Audience...Participate!

Given the overwhelming response of my readers (Thanks Kath and EEbEE!) I've decided to post the music for you to use to write/sing lyrics to! It's a very short loop, and it's not a great quality for now as it's just easier to upload and stuff this way. It's the little mp3 player on the side bar under the subtle heading of 'Competition Music!'.

The piece is a very chilled lounge piece. I did this because I figured that it's appealing to a wider range of audience (compared to, say, industrial...?) and because if the music is slower, it might make it a little easier to write/sing to. If you'd like me to mail you the loop itself for you to listen to over and over, please drop an email in my inbox (see previous post for address) and I'll happily send it your way.

PS. Let me know what you guys think!

PPS. For the record, it's an absolute bitch to find an mp3 player add-on that actually plays music you want to play and not the 'Top 20' from some arbitrary Russian site...

Audience participation!

I have had an idea, but I'd like to gauge it's potential success. So here goes.

I would like to collaborate with one of you on a piece of music! So, what I'm thinking of doing is compiling a loop sample that I will upload onto this, here blog for your auditory enjoyment. There is a catch: I'd like you to try and write/record lyrics for a song to this! Now, I know that not everyone has the most sing-worthy voices, but if you feel confident enough to do so, please do record and email me the recordings! Otherwise, strap a friend/family member to a chair and force them to sing for you! If possible, please make sure the recordings are of relatively high quality and are in a *.wav format. But this isn't crucial...

I royally suck at writing lyrics of my own, so I'm sure you will do far better than I can!

If you think you'd be up for it, please mail me at watchmonkeysblogsong@gmail.com with 'I wanna write your song!' as the subject line and I will then know how many of you are interested! Fill the contents of the mail with whatever you want (provided it isn't offensive...or viral in nature).

It's also a neat way to see how many of you are still avid readers here...

Life-long To-do list Item 32: Check!

Before I begin, I must point out that I don't really have a Life-long To-do list. Not in the formal sense, anyway. I rather have a kinda space in my brain that holds all the stuff that looks cool to do and I'll get to later...

Avid followers of my blog will remember me once writing a post about my lifelong quest to partake of all the exotic fruit wonders that our world has to offer. Well, I am now one step closer to that goal! I have finally sampled the amazing flappy-purple-orb that is DRAGONFRUIT!

This is all thanks to my mother, who somehow managed to track down one at our local supermarket (not usually the place for edible rareties of nature...).

Behold! The amazing dragonfruit!

As you can see, my sister takes these things very seriously. Her carpophobia really got away with her... 

The innards of a dragonfruit: 

Giving the fruit a try: 

Look at the amazing colour!! Visually, a stunning piece of food: 

It's a very odd fruit. It doesn't really have much flavour. It's very delicate. It has a consistancy that lies somewhere between a persimon and a kiwi fruit. Very odd. The seeds are like those of a kiwi too. But the colour is amazing! It's really beautiful! It also stains your hands like beetroot does, which was kinda cool. I would totally recommend it for anyone to try!

I'm a dad! World, meet Greg...

So, seeing as I had never attempted this in the past, I decided to give Movember a bash. Had my last shave at the end of October and have successfully grown quite the facial lawn! Behold:

This picture is a little outdated...Greg has grown substantially since this was taken.

However, two rather unpleasant things have come out of this follicle-driven endevour; My sister has fallen in love with my beard. She has decided that I am just not a whole person without it and that I should never get rid of it. Thus, she has named (I kid you not!) my beard: Greg. Her thoughts were that if I gave it a name, I would feel terrible when I eventually got rid of it and thus would be deterred from shaving ever again.

Unfortunately for her, I have no qualms about slaying Greg come December! This is because Greg has become a bit of a nuisance. He has taken on personality traits and behaviour that I find less than desirable. He seems determined to make me very aware of the fact that when I talk, I do actually use my top lip. He keeps bobbing up and down along the edge of my vision as I converse with people and it drives me nuts!

Secondly, and probably the worst of his character flaws, he has become very vexatious (I like that word...) and continuously pokes me! It's so irritating! It's a bit like a combination of having a pot scourer attached to your face and having a spider walking over your lips at the same time. And it's just that much more irritating because you know that the pot scourer is the product of your own body and that you have consciously decided to cultivate the thing!

