Fire Update

The fires around San Diego are getting worse. At this stage about 500000 people have been evacuated and 1250 homes have been destroyed. There are several fires around the San Diego area and so far they've burnt about 300000 acres. The really scary thing is that the two biggest fires are hardly contained at all. At this stage they expect one of them to be contained on 31 October at the earliest and who knows about the other one.

The news stations are covering the fires 24 hours a day it seems. I suppose it's a good thing because you can see the vast scale of the fires. There have been pictures of helicopters water bombing the fires and apparently some large cargo planes are expected and will also be able to help with that. Which is a very good thing considering that the one fire was 20 miles long! A national emergency has been declared and apparently Bush himself is coming down to visit on Thursday.

You realise how tragic this fire is when it affects people you know. A while back (maybe a month and a half ago) I was invited to the house of a Rotarian. This was the day after the District's Rotary Foundation Seminar so there were a number of important people in town. He and his wife were hosted a very nice lunch at their beautiful home in Fallbrook for everyone. Fallbrook is directly North of San Diego and slightly inland. It's a very pretty, slightly rural area in that it's a bit out the way. The houses are large and stand on very big properties filled with avocado trees. Everything was very green and lush. Apparently they were evacuated from their house yesterday and don't expect it to be standing when they return.

On my side I haven't been affected much at all. You can smell smoke outside and the horizon is just grey but that's all thankfully. The University is closed for the rest of the week so on Thursday Sarah and I are going to drive up to Bakersfield to visit her parents. Bakersfield is north-west of LA and about 3 and a half hours from San Diego. We're then going to carry on to visit a friend of hers in San Luis Obispo for the weekend. She mentioned something about a Halloween party too so we're going to get costumes tomorrow I think. It should be fun! At least I'm getting to see a bit of California.

Fire!

I don't know if this has made it onto South African news (although it is on the News 24 website), there are huge fires burning in California. More specifically there are several large fires burning around San Diego.

I copied this off one of the news websites to give you an idea of just how huge these fires are. The red area is the burn zone, The little fire symbols are where the fires currently are and the crosses are evac points. Even though we're quite safe (SDSU is somewhere under the 'La Mesa' label on the map), it's still scary.

The news stations have been covering this all day. At this stage 250000 people have been evacuated for the areas surrounding San Diego and it doesn't appear that the fires are going to be stopping anytime soon. A State of Emergency has been declared and good old Arnie is doing his bit and is going around visiting the evacuees.

As far as I can make out the fires are as a result of an incredibly dry summer with virtually no rains and are being driven by strong winds. I heard a report today that a fire had jumped one of the main highways, the I15. When you realise that American highways are concrete monstrosities with at least 6 lanes in each direction, you understand how impressive that is.

I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am fine (just in case you were worried). There's a permanent smell of smoke around and things are quite hazy but aside from that all is good. In fact they're probably better than good because the University was closed at 1pm today and is going to be closed tomorrow too. Something to do with levels of smoke in the air and getting people off the roads so that the evacuees can get to where they need to go. I'm not complaining.

How's this for impressive? The University has these movable electronic signs which they've put up at all the major intersections around the University so that people know what's going on.

It seems we have gone from one extreme to the other here, last week it was cold and it rained! This was a really big thing... I've been told that it hardly every rains in San Diego. Seeing as it is tecnically a desert I suppose that's hardly surprising. Apparently it's rained once or twice since I've been here but I was always asleep at the time and there was no trace of it by the time I woke up.

I'm baaaaack!

I am quite willing to admit that I've been absolutely shocking about posting stuff on here so I must apologise. I decided that today was the day that I was going to start getting everything back into order with my life. Why has everything got out of order? Because I've been busy and it's really hard living on your own! (and admittedly because I've been lazy). My 'to do' list has got to a point when it's looking really scary so I decided that I really had to do something about it.

As for what I've been up to - nothing thrilling unfortunately! I've been being a student, in other words I've been studying! Isn't that peculiar? In my last post I mentioned tests - two of them, international trade and econometrics, went well but microeconomics was shocking! The biggest problem was time and the fact that there was enough of it for only half the paper. It was not fun. We've also had endless assignments, I just handed in another one this evening and have another due next week. It doesn't seem to stop! You'll be pleased to know I am surviving though.

Life is starting to look a bit more fun too - I have a lot of things lined up for the next few weeks. Highlights include going to see an exhibition of the dead sea scrolls, New York and then going to Santa Barbara with my friend Jen for Thanksgiving. No doubt other stuff will crop up too. Hopefully some of the touristy variety!

