Spindrifting South African sea monkey

New blog

2010-03-01T06:15:00.000Z

Hi everyone,

I have migrated to my new blog site! It is very much a blog in progress, so I hope you will be patient with design disasters and stuff. But if you want to keep reading, you can now find me at

southafricanseamonkey.co.za

I hope to see all my bloggy friends over there!

DON'T CARE!

2010-02-26T06:20:00.002Z

I think I wrote somewhere, sometime (not going to link to it because I am ashamed) that I was trying to cut down on coffee because of health reasons blah blah.

Well I am back to drinking a million cups of coffee a day. Because it actually lifts my mood. I don't know about scientific data proving that caffeine is an antidepressant but it is for me, probably because I'm an addict. If it gets me through this winter that's fine, I just hope my liver holds out.

I've realised that I am no longer able to distinguish when things are going well or badly at work. I think I reached a threshold of despair, and now I feel bad all the time, even though things are ok. I am miserable at work at the moment, and this extends to home where I just sleep and eat, and... sleep.

But not to worry, because this is all clearly down to SAD and if I hang in there and don't scream or throw something or say what's on my mind to anyone at work, then I will survive and winter will be over and I won't go insane.

And I even had an extra dose of sun over January!

Oh dear. When does it get warm here again? I remember people always talk about the good week in April. Bring on the good week in bloody April.

I have scientifically calculated that Northern European winters are bad for my health (sharp hey) so we are planning to move to South Africa round the end of next year.

I hope you realise how scared I feel writing that down in my blog. I never announce plans in my life ever, because things go wrong, and people change their minds, and things don't work out, and things get delayed, and things are not meant to be. But we are hoping to move back next year, or sometime. I am so superstitious that writing it makes me feel like I have jinxed it.

Oh ja, p.s. don't tell my Dad. My Dad's tactic of persuading me not to go back to South Africa drives me insane and involves him shouting the word "Australia" to me at random intervals. Oh Daddy, you never learned did you; if you want your stubborn daughter to do something you must tell her to do the opposite. There is now no way in hell I will ever move to Australia, just to go against my Dad.

Yes I am a brat.

Right now I don't care what anyone says about South Africa.

Malema wants to nationalise everything -> don't care
Malema is annoying -> don't care
The ANCYL declares a state of war every time someone looks at them -> don't care
SA is crime ridden -> don't care
Zuma wants to shag everything and have a million babies -> don't care
I spent my whole life in South Africa in financial difficulty -> don't care
people keep saying farming is doomed and SA will become Zim etc etc -> don't care
SA doesn't have iTunes or cheap and easy internet -> eeep I may care about this
Steve Hofmeyer lives in SA -> don't care

These are the reasons people give for not going back, amongst others. Well, I DON'T CARE!

I do care obviously, I care very much, but I'm going home damnit. I want to care there rather than here.

There must be reasons for me wanting to move back other than weather, but ... well, the weather is a major factor. Yup, how lame is that? And it's time for a change, BFG and I are stagnating.

Never underestimate the power of irrationality, frivolity and whim when it comes to making huge life decisions, that is my advice for the day.

My little blog is growing up!

2010-02-23T06:20:00.002Z

I was having a pretty dismal Monday until I got an email from Briget of becausican.

If you didn't know, she won the Nerdies 2010 award, and much deserved! This is a South African award for the shecksiest blogger/tweeter spearheaded by by the blogger Shebee (who also runs Nerdmag) and it also donates to charity. This year they donated to the Wet Nose Foundation.

Anyway, Briget won some awesome prizes and she decided to give one of them to me! I am touched. She is giving me twelve month's hosting and domain registration by Eighty Six.

I must admit I am not entirely clued up to what this entails, but I assume there will be some changes around this little corner of the internet. This blog is nearly two years old so maybe it is time it took a step up the food chain.

Apparently the domain is a co.za one, which makes me feel a bit weird since I am not in
Dotcodotza land at the moment. But trust me, if my life plan goes according to... plan, I will be there, sometime in the forseeable foocha. Not that anything I have ever done has gone according to plan. But it has to now, it is written in the blog!

Thanks so much B, you definitely deserve your crown. And thanks Shebee for organising such a wonderful event, and thank you Eighty Six for your generous offer!

Robot angst

2010-02-22T06:20:00.000Z

Sheesh, sorry for the distressed outburst on Friday, but it felt so good to write that post. I can't exactly freak out and swear in the lab but I did feel like throwing something at the wall at one stage.

For once it wasn't even my fault, technology was rebelling against me but it was just the limit. I can only take so much. I had to throw something away and have to start again this week. Whatevs.

I am feeling so much better. But lets be honest, I wrote this post on Sunday night, after lots of sleep, food and exercise. I thought it would be best to write it then rather than Monday because I assume after about 5 minutes on Monday morning I will be freaking out again.

So lets go with the happiness vibes.

BFG has been coding robots to destroy each other all weekend. His first robot committed suicide by bashing its head repeatedly against the wall, instead of blowing other robots to smithereens.

I just thought you would like to know.

don't bother reading this.

2010-02-19T11:29:00.001Z

I don't think this month could possibly get any worse in terms of work. I have had it up to here. I want to swear. Alot . So I shall.

Fuck this shit. Seriously.

Am swearing a lot more in my head. I have been back from holiday just over a month and I need to go on another one asap before I have some kind of meltdown.

I hate everything right now. Sorry.

Crying without tears

2010-02-17T06:20:00.000Z

I know I am not the only person who suffers from tear duct constipation, it is surely a symptom of emotionally repressed people everywhere. Anyone else with a complete inability to cry?

Firstly I am one of those people for whom crying is a trauma. If I cry in front of someone else, anyone else, I feel like I am dying. Don't know why. So I don't do it. Also I can't even really cry alone. It seems to cause me pain even then. If it does happen it is more like I am being torn apart for a few seconds and then no more tears come. This happens about once a year.

It is quite inconvenient. There are many occasions that call for tears, as a kind of pressure release, and it makes you feel much better afterwards. If you let them build up and up.. well I think there lies the path to nervous breakdowns and stuff.

This all stems back to the wars between me and my father years ago. I realised that when he was angry at me, I vindicated him by crying. So I forced myself to stop crying, no matter what physical or verbal punishment was being metered out upon me. It was hard because I was scared but eventually I succeeded. And it enraged my Dad, who couldn't seem to figure out why his punishments weren't working any more. Score! Ok the punishments became worse, but I scored a psychological point.

Yeah I was quite a brat.

Anyway I can't cry no more. The apparatus she ees broken. Except when people die, then I can cry.

Please, no one die, I don't want to cry that badly.

But even when terrible terrible things happen, if no one dies, then I can't cry. I don't think this is healthy, it leads to this build up of emotional tension and sometimes I think I could explode.

My driving test is in 5 weeks and I feel like I should cry about this at some point, or at least vomit (although I have vomit constipation too, a whole other issue) because it makes me feel sick just to think about it. But obviously this isn't going to happen. If I can't cry at terrible things, I am hardly going to cry for something as menial as a driving test. But man it would feel so good.