Having said all this, I am told I look rather dashing with my new lip-lawn and that I should strive to keep it going. Unfortunately for Greg's admirers, I alone control the razor...heh heh heh...

Look to the sundog!

Yesterday morning, Johannesburg was privy to a spectacular climatological phenomenon! The sundog, or parhelion! It's a corona (ring) that forms around the sun, creating a glowing, rainbow-halo type of effect. The result: A beautiful coloured ring that encircles the sun. The effect is apparently created by the presence of tiny ice crystals floating around in the upper atmosphere in the form of cirrus clouds. By the sounds of things, the light from the sun is bent at a 22 angle, resulting in the light halo. They are apparently best observed  when the sun is low, but we saw it fine with the sun almost directly overhead. There's more info available here on the ever-faithful, source of all true knowledge: wikipedia!

Here are some of the pics that I took yesterday. The dark bits are my building; I really should have been tending to the coffee machine at the time, but these climatological phenomena don't just happen everyday you know...!

 

 

Circus life, here I come!

So on Saturday, I went with a group of my friends to JoziX, an extreme sports park up in the north of Johannesburg. It's activities are all centred around large inflatable rigs so there's no danger of hurting yourself (unless you don't listen to the instructions, but how's that any different to any other physical activities, like ironing?). If you are ever in Joburg, it's well worth the price (financial and physical; you will be in pain the next day; you WORK those muscles...). In spite of the unpleasant end to the day (for me anyway) it was one of the best things I've ever done! I plan to return and complete my trapeze training once I'm all healed up! All the stuff comes from New Zealand. Who thought we'd have something to thank the Kiwi's for? ;P

The monkey bars! You have to swing from bar to bar and then try and sweep over the ears of the angry blue cat on the other end. I managed to land beautifully inbetween the ears and have the cat's head close on my like a pair of scissors...

Proper zorbing! SO much fun! Wanted to puke at the end, but adrenalin did away with the nausea!

Anyone remember 'Gladiators'? Same idea, only you pummel a friend instead of a steroid-laced body-builder...

Tight rope! I managed to grab the handle on the other side and then lost my balance. Good fun though!

The inflatable climbing wall! Much harder than you would think! There are four walls: Red is the easiest, yellow's the hardest. I can do red...that's all.

The highlight of my day! Trapeze! So cool and so much fun!

My cousin doing the trapeze thing. He even managed to transfer to the next handle thing! It looked amazing! I nearly did, but somehow ended up tearing large chunks of skin out of my palms, so doing the full manoeuvre was not going to happen.

Me holding swabs with disinfectant onto my then skinless palms. Painful, but TOTALLY worth it! That trapeze is my new love... 

*(I really have nothing against New Zealanders except for when they kick our ass at the rugby. It's just fun to play on the stereotypes. In fact, I have family there now! They're not true Kiwi's because they're actually from South Africa and moved there, but it's the closest thing I have...)

Engrish!

Some pictures from the ever-entertaining China-Mart!

The menus at the restaurant were princess themed...

Spiced Chemical Egg! My favourite!

Chicken omlettle! Another personal favourite!

Ever need to teach your children the meaning of contradiction? Why not buy them a 'grumpy-baby-with-smiley-face' doll?

Night of 1000 Drawings!

Hi all!

For a smidgen of brief entertainment and knowledge-gaining see the list fo emotions at the bottom of the wikipedia page. I had no idea most of them existed...It makes me saudade...or is that weltschmertz...?

I've been furiously working on my proposal for my PhD over the last month or so, so I've really neglected my blog. I R sorrow...

Moving swiftly along, last week Thursday, I went to the 'Night of 1000 drawings'! It was hosted in the old Park Station extension, which has been untouched since about the 70's. It's a fantastic venue, filled with all manner of beautiful art-deco and later elements! Check out the pics below for an idea of what it looks like...

But first, what is the Night of 1000 Drawings? It's a genius charity event organised each year in Johannesburg where over the entire year, the general public are encouraged to draw/paint/photograph something and submit it. The content can be anything at all and the materials used vary considerably. The only unifying factor appears to be the size of the canvas (obviously not a literal canvas...).

