Exams Over, assignments in, long weekend ahead

After all the studying and long hours put into making sure I didnt completely fail statistics, the exam was written on Sunday morning (I literally worked for the enitre duration of Saturday and woke up early to do a last minute refresh on Sunday morning, much to the delight of the kittens who thought it was great fun to have me up so early to "play with" on a Sunday morning)

I learnt a long time ago not to comment on how well or how badly I think I did in exams, because, as a rule of thumb, the opposite almost always occurs.

This (or the opposite of it) was painfully experienced by a Supersport presenter recently who proudly stated "I always get it wrong, so I am going to say that New Zealand will DEFINITELY win the quarter final of the Cricket World Cup in the game against the Proteas..." we know how that turned out. Fail.

Anyway, the best part of the exam was right at the end when the finish line was in sight. I wrote to the best of my abilities given the time (and the fact that I had been in Zanzibar for a good 10 days during the course of the subject!) and was able to respond to everything asked, whether correctly or not!

So we shall see...

Anyway, that is done, the group assignment is complete and the momentum now shifts to the next block, which is Macro-economics for me (I have the credit for Financial accounting already, much to my group's dismay)

The frantic pace over the last two weeks at work (with statistics thrown in on top) has now slowed down to only a mild panic and the normal course of work is kicking in again. This means new projects to deliver, financial reviews to complete and general strategy type stuff to do. I am much less concerned about macro-economics as I actually enjoy the subject, so that should be fun. (watch this space)

This weekend we are off to the Waterberg with my family and I am looking forward to finding some form on the golf course at Elements and potentially Zebula as well. With this comes the responsibility of ranking these courses and so the Golf Digest Ranking panel card shall be accompanying me on the journey.

It will be nice to have a little break after the last two weeks and I'm definitely looking forward to it.

On that note, the running will be kicked off again (temporarily dampened by the beaches of Zanzibar and crazy, over the top working hours...

Now to find a  new battery for my Garmin watch...

The Catch-Up and Zanzibar!

Considering how long it has been since my last post, I think I need to add in a new “quarter year resolution”...basically, that I promise to post at least once a week!

Unfortunately, this is an indication of how busy things have been and the sheer volume of work thrown my way and the time it has taken that has been dominating my life over the past month. Now, Nedbank isn’t solely to blame for this, Gibs is also a strong contributor and unfortunately, going on a little holiday to Tanzania in between blocks of lectures for the MBA only made the workload even greater.

I am sitting at the office, it’s 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, the 16/04 and I have been studying for my stats exam tomorrow for a number of hours already. I have to come to the office as any attempt at working on MBA things at home is futile. Unfortunately, there is just way too much distraction and this results in fractured focus and the work never being A). Absorbed or B). Done at all

The office is dead quiet though, I think the only people here are those who are in the same position as I am, studying or working for deliverables in the next few days and trying to get it done in an environment conducive to concentration!

This entry is the closest think I will get to a study break and I figured I may as well use my time doing something value-adding and catch up on these entries, it at least gets my mind off the section on hypothesis testing I am about to undertake.

So the last entry I made was just before the surprise trip to Zanzibar. Needless to say, the trip was fantastic in so many ways.

13 March: On our actual One Year anniversary, I had lectures in the morning and this gave us time to get organized and ready for the evening flight. We were dropped off at the airport by my parents and once in duty free, I spotted a camera lens to go with the Nikon D5000 Helen had bought me for our anniversary. The camera comes with the 18-55mm lens, but I need the longer lens for the National Parks. The 55-300mm Nikon lens was at a reduced price and so I bought it J I added a Lowepro Camera bag and an 8gb memory card to the purchase and R4000 later I was sorted. Except that my camera was at home locked away. In the cupboard. I had decided not to bring it as Helen had hers and besides, I didn’t have a bag or a longer lens, so why bother. Little did I expect to find it all at the airport before we even left! Anyway, we checked into the business class lounge (using my new Amex card for the first time to make sure it gave us the access it promised!) and had some dinner before catching the flight. The flight itself was relatively quick and we landed in Dar es Salaam in the early hours of Monday morning, to be picked up by a driver (Maraji) holding a board for “Mrs Helen BrownWood and her husband” Nice one Rachel.

