Another Day In The Life Of

I left early today from Ikura Chugakko, as they had nothing for me to do. The kocho sensei interviewed me for the monthly school paper, and I confused the shit out of them by listing "fire poi" as my only hobby. A dictionary consulting session followed, and "poi" was found to be a small Chinese potato. No, no, the other poi. Google images came to my resque (but what will the students think when they read it in the paper? Will they expect fried potato omiyage from me?)

Ikura Chugakko is on top of a hill, so getting there requires a drive up quite a steep incline. I'm sure all the kids in the school have beautiful calves. During my time at the school, three teachers asked me, with pride shining in their eyes: "So, what do you think of our slope? Steep, isn't it?"

After driving my car down the steep driveway, I stopped at a Lawsons for a tuna mayo onigiri, which I've recently become addicted to, and drove back to my tiny apato in Tetta-cho. I'm becoming more and more comfortable with breaking the 40 km/h speed limit, and I really am enjoying taking corners at the crazy speed of 60 km/h. It's almost an adrenaline rush.

As I get to my apartment, I decide to set back my plans of cycling to Niimi in favour of cleaning up the mess. I'm worse than a bachelor. A month down the line I still have papers from Tokyo orientation all over the show. I just started the systematic cleanup, when my doorbell rang. I picked up with a "moshi-moshi!", and a kid's voice replied something unintelligible. I opened the door in any case, and let Mizuki-kun in. He's a six-year old boy that seems to enjoy chilling with me while rambling away in Japanese, while I sit and clip my toenails and ask "nani? nani? nani?" the whole time.

Mizuki brought his Dragonball Z PS2 game. He had it there yesterday as well, and Nihongoed me though all the character profiles. Today he was convinced that my cd player was in actual fact a playstation, and tried repeatedly to get the disk to work. I looked up the word for "music", and kept repeating "ongaku, ongaku" while pointing at the cd player, but he was determined to transform it into something more.

Then the doorbell rang again.

"Moshi-moshi!" (I love saying that...) Reply is.. something in Japanese.. uhm.. so I open the door. There's an old Japanese man whom I've never seen before. He smiles and makes cutting motions in his hair with his hands. Uhh, no, I did not cut my hair.. Who are you? Maybe he was mistaking me for the previous ALT, who had long blonde hair and looked in no way the same as me. I introduce myself. He keeps rambling in Japanese. "Ahh, gomen nasai.. Only.. sukoshi Nihongo.." I utter.
He understands, and proceeds to include at least one english word per sentence.
"We have.. party for you? Yes? When?" Most of my evenings end in a beer drinking session with local gaijin, so it's not like I have a schedule or anything. We swop numbers and agree on next Monday. He says he'll phone me to confirm.

Back inside, Mizuki-kun is still trying the game on my cd player, stopping only to try on all my jewelery. He raids the fridge, and I give him chocolate. He colours in the pictures in my 100 yen katakana practise book. I have no idea what he is saying, but he doesn't stop talking. Eventually he just says "goodbye!" and runs out.

I make use of the opportunity to get on my mama chari (old-skool bicycle with a basket, but no gears), and cycle the 20 minutes or so to Niimi, where I can make use of free internet. While I'm replying to some mails from fellow South Africans, my phone rings. It's.. the dude from earlier. I can't remember Japanese names, as they all seem to be made up of different combinations of "yo", "ya", "ma", "no", "to" and "ri". It's all the same to me.

I moshi-moshi again, but this time with some apprehension. Ahh, they decided to move the party to tonight. I lack the language skills to fight, so I say that it sounds wonderful. Nan-ji? "roku-ji-han", he replies, which translates as 6:30. "So that's eight-sirty", he says. I can't muster up the enthusiasm to correct him, or attempt to figure out which of the times is correct, so I say my goodbyes, and decide to be home by 6.30.. and then wait. Who knows what the evening hold.

Nippon? Ahh.. sugooooi..

It's the little things that kill

I am painfully aware of the fact that my blog is being spammed.
So, I visit it every now and again to delete the stupid "here are some interesting links" comments, in a futile attempt to keep my comment space clean and clinical.

So, why not just add the squiggly letter fucntion? I hear myself ask.

See, I'd love to add comment verification protection spam-prevention.. but.. In Japan, die whole damn blogger site is in Japanese. I don't even know where the "English" button is, if there is one. There's no chance that I'll be able to do anything more complicated that post a message, and hopefully, one day, add a picture or two. Yup, I am now more illiterate than I was at age 4. So, this must be what braindamage feels like...

On a less despondent note, I am trying my best to figure out how to travel about 700 kms North into the country to get to a party on the 18th, seeing as I have an insane amount of free time, which I'm getting payed for. The challenging bit is that I have no idea how this public transport system works..

Gotta find out some time though, and there's no better reason for learning to swim than throwing yourself into the deep side of the pool.

