the world's highest bungee jump

...like the title says. it's 216m tall, which is a little over 650ft.

there were 8 of us--4 guys, 4 girls and we left early saturday morning around 9am and started the long 7hr drive to plettenburg bay, where our hostel was. we grabbed lunch in mossel bay around 4pm (late i know) at a restaurant called delfino's, which was right on the beach overlooking the indian ocean.

the drive there was the most scenic thing i've ever seen. i thought the wine countryside on my way to the wacky wine festival was incredible, but it was nothing compared to the drive to the southern coastline and then driving alongside.

there were green, rolling hills everywhere...and even in the middle of winter, there was so many more shades of green than i've ever seen. of course, the sprawling plains and hills were made even cooler by the huge mountains in the distance everywhere you looked. there were really dense forests and little watering hole things where animals would gather as well.
we saw a lot of cows, sheep, ostrich, and horses. im sure i even saw some vultures doing their signature circle of death dance above.

after mossel bay though, the highway followed the coastline and the scenery began to change. we drove past mountains w/ waterfalls, huge lakes with islands in them, and even some swampy marshland looking areas. it was simply stunning, how beautiful this country is.

anyway, we arrived in plettenburg bay around 6-7pm or so and immediately proceeded to drink heavily at the hostel. it was a really cozy backpacker's hostel for a really affordable price (~$15). we then grabbed dinner at a place called the lookout, which as the name might imply, overlooked the ocean. we seem to like restaurants that overlook an ocean.

after dinner, we headed back (more like stumbled back) to the hostel and met up w/ another group of connect-123 interns who were doing the same garden route trip. one of the girls i met liked metal and understood why metal had the most talented musicians today--love at first sight. totally bonded over metal.

we crashed early to get up early for bungee jumping the next day...

we drove to the bloukrans bridge, which is the largest bridge in africa. it's built over the bloukrans river, which empties into the ocean, which you can see. it started to rain a little bit when we arrived, so we were worried that the rain would make the jump way scarier. the river is at the very bottom of a really really deep valley.

after a quick hike down a trail that had "beware of snake" signs everywhere, we made it to the underside of the bridge. picture time for better story-telling.



there was a catwalk attached to the underside of the bridge, which connects the side of the mountain to the center support structure. there's also a zipline which costs extra which takes you automatically from the mountain to the center. once we arrived, they briefed us real quickly and immediately got us going.

i just want to say that working there would be so fun. everyone was extremely friendly and genuinely seemed to enjoy their job, plus they were blasting tunes the whole time, which was nice. definitely heard some american tunes [forever by chris brown!]. i was the 5th person to go in our group, which was by weight from lightest to heaviest. they strapped you in, walked you to the edge b/c your feet are tied together, and then they count down from 5 and yell BUNGEE!

the first person had no idea how fast they would count down...and they count down fast, giving you no time to think twice. and if you don't jump, they push you haha

anyway, my turn came and by that point, i wasn't nervous--just really stoked to do it. i got strapped in and hopped to the edge...but it was at that point looking down a half mile down to my death that some voice in the back of my head told me this was a bad idea. but i was still totally pumped to jump and they counted down 5..4..3..2..1..BUNGEE!

i jumped...and for a split second freaked the hell out. there was a lot of noise from everybody yelling to the loud music..but as soon as i jumped off the bridge, everything became completely silent and i remembering saying "shit." then the wind started to howl in my ears. the rain was hitting me on the first second or two, but then i had accelerated faster than the raindrops around me were falling so it literally seemed like time slowed down around me as the raindrops slowed down. i remember looking at one particular raindrop to my right and beating it down to the bottom. the rush of the river and greenery towards me took my attention away from the raindrops. the actual freefall is around 5 seconds, which is freaking awesome. i hit the bottom, got the painful blood-rush-to-the-head and bounced about 4-5 times. being suspended there waiting for the guys to come get you up tandem was a lot scarier than actually jumping. i remember feeling my shoes start to slip off--that was unnerving.

i was brought back up and was so jacked to go again...but the first jump cost R590, which is around $90. but another intern, bill and i decided to do a second jump. we decided to jump off backwards, since we had done the traditional forward jump. the second jump cost R420 and we suited up.
i went first this time...and let me tell you, standing with your heels over the bridge not knowing what's coming was even more terrifying than doing it the normal way.

the countdown went, and i jumped anyway...i remember worrying about the jump b/c you need somewhat more proper form or you could flip on your way down and stuff, which is bad. you have to keep your head tucked in as you jump, and then once you're off, you have to bring your head upright to stabilize yourself so you go down straight into a dive, as opposed to potentially somersaulting and stuff in mid-air, which is bad. i saw the sky, then the valley and the river, and then i saw the underside of the bridge and the rope extending...and then i felt a tug on my left side and i started to spin in a spiral the whole way down, which im pretty sure wasn't supposed to happen, but it was awesome. a little painful towards the bottom, but awesome anyway.

i came back and everyone said the way i jumped off had looked like a professional dive, which made me sad i got the video and pictures for my first jump, not my second. but whatever, the experience was incredible.

i have pictures of the place b/c they put it on a CD for sale...you can't take your camera on the bridge.

here we go...



