Day Seven and Eight

The latest Facebook Japan debate.


Sorry for the combo, I've been working and testing and essaying. But now that that's all done, I am blogging. Again.


And I want to address an interesting little fight between the human rights activists and the animal rights activists. (I know, mistake number one that they make is to think that you have to choose one of the causes only.) They're getting hot and steamy on peoples' walls, throwing irrational conclusions at one another and generally creating a war against those who think the Japanese community got what they deserved.


Call me a purist but I think that no matter how much you don't like someone, or someones, they do not deserve to suffer the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives. They are not "getting what's coming to them" nor is it "karma". I hereby dub it A Natural Disaster, with disaster having the nasty connotation of being the ruining and altering of lives, land, luxury and lotssofmoney.


So if you haven't heard, someone brought the phrase "The Cove" into an earthquake/tsunami/radioactive Japan. The Cove is a documentary on the massacre of over 23 000 dolphins off Japan's coast each year. It is not legal and is underhand. This meat is sold as whale meat and in which toxic levels of mercury are found.

(This video is ohkay for the squeemish.)

Basically, due to this immoral act, outspoken nobody's are saying that Japan deserved the Natural Disaster. I love dolphins, and am strongly for the protest against dolphin slaughter. And I love people. The key issue in this argument is that people want you choose a side: either the dolphins or the people. People choosing the dolphins generally are the ones saying that they will not pray for Japan and Japan and its people deserved it. People for Japan, are more open-minded.






To settle this argument, take The Most Famous Dr. Seuss's words, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Use these words and get involved in these two worthy causes! 


Here's the link to help the Japanese Red Cross Relief: http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/relief/l4/Vcms4_00002070.html


And here's the link to The Cove's page: www.ecojoia.com

Day Six

Google translate. Who knew?


A blackberry, while annoying with people constantly on theirs, is absolutely indispensable to a language student. Take, for instance, this morning.


I planned to have read through Antony and Cleopatra which we were going to discuss in English today, on the weekend. Instead I focused on our two 800-words-a-pop essays on the short stories and plays, which is due on Wednesday, the same day as my Philosophy test (and yes. I do have a waitressing shift on Tuesday evening.) Last night I stayed up doing philosophy homework, after the dresswashing, and went to bed after 12. 


So basically, walking to English from my Philosophy tut, I had no real grasp of the play. Google: "Antony and Cleopatra". Second search result: Sparknotes. In the ten minutes before class started I gathered what the play was about and probably in a better extent than those who had struggled through Shakespeare's words. That's not to say that I won't read it, only that I haven't. Yet. Also, when asked to follow Act I Scene I, I could. Word for word and heavybook free!


Next up was French conversation. Emanuelle, our lecturer, wanted us to focus on: Mon rever et mon passion. My dreams and passions. Gosh.

So the only thing that came to mind was the most amazing, world renown concert about which I have heard and read many wonderful things. Glastonbury.

It is biggest music concert in the world, with all my favourite bands playing, and more. And more. And more. It is mind boggling.
I want to go soooooo badly!

This is Vampire Weekend at Glastonbury 2010.

So this was my dream in French for today. To sound like a natural, and a smart arse, me and Google Translate did our thing and voilá! I was oh-so-knowledgeable when it was my turn to speak. Again, in my French tutorial later on, I was describing my day with nifty little phrases. To top it all off, I responded in length to a friend's French wall post in highly efficient and completely grammatical-error-free text! 

Tonight, while I'm learning for Philosophy, I send a thought out to Nick and Wesley and the rest of our Ikey Tigers, and wish them well in their match against UJ!

Day Five

I worked yesterday. In my dress...


As with any waitressing job, when starting off at a new place you start at the bottom of the food chain, aka. 
A runner.
A runner does all things knitty gritty. So I was polishing glasses, folding napkins and pizza boxes, sending the dumb waitor up. And down. And up again. Emptying and loading and polishing and wiping...


Nam-learning and pizza-glancing and wine-looking and stairs-climbing left me exhausted but satisfied. The pizza, pasta and grill style of Basilico (http://www.basilico.co.za/) combined with its child-friendly (with dough and shape cutters and plastic rollers for the kids!) and friendly managers makes the ambiance of this newly redone restaurant.

This is Basilico's famous pizza, the Basilico.

A R20 taxi fare back to granny's, desperate supper-stuffing and crawling into bed left me thoroughly exhausted, in a satisfied sort of way.


Today was essay-writing and church-going. Sat in on the youth group at my church, St. Andrews, of which I may take charge and tried out an awesome church of my friends', Church on Main, for their evening service. Great people, a message to increase preaching and coffee served me well! I think I'm going to head back to that one. A long stop at friends' digs for supper and chilling, leaves me exhausted as I get shipped back to res.


Superwashing awaits my dear dresses as soon as I get back!


Sweet dreams to all of you still out there!

Day Four

I had a lot planned for today. I was going to read Antony and Cleopatra (at least once), learn how to ride my bike in my dress, go for a swim, tidy my room, go running, camp off at granny's...and get a job.

I expected a lot from myself on this Saturday.

Instead. I woke up at 10 am.

My roommate and I, in a just-missed-breakfast-daze, wondered aimlessly what to do with ourselves. Luckily, someone had organised this for us: yes. We were going to the market at the Labia Theatre! Overjoyed that we could take a free Jammie Shuttle there, we agreed to meet at 11:40, the time that the bus was due to leave. Polly (roomie) and I get down there at 11:43.