PS Until I find out how to englishify die blogger site, does anyone want my password to add the protection for me?

Say whaaaat?

There's no point in visiting my blog at the moment.

No, really. I'm in the process of adjusting and decompressing in Japan, and for that I need a gaijin card. Wait, let me try structure my thoughts. I have very little internet time on my hands, as those who have not been receiving mails from me will be able to say. Today I had my first day of school, which ended at 12h00 (what a bonus..), so afterwards I changed my clothes, repacked my bags, and got onto my hard-on-those-hills purple bicycle and tried to keep my eyes on the narrow road for the 5 kilometres it took to get me to Niimi central.

In Niimi I got sunblock (why did I not listen to my mother when she offered me a whole bottle, free of charge?) because my exposed parts are turning a rural shade of Japanese already. White legs, brown arms, maybe I should invest in a pair of weird gloves and a bonnet hat.

My point with the gaijin card was the following: Before I can enter into communication mode again, I need this aforementioned card to apply for landline connections, keitai accounts and yes, I'll have a fax machine as well. So I'll keep you posted. This all should happen in the next few weeks. Next two weeks.

Now to figure out which button will let me post this message...

Ja mata ne

whatamess

...at least everything is in heap-like heaps. It's a start.

Who's prepared?

Instead of ripping the last 15 cds, I'm going to go visit Gert, who wants to make me a skirt with the most beautiful material on earth. This guy is great, and I've known him since childhood days. My first memory of him is seeing him walk with my brother in the garden, while I was chilling on the roof.. Or maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Nevermind.
There's often an occasion where we're all broke and hungry, and Gert would say "do you have eggs and some cacao", and 20 minutes later we'd have brownies. No recipe book. Nothing to wear tonight? No worries, he'll just make a jacket to cover his shoulders. Car troubles? Fixed if Gert is in the neighbourhood. He's like a McGyver of sorts. I really wish he came in a travel-sized pack so I could take him with.

I am a sum total of the phases I go through

The past week was spent in a petrol-consuming daze of red wine and pasta, couch-hopping from one friend's house/flat to the other. I was spoilt enough to make me not want to go home (?), but I had other people in other towns/cities to see, so I filled up my tank with unleaded and moved on.
Also, I was in dire need of some fresh clothes, and was itching to check my mails. My packing skills have always let me down, and I spent a week in Pretoria with 3 pairs of pants, 2 shirts, and 8 pairs of socks.

Friday evening we decided to go against the grain, and payed a visit to the local alternative club in Pretoria central. Zeplins is located right next to the biggest Adult World that the city has to offer, giving it a slightly more dodgy feel than it perfectly well managed to exude on its own. We spotted a dog unit police car in front of the club, but our mild paranoia never realised, and we figured that they were probably busting the porn shop, or perhaps stocking up on handcuffs. (Or selling theirs, you never know.)
A long time ago, in a previous life, I used to frequent clubs that were even more alternative and more dodgy than the aforementioned Zeplins. Clubs where the only lighting was fluorescent, and people danced as if they were just resurrected from a miserable death. My mother always left me to go through my many phases, so when I told her the one day that I wanted a full-lenght body-hugging halter-neck black pvc dress, she said:

"Let's go buy material"

and she made one for me.

On Friday I donned it for the last time, danced for hours, inhaled yellow smoke from smoke machines, smelled my retinas burn in the persistence of the fluorescent tubes, and realised that I'll never wear it again.
It is being passed on to my dearest Tish. Use it well.

Gallerie d'Prinsloo 70

(Closed Recently)

Some of the images that have travelled with me for years. The Pinkish siamese twin poster, I fished out of a garbage bin in front of the Uni radio station (blocked on wood and everything), and the brown little girl faces are years older than I am. Projects and presents..

Every object has a history
every picture tells a story

Petroleum Powered

Sasolburg was established in the early 1950’s as a town to house a host of Engineers, specialists, mechanics, fitters and turners, the people who were responsible for making SASOL work. SASOL is the main company responsible for petroleum manufacture in SA, and Sasolburg was filled with great minds who worked long hours and built a giant energy corporation. It used to be a town with culture, where the trophy wives kept themselves busy with raising kids with high morals, and drinking tea at quilting clubs. My most frequently repeated quote about Sasolburg is “It’s the perfect place to raise kids. It’s not big enough to be a city, and it’s too big to be a small town. It’s a well-balanced town with well-balanced people.”

I spent the biggest part of my life in this town. Walking through the streets brought back memories from being in primary school and riding my bike, nearly being hit by a lightning bolt once and speeding back home, white as a sheet. Or the eye-to-eye I had with some insect, causing me to crash my bike into a fence and cutting open three of my toes as I never wore shoes in those days.