my jump #




the river at the bottom...waaaaay down there



the view from one side of the bridge, with the river emptying into the indian ocean



the catwalk there..open floor, so you could see down as you walked which was sweet. in case you can't tell, i love heights.

and now, pictures from my first jump...














the whole thing will be on fb eventually...as soon as i find the available bandwidth, cuz the apartment's wifi is slow.

after the jump, we grabbed lunch and began the long 7hr drive back home, so we could all get to work the next day and watch the confed cup final b/w USA and brazil.

as i write this right now, it's 2-2 and 84 minutes into the game.
i'm amazed the USA has come this far, and this game is amazing...but it should still be remembered that the USA is playing most of their best players, while the same isn't necessarily true of brazil or spain.
...haha just kidding brazil just scored and it's 3-2. figures.

anyway, we didn't get to do all the other awesome things on the garden route due to lack of time like sea kayaking w/ dolphins and whales, cave exploring, the world's highest absailing, ostrich racing, elephant riding/feeding, and hanging w/ monkeys. maybe some other time though.

for now, i have to finish work for tomorrow. congratulations to brazil, the confed cup champs!

if you ever have the chance to go bungee jumping, even if it isn't the tallest one in the world [guinness world record certified], it's ok because the experience is amazing.
the two jumps have definitely been the highlight of my trip here so far.

mother nature's fury

so i was woken up today by the sound of ferocious winds beating my apartment windows mercilessly. i wasn't too happy about that.

i was working from home today so i got out of bed and did my usual morning routine.

as i was working on the computer though, the wind picked up even more..i would guess speeds are currently at like 30-40mph. but i just totally pulled that number out of my ass cuz i have no idea or any way to make a more educated guess.

anyway, i was looking at the window listening to them being banged on like african congo drums...when from near lion's head mountain, i see something incredible.

it started to rain but the wind was so strong all the rain went horizontal. i was watching a literal wall of water come towards the apartment. it took about 3-4 seconds and then sure enough, the wall of water crashed into the windows and chaos ensued. it was literally the coolest thing i've ever seen, precipitation-wise.

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anyways, that's really about it as of late. it's getting pretty chilly...last weekend, we went to cape point, which is the southernmost tip of africa. stopped at a place called boulder's on the way, which i assume is so named because of the gigantic boulders lining the beach. it was also home to a lot of african penguins, which are adorable things. they're really small--they don't even come up to your knee.

i decided to climb the large boulders on the beach because i'm still a little kid at heart. on my way up, i looked in a crevasse and saw a baby penguin just chilling. i was literally about 10 inches from this thing. i turned my head and it would turn its head too. i tried to touch it, but apparently that wasn't kosher and it kinda flopped away. adorable.



i got on top of this huge boulder...but then i had no idea how to get down. the way i came up was much more difficult going down...and i almost slipped and died a few times. ended up getting a few cuts, but it was worth it.

when i noticed the cut though, i freaked out cuz it was an open wound in africa. so i put on my sweater immediately to cover it up. no one had band-aids :(

cape point was absolutely gorgeous. after a short hike to the lighthouse, you could see where the atlantic and indian oceans coincided. so many shades of blue and green, and the sun setting just made it even more beautiful. it was kinda surreal standing at the very edge of a continent where two oceans meet.
so i've now officially seen 3/4 of the oceans on mother Earth...sweet. got some pretty kickass pictures...just wish i could upload them.

till next time.

revelation #2, a cute little girl and mountainsss

it all started when my supervisor asked me how my long weekend left, to which i told her about all the weekend's sweet activities. i said i was doing all these things b/c they were once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

later during the day during the clinic, a man walked in and i found out he was of bushman descent, or the san people.
these people are the actual native natives of south africa who've been here thousands of years. wikipedia even says that "Genetic evidence suggests the Bushmen's ancestors predate the genetic changes of the rest of the human population", which pretty much makes them like. everyone's ancestors.

anyway, she told me that not all once-in-a-lifetime experiences were activities to do or things to see. sometimes, they were people you met and the interactions you had with them. the san people are slowly being phased out as technology increases and modernization of africa occurs. she described their culture as being goofy, and all about laughter--bonding came from poking fun at each other and sorts. indeed, this guy was about 50-60 and was a cute little old guy who had this goofy grin on this whole time and cracking jokes in afrikaans, even though he had HIV.

dr. zeier told me i should remember this man forever because i would most probably never have a chance to meet another bushman ever again.

that stuck with me. and it will forever.

god that was so cheesy. i hate myself haha

as the day went on, i saw other interesting patients.
one man survived a stroke, and sure enough, had the left side of his body paralyzed. but he was still an alcoholic and was non-compliant in taking his ARV's...which really aggravated his wife and doctors. i don't understand why you would opt to skip out on your anti-HIV drugs when it's been made perfectly clear that if you miss even ONE dose, your chances of survival and drug efficacy drop exponentially.

another thing about the ARV's...the consensus method of treatment for HIV around the world nowadays is something called HAART, or highly-active anti-retroviral therapy. it's basically using a combination of 3 drugs at once in hopes of suppressing the viral load to undetectable levels. the virus can never be completely extinguished. at this point, the only surviving viruses are dormant and incorporated into the host genomes. once a patient misses a dose though, the drugs inhibiting reverse transcriptase, invertase and proteases will fail and the virus will mutate and become resistant. thus, new drugs are required...but already, the virus is much stronger. this is why it's so important to never miss a dose.

