For Every Action...

..there's an equal, but opposite reaction.

So I spent most of my morning typing up a list of all the things I'm required to shove down my throat on a daily basis. The zillion components part is a new thing. So I drew up beatiful tables and so forth, printed out the list (four pages), and plopped it down on my manager's table.

"Hi, here's a list of everything you expect me to QC every single day of the week. I'd appreciate it if you could join me for these QC sessions, so I just want to kow what time will be convenient for you. How does after lunch suit you?"



My component QC list dropped from 131 products to 11. I feel lighter already.

Food Stopped Being Love

I'm so sick of eating. It might be due to the fact that I'm forced to eat, like my over-active liver soon has to be the base for a delicious human fois-gras. It's the joys of being a food technologst for a company that produces over 250 different types of convenience foods. And I hate the heat-and-eat society, the society that don't know their children's names, but have flatron tv screens in every room. The society that take pills for every problem from depression to erection, who believe in quick fixes and instant highs. Of course, I am part of this society - it's inevitable. But it doesn't mean that I have to agree with it.

The popularity of conveniene foods is just an after-dinner burp of the society that is too freaking busy to spend five one hour to prepare a proper meal.

At work, I'm forced to eat. They call it daily QC - quality control. I call it the reason I might just become bulemic. Fortunately, our office is a good 5 minutes' run from the closest toilet, so bulemia seems like way too much trouble. Oh what the hell - I'll swallow. Bring it on.

We used to only have to do it once a week. As of tomorrow, I have to force down, I mean QC, the following:
22 flavours of sandwich
4 flavours of omelette
131 components (which includes things like rocket, 6 types of cheese, 7 types of red meat, 11 types of sauce, hard-boiled egg, mayo mixes, tomato, parsley, pizza bases, breads, dips, ugh..)

That's the daily list. I have a weekly list as well. It includes a page of other crap, with cheese on top.

I'm not complaining. Wait, who am I trying to kid - I'm complaining. I realise that there are starving kids and poverty around the corner. Those guys are more than welcome to come do my QC sessions for me. You buy the plane ticket, I'll hand over my lab coat and green mopcap. Really. Any applicants can leave me a message. No dietary restrictions, please. Absolutely no vegetarians.


PS - The bird is to make me feel better. So is the green tea.

Palate Scratch

There’s beauty all around us. There’s beauty in the breakdown, there’s beauty in violence, and inspiration in it all. We just tend to get distracted by the now, the current; the ingrown nails and mosquito bite itches. But while we walk around with scowls on our faces and thunderclouds above our heads, the beauty of everything is still very much alive, and patiently waiting for our gazes to return and absorb it.

On my way to work, a head muddled with irritation, I drove my familiar route in autopilot mode; smoothly, but with no thought behind the action. To save battery power, my radio was switched off and my mind switched on. I was mentally grumbling, old lady with wet panties syndrome, going on and on about the inconveniences of life…

… and then a flicker of pick caught my eye.

I became quiet, and noticed the breath-taking start of another day. A autumn blanket of mist was covering the farms alongside the road – clumped up in the shallow valleys and disappearing like ghost breath on the horizon. The crisp morning green was dotted with patches of wild cosmos flowers, braided into the long, wispy grass that shimmered with gravitised fog.

I opened the windows to breathe in the first light of the morning, wondering how I managed to not notice it in the first place.

When there’s a thorn in your foot, and you choose to focus on it, even Armageddon will be second in line for attention.

Double-clutch

There’s a definite rhythm in the chaos.

If I switch my car off, I have to jumpstart it to life. I can deal with that. It’s during events like this that my faith in mankind is rebuilt – whenever I’m drowning, there’s always a hand that reaches out to grab me. I lead a charmed life.

After work, I stop by the garage to pick up something. I plan the whole event; I’ll drive up to the shop entrance, leave my car idling, and run in quickly, trusting that my readily-consumable car will be where I left it when I return. I drive up to the garage, pull up the handbrake, and suddenly one of the garage attendants runs up to me and knocks on my window:

“Don’t switch your car off. I’ll run in to go get what you want.”