There’s this wonderful thing called groenstroke (green strips) in Sasolburg. This is basically a network of cement roads for bicyclists and pedestrians that snakes through the neighborhoods like a network of veins, keeping kids out of the streets and getting people to walk down tree-lined backroads. After 5 o’ clock, you found families on bicycles, families walking their dogs, old people walking hand in hand. Maybe I just had a beautifully disillusioned childhood.

Now, walking through town is like walking through a faded snapshot. Everything is still there, but neglect is spray-painted on the walls and overgrowing the pathways. Corrupt municipalities and apathetic government systems has led to the downfall of the town. Faded wrappers and empty cooldrink cans decorate the unkempt bushes. Plants grow through in cracks in walls and slowly creep over the man-made structures. What I like about it though, is that it almost seems like nature is reclaiming the land. With no budget to trim the hedges and cut the grass, plants are given free reign once again to grow over and around the structures put in their way, back when Sasolburg was still in it’s prime.

Expectation vs Realisation

With just over 2 weeks before I hop the ocean, you'd think that I'd be frantically organising those little things that requires organisation.. tying up loose ends, working out budgets, making lists of things to do.. being productive, is what it comes down to. So to recap:

What I was planning to do during my stay in Sasolburg:
- Unpack and repack my room full of boxes (to figure our what the hell is going on there)
- Go shopping for clothes that I can teach in, i.e. that weren't bought at the Salvation Army for 5 bucks and a piece of gum. In 1997.
- Study some Japanese that goes past 'konnichiwa' and 'arigato'.
- Brush up on hiragana and attempt katakana
- Figure out my finances
- Sort out my photos and make beautiful, cheesy photo collages for my blog.
- Mail a thousand friends
- Fill in my tax return forms

What I actually did during my stay in Sasolburg
- Walked around the town of my youth with a friend from my youth (who's still a good friend)
- Did hours and hours of reminiscing in nostalgia mode.
- Went for mid-morning walks in gardens with carel after which he gave me a crapload of movies and anime, and showed me a beautiful, silver flute.
- Watched countless episodes of Robot Chicken and Simpsons, and experienced braincell death because of that.
- Channelhopped (quite a novelty for someone who hasn't had a tv in years)
- Drove around town, in forgotten areas, past forgotten streets
- Sat on the back of a bakkie drinking beer, watching the sun go down and seeing two dudes play around with a bulldozer, breaking up logs for firewood.
- Chatted on MSN
- None of the planned things

For those with a short attention span, here's a picture of a rose.
(to be added later)

Ukulimala koyedwa ukulimala kwethu sonke

The end of the financial year means tons of paperwork for some, day-long stock-takes for others, and for the plebian slave-workers of this factory, it means the legal fight for wage increases.

Led by COSATU, driven by fear and swept away by the crazy sense of community that black people have and white people will never understand (whites being driven by the fight for the individual), the first tendrils of an upcoming strike are already creeping into daily production.

As I started typing this, the veggie department (just around the corner) started singing, chanting: “Gerela yo.. Gerela, a nyamazane”

Loosely translated, this means something to the like of We will hunt until we find our animal.

Interpretively translated, this means We will not back down from our 20% increase demand, we will take your factory down, we will toi-toi in the streets and watch as you lose millions of rands per day because we won’t stand around like human machines for measly pay that is less than the legal minimum wage.

Personally, I’m rooting for the underprivileged, unschooled, underpaid, uneducated staff.

Something from the archives

31 october 2005 - halloween (but in reality, just another monday evening)

My history with blogs stretches more than seven years back. I was still in high school, and already addicted to the internet. I was a regular in the imusic chatroom during the evenings, and, during the day I was living a strange double life inside my head where my thoughts revolved around the people behind the nicknames - people I've never met and never will. I haven't got the slightest idea what happened to them. They are somewhere on this planet, either dead or alive. i have no idea.

During this same time, I stumbled across my first blog. I had no idea that there was a name for writing of this kind, I just happened upon a site called tummyache.com (don't bother going there, it's now a medical site dealing with, well, tummyaches and the likes). I cannot remember the name of the girl who was the author of the site, but I soon became addicted to her online diary, reading my way through her life, her dreams, her obsession and disappointments. she worked in a book store somewhere in the USA, had a secret crush on her boss (or fellow colleague), she had a dog that she loved, and a stuffed lobster called Jesus. She also had an obsession with food, a hate for her desire of it, a hate for her bulemic tendencies, a hate for the significant role it played in her life. One story from her blog still lingers in my head today: After preparing a midnight snack of tapioca that she was voraciously anticipating, she tripped over stairs, fell down and so did the steaming bowl of tapioca. She ended this tragic story by saying: "and now I am certain that your God does not exist."

