Parliament

Today I went to the committee of Justice and Constitutional Development meeting at parliament. They were debating about the Protection of Personal Information Bill. A parliamentary system with multiple parties like that is much different. There were some loud personalities, but many of their debates were germane to governance in general.

The most fascinating thing probably was that it was soccer Friday. All of the MP's were wearing Bafana Bafana stuff, so it was a bit hard to take it all very formally.

In the meeting included this guy
He was quite interesting.

Afterwords, the other half of my organization premiered their video about whistleblowers. One of the whistleblowers featured was there, so it was quite interesting.

One of my bosses was wearing a swanky soviet trenchcoat with a Mao pin. Again, I work for the Open Democracy Advice Centre. It was either frightening or ironic.

Do Work

This picture is at the aquarium. There was a cutout in the middle of the tank. I am not in Hirsh's lap, but it really looks like it.
The fish on the right is Pikachu.


I thought I would give a brief update about Odac.
The people are very kind, but the workplace is quite interesting. My work is research-based, so I spend most of the day reading and writing.

Side-note: being assigned to find out what the access to information law is in the DRC is particularly difficult, as there is no detectable law of any sort in the DRC. Two quotes describe the state, and the (smarminess of the editors).

1: At the time of independence, no transitional arrangements had been made by the Belgians, after a century of control. They left the new nation with seventeen persons, out of a population of 20 million, with university degrees and not a single officer in the armed forces or police. Even by the abysmal standards of Africa, "No colony had ever faced independence so ill prepared"

2: "The official name of the former Zaïre is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is, of course, neither democratic nor a republic. Possibly in a normal distaste at using meaningless adjectives to denote the different Congos, we append the names of their capitals, thus Zaïre and Democratic Republic of the Congo is now, for your editors, simply Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of Congo is Congo (Brazzaville). Until 2003 there was, in our opinion, little to report concerning legal institutions in the Congo or even of general legal developments."

The people in my office, however, are on the telephone all of the time. Everyone in SA speaks English, but whenever they receive calls they will often switch to another language. Four of them, the middle-management group, speak in isiXhosa whenever they gossip with each other. That language has clicks, and it is very hard to adjust to those when they occur. They all speak English with different accents, so they all start talking a little louder to each other. Even when they speak to me, they will use Afrikaans and isiZulu words often. Plus, they use a different vocabulary than we do, similar to but distinct from the English. The internet system is hilarious. There are random switches and wires everywhere. They fired the IT company today. It was intense.

In unrelated news, fill out your World Cup Brackets! And Jose Torres is from Longview: http://www.socceramerica.com/article/38325/jose-torres-makes-east-texas-town-proud.html

Small World

Last night, after our incredible day climbing Lion's Head, we tracked down a place to watch the USA play Turkey in an international friendly. Dubliner at Kennedy's, an Irish bar on Long Street, put the game on for us. I was decked out in my Charlie Davies Jersey and my USA track jacket. David was wearing an American Outlaws shirt, and Hirsh, who had never watched an entire soccer match, did not know anything about our team, and is from UC Berkley wore my $5 Walmart Star-Spangled T-shirt. It was a bold move, but totally paid off.

We went down a goal about 30 minutes in, but second half goals from Jozy and Deuce put the Yanks on top.

About as the game was wrapping up, a group of UGA, Wake, and Auburn kids came in. they were on a 'Leadership Studies' Maymester, meaning they have been just hanging out in Cape Town for a month. One of the guys was in the same fraternity with Hillyer. One was my cousin Nick's pledge trainer. One girl went to Camp Longhorn with my cousin Trent. We went upstairs and joined them at a piano bar, and right when we walked in David, the piano player, started playing 'Walking in Memphis.' I went nuts.

Today we went to a Portuguese restaurant on the waterfront then to Two Oceans Aquarium. It was really cool. David and HIrsh went to pick up stuff at the telephone and computer store, and Hirsh saw that the model for one of the displays in this store was his sister. We tried not to give him two hard of a time for the picture prominently displaying his sister in bed with some guy.

It was a surreal day.

The last picture is of a really sad-looking penguin.