I'll miss you SO much!

Given that I will be leaving my alma mater, Wits, in the not-too-distant future, I have been thinking a lot about how much it has meant to me to be part of it. The other day, while on the hunt for food, I was reminded of one of the more fun aspects of Wits' charm: The quirky promotions that seem to happen on campus on a regular basis. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to snap a few on my phone, before the promo broke up!

Where else in the world am I  likely to encounter giant walking fruit on my lunch break?!

I'm not entirely sure why the giant fruit were hiding under black sheets, especially seeing as it is the middle of summer in Johannesburg (usually around 30 degrees centigrade in the shade at this time of day...). The one on the left is a giant lichi, in case you're wondering...

Behold, the giant granadilla! You can also make out the giant mango behind him and what appears to be an orange too...what the other one is...I have no idea.

Even giant fruit get tired! Here they are, parking off on the grass for a well-deserved break.

This, amongst other things, I will really miss when I'm gone.

Pelted with flowers!

Now, anyone that knows me will tell you, I am by no means a superstitious person. I will happily smash mirrors, hang around black cats (although my cousin's one is genuinely evil) and scoot under open ladders. But for some reason, this year I was overcome with worry regarding a local superstition and it's implications for me.

Okay, so maybe that's a minor exaggeration; I wasn't exactly overcome with worry, but it had occurred to me...

So at our university, there is an urban legend that, come the end of the year and the advent of spring, there is only one sure way to know that you will pass your exams (or the year, if exams are not something you have to do anymore): be hit by a falling Jacaranda flower on campus.

Every spring, the jacarandas of Johannesburg bloom, transforming the landscape from a hollow tan that personifies the dead highveld winters, into a lush forest of deep greens, offset by the lilac-blue explosions that are the jacarandas. Jacarandas produce an exhaustive display of flowers at the start of spring, before they produce any leaves, resulting in huge purple trees scattered across the city, and campus. Johannesburg isn't really known for the jacarandas and dwindles to insignificance when compared to our sister-city, Pretoria (Tourists apparently go there just to see the jacarandas!), but you still feel the transformation in Joburg all the same.

So I was a little concerned when, almost half-way through the university exam month, I had yet to be hit by a flower. Then, yesterday, I was loading stuff into my car, exhausted, mind abuzz with statistics nonsense that I'd been doing all day. I felt a breeze picking up and noticed that my car was awash with little purple flowers, almost adding insult to injury. I looked up at the jacaranda above my car and sighed.

A flower drifted down and bounced playfully off my shoulder and at that moment I knew I was okay. I was going to make it this year.

Look to the sundog!

Yesterday morning, Johannesburg was privy to a spectacular climatological phenomenon! The sundog, or parhelion! It's a corona (ring) that forms around the sun, creating a glowing, rainbow-halo type of effect. The result: A beautiful coloured ring that encircles the sun. The effect is apparently created by the presence of tiny ice crystals floating around in the upper atmosphere in the form of cirrus clouds. By the sounds of things, the light from the sun is bent at a 22 angle, resulting in the light halo. They are apparently best observed  when the sun is low, but we saw it fine with the sun almost directly overhead. There's more info available here on the ever-faithful, source of all true knowledge: wikipedia!

Here are some of the pics that I took yesterday. The dark bits are my building; I really should have been tending to the coffee machine at the time, but these climatological phenomena don't just happen everyday you know...!

 

 

Friday is NOT a work day!

A while back I posted about how fantastic Fridays were because we got to have doughnuts and coffee. Well since then, Fridays have continued to uphold all that is important and true. However, this Friday has been a little different...

Our supervisor is away at the moment and, well, when the cats away, the mice...swordfight with broom-sticks!

...or perhaps a little song and dance number?

Time-warp tests

Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of having to invigilate a test or exam in their lifetime can attest to this simple truth; it’s not fun. Tests seem to alter the space-time continuum, drawing time out, extending it beyond what is normally possible. It’s much like deadlines, which compress time into smaller and smaller bits, but it works in the opposite way.


Anyone who has ever invigilated a test will also tell you that as an invigilator you need something to occupy your mind while doing this job. If you don’t, the time-warping effect of the test is exacerbated tenfold. If you are smart, you take a book to read, or some marking to do from the previous time that you invigilated. But if you are like me, you only realise you are supposed to be invigilating about two minutes before the test starts and thus fail in the forward-planning department and end up stuck, pacing the rows of students with nothing to occupy your time.

On Friday, I had to invigilate such a test. Unfortunately, true to form, I completely forgot about it and thus failed to take reading material with me. I had walked briskly across campus, strolling nonchalantly past the students who were waiting outside the test venue (as their lecturer, you must maintain your coolness at all times). Once inside the large building, I realised that the test hadn’t even been set out, never mind ready for the students to write. I also discovered that the class, being in excess of 400 students, would be writing in two consecutive sessions.

Once the test was set out, the first batch of students came in to write. Time took on the consistency of syrup and my mind began to strain at the growing emptiness inside. When invigilating, I find that I tend to become pathologically eagre to do mundane tasks; things like collecting unused transcripts, counting the number of absentees, estimating the ages of students, counting how many students pick their noses thinking nobody is watching all become of the utmost importance. Occasionally a student will put up their hand for an extra sheet or to request an escort to the bathroom and your mind rejoices at the opportunity to do something.

