Charles Apple

The first working day of my two-week teaching gig here in Cape Town, South Africa couldn’t possibly have gone any better than it did.

My fellow consultant and I drove over to the paper early Monday, only to discover the graphics folks scheduled for my class were astonished to see me there early. Because I was arriving in Cape Town so late, they figured I’d be so exhausted from jet lag that I’d sleep in late Monday and only be in for a few hours that afternoon for brief introductions.

Instead, of course, I arrived fairly early, ready to go. I’ve found the adjustment to the new time zone a breeze. Here’s how I did it.

Because I planned to not carry a cell phone here, and because I don’t normally wear a watch, I’d have no way of telling time, Sharon bought me this cute little clip-on watch for just a couple of bucks last week down at Wal-Mart:

When I pulled it out of the package, I set it to South African time — six hours head of Eastern Daylight; seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard — and referred to it often.

All last week, I started shifting my hours forward. I’d get up an hour or so earlier each day and attempt — some times failing — at going to bed an hour or so each evening. By the time Thursday and Friday rolled around, I was hitting the sack around 8 p.m. and getting up around 4 a.m.

Do that for a few days and you’ll find shifting to a six-hour time change a breeze. Really, it’s been no problem. Being able to sleep on the plane helped, too.

For the second straight day, I woke up here at 5:30 a.m. Which, I’ll repeat, is 11:30 p.m. Eastern time. I’m waking up before most of my friends at stateside newspapers are going to bed.

Another great solution for jet lag is sunlight. You want to expose yourself to sunlight that operates on the cycle of your new schedule. Get out and get some sun on your skin for several minutes in the morning once you arrive at your destination. Avoid the sun at your old location. This worked well for me when I went to the Philippines two years ago.

We spent Monday setting up our temporary training facility, introducing ourselves to each other, looking at samples of our work and having a nice lunch. Here’s the view from where we ate:

Isn’t that incredible? I don’t know how anyone in this building gets any work done. I’d end up spending my entire work day gazing out the window.

Because we were so far ahead of schedule, I went ahead and plowed into part one of my three-hour intro to infographics lecture. We talked about the importance of content and looked at some examples of boiling content down to it’s simplest, most basic elements in order to emphasize the content — even at the risk of resulting in a less sexy graphic. It ain’t about wowing the reader with your graphics prowess. It’s about telling your story or presenting your data in the clearest way possible.

So after a pretty full day Monday, we knocked off, had a couple of drinks in the hotel lounge and then went out for dinner with an editor of the local paper. I wish I had taken my camera so I could show you a photo of the steak I was served. Truly one of the better sirloins I have ever eaten.

After a quick iChat conversation with Sharon, I turned in relatively early.

Today, Tuesday morning, dawned a little differently than had yesterday. A thin veil of fog rolled in off the bay:

Click this panorama for a much larger view:

A problem I’ve run into every morning is trying not to look so much like a rumpled slob. My clothes emerged from my suitcase very wrinkled, so I’ve done something very rare for me: I’ve attempted to use an iron:

The other thing I’ll be watching out for: I’m hoping the housekeeping crew services my room today. For some strange reason, they didn’t show up yesterday to change my towels or bed. When I returned to my room Monday afternoon, my bed was unmade. However, the curtains — which I had carefully closed in order to keep the room from being hot in the afternoon — had been opened. So clearly, someone came in but then didn’t perform even the most standard housekeeping operations.

While they couldn’t be bothered to make up the bed or change my towels or empty my wastebaskets, they didn’t have any trouble at all restocking the one soft drink I bought from the minibar.

Very strange, I think, for a Westin hotel. Shame on these guys.

Other things I’ve learned: I mentioned yesterday that the internet connection here in the hotel was painfully show. Folks yesterday told me it’s not just here: The internet in the entire country is very slow, they said.

I’m able to iChat with Sharon, but just barely. She says the picture I’m feeding out is very, very poor. And I’m about to give up on Facebook while I’m here. I can see my own notes page, but I can’t get my news feeds page to even load.

The plan for today: We’ll talk about how to pull together visual materials for graphics and illustrations, about being visually striking, how to use color as a tool to communicate and about being a more proactive seeker to visual solutions in newspapering.

It’s going to be fun…

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EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA

You’re reading the sixth chapter of my journey to Cape Town, South Africa.

• CHAPTER 1: Preparing for the journey.
  
• CHAPTER 2: I made it as far as the Dulles airport bar
• CHAPTER 3: Getting really bored sitting at Dulles
• CHAPTER 4: Safe and sound in Cape Town
• CHAPTER 5: Day one in Cape Town

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 2:19 am and is filed under Charles Apple, Travelogue, Trip to South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.