A day to remember!

It has been great working here in South Africa! I have learned a lot of things about myself and what it takes to manage a group of individuals. There have been good days and bad ones but overall it has been positive. Lately there were some tough moments and well you often wonder what is the meaning of things in your life.

Today was a moment where it all came full circle for me. This morning a courrier came in from DHL. I knew right away that it was the book I have been working on with my father over the last 2 years! It has been an incredible experince and I have learned so much from it and I am honored an humbled to have my name along a GIANT like my father! I mean to put it into context for his field he truly is the Michael Jordan or even more relevant a Leonardo da Vinci. I have no business being mentioned in the same breath, but I will accept it and cherish and honor it for as long as I can.

I have worked with him since 1995 and while it was not always perfect it has been the most precious gift anyone could ever have to work along side someone with so much talent, creativity and intelect. Even more humbling is the fact that he took the time and had an extreme amount of patience to tranfer his knowledge to me. So now it has come full circle (even though back then I had no idea what all the hard work and sacrifice meant) this has allowed me to help fulfill my father's life work and in the process given me the insight to see how much I have done and how much more I need to do and that knowledge is something to be shared and given away to those who want it. What a great day!

Here is our book...Experimental Mechanics of Solids...such a great feeling!

Now make sure you all go out and but a copy :)

Cullinan Diamond Mine

Today is a South African national holiday known as Human Rights Day. In 1960, sixty-nine people were killed in Sharpeville when protesting the "pass laws." These laws were meant to opress the blacks in South Africa. Four days later, the government banned black political organizations. As a result, many black leaders were arrested and many more fled. The aim of this public holiday is to remind South Africans of their human rights and to ensure it never happens again.

It was a nice break in the middle of the week, and it was such a perfect day! Steph really wanted to visit the Cullinan Diamond Mine, so we made the 30 minute journey to the town of Cullinan.

We did the "surface tour" that walks you around the grounds of the mine. There is an underground tour where you actually go into the mine, we were not so keen on that. The tour starts with a walk through the original housing for the mining officers (circa 1903), which is now used as offices. Some of the housing is now used as shops and restaurants just across the way from the mine.

The streets were still looking good...even after 100 years of use.

Steph at the entrance to the mine, she was ready to find a diamond! This mine is one of the biggest and most productive diamond-bearing kimberlite pipes in the world. It has produced 3 of the largest diamonds ever found. The largest, the 3,106 carat Cullinan diamond was found by Cullinan just 9 meters below the surface just 2 years after he bought the site for $52,000 dollars. This diamond was sold to the TransVaal government for an obscene amount of money. It was cut in Amsterdam and there were 9 diamonds made from it most of which are with the royal family in England (one on the royal scepter and another on the crown).

Here is the chart that displays the amount of carats they pull out of the mine on a monthly basis...

Here is a close up of the count the left column indicates what their target is the right is the actual right next to it is the most important smiley or frown face depending on the result.

Here is their injury board for the mine, this past year there were only 2 injuries that resulted in some days off of work, not bad!

Here is a demo of how they move the kimberlite rock from within the mine

Explosives carts, nice!

Here is one of the main towers which brings in the equipment down the more than 700 meters below the ground.

This is where the kimberlite is brought from the mine into the main sorting area, as the guide says, you can say "it literally is raining diamonds there."

Here we are infront of the mine...

This is where they store some of the kimberlite before it goes through the sorting process. Now it is done optically making it much more efficent to find the diamonds within the kimberlite.

Inside the main hoist room of the plant

Here is an old 1948 GE transport that was used in the mine.

This is a statue of Mr. Cullinan himself that you see as you exit the store. We thought the prices were a bit high. It was funny, because as we ended the tour (all were South Africans), the guide was talking about Americans on prior tours who were very stingy and bad tippers. We were slightly annoyed but, oh well, it happens.

Here Steph is standing in front of one of the stores selling old items that must have been left behind by the miners. A very nice setting, we are glad we went to visit.

Road to Bethlehem

The name sake is given because they grow wheat in the town. We traveled there because I was participating in a sceince event "Science Unlimited" where they present various topics to high school students. I was excited to get back into a classroom and talk about the exiting world of laser materials processing. We were meeting some of my colleauges from work there as well. They actually do this all the time all over the country, very impressive!

On the road you commonly see the make shift shanty towns and it is always humbling. Not that we haven't seen this before, but it always reminds us of how lucky we are.

Just as humbling is the shear size of the open lands and how breathtaking the landscape is.

As we approached our destination the sun was ready to rest for the day. What a beautiful setting, we felt so blessed to see this natural beauty.

The shows went well on the first day and we were done around 3pm so Steph and I drove to a small town nearby called Clarens. It is an artisitic town and also had this German restaurant so we just had to go! Here we are sitting out back of the German restaurant with another breathtaking view.

We then did a walk around the main square of the town and came across the Clarens Museum. Unfortunately it was closed.

We are always amused by the signage, not sure if you can see it but it says "potholes" next 5km, funny enough after the 5km it says it again! Would be nice to have that in Chicago huh?

Steph was taking some great shots on the way back home...

We were driving into the storm on our way home. We tried to get some shots of the lightning but it was almost impossible.

It was a great trip, first because I met a lot of great young minds who were eager to hear our story! In addition we saw some natural beauty that is hard to describe without seeing it for yourself!

