View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

change of place = change of pace
It's good to have come out of the last 3 weeks, which must be some of the most stressful I've ever experienced. The stress was due to my girlfriend moving in with me, work (including extracuricular work), not being able to train, having my car go in for a major reconditioning - I still don't have it after 2 weeks - and then the Slum Wars.

This weekend I have stumbled across some grissly information - it's gruelling to have to process. This, on an American girl who died in a car wreck, was particularly disturbing. It's odd that as we left our previous residence, we shared a few crime-horror stories with the neighbours. Their story eclipsed mine for the sheer horror of it.

And then there is swine flu to put horror into the appropriate hierarchy.

It is perhaps a quirk of fate that two pandemics (one in the making - still evolving) have one thing in common - the 'Spanish' tag. The Spanish flu in 1918 and then the outbreak in Spanish speaking Mexico, and by no conincidence, the highest infections rates in Europe are guess where - Spain.

It is also interesting to note the use of the term 'evolving virus'. There is perhaps no other lifeform that moves so rapidly in this regard as a virus. Some of the 'leaps' can be quite spectacular and of course, potent. Here we see mutations, adapations, recombinations. Any creationist or religious person who says they are sceptical that evolution actually exist might want to (have their imaginations checked for major wiring faults) and keep tabs on what a pandemic virus does. It moves fast. It changes. It adapts. It seeks to assert itself, to survive in its host. It's an invisible process that manifests as a terrifying reality.

My personal view is that whatever the latest statistics or reports, this has to be a worst case (Phase 6) scenario. It's a recombinant bird, swine and human flu, it's transmissable both between animals and humans and between humans and animals. It is killing young adults in that characteristic malaise - a potentially fatal hyper-response from the human immune system to a brand new virus. The body essentially chokes in a storm similar to what one sees when an allergic person is stung by a bee (anaphalactic shock). It's euphemistically called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS).

While the media and the government want to forestall a panic, they are also very careful to avoid mentioning what it is like to contract these exotic virusses. There are a few people who have survived the extremes of ARDS. They suffer permanent lung damage to the extent that they are virtually crippled for life, and resemble human skeletons with a great deal of lung scar tissue and impairment to other organs. Some victims (as a documentary on H5N1 in Vietnam showed in 2005) may have trouble walking for the rest of their lives.

Thus the attitude that any sort of pandemic flu can be exaggerated is quite silly. It is similar to your arm being amputated and a doctor saying, "it's just a scratch". No, pandemic flu is a very big deal and it is impossible to overreact to it. Panic though is not helpful.

My prediction is that we will see it resurface in a big way in Southern Hemisphere countries, over the next few weeks, with South Africa and Zimbabwe leading the way. The large Aids population presents a tinderbox for the virus to burn through, and it will be masked initially by seasonal flu (that is, until people start dying). Probably, government will prevent the real data from coming out in order to protect the business opportunities surround the 2009 and 2010 Soccer Tournaments. We will see, up close, the lengths corporations and governments with vested interests will go to in order to protect their interests at the expense of the ordinary citizens.

Already we are seeing Mexico revising it's official death tolls downward. This as the capital became economically paralysed for a week in an attempt to halt the spread of this virus. All in all pandemic flu is likely to open cans of worms around the world. It happens at a time when countries resources are overstretched. It's the ultimate inconvenenient truth, and I'd advise you not to believe everything you hear.

New Setting

In the meantime, my environment has changed a great deal over the past week, and I am happy to say, for the better. I am now perched over the city of Johannesburg is a more secure area, and also one that is substantially more private and connected with nature. The area surrounding our stone cottage is covered in trees, so when the wind blows you get a wonderful sense of calm tranquility as the leaves hush and whisper overhead, like a slowly clapping tall green audience.

This is all a far cry from the nonsense I had to deal with in Orchards. It only occurred to me when I had finally moved everything out, what an unreasonable and frankly unpleasant human being I had been dealing with. For example half of the book shelf in my apartment was filled with her encyclopedias and it had not occurred to me to ask her to remove them. Why not? Because I was preoccupied with a myriad other invasions - invasions of space (her squatting downstairs), privacy, false accusations and hissy fits around the clock - including cutting off power to my apartment and turning off the geyser when I went away for a weekend (but forgetting to turn it back on once I'd returned). Coming back to find her car parked in my garage, or cooking dinner in the garage.

It is good to put all that behind me, though there is one outstanding issue and that is the deposit. As you can imagine, a woman with the manners outlined above, it's not difficult to see that she would also try to malign her way out of the deposit.

The above picture was taken recently just prior to the evacuation.

This was the view from my bedroom window (though you had to stand on the bed to see it.) Compare it to those below.

We have a fireplace downstairs which means the whole place can be warmed in winter to a cozy temperature so that you can walk around in a long-sleeve shirt at the most. Great to lounge in front of the little fireplace with a good book and a glass of wine.

We also had our first guess last night. Saskia, a neighbour, came over and between the three of us we polished off 2 bottles of red wine. I'm looking forward to happier days and hopefully we can say, "At least we have our health."