right outside the block of rooms I was staying in, and I was able to sit in the lounge area with a view into the car-park area out front and just veg for a bit. For some reason this time I didn’t get a call from home – I forget why, since it has officially been more than a year ago and it has taken that long to get this diary written up properly. Nevertheless, eventually the distant glow of headlights down the road became a white CME van, and we were all ready to go. I have mentioned before that I lived on a diet of decongestants and Vicks VapoRub and this morning was no different, except that I hadn’t yet taken the decongestants. Taking hard drugs on an empty stomach has been known to cause vomiting at least once in my past, and I figured that the 90 minutes to the airport wouldn’t be too much of a hassle, so I hadn’t taken any. I did, as always, have the Vicks mini jar in my hand luggage for just-in-case. Just in case happened, of course, about twenty minutes into the journey. First a headache, then nausea. After a brief period of wondering what to do, I just went ape-shit with the Vicks and splashed it all over my face. That is the inherent problem with Vicks VapoRub – it’s not subtle. Your upper lip and/or forehead (depending on where you put it, you see) shines like a greasy pile of oil, and of course it has that whole medicated mentholated eucalyptus medical smell. But it was either that to clear out the ol’ sinus passages or risk having to ask the driver to stop, climb over everybody and throw up all over the side of the road. I have unfortunately actually had to do that before, several times on two separate occasions - one single and one multiple - but that’s another story. So I went with the Vicks, and proceeded to eat a Disprin as well; empty stomach be buggered, I thought. To reduce the risk of puking up the Disprin (that’s aspirin, for anyone wondering), I proceeded to devour my entire box of those funky flavoured Listerine breath-freshener strips which melt on your tongue. DIA could not arrive on the horizon quickly enough. Eventually, though, it did, and we all got out at our various terminals. In my case, again, United – as it had been at HPN, Dulles and La Guardia ten, nine and five days previously. I got all my stuff and headed to find the nearest bathroom, because I was not feeling anywhere near 100% and felt that puking was indeed imminent. I’ll say right now that the bathrooms in the main terminal at DIA are not near their best at 6am – it was actually quite rancid in all three of the ones I tried. I’ll leave out the details, but for those of you who’ve heard that Star Trek joke about Scotty finding stuff in the toilet, I think you’ll understand what I mean. Anyway, got checked in, as usual not a single emergency exit row available for a big lad like me and went looking for breakfast in Concourse B. I’m pretty sure I ended up at Itza Wrap! Itza Bowl! but it may also have been Cantina Express after wandering around trying to decide what to eat. Either way, I ended up with an awesomely good beef and black bean burrito for breakfast and then waited around for my flight. The food did my gammy stomach a world of good, I should say. Eventually we got called and I moseyed out to the gate to put me onto UA229, non-stop service to SD arriving around 10am Pacific time. It was a nice enough flight on a little 737-500, but I was not overly impressed with the two gentlemen in my row. I had a window seat, and at two hundred plus pounds, or 95kg metric, and 6’3” or 1.92m, I am not exactly pocket sized, and neither were they. All three of us crammed into that row made it look like a South African minibus taxi, which typically are licensed for fourteen passengers but carry around twenty. The two of them – brothers, I think, since they looked so similar but too close in age to be a father and son – were loud and obnoxious and really did moan a lot about everything. And boy can they eat and drink! Each of them ordered a beer and a vodka and coke on takeoff – and it’s only 9am and a two hour flight, and UA do not supply food, so you have to buy it – and moaned about the prices, and let’s not forget that those mini-vodka bottles they give you are doubles essentially, so that’s three units of alcohol already with the beer, as well as coffee when it was offered, and then when they handed out the complimentary snack-pack thingy, which was cinnamon biscuits as opposed to the funky savoury snack mix on the flight to DC, they still insisted on having a glass of milk as well, because “I always have milk with my cookies.” Incidentally, I’m about 40 years old, so perhaps milk and cookies is something I might have grown out of, I don’t know, thirty years ago. Suck it up, already. Anyway, eventually we descended into SAN, or Lindbergh Field or SD International Airport, a little more heavily than the landing at DIA the preceding week. Unfortunately, there was a westerly wind prevailing, which means we approached from the east into the wind instead of flying out over the bay and flying in over the navy base and the rest of the city, which would have been almightily cool. Bearing in mind that four hours previously I was standing in snow, high up in the mountains, it was odd stepping into the perpetual summer of southern California. My mate Andrew, or Ands as we call him, had been in SD since the Monday I got back to NY, so that was about nine days, and he was at work that morning and coming to meet me at the airport so we could do our SoCal tour. That was Plan A. Plan B was I would realise after x many hours of him not arriving that he was running late and that we would meet at the hotel and work from there. The hotel in this case was the über-trendy and most definitely “hello, vicar!” Dana on Mission Bay, which we got a super rate for through a discount hotel site. It is beautiful, and was not at all bad at $100/night per room, which we reckoned we could afford okay. I mean that’s $50 each for a king-size bed and private bathroom right there on the bay – beautiful! I was hoping it would be Plan A, since we had a busy day planned for Thursday, and wanted to get as much done on Wednesday as possible. That, and I had no idea about anything in SD – we were relying on him picking up a bit of knowledge and the lie of the land during his nine day stay there, and had no clue about buses, or suburbs, or anything. Short of knowing the airport was in the middle of town, and the hotel was on Mission Bay, and that Scripps was somewhere slightly further up the coast, I was lost. This was inherently flawed, of course, since his firm’s offices in SD are not as much in SD as in Carlsbad, probably the equivalent distance from SAN to Scripps in the other direction from Scripps, so expecting him to know too much about SD proper was perhaps a little ambitious on our parts. More on that later. Anyway, I mooched around SAN for about forty minutes or so, debating. Annoyingly, Ands had opted not to get a temporary cell number for his mobile while he was there, so I actually had no way of getting hold of him to find out where the hell he was. To a point, this is typical of Andrew. In short, he is very often not one to spend money un/necessarily. Finally, he arrived. It was still fairly early and we opted to skip lunch by having late second breakfast at Rubio’s there at SAN, because he wanted a seafood burrito. I forget what I had; but I think it was another one along the lines of the beef and black bean one I’d had at DEN sometime earlier. Following that, we decided to go find some wheels. We’d already decided, much to the dismay of my panicking mother, that we would need to hire a car to get around. Had I been on my own, I would have gone for public transport, but we needed to get to many places, including LA two days later and we reckoned having a car would be better than trying to find bus schedules and get another flight, since cost-wise it would be silly to do a 1-way to LA from SD since it is only about a hundred miles, which is a two hour drive. Flying would involve forty minutes in the air plus ninety minutes at the airports and we wouldn’t get to see the coast at all. Not to mention the added cost of getting to SAN and from LAX to the hotels in each city, it was just easier and cooler and faster to be mobile. Unfortunately, cars are muy expensive for foreigners to hire, particularly if you intend to drive them to an alternate delivery spot like LAX instead of SAN, which was our point of origin. Of course, our flights back to Noo Yawk were out of LAX, so that was the way of things. In short, hiring at 12pm (“1200 hours military time, gentlemen”) Wednesday in SD and returning no later than 9pm Saturday (2100 hours, military time) at LAX cost us about $350. And of course that excluded petrol, so we’d need to return the car with a full tank as well. And we were forbidden to drive to Mexico, which was annoying since we’d wanted to go to Tijuana, which is about 20 miles south of SD. That part was fine, though, since we were really pressed for time. Another annoying thing with my friends is the complete lack of respect for time-frames. If Andrew had arrived at SAN at 10am when I did, which was Plan A, instead of after 11, we could have had the car and been settled long in advance. This would prove costly later on, as you will find out later. And unfortunately this sort of annoying casualness continues to this day. Anyway, we eventually convinced Hertz to hire us a car – crikey, what a mission – after having to put up with a lot of uphill from a very bored sales guy there at their stand at the airport. But we got it, in the end, a little blue Kia Rio sedan, not huge but plenty big enough for the two of us and our gigantic luggage. We both are about the same size, but I have about 20kg on Andrew, so it is fortunate nobody had to ride in the back with us because there was no space at all back there. Of course, this was also our first experience with driving in the US. Driving ourselves, I mean, as in not being chauffeured around. We were finally discovering the joy of a left-hand drive, and that whole right-hand-side-of-the-road nonsense everyone over there seems to enjoy so much. And of course trying to read a map hand-drawn by the snotty behind-the-counter guy and being in extremely foreign parts all at the same time – double trouble. Surprisingly we made it to the hotel on our first go that time, unlike later when it would take us two or three wrong turns at a time. Ands kept asking me what I wanted to do that afternoon. We had plans to hit the beach at some stage, either in SD or on the road up to LA – both Black’s Beach, or, to use its proper name, Torrey Pines Municipal, and San Onofre are on the road between the two, and they are supposed to be the two best surf spots in North America – or something similar, but we had four days to do it in so I wasn’t particularly worried. I was really just happy to be there and had the meeting at Scripps the next day and just wanted to make the most of my time there. Ands was quite keen to get out to Seaport Village, a sort-of touristy shopping spot offering some curios and local souvenirs and stuff. I’ll admit that that sort of thing isn’t my scene, but hey, we did it anyway. Seaport Village is quite near the airport, and near the Padres’ baseball ground on Coronado Bay. SD has a lot of bays – it’s actually quite waterlogged, really. There are quite a few battleships and stuff parked there, and this particular neck of the woods is called the Gaslamp Quarter, and has a lot of old buildings and businesses and stuff there. One particularly impressive spot right there on the waterfront is the Manchester Grand Hyatt, two fairly tall towers of super-larney hotel splendour, with a rooftop bar which we immediately made plans to pull in for sundowners at on our way out later. We did the Village in the early afternoon and took pictures of the battleships and a smallish aircraft carrier – one of 4 routinely there, no less – and tried to decide where to go for supper. Ands had picked up a Let’s Go California travel guide from a local retailer back in Cpt before we left, and it was quite handy with maps and places to go and things to see and do and stuff like that for both LA and SD, so we were quite grateful for it. We had earmarked a few places as potential eateries and night-spots and Ands was really keen to stay in the Gaslamp that night. We agreed to think about the beaches and stuff on Thursday and planned to hit World Curry and Pacific Beach (a suburb, not only a beach), which is kinda bohemian/nightclub/dive-bar paradise, on Thursday evening. Some of the people at Ands’ office out in Vista near Carlsbad had pointed out a few spots to him as well, so Thursday was kinda sorted. We ended up at a pizzeria recommended to us in the Gaslamp, and it turned out to be quite a larney one which took quite a nasty chunk out of our budgets, it must be said. But before that, we started at the Top of the Hyatt – the bar is on the 40th floor of the rear tower. It has gigantic bay windows so you can see the airport and Coronado Bay and the naval base and all the way out to everywhere. We had a couple of Heinekens there – none of our usual fare, which is Carling Black Label (as voted Best Bottled Lager in the World 1994 at the big beer competition held in Burton-on-Trent in England) and either Amstel or a Windhoek draught for Ands. I loathe and detest Windhoek; he regards a Label as much too common and slutty for his taste. Admittedly, Label is the UCT undergrad beer of choice, so I learned to love it some years ago and have never really gone beyond it unnecessarily. But Amstel and Heineken both will do in a pinch, so we did the Heinies. I took a good few pictures of everything, of course, and enjoyed watching the planes come in to land at SAN because you can see it all from up top there. Should you find yourself in SD, I suggest and recommend it. Following the drinks and the expensive dinner, we just moseyed around. First, we got lost. It took an age to get back to the Dana, like it had coming back from Seaport Village, and by now it was around 10pm and thus, you know, night. We did have a very interesting conversation while touring about aimlessly in the car about various things – sex and religion both featuring quite prominently – but since we both agreed never to divulge the exact contents of what was said and by whom, that is about all I can tell you. I think I was driving and Ands was navigating – this little point will also prove important later on. He had driven to the hotel from SAN, but I had done most of the driving since. For those of you who’ve never had your comfort zone ripped from around you – and I for one tend to enjoy having mine removed temporarily from time to time, since a change is as good as a holiday – I’ll tell you this: it’s particularly odd driving on the wrong side of a car, on the wrong side of the road, in a foreign place, in the middle of the night. Everything about it is completely fucked up, and there is no other way to describe it. Even driving in parts of Cape Town, which sprawls about 20km by 40km all things considered, in bits of town which I don’t know that well, there are landmarks which you can use to at least generate a sense of direction. A big fuck-off mountain, for a start. The Caltex/Chevron refinery is another handy set of lights and towers. And at least the sea is only in one place – SD is a multitude of water and in some places the sea is both left and right of you and you have no idea which way to go. To cut a longish story short – well, shorter, since I have already harped on at length about it – we got back to the hotel too late to go to the Tropical Pool spa and bar which is open only till 11pm weeknights and it was already about 10:52 by the time we got back to the Dana. Instead we went to bed and continued the earlier discussion; however, it was in more general terms this time around and far less embarrassing and direct than it was in the car. Also, the focus was shifted more from sex and religion to morality and likewise issues. Not that religion is a big thing for me – I attend church only for weddings and funerals, to be completely honest, and resist all attempts to change that, for various reasons – but it is important among my friends, to a lesser or greater degree depending on which friend, and so we chat about it from time to time. Anyway, we eventually went to sleep and were all primed and ready for the big day which was looming. -d-

