Darn...what was I going to write about...?

I think that I am rather tired. This epiphane isn't from any kind of signal that my somewhat lazy brain is sending to the rest of me but is more due to the fact that literally seconds ago I had a topic for todays blog entry but it has totally evapourated from my skulls inner recesses...So, either I'm tired or my age is catching up to me...


This is a photo of the swallow that haunted the shed in which we worked. He was very cute!

Ten points to Helen for getting a laptop!

That reminds me. I must recount a story of Helen and birds and a frightfully carrot-up-the-arse-sounding english woman, who coincidentally does seem to have a carrot up her arse. Although, come to think of it, it's more like she has a very angry racoon up her arse...

The story begins at the begining of 2006, our honours year. Helen and I happened to both be tutoring for the same course. The course was run by a particular staff member who nobody else in our department, apart from our head of school seems to like much. She is the lady in question, mentioned above. So as not to incriminate anyone, I shall refer to her in this story as 'Caroline' (Ha ha!).

Anyway, one day, Helen and I had to go and speak to 'Caroline' about how one of the practicals was going to be run. Neither of us wanted to attend this practical as it was one of the more shitty ones and it involved trapsing around a very large park ooo-ing and aah-ing at random birds that happened to fly past at the time - something about learning how to identify birds or some nonsense. Herein lies the root of the story, for Helen is hopeless at identifying birds. And, as part of her argument against attending the practical, she mentioned this to 'Caroline'. Upon hearing this, 'Caroline' recoiled in horror and insisted that Helen actually new much more than she thought.

'Caroline' then went on to explain to Helen how easy birding was. At this point I feel it is important to mention that Helen and I had gone to see 'Caroline' during our lunch break and had intended to go and buy spinach and feta pies from the theatre after our little chat with 'Caroline'. we had intended for our meeting to last only a short while - 5 min at the most. However, 'Caroline' had other plans.

"You see, birds are not as difficult as you might think," she said in her hot-potato-in-the-mouth british accent that just makes you want to slap her silly! "You can easily tell them apart. I mean, you know what a duck is, don't you? A duck is a duck is a duck. And you certainly can't confuse something like a weaver for anything else now can you? A weaver is clearly a weaver. Ostriches are so distinctive that there is no way of confusing them! An ostrich is an ostrich is an ostrich! And what about chickens! You certainly know what those look like and I'm confident that you will be able to point one of those out. And pigeons! Pigeons are SO easy to spot! I mean a pigeon is a pigeon, it can't be anything else! And doves are so common that you must know what a dove is! And geese are all over! A goose is a goose is a goose! Nobody can confuse those! And you know what a sparrow is. They are so easy to tell apart from the other birds. And, I mean, there is no way of confusing a peacock with anything else, now is there? And very few people can claim to be unable to identify a penguin. They are so distinctive! And all those birds of prey. An eagle is so clearly an eagle that it can't be confused for, say, a duck! After all, a duck is a duck is a duck..."

And so the very one-sided conversation continued until there was practically not a single kind of bird that had been forgotten, as if she was worried that the birds forgotten might find her and beat her up for making them feel left out! Eventually, we both, Helen and I, resorted to agreeing with everything that she said in the hopes that we might eventually get to go and actually eat something. Finally, after about 25min of bird speech, we were released to go and feed.

In the end we did attend the practical. We ran away after about 10min...

New years! (I.E. 2007)

Well gang, another year has come and gone and the world is still turning. It has been one hell of a year! So much has happened and I, personally have had a rather hectic emotional time this year. Firstly, as most of you will know from all my bitching, it has been my honours year and thus has been the most exhausting and overworked year of my life! Then, this was the year that my grandfather died. It took a major toll on all the family. It was the year that my parents returned home to South Africa from Italy which was also quite an emotional rollercoaster. My sisters underwent major surgery and treatment to have their jaws fixed up which has certainly been an experience for all of us.

It was also the first time that I attended an 'H2O' party! It was awesome! H2o for those who are confused is a kind of day long rave thing that is held at a water park here in Joburg. They have them throughout the year but I went to my first one last night - the new years party! It was amazing! I'm actually exhausted as a result...so todays should be a short post.