So I am hoping that someone for whom the eye juices flow freely will donate me one or two tears, not too many, just so I don't feel so scared and crap. Any offers?

Just shed a little tear for me,

forever and ever you'll stay in my heart

and I will love you,

forever and ever, we never will part..

Ok how disgusting is it that I would actually wish for someone to cry? I don't mean it. Don't cry for me (Argentina), this driving test will have to be performed with dread in my heart and dry eyes.

Are there such things as crying lessons?

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives...

2010-02-16T06:20:00.000Z

When I delved back into my posts from this time last year, I found that I was writing about Biology being a bitch, and me being a sad Po, because my experiments weren't working.

Hello, am I on some kind of time loop here? Is February the month of doom? Will my life play out like this again and again like the science fiction boomerang of bad luck?

Well I am happy to say that some time last week (much the same time as last year) my little white strips started putting in an appearance or two again. Finally. For no particular rhyme or reason that I can make out.

I love me some little white strips.

I have a feeling only a certain set are working and the others are still fucked, but we can live in hope. Baby steps.

Just in case you didn't read it last year: Biology is a bitch, and don't you forget it.

Just a side note: to whoever it was who wrote the code for our PCR machine (the machine that runs my little DNA factories):

Was it really necessary, when warning me that I had forgotten to set a minimum temperature, to write a pop up that went something along the lines of

you have forgotten to set a minimum temperature!!!!!

That level of punctuation seems more in line with:

if you don't set a minimum temperature in 5 seconds this machine will explode and you all shall die!!!!!

Whereas what is called for is more along the lines of:

By the way, you have forgotten to set a minimum temperature, which could inconvenience your experiment. Which will be a bit of a bugger.

Save the multiple exclamation marks for personal use, if you don't mind, don't foist them on unsuspecting lab rats, they give me bad karma. No wonder my experiments haven't been working.

Moggy

2010-02-12T06:20:00.005Z

You know how if you have cats, they go mental when there is a change in weather? From what I remember from when I was small, if the weather changed from the normal Durban humidity to a crisp chilly day, my cat would go insane. He would tear up and down the passage and attack me like a banshee. He loved me really. And my sister's cats turn into fruit loops when it snows here. You don't want to be a moving target on snow days. It's best to just stay in bed. Safer.

I think the term is: "moggy". Because they are cats and all, right?

Anyway, the weather here has made me go moggy too. It was pretty warm (ie above zero) and rainy and then all of a sardine it became icy and alternated between sun and snow. And I am going insane.

I seem to oscillate between jubilation and despair. But mostly hysteria. For some reason everything is vastly funny to me. And I want to run around the room and do cartwheels and go catch snowflakes on my tongue.

I spend most of my time alone at work because my colleagues work in an office and I am in the lab. I have no one to tell my hilarious jokes to. The other day I was giggling to myself for about 15 minutes about the word "soutpiel*". I'm not sure I want to be explaining about penises dangling into the sea to my superiors anyway. People are deadly serious around here.

As I have no one with which to share the intense hilarity that is life, I have started hosting conversations in my head where I explain to imaginary people how funny it all is. Also I keep grinning manically and snorting. I think I am scaring the post doc who does wander into the lab on occasion. And when anyone does come near me I start prattling until I see their startled faces. Then I start giggling again. It would be best if they all just stayed in bed, really. Safer.

I have finally cracked. It is true what they say, if you spend too much time alone, you will start talking to your pet weeds and their little fly friends.

At least they talk back.

*Afrikaans word for English speaking South Africans, meaning "salty penis". Because they have one foot in England, one in South Africa, and your sausage** dangling in the sea.

**white boerewors!***

***pity it will be so small and shriveled.

Preserve our elders

2010-02-10T06:20:00.000Z

Someone I care about recently got conned by a person with a fake internet identity. He did not manage to get any of her money but he dragged out a relationship over many months and took from her a huge emotional investment and precious time. She had no money to give him any way, all she had was love, which sure as hell was wasted on him. I want to kick him in the nads and wish him a plague of aphids.

But that aside, we need to protect people of the older generations. They who come from the days of morals and verified information that came from books. They who are not always very good at using computers.

They don't seem to realise that it takes a person roughly three minutes (depending on your bandwidth) to create a believable fake internet presence. One minute to google "American white army officer" (or whomever you wish to be), one minute to download a photo, one minute to upload the photo to whichever profile, and you can start preying on vulnerable women.

Many older people I know could not do any of the above in three days, or ever. So they seem to believe that people are who they say they are.

And who are the ones that send on those interminable email forwards warning of the evils of canola oil and aliens in your boot and tokoloshes learning how to get past bricks? Ballies, that's who. They believe credible sounding information because in their day information was more reliable.

All of the forwards I have bothered to read before deleting sound like they have been sucked out of a 15 year old's ~~bum~~ thumb . But if you throw in some words like "genetically modified" and "statistically vulnerable" and "police reports recently show" then it seems many ballies will fall for it every time.

We need to protect our elders. The times have changed, and they need educating. They don't take to it kindly but it is for their own good. They are just too good and honest and gullible. They need their nasty, cynical, scheming, lyingkids to teach them a thing or two.

*parents and general old timers

The shame

2010-02-08T06:20:00.002Z

I have to hang my head in shame but I am about to admit one of those things that are probably kept off the internet and away from the eyes of many.

I have started drinking Rooibos.

It is disgusting.

When I was a lass people in Durban did not drink Rooibos, they drank normal tea. We were simple folk.

When I was about 15 I tried my first cup of coffee, and since then I have been an addict. I have a dangerously addictive personality, which is why I avoid drugs like the plague. I drink far too much coffee and always have.

When I moved to Cape Town I was introduced to the tea snobbery that is drinking Rooibos. Nowadays everyone in SA drinks Rooibos and it is hugely popular in the UK too (Redbush). But back then it was like you were on a higher plane of existence (the Capetonian plane by the Mowwwntain) if you drank Rooibos. And it is disgusting. I cannot emphasise this enough. I have never been able to like it, no matter how eager I was to fit in.

When I first met the BFG he would offer me tea and I would say yes and ask for milk, assuming it would be normal, and he would being me milky Rooibos and I would drink it. One day while doing this I had a flash of clarity: this is disgusting. I shall never drink this shit again.

Yes, I also tried the non-milky version but it still tastes bad. Coffee all the way.

Until now, when I am starting to worry about my liver and the fact that I get the shakes and that if I can't have coffee I start to panic.... this needs to stop.

I need the stuff in the mornings and it does not have any bad effects on me then, but if I have it in the evenings I am a wreck. So I have started drinking Rooibos in the evenings to become all healthful and serene and decaffeinated and free of radicals like the Mowwwwntain people.

It's still disgusting though. This must be growing up.

the birds and the bees... and Po.

