Despite my plane fiasco yesterday I did successfully make my way to Pretoria and my guesthouse, which is located on the edge of the vibrant, trendy Hatfield area, which itself is adjacent to the University of Pretoria (where I’ll be giving my talk tomorrow). The guest house has a pretty nice Portuguese restaurant attached to it that made for a good place to camp out and watch the Spain-Germany match with a small but enthusiastic group of fans who all seemed to know one another and took great pleasure in the suffering of the one German supporter among them who watched his team’s usually incisive attacking style fail them in a 1-0 loss to the Spaniards.
Spain and the Netherlands are historically disappointing sides, one of which will now win its first World Cup for its long-suffering fans. Spain are the defending European champions — before that their plate had been pretty much empty — and the Dutch have now won anything significant in more than two decades (Euro 88, I believe). The Spanish seem to be the favorites — a pretty solid consensus in the South African press and television media was that whoever won last night’s game is going to win it all. I’m not convinced — with one moment of doubt (when the Dutch played Brazil) I have otherwise had Holland as my wild card to win it all. I am not yet convinced that Total Football cannot beat Spain’s tika taka passing game.
Today has been a mellow one for me. After being up early for breakfast I returned to my room and watched a couple of movies on the M-Net movie channels (think HBO or Showtime). One was a pretty mesmerizingly horrible Anne Hathaway-Andre Braugher flick about survivors of a plane crash who — spoiler alert! — were actually not survivors. I think it was called The Passengers. It was pretty much down the line an M. Night Shyamalan (sp?) ripoff. I half expected Bruce Willis and the creepy kid from The Sixth Sense to show up and proclaim that they see dead people. The other was Gran Torino, which is excellent, if occasionally Clint Eastwood chews the scenery.
Now I am up in Hatfield, wandering around, figuring out where to spend my money, and generally keeping it low key. Tomorrow I have my panel, and then tomorrow night I want to go see Pretoria’s beloved Blue Bulls rugby team open up their Currie Cup campaign. The Blue Bulls may be the country’s most popular team. As of right now it is currently the most successful, having just won the Super 14 competition against the best club teams in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. The Currie Cup teams, especially the top ones, tend to lose out on a lot of their best players because the Springboks are about to start the Tri-Nations competition against New Zealand and the Aussies and naturally a squad like the Bulls has lots of prominent Boks. And the Super 14 teams tend to pick up guys from other squads not in the Super 14 (soon to be Super 15) and so is a stronger team. It’s an interesting approach because when the Currie Cup season is approaching its conclusion the Boks are back, so the best teams get a massive infusion of some of the best rugby players on earth.
But today is one for wandering and exploring and eating and drinking and maybe a little shopping. The wireless at the guest house is a bit screwy (though it may be a laptop issue — I’m still figuring out how my Mac works with some wireless providers, especially those that are locked with a password — every time I log in I am told the password does not work even if it is their sole password) and so I am writing from an internet cafe. In South Africa internet cafes typically use relatively aged computers (and often internet as well) but it is, as they say, better than nothing.
More off days for the World Cup before Saturday’s 3rd place game (an exercise that has always stricken me as being pointless) and Sunday’s finals. On Monday I jump on a plane for the circuitous path back home (Joburg to Addis Ababa to Rome to DC to Dallas to San Antonio, then a drive to Odessa). Between now and then I’ll enjoy my waning days in South Africa.
