South Africa

I mostly created this blog so I could document my upcoming trip to South Africa for the corporate service corps with IBM.  Hence the disclaimer at the bottom of this page.  We do have an internal corporate blog, but as so often happen with corporate tools, the available public tools are easier to use, if less secure.  I'm pretending this is my verison of an open source blog.

I leave on June 18th out of Laguardia to Atlanta and then on to Jo-burg, SA.  I'll be meeting 13 other IBMers there from all over the world, including (off the top of my head) India, Uraguay, Japan, Australia, Mexico, etc.  The 14 of us will be divided into three separate organizational projects, Business against Crime, Mpumalunga Tourism Agency, and my team's project, MEGA (Mpumalunga Economic Growth Agency).  My subteam will consist of five people, also subdivided into two teams, a team of three, and then my team, a team of two.  Oddly enough, my teammate is from the New York area, and even more oddly enough, out of all of the people we could possibly replace from South Africa Wave 1 (we're wave 2), is another American who actually happens to sit one aisle over from me in Somers!  If you're interested in reading her blog about her experiences there, you can find it here.

I've been a bit lax about getting ready for the trip, putting off immunizations for what I thought would be too long (turns out they accomodate lazy people like myself) and just in general not preparing.  I've been doing my internet research and team meetings and all of that kind of stuff, just not physically getting in the mood to travel yet.  Even as I write this and know that I'm leaving in 10 days, it still seems a long way off.  After all, I have a whole weekend party between now and then.

My arms are still sore from the four vaccinations I had to get...Tetanus, Typhoid, Polio, and Hep A, and I still have to head to the pharmacy tonight for my malaria pills.  Apparently there are three types of malaria pills.  I've been given the choice between two of them really: one that you take daily, and one that you take weekly.  The nurse tells me that the ones you take weekly give you very "vivid dreams".  In fact, she said, "I was on them two years and I used to take them on Sundays and go to bed early...people that like Larium don't just like it, they love it."  We'll try that one and see what happens.  When I asked her about the side effects or how I'd know if I didn't like it, she said, "You just won't feel right."  I'm curious as to what that means...

On a Non-Africa Note, we just got a hammock installed (meaning I had to screw it into trees in the backyard) this weekend.  Going to be a nice addition for the party hosting.  Speaking of parties, Terra has quite the weekend planned as usual, with all sorts of decorative surprises, very much looking forward to having all of our friends over.

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.