2010-02-05T06:20:00.001Z

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated trees* do it... It's not that hard to have nookie is it?

Wrong. Plant sex is the most difficult thing I have ever done. And, erm, that is not as dodgy as it sounds.

It is a well known fact that plants have sex via the air, with the help of wind, bees, flies, etc. Right? Some plants prefer to self pleasure instead and mate with themselves and that seems to work well for them too.

The plants I work with prefer themselves and get it on very well and we are all happy. Until we need to mate one plant with another to study gene interactions... that is when our plants need a facilitator. And it would appear that the facilitator is now me. Oh joy.

The fertile bits of the plant are in the flower bud. Now the flower bud I am working with is about the size of a ... flea? Maybe if if you split a rice grain in two along the length, then take one of the skinny bits and chop it into about 4 pieces, then that would be about right.

The bits of interest ie the male and female bits, are much smaller. I cannae see them, Cap'n!

Basically you are supposed to take a pair of fine forceps and dissect the bud pulling back a petal, (which looks like a white speck) taking out all the male bits (basically invisible) so they don't fertilise themselves, and then take a flower from the daddy plant and rub its pollen all over the mommy plant. No problem.

So far in the week that I have been introduced to this torture I have decapitated about twenty plants and produced no crosses of any worth whatsoever. I am not a surgeon. Even a surgeon would struggle to perform surgery on a speck, right?

Someone very kind is now trying to teach me how to do this horrendous process with a microscope to ease the heinousness. But my boss told me to do it with the naked eye. If I do, there will be no plants alive at the end of it.

Will it help if I wear a bee suit?

*artistic license

FML

2010-02-03T06:20:00.001Z

I am in quite a state at the moment. For some reason my body's reaction to work stress is more in line with what is usual when someone dies or some other tragedy happens. Which is ridiculous. I can't go into a catatonic state of depression so easily, I need to conserve my energy for when something really terrible happens, and in my experience that can happen at any time.

I just can't hack this daily torture of blank DNA gels. Sometimes I do hundreds of PCRs in a day, and every single day they just do not work. Where are the little white strips, seriously? Even after I corrected my idiotic mistake, things just are not working. I came back to work eager to shift the long To Do list, and here I am not able to begin. I can't take this constant failure. It is squishing me.

Then there are other things, other forms of torture going on at work that are just the limit for my small sense of self confidence. I shall write about them soon. They involve plant nookie. Dear God. Is that not what bees were invented for?

I am of no use to anyone in this state. I am too dejected and feeble. And just last week the BFG and I were scheming life plans. Now I feel too afraid to scheme life plans. Will my boss put up with this nothingness for much longer? I doubt he could fire me that quickly, there are probably laws against it, but at this rate I will be quitting soon. You can't make life plans about the future when you think you could be fired every day.

The only way I have not broken down into a puddle of tears is by mainlining music. Where would we be without music? Music has probably saved more suicidal people than any other thing. It is the only thing that can make me feel better.

My discovery of the week is Mumford and Sons, who are very successful in the UK. I was previously obsessed with some American boys from Vegas who try to imitate Brit pop and indie.

Now these Mumford guys are from London, but they are going for a full on hillbilly folk sound, replete with banjos and half-American accents. Who could not love a bunch of English banjo-boys?

Hooray for the banjo-boys, I think they may have saved my life this week.

Banjos aside, FUCK MY LIFE.

the trip of awesomeness part 4: Western Cape

2010-02-01T06:20:00.001Z

On Friday last week, at about 5pm, I figured out why my work stuff wasn't working. This was not a Biology Bitch effect. This was a "Po is a complete and utter plonker" effect. I am so ashamed. I am hanging my head. I wasted a whole 7 days with a mistake so dumb I can't even believe it is true.

And with that, I shall continue recounting my holiday to South Africa.

Our next stop was Montagu. I think this was my favourite part of the whole trip. Well, apart from the Owl House... ok it was a great part. I love Montagu. I think it is so beautiful there. The plants and animals are special and the town looks Mediterranean. They grow olives and grapes. They have the best Pizza place.

Real climbers would never say Montagu is their favourite, it is too popular and busy. But I love it. And we were the only people in the mountains. Again. Where are all the climbers? Either they have all left the country or they are too sensible to climb in that heat.

We saw duiker while we were walking. That was a definite first in all the times I have ever been to Montagu. But one thing I knew we were guaranteed to see in Montagu was.... DASSIES!!! Montagu is a dassie haven. BFG went from a score of 2 to a score of 12 in one day. I hit a measly 7. The reason being, the little dog that adopted us and escorted us to the climbing chased the other dassies away before I could see them. BFG claimed they were turbo dassies. Oh well. He won the dassie spotting contest because those were the last dassies we saw. Tragic.

The Cape Town leg of our holiday was jam packed with so many things I think I shall have to use bullet points:

We saw family and friends.

We went to many many beaches, Llandudno was particularly spectacular thanks to the South Easter. We watched huge waves crashing for ages.

Someone got munched by a shark. This was perturbing and upsetting. We went swimming in the sea the next day and I was a bit jumpy. But it was 38 degrees. I needed to cool off.

May I just reiterate. I swam in the sea. In Cape Town. This is a feat of great impressiveness.It was refreshing.

We drove along Chapman's Peak drive, and it was spectacular as ever.

We wandered around Kirstenbosch while melting into little puddles. I kept "accidentally" walking into the sprinklers.

We walked up Lion's Head. The lazy hiking option. We did not go to the 9 hour hiking place in the end. I can't say I was thaaat sorry.

We ate lots of cool food in funky places.

We went to Robben Island and saw a dolphin! That was a highlight. I liked the tour of the prison very much, seeing as I had just finished Mandela's biography. It was very fresh in my mind. They had personal stories of the cell mates to read, that was interesting. Our tour guide was very good, he is an ex prisoner and had some interesting stories to tell. The tour around the island was a bit crap though, we couldn't get off the bus. But the views made up for it. Finally I have been to Robben Island!

I met a blogger! My first one. We met up with Tara of Goblin Talk and her boyf and we had delicious pancakes. It was very cool considering I was very nervous about coming out of my fairly anonymous shell. But she put me at ease and was very cool. He was very cool too to meet a bunch of total strangers and act as if it was a normal occurrence :)

We went to the Cederberg for the weekend and it was as spectacular as ever. The stars were out in full force. We climbed up Wolfberg, we investigated the cracks, we met up with a surprise friend in the campsite and his buddy from the UK who supplied us with loads of food. We saw a snake (only a mole one, but it will do) and other types of buck. This really was a buck-seeing holiday.

The day we drove back it was 42 degrees in the Cederberg. Needless to say we had to have many river swimming, sprinkler, icecream and dumping-water-over-head stops. I highly recommend getting air conditioning in a hired car. Of course we never will because we are too stingy (and hardcore!), but normal people, get air conditioning ok?