Then, on the night of 1000 drawings, each of the submitted drawings are auctioned off for R100 a pop and the proceeds are donated to a number of charities! Genius! I confess, I didn't buy anything myself as I arrived too late and all the good stuff was taken, but the stuff that I did see was rather impressive! Next year, people...next year...

By the way, the whole point of this story is that it's the first time I've been to one of these and they are AWESOME!!!

Behold, the main exhibit; Thousands of small drawings held in place by clothes pegs for the buying!

The drawings themselves were very variable. There was everything from telephone-side doodles and kids scrawlings to beautiful photography and professional artworks.

I liked this one in particular because I'm very anti-facebook (but somehow still can't bring myself to delete my profile...).


In the remains of the old fountains in the station, they had people doing massages; For when the weight of your taxing picture viewing becomes too much...

I like this one! I have no idea why, but I do...

You've never done WHAT?!

I'm amazed...So many of my friends have never eaten a fresh coconut before! Obviously not the whole thing (I think I'd be hard-pressed to manage downing an entire coconut), but I can confidently say that I quite like eating coconuts fresh out of the shell. And as it turns out, Tas, one of my lab-mates, has never eaten it, nor has Athena!

So, in an effort to broaden their horizons, I brought in a coconut this morning. I mentioned it to my supervisor who was rather excited at the idea and came to observe the coconut cracking ceremony, and get coffee...

Using my trusty hammer that I snuck out of the house and onto campus, we pulverised the coconut and from it emerged it white and tastey goodness! Unfortunately, I had bought a dud one, without any milk, so that part of the experience was missing, but otherwise, it was a rather tastey specimen. As it turns out, Leia and my supervisor are both expert coconut extractors...

Athena was really rather impressed with the fruit. Tas was not. She preferred the dessicated and shredded kind (I call it dessicrated coconut...). Leia and I were discussing how we think we should make it a weekly thing to introduce a new fruit to each other. Next time: STAR FRUIT! (Helen, you might want to stay in the bush for just that little bit longer to avoid the star fruit... :D )

My little sister

Gosh I hate blogger sometimes!! I had written up a whole post, and then tried to copy/paste it, and now it refuses to paste! AARGH!!!

Anyways, the point of todays post is to showcase my sisters artwork. She's doing her BA fine arts, specialising in sculpture. Today she has to exhibit all of her works from the whole year to be marked. I'm not entirely sure how one goes about marking an artwork, but anyway...

So here are the results. I'm rather impressed with it all! If you happen to be at Wits today, I'm sure she'd be chuffed to have you waddle through and 'Ooo!' and 'Aah!' at it... ;)



For this piece, their directive was to do something for a full 24 hrs. So what did my sister choose? FRENCH KNITTING!!! Of all things to do...The amazing thing about this piece is that it really does preserve the 24 hours in a tangible way; she used different coloured bits of wool for each hour, so the result is a long woolen sausage made of multiple coloured bands, each a chronicle of that hour. She can even point out at which points she fell asleep...The wool on the wall is the response piece to her knitting. The class had to respond to her work and so she got them to unravel tangled wool (the same colours as the piece itself) for an hour. The total that they unraveled was wound up into a wool ball and laid at the floor of each tangle.

For this piece, she made casts of her feet in plaster. The moulding and casting process was loads of fun! We got to play around with the awesome silicon-rubber moulding stuff! It's bright purple and requires that you mix two chemicals together; one bright blue, the other bright pink. Very 5 year old birthday party, just without the screaming children and the nausea from eating too many sweets and potato chips. She then poured resin over the feet to represent the washing of feet (mirroring the story in the bible of Jesus' feet being washed). I'm not entirely sure what the significance of this all was, but it looks cool and we got to play around with some awesome chemicals!

My personal favourite: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For this my sister took a real tree (or at least, part of one...) and coated it in aluminium foil. The leaves were all hand-made by her and the rest of us. We then helped her attach them to the branch. The idea, apart from the fact that she just likes foil (as you will see later), is that the tree itself reflects the observer. It's also a dynamic piece as the reflections are constantly changing, depending on where you stand around it. I asked her if I could have this one, but she'd promised it to someone already...