I think I got my first bout of homesickness this weekend. I was feeling quite sorry for myself! The main protagonist was the Rugby of all things. Why? - because I haven't been able to watch any of it! There's also no one here who I can talk to about it - rugby is a bit lost on my room mate. It just seems that everyone in SA is so into the RWC (as they should be) and I'm feeling left out! I met a guy who plays rugby for SDSU last week in our apartment block's laundry of all places! I think I'm going to find out where he's watching the final and gatecrash...

I think that's about all for now. As I remember interesting stuff from the last few weeks I'll try to remember to post it.

Economics Students

Wow! I have a busy week and a half ahead of me. In this week coming up I have two assignments due and a test and then on the following Monday and Tuesday I have two more tests. What fun! So I thought I'd give you an insight into the day of an Economics masters student. So here's an example of a typical Wednesday

We only arrive on campus in time for our class at noon which is Econometrics lab - ie a practical. The lecturer is rather amusing - he told us in our first prac that he runs the class like a business meeting. We are therefore given an agenda at the start and by the end will have covered all the topics on the agenda, just not necessarily in the same order. It's a fun class! He demonstrates/teaches while we try the same things on our computer. What's really funny is when he makes a mistake and can't work out what's wrong because it's normally something small and stupid but all our programs work! We're essentially learning how to use SAS - a statistical modeling package - at the moment so it's a fairly common occurrence.

We then have a whole bunch of time to kill before our next class so being the responsible, mature Masters students that we are...
We work! Lots of people (like Jen) bring their laptops in their bags to varsity.

We get confused with silly questions (like Jaren) and help each other out! (I'm a fan of working in a group).

And we eat (like Tiffany). All the food places on campus are fast food chains which is nice in some ways because if you're hungry you have a large number of options. Then there's alway the market which stocks fairly similar stuff to a corner cafe - everything!

Of course the other thing we do in our spare time is get bored of working (like me) and so you start taking random photos of your friends!

At about 4pm all my friends disappear off to their class - North American Economics - which I am not taking thankfully. They have 3 books to read and summarise at the moment - not fun! I have office hours. I actually had a student this week so I couldn't update my blog then :-( We have Microeconomics in the evening which is fairly sleep-inducing to put it bluntly. No one should have to concentrate on stuff you're not finding interesting for more than 45mins because after then my eyelids start to droop. I think the biggest problem for me is that I've done everything we're going over at the moment before (and I remember it). You don't need to have a full undergrad degree in economics to do Masters in Economics though and some people have been out of university for a few years so it is important to recap before we move on. But still! It's quite a relief when it's over.

Such is a typical Wednesday and so ends my rather random post.

Baseball

I went to two baseball games in the space of 3 days which I think was very impressive (although truth be told I would rather have been watching the RWC matches which you can't get on TV here unless you pay for it). Anyway, I digress. I think I can safely say that I now know more about baseball than I did before the first game I went to which was on Saturday evening. However, considering that I didn't know much about baseball at all before then, this is not as impressive as it sounds.

The San Diego team is the Padres. I was told they were called that because Franciscan friars founded a Mission in San Diego (hence the reason the one area of San Diego is called Mission Valley). But it turns out that the Padres took their name from the minor league baseball team that they developed from. I have no clue why that team was named the Padres but hey. However, what I did discover is that the Padre's mascot, the Swinging Friar, is "a whimsical takeoff on Father Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who founded the chain of twenty-one original California missions in the late 18th century, starting with Mission San Diego Alcala" (which is in San Diego and is on my list of things to see).

So after that exciting piece of random information here is the Friar (who's very annoying I might add and is nowhere near as cool as Sharky).

The baseball stadium in San Diego, Petco Park, is right in the middle of the downtown area of San Diego. I went down on the trolley special events line which goes straight to the park instead of me having to use 3 different lines (or all the lines in the San Diego trolley system)! It's a bit strange though - you're in the middle of the downtown area with lots of tall buildings etc and the next thing a stadium appears out of nowhere!

I even have photographic proof! It's quite an attractive stadium unlike Qualcomm stadium which is where all the American football matches are held. That's just a huge lump of concrete that rises out of an enormous concrete parking lot.

The game on Saturday evening was a Rotary game in the the match was dedicated to Rotary. I'm still not 100% sure why but I do know that flag court at the stadium is the Rotary flag court. It was dedicated by Rotary District 5340 (ie San Diego) as part of the centennial celebration of Rotary International. It's quite cool - on the main flagpole there's a large Rotary wheel.