Then we had to leave this all behind and make the looooong journey back. I don't like Iberia very much, and the Madrid airport people are weirdly mean. I have used that airport many times and have had similar experiences each time. I will really try to avoid using Iberia in the future.

It was an awesome holiday from beginning to end. It already feels like nothing more than a dream.

An agglutination of Agriculturists.

2010-01-29T06:20:00.001Z

My intention was to finish up the enthralling tales of my holiday today but I have been in misery city this whole week. Ever since I have been back at work not a single thing I have done has worked. What a great start to the year. Blegh. All parents and future parents please write this down:

"dear small person from my loins, do not become a scientist. You will get paid very badly to fail constantly. Which kind of makes sense but is not much fun."

So I am holding back my holiday memoirs til next week when I feel perkier. I have also been getting home after 10.30pm, so I haven't even been able to read blogs properly. I have been a terrible blogger. Apologies!

I shall leave you with this instead:

How scary is the human herd mentality? I witnessed a good example of it last night. A huge herd of students were coming out of a lecture. A few started to cross the road when there was a gap, and of course the entire herd followed, even though there were cars right there having to stop and dodge them by the end.

It is quite a hilarious phenomenon. If you are alone, you look left and right, and if you see a car approaching slap bang where you need to cross you will not go. But if you are in a herd you don't look, you just go, because if they are doing it so can you... squeeesh. I guess so long as you stick to the middle of the herd you are allright, your friends can act as a buffer.

And the bigger the herd, the worse the effects. In a really large herd, all but the leader completely lose their minds and surrender to the hive mind, which just says "go".

It is not so hilarious when I happen to be the one to succumb to herd mentality though; then it pisses me right off. I'm thinking " Dumdeedum - wait a minute there is a car at my thigh why am I in the middle of the road fucking hell I succumbed to herd mentality again didn't I?"

This happens far too often. Down with herds, down! Although I seem to enter herd mentality in any herd greater than one, which does not bode well for my survival.

The trip of awesomeness part 3: Road trip cont.

2010-01-27T06:20:00.001Z

Nieu Bethesda to Montagu.

Nieu Bethesda is only a few hours from Colesberg along a dirt road. It is a tiny dorpie that only got electricity in the 90's. I know people who spent childhood holidays there, and I am sure it is like a city in comparison to what it was, but there can't be more than 60 people living in the town itself, and apparently about 900 in the township section. The local kids there ride around bareback on horses. Everyone is so open and friendly. It is probably the safest place in the world. My statistic.

We went straight to the Owl House museum to see the art that Helen Martins had left behind in her yard and in her house. This place blew me away. I loved it so much. Partly because I have a fantasy of living far away from everyone and making funky colourful paintings all over my house.

I took about 1 million photos of the place. Unfortunately I filled up my flickr quota for the month, so will have to keep adding them later. But if you want to check them out, you can mail me for my flickr name.

The entire interior of her house is covered in ground glass. There are so many sculptures of weird and wonderful things in her yard, it takes hours to try and look at them all. It was definitely worth the trip to the middle of nowhere.

Then we read our books under a tree, walked around the entire town (it didn't take very long), read some more, walked some more, then I had a Karoo burger at the pub and we went to sleep. Such party animals.

By the way, zoologists (Helen, Luke, EEbEE?) I need your help. We saw the weirdest animals (to me) in Nieu Bethesda. The were roughly squirrel sized, yellowish gold in colour, had tails but not quite like squirrels, much fatter and sturdier tails than squirrels, more like skinny hairy beaver tails(??) and their bodies were similar to meerkats. They even did the upright standing thing. But their tails seemed quite unmeerkatlike to me. Does this make any sense? I didn't manage to get any photographic evidence of these meerkat beavers.

On the way out the next day I saw my first dassie!!!!!!!!!!!! and a baboon. Oops apparently BFG saw a dassie in Harrismith so I lied on yesterday's scorecard.

Man that day was hot. Apparently it hit 40 degrees. And we had no aircon. Poor BFG. He drove 10 hours that day. But we stopped constantly for orange lollies, which appear to be his kryptonite. I also had him stuck on 20 questions for about an hour trying to come up with "marshmallow". He got as far as, they are man made but not an appliance, and come in herds, for aaaaages. It's so obvious, innit?!

The most memorable part of the day's driving was Magdalen. We picked up a tired lady walking somewhere along the N9 before Graaf Reniet. It turns out she was walking to a job as a domestic worker in Swellendam (about 500km)! She had been walking for 2 days to cover ground that we drove in an hour. It was Saturday and she had to be at work on the Monday. No one had picked her up in that time. She had no money, but she told us that it didn't matter because God was looking out for her. She had two kids back in Aberdeen, which is a minute farming town in the Eastern Cape.

Magdalen was a pretty cool chick; we told her that in Oxford for some reason they pronounce her name "Maudlen" and she was highly amused by that. She told us stories of her holiday in Joburg and schooling in George.

At the time we were planning to stop in Oudtshoorn, which is a far far walk to Swellendam, but she was happy for the ride. We hit Oudtshoorn at midday in full 40 degree heat and decided it was too early to stop for the day. We figured we could camp the night at Barrydale. There is some pretty spectacular scenery around there along the R62 I have to say. Love that route.

At Barrydale, we dropped off Magdalen on the road to Swellendam. BFG decided he had the juice to drive to Montagu after all, which was our hoped for destination. We sat at the corner, watching Magdalen walking slowly away...

then we realised that if we went via Swellendam it was still only about 2 hours to get to Montagu!

We ended up taking her to her sister's doorstep in Bonnievale. I was very happy that we could do that, because I was thinking while we were at Barrydale, imagine we bring her all this way and then leave her to walk for the next day or two and she gets raped along the way?

Now I know that the route is very quiet and the area probably really safe, but would you feel happy letting any woman you know, wife, sister, girlfriend, whatever, walk alone from Barrydale to Bonnievale (roughly 100km)? Maybe you would, maybe it is just me, but I just could not feel sure that she would have been safe. And when we drove along there were hardly any cars, so the chances of her being picked up were very slim, and then I worry about strange men driving alone...

If it was me I would have been a bit scared. And dying of heat. And she had no money. Just saying.

When she left she asked us for our cell number and we gave her our SA one. Now I feel like such an idiot because we are back in the UK and our MTN number will expire and she promised to phone to tell us how she was doing and to answer "Maudlen" but she can't. I feel really sad about that. Maybe she will think we gave her a fake number. Wah. But you know what, I actually know where she lives, so you never know, maybe this is not the end of the Magdalen files. Anyone live in Bonnievale?

Anyway, after all that we got to Montagu, where we wanted to be, BFG was toast, and the rest is for another day.

trip scorecard:

Dassie score:

BFG: 2 (apparently, including his mystery dassie in Harrismith)

Po:1

strange beaver-meerkat sightings: too many to count

awesome trippy statues: hundreds

random strangers with biblical references picked up: 1

The trip of awesomeness part 2: Roadtrip!