Everyone else has done the whole new years resolutions thing but I will break the mould and NOT do this! Wow...I'm such a rebel. Seriously, I don't see the point. They are just a bunch of promises that you make to yourself that you secretly know that you won't keep anyway so why bother. And besides, New Years, as an event, is pretty meaningless anyway. It is simply the end of a technical year that way placed on an arbitrary day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily anti-New Years! In fact, I am all for celebrating. I really think that we don't party enough and that we should use any excuse to all get plastered and dance the night away! I just don't think that people should put so much significance into it and make empty promises and what not.

Sorry, I'm tired and so I'm not feeling particularly enthusiastic about life in general. Also, after reading Sarah's post about Sadam, I'm a little peeved at the universe in general.

Ooo! I forgot to say that at H2O, Dave (Friend) and I saw two celebrities! We saw a presenter from SABC3, Graham Richards, and some chick from ISIDINGO whose name is unknown to me. Some drunk guy spilled his beer onto Graham Richards's shoes. It was so funny!

And I shall end today's post with a short story that Helen forgot to mention on one of her posts. It concerns the swallow that she mentioned. It lived in the shed that we worked in. He lived on the floor and my guess was that he had tried to fly a little early, had fallen out of the nest and had lived on the floor instead. His parents were always around and would come flying past your head when you walked in which, despite expecting it, never ceased to freak me out.

One day we were offloading some stuff from our vehicle into the shed and the little swallow was hopping along the floor. I stopped to watch him and as I watched, he hopped along toward the door. He stopped on the rim of the door frame and looked around for a bit. He seemed to be surveying the world, trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, rather unexpectedly as most sudden things are, he opened his wings and flew off! I had witnessed the first *successful* flight of a baby swallow! It was beautiful and I felt honoured to have been present for such a momentous occasion in the life of that tiny, somewhat ugly, creature.

To friend or not to friend...

Hey all!

Hope the final days of 2006 are treating you all splendidly! I certainly can't complain. Well, actually that isn't 100% true but we'll quickly skip along to the point of todays post.

To Friend or not to Friend, that is the question...

If someone likes you, are you under obligation to like them in return? I'm not talking in the teenage girl, 'so do you, like, like him?' kind of way but in terms of friends. I realise that this is a bit of a random topic to blog but you'll see that there was some kind of thought behind it.

It all stems from the situation that I live in. When my family and I moved off to Italy, my grandparents, who owned it, rented out our house to an Italian family that had just moved over to South Africa (I realise the irony in the situation). Now, this family lived in our house for about 5 yrs and then got a house in Edenvale. During their stay, our families became great friends. I became friends with the kids, one is my age and the other, four yrs younger than me.

My problem is that I really like the kids but the parents on the other hand...To make things worse, I really don't like the social circle that they are part of and so I came to this question. They like me and would do anything in the world to help me but I just don't like them. Is it wrong for me to feel this way? Should I simply love them by default? What is your take on the situation?

And after that I figured that I should brighten everyones day with the instructions written on a pair of chopsticks that I got in Italy on how to use chopsticks. I am typing it our word for word, nothing has been altered:

Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history and cultual. BAMBOO CHOPSTICKS PRODUCT OF CHINA

Tuk under tnurnb and held firmly. Learn how to use your chopsticks. Add second chcostick hold it as you hold a pencil. Hold tirst chopstick in original position move the second one up and down Now you can pick up anything:

PRODUCTOF CHINA

I have the chopsticks here infront of me so if any of you are doubtful of what I have written above, we can always organise for you to have a privat viewing of the specimen...;P

Siblings...

Hey Gang!

Today was crunch day for many a South African high school student as it was the day that the final end of year results for the last year of high school, called Matric, were released. My two sisters were amongst that large and rather unhappy group. They were so stressed out about their results that I doubt they slept very well last night. I certainly didn't, but that was for other reasons.

This morning, they came running into my room to wake me up and tell me that they both got 4 distinctions! They each scored over 80% (or is it over 85%?) for English first language, Italian second language and Art. Then, Gemma and Lucia, for those are their names, got the same marks for Geography and History respectively! The only subjects that they didn't do all that well in were Maths, Science and Biology.

Now, how am I, the elder of the three of us supposed to provide a good example for a pair of superhuman twins?! They do so freaking well at all their work, it's just not fair! I'm so thrilled for them, I really am! They were so nervous about their results and now it is over. They are going off with some of their friends to celebrate in Melville tonight. I have to go fetch them tomorrow around 1am which I'm not too pleased about but I think they deserve it.

