THE FISH RIVER CANYON

The fabled list keeps on ticking over.

Recently returned from the Fish River Canyon, and I started on my new book...

This is how it goes.

THE NERD AWAKES
I was a fat kid.
I have this theory that people who were fat kids never really shake off their sense of being out of shape and unattractive, even years later, when we become really really ridiculously good looking. We never quite believe it…
Anyway, fat kid. In time, I would add some regular nerd standard-issue thick rimmed glasses to my iron-clad persona, but for now, allow me to explain why I have always been kind of chubby.
I like to eat. Snack, more accurately. And my folks, bless ‘em, always had all kinds of good stuff hidden away which I would find and devour. I was on my own a lot at home, the folks both worked at the travel agency.
For the first 14 years of my life, I had no concept that I might be good at a sport or physical activity. I therefore just had not desire to participate.
I found, quite early, that there are things a lot more interesting than people. They’re called comic books.
Let’s focus on Point 3, which led to a whole bouquet of anti-social behavior that would dog me to this very day. It’s important to assign blame for my stunted emotional growth, preferably to someone that can’t fight back. So I blame my grandma (recently deceased at 94, the old girl knew how to hang on). As a backup, I’m going to choose to point a fat finger of accusation at Rico too.
Grandma. My family loves to read, and Grandma loved to read to me when I was a toddler. Before I could help myself, I was insistent that she, my mom, or whoever else close read to me whatever was at hand. The world of words and pictures fascinated me almost straight out of the crib, and she indulged me.
So I have great memories of her reading me all kinds of books, and in later years, those were the memories she always grasped at to find a point of reference with a grandson that was increasingly disconnected from her.
Rico was the first boy I remember being friends with. He was a year older, but our parents had been good friends even before I was borne and they lived in the same neighbourhood, right round the corner. We attended the same kindergarten, but we went our separate ways roundabout 5 or 6 years old.
My dad took a job in Johannesburg, Africa’s biggest and baddest economic powerhouse of a city and a shithole these days. But back in 1980, it was the place to be. My mom kicked up a fuss because we had to leave the pristine academic town of Stellenobsch, until she settled in to the vibrant social life up there.
Anyway, we move to Joburg. Meanwhile, Rico’s dad (a professor at the University) goes on academic sabbatical to the United States, taking the family with him. Six months later, we hook up at their place after their return, and he reveals to me all the treasures of Alladin’s cave.
He had a toy spaceship which looked kind of weird. What was cool was that it had this trapdoor feature, where two of the characters could hide. He also had a bunch of guy dolls. Their names were Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Han Solo. I remember it was so cool, the dolls had these retractable swords that came out of their arms.
All the toys were related to a movie that I had not yet seen called Star Wars, but I was immediately fascinated. He also had picture books related to the second installment, The Empire Strikes Back. As every sci-fi nerd can tell you, the big surprise at the end of the second movie is that Darth Vader is Luke’s dad. Well, duh, I knew that before I had even seen a single second of the movies.
At this point, I had expressed an interest in comic books. I’m not talking about Casper, Archie or Richie Rich. Those aren’t comic books! No, comic books are vivid worlds inhabited by big green monsters, guys who dress like bats or spiders and alien supermen who just want to save the world and kiss the girl.
But of course, when Rico came back from the US with this variety of amazing comics, stuff that I’d never even SEEN before… I was hooked. His collection kept me fascinated for years afterward, everytime I came to visit I would spend hours rereading his X-Men, Ghostrider and Superman classics. Some of those books would be worth a ton of cash today.
So Bam. That year, I saw Return of the Jedi, the third Star Wars movie. And became a devoted fan for life. I just really really, to this day, wanna be able to move things with my mind and run around with a sword that looks like a lazer. Who doesn’t?
So your first year in primary school they teach you how to read. My collection of comic books became new worlds of wonder when I could actually read what these folks were saying. An immediate side benefit was that all the books were in English, so I started reading English almost as soon as I could read (my first language being Afrikaans), and this is why I was the Jedi Master of the English Language for the rest of my school career.
