Jonathan Field - Maker of Random Stuff

I’ve been writing a lot since I arrived in South Africa a couple weeks ago. I’m going to start posting today, and I’ll try to post a little something every day. However I am going to do it a little different this time: I’m going to keep the posts “friends only”, so that I don’t have to worry so much about privacy in an increasingly connected society over here. If you want to read the posts, just sign up with LiveJournal (if you haven’t already) and “friend” me.

I hope that my thoughts, however slightly filtered, are at least comprehensible. And maybe even enjoyable.

Feedback is most welcome!

I leave in just four days! I don’t have much time to work this out but it has been requested by Alan and Donna that I try to secure a used laptop computer to bring to South Africa with me. One of their most promising students is Simangaliso, a fellow I wrote about on my last visit on a few occasions.

Apparently the laptop he’s been using for his studies has died. He’s in his last year of college and they were hoping to help him out. Nothing fancy, just a small Windows laptop that could run Office 07. Because the organization is so small, they do not have official non-profit status, so it’s not tax-deductable, but I assure you there’s no profit, and it will be put directly to good use.

If you’ve got something that would fit the bill laying around that you’re not using, and that you’d like to donate, drop me a line at…

Update All set!

In just over a week, I’ll be leaving for a second visit to South Africa. It’s been three years. I’m looking forward to it, as my life here, while fun, hasn’t been inspiring me the way it used to. I figure I should get out and just do something positive, and hopefully that will give me the energy and ideas to take on further challenges. Anything to save me from more days just wasting away online!

That doesn’t mean I won’t be online: I’m still considering whether I should undertake writing a detailed daily blog about my experiences there. I think that writing things down day-by-day last time set the experience much more firmly in my mind than if I hadn’t done so. So perhaps I should do that again, to make the most of it. On the other hand my spending several hours each night writing on my computer may have kept me from other adventures… though I can’t imagine what they might have been, as overloaded with new experiences as I was!

I think I’m leaning towards blogging it again, but we’ll see how I feel when I get there. Another option presented to me by a friend’s gift is to do it oldschool in a paper-and-graphite journal. That might be a fun way to go about it, though I worry whether I’ll even be able to decipher my own handwriting, as out of practice as I am!

I’m going to be there for two months. I’ll be doing the same basic stuff I did last time, to start, though my uncle has suggested that if I see any new and interesting projects come up I should branch off and do them. That sounds fun and scary… two things I tend to like.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of the people I connected with last time to see how their lives have progressed, and make more good memories.

Strangely, I think I’m in a more subdued state than I was last time. I was a bit crazy with shaking off enormous work responsibilities when I did my last trip. I was exhausted yet somehow energetic. This time I feel a little less energized. How that will effect my trip I don’t know. Perhaps the energy there will get me in gear. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.

Until then, I’m just hanging out and taking a quick visit to Kentucky to see the state of the Zappos warehouse and the people within. I haven’t been there in 3 years either. Should be a fun weekend… and then off I go.