Busy, Busy, Busy...

12:20 am local time.

So I've been keeping very busy, as you may have gleaned from the title.  Been working away and jumping into Johannesburg's nightlife left and right.

I'm finally doing stuff at MR... I was given a project, and have assisted on some TV ad edits for a major burger chain here called Wimpy.  It's been a hectic week.  This is still interspersed with lots of time sitting around trying to get assigned a task, but I'm still learning so I think they're a bit loathe to give me anything that's too intensive, and I think I agree with that tactic.  We'll see how it continues to pain out.

On to a subject that involves mobility.  I've now gone through three rental cars.  The first one was a VW citigolf chico probably made within my lifetime which had various issues- including but not limited to slight overheating, oil pump trouble, and the rather handy ability to have trouble starting while parked on hills.  Big fat X.  Next, it was on to a Mazda 323 that was definitely older than I am.  This one had four DIFFERENT tires (tyres, for you SA people watching for my assimilation into the culture here) and a very angry clutch and alignment problem.  The one benefit I saw was that it had 5 gears, and had a slight power advantage over the chico; at least until the other day, when a myriad of things went wrong with it.  I was parked in the MR parking lot and started the car, at which point I noticed some pretty intense valve tick, so I became worried it had no oil and turned it off.  I checked the oil, found it still had enough (although it was VERY dirty) and started it again: no tick.  Then, as I was driving along Grayston drive in Sandton looking for a car hire place, I noticed that when the car would idle it would shake badly, and there was a very perceptible drop in power.  I've had a misfire in my Volvo S80, so I knew the symptoms and knew the car had misfired.  Another fat X, and the next day I swapped it out for my current car, another citigolf.

This citigolf is probably the best car they have on the lot.  It's newer (I'm thinking circa 2004-5), has a tachometer, digital clock in the gauge cluster, and a built in gearlock for antitheft.  The key is even newer; it looks like the service key for most new VWs nowadays.  It does have its share of problems, however.  Second gear's synchros are toast, so if I don't double-clutch or wait for the RPMs to drop, I get a lovely, grating crunch when I move the shifter through second gear's gate.  This one starts fairly readily, but it has two very gnarly cracks in the windscreen that run from the headliner to the dash.  Meh.  It'll do until I change companies at the end of next week :)

Tonight, I saw The Social Network.  I'm not sure how accurate the portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg is, but to be honest, I find him to be abhorrent as a human being if it is accurate.  I even considered deleting my facebook; if he could have been that terrible to his one and only friend, why would he care about the rest of us "farm animals?"  Lovely.  So that movie left me musing quite hard.  Of course, this was all driven out of my mind by the fact that my aunt's car battery had died, and no one had jumper cables.  We tried to roll-start the car but the immobilizer (immobiliser) was NOT having it.  Fortunately one of the guys who watches cars in the lot (Every parking lot in South Africa has several questionably legitimate people hanging around lots wearing reflective vests looking for tips) had a set of jumper cables in his car and helped us out.  No more leaving your headlights on, Penny!

On Saturday, it's off to the game reserve in Sabi Sands, called Savannah.  I'm super excited, it's going to be awesome.  5 hour drive early in the morning, and we should be just in time for lunch.  I'll take lots of pictures. I get Monday off, and I'm very excited to just have a day to appropriate all the experiences in the game reserve and relax a  bit.  Again, a game reserve is not for hunting, it's for viewing the animals in their natural habitat.  I'll be sure to expound upon this after I actually experience it.  I know I'll have a lot to say!

Alright my friends, it's time for me to depart.  I have to get up early tomorrow and brave the roads in South Africa to get to MR and finalize my project.  Wish me luck :)

Cheers, keep LA warm and ready for me when I return in two months!

Adam

PS:  (Friday, November 19, 2010) I was going to post this the other night, but started to have issues with my laptop.  The screen started to turn off at random intervals, and then the computer would reboot, and I figured something was wrong with my GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).  After doing some research, I found out that my particular model of IBM Thinkpad laptops were prone to a loose GPU issue, so I took the keyboard off and attempted to exact a fix for it.  While doing it, I thought that I may as well try a system restore, and after doing so, I haven't had any trouble thus far.  Wish me luck!  5 years for of having no critical hardware failures with a heavily used laptop computer is quite a run!

Off to the game reserve tomorrow.  I'll update on Monday!  :)

Cheers everyone,

Adam