2010-01-26T06:20:00.002Z

The trip of awesomeness part 2a: Harrismith and the general Free State region. Also the Northern Cape.

-we loaded up our car with about a year's supply of food, including cascades of niknaks.

-we drove for 3 hours

-both of us failed to check the directions for the actual climbing campsite we were headed to, inaptly named Mount Everest resort. We used to go there when I was at school so I figured it would come to me. I also figured if you drove into the town of Harrismith and then headed for the mountain, all would be well.

-Wrong.

-Luckily some kind locals gave us directions and we made it to the campsite just before it got dark.

-We were the only people there. The campsite is around the corner from the rest of the resort and up against a mountain.

-I must say I was a bit spooked at first. I have not been around such darkness, such quietude and so many animal noises for a long time. But soon the total awesomeness of our surroundings got to me. There were so many stars! I still got spooked when I had to walk to the toilets though.

Proof that we actually climbed.

-We got lost trying to find climbing that we both thought we would remember, but after 12 years I was blank. We found other stuff that we did recognise and climbed that. We were the only people in the mountains. That is a very special thing.

-Um. It was very hot. BFG got very burnt. I applied sunscreen like a mental person.

-We saw at least 4 different types of buck, some Wildebeest and a mom and baby Zebra. Also some Americans, who are now running the resort.

-That evening there was a spectacular Free State thunder storm that unleashed its fury upon us. We sat in the car and enjoyed. Our tent survived, hooray!

-I remembered this place as something really special from our school trips, and it really is. I definitely want to go back.

-Then we drove, with BFG getting reaccustomed to how you are meant to drive in SA, ie. pull over into the emergency lane for people to overtake, and try and overtake in single lane freeways with no central reservation. He managed.

-I became reacquainted with the joys of South African radio. I have one thing to say: ERK!

-While chilling at an Engen One stop in Bloem we realised one of the tyres on our Kia Picanto (poo car) was dubiously flaccid. We grew concerned. We phoned up Europcar and they told us we could just exchange cars if we came to the Bloem airport. Talk about lucky, getting a flat right in Bloem instead of somewhere in the bundus!

- Some people may argue that Bloem is the bundus. I beg to differ. They had a Pep.

Not our dream car

- BFG's dream car is a citi Golf. He has pined for citi Golf his whole life. We managed to persuade the Car lady to give us a Golf. Who was she to deny a sweet boy his dream? BFG was so happy. And the boot was twice as big. Sweet.

BFG's dream car.

-We managed to drive out of Bloem into a full on storm, Free State attack number 2. Scary.

-We made it to the metropolis of Colesberg in the Northern Cape and decided to go no further. It was swelteringly hot in Colesberg. I slept without a blanket!!!! You have no idea how exciting this was for me!!! And I was not wearing a jersey!!!! I felt completely naked!!!! Any more exclamation marks anyone?

!!!!!!

trip scorecard:

Dassie score:

BFG:0

Po:0

thunderstorms: 2

buck seen: very many

sun rays absorbed: lots and lots

car changes: one

Times we got lost: once

The trip of awesomeness part 1: Durban

2010-01-25T06:20:00.002Z

I have been in hibernation these past few days trying to recover from the nasty shock that is the Real World. What a bleak, harsh place. You spend your holidays sleeping and doing one fun thing after another, so going back to work was like a slap in the face with a frozen tuna.

I am hoping that recounting my adventures will cheer me up with happy memories.

Here is part one of the SA roadtrip 2010 chronicles:

Durban.

- One of the first things I noticed after stepping off the plane is how friendly everyone is. People just randomly chat to you all the time. I was a bit shell shocked at first but got back into the groove pretty quickly.

-At O.R Tambo airport the first thing we saw when we looked out the window was someone reversing along the freeway for quite a way. Then we knew we were home :)

- It was monsoon season in Durban which meant it rained pretty much every day we were there.

-This was torture, because we were champing at the bit to swim in the sea.

- I rediscovered that Durbanites do not like going to the beach.

- We hung out with my aunt, had braais, ate lots of food and bonded well with my aunt's DSTV.

-watched some bizarre Afrikaans movie with two "Bill and Ted" type misfit characters who clearly never left the anal phase.

- The place was crawling with Vaalies (what do you call Vaalies now that they are not Vaalies any more? Gauies?) We were amongst them with our GP numberplate and our general confusion over where we were going.

-They have changed all the road names in the city centre, which leads to much fun. Some of the roads still have the old names with a line through them, some not. Our map book included some of the changes and left some out. Also new roads have been put in which confused the hell out of us. We managed somehow. We did get lost a few times, but Durban is small.

-We went to Moyo, on the one sunny day, and it was very fun being painted and sung to, but I must say sitting so close to the sea and not swimming was killing me.

-On the final full day we had left in Durban we decided that we had to go swimming in the bloody sea. Unfortunately the monsoon was in full swing. This is me going for a balmy stroll along the azure coastline:

I was using the umbrella as a shield.

-While this may be a commonplace scene in the UK, trust me, we were the only people at the beach apart from a few workers and they were looking at us as if we were deranged.

-Needless to say we did not swim that day, but we scooted off the next morning before we left and finally swam in the Indian Ocean. Hooray! Note to self, do not go on holiday to Durban before April.

-We also took the cable car up the funky new Moses Mabhida stadium like real tourists, and it was totally cool to see an aerial view of ole Dirtbin.

IT is good to see that Durbs has finally been deemed worthy of a revamp (read bulldozing every old landmark to the ground), because it was really starting to look a bit sad and crumbly for a while.

view of the Durban Country club, in full colonial splendour.

Durban beachfront being bulldozed.

Final Scorecard for Durban:

Dassie score:

BFG: 0

Po: 0

monkeys seen: a measly one

times we got horribly lost: at least twice

sea swims: 1

Back

2010-01-20T17:48:00.004Z

I am back in the UK.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGH!!!!

I spent 24 hours travelling and have to be up for work tomorrow.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHH!!!

It is cold. I bet you never saw that one coming, aha! Apparently they have been having Armageddon weather here while I was gone but it is grey and drizzly now, which is perfectly normal.

My special stash of niknaks, biltong, alien green smarties, and funky biscuits got stolen from my bag. Bleak, bleak am I. One of the main reasons I go to SA is to stock up on the food of awesomeness and it is all gone. At least they didn't steal anything of real value I suppose. Although, who can put a true value on alien green smarties? I guess I should be grateful that I have been saved from obesity though, cos I probably would have eaten all that stuff in one go.

I am sorry to report that I did not have any sushi, milkshakes or Steers burgers while I was there either. To be fair, we were camping in Steers free zones for much of the time.

I shall report back on my trip of awesomeness sometime soon, but now I actually have to go to a freaking writing class, although I have just walked in through the door. Meep.

work babble

2009-12-29T12:00:00.005Z

I am pumping the crappy pop tunes at work right now. The whole building is deserted. Somehow this feels all wrong. But when today is finally over, then I get to go out in the freezing rain, pack, get on a plane, and bounce this place. Whoohoo! Off to the town of my birth. Apparently the weather is crappy there too, but nothing can be as bad as this.