Pretoria National Botanical Garden

This is about a 10 minute drive from our house. It is about .76 square km in size and has a great venue for events as well as several restaurants. The one restaurant inside the garden has really good food. We had Sunday brunch there a few weekends ago! After we ate, we walked around enjoying the sites. The higlight was the waterfall near the restaurant we ate at. A great place to also come and have a picnic, there are a lot of people who do it. I am sure we will be back!

Hartbeetspoort Dam

This town is in the North West Province about 1 hr drive from Pretoria. In Afrikaans it means "gateway of the hartbees" which is a species of antelope. It is an irrigation dam for farmers nearby. There are some small shops and larger bizzare areas selling "local goods". In fact quite amusing as they all try and convince you why you should buy from their little shop! After looking through the stores we stopped at the dam.

It is an impressive site and appears to be a popular location for boating as well. Another visit we could cross off the list!

The best part of the day came on the way home when we saw the name of this store.

Pilanesberg National Park

In February, I had some work-visitors from the States who came to install an additive manufacturing system (LENS). It was nice to have people to take around. So, we made a few roadtrips over the weekend that they were around.

Our first trip was to Pilanesberg which is about a 2 hour drive from Pretoria. It is South Africa's most accesible big-game reserve and is on an old volcanic crater. You can see the "big 5" here. The big 5 include rhino, elephant, lion, leopard, and buffalo. They are called the big 5 because safari-hunters-of-old found that they were the most difficult to kill. A lot of tourists go to Kruger National Park-which is an order of magnitude larger than Pilanesberg. But, if time doesn't permit heading to Kruger and camping isn't on the itinerary, then Pilanesberg is the place! There are many nice hotels in the area, and Sun City - a bastion of Old South Africa - is nearby. Decades ago, gambling was illegal in South Africa. So, the land where Sun City now stands was annexed in order to build the gaudy casino and a music venue.

Okay, so we had a great tour guide that gave us an abridged version of South African history in the two hour ride. It certainly made it very pleasant, and plus, I was not driving. We made it to Pilanesberg around 8 a.m. and were very hopeful of seeing the big 5!

We started out seeing zebra....so beautiful! Each zebra's striped pattern is unique, and they actually have some grey stripes in between the white and black.

We also saw a lot of impala (below) and springbok here...

We were really excited to see white Rhino...in fact we saw about a twenty or so that day. They are very graceful, magnificent creatures.

We also saw two lions (sleeping). The picture wasn't great, so we didn't post it. We just missed the leopard and heard there were elephants around, but we did not see them. We also saw plenty of warthogs, guineafoul, giraffes, wildebeest, hippos, and steenbok. So, 2 out of the big 5 was still a great day to be out and see nature!

Pretoria Zoo

There is nothing better than waking up to pure beauty. This past Saturday was just that! In fact most days here in Pretoria are beautiful, despite this I apprecaite each day and marvel over the ability to feel so warm and wonderful! I just knew that today would be special....


After our morning walk with Sasha we decided to make pancackes. Steph brought her A game as she even made Chocolate Chip Pancackes (see below) for me....yum yum yum!! It was DE-LIC-IOUS!!! Typically on Saturdays we like to get our errands done early and then get out and about, but this day nothing was pressing so we got a very early start and figured we should check out the zoo. It was said to be amongst the best in the world! Let us see??

So the zoo is in fact about 15 mins away from our house, it is near downtown Pretoria. There is rarely any traffic so most of the time it really is just 15 mins. There was one event going on though near the University of Pretoria...we had no idea what was going on, it must have been some kind of parade. It appeared like college gameday back home as all the young students were in groups just hanging out or making a Braii and DRINKING.....was interesting to see...so what normally takes 2 mins to drive past took about 30 mins.

Finally we made it to the zoo and first stop was the Elephants! Upon entering I was amazed at the size of the place and in fact they rent golf carts so you can ride around the zoo in comfort. Seems like a great thing especially if you have kids. Also important to note that the zoo is on an incline and at the very top you have the lions, tigers and bears...oh my! I think this place was at least a few sqaure miles big or even more. People even brought picnic baskets and would just find a tree and spend the day.


Here we see the black Rhino just taking a nap, it was cool because all of them live in open air places and are not caged in. I imagine these are also rescues so they are better off at the zoo. Later we got to see the white Rhinos and wow they were massive and it was funny because it appeared they were waiting by the gate were their food comes and in fact were fighting over space next to the door.

Here was the Cheeta and I must say I had to take this picture at a distance...the same spot where that cheeta is looking is where we walked passed and I swear it was stalking us and wanting to rip us apart...it seemed like he/she could just leap over the fence and tear us up. Gulp....let's move on :)


Towards the top we stopped at the Hippo pools....and as imagined on a warm day they were just chilling. There were at least 4 different areas/pools for them to wade around in, we even saw a pigmey Hippo! This shot taken frmo an outpost can also be used to picnic...

Then a stop over to the Kangaroos and Koalas! Cute indeed.

We finally made it to the top and got a great view of the Lions, they reside on the hillside and looks like a very natural habitat for them. They have large spaces in between lots and it was funny because they were staring over at the mountain goats in the adjacent lot.

We then decided to treat ourselves to the cable car ride down and get a great view of all the terrain we covered. It was a great ride and had a great view of the city as well!

This was by far a truly wonderful zoo and although I have not visited many others around the world, I could see why one would argue that this was in the top tier. It was a great day and next stop was a late lunch early dinner....all that walking made us hungry!