Lessons learned in this life: 1. If you dream it, you can do it. Provided everything else works out beautifully, and nobody gets in your way to fuck things up royally and repeatedly. 2. You can get by with a little help from your friends. Unless they don't want to help, which seems to happen more often than not sometimes. 3. If you don't expect too much, you can't be let down. Actually, that's only half-true. If you don't expect anything at all, you can't be let down. 4. Trying is the first step to complete failure. If you don't try, you can't fail. 5. If you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself. Make sure it's the sort of thing which only requires one person to do it so you don't need anyone else to pull finger and get their part of things done. 6. Sometimes, in spite of everything, some people just, well, suck. It's like the changing of the seasons. 7. When life hands you lemons, check to make sure they're still fresh. You could try to make lemonade but you'll inevitably fuck that up so don't bother. See Lesson #4 above. 8. Sometimes, the glass is half empty. Other times it's also half-empty. Half-full is just hippy crap. 9. Life's a bitch, and then you get put to sleep. Symmetry pronounced dead 10h55 on 9 Saturday 2006. -d-

The next day dawned, as days are wont to do. As promised by the various weather bureaus, it had come down during the night, and was still proceeding to do so – acres and acres of virgin powder, gently falling to Copper and the surrounds. I immediately snapped a picture of the stage which just 12 hours earlier had been rocked by the Blue Oyster Cult and others, now blanketed in several inches of white. It was only around 6am, first light; the area was strangely quiet. Not that Copper is hugely urban like I am used to – in my neck of the woods, there is a hum of traffic between 6am and midnight pretty much regardless of season – but it was eerily quiet. I’m guessing that the winter and the snow mean not too many birds nesting in the conifers, so there was no squawking or flapping or anything, and the hotel was dead quiet at that time of day. I realised forty five minutes and another lighter photograph or so later when I went downstairs that the quiet is caused by the snow itself; much like fog, it tends to muffle all the sounds around it. It was dead quiet without the hum of the hotel geysers and radiators and air conditioning outside, surreally so. That sort of silence has a sound of its own – like in fog, you can sense that it is muffled and the air compressed and that whatever you might hear is going to sound like it is not where it is, nor where it should be. This is horror movie territory. The only unchanged sound was the crunching snow beneath my shoes. The air was crisp and cold and smelled unusual – I have mentioned before that this is my first experience with actual real snow falling down out of actual real snow clouds, and I have to tell you I was like a kid let loose in a toyshop. By the time I got to the conference venue, maybe a two minute walk away, I had already let a few flakes drop onto my fingers and raised my face to the sky and had it land on my beanie and run through a snowdrift and all other likewise things that you do in snow for shits and giggles. People who have grown up with snow probably don’t remember their first time in it; I was losing my virginity, as it were, and loving every second of it. I was ready for breakfast with a grin as wide as a very wide thing plastered all over my head, and Brandon and I seemed to be having a lot more fun just being in the snow than pretty much anyone else at the table. Had it not been as staid an event as the first morning of the conference, there is a very real chance that I would have done my party trick and gone streaking. Breakfast was good – scrambled eggs with some tomato and I think spinach bits in it, and some sort of gritty stuff that seems to be some stir-fried, hash-browny sort of spicy potato and sweet pepper mix. Not sure what the hell it was, but it hit the spot, along with the muesli and yoghurt and good strong coffee. And the pastries and breads and muffins and plenty more of those mini Philadelphia cheeses to go with them. I made a mental note to demand better breakfasts at home from now on. From there, it was conference time. First session of the morning was fairly uneventful, and with the time-zone difference still affecting many attendees we looked forward to the first coffee break. Everyone congregated outside drinking conference coffee while Paul and I made a mosey through the snow – the novelty still with me, it must be said – to the Starbucks which Copper has just down the main strip and next to one of the other hotel buildings. The resort is a village – just about everything you could possibly need is there We returned a few dollars lighter, but gigantic cappuccinos heavier, so it was a fair trade, I thought. Almost everyone was “Gah! Where’d you find that???” since the Yanks seem a little more addicted to the stuff than previously expected by me. We were the kinda unofficial men of the hour in the popularity poll in my mind, I thought. Well worth another walk in the snow, too – I was fast becoming a veteran of that. It seems it came down quite heavily all over the place, and DIA was snowed in. I was mildly concerned that the storm may prevent Wednesday’s planned sortie SoCal-wards when the news had footage of thousands of travelers sleeping in the chairs at the airport, but my spirits were not dampened too heavily at the thought of an extra day of snowboarding. Before that, though, I did have some business to attend to. One was meeting the chap from Georgetown, who had hosted me six days prior even though he’d not managed to make the meeting. He’d presented just before the coffee break, and I hijacked him as we headed out and we chatted for a bit. He is a hell of a guy, very warm and friendly, seemed genuinely excited about meeting me and really went out of his way to put me at ease. What may well have been a mini-interview, since first impressions last as we all know, ended up being nothing like it and any nervousness I had felt beforehand evaporated within about fifteen seconds. We chatted for a bit then both proceeded to head for the coffee. The conference itself is something which I will not give too many details of. Yeah, there was conference, there were proceedings and presentations and it was all hugely informative and far beyond worthwhile – snowstuff aside, I’d have been glad to just be there – but I’m sure the details need no mention in here. 11 o’clock rolled around and it was time for the big break, the “See everyone back here at 5” time-to-hit-the-snow break. Anyway, all that aside, I popped into a ski-hire place to get kitted out. Had planned to buy gloves in NY, DC and Denver, but had come up short on all three; luckily, said ski-hire place had one last pair of awesome Dakine snowboarding gloves going begging, just the right size, marked down to a mere $20 since the season was ending in a week. And they rented me a set of boots and a board with a blue bird on the bottom for the princely sum of $20 per day, with a full service guarantee. Anything goes wrong, anything you’re not happy with, anything need a fine tweak, bring it in and we’ll do it on the spot, they said. Nice one, chaps – appreciate it. Show us how you stand so we can set the bindings. Goofy or regular? Normal angles or do you have a preference? Goofy, normal please. Those of you who haven’t surfed/snowboarded/skated before may not appreciate the difference between regular – left foot forward – and goofy, which is right-foot forward. That’s all there is to it. I think there’s a fairly even mix of regular vs goofy out there in the big wide world; although I am the only oke I know who is goofy, so that may be completely wrong. Got back to my room, got well-kitted out – new Columbia snowboarding BurbRider pants, from Campmor in NJ which I’d ordered online in Cpt before leaving, to go with new Columbia SLV soft-shell parka, also from Campmor, same story. I’d been wearing my Billabong hard shell with a jersey beneath it up till now, but I was quite keen to try the soft-shell on the slopes. Went down with my board and boots and everything, with some cash for the slope tickets and my conference card to claim my conference ski-ticket discounts and got set up for a day pass up the slopes. Immediately headed out to the American Eagle, right in front of the ticket office and up, up and away we went. First mistake in the snow – the Eagle is primarily blue-run, or intermediate terrain. I have a mere four days of snowboarding under my belt, from five years prior up at Tiffindell, where I spent the whole of the first day out with a smashed ankle. Green-run, or beginner terrain, is where I should be. I came off on my ear up there. The lift is quick, but it’s a good seven or eight minutes up to the top, all the while swinging high over the tree canopies – many with Christmas decorations on them – watching the occasional squirrel bounding through the snow. I also saw something a little more Arctic-Foxy – perhaps a wolf or coyote of some sort, since I’m not sure there are Arctic, or other, foxes in the US, but I really don’t know. Anyway, upon falling out of the lift at the top – I’m not good at disembarking, it must be said – I got strapped up, boots into bindings, and endeavoured to remember what Nicole the hot Tiffindell snowboard-instructing minx had taught me in my youth while I was checking out her boobs and her bum. First up, I realised that, in fact, this blue terrain is sort of steep. I managed about fifteen feet before coming off face-first. I also realised that in fact snow is kinda chilly, especially when your head is caked in it. It’s like a giant ice-cream headache, perhaps even worse than the sort you get being macho and playing in the mighty Atlantic Ocean at Big Bay, which is always cock-shrinkingly freezing, regardless of season. I came off several times on my first run down the Eagle. If you know your way around Copper, though, you can tell where all the runs intersect, and can actually put together an entirely easy, or all-hard, or mix’n’match of both types, since there are intersections and junctions all over the place, all colour coded in blue, green, orange and others. It took a while to get down to the bottom; by the time I did, I was knackered. Both wrists – already dubious, mind – were stuffed, My strapped-up knee was also taking a bit of tap, and my legs were sore through the thighs and quadriceps. And I had taken a particularly nasty, high-speed, awesome, snow-flying-everywhere, spectacular wipe-out – undoubtedly saving a little kid, or a stricken squirrel, or something likewise heroic – and could feel that dull tingling which accompanies a graze. In this case, my backside, from my right hip to halfway down the back of my leg. I had left several yards of skin somewhere, it seemed. Yeah, it was awesome. Sometimes you need the war-wounds. Sometimes they just make you feel so accomplished, or if nothing else, just alive. And for the next four days, I would have a fairly sharp reminder of my first day in the snow, carving up the runs of Copper in a mild, beautiful snow-storm. It took a bit of time to get back to base, whereupon I picked up my board and consulted the trail map and headed for the American Flyer, a longer, more gentle, and – most importantly – green run, starting in front of the conference venue and heading upwards and to the right. My guess is that it went from west to south east; no idea if I am right, though. I still came off a couple times, but I strung together some good runs, and had a total blast. I went up and down the Flyer four times in all, I think, on the first day before calling it and deciding that I should probably go scrape the sweat and ice out of me, and that perhaps a visit to the Copper pool in the gym would not be a bad idea to hit the would-be stiffness before it got too bad. Alas, it was not to be. The pool was quite full by the time I got there, so I opted instead to spend some downtime in the hot-tub in the men’s locker room. Perhaps someone could shed some light on this – are you supposed to stay clothed in the tub there? It’s inside the locker room, which is definitely guys-only, so should you keep your kit on? Our gyms don’t have hot tubs here in .za, so this was a bit of a closed book to me. Unsure, and not wanting to get nailed or expelled from the venue, I opted to keep my black boardies on. The hot water worked wonders. It really hits the spot on sore and fatigued muscles, and, karate aside, these were muscles which hadn’t been used like this apart from four days five years ago, under much shorter, gentler circumstances. I was sore and stiff, and, I discovered, the graze wasn’t so much a graze as a mildly grazed bruise approaching the size of Texas across my butt. I sat in the bubbling water for fifteen minutes, then showered and dressed and went back to get ready for the late-afternoon and evening sessions. I could feel the stiffness as I climbed the slight uphill back to my room to put my bag down and get my conference gear. My thighs and quads had that awesome, satisfying, overworked feel to them, where the stiffness serves to remind more than to punish, and in a way to encourage further activity. It’s that sense of a job well done, like when you’ve cooked up a storm in the kitchen and there are no leftovers – yeah, it’s messy and you have to deal with it all, but hey, everyone really enjoyed it. It was with a certain determined smugness that I returned to the conference hall for the pre-session tea – coffee and biscuits and a few energy bars and stuff like that. The conference takes over again from 5pm till 7, when it is social/supper hour before the poster sessions. Again, more business to attend to. The lady whom I was meeting in San Diego had presented shortly before the dinner break and I made a plan to hijack her, too. It didn’t really go that well. The early warm fuzziness I had got from Prof Georgetown was nowhere in evidence with Prof Scripps. Firstly, I offered my hand, as one does when meeting people, and she put hers into her jacket pockets and sat down, leaving me standing there like a useless prick. I immediately put that aside thinking perhaps she has a thing about handshaking – benefit of the doubt, right? I realise she has no idea what I said, perhaps, because she is reading my conference name-tag. “Oh.. you’re that guy. The one who, you know, wants to come check out my lab.” Said kind of sarcastically, almost “who the hell does this guy think he is, demanding to come check out my lab?” I then went on the hoover trail, sucking up about how I enjoyed her presentation, even though I didn’t follow all of it. I think she took offence – what I meant, and what I had stressed while setting up the SD meeting, was that her interest in malarial genetics and my interest in antibiotic resistance may be related, but I am not familiar with her region of the field, so I got a little lost in some of the technical stuff. So there was balls-up #2. Then, realizing I may well be crashing and burning here, I checked to see if we were still on for Thursday morning. It was all in order, but when I asked for some vague directions to the lab, I was told to Google it and print out a map. Not “it’s quite complicated; I think it might be better to see if you can’t get a map. Perhaps use the conference computers upstairs and see if you can print one from Google?” None of that, no sir. Just “Google it. Print a map.” So I was beginning to sense a bit of an awkward vibe by now. Anyway, I figured short and not-sweet, I’ve made the introductions – no point in spending 4 days at a conference with the woman I am meeting on the 6th day without introducing myself; that would make me seem odd – get the fuck out of there before you tread on even more toes. So I said “excellent. I’m really pleased to have met you. I’ll see you around; otherwise Thursday at 9” and bailed. It kind of threw me, though; I was a bit bewildered by the whole thing. Perhaps she isn’t a people person; still, that’s where being polite but distant comes into play. This, I felt, was plain rude. My mom – impeccable timing, as always – phoned right about then, while I was stocking up on Life-savers for my presentation (Life-savers are another story for later on) to hear how things were going. We both found it odd; my mom, poor thing, even sounded righteously indignant and a little sad. Yeah, I love my mom. She came in handy later on, on day 16. The pattern was repeated over the course of the next few days. Early start, complete with moaning and groaning about the stiffness from the previous day, shave shower and shampoo, marvel at the snow, gigantic breakfast, conference, coffee, conference, snowboarding, hot-tubbery, conference. Mix and match with social hour and having drinks occasionally too. I was presenting my poster Monday night, so got my supply of Lifesavers ready, and even had a shave. The way the Lifesavers thing works is this: Step 1. Stand at poster 2. Eat Lifesavers, with a ready supply in your pocket. 2b: Make sure you have both single eg mint and multi-flavoured eg mixed fruit ones at the ready. Variety is in the mix, of course, and it gives it that whole “Which one will I get? Do I feel lucky?” aspect to anyone who enjoys the occasional gamble with the mixed fruit ones. 3. Offer them with a huge smile to anyone walking past near your poster who even hints at eye contact – 90% of people will take them and then stop to chat with you about your research. 4a. If you are lucky, a larney big-wig will fall into this cunning trap and take an interest in you and your research, like they did when you learned this trick in Tanzania using Polos (that last bit of part 4 may only apply to me) 4b. So might a hot chick/dude/both, depending on your preference(s). 5. Score! Either by meeting bigwig, or hot chick/dude, or both bigwig and hot chick/dude. Who says conferences are not awesome? 6: Repeat, repeatedly. I’ll say at this point that I was getting sort-of adequate on the board. Long runs aplenty, and falls much less painful all point to a general improvement, and although I came out with what I’m sure was mild concussion at least once, and almost frostbite – man, the snow gets everywhere, and I do mean everywhere – it was all good. It was with a heavy heart that I left the mountain for the last time on the Tuesday, knowing that I was a mere fourteen hours away from heading back to DIA on the CME, and that the winter wonderland which had so quickly become a part of me would soon yield to the perpetual summer of SoCal. I didn’t allow myself to dwell on it, though – marched right back to the ski-hire place as soon as I got off the piste and returned boots and board, paid the rental costs and thanked the guys there. Headed back down to the gym for my last bout of super hot-tubbedness and that was that. The last session of the conference was light, followed by an enormous banquet and, horror of horrors, old people dancing. Blue-eyed Nick was well in there with all the laydees, it seemed, while Paul and I opted to have many beers and annex one of the outside couches to just sit and chat and shoot the shit for a couple of hours. Nick even came out to ask me if we were going to streak in the snow after all – I must have mentioned it at some stage when we first met. He encouraged Paul and I to join in with the womenfolk but we did not want to view the carnage within the banquet hall – lots of the er… more mature scientists getting down to a selection of contemporary hits. Perhaps the idea is just a little too foreign to us, so we both declined. After that, there was a kind-of forced adjournment to the Irish pub near the Starbucks, where a lot of the younger crowd – under 40, basically – had spent a good many nights. Most of the DC crowd were now regulars there, and a large number of the more liberal older crowd arrived a little later and were well on their way to blottoed when I finally called it a night. At first I wasn’t going to go because of my planned early departure, but went along after someone twisted my rubber arm. I was leaving at 5am, after all, and still needed to pack and panic and go through my checklist – four pairs of thick socks, check, seven pairs of boxers, check et cetera – so that I wouldn’t miss the shuttle by having to do that in the morning. If you weren’t sure by now, yes – I am the supreme time-waster. Not so much a procrastinator, because even when I don’t leave things till the last minute, I still end up running short of time. It’s a gift. Anyway, had a few more items and eventually after many goodbyes crawled back into my room at sometime between 1 and 2am. Not fun when you’re on a 4am wake-up; but it was a fitting final night to the important mid-section of the tour. As usual, put my cell-phone far, far away from the bed so as to not turn the built-in alarm off without getting up – another trick from the Tanzania trip; something I do frequently when I am traveling alone without the luxury of someone else to wake me up should I fall back asleep – and then spent a fitful night not sleeping and panicking every ten minutes that I had missed the alarm. Even as tanked as I was, the alcohol couldn’t knock me out. In fact, it was all much the same as my last night in New York some days previously at the Malibu, but this time without the scalded fingertips. -d-