During my possibly pointless research into japan and everything that comes with the island, I started surfing the blogs of some JET kids, people who are in Japan thanks to the program I'm planning to join. Unfortunately, most of it made for terribly boring reading. basically their writing sucked, it was all "and then I went here, and then I saw these JETs, and then I got onto a train, and then". If I sound like a snob, it's because I am. There's nothing more torturous than scrolling through pages and pages of badly-written boo-ha. actually there is, and it's sitting through half an hour of makeup advertisements and previews about war movies when you really just want to watch the subtitled artsy film that you payed to see.

My second real blog addiction only started a month or so ago, something I came across while searching for JET blogs. Very well written, thoroughly entertaining (I keep thinking - damn this is better than reality tv), and frequently updated (as in 4 to 5 times a day, sometimes even more).. all the ingredients required to produce a blog that hooks. I'm not going to get into detail about this femme's blog, i'll put it up as a link one day one day when i actually have my own blog.

then what is this?

This is me, so enamoured with the idea of blogging (that comment alone should warn that i'm a geek at heart) that I'm writing my first post without a connection to the www, and without an existing blog. I've got this crap but trusty pentium 233 that always has notepad open and some essay in the making. Most of them I send off as emails to a hand-picked selection of cyber friends. The rest sit in my "arb crap" folder. when I die, I'd like all my words to be printed and cremated with me. But for the time being, it's relatively safe on my outdated harddrive, and it keeps me busy during the evenings.

I do have a social life, but i need to drive to get there. Currently, I'm staying in Bronkhorstspruit (try typing that really fast), South Africa. Just me and my cat and my notepad. Next year this time, I'm hoping to be in rural village, japan. I thought that a blog would be a convenient way for my friends to get a taste of what i'm up to, a million miles away.

this is how I know I have way too much free time on my hands - Applications for the JET programme has not even opened yet, and I'm already posting in my blog that doesn't exist to keep people updated with the life that I do not even lead. I've already decided which books I'll take with to Japan, because I'd feel lost without some reading material. i've limited myself to five, and according to today's reasoning, these five books are:

1) Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Robert M. Pirzig *note - confirm later) - because I only read the first forty pages before giving up, and I think it's an essential read. Must get own copy first.

2) The tao of health, sex & longevity by Daniel Reid - because this book will go wherever I go. It's a user manual to the human body, and my bible. It's wonderful for referencing. You say your kidneys hurt? Wait, lemme see, hmm yes you need to drink some cucumber and beet smoothies, off you go. Next!

3) Atlas shrugged, We the living, and Fountainhead by Anne Ryand - The fact that's it is three books is a technicality. If i count them seperately, I won't have space for

4) An Afrikaans book - If i'm gonna be stuck on a little island where I don't even know whether I'm in the male of female toilets, i'd like to have some reading in my mother tongue. It's a beautiful language, a bit rough around the edges, but jam-packed with onomatopoeia, which makes for delicious reading (and even better writing).

5) Application for position still open.

as a disclaimer - I chose to write in English because it is the language of the world, and the Net that binds it together. I prefer Afrikaans, but in case there's some wool-headed girl out there trying to blogspot some JET writings, I'd like to make this understandable, world-wide. The thought that I'm a vernacular traitor is made redundant by the fact that there a few blogs that I desperately wanted to read, but couldn't, because they were in freaking french or ali baba language. So yes, for your reading convenience this blog is dubbed into the language of microsoft and google, the language that is supposed to unite the world, the language i'm planning to use as my excuse to go chill in the East.

No News Is No News

When my landlady knocked on my window to check if I was still alive, I realised that I really am not home all that often.

When the check-out girl at the supermarket said, “You really like red wine, hey?”, I realised that I might be overdoing the glassss-a-night thing.

When my daily friends kept asking why I haven’t posted anything on my blog recently, I realised that I’ve been neglecting my blogging.

I haven’t been neglecting my writing, as I spend many an evening in front of my pc with my cat on the monitor, a heater at my back, and a glass of wine in my hand. Another evening in Dronkwordspruit. It’s just that I’ve been pouring my arbitrary analysis and petty pet hates into personal emails. But I’m still writing. It’s my biggest addiction.

With two weeks, one day and 5 hours left of life as a food tech green-cap, I have been stuck on a mental analysis of my current situation. Just to kinda get a grip on what exactly it is that I’ll be leaving behind. And I’ve realised that I’m living a pretty damn comfortable life. I’m financially independent. I’ve got amazing friends. I’ve got a promising career ahead of me. I really dig my job. I love South Africa. I love the people. Even with many things missing from my life, I’m happier than some people will ever be.

So this is the perfect time to give everything up. It’s the clever way, like walking out of the casino when you’ve won your bucks. Thanks, much appreciated, check you later. Leaving a pseudo-perfect life behind means that my move is out of choice, not out of circumstance. I’m not running away from anything. I’m not leaving in fear of my future. I’m not seeking greener pastures. The grass I’m feeding on is pretty damn green. But I’ve never grazed on Japanese grass, which is more than enough reason to do it.

