skeptomai

60 Percent Off Girlfriends!

	What a great after-Christmas sale! This week only, girlfriends are 60% off. At that bargain, better get two.
I told Susan that when I was at university, there was an even better deal. With cute girls who were roommates, I'd often get the "two for the price of one". Susan replied "God the girls you went to school with were dumb."

Easier access to Cape Town Photos, new Gallery

I've created a photo gallery on this site with a single album containing 24 of the photos we took in Cape Town. I'll soon add more of my photos and Susan's as well. I'm still planning on posting Susan's journal entries, but she's dragging her heels a bit.

Catching up with friends

Michael is back from Denmark for the holidays and to gather up Susan and Malcolm for the move. He's been over there already for a while and he's keeping a great journal of his discoveries. We got together for dinner, along with our friend Kathleen, a couple nights ago. We all agreed now is a good time to move out of the U.S. for a few years. They'll be in Denmark, we'll be in South Africa and all our friends will come to visit. We are trying to find points in between to meet up and vacation. I wouldn't mind flying all the way to somewhere in Europe, but it is a 12 hour flight.

Seattle - Maybe not America's nicest city?

I park my car about 1/2 mile from where I work in the International District in Seattle. It's not the most savory part of town and quite often I've seen the result of fights, police cars stacked end to end in front of cheap bars, and vandalism. Tonight, it was my turn. I took this picture with my Nokia cell phone, in the dark. The detail sucks, but I did my best to clean up the picture. For folks who don't know, this is my new car. It's a blue 2004 Volkswagen Touareg now sporting a smashed passenger side front window. I've been carpooling with a collegue from work. We arrived back at the car this evening shortly after 5 p.m. Since it's already dark by then (today is the winter solstice), getting away with smash and grab is pretty easy. I immediately called the police to report it and started taking pictures just in case I'd need them for insurance reasons. I wasn't planning on sitting around there all night and I needed to clean up all the glass just to make the car safe to drive home. Cops took my number and promised to call me back later in the evening, which they eventually did to get the rest of my information. I called the Volkswagen dealership from home before they closed and they should have a replacement window by Thursday or Friday. This whole experience isn't going to cost me that much money, but it is a sad statement about how the world works, even during the holidays.

Update: Turns out they did get away with some stuff. My new REI rain jacket (which was a birthday gift from my wife and kids) and one of my Tom Bihn laptop bags are both missing. Fortunately, there was no laptop in the bag at the time.

I admit to a small, sinful pleasure

Today we bought Buffy, season 7. I'm a big fan, which I'm sure elicits peals of laughter from any of my friends reading this. I own all 7 seasons and have memorized the words to "Buffy the Musical". Pathetic? Yeah, I guess. I'm watching the first episode and I might just sit here watching until hunger takes me. Nice plan, but I do have work tomorrow.

Yuletide, straight out of suburbia

Every year we go back to the same Santa. You have to admit, he's got the look. Strangely enough, he holds court at the Kirkland Ford dealership. Hmm... not quite sure what that means. In past years, he did these photo sittings on the Microsoft campus, but they kicked him out (I'm not kidding). Interpret that as you may.

The children are scrubbed and polished and well-behaved. Norman Rockwell would be proud. We are staying home for the holidays and the tree is trimmed. I had to spend a day in San Jose for business last week and I returned home around 11:30 pm to find Susan and kids had purchased and placed the tree. Yesterday they trimmed it while I ran for cover (xmas is never a pretty sight around here).

Our Trip to Cape Town

Susan and I just returned from 10 days traveling through London to Cape Town, South Africa. If all goes well, we will be moving family and household down there next spring. Cape Town is truly a gem. It's more like the French Riviera than Africa. Squint just right and you'd swear you were in Europe. I've included the journal I kept during the trip. In a few days, I'll post Susan's as well. Of course, we have about 200 pictures. I'll post a link to them as soon as they are organized.

