Catsitting 101

By Conor | August 7th, 2010 | No Comments »

I have a complicated relationship with cats.

First, I’m allergic to them. But it’s not just that – I’m allergic to other things too, after all. Dust mites, or whatever you call them. If we’re watching a movie in somebody’s basement, I’m that guy who suddenly starts blowing his nose, following by clawing at my face to try to get through to my sinuses, and ending with a crescendo of hacking, which, to be fair, I try to synchronize with loud scenes from whatever DVD we’re watching. (Like the rocket launch in Apollo 13, or when that Decepticon that looks like a lobster was eating an army base.)
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Housesitting 101

By Conor | July 22nd, 2010 | 4 Comments »

In every marriage there are differences between husband and wife, chronic differences in attitude that can lead to some contention. Liz and I are no different.

The fact is that Liz, since I have known her and long before that, feels something akin to physical pain when she believes she is putting somebody out, making them uncomfortable in some way.

I, on the other hand, have no problem at all with putting people out if I can somehow gain from it. Which may be how we ended up in a ridiculously beautiful house in Brooklyn Heights this week. So I think we can all agree to go ahead and score that one for me.
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Doing Good, and Also Not So Much…

By Conor | July 3rd, 2010 | No Comments »

Walking through the shanty towns in the township of Grabouw for the first time a few weeks ago was like stepping through a TV screen and into a documentary. It was the kind of place I never thought I’d see in person.

Yet there we were, feeling the dirt and sand beneath our feet and walking among a disorganized array of huts, most built with rusting slabs of discarded corrugated metal, others built with wooden slats which, after weather or pressure, had caused them to lean at impossible angles, like a cartoon house in a book of German folktales.

Liz and I must have looked painfully out of place in that community, but nobody seemed even surprised by our presence there. They must have been quite used to volunteers and white staff members of Thembalitsha. That’s not to say it would have been even the least bit safe to venture into those communities alone – our colleague Adrian proved that when he was robbed at gunpoint a year ago – but in the company of the Thembacare health care workers, we were never made to feel unwelcome.
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The Road to the World Cup, Part Deux

By Conor | June 29th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Two weeks ago Kelly and I were driving up to our digs, a game lodge 25 minutes from the stadium where the US would play England in the opening match. The game lodge was called Bakubung, which translated as “People of the Hippo.” When I read this I insisted on referring to the lodge as “People of the Hippo” for the duration of our trip, and it is a mark of our 18 year friendship that Kelly never seemed bothered by it.

“How far are we from People of the Hippo?” I’d ask.

“Maybe an hour,” Kelly would say. “Not much traffic from here on out.”

“Was it hard to get a room? At People of the Hippo?”

“I think we got the last one – lots of fans up there.”

The entire journey from Jo’burg to People of the Hippo, we were keeping an eye out for a bar or restaurant that might show the opening match of the World Cup, South Africa vs. Mexico. Missing the match was simply not an option. South Africa had been counting down the months, weeks, days, and now hours to the kickoff, and we absolutely had to be part of the celebration in whatever form it would take, even if we had to stop in some roadside kiosk to watch on a portable black and white TV while some dude spent the ninety minutes trying to get us to buy his carved elephant heads.
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The smooth, silky road to the World Cup

By Conor | June 19th, 2010 | No Comments »

If you had never heard of the World Cup, you would still arrive in South Africa these days and know immediately that that something huge was going on.

Even a few weeks ago, before the World Cup officially began, you could see it in every city here. Stores that had no reason to have mannequins – bathroom tiling stores, for example, or Popeye’s Fried Chicken – suddenly found an excuse to put mannequins in their windows, then proceeded to dress them from head to toe as members of the South African National Soccer Team. Or as they are known here: Bafana Bafana.

The closest explanation I got for what Bafana Bafana means was from a local friend of ours named Leigh, who said: “I’m not really sure.” Nevertheless, Bafana Bafana is everywhere and there seems to be no shortening of the name – you have to say it two times, or people will just wait, as if you’d started a conversation with “Guess where I just saw a lit stick of dynamite?” or “You know what animal I’m thinking about marrying?”
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On Volunteering

By Conor | June 14th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

We’re doing some volunteering while we are here in South Africa. It was the main reason behind coming here in the first place, and yes, Dad, I really did find out the World Cup was happening here after our decision was made. But more on that in the next entry.

