Monday, November 07, 2005

Weekend in Joburg (Nov 5-6)

Highlights of Joburg: The Old Mutual Soweto Race, rugby, green trees, shopping, and real Thai food!

Johannesburg: City lights with an overexposure

Rustenburg
Chris and I took a trip to Joburg this weekend which was, again, planned at the last minute because Chris got her visa late and I couldn’t find my resident’s permit. Because of the late start we made a stopover in Rustenburg, a mining town northwest of Johannesburg. There were some scenic, mountainous areas, and a nice “kloof”, which I think means cliff? We also saw the shadier parts of town when we got lost (as usual) in the industrial area at night.

Sandton Shopping
We finally made it to Sandton Saturday morning after passing through Hartebeesport, checked into the hotel and headed straight to the shops. After a 2 hour stint in the camera store, we took on the shoe stores and beauty product shops- it was quite the shopping marathon! However, I was reasonable and only took back 1 pair of shoes and a moisturizer- necessary things.

Rugby and Cancer Research
In the afternoon, Tonie and I met up and went to support cancer research- he shaved his head and I spray painted my hair blue! It was for a good cause…I also learned a little bit about rugby from watching the South Africa-Argentina game in a very smelly pub. Players are allowed to grab each others legs, ears, shirts- whatever it takes to get the ball. There are 15 players on each team, except when there’s a scrum, then there are only 8 players on each side. As far as I could tell, a scrum is when the players pile on top of each other. A very entertaining sport!

The 14th Anniversary of The People's Race: The Old Mutual Soweto Race
I dragged my poor mother at 5:30 in the morning to this race, and it was fantastic! There were hundreds- probably thousands- of runners and tons of atmosphere! There were singing groups, blaring radios, lots of cheers. I had someone yell at me, “Go Chinese runner!”, which sounded like pure encouragement, so I smiled and ran faster.

Time: 0:53hrs. Considering that there were some wicked hills, I had slept about 3 hours, had one more Savannah than I should have the night before, and missed breakfast, I thought it a decent time. The only disappointment was that the organizers ran out of shirts and there were practically riots because of it. Overall, brilliant race!

Runners on the Soweto Marathon Route (2003)

Winner of the Soweto Marathon Tsotang Maene (2005)

Runners on the Soweto 10km Route (2005)

Finished!

Ishmael Khosie: I still haven't been able to figure out who he is...a runner or someone supporting the anti-apartheid movement?

Soweto: We ran past this!


10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

1:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rugby is a game that American took it and changed its rules and called football. Football game was also taken from the old countries. American did change the rule of throwing the out-of-bound ball into play to kicking it. But it was changed back. The name of football game is changed to soccer game. MIT started to play Rugby as collegian game.

3:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One picture is worth 1000 words. More picture, please.

4:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What did you have for dinner at Green trees.Could you detect Thai with Dutch accent or Thai with Laos’s accent?

5:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What part of the main land China are you from??

5:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Like this Chinese runner!!!

5:16 AM  
Blogger Ketunuti said...

Thai food: had green curry, satay (gai) and pad see ew- tasty! And the staff spoke Thai, but I could not detect any Laotian accent. =)

China: Let's see, I could say Taiwan, as that sounds like Thailand...Or I could say I'm from the northwest, just newly immigrated from the bird flu area!

6:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Go Thai runner go! What an exciting trip to Johannesburg. It is too bad that there were not enough T-shirts, but at least you got the medal to remember it by. I am looking forward to perhaps running a race with you when I visit.

7:26 PM  
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