Matthew D. Dekenah

It’s 03h30 and I have an essay due today so naturally my room is pristinely clean, I’ve finally hung hooks, my noticeboard, mirror and made a photo wall. Oh and of course I’m writing this blog post too because that’s good time management.

I had every intention of having this essay done by Friday, but as always seems to be the case with me I have left it to the last minute. And now I’m writing this blog. I despair.

The essay is actually the only assessment basis for one of my courses, Public Health and Health Inequalities, with one of my favourite lecturers, Sarah Hill, so I have every intention of giving it my all between now and the due time at 16h00. I’m actually about halfway at this point and have a good idea of where I’m going as I did manage to do most of my research and planning for a presentation I gave on the same topic in a seminar on Friday (the role of the state in regulating (unhealthy) food as it pertains to questions of public health and freedom of choice). Anybody want to read it when it’s done?

The reason I couldn’t finish it up this weekend is because I only returned at around 18h30 from Southport (near Liverpool in Merseyside) where the Rotary District 1020 Conference took place. It was a lots of fun (with my favourite; ceilidh dancing), but I promise more about that in my next post. Just a quick shout out to Lucy and Dan who made the effort to come through from Preston to see me in Southport on Saturday afternoon; it was really good to hear some Saffa accents and see some familiar faces from home, but as I said, more on that later.

What I did aim to do with this post, (with the intention of somewhat effective procrastination), was to tell you a bit more about my shoebox/bedsit/studio flat so that you can conceptualise where these blog posts are being written and where the magic of most of the essay writing/procrastination occurs.

So above is the Google StreetView of my flat. I live opposite Old College, which is the University of Edinburgh Law School and mine are the two windows on the 2nd floor to the right of those with the planters. I am super conveniently located on South Bridge which appears to be at street level, but is actually a bridge, so most of the buildings have deep vaults and basements, like the Blackwells Bookstore downstairs. There’s also a Tesco Express downstairs which is open till 23h00, which is great for odd purchases, although I do most of my grocery shopping a bit further down the same road (which changes names about 6/7 times along it’s length).

It takes me about four minutes to walk to most of my classes which more than makes up for the fact that my bathroom feels like a plastic spaceship capsule. My kitchenette is essentially one unit that was installed into the wall, but it works and at least I can call it my own. My bathroom looks like they shoved a plastic box into a hole in the wall with a toilet, sink and shower, (and they probably did), but it’s clean and I can rumble in peace, which suits me just fine.

When you add up the convenience of location, along with the fact that I’m not living with and cleaning up after Berni, I’m actually really happy with my little home, and it’s not actually that small. My windows are going to get double glazing next week which will definitely help with what promises to be another really cold winter apparently. It’s also sure to help with the noise, which is substantial, especially from drunken, screaming undergraduates who go to the chippies on my road on their way home for chips, cheese and gravy. (UPDATE 10h54, 24/10/2011: My double glazing has just been installed; such a difference!)

Alright, back to the essay, but there should be another post later in the week. Well, unless I put that off too. Till then.

UPDATE 16h30, 24/10/2011: Essay’s in! Huzzah! Uploaded here if you want to read it.

So mayhaps it was a bit ambitious of me to start a blog knowing how I love to procrastinate? It’s been just over a month since I arrived in Edinburgh and here I am, finally sitting in front of my PC, and bashing out this post to reflect on what has been an insanely busy, yet exciting few weeks.

After landing in Heathrow (forgetting my phone on the plane and my passport in the bathroom) I somehow managed to arrive in Edinburgh and was welcomed by my authentically Scottish and lovely host parents, Allan and Mary Maclaughlan, who live 40 minutes South West of the City of Edinburgh in West Lothian. After a quick shower and change I attended my first Rotary meeting at my host club of Currie Balerno (where I gave my first presentation a week later).

While it still feels somewhat surreal that I am actually finally here in Edinburgh studying at the 20^th top university in the world, apart from the obvious financial drawbacks of being a full-time student again, it’s kind of ideal for me. I feel refreshed, energised and engaged with the city and my course, and I’ve already completely over committed myself as per my usual MO (probably related to my other ‘MO’ — FOMO).