so It's official, everybody - I think I have missed my calling. Or at least arrived at it a little late, having not taken the proverbial left turn at Albuquerque. As always, first a bit of background: It's been almost 2 years ago since my beautiful camera arrived (interestingly, or perhaps not, just on 11 months since I lost it and got it back again). I have discovered a growing interest in the art of photography over the last few years, and I finally was able to get on my bike and act on it. Got the camera, got some accessories, got some more accessories, and attempted to art it up, as it were. American Beauty - there were concepts in the multiple award-winning film which resonate in me today more than they did when I saw the film back in very early 2000, fresh after its Oscar triumphs. One of the driving forces in the Ricky Fitts character - to a point, I suppose - is how he managed to see beauty all around him almost all the time. At least, that's how I recall it; I will of course stand open to correction by anyone out there. I found this tenet intriguing at the time, and realised that I believed in that, too. I find that more and more each day. Cue today, in the lab. Our sterile unit, the tissue culture laboratory, or TC as it is commonly known. Yes, one might at this point think of TC as in the guy who flew the helicopter in Magnum, but I don't think anybody left in the lab these days would make the connection. It's a generations thing - the old guard from one, and the young rakes from another. This is one of those things. Nevertheless, there I was, sitting in TC, slaving away to save the world from the scourge of malaria on Bench 1 (cunningly named, for it is the first workspace of three which you encounter once you breach the door from the antechamber and enter the cool, sterile, air-conditioned climes of TC proper) when I got a dicky pipette. Dicky in that it had a warped end, like the plastic had been melted somewhat and had piched itself so that the liquid flowing through it no longer ejected itself in a clean line of pale fluid but shot out the end at a funny angle, high-pressured, twisting and tumbling. Any dude out there who is uncircumcised will know precisely what I'm on about, here. Ladies perhaps not quite as much, alas. Er... assume you take a packet of milk and puncture it badly and then milk sprays all over the table when you try to pour it into your coffee. And circumcised guys... um... how do I put this politely? It's like that first pee the morning after a night of passion - we all on the same page now?? I hope so. Nevertheless, I am hard at work reconstituting my children. Three lethal isolates of human malaria, drug-resistant variants of the most pathogenic of the four common human-infecting species. It's very cosmopolitan - one of the strains was isolated in Kwazulu-Natal on the south-eastern extreme of South Africa; one is a clone of an isolate from Indonesia and the third a strain isolated from a patient in Thailand. There is a biological difference between an isolate or strain and a clone, but let's not get too Tarantino unnecessarily at this point. For the sake of laymen, they are just different pathovars of the same species, okay? Point is, they are all horribly antibiotic-resistant, so don't inadvertantly skewer yourself with a syringeful or anything stupid like that, because you will have such a sucky time with it. Okay okay, not entirely true necessarily, but that's not the point. I fill the pinched pipette with 35ml of finest complete medium and aim it into the flask which is due to hold K1, the Thai strain, and eject the medium against the inside of the container. The fluid builds up to a bit of pressure inside the neck of the pipette since the dispenser just ejects come hell or high water, regardless of the pinch in the mouth, so the fluid sprays out, piss-like, through the pinch into the wall of the flask. The immensely high pressure causes the cow-blood protein extract we use as a supplement to foam up something proper, basically causing the medium now in the flask to come to rest looking not too far removed from a pint of lager - it's roughly the same colour, and the froth on top of it makes something approaching a head. For those not au fait with the complexities of a good head on nice cold beer, it looks like an Irish coffee, or perhaps a cappuccino or latte. In short, liquid at the bottom, frothy foam all bubbles and excitement up top. Next comes the addition of the parasites. There are too many of them to keep the culture in good shape - it all gets a bit overcrowded, one, and two, they tend to not grow that well wallowing in each others' waste (but then again, who would?), and three, they then tend to starve if there are too many, so I need to dilute my parasites to a point with fresh human blood. Calculations indicate that current parasitaemia (that's the ratio of parasitised red-blood cells to non-parasitised ones, since the malaria parasite lives inside the red cells, you see) is about 14%, so I am going to dilute them about 7-fold; which amounts to me taking out 82µl (that's microlitres, or one-millionths of a litre. For those who are non-metric, a can of Coke is usually 340ml, which is of course 340 million microlitres. Obviously, 82µl is somewhat tiny by comparison and needs a specialised micropipette to measure it accurately, called a Gilson Pipetman. This is different to the big 35ml pipette - the dicky pipette mentioned first - which has a pinched end in this story) and mixing it up with a further 518µl of fresh human blood, type O positive, which we get by the jugful from the local blood bank at the hospital UCT Medical School is attached to when they throw it out. I suck up 82µl of pRBC (that's parasitised red blood cells. I hope you're all paying attention - there will be a test later) with my Gilson and gently eject it onto the froth from above, where it sticks. Slowly, the bubbles around the insertion site run red as the blood seeps through, spreading in width through the foam until the now-multiple fronts reach the froth-medium interface where they hang, suspended, for a few seconds, frozen in time. Then slowly, very slowly, a slow rain of fine miniscule red droplets begins, each falling gently to rest with a little puff of red haze at the bottom of the flask. Even finer red and pale pink contrails mark their passage through the medium under the curse and blessing of gravity, tracer fire under the frothy clouds against the sterile steel backdrop and harsh fluorescent lights of Bench 1 in TC. Good lord, it was beautiful. I took a picture with my cellphone's camera, but the resolution is not that good on it and so it barely does it justice. I wished fervently I had a video camera on me, or my fantastic Canon mentioned above and repeatedly previously. Science is a wondrous thing. And yes, filled with items of such great and unexpected beauty that it must be seen to be believed. I think Ricky Fitts would approve. And I think this would piss all over his floating pastic bag, too. If the Apocalypse is coming as the cults all say it is, and this what the skies will rain with, bring on Revelation. I'll get my camera. -d-

