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When I went to NY that time in 2007, everything used to awestrike me. Even the carpeting on the ground. The clean and one-way streets. The food cart at the corner selling one dollar hotdogs for 80 cents. The downstairs pizza place that's individually owned but delivers and has a website for ordering online. The houses where someone upstairs needs to buzz you in so you can get through the front porch. The 5-floor waterfall running down the inside of Trump Tower. The Museum of Modern Art, and just Fifth Avenue stores in general. The subways. My Hostelling International room. Their flushing system (trust me, it's vastly different than ours). And the fact that they're so impressed we can even speak English they give us whatever we ask for (at least the people I met). I thought I'd never feel that way again. I thought it was only coz I was still [young and] impressionable. I was not right.
Johannesburg is a large city. I looked up some stats and turns out it's actually the largest non-coastal city. In the world! It shares square miles with Los Angeles as it is. It's the financial capital of South Africa, and maybe even of Africa given SA's muscle here. It's spic. It's span. It's vast. And it's a little slice of heaven. But in all fairness I hardly ventured out of Sandton.
Sandton is the "it" suburb of Jo'burg. I think you can actually refer to it as a first world neighborhood. The roads are pristine. The traffic lights and public system in general work as they should, and people obey the law. The highway patrol are polite and there's an actual system of tickets so traffic offences aren't blown up to be more than they are - nuisances. Traffic jams move coz all the roads that matter are at least three lanes wide, with overpasses and underpasses as appropriate, and road markings showing you which lane goes where. Not a single roundabout in sight, or even a Vitz. There are official Aston Martin and Porsche dealerships, so it's safe to conclude the average person living in Sandton is rich. Every brand in the country is represented here, so if you live in Sandton chances are your office is also there, and you never need to go anywhere else. Except maybe to Gold Reef City in the mid-south which is a pretty excellent park and gamespot. And it's right next to Soccer City, although that's more a landmark now that the World Cup is over. Or to Woodmead where there's a Woodmead Auto who are the people who sell Lamborghinis if that's the sort of thing that tickles your fancy. New, of course! The street lighting is so comprehensive you can basically go anywhere at any time, but most places don't stay open past 11, with the exception of those McDonald's drive-thru's.
Sandton City is a mall complex that includes itself and the world-famous Nelson Mandela Square (which has that 20-foot statue of him in its center and a singing waterfall. As in the water rises, and as it falls back to the ground it falls in a pattern that creates music. Yes, believe it!) Inside Sandton City, unless you're looking for cheap bargains, there's nothing you won't find. There's two hypers that stock all home shopping goods. There's two Apple stores, and one of them has Geniuses inside it. There's a Digital Planet that sells authentic Beats by Dre headphones for the cost of a semester of uni. There's an entire floor dedicated to couture - LVMH, Chanel, Dior, Oscar de la Renta, Emporio Armani, Versace et al. The entire level 1 basement is taken up by this humongous cinema that has screens the size of football stadiums - 11 of them. There's every food joint you could be looking for, then there's one in the terrace on Nelson Mandela Square just next door that serves pork ribs in sweet and sour sauce with garnish, fries and veggies for R120 that will change your life! Semi-open air. With ambience to kill for. Right next to the singing fountain.
Morningside is one of the hoods in Sandton, which is itself one of the hoods in Jo'burg. Its main road is called Rivonia, and that's the road on which you'll find everything you want in Morningside. That's also where my hotel is. It's 10 minutes driving away from Sandton City, and 15 minutes away from the airport via the 160kph-without-flinching bullet train called the Gautrain. That ride is the ride of a lifetime, FYI! Across the road from my hotel there's a Harley Davidson dealership, where it's one of the employment requirements that a person have a goatee, moustache that stretches out, at least two tattoos, muscles, and those cowboy boots with spikes and stars at both ends. And tight-fitting jeans made of real demin - the original Levi's. And dark aviator sun glasses. Texas accents are an added advantage. Either that, or that's their official dress code, coz everyone who works there fits that description. One of those Harley bikes costs about as much a small child, so broke @$$es need not apply, it says on the door. [ok, not really, but ya, they're not cheap]
About 15-20kms out of Sandton on the N1 - the main road that goes to Pretoria - near Soweto in a neighbourhood called Ormonde, there's the Gold Reef City. It has the largest Ferris wheel I have ever seen, and each seat on it is shaped like a giant soccer ball. It's got a water slide that extends so high it's about 2-3 kilometers sliding down, but it's open so the chill factor is a little reduced. It's flanked by its own five star hotel that looks as though it was made out of gold, which is actually possibly the case because that used to be the epicenter of the gold mining trade until it became uneconomical to do it anymore, then it was converted into a park. It also houses the Apartheid Museum which is pretty monumental for a country like SA. And about a very small and light stone's throw away, in all of its glass-and-curvy glory, stands Soccer City. The stadium that put Africa on the map. When you drive through Gold Reef City at night (at that time almost nothing's still open - except maybe the casino which does not admit under-18's), you look up and you see the moon and the stars and then you look to your left and you see Soccer City glowing and it's like a celestial body has fallen down to earth.