We’ve only got one planet. Go explore it.

I Don't Dream

This picture has been floating around in my head the past few days. It was the first Dali I ever saw, in a book about dreams or psychology, something of the subconscious.
Can't remember, I was very young..

Speak Softly

I've been so manically busy at work the past few weeks, that I haven't checked out my friends' blogs in quite a while. I don't see them half as often as I'd like, so The Blog plays a convenient, yet sterile role in me knowing what's going on in their lives. Make do with what you have.

I gave up on cleaning schedules and micro reports, and decided to wander down their mind lanes for a while. It left me feeling the way that I feel after witnessing any great work of art - both inspired and despondent. But for different reasons, this time around.

Be kind to people you meet for the first time - every person is fighting their own personal battle.

Experiencing A Slight Change In Pressure

My options are limited:

1) Take an aimless walk around the factory

2) Phone a friend

3) De-scale the kettle

I've already done 1 and 2, and option 3 will have to wait a while, as I'm letting the water cool down for my umpteenth super-sized cup of green tea. No one should have to be at work at 4 o' clock on a Sunday afternoon. I'd rather be sitting outside with the sun on my face, reading the Sunday newspaper. But eh, you can't always do what you want. If you could have, free will would have lost it's novelty years ago.

All the white men who work nightshift here look like pedophiles with hidden collections of kitty and kiddy porn in their basements. And toy trains. I greet them with a friendly smile, but from afar, in fear that they might smell me. There's a younger nightshift guy who looks like a really scary Wolverine. Imagine Wolverine on meth for 6 days straight, lost in an industrial area. Wearing dark blue overalls. Scary people.

Yesterday, I took a manic drive from work to home to Pretoria, making my way to a non-compulsory JET Q&A session at the Embassy. Initially, I decided to go to check out my fellow jets, but in the end the gathering proved to be informative. Fortunately or unfortunately (I've yet to make up my mind), I've been researching Japan/JET like a crazylady for almost a year now. My brain is super-saturated with island info. Please, I'm looking for a distraction. Tell me a story, or invite me to something.

Time to de-scale that kettle, I think.

Sunrise in Bronkhorstspruit, Moonrise in Delta Park

Afrikaners is Plesierig

What I do when I visit my parents:
1) Eat as much candy as I can
2) Catch up on all my internet time (because work days does not allow for tea, lunch or casual surfing)

I've also been catching up on reading alternative Afrikaans online articles. Die boys (and the occasional skurwe girl) from the watkykjy team had me sniggering in front of the pc like an idiot. Moerse funny artikels. Dis my tipe people - born and bred in die Vaal Driehoek, 'n tersiêre geskiedenis in Pretoria, en 'n bitter siniese uitkyk met 'n tikkie galg humor. Love it.


Verontskuldiging
Alle pics in hierdie post is ge-rightclick, gesave en gesteel van watkykjy.co.za af. Dankie, ek waardeer dit. Spaar my die moeite.

Manzini Memories

Should you ever find yourself in Swaziland, be sure to drive past Mbabane, onwards to Manzini and stop at House on Fire. It's worth every lush grassy hill.

This is also my 100th blog entry, so let's open that bottle of champagne...

Lost Pixellation

Kid's colours. Bright red and turquoise are kid's colours.
It whispers to the brain to move into nostalgia mode. It begs for memories to be recalled.

Orange, on the other hand, is the colour of winter and tigers and citrus and institutionalised crazies, and monks, walking through mountains, holding umbrellas. It's a jacket zipped up to hide 'Easily Distracted'. Not many people wear orange. I'm very greatful for that.

On the subject of colour (a recurring theme), I wanted to comment on the spectacular clouds that were featured in the post below.

All four pics were taken while driving from my current home to my childhood home. It's a two hour drive (if traffic has not completely tapered out) on a long, farmstyle road that eventually curves past the airport. Before you actually hit traffic, you drive through this amazing landscape with a full, 360 degree view of the surroundings.

What I love about that road, is that you can look in four different directions, and see four different skies. 1 o' clock presented a grey sky with darkened smudges of rain, connecting the earth and the clouds. 4 -5 o' clock had a rain of a different kind: every shade of yellow, orange and gold pouring down from the sun, discolouring the clouds at such a sneaky tempo that every time I glanced, it was a completely different scene, each more breathtaking than the previous. My rear-view mirror displayed an innocent baby-blue sky with little white cartoon clouds. Looking over my left shoulder, I could see two rainbows drawn next to each other. A horison filled with colours.

The point is:
I was struggling to keep my eyes on the road. So many other things to look at. And I thought that I could not remember such amazing skies. Then I realised - Approximately a year ago, I was driving to my parents' place, on the very same road, struggling just as hard to keep my eyes on the road, when I was pulled over by cops. Speeding and swerving. I did get a fine, but talked it down, telling him the truth: My eyes were not on my speedometer, but on the clouds.