Her last piece, and her favourite, is a statue of St. Lucia, again, coated in aluminium foil. My sister's name is Lucia, so this might be why she likes this one so much...Surrounding the piece are hundreds of origami lillies, also made of foil. We were all recruited to make those too. They are not easy to make at all! Folding foil like that is a mission! But, with the help of the extended family and a few friends, it got done.

Just to confirm, my sister is in fact fascinated by religious iconography, so that's why the themes for most of these are of biblical/religious origin.

The hell-hound strikes again...

I am once again house-sitting for my aunt and uncle. It's a fantastic job except for one thing; their dog. I've written to you all about the hell-hound before, and this story follows another of the little *&^%$#'s adventures...

Once, during the house-sitting stint in the post linked to above, I made the mistake of leaving one of the house windows open when I left for university. It is a very low-down window, practically on the floor, but it is part of a wall-like window setup at the main bedroom. The window has bars across it, so I figured, it's safe, nobody will get in through there. So, blissfully ignorant to the peril that awaited me, I left for varsity, confident that all would be well in the world.

Many hours passed, and the day progressed uneventfully...

I returned to the house that evening. I opened the door to find the dog in the main entrance hall. My first thoughts were something along the lines of, 'That's odd...he was locked out earlier...' and immediately graduated to 'Oh no...someone has robbed the house!!'. So, as I frantically ran from room to room searching for evidence of thievery, the true horror of the situation began to dawn on me. Nothing was missing. All the doors were closed. The only possible entrance could have been the window I'd left open!

I sprinted through to the master bedroom and there, glaring at me like a defiant child who has just been refused their demand for sweets in a supermarket, was the open window. A little confused I looked around and again, confirmed that nothing was missing. It was only when I returned to the living room that the true horror of it all sank in. And given how many horror movies I watch, that's pretty bad!

The dog had come in through the window and devoured the entire lounge! Okay, so not the chairs and sofa and stuff, but almost everything else was gone! He had chewed up their grass-weaved basket, a wooden puzzle that they had bought on a previous holiday (it remains unreplaced...) and several garden game tools, including an entire volleyball set...

So, since then I have ALWAYS ensured that the window remains sealed shut. That is, until this time...

So this morning I left the house to head out to my grandmother's for lunch. Once there I suddenly realised that I'd forgotten to close the window!!!

I had too much to do to head back to close it at the house, so I ended up spending all day with the sickening fear in the back of my mind. At the same time, at the end of the day, I was determined not to let the terror get to me and so tried to appreciate the skyscape as I drove along the highway:


When I arrived at the house, I couldn't help but scanning the house from outside for movement. My eyes, darting around furiously, revealed nothing and I breathed a sigh of relief. I soon gave myself a mental slap. The hell-hound could have been somewhere not visible from the outside!

As I opened the door...

...he was there, with the facial expression typical of dogs that says, 'HI! I'M HERE! AREN'T YOU PROUD OF ME?'

My heart sloshed around my ankles...

But, as I moved through the house, surveying the damage, I began to realise that there was...none! The house was intact! Behold, the proof!

Before:

After:

I was SO happy that I gave the dog a MASSIVE sinew-bone-hide-thingy. You can *just* see him in the picture below with the bone in his mouth looking very pleased with himself...

All in the name of science...

Every two years, our department runs an undergraduate course on Reproductive Biology (coincidentally, the name of the course!). Students in general hate the course as the majority of it focuses on the reproduction of plants and fungi, but a small section of it relates to reproduction in animals. For this particular section, the amount of giggling and crude jokes that are made during the lectures of the students is, unsurprisingly, high.

For this section of the course, the practical that the students have to do is rather fun. No...it's not what you are thinking...but is instead an examination of the role of perfume in mate selection. It requires that the blindfolded students smell a selection of perfumes on male and female 'models' and state what they think of the perfumes. This year, Luke and Leia were the smell models.