On top of it all, they got an article about them printed in the newspaper! All about their results and how tough the year had been on them. It was really odd to open up the newspaper and see my sisters on the page in front of me!

I didn't sleep well beause of the fact that a friend of mine, Xena (not her real name) was coming over today at 10am to make some jingles for her new radio program that she will be doing. It'll be on some online radio and will be a relationship advice show. Her, Duncan and I had come up with the jingles some time ago but now had to actually produce them. Duncan is off at the coast somewhere at the moment on holiday so he couldn't be here.

Anyhoo, the point is that when I know that I have to get up for something specific, as was the case today, I can't get to sleep properly and so I don't sleep very well.

The End.

BTW, Helen phoned to congratulate my sisters, which was funny...

Christmas merry making

Hi guys! A belated Merry Christmas to you all! I hope that you all had a brilliant festive season filled with love and joy, and of course, presents!

I have been doing a lot of thinking of late about all kinds of things. I usually do most of this thinking while driving people places. My sisters still do not have their driving licences and so I act as the family driver. I've done SO much driving over the last week, it's not even funny! Most of it was for the transporting of people to go and buy presents and things but it's really been tiring. Especially when my sister sends me off to buy some earings for our other sister with this flawless description: 'They look like they could be sweets'

Now, normally, this kind of thing would be enough for me to go by but on this occasion, the store that I was sent to happened to be one of the local accessory shops called 'Claire's'. Now, as I'm sure many a South African girl, and guy, can tell you, almost everything in that store looks like it could be sweets! So invariably, I bought the wrong thing and had to return them for some other ones. To my relief, it turned out that the ones that my sister had intended that I buy were all sold out anyway and so I wasn't completely useless!

But other than this little sidetrack, I've been thinking about my life, my friends and family and just what a jump it's going to be to go from honours into masters. The problem lies in the fact that in honours, we had an office in which we all had our desks and we all worked. Technically we had three offices because we had a very big honours group. But in Masters, we all work on our own and in our own labs and things.

It's going to be really sad not seeing all the other people all the time and not getting to sit and gossip through our lunch break eating spring rolls from the ever-so-slightly-dodgy chinese place. Also, Sarah (abfablife.blogspot.com) won't be around anymore. She is studying international relations and technically shouldn't have been near our building but she moved into our office and we loved having her around to sing things down the corridor and act as the buffer between Rob, one of the other students, and the rest of us. (We love you Rob and we're gonna miss you! Buya!)

Another person who I'll miss is Marlien. She wasn't in our office but she often visited us and she was one of us crazy people that often remained at Wits long after we should have left to work. Her fiance (I really have no clue how it is spelt) was also always around and it was so cool to have them there to go and bug when you were feeling particularly ADHD or when you felt like going to get pizza from Debonairs before they closed at 7:00pm.

There are many more of you who I shan't name simply because it would bore the crap out of my hordes of adoring fans (Thanks guys! I love you too!) but I'll miss you all none the less! That bit about the fans was sarcasm, by the way.

The other thing that I'm thinking about is the direction th-

Damn...I have to go mow the lawn. Sorry. I'll have to continue this rant later.

The photo for today is of the farmer-from-Darling's dog. His name was Andy, the dog, not the farmer, and he had one blue eye and one brown eye. I LOVE him! Again, the dog, not the farmer. The farmer was terribly nice though but I doubt that I'd be able to say the same about him, what with barely knowing the man and all...

I love the rain

Hi guys

It is raining right now. I think that that is one of those things in the world that is keeping me semisane. In the words of Natalie Portman as Eevee in the brilliant movie 'V for Vendetta', "God is in the rain." I really feel like that sometimes. There is nothing I like more than walking in the rain. And not the kind of walking in the rain that most people do, as in wearing waders and carrying an umbrella around, but instead I prefer to go walking with no protective measures. Naturally you do run the risk of...gasp! getting wet, but I feel that that is part of the experience and that you should just let yourself get wet and enjoy it!

The best thing is to go to sleep or wake up when it's raining. Lying in bed watching the rain running down the plants in the garden and smelling that amazing smell that comes with rain is just so beautiful to me. It is something that I really miss during winter (we are in a summer rainfall region) and when we were zooming around the country.

In Kamieskroon we had one day in particular which was terrible! We had done all that was necessary for that day and we were simply waiting for time to elapse so that we could go and check the traps we had set out. We were all in the car trying to keep our bodies out of the sun. I'm telling you all of this because it has to have been the hottest day of my life!

