As mentioned in my previous post…the opening weekend was kiiiiiiiinda hectic. So I took the opportunity again on Monday to slow my roll a bit. I spent the day at home relaxing (but not in my pajamas cos they got stolen on Friday), writing things up for the blog, and playing with orange-clad baby Nicholas. My new Algerian friends tried to coax me out to Hatfield, but I had to say no. In that respect there is not much to report from the road on World Cup soccer J
The games today were: Holland vs. Denmark, Cameroon vs. Japan, Paraguay vs. Italy. Holland, Japan, and Italy/Paraguay were the victors today. I enjoyed the Cameroon vs. Japan game the most, although I wish Cameroon would have won. They put out a nice effort in the 2nd half, but the Japanese goalie was the bomb. Ross went to go see the Holland vs. Denmark game at Soccer City in Soweto and it sounded like he had a good time. He took a train/shuttle thing there and said it went off pretty well without a hitch. He did say that they ran out of water part of the way through the game (sounds dangerous…i.e. Woodstock 99 dangerous) but other than that it sounded like a good time.
Ross’s birthday is coming up soon and he just got a nice flat screen TV for his birthday present. Well-timed for World Cup viewing, no doubt. So it has been nice to watch the games at home so far. Mostly I just keep the sound down but for the Japan vs. Cameroon game I had the sound up and was treated with the frequent mispronunciation of “vuvuzela” by the commentator. “Vuvuzela” turned into “vuvuzwela” a few times in that match. Ha ha ha ha.
Also to note on watching the games on TV is the digital juice it takes to make it all happen. Look, internet in South Africa is not the best. This can be attributed to a number of things: Telkom’s government monopoly on telecommunication services, finite bandwidth available to the continent of Africa, and maybe some other things my tech-saavy mind knows nothing about. Broadband services are at a premium here and if you want them you will pay out the nose for them. This is improving incrementally and I can say that in the time I have spent here I have seen better services available for people to get the internet in their home. At Helen and Ross’s we do have wireless internet in the house, but that is a pretty rare thing. It is almost impossible to find wifi hotspots in the community. I even know people that STILL have modems in their house…now THAT is old school.
In a roundabout way…what I am getting at is that in order for the matches to be broadcast on HDTV, the internet juice for the whole country is really really being taxed. Not so much that it will break or anything, but just try loading facebook or an internet page during a match. Good fucking luck. Maybe by the end of the 1st half you will have part of the page loaded.
Phone lines have also been a bit taxed since World Cup started. I don’t normally have problems with reaching people on my phone, but I’ve had to redial a few times since the World Cup started. The official sponsor of the World Cup is MTN (a South African company w/branches in many African countries) but it seems that Vodacom is trying to get a piece of the pie however they can. My friend Ramsey said that at the airport they were just giving out Vodacom SIM cards for use while the travelers were here. I found that very very interesting. Media reports here have voiced concerns that the whole system might crash in the face of increased traffic, but let’s not get all “the sky is falling” here if we don’t have to.
This finite capacity is something that we don’t know much about in the USA…and not just in an internet sense of the word. I am grateful for the chance to understand the limitations of consumption and availability in the way that I have known them in South Africa. This broadband broadcasting issue is just one example, but I have experienced this many times from booking a bus ticket at peak travel times to times when there is a shortage of Coca Cola in the country because of a shortage of carbonation ingredients. I have even seen cement shortages here. Serious…how do you run out of cement? Sometimes there just isn’t enough of something here. It would do us well in the USA to have to learn this lesson of shortage and want. Sometimes you can’t always get what you want…
Hugs everyone and hope you are all enjoying World Cup!
Hasta manana…when Bafana Bafana plays in Pretoria!
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