Super Safari Adventure

This weekend I went on safari at the Inverdoorn game reserve out in the South African Karoo. What an unreal experience. You'll never want to go to a zoo again after going out on a safari.

This Rhino came up to within about 4 feet of the vehicle that I was on, with its tusk pointed right at me. Luckily, White Rhinos (such as this one) are very docile and since they have no natural enemies, they aren't afraid of Range Rovers. Otherwise, I might have been speared by a Rhino. Good times!

Another interesting Rhino fact: they can't see any more than 4 meters in front of themselves. That means if they start running, and they can certainly get moving, you don't want to be in their path. They'll literally run through everything in existence, including trees, bushes, other animals, whatever. And since they weigh up to two and half tons, next to nothing will stop them.

And then there's this guy up here. Lions are little less docile than Rhinos, especially when they're really hungry. This lion is hungry, in case you couldn't tell. Note to everyone, stay away from lions.

And just for the hell of it, here are some giraffes.

Thoughts on Cape Town

Physical location and geographics: San Francisco meets Yosemite
Pollution: Like a mini-Los Angeles
Crime: Where's my bullet-proof vest?
Weather: Identical to San Francisco
Cleanliness: Not so much
Social scene: Bizarre mix of NY/LA. In other words, assholes in shorts and sandals.
Cars: 3rd rate rejects from Europe
Acceptance of gay people: Very much like San Francisco (downtown). Elsewhere...uh, no.
Haircut of choice: Anything from an 80's video
Government: Massively corrupt
Police: Ditto
Aids problem: Beyond horrible
Shark problem: Jaws
Work attitude: Work?
Beer: Forgettable
Food: Excellent
Cocaine equivalent: Tik
Cricket: Strangely intriguing
Rugby: It's not football
Girls: Attractive
Guys: They say bro "brew." As a beer drinker, I love this.
Afrikaans language: A dutch person on my safari called it "4th grade dutch." Burn.
TV: Sure wish I had American cable

Take me to your robot

There are always going to be some subtle language differences no matter where you go in the world, even if you go to a country where you know the language. Slang terms and everday phrases are not always the same. That's absolutely fine.

Like here in South Africa, instead of saying I want my hamburger "to go" you say it's for "take away." No problem, it does the same job. Also people here say "pleasure" (short for 'my pleasure') instead of "your welcome." Again, same thing is accomplished.

But there's one term down here that makes no sense at all. They call street lights down here "robots." WTF? The first time I heard this was when some guy told me to take a right at the robot. I had no clue what he was talking about.

Technically, I guess street lights are robots of some kind, but when I think of robots I think of ass-kicking Transformers or the robot from Lost in Space, who's currently gracing the post.

The term "robots" just doesn't work for me. They aren't robots. They're timed lights for crying out loud. If you add death lasers to them, then I'll reconsider my opinion.

What time is it there?

It's way too early is what time it is. Last real party weekend here in SA, since next weekend I'm off on safari. So what happened? Well, a lot.

That's all you really need to know. It was a reasonably entertaining Friday night out.

Going Out with a Bang

I still have one week left at work, but this is a pretty good finish. Today I got the front page lede story on a real important day - World Aids Day. The last page 1 lede story I got came on kind of an off day when not much was going on. But not this one. Although the paper jazzed the headline up a bit, it's still pretty shocking. Since the paper locked the damn article on the Web site, you can't read it, my apologies.

Geoff Bough

Beating India like a red-headed stepchild

For the last two weeks, India's national cricket team has been down here on "tour." I love that term, cricket is so proper. Anyway, they've been squaring off against the South African national team at various venues across the country every half week or so in one-day matches. One day cricket matches are a lot more fun to watch (and I realize I'm the only one that understands anything that's being said here) because they have limited overs of 50. That means you have to be more aggresive to score runs, since you only have a limited opportunity to do so. It's faster and it's more entertaining. The cricket that Americans know is the interminable 4 or 5 day matches where overs are unlimited and people will take an hour defensively batting balls away from the wicket before taking a real cut. That sucks.