In a year or two, books entered the fray. Not surprisingly, the Tarzan books were the notable first foray into actual novel fiction. Tarzan was not a world removed from Superman, Batman and the rest of the guys. Hero? Check. Lost his family? Check. Has abilities beyond that of normal men? Check.
Yep, there was a pattern here.
A couple of months before we moved back to the coast, I won my first prize at school for being the best writer in class, based on some composition I had done.
When you’re seven, the world is really your oyster. My parents were very supportive of whatever I wished to do. Turns out I wished to read… and write.
My dad bought a business in a town called the Strand. It was neither the social beehive of young professionals that we had in Johannesburg, or the academic stronghold of self-important intellectuals that we were part of in Stellenbosch. My dad gets along with everyone, though, and was soon part of the social network that was more of a middle-class industrial environment.
My mom felt herself out of sorts, however. In her heart, she always felt a little bit superior to the people in that town, and some of that robbed off on me. She threw herself into working for the company, and I threw myself into my own little worlds.
When you’re in primary school, it doesn’t really matter to people that you spend your breaks reading by yourself in a dark corner and your days huddled over your desk in your room writing picture books about imaginary characters with super powers. They leave you alone.
Of course, your parents might worry. But when you finish no 1 in your class in academics (I was a smart kid who loved to read – I was way ahead of the curve) they also tend to cut you some slack.
So while other kids were playing rugby and football, getting into trouble and forming their social orders and building blocks, I was off in my own little world, happy as can be. I met a kid called Hermanus who was my partner in crime when it came to the comic books and scifi movies, and our relationship would remain an important yet irregular feature of my school years.
The teachers thought I was a writing genius, and I often received full marks for my pieces. The other kids loved reading the comic books I wrote, and I got beaten up roundabout when I was 11, after which the bullies also decided I wasn’t worth their attention and I got to get on with my life without much pain.
Then, High School.
It’s a fucked up feature of puberty that social interaction suddenly becomes wildly important. Guys need to show off, girls seem to like that kind of thing, and there’s a lot of pressure to do the stuff that gets you noticed. Play rugby, which was a religion. Be friends with the right people. Be a sheep.
Suddenly, no-one was interested in reading my comics. High School transformed me from a slightly odd loner to a full on nerd. Of course, I had no social skills, I was chubby and I had a particular affinity for my English teacher, which translated to full teacher’s pet/suck up status.
I was a social outcast, but now I started to be aware of it, and it kinda hurt. Taking my lead from my mom, I decided that everyone in school were idiots and jealous of my intellect. This helped make me more popular, of course.
Then, a boy called Deon Coetzee came across my path.
He, in his own way, was a bit of a lone ranger. He had less of my mom-inspired sense of superiority, which always made him more acceptable if not popular, because he too was no follower.
The one sport I had dabbled with as a child with my dad was squash, and so it was something I could play. Deon played too, and we started to go the courts together. No-one else in school was really doing it, but somehow it became our thing, and would dominate our after shool days for the rest of the year.
He was also a golfer, and that year, my dad also took up the game. We happened to have a teacher at school who was a golfing maestro, and when I was 13 or 14 I took up the game.
At this point, I was quite used to being the subject of peer ridicule. So when, at a first public testing of skills, in front of a dozen other boys, I swung and missed that little white ball over 10 times. I finally made contact, and the ball travelled a few metres.
The teacher was not impressed, and the other kids chuckled or even laughed outright.
But, my dad was encouraging me, my new best friend was willing to help and I was determined to show them all.
So I did.
For the next 3 or 4 years, afternoons spent reading or writing comic books were replaced by afternoons spent on the golf course. Deon and I would get on our bicycles and cycle out there, rain or shine. Sometimes there were torrential rains, but we faitfully put in the practice.
And we became pretty good at it. Deon’s ability – and temperament – was always better, but in school I always matched him, although adults kept on giving him praise. We both won the school championship once, I in our penultimate year and he in the last year. We were really the only two contenders.