For those that don't know me, I am closer to an ape than most people. In short, I have rather hairy forearms and this complicates matters when the students are not supposed to be able to distinguish the male and female models (shoving your nose into a hairy arm does kinda give away the sex of the model...). So, the solution?

SHAVING!!!

So, both Leia and I had to shave our arms for science! It was actually a fascinating experience! My arms are surprisingly smooth and I've discovered a whole bunch of scars that I had no idea I had, not to mention the shaving techniques that I learned which I can apply when and if I decide to do cycling competitively!

Here are the pics:

The shaving process at work: By shaving in one direction and then pushing the razor backward, it cleans the razor! Nifty hey?! :D

The process at work...Thank goodness we have sinks in the lab. The bathrooms would have been awkward to have to keep explaining to people what I was doing...

Before and After! Great insulation and comforting fluffiness converts to silky smooth and a map of past traumas!

Brussels and Belgium

After our stay in Holland, we headed over to Belgium. We had arranged our tickets ahead of time for the train through to Brussels from Amsterdam, which had turned out to be a little more complicated than we had anticipated. The problem lay in the fact that the Canadians had been intelligent about their travelling expenses and had organised themselves passes for the whole of Europe. In contrast, the South Africans had arrived with no clue what to do and a strong hope that Europe worked in much the same way home did. Thus, we had to organise separate tickets for the two nationalities.

In a way, it was easier for the Africans because we just had to buy our tickets straight out, whereas the Canadians had to make bookings for the one train, but not pay while paying for the second train. The whole process was smoothed over by the very cheery and, for lack of a better term that doesn't conjure as many images of fat old men with white beards in red suites, jolly ticket lady.

The actual morning of our departure was exciting to say the least. We arrived at the main station to discover that the train we were supposed to take through to Brussels was no longer running and thus, we were to take an new train through to a small town to catch our connecting train.

Lacking any alternative option, we decided to catch the train to the hamlet-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. We were a bit early for that train and so decided to each go and get ourselves some breakfast before the train left. We took it in turns to find food and return to the platform to guard our luggage while the next expedition went for their food. As it turned out, our expeditions took longer than expected and we almost didn't catch the train in time!

The ride out of Amsterdam was uneventful. We arrived at our destination station and disembarked from our train. We waited for a good half hour on the station platform for our train to arrive. It was a surprisingly miserable day and rather chilly, so the wait felt very long! Eventually, one of our number decided that the cold was too much and retreated to the toasty saftey of the station building itself. She returned shortly thereafter to announce that our connection train had been cancelled as well!

At this point we decided to retire to the building as well and wait for the next one to come through. We did so and settled down in one of the restaurants to just take a break. After a while, we went to catch our train which, miraculously, wasn't cancelled. We were on our way to Brussels!

In Brussels we stayed at a small but fantastic Bed and Breakfast called the Lught en Light Bed and Breakfast. It's a family operated place which is really charming! After checking in and dumping our luggage, all except one headed out together into Brussels.

Our first port of call was the European Union centre. We saw several of the EU buildings, including the EU parliment, none of which were particularly interesting. We then went in search of the Natural history museum of Brussels, famous for some of the fossils which they have on display. As it turned out, we'd arrived on a Monday, the only day that the museum is closed. So we opted to find other tourist traps instead and return to the museum the next day instead.

It was still relatively early in the day at this stage, and so we had a lot of the day left to do our exploring. We decided to use our more financially-friendly feet than the metro to get around. As one can imagine, this means you get hungry eventually. This was our problem.

We had managed to induce that feeling of being absolutely famished in the middle of a district in Brussels entirely devoid of anything edible!

So we decided to try and navigate our way out of this doldrum and find food...

Europe: Amsterdam and Holland

So, given that it is a beautiful, sunny, typical South African Sunday afternoon and I am recovering from eating WAY too much of my grandmothers awesome cooking, I've decided to take the time to write about my amazing trip to Europe! I apologise about how few photos I'll post with this, but the blogger photo thingy just drives me INSANE...so my patience only can cope with about 5 at the most...

The trip started on Thursday the 13th (not nearly as ominous as if it had been a Friday...) of August. I was on my way to Europe to attend the International Ethology Conference, in Rennes, France. We call what we do Ethology because that just sounds way more cool than just saying, 'We watch animals and try figure out what they are doing...'