but the highlight of my day came from a mother infected w/ HIV who came in with her 2-yr old daughter, also infected w/ HIV. the virus was passed during the third trimester of her pregnancy b/c the mom had been non-compliant w/ her drug taking. thus, the doctors had been angry with her because had the mother taken every dose, the child would most likely not have HIV. but just today they had found a temporal lobe lesion, which gave the mother epileptic episodes. [epilepsy isn't what you think it is normally...not really that spastic stuff in reaction to flashing lights and whatnot, although that does occur. i saw a case of that in the dominican republic] but her form of focal epilepsy caused her to have strange, uncharacteristic personalities and she sometimes wouldn't recognize her daughter.

this led the doctors to believe that the mother had forgotten to take the drugs because of these epileptic episodes...which unfortunately, are extremely hard to detect even w/ imaging techniques. thus, they apologized for blaming her directly for the child's HIV.

but this little girl, as SOOON as she walked in and saw me, stopped crying and ran screaming into my leg and hugged it. i was a little shocked but it was so cute. she'd keep trying to hug me and she was rummaging through my bag as she was on my lap and she found my mints. she knew there was candy inside, so she made me open it and she took like 5 mints and kept asking for more as her mom was being checked by the doctor. adorable. it was the most heartbreaking thing ever knowing that this 2-yr old cute girl was infected w/ HIV and would not live to be 40.

fuck AIDS man. HIV may be the next step in viral evolution...but we don't need this shit. fuck evolution in this case.


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anyway, on a chipper note, tuesday night i climbed lion's head, which is the second tallest mountain in the western cape area [table mountain being the first]. it's 669 metres, or 2195ft high.



yay big pictures. i thought it would be a leisurely hike...and it was till about halfway up or so. you can see the trail curling around the mountain. but after that, the hike turned into a literal mountain climb. at times, there were vertical rock faces that we had to scale using nothing but chains they had left for us. and the rocks were wet from the rain the night before. reassuring. i slipped and almost fell to my death many many times. there were no fences or anything to keep you from falling.

anyway, we made it to the top in about an hour. it's actually not that tall, it just looks like it. but at the top, i got my first view of the entire cape town area and the atlantic ocean...and it was incredible. we watched the sunset and watched the lights of the city come on. absolutely incredible. the scenery beats anything i've seen in the US.

we climbed down after the sun had set...and realized it was pitch black and we only had flashlights on our cell phones to guide us down. imagine jumping down a wet, slippery mountain w/ nothing but a cell phone light to guide you. good times though.

later that night, we went to camp's bay for dinner. this is the richest area in cape town...like where all the celebrities and rich white ppl (also called schmirdles) live. these mansions situated oceanside were the most amazing homes i've ever seen...even beating out pebble beach in CA and whatnot. anyway, the value is INCREDIBLE b/c they're only about $750,000...my house in arizona costs more than that and is just a regular house. in california, that'll get you a nice small, medium-sized house im sure. and in manhattan, that'll get you a crappy apartment if you're lucky.

point is...if you're going to buy a house, just buy one on the beach in south africa :]

the real estate market is supposed to burst after the world cup though. i was reassured by a local real estate agent though that the prices would drop soon after the world cup ended. yesssssss
im going to come back and buy a house in the future.

weekend aquatic activities

this weekend was incredibly fun. it started thursday at a bar called "neighbourhood" where the program directors took everyone out for drinks. every thursday night is drinks night here somewhere around town.

friday night was the night of the stanley cup if i recall correctly. i got back from work after the ward rounds mentioned previously and went to a braii [braai?], which is basically a south african BBQ. it was at another intern's house, which was set up pretty much like a mansion.

we had some good food--it was stereotypically funny though. all the guys sat around the grill with beers grilling the food and the girls were inside listening to crappy music like spice girls and making the salad.

for some reason, at that point, i felt really old and manly. not in the sense like chuck norris manly, but you know...a grown man. it was really weird. i'm only 20.

anyway, afterwards, we all went to a club called zula and paid a ridiculous cover charge [R40 = only ~$5-6 but 40 makes it seem much more expensive]. there was a pretty good band playing but i wanted to get home and watch the stanley cup final. so me and my bud scott [who is a wings fan] left early and went home to set up the live internet stream...which as mentioned previously, cut out every 5 seconds. but we sucked it up and stayed up till 5 am to finish watching. passed out.

saturday:

saturday was a slow day. didn't do much...chilled at home and watched some movies. decided to crash early because we were going to go shark diving the next day really early at 6am

sunday: we woke up early to go, but i got a call from the skipper saying the weather conditions were too bad to go out...so they had to reschedule us for the next day. so instead, we decided to head out to muizenberg, which is a small town on the southern coast of south africa about an hour's train ride away. the train ticket was $1.50 roundtrip :]

we arrived in muizenberg, which is a nice quaint little town...and i got my first view of the indian ocean. it's gorgeous. we went to a surf shop, and got suited up into wet suits cuz the water was cold. i surfed for the first time! it was tough at first, but i managed to pick it up pretty quickly and by the end of the first hour, i was standing and riding those waves wooooo!

