Today (by which I really mean “the preceding 24 hours”) was a pretty interesting day. After arriving last night, I met up with Glenn in the luggage area and cleared customs. South Africa allows you to import firearms, as long as you have a permit. Unfortunately, I left mine all at home. The airport is cavernous and was almost deserted when we arrived; most of the international flights arrive early in the morning. While waiting for luggage, I’d tested my Verizon “world phone” SIM. Of course, it didn’t work. I then stopped off at the Vodacom booth to check the SIM. Nope, it didn’t work in their phone either. Sensing a pattern, I borrowed Glenn’s phone to let Arlene know I’d made it, then resolved to contact Verizon later.
We got to our hotel, the Mercure Midrand, about 40 minutes later. Unfortunately, it was dark, so we didn’t see any of the city (except billboards– which are no more exotic here than anywhere else). Midrand is a city of about 240,000 people nestled between Johannesburg and Pretoria. The hotel was about what I expected; it used to be a Best Western, so the small but comfortable room was no surprise. What did surprise me was the fact that the hotel is ringed with a 7′ fence with an electric fence on top of that. Security-conscious bunch! That’s to be expected given that the area of Midrand where the hotel is is primarily a commercial and industrial area. There are lots of folks about at night, and not all of them have good intentions. Surprisingly, some 200,000 of Midrand’s residents live in two black townships comprising 7% of the incorporated land area.
Glenn and I struggled with the lobby’s alleged wireless Internet before giving up. I wangled the desk clerk into letting me use his computer in the hotel office; with a little plug magic, I soon had my laptop open, called Verizon, and asked why my SIM wouldn’t work.To abbreviate the discussion, the answer is “it only works if you have a Verizon global phone”. Oops. Skype works fine, luckily, so I was able to call them in the first place.
I got up this morning about 0730, had a delicious hotel breakfast, and hooked up with the newly-arrived Jim McBee. Our first order of business was to get the right kind of power adapters– turns out that the “type M” style that I’d bought were the wrong kind. We had a nice walk up the street to The Boulders, a shopping center whose chief claim to fame seems to be a very large collection of boulders on the lower level. On either side of the street, there were little stalls selling fruit, candy,various kinds of counterfeit goods, and other things that we weren’t actually looking for. No one was unfriendly, but we did get some semi-hostile glares. At The Boulders, we found an electronics shop (no luck), a sort of WalMart-like discounter (no luck), and a car stereo store (bingo!) I bought some food for the kids (including some Simba potato chips and some assorted unusual candies).
The wireless Internet still wasn’t working, so I rebooted the access point– and voilà! that fixed it! For the rest of the afternoon, I worked, punctuated only by a visit from the local ward’s bishop, Mike Perry. He was an absolutely fascinating guy– he runs African Reptiles and Venom, a sort of one-stop snake superstore. Mike breeds and sells several varieties of reptiles, collects venom for use in antivenom sera, puts on corporate events and kiddie shows, and so on. We really enjoyed speaking to him, and I promised to look him up if I ever come back. In fact, I’d like to hire him; one of the team-building events he does is called “Fear Factor”. The victim, errr, contestant gets to put their head into a glass tank full of (non-venomous) snakes, then retrieve a piece of fruit from the tank using their teeth. What a way to build esprit de corps: “start acting like a team or I’ll bring Mike Perry back here again!”
For lunch, we went next door to Steers, a local fast-food chain, then it was back to the hotel for more work. We ended the day with a visit to the conference venue, which is huge! Jim has room for about 700 people in the room where he’ll be presenting; I haven’t seen my room yet, but it probably won’t be that big. More tomorrow; now I’m off to bed.
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