For financial reasons (being a student does suck sometimes) I had booked myself onto an Egypt Air flight to Amsterdam, my first port of call. Saving the money on my flight with Egypt Air did however mean that I had to spend 5 hours in Cairo, wafting around the airport. It wasn't all that bad and, honestly, the only thing that really struck me about Cairo, was just how flat and desolate it was! I know what you're thinking...'Luke, don't be such a dumbass! It's in the middle of the desert! What were you expecting?! A tropical paradise?!'

Honestly, I don't know what it was that I'd expected to see when I got there. But somehow, it still came as a surprise when I looked out onto the runways and the airport grounds and saw nothing.

I then flew through to Amsterdam from Cairo. Cairo was like the alps in comparison to Amsterdam! I've never been somewhere so flat in all my life! It's just bizarre! Johannesburg is quite a hilly city. We are built on a range of hills which run east-west through the city, so a little gradient isn't anything strange for us. However, a lack of gradient is...

I arrived in Amsterdam feeling that terrified excitement that can only be understood when one is arriving in a country you've never been to. I'd been very smart about my travelling and had printed out a map of where my hotel was and had gotten a bus number off the hotel web-page so that I would have no trouble getting from the airport to my hotel. Once out of the airport, I found my bus-stop almost immediately, and waited all of a minute for my bus to pull up. I got onto the bus and after having a brief but pleasant chat with the driver, in English, moved to the back of the bus to take a seat.

A word of caution to would-be travelers: if you are attending a conference, don't take your poster with you unless you have one of those nifty architect-drawing-carrier-tube-over-the-shoulder thingys. Otherwise it just gets VERY irritating and cumbersome! But, sitting in the back of the bus, trying not to let my poster tube wallop people as they walked past, I could feel myself beginning to relax. It was a pleasant feeling to think, 'For the next few weeks, you don't have any responsibilities, other than staying awake in talks during the conference'.

After about 45min of riding the bus, we were well into Amsterdam and I began to wonder where my stop was. I got a little more worried when I noticed that the next two stops were the last on the line and neither were my street. So I scuttled to the front of the bus and asked the driver, who in very friendly tones and grinning from ear to ear assured me that I was very much on the right bus and that the next was my stop. I figured, who would know better than the guy who drives the bus every day? As it turned out, I'd probably have been better off getting directions from a pot-plant...

I dismounted the bus and thanked the driver, gleefully ignorant to the true nature of my predicament. He had suggested that I walk a few streets down in order to find my hotel, which I dutifully did. As I walked through the very busy area in which I was again, trying not to injure the local populous with my poster tube, I began to suspect that I wasn't where I needed to be.

Eventually, in a display of behaviour most un-befitting my sex, I asked for directions. In truth, I was a little terrified to ask the locals for directions and so sought out the first hotel with a Union Jack hanging outside it. I managed to find one with ease and, trying not to sound too nervous, asked the woman behind the front desk how I got to my hotel. She was very accommodating and kindly pointed out that my hotel was in fact, on the opposite side of the city.

After she suggested a bus to take, I returned to the bus stop to wait and pray that I was heading in the right direction. Another note to would-be travellers: If you are taking a backpack, ensure that it doesn't protrude too far off your back. Standing on a narrow island in the middle of a busy road waiting for a bus, you'd be amazed how many cars have near-misses with the pack on your back. Obviously the poster-tube hellbent on drawing blood by nightfall didn't help much either...

As it turned out, I was catching the correct bus (Thank you SO much reception-girl from Amsterdam!!) and eventually walked into the reception area of my hotel, grinning the triumphant grin of the moron who took the wrong bus, but everything is okay now. After checking in and learning the room number of the friends I was meeting up with there, I headed off to my room to ditch my stuff. The room, which was not bad at all, was a welcome sight and after unloading my baggage, I went in search of my associates.

I got to their room and knocked on the door. There was no response. So I knocked again. Nothing. Just as I was about to give up I heard the clacking of the door being unlatched from inside. As the door was cracked open, I gazed into an entirely unfamiliar face. After exchanging greetings, I apologised for disturbing her, obviously at the wrong room, and left. A little confused, I returned to reception to check on the room number. The receptionist assured me that I had been at the correct door and suggested that I try again.

