Retroid Raving

You know, I can remember it almost as if it were yesterday: bright sun, dust, thronging crowds, Mkishi dancers scaring even the well-dressed sophisticates; a military tattoo, fireworks - and the Union Flag coming down slowly, as the new flag went up in the Independence Stadium.  October 24th, 1964: birth of a new country.  A bright new, eager and idealistic government, determined to make the most of a country that had been kept back at the expense of its southern neighbour.

And then growing up there: memories of big trees, sudden summer rain, endless bicycle adventures; playing marbles, wandering in the bush...surrounded by poor but friendly and apparently happy people, leaving doors unlocked....  Having a new currency, where 100 little brightnesses ("ngwee") made up one dawn ("kwacha").

And huddling together outside school on November 11th 1965, wondering exactly what the "unilateral declaration of independence" from Salisbury meant.  Watching as security became ever tighter; people were deported for no obvious reason; teachers and fellow students and their whole families disappeared literally overnight.  Going to secondary school, and singing the national Anthem every day under a fluttering flag; standing up for it every time one went to movies.

Discovering it would be a good idea to continue one's education outside the country; watching as both Rhodesia and Zambia slid down the slope towards increasing insecurity and unrest and unease.

Staying attached, though: marrying someone from near where I grew up; living and working there in vacs, maintaining the passport, with great difficulty.

Eventually losing the links to the homeland: divorce and emigration do these things to one.  Watching, watching as home slid further and further down into economic ruin; as the currency became a joke (what's the sound the Rand makes as it hits bottom?  "Kwacha"!!).

Then finally, after increasing hassles at airports, giving up citizenship: having the Zambian consul-general in Pretoria tell me that all passports were being withdrawn "because too many Nigerians are buying them".  Becoming, at long last, a South African.

But getting excited recently to see a Zamsoc booth on Jammie Steps: seen from afar because of the so-familiar flag (like our noble eagle in its flight...).

And still remembering every word of the national Anthem...for a long while I used to sing it down the phone to my only other Zambian friend in Cape Town; I even taught it to my children.  Now I use higher technology: check this link out.

I have visited Zambia only twice since 1983: once on Ushepia business about eight years ago, and again for 50th birthday reasons in 2005.  And what it showed me was - the past is really another country; you don't want to try and go back there.  And modern Zambia was a great place to visit, but I'm too used to Cape Town to want to live there again.

And October 24th has rolled around, and past, again - and Zambia is middle-aged at 44 years old, just 9 years younger than me.

Happy birthday.  Happy birthday, Zambia.  I hope to see many more.

Ed Rybicki

Anyone ever noticed just how awesome an album Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" is?  Listening to them just the other evening brought back a rush of memories, including driving down the Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Banff, Alberta, four years ago, "You can go your own way" hammering out....  What a good a unit they were!

Have you heard all of the background mutterings on "Dark Side of the Moon"?  I obsessively played and replayed the 30th Anniversary reissue version the other day, until I got them all.  "I know I'm mad, I've always been mad..."  "Just a short, sharp shock...".  "I am not frightened of dying...any time will do...".

Yes, folks, it is THAT time of year again: when you find yourself doing such as the above, or finding great interest in your daughter's favourite kid soapie, or watching your son play "Halflife 2".

Rather than MARK.... 

Mark undergraduate scripts.  Honours comprehensions.  Third-year practical course write-ups.

Damn, there I go again...watching a YouTube cartoon short of a New Zealand-accented whale beaching itself.

Rather than MARK...!!!!

You know, people are stupid - and it appears as though undergraduate students are exceptional examples.

Retroid speaks, of course, only in the context of crossing roads in this instance - although he is sure he could come up with a number of other categories if pressed.

Those of us who have occasion to make the regular trip from the Upper to the Health Sciences Campus and back in the course of daily business will have noticed - oh, how we have noticed! - how the closure of the M3 Hospital/N2 offramp has drastically lengthened the trip, as well as having led to altered traffic patterns on Main Road.  The University's closing of the road in front of the Pink Towers has only exacerbated the congestion on main Road, such that trying to get to or from Upper Campus via that route any time close to rush hour is almost impossible, at least, impossible within a 45 minute window.

What I have had much opportunity to notice in addition in recent months is the lemming-like tendency of students - for one presumes this is what they are - to cross busy roads en masse, without looking, trusting that oncoming vehicles will (a) notice them, (b) stop.