What a great trip so far. Let's start with exactly where I am right now and then I'll backtrack to the details of the travel. Susan and I are staying at the Ambassador Hotel on Bantry Bay. In one word, gorgeous. I'm sitting on the balcony of our room at 7:20 a.m. looking out over the water (see the pictures). I could fill a couple pages with hyperbole and toss in the word idyllic, but you should just check out the pictures and judge for yourself. (By the way, some pictures courtesy of Canon Photo-Stitch and stitch assist mode.)

We left Seattle Weds. afternoon for London. I think we each watched 3 movies. I saw Spider Man II (finally), Alien vs. Predator (sucks) and Collateral (fair). It's a 9 hour flight over the pole which put us in London at about noon local time. For us, it was the middle of the night but we resolved to adjust to local time as we went (I slept well on the flight over... Susan, not so much). Our layover was nearly 7 hours which gave us enough time to take the underground in to central London. We started at Hyde Park, took pictures at a couple war memorials. It was just passed Remembrance Day and the flowers and messages still adorned the pedestals of the Royal Artillery monument, the Machinegunner's memorial, and other WW I statuary. We walked to Buckhingham Palace and took the usual tourist pictures of the Q-tip headed guards. I apologize for the U.S.-centric attitude. I just can't help chuckling a bit watching those poor guys stiffly trod back and forth. At least they've upgraded the weaponry a bit. Look closely. I believe they are carrying Armalites and those old bayonets I remember from my time in the infantry (Mk 14?). From there we went past the Royal Horse Guard staging area, Green Park, and down to the strand, London Millenium Eye, and back around to Westminster. We took pictures of the Eye and Big Ben, then stopped for lunch close to the Westminster underground station. Little did we know how close we were to the cabinet offices and parliment. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt in chilly weather like I always do and got lots of confused looks. The underground operator yelled "must be coming from someplace warm." I yelled back "no, actually headed to someplace warm." From the sidewalk restaurant we could hear chanting and see flags waving. Clearly some protest was in full swing, but we hadn't recently seen the news to figure out who or what. I thought they were yelling "U S O" and Susan said it sounded like "U.S. Go.." We realized later that it was about the Ukrainian elections and the chants were "Yushenko" Bizarre for two Americans to hang out watching a Ukrainian protest in London. The world is small.

Next, we returned to Heathrow for the long flight to Capetown. I was tired and sticky warm from all the walking. I picked up a great Manchester United shirt from the Nike shop and a travel toothbrush to freshen up. We sat for a while at a little coffee shop awaiting departure.

I admit, I wasn't ready for another 11 hours in a steel tube at 37,000 feet. There's no preparation. This sort of travel is just grueling. I slept very little, but did manage to finish "Summerlands" by Michael Chabon - what a great book. If you get a chance, read it and his first Pulitzer Prize winning "Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay" Susan wisely took some Tylenol PM and slept soundly for most of the flight. Damn, I'm jealous. I watched the electronic flight map slowly updating in the seatback screen. Novel concept - this thing shows flight time remaining, altitude, exterior temperature (usually around -50F!) and a flight map of a little tiny plane superimposed over the globe. I didn't realize how large Africa is. We flew over the western bulbous part and then followed the Atlantic coast. The flight was smooth and the children a few rows up slept and were peacefully quiet (there was a 3-4 yr old boy on the London flight who screamed for 30 mins at a stretch. It was nearly unbearable). We arrived Cape Town at about 8:30 a.m. on Friday. Chris Pinkham picked us up at the airport (thanks again Chris - you didn't have to do that) and took us to his place to freshen up before hitting the hotel. We chatted at the house while Christine and Susan took the kids down to the beach. Chris and Christine are in a community called Llandudno a fair piece down the coast from Cape Town proper.