It has been non-stop since my arrival. Apart from settling in and equipping my shoebox (which isn’t as tiny as I imagined), I’ve already done three of my ten required Rotary presentations (with a fourth lined up for next week), attended three weeks of class (and surprisingly completed all of my reading assignments), given a presentation on HIV/AIDS and the TAC at a class seminar, submitted an assignment on Polio Eradication, climbed Arthur’s Seat twice, overspent my budget at the high street retailers on Princes Street (making Larry proud), made a bunch of new friends both in and out of class (while missing all my maatjies back home), visited the Edinburgh Castle, got lost on dark Edinburgh streets, sprawled out with my work on the Meadows when the sun briefly visited Edinburgh, visited the Primary Care Trust for Wolverhampton City NHS,  joined the University Singers, the WineSoc, StopAIDS, and the Hillwalking Club,  met 60-something of the other Ambassadorial Scholars in the UK and Ireland at the RIBI Link Weekend in Staffordshire, and attended a ceremony installing HRH The Princess Royal as the new Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh where she bestowed an award on JK Rowling for her generous contribution of a cool £10 million to research into neuro-degenerative conditions. Apart from that I’ve discovered some wonderful nooks, crannies and eateries around the city, begun to drink tea, joined the most amazing gym you have ever seen, and even nursed several hangovers.

What has been the biggest mind shift for me (ignoring the obvious questions of weather and finance for the moment) is how safe I feel here. I have embraced a completely pedestrian lifestyle and I feel completely comfortable wandering the streets at night, even with my mobile in hand. Granted, I may be completely overly paranoid in Cape Town, but it still feels really liberating. But then again, it was 30 or so in Cape Town today and 12 or 13 here and I felt the beach calling out for me, but alas.

In other news, I found myself on YouTube yesterday with 60-something views! I’m quasi-famous. Check me out sounding like a tool at 3:30:

You can also check out some more pictures from the RIBI Link Weekend over on fellow Edinburgh Scholar, Robert E. Starr’s website.

I have now made an agreement with myself to not do any schoolwork on weekends where possible, so I’ve just finished a super relaxing weekend and managed to apply for a couple of jobs today; I’m starting to feel my purse getting rather light and Muriel isn’t around to save me.

I do not want to overload this first official blog post any further, but I endeavour to post more regularly from here on out. Please use the comments to shoot any questions my way and offer suggestions and the like.

For a day that has taken forever to arrive, it suddenly feels like it has come too soon. Today marks exactly one week before I depart to Edinburgh as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to read for the MSc in Global Health and Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh. My mind and body feel wrangled with both excitement and nerves for what lies ahead.

It feels like forever ago that I received the phone call that set this all in motion and gave me the opportunity to formally pursue my passion for Health and Public Policy questions for South Africa. I truly appreciate Rotary District 9350 and The Rotary Foundation recognising this in me and providing me with the platform to turn this dream into a reality.

For those who know me, you know that I have taken a rather unconventional path to reach this point, but then you also know that I have highly varied interests and sheer determination in the face of adversity. I believe this exposure to the Social and Information Sciences, Finance and ICT have built competencies in me that will inevitably prove  invaluable in reaching my medium to long-term goals and aspirations and empower me to contribute as much as I can to my community with the skills and knowledge I continue to build upon.

Tomorrow is my last day in full-time employment. This bodes a complete lifestyle shift for me, especially considering that Rands do not convert to Sterling very well. The return to a student lifestyle is definitely going to take some adjustment, especially for Muriel* (my credit card), who is going to suffer neglect over the next year.

Most of the big admin issues are out of the way. I’ve packed my room into boxes, jumped hoops (and proven I speak English) to get my visa, bought my ticket, and even found a shoebox to live in, in Edinburgh. My next challenge, though, is to figure out how to pack my bag for the next year in under 23kg. I fear.

My next post will likely be from my shoebox in Edinburgh, which thankfully has an Internet connection; so until then, lang may yer lum reek! (Wi ither fowks coal!)

* Muriel was named for Muriel Heslop of Muriel’s Wedding, so that when the limit is inevitably reached I can say, “You’re terrible, Muriel!”