I stare at the guy in disbelief. How did he know? Incredulously, I hand him my twenty bucks and my order. He runs inside, does my shopping for me, and returns with the correct change. My car is purring like a kitten. I’m trying to fathom the moment. We exchange goods, and I ask him how he managed to read my mind.

“Oh.. we just know. You know how it works here. We know.”

Indeed. It seems that they do.

Bring it on..

I'm the ultimate cliche. I line them up, one after the other. Got proverb? I'll live it out for you. This week, my proverbial theme is: "It doesn't rain, but it pours."

First my cellphone broke. I replaced it.
Then my car inconveniently gave up its battery in the middle of the week, far away from my house. I replaced it. Missed a day's work and a week's spending money.
Next, my computer died (it was on life support, I pulled the plug).
Then, my kettle stopped working.
My body knocked off early without telling it's co-workers .
And for the final act, my car boomeranged and has, since yesterday 5:26pm, refused to start. No one can tell me what the problem is, but I'm convinced it's spelled with Rands and Cents. It's just very inconvenient, because I have places to be and assignments to hand in. I don't have time to waste, and yet I'm forced to sit at home and watch it drip, minute after precious minute, into an irretrievable void.
My current carkey is in the shape of an old pair of jumper cables. How to make friends and irritate people.
Last night, I had the best sleep of my life, because for 6 hours I didn't have to deal with all this crap.
I'm considering resigning myself over to alcohol, but all I could find was sterilising alcohol handspray that they use in the factory. So I opted for peppermint crisp dessert. And lots of coffee. I hate this constant frown. So I'm shaking my fist at the universe, cartoon-character style.

Generic Holiday

Just what the doctor ordered.. literally.

I haven't had much time to sleep lately. I suppose if I cut out social gatherings and late-night mail-typing sessions, I'd have more than enough sleep space, but I do need some variety in my life. So last week my meaty vessel decided 'screw you, lady', showed all the cards it had, and folded. I got slightly irritated with falling asleep in meetings, in conversation (sorry, Gert), and feared falling asleep behind the wheel. So I decided to get myself booked off.
As a student, there were so many times where I'd chain-smoke a few cigarettes (all the better to cough with, my child), walk around in the cold with summer clothes and run to the campus doctor (for increased body temperature), all in the vain hope that he/she will write me a standard sick note, and I wouldn't have to write the test that I didn't study for.
9 times out of 10 this technique didn't work. Thank goodness for affadavids. Who can spell that, cause I surely can't.

Not in this town, senorita. This is how it works in the lovely little town of Bronkhorstspruit.
There are three standard doctors. They are all fat, with jolly round faces, Saint Nick beards, and shows you into the examination room with a "ho-ho-how are you feeling today?!". Lovely. I love going to the doctor here. You pay a flat rate of R170. Then, they wait for your sob story. Mine was very truthful:
I've been feeling like crap for a week now, I don't have time to rest and recuperate, I need some time off. Help.
He whipped out his magic sick-note pad, and said, "It's Tuesday now, I'll give you till Friday. Is that alright, or do you want to stay at home for longer?"
I was mentally rubbing my hands together in glee. I settled for 3.5 days off work, and he started dishing out the government-issued drugs. Bag upon bag of pills; pink ones and green ones and tiny white ones and large purple ones. I had to stop it. I asked what they were all for.
Oh this one, he replied, is for pain and fever.
But I'm not in pain, and I don't HAVE a fever, I argued.
He looked up at me, blinked and said, "Oh, then just add this to your personal collection. You're bound to have pain or fever some day in the future."

After my second visit to the local doctor's association, I've got enough 'future medication' to cook up some seriously wicked psychedelics in the comfort of my home. I'll never have to visit the pharmacy again.