There's also a plaque/story on the wall about the flag court. As you will no doubt have noticed, I am wearing a cap. Which I do not normally do. They were free! All 40000 people at the game were given San Diego caps. The Padre's colours are navy and white (hence the white cap - duh!) and the blue blob you can see on the side of the hat is the letters SD. I was very impressed. Sure the cap has the sponsors name on the back but it's still a rather impressive thing to do. The other two people in the photo are from Interact (which is essentially Rotary for school kids). They got to raise the Rotary flag in the flag court before the game started.

The game on Saturday evening was rather confusing. For starters we were rather high up as you can see from the 'view' from our seats. So I was never 100% sure what was going on exactly. The atmosphere in the stadium was amazing though - it was almost completely full! The Padres were playing the San Fransisco Giants so there's a lot of rivalry there. Especially since the Padres old coach joined the Giants this year. I did learn a lot about the rules of the game though. For instance I discovered that the yellow pole you can see in the picture is called the foul pole but if the ball hits the pole it's not foul. This had me confused for a while too! The pole basically separates a legitimate hit from one that's out (not sure of the correct terminology here) so it's sort of like tennis where 'on the line is in' and anything behind the line towards the crowd is not.

We left a bit before the end of the game as Marge didn't want to get caught in the rush of people leaving the stadium and heading for the trolley. I was only too happy to because the game up till that stage had been rather boring. It was what they called a 'pitching duel' where the pitches are too good for any of the players to hit so they just go out. I think the Padre's had one run at that stage. Just as we were leaving one of the Padre's players hit a home run! Well - the drama! Pyrotechnics went off, there was music blasting from the speakers and everyone was on their feet cheering. It was quite a spectacle!

Then on Monday evening I went to the baseball again. A Rotarian I'd met the previous weekend had season tickets but wasn't able to go to Monday's game but asked if I'd like to. Of course, I was only too happy to go! I took my friend Danielle who's from Canada. I met her at the International Student Centre orientation at the start of varsity. It's great because even though she looks and sounds like an American (in my opinion anyway) she's just as keen as I am to do touristy things.

We were such tourists at this game! Besides the large amount of photo-taking we also bought Padres stuff! I'm quite enamored with my shirt and am very proud that I did not shrink it when I washed it today. Danielle bought the cap.

The Marine band played the Star Spangled Banner on the field before the game as it was in honour of/dedicated to the Marines. They were most impressive. It's quite funny, before each game they announce which players are playing and a picture of them flashes up on the big screen. During the match against the Giants when they flashed up the picture of the Giants' big hitter everyone in the crowd booed. What I couldn't understand is why, when the flashed up the picture of one of the Padre's players, everyone booed again. I later discovered that the player's surname is Kouzmanoff so people weren't booing, they were saying Koooooze! On Monday i could hear the crowd clearly and they were definitely saying Koooze -oops.!

Our seats were most impressive. We were in the very front section right down by the field as you can see from my lovely action shot (the zoom on my camera's not that great I promise)! As a result I enjoyed the game a lot more because I could see what was going on, even though I don't understand all the rules. It was a rather exciting game too. The other team (the Pittsburgh Pirates) was fairly useless and were all out rather quickly each innings. The Padre's were much better and got a good few runs each innings as well as some exciting home runs. The Padres won the game - yay! Now everyone's hoping that they make it into the playoffs.

Apparently I'm an imposter.

I was accused of faking my accent! I couldn't believe it.

Some of the guys from our building belong to a fraternity by the name of Kappa Alpha (or KA for short). So the other night they were heading over there and asked if Sarah and I wanted to come. The frat house is just up the street from our place in what's called 'Fraternity Row'. Apparently the University bought up a block of houses, demolished them and built a whole lot of frat houses next to each other. The frat house has a pretty cool set up - there's a central courtyard with rooms around it. Although how anyone who lives there actually manages to get any work done ever is beyond me! I was chatting to some people then went to have a look round. in the one room I noticed there was a British flag so I asked one of the guys I'd been talking to "Who's British?" To which he replied "You're not British". I said "I know, I'm South African." He said, "No you're not, you weren't talking like that just now, you're faking your accent." I of course protested and even volunteered to show him my passport (which I didn't have with me but that's not the point). However, this was to no avail so I left. I'm thinking the amount of alcohol he'd consumed probably had something to do with it :-)

Birthday Party #2

As I mentioned in my previous post, my birthday coincided with Rosh Hoshannah this year so it was a bit of a non-event. Not much happened at all. Sarah said Happy Birthday to me in the morning and I had a chat to the whole family (Mom, Dad, Brother, Gran and Aunt) on skype but that was about it.