But thank god we don't have that going on here. Instead it's limited overs! And South Africa has been kicking India's ass, which is surprising to a degree I guess, since the only thing Indians like better than Bollywood movies is cricket. Already in a best of 5 showdown, South Africa is up 3-0. Which effectively means they can take a piss the last two matches and no one will care. India has been so pathetic that in one of the matches they scored only 91 runs. One guy on South Africa scored more runs than that by himself in the same match.

Now despite the fact that South Africa has been killing the Indians, for the one person still left reading this, there is still trouble for South Africa. Their captain, Graeme Smith, is awful. He is the leadoff batsman for South Africa and in the first 3 matches he has produced run totals of 0:1:0. They even have rules in one day matches so that the first 2 batsmen have an easier time scoring! And I also can't stress how bad it is to lose a wicket that quickly.

I don't know what the American sports equivalent of this is, but it's like if Albert Pujols went 0-20 in the NLCS with 10 strikeouts or Michael Jordan going 0-20 in a playoff game. It just doesn't happen to a player who is on a national team. Hell, if you're reading this blog and you've ever played softball or baseball or beat your annoying neighbor's dog with a stick, than you could have done better than Smith over the last 2 weeks. Plus he doesn't bowl (i.e. pitch) for South Africa so he's essentially worthless. I could have captained South Africa for the first 3 matches and I don't think they would have done any worse. What's weird is although the sports media cares about this down here, he doesn't get a lot of shit, which I find surprising.

I haven't been watching cricket for long, but I do have the advantage of being an impartial observor, sort of like an alien coming down from Mars. And as a Mars alien watching cricket I can tell you one thing - Graeme Smith sucks.

Why Americans hate soccer

While I've been down here, I can't watch any NFL or college football games which has driven me almost nuts. Strangely though, I have begun to like cricket. But before you call me a wuss, let me continue. On Sunday, to try and quench the thirst of watching a big time game, I went downtown to watch the Manchester United v. Chelsea match, which was billed as a slightly bigger event than 10 Super Bowls combined.

And of course it ended in a 1-1 tie.

That's why Americans hate soccer and we always will. There's nothing worse than sitting around for 2 hours, fully aware that what you're watching will end in a tie, and then asking youself, "Why in the hell did I just watch that?" Hey, the last Super Bowl sucked, but at least someone won it. Man U v. Chelsea was more hyped than anything I can remember in recent memory - and you didn't even get the satisfaction of seeing someone win. In the US, we have sports that produce something called a WINNER, which most normal sports fans I think appreciate. Although football can produce a tie, it almost never does, and hockey caught on now as well, forcing penalty shootouts in regular season games.

I hate ties, and so should every one who likes sports, but that isn't the case down here at all. After the Currie Cup final (South Africa's rugby Super Bowl) ended in a 38-38 tie, people weren't pissed off in the least. Can you imagine if the Super Bowl ended in a tie? I think the US might go up in flames.

Whatever, I gotta get out of here and get back home, where I can watch sports where at least I know someone is going to win.

Apocalypse Now

This weekend wasn't so great, that's about all I have to say.

Cricket is fun.....when you have luxury box seats.

One of the things I wanted to do while I was down here was go see a cricket match. Don't ask me why, I guess to blend in with South African culture or something like that. Anyway, I went to the limited overs Domestic Championship between our hometown Cobras v. the Warriors. As confusing as Americans think cricket is, it's much easier to understand than baseball - without question. After watching it for 2 months down here, it's not hard to follow at all. It's just not real exciting, because even a one-day limited overs match lasts 7 hours. So how do you beat the boring parts of a match? Run into someone who you work with whose brother has a luxury box complete with free food and drinks - that's how.

I'm not sure how many Americans have gotten to sit in luxury box seats at a South African cricket match, but I'm one of them now. By the way, the Cobras won in what was actually a really exciting match, at least at the finish. And the guy I work with got incredibly drunk and started hitting on an 18-year old. He's 60. That was probably even better than watching the Cobras win.