grabbed a late lunch and headed back to cape town, chilled at home again, had a few drinks w/ people and crashed early cuz we were going to go shark diving for REAL tomorrow.

monday: so this tuesday is youth day in south africa, which is a national holiday. i took off work so i could have a long weekend and also cuz we had to reschedule the shark diving. so, we got up at 8am this time and were picked up by the shark diving bus. met a group of ASU rugby players who were also going--that was cool.

the drive there was incredibly scenic and took about two hours. during the ride, they showed a documentary on a guy who swims with great whites OUTSIDE a cage regularly. also learned that you can put sharks in a catatonic state by flipping them over or touching their nose. this is called "tonic immobility." the flipping over really only works with smaller sharks though. this technique is important so you can extract blood from the sharks b/c sharks have extremely strong immune systems and we can extract antibodies and stuff from them.

anyway, we arrived at the diving place and got a quick briefing on what to do. we got on the boat, which was TINY. seriously, if a shark decided to jump on it or attack the sides, it would've capsized. anyway, the spot we dove into was about 65km or so i think off the coast. we headed south into the indian ocean and saw "the clubhouse" on the way----so named because back in the old days, they used to club seals there for their pelts LOLOLOL XD

so how shark cage diving works is you suit up in a wet suit and get into the cage. the skippers release bait (gutted tuna), a board that looks like the silhouette of a seal and some chum (gross ground-up fish and other crap) into the water. you get into the cage and the skippers will yell directions from which the sharks come from so you can see. the top of the cage isn't underwater so you have room to breathe. the water was pretty murky underwater.

about 5 great whites came to us throughout the dive, which lasted around 60-75 minutes. the biggest one that showed up was a 4m female (12-13 ft long)

one of them got a little angry i think and ended up ramming the cage with its tail. another got hold of the seal decoy board and almost ripped it to shreds. sweet.

got some sweet pictures from the boat, but pictures were hard underwater cuz the underwater camera was a cheap plastic polaroid and the visilbility was low.
it was absolutely incredible though how close we got to these sharks. we could've reached out and touched them if they'd let us. admist the chaos, it was strangely serene underwater staring face-to-face with the ocean's deadliest predator. it was also really cool just looking south and knowing that straight ahead would be antarctica :]

so monday night is over and tuesday is here. one more day to enjoy the weekend. the plan is to go surfing again in muizenberg and then hike table mountain, weather permitting. if not, i'll just go grocery shopping and relax and catch up on some work.

till next time...

a revelation...and sports!

so im sitting here listening to stevie ray vaughn, sipping on windhoek lager, waiting for someone to come over for dinner.

i've been doing a lot of cooking lately...and i've found out i'm not that bad at it actually. i made the BEST steak ever a few nights ago...omnomnomnom

sometimes i wonder how i enjoy music like stevie ray vaughn, between the buried & me, opeth, dream theater, and ne-yo all at once. anyway.

i went on a sunset cruise the other day...which is misleading cuz it's not a cruise ship but a medium-sized sailboat. i havent' been on very many boats so it was really nice. we sailed the cape as the sun went down and the breeze goin by...even saw some baby seals resting on the buoys in the ocean. i thought i caught a glimpse of robbins island as well, which is where nelson mandela was imprisoned for 27 years.

i definitely wanna visit there if time(and money allows).

upcoming planned activities...i'm going to go shark cage-diving very soon :]!!!!!!
it's expensive--1150R or so, which is like oh...idk. divide by approximately 7, but it's going to be totally worth it.

also planning a trip to namibia (which is directly north and west of south africa) for some safaris and sandboarding. but this could be very pricey as well.

i've realized i need more moneyyyyyy so i can do everything this amazing place has to offer in the short time i'm here. i've only been here a little over a week but already i feel like as if i've been here for a month. i've come to known the roads and directions quite well.

incidentally, my address is:
37 roeland st #912
cape town, 8001, south africa

so if you want to send me mail that's cool it'd make me a happy little asian :]

today is friday so i did ward rounds w/ the doctors at the hospital. you know those war pictures of malnourished people? or the national geographic covers where people are so sick they're pretty much nothing but a living skeleton.
it was shocking to see patients in this state. i've been in hospitals before and even in the dominican republic's most poverty-ridden areas...but i was still unprepared for what i saw today.

the wards would smell like urine when we walked in and the patients would be in their beds curled up, hooked up to several diffferent IV fluids...and you have to remember nothing looks new or fancy. the entire hospital is very run-down, decrepid and silent-hill esque. i saw firsthand what HIV can do to people. of course, HIV itself doesn't cause too many symptoms in and of itself, but tuberculosis (TB) is the 2nd most problematic epidemic here and almost 75% of patients have it.

i saw a severe case of athlete's foot as well. not the kind in the states where there's a very thin white layer of fungus b/w the toes...but this guy literally had like vesicles that looked like they were about to burst and sporulate everything...gross. but that was the least of his problems.

another woman had jaundice. i've never actually seen it. jaundice is yellowing of the skin and eyes due to increased concentrations of bilirubin in the blood. but i looked into her eyes and it was almost scary...pteryglia and cataracts had completely clouded her iris so it looked like one of those creepy horror movie ghosts or something and then the whites of her eyes were well...a faint yellow. it was really scary.