yo It's been almost 2 months since the big night of the spiders, and my last entry. I will be better about doing this in the future. This, and a lot of other things. It's 2006 - hooray! -d-

so Last night was the end of the karate year for all our kiddies and we had a christmas party thingy for them. It's as much an excuse for us to enjoy a bit of cake and biscuits and stuff like that as it is for them, it must be said. Proceedings last night were lighter, and less tense, than proceedings at the corresponding fixture last year, because last year was The Accident (see entry #81 on right; be warned, though - it's bleak), and we got to hear all about it. This year, though, we were excited to a point because of proceedings on Monday night, and we wanted to see what would happen on Tuesday night at the kiddies' party. Because on Monday night, we found a gigantic spider in the karate club, or dojo (But I think dojos are cooler, so we will stick to club for now). It was Big and Hairy, and didn't seem too perturbed by our presences in there as it sat near a back corner in the middle of the floor. Keenan herded it into a bag traditionally housing focus mitts (sort-of hand-held punching-practice targets) and we took a good look at it through the clear plastic. It was biggish - maybe the size of the palm of my hand (far as I'm concerned, any spidery thing bigger than a fingernail is too big) and hairy, jet-black with long, fat legs and gigantic fuck-off fangs. You could even see its simple eyes it was so big. One of my juniors, Dane, claims a certain amount of arachnophobia and hit the high road to the hell out of there as soon as someone said "hey - spider!" but we eventually decided to not squish it (Wim's suggestion. We shaved his eyebrow off in one of my very first entries) and Keenan took it outside to release it near the skatepark, far away from my car. General consensus was thatit had come through the open window from outside and had somehow escaped being spotted by our grannies class earlier. "Was it a rain spider?" someone asked. We didn't know. Apparently rains spiders are grey-brown; up in Zimbabwe, they are rusty-reddish brown. This one was black as the blackest night. "A baboon spider?" No - those are also grey brown, and as big as a large tarantula. In fact, it is called the African Tarantula after its latin name, like the Mexican red-kneed tarantula is common to Mexico. "A wolf spider?" someone suggested. We didn't know. "Why do they name some animals after other animals?" Wim muses. He's just been awarded his BAchlor's degree from UCT - hats off to big W. "Wolf spider, crab spider, baboon spider..." he continues, completely missing the point, chinning away with gay abandon as we study the ginormous fanged monstrosity in the bag. "Then again, a baboon is a monkey, and you get spider monkeys, so perhaps they have just run out of names?" he suggests. Coincidentally, and perhaps proving the point, we have a scientific photograph calendar here in my office at UCT, and the November/December photograph is of a beetle, Lepithrix pseudolineata, which happens to be commonly called a spider-monkey beetle - double trouble! Class proceeded with no further disruptions, and we fought and grappled and sweated our way through the next hour. However, as we were wrapping up, young Jason let out a "no ways!" for lo, there was a likewise second spider, same species, same nasty McNasty characteristics, but on a micro-scale. This one was but a teeny tiny little slip of a thing, probably only an inch long. In fairness, it would have freaked me out had I not seen one three times its size earlier. This little oone was in the opposite corner diagonally across from where we had found the first one. All eyes immediately went to the ceiling; it was unlikely that two of these things had fortuitously come in, and we were thinking they were living in the roof of the club. Several people made mental notes to bring in Doom foggers - essentially mini fumigation devices to kill everything in a room; two or three foggers will do a whole house. Press the button, evacuate the building, return three hours later to an insect-free environment. Et cetera. Anyway, Keenan convinced this little titchy one to get into the same bag that its mother was shepherded into earlier and we were going to put it outside too. Off he went while the rest of us lock up for the night. Suddenly, from outside: "Oh my God!" I thought he'd been bitten; but it was much worse. "Guys, you gotta come see this!" As one we ran outside, me grabbing my phone in case we needed to phone for poisoning assistance or the snakebite unit or something. We get outside, and Keenan is motionless, standing facing the outside wall, like that guy at the end of the Blair Witch Project as it all comes to a head and the movie ends. We follow his gaze to a third spider on the wall. It is twice the size of the first one, about the size of my hand. "Maybe it's just the time of season for these guys," Keenan offers. "We've been here for 10 years; you've been here for 7, K. I've never seen one of these spiders ever before, let alone here." "True." The spider scuttled menacingly into the grass as we gave it a wide berth. Keenan threw the little one into the grass after it. When I got home, I sprayed the car with loads of insect killer. The mother of all spiders was within pissing distnace of where I'd parked, and I was not about to take chances with them having hitched a ride to our house and setting up camp in my roof, thanks. One gigantic spider assaulting the house per year is more than sufficient, as described a handful of entries ago. No such spiders at the kiddies party, however - we looked. -d-

so It was Claire's birthday on Sunday, out there a million miles away, touring the world, rescuing small children from avalanches, infecting everyone with her bubbly persona and all-round spunkiness. I dropped an email. It was uninspiring. I'll point out at this stage that usually after the first sentence, the words flow like blood from a severed aorta; not this time. I could't think of anything cool to say. Or interesting. Or insightful. Or anything. I was a little put out in the end and I had to finish it with a really lame half-joke just to attempt to drag it slightly out of the mud. But I got a reply... and guess who's just got home to Johannesburg? More importantly, guess who will be in Cape Town next week and is so excited and can't wait to see me again? A year has passed since I managed to miss the opportunity for the last time. It was as right-royal a fuck-up as you are ever likely to see or hear about, I can promise you that. The question is... what do I do this time? Do I go for it? Remembering that last time I didn't go for it because I'd rather be her friend if she was interested than have things get awkward between us; and because each time I attempted to test the proverbial waters, I got what I always thought to be a tacit "hold position" from her. The others reckon I wimped out on it, but they can all fuck off. I'm smiling so wide right now that I am in danger of losing my head from my top lip upwards. -d-

Football great George Best, Northern Ireland international and Manchester United star striker, is on his deathbed. He's been in critical condition since the weekend; his doctors are surprised he lasted the night. The 24 hours max they gave him are nearly up. Too late for miracles, Bestie. -d-

The t-shirts said: Full Circle Tour Then a logo: . Symmetry . Cape Town 16 November 1996 . Cape Town 19 November 2005 with the two dates across from each other on an ellipse, marked with diametrically opposed rings to indicate a plane of symmetry. You can sort-of see it, up there in the upper left corner. A good friend of mine designed it. We redesigned it, to a point. It spoke the truth, of course. It was indeed full circle for the band Symmetry, playing together again on 19 November 2005, the first time since 16 November 1996, nine years and three days earlier. The weird part, though, is that that night back in 1996 was the band's first ever gig, strictly invitation only stuff. I don't remember exactly what we played that balmy night nine years ago. I'm sure there was a Nirvana or two; definitely at least one Pearl Jam; chances are good that there was a Live or a Pixies or a U2 and perhaps an REM as well. We just aren't sure. I also have some money riding on a Red Hot Chili Peppers, but the others disagree. The second gig was a little different. We were nine years and three days older, and wiser. Theoretically also 9 years and 3 days more talented and well-versed, but that bit is decidedly not true. It was also invitation only; this time, though, far fewer invitations went out. Yeah, you kinda had to be really well-connected in either case. Okay, that's not true. Circles of friends just tend to tighten as time goes by, and the host of the party we played at was prepared only to crack the nod at a select few this time around. Disappointing, really, for the amount of work that was put in, but nevertheless. It so happens that the host is the bass player for the band, and back then seemed to be the only one willing to take a chance on us actually performing anything in public with actual people actually watching on purpose. I had some theatre training in my youth, and I'd always believed in a strict closed-door policy until we were Ready, and he decided that we were as ready as we would ever be. To a point, that was our undoing. To a more realistic point, only two of the five of us were ever really in it at all. But even then, we didn't really ever give ourselves any good backing, any belief at all that we could actually Pull This Off. The two of us still played often after the first gig, but then he left town after a two month stint in another actual band. I still play fairly often. A good few times a week, either on my battered old Classical guitar, or unplugged on my red electric, or when I'm feeling brazen, plugged in on my red electric, wailing away if there's nobody home to get annoyed. To my dismay, the ol' keyboard passed on some years back; irreparable and I didn't get around to replacing it, for various reasons. Still, some few months back, Craig said "let's play at my 30th. Like we did at my 21st. Let's get Symmetry together again." We laughed at the idea while privately entertaining it. Yeah, we hadn't played together in almost a decade, but Stephen and I still played often, even though he is 8 hours away and now ensconced in Flamenco guitar and a bad bad break-up, and we have enough time to get it together and rehearse a bit and we can send Stephen everything and we can put it together two days before showtime. Darren still has his drums and is up for it and everything. We all stay in touch, after all - we're best friends. There was just Gareth on vocals, who we haven't seen since... well, since 16 November 1996, with a vow to "call next time we practice." Gareth was a bit of an anomaly. We were jamming in Craig's garage - garage band, right? - when Gareth happened to walk past. Craig's mom's house is not exactly on a beaten track, so the chances of Gareth moseying past at the one time we were there doing our thing on a Saturday afternoon in September 1995 were remote, but it happened. He asked could he watch for a bit, then noticed that Stephen was kinda half-heartedly doing vocals as well as the guitar. He offered to sing a bit, and as-yet unnamed Symmetry had its newest member. We were all college boys - Stephen and I at the mighty University of Cape Town, where I am now completing my PhD, Craig and Darren at Cape Technikon, now the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and Gareth elsewhere, I forget where, and The Band was very much a spare time thing, with Stephen and I putting in more time than the others, as had been the case since we first started playing back in our final year of high school back in 1993. Darren only came along later - him and Craig met at college. To our discredit, we never really got in there with Gareth - he was from the neighbourhood but hadn't gone to school with us, so we didn't know him, and we didn't get to know him well, either. Our bad. But fast forward 14 months or so to the big bash where we did our thing to great applause - man, that was about as magic as you could get. Stephen and I had always thought we could actually make the big time if we committed; that we could progress bit by bit through the cover-band stage to the original band stage to, well, who knows how far? I'll admit at this point that my Reach for a Dream wish, were I on my deathbed, would be to play something, anything, on my guitar in a spotlight center-stage at a big event at the old, now being rebuilt, Wembley Stadium, home of English football and concert venue extraordinaire, in front of eighty thousand people. Yeah, go big or go home, I say. Can you see it, though? The crowd sweaty, muttering and thronging in anticipation, a slight hum through the hundred kilowatt system, the lights come up a bit, one spotlight on the guitar... the first note wails. It is distorted but crisp, compressed through the tubes glowing in the amp, the tone warm and driven, a hint of reverb sustained through the wall of speakers as it begins to feed back into the gain circuit... It would be beautiful. 16 November 1996 was a different affair. The atmosphere was electric. It was the start of summer, we'd been practiciing for months, and you could taste the adrenaline sparking against your teeth if you opened your mouth. It was out back near the pool, everyone parked on garden chairs or sitting on the wall as we pulled our shit out and plugged everything in and played out hearts out. We were probably crap, but we were only 20 and it was the end of the rainbow, near as we could tell and this was the High Life and we were Going Places and perhaps finally that night we even thought about committing seriously to doing this. But we didn't. We couldn't, really. We had nothing concrete. We had borrowed amps for the night, Stephen had no intention of dropping out of Medical SChool, Craig was seriously considering trying the 2-year working holiday thing in the UK and I was finally on my way into post-grad work at my current abode, and for all of us to actually stop doing that and try to be in a band for real was stupid. That and Craig to this day can barely play his guitar - he didn't ever own a bass - and Darren can't really keep time, kinda crucial for a drummer. Stephen and I didn't own the necessary amplification to actually be able to be heard, and we weren't nearly as good in the flesh as we were in our minds. I think deep-down our parents one and all were kinda relieved that we didn't come home that night with stars in our eyes. But boy do I wish we had. Nine years have passed, and we look back on that night with fond memories through rose-tinted glasses. This time around was a lot different. There was so much less of a sense of urgency from Craig and Darren - perhaps they wore their rose-tinted glasses for too long - and as I said earlier, Stephen was going through - actually, officially has just gone through 10 days ago - a break-up of an eight-year relastionship. That's another story for another time, perhaps. I was the only one who was remotely interested in getting this thing off the ground properly. I'm bitching now, I know. Again, perhaps I have too good a work ethic when it comes to this sort of thing. "Relax. We're not going to be as good as U2 or anything on the night" was Craig's observation, to which I shot back a defiant "Why not?" It got to the stage last week where I nearly pulled the plug on the whole thing, after another rehearsal was cancelled. I've heard all the excuses, from the good ("I'm going away") to the bad ("Tired") to the obscure ("I'm going on the Weakest Link and only getting back late") to the ridiculous ("I need to get my PS2 rechipped to play pirated games, and I don't want to have to drive back to fetch it later") to the just plain pathetic "I have a hangover and the drums will be too loud for my headache," to which my only response was "take a fucking Aspirin," because in all those cases, I had endured major rearrangements of my plans and my work shifts and karate and my PhD research work and family commitments and everything and that hangover Sunday I had got up really early - 5am - to come up to do my experiment and get finished in time for the rehearsal to have it called off fifteen minutes before it was due to start for Craig's hangover. And it was his party, and he was the one who still didn't know the material and needed the rehearsals, not me. When I phoned Stephen later that day to see how he was getting on, he confessed that, at t-minus 6 days to go, he still hadn't actually bothered to even start looking at the stuff I had couriered through to him NINE WEEKS earlier, or look at any of the emails or anything else I'd sent with further material in the interrim. It was at that point that I kinda let rip. He unfortunately got the brunt of it, but it's his own fault. Yes, I have never had an eight-year relationship go sour on me, so no, I don't know what it's like. But I do know that if I couldn't have handled it, I would have said so. I would have told my band, "look, I am not going to manage. Do it without me." If I had said, as he did, "I'll be there," then I would get on my bike, break-up or not, and put in the hours to put the material to bed. He didn't even listen to half the stuff so he hadn't actually even heard of some of the songs were playing on the night, which is unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. I had sat with Craig for 5 weekends in a row, teaching him the material, then we had got Darren in and I had to sit with him and teach him the material too, and I am not a drummer. Both of them kept threatening to actually sit down and work through it all. Go on - I dare you. And Andrew, our new vocalist in lieu of Gareth, and my oldest friend who I went on The Tour with and who was lucky to get home alive, also didn't know half the stuff, and kept arguing about the stuff he did know. I was so close to walking out... if I didn't still have the stars in my eyes, I would have. Stephen breezed into town Thursday night after a traumatic nine hour drive. We arranged to have a quiet, drumless practice later - 9pm - at Andrew's place, and Andrew arrived late, all pissed off for some reason, so he got the riot act read to him as well. Friday I left the University early to get the shirts sorted out (part of the reason Andrew was pissed off was that we'd tweaked his design, because during the design process, we all agreed on certain things and he ignored them) and to have another session with Stephen. Saturday was showtime, and we did 3 hours of rehearsing that morning with everyone. It was a collective bated-breath, because that's when the orchestra I could hear in my head would finally be proven right or wrong. I'm kinda good at that big-picture stuff; but in more a case of also seeing all the small pictures in great detail as they make up the big picture, so when the others had said "this isn't going to work" during rehearsals, or "it sounds off/funny/shit" and I had persisted and insisted on carrying on, this was the time to see if I was right. Also, it was the first time we had everything up loud, so it was the first time we'd see if Andrew could actually pull off singing in front of a band. Although keen to try it, he'd never done it before, and had mumbled his way through the few rehearsals. Eat your heart out, American and Pop Idols, that kind of thing. Showtime came and went. It was far less exciting than that balmy night back in '96, because we'd realised that afternoon that it was actually all going to work and work well, which took the edge off, and also because this time the guest list was so small. Yeah, we sounded phenomenal. We got it all on a DVD-camcorder thingy, apparently, if it worked properly, and it seemed that everyone was well impressed with us. At one stage, even the neighbours cheered from over the wall. Lots of cameras went off. 10 weeks after inception, countless hours of arranging and rearranging and teaching and reteaching and coaching and tweaking and phoning and e-mailing on my part and I'm going to claim the victory. And I am going to say the others rode in on my coat-tails, while they congratulate themselves on all their hard work. For the sake of posterity, the final set-list: 1. Times Like These - Foo fighters, a blend of their acoustic and original versions, as nicked from the Anywhere But Home DVD 2. Where is my mind? - Pixies 3. Today - Smashing Pumpkins 4. Under the Bridge - RHCP 5. DAkota - the Stereophonics 6. Knockin' on Heaven's Door - a bastardised version halfway between the numerous covers and the Guns 'n' Roses version, but woth only half the lyrics, hastily put together that morning 7. Under Pressure - the Used/My Chemical Romance version for Tsunami Relief, with Ice Ice Baby thrown in at the end for shits and giggles Historical Note: Tracks 1 and 6 were initially supposed to be Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day, and Paradise City by G'n'R; however consensus during rehearsal was that these were not going to work so well, because I couldn't see it in my head. In retrospect, they probably would have. Now there's talk of Symmetry heading east to Port Elizabeth for Stephen's 30th in March... I'll believe it when I see it. -d-