I had neither a natural ability – what people call ‘ball sense’ – or the right temperament (for years my temper would just get in the way), but I managed to become good enough to compete at the top junior levels and play league for our club. Deon would go on, after school, to play with some of the top amateurs in the country. If he had more competition than little old me, he might have gone even farther in school. But there you go, we had a blast.
So I had a lot of good times with my dad, and my mate, on the golf course. Golf was nowhere on the importance ranking at my school, but it didn’t matter. I had a friend and had found a social environment that I liked, even if it was a bunch of old farts on a Saturday.
Meanwhile, my younger sister was showing me what it meant to be social. She was pretty and rebellious, and a stream of boyfriends came through the door. She gained and discarded friends almost weekly, and her life was completely different. I longed for the popularity that she seemed to enjoy, but had no idea how to access it. She was desired by men, girls were repulsed by me.
Oh well. At least I knew that I could hit a golf ball.
Meanwhile, Hermanus came and went to and from my life. His dad was kinda shifty, and kept on changing jobs and home towns. Hermanus was a promising kid, but all the changes made him hungry for acceptance and a sense of belonging.
So he learned how to ingratiate himself quickly with his new social environment. When he left our school at 14, he moved to a rural town called Ceres. The next year when I went to visit him during the holidays, my comic-book lovin’ friend had morphed into a smoking, drinking cool cat who was tongue-kissing girls two and three years older than him and hung out at the pool club all the time. I was horrified.
He had learnt the trade of social acceptance. When he returned to our school a couple of years later, our friendship resumed – briefly. I was 16, and I had my first kiss with his girlfriend’s friend that year. Wasn’t special.
Anyway, he quickly decided to upgrade his social group, and fell in with the cool kids, my arch-enemies. I was discarded, but I decided to bide my time in self-righteous indignation. And, true to form, he got tired of the pretence and started seeking my company again less than a year later, and settled into a sort of social middle ground. It seemed like a lot of work for a nerd to get in with the gang.
But Hermanus introduced me to tequila, and my first session of vomiting. So with him, I started to take my first baby steps into booze, girls and parties.
At the end of that year, my cousin (who was one of the cool kids at a different school) and I clicked on a family trip, and I went into my last year of school playing less golf and doing more party time of things. I had my first drunk fling at a school disco, my first girlfriend, and threw the afterparty at my place after our final school dance (parents were away).
I was no longer an academic giant, although I did graduate with honours. My writing was still valued by my teachers, but I had stopped writing beyond school tasks. Still liked to read comic books, but had stopped writing them. And I had slimmed down a little bit and gotten contacts, so here and there a girl even expressed interest in me.
It was time to go to University. A chance for a fresh start.
FACTS, FIGURES
So I pitched up at the University of Stellenbosch, the venerable institution that had supplied both my parent’s tertiary educations. I went to the same house that my dad went to 20 years before, full of hopes and expectations, and signed up for a degree in accounting.
I was ready for an exciting future. Popularity, lots of parties, girls… it would all be mine.
Turns out that there was nothing wrong with the kids I went to school with. The problem was all me.
It didn’t take the folks in my house, or in my class, to by and large conclude that I was a self-involved slacker who really had nothing much to add. I could never quite figure out why they would think that, and concluded once again that they were jealous of me, this time because I came from a bit of money.
See, my dad was an extremely successful – and well-known – business man in the region. My studies in accounting was largely at his prompting, and I was even then being groomed to take over the family business, a travel agency.
I hated it. People either thought of me as Matie’s son or Karla’s brother (all the guys thought she was hot). What about me? Did I not count?
Wallowing in delicious self-pity, I spent the next two years in that house fighting the system, generally being very unpopular. I stopped playing golf, wasn’t writing and studied a bit. Managed to pass my first two years, which was an achievement given the absolute zero effort I put into it.
