Some other fun facts: Mitch (the m2m founder) is bringing Annie Lennox as his date to an upcoming m2m fundraiser in London! She is a huge supporter of m2m and visited us in Cape Town a few months ago. Apparently on her site visit she surprised everyone by initiating a group song in Xhosa, which no one expected her to know at all (you can see video here). So yeah, Annie Lennox is pretty cool...and thus for those 80s fans out there this means you can rock out to “Sweet Dreams” guilt free, haha. Elton John is also pretty cool by the way; he just gave our M&E department about $1.2 million dollars to improve our M&E work (considering there are only 4 of in the M&E department right now, that’s not bad!). Oh, and I met the Prince of Liechtenstein the other day! I followed some very tall men wearing suits into the office and was wondering who they were when Heather pulled me aside and said “you just followed the Prince of Liechtenstein into the office!” I was able to meet him briefly when he came by to talk to Monica, and he was very casual and just held out his hand and said “hi, I’m Max.” Ilan didn’t even bother getting up from his desk to say hello, but was later a bit embarrassed when he realized who it was…luckily I had the head’s up from Heather!
It’s also been fun getting to know people from work a little better these days. The other weekend we went over to Monica’s new house (which is GORGEOUS) for a braai and had a great time enjoying the outdoors and the good company. Their house is perfect for braais – tons of outdoor deck and patio space, a pool, a large braai, all on a lakefront with a dock and boats for the adventurous to go exploring. Byron, Wenli, and I happened to be the first to arrive, so Monica sent us out in the row boat to try and catch some fish. About a minute after we left the dock, we realized this was going to be a failed expedition. Byron was in control of the rowing, but we soon found out the oarlocks were not actually attached to the boat, and the oars barely fit in the oarlocks, so whenever you tried to row, the oarlocks came out and you had no traction to gain momentum. Wenli and I were also really struggling keeping our fishing rods from getting tangled in the swampy water. Before we knew it, we had been blown across the lake and were stuck on the far edge, with my rod completely caught in the swamp grass and what seemed like no hope of us ever getting back to the other side. After finally disentangling our rods and reeling them in, giving up on the fishing part of things in hopes of making better progress on the rowing, I grabbed an oar and Byron and I worked our hearts out to get us back to Monica’s dock. Of course by that time a lot more people had arrived and were able to have a good laugh watching us struggle to get back. (The next day at work Monica told us she had tried to go out in the boat but had quickly given up after realizing they needed to fix the oarlocks before it would be useable…at least it’s comforting to know it wasn’t our incompetency that got us stuck, though we might have been wise to turn around before being blown to the other side.) Aside from that, the braai was great and it was fun to hang out with a really diverse group of people (from the U.S., U.K., Cote d’Ivoire, Australia, Italy, Angola...) so at any given moment there was English, French, and Portuguese flying around the table. Hopefully there will be more braais to come, though unfortunately the weather hasn't been that great until just recently.
To celebrate the first rain-free Saturday in a while, we took a walk on Devil's Peak behind Julia's new apartment (see pictures below). I really appreciate living somewhere you can enjoy both the outdoors and city life.
View of Table Mountain
And that's Lion's Head
And finally Devil's Peak
The new Green Point Stadium is off in the distance (as is Robben Island)
I think the burnt proteas (yes, Cape Town has forest fires too) actually look really cool
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