so Found a cool two hundred and fifty bucks on Sunday afternoon, in the parking lot at Canal Walk, our megamall at Century City in Cape Town. It wasn't cold hard cash. It was in fact a voucher, for my current favourite store in the whole world; to whit, Exclusive Books. They have everything you can think of - fiction non-fiction science fiction crime fiction photography art architecture painting sculpting advertising cult occult magazines comics encyclopaedias science everything. Ev.Ery.Thing. They are hella expensive, since everything is imported there, and our government has hefty import tarriffs and duties on books particularly. The branch there at Canal Walk is by far not the best branch of theirs in Cape Town - that honour lies with the branch at the Waterfront - but it will certainly do in a pinch. And there I was, clutching a purple and blue envelope in my grubby little mitt, as my mom always said, with their arty logo emblazoned without, and a R200 and a R50 voucher stashed within, all alone in the carpark with nobody nearby saying "Sorry... that's mine. Where did you find it??" Dilemma - since I completely failed to win the Lottery Saturday night - and it was worth a cool twenty three-odd million bucks in .za money, or about 3 and half million in US money, or 2 million in GBP etc etc, should I take this R250 and put it with some other moeny I have been putting aside for a rainy day and go and buy myself a superb book like Time's Photographs of the Century, or 1001 Amazing Album Covers or something suchlike? Or should I do the right thing and see if, somehow, they can use the serial number validating each little voucher and perhaps trace the customer who'd lost them, hoping of course that said customer had paid via credit card or cheque. Or should I keep it, a gift from G_d on a murky Sunday afternoon, a Sunday which for all intents and purposes had not been that good a day, and, unbeknown to me, would in fact continue to be quite sucky well into Monday? It wasn't mine, but Finders Keepers, right? Inside, immediately, I knew that I couldn't keep it. It was necessary for karma, really; the results of Day 16 half a world away (yes, unwritten-about at this time excpet as a mild allusion) involving a subway renovation meaning I had to change trains and in doing so lost my pride and joy, my camera, by leaving on the seat while on The Tour. A convoluted chain of events, however, starting some 3 time zones away and a stripsearch earlier, though, meant that somebody found it. And called the number written on the American Airlines tag on it, and took time out of his day to come to find me to return it. There was no way I could keep the voucher in the murky afternoon 7 months later in another hemisphere and keep a clean conscience. I went to Exclusive and explained my story. The guy there said there was no way to trace the owner - it had been a cash transaction. He offered the vouchers back to me. I opted to leave them there, hoping that perhaps the person may realise they'd lost them and phone. He said come see us later - if they're still here, you take them. I didn't go back. The guy, Adam, who found my camera on the Blue line train at Jay Street in Brooklyn and phoned me repeatedly trying to let me know he had it, was married. To a South African woman, from Cape Town. I'm kinda hoping maybe it's a relative of hers who lost the voucher and that she did phone and that she got them back. Yeah, my camera and all its things were worth a lot more, a lot more; but I don't think that's what karma is about. -d-

It's been a year since Claire left for distant shores. We've spoken a couple of times, and sent a handful of e-mails. I've remembered her birthday , too - well done, me. Ah, yes, there it is... the old familiar feeling of a wasted opportunity. -d-

