Days like these...

Hello gangsta's!

Today, I'm thrilled to announce, I finished and handed in my project proposal! It's for my masters dissertation on chimpanzee behaviour. It's taken me absolute ages to finish off and now it is finally done! Hooray! Here is a photo of Claudette, my favourite chimp!

The sad thing is that now I feel like I have nothing to do. It's been a bit of a birthing process in that I had devoted so much time and energy to it that now that it's over, I feel like there isn't anything left. Apart from the crap that the 1st years hand in for me to mark that is...

Sadly, not everyone can join me in my revelry (If that's not how it's spelt, I don't care!). Alas, Helen and Vanessa are busy working furiously on their proposals too and are feeling rather down about it as they feels they have too much to do and too little time to do it in. So, to Helen and Nes, chin up! You can do it! You will manage!

In other news, Sarah has confirmed where she will be going in Japan to teach English for the nest year! It looks awesome! I'm so jealous! If only I were to come into a large sum of money and had little to no inclination to finish my masters early, I'd totally be there!

And, to celebrate all the good fortune that has been dolloped onto today, I am going to go to sleep before 12:00! So cheerio!

Gasp!

Tom tagged me! I'm honoured!

As is customary for these things, I tag Helen, Angela, Travis, Hannah and Laura. Pot along, and do it for yerselves.

First Add a direct link to you below the name of the person who tagged you! Include the city (or state) and the country you live in (a great way to score links and find new reads).

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
Velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
Tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [Ish], Texas, United States)
Lulu (Chicago, Illinois, United States)
Chris (Boyne City, Michigan, United States)
AB (Cave Creek, Arizona, United States)
Johnny Yen (Chicago, Illinois, USA)
Bubs (Mt Prospect, Illinois, USA)
Jintrinsique (Manitowoc, Wisconsin, USA)
Dino Aka Katy (Newport News, Virginia, USA)
Angel (Gauteng, South Africa)
Tom Cat (Joburg, South Africa)
Mangaliso (Joburg, South Africa)

Second List your 5 top eateries where you live!

1. Soi, in Melville. Super-amazing place! I love the food! They make the most amazing stir-fry and the jasmine rice is always awesome!
2. Bismilah's in Fordsburg. Their food tastes great, doesn't kill you and is really cheap!
3. Thai Cafe in Paulshof. The peanutbutter curry! That's all I have to say...(it's also the only thing I have ever eaten there but it was so good! Apparently, the cashew stir fry is also really good!)
4. Moyo's in Melrose Arch. I had Tom's kous-kous, which was great, and the ambience was awesome! Plus, they paint your face for free!
5. Benkei in Norwood. Sushi is amazing, what can I say! Even if it is vegetarian...

Third tag 5 other people (preferably from other countries/states) and let them know they’ve been tagged.(see above)

Blog people!

I have begun to notice a disturbing trend amongst bloggers...

They are not blogging!

I realise this is rich coming from someone whose last post was about two weeks ago but I think that blogging is a really nice way for people from all over the globe to keep in contact and the fact that few of us are doing so, saddens me. As Tom mentioned before, perhaps the fad of blogging has died and people have moved on, to better forms of communication, such as facebook. Even so, I still think that we should all blog!

Now that my minor rant is over, I have a short true-life story to tell. On Friday morning, I woke up to discover a note and a CD outside my bedroom door. As it turned out, it was from my sister. The note basically said that that evening a band that she really likes would be playing a gig and nobody wanted to go with her to hear them. So, she wanted to know if I would go with her. I was definitely not feeling up to it.

The CD was of the band, called 'Cabins in the Forest', and she wanted me to give it a listen to decide if I was going to go with or not. I was running a little late so I just grabbed the whole thing and shoved it into my bag as I galloped out of the house.

Once I had settled into my office at varsity, I popped the CD into my laptop to listen to while I worked. It was AWESOME! They are really good! They are a pair of guys, one from Cape Town, the other from Durban, and they play alternative rock, with a slight new age/spanish sound. It's really cool!

So, later that evening, after exploding two beers at BioSoc (I'll have to write about that some other time), I got home and we decided to go. I was still a bit apprehensive about going as I am not a rock person and the idea of going to a gig where all the people around me would spontaneously start singing along while I had no clue what language they were even singing in, was a little daunting. But it was really worth it!

The gig itself was hosted in the back room of a tiny CD shop, called 'Canned Applause'. The two guys had set up their stuff and had put candles all around them on the floor. There was no other lighting in the room apart from some very feeble ceiling lights. We all packed into the room, sitting rather uncomfortably, and they played. They were BRILLIANT! I really liked them! They are a little like Michelle and Rodriguez, for those who know who that is.

And so, I am very grateful for having gone on Friday. It just shows that it does pay to step out of your comforst zone every now and again!

Life without light

We work very hard on field trips!

Hi all!

This post is not anywhere near as serious as the title hints. I'm just writing about how, for the last three days, I have had to camp in my own house. It is all because as most South Africans can testify, we are not all that good at grasping and understanding this concept of public service and community.

The reason why I say that I have had to camp in my own home is that we have had no electricity for the last three days! It's been insane! There was some problem and our power went out some time very early on Monday morning. I woke up to find that our house was unusually cold, despite the fact that we don't actually have any heaters in operation at the moment. I recieved a phone call on my cell phone, which incidentally was in the final throws of battery death, tried very hard to answer the call and for some inexplicable reason, couldn't. So, I got up and tried to plug my phone in to recharge the battery.

Now, usually, I do have problems getting the plug of my cell phone charger to actually make a decent connection so that I can actually charge my phone. So, this morning, when I plugged it all in and failed to get any hint of recharging it didn't strike me as particularly strange.

I sometimes like to listen to music in the mornings to wake me up a little. So on this morning, I pressed the play button on my CD player before I tried to plug in my phone. It was at this point that I noticed something odd. There was nothing happening. Not even that familiar whirring sound that usually preceeds the music. So, I sat up and looked at the CD player. That was when I realised that we had no power.

Now, power failures in SA are not entirely uncommon. We have them from time to time, however they tend to last about an hour or two at the most. This one went on for THREE DAYS! We are very fortunate however as we are one of the few families that I know that have solar heated water. It's great because it means that we still had hot water! The only down side was that we had to go and fetch the water from our pool area as that is where the solar unit thingy is. We also had to invent a new style of washing which involved getting a bucket of hot water and a sponge. You would then use the sponge to generate a kind of spray, similar to an actual shower only much less satisfying.

Then, our prayers were answered this morning! I awoke to my father sitting at a computer, checking his e-mail. The power had been restored!!! So, tonight I look forward to a shower instead of a 'bucket' as we began to call the new cleaning process. Also, I don't have to worry about concerving my battery life on my laptop! Yay!

In hindsight, it was actually rather scary to realise just how dependent we are on our electricity. It felt as if our lives had come to a complete stand-still because we couldn't watch TV or surf the web. It's rather sad really. All the same, I am thrilled to have it all back!

As an aside, I went to prize-giving this evening and finally recieved the prize for the mysterious money which I recieved a while back. It was cool! I got a post-it note with something along the lines of 'If you have any problems, please contact Mrs. Adele Katz'

Random Fact Of The Day:

Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries