the sims 3

the best part about studying abroad in cape town is also the worst part: no matter what the task or action, everything spontaneously becomes an adventure. even for tasks as seemingly simplistic as running over to the supermarket, it's your best bet to devise not only an intricately formulated plan for yourself, but a back-up plan as well. so, when i decided to go across town today to century city, over the northern suburbs (as opposed to my own suburb of mowbray, in the southern suburbs), the action i took was anything but straightforward.

not even a month ago, EA released their newest computer game, the sims 3. i've loved the sims series since the original version of the game came out 9 years ago, and i've been playing it - off and on - ever since. my dad gave it to me as a gift when i was 11, and my mom, displeased by the ESRB "teen" rating, made me promise i wouldn't make my sims have sex. so, i just trapped them in a room and burned them instead.

now, at age 20, i have decided that, despite the rapidly increasing number of the responsibilities that i've got here, i want to start playing computer games again. i don't have a tv, and the internet is ridiculously expensive here, so i decided to obtain a copy of the sims 3. miraculously, EA opted not only to produce this programme so that it could played on either PCs or macs, but also to release it here around the same time as in america. both agnes and jeffrey have purchased it and have raved about it for me, so i decided to forego fighting off my attention deficit in favour of purchasing the programme.

the only problem with this, of course, was the price. R350 is certainly a lot for me to spend, especially when my income is zilch. however, agnes informed me of gumtree, south africa's answer to craigslist, so i opted to check it out in hopes of finding a cheaper version of it in this way.

well, i was right. a woman decided she was too busy at work to play the game (whoops), so she decided to sell her copy. she listed the price as R200... i negged her down to R150, and that was that. the problem: she wanted me to come pick up the programme from her in century city, where she works. yikes, that's quite a distance, especially sans automobile.

nevertheless, enchanted by the notion of saving a cool R200, i opted to traverse the city via public transit in order to get to century city... a task easier imagined than completed. the majority (60%) of commuting capetonians travel via "taxi" (known in america as a jitney or a shared taxi), so after failing to find any clues online regarding how to get to century city via train or municipal bus, i opted to travel via taxi.

the problem with this: taxis function within an extremely decentralised system, so there's no website elucidating taxi routes and whatnot. ergo, i left my building around 2:30 with a strategy in mind of touch and go. i rode a taxi on the only route i'd ever taken before (main road toward wynberg) into cape town, to the central taxi terminal. i've always been fascinated by this structure; it's bustling with an indescribable amount of activity. my favourite part, however, is the series of 30ish lanes, each signed to indicate the final destination of whichever taxis pull into the given lane. it creates the illusion that transit in cape town is simple.

since i didn't know which taxi route i'd want (since they aren't listed online) before i got to the terminal, i walked down the (very loud) row of lanes, reading the signs posted at every lane, trying to determine what my best bet would be. no routes terminated at century city (as i'd guessed), but one goes to the neighbouring community of milnerton. i decided that milnerton would be my best bet.

since i'd been staring at my street map prior to my journey and knew the basics of century city/milnerton's geography, i told the conductor of the taxi in the front of the lane that i wanted to go to milnerton mall (i'd decided to walk to century city from there). well, in typical TIA (this is africa) ridiculousness, no one had any idea what i was talking about. great. i finally found somebody who knew what i was talking about; apparently, the shopping complex had been renamed centre point mall. so, off i went.

the taxi passed through brooklyn along koeberg road. soon, we reached milnerton, and i was let out in front of centre point mall. great, now what? i was feeling rather calm at this point, though; the northern suburbs have a reputation for being safe and comfortable, and lo and behold, this held true in my eyes. (for those of you at home getting antsy reading my words, take solace in the fact that i'd NEVER conduct a journey like this in a rough neighbourhood. again.) looking at my map, i determined that cutting through a neighbourhood, named tijgerhof, would be my best plan. so, off i went down degrendel road.

