Cape Town

Flying across Africa is always a fantastic experience with incredible blue skies and great views; it is fascinating seeing the dramatic changes beneath from deserts to grassland, mountains to valleys to savannah. But arriving into Cape Town airport is really, really impressive as Table Mountain is visible from afar alongside the sea, with the City Bowl, as it is known, in between (with the mountain a semi-circular shape on three sides and the sea on the other side, much of the city feel like it is encircled by a bowl). And the plane circles around False Bay (to the South East of Cape Town) and the Cape of Good Hope behind the mountain to land. It is an amazing introduction to a fantastic city.

Before the conference that I was speaking at began I managed to see the Castle (built to defend the city by the Dutch 300 years ago), District 6 Museum (commemorating those who were forcible removed from where they lived during apartheid), the Company's Gardens (very nice, originally where the first traders planted crops that could be used to restock the ships on their way from Europe to India) and the Bo Kaap museum (an area where many Muslims live and famed for its colorful buildings). I also managed to get a ticket for the trip out to Robben Island where Mandela and many other political prisoners were kept during Apartheid. It was a nice boat journey and quite interesting to learn about the island's history and the different things on it: a lighthouse, the village where the wardens and staff used to live (and where the tour guides/administration staff still do), the quarry where prisoners were forced to do hard labor (and in most cases just moving rocks from A to B and then back to A again whilst their eyes were ruined by the reflection of the sunlight off the white stone) and of course to see the prison. I even saw one of the penguins that live on the island (it had run under the tour bus and was hiding there) and a seal that was on one of the rocks in the port.

The prison itself is no different really to any other prison I've visited and exactly what one would expect for an island prison, as in no particularly high security, just dormitory rooms, fences, guard towers and related buildings for working, washing and so on. Although the fact that it's on an island makes it more interesting. A former prisoner explained his experience, and we saw Mandela's small cell of course. I suppose the purpose of the visit is to think of the people who spent their lives there mostly due to persecution during apartheid and to imagine -as the tourists arrived by boat- what it was like arriving by boat back then as a prisoner. To be honest the cells and torture chamber in the Castle seemed more punishing, but then that was used a few hundred years ago, and Robben island was only a prison: prisoners had already been tortured when they were initially arrested and interrogated elsewhere.

In the very early mornings I climbed both Table Mountain and Lion's Head. With the latter it was a beautiful day and a wonderful view. With the former, it was a day when the top of the mountain was covered by the famed table cloth of mist and cloud. So there were great views on the way up, but once you were shrouded by mist at the top, you could only see 5m ahead of you and thus had no sense of the scale of the mountain really, or could see the view (which was really the same as the view half way up). I was surprised how barren the top of the mountain was in terms of its vegetation and rocks. Apparently it has its own flora that is not found anywhere else.

In the evenings, there was some great food in the City Bowl and at the waterfront, which also seems like the entertainment and shopping hub of the city which an excellent vibe: though one could be in Canary Wharf! The city felt very safe with a lot of police all over the streets. It really does feel like the opposite of Johannesburg which is more spread out, dangerous and larger. Although Johannesburg has a fantastic Apartheid Museum which is much better and more thought provoking than the relevant museums and exhibits in Cape Town, Cape Town does offer much more to see, is physically much more impressive with the dominating mountain and the sea, and is more pleasurable to live in from what I could tell. Cape Town is also several degrees cooler and gets a lot of wind on the coast.

A special first year

Leah is one year old. It's quite incredible how time flies and how one only notices it when one has small children! Work has progressed of course, but nothing changes more than the first year of life. As with Hannah, Leah is practically walking, is eating more than the average teenager, is constantly grinning with her four teeth, and always looking adorable with her wonderful and bountiful hair. An incredible first year.

Despite being somewhat lazy, she is becoming more demanding and impatient: working out how to shout when she wants more food for example; and there is a lot of intelligence in there too: she seems to already be understanding a fair amount and pointing to what she wants. Last night at dinner she decided she did not want her food anymore, but wanted my food instead – she made that very clear through rejecting her own food and pointing at my food!

She's quite a drinker, quashing a few bottles of water per day, and is now enjoying the taste of soy milk and fresh milk, as well as everything else under the sun. She's more willing to eat spicy food than even Hannah is now. Unfortunately, as befalls most second-children I am told, Leah suffers from a lack of friends. She has one very good one, her sister, who plays with her continually, and she plays back. They sit together putting things in trucks and then emptying the truck; playing with play dough, balls and other things. But most of the friends we hang out with are of Hannah's age: from her kindergarten, neighbors and so on. Leah does not yet need friends, but we'll have to find some for her next year. Unfortunately most of the people we know in Shenzhen only have one kid, including the foreigners.

The last week or so was a national holiday in China. And a typhoon decided to hit South-East China meaning torrential rainfall almost non-stop. Just before the worst of it hit we managed to spend some time playing in the fountains at OCT Bay and a day in Hong Kong cycling along a bike bath on the Eastern coast, and after the rain hit we spend time in indoor playgrounds, a trampoline park, toys r us, and even some time at home! It is probably a good thing we did not travel around the region, though we should have got our act together and flown overseas somewhere for the holiday.

Hannah is still enjoying her kindergarten and having more interesting conversations that involve joining-the-dots as well as connecting disparate events. When I talk about flying she asks about me going to a different office, or sleeping on the plane; when she sees the Chinese flag she talks about the one she made in kindergarten; she remembers things from her visit back to Europe in January; compares a video of someone in a wedding dress to the dress worn at her Aunt's wedding in August and so on. She's enjoying her dance class and taekwondo class more: a good way for her to get some exercise and some discipline following teachers. She loves using her imagination to play games, but she is still failing to hide in any interesting places for hide-and-seek.