Charles Apple

I sat in my hotel room tonight, at the Westin Grand, working on my presentations for later this week and watched the sun — what little there was of it today — sink behind Signal Hill, here in Cape Town:

That was around 6 p.m. or so. Just a few minutes later, though, I had to pull out my camera a second time to catch this incredible play of light among the clouds:

What a visual delight this city is. If I lived here, I’d be forced to find a home with no windows. Otherwise, I’d never get any work done.

Weather-wise, the day was pretty miserable. The folks down at the front desk were kind enough to loan me an umbrella so I could make it to the newspaper building without getting drenched.

The gale-force gusts were so great this evening that I wouldn’t have been able to use the umbrella anyway. It was nuts out there for much of the day.

The current forecast for Tuesday is about as bad as today was: Fifty percent chance of rain, with an even colder high and low:

The good news: It should clear off for the second half of the week.

For the record, I’ll depart for Johannesburg Saturday morning at 1:50 p.m. — 7:50 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. I’ll arrive at Norfolk International Airport Sunday at 9:42 a.m.

My total stay here in the Westin Grand will have been 20 nights.

I spent a few hours this afternoon working in my room, then took my laptop downstairs to the restaurant for dinner and to continue working over a few beers. I returned to my room a few minutes ago, two cans of Coke Light in hand, to work into the evening. In addition to my slideshows, I hope to finish writing the text for my blog entry about my Sunday morning trip to Robben Island.

The folks at the Westin Grand have seen to my every wish. And to a number of wishes I didn’t even know I had wished for until they were answered. I still have half a bottle of fine South African wine to polish off, here in the room.

My first session today with the five advertising and marketing artists who are attending my class went well. We got to know each other and we critiqued each other’s portfolios.

Tuesday, I hope to show them tips on using color and in conceptualizing and selling unusual, “thinking out of the box” kind of ideas.

—
EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AFRICA

You’re reading chapter 20 of my journey to Cape Town, South Africa. Previous installments:

• 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
  
• CHAPTER 6: Day two; No effects at all from jet lag
• CHAPTER 7: A tour of the Westin Grand
• CHAPTER 8: Dealing with little things like money and electricity
• CHAPTER 9: Thursday night on the Cape Town waterfront
• CHAPTER 10: Ending the work week on a high note
• CHAPTER 11: A Saturday trip to the Cape of Good Hope
• CHAPTER 12: A Sunday visit to Cape Town’s Table Mountain
• CHAPTER 13: The blustery ‘Cape Doctor’ winds arrive
• CHAPTER 14: Making some real progress in our class work
• CHAPTER 15: Giant infographics and a night on the town
• CHAPTER 16: Our last day of infographics class in Cape Town
  
• CHAPTER 17: Looking forward to a weekend of sightseeing
• CHAPTER 18: An interesting Saturday bus tour of Cape Town
• CHAPTER 19: Preparing for a week of advertising classes

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Charles Apple, Travelogue, Trip to South Africa, Visual ethics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.