The Way the Week Starts

We've survived the weekend but only just.

I think since the first time I came to Kinshasa and was dragged to all the nightspots I have not bothered to go out and party. Usually I'm too knackered to think of partying. Not so this time. The client (Heineken) sponsored a huge party on Saturday with muso's from Paris and when I arrived there (after drinking two beers at the guest house) I proceeded to drink more beers than I can remember over the course of an evening which ended in a night club called 36. It also helped that the music was fantastic and the dance floor small and packed. At some point I recall everything coming together in a way I haven't experienced at party since the ecstacy fueled 90's. In fact there was a three or four song period of time where I think everybody on the dance floor was dancing with everybody else, or so it felt.


I paid the price on Sunday and luckily got a full nights sleep last night so today I feel like a normal person again.

By lunchtime the full crew will have arrived in Kinshasa and we will be going full-ball. At this stage I'm focusing on the first two commercials that we'll be shooting and hoping that the second two will come-together at some stage...

I have vision's of Werner Hertzog's "African Queen" flashing past my eyes every so often.

King of Congo

I'm getting ready for another trip up the big river. If only Marlowe could see me now.

Tomorrow I fly to JHB and Friday to Kinshasa to shoot 4 beer commercials for Primus. This time we have to shoot 4 commercials in the time it usually takes us to shoot one feature length music video (13 minutes at LEAST!).

It's a hot balmy night in Cape Town, 19 degrees and the moon's just popped over Devil's peak.

The Prez comes to visit

Sarah and I set up the stand for the Cape Town book fair today. While I was waiting for the paint to dry (literally) I saw a commotion at one of the stands and wandered over while munching my greek salad (in name only). Of course I was surprised when I peered over the mass of raised cellphones not to discover a famous author (even though it can be argued he is one) but none other than our diminutive president. It's amazing how short he is. Luckily for me I could hold the cell phone up above my head to catch this neat little clip of him.

Tomorrow the Festival opens and we launch Sarah's new business, "The Write Co" Cape Town.

This is what it has come down to, looking at satellite images of the weather so that I can find a gap in the rain so that I can fix my roof. Our roof leaks buckets... (one, two, three...) 5 buckets and two towels as I speak. Yesterday was the first sunny day in weeks and there was a team on the roof painting it black with various forms of waterproofing etc. Obviously that wasn't the problem. This makes it much more interesting cause the next option is to rebuild one third of the roof. Makes you want to go out for a long drive along the sea...

It's day three and today the house is starting to look like a house. Less boxes than people and furniture. The people and the furniture are winning!

Think sunshine, sunshine, sunshine.

Worms!

Worms!, originally uploaded by Llewelyn.

Ruby and Jude found all these worms freeloading on our cauliflower plants int he garden. "They made green poo on our fingers" said Jude. Either Ruby hasn't discovered that she should be illogically afraid of worms OR she's really special when it comes to critter lovin!

Today was a harder day than yesterday. Lot of boxes to unpack. Can't figure out where to put the tv so on.

Tired. Tomorrow pics of the new house with our stuff inside.

Home at last

We moved in to our new house today. The bit of sunshine I found in the Karoo followed me to Cape Town and the sun shone today for the first time in weeks!

Even though the movers arrived 5 hours late we managed to get everything onto the property at least before sunset. I say property because we can't fit everything into the house. I was really kakking myself at the prospect of moving into a much smaller house but after just one day I have to admit that I'm loving it. For the first time in years I feel like the house and property can be managed.

In fact when the movers had emptied out Desborough ave and I stood in the empty house one last time before I headed down to the Cape I actually felt a palpable sense of relief. This took me completely by surprise. I really didn't expect to feel anything vaguely light about leaving. I guess my sadness at leaving Jo'burg led me to think that I'd feel a sense of loss when I left Desborough Ave, but I guess not. Just goes to show, you just don't know until you know.

When I drove to the storage locker this afternoon to put everything we can't fit into the house away (mostly office stuff) I sat in the famous Ctown traffic. It has to be said that it was the most beautiful traffic jam I'd ever sat in.

From JHB to CTown

This is what our life looks like in boxes!


I drove down from Joburg on Sunday as soon as the movers had emptied our house. I slept over in Colesberg (the midpoint) and left again early on Monday morning.


There's nothing like driving in the Karoo at night and the sun rose as I approached Beaufort West.



And today is the big day. We move into our new house first thing this morning. More later, no doubt.

My trip so far in Pictures

I found a way to link to my Sutherland road-trip photos embedded in Googlemaps! Click here to go to the map and click on the little markers to see photos taken at those exact co-ordinates with my Nokia N95 while I drove. I used Shozu's amazing software to automatically geotag and send the pics to flickr from where I use this nifty workaround to see them in googlemaps.

Under the Mountain

A brief respite from the beautiful scenery

At this point I was still trying to figure out how to use the N95 with GPS and take photos and listen to music. Eventually I realised that it can only do two things properly at any given point in time. So while listening to music I cannot also have the GPS active AND take a photo. At best I can either have the GPS and the music or the GPS and take a photo and seeing as the idea is to have the GPS active while taking photos so that they are geotagged, it isn't exactly the mobile answer to blogging on the move. But, it is bloody marvelous. Now I have to figure out how to post my google map with all the pics of the trip tagged to their GPS co-ordinates onto my Blog.

Road Trip to the coldest place in South Africa

This was full moon from the balcony of the flat I'm staying at right now, but taken a few weeks ago.

I'm off to Sutherland today, the coldest place in South Africa. Temperature right now (7h30am) in Cape Town is 12 degrees and in Sutherland supposedly 10 degrees but I see snow coming. So hopefully later today I'll be posting some snow pics!

I'm going to do a reccie for a 2 minute mini doccie that Discovery Channel is interested in commissioning. I want to tell a story of the Telescope as a "time machine". Let's see what I find.

It's 4 hours by car and I'm going to see if I can post some pics and clips via my new Nokia N95. To infinity and beyond...

I came, I saw and I had to get out fast

(Wed 18 Nov)

I was going to spend almost two weeks there and I ended up leaving hastily on Wednesday the 18th via a quick river crossing and a flight out of Congo Brazzaville back to SA. That night my friends in the Congo called to say that it was for the best cause Bemba (one of the two presidential candidates) had unanimously announced himself the victor. This was before the official results were announced and of course the one thing everybody feared.
The rest is now historical record and Kabila was announced president and there was a huge collective sigh of relief.
The shoot was madness. I should post a retrospective but I've already been back since then.
I spent 10 days there from the 2nd till the 10th of February this year to shoot another music video for JB Mpiana. It was our biggest shoot to date and I would have blogged had I had the time. Oh well, suffice to say that life goes on even if my blog doesn't.