Conversions and Move Date

Conversions
My wife and I are starting to look for cars.  I was really excited about buying a nice little diesel powered four wheel drive adventure vehicle but reality is setting in.   They are just too expensive in South Africa.  A Ford Ranger should not sell for the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars and I'm not paying forty thousand for a used one.  We are starting to look at passenger vehicles and we are having trouble evaluating them.  By far the biggest obstacles are all the conversions.  First we have to convert the price of the car from Rand to Dollars.  We have come to the conclusion that cars in South Africa are severely overpriced.  Once we convert currency and determine if we may be able to afford a specific vehicle, we have to convert all the other metrics used to describe a car.  The fuel economy metric is a bit tricky.  First we have to mentally convert gallons to liters, miles to kilometers, and finally miles per gallon to liters per 100 kilometers.  Performance metrics like horsepower and foot pounds of torque need to be converted to kilowatts and newton meters.  In order to accomplish all of this I might write a series of formulas in Microsoft Excel.  For now I have a web browser open for each of those conversions.  My wife and I are starting to think about buying a used BMW 3 series, hopefully a 335i.

Move Dates

Flights
Oh, it looks like we finally have a move date.  The movers will be coming soon and we only have a few more weekends in the United States.  If everything goes well, we will be flying for two days with very limited layovers.  Our dogs should leave the same day we do but arrive a day after we do since they will be spending a day at the doggy hotel in Amsterdam.  This trip should be better than my three day ordeal, with a twelve hour layover at Heathrow, I suffered through when I went down for my interview.    

The Movers
 
When I talked with the American liaison for the moving company he was very surprised that the South African company didn't contact me about moving my motorcycle.  According to him he said that he brought it up with the South African company and they said they would take care of it. This is not reassuring. Unlike him, I am not surprised that nobody contacted me about this. I can't wait till one of my questions is adequately answered from any of the agencies I have to deal with for this move.  I'm really starting to doubt whether Helga (my motorcycle) will be shipped to Africa.

The Five P’s

When I was a private, I was instructed to memorize several phrases or bits of information that I should know. I wrote this information on a piece of paper, laminated it, and carried this list in the cargo pocket of my right pants leg until my ETS date.  Some of these bits of information on my list might include the maximum effective range of my rifle for both a point and an area target, or the five paragraphs of an Op Order.  The phrase that this post is about was called The Five P’s.  The Five P’s is an acronym which stood for Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.  Failure to have this phrase or any of the other information on the list memorized would result in corrective training, more affectionately known as being smoked.

Getting smoked usually involved alternating between several exercises including, but not limited to, inclined pushups, flutter kicks, motorcycle riding, and the peeping tom.   If your leader was in a who wants to quit mood the exercises were alternated when your body could no longer perform the exercise correctly or your leader was tired of it.  Inclined pushups are the same as normal pushups except you have your feet resting on your sink, your bed, or any other available object. If you’re in formation this object might be your ruck sack or a fellow Ranger might hold up your legs while you’re getting smoked.  These types of pushups were a favorite and if the leader was not in a who wants to quit mood, you would only have to do twenty-five of them plus one for the Army, one for the 75^th Ranger Regiment, one for 1^st battalion, one for Alpha company, and finally one for the Airborne Ranger in the Sky for a total of thirty pushups.  In my time and squad, my Airborne Ranger in the Sky was PFC Maynard; a young man who died during the invasion of Grenada who was in my antitank squad.  If I was in 3^rd battalion my Airborne Ranger in the Sky would have been one of the Rangers who died in Somalia. 

If my leader trying to find out if I wanted to quit, I might be busy until he got tired and entail alternating between the other exercises. Doing flutter kicks was usually next and was an exercise where you would lay on your back, place your hands under your rear end, extend your legs, and move them up and down, between six and twelve inches away from the floor, at a set cadence (1, 2, 3, 1; 1, 2, 3, 2; 1,2,3, 4…).  The motorcycle is a more imaginative exercise where you sit with your back against the wall, with nothing under your rear end.  To make it interesting, the person in charge of smoking you has you extend your arms so it looks like you are riding a motorcycle and tells you to make motorcycle sounds (vroom, vroom).   The person may even ask you to give it more throttle or change gears. At this point you are supposed to twist your hand to give the motorcycle more throttle or pull in the clutch with your left hand and make appropriate adjustments to your sound effects.  My personal favorite exercise was the peeping tom.  In this exercise you are playing the part of a peeping tom and the person smoking you is playing the look out.  For the start position you hang from your foot locker, door, or anything which may act as a pull up bar.  You stay in the start position with your arms extended until the lookout says “she doesn’t see you”.  When this phrase is said you perform a pull up and hold yourself up until he says “she sees you”.   This pattern alternates until the smoker gets tired.

