OCEAN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
p.87, Ben Oostdam's Autobiography| Tuesday, December 1, 1964: Much ado about Erik's surf sampling program(me): hired a plane, canceled it, called Joburg, CDM, Tidal, etc. Several new hires start work to-day, incl. Endenburg and Gordon Moir. Braaivleis with George, Bruno, Mercia and her "sister". |
| Wed.2: Hot day and frustrating problems with Rockeater and getting Dave off to Joburg. Visited MDC and received a series of fine maps. Instructed Kleinjan and Lamming. Evening Greek food, swimming party incl. George and Jack and visit to Erik's new flat. Poor Mercia got sick four times! |
| Thur 3: 05:30 call from Pete about theodolite and sent message to George and Eric. Chat with Captain Cook who told me that the S.A. fishing fleet had been catching a ton a day of crayfish on VEMA Seamount lately - which bothered me as first discoverer of this "resource". Long lunch with Dave Garisch and Socrates Vartsos of MDC. More statistics consultations with Dr. Fuller and Robin, who appears to be leaving in January - somewhat of a relief. |
| Fri 4 - Sun 6: Instructed Tom Gans. Homesick re Dutch "Sinterklaas" (Dec.5). Visit by Susan and Sakki: hired him for calculations etc. (nepotism?) |
| Mon 7 - Sun 13: Relentless work of all to complete evaluation Numerous discussions with Dave on selecting and changing shape and size of "patches" of diamondiferous gravels, sometimes rather arbitrary and probably against Sichel's concepts of negative binomial distributions. Even Susan got involved! To our great relief, a new "deadline" was set! |
| Mon 14 - Sun 20: Skipped the Washington letter and continued full blast on evaluation, including evenings' overtime. Dave worked at home and was irritable, Harvey kept unburdening new ideas. Rockeater constituted strange "problem": they kept on finding diamonds! Finally on Saturday extensive presentation to Messrs Brown and Daniel, who almost "buy" the "sample spacing factor" concept. Forewent the circus Sat afternoon, instead had good long lunch with Anglo VIPs and took Mercia to the "bioskoop" at night. |  |
Slept late on Sunday, called Dave and Louis Murray, then off to Goodwood where we acquired a cute Malthese poodle named "Soepie" (Superior) to Mercia's great delight. Then onward to Llandadno and the Kleinjans. |