looking at the patients, you would never guess that any of them would ever get better and be able to lead normal lives. but a small few of them do get better enough to the point where they're able to return to their previous lives. i'm pretty sure i even saw a corpse wheeled by me at some point today.
off topic, i saw the south african SWAT team when i was leaving the hospital...random. kinda intimidating too. they just stared at me and watched me leave.

now i'm an ass. not as big an ass as james harrell. but i'm still an ass. even so, i have always thought i wanted to be a doctor.
i wasn't completely sure if i wanted to go to medical school and spend the rest of my career dealing with and helping sick people.
but as of right now, this day, i'm certain this is what i want to do. yes the financial aspect of it is very appealing, but i remember standing in that piss-smelling ward as the doctors surrounded a woman who was only 40 and weighed in at less than 60 pounds as the doctors tried to figure out what to do, and feeling nothing but admiration for these doctors who were getting paid a pittance to deal with patients suffering from one of the most impossibly difficult and frustrating diseases. while i may not get to work with AIDS patients, i want to be in that position one day.

we'll see if grad school changes my mind...haha

OH!!! and i found my camera :] some guy picked it up at the wine festival...so i called the wine estate, and they gave me his # and i went to pick it up from him a few days later. he lives in table view, which is like 20-30km outside of cape town...but totally worth it. there are still some decent people left in this world

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so i'm so proud to live in pittsburgh. first the steelers win the superbowl to become the franchise w/ the most superbowl wins...and then in the same year, the penguins take the stanley cup, becoming only the 3rd or 4th team i think to win game 7 against a better team in an away game. that's impressive.

granted, at the exact time of writing this, there is still 17:24 left in the 3rd period, but it's safe to say the pens have this one with the way they're playing. the game aired at 2am here but me and some other guys stayed up late after hitting the bars and clubs and found a live internet stream to watch game 7. unfortunately, the connection was shitty and the stream would interrupt every 5 seconds...everyone here is a wings fan...me and nina (the girl from chatham) are pretty much the only pens fans i know of here. and all the wings fans were talking shit about how no one wins a game 7 away against DETROIT. winning is so much better after everyone has given you complete shit about it.

2/3 of pittsburgh's professional sports have taken the national title (yes the pirates suck ass). i can only conclude that pittsburgh is the best sports city right now :] fuck boston, fuck philly and fuck LA, even though they will win the NBA finals :(

this gets me so pumped up for this upcoming NFL season where the steelers will have one of the easiest schedules...and the defensive roster remains largely the same. the steelers have a legitimate chance to reach the superbowl again if they can get past the patriots, which i think they can.

i love pittsburgh. long live the steel city <3

work starts for REAL, more food and culture/history?

today's weather was even more beautiful than the weekend...not a single cloud in the sky. so much so that even table mountain had no "tablecloth" around it :]

anyway, woke up and left for work for the last time in a cab..and thank god for that. unreliable and way too expensive. unfortunately, i started talking to the driver and found out his son had recently been murdered by his girlfriend two nights ago. i couldn't believe this old guy was working this early in the morning driving people around. women are crazy >:-(

i got to work and my supervisor, dr. zaier, was late by an hour but it was all good cuz i just read sports illustrated.

we had a nice chitchat about what exactly i would be doing. the specific research project she wants me to work on right now is seeing if there's a correlation b/w diabetes mellitus and HIV.

the researchers noticed that the CD4 counts of HIV patients appeared to regenerate faster in patients also diagnosed w/ diabetes than those who were normal HIV patients. that's what im looking into. of course it'll take some time cuz clinical research is much more longitudinal, and there are infinite variables which are out of your control, unlike in a lab setting where you can control say the growth media, temperature, time, etc.

but that's only the first phase. the second phase is once a conclusion is reached, determining if it has actual statistical and immunological significance. she mentioned doing ANOVA tests and whatnot, which i don't remember at all from 36-201...but it was easy stuff so im sure i could pick it up quickly.

in the case that diabetic patients do regenerate CD4 cells faster (which is unlikely in my opinion), i don't think those CD4 cells would be competent immunologically. oh gosh i told myself i would never talk about competent cells ever again after bio lab, but i guess i can't escape it...anyway, just because there are increased numbers of CD4 cells doesn't mean they're able to perform their physiological duty. thus, the next step would be to determine the efficacy of these CD4 cells as well as the concentrations of other blood serum immune cells like platelets, CD8 cells and whatnot.
in the event that a link is NOT found b/w diabetes and HIV, then that's that and i can move onto something else.

although i personally don't think there is a relationship, it would still be really exciting to find such a correlation because it means diabetics may hold a key in developing a drug to perhaps boost CD4 production to compensate for HIV infection.

i guess i should've mentioned this earlier, but for those non-science people, HIV infects CD4 cells and in effect destroys them or renders them unable to properly function. once the CD4 count falls below 200, it's considered...for lack of a better word...very very bad. actually, the crisis threshold is 250 in tygerberg hospital just b/c of the situation.
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french fries are called chips here...that was really confusing for awhile. the ketchup is also a little different..it tastes slightly sweeter. i kinda like it. dr. zaier bought me lunch today so i had a south african burger. nothing special, but it tasted fresher and was of course, way cheaper than an american equivalent would be.

