Day 2ish - 2nd of august

Day 2.

We decided to wake up a little late today.  I think we needed it after the 24 and 36 hour days we had between the 4 of us.  8am seems to be sleeping late in our minds, but hey it worked so it’s all good.  By 9am the driver was there, we never noticed so we only got outside at like 9h15am.  Lucky for us the drivers (and I think this goes for any driver on the road here) are really calm and chilled out people, so he didn’t mind at all.  We had a slightly nerve wrecking drive to the office - suddenly we were awake enough to notice how chaotic the roads really are here.

We finally arrived at the office after what felt like crawling through a mind field with a sign strapped to our backs saying “WE ARE STRANGE PLEASE LOOK AT US!!!”  As we drove into the office parking we got stopped and they checked the bottom of the car with a strange mirror on a trolley.  This seemed normal in relation to everything we have been experiencing so far so we didn’t ask any questions. 

We got to the doors where they noticed that we are foreign (obviously).  The guards were pretty friendly and helpful, one was so helpful that she started talking to Kaishni in Hindi… only one problem with that, Kaishni understands 2 more words in Hindi than I do, so 4. 

Inside we saw some strange things again.  At the 7 lifts (yes 7) there were close to 50 people standing there waiting for the lifts to come… they did, eventually.  We asked for directions to the stairs very shortly after that.  Waiting for a lift has never felt that long before though (and this is taking into consideration lunch time at our Sandton office…

After a morning of getting to know the members of the team we will be working with on the project (or rather just seeing the faces and hearing some random names which I will know only by the time we leave).  We also had to introduce ourselves and I am pretty sure our names confused the guys as much as their names confused us.  We got an update on the status of the project…  I think I know what they said.

Okay so I didn’t mention this earlier, so I will now:  The plugs in South Africa are bigger than the plugs in India, so that means our plugs don’t really fit here.  This translated into us not being able to work for almost half the day. (Connection problems still not solved by end of day regarding the network)  So before I go too nerdy on you, we then got to see that we are now the “Scared Shitless Foreigners”.  This happened when none of us were brave enough to dring the water from a filter, but in all fairness everyone back home did scare us off it pretty well.  By the end of today Hein still wasn’t brave enough to try the filter water; I don’t blame him after being sick on day one though.

At this stage we got news that there was an explosion about 15km away from where we live... That was a bit creepy...  Then we heard that the reason for the checking of the underside of the car was all about in the morning.  Only one person got hurt in the explosion though, and only because he picked up a bag that was just laying around.

Next on the discussion list comes Lunch.  One of the guys recommended that we get Chinese…  Can someone say Irony?...  Anyhow, we decided to go with something we know, easy and surprisingly expensive - KFC.  I tried the hot chicken… SA we are not doing too bad on the hot food front, actually I think we might be winning.  The guys who went to get the KFC asked me to drive with them… on a bike.  I don’t think that they don’t know what they are doing, but I still declined the offer.  We might fall not due to the driver or the road, but due to me crunching the driver’s neck if I get a fright.

I am skipping through to the next session of eating, as the rest of the day was just a “try to get the connection working day”.

“Where would you like to have dinner?”  The driver said with a slightly frightened stare.  Yes that’s right we scare some of the guys here.  We don’t really know the places so we asked for his opinion and to make the choice “not too Indian” (nothing wrong with saying that to an Indian man…) LOL.  He made an awesome choice though.  He took us to a place called “Barbeque Nation”.  The place is awesome it has a Casino theme and dinner is a buffet.  You start off with a starter (which you braai in your table).  They only stop bringing the starters when you lower the flag… or if they think you don’t know what the flag means they keep on brining the starters…  Needless to say we didn’t even get to mains, too… much… starters…  Of course we had to end with desert, that was just awesome, nothing spicy and nothing strong just good old Chocolate (maybe some tiramisu also but who counts).

We asked the driver to be there to pick us up at 8pm… we only finished at 8h30 (sorry mister driver but the food was just too awesome).  We plan on taking all the managers there when they come here for their visits.

The day ended shortly after the four of us sitting on the stoep and having a cup of coffee and lots of laughs.  Kaishni shared some secrets; I think she already regrets sharing them though.  And Hein is feeling a ton better (he said so it’s not me making an assumption).

I also saw the first spider this side tonight.  It was a beautiful (beautiful relative to spiders of course) little white one; it kind of resembled a sharp edged pebble.

That’s day two guys.  I hope I didn’t forget anything.

That is the end of the actual day 2.

-this was thought through on many levels including novice and beginner.