Jelly-legs

Well guys, I am currently barely able to remain upright on my legs. As Helen already blogged, on Thursday a whole herd of us wits students went off to play paintball! It was awesome! I felt terrible though because I accidentally shot Kathleen! She is a pacifist and was only there to take photos. I didn't see that it was her, I only saw a head with a mask on and so I assumed it to be the enemy and opened fire. I hit her on the mask...a thousand appologies Kathleen! I got shot over 20 times and each shot seemed to sting more than the last but I would do it again any day! My back is currently covered in large ring-bruises (thanks to Oliver - you underhanded dog you! ;-) ) but that is not my problem! My legs are SO sore that I can't bend them!

The problem is that I have been sitting infront of a computer all year and so I have not really used those muscles in my legs for about 8 months! I nearly fell over when I tried to get out of bed on Friday morning! So, I have made a decission to try and get fit this holiday. I've been swimming a lot since the exams ended. I mainly do butterfly because it seems to be the most exhausting, so I figure that is must be doing me the most good...

The photo for today is of Laura looking annoyed at the camera, held by Vanessa, as I dish up our dinner. It was from our first Wits run field trip. It was for a course where we had to make and insect and plant collection. We were the only ones that had made pasta for dinner! All the rest of the normal people had brought things like 2 min noodles or cup-o-soup. We even had salad with kroutons! That's what happens when Laura is in charge of catering. Don't get me wrong, it was great! We arrived at this place, called Ezemvelo, and from the second that we stepped off the bus to when we got back onto it two days later, it poured. I have never been so wet in all my life! It got to the point where as I walked, water would gush out of my shoes, but in the time between lifting my foot and putting it down for the next step they would fill up with water again! It was such fun!

On the last night, we were all so wet and tired of running around looking for flowers that we all climbed onto a single air matress (spelling?) and didn't move all night. There were about 5 or 6 of us all crammed onto a 2.5m x 2.5m matress. It was snug to say the least. On the last day I had to borrow some tracksuit pants from Laura because I didn't have a single dry item of clothing left. For weeks afterward, we made jokes about me getting into Laura's pants. We all thought that they were hysterical but in hindsight, they weren't all that funny.

Sometimes this site is REALLY dumb!

I just tried to log in and the website kept saying that my computer was blocking the cookies from Blogger. So it suggested that I alter my security settings, which I did. I set them higher and it let me in! How does that make any sense?

Today was really nice because for the first time in a very long time, I spent a good part of my day outside, in the sun, playing with the dogs and swimming. It was really nice and I realised how much I've missed it.

I did go in to Wits today to speak to Neville about some of the stuff I found out at the zoo the other day (When I finally learnt all the chimps ACTUAL names). He came up with a really cool idea for enrichment of the chimp enclosure that would encourage them to use more of the space. I elaborated on it so that it'll become a great way to increase the amount of time that the chimps are occupied and make them use more of their space. In short, they should be happier at the end of it all.

I also gave Neville a thank-you/christmas gift for all the stuff he's helped me with this year and put up with. He was chuffed.

Tomorrow I'm off to go and play paintball for the first time in my life! It's kinda scary considering all the horror stories I've heard about people losing eyes and bruises that remain with you for your life etc...I'm rather psyched on the other hand and I'm sure it will be awesome! Some of the Honours people refuse to come or participate (TAO! - we all want to shoot this one in particular!)

Anyhoo, it's 22:45 and I'm feeling really tired so I'm going off to bed. Yes, I know I'm like an old man but I haven't been sleeping lately and so I'm really tired. Hopefully tonight I can get a good night's sleep!

By the way, the pic today is of a tree from Suikerbosrand that I took a photo of. We named it something but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was called.

Afterthought: I finally have the first Chicane album! It's awesome!

My current best-restaurant-of-all-time!

Does this photo remind anyone else of the surface of the sphinx in Egypt?

Well guys, as the title suggests, today I was introduced to my new and current favourite-eatery-of-all-time! It is none other than Kuwai (Spelling?). I'm allowed to spell it wrong because I've never been there before.

They make the most amazing food! It was...wow...I had something that had lots of humus on it and pepperdews and stuff which was delicious! And they have the only smoothies on the planet that I have ever actually liked! I had something with lots of mango in it and it was brilliant!

I would like to thank Laura and Sarah for broadening my horizons with todays lunch. I am eternally indebted to you!

And the best part of this amazing place is that the vast majority of their food is vegetarian friendly! There is a lot of vegan stuff too! Thus, it is also automatically healthy! Hooray! Finally, good food, that's healthy!

We all (Laura, Sarah, Helen, EEbEE and I) went to the movies today to see 'An inconvenient truth'. It was rather good except for the fact that the movie was primarily about how the first world was going to be affected by global warming. It appears that the REST OF HUMANKIND that lives elsewhere, will be entirely unaffected by the phenomenon.

I must admit that it makes me glad that I live in Joburg. At nearly 2000m above sea level, we're not likely to get flooded any time soon. Kind of ironic when you think that many of the people of this country can trace their ancestory back to the dutch and Holland is going to be completely wiped out by the warming!

In other news, I went off to the zoo again today and was taken on a tour of the new reptile enclosure (which hasn't opened to the public yet!). It looks amazing! I also got to go into the back of the chimp and orangutan enclosures! The orang is scary! He is massive! His middle finger is as thick as three of mine combined!

That's all...

The scary photo!

The Scary Halloween photo finally posted! Hooray!

