I slept late today.

I went in to the office around 8:30. Check the equipment, and found everything jammed up.... had to resolve that problem.

I proceeded to compress and copy to disk the test data. I didn't have enuf disks!

I had some free time before the re-start of testing, so one of my co-workers and I walked about 10 minutes to a dry-cleaner/laundry. I didn't really like having the guy there drag my dirty underwear out onto the table to count every sock, but 5 days worth of clothes are gonna cost the company 144 Rand or about $26 to launder. I need to pick it up tomorrow between 5 and 5:45 PM.

We then stopped at "Dion's" which looks like a small version of half a K-mart. I don't remember clothes, but they had electronics and hardware, even refrigerators and BBQ's, other branches of the store sells guns. I got some more disks.

Back in time to restart the data taking.

One of my co-workers was preparing a trip to Mozambique or Tanzania or someplace.

After finishing up there, I asked the company's receptionist to help me find a cab. From memory, she called a number, and her part of the conversation included, "oh, you're at home today...", Turns out, all these cab drivers have a cell-phone (I had previously noticed it) and write their personal name and number on the space provided on the company business card. That way, you can call the taxi company and wait an hour, or you can call you favorite driver (the guy who drove me yesterday, her first choice, and who I tipped better than average becuz I didn't have a smaller bill, normally hangs around the taxi stand at a nearby hotel, and today was his day off) she tried another number, of a guy working in a different area today, so I walked back to the hotel, ate some Droewors (dry sausage) I had bought before, I didn't want a big lunch, it was now near 1, in case I had to eat a large, early dinner. From the hotel, I caught a cab to the other office, I got the guy's card and told him if I needed him, I'd call.

I walked into my new office and found another guy in there at his computer, turns out, he's from the Belgium office and is in SA for vacation and decided to stop by the local office to say hello and check his email. I checked my answering machine and ended up getting invited to lunch with several co-workers, including the guy from Belgium,

A coupla guys from the office took me with them to "Vodaworld" kind'uva mall made up of "Cellular-One" stores. Literally, it was a mall built by one of the two big cell-phone companies, it was full of stores, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, a software store (with a BIG Yebo display), a cafe, a theatre, and meeting rooms (for product announcements) Everything was cellphone stuff! Voda-world is way up in the north, kinda out in the country, there was a yard with horsed nearby, and a house on a large several acre lot with NO SECURITY FENCE OR BARBED WIRE!!!!

My friend asked the guy in the Nokia (http://www.nokia.com/) internet store to show me the New 8810!. What a COOL phone!!! its sort of "chrome" plated, looks like a cigarette lighter, longer than a closed startac, but not by much, the bottom covering the keys slides down (I saw other european phones like that) it has a built in alarm-calender and can be programmed via infra-red and your computer. Battery lasts up to 133 hr standby!!!

Over lunch, my friend demonstrated the SMS "short message service" feature of GSM phones. You can go into a menu in your phone and using the number keys, compose a message of up to 160 characters, then dial a GSM number and press send, the other phone acts just like a pager! Apparently is MUCH cheaper than a phone call. That explains why I noticed NO-ONE carrying a pager in this country. Although they were offered for sale in the vodaworld stores.

I turned on my Motorola Star-TAC 130 GSM yesterday when I woke up, I forgot to charge it or even turn it off last night, now its 10:30, its been on 40 hours, I've made 5 or 10 calls! Wow! and its a smaller battery than in my US analog star-tac which would be dead in 10 hours!

Interesting that I come to the "Dark Continent" to observe communications technology more advanced than anything I had seen at home. [Before I finish getting these web pages updated upon my return, I will have bought not one, but 2, count'em 2 digital CDMA phones!]

A young employee in the office who appeared to be of indian descent (there's a lot of those here in SA) was bragging about just getting a driver's license. This individual had been driving to work with no license for some time,  didn't even bother buying a black market license like I had read about. Apparently, the license exam in SA is quite complex, including being observed scanning the 3 rear-view mirrors, etc.

I needed to get back to the other office for the 4 o'clock meeting. So I bummed a ride from the newly licensed co-worker.

Stayed till about 6, and found a message when I got back to the hotel. The message was placed as I was racing back to the meeting, they were looking for me! Apparently some-one didn't get the message that I use the cell-phone if I'm awake and the phone in the hotel room is (and it was in this instance) useless for getting in touch with me since I'm not often here (unless I'm asleep).

Observation: Soda cans seem to be heavier when empty here than at home, I think ours are stamped to thinner wall thickness.

I've turned on CNN nearly every night to see what's going on. They replay the same stories over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and if I ever get my hands on Ted Turner!!!! I finally had to turn that dumb thing off! I think I can quote stories about hurricane Mitch verbatim.

One local hand-crafted art-work is wire sculpture. Locals, many of them Rastafarians, make figurines out of wire, I had seen a few items, and The wife of my Shooting friend recommended I get something, she considers it uniquely South Africa, The guy from the office who took me to Vodaworld gave me and our Belgian colleague "cell-phones", while out driving, we saw a guy on the street corner selling ones just like it, he had picture of Haile Salassie around his neck.

There are vendors and beggers on curbs and between the traffic lanes on many major intersection, some of them sell items as diverse a fruit, or tubes of superglue, or trash-bags in addition to the aforementioned wire sculpture. Some are just beggers. All that I had seen till this point were black, I later saw whites begging too.