All this is done to motivate you to memorize The Five P’s: proper planning prevents poor performance.  To this day I still remember The Five P’s, maximum effective range of my M-4, and quite a bit of information on the list I carried in my right cargo pocket.  I guess the teaching technique worked and had the side effect of getting me in shape.  When it comes to the information on that list, most of it I can’t use in my current life.  The type of rounds available for an M-3 Carl Gustav is not useful, but The Five P’s are.

I would like to implement The Five P’s when it comes to planning our move to Cape Town.  Unfortunately, I don’t have enough information to do the proper planning so I could prevent poor performance from occurring.  I can’t believe that I still don’t know when my move date is.  Every time I ask my contact in South Africa about the move date, the person replies with something like “I can’t know that until you have your work permit in hand.”  Once that is complete I ask the question again and the person replies with “That can’t be known until they have all the movers’ estimates.”  At this point, timing seems very important.  For example, in order to move our pets, we need to pay for blood tests which take weeks to complete and are only good for thirty days from the day of their blood draw.  This leaves both a narrow time-frame, two weeks, and weeks of prior planning.  In addition, these blood tests are expensive, costing us approximately $1,500.   Any misstep in planning will force us to waste this amount of money and pay for the same blood tests a second time, plus their pain and suffering.

This isn’t the first time that I have felt that there is a lack of communication about the move.  I spent the last few weeks of December stressing out, thinking I had to be ready to teach on February 8^th.  The following questions were racing through my head.  Were we going to make it to Africa in time?  What will happen if we don’t make it?  Will I be violating my contract?  Will this negate my contract?  Did my wife quit her job for nothing?  I tried asking these questions and the only answer they gave me was something such as “most administrators will be off until mid-January so we can’t answer that question.”  This answer was not reassuring.   I finally just wrote the head of my department and was told that he didn’t expect me to get there until sometime mid-semester.  That information would have been nice to know when I was having mini heart attacks back in December. 

Housing Update

The god of "things will work themselves out" has been kind to my wife and I this week.  Yesterday morning I woke up at my usual time, six in the morning. The reason I wake up at this ungodly hour is to read emails originating in South Africa, and still have enough time to reply before the author of the email is done with the workday.  Well this particular morning I received some good news.  The university suddenly has a dog friendly house available for us.  The picture above is a photo of the house. My wife and I are both excited and relieved that we have a place to move to.  I actually remember seeing this little house during the interview process and remember thinking that it would be nice to live in this neighborhood.  It also makes the move with our dogs much less complicated.

Work Permits

A big step in this move is complete.  The work permit was holding up almost everything, to include the move date.  Without that move date you can't buy plane tickets, know when to ship household goods, or when to have the dogs' blood tested.  Now we should be able to proceed and I suspect that the pace will start picking up.

Motorcycle Box- On another note I went to the local BMW shop and asked if I could buy one of the crates the motorcycles come in.  According to the mechanic I talked to all of the crates are exactly the same whether its a 650 cc dirt bike or the R1200GS adventure model. They said I could have one and that they will be leaving the crates out by the dumpsters.  I  will be picking one up later. 

Week of Dentist Appointments

Years of not going to the dentist on a regular basis has caught up with me.  My wife has decided to make up for lost time by scheduling four appointments within one week; two days of deep cleaning and two days of filling cavities.  Last Friday, I completed day one of this tetralogy and my gums and my jaw joint are still a little sore.  I'm not looking forward to the next few days, but I plan on completing my wife's plan of action.  The only reason a root canal is not on this list of procedures is because I might be moving to Cape Town before the crown is made. 

My wife questioned if I should put this information on the blog.  She said "you might gross people out" and have everyone think that my teeth are rotting out of my mouth.  If this grosses you out, I'm sorry, its just one more thing I'm doing before the big move and consider it part of preparation.  Kind of like the immunization schedule I went through during December.  I'm sure Cape Town is full of great dentists, however, the last thing I want to happen is developing a tooth problem in the first few months in South Africa.    

Why haven't I gone to the dentist in years?  Well, during the last decade I have been a student and The University of Arizona doesn't offer dental coverage.  In addition, I never liked going to the dentist.  When I was a kid my parents were poor and rarely took to me to the dentist.  On the rare occasion that I had the opportunity to sit in a dentist's chair I was already in severe pain due to a toothache.   On one of those occasions, the dentist wanted to extract a molar.  I refused to even let the man inject my gums with anesthesia let alone pull it.  To avoid having this man enter my mouth and cause pain, I offered to pull it myself.  My guess is that I wanted to have control of the pain.  He squirted some topical anesthetic and handed me some strange looking pliers and I pulled it out.  He congratulated me and told me that I might want to become a dentist.  I didn't follow his advice. 