Towards the east of Sandton (but still North of the entire city), there's an exclusive golfing estate with housing units inside it called Dainfern. Trump would be proud. It's so large and exclusive it's got it's own address system all inside it - Cortona Drive. The security checks before you're admitted into Dainfern take about 10 minutes, so you better believe if you're carrying molotov cocktails in the trunk they're gonna be found. If you come in and you're a resident there you have your own entrance where you wave your door key and the gate lets you in. The houses are huge. They're double-story, but judging by their height they should have 3 floors. That means high ceilings. Chandeliers as tall as fern trees. The living area (without distinct walls and doors i dono if you can actually call places rooms) alone has 7 bulbs. The small circular kind that are usually depressed into the roof. They can be dimmed for ambience. There's motion detectors in every room. The entire ground floor around the living area is literally made of glass, and the house has sliding doors as standard both to the front and the backyard. There's of course an Infinity pool in the back, heated and internally lit. There's a built-in barbecue grill just outside the dining area - South Africans like meat (a running joke is that they typically eat meals wholy composed of beef, with a little chicken on the side). It comes with a wired surround system and flat panel TV. Different furnishings for the living room than for the dining. Wholy fitted kitchen. Open plan partitions. And a dog. A terrier. Just for the hell of it :) This is where my boss lives. And that's who I want to become.
There's a neighbourhood west of Sandton called Westcliff where the average house is R30 million. Not coz it's palatial and on 17 acres of land or anything grand like that, no. They're actually bungalows on about a half acre each. But they're R30 million just because. So the who's who know there's no riff-raff mixing in with them. It's for Fortune-500-type old money people. People who sip English tea and play squash on Sunday afternoon and watch the Discovery Channel and CNN and attend theater and are thrilled by 6-day golf games. And serve their guests Dom Perignon coz they probably have a wine cellar downstairs in the basement. Whose children do weird things like music theory in college. Where everyone has a private security guard outside their compound 24/7 in addition to Cobbs Rescue (which is for them what kina BM Security are to us).
Like I said, Jo'burg is a huge city. It's a beautiful city. I've been impressed at each and every turn, bar none. Conclusion: those people who say money can't buy everything probably don't live in Sandton.
END
Pure and simple: today was a good day. I got up, and the sun wasn't scorching, and it wasn't raining either, and I got someone to drop me at work so I didn't have to walk the whole way, and I cleared those accounts I'd been preparing all week and handed them in for review, and then in the evening, friends. Old friends. Good friends. We sat for four-odd hours and did nothing but catch up. And remember the good ol' days. Business school was a carnival ride. See I can say that now - business school - my uni changed names from just Faculty of Commerce to School of Business. Man, fun times. You know how in the middle of January you go to the chart and see the assignments they have lined up for you and you know it's going to be the four weeks from hell, and you have no choice but to take it. Ya, three weeks ago that was me. I was trying to look ahead and see the light at the end of the tunnel, couldn't even see the walls of the tunnel. Twas like an abyss, black as the Pit from pole to pole (William Henley, anyone?). And then in the middle of it all, when it seems like you can't possibly sink any lower, the curveballs stop coming. You get up and the weather's just right, and you can immediately smell the coffee, and your heartrate's not as jacked as it's been all month. And then when the call comes, "Dude, pizza today, you in?" You know, nothing's going to go wrong today. Whatever else happens, this day is going to be an oasis of hope in the middle of all the plodding and toll, under the bludgeonings of chance. Last year, just before my epic trip to the Sudan(!), I remember creating an album, with pictures of various happy times during the year, and at the end of the album on the very last one the caption I put as, "What, then, shall we say to all these things; friends make me happy." And today I was reminded just how true that really is. I keep learning to never underestimate the power of Providence to surprise you when you least expect it. And to always expect Him to come through for you.
Tomorrow, the sun might not be just so. And the deadlines might become more ridiculous due to this relentless drive of ours to be the standard of excellence. And I might not see anyone I like or even know. And, worse, I might actually be required to work all day (ya, it's gonna be one of those Saturdays). Hell, tomorrow might not even come. So if this is going to be it, if this is as good as it's gonna get, then I'm glad I enjoyed it while it lasted. "Paradise was a place of bliss," said Locke, "...without drudgery and without sorrow." Today, I was in paradise.
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