Well, Conference Day arrived, all bright’n’shiny, with no hint of the previous day’s ill weather, and, by proxy, no foot of fresh powdery snow, either. But still, this was it. The day I had been waiting for since I was green-lit to attend waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in January. The purpose for the 18 hour hell-flight. Sort of, at any rate, since I had been obliged to chuck in a little extra-mural travel as well – you know, see the sights – and of course see various people about schmoozing my way into their labs in a post-doctoral capacity. Nevertheless, Conference Day! Hallelujah! Glory be! Et cetera. Of course, SuperShuttle were only due back around 1pm; the mountain trip was going to happen at 2:30pm and it was but a very early 9:30am when I came to, blinking in the sunlight. Needless to say, there were a few hours to kill; quite possibly, however, not enough to get myself back to LoDo and back to the hotel – a real bummer since I had carefully plotted this the day before. But that’s what happens when you don’t give it 100% stick and don’t actually get stuck in properly. What I should have done was to call Supershuttle and see if they couldn’t come early – location meant any shuttle coming from town to the airport would have to pass me anyway. Didn’t occur to me, though – silly boy. So I did the next best thing, which was channel-surf a bit. All that was really showing on the 40-odd channels I could get was informercials, the Pope’s funeral, and the marriage of Charles and Camilla, to a good amount of rampant dismay from the British and Commonwealth citizens by and large; in particular, one Dale’s Mother, who had been muttering about it for some time. She gets a bee in her bonnet about things sometimes, you see, and these things blip up on the radar from time to time, usually fairly infrequently, but at length when they do, and this was one particular storm which I had weathered before leaving Cape Town, and thus was spared the week running up to said wedding when she may well have been in full force. I did get a dig in at her about it when she phoned, but spent more time moaning about my crap choice of lodgings, and trying to downplay that I was near a truck-stop frequented by Hellbillies, and that I was alongside a strip-joint which was quite possibly a brothel. Following that, I took good long hot bath. Yeah, I know guys are far more prone to showering, but I am more than happy to spend an hour immersed in warm water either reading a good book or latest FHM/Maxim/Men’s Health, or sleeping and coming to after 45 minutes with a sore neck. Following this routine bout of cleansing, I piled on shitloads of moisturizer – the dry air was playing hell with my sensitive skin; the 18 hours of horrific, no-off-switch-having A/C of the Airbus and subsequent completely air-conditioned environments of the preceding week had done precious little to help – and proceeded downstairs for breakfast. It was there that I came across the wonders of pre-packed Philadelphia cream cheese – something of a delicacy down here in .za; all imported for a the cost of an arm and a leg, and you guys just give the stuff away – and toasted bagels. So breakfast was good, especially the scrambled eggs and bacon and stuff as well, and I was, sated, able to wait out Supershuttle by doing a bit of internet shopping – well, internet browsing – for likely gift items for my family back home. The trip back to DIA was even more multicultural than the trip in the cab to WRAIR in DC. We had an Aussie – and I hardly even called him a sheepshagger, even though they all are down there – a girl from DC, a Mormon heading back to Utah and of course me, lost lonely little African boy, here to spread the word on how to save the world from malaria, to other people who were here to do the same thing. People who are non-scientists always think that that’s what we do at conferences – tell each other where we have been going wrong and sorting each other out, but it’s not true. It’s merely an incredibly expensive version of Show and Tell, with the “show” part being primarily intellectual property and statistical data and computer models as opposed to a pet hamster or a new pair of shoes or something similar. But you non-scientists can keep on believing that everyone attending any conference is holding the key to the secrets of the Universe if you really want to. Anyway, we all wowed each other with credentials of places we’d been to, and where we were headed to – Supershuttle of course traditionally taking people to the airport to catch a flight; my idea of Supershuttling back to the airport to catch another shuttle back out of the airport was met with much bemused consternation and general “Are you serious?” Of course, that was when I explained about the conference – that I was getting shuttled out to Keystone from DIA and the Mormon girl, a medical doctor in training heading home for Spring Break, realised that Keystone was a prestigious conference organization and that was how we got onto that eventually. Nevertheless, the 40 minute journey passed without any incident, and we were delivered to the various terminal entrances to get to our respective airlines – Delta, in my case, which is where the CME leaves from every hour or so. Got checked in there and was kinda left to my own devices for the next 40 minutes or so while we waited for everyone to arrive so we could go. I had my 2nd pack of M&Ms ready for lunch, since I had had a late breakfast and was not ready for anything substantially lunchy, and my camera and my poster and all my luggage and felt a bit of a nitwit watching everyone else rock up with only a small suitcase in tow, the conference itself running only till Tuesday. Yup, all this fiasco for a mere 3 and a half days. Seems like a waste, I know – welcome to science, people. Anyway, got pointed to my shuttle – there was another one leaving as well – and off we went. I was stuck with a very taciturn guy about my age, who didn’t say one word, another woman who slept the whole way there – she was going for the Worms conference, not the Protozoan one like me – and two other Dutch/German/Belgian/one of those countries academics, both now based at NYU, who gossiped and ranted and raved about everything the whole way there. Although I offered, nobody wanted any M&Ms; in fact, they looked at me like I’d crawled out from a piece of cheese and waved my cock at them until they realised I was in fact not taking the piss. They still declined, however – their loss, I say. By now, the bad weather was kinda coming in, and we got our first up-close glimpses of snow alongside the highway. I’ll admit at this point that my sole experience of snow has been the man-made kind at another ski place in South Africa – in fact, Tiffindell is the only ski place in Africa south of the Equator – and I had never before seen proper real snow which had actually fallen from the sky at all ever up close. New York and DC had both passed their snow days, although both were cold, and Denver itself had been decidedly unsnowy, and bloody-mindedly so. This was an exciting prospect – real snow; another foot of fresh virgin Colorado powder, Aspen-quality or Vail-quality no less, expected this evening and continuing on for the next couple of days. Although I couldn’t really line up or frame anything useful, I had my camera at the ready the whole time, and when the taciturn guy got off at the summit stage – a kind of general meeting point for all the shuttles before they head off to their various resorts – I did indeed go to town snapping snowy peaks. The summit stage, however, doesn’t give you a great vantage point for this sort of thing, but I got a couple of good ones, so that’s okay. A mere 10 minutes later, we were at Copper Mountain, home of the joint X5 (helminths – that’s worms for you non-scientists) and X6 (protozoa – single celled eukaryotes like Malaria, Leishmania etc; NOT bacteria because they are prokaryotes, as you know, and therefore have fundamentally different basic characteristics in terms of DNA complexity, ribosomal structure etc etc) symposia. Got checked into my room and off I went to get settled. The room was spacious – 2 double beds, private bathroom – on the 3rd floor of Mountain Plaza in the corner overlooking the main plaza and the American Eagle ski lift, site of my erstwhile non-co-ord skiing abilities. At the time of arrival, which was at the end of the ski season – the resort was due to close the following Sunday – they were well into the end-of-season events, and the one wrapping up today was a rock festival. As I was getting my shit unloaded, the band on-stage were 70s greats The Blue Oyster Cult, most well known for the track Don’t Fear The Reaper, which they were just starting as their encore. So I snapped a few shots out of the window of the band, and, more importantly, the guitarist during the solo. They sound really good live, it must be said. I had a room with a view, as the saying goes. In fact, one way or another, all the rooms seemed to have a spectacular view; the only difference being the way you were facing. Mine was directly onto the piste; the others behind would have been into the Breckinridge valley, which you could see from the front entrance to the building – all good, I reckon. Down below me there were ski shops, restaurants, bars, the Adventure Center and cool things like that; about 100 metres further away from that was a full gym with a heated lap pool and Jacuzzi. Most of the lodging buildings had either a Jacuzzi or a sauna – all very relaxing after a hard day’s skiing – and each bathroom was kitted out with infra-red lights to aid with quicker drying of your clothes. There were vending machines and places to do laundry and everything in the buildings as well, as well as ski lockers downstairs to keep your boots and board and everything on the ground floor so you don’t need to lug it up and down all day. Copper is an awesome place. It really does knock gigantic spots off Tiffindell, the local ski resort here in .za, in terms of locale, ski terrain, facilities and all-round fabulousness. The front desk is 24-hours and they are extremely efficient, the shops, ski-rental outlets, restaurants and pubs are all fun friendly places, the guys involved in assisting both on and off the slopes are very quick and knowledgeable and above all, the whole place just works really, really well. I would definitely recommend it. Absolutely top-notch all the way, in my opinion. Following the initial settling in, I went to go register for the conference. This involves getting checked in at the conference/meeting venue (fortunately, in a building just around the corner from my room – literally a 90 second walk), getting your name tag and passes for meals and special sessions, getting an official and up-to-date programme for everything, and most important, receiving your bag o’ swag – in most cases, a larney briefcase-type thing with the conference logo emblazoned on it, sponsored by someone who is trying to impress you, filled with a set of pens and pads and diaries and suchlike, also all sponsored by other people trying to impress you, and everything else – everything from vouchers for free coffee, keyrings, mouse pads, journal subscriptions, you name it – we all whore ourselves one way or another, I suppose, and believe me, the sciences, and medical science in particular, are no exception. We all moan about the big corporations ruining science and independent research, too, of course, but we will happily accept and endorse their merchandise, and their money is always welcome when times are tough. Times are always tough in the sciences, by the way, particularly at University level – this is one of those things – more so in the developing world. It’s a catch-22 of note for countries like ours – no money for research so the researchers go seeking opportunities abroad, so you spend more money to train more researchers who can’t find work, so they go away too etc. even when you get money, those who have left have tasted the high(er) life and are loathe to return to a place so backward by comparison. We’re in real trouble here in the 3rd World in this regard. Anyway, heading to the conference center at Copper, I ran into one of my colleagues, Brandon, who was in my department until recently and who is clearly also attending. He had arrived the day before, all on his lonesome, direct from .za via Atlanta (as opposed to my scenic approach over a week and via New York) and had, luckily for me, broken the ice with a lot of cool people, so I was readily accepted into a circle of his newly-made friends. This is good – I was on my lonesome in Tanzania, and struggled a bit to interact with the people from the conference staying in the same hotel as me. Those people I did hook up with at the conference were in other hotels scattered about town and so the social interactions were largely diminished outside “Conference hours,” largely because of the logistical nightmare of negotiating after-dark Arusha safely. In this case, safely means not getting hit by one of the myriad buses tearing up the wide dirt roads, no lights on the bus and no streetlights at all, and also not getting knifed for being a tourist and therefore wealthy, even when you are not. They don’t ask questions, you see. A word on the Keystone Conferences: they occur in ski resorts exclusively, during ski season exclusively. I was wondering if I should arrive a few days early to enjoy some snow and related activities when I was told to “do the maths” – according to Heinrich from my unit back here in .za, whom had been to several Keystone meetings while a post-doc at Yale Medical School, the skiing is all built-in and, to a point, expected. To whit, a typical Keystone conference day: 1. Breakfast 7am-8am 2. First morning session: 8am-9am 3. Coffee 9am-9:15am 4. Second morning session 9:15am-11am 5. Break 11am-4:30pm 6. Coffee 4:30pm-5pm 7. First evening session 5pm-7pm 8. Dinner 7pm-8pm 9. Second evening session/Social event 8pm-10pm 10. Repeat over 5 days. Note point 5 – the 5 hour break. Conveniently, the slopes are active from 9am-4pm, so that gives you ample time to get out and about, and in my case, horribly maimed, in the snow. And then 4:30-5pm coffee gives you ample time to brag to all and sundry about your fantastic, practically ESPN X-Games abilities, or in my case, walk about gingerly with a bruise the size of Texas on my backside, ruefully regretting my lack of co-ordination on the snowboard. So I hooked up with Brandon and was introduced to Paul, a PhD student from Imperial College, London and likewise Arsenal Football Club supporter, also sponsored by Keystone to attend like me; Nick, a PhD student from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with the most stunning blue eyes which you could lose yourself for weeks in, who was here to conduct a workshop on mRNA extraction, no less, very hoity-toity for someone so new in his field; big burly all-American Adam, a US Army captain/PhD and PI (Principal Investigator – kinda like a VP, in Yank-Speak) on two big projects at WRAIR – he even recognized me from the preceding week when I was at WRAIR, even though I wasn’t introduced to him – and several other people I got to know to a lesser degree over the next few days. Also there was Uschi from our unit – we don’t really get on; a long story for another time, but we were letting bygones be bygones in this case. Uschi and Brandon both work for Heinrich here in my unit at UCT. A bit of a motley bunch we were – an American, an Englishman, a Canuck, a Zimbabwean-via-South-Africa (me), an Austrian-via-South-Africa (Uschi) and a pure-bred .za boy (Brandon) – but a fairly good group of people nonetheless. Nick was technically there for the worms meeting, but since all the social items were joint worms-protozoa, he kinda loitered with us for coffee, meals and other times, and we agreed to not give him too much stick for being in the wrong research field. First item on the agenda was the official opening – these tend to be kinda sordid and back-slapping, a bit like the Oscars and Emmys, I suppose, where we all congratulate each other on having the foresight to attend such an important meeting on such important problems, and we all agree that we need to “move forward” – I really hate buzz-words – for the common good etc etc. It may all be true, but it is kinda cheesy, I reckon. All of those of us who were sponsored attendees were then introduced – we didn’t have to stand or anything, but we had our names and affiliations read out and they were broadcast all over the venue every time there was a break, along with the various sponsors and organizing agencies’ logos. Technically, I was not sponsored by Keystone; rather, I was there thanks to the ICTDR (International Center for Tropical Disease Research) Global Travel Awards programme, and Paul was traveling on the NIAID/Biodefence ticket. Of course, like the erstwhile Charlie who visited the Chocolate Factory in the novel, both of us were just glad to be there. Frankly, I couldn’t care less whom had actually paid the bill, although perhaps I should write a short note to them to thank them, and to suggest they chip in for Business Class travel, given my hell ride into New York. It’s all well and good to fly someone across nine timezones, but they can’t really function that well when they get there after 17 hours in a noisy cold tin can. Following the opening is the keynote speech. This is like the Nobel Peace Prize of the event – far too important to be lumped in with the other themed sessions, even though it usually belongs in one of them, and usually presented by the Man of the Hour, as chosen by the organizers. These days, the keynote address is considered all the more trendy and out-there if the presenter looks like he has been dragged through a bush backwards – old surf/rocker t-shirts, faded, well-worn in jeans, 3-day stubble, uncombed hair etc is good; 3-piece suit is bad. It’s almost like the researchers are trying to outdo one another in this regard. The idea is that the look is not so much retro as merely genuinely old. I’ll admit at this point to having somewhat of a love for the jeans/t-shirts stubble approach – that is one of the perks of the position as an academic scientist. You can pull it off quite easily being the head of a scientific research unit and looking like an aging hippie, with nobody batting an eyelid anymore. I wouldn’t try it if I were a Law professor, though, or a clinician, but a wet-bench scientist – no problem at all. Having said that, most of the attendees favoured a jeans approach, but we did sort-of dress it up a bit with smarter shirts to a point, and we looked a little less unkempt than our keynote speaker. Make no mistake, the guy doing the keynote is very highly regarded in the field at the mo, and rightly so – in fact, Paul is trying very hard to get in on some post-doc action up there with him next year. On the other hand, Adam did not like the keynote speaker – he had met him several times before, and had been dissed largely each time, the way he told it, and so thought it was a lot of hot air. We got to hear that at length over the next few days, usually accompanied by the word “dick,” every time the poor fellow made a comment or asked a question. He did ask a lot of questions, though, and of course nobody likes a clever dick. Following the opening there was a finger banquet supper thing, and pretty much everyone headed off to bed fairly early. Brandon, Paul and Uschi had all arrived the day before, and their body clocks were between six and nine hours off; Adam and I were still stuck on EST and so we were about two hours off. So it had all kinda come to a head – this was it; I had arrived at the place I was sent to and the last nine days, fun aside, were basically to be regarded as fluff by comparison. -d-