My next memorable dentist visit happened when I was in the U.S. Army.  I was in the field when one of my wisdom teeth was causing a severe tooth ache.  It hurt and swelled up so bad that the medic decided to have me taken out of the field.  They ended up taking me to an overworked army dentist with a long line of patients.  I had already spent a week in the field before this visit and I'm sure he didn't appreciate my stench.  He did make a comment like "Army Ranger, tough guy?".  When he said this, I knew this was going to be a bad day.  He ended up pulling out my nasty wisdom tooth seconds after he injected my gums.  Needless to say, the extraction was very painful and I sat there wishing I had my M-4 and it was loaded.  The pain subsided when I was standing up, a mouth full of cotton, and my mouth was finally numbing.  I think he was a little impatient and started pulling before the pain medication really kicked in.  After this experience, I really disliked dentists and didn't want to pay for an experience I disliked unless I really had to. 

Hopefully, my new job offers good coverage and I learn to go to the dentist more regularly and prevent painful situations.

Saying Goodbye and Vehicles

My wife and I have started saying goodbye to people we will likely not see again before we leave for Cape Town.  Yesterday we said goodbye to my sister and my niece and today we said goodbye to my wife's grandmother.  Although we might see my sister if she decides to visit, we will likely not see my wife's grandmother until we come back to the states for a visit.  It's difficult to think about how very far away we will be from our loved ones.  I truly hope this move won't be too difficult for either of us.

On another note, looking at vehicles on the internet which we might want to purchase in South Africa is both exciting and discouraging.  Currently I'm very interested in the variety of small 4X4's available with diesel engines.  Not only because they are not available in the US but because the little diesels should perform well off-road.  However, the cost of these vehicles in South Africa is discouraging.  When a Ford Ranger costs more than a full size truck, it makes me think that I will be driving a Hyundai Accent or an equivalent vehicle.  I'll be stuck in Cape Town and won't be going on safari on the weekends.    

First Going Away Party

Today my wife and I had our first going away party.  I spent the afternoon eating steak and talking with my wife's coworkers.   For once, the conversation was not centered around work; I don't think I heard anything about clients or complaints about paperwork.  It was kind of refreshing. 

Somehow, it doesn't feel like we are really moving from Tucson.  This feeling is probably due to the fact that we still do not know when we are leaving.  We are still waiting for approval of a work permit.  Currently, our packet is at the South African Consulate General in Los Angeles and according to the administrators at UCT we should hear by Monday.  The reason for this Monday estimate is that our paperwork packet was delivered a week ago and UCT claims it takes them about a week.  I hope the Martin Luther King doesn't extend the time it takes to process our paperwork and that there are no problems with the paperwork.  Moving may have felt more real to my wife since she already quit her job and is saying good bye to them professionally.  

My Motorcycle

One of my favorite possessions is my 1995 BMW R1100GS motorcycle.  I have had dreams about riding that motorcycle in Africa for years.  This dream ranks up there with a Tierra Del Fuego ride which I have yet to go on.  Since UCT is not paying for the move of any vehicles, I assumed that I was going to have to sell her (her name is Helga).   I just talked with the second moving company who said that the cost of shipping Helga along with my household goods would not be much and that I could pay that extra cost out of my own pocket.  I'm starting to let myself get a little exited about this possibility.

Call me doctor?

On the 12th I successfully defended my dissertation, bringing me one step closer to moving to Cape Town.  In doing so, I guess I earned a new title (Dr.) and have a few more letters (PhD) to add to my name.  This day will be memorable for other reasons.  After a long morning, I then decided to volunteer for the Together We Thrive event held at The University of Arizona.  After waiting for hours, I ended up being tasked with providing information to people waiting in line to see President Obama speak at McKale (the university's basketball stadium).  Mostly, I told people what they can and cannot bring into the stadium. The line I worked on, there were two of them, was very long and probably stretched over a kilometer.  
             The interaction with so many people was both challenging and uplifting.  Most people were very nice and thankful that people volunteered and were helping out, while others wanted to argue.  The uplifting part was nice, given the sadness and disgust I felt over the previous few days.  These feelings caused by the tragedy which took place in Tucson last Saturday which will be difficult to forget.  The biggest problem I encountered was probably caused by the media saying small purses were OK to bring.  I've come to the conclusion that my idea of what a small purse might be is very different than what most women think the phrase small means when it comes to purses.  Luckily, someone over the radio gave me an objective measure of what small meant and this angered many people.  The objective measure was a compact digital camera bag.  Having to tell women who have been standing in line for a few hours that their small duffel bags they were carrying would probably prevent them from entering the stadium was not fun.  I had one old lady even curse at me while quoting the news.  I think the phrase was "I don't think you know what the f*&k you are talking about, the news said small purses were OK". How do you respond to that?
     After a long day working the lines and talking to people, I didn't even get to enter McKale.  I ended up watching the event, along with the thousands who didn't fit and instead watched from the stands of the football stadium on the Jumbo Tron. It was quite an impressive show of unity for our town.  I heard someone say that McKale seats 15,000 people.  Add that to over half of the football stadium (not counting the upper deck)  filling up, I would estimate at least twenty to thirty thousand people came to the event.   I really liked the president's speech and agree with others that it might have been one of his best yet.

