After an exciting drive around central Joburg and a battle with the administrative challenges of the South African Healthcare system we are now the proud owners of our required HPCSA forms. We're still not entirely sure what they're for or why we needed them.... but there you go.
Some of the other elective students had raved about a local gym where you could get personal training for next to nothing so on Sunday morning with 2 of the guys that had been going there throughout their time in Joburg we drove to Emet's gym. Now I'd like to think that I'm not particularly unfit but I was definitely not prepared for the beasting that followed - I blame the month and a half exam hibernation. Sprints around the parking lot in between pushing sleds with 50kg on them was more than enough to have me collapsed on the floor after half an hour. Riki faired much better but has paid the price today with his legs giving way every other step. After the work out we chatted with some of the guys and the owner of the gym and he invited us back for a session today, fingers crossed Riki will be able to walk properly by then.
Post gym another medical student in our year from Cambridge arrived for his brief stay in Joburg. We'd wanted to explore a market called 'Arts on main' that had been recommended to us so with the assurance of safe nearby parking we set off excited for lot of great food. So the good news is, there was safe parking. The bad news is, we did not find that straight away. After a few sketchy side roads which got us all a little on edge, we found one of the many helpful parking attendants in fluorescent jackets and headed in to the market. Inside there were loads of food stalls selling different kinds of curries, ribs, sweet nuts, schwarma and after sharing round a few plates we chilled on the rooftop bar in the sunshine.
Some of the delicious curries to choose from, not sure how authentic curry is to South Africa....
We stopped off on the way back to pick up dinner supplies. Somehow we had decided with Alan that we were going to introduce his adopted family to new cuisine and that the best way to do this was to all make it together. So on our third night in South Africa we had that traditional African dish of.... Sushi.... We all entrusted Riki's Japanese heritage (yes I was dubious too given his cooking track record) to get us through the actual making part and with help from Manu (who only revealed halfway through the process that he'd actually had sushi cooking lessons in Japan...) everyone contributed their own sushi. The contents of the Sushi were.... erm.... original? Riki's mum please jump to the next paragraph for this bit, Riki believes the contents may upset you. Not wanting to waste anything and finding fish to be expensive in South Africa, Alan also added chicken, fish fingers and banana (yes you did read that right, banana) to the choice of sushi contents. I'm not saying it's going to revolutionise sushi, but it wasn't actually that bad.
Yes that's it Riki, you pat that rice
Our smiles hide our terror at the prospect of banana sushi
Now for the thing that we'd been warned about by the other elective students: the horrors of the University and Government administrative team. They sounded like they were even more incompetent than our own clinical school admin team. Surely not. We arrived and things initially seemed promising - there was an elective officer, which was a start. She half politely requested some forms that we had sent over a year ago to the previous elective officer (oh yeh, there was a previous officer who decided to retire about 6 months ago without telling anyone and no one seems to have been looking at her emails since). Riki fortunately had his hard copy, while I trusting that I had already sent it to the officer did not think it would be an issue. Apparently it was an issue. When I suggested printing off a copy the elective officer said that it would not be enough for the government office. After convincing her that a colour copy would be fine I asked if I could print one in her department. She said no they were saving in the department and only printing black and white - fair enough. Well ok then, can you show me somewhere else in the University where I could print it off?She said (with a straight face mind you) that nowhere in the entire University was there a colour printer... just to provide a sense of scale, over 33,000 students go to this Uni. This was the point at which I realised all hope was lost for common sense to prevail. Despite what was quite obviously a lie we went to a local print shop and printed a copy there before heading to Pretoria an hours drive north of Johannesburg where we were magically presented our certificate.
Riki reeeeeaaaally enjoyed the wait for our certificates
One of the more hair raising (at least for Riki) points of the drive to Pretoria
No one has told us what we're meant to do with this certificate and the whole process seemed pretty pointless to us. At least they were printed in colour.