Can't wait to be back in the armpit of humanity, ole Durbs. I hold Durban dear to my heart, not so much because I was born there, or for all the happy things that happened there, but because of all the pain, the sadness, the fury, the heartbreak, and the confusion that happened to me on that soil. Durban has held my blood, my tears, my deepest fears and my ugliest thoughts. The place is bonded to me by the soul strings and I may never live there ever again, but I will always return to visit, always.

Hide your niknaks people, the human vacuum will be in town.

I just pray they are gonna let me in the country, since my passport is full except for a few lonely pages. Please let me in!

*update* ok is this some kind of sick joke? The rain is turning to snow. I have been praying for snow for weeks, but loik, not when I have to drive down south, try and get to an airport and fly away. Noooo. But yay! So pretty.

Bugger.

No snow.

2009-12-24T07:00:00.002Z

A giant snowball from a happier time.

I am heartbroken, as heartbroken as a South African can be.

The last two weeks I have been hearing snow stories all across the country. The usual stories of deadlocked traffic, stranded trains and planes, closed schools. The Facebook updates of sheer excitement or horror, depending on the nationality of the person. People everywhere have been snowed under. It has never snowed this close to Christmas since I have been here.

It sounds wonderful. I cannot tell you the pleasure snow gives me, and most other South Africans I know. I have known my mom to phone my aunt in South Africa at 1 am just to tell her it was snowing. Snow gives us so much joy.

Snow brings silence, peace. Snow is meditation. Snow makes even my ghetto look beautiful. I can watch snow falling for hours. Snow is like summer rain, it gives me a feeling of calm wonder and centeredness. Snow is zen. Snow brings out my inner child (or idiot). I do the angels and the snowballs and the snowmen and my best thing is just to hear the crunch under my feet.

I really like snow, yeah?

If I can just use a diagrammatic representation loosely based on nothing whatsoever relating to reality:

What I am showing you here is that the whole of the UK, more or less (because it all revolves around London, right? That's what I thought before I got here), has been experiencing wonderful winter wonderland snow these last few weeks, except for the two green patches above. The two green patches are where I live and work.

F@#*ing green patches. Well they are not actually green because we had some sleety snow that then froze so that now everything is covered in ice. I have never experienced this ice madness before, but it is so cold that the roads and the pavements are iced and walking and driving are a little more adventurous than normal. The puddles are solid, man, it's mental.

Ice and freezing temperatures without snow are just ...

unpleasant. <==== please note the strained understatement.

This is what I get for living in the middle of the country.

I hate you, snow fairy. No mince pie for you.

Lonely post

2009-12-22T11:12:00.002Z

Helloooooooooo hellooooooooo helllooooooooooo.

I can hear the echoes around the working world today. Is anyone else still out there (pretending) to work like me?

I am probably going to be in and out of work until I leave for SA; cute furry little plantlets wait for no man or seamonkey. But I am cool with that because I will have three weeks in a beautiful sunny place to make up for it.

I am trying to keep myself company until then by, erm, writing blog posts to myself.

*Waves at self*.

Okay, maybe I should stop doing sniff checks to see if my ethanol bottle is empty...

Peace out.

Two thousand and fine

2009-12-21T06:15:00.001Z

Two thousand and nine was fine. It was not earth shatteringly amazing but considering 2008 was so bloody awful for me, anything was an improvement.

I did have intentions of turning over a new leaf and cultivating a whole new attitude after realising in 2008 that most of my misery was caused by my approach to life, but, erm, I got sucked into my job and routine and changed nothing really, just plodded along from day to day, letting work lead the way.

So here is Po the seamonkey's year 2009 in stream of consciousness summary:

New job, new job fears, lots of commuting, spending lots of time by the train toilets inhaling the refreshing aroma of pee, gave some plants some hairdos, waged a war on flies,

retreated into my shell and forgot how to come out,

joined Twitter, Twitter brought out a narcissistic, self-important monster in me, nearly got swallowed up by Twitter, quit Twitter,

had a month of PCR issues at work where I felt scared and alone and was on my knees in front of the Biology Goddess,

travelled to Vietnam and Thailand, travelled to Spain, went to the Edinburgh Festival,

saw the Killers and was blown away,

wrote some weird shit on this blog about dassies and hamsters and samp, you know, the usual,

found out some stuff about my life, or rather other people in my life, that explained years and years of confusion and pain, and while understanding doesn't help them or lessen the pain, it does help me to reframe what happened and is happening in a way that finally makes some sense, was thrown into a state of nervous tension as a result of all these revelations, survived the nervous tension,

hung out with lots of Chinese people and got excited to go and visit my sister there,

had a confusing relationship moment that shall not be blogged about,

started learning to drive and am still suffering this torture weekly,

realised I have no friends any more in this country and yet this does not make me as sad as it should as I am a loner anyway, have made some aquaintances and that will have to do,

realised I am essentially a cranky bitch at heart, but that I try my best to keep her to myself,

was exposed to Lady Gaga a little more than is healthy and scarily started enjoying one of her songs,

ate, drank, climbed, swam, slept a LOT, cried? possibly not, oh yes, wait, cried, laughed,

read The Road (best book I read) watched I am a cyborg and I'm ok (best movie I watched), overdosed on Florence and the Machine and Dear Reader (best bands I found),

did not achieve anything remarkable, did not do anything worthy or admirable, remained as dazed and confused as ever, oh well, there is

always next

year.

Byegones

2009-12-16T06:15:00.001Z

You may be wondering why I put a picture of a girl's tattooed torso on my blog. That is a very pertinent question. It happened to be the only picture that was saved on the computer I am using right now. So, er, enjoy.

Miss Shebee, who I think is the blogging world's best cataloguer of life, posted her resolutions from last year and if they actually worked out this year. I was interested to know what the hell I thought this year should be all about, and I love these self-absorbed posts, so here is what I wrote last year:

1) if my body allows it, try and do some form of exercise, hopefully climbing (Achieved! This year I have been in pain all year but thanks to my chiropractor, my back at least tries to stick to the correct position, most of the time. The capoeira career is over though. And we even bought the instruments. Sigh. Byegones).

2) eat fewer chocolate digestives. Eat more of the chocolate toffee ones. They are better. (Huge fail. I ate plenty of all kinds. Oops. I'm pretty sure I ate fewer than last year though, unemployment leads to cookie overdosage!)

3) do not study. Try and get a life instead. (Did not study for the first time since 2005. Did not get life instead. One out of two. Not sure I should be proud of this though, cos what it really means is that I became incredibly lazy.)

4) read more books and fewer blogs (achieved. I read more because I didn't study.)

5) keep blogging (achieved. As to the quality, well... perhaps my blog has become more a kwality blog than a quality one. Byegones.)