Because I'm Practical

I really do dig my hair. The supposed Winona Ryder style (huh, Ree?). So I shaved it again tonight. To be more specific, my brother shaved it for me, between snips and giggles. I just realised I wore the same freaking shirt the first day I shaved my head (scalp-skeer). Got the shirt from on of my weirdass female flatmates from my Pretoria days. The girl whose boyfriend worked at a butchery, and was addicted to Grandpas. The headache powder; not inverted peadophilia.

The point of the post (not all that comfortable splashing my face over my blog - especially not in a "before and after!" mediocre make-over setup.)
The point of the post was the following: I like having a mess of hair. So, to be really practical, I timed my hairgrowth that it would be of a messable lenght by the time I get to Nippon. No cutting, styling, brushing or serious washing in my future! Never thought I'd be blogging about my hair. Wonder if I'm slowly turning into a real girl. Best I stop while I'm a-head...

Autumn in BHS

I remember when I moved into Bronkhorstspruit, I saw the letters 'BHS' everywhere; on rubbish bins, on electricity boxes, on streetlamps and manhole covers.
"Wow," I thought, "The local High school must be very active in the community service thing," misreading the HS as "high school". It was, in fact, "horstspruit" (what a cool combination of letters).

I love my little house, I love my sample garden and the missing tree and the fact that I can get onto my roof in 9 seconds and I love autumn and the colours of the dorp and I'll miss it but I shall remember it.

Future Rewards

The sheer goodness of my moodness lately is due to a combination of things. Part of it is the country-hopping expedition that is one day closer every day. I knew that I’d be going to Japan in July, but hearing the name of my future home-away-from-home just added to the reality of it all. In a little over two months (damn, still so far away) my new address will end with Niimi, Okayama prefecture, Japan. I’m as excited as a kid waiting for Christmas, and my current reality is suffering because my head is already on the island. No, my current reality is enhanced; it’s just my work that has regressed from being arbitrary to now being ridiculous. I do try to focus, I just forget to do so sometimes.

They say that you don’t realise how much something means to you until you lose it. So what happens when you know that you’re going to lose something in the near future? You appreciate it more than ever before, while you still have it. A future that involves leaving is a wonderful filter through which to perceive your world. I breathe in every morning and every night. I feel the stable earth of Africa under my feet, and sit hypnotised under the African skies. Autumn has transformed my town into a kaleidoscope of colours. Once again, I love this place. Every visit with my friends and family is a chance to absorb their presences while I still can. In my mind, I’m collecting images and moments. In my head, I’m saying goodbye to everything that means something to me. Every day is lived as if it’s the last – because the last day of this phase is just around the corner.

I should have taken my camera with. But, this having been my second funeral ever, I was a bit uncertain as to the correct funeral etiquette. Is it rude to take photos? Do you say ‘cry!’ instead of ‘smile!’ when pushing the button? In the end, I left it at home, and regretted it within the first 20 minutes of driving:

The road to Nigel is long and straight. It runs in between farms and small dorpies. The red soil has discoloured the tarmac into a pink-brown strip that carries on forever, over flat hills. I drove past a guy on a donkey-cart who waved as I moved to the other lane to pass him. A little bit further on, there was a black guy in a blue overall next to the road, clutching a white, awkward-looking chicken in each of his hands. Harvest-debris rolled up into huge balls of animal feed, so big that you mistake them for cows from afar. Black cows on a pale brown land. Brown. Winter is brown; all shades of brown. Luckily the sunsets are a picturesque pink and blue.

What Does One Wear To A Funeral?

The previous post was about life. This one is going to be about death. The two sides of the existence coin.

My uncle died last Friday. He’d been fighting cancer for a while, but the disease had a good start, and won the battle in the end. My perception of death has been on my mind a lot the past week, and I realised that I’m so calm about it that it borders on being blasé. I doubt that I’m ever going to feel sad about his passing. I even really enjoyed the funeral. Like stepping into an 80’s movie, I watched friends and family hold hands, exchange long hugs, an look at each other with half-smiles, not saying anything. The unspoken languages. I love it.

I suppose I just enjoyed watching people swell with emotion, confusion, relief; death and life intertwined into every moment. People from the past. So many people whose paths crossed with his – I could trace my memories of their family just by glancing around and spotting the familiar faces of people I met years ago. People that I’ll never know. Maybe I just enjoy seeing humans being human.

Funeral moods:

I think the funeral to aspire to, is the one at the end of Big Fish. A big party in the memory of the deceased, and everyone is laughing through their tears. Today’s funeral reminded me of that, just more.. Afrikaans. Subdued. Relief and love: That was the mood. What would the mood be like at the funeral of a teen suicide? Or a car accident victim? Sudden deaths. Disbelief? Heart-wrenching sobs that haunt you years after?