And it was okay. Deon had gone abroad to work overseas a bit, and my cousin Sergej had stepped in to fill the best friend position. I fell in with his whole crowd of school friends for those two years, who were neither at University with me nor had been at school with me. They might have thought I was a dickhead too, but I was Sergej’s cuz and as such had a free pass to inclusion.
This was roundabout the time that I was forced to play some rugby for the house. From initial resistance, I actually came to enjoy it, and would’ve continued to play if I didn’t dislocate my shoulder when I was 19.
I developed a strong sense of appreciation for the Springboks, our national rugby team, and became one of those overzealous fans who knew all the detail. Sergej would joke about my grasp about the facts and figures pertaining to the team and games, he scoffed as I had never been much of a player. But hey, you wake up late in life.
The reason I bring up the rugby is that it took up a big part of my third year at University. Not playing it. Watching it.
Sergej also left for abroad, and I moved into a flat with a friend called Hugo. Hugo decided after less than a semester to quit university and start work as a barman at the most popular bar in town. Which was in the same building as our flat.
Recipe for disaster.
Aided and abetted by my free-drink supplying flatmate, a national success in the rugby world cup and a general dissatisfaction with my life and studies in general, I proceeded to superslack my way through my third year.
I didn’t study, watched a lot of sport, hung out in the bar and even pitched up at some exams drunk.
Given my stellar academic performances in school and my ability to get by in my first two years, I was quite convinced I lived a charmed life and would simply cruise through my third year too.
No so.
Suddenly, I was faced with a fail in three of my four major subjects. Pleading and cajoling with my lecturers did not help, and I wasn’t even allowed to write the exams in two of them. It was that bad. I scraped through the third, and narrowly failed the fourth, prompting a rewrite.
Now, in a lesson in abject stupidity, here is what happened. The subject was financial accounting, and I have always been good with numbers. So good, in fact, that I was sure the lecturers were all idiots and I had the answers. I didn’t follow their advice even when I did bother to listen in class (which was rare).
Because of my insistence to do things my way, I failed that exam. But I did well enough to merit a rewrite, which would be on the following Friday morning.
My favourite band, Bon Jovi (Owah, we halfway there… oh oh, living on a prayer…) was performing their one concert in Cape Town that Thursday night. I was devastated. How could I attend the concert the night before my all-important rewrite exam?
Of course, it never even occurred to me that I could study real hard for the rest of the week, be prepared and then take the previous night off and go enjoy the concert. No, the only option open to me was to slack off for the rest of the week, then jam like crazy the day before. This meant I had to sell my ticket to the concert.
You guessed what happened next. Missed out on the epic concert event of the year (EVERYBODY was there), and… drumroll… failed the rewrite too.
For the next 10 years, I would harbour a not insignificant obsession with Bon Jovi… which would finally be satisfied. But I’ll come to that tale.
Cue the livid father. His golden boy, the protégé that could do no wrong, had failed his third year. Miserably. What do I tell the friends? The shame of it!
I was kinda pissed off, as you do. My dad kept going on and on about how much it had cost him, and like a real brat, I kept on pointing out that my education was costing a tenth of what my sister was paying at a school in Austria.
That was a bad summer. But I did knuckle down and go waiter like a demon, making enough cash over the season to pay for my own courses the next year.
Something happened during that time. I guess it was a sense of mortality. I woke up, and realized that I would have to work harder and give more if I wanted success. That fourth year, I stopped the slacker behaviour. I became involved, joined societies. I achieved good grades, and worked on my health a bit more. I even signed up for some extra courses.
I made a few good friends, and the old ones kind of stuck around. I even dated a few nice girls, but none that stuck yet. I was still very insecure about not knowing who I was, though, and felt people prejudged me within that microcosm, for whatever reason. I had been an asshole too long, and needed to break the image.
When I was 22, my dad arranged a job for me with a ski touring company, to go be a ski guide in Austria.
Confident in my final results, I was on a plane to the ski resort with my new boss and my first real job before I even knew whether I had graduated.
I was tired of being labeled, and maybe overseas I could start being my own person.
I was right, and I was wrong. What happened next would shape the next ten years of my life.