So. My online friend’n’neighbour Val (from Valleycat, link on the left) on SIT tells me I need to update more often or people will think I am either dead, amnesiac (I think that’s the term, Val) or too good for SIT. For some reason, perhaps politeness, they leave out “lazy.” Option D, if you like; or none of the above. Nevertheless, point taken, Val. My bad. So anyway... I mentioned last time that I would have a doozy of a story to regale you with this time, readers, and hot diggity damn, it’s a winner. So y’all pull yourselves up a chair now, and listen close. Unless you’re offended by public displays of drunkenness, of course. Then you should stop reading right now. And if you’re offended by public displays of private parts, then turn around and head back over yonder to where you came from, because my goodness, this is a story in which bums and knobs and all sorts of things sho’nuff have a starring role. Were there an Oscar for winkies on display in a blog, it would be heading over here forthwith. Okay, so consider yourselves warned. Any moral crusader found loitering with intent to tutt disapprovingly will be shot on sight. The scene: Tony’s 21st birthday party. One of my minions er... protégés from karate is of age and can officially drink and drive in the USA. The limit for that is 18 here, by the way; although the way some parents practice parenting, 12 seems to be a good time to get the sprogs started. I’m showing my age now, but come on, people! So anyway, young Anthony is officially turning into twenty-something Anthony, and there was a big bash planned at his place as is custom for these things. There are another 3 kids in his family – two slightly younger sisters and the youngest child, his little brother Jason, likewise a minion from my junior karate class. Also in the mix, Tony’s mom who I have met once before some years back, and her latest husband. Perhaps not a fair statement; I think he’s only officially number 2, but him and Tony had issues during the courtship – actually, none of the kids really liked him, one way or another – and so I am obliged to side with the sprog on this one. The husband seems nice enough; my guess is because both Tony and Jason could tear him a new one without thinking about it; and especially since Tony – the very same chap referred to in an earlier entry (The MRIs, entry #92 on the right) as Tony the Nazi – is extremely fast and lethal and not small. I think they declared somewhat of an uneasy truce some years back when the husband realised he was there only by the grace of Tony. Nevertheless, I get to Tony’s place and I am immediately cornered by a somewhat tipsy Keenan, who needs some help fetching and carrying wood for the fire. I don’t know too many people at this thing – my other minions and lieutenants have a tendency to operate in a half-hour late window – so I was only too happy to assist. By the time we got back, more people had arrived – probably about 60 in total – and the party was in full swing. The problem with having 60 people having a drunken and debauched party at your house when it only has one bathroom is that it only has one bathroom and 60 people are trying to use it. Tony’s mom, ever the flirt, and IMHO trying way to hard to seem cool in front of her kids and their friends – judgmental, I know, but that’s the privilege of my station, you see – is making sure that everyone has far too much beer and wine, and spirits for the old people, so the queue for the bathroom is long. It is a good thing that a large proportion of the queue-ees were guys, and even more fortunate that across the road from Tony’s folks’ place is a daycare center flanked by a school and a large playground with copious amounts of vegetation. When your bladder is the size of the proverbial football, and you’re a dude, and the Great Outdoors is right there, it’s a bit of a no-brainer. Cue rows and rows of guys peeing into said shrubbery. A word, at this point, on the Way of Things: Keenan is a hell of guy. I hope he would say likewise of me, because I don’t think I do too badly in this regard, but that’s not the point. Keenan may be a little wayward, a bit of a hot-head, a mite on the wild side, a little too impetuous, and far, far too driven by the pursuit of pleasure (his, and other people’s, as Spud declared in Trainspotting), but he really is a truly awesome guy with a heart of gold and a cast-iron constitution and body moulded of pure titanium. I would be tempted to trust him with my life, probably seven days out of ten. It would have been higher, but sometimes he’s just a little too psychotic. I, on the other hand, am merely not shy to the point of seeming downright brazen. However, when it comes to personal safety, I tend to see the logic of not inflicting grievous bodily harm on or about my person, and so I opt to sit a lot of these things out. Yeah, kind-of chickeny, but hey, that's survival. So anyway, amused by the enormous line of cross-legged females hopping up and down and pounding on the bathroom door, we make our way to the line of guys outside and take up station alongside. Keenan – and this is the booze talking – is already fairly loud and raucous. The booze talks a lot through him, it must be said. Once it convinced him to Jackass himself off a roof so that he fractured his ankle on a gutter. Once it suggested setting his backside on fire to do the Jackass ass-in-a-glass stunt. Once it merely hinted at a Jackass-esque game of nutball. Do you see the trend here? This was much milder by comparison, but he did step into the middle of the road and proceed to drop trou, unlike most others who merely unzipped and let rain, and proceeded to shuffle arse-naked (ass-naked in American), bits flapping in the breeze, to across the road to do his pee, then stand on someone’s car and whoop and holler like an idiot, still sans pants. Anyway, he was eventually shouted down and we proceeded back inside, whereupon Mrs Tony’s Mom leaped upon me and showered me with hugs and kisses like I was her long-lost whatever, then pinched my backside and carted me around to all the other old people there (old as in older than me) like her sisters and brother and her dad (who later passed out. How many Grandparents pass out from alcohol at 21st birthdays, for fuck’s sake???) to point me out as Tony’s friend. Why the hell she did that, I do not know. It was a little disconcerting – pedestals are all well and good when you deserve them, but this was not exactly my night and I was the one on parade. Secondly, it's a bit off-side to grope your guests, I thought, especially with your husband and parents watching. In an entirely different way, Tony was also on parade though – his mom had hauled out a whole lot baby photos and stuck them up all over the place with amusing, badly-written captions all over them, once of which was him on probably Day 2 after birth, buck naked and with the reddest set of balls in the world, and some-or-other lewd caption lambasted thereupon. I digress though. Fortunately, Keenan rescued me fairly early on before she could kiss me again and I was dragged thankfully out of there to go and hide elsewhere. “You’ve never met Tony’s mom before, right?” “Yeah, once, I think. At his last birthday party, maybe?” “Ah. Should have warned you that she gets a little touchy-feely-flirty after a couple glasses of wine” “I wish you had, Keen.” “Cool. Now you know. Don’t go near her after the champagne, though, or we’ll never see you alive again! She’s a man-eater.” Forewarned and forearmed, I tried to avoid Mrs Tony for the rest of the night. So the toasts came and went, Granddad’s slurred testament to his eldest grandson barely uttered before the old geezer’s eyes glazed over and he passed out, and many many glasses of champagne disappeared down various hatches and Keenan was soon discovered to be somewhat beyond his earlier stages of “ticking” and “tanked” and had stepped through the realms of “hammered” and “wasted” and had arrived somewhere on “blotto.” He was not looking or feeling his best and one look at him told me and Click and Wim, all of whom were there and thereabouts in the kitchen, that projectile vomiting was imminent. I was charged with the task of seeing to it – Tony wanted him out of the kitchen, for obvious reasons, Wim suddenly had to see to the music and Click was just “no ways, bro” so I took him to the bathroom. Unfortunately, someone had beaten us to it. I don’t mean it was occupied. I mean someone had thrown up all over everywhere. Later reports claimed young (15) Jason was the culprit; others reckon Granddad was the one. Either way, the place reeked and was not a place anyone wanted to be in. Luckily, the copious amounts of vegetation were still across the road, so that’s where we went. Keenan was rambling on about zombies, I think it was, or maybe vampires, or maybe demons – he has a love for the esoteric, especially when it contains demons and angels, but more demons – and we were partaking of the fresh air when my glass of champagne began knocking on the door and I was obliged to take Mr Lizard for a walk, as they say. I don’t know who says it, but that’s the expression I’ve used for some time – much the same as “Going to see a man about a horse,” or in common parlance, going for a piss. It’s just me and Keenan out there at this point, so I head back to the nearest bush and proceed to drop trou. They actually shimmy all the way down to my ankles at this point, but hey, nobody’s around, and so I couldn’t really be arsed about it; not that I would care anyway. Suddenly Keenan’s beside me, again. “What are you doing?” Slurring badly. “What does it look like, Keen?” “Oh. I see. So is this the piss pot, then?” “Only for tonight, I suppose.” “Who puked in the toilet?” “No idea, dude.” He also has a pee; as before, the pants and boxers are all the way down. We are in the bushes just a few steps away from the entrance to the daycare center, wisely barred with a security gate. “So.” “So?” “Yeah.” “So what, Keen?” “Just so.” “Okay. So.” “So.” “Haha you are sooooooooooooooo smashed, Special K.” He doesn’t like being called Special K – slang for ketamine, a powerful tranquiliser used for horses and, for some reason, babies. It has a bad rap though as something once used for date rapes. We use it in the Kellogg’s sense, though, because he is always a complete ball of energy, even at Hell Night at karate, and hence we look at him, shake our heads in disgust and mutter “guess who got it all this morning” to one another. “Yeah. I’m smashed in the piss pot.” “Yeah, dude.” Time passes. Yes, it’s fairly inane conversation. See, guys are not used to the whole communication-while-you-pee thing. That’s the way it is. Even if we were sober the conversation would have been similar. This is why guys can go in a public bathroom without having all their mates along for support. Unlike women. And why having someone talk to you while you pee is so utterly unnerving. “So... if this is the piss pot, where is the... wank bank?” He giggles. Guys don’t usually giggle, but Special K is a giggler of note. “The what?” I may have had a good beer buzz at that point, but phrases like that tend to take the edge of it somewhat. “The wank bank. You’re in the piss pot, I’m heading off to the wank bank.” Surprising, indeed. Not a common topic of conversation, certainly, but hey. I laughed to myself until he aimed his bits at the security gate and started er... having a go... et cetera. I’m sure no further explanation is necessary. Do you believe this guy? I finally convinced him put it away and go inside by actually pulling up his pants for him and telling him that there was a security camera just behind the gate. Even then it was a struggle. I headed home after that, pretty much right away, my Dali quotient up to its limit for the night. Now I don’t want to come down on Keenan. And I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about him. Yeah, he’s a complete nutcase. But he’s a good guy. Rene later mentioned that Special K is prone to doing “weird shit like that” fairly frequently; a worrying prospect since he also is big into shaking hands with people. Rene also told me an extremely amusing story along similar lines which I probably shouldn’t tell the world. For argument’s sake, though, imagine that it’s, I don’t know, some guy who's name begins with K and a friend of his, watching some or other p0rn movie at 14, mutually deciding that this was a big turn on (both of the lads only 14, right?) so it would not be weird to, er... you know... while watching, each on his own chair, of course, nothing gay about it. And then no doubt being rather surprised and horribly embarrassed by having Mr K’s Dad walk in on them halfway through. -d-

