Thursday, November 20, 2008

Santa Barbara is burning

Hello from the burning lands of Santa Barbara

Wow it's been two months since our last newsletter, it seems I just got sucked into a PhD vortex and I haven't had a moment to get my head above water to speak. We finally feel like we are iving the American life now, I don't think much about driving on the wrong side of the road, I calculate change in quarters, dimes and pennies quickly, rhetoric American English doesn't sound strange to our ears and turkey bangers and Mexican flautas look at home in our fridge. Yet when we listen to Jonny Clegg sing Asimbonanga or speak to family or friends over Skype we just want to be back home.

Nula is settling into home schooling Samuel and Luke after the American schooling system and Samuel were like a gummy bear meeting agent smith in the matrix. Samuel was born with an inquisitive mind which makes teaching him pretty fun, he's reading basic Dr Seuss books without much effort now and he can add some double digit numbers.

I bought an electronic project kit for him for sleeping alone in his bed for 7 days, of course I was also the one wanting to relive some of my childhood. We built an electronic organ yesterday which uses a graphite pencil coloured rectangle as a variable resistor to generate different pitch sounds - pretty funky, we almost got the pitch right for "doh a dear" from "the sound of music". Samuel also goes to a Wednesday home schooling group where his made some good friends, he even played some soccer there last Wednesday. They have also made plenty of good friends around the family housing and it's good to see kids being kids outside, playing soccer, hopscotch, riding their skateboards and bikes. It reminds of how I grew up as a kid in my neighbourhood before the era of high walls and electric fences.

Luke is a tough guy and he's adjusted very well to American life - he's accent is changing fast, using words like "Awesome" and ending most sentences with "right". He has two girlfriends, Gillian and Lucy, from families in our neighbouring houses and has a another good friend, Lucian who enjoys trying to keep up with his flying feet when he does Irish dancing. Luke's Irish dancing skills totally amaze us - he watches Michael Flatley you tube videos and then copies the choreography with incredible precision - he's been teaching himself tap dancing for about 9 months now. He attends a playschool twice a week and is really enjoying it and makes friends very quickly.

We get on with most people who live around here, there's everyone from philosophers to surfers to part time gypsy jazz drummers. Mostly people studying in the humanities - areas like religion and philosophy. But it's hard to say yet whether we will make good friends with anyone here, many people here will be graduating in the next year or two anyway. I get on very well with colleagues in my lab, they're from all over the world - India, Lebanon and Croatia to name but a few. Nula has been spending time with and eccentric crazy mom from her home group called Mitz - she's a wonderful mix of of Japanese, African and American and it shows in her big Afro. Her old Mercedez car broke down here at our apartments a few days ago and she got really excited about trying to fix it up herself and climbed into the engine and found out that the problem was with the condenser. On Friday she took Nula and the boys on a paper lantern walk but then the mountain caught fire and they had to leave early (this was the start of the fires that burned down many homes near where Oprah Winfrey lives in Santa Barbara which you probably saw in the news).

Some of the regular things we do here in our leisure time are a 15 minutes walk down to Isla Vista beach or a 10 minute cycle to campus point and the campus lagoons. I got myself a surfboard about a month ago and today Nula and I were taking turns practising catching waves on some small friendly swell at Campus point while the other watched the boys on the beach. Sometimes I have to slap myself while I'm surfing a wave and looking up the beach to see the office window of my lab only a few 100 meters away.

It's good to know my carbon footprint has been mostly reduced to food and about $30 of electricty and gas per month, I cycle to campus everyday and we only use the car to transport food from the nearby supermarket. The simplicity of life here is a refreshing change, our only real costs are food and rent. Musically I felt really starved until I found a grand piano in one of the community halls near us, so almost everyday, on the way to campus in the morning, I pop in and grease my fingers on some Bach, Chopin and a little random improvisation, it helps with my sanity when the work load gets intense. When I've raised some money from my cello sale, I'm going to buy some Uilleann pipes – I've decided this is the next instrument that I have to learn (listen to this and you will see why http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSjmvU_8xLY)

The PhD is fairly intense - I'm taking 2 courses (computer networks and computer security) and teach a basic computer programming course. The courses all have regular assignments, exams and one has a large research project, you just can't rest until the 10 weeks of the lightening speed quarter are over, if you blink you'll get behind. I knew the first year of courses would be tough until I get to the pure research part - so I'm just biting down on it and hanging in there. The security course has turned out to have it's fun moments - its taught by a wild Italian surfer who is one of the countries top security experts - he audited all the voting systems before the election and found that many of them are "hackable". Our final assignment is a hacking contest were we try and break into other peoples computers and they try and break into ours - it's controlled anarchy.