Short digression - the first things Chris pointed out leaving the airport were Table Mountain (can't miss it - it looms over the city and is quite impressive), University of Cape Town at the base of the mountain, and the shack towns close by. I think this is the first time I've encountered that dichotomy. I remember the poor areas in Georgia and Alabama, but this was different. It reminded me more of the pictures of the Brazilian favelas. Chris remarked that it's improved greatly since the gov't changeover. There are more real houses now and the community is in constant upgrade. During his time at university, he said the gov't was essentially at war with the people and would occasionally roll in and bulldoze the shack towns to the ground, forcing the already amazingly poor inhabitants to rebuild from the pieces.

It's 8 am now and the cafe downstairs should be opening. I'm going to head down to grab coffee and a fruit smoothie and wait for Susan to stir. There was a note under our door (from what time last night, I can't tell. We arrived quite late from dinner and I don't remember seeing it then) from Chris about breakfast this morning at Kirstenbosch. I'll call him around 9 to make sure I'm not waking the kids.

Ah, I should include something about our first afternoon here and our first real day (yesterday). Once we'd secured our room at the hotel on Fri. afternoon, Susan decided to take a quick nap. I grabbed a cab from the hotel to downtown and walked myself silly, from the Sheraton near the waterfront to the Turkish baths at the end of Long street near the foreign consulates. I wanted to orient myself and find out what downtown felt like during a normal work day. We'd been discussing the relative dangers and I wanted to see if I felt any less secure here than say in Manhattan, or even Portland or Spokane. My conclusion is during normal work hours, it's like any large city with a diverse population. There are poor, homeless, working middle class and the well-off intermingled. I am adjusting to the racial differences. We hear lots of languages spoken, most of which are completely foreign to us. Once I returned, I joined Susan for that nap and we finally woke up after 9 pm and headed out to dinner. Our concierge recommended a fairly new restaurant in the Gardens called Manolo. The food was quite good. The place is trendy and people clearly go there to be seen. Susan had chicken and I went for the filet of Springbok. We didn't get back to the hotel until around midnight. The high point of the cab ride back was chatting with the driver about racing. Turns out he's driven a Ferrari Testarossa on track and participated in the 1987 Lemans in a Porsche as part of Jacky Ickx's team. Wow. We discussed the return of Formula I to South Africa slated for 2007 and speculated on track choices. He doesn't think it will be at Kyalami, but rather a new track yet to be built.

Next morning we got up fairly early (9 am'ish) and I bought ham, eggs, cheese, strawberries, milk, etc. from the little store downstairs and cooked in the room. Our suite has a pretty complete kitchen. After breakfast, we caught the hotel shuttle to the waterfront district. We visited most of the shops and picked up souvenirs for the kids. There's a large shopping center right there that is indistinguishable from any large mall in an American city (with a large black population - so it couldn't be Seattle). Susan noticed one amazing difference: there's very little commercialization of Christmas here. Back home, there are Christmas related ads, sales, etc. stuffed in your face everywhere. Here there are a few decorations in the mall, but nothing remarkable. We took some pictures of Table Mountain from the waterfront, then headed for a walk uptown. I had scoped out the location of the two bead stores the day before and wanted to bring Susan there. What we didn't realize is that all the stores close early in the afternoon on Saturdays, sometime around 1 pm. We arrived in the market district around 3 pm to find everything closed. Oh well, Susan has the week to get there. We caught a taxi just before Long becomes Kloof street and the cabbie took us over the mountain, past Lion Head and down to Camps Bay and Clifton, then to Bantry Bay. Another beautiful drive and some description of the area, another great day. I'm feeling pretty spoiled at this point. That night we watched the sun set over the ocean from the hotel bar (amazing view) and ate in the hotel restaurant. Still feeling adventuresome, I had the Ostrich filet.

Other impressions? As in many countries, ordering water at restaurants is extra and usually bottled. You have the choice of still or sparkling mineral water. The housekeeping in the hotel is immaculate and we returned from our jaunts to find the dirty dishes had been washed and put away. Of course, we are tipping the housekeeping staff, so I'm sure that helps. One annoying British influence: they drive on the wrong side of the road here. We are planning to hire a car and Susan's already said she wants me to drive. I'm still deciding if I'm up to it.