yo So it has been a fairly busy time of late - several birthdays having gone or shortly going by; all those of us whose folks presumably had fairly quiet Christmases and New Years' back in the day. As a result, I have had the good fortune of celebrating several comings of age - always a big event, particularly in my neck of the woods - as several close friends from work and karate finally turned 21. Yes - at this stage, I do feel particularly old. Two such events occurred fairly recently. One involves foreign languages, racism, a large spider, and loads of peeing in the great outdoors. The other involves a randy, recently remarried mother, a pair of very red testicles (not related, surprisingly), a ghastly amount of fresh vomit, and loads of peeing in the great outdoors. Peeing in the great outdoors is a very liberating thing - I suggest you try it. As for the first one, the only real talking point of the evening was the large spider. I got a phone-call from home half-way through proceedings to ask me to please return at my earliest convenience on account of the house being under assault by a somewhat determined and fairly capacious arachnid. I was not all that keen to head home at that precise time on account of me a:) being well in there with some chick (another story, best left untold) and b:) having managed to misjudge my alcohol tolerance levels and not be in the best shape in the world to drive home. The downside being I could actually see the house from the party since it was literally a baseball field away - the party was held at the sports club over the road from our house. Needless to say, I was not in any position to refuse coming home because mother and sister both a little concerned about said large spider. When I say a little concerned, I mean blindly terrified. We are talking a few steps past mere dislike of spiders and well into the territory of full-blown arachnophobia here. I made my excuses to the bird who was no doubt planning to jump my bones and headed home, trying very hard to will the alcohol from my system. It's kinda a respect thing - I wouldn't ever get home completely wrecked for the sake of my mom, who has Very Fixed Ideas about what is good for me, and thus her. It really is a lot easier to either not get plastered - and that suits me too since I am unpleasant when hungover - or to sleep out on the nights where that sort of thing is likely. No such luck tonight, though. Anyway, I got into the house and attempted to appear completely sober; I'm not sure I succeeded, to be truthful, but the sheer panic ensuing in the house means I got away with it. I ask about the whereabouts of said archnoic beast, and pick up a smiting shoe. I aim for the back door and my semi-hysterical sister ells me I can't go out there, I have to go through the garage because it was right there near the back door and she is terrified that it will come into the house. She is in tears at this point. It is at this point that I realise that this is not the usual garden-variety large garden spider, or something similar, but may well be into the realm of the dreaded baboon spider, or as it is known scientifically, the African Tarantula. Large, hairy, gray-brown and scary, and we are about the only people in our area who have not had one in the house. I had always said that if we find one in the house, we leave and sell the house, in that order. I am not overly keen on huge spiders either, you see. Luckily it is very much a penis thing that alcohol makes you bulletproof, and luckily I have a penis and had lots of alcohol and thus was not only bulletproof but Bullitproof (more hardcore, you see) and also spider-proof. I grabbed the keys to the garage door and headed in there. Couldn't get the garage back door to open into the courtyard though, and so wrestled with it for a time before it finally popped open adn I stumbled out into the dark to meet my fate. It was 2am, a clear night, dark, cold and crisp. I could taste electricity on my tongue - probably just cheap wine repeating on me - and hear my heart pounding in my head as I crossed the threshold and quicly shut the garage door behind me. I'm in the courtyard, washing line to my left, back door leading into the house on my right, kitchen windows up ahead. I'd been advised that it had first been on the wall under the kitchen windows, and my sister had taken station near the back door and watched it through the glass, determined to know where it was until I arrived home to kill it. She looked away for a second and it disappeared. That was when she had the nervous breakdown and I was phoned to come home now. I look around quickly, the alcohol spinning the world gently around in my poor vision. Nothing. I'm wondering if it has headed into the roof to mate and produce an army, when my sister yells at me through the back door that it was near the dustbin (trashcan in American) by the windows. I take a doddery step forward and peer over the bin. I realise that I am peering down the length of two legs, with another six bringing up the rear, as I am face to face with a large rain spider, something which has only been in the house once before, very briefly, before I annihilated it with a broomstick and a doorframe. With my hand at full stretch, I could not actually cover it, this is how big it was. Not that I'd want to touch it, of course, because... no. It is on the wall behind the bin and just out of reach of any sort of good killing blow. I would need to move the bin to hit it, and moving bins with spiders nearby always makes them run like the dickens, I have found. The same was true that morning, at 2am in the crisp cold, with the taste of electricity on my tongue and fire in my veins as I move the bin and it moved rapidly upwards,heading for the roof. Without thinking, I swung my shoe and smashed it against the wall. The plus side about having the spider on the wall and not in a web is that you don't misjudge your arc and end up breaking the web and having the spider fall onto your head because your arm movement is round and nor straight. So the shoe managed quite nicely to make the spider about eight inches wider and about 3 inches thinner than when it started running. As the body fell onto the floor, I mashed it another three times with my size 13 shoe, waking up the neighbours in the process. Satisfied that it was dead, very very dead, I managed to stumble back into the house and receive a hero's welcome, all except for the hero's welcome part. In fairness, I made excuses to go and try to get my contact lenses out without putting my eye out - another downside to drunken debauchery - and headed off to bed. By the time I got up the next morning, ants had done away with the leftovers of the spider, and I was left with a small sense of pride and a nasty buzzing headache. -d-

Hey Imagine my surprise yesterday morning when I walked into my department to find a large section of the back end of it taped up with red and white "Attention! Bad stuff happened here!" tape. Puzzlement turned to consternation when I saw that the scintillation counter, worth a cool quarter of a million, was stuck behind said tape. I need to do a mammoth amount of work involving said scintillation counter this week. For those interested, a scintillation counter is used to detect and quantify radioactivity in samples, a useful biological tool. Unlike a geiger counter, which merely detects radioactivity so you can make a judgment call to get the fuck out of there if necessary, this thing can count anything from minute amounts to right off the scale - hence the name - and you can use the data to find out all sorts of cool stuff about stuff. And here it was, hemmed in like a caged animal, behind this red and white tape. What could it possibly have done? A good question - it is fairly sedentary, with lots of belt-driven trays and racks beneath its hood and a monitor perched on a stand like an antenna-bearing eye leering over the top in its DOS-based simplicity. Also a keyboard, cunningly hidden in it which the enlightened can pull out on a slidy-tray thing, to make it go and, of course, stop. It's a very cool machine. It was at approximately this time that I began to see the big picture. In this case, a large steel pole, approximately 6 foot long and about as thick as my arm, weighing about 50 pounds, lying on the floor alongside the counter. Above it, a gi-normous hole in the ceiling, clearly having been rent by something large punching through it from above. Exhibit C: a fairly nasty chunk bitten out of the floor, approximately the diameter of my arm across. Flanking the cool beta counter, an ice machine, two large freezers and the extra Ladies' bathroom, as normal. It is, you can probably guess, a fairly busy region of the department, what with the sample-storage in the freezers, the ice machine, the beta counter and the toilet right there. Fortunately nobody was actually standing there when the clowns working in the roof decided to let go of a 6', 50lb chunk of cast iron and let it plummet through our roof and take a divot out of our floor, because they would have been decaptitated. Who said science is for nerds? It's a contact sport! Needless to say, as soon as we heard the workmen in the roof above my communal office, everyone found excuses to move to another room. Having the sky fall on our heads once a day is quite enough, we felt. -d-

Okay So this is the deal. The travel diary is on hold. I Am updating it as often as I can, but other things happen all the time, and the diary is in hard copy elsewhere. As the entries are finished - 5 months late - I will put them up here, for the edification of me and anyone else who fancies a read about 19 days of me running amok through 10 different time zones on two continents in two different hemispheres. Today's interesting happening: The Bloody Hemorrhoid Yes, it sounds fairly grim; kinda because, well, it was. First, though, a little back story: the bloody hemmorhoid is in fact a drink. A cocktail, but without the traditional glamour (think a Pink Lady or Martini), trendiness (Sex on the Beach, Flaming Lamborghini) or heritage (Tom Collins or a Kentucky Derby classic, the Mint Julep). It is something which as near as I can tell does not exist in the modern world's cocktail recipe books; least of all the good ones like those larney ones you can buy which have the menus from the Ritz-Carlton or the Waldorf. It is something local, it seems, encountered or developed by the misguided horde with whom I do karate 3 nights a week. It first surfaced at Tony's 21st birthday back in June - undoubtedly the subject of my next entry because that was a surreal evening to be sure - and then resurfaced on Tuesday night the 20th of September, when I was taken out to celebrate my last year of youth, having hit 29 the previous day. To keep things simple, we headed to a local watering hole called Bella Roma, an Italian themed restaurant in our local shopping centre, mere pissing distance from the karate club and everyone's houses. Bella's, as it is known, has never quite hacked it as a restaurant/coffee shop; it has always basically survived by the patronage of its bar. In fairness, a mere fifty metres away in the same complex is another Italian themed restaurant, Verdi's, which has been there for 15 years, so you can kinda do the maths on it. And the suburb is not really geared towards having a coffee shop per se because it is kinda dead during the day and will lure in little passing trade. Nighttime at the bar is a whole other story, though. We pop up there as a group probably once every six weeks for a drink after training; the others go there a lot more often than I do, though - probably once a week. So there we were, getting all nice and mellow, shooting the shit and just generally being content with life, the Universe and everything and talking about various things, experiences and all kinds of stuff when Rene, all 49kg of him, decides that It Is Time for my birthday 'roid and motions Tony - looking more Nazi than ever with a newly shorn head and goatee - to discuss the recipe. I'll admit at this point that I am not usually one for raucous celebrations. I can count the number of times I have been drunk to puking point on three fingers, and the number of times I have been drunk to the point of slurring my words and being generally obnoxious on six or seven, including the aforementioned three. It is just one of those things, I suppose. I know my limit, generally, and I tend to hover around it, staying on the right side of the thin line between warm, fuzzy mellowness and alcohol-induced temporary mental retardation. Having said that, I don't regard myself as a wet blanket of any sort - I am more than happy to have a couple of beers and go streaking, or skinny-dipping, or stupid things like that. I just don't need to be piss-plastered before doing them, you see. Also, at my age, long gone are the days of the birthday drink, where everyone gets together and mixes you something so utterly rancid that you have to down it - because nobody in their right mind would slowly savour something tasting of drain cleaner and petrol - and I was a little concerned that a night's pleasant introspection, camaraderie and bonding could be ruined by me getting too drunk to drive myself home after a mere two beers and this upcoming concoction. Yeah, maybe it is party-pooping, but hey, it's my party, right? Nevertheless, when you don't go to a nightclub for the first time, opting instead to go out for dinner - or stay in and cook for everyone - that's the beginning of the end. That's when you shrug off the mortal coil of college days - even if you're still there - and move into the more sophisticated waters of young society. And that's where you leave the birthday drink behind. I voiced my concern to Keenan, sitting morosely on my left (argument with the girlfriend) and he was able to intervene to get the contents limited to the equivalent of four shots (120ml) instead of the draught glass (500ml) Rene was eyeing. I had plans for a lot of work in the morning, after all, and I did still have to get home, so I thought it was for the best. All that aside, it becomes apparent that neither Tony nor Rene nor Keenan can remember the recipe for this concoction anyway. The poor bartender - a pleasant lady who has had a stroke at some point - is getting a little ratty with them because it's late now - 11pm - and she is eager to close up and go home. Also, the last time she made one of these was for Tony, and she remembers him throwing up and is not keen for a repeat performance. I kept trying to see what was going in over my shoulder and kept being yelled at to turn around by Rene. All I saw going in was Amarula - a cream-based fruity liqueur native to .za where the marula trees grow. This is where it gets nasty, and good at the same time. The purpose of the Amarula is to give the drink some texture, because it curdles. The reason for its curdling was supposed to be unknown to me, but Rene was shoving it into his pocket and I knew what was coming. It's also what gives the drink its kick and its blood-red colour. Thank the good Lord that they had run out of stroh rum, though, because that stuff could floor a rhinoceros. Also, with no stroh rum, the drink won't light - another plus, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, the bartender brings the drink to the table. I have wisely convinced Tony to bring me another beer as well since I am expecting to have a vile taste in my mouth directly, on account of the secret ingredient - a fuckload of tabasco sauce. The bartender kinda read the riot act to me - imminent violence hovering over me should puking commence - before placing the cocktail in front of me and giving me a tiny straw. A picture: a murkily translucent red liquid, fumes coming off the mouth of the glass from the alchol, containing grey-pink floaters of curdled cream. I resisted briefly - as much out of concern for what it contained as for the showmanship of it - before sucking the entire chunky mass of it through the straw. I'm guessing there was at least a tot of tabasco in there from the reaction of my mouth to the burn. It was extremely hot, vile and disgusting, but my brave act got me a round of applause and yet another beer. Later on, there was disappointment from Rene when he realised he'd forgotten to make me sniff up a line of salt before taking the drink. Tragic, he reckons; blissful, in my opinion. Needless to say, I was not looking or feeling my best when I got home - eight units of alcohol is a lot - and particularly not on Wednesday morning, where every movement of air through my throat (coughing, general throat-clearing and even the occasional breath) brought the sour aftertaste of semi-digested tabasco sauce and curdled cream. And let's not mention the hangover. -d-

Just need to dust out some of these old cobwebs and stuff... There. Wow it's been a while, hasn't it? Seems just 4 entries ago was 4 months ago and now here I am, a year older, (theoretically) wiser and world-w(e)arier, and ready to hit the ground running (or the water swimming, if you prefer) and with a healthier outlook for the new year. Hold thumbs for me. -d-