Me writing over my photocopy to try to make it look more authentic
Administrative challenges overcome, we get to start doing some actual medicine tomorrow!! YAY! Starting at 7am, Boo.
Some of the other elective students had raved about a local gym where you could get personal training for next to nothing so on Sunday morning with 2 of the guys that had been going there throughout their time in Joburg we drove to Emet's gym. Now I'd like to think that I'm not particularly unfit but I was definitely not prepared for the beasting that followed - I blame the month and a half exam hibernation. Sprints around the parking lot in between pushing sleds with 50kg on them was more than enough to have me collapsed on the floor after half an hour. Riki faired much better but has paid the price today with his legs giving way every other step. After the work out we chatted with some of the guys and the owner of the gym and he invited us back for a session today, fingers crossed Riki will be able to walk properly by then.
Post gym another medical student in our year from Cambridge arrived for his brief stay in Joburg. We'd wanted to explore a market called 'Arts on main' that had been recommended to us so with the assurance of safe nearby parking we set off excited for lot of great food. So the good news is, there was safe parking. The bad news is, we did not find that straight away. After a few sketchy side roads which got us all a little on edge, we found one of the many helpful parking attendants in fluorescent jackets and headed in to the market. Inside there were loads of food stalls selling different kinds of curries, ribs, sweet nuts, schwarma and after sharing round a few plates we chilled on the rooftop bar in the sunshine.
Some of the delicious curries to choose from, not sure how authentic curry is to South Africa....
We stopped off on the way back to pick up dinner supplies. Somehow we had decided with Alan that we were going to introduce his adopted family to new cuisine and that the best way to do this was to all make it together. So on our third night in South Africa we had that traditional African dish of.... Sushi.... We all entrusted Riki's Japanese heritage (yes I was dubious too given his cooking track record) to get us through the actual making part and with help from Manu (who only revealed halfway through the process that he'd actually had sushi cooking lessons in Japan...) everyone contributed their own sushi. The contents of the Sushi were.... erm.... original? Riki's mum please jump to the next paragraph for this bit, Riki believes the contents may upset you. Not wanting to waste anything and finding fish to be expensive in South Africa, Alan also added chicken, fish fingers and banana (yes you did read that right, banana) to the choice of sushi contents. I'm not saying it's going to revolutionise sushi, but it wasn't actually that bad.
Yes that's it Riki, you pat that rice
Our smiles hide our terror at the prospect of banana sushi
Now for the thing that we'd been warned about by the other elective students: the horrors of the University and Government administrative team. They sounded like they were even more incompetent than our own clinical school admin team. Surely not. We arrived and things initially seemed promising - there was an elective officer, which was a start. She half politely requested some forms that we had sent over a year ago to the previous elective officer (oh yeh, there was a previous officer who decided to retire about 6 months ago without telling anyone and no one seems to have been looking at her emails since). Riki fortunately had his hard copy, while I trusting that I had already sent it to the officer did not think it would be an issue. Apparently it was an issue. When I suggested printing off a copy the elective officer said that it would not be enough for the government office. After convincing her that a colour copy would be fine I asked if I could print one in her department. She said no they were saving in the department and only printing black and white - fair enough. Well ok then, can you show me somewhere else in the University where I could print it off?She said (with a straight face mind you) that nowhere in the entire University was there a colour printer... just to provide a sense of scale, over 33,000 students go to this Uni. This was the point at which I realised all hope was lost for common sense to prevail. Despite what was quite obviously a lie we went to a local print shop and printed a copy there before heading to Pretoria an hours drive north of Johannesburg where we were magically presented our certificate.
Riki reeeeeaaaally enjoyed the wait for our certificates
No one has told us what we're meant to do with this certificate and the whole process seemed pretty pointless to us. At least they were printed in colour.
Me writing over my photocopy to try to make it look more authentic
Administrative challenges overcome, we get to start doing some actual medicine tomorrow!! YAY! Starting at 7am, Boo.
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