Big Sister Is Watching You

Sitemeter has this nifty little function that you can use to sniff out your readers like pure-bred policedogs. I've become secretly addicted to it, watching you watching me, curiousity and travel-mindedness getting the better of me. Interestingly enough, most of my pageviews are not from South Africa (i.e. my four friends that read my blog), but from Mauritius.

Aloha-ha-ha! Or is that Ha-ha-ha-waiian? I've been racking my brain to figure out what or which post could have led to a connection with a small little honeymoon island that I've never been to (and might never go to - seems a bit commerical - but that's judging a book even without seeing the travelogue cover). I have no idea. Maybe there are a lot of Buddhists on Mauritius. Or people with mango orchards. Or girls with green shoes. Or cats that park and purr on computer screens. Who knows? Not me.
But this is my ola-aloha to Mauritius. Do you have a couch I can come crash on?

Unused Opportunites

It's totally free and I totally won't make it.

I'm more or less over the whole clubbing era of my life, nothing only means that much. I do love dancing though, the moment when movement becomes meditation, and my body switches over into autopilot mode, thus enabling my mind to observe my surroundings from a different altitude. I don't miss trancing, but I always have a good time when I do go.
The only reason why this party caught my eye is because I saw the poster on the wall next to the local supermarket. Normally, those walls are flaking with bad ads; farmers selling tractors or horses, housewives selling beauty products from their kitchens, mothers offerings their babysitting facilities, and I've even seen ads for earthworms and eggs.
Yesterday though, the walls announced a party. Literally down the road from where I stay. It would be good to go, but even though it's free, I know I'll have to pay a hefty price.
I've been running out of time. I've been wishing for 26-hour days and 9-day weeks, because my current helping of time just doesn't provide me with enough time to waste... and I do love wasting time. The 18th/19th is my working weekend, which means I will drive past the turnoff to this party. This free party. It also means that my giant assignment has to be handed in the Monday following - which will be the reason I will pretend to not see that turnoff, leading to a long dirt road that will in turn lead to self-built toilets, dudes with dreads, tie-dyed clothes and the beat that just goes on.

Cover Artist

One of my first online connections told me : "Don't judge a book by it's cover, for else it may never be read."

I had to change my cover though. The blog template I had previously irritated the living crap out of me; the fonts were bad and inconsistent, it was toooo white, the entries amoebae'd into each other, comments ended up below the worngs posts, all in all, it was a sucky choice. Almost as sucky as deciding to take an alternative route to class in 5 o' clock traffic.
Changed my template, checked out the new look, and thought, damn this looks familiar. I'd chosen the same template as w had. Made another attempt, checked out the new look and thought... wait.. this looks kinda.. sorta.. familiar. Well, they only provide us with 10 freaking options, and I don't like dots or white. That leaves me with.. uhm.. 10 options, actually.
I have to go check out some trucks. What a day. A significant day, in some minor, obscure way.

Seven till four

I work with some strange people.
Walking into the micro lab, I see Moroga standing with one hand on the incubator, and one hand rubbing her breast. She stops to watch me enter the lab, and continues with her circular movements while looking at me with a half-pained, half-smiling expression on her face. Uhm. She mutters something, and I have to ask her to repeat it, still distracted by her unabashed boob-rubbing. "I said, the cold makes my nipples hurt."

I'm kindof a trainee food technologist at the moment, I have to take over this other girl's department when she goes on maternity leave. She's very much pregnant, but there's three or so months to go. But in my life, I have never seen anyone eat as much as she does. For breakfast this morning, she had two toasted sandwiches, two bars of chocolate, coffee with rusks and biscuits, and a 500g fruit trifle. Lunch was 2 portuguese milktarts, two huge hamburgers, and another chocolate bar. Damnit, i WISH I could eat that much. And she's a tiny girl, aside from the belly part.