After the first batch of students wrote and had been released, the second lot filed into their places and began to worry for my mental health. I still had another hour of waiting before my invigilating duties would come to an end. As the second lot started writing, time, having given a brief respite and returning to normal speed, resumed it’s passage at the speed of snot. I too resumed my seemingly critical tasks. It was during one such task, drifting down one of the aisles between desks, that I noticed something odd.

The test venue is a large hall, built to resemble an aircraft hanger. Whether this was intentional or merely my own perception, I cannot say. But one wall of the building is made mostly of one-way glass. Pacing inside the hall, I looked through the one-way glass to see a pair of girls outside, apparently in the throws of some sort of synchronised seizure or demonic possession. As I got closer to the window, I realised that the pair were actually practicing their synchronised dance moves, using the reflection off the glass to aid them.

While this in itself was amusing, what made it so much worse was the fact that the pair were, I assume, blissfully ignorant to the fact that there were over 200 students sitting inside the room, able to see them. At one stage one of the writing students stopped her test and watched over her shoulder for a good 5 min as the duo gyrated and stamped around outside. I too watched them as they flailed around, occasionally bursting into fits of laughter when one appeared to fail at twitching at the right time.

The responsibility of watching the students drew my mind back to the writing masses. Suddenly, a shriek was herd and I turned back to see what had happened. As I turned, it became clear that the pair outside were the noise. As I watched, the pair tore around the parking lot outside apparently being pursued by something small and white. I looked closer and realised that they were being chased around by a Maltese poodle and that the dog was determined to take them down, no matter the cost. One friend broke away, successfully evading the pooch while the second continued her rampage of shrieking. Eventually, she stopped, apparently exhausted from all the running and screaming, and the dog stopped to. The pair caught their breath and then resumed their chase.

Unfortunately, the test time was nearly up and I had to tear myself away from this very amusing episode. However, I think this has to have been one of the most exciting test invigilations I’ve ever done! It was awesome!

...all we wanted was some milk!

As occasionally happens when one is a professional student, one becomes overwhelmed by the sheer amount of procrastination that one undertakes and is forced to take a step outside, away from all the work and non-working, to clear ones head. I was offered the opportunity to do so today when Leia, discovering that we were out of milk, decided that she was going to go and walk to the shops to buy some. She too was procrastinating and thus, it was better for both parties involved to just take that step and leave the lab...

We walked down to the shops of the Matrix (our student centre where purveyors of everything sweet and greasy ply their trade; if I ever get heart disease, I'll be blaming it on the Matrix...). We walked into the 7/11, deep in meaningless conversation about the perils of the student life, or something to that effect. As we approached the wall of glass doors that are the fridges, we discovered to our horror that there was a large empty space where the milk usually took residence.

In utter disbelief, Leia shuffled from door to door, examining the contents of each fridge, in the vein hope of finding that one carton that somehow went unnoticed by previous shoppers. Unfortunately it was not to be.

Conceding defeat, she announced that they had no milk and together we forlornly left the store.

BUT WAIT! There is also the Cafe Fino in Senate House! Perhaps they might have [ridiculously overpriced] milk!

With the hope of this revelation in our hearts, we began to trek up the hill to Senate House. We arrived through on of the side entrances and continued down the 'Disability Unit' corridor. Just as we were reaching the end of the corridor, the person who had been walking in the opposite direction to us stopped and spoke to us.

She looked Mediterranean, about 50+ years of age and wore an ochre/orange jacket. Her hair was died an impossible blond and had the fatigued look of a little too much time at the office. She started by asking us if there was an exit that took her to the traffic lights in the direction that we had come. A little confused as to what she was asking I responded with silent blinking.

Leia, a little more on the ball than I, requested clarification. It turned out that the woman worked in the block north of the university and had come in to pay something but had somehow gotten lost on campus. She had found the financial office but now needed to return to her car which she had parked near a set of traffic lights on campus.

'Oh...!' I recounted internally. I proceeded to offer her a detailed description of a route that would take her directly to the traffic lights she sought. The route was not complicated; literally just walk in one direction, in a straight line until you reach the road. Then turn right, following the road down the hill. Et viola!

Clearly uncertain, the woman thanked us and proceeded to walk the suggested route, muttering something about how despite her navigational skills she had other redeeming features. Feeling that the incident had concluded, Leia and I resumed our conversation.

A few words into the chat, we were again accosted by the lost woman. This time in a rather determined tone, she asked if there wasn't an alternative route through one of the passages to her left. A little perplexed, we assured her that the route we had suggested was the most direct and simple route. Thanking us again, she resumed her waddle toward the street.

We entered the store, found the milk and payed for it, all the while chuckling and muttering about the crazy woman who seemed convinced that she knew where to go, in spite of demanding directions from complete strangers. As we left the store, we walked toward the building exit and stopped dead in our tracks...

There, waddling between buildings was the crazy woman! She apparently had walked the route we had suggested just enough to seem like she hadn't completely disregarded our advice outright and then had gone with her gut...the wrong way. Neither of us wanting a repeat encounter, we decided that it was best for all involved that we run in the opposite direction, giggling with milk in hand...