14 March: We checked into Hotel Rachel and promptly fell asleep (it was about 3am). The heat in Tanzania is quite something and without air conditioning, the rooms would be unbearable (well, for me at least) The next morning we woke up to breakfast set out on the table (Rachel assures us that she put it together and not her maid...the jury is still out) and we then joined up with Rachel to go and see the sights of the city and get a feel for the country a little better. Dar es Salaam is a sprawling mass of streets, where the most fascinating thing is the fact that some of the suburbs don’t have tar roads. This is most notable in the Peninsula (the Sandton of Dar) where the big houses are straight off dirt roads. This reminded me that we were, indeed, in Africa and that South Africa is actually part of Europe. We had lunch (and the first taste of Tanzanian beer, Ndovu) and then went about trying to find a property for Rachel’s new school to be based. This was not so successful (although upon our return from the island, Rachel had found and secured her location and it opens in June...) In the evening, we went out to Rachel’s local hotspot and had dinner and a few drinks before heading home.

15 March: We awoke to a similar breakfast as the night before (and no Rachel, but the maid was there...hmmmm) and relaxed at the house, reading some books before we headed off to the airport to catch our flight to the island. The planes that fly with Coastal Air are so small, you literally feel every gust of wind as you fly out over the ocean from the mainland to Zanzibar. We landed comfortably and were met by another driver (organised by a friend of Rachel’s) who took us to Stone Town, where we walked around and visited the old Palace and the little stone streets.

After an hour or so, we were taken to a local’s hang out for lunch and had chicken and rice (at local’s prices, not in dollar terms), then we went a little further north of Zanzibar Town to a spice farm, where we were shown around for a couple of hours at how the locals grow everything from cinnamon to nutmeg, to coconuts. The locals are incredibly clever and use everything at their disposal for cooking, flavouring, medicine and clothing. Our tour guide and his “assistant” were very good and really gave us a feel for the way a farm runs year round. They then fed us with all manner of fruits and sent us on our way more full than we were after lunch. After this, we headed across the island to our hotel. The taxi driver was incredibly informative and had lots of views on education, politics and the state of the economy. Quite interesting when you compare these with South Africa.

After all my trepidation of what to expect (thanks to Carte Blanche putting the fear of the unknown into us every Sunday and Monday of booking online only to find the hotel does not exist) we were welcomed into Breezes Beach Club and Spa to find that not only were they expecting us, but it was a truly 5 star establishment. We had our room upgraded, were given vouchers for spa treatments, lunch (as I had paid for dinner, bed and breakfast) and more. The hotel itself is situated on Bwejuu beach on the east coast of the island and has an amazing stretch of white sand all to itself. Because the east coast is tidal, the ocean recedes for a few hours a day and leaves the tidal pool shallow enough to walk in, which is nice, as you get to literally walk between the coral and see all the fish.

An angelfish swimming near our ankles

A not-so-friendly eel hiding in the coral

16 March – 22 March: I won’t summarize everything we did every day, but just the highlights. As I mentioned, the resort was absolutely amazing. It has a large swimming pool surrounded by deck chairs and bordered by the Dhow restaurant (one of three restaurants available for lunch) which is decorated with beach sand floors, and couches underneath a ships mast. The food and cocktails/smoothies from this restaurant were fantastic (a special mention to the calamari!) For those guests on full board (breakfast, lunch and dinner) there was almost too much food to fathom.

Relaxing at the pool

The Dhow Restaurant at the swimming pool

We tried it one day when we used our voucher and almost exploded with the sheer volume (and quality!) Each morning a full breakfast buffet (local and foreign food) is laid out, you are served by waiters 24/7. At dinner time, each evening is a theme and most nights are supported by a band or support act (the best was the acrobats!) The food at Breezes is ridiculously good, they alternate between a buffet at dinner (curry, seafood etc.) and plated meals which are very fancy. Needless to say, the value for money is extreme. In fact, I’m sitting here eating a tuna salad as I type this and thinking back to what we had in Zanzibar, this is a bit lame.