Liz has worked with Thembalitsha before but this is my first time, and I’m finding that they are a tremendous organization. We have a couple of projects that we are working on.
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Into the Winelands

By Conor | June 5th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

We are in South Africa. It feels like summer here but it’s actually winter, and it’s only going to get colder. But on day one it was eighty five degrees Fahrenheit.

(I totally panic every time I have to write that word – Fahrenheit. Every time. I see it coming a mile away, and I’m never even close. That damn red ziggy line appear under it, but Word doesn’t even have any suggestions for me. That’s how far off I am. I add h’s and e’s, and take out the half dozen r’s I jammed into it but Word still gives me that prissy “No suggestions,” like that Parisian waiter who pretends to have no idea what I’m saying until I’ve said “un croissant” for the sixteen time and then he goes, “Ah, un croissant!” and turns away laughing heartily at your pronunciation until you stand up and give him an wedgy that he won’t ever forget in his life, I promise you that, though you’ll probably have to go elsewhere for your croissant.)
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Up in the Air

By Conor | May 31st, 2010 | No Comments »

On the morning of Wednesday, May 19th, the movers came. Liz and I had packed up most of our stuff ourselves, but we hired a moving company to actually move the stuff out, including the furniture. If you’ve ever moved in or out of an apartment in NYC, you’ll know what I mean when I say that moving in New York is a cross between a Mr. Universe Pageant and a David Copperfield show.

Muscular young men – ninety percent of whom are former Israeli army with rhomboids like flying buttresses, enter your front door – sideways, usually, since their upper bodies are the shape of hand gliders – then catwalk into your home in single file, bearing a stack of cardboard boxes and a single dolly the size of a handbag. They wave their arms a bit and shout “Hoofa!” and “Lechem!” or whatever they are saying in Hebrew and suddenly your nine-foot tall, six-foot wide mirror is in the truck, and you find yourself examining the two-by-seven foot front doorframe for trick paneling.
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The Storm Before the Storm

By Conor | May 27th, 2010 | 4 Comments »

When Liz and I decided last fall that we wanted to spend a couple of months in South Africa this summer, we decided that the logical time to do it would be immediately following my graduation from Stern.

By then I would have had a few peaceful days off after finals, then a short graduation ceremony, then Liz and Finn and I would relax in our living room as we supped fresh papaya and did family jigsaw puzzles together, and maybe Finn would put a piece in his mouth and we would all laugh, because jigsaw puzzles aren’t for eating!

Then we would take our time packing for South Africa, over the course of several days, all the while making up songs about boats and zebras while Finn cooed quietly in the corner, drawing seascapes.

It turned out a bit differently.
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The New Hamptons

By Conor | April 27th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

There is a town in upstate New York called Jeffersonville, and the first time I put it into Google maps on my iPhone, Google couldn’t find the town. Which was disconcerting because we had just rented a farm house there and 8 of us – mostly Stern classmates – plus a toddler and three dogs, were heading up there in, like, an hour.

Thankfully, this turned out to be an AT&T issue rather than a Google issue, which shouldn’t really have been all that surprising considering AT&T is about as reliable as a junkie. With directions in hand and my vent about AT&T out of the way, we were ready to go.

We gathered at our apartment on the Upper East Side. Our car was dominated by Emma (our dog) and Nya (the dog of Itay and Orit, our Israeli friends), two enormous retrievers that took up most of the cargo area. JC pulled up in a red Ford Explorer with his own wife Liz Rich, Gianna, and Ryan. He offered to put most of the luggage in his car, since anything we tried to put into the space with Emma and Nya would come out covered in a thick golden shag.

“What about Gianna’s dog?” I asked him, peering into the back of the Explorer.

“Who, Gizmo?”

“Yeah – where’s she going to sit?”

There was a pause. “Have you seen Gizmo?”

I had not. At least, I thought I hadn’t. In fact, I had unwittingly seen her out of the corner of my eye just seconds earlier when I had given Gianna a hug hello, and had mistaken the dog for a stylish coin purse tucked inside Gianna’s handbag.
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