Working Hard // Hardly Working

As I write this I’m incidentally cafe-listening to a song called Taxi to War. Despite some African vibes on this track, the dude behind it, DJ Disse, is just some dude from Copenhagen who likes to sample from “obscure vinyls”. Other tracks of his include “Bossarocker” and “Egyptian Disco”; almost too worldly (and get a load of that album art 😒), seems like we’ve got a real Danish Drake on our hands. In like a sound-appropriative way, clearly not in celebrity.

How’s this for a contemporary rule: you can always take the pulse of a place by talking to its uber drivers. Examples: practically every driver in Boston has a family in town and also a desk job. In New York it’s a lot of immigrants from all over, plus the occasional young local. And in Cape Town, loads of the drivers are from Zimbabwe. I’ve met a few from South Africa, Rwanda, etc. but (anecdotally) like 90% report that they’re here from Zimbabwe for better employment prospects, since Zimbabwe’s economy is serious struggles– they had a 95% unemployment rate following the year 2000 thanks to Mugabe, and 231 million percent inflation in 2008. (Note, meanwhile, that anywhere from 25-40% of South Africa is unemployed, which is already a LOT. And no love to just-ex-President Zuma for doing anything about it.) All of which is just an argument against greedy dictator types— not that the world is taking note (Oh hey China).

Elsewhere on the employment front, Amazon is building a new office in Cape Town. They don’t have a retail operation down here, but have been rapidly expanding their support services since they opened up shop in Cape Town in 2006; New office says full steam ahead. HQ #3, anyone?

While I am not on Remote Year, I’ll tell you one more time that you could be. The program that helps you bring your regular job where you travel, setting up your housing and coworking space in cities around the world, also organizes some sweet local activities so you can dig into whichever city you happen to be in that month. In Cape Town they have a team of locals who set you up with things like meeting an old friend of Mandela’s for lunch, painting the city view with a local on a rooftop, and learning to make Malaysian food, among other things. All pretty sweet ways to meet and learn from regular local people the second you touch down. If we’re being reasonable, why would you not take that opportunity to learn? Learn more here, and get out of town.