Monday, 29 November
Yesterday was a nice long day starting with Chris picking us up at the hotel for breakfast at the Kirstenbosch gardens. Kirstenbosch is a bit like the Bellevue Botanical Gardens plus the Arboretum plus a lodge-style restaurant. We had brunch there with Chris, Christine and the kids, then set out on a walk around the gardens (see pictures). The warm clear day made for an easy stroll, but looking up at Table Mountain, I could imagine the hike up would have been much warmer right out in direct sunlight. Most of the gardens are shady and benefit from much more precipitation than the rest of the Cape Town area. After the gardens, we road back around to Chris's house in Llandudno for a late afternoon braai with some of their friends. Susan caught a quick nap to fight off the remmants of jet lag, while Chris and Christine prepared the meal. Their friends were all warm welcoming people and we had a nice meal of fish, salad, etc. with lots of laughter and pleasant conversation. The day passed quickly. We returned to the hotel fairly late without enough hunger or energy to deal with taxis and restaurants. We stocked up on snacks and bottled water at the store downstairs then retired for the evening. Tomorrow we intend to hit the rest of the waterfront and the bead stores when they are actually open.

Other impressions: most cars are smaller, with the exception of those rich enough or willing to spend > 50% of their income on Cayenne, ML Mercs, etc. The Volkswagen Rabbit, Golf, Ford Fiesta, Renault Clio are quite popular. We looked at the price comparisons for all passenger vehicles and nearly collapsed. The Subaru Forrester and Volkswagen Touareg together here are nearly the price of a small house. The Touareg is around 500,000 R which is about 80,000$ US! Yesterday was our indication of how different some things are. For the most part, we don't feel out of place. There's a great deal of tourism, English is the primary language and people are kind and helpful. Christine mentioned Cape Town is the playground for European winter vacationers. It certainly looks that way. Why do I say we felt a bit out of place? During lunch yesterday, we were trading jokes and laughing all together. In a couple instances, someone at the table would interject "Oh, but I heard it this way in Afrikaans" and retell the joke. Everyone would laugh, then pause to translate for Susan and I. I now know how Susan felt during our time in France. It's such a strange superposition of the familiar with the foreign. At no point did they try to make us feel out of place. On the contrary, they were very warm people. I'd love to find a way to learn Afrikaans, since languages are a bit of a hobby for me. I wonder if there are evening classes? Susan still seems as comfortable with the idea of moving here as I could expect. We continue to discuss details. Oh, concerning personal security. I haven't seen anything to worry me about security at home or for the children. It is odd to see such a number of "Armed Response" businesses - basically the scarier version of rent-a-cops (real guns). Most upscale neighborhoods (like Llandudno) have a gate with a guard and most homes have security systems. Chris explained that the Armed Response businesses fill a market need since the police force is small and under budget to cover the entire area and most serious crime is in the poor townships. This leaves the affluent areas to pay for their own private coverage. In some respect, this seems reasonable. The patrols and warning signs seem to act as a viable deterrent to crime in most neighborhoods. Still, seeing razor wire at the top of home fences is disturbing. I've got a great picture of razor wire on a fence separating a local children's park from a home bordering it. By a trick of the imagination, you could assume the wire is to keep kids out of the park. It's 6:54 a.m. and I've been up since 6. That's an improvement from yesterday's 5:30. Can I blame the jet lag or my genetic predisposition to rising with the sun? If you were to ask Susan, I believe she'd tell you the best and worst features of this room are the sea-facing balcony and windows. The sunset is superb, but we get the early morning sunlight directly on the bed as well. There's no way I can sleep in. She manages by covering her face with large pillows. Good on her. Tomorrow Chris and I will interview two promising candidates for the office. At some point, we'll also check out the prospective office space. Wednesday we will probably hike Table Mountain (well, some of us) and take the cable car at the upper level. Susan is keen on doing the daily routine with Christine, including grocery shopping, checking schools and neighborhoods. We'll probably concentrate on the Constantia / Tokai areas first. I'm sure the transition will be hardest on her as she will have all the daily household duties and caring for the kids, with schools, doctors, play groups, etc.. For me, it's simply a new office with the same tasks and even the same boss. Plus, I transition easily and build new habits gladly.