Here’s to happy funerals.

Star Struck

...I'm kinda...

...hypnotised...


I kinda... lost..
..my..


structure of thought


...along the way...

people can be

very addictive
....people...
can feel like home...

From Pretoria with Love

I've been missing this dude a bit. Especially over the weekend, driving down roads that used to lead to his house. Especially after just reading his blog update.

He's in Sicily at the moment, soaking up sun and eating pasta, and it sounds like he's well, which makes me miss him a little bit less and even more.

Cheers dude, I'll see you in 2007. Oh, I changed our destination to one island east from Koh Samui. Check out Koh Panang when you get the chance. We'll have the party of our lives.

The High Cost of Living

To confirm my acceptance into the JET program, I had get myself checked out by a doctor. Even after having been a salarygirl for 1.5 years, I still scrape the bottom of the barrel, come end of the month. So when I found out that all the local rip-off doctors were going to require a few hundred rands from me for tests and x-rays, I decided to phone a friend.

Eric has been one of my friends for years now. We even went to our high school matric farewell together. Our paths split during uni years, and after tertiary education, we ended up living half an hour’s drive away from each other. He’s a doctor-in-training in a government hospital, and he totally agreed to play doctor in order for my JET form to be completed. I drove through after work, arrive, eat a chocolate Easter bunny’s head, and mission off to the hospital.

First, I have to open a file. Eric hands me a slip of paper which says ‘CASUALTY’. Cool.

“Go to the counter. Tell them that you drank a lot of pills. You need to be admitted. Remember: You’re overdosing on pills.”

I hadn’t planned on playing sick. Pills? What a siff way to try and kill yourself. Stomach pumping and all that. I take my place in the queue of three people and try imagine why I’d drink too many pills. I decide that I’d been visiting some dodgy friends, who dared me to swallow a handful of pills, which I did, because I am dodgy. And I wait. I hold my stomach. And I wait. I run my hands through my hair, repeatedly (all the better to shape an afro, my child). And I wait. I rock back a forth. And I wait 25 minutes before the guy at the counter finished flirting with his dying patient, and I get to open my file.

I shuffle over to the counter (pills. I drank pills), take my seat, and groan a “Sawubona” to the chick behind the glass panel. She doesn’t return my greeting. She just stares at me with crazy eyes. Finally, she speaks:

“Don’t take this the wrong way but.. are you a man or a lady?”

Her comment shatters my suicide facade, and I burst out laughing. So much for dying, eh? As a fan of androgyny, she unwittingly gave me the biggest compliment. I quit pretending to be dying, and she happily fills out my form. I become an official patient of the inadequate South African Governmental hospital system.

Next step: x-rays of my lungs, to check for da TB. My suicide becomes stupidity:

“Just tell them that you swallowed a pin, and you experienced shortness of breath afterwards, and you need to get an x-ray of your lungs”

Another 25 minutes wasted on cheap plastic seats. I walk around, reading leaflets on breast feeding and poems about death. I get my x-rays and have it analysed. Even with a history of smoking, my lungs are in prime condition (I thank Taoist breathing exercises). My clavicle has healed (I have the best collarbone x-rays, defined by screws and plates). My piss is pure. My blood pressure is textbook. My eyes are 20/20 all the way. My heart beats 80 times per minute. I am sane. I am free.

Slavery Is Not Job Creation

If I were a vegetarian, I’d probably be a mellow fanatic. I wouldn’t wear leather shoes, I wouldn’t eat jelly babies that contains gelatine form mammalian sources, my catfood would be dolphin friendly. When there’s a mindset that I disagree with, I refuse to be part of anything that supports that mindset. And this leads me back to my job.

Obviously, the aim of any major company is to make money. Minimum expenditures for maximum profits. But when is the price you pay too high? The company I work for is situated conveniently close to an informal settlement. This means that they (I refuse to say “we”) can dip their greedy hands into the struggling community and provide them with jobs. Some job creation is better than no job creation, but after hearing some behind-the-scenes info, I cannot imagine how the company’s owners sleep at night.

a) Some big bosses came to visit the factory, and noticed that we were using raw materials that had expired more than a month before. They made a big hoo-ha, the managers made a big hoo-ha, and everyone passed the buck until it landed on the poor sod who issues the products from the fridges. They opened a disciplinary action against him, humiliated him in a few shouting matches, and finally suspended him from his bottom-of-the-barrel fridge-packer job. Once the big bosses left the building, our managers recalled all the rejected raw materials and insisted that the factory continue using them. Because it still smells alright, and is worth a lot of money. They are rolling around in double standards and new cars, and the fridge guy now has no way to support his family.

b) Yesterday I found out that some people get payed not per hour, but per weight of raw material/product they prepare. This is grand, because the harder you work, the more you earn. Incentive? Not here. The line of ladies who spend every day on their feet, from 6 am to 3 pm, cutting raw meat into 1x5 cm strips are paid by the bucket. R6.00 per bucket filled. It takes them a goof few hours to fill a bucket. The ladies who cut spinach have it even worse: They are paid 50 cents per kilogram of spinach prepared. Spinach is feather-light, especially when cut. It takes them an average of four hours to cut a kilo of spinach. That’s 12.5 cents per hour. South African cents. That translates to $0.01 per hour, working with sharp knives and standing on your feet for 9 hours.

