You can't cross the same river twice

I enjoyed going to Oxford the other day; it was nice being in an academic town again. It's odd, but there really is a certain studenty feel to the place. It made me miss wandering around the UCT campus; it made me miss being at varsity, doing the whole academic thing. Going to lectures, studying - just learning new things (although I don't miss tests and tutorials and exams).

And then I started thinking about other things I miss; I used to do First Aid for the rugby team at school, and each Saturday I'd wake up early, collect a pile of ice from the freezer, and go down to the rugby field to watch the game. We'd have to be there rain or shine, and somehow it was always fun.

I miss the holidays in Robertson we used to have when I was a kid. We'd stay in a chalet, and go swimming and ride the supertube, and go into Barrydale to do shopping. It was fun.

I miss doing archery - I only did two lessons, and the first time I got horribly sunburned, and the next time I managed to bruise my arm really, really badly, but I enjoyed it anyway.

I miss working at Axcess - we were working on interesting stuff, with cool people, and it was really great.

The thing is, that I miss UCT, but I wouldn't want to go back and do another degree now. I wouldn't want to wake up early and go to rugby. Robertson would be unbearably boring. (On the other hand, I would go back to Axcess in a heartbeat, if we got all the same people together again). And I know I'm not the first person to think this, but the time, place, and activity are all tied up together, and you can go back to the place, or do the same activity, but you can't go back to the time.

And I have to keep that in mind, with moving back to SA - I'm not going back in time; I'm not going back to Axcess, I'm starting something new, just in an old place. Doesn't mean it won't be good, but it won't be the same as before :-)

There are some things that I'm not looking forward to:
- Lack of communications infrastructure. Ridiculously expensive phone calls, mobile contracts, and don't even mention broadband (or what passes for broadband there; I think that the ADSL is too slow to qualify as broadband, and GPRS certainly isn't broadband).

- Bank fees. Paying for every transaction, even getting a balance from an ATM, is going to take some getting used to again. Not being able to use a debit card will be the worst; not that they don't have debit cards, but you get charged each time you use it - the same charge as drawing money from an ATM. Mostly I used to use my credit card as a debit card, but you can't really use a credit card for small purchases like you can with a debit card. And while I'm on it, why are charges always a percentage of the transaction amount? It's an electronic transaction; whether it's for R1 or R10000, it doesn't take them any more effort to process it. So why should you pay more?

- Politics. I know everywhere has political problems, but it just seems so much worse there. It's partly the race thing; for example, the ANC is going around renaming roads and places to honour ANC heroes. I think that most people agree, if reluctantly, that some current place names may be offensive; but then rename things to be neutral, rather than ANC-centric. What if, say, the IFP comes into power, and then renames everything after IFP heroes? And then the DA, and they rename everything, and then the ANC, and they rename everything again... I understand renaming the airport from DF Malan to Cape Town International, but now they want to rename it again to... something or other, after some ANC guy. It's just silly. And our politicians seem to all be pushing their own agenda; they're generally incompetent or corrupt (although there are some exceptions, like Trevor Manuel).

But the thing is, while those things are important, they don't really affect your day to day life :-) You get used to the expensive communications; you learn to optimize your banking transactions and stop thinking about it; and if you don't read the news, you can avoid most of the politics ;-) And there's the mountain, sea, sun, kirstenbosch, familiarity, and family. People to laze around with over the weekend, in the sun, with the blue sky and green grass... I'd put up with a lot for that!