Is that a Sex Pistols shirt or are you just happy to see me?

You can find a lot of interesting stuff down here in South Africa (which you can also probably find online, but that's beside the point), and today I found what I've been looking for for years - a SEX PISTOLS t-shirt. Despite the ridiculous cost for it, even by American standards, it's awesome.

In case you think I'm crazy, which I am, there's a reason I needed this shirt. Back in college I actually wrote a 20-page research paper on the way the Sex Pistols helped define punk. So cheers to you Sid Vicious - the Sex Pistols are alive and well in South Africa.

God save the Queen!

Karaoke Cops and not so Princely Music

Yesterday I got sent out on one of the worst stories I've ever gotten here, but it instead turned out to be fantastically funny. SAPS (South African Police Services) was giving away 40 cars to rural police units around the Western Cape. But before they did this, there was a brief speaking event interspersed with THREE different songs sung by individual police officers. It was without a doubt, one of the weirdest events I have ever been to in my life.

Even funnier was this woman who dedicated her song to the commissioner, then proceeded to absolutely butcher the song. She was actually OK through the first half, but then she just decided to go for it and wound up nearly breaking everyone's eardrums. I wish I had recorded her song, since it was about a 9.5 out of 10 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale.

What's even worse is now I can't even look at the police down here with a straight face. My mind just keeps drifting back to this event, which I think set the respect bar for SAPS back about 15 years.
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The police event also reminded me of another random horrible musical moment while I've been down here. A few weeks back I went out to Franshooek in wine country to do a story on Prince Edward who was in town to give out awards to all these kids. Before he did this they had a musical piece involving two kids playing a violin and a piano. The kid on the violin was so bad that even if I had been the kid's parent I still would have told them they sucked. It was really that bad.

Regrettably, since it was like a 15 year old kid, it doesn't rate as high on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. But it sure ranked high on the "Man am I embarrased for this kid" scale.

Makin' a South African Blog? Unfortunately yes.

You know you've made, at least to a degree, when people you don't know blog about you. A few weeks ago I wrote about a controversial dude who spoke at the University of Cape Town on same sex. The Democratic Alliance Students' Organization blogged this about me:

Not afraid to be controversial, Naidoo made some pretty strident remarks about homosexuality. This is how Geoff Bough reports on some of Naidoo’s comments at the debate:

“Naidoo said he believed that preventing gays and lesbians from being able to marry or have civil unions was not a form of discrimination equivalent to apartheid.Apartheid contained "the unchangeable characteristic of colour" while "homosexuality is a sexual behaviour and can be changed" [Naidoo also used the word 'deviant'], he argued, provoking a chorus of boos from the students.”

A bit of semantic embellishment there from Bough, seeing as the “chorus of boos from the students” was only some amused laughing by a few students, including me. What was hilarious, was when someone shouted out Michael Jackson's name after Naidoo had said that a “black man can’t change into a white man” (as an example in defence of his ridiculous view that whilst racial discrimination is unfair, discrimination on grounds of grounds of sexual orientation is ok).

Was it a semantic embellishment. I don't think so at all. People were really angry in the crowd - they weren't just laughing. As usual, the media gets dumped on. The curse of being a journalist, but at least I was on a different blog.

Buy your way in

One thing I love about this city is that, if the stuff hits the fan, you can quite literally buy your way into anywhere you want to go because the exchange rate is so great. Tonight, me and a buddy got stopped outside a door about 30 min. before a place was set to close. They said forget it, you can't come in because we're about to shut down, so we said, hold on - how about R50 to let us BOTH in? Immediately bit. For the two of us combined, R50 is literally about $2 a person, or maybe less since my bud is from Ireland. I love this city so much, you can buy your way out of - or into - any situation. But it means so much more when you can buy your way into a great club at 3:30am in the morning when the place is shutting down for $2 and not care. I feel like I own this town.

P.S. Since no one plays rap in this city, which i love, what's the best rap song ever? I say it's a toss-up between 2Pac's "How do you want it" and Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M." with an edge to the Wu. Best instrumental ever for a rap song, period. Liquid Swords also deserves some buzz.

