Unfortunately, not everything from the 70-minute interview could be stuffed into Tuesday’s feature on Cal water polo player Brian Dudley. (Nice guy. He still showed up early after I changed the location about a half-hour or so beforehand; I walked into Caffe Med to find him already sitting at a table.) Fortunately, I have all the space I want here to stick some extra tidbits.

The Haas student hits everything from punctured eardrums to South African food to his fear of sharks:

You missed the first five games this season with a broken hand. What’s the worst injury you’ve suffered in water polo?

I guess, bursting my eardrum. Back home, I got in a little bit of confrontation with this one guy. I got hit and it burst my eardrum, it concussed me. I don’t remember much of what happened. I was completely dazed. I got kicked out and I just picked up the ball and threw it into the crowd. I had no idea what was going on. And obviously, I had a five-meter called on me because I was interfering with play. That was pretty painful.

How did that happen?

We were playing and the ball came in set. His object was never to go for the ball. My whole team was ganging up on this one kid. I was behind him, and he came around and just headbutted me. It cracked my headgear and burst my eardrum, and yeah, I got a bit dazed after that … Bleeding out your ear, you’re always like “Oh my God, what the hell is going on.”

You mentioned playing video games against your brother growing up. What was the first platform you had?

The first platform we ever had was the Sega 16-bit. And then for my brother and I’s … it must have been like, Christmas around ’96, we transferred to PlayStation 1 and that was like the biggest thing ever. Played PlayStation 1, and then obviously we upgraded to PlayStation 2. We’ve definitely been the system of PlayStation. We won’t go to Xbox. I refuse to go to Xbox.

What’s South Africa like?

Obviously, you hear a lot of the bad stuff. Crime rate’s high. AIDS rate is extremely high. Robberies are extremely high, anything, carjacking. So you obviously have to be extremely safe in everything you do and that’s why it wasn’t such a good environment for my younger sister and my mom to be in. (Ed. note: His American mother moved to New Jersey with his sister after his parents’ divorce.) So we understood that, and my sister’s grown up to be a beautiful young girl. She’s lived a better life. She can ride a bicycle out on the street without my mom having to watch her.

The flip side of that, it really is—I’ve travelled extensively throughout America, throughout Europe, some parts of Africa, South America—by far the most beautiful country in the world. There’s a lot of promise, and hopefully the 2010 Soccer World Cup can expose that promise.

What’s the food like?

A lot of traditional food, there’s a lot of meat involved. We have this different kind of mashed potato, yours is a lot softer, ours is a lot harder. Obviously, different ingredients that make it harder. We eat a lot of sort of, kudu meat, like you know, like a springbok. We eat a lot of that type of meat. There’s actually quite a lot of Italian. Sushi’s growing there, but there’s not so much Asian food. We don’t have as many fast food restaurants. The only one we have is McDonald’s, we don’t have Wendy’s, Burger King, Arby’s, anything like that.

Do you miss it?

Yeah, big time. The candy, definitely. Candy’s unbelievable back home. So when I came here I had to put away a lot of the candy that I ate. I pretty much don’t eat sweet food now. The thing I miss back home is biltong — what you guys call beef jerky, but it’s a lot better, I promise you. I’ll bring you back some.

Can you cook any of it?

I’m a horrible cook. I’ve stayed on the meal plan for all four years. I cannot cook anything. My philosophy when I was younger was the less I knew how to cook, the less my mom could ask me to do, so my brother always got stuck with those obligations. I don’t know how to cook anything. Spaghetti, eggs, that’s it.

You’ve traveled to a lot of different places. Which is your favorite?

Croatia, by far. Oh my word, the women there are unbe-liev-able. Goodness. And also, the night life there was a lot of fun. Obviously, the water polo, you’re playing against some of the best players in the world. Learned a great deal from going on those trips. Croatia, beautiful sights. All the Balkan states are, even Hungary, are beautiful. I haven’t visited Serbia yet, unfortunately, but I’d definitely take Croatia.

I heard you like to surf.

Body surf. Surfing, I tried it once back home. To tell you the truth, I have a humongous fear of sharks. I cannot, oh my gosh. Sometimes when I go out and body surf, I always make sure there’s someone slower and older than me out there so I can maybe give them a little hook to the face and then swim past them.

Where the waves are the best is called Jeffreys Bay, and there’s too many sharks there. There’s way too many great whites there and I just won’t go near it. I haven’t even had a desire to go to Jeffreys Bay, not even a desire. I stay close to where it’s safer, where there’s a lot more shark nets.

I’ve been, not shark diving, but in a cage out on the ocean back home in Cape Town. That was an unbelievable experience, being that close to such a predator. Oh my goodness. I didn’t stay in as long as I wanted to, or not that I wanted to, as long as I paid for, I was like, “I’ve gotta get outta here.” Obviously, seeing Jaws scared the shit out of me. Some of these things were like three meters, three-and-a-half, four meters. Huge.