i went grocery shopping after work today with my roommate jeff and dropped 280 rand. i was like omg this is so expensive, but i keep forgetting that the exchange rate is ridiculous. it only came out to about $40, but the amount of stuff i got would be like $60-70 in the US. again, i love this place :]
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so dr. zaier took me on a tour after our initial meeting of the hospital and university. the university of stellenbosch's medical school is adjoined to tygerberg hospital.

a little interesting info on tygerberg hospital...it's gigantic. like...huge. i mentioned it looks like it's out of silent hill and it's like a prison. only the section i work in is like that.

everyone knows about apartheid and all that. the hospital was built during the peak of apartheid in the 70's and was pretty much constructed as a mirror image. however, they split the hospital in half--the upper wings were for whites and the lower wings were for blacks and colored people (yes there is a difference which ill get into in a bit). the infectious diseases clinic i'm in is unfortunately located in the then blacks/colored people section.

the white people's wing is obviously much nicer and better equipped. they even have a 3T (tesla) fMRI machine...which i didn't really expect i guess in a south african hospital not located in the city. again, i have to commute 30-60 minutes to work depending on traffic :( so i learned some history about the hospital and then we walked underground into the tunnel that joins the hospital and university of stellenbosch's medical school. i saw the dental school (steph kim!) and noticed that the med school was really clean and very much so more modern and newer looking. which is totally my thing.

there were an assortment of all kinds of students there--i even saw asians for the FIRST TIME SINCE I GOT HERE! anyway, saw asian people, got excited cuz then i knew i wasn't alone, and stared at the south african girls.

this is where dr. zaier probably noticed and told me about the difference b/w black and colored people.

blacks are the native africans who were here. simple as that.
colored people however, are an ethnic mix of the dutch who came through imperialism and the malaysian slaves they used. also, some colored people have a little native african blood in them as well. i had no idea, but the dutch used indonesian/malaysian slaves a lot. their descendants are the colored people, which gives them a much lighter complexion than the very dark blacks.

it shocked me how much the remnants of apartheid are still seen and felt in this country. blacks commonly yell at white people and call them "hey whitey!" and the N word is still tossed around, although not so much within the city. it's also not necessarily a degradatory word, although it depends more on tone of voice and context.
but even as you drive along the road in the countryside, on one side of the road are tin shacks that blacks live in and the other side of the road are normal homes built where whites live. on some roads, there's even a split b/w black people's shacks and colored people's shacks. i know this sounds racist, but that's the politically correct terminology here i guess.

it's strange imagining that less than 20 years ago, this country was incredibly segregated.

wacky wine weekend!

so this weekend was the first sponsored event for the interns by the directors.

we'd be traveling out to the south african countryside and visiting various wine estates for "tasting."

we left saturday at like 9am and drove for about 2.5 hours.
i was exhausted, but the beautiful scenery was enough to keep me awake and snapping pictures the whole way. it was the first sunny day i'd seen in cape town. i could actually see the top of table mountain from my apartment that day.

table mountain is really really cool. the top of the mountain is flat, hence the name. but for some reason, even on a perfectly sunny day with no clouds, the top of the mountain is shrouded in clouds that they call "the tablecloth."

http://naimasnook.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/best-view-of-table-mountain.jpg

my apartment is located in the middle of those mountains where all the big buildings are. this whole area is downtown cape town and they call it the CBD, or central business district.

anyway, we got to our first wine estate and we were given passes to taste as much wine as we wanted. invariably, being college kids in a foreign country with the opportunity to have unlimited wine, we "taste-tested" the wines to death.
i had a little bit of almost every wine available, which was well in the 20's. they were also selling this incredible olive oil which i realllyyyy wanted to buy for my mom cuz it was just unreal. unfortunately, i needed to save money as much as possible...the scenery around the area was just unreal.

there were huge vineyards as far as you could see and we were surrounded by mountains and waterfalls.

we left (with a very healthy buzz) to the next wine estate called roodezandt. here, the main attraction was 55% moonshine (110 proof) and wine diving!

i figured it was a rare opportunity so i paid 50 rand (~$5 hehe), changed into the clothes they give you and rode the wine slide down into the pool. unfortunately, it's winter here. and the wine was ice cold. talk about hard nipples. anyway, it was a really good experience and would definitely recommend for anyone to do. wine stings the eyes btw. also got a free bottle of wine for doing it.

showered off, and we left for the next estate called excelsior. here, we got to blend and bottle our own wine for only 40 rand (~$3.50). wine bottling is really easy. you just press down on this lever thing which puts the cork in and then you seal it with that paper stuff around it with a hot hair-dryer looking gun. really cool. we got stickers saying "excelsior wine blended by ______" to make things look official. definitely bringing this back to the states. i think it tastes alright, but im no wine connoisseur.

then, we left for the final estate called arabella. this was an actual wine festival with lots of bands playing and stuff. we each bought another bottle of wine (only $3 :] i love how cheap everything is here) and proceeded to drink heavily. i don't remembered what happened through most of the night since we'd been drinking since 10am. i met a girl from chatham university, which is right next to CMU so that was cool...she dated a beta who graduated. small world!