I think this was a good way to spend my day. 

Work Permit

The last few days have been trying ones.  One of Tucson's congressional representatives and nineteen others were shot.  I spent a good portion of the weekend reading and watching television reports on this tragedy.  After watching the shooter's Youtube videos, I think he sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic. I really do hope Gabrielle Giffords and the rest of the wounded recover.

In an attempt to get out of this crappy mood I spent some quality time with my two nieces and my little sister.  It worked.  Today I also sent a $344 dollar cashiers check to the South African Consulate General in Los Angeles California.  I wonder how long it will take to get the permit issued?  We noticed that Etta has an abscessed tooth and will be taking her to the veterinarian on Friday.

Dissertation Submitted and Dog Crates

I submitted my dissertation yesterday.  I wish I could say that the light is at the end of the tunnel, but there is still so much work to do.  I have to defend it next Wednesday, and I will likely have revisions to write and resubmit to the committee.  Upon final approval by the committee I still have to submit it to the University.  All this has to happen before I leave for Cape Town.  This doesn't count all the moving to South Africa related work which needs to be done.  Nevertheless, I did have a few celebratory beverages with my fellow researchers in the lab; when we ran out of beverages in the lab we continued celebrating at the Aulde Dubliner on University Avenue.  Some of the pressure has decreased as of yesterday.  Not only did I submit my dissertation, I also found out that I don't have to start teaching in early February.  The people at the University failed to mention that the department foresaw me arriving in Cape Town after the beginning of the semester and planned around that.

  The pictures below are my girls getting acclimated to their brand new travel crates.

Housing Woes

We found out the other morning that UCT does not have any pet friendly housing available.  Needless to say, my wife and I are very upset.  I waited too long to contact the person in charge of accomadations.   Now we are in an unenviable position of finding suitable housing from an ocean away or not take our dogs.  In other news, I'm scheduled to turn in my dissertation today.  Can't wait until this is finished.  I also found out that the university was not expecting me to make it in time to start teaching in February. 

GoGo

GoGo has now been missing for two days.  My mother in law called the local dog pound and he wasn't there, and my wife and my phone number are on his collar and nobody has called us.  Even I, am starting to lose hope that he is alive and well. 

Thoughts

The last post was about the new year and it started a string of thoughts.  I just realized that the 2000's was a rather unadventurous decade for me.  Besides starting college, meeting my wife, and being accepted to graduate school, the decade was rather uneventful.  I'm sure I could have finished school a few years ago.  I guess it was rather easy to get comfortable going to school and being hypnotized by the steady rhythm of that life, get up, go to school, come home, and repeat.  Not to say that I don't consider my collegiate exploits accomplishments, not every kid growing up below the poverty line gets to go to college much less graduate school, but somehow they don't seem to count as great adventures.  This perception of not counting college as an adventurous activity is probably rooted in the idea that most people in this country of any means just expect their kids to just do that. Looking back, it seems like the last big adventure I took was in 1995 when I joined the army and served as an infantryman in the 75th Ranger Regiment.

That ended in 1999, I think I'm overdue for one. 

Snafu #1 GoGo

We can't afford to take all three of our dogs with us, so my wife and I decided to leave the oldest  behind with her mother.  He is a seventeen year old Jack Russell Terrier and he just left for his new home in New Mexico two days ago.  Unfortunately, we found out that he broke out of his new home and is now lost.  I really hope he survives the cold winter night and is found tomorrow.

Good luck buddy!

GoGo, before he left to New Mexico.

January 1, 2011

A new year bigins, and it should be an interesting one for me and my family.  In less than two weeks I defend my dissertation, by the end of the month we should be moving to Cape Town, South Africa, and in early February I should start teaching at the University of Cape Town.  To be honest, I am simultaneously excited and frightened about what the coming year might hold for me and my family. 

I'll keep you posted.