Group Buying, or Tuangou, is a relatively new buying and marketing strategy originally from China. Offline, Tuangou usually involves several people who approach a vendor of a specific product in order to bargain as a group to get discounts. The entire group then agrees to purchase the same item and benefits by paying less. The business benefits by selling multiple items at once.

The global trend at the moment is providing the same concept online by linking up strangers interested in purchasing the same product/service to (usually) small local businesses who provide the product to each member of that group at a drastically discounted rate.

Continue reading on ohso: Will The Group Buying Model Work In South Africa?

One of my favourite new tools/apps from 2010 has to be Dropbox. This web-based service has completely nullified my need for a flash drive and I have not felt the need to carry once since I started using Dropbox for peace of mind.

Not only does this service provide a secure backup system for your important documents and files using Amazon S3 storage, but all data is transferred using a secure connection and encrypted with AES-256. Any changes you make to files you store in Dropbox are automatically synced to the cloud via the Dropbox web service and to any other computers you have linked to your Dropbox account

Continue reading on ohso: Flash Drives Are So 2009

So, it’s my birthday this Friday the 13th and I decided to share some astrological insight into yours truly using an adaptation of the entry for August 13 in the book The Secret Language of Birthdays by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers.

The 13th day of August is labelled as The Day of Long Odds in this book. Now, I am no follower of astrology and am usually rather cynical of the esoteric world, but I do find the allusions to my life quite unsettling in the below excerpt. What do you think

Continue reading on ohso: The Day of Long Odds

We all enjoy our nocturnal escapades with a touch of alcohol from time to time. Some of us more than others, but most of the time we are completely unaware of what we are consuming. By the end of this alcoholic exposé, perhaps you shall be more enlightened by some standard – and some bizarre – facts on your drink of choice.

Let us first dispel a few myths about alcohol consumption. Firstly, contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not destroy brain cells and in some cases has been proven to be associated with improved cognitive functioning. A “beer belly” is not caused by the ingestion of beer, or any alcohol for that matter, but rather by eating too much food.

Continue reading on ohso: Your Drink of Choice

Google has recently been promoting their Search Story concept, which has spurned a whole bunch of cute and funny search stories. I also particularly enjoyed this one by a friend, ianaarondavidson.

Anyhow, I decided to try my hand at it late one Friday evening after a glass of wine and came up with this. Please enjoy. I might make another one soon. Probably

Continue reading on ohso: Lice Aren’t So Nice – A Google Search Story

Latest update: 1 July 2010

We all love a good special and, come winter, Cape Town restaurants usually provide a great selection of them to patrons. This year, however, seems to be a little different. With the upcoming Football World Cup, many restaurants seem to be extending current specials only till the end of May and I can’t say I blame them; what with the sketchy statistics about how many visitors are expected in the host cities and all.

However, many of the restaurants are still offering specials extending through all of the winter months, and my dear friend, Karen Hilliard, is superb at compiling lists of these. With her permission I am reproducing this list below and will update it as winter passes

Continue reading on ohso: Cape Town Restaurant Autumn/Winter Specials

Overall my experience was not as dire as I am sure we have all come to expect from South African bureaucracies. That is not to say that I could not instantly point out any number of inefficiencies in the incumbent system, but I think I am mostly grateful that I managed to spend under an hour in the rather depressing building that is Gallows Hill Traffic Department in Green Point, Cape Town.

I arrived just before 8am this morning and joined a rather short queue, which – for a change – everyone seemed to understand the concept of. The doors opened shortly after 8am and I was directed to the Enquiries counter to my left by a scarily efficient security guard who failed to hear my objections…

Continue reading on ohso: Renewing a Driver’s License at Gallows Hill, Green Point

Being the total geek perfectionist that I am, I wanted to contextually link my bio to a page describing the typical Capetonian, but was stumped by the complete lack of any definition for one on the WWW. Even Urban Dictionary returned nothing beside the generic etymological definition, “Someone from Cape Town”.

So, in my efforts to link to something more substantial, I decided to write a post describing the typical Capetonian myself

Continue reading on ohso: Capetonians