Day Twelve

Last night saw me adding another category of non-dress wearing to my category. Yes, you definitely did not guess it, but I have officially started work! So now it leaves me as a clothesmortal in pyjamas, exercising clothes AND work clothes. So now that I'm a working girl, I have more money to spend on not-clothes. 
Love-er-ly.

But yesterday morning is my focus of this page.

I have started helping out at my church's youth group, or "Children's Church" as they ridiculously renamed Sunday School. And it was my first lessonthing.

What on earth do you speak about to a handful (yes, only a handful) of "teens" from 12-20??
I was definitely not the "cool" person there. But my message had to be cool.

So I spent Saturday night trying to be cool.

And I decided to speak about the messages of God in cool bands. Like U2. And Bruno Mars. Adele. Mumford and Sons. The Fray. Bob Dylan...

I focussed on U2's song, 40, which is an interpretation of Psalm 40.

And then Bluetoothed and swindled my way into their cellphones (and hearts) and sent them coolsongs. They had to listen to them and tell everyone later what their song meant.

 This suddenly, like a string to a helium balloon, grounded me. It made me realise that I take meaning from some songs, and ignore the meaning of others. I take The Fray's "You Found Me" quite literally, without even a second thought on the matter. Where as Mumford and Sons' "Roll Away Your Stone" deserves a whole thesis, in my eyes. I feel so stupidly unconscious towards all meanings that I, from hereonout, will take more time to give a thought at what an artist could possibly mean. And what that song means to me.

Teaching really is the only way to learn.

Day Eleven

Today is about to turn into tomorrow and I have accumulated enough zombieness these past few days to stop caring.

Saturday saw our bright and eagerlystarving tummies to The Old Biscuit Mill's Neighbourhood Goods Market. Pity it was on the hottest day of Cape Town's year! I have never felt it necessary to buy two smoothies and an ice lollie is the space of one hour before..... now I can tick that one off the list at least!

In the evening we had full intentions of going to watch an amaaaaazing South African band, Die Heuwels Fantasties, in the Company Gardens in town before the Long Street Carnival, celebrating Human Right's Day.

Heat was our time slower so we came late but just in time for candyfloss in the park! (And of course, to watch two friends embrace....and midway both of them standing in steaming horsemanure which the great-sense-of-humour police horses had left behind.)

At the parade you couldn't walk without bumping into prams and camping chairs and old granny's perms and dreadlocks. The coolthing about the parade was the animals (like the dino below...) They were giant and worn by puppeteers and moved amazingly. With a coolresemblance to Headwig, and owl flew up and down the streets, but the crowd were taken away by the ostrich races, for which two men were made into the ostrich puppet. Everyone went beserk!

(Speaking of Dinosaurs, a side note, with a side link and a YouTube buffering to Dinosaur- Jax Panik. He was playing at the concert we missed. He, coincidently, also puts his name to this song, the song for which my sister has been MK drooling for days, just to hear it. I hope that while we're sitting here at Cocoa Wah Wah she'll use her 40 free megabytes and listen to it to end her maddening tvtakeover.)

It was sweating with capacity.

 Luckily we all decided to have a drink at a nearby hotel and left pretty early.

Nevertheless, the spectators became the mob. We were driving (just us girls in a soft-roofed BMW) through bumpertobumper traffic past the crowds. Suddenly a group of guys came to the car and were knocking on our windows and trying to open the doors and roof. So really, we had lavish living, carnivalattending and adrenaline pumping all in one night. All in all, perfect blogging material.

Our quirky night ended with having drinks with friends at Forries and then a scramble of writing my lesson for childrenschurch the next morning!

Day Ten

Last night was great.

Nothing is impossible: when needing to wear green for St. Paddy's  and having only a black dress do not fear! Get Nicole's step-mom's Polo Sport tank top and customise your dress until you have a skirt! Problem....what problem?!

It involved the opening of corked wine bottles with knives, the cleaning of the wine splatters from all over the walls because of the knife opening, the pinning  of size 14 dresses on the Jammie Shuttle while trying to hold the hidden (and open) wine between your boots.  And then stopping off for our own artwork creation with plastic glasses and an R. Mutt sticker in the Hiddingh loo of course.

R. Mutt. (Famous work on urinals by Duchamp, a Dadaism artist).

Our edition to Duchamp's work and Dadaism (making useful object useless).

"Engaged". 

(What sort of immature people laugh at engagement you may ask...)

Nicole and I did the whole thing. We went to Dubliners, the home of the Guiness beer and green drinks with 80’s music to singalong to. We went to Mr Pickwick’s for a moment of marvel. We went to goodnessknowswhere and had goodnessknowswhat and had goodnesknowshow the best of fun!

All in all, everybody was out to celebrate.

This morning left us with smells of smoke, cut feet and tired eyes, but the enthusiasm to get up and prepare for tonight’s fun nevertheless! Wine under oaks with friends on blankets, an old VW van to Chinese food (with the most realest Chinese person) and famouslookalike friends denying their similarities based on homophobic views found us having the best of an evening!

Home now, and to bed we go (after watching Garden State, of course!)

(Still) Day Nine

Before I go out into the wild rush of the Saint of all Patrick's, I'd like to share with you The Most Awesome (Green) Shoes In The Entire World.

The most awesome Be Delicious pose in the world:

Not this one.

This one.

The best (and most stereotyped) poster St. Paddy's Day poster in the world:

Have a good one!

Day Nine

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Now it's just after 2am and I'm exhausted so excuse the typos and the general sense of non-sense going on here. But today is a nonsense-filled day! We just came back from an epicccc night at Zula!

It is on Long St. (which is arguably the best street in Cape Town, come day, come night. It's the sort of street you walk down and people are leaning against a lumpy old car with a guitar, a girl is singing along and the other members of the group are smoking and listening quietly while leaning against the car and nearby shop windows. It's just wonderful.) www.zulabar.co.za. 

Anyway, we sat at a table on the balcony watching gourmet pizzas pass us as we sipped our aperitifs in the hot humid heat. With vanilla cigarettes fuming the air, we looked across to the bead shop, watched a topless middle-aged man quizzically and generally waited eagerly...to watch Step Dog perform.

They have, in my opinion, a The Kooks-meets-Kings of Leon-with-a-bit-of-Bubléontheside sort of a sound. 

They are stunning.

After a quick stop at Maccy Dee's, we went on to catch the bus back home. In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, we decided to make card cut outs of a Four Leafed Clover and stick them in the green traffic lights outside res. (I got the idea from my friend, Georga, who photographed a heart made in the red light.) I found some old Simba chips box outside Mac Donald's and away we went.

Cynthia had a pencil in her bag (luckily!) and with it I drew a terrible shape. With a little help from everyone, the clover came into being. We arrived back at res and quickly made the cut-outs and coloured them in (with my awesome crayons: Ferbies!) Thanks to Graeme's tallness and a handy unused crate, we stuck (with the scavenged prestick that Cynthia and I gathered) the cards up fairly easily.

Drive down Main Road past Lower Campus to see them today!

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!