NEXT STEPS

Just for the record, here are the 2008 goals:

PERSONAL:
1. Sub 3h05 Argus
2. Complete Body for Life
3. Enjoy an active social life in Cape Town
4. Go do at least one major hike

PROFESSIONAL:
1. Sign up R500k worth of business
2. Successfully run two Tourism modules
3. Complete Yellow Jasper to publishable level

NICE TO HAVES - but it won't kill me if they don't happen:
1. GV08
2. Love of my life

JOURNEY's END

BACK IN CAPE TOWN
Almost exactly 14 months later, I hit the tarmac in Cape Town after a 21 hour flight oddyssey from New York, only to promptly be collected by my sister and taken to buddy Charlene's birthday bash at a swanky Cape Town nightspot. I was immediately faced with the reality of being back home, as I was not allowed entry with my flipflops and shorts. Backpacker style I changed into my sexy duds in the car and went in, only to be hit with reality check no 2: The girls in Cape Town are HOT, but so are the guys. I can no longer rely on my South African accent to make me feel special, I definitely need to hit the gym to get back in shape and my wardrobe needs an upgrade. Also, I need to refine my sales pitch, as telling prospects that I am unemployed, I drive my dad's truck and I live with my sister is not gonna get me dates. Back to the drawing board...

In the meantime, I'm getting over the jetlag, I've had my first cycle this morning, my Dad is doing the drill sergeant thing trying to organize my life (let me catch my breath first please!) and my mom is very excited about me lugging all my clothes out of their cupboard. I'll start reconnecting with the mates tonight, as soon as I have my telephone list updated I can start calling people and arranging braais... but now, to reflect on the 14 month extravaganza that was my year check-out from reality...

GLOBAL VILLAGE 2006
I had an awesome time. As a guide and instructor, I learned a lot, made some amazing friends and was reminded why this program is something special. Fico, Nancy, Sherry and the rest of the team, an amazing group of interns and some real growth, both during and after. Maybe it was too much like being a Villager again, and I learned some hard lessons about what it means to be a mentor, but I sure had a blast...

THE REST OF 2006
Hanging with Amy in New York,Bermuda cruise with Quentin, hukas with Kevin in Phillie, Ricardo and Mexico City, Hippie Camp in Guatemala as Distant Mountain with my boy Blue, Susie, Pepe, Frank, Sarah, Nicola and Joel... Spanish classes in Mexico and Guatemala, scuba diving in Mexico and Honduras, hammock surfing with Susie in Nicaragua, volcano boarding, Blue finding Ingrid, Susie singing Long Way Home, getting stuck at the other part of the island on Isla de Omepete, rum with Blue and Karla (mas run!), Frank the bad influence of Leon, Super Sujin in Mexico, giving class to kids in Xela, spelonking in Semouc Champy, hitchiking across the boarder in the back of trucks, cooking veggie meals with Blue and reading the tarot...

EARLY 2007
I heralded the New Year in in a tent in the Andes in Peru at freezing temperatures, in fact I think I was already asleep when the New Year hit. Just what I was looking for... Hanging with my boy Fico in Lima, hitting high altitudes and salt flats with Emma in Bolivia, cute Aussies and entertaining Irishmen, more Spanish classes, Amazon adventures and cruises with Blue, Carnival madness in Brazil, good steaks and good red wine in Argentina, wobbly wine tours on bicycles in Mendoza, incredible chocolate and nature walks in Bariloche, sassy German lassies and gorgeous locals, Spanish School in Buenos and the Morena glacier in Patagonia... Barney the non-peanut-butter-sharing prick, freezing our nuts off among glaciers in Torres del Paine, completing the Circuit with Blue in cool biker gloves, going to Santiago (once last year), seeing Dror in Buenos, meeting Chrissie on the bus to Ecuador, dancing with Alison on the deck of our boat in the Galapagos, finally getting my Mexican visa, hiking with the German crew in Venezuela Mount Roirama, hanging with my boy Enrique in Caracas, fishing with my dad in Belize, and ziplining with the whole family in Tikal.

GLOBAL VILLAGE 2007
The Tree of Trust: Cat, Javier, Brenna, Lindsay... another great bunch of interns (96 from 43 countries), doing a Dan Band rendition of Total Eclipse, hanging with my boy Fico for another great summer... the Legend lives. Presenting my Effectiveness Workshop to great success, making a real difference to people's lives, and generally using some of the hard learned lessons to become an effective mentor. I really felt like I reached a lot of the interns this time, and that is a good feeling. We had a blast again, but a more balanced blast. Fico got the best Instructor award at the Governer's School, Lindsay mastered an Afrikaans drinking toast and Brenna tried to get me back to meditation. Noo!!! Am I growing up??? Say it isn't so...

I finished up by watching Meatloaf in concert with my colleague Beth (he is not a good looking man, I would do anything for love, but I certainly won't do that), having a magnificent last lunch and then hitting Atlantic City with Sherry and her husband Rick. I lost on the blackjack table, I lost on the roulette table, I even lost on the golf course. There is a reason they bring you those free Scotches, sanity goes out the window... but again, you know it>... I had a blast! Thanks Sherry!

Now I'm back home, and going to say hi to Grandma. Tonight me and sis are cooking for some of the mates, tomorrow I go peep into my old company office, on Wednesday I might play some golf with the old boy. Easing back into reality....