How Not To Start A Week

Last night was not a night for being inside a car. Three reasons:

4:30) Thanks to quiet roads and smooth driving, I make it to class an hour early. With 62 minutes to spare, I decide to take an alternative route, a road I’ve never taken before. MISTAKE. I end up stuck in the dead centre of JHB, surrounded by taxis, no clue where I am, unable to move faster than 4km/h. Eventually this scary man with a leathery face knocks on my window and asks for a Rand. I swop him R1.20 for directions, and find my way to class – 15 minutes late. Me and my dumb-ass bright-spark ideas.

21:00) The silver sliver of a moon is high up in the sky, and I’m on my way back home. On the highway, just before the Hans Strydom turnoff, an old white car speeds past me, taking up two lanes to do so. Just as it passes me, it swerves more hectically, the guy loses control of the car, rolls it over the two lanes (thank goodness there was a third lane), it hops into the bushes on the side of the road, and hops back onto the highway. I have to slam on the brakes to avoid being caught up in the roll, hard enough for everything in the back seat to end up on floor in the front. Burnt rubber and shattered glass, with a twist of metal.

I do what any concerned citizen would do: I phone 112, the free Vodacom emergency line to get an ambulance, to report the accident. After the phone rang for about 30 seconds, a robot finally picked up:

If you are in a life-threatening situation, please press 1. If you have having problem with your cellphone, please press two.

Great, I thought, so either I’m bleeding to death, or I don’t know how to send a text message. I pressed 1. It rang for another 30 seconds.

Dear caller, your call is important to us. All the lines are currently occupied. Please hold, caller.

Love how they try to personalise the whole thing by calling me “caller”. Long story short, after being transferred 4 times and holding the line for close to six minutes, I finally got through to the ambulance people. Hope the car-rollers are alright.

3) One more street to go, then I’ll be home. I spot a cat on the left side of the road, and purposefully drive on the right side, cause I can, cause I’m the only one in the street. And the damn cat runs all the way from the safe side straight into my trajectory, under my car. I mentally close my eyes as I feel a bumpity bump (pretty little siamese kitten), look in my rear view mirror, and see the kitty jumping around playfully, off to go climb a tree or something. Phew. Too much action for one night.

Stop The Boat

It started with a stuffy head. Stiff neck. The shakes. Indecisive body temperature. Lazy cough.

Flushed face. Rollercoaster head. It grieves me to say this, but I think I'm getting sick.

Beautiful virus though, if you check the picture. I almost don't mind playing host to Mr & Mrs Flu and their future offspring. I actually don't mind being sick - I just hate feeling sorry for myself. And it's inevitable. Last night, as I was rolling around in feverish sleep, it already started: 'poor me poor me'.

With the way I've been not sleeping and not eating properly and driving around all the time and not seeing my friends for verbal TLC and walking around naked in the cold, I'm actually surprised it took so long. But yeah, I was waiting for it, and now I'm sick.

Movies & Marshmallows

This weekend has been the closest thing I've had to a holiday in yonks.
I'm still in the pajamas that I donned on Friday evening. Didn't even bother with a shower yesterday. Mrs Nature has opened her box of winds, it's been ice cold the whole weekend (hmm, electric blanket), the wind teasing the windows with haunted verses.
Saturday was spent channel-hopping under a huge quilt, munching chocolate, jelly babies, and ice cream with marshmallows. The beautiful thing about the E! channel is that watching it involves no brain activity, and I was able to do some lazy lusting after the 101 sexiest celeb bodies. Followed by some hot chocolate. And hotdogs.
I crawled into bed wearing the same pajamas, and only got up at 10:30 this morning. Was stirred from sleep by my mother crapping out my father because he bought powdered custard and not UHT custard. Yeah. It's the little things that kill. Woke up sore, stiff and confused - my neck overslept into the sixth dimension, and the traces of an all too familiar dream still clinging to my skull. If this same guy features in my dreams again, I might just go crazy upon awaking. For now, I'll just groan into my pillow.
It's been good to be useless. But I've got an assignment to do. Suppose I should take that shower.