I had an interesting Rosh Hoshannah though. I went to Hillel which is a Jewish student organisation on campus. They had a dinner at their house which is just off campus and then held a service on the campus itself. At the dinner I met a variety of interesting people - one guy asked where I was from to which I replied 'South Africa'. He then asked where in SA (which is all fairly standard, I think I probably get asked this at least once a day) and I said Durban. He then said "Where in Durban?" and I think I must have done a fairly good impression of a goldfish at that stage! No one has asked me that while I've been here so I wasn't expecting it from some random American! Turns out that he spent some time in Durban last year - working on research to do with the new Stadium. So he knows people I'm friends with in Durban - it's such a small world!

Given that Wednesday evening was Rosh Hoshannah I delayed my birthday party till Thursday evening. I invited some of my friends from class as well as the guys from the building over for South African drinks and snacks. Drinks-wise I'd organised some Windhoeks, more Nederberg Chardonnay, Excelsior Cab and Appletizer. There was quite a variety on the food side of things - stuffed peppadews, Safari dried fruit roll, dry wors, samoosas, chilli bites, koeksisters and milk tart. I was quite impressed with my selection! As for how I obtained all of this... that would be telling! (and no I did not bring it with me - could you imagine squashed milk tart in between my t-shirts in my suitcase, yuck!) Although I would like to, I can't lay claim to having made the samoosas, milk tart and koeksisters. They were made by a couple who do South African catering here who I found on the internet. I was very proud of myself for making the chilli bites and the stuffed peppadews though. I must confess that I did manage to kill a spoon in the process - no one told me that you shouldn't put non-stick cooking implements into hot oil! We now have an interestingly-textured cooking spoon!

I only finish lectures on a Thursday at 6:30pm so my university friends and I just walked over to my apartment after class. When I walked into the apartment I got such a nice surprise - Sarah and the boys had decorated it!

It was so pretty! There were streamers across the ceiling and helium Happy Birthday balloons all over. They'd even put a Happy Birthday banner up on the wall! It was such a lovely surprise! They'd also all signed a card for me. It made me feel very special.

The Windhoek was definitely the star of the evening - all of the guys agreed that it was good! Most of the guys drink light beer here but it's strange - US light beer is light in term of carbohydrates and calories not alcohol like in SA. I thought that the alcohol contained all the calories so I'm a bit confused.

Generally people were rather scared of the food. They're all sissies! I persuaded everyone to try a bit of dry wors. I'd cut it up into really small bits so it wasn;t too intimidating. The problem was he everyone thought I was saying 'try some dry horse'! Which added to the sceptisim I think.
The samoosas went down well. Anuar from the 1st floor and Dave from the apartment below us enjoyed theirs. Some people found them a little spicy, particularly the potato ones, which I found a bit strange as people here eat tonnes of chilli with their Mexican food. The thing is that I tried them and they had virtually no bite. Not that it matters much - they still vanished!

Almost everything else disappeared as well (with the exception of the dry 'horse'). The general consensus was the the stuffed peppadews were 'bomb' which means really good I think. The name chilli bites scared people initially but they too disappeared - they were already half gone by the time I took this pic! Sarah wanted to hide the dried Apricot roll she liked it so much. The koeksisters were really sweet - literally dripping in syrup! There was some milk tart left over so I kept a piece for marge. who liked it very much.

So all in all I think it was a great success! I certainly enjoyed myself and all the guys thanked me profusely. Below is a random selection of pictures and people from the party.

Hien and Lindsay - friends from economics. Please note the tumbler for wine! We ran out of wine glasses. Not that that's surprising seeing as we only have 3!

Jaren - the son of Dad's best friend from University who's also in my Economics classes. He was lucky - he got a wine glass!

Ted from the floor above pointing at his cousin Scott, from the ground floor, for some unknown reason! In the background is Sarah and Pasha who lives on the floor below. We tried to persuade him to have a pic taken all evening but it didn't work - so there's only a distance shot of him!

Cheers! Jen from Economics and Anuar from the ground floor. I met Jen at orientation - she came up to me and told me that she'd been to South Africa and had really enjoyed it. Turns out she did what's called 'Semester at Sea' where they literally spend 6 months of university travelling around on a cruise ship. How cool it that?

So that would be pretty much it! All in all a really good birthday!