GLOBAL VILLAGE 2007 WRAPS UP!

Yep, it's all over... GV07 was a smashing success, and a combination of factors have elected that I am getting on a plane sooner rather than later. Let me give you the salient highlights of another amazing summer and a fitting conclusion to my 14 month hiatus from normalcy...

THE TEAM

The really really ridiculously good looking bunch of people pictures above would be Oksana (intern, but hey, if you can pull off wearing a dress like that, and she does, you get to pose with the staff...), Gina from Peru, yours truly, Cat from Sweden, Javier Colombiano...., the lovely Lindsay and my boy Fico! We laughed, we cried, we played hard and worked hard and we rocked this joint! The Tree of Trust....

MY REALLY RIDICULOUSLY GOOD LOOKING STUDENTS

A. THE GIRLS...

Yep, I think there is some kind of genetic screening to the program. Check out Maria from Chile (best smile of the Village) and Patricia from Spain (my project team, and the sweetest girl you could ever meet).... and down here, my girl Imane from Morocco, who headed up my project team and did not stop arguing with me until I put on a suit at the closing dinner. She got it!

B. BEING A GOOD MENTOR

I learned a lot from my boy Fico... ("God's busy, can I help you???") Here's me instructing my puppies on how to be even better looking... Hanyu from China, Maria Chile and my boy Ravshan from Uzbekistan. They are pulling it off...

C. CONNECTING WITH MY BOYS!

My Boy Tim from Germany (what a good looking dude, I see me at his age, without the good looks...) and Gonzalo from Spain, I had a blast with these guys, we had some awesome conversations, figured some stuff out and it was a privilige for me to work with them this summer...

FACILITATORS ROCK!

We always knew Fico and I were is with a fighting chance of making a difference teaching these guys this summer...

The surprise, though, is that MY BOY received the award for Top Dog Facilitator at the Governer's School, which is the Junior Program for the top kids of the region. His Creativity Course rocked their world... me, I had the rewarding experience of teaching my Effectiveness Workshop based on the 7 Habits to about 40 students, and a few had a significant experience from it... which is all I can hope for!

THE GROUPIES!

Check out the Youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnKR2nkj-WA for a stirring rendition of Total Eclipse by the boys at Alumni culture night... Javier, me, Victor led by Fico, we had a blast! The groupies failed to throw their underwear at us, we forgive you Lindsay and Cat... who can stay mad at such cuties!

Yep, Lindsay is really really ridiculously good looking, and is now well trained in the art of toasting in Afrikaans.... Omme den verderen...
THE FRIENDSHIPS

Enough said. It was awesome.

HOT RUSSIANS

People will be talking about that dress for years... Go Oksana!

THE COOL KIDS!

Let's face it... when I walked into the American crowd's dorm room and they had the wireless hooked up, no less than three gorgeous girls working on three gorgeous Macs and Chaz outside dicating his closure document... also known as the Breakfast Club, I felt like I was back in High School, but as the cool teacher. What a crowd! Pictured Tristan from Oz, Fico, Juan from Spain and Chaz, Whitney (head cheerleader), Courtney (winner of the cuteness prize) and Rachel (the hybrid drivin' heartstealing local lassie...)

CALL ME!

I think I will keep in touch with this crowd...

SHERRY BUSS ROCKS!

There's a lot of other cool stuff that I don't have time to blog about right now, such as other friends visited in DC, more stuff on the projects, the outcomes, the courses, my personal growth... etc etc...

But more importantly, here's me and Fico pictures with Sherry, who would be the Curriculum director, my Summer Lovin Kareoke partner and the last person form the program I will see before I head back home on Friday... I join her and her fam for gambling and golf in Atlantic City tomorrow, and then I head home. Who could ask for a better finish!!!

She not only is really really ridiculously good looking, but has a really ridiculously good looking husband, kids, house and car (Love those Star Wars movies in the back) - but more importantly, the integrity there is what rocks!

MY BOY BLUE'S VISIT! The legend Chris Warner came to visit me at the Global Village... the highlights include:

MY BOYS BLUE (AND BARBIE)!
So the Village is rolling on at breakneck speed and we are already in Week 4... a great crowd, and I had the privilige of having Blue come to visit for a couple of days to check out what it is that I do... he even attended my Effectiveness class! We had a blast, and the Villagers were very welcoming. Fico and Chris under one roof... yeah, that was trouble.