Talking of the election, wow - we are living through the 2nd great depression and the first African American president who has a grandmother who lives as a rural farmer in Kenya (this video just blows me away: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UreJZMY_2IY). There is a lot of hope now that Obama is taking the reigns - there were huge celebrations here the night he won, people were running around clanging pots and pans and generally going hysterical. The economic depression is very real here - I've started to notice retail businesses having closing down sales.

Well those are some random reflections from the past 2 months – I'll send you a link to some pictures and videos from the past few weeks soon.

Take care in yonder lands of Afrique du Sud
David, Nula, Sammy and Lukie

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Johnsons have arrived in California - part2

Well the kids didn't go crazy for 3 weeks - so part 2 was delayed because we all have been running around like headless chickens for the past few weeks trying to get settled before I start my PhD at UCSB on the 22nd of September.

This email is in two parts first there is the more reflective part on Californian life as we have experienced it so far and then there is the news of the last three weeks - if you want to jump to the news just jump over to the section <<< news >>>

<<<< More reflective part about California >>>>

One thing just stands out, especially in California - this is a place of abundant wealth - yes there are a small few who may be considered poor - but they can get by on food stamps which they pick up at the social security office. By the way we are considered poor, living on a student grant - actually if you earn less than $40000 per year here you are considered poor and can get all sorts of benefits - for example the kids can go on a free medical aid scheme thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger's medi-cal scheme. OK you have to go to doctors and dentists where you sit in a waiting room a bit longer but it beats paying the ridiculous premiums that most Californians pay - about $800 per month for a family of 4 and then you only get about 80% cover on most medical procedures.

The other thing about a place with so much wealth is that it's very hard to get rid of old stuff - so at our apartments, for example, you get these free thrift shops where you can walk in and just take stuff people just throw away - we got a good coffee maker, a wireless router and a whole bunch of kids toys.

Back to Arnie - his such an enigma this guy - the German Mr Universe waltzes into the US - makes action movies and then becomes the Governor of California which is kind of like being the president of a country - he can make a huge amount of changes within the boundaries of federal law. For example I have to take my second hand car I just bought for a smog-check thanks to his pollution laws and the free medical aid for us poor is also his doing. And yet he's a Republican in the most vehemently Democrat state.

Some other reflections

*America has a particular sweet smell when you walk into shops or public spaces - it's weird - but I think I've pinned it down to the detergents they use to clean stuff like carpets.
*I really miss ceres and liqui-fruit juice - it's so hard to find freshly squeezed fruit juices here - well I've bought a blender and there's lots of good fresh fruit around.
*The lack of regulation on petrol prices is really weird you can go to one petrol station and it's $4.01 a gallon at Mobil and across the road at 76 it's $3.58 and everyday it can change.
* There are rules everywhere - I have already been stopped by campus police for riding my bike in a pedestrian only side walk. Warnings aboutstuff also abound - I went to take my car for a service and there were big notices everywhere about stuff in the service garage that could give me cancer - made me not want to breath.
* But on the other hand - there is no roadworthy tested needed when you register a car - just the smog-test. So you can't kill people slowly with air pollution but you can kill them quickly with failed brakes.
* "You're all set" is the most common phrase we have encountered in the US - at ticketing offices, libraries ... just everywhere


<<< news >>>

All the pictures over the last 2 months are posted here - some have captions
http://picasaweb.google.com/david.lloyd.johnson/Use_august_2008#
http://picasaweb.google.com/david.lloyd.johnson/Usa_september#

They are all taken with my rather "not to bad" camera phone - so hopefully the picture quality will improve when we've picked out real digital camera.

So after arriving in our apartment on Thursday morning the 21st of August we went out to buy a queen size mattress and could then basically camp out in our empty apartment - it already had a huge gas fridge. I realized with a fridge a stove and a bed - you can basically survive for quite a while.

We then hired a monster U-haul truck which you will see in the pics - to go and buy IKEA furniture in Hollywood which is 140km away. It was a freaky experience driving this thing - I kept straddling lanes and getting hooted at. We bought couches and "flat packs" for book shelves, beds and basically everything and it took a good week to get all the stuff assembled.