I returned to the door and knocked again. This time, the response was almost immediate and again, an unfamiliar face appeared on the other side of the portal. This time I thought to ask if my friends were there. As it turned out, they were and the 'unfamiliar face' was in fact one of the people we were going to be travelling around with for the next two weeks.

A little rosy faced and sheepish, I entered the room to see how the others had fared on their arrivals. As it turned out, not one of us had managed to get to the hotel without getting terribly lost! That might have had something to do with the fact that the map and instructions I had used, I had passed on to all the others to aid their navigation, but I prefer to think that it was just rotten luck...

Amsterdam was amazing though! I don't think I've enjoyed a city quite as much as I did Amsterdam! No...wait...I'm lying. London was awesome, but Amsterdam came very close! We did so much! We went to the Anne Frank house (an amazing, but humbling experience), the 'Our Lord in the Attic' church, the red-light district, several amazing parks, the Van Gogh museum and a Holland-in-a-Day tour with the craziest woman I've ever met as our tour guide (Seriously, she was either severely unstable, or very high and given that it was Amsterdam, it could have gone either way...).

More on the rest of my adventures later! For now, gaze in wonder at the amazing photos...

A house opposite one of the very large parks of Amsterdam. Who wouldn't like to live there...?

A water feature near the Van Gogh museum. The panels in the middle are concertinaed metal sheets with pieces of different images on the side of each fold, meaning that the image changes, depending on which direction you look at it from! Clever! And, in the background, you can see the word 'Amsterdam'; it was another artwork.

I think this is a fantastic store! Whoever came up with the idea to market lies to children is a genius!

What would Holland be without clogs? Eh? I mean, look at the variety! They even had 'Hello Kitty' clogs!

Rotterdam (I think...)! The architecture was amazing! It's a little odd to think that you can go about the city by car...or boat...

Returned

Hi faithful followers of me!

I have returned! And I come bearing presents! For most people anyway...unfortunately, a student budget does limit one's present-buying abilities.

So, I've been away from my blog for AGES now and here comes the barrage of excuses:

1. My life was completely thrown upside down by the robbery incident that happened about two months ago and I am still running to catch up with that. I also have yet to have my emotional breakdown that accompanies most peoples assault/robbery experiences in South Africa, which is a little worrying. I hope it doesn't happen somewhere public...that would be embarrassing...
2. I've had to prepare a poster for the conference in France. This was made extra-difficult because of the above as I had to try and scramble together all the little shreds I could of a project I'd once had.
3. I experienced a serious social upheaval just prior to my leaving for the conference. This, upsetting in its own right, seriously threw me off when it came to getting things ready for the conference as well. I'm one of those unfortunate people who battle to concentrate on work when their personal life is falling apart.
4. I had to attend said conference in France. That's where I've been for the last three weeks. But more on that later...

But, I'm back! And VERY glad to be home! As much fun as scuttling around Europe for three weeks is, the attitude of the Parisians totally ruined it for me, so I ended up being more than happy to leave and come home.

P.S. A certain individual in our department is REALLY ticking me off. He coordinates the exams for the medics and just prior to my leaving for the conference, amid all the stress of preparing for that, he started insisting that I send him all my quesitons for the medic exams at the end of the year. I, somehow, managed to throw a few together and email them to him; not all of the required work, but part of it. So today, having been away for three weeks, I ran into him and immediately appologised for the lack of work-handing-in-ness. He then, very nonchalantly, tells me that he's not worried as he's had other things to do and couldn't be bothered to look at 'that stuff of yours' yet...if murder were not criminal and morally questionable, he would not live to see another day...

Hi! I'm here to have my face cut up...

So, for those of you who are avid readers of my blog (I love you guys!), you will know that I was recently the victim of an assault, during which my nose was broken. Well, yesterday, I went into hospital to have it repaired. Surgically.