Aimlessly wondering has never been more effective. We in the end, pooled with an art student and taxied down to the theatre. Once there, having met up with our friends, downing a strawberry slushie, having a peek into the oldest theatre in Cape Town (which, behind the heavy ochre curtain, was busy showing 127 Hours..) we became completely and utterly lost in second-hand glory.

The market was a bustle of indie. Records were playing from an old gramophone, the flocking pigeons flew overhead like they did for Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, people were trailing clothes to the loo (used as a make-shift change room), store owners were hiding from the sun under umbrellas and hats, and playing cards in the shade of the clothes racks on the ground.

A place for bargains, there were shorts for R50 and jackets for R130. We caught the Jammie back at 2pm, and I'm quickly packing for my planned trek to granny's. Going to have a trial shirt at a restaurant called "Basilico" tonight. They said dress in black. How appropriate.

Fingerscrossed.

Day Three

Static.

This is my first issue with this dress. It tickles my arms while the hair on them stands up straight, attentively awaiting orders from the dress which will issue the command for me to be shocked. It hasn't happened...yet. For now, I'm staying away from all trampolines, all plastic chairs and all giant metal popcorn bowls . The result thereof? Avoidance of all children's parties. (And that includes digs parties...which I'm missing as I plonk away on this keyboard.)

So as I hibernate in my res room in my pyjamas snacking on crunchy corn thins , with the hardest thing in my life being the fact that I have to wear the same pretty dress every single day and that it's making me a teensy bit static, I feel like an utter brat.


Japan has just had a huge disaster, what with earthquakes and tsunamis and oil refinery fires, potential nuclear leaks and the loss of many lives as a result thereof, and I can look at their shock and horror on my laptop screen while contently crunching down a corn thin. If I had a choice and if university did not nag for a pass from me I would love to fly over there and do what I could to help. Instead, I am useless to them.


So as my pathetic attempt at sympathising with one clock tick of a country, I want to accentuate its beauty through nothing other than Static. Take a moment and appreciate Japan and the art which was created because of it. It is truly mesmerising.





Here is what Tokyo looks like as of today.

Let's all keep these people in our thoughts and prayers!

Day Two

Testing, one two! 

Weather is a child. It plays with you, messes with you and just when you think it has had its fun it goes and makes a public mockery with you. 

I think it kindly realised that I was wearing a bra with straps that stick out, so it insisted on me staying desperately in my jersey to hide this and boots as a small compromise for as my bare legs and their overgrownness (in need of a shave) rustled, quite literally, in the wind.

Hats are no obstacles for wind, nor are dresses apparently. We did Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" in english today which makes my life very poetic, what with Shelley describing the clouds and the oceans and me describing my white white hot pants and hairy legs and shrieks.

And if you, like my aunt are asking what about the "shoe(ness)" (that was all her!) then look no further! Here are the two items which kept me alive on this windy autumnish day.

(The hat is on an original Yoighänder Bessa I, which is a prop of fun in my res room. It points towards a giant block of cheese stuck on the wall, and why that is there is a whole other story, for a whole other blog. Check it out on www.andartattacksagain.blogspot.com/2011/01/choice-notes.html .)

These are my amazing black boots. They are soft. They are comfy. They lace up. They take me everywhere. (They are from Aldo if you want a pair. (Cavendish Mall, Cape Town to be exact).)

So today I was nearly cold, did the whole varsity thing, did the whole free arm band for student night thing, and the whole go-to-granny-for-lunch thing only to find out that she was not there and I didn't have my key and so I had to listen to her neighbour disgruntle at the weeping oak tree thing. And then I did the whole grocery thing, the whole supper thing and the whole plan thing.

Now I'm doing the dress thing to do the dance thing, at the thing called Tiger.

(This is the thing- Fink).

Day One

It's all about the......dress.

It is day one of lent here, Ash Wednesday, and I am on my way (-ish. I haven't been fetched yet) to St. Andrew's service down in good old Newlands. (Will try snap a picture on  my lousy 2MP Blackberry camera, no flash. Don't rely on that being a success story!)

Going to get ash crossed on my forehead, say my prayers and hope above all hopes that I will come out of this A CONQUERER! (tadaaah! -and that's not TADA (Teenagers Against Drug Abuse for those people who's crescendo into life has also been ruined because of a silly school society.))

So the reason. For the blackness. And the simpleness. Of the dressness. (And speaking of the suffix "-ness". I think it's wonderful. It adds emotion to every object, every thing suddenly is said with love, all by suffixizing (my own little neologism there, my english tutor would be so proud) a once-ordinary word. 

I have even changed the name of a friend of mine because of this. It's interesting to see how something so seemingly insignificant can change the whole way you view some thing....for instance, he hates it. And I? I love him all the more for it.)

Why oh why oh why?

What is the point? Well. a.) Style. It's a self-reflective, wish fulfilling, happy-maker materialistic completely superficial thing that I love. b.) Society makes us follow society. Like it or not, we do it. We know to wear X, not wear Y and if wearing both X and Y to do Z. I'm not saying we all follow fashion, no. We don't. 

Exhibit A. (For Nicole).

c.) So every day we, and the other 6.9 billion people, decide what to wear. Sure, we justify this by activities and weather and and and. And everyone does it. We are all conformists.

I have decided to give up this conforming for lent and to wear the same simple black dress every day and night.

The most important question of course is what does this dress look like? It's the swinging, hair flinging girl in a dress which is me in what is The Dress.

What are the dressfacts of the day?

My roommate and I went to the park below our res, we snapped some pictures. I went to church, now have an ashen cross on my forehead.

All in a all. A good start!