Retroid Raving

Hey, you gotta just love the Mother sometimes....

The Alma Mater, that is, seeing as we're into Latin right from the title in: we work in a beautiful place.

Taken from Rondebosch Common around 9 am this morning, during an imaginative detour to work to avoid a completely gridlocked N2.  You will, of course, notice the rainbow - bursting forth from the North End, naturally.

One can understand why Arthur C Clarke called it "The most beautiful University [campus] in the world".

From afar, that is...too close, and you see the Konkrete Jungel it has become.

Ah, well.  It was a beautiful moment.

Here's another - from Sunday.

Was anyone else involved in the mayhem of Tuesday night?  You know, the UCT Maths Olympiad?

Just remembering this prompts the collective to take a leaf from the Parkin book here: that is, heave a deep breath, count to five, release, say...well, you know the drill by now.

What. Pure.  Unadulterated.  Fracking.  CHAOS.

Oh, we're sure the Olympiad itself went off OK - the various kids associated with us all seemed to get where they were supposed to, do what they were supposed to (within limits; some fruit falls far from the tree...B-), and even manage to find their way to designated meeting places - it was just the getting TO and leaving FROM UCT as a whole, that was such a mission.

Consider: the N2 town-bound left hand lane was blocked solid at 18:00.  So too the M3 left-hand south-bound lane.

So too Main Road south-bound...and that's just the collective's experience; apparently north bound was hardly better.

And this was EARLY for the start of registration, which was slated to go from 18:15 through to 19:30!!

One of us can vouch for the fact that, even if one managed to turn off Woolsack into Middle Campus, that this was also congested beyond belief: coaches, coaches, more coaches, double-parked cars, minibuses...hundreds of kids walked from there up the hill, while parents sat in the jam trying to escape.

Pickup time was worse, if anything: taking advantage of cards and boom gates to get parking, and arriving early, just meant getting stuck in the incredible congestion that developed once all the pickup cars tried to get OFF campus.

And here is where the stalwarts of the UCT Traffic force come in for some praise, but also criticism: holding up Ring Road traffic to allow student parking area traffic in is stupid; when the tailback is all the way up the hill and around the bend past the Rhodes memorial stile, it is also just short-sighted.  WALKIE-TALKIES, anyone??

And having someone on duty at University Avenue, where NO traffic comes out, and not further up the hill, is just plain dumb (our most outspoken member told said member just this - he did not look pleased...).

Much deep breathing was done, and much f**k itting.  And this was BETTER than last year!!

So, UCT Maths: congratulations on what is undoubtedly a sterling and highly successful, very well regarded endeavour.

But do you realise that the whole University is now victims of your success??  Not to mention large areas of the southern suburbs??

The time has come to stagger the Olympiad, folks...not to have quite so MANY eager young minds coming up to campus AT THE SAME TIME.

Please???  At least one black-BMW-driving parent will thank you; he tried some A-type behaviour in the traffic queue with the largest of the collective's vehicles, and was not only nearly bisected by a Kombi bullbar, he was also roundly jeered at by the scholarly load - which will have done his blood pressure no good at all.

The View From the North Collective

This is an open version of a letter I have just written to the author of a most unusual manual for spiritual enlightenment.  I hope you all learn to walk the Way too!

Dear John;

I was going through OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg (think: same sort of attractiveness as Birmingham or Manchester), after yet ANOTHER trip to Pretoria from Cape Town on academic business, when I chanced upon two books in the transit area bookshop.  OK, the one was pure escapism (Vikas Swarup: Six Suspects), but the other one....

I must explain: my wife keeps buying me self-help books and self-improvement manuals (I know she's hinting at SOMETHING), but if I've read ten pages in ten years it's a lot.  I am also a lapsed-but-well-educated-and-thoroughly-atheist Catholic, so spiritual messages have got lost on me ever since I threw the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's "Bhagavad Gita" translation away unfinished in 1976.

So it was the title that attracted me first, rather than the fact it was in the "Spiritual / Self-Help" section: after all, how many books do you see with essentially just a two word title, and that being "F**k It"?  OK, it goes on to claim to be "The Ultimate Spiritual Way", but I was hooked after the blurb; by the end of a two-hour flight I had had more than a couple of concerned looks from fellow economy class passengers after laughing out loud on several occasions - and that after only one-third through the book!

I have now got through to the end, including breathing and armchair exercises, and I am an enthusiastic convert.  The fact I can never remember who wrote it [John Parkin] is no problem; typing "F**k it" into the Google search box very quickly brings one to your two pages (positions 5 & 6).

I have a simple routine now: when something gets to me - like suicidal minibus taxis on the highway - I take a deep breath, hold it for 5 seconds, release, and say "Fuck it". 

And am immediately soothed. 

The taxi also gets to escape, given that I am otherwise occupied, so the net serenity of the Universe is indeed increased.  I have practised this mantra - for so it is, despite its simplicity - for lo! the last several weeks, and life has much improved.

For me, obviously; I can't speak for journal editors who are trying to hound me; for colleagues who want me to teach more; for all the many, many folk who seek to burden me with trivia.  Including Julius Malema....

I have learned at least part of the Fuck It Way - and am content.

Yours on the path to enlightenment,

Ed Rybicki

PS: After I had said "Fuck it!" to any further work this pm, I listened to the Eagles...and just HAD to share another 70s gem:

"Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels
Drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy...."

From UCT's Research Office, this am:

Three NRF funding calls were due to open in April 2009, namely Thuthuka (TTK), Research Niche Areas (RNAs, also called IRDP) and Competitive Support for Unrated Researchers.  The NRF has informed us that, due to budgetary constraints and the pending reviews of TTK and the RNAs, there will be no calls for these programmes in 2009 for funding in 2010. 

The call for Competitive Support for Unrated Researchers will proceed as planned, opening mid April.

 Well, well, well....  So the Not Real Funding agency (which is what we folk long-associated with it, know the NRF as) has actually admitted, that really, they Don't Really Fund??  How is it that SA's premier pure scientific - pardon, that should be general - research funding body HAS NO MONEY to fund what presumably were well-thought-out initiatives, planned long ago?

Could it be - gasp!  Shock!  Horror! - that the rumour is true?  That governmental funding and subsidy of the 2010 World Cup has so drained the national fiscus, that the NRF has been short-changed??

Or is it that yet another rearranging of the deck chairs on a ship that is sinking have drained monies from initiatives that were supposed to be core funding avenues?

Who knows, who knows....

Ah, well.  The Doors had it right, if we are to relate yet another Golden Age song to a modern situation:

The Doors: Ship Of Fools Lyrics

Songwriters: Robbie Krieger, John Densmore, Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek

...

Everyone was hanging out
Hanging up and hanging down
Hanging in and holding fast
Hope our little world will last

Yeah, along came [Dr. Albert S. van Jaarsveld (Acting)]
Looking for a new a ship
Come on, people better climb on board
Come on, baby, now we're going home
Ship of fools, ship of fools...