 

This company is grating against my moral grain.

 

Vanilla

Very tired. I've been almost falling asleep all over the show. Today, the rest of the country is sleeping in and having breakfast in bed in the name of Family Day. The bakery manager asked me what the date is. "It's the 17th today," I replied. "It's supposed to be family day." I haven't seen my family in months. I also haven't even seen an easter egg, and Easter is basically over. After having spent my Easter at work, the bakery man crushes the last little wakefulness I had by replying: "Oh, but this is where you should be today. This company is your family now."
Three months and counting. I'm resigning on the 14th of June.

The past week or so has brought forth a series of extremely ironic events. So many absurd interactions with semi-strangers that I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet. I suppose I'll have to let it sink in first, do some mental filing, sexual admin. But first, I need to get through the day. QC sessions and cleaning training awaits in a company that go against the grain of human rights. They are slave drivers. Im referring to the poor black people they use as the cogs & wheels for profit. This is me, digressing. Back to the point:
I do believe that, as humans, we rock individually and connect invisibly. But I forgot that we do. Until recently I've been picking up small connections between me and the semi-strangers. Picking up the phone just seconds before I get an sms from samesame - six times in a row. Or dreaming the burn's blog address - and being out with two letters. It's always the little things that kill, the little things that thrill.
And the main act in this lip-synch circus has yet to make his entrance..

I Am Near

In three months' time, you'll find me on a different corner. I'll be here. Where? Somewhere. I don't know yet. I'll know by mid-May, and I'll steal another map from Google and add it into a post. All I know at this moment is that I still have to get arond to a doctor so that he can analyse my piss and observe my cough.

And tell the friendly JET people that 'm lesharpa to cross the ocean. That I'm free of TB and HIV and MSG and LSD.

The other thing that I do know, is that I'll be taking ground in Tokyo on 31/07. Damnit, we're only in 04 now. So close, but yet so far.. I love saying it. "I'll be landing inTokyo...." The words sound alien, coming from my mouth. But I can get used to it. Let me say that again.. I'll be landing in Tokyo...

I Am Here

This is where I am currently geographically situated. If you follow the red arrows, circling around a specific spot like patient vultures, you will more or less get an idea of where I stay.

Ag shite, no arrows. Well, this is the town where I stay. I live in the "Bester" area, which consists of the main square in the map. "Erasmus" is to the left, comprising a grand total of 15 streets, most of which have animal names. Elephant Street. Lion Street. Zebra Street. I don't know or care much about the "Masada" area, but I suspect that alcoholism and wife-beating is a national sport on that side of the dorp.

Drive straight North across the bean-shaped province, the province that is neither Orange, nor Free, nor a a State. Cross the border into the former Transvaal, now remaned to a more politically soothing "Gauteng Province", GP, gangster's paradise. Drive on and on like a halycon, until you reach the Other Mother City. Ons sal lewe ons sal sterwe, ons vir jou Pretoria. Five years of my life spent there. Five years that changed me so much I have no idea to return to what I used to be, and no desire to do it either. Pretoria swallowed me whole, chewed me up, spat me out, played with me and wiped off the film of drool. I'm still clammy and slightly dented, but I've been to places I cannot describe with words.

When you get to Pretoria (also identifiable by the name "Tswane") turn right and drive for 30 minutes. I'll be waiting on the corner. I'll be the chick with the frazzled grey-and-white beanie tripping over my words, spare toothbrush in my pocket. Because you never know.

Map of the World

So I've been accepted into the JET program.
I have three months left in the country with the most beautiful sunrises
(rumour has it)
only three months left in the job that I lost all passion for
I'm too sleepy to type now.
Maybe later.

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.

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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.

EarthFireCatWater

Moerse.

I've seen better photos of me playing fire. But I'm trying to work with what I have.
Scene : Parking lot next to a row of blue and red postboxes.
My brain is the internet.
It's good to walk, what a lovely night.
I've gotta go to TEFL class. Now, not that night,
Infinite initiative start something and finish it.

If you turn your head 90 degrees.. no, to the right.. it almost looks like a 'tsu'. Keep your head upright and it could be a mirror-image 'U'. Putting the "u" in marilu.

gotta go.