Jo’burg and back

 

I visited Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg on Friday with Noora. The two hours spent there gave just a scratch on the subject, so another round on Saturday with my young scientist colleague Nathaniel from the US was well justified. The whole place reminded me of a museum I visited some years ago with Jaakko, the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Both in the impressive architectures and the histories themselves: high unemployment of the ruling population, fear of mixing of populations, desire of ‘racial’ purity, geographical segregation (ghettos vs. townships), both happened in the 20th century, nationalist ideology etc. The apartheid in South Africa didn’t reach a ‘Final Solution’ like Nazi Germany, but I think otherwise the similarities are clear. A frightening distinction, though, is that the apartheid ended (officially) just about twenty years ago.

Nathaniel and I drove back to Bloemfontein on Saturday afternoon. He had been driving around with a friend and  was now also returning, so I also got a cheap option to make my way back. A week’s holiday was well earned and did good. I’m almost eager to start working tomorrow again.

I escorted Noora to the O.R. Tambo International airport on Friday evening and looked her disappear behind the security control (sob). It’d be fun if you would be able to go with all the way to the transport, as is the case with trains and buses (with the wonderful possibility of having a surprise trip to somewhere – although is this case it would have caused a bit too much trouble). It felt kind of funny to talk to and see her through Skype already today, as she just left yesterday evening and had travelled several thousands of kilometres to the Northern side of the globe. Anyway, it was very nice to be able to do that.

Sometimes SMS’s seem not to get through here (locally and globally). I discussed this with Jonas, and the only plausible theory we made up was that the local operators drop some messages on purpose to reduce load on their servers. Maybe.

A bug