This may seem relatively trivial to some. I mean, so what, it's a little surgery. It's not exactly a heart/head transplant. Well actually, it was! Behold, the new me:

On a more serious note, even the most simple surgery which requires me going under complete anaesthesia is potentially life-threatening for me. I have a fantastic little disease called malignant hyperthermia (MH). Just reading that first paragraph on wikipedia makes it sound very fatal. It's genetic and basically means that if I am not given the correct anaesthetics, my body starts to burn off all its possible energy and I end up cooking myself to death. Charming, isn't it?

Apart from being able to instill terror in the hearts of anaesthesiologists everywhere, there's no real perks to having the disorder. The only way that this disorder can be diagnosed is by having a biopsy done on a leg muscle in which the remove a massive chunk of your leg, put it into a special solution of chemicals and watch it twitch and fizzle. They then confirm that you have it. I had the biopsy done when I was 5. I only learned yesterday that in order to avoid giving me anaesthetic, the doctors just doped my little 5 year old body with tons of Valium and then hacked away at my leg. Am I the only one who finds that irresponsible...?

This time round, no Valium was required. But it would have been appreciated. Instead, I was given the safe stuff (I don't actually know what they gave me) and I was the first to be operated on, so as to ensure that the machines were all clean and devoid of normal anaesthetic. The operation (I keep thinking it's spelled with two 'p's...) entailed repositioning my septum (the cartilage that separates your nostrils from one another) and removing part of my turbinates (wafer-like bones in your sinuses that are necessary for heating and cooling air as it enters and leaves the body respectively), which had been damaged when their quiet existence was rudely altered by a firearm. Behold, my x-ray!

Sorry, my scanner can't really cope with the contrast very well, so I had to draw the bits in...Anyway, I awoke in the ICU after the op was over with a mass of memories that I'm still not sure didn't happen. Someone explained to me that apparently with MH, the attacks can take place up to 24 hrs after the surgery is over, so there is still a danger, even if you've made it through already.

But I survived! I then spent the next day drifting in and out of consciousness in the ICU, being attended to by a fantastic male nurse called Presley. After reading his name take I made a mental note not to say 'Hey! Like, Elvis Presley!' as I was sure that he'd probably been hating his parents all his life for giving him that name. Instead, I thought 'Hey! Like Elvis the penguin!'.

Throughout the day the nurses checked my vitals, took my temperature using an ear-gun-thingy (usually, just as I was drifting off to sleep) and occasionally checking my blood sugar just for fun (I'm not kidding. This morning I woke up and the nurse literally said, with great enthusiasm I might add, 'Shall we check your blood sugar? It's not necessary, you're fine, but let's just do it anyway, shall we?'). Every now and then Presley would swing past to make sexist comments like 'These woman...you work so hard and they go and spend all your money...' while looking at me knowingly. I tried to make like I was woozy from all the drugs.

At various times I was also accosted (but in a nice way) by the catering lady, who came around with a menu to ask me what I would like to eat for my next meal. For the record, the Greek salad has no feta and came with a grand total of three olives. But otherwise, hospital food wasn't bad!

I was also visited by my parents, my cousin and my pal Dave! Duncan (cousin) was most unimpressed that nobody had brought me chocolates for him to help himself to. So I sent my mother to buy some, which she did, and he helped himself to. The nurse ended up taking it in the end. I wasn't really in the mood for chocolate anyway.

Eventually, I was permitted to return home. My dad picked me up with some clothes (the underwear they give you in the hospital is amazing! It's so stretchy! But very uncomfortable...) and I was whisked off home after a few goodbyes. Now, I sit at home, wrapped in a blanket, tissues stuffed up my nose and happy to have had a bath. I'll keep you posted on my condition...

Don't read further if you do not want to be scarred.

You were warned! For the record, when you are in ICU, no matter how coherent your speech and how much effort you put into proving that you are quite capable of moving around by yourself without dying, they will NOT let you go to the toilet. Instead they will bring you a little jug-thing into which you must now relieve yourself. Being a male, I'm sure this was easier for me than, say, for a girl. However, peeing at such a funny angle, into a vessel that is filling rapidly and could overflow into your bed at any time is scary! It's even worse when they give you one that doesn't have a lid! It's so much more risky! You could spill at any time!