Tues / Weds
I'm sitting down to coffee on the balcony on Weds. morning to record Tuesday's events. I've got my coffee and Susan has her Froot Loops (from the little store downstairs). The sea is rough this morning as it was last night. Chris said that's an indication of a front moving in. The wind changes direction and pounds the coast. Here is yesterday in reverse chronological order: Last night we had dinner with Chris and Christine at their house. The kids went down early and nicely. Wish ours would do that. (OH man, you should see the waves coming in right now... huge) We told stories and jokes, the usual fare. Chris and I called Jacob to prep him for a phone screen. He was scheduled to speak with a candidate we'd interviewed that day and I wanted to make sure he knew what questions I'd already covered. We tend to pick the same questions and trip over one another at times. A couple hours previous, we'd been down to the beach at Llandudno with the Pinkhams. Susan and I got caught by a freak wave and drenched. We weren't the only ones. Lots of laughter up and down the beach from soaked people and their smarter, drier friends. The only scare was little Kyle (2 years old) who also got caught in it. The water came up quickly enough to cover him and he got a bit of a scare. Earlier in the day, Chris and I used office space belonging to friends of his to interview 3 candidates. The office space was shared between Korbitec and UUNET. The interesting detail is UUNET grew out of Chris's old company, Internet Africa and he's still friends with the directors of both companies. Again, physical security was greater than I'm used to. We had to check in with security / reception in the building, stating who we were meeting and then were buzzed in through electronic mantraps. Parking was similar, with a guard and assigned parking spot. We had a fun time interviewing and it went fairly well, with one sure hire, another most likely and one missing the mark. Chris and I left for lunch to Constantia to a small restaurant with great atmosphere (dining on an outdoor terrace) and good food. Chris commented that the prices had come down quite a bit. Two years ago the dollar was much stronger against the rand and businesses were chasing the dollar and charging more. Now that the dollar is lower, prices are floating back down to normal levels. On the way to lunch, we stopped to look at our prospective office space. We couldn't get inside so we walked around 3 sides and Chris roughly sketched the layout. It's nice from the outside and sounds like a good bargain even if more expensive than the average here.
What else to tell? Our seafaring clothes from last night are drying on the line over the bathtub and we are easing into the day awaiting the Pinkhams. We're driving out to the Peninsula for a tour. They've just purchased a new Volvo and I believe Chris is keen to take it out for a longer spin.

Other impressions: Clifton, Camps Bay, Bantry Bay - it's all like the California beach towns. Nice cars, great weather, trendy little coffee shops and little tan and toned blonde women jogging up and down the road. Most people around here look pretty fit and there are very few fat people. We've more or less made the decision to move here, having seen nothing that would warn us off. I'm excited by the adventure and by the prospect of working hard on a new project. Susan is her usual even-keeled self, not getting visibly excited. She does seem to enjoy herself here, but I'm sure she's worrying about adapting with the kids.