i almost got pepper-sprayed by a drunk girl who really wanted to pepper spray me and my bud scott. i was actually really shitscared. i took it away from her and convinced her there was no need to spray us. she then slapped me and said relaxxxxxx.
women are dumb :]

had another bottle of wine and we were dancing and stuff and i remember getting on stage. apparently i was yelled at to come down but i didn't, so they just left me there. my memory leaves me then but when i do start remembering again, i'm sitting on the edge of the stage, a whole new band is playing and my phone and camera are gone. i lost my camera. all those pictures (especially the one w/ neve campbell!) are fucking gone. i was real pissed, so i drank another bottle of wine. probably not the best way to go about it. i didn't bother looking for my phone cuz the phones were literally like $2 to rent. we went to bed in tents and woke up the next morning at around 9am.

i had my friend call my phone and turns out some random girl picked it up and she gave it back to me. a lot of kids had puked from drinking too much, but i felt great haha. problem. need to stop drinking so much...not good for me :\

still didn't find my camera, so im going to give the estate a call in a few days and see if it turned up. really hope it does...

all in all, it was an epic weekend. i don't want to drink wine for a long long time.

work starts again tomorrow...hopefully i'll be doin some real stuff this week

a funny comic!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20090607.gif

holy shit!

i had ostrich for dinner the first night i was here

and tonight, i had ethiopian food. which is really fucking delicious btw.

ostrich literally tastes like a really tender steak...in fact, if you were blindfolded, you would guess it was a lean steak, not an exotic bird you were eating.

anyway, hopefully i can try more exotic foods during my stay here.

but more importantly...I SAW NEVE CAMPBELL AT THE RESTAURANT TONIGHT!!!

if you don't know who she is...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neve_Campbell
she's the star of the 'scream' series, and wild things, which is like. every teenage boy's dream movie growing up cuz she was like. totally in the hottest scene ever w/ denise richards and champagne. seriously.

anyway, we got a picture w/ her. she was real nice about it even though we were all drunk and obnoxious. took the pictures and went back to her table to eat. and then she left and said goodbye to us :]

im still reeling. neve campbell. holy shit.

first day of work

im so tired. got up at 7am partly cuz i couldn't sleep and partly cuz i had to get up anyway. was supposed to be picked up by gabby, the program coordinator at 8:15am to drive to work for my first day...but she was late by 45 minutes. yay polychronic cultures!

we picked up sarah whom i met at the airport and dropped her off at the university of west cape, where she is working. the place was pretty bomb. then i finally arrived at the tygerberg hospital.

the entire hospital complex is GIGANTIC! but unfortunately, it looks more like a prison or military base and the pouring rain didn't help its gloomy look. unfortunately, the interior was way worse. there were bars everywhere...i don't understand why you would have bars inside a hospital. the paint jobs were terrible, if there were any surviving ones. basically, it was a hellhole.

i don't know if anyone knows what silent hill is...but if you ever see the movie or play the video games, you'll understand. it was that depressing. my supervisor, dr. zaier, wasn't in to meet on my first day...hooray miscommunication. wasn't my fault though, i had no contact w/ her.

another doctor took me in and i sat and watched her interact w/ the patients. unfortunately, many of the patients spoke afrikaans, which is the second most spoken language in the cape town area. it's basically dutch, the name is misleading. so i had no idea what the conversations were about until she translated. but i got to see some cool things like super-TB-infected patients.

one girl had an entire lung pretty much destroyed...when she breathed, you couldn't hear anything through the stethoscope it was that bad. and because of poor circulation, the ends of her nails were completely rounded and swollen. and if you look at your nails, you'll notice the half-moon shaped lighter part at the bottom...well her nails were fucked up and that lighter part was the whole nail. it looked like she had painted them that color. yikes.

the saddest part of the day though was this old lady who was just diagnosed w/ HIV...she came in and they have to sign these consent forms if they're going to receive the HIV antiretroviral treatment (ARV for short from now on). this is to ensure that the patient will do everything in their power to make sure they do NOT ever miss a dose of the treatment...cuz if you even miss one, the efficacy of the ARV treatment decreases a metric fuckton cuz HIV is a little shitbug and mutates and becomes resistant very very easily. anyway, she was signing the form and just started to completely break down. i guess she had finally realized that yes, she was pretty much signing her life away to these drugs...the small pills that would hopefully keep her alive for a little while longer amidst the many horrible side effects they bring.

i tried to imagine what it must be like...finding out you have HIV. imagine the gravity of hearing something like that. i mean, the treatments are much more effective nowadays and life spans are increasing but still, it's just like being diagnosed w/ cancer. except its worse. with cancer, there's a chance you can come out of it alive and well if diagnosed early enough...with HIV, it's a never-ending uphill battle; a ticking time bomb if you will. you can only contain it for so long. sooner or later, you won't be able to afford it, or the virus will mutate. and then you're done.

the ARV drugs they use here in south africa aren't used in the US. the hospital i work at gives these drugs for FREE to anyone who is diagnosed w/ HIV because the state sponsors them. unfortunately, this means that the drugs are somewhat outdated and are known to cause some nasty side effects and they're the cheapest the government can afford en masse.

it's a really shitty situation...the hospital's rundown, they don't have state of the art equipment like we do in the states...but everyone makes the best of it. even the doctors understand the shitty situation. they recognize the need for better facilties, better drugs and better health care.

i didn't get to find out what exactly my research entails because dr. zaier wasnt in today, but maybe ill find out tomorrow.

but for now, i'm exhausted. the cab ride back took 2.5 hours cuz of traffic and the driver getting lost and having to pick up 2 other interns.