United We Attempt To Stand

I work in a food factory that employs approximately 850 unskilled workers. I can count the white labourers on one hand. There's the bearded lady that always talks about apples. The short guy that cooks pasta and struggles to count past ten. The tiny woman in the bakery that looks like a tired prostitute, and then there's helena. Helena is beautiful. Both men and women stop to stare at her, to absorb her perfect face, sparkling blue eyes and gorgeous smile. She's perfect, and looks very out of place with her heavy red industrial apron, standing over a huge pot, digging into 50 kgs of mincemeat. But that about covers the white workers.
The more you get to deal with another race, the more obvious the little differences become. In SouthAfrica, there's a mentality that the black folk are trying to get across to the white ones, a mentality called "ubuntu". This loosely translates into "the spirit of togetherness", which translates into "if you are happy, we are all happy. If you succeed, we all succeed". I think this way of thinking is born from a physical closeness that black people grew up with (were forced to grow up with?). Rural black people stay in small houses, and often share a room with a whole family. There's a whle sex/AIDS theory that stems from the last sentence, but focus first. Because many blacks grew in a community system, as opposed to the white individual system, they were brought up with the spirit of ubuntu.
The problem with many white people seems to be that, because they were taught to fight for the individual, it's easier for them to trample others into the ground in the attempt to get to the top of an imaginary ladder. I know I'm generalising, but it's neccessary. Ubuntu also has its glitches, but white Southafricans can learn a lot from the black way of thinking, and vice versa.
I love this country. We're the experimental tip of Africa.
This physical closeness not only breeds a way of thinking/doing things, but also makes them more comfortable with each other. It's the one thing I cannot get my head around, the one thing I see at work every day: they all hold hands. Men and women, women and women, men and men.. People will always be strolling down the corridors, holding hands like it's rush-hour in lover's lane. And there's absolutely nothing sexual or suggestive about it. They just do it. It's just such an oddity to see two 40-year old black guys holding hands while chatting about soccer.
I was talking to a girl in the micro lab, when she asked me whether I had any kids. Haha, nono, I'm only 24, and I'll need a husband first. She seemed honestly surprised: "Oh? You want to be married before you have kids?" Uhm, like, yah. I don't do Pregnancy a la stranger. A small, yet huge difference in way of thinking. They do not mind having babies at age 18, fathered by someone who will never be a father.
Disclaimer - When I refer to 'black people', it is in reference to those who work with me. Move to the city, and you get a completely different mentality. Trying my best to be very P.C. - it's the language of the sensitive seffrican.

Skip This Post

I'd like to quickly mention the JET program, and it's role in my current reality. There's a lot of shitty blogs out there, written by current and ex-JETs, and the idea is to not fall into the 'yeah so now i'm in japan and this is what I ate today' trap. Not likely though. These blogs do serve a purpose, it's one of those technological wwwonders that enables people across the globe to still know what is potting in each other's lives. But dis ain't one of dose blogs, no sirree. Let me just get to the point:
So the story goes as follows - I decided in june/july 2005 to give up my har har career and devote three years to travelling. An easy way to do this SEEMS TO BE travelling & teaching. I mainly want to go to countries where my friend English is not the first language, so it's makes sense to teach, save, and travel. Plus, you get school holidays. I do feel like cliche at times, because so many people are doing the same. But this is my story, so the others do not matter.
I decided "let me head east" (many reasons, different blog entry, maybe). Did my share of online research and stumbled upon this interesting little program called JET, which would be an acronym for JapaneseExchangeTeaching. Dunno where the "exchange" bit comes from, as I've only seen mentions of them importing people into j-pan. Not the other way around. So I sent my seven thousand pages for the appplication. made it to the next round - interviews at the Japanese embassy. Dusted off my high-heeled shoes, double-checked my self-confidence level, drove to Pretoria (not knowing where the embassy was, but I found it via luck & logic). There I wrote a 45 minute English test which included a dreadful comprehension test, no, two dreadful comprehension tests and some duh grammar questions. All done, had an interview with three people during which I talked non-stop dribble and forgot basic English words such as "passion". Throughout the interview I was so, sooo thirsty, and kept eyeing the bottles of 'made in japan' water that the interviewers had to quench THEIR thirst. Damn, I lose track quickly. Made the shortlist though, even though I praaayed for a yes/no answer. No is fine. No means I'm going to Bangkok.
Already this is too long to be a post, I'll just type this for myself. So I can look back one day, and remember. These entries are like photographs made up of words. Graphographs?
So : Why JET? a) because I'm lazy. No, no, maybe not. I just like taking the path with the least obstacles. The road with the least number of stopstreets. JET seems to provide basically everything, you just hop on the plane and sit through a crapload of orientation sessions. It also seems to pay well, and it's this little factor that leads me to b) JET is step one. the ideeeeeaaa is to go japan --> thailand --> south america. From where I'm standing now, 2 March 2005, this is my plan. But life loves a well-executed curveball, and I might be dead or in Delhi in a year's time. I don't know. But it's wonderful to have a plan, for the first time in 24 years.