OH my golly-gosh people of this small green and blue planet! I have nearly finished my honours degree! I'm not going to get used to this any time soon…It may seem incredibly odd to the rest of you but I am really rather freaked out by this thing of having finished! Helen and Eebee can attest to this as they suffered through the whole of Friday lunch with me going on about how cool it was that we had finished and did they realise that we were nearly done and that this was a major milestone in our lives and that we were finished and... (You get the idea)

Coincidentally, I have never been so tired in all my life! I haven’t had a good nights sleep in I don’t know how long! Speaking of which, I’m also losing track of time…It’s rather surreal to be told about something and think that it happened months ago and then realise that it only happened yesterday.

Oh my gas! I’ve also put on 5kg’s since the beginning of the year! I’m going to have to work it off. I really hate exercising so this is going to be tough…I’m sure many of you can sympathise. Exercising sucks! And I have all these papers that say that research has shown that exercising releases endorphins, which makes you happy. I think they may have conveniently left out the bit where all their study subjects were fed chocolate while running on the treadmill and THAT’s where all the endorphins came from! But seriously, I can’t get excited about jogging or cycling or anything…except perhaps swimming. I enjoy that, but in a more ‘I’m going to pretend to be a piece of driftwood and see where I end up’ kind of way.

I used to do swimming in school. In primary school I loved it and was on the swimming team and everything. I went to swimming training with some woman who used to be a friend of my mom’s from high school. I then arrived at high school, hated the idea of achieving anything in the name of school and stopped. I was forced a few times to swim in the school gala, once as a result of a practical joke on the part of a friend of mine. I was not impressed…

Wow…today I really can’t keep my mind on a single thing! ADD in a bad way…

So, what I’ve been up to lately…Well, on Friday I went with Helen to try and see if I couldn’t do some behaviour sampling for my Masters project. The chimps were not out and so I decided to take the rest of the day off and go home. I did that and swam a bit. That evening I went out for the first time in…I dunno, but the point is it’s been a long time! I went with Duncan and David to ‘Frankie Bananas’ here in Bedfordview. I’ve been there before with some of my colleagues from when I used work at M&A. It was cool then, not too crowded, but this time it was packed and it was full of the typical pretentious Bedfordview rich kids. Not cool. So, instead, we went off to the new club (I say new because it’s new to me) called ‘la Boom’ at Wild waters in Boksburg.

Yes, I ashamedly admit that I occasionally go to the ‘far east’ to party…

It was actually not bad. The crowd was a little I’m-16-but-I’ll-pretend-to-be-23-and-nobody-will-know, but I had fun. I loved their toilet signs. The theme for the place is sort-of South American…or something…and they have these signs outside the toilets that say ‘senoritas’ and ‘senoras’. Now, if my limited Spanish knowledge serves me well, senoritas means young girls and senoras means women. So technically, they have no men’s room! I think that they think that senoras is men, but it should be senores.

Anyhoo, Saturday I got up and went off to the zoo with my sister who came along as my time-keeper. She was a brilliant assistant. Don’t worry Helen, I’ll make the CD for timing…
After returning, we went off to return the DVD my sisters took out from the video store the night before and ended up getting two more DVD’s. My sisters insisted on getting ‘School of Rock’ again. I’ve seen it 4 or 5 times now and it is becoming a little tiring to watch over and over. My sisters think that it is the most amazing movie on the planet and can’t seem to get enough of it. I got something called ‘Bagdad Café’ which is really good! It is amazingly shot and tells a rather simple story in a beautiful way. I recommend it to all!

Then, today I went to church which was really tough as I fought to remain conscious. It wasn’t as long as I was expecting, which was nice, but the worship was horrid! Tone-deaf people should not be appointed to the position of lead singer in the worship team! What were they thinking! After that we all went to tea with my grandmother and then Gemma and I went off to the zoo again. There we discovered that I had been calling all the chimps by the wrong names. It was a little embarrassing.

My sister and I had a bit of a REALLY BLIND moment later. We were supposed to fetch my gran from my aunt’s house at 15:00 and we finished at the zoo at 14:30. So we thought we should simply fetch her straight away. The trip should have taken about 30 min anyway but as it was Sunday, shortly after lunch, everyone was off the roads. So, it took us 10min. And so, despite our attempts to get stopped at every traffic light, we arrived 20 min early. We decided rather than to show up 20 min early, to go and get a cool drink from the petrol station up the road and chill for 15. We did this and went to fetch her.

Hmm…I guess you had to be there.

That’s all for now! I’m off to write my book report for tomorrow! Have a good one people!

Finally done: take 2

I'm very tempted to write out that 'Hello world...this is me...' line again.

Well guys, I sent off my stuff to Neville last night and he sent me back the stuff from two days ago. I always expect the worst when recieving comments on my work from him and so today when I opened the file I kept chanting 'It's gonna be bad' in my mind. So I opened the file and found a comment at the bottom that basically said that what I had spent all day typing up on Monday was completely off topic and had to be rewritten. This was my introduction and seeing as my discussion section, which I completed yesterday and was rather chuffed about, is based on my intro, that has to be rewritten too. I wanted to cry.

It was bizzare because usually, I would get really annoyed that he had said that but this time, I just wanted to die instead. Don't worry, I'm not suicidal...

So I spent the whole day today rewriting my intro. I finished it about half an hour ago, at around 10:00pm. So, tomorrow I shall go and see Neville, find out which parts of my discussion I can salvage and then rewrite that. Then I shall send it off to him, have it ripped to shreds again, rewrite it and send it off for the last time, print three copies, bind them, create a *.pdf file of the whole thing, hand them all in and go off to Helen's house to go get smashed. Then the only things I'll have left until my honours year is over will be my two outstanding essays (not outstanding as in good), the two exams I have to write consecutively, a book review and a stats project! There is light at the end of the tunnel!

Blogger hates my photos...it won't let me upload again. Boo...

Well, that's all for now! I'll blog again when I'm able. How was everyone's Halloween?