6) try and write stuff. What stuff is, is vague as yet. (achieved! I just wrote this sentence, innit? I did join a poetry class, but I didn't really write anything on my own initiative. Bad bad seamonkey. Byegones.)

7) Moan 2% less about English weather than I did last year. (Achieved! The weather was very mild these last two months, so words such as "it is surprisingly warm" and "my hands are not acheing" have slipped through my lips, as well as the usual "it's coldcooooold. Ooh it's cold. Hey, it's cold" every two minutes. Score!)

8) Do lots of handstands. (achieved but not nearly as many as I should have. Am still yet to do one in my current lab. This must be rectified asap.)

9) Try and be a nicer, kinder, better, more successful, more proactive, more confident, more positive person. (In every way FAILED.)

10) When I fail miserably at achieving number 9 - do not beat myself up too much about it. At least I have a nice personality ( Achieved. Byegones).

11) and finally: try and unite some of my nice personalities into one. It is a bit crowded in here with all the voices talking at once. I aim for 3 personalities by the end of next year. Making decisions is too confusing with any more than that. (failed. It is still as noisy in this head as ever).

As to 2010, by the end of the year I shall:

1) learn to play the viola

2) try to figure out exactly what a viola is

3) learn to sing opera

4) compete in an iron man, all my friends are doing it

5) Read James Joyce's Ulysses and understand it

6) learn all of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart

7) run naked in Times Square

Ok ok seriously my aims for 2010 are:

1) keep climbing, ie not get so flipping injured that I cannot move any more. Try to run more.

2) stop being one of those people who goes through life in survival mode. What exactly is it that I am surviving? I am sure there is more to life than working, eating and sleeping.

3) On the subject of survival, survive the midlife crisis that will definitely hit when I turn 30. It will hit, I know it will. I hope nothing too dramatic happens. Eep.

4) Try to go to China! My sister is there, the BFG's parents are moving there.

5) start studying again? Not sure if I can muster the discipline to go back, but I cannot stand the thought of having half a degree hanging over my head. Or maybe study a language instead. I am thinking Zulu, cos it is already in my brain from school and my Dad can speak it and help me a bit. A half learned language is like a plague in my head, bits of it leak out all the time but I cannot complete sentences. I have a similar problem with French.

6) go for therapy? Will I have the time, the money, the courage? We shall see.

7) Hopefully get a driver's license. Despite the fact that this breaks several laws of physics.

8) Keep writing. My poetry course found something in me that I should be able to access on my own, without a teacher whipping my ass. Self motivation can be done. I just have to activate it.

9) Have more fun. I am too serious and too lazy. Fun is hard work, but it is worth it.

10) try to plan for the future. This is usually impossible for me but considering I will be coming to the end of a work contract and a visa, it needs to be done.

11) run naked in Times Square.

And finally:

12) adopt the attitude of "Byegones". Who knew Ally Mcbeal could be the source of all wisdom? What is done is done and boring. I don't believe in having no regrets, but I do believe in saving those regrets for the really shitty things I have done. No point in getting upset over the minor shit. Move along please!

Random acts of kindness

2009-12-14T06:15:00.000Z

I may have mentioned once or twice on this blog that I am a T.S. Eliot fan, yes? Well just to recap, I am a T.S. Eliot fan.

A few weeks ago I had some time off so I made my way to London for the day, and like all cool people I chose to hang out in the British Library. What an awesome place. Until I got kicked out because of an accidental attack of phone ringing, which is just typical, because no one on this earth phones me, ever, so I forgot I even have a phone, and the day I hang out in the freaking British Library that houses the Gutenberg bible and Shakespeare's folios, someone finds it imperative to phone me. Oh well. Byegones.

But before I got moved along I happened upon an exhibition of T.S Eliot's publishing life. He worked for Faber and Faber publishing house and was responsible for discovering and publishing most of the great poets of that time. There were also recordings of the actual poets reading their own poems which was just too awesome. They were all soooo posh; poetry doesn't exactly bring home the bacon so I am assuming they came from wealthy families and had other means of survival.

So I heard T.S. Eliot reading his poem "Preludes", you know the one with "the burnt out ends of smoky days" from the Memory song in Cats? It was wonderful. He had that ridiculously posh old Englishy-Germanish accent with the potato in the mouth, how the Queen speaks. Even though he was American. Whatever.

That poem has some of my favouritest lines ever, like these:

...You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.

Yeah it was pretty close on orgasmic.

Anyway, my poetry class ended last week and I am still in mourning. My teacher is such a kind, wonderful man. It was the last class he was ever teaching because he was quitting to concentrate on his PhD. So to say goodbye he bought us each a poetry book, based on our writing and who he thought we would like. And for me he chose a T.S. Eliot book!

Ironically he had asked us to bring our favourite poems along and of course I took a few Eliot poems with me, but I was too shy to read them out loud, I just could not do them justice.

How he guessed my thing about T.S. Eliot I do not know. But that random act of human kindness really bowled me over. Who buys each of their students a book based on their personal style? And knows us well enough to get it so right?

I feel like crying just thinking about it. People that kind break my heart.

Hic.

2009-12-11T11:26:00.004Z

Hmmmm. I have the potential to be an alcoholic for sure.

Champagne at work in the morning is the shit.

Just saying.

Gonna go pretend I can wield a pippette now.

10 things I think you should know...

2009-12-10T06:15:00.002Z

Tamara Doodler gave me an award and did a very cool post where instead of listing 6 things about herself, she listed 6 little known facts about HIV/AIDS.

I wanted to do a similar thing about something that in some ways only entered my life this year, but in some ways has been a part of my life almost since I can remember. I guess that many people have never even heard of it, but here are:

10 things you may or may not know about Borderline Personality Disorder (known as BPD):

(Please know that I write only from my personal experience and from books that I have read. None of this is certifiably accurate and I am open to correction. For the best information, read the books I recommend at the end of this or see a professional).

1) Borderline Personality Disorder is best understood as an emotional disorder. People who develop BPD have no emotional "skin", they feel everything far more intensely than normal people. As a result they are in a lot of emotional pain for most of their lives.

2) Most of the symptoms of BPD manifest as a result of the ways they attempt to deal with this intense pain. The symptoms of BPD are destructive and maladaptive ways of dealing with pain. There are 9 criteria for being diagnosed with BPD, but you only need to fulfill 6 to be diagnosed with BPD. Many people will experience some of the 9 in their lives, but people with BPD exhibit at least 6 pervasively, ie much of the time throughout their lives, starting in early adulthood.

3) The biggest problem for a person with BPD is that they perceive or read rejection, abandonment or invalidation into every situation. People with BPD have felt so much emotional pain their whole lives that they start to anticipate it at all times in order to protect themselves. The problem is that they perceive rejection when it is not there. They can percieve rejection in a tone of voice, or in a comment about the weather. This can appear to someone who does not have BPD as jealousy, as paranoia, or as just incomprehensible. This perceived rejection causes the person with BPD agony, even if the rejection was not there at all. As you can imagine, this leads to problems in relationships.