tijgerhof was an odd mix of swakopmund and the san fernando valley. most of the street signs in the area were in the distinct style that swakopmund's and windhoek's were in, and frankly, that made me feel even more at ease. tijgerhof had some condominium complexes resembling the (seemingly tunisian/moroccan) architecture prevalent throughout swakopmund, but the houses looked as if they belonged in canoga park. one of the roads i needed to take was unpaved, which threw me off, but that was only temporary, and i continued on.

traversing tijgerhof, however, i suddenly became aware of how late it had become: it was suddenly 3:45! i sent an sms to the woman i'd be buying the software off of, asking her if we could push our 4:00 meeting back to 4:30. she was amenable. i got to the other side of tijgerhof at ratanga road, and unfortunately, it was here that i made a crucial error. i'd planned on turning right down ratanga road and turning into century city not too far down. however, i saw signage announcing the entrance to century city right in front of me, so i proceeded straight into the community.

century city is an oddity for cape town. it's a master planned community, and as such, it's made to look dazzling and pretentious. i proceeded down century boulevard, becoming increasingly reminded of wood ranch (for those of you native to ventura county) as well as exhausted from walking. signage indicated that canal walk (the mall where i was to meet my seller) was "ahead", but all i saw were more master-planned neighbourhoods of cookie-cutter houses. indeed, like most master planned communities, century city would've been far easier to traverse by car.

after a half hour, i reached a more commercial section of century city. now, the urban landscape reminded me of las vegas. the architecture certainly opted to make its buildings look larger than life, and i immediately felt an intense of aura of elegance pervading the neighbourhood. i continued walking, by this point not only exhausted, but baffled by all the "century city shuttles" i saw running. oh well, i figured i couldn't be that far off, right?

i hit canal walk right on the dot of 4:30. had this been our original plan for meeting up, i'd have been quite proud of myself. the seller showed up at 4:45 (quite good for africa time), and we completed the transaction. at last, i had the sims 3 in my possession! :D i walked around canal walk for a bit, and it looked like an awesome mall. i wanted to spend more time there, but at the stroke of 5, i started to worry that, since it'd taken me some 2 hours to get here, i wouldn't make it back to mowbray before sunset. so, i left.

upon exiting canal walk, i saw, right in front of me, a bench labelled "century city shuttles pick-up". i figured, "why not?" and boarded it. it didn't take me terribly far, but it only cost R2, and it helped me realise how silly it had been to go through century city's first entrance at ratanga road; there was a much more convenient option not too far from canal walk! i alighted at century city's transit terminal; nope, no luck getting back to cape town, as all the options i saw would have taken me to various locations throughout cape flats (where, presumably, most of century city's blue collar employees reside. i'm not trying to pass a judgment, it's just fact.). fortunately, i was not too far off from tijgerhof, so i made my way through that neighbourhood relatively quickly.

i came out of tijgerhof at centre point mall, and hoping to take the reverse journey of what i'd done before, i caught a taxi whose conductor told me that it was cape town-bound. this was, as i should have expected, false, and the taxi terminated at the maitland metro station. i was disgruntled, especially since i sensed that the sun would soon disappear behind table mountain for the day, but the conductor not only helped me find a truly cape town-bound taxi, but gave some of the R6.50 fare that i'd given him to my new taxi's conductor so i wouldn't have to pay an additional fare. this new taxi rattled more than i like them to, but it nevertheless made its way to the taxi terminal in cape town in due time.

the sun disappeared behind table mountain. crap, time to vamoose. i found my way to the wynberg-bound lane and boarded one of its taxis. it's a popular route, and that was made obvious given the large crowd waiting on the platform to board a taxi as well as how crammed we were into the (supposedly) 15-passenger minibus. i'd guess the true number was somewhere in the twenties.

dusk came about just as i alighted from that, my final taxi of the day, and i hurried down saint peter's and durban roads into my building. i immediately felt victorious, having completed my roundtrip journey unscathed. :)

i suppose that, when i get back to dc, any given situation will seem rather easy to take on, and any given method will seem wholly efficient and effortless on my end. from overcoming a car accident in rural namibia to obtaining a computer game from a woman across town, though, the adventures thrust upon me here in africa make any day become instantaneously exciting. :)