Recent developments

The past weeks have been hectic, not just in my life, but in events around the world as well. The fact that I have huge problems with contamination in my cultures (if they don't refuse to grow at all) lets research progress quite slowly and dissatisfyingly, so I'll just skip work for now until something interesting actually happens...

With some international interns and students I went to Cape Point as well as to Robben Island within two days, if you don't know what those are, look them up. The former was beautiful, a great drive, view and experience, the latter rather interesting historically, not highly interesting by itself, but coming to life when you imagine all the things and stories and history that happened on that Island.

I've also finally made it up Table Mountain (just Saturday) taking the Platteklip Gorge Route (more or less the shortest, up from the Cable Car), taking us 2 hours to do it. It was amazing and I can't wait to explore other routes and areas of the Table mountain itself. Up there it was very cold, the icy wind cooled me down in my shorts and thin sweater in no time, but what a sight! We've been having good weather again from Friday on, pushing temperatures up to 23°C making it warm especially in the hot African sun. Last night I made it up Lion's Head for the second time, this time in 40 minutes (phew, tired). It's good fun and this time the view wasn't obstructed by a sea of clouds to one side which gave an amazing view to the sunset and later the city at night.

The World Cup is nearing with huge steps now, less than 10 days to go, time to find a good bar/public viewing place to go to... thinking of going to a public viewing area in a township for a SA game, will be interesting! :) Many people here are excited about it, talks about it on TV and radio are disproportionately many, but often the content focuses more on possible problems for the team and in infrastructure as well as economic impact as general positive news. One must also bear in mind though that as a former English colony much of the white population fancies Rugby (an South African team just won the Super 14 championship) and cricket and is to a great degree rather ignorant of soccer, in contrast to the black population.

Reading about the oil spill in the gulf that's been going on for weeks now can just make you roar in anger towards greedy, idiotic leadership in BP and also raises the question of why the American government was so under-prepared. It's not just incredibly frustrating to witness both their inabilities to handle the situation but also to get more news everyday of the utterly catastrophic proportions of the continuous effluence of crude oil. The worst thing is how they deliberately accepted the consequences we now face and the state-control completely failed in overseeing and providing protection for the environment as well as the population along the coast that is strongly and directly affected.

Following further news I was joyfully surprised about Lena winning the Eurovision Song Contest and could hardly believe what kind of positive impact her winning seems to have had on the German population and especially in the media. It sure was fun seeing her and so many being excited and happy, certainly her performance was outstanding and she is such a likable and undepraved young woman and I can't but smile at her success, hoping that it will not spoil her. Wouldn't it be marvelous if she could retain her light-hearted particular self?

What I was quite shocked and upset about yesterday was the news of Bundespraesident Koehler's resignation, in his own words due to lack of respect for his office. Though I can to some extend understand his problem, I deeply regret his decision since he was the moral compass of the government, the one person you could be sure of to be of absolute sincerity and integrity. Where is Germany going?
In terms of the World Cup at least it's going to be extremely challenging having to go without another player dropping out due to injury. Seeing the game vs. Hungary was fun, making me less worried about our midfield, but more about our keeper and now our defense. Well, there is only one way to find out...