A few days ago on Main Road I saw a flock (gaggle? horde? infestation?) of young people waiting to cross towards Varsity, standing in the left hand lane (going south), well away from the light-controlled pedestrian crossing further down, apparently oblivious of a Golden Arrow bus bearing down on them at high speed.  I assume they were not mown down; there was no blood there the following day.

Today, on my way to FHS, I had occasion to brake for a student running across Ring Road to catch a bus.  In Observatory, I braked again to avoid a woman carrying a baby, hurrying across a light-controlled intersection (with the light in my favour) to catch up with her friend.  Proving civilians can be just as stupid as students sometimes.  Once on FHS campus, I stopped at a crossing to allow a (ganglion? paroxysm?) of HS students to cross - only to have them wander, along the road in front of me, vaguely towards the Anatomy Block.  I drove firmly through with hand on hooter.

Strange...the brain goes into neutral when you are with friends, and when on or near campus.

Retroid has been fondly collecting the sayings of his children throughout their lives: you know, the cute-yet-incredibly-true things the little people say every now and then?  They've been getting rarer as the children get bigger - sadly - but today was a classic.

In explanation, it must be admitted that the retroidal offspring have deliberately been brought up religion-free - partly because Retroid had too much of religious schools (Dominican nuns, Irish Jesuits, Benedictine monks, Franciscan friars, and just to round it off, a final dose of English Jesuits), and partly because we're just too slack.

So it was especially delightful when the retroidal daughter said to me a short while ago: "They talk about the Lamb of God, or eating God's Lamb, or something like that: does that mean God's a sheep...??"

Priceless.

As devotees of this column and of the UCT Blogs in general will be aware, Retroid hates "Gaudeamus".

Really hates "Gaudeamus"....

So, in the interests of livening up graduations this year, he offers you an alternate version: gathered from these very blogs, new words to sing along with the old.

 Come, let us add to the transformation efforts at OU^TM - help Retroid finish this song!

 "Gaudeamus":

Gaudeamus, igitur
What the words are, I don't care
And it bravely fills the air
As we teachers climb the stair
Going on and on and o-on
On and on and on and on
I-incomprehensibly
I-incomprehensibly

Then it starts another verse
Cheer up, things could get much worse
They could play "Die Stem" instead
Like when we grad-u-a-ted
When we all sat down in protest
Waiting for someone to notice
Our noble gesture
Our noble gesture...

And another voice is heard
To provide another verse
Of the the song that never ends
Sung in Anglicised Latin
See, it just keeps on and o-on
On and on, and on and on
Scanning but not rhy-y-ming
Scanning but not rhyming...

Gauteng outjies, waar is jy
Jy moet jou vuvuzelae kry....

Not so hard to do right now, as it happens: funny, it always snows in October.

But soon it'll be time for this:

This year's gone on long enough, and been tense enough, that some serious non-literal chilling is in order.

Bring it on...

Retroid was at a very interesting meeting the other day, when a VERY senior member of the University hierarchy said - in answer to a question about how publication subsidy was used - something along the lines of: "Well, it's part of our core subsidy, but it is used to stimulate research because it pays for the 30% of your time that you spend doing research".

Interesting....  So, if I spend more than that - what?  If I spend less??  And what if the amount I bring in by publishing pays for less than the 30% of my time??  Should I take a cut?  And if it is more - could I even (now here's a revolutionary suggestion) be paid MORE??  And what happens South of the Steps, where research is often done at home...?

Who worked that out, anyway, and how?  I have never filled in a detailed questionnaire on how I spend my working day, other than a once-yearly thumbsuck sent in to the Faculty of Science - of which, as far as I am aware, Bremner remains ignorant, as no-one in the Central Finance meeting I went to a while back had ever heard of it. 

That is also a different version to what I heard at Faculty Board - where we were told that the subsidy (which is supposedly all devolved to Faculty level) was used to hire extra staff for productive Departments.

Get the answers straight, people: why is money that is paid by the Dept of Education to the University to help stimulate research, not more transparently used?  Why - apart from the not-very-convincing issues discussed here  and again here in this column - does the University not distribute a more significant part of that largesse to the people who earned it, either as a research grant or as above-RFJ salary?

It seems evident that Our University does not actually have a coherent story to tell regarding subsidy earned by individuals: ALL subsidy income is regarded simply a replacement for the old direct State subsidy based on student numbers, regardless of the stated intent of the publication subsidy in particular, which happens to be enshrined in an Act of Parliament.

It might be nice if there were an incentive to earn the subsidy, other than to get promoted: other Universities do it; why don't we?