Step To My Beat

I've been listening to my heartbeat for hours. Just me, the dark, and my heartbeat. I can feel it pulsating in the space where my ribs meet, I can feel in in my temples, in my fingertips. My vital organ, my built-in clock. Independant of will but dependant on time, it serves as a traffic cop for oxygen, no rest for the ticker. My textbook heart separates blue and red blood, and channels the two colours to their individual destinations, without them even having to ask for directions.
It's been busy for a long time now. It's always been there, almost from the start. Roundabout the time my mother most likely realised that she was pregnant, my heart was already the feature of the show. In proportion to my four-week old body, my heart would have been nine times larger than an adult's heart. No one told it what to do; it has just always been doing what it does best - keeping me alive.
It has been slowed down in deep sleep; those moments where everyone looks as innocent as they once used to be, It's been quickened by narrow escapes, intimate eyecontact, anticipation, emails from strangers, games of hide-and-seek, orgasms, rollercoasters, hockey matches and hidden crushes. It has missed beats, it has done two-steps tangoes, it has turned to ice and has smouldered like fire. But it has kept on beating. Until death do us part - my natural rhythm, my muscular metronome, my heart.

Reptilian Blood

My ear is still warm from a long converastion on the phone with wessel, during which we spoke a bit about blogging. Speaking about blogging, and blogging about speaking, a ring is round and has no end. In his blog he commented that my blog was the blog that got him blogging. The blog that got me blogging belongs to a fish in japan, the chick whohasaboat. Lately I don't have time for bloggunication anymore, but I read her posts on wessel's blog. Somewhere there's a full circle in there as well. I do miss writing down arbitrary thoughts, Not as much as I miss my friends though. And sleep.
My place is such a mess. I had to look for the keyboard under a heap of crap; broken mirror shards, nail clippings (DNA), half-drawn crossword puzzles and worksheets for mock classes, tampon wrappers, peach pips, scratched cds and dry, lonely twigs that were once heavy and proud with sweet, black grapes. There's also a variety of dead insects, those who thought they were on a bullet train to enlightenment, only to hit the glass bulb and burn to death, Rest in peace, nê?
After not sleeping for more than 24 hours somewhere in the middle of the week, I turned the corner into my room, and almost tripped over this huge gecko that decided to wait for me on the floor. Tense, frozen, poised to dart away at the slightest hint of movement. I slowly backed away, not making a sound. I got my camera, I mean my phone, and tiptoed back, making sure that I stay in the shadows. It hadn't spotted me. On all fours a slowly crawled closer to get a nice-full screen shot of Mr Lizard. I was like a thief in the night, like shadow-woman, like underground paparrazzi. I snapped him, and shimmied away, gaining +10 points in stealth.
A few minutes later, I walked past there again, and he was still chillin' in the same spot. I walked closer. This time in the light. And closer. Until I could turn him over with my foot. Which was when I saw that, where his stomach used to be, my cat had chewed out a sizable chunck of essential tissue. At least now I have a picture of a dead lizard on my phone.