SO much good food

The acrobats, who kept having to perform when the lights went out!

Breezes is also set up for complete relaxation. They don’t have tv’s in the rooms and there is no wifi or internet (except for one pc in the library) so you are literally separated from your usual daily grind. We ended up both reading a lot (which we always do on holidays) and swimming/relaxing at the pool a lot. We also played tennis on a couple of occasions and even hit the gym once (after all that food, we needed to!)

On the Friday morning we went out on a day tour and swam with dolphins (even though a tropical storm hit us while out on the boat!) and went and visited the local Jozani forest (where we saw a green snake close up on the fern fronds, not sure what it was though!) and met up with the famous Red Colabus monkeys. They reminded me a little bit of our bigger kitten, Jelly, as they seemed completely oblivious to the fact that there were people around and focused mainly on the fruits on the trees. We also popped into the mangrove swamps and saw how these are influential in creating the local environment for the plants and crustaceans/animals.

A view out over the ocean with the storm coming in the distance

Our unknown green snake, right next to the path where we were walking in the forest

A red Colabus monkey focused on the foliage and not the camera!

I did manage to slice my toe open on the coral on one of our low-tide walks (on the Thursday) and had to be fixed up at the hotel clinic (literally, everything is available on site) which was a bit stupid as it meant I could not swim for a day and was resigned to sitting at the pool, rather than in it. I had done the same thing in Thailand a year earlier (almost to the day) when I cut the underside of my foot open on a sharp rock. Something about learning from mistakes...

On one of the night’s they hosted a beach party down on the sand and all the guests seemed to come out of the woodwork. We met up with two German tourists that were a similar age to us and had a good chat with them about travelling the world, the Soccer world cup and other things.

All in all, Breezes was absolutely fantastic and we would definitely go there again for a spoilt, relaxing holiday. We were incredibly sad to leave it (and all the friendly staff, who loved to chat to me about Liverpool, as a couple of them were big fans!).

The resort surprised us with sundowners and canape's at our room on the patio one evening

We returned to Stone Town with our driver (talking this time about police corruption after being stopped at a roadblock and having to slip a sneaky few shillings into the greasy hand of a female traffic officer to get through) We did a proper tour of Stone Town and saw the slave trade and the Anglican Church, the Museum of Wonders and the small streets with a guide who knew a lot about the city and its history. Once again, we headed to the little airport and caught a (much bumpier) flight back to the mainland. We spent 7 nights and 8 days on Zanzibar and would definitely return for a great beach/island holiday at a fraction of the cost of places like Mauritius.

We joined up with Rachel at her place again and headed out to a local “English Pub” for dinner and an introduction to “Cheza Tuesday” which is the Tanzanian version of “Phuza Thursday”. For us there would be very little Cheza-ing as we needed to catch a 2am flight out of Dar es Salaam and back to Joburg!

We were picked up for one last time by Maraji and taken to the airport, where we waited for quite some time until the flight was ready to depart. It seems that in Tanzania, the flight leaves when all the people have checked in, as we took off a full 30 minutes earlier than planned! Amazing!

What this did mean was a very early arrival time in Johannesburg and a Gautrain that had not yet opened for the day’s operations! So we waited back in OR Thambo as well. Once it did start up, we were very lucky and caught the first train of the day, a bus immediately from the station and straight back to our house. All of this was an indication of how far South Africa has come in advancing parts of its infrastructure into the very first world.

I’ll say no more as the rest of the day was spent in the office J

Hopefully this has covered for a number of posts and caught my terrible lack of updates up a little. It was a fantastic holiday and besides the fact that I went straight back into lectures the weekend we returned, I think it was the absolute best way to celebrate our one year anniversary, in style!

New Year’s Resolution: Tick!