Thursday morning, 6:22 a.m.
Back to my folly of rising too early, I'm syncing my iPod and looking over interview questions for this morning. We've only got one more interview, but this candidate is friends with a previous one and I suspect they'll have exchanged impressions and discussed the questions I asked on Tuesday. No worries, since I've got a question list that could take days to answer fully. On a completely different subject, we had an excellent dinner last night at Constantia Uitsig. At table we were Chris, Christine, their friend Margaret who is in movie casting, myself and Susan. We had a great time and the food was superb. Chris had the ostrich, which I've been told really is a local item. We passed an ostrich farm yesterday and Chris explained most ostrich are bred here or in neighboring Namibia, or at least were until Namibia started exporting breeding pairs. Now you can find them even in eastern Washington! I had the kingklip, which is a local fish. Christine said she wasn't impressed at how they typically prepare fish but mine was quite tasty. For dessert, I had this chocolate thing that was dark, dense and probably very bad for my health, made directly from about one half dozen eggs and dark chocolate with probably little else. Chris said the recipe is in the restaurant's published cookbook so my curiosity is piqued. I'll have to take a look at the copy we'll no doubt buy for Susan's sister Cathy, the family cook. As mentioned earlier, today is the last of our interviews. I'm not sure what the plan is for the rest of the day. I believe Susan is a bit tired from all the running and intends to stay in and relax with her beadwork (and probably to read her Ndebele book). Tomorrow we'll probably finish up a bit of tourist stuff before our evening flight.

Postscript: We finished up the interviews and had lunch with a couple of the recruiters to focus them on what we are looking for. It appears they usually fill positions based on specific technologies (this one knows J2EE, or .NET or C++, or whatever) and not on the strength of CS first principles. We tried to explain that programming language is not the important detail, but rather if the candidate can solve the problems and express the necessary data structures in *any* programming language. I said I'd be happy getting solutions in Lisp, and they didn't quite know what to do with that info. Anyway, afterward we stopped back at Chris's house shortly to find that Susan had indeed stayed at the hotel, so Chris ran me back there. It turns out Susan had taken the shuttle to the waterfront to finish up some Christmas shopping and we ended up going back down there for dinner later. It's sad but true that the waterfront shopping area feels just like a mall in any big American city and perhaps subconsciously we were taking refuge there from time to time.

Home, Mon 6 December, 6 a.m.
We arrived home on Saturday evening, just shy of 6 pm. I felt hazy and slow, as my body tried to cope with all the time changes and jet lag. Susan and I both slept soundly on the flight from Cape Town to London. We played so hard during the day on Friday (at Table Mountain - more on that in a moment), then I had a beer in the airport with Chris and I'm sure that helped me sleep a bit. The flight is nearly 12 hours and I was not looking forward to it. After they served dinner, Susan and I both fell asleep and didn't awaken until they served breakfast about 1:22 from arriving in London. Perfect. We arrived back in London at just after 6 am, clearly too early to do any shopping on a Saturday morning. We found the Heathrow Express to Paddington. At 50 pounds for the two of us, it's a bit expensive, but in 15 minutes you are at Paddington station and within striking distance of the rest of Central London. We grabbed coffee and pastry in the station and struck out on a long walk. Susan was wearing sandals with bare feet and didn't relish walking chilly London (3 degrees centigrade), so she bought the most hideous rainbow coloured socks at the station. I was also in short sleeves and shorts with bare feet in sandals. You can't imagine the looks and comments I got from the bundled-up Londoners walking their streets. I had sunburns on my arms and tops of my feet. They must have thought I was crazed. They don't understand that I don't get cold. What fun. We walked from Paddington clear to Oxford Street to the big shopping areas and spent a few minutes in Selfridge's grand store. I'll never do that again. Imagine a large garish Nordstrom decked for the holidays. It's a non-shopping man's nightmare. Even Susan didn't enjoy it... go figure.
Back to Friday in Cape Town. Chris and Christine collected us shortly after checking out of the hotel and we drove to the base of Table Mountain to take the cable car. On the way, we hassled a bit with a courier on a scooter. He kept dangerously weaving between Chris's car in the rear and Christine's ahead of us. At one point Chris honked and the scooter driver gave us a dirty look and some gestures. At that point, Chris yelled "What the fuck is he doing" and gestured back, yelling "It's you.... you.... you are the moron!". I felt right at home :)
After finding parking on the side of the road below the cable car, we trudged up and around to the embarkment area. Looking up, I was amazed at how steep the climb is and what great time the cable car makes. Each car holds 65 passengers and rotates during ascent to get the panoramic view of Cape Town below. Simply incredible.