Greyson Week 2

This week we moved to the Rosslyn plant in Pretoria. So last Sunday Nozomi and I got driven over to our new place to stay, Utopia Guesthouse. Its been really great, the breakfast is delicious and we get vouchers for dinner every day at a restaurant next door. The people here are really great and have been very accommodating. 

My bedroom at Utopia Guesthouse
This week I met the group of people Im working with at the brewery. My main contact, Myron is in charge of the engine room at the brewery which is where Ill be working, Nozomi's host Monique works with CIPs in Brewing and gave us a tour of the brew houses in the plant, giving us a brief overview of the brewing process from the collection of the raw materials all the way through shipping the beer off to the packaging department. Then Terrance, another employee we're working with, gave us the run down of Inbev's management strategy and then gave us a step by step walk through of the packaging process, showing us every machine in the line and explaining how they work, including outlining what the inside of the machine looks like. I've been working on a few side projects while Myron comes up with a full project for me. This has included doing some safety setup for a contractor project, making a efficiency calculator and doing some math on a potential plant upgrade. 

The annual plant shutdown was this week, so on Thursday we had no power for the whole day and the plant has been off since then. It was pretty cool to get to see the engine room while all the pumps were off. We went through our initiation, but still have to get our medicals done at the plant clinic. Until then, we're technically only visitors, but after a week we can get in and out of the plant pretty easily. 

This Saturday, I was in charge of finding things to do, so we went the wonderboom nature reserve in the morning. This is a small park trapped between highways in north Pretoria. The main attraction is a 1000 year old fig tree called wonderboom. It also has a cave and waterfall, though we think we found the cave and the waterfall was dried up. We're not sure though since we were having to go through some trails that were overgrown. In addition, there is an old fort at the top of the hill which we could walk around



The base of the wonderboom tree group

Wonderboom

View from the top of the hill

The cave we found




A closer look at the cave


Where we think the waterfall was supposed to be

Another view from the trail

Front door of the fort

Inside the fort

Toys R Us spotted at the mall across the street

We then went to lunch at this place called market at the sheds where there were some food and clothing stalls as well as a live band playing. I got a chicken burger and a appetizer set with samosas, egg rolls, chili balls, and kebab balls. I also got a big cookie the size of Nozomi's face

The first band we saw
The second band

My cookie with Nozomi's head for comparison

We then went to the natural history museum across from the city hall. We got to see a bunch of different cool skeletons and other things. The main attraction was Ms. Ples, one of the most complete examples of a pre-human skull ever found. 
City hall

Dodo Skeleton

Pelican and Ostrich skeleton compared to human

A Bird that uses it's feet like mallets to kill prey including snakes

Elephant head

Bee exhibit

Using Nozomi for size comparison on some shark jaws

A toothy fish

Velociraptor


Using Nozomi to measure a tree cutting

City Hall from the natural history museum

Pictures of pre human and human remains in chronological order








A mold of Mrs Ples

A somewhat disturbing display 




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