We headed off to the Big Apple for the weekend, where we crashed at Chris's friend Liz's place. We partied hard, Zoolander was playing in the background at the Club night 1 causing us to re-enact the Walk-off... I'm not an ambiturner and almost gave myself a wedgie, but all's well that ends well.



A great day hanging out in Central Park watching Afrobats, fruity rollerbladers and shooting the shit was capped with a cruise on the Hudson, a limo ride (16 of us!) a Latin dance party and two dinners!

The Germans are still pissed at me because I didn't go play with them at 3 in the morning, but I glad I made a duck, as one of our interns ended up in the hospital from the booze and I went on the chase at six the next morning. All in a day's work, now I need a weekend after my weekend!

Chris has gone, and that's our shared history for now... too bad so sad, but this is not our last encounter... but maybe the last in a while. Am totally stoked, however, of seeing that other key member of our hippy camp band... the indisputable Dark Fern Susie Gaskins... when we hit Baltimore in a week. Roll on the good times, but I wish I could shake this damn sore throat! Sleep and healthy food... two things I am not getting!

I SWEAR WE'RE WORKING HERE!

A great couple of days in New York catching up with old school mate Charlie, hanging out with Peruvian travel companion from Ecuador Christy and even catching a rugby game on Saturday, my first in a year - and we won! Good times, and I was off to Lehigh...

The incomparable Sherry Buss and her awesome family hosted me and co-guide Javier for the weekend... barbeques, watching some Little League and hanging by the pool. Awesome stuff, and Monday we punched into work, reunited with many old friends and meeting some new ones on the Guide Team.

Clearly I hate my job, as my colleagues are really hard on the eyes...

The interns are a great bunch, good energy and I have a good guide group, an awesome project team and I have a whole bunch of em doing a property analysis in South America for me... I love it! Tomorrow I present my first course, "Simplifying your Problem Solving Approach", and next week I get stuck into my Effectivity Workshop. Gonna be a great summer!

MY BOY is making me laugh out loud every day AGAIN, more Fico Quotes... bring on the MILFS! Not getting a lot of sleep... ach, who needs it.

Yeah, life's tough. Will keep you folks posted....

FAMILY WRAP UP AND BACK TO THE STATES!

Mexico City! Two days spent catching up with good friends Ricardo and Blanca, reuniting with my Ipod and starting a habit of jogging again. Emotional roller coaster as I know I will not be passing along this way soon, and many happy memories. Until next time Amigos!

Puerto Vallarta: Doing the big resort hotel thing in Puerto Vallarta was a good way to end the family holiday... observe my sister being attacked by the mutant killer Pac Man taco at Titi's, the local hangout recommended to me by my stoner dolphin training co-traveler on the way to Puerto Vallarta. We hired a jeep, it blew a tire, the spare was also flat, we got it fixed, the girls went shopping, the boys had many sundowners on the terrace... it was a very relaxing few days, climaxed by an awesome night of good Mexican food and massive Margheritas at Pipis. Yeah, I know... our two culinary experiences were Pipis and Titis. The Geldenhuyse strike again!

Denver! The folks headed home via Mexico City, I headed back to the Phillie via Denver, where old hiking buddy, ex-truth seeker and former hippie Amy demonstrated her return to civilized society by treating me to a park jazzz concert and some chilled Sauvignon Blanc. Denver has a nice vibe to it... no wonder I have met so many good people from here. Amy is still the manic yoga junkie girl I met two years ago, but now she's got a solid chunk of lawyerliness added to it, hehe ying and yang right?

In due course I touched base in Phillie, and to where it all started. Staying at my mate Kevin's place, spending time with him and his lovely girlfriend Erin, and I am just about to go for a final rollerblade down the river before I head back to NYC. Deja vu? Check out my blog a year ago exactly and you will see how weird this all is...

A strong Darth Vaderish feeling has overcome me, ie "The Circle is now complete"... people are moving on with their lives, and it is time I do the same. A year exactly has passed since I left SA, and now I need to go to Defcon 2 in terms of future plans. Am ramping up to the Global Village summer program which starts next week, I have many new projects going this year on it and am excited about doing my last gig in the States. Watch this space, new goals are coming soon...