We were literally paralised in the car! We couldn't do anything at all! We couldn't lift our arms, we couldn't bare to keep our shoes on and eventually we all just fell asleep! We all decided that the temperature must have exceeded 40 degrees celcius that day but I suspect that it may have been closer to 50. We had a day in the Kalahari when the temperature in the shade was 45 and that wasn't nearly as bad as that day.

Overall, Kamieskroon is a very hot place. And there is nothing to do there at all! So pretty much every day we went to the only supermarket in the whole town to buy ourselves drinks. And they were so cheap there! It was great! You could buy yourself a whole litre of fanta for R6, AND get R2 back as a deposit on the bottle if you returned it after you'd finished! So essentially, you were paying R4 for a litre of fanta! To put this into perspective, in Joburg, most of the time you can't get a 340ml can of fanta for less than R4.50.

Well, the rain seems to have let up so I'm going to go and have a swim. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere and are able, you should go and have a swim right now! Even if it is at night! There is nothing more exsilirating than going for a dip at night.

Hello world! This is me...

I can't believe that after all this time, my first instinct is still to write out that stupid line!

Well gang, I have finally returned from my month of galavanting around the country digging for a German's research. It was really such an experience! We first went off to Darling, a small town half an hour north of Cape Town. It took us 21 hours to get there from Pretoria, a trip which should have taken 14 hours at the most. It took so long because of the fact that the vehicle we were using was completely messed up. There was something wrong with the battery and it was severly overdue for a service; about 6000km overdue.

Darling was really interesting for me because, as someone who has lived their whole life in a city, going to a small town was very strange. Firstly, the small town sense of humour is...odd to say the least. They seem to find small things hysterically funny. Secondly, they are incredibly generous and warm! If someone I had been staying with in Joburg wanted to hug me goodbye after knowing them for a week, I would be mildly freaked out and wonder what is going on inside their heads. But somehow, when the wife of the farmer whose farm we were staying on hugged us all goodbye, it was perfectly fine. Thirdly, small town folk are easily entertained.

A good example is what transpired one evening at the home of an orchid farmer who is a relative of the people who hosted us. This guy and the son of our hosts had organised a kind of welcome braai (barbeque for you who have no clue what I'm on about) for us at the house of the orchid farmer. The evening began fairly normally and we drank quite a lot of wine. We ended up eating very late and soon after feeding, we were joined by some other people from Darling. How they fitted into the general social equation completely eludes me.

Anyway, we all had some more to drink and got to know each other. One was a local resident and the other was a German who had come over here for work or something. The only thing that I really remeber about him was that the German who we were with was really not impressed with him. After some more drinks, our host, the orchid farmer, decided to put some music on. He asked us if we would mind his 1930's jazz and blues. We said we were happy with that and he proceeded to put on the music. The problem was, that it was not 1930's jazz and blues! It was Abba and Westlife and all kinds of horrid sounds! What made things so much worse was the fact that he then insisted on playing along to all of it on his piano! It was aweful!

Helen, Nicole and I were all in fits of giggles! All the others seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it all! They were all dancing, in a sort of dancing-in-someones-livingroom-is-silly-so-I'll-just-kind-of-sway-my-hips-like-a-complete-fruitbasket-instead kind of way. This certainly didn't help to bring the giggles under control. The German guy was particularly keen on the Beach Boys.

Eventually, we went home after signing the orchid guy's visitors book (yes, he has a visitors book...FOR HIS HOUSE!), and I had somehow developed hiccups and was rather tipsy. It was rather embarassing because the guy giving us a lift was convinced that I was going to throw up all over his car but I was fine. And trying to convince someone that you are not going to do the technicolour yawn in his car when you have hiccups isn't easy. Everytime you say something you pack up in fits of giggles because it's so funny that you hiccuped!

The morning after, the farmer's wife (the guy we were staying with, not the orchid guy) came and asked us if the orchid guy had played piano for us. When we responded in the affirmative, she rattled on about how it was so beautiful when he did that and how she loved to visit him just so that he could play for her...Hence the fact that they are all easily amused.

And I think that that is enough of a rant for today. I leave you with a photo of one of the holes that I dug in an attempt to find a molerat tunnel. It was big enough to bury someone in and, as it turned out, was a fruitless venture.

See yawl!