On Sunday afternoon, our friends Johann and Janet (probably the people we've known the longest in Cape Town) held a farewell as they've decided to try out Germany for a few years and they both have good opportunities there. On Sunday afternoon, we went to a farewell party at their place, bringing (with permission) Dante.
Well, from what I was saying earlier, we're supposed to expose Dante to all sorts of things as part of his socialisation training. We managed to tick off quite a few, as many guests brought children in addition to Johann and Janet's young Christoph.
The day was not without a bit of crying, with Dante nipping one of the children playfully (a habit he's mostly got over), and the children just plain being afraid initially, but towards the end of the day, they were playing together nicely:
Among the guests was my former colleague from IOL, Simon Cross, and he and Adrianna and I chatted about the features of a balanced, challenging, and playable roleplaying system. We discovered another vegetarian (one who's never eaten meat), and quite a few people who've had bad experiences with groups like His People (my fault, I mentioned they were given pride of place on a noticeboard at the Potchefstroom Campus of North West University). Johann showed off a few trailers for upcoming GameCube games (ooh, Legend of Zelda, drool, and so forth).
Besides many GameCube owners (Johann's influence), there were also a number of programmers there, and more to the point, many who either use Python or are very keen to start doing so. Again Johann's influence I think. Apparently there've been a number of Python jobs being filled in Cape Town, and I haven't heard about them at all, and I don't know the people involved either. Freaky.
Somewhere towards the end of the evening, I started feeling a bit ill (and I stayed in bed much of today), and persevered until the usual open-ended goodbyes - I'd like to think we'd pick up perfectly whenever we happen to see each other next. Although it seems they'll be back sometime early next year for a short visit.
Dante was exhausted - the first time I've actually seen him unable to go on. He'd finally found an outlet for all his energy, and I'm glad that he behaved well around the children.