OH! i saw the world cup stadium they're building for 2010. it's huge. i can't post pictures throughout my trip cuz i forgot to bring the computer connector, so everything will go up when i get back :\

first impressions

finally here! after almost 48 hours of traveling...the plane was delayed leaving atlanta cuz some idiot checked his bag in but didn't show up...so we sat on the runway for 1.5 hours, and then had to get his bag off, and then refuel since we wasted gas sitting there.

the stop in dakar was uneventful. they wouldn't even let us off the plane; the security guards just came through and checked everyone's passports and then off we were after a quick refueling.

when i arrived, i met up with 3 other program interns (2 guys and a girl)--bill, scott and sarah. we were taken to our apartment and met up with gabby, a south africa native (she's white) with that cool british accent :]

the first thing i noticed is that...70% of the people on the plane and in the airport were white. so i guess this isn't really "africa".

after a quick orientation, showering up and getting unpacked, meeting one of my roommates jeff, i re-met up with bill and scott and we hit the town to get some food.

cape town is a bigger city than pittsburgh. unfortunately, the weather was the exact same. cloudy, humid, moist and rainy.

we went to an irish pub, grabbed some dinner and had my first drink in africa which was...anticlimactically, draft guinness. but i love guinness so its all good. we bar-hopped a bit, met a few other interns--leo who was some kid from england, victor and katy. we ended up at a place called mama africa which had a really cool african band playing. if you didn't know, african music is very rhythm-oriented and they had all these cool drums and stuff.

right now outside my 11th story window, there is what appears to be...sounds of a cannon firing repeatedly. nonstop. sort of frightening, i don't know what's going on. i do know the president is addressing the nation or something, but i'm not sure if this has anything to do with it. annnnd now there's smoke everywhere.

i start work tomorrow at the university of stellenboch's tygerborg research clinic. excited and nervous yet again.

i had a little power fiasco this morning trying to figure out how to get the power running. they run on different frequencies and voltages here, so adaptor plugs and stuff was a hassle. i also do have my own cell phone here...but if you're going to call or text me, do it on my regular # anyway :]

OH! the toilet thing...it's not true. not from what i can tell anyway. water just kinda...crashes in randomly and just drains down straight. no swirls. god dammit all i wanted was a swirly toilet.

i'm going to come back to the states with a british accent, just you watch. huzzah!

atlanta...

In Atlanta…the first thing that struck me was how cool the airport is. It’s really a smart and efficient design—more airports should be like this. I’m talking to you JFK.

The other thing that struck me was the SOUTHERN ACCENT! I’ve never really had an opportunity I guess to hear it everywhere and it’s really cool. kinda cute on girls :] reverse british accent?

slept on a chair in the main lobby b/c i couldn't check in for a few hours. didn't think i could fall asleep w/ hundreds of ppl stomping past you but when you're that tired...

So my bag was overweight by 8 pounds and guess what…Delta charges $150 for that shit. One fitty. I argued, pleaded, negotiated and it didn’t work. I mean I can’t exactly just throw away clothes, especially since I’m short-handed as is. So I had to pay the ridiculous fee…great way to start my trip.

On the flight here, I had to sit next to a really fat guy. I was like “geez, first the bag and now this.” But the guy started talking and he turned out to be really interesting. He used to deliver oil to various airfields, military and civilian up in the Buffalo, NY area. I learned all about different kinds of fuel used cuz jet fuel isn’t necessarily jet fuel. The gas smell you sometime smell when the plane first taxis isn’t jet fuel…it’s kerosene. Which is jet fuel, but more specifically kerosene I guess. And it isn’t even kerosene, it’s like a kerosene solution compound but it’s pure? Idk. I told him I was going to South Africa and he got excited and we had a good chitchat. In-flight movie was Bride Wars, which looked pretty dumb. So I didn’t watch it.

speaking of crappy movies...i watched the MTV movie awards last night before i left and i was appalled. seriously...'twilight' won like every category (beating out dark knight and slumdog millionaire) b/c of stupid raging girls clamoring for that pale-ass dude's mug. god i hate MTV. how is twilight the "best picture?" even goddamn pineapple express was better. not that i saw twilight. i'm just being judgmental. which is ok, cuz its twilight.

Everyone always talks about sunsets; I think sunrises are better. Especially AZ sunrises. Nothing beats the AZ sunrise…I got to see the Atlanta [East Coast] one on the plane. Lame.

More on this airport though...they have PANDA EXPRESS!!! i've already decided it's going to be my pre-boarding meal :] orange chicken mmmmmmm
this food court/concourse area is really nice..i'm sitting next to a jazz piano with a fully-stocked bar. i'm not there obviously b/c i'm not 21 and not about to use my ID in an airport. too tired anyway. but panda express. and arby's. definitely one of the nicer airports i've been in.