Could I be any whiter? No, but whatever, I love rap and you're racist for suggesting it ;)

"I'm low-key like seashells, I rock these bells
Now come aboard, it's Medina bound
Into the chamber, and it's a whole different sound
It's a wide entrance, small exit like a funnel
So deep it's picked up on radios in tunnels"

Hatin' on the VOC

To those of you who are super history buffs, you might recognize this engraving. It's the sign of the the most hated bad guys in Pirates of the Caribbean II - The Dutch East India Company. They built the Castle of Good Hope here in Cape Town which funny enough never fired a shot in anger nor was it ever attacked. That being said, the VOC knew how to torture people, as I found out on a tour today. They have a room at the castle known as the "Dark Hole" that was usually used for storing stuff. We were told that the room has no air holes and as a result, if one person was locked in there, they'd run out of air in 12 hours. How come anyone knows that? Well, the VOC used to stick people in that room. Yikes. And on top that, they have a prison and a "whipping wall" at the castle as well. Good times! Glad I don't live in the mercantilistic 1700's.

Trivia time

A lot of people, by which I mean like 1 person, have asked me, what the hell does CPT stand for? Here's the answer: it's the official airport code for Cape Town.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Hot Lunch

This place that I usually grab lunch from here has one of the funniest names for a salad I have ever seen. The salad is called the Bangkok hot beef tossed salad. Just thinking about it makes me want to go get tested for STDs.

But what a fantastic name. It takes serious skill to come up with an item on your menu where every word can be misconstrued for a sexual reference.

The Blog is Back

To all 3 of you that read this blog, I apologize I haven't posted in a while. It's been an insane last few weeks with everything from a helicopter ride to somebody trying to charge the health minister with homicide to killing my hands by repeling down a cliff face using metal chains. But now, the blog is back, for all your enjoyment.

Hasslin' the man

So tonight after having talked with a couple of girls for a long time, we all decided to go home from where we were catching some late night snacks. As they were getting into a taxi, a couple of guys came up and started hassling them. One guy - who was with the two girls - (so in other words a good guy) came out to speak with the two guys but wasn't getting anywhere. So I came up and said, in these exact words, "Hey guys, lay off, just let them go home."

Rather than just let it fly, they hit me with this junk, "Hey man, I'm South African." So what? It's not like I run around hassling girls and when people tell me to ease off I just say, "Hey, I'm an American" and go back to causing trouble. The worst part is, saying something like this will get you in serious trouble around here. That's unfortunate, because sometimes guys deserve to get clocked for their crappy treatment of women, men, whatever. Pisses me off, big time.

The Red Light District

This past Monday I did something I should never have done - gone out with a veteran photojournalist who can't go more than 5 minutes without talking about how he's going to quit tomorrow. Not because guys like this are boring, but because they're crazy and don't care anymore - and that's dangerous. After going out for one drink with him, it quickly turned into more than I would have liked. That's when the night got interesting. Without me knowing where we were going, he took me into what I thought was a bar but turned out to be what is universally regarded as one of the worst strip clubs here in Cape Town, known as the Cage. It's basically a whore house that fronts as a beyond awful strip club. Wanting to leave, I burst out the door to find myself on a deserted dark street in a section of town I've never been in - Cape Town's Red Light District. I had no choice but to go back in and watch the guy, along with a buddy of his, go after girls for the next 45 minutes. All the while he kept telling me, "I love the black girls." Fantastic, and this guy has a 10 year-old daughter. To say it was not fun would be a mild understatement. This is last time I ever go out with anyone from work again.

Dutch Nasty's Big Story

Dutch Nasty got himself one hell of a story in the Thursday Argus. Took up the entire upper fold of the paper. He was the first person to actually talk to that guy whose face you can't see in this unfortunately crappy image. This guy is a professor at the University of Cape Town who left his baby kid in a car and the kid got cooked to death. Unbelievable. Great job though Dutch. Medill has now had students on both the front page of the Times and the Argus. We run this town.