That weekend we also did our first proper beach visit ; when our toes were in the beach sand we finally felt we had arrived. The ocean is very calm here - it actually reminded me a bit of mauritius with very shallow waist deep water for a few hundred meters from the shore line. We saw a few people paddle surfing near where the beach makes a point. This is how surfing first originated in Hawaii - it was a means of transport for locals. It looks very mellow you can surf small waves and you don't get wasted paddling out with your arms.

The following week it was Samuels first day at Isla Vista Elementary school for First Grade. Public shcools are free here - you just have to live in the area. We found the school very un-friendly when we arrived they wouldn't let him attend class until I had cycled back to the apartment to show my passport - Samuel had a terrible day - the teacher basically ignored him and all the other kids as well and we immediately pulled him out. we then took him to a "charter school" which is a less formal school that uses more alternative education with input like music and art. We found a school which was very homely and "hippie" like with couches in the classrooms - very small classes of about 10 and we through this would be great - we really liked all the teachers. But Samuel was so traumatized by the other school experience that he totally withdrew into himself and wouldn't make friends with any of the other classmates - Nula had to stay with him everyday - and eventually we made a decision to home school him to re-build his confidence and cushion all the changes until second grade next year.

So the whole school experience has been really hard but Nula really enjoys the educator role - The challenge will be trying to teach Samuel and Luke at the same time. We've ordered Christian based home-schooling material and Nula will also be going to groups that get together every week to share resources - moms also sometimes teach subjects which they may be good at.

Then we think of all the amazing friends Samuel and Luke have made around us in the apartments and the great people living around us that we get on so well with and it softens the blow a lot. The total safety of course also makes up for any hardship - it's amazing how much tension is released, even in your shoulders when you live in a place where there's no threat on your life.

Santa Barbara is just an absolutely stunning place - we've done some walks in the forested creeks up on the mountain and there are so many great beaches to walk on and surfing spots nearby. There are also dedicated biking lanes everywhere - so you can take your whole family with trailers behind the bikes all over the town. We feel truly blessed to be here and are going to try and make the most of everyday - we have a 2 day beach / mountain rule - which says we are not allowed to go for more than 2 days without going to a beach or the mountain. I have hardly needed a jersey (nobody knows what that is here) day or night - it's almost always 26 degrees in the day and about 17 degrees at night with a light sea breeze always blowing.

We went to our local public library today and were blown away - they have hundreds of educational dvd's for kids, music cd's, almost every doctor Seuss book - I found some great books on Richard Feynman and Nula brought back about 25 books which she will use for home schooling. You can take as many books/dvds/cds as you can carry. I don't think Americans really understand the amount of resources they have.

We are getting to the stage now where we wish some family or good friends could pop in for a braai and a lekker chat - but a year will fly by - next year July we're back again. But please visit if you want - we have enough space for 2 or 3 people to camp in our lounge.

Well goodnight and take care

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Johnson's arrive in California

This is just a short note to say we have all survived our long and arduous 30 hour journey across the atlantic.

We had a scare at the border where they sent us to section B - which was a waiting room where people are interrogated and scrutinized - it was the dark side of America where you feel like an enemy on the state - there is no water - even when you sit there with screaming jet lagged children, the staff act as though you don't exist - Guantanamo Bay came to mind as I sat there with Samuel and Luke moaning that they were thirsty and realizing that we would miss our connecting flight.

In the end it was a computer glitch and the doors of the USA swung open with us and our 4 trolleys of SA paraphernalia charging through to see if we can still make our flight. This was not to be and we had to wait 5 hours in Washington DC to make a connecting flight to LA through Las Vegas. When we eventually got to LA it was 30 hours in planes and airports. I then fetched a truly American style Ford F350 van at Avis to pile in our goods - driving this monster on the wrong side of the road while jet-lagged was insane. We then made a 2 and a half hour drive to Santa Barbara in LA rush hour traffic at night - with Star bucks coffee pumped in my system to keep the eye-lids open.

We stayed over that night in a B&B and after a long rest, the sun bleached californian coast greeted us and a we arrived at our apartment in Goleta (the suburb next to Santa Barbara). The people here are amazingly friendly and helpful (ok the kids are going crazy ... so part 2 will continue shortly) .....