Friday, 24 June 2011

The Final Day of Training (Fri, June 24)




































This week has really been a blast. I've been going to trainings from 8AM - 5PM all week and meeting up with about 80 other South African "interns/trainees". Training has been pretty basic and we've been doing quite a few team competitions and presentations. Also turns out that even though SA is on IFRS, their audits are still fundamentally the same as in the U.S. - we're also frowned on for clinging to IFRS unlike the rest of the world. Just like with metric. After training sessions end at 5 Nick and I been going out with our mentors or my cousins. We had some steaks and then went to Jolly Roger's Pub the other night and yesterday we had some great steaks with my cousins at this giant indoor mall full of restaurants and a movie theater. I finally got some of that monkeygland steak sauce I've been craving.

- some other recent updates: turns out we're not going to Mauritius this weekend and we're going to Zambia instead and visiting Victoria Falls. We leave tomorrow morning and come back Monday so hopefully we'll have some unique activities out there in sunny Zambia. On a totally unrelated note, neither Nick nor I have really had any jet lag. The earliest we've ever really slept is at 11 and we're always up by 7.
- we're about to head out to meet up with some friends from training so I'll write an update whenever I get some time this weekend.

Monday, 20 June 2011

Day 3 - The First Day!





















So after Nick and I had a breakfast worthy of dinner we got to the office complex/park at 8 and met around 80 other interns socializing before the first orientation. The local office works differently from us in Seattle since uni students start attending week-long "myVACschool" trainings when they're still second or third years (out of 4 years). So we are training with students from ages 19-21 this week and we'll go out on engagements next week with some of them. It also turns out that these students can sign offers at any stage now and commit to doing "articles" (internship) for a three year period as soon as they get out of college.
We've been learing a lot about the career tools offered to employees and we've also been divided into 3 training rooms and 5-person business simulation teams - our team name is "Young Money" (YMCM) and we own a wine bar. At the end of the day we walked around the "Woodland Office Park" ,which is occupied by a ton of Deloitte buildings and over 3,000 D&T employees, and saw the springbok and giant guinea pigs. Supposedly they had Zebra before but they got a little too aggressive around people. I drove the Jazz home with Nick and guess what? The only excitement from all these street vendors walking between the lanes asking to get hit by car mirrors.

Random Side Notes: Turns out that Nick refers to our British English speaking gps as a "she" so we named her Jane. I'm also starting to pick up some S African traits like saying "yeh" after everything and drinking tea every morning and twice a day during office tea breaks. People are also pretty intrigued by Americans and Nick's new nickname is "Miami".

Sunday, 19 June 2011

Day 2 - Driving































Another day with an awesome breakfast - greek yoghurt, carpaccio, fresh fruit juice, and the best jams/marmalades in the world followed up with a hot plate of poached eggs and bacon over toast. Anthony, the husband of the guest house owner, took Nick and I out for a Sunday drive to the office in the Honda Fit/Jazz. Of course I had to volunteer to drive first and it was pretty hilarious to see how afraid my passengers were while I kept trying to drive on the right (spreading the driving stereotype one South African at a time). Soon after I got picked up for an aunt's 80th birthday party (and drove through downtown Jo'burg) and her kids said one thing that really resonated - that they used to wake up at 5 AM every morning to get things ready for the shop then they'd go to school, come back to work in the shop after school, and then do homework late into the night after close.

Day 1: Touchdown!

Pre Day 1 - This week after graduation/week before South Africa has been nuts. I've been doing online trainings, packing, and getting lots of last minute things together for the trip. On top of that I was injured the other day after being kicked in the back of my knee during our Tuesday game. I started to wonder how I'd travel to SA after the sleepless night after the injury and on Wednesday I was lucky enough to get a UW sports med doc check it out. He confirmed my suspicion: that I'd busted up the knee ligaments (torn MCL and ACL) and likely needed reconstructive surgery when the swelling decreased...but luckily I can delay it until my return in a month! The doc gave me a pretty serious brace that got me back up to maybe 75% of my normal walking speed.

After flying for over 21 hours and going through three airports I can confirm that being a "disabled" flyer definitely has one big perk: no line that can't be cut. After arriving in Jo'burg at 8 AM yesterday Nick (my traveling companion/intern from Miami) and I spent time running errands with the "Leaves Guest House" owners Sue and Anthony. We picked up prepaid cell phones and a rental car, a sporty Honda Jazz/Fit. It's funny to see how many people have cell phones now, especially blackberry's and Iphones, compared to the last time I was here five years ago. After getting back to the house around 5 we were invited to a South African Braai (aka BBQ) by my cousin and wound up back at the house at around 11PM - in a protein coma.