Posted on October 16, 2008 - by Justin Hartman
Moving to the Mother City
It’s been 13 days since I shipped my entire family down to Cape Town and what an experience it has been. We’ve gone from this chaos in Johannesburg:-
To this ordered chaos in our new home in Cape Town:-
I have to say that moving to a new city is really not as easy as it seems and proved to be an immense challenge for all of us.
When we knew that we’d have to move it really seemed like an awesome idea at the time. I mean, who wouldn’t want to move to a city with reduced crime, beautiful oceans, mountains and a better overall quality of life?
While I am not regretting the move at all I didn’t/couldn’t anticipate how trying this would be both emotionally and physically to all of us – including the people we left behind. Packing boxes is no fun, unpacking even less, but the really difficult aspect has been the emotional loss of our families and friends.
As adults, Colette and I are able to understand our emotions and deal with them accordingly but what we’ve found with Luke, our five year old, is that this is not so easy to do. While Luke is content about 90% of the time there are moments when he’s tired and run down and it’s then that he yearns for his family and our domestic worker left in Johannesburg.
This is gut wrenching stuff for us but we’ve just tried to make it fun for him to try and mitigate the loneliness and heart-ache he’s experiencing.
On the work front I’m loving every minute of being involved in a startup. These are exciting times for Afrigator and at the moment we’ve been working hard on setting up relationships with people here in Cape Town as well as working on some interesting developments for the website and community.
There is a new and different kind of stress being involved in Afrigator but at the end of the day I’m doing this for myself which makes it very motivating and highly exciting. I really think we’re going to do some awesome things over the next two years.
Finally, on the blog front, I’ve decided to change my writing style and theme somewhat. Moving forward this blog will highlight my experiences running a startup which I’m doing mainly to alleviate some of the stress and I’ll also be writing more about my personal life and the adjustment to life after Jo’burg.
In short this blog is about startups, technology and life and you can expect this to be the core focus moving forward. Not sure how much I can post these days as things are pretty busy but I’ll do what I can when I can.
14 Comments
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I am a seasoned entrepreneur and currently the CEO of 
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October 16, 2008
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New blog post: Moving to the Mother City http://tinyurl.com/3qzcqw
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October 16, 2008
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That’s my boy, the big pimp daddy with the blinging flatscreen. You make me jealous!
Nice one Justin, chuffed to finally see some pics. Will come visit soon!!
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October 16, 2008
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I feel your pain – it’s tough! I’ve been here (permanently) since Feb and I still miss my friends and family! Hope to catch up soon. Hang in there!!! xxx
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October 16, 2008
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Congrats on the move. It’s always a pain moving from one city to another – brings back memories of when I moved to JNB from CT. Good luck!
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October 16, 2008
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Ya, sweet TV you got there! But moving to Cape Town will be great I would think. Joburg is just way to hectic! I can’t wait to get over there…
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October 16, 2008
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@Nic & @Simon – did you guys stop reading the post after seeing the Sony?
@Feisty – least we’re in the same boat – we must hook up soon.
@Gino – How are you finding JHB from CPT? I’m not sure I’d like it so much to move the other way around but that’s just me.
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October 16, 2008
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Looking forward to your new writing style, hearing about your adventures and living vicariously through you
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October 16, 2008
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Gongrats on the acquisition and the move. Having moved to Sydney at the end of last year, my wife and I know what you guys are going through. It is really not easy, especially for children. Almost 12 months in and we are still finding it hard at times. Best way to look at it is as an adventure! Besides, there are worse places to end up than Cape Town.
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October 16, 2008
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Welcome Justin…the old Ma se City is tough to crack (I think Jozi gets points for social creds), but she’s a good a place to live. Good luck.
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October 16, 2008
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Um…I’m trigger happy today…that would be Kate, not Kaet.
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October 16, 2008
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The house is looking good… BIG change from before hey?
Happy to have you all there.
I’m sure Luke will adjust with time. Loads of trips to the beach and picnics on the mountain might help.
Enjoy.
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October 17, 2008
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Hey Justin, thanks for the insights. This is really helping us decide if the move is worthwhile or not. Looking forward to more posts about the changes (good and bad).
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October 17, 2008
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Hi Justin
Nice to read about a start-up success story. I am also making a big move with the family in a couple of weeks – from Jhb to Palo Alto in Silicon Valley.
I am also involved in a start-up (only launching in Jan), very daunting to be going to the Valley but hugely exciting as well.
Will follow your adventures with interest.
Kind regards
Kevin
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November 7, 2008
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[...] be honest I have to say that I can’t believe it’s only been a month since we moved to Cape Town. So much has happened this past month that I feel like an old pro navigating my way through the [...]