It is a tragic situation because people with BPD are desperate for someone to love them, and yet they push those who love them away because they are so afraid of rejection.

4) A defining characteristic of BPD is rage. One of the ways in which people who suffer from BPD deal with their pain is by projecting that pain onto someone else in the form of an intense and terrifying rage. The rage can be verbal or physical, often both. Because of these rages and their results, this disorder carries a heavy stigma.

Some people have likened a BPD rage to demonic possession. This analogy has crossed my mind in the past. However this is not helpful at all. There are many stories of people with BPD being subjected to exorcisms. That is disgraceful. People with BPD are in pain. They are suffering from mental illness and need sympathy and understanding, and most importantly psychological help. They do not need to be treated like demons.

5) People often confuse BPD with psychopathy. This is incorrect. A defining characteristic of psychopathy is lack of guilt. People with BPD suffer from guilt. Guilt and shame are definitions of how they see themselves. They see themselves as only worthy of rejection.

6) Other destructive methods of dealing with their emotional pain include self harming in the form of cutting or other methods, eating disorders, staying in abusive relationships, substance abuse, impulsive spending or driving. As you can see it is quite a bitch of a disease. Not everyone who suffers from any of the above has BPD as well. But it is really hard to see the BPD if it is there underneath all the other stuff that has to be treated first.

7) BPD is also often comorbid with other mental illnesses such as bipolar, major depression, anxiety, avoidant personality disorder, OCD, OCPD, to name a few. So people often have to be treated not only for the nightmarish BPD but other nightmarish diseases as well.

8) As far as I know and have been told, self harming in the form of cutting is not usually about a desire to die for people with BPD. The desire to die is strong in people with BPD, make no mistake. About 10% of people with BPD commit suicide. Most will try. But apparently self harming is all about making the emotional pain less by turning it into physical pain. Actualising the pain makes it slightly easier to deal with. I have also heard that it helps to calm people with BPD down when they are in the midst of a raging episode.

9) There are treatments that help BPD. Nothing can "cure" BPD. You cannot teach someone to no longer feel emotional pain. Some people are made with more sensitive nervous systems than others. What you can teach is how to recognise real rejection vs imagined rejection, and constructive methods of dealing with pain rather than destructive ones. There are also drugs that can level the intensity of emotions somewhat.

10) the problem lies in diagnosis. Getting someone with BPD to get help is one problem. Getting the correct help, when there is so much misinformation about BPD that many shrinks cannot even recognise it or believe it exists, is another problem.

*****

I am sure many people have absolutely no idea what I am talking about or why I would bother to write this. I don't blame you. Why would you know about BPD or think about it unless you have it or know someone who has it?

In my experience, current public knowledge about mental illness is on a par with attitudes in medieval times. People don't speak about it, and do not understand it at all. The exorcisms are a good measure of how we demonise mental illness.

There are no celebrities officially diagnosed with BPD. I can tell you many that stand out to me as likely candidates. Amy Winehouse for one. People have speculated about Van Gogh all the way through to Marilyn Monroe and Lady Di.

But because of the huge stigma attached to BPD, because of the fear and misunderstanding, no one bears the name of the disorder, no one comes forward.

No one makes the millions of sufferers feel relieved to know that they are not alone in this hell. Perhaps these celebrities and others could have been helped, been given the treatment they needed if it wasn't for the misinformation, the silence, the secretiveness. Perhaps some lives could have been saved.

I just want it to be out in the open, for people to learn about and understand mental illness a bit better. There is no need to live in the dark ages any more. We need to learn how not to be afraid of it, because our fear is holding back the potential for people who suffer from mental illness to access the help and information they need.

****

If you want to know more about BPD, I have read the following books and found them helpful. Please read them rather than taking what I say as fact, because I speculate and guess and they speak from fact.

1) Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder by Rachel Reiland.

2) The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Living with BPD by Alex Chapman, Kim Gratz

3) Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder. by Paul T. Mason (Author), Randi Kreger (Author)

Missing.

2009-12-08T06:15:00.001Z

I need help! One times somewhat fruit loopy seamonkey has gone missing! Please help me find her.

Seriously, I think I have gone missing. Well, the interesting part of me anyway, the part that is full of life and whackiness, the part that I like to think of as the real me. I think I have been putting on my professional, serious, "I don't swear or make facetious remarks or imitate cartoon characters or do handstands in the lab because I am surrounded by world class scientists who are on a different planet to me" face for so long now that I have buried my "me" face somewhere too deep to retrieve. Somewhere behind my left kidney perhaps?

Nooooooo. I used to use my blog as the place where I could let the real me out for a walk, but now she is gone! I want her back.

I will give a reward of a secret nature to anyone who finds her, or at least a clue to where she is hiding.

A clue: wherever she is she is probably doing handspins and Cartman imitations.

Truth, subterfuge, hamsters.

2009-12-04T06:15:00.003Z

We were getting all philosophical the other day in my poetry class, discussing truth and whether a poem should be "true", and the difference between experiential truth and factual truth, and of course things get slippery from there, in any discussion about truth you start to wonder if such a thing even exists...

So someone made a point that it is very difficult for a poet to write about truth if truth is all subjective anyway. Then this oldish man came up with something that really made my day.

Basically he said "There should be no problem because our whole every day lives are based upon untruths, we have to live untruths in order to survive social interactions. When we see someone we barely know and say "how are you?" we do not actually want to know. We DON'T CARE. WE don't want to hear if they are having a shit time. We want to hear "Fineanyou?" We are just saying it because we are required to. It's all fake and lies."

This old man made me so happy. What he says is pretty obvious, but we don't exactly go around admitting it on a regular basis to eachother. We are all full of shit. I just loved his ability to cut through all the crap and say it. It is good to know I am not alone in these thoughts.

Everyone in the room started smiling and nodding after he said it. It feels so good to just acknowledge the complex games we are forced to play in life. It felt especially refreshing coming from an Englishman, because from my experience here tradition, decorum and social games rule.

I think it resonates with me so strongly because of my whole "pretending to be a scientist" thing. It does get tiring trying to play that role well every day. But if my life is full of pretense and subterfuge, then I should have no problems writing poems in which the truth is purely within the poem and nowhere in real life, right?

A poem is a truth in itself. Ooooooh I just made that up, sounds good doesn't it?

Ok ok, I will stop with the dodgy ponderations and say to everyone in the world who is seeing the Killers this weekend (I assume this applies only to South Africans unless they have access to some kind of beam me up Scotty facility), just remember:

THE HAMSTER LIVES.

Let its spirit move you to remember the correct words to all the songs.

I've got ham but I'm not a hamster

Are we human or are we hamster?

And it goes on.

(Just a note: Mr Brightside: "I'm coming out of my cage....." Need I say more?)

Passage to freedom.

2009-12-03T06:15:00.003Z

We have a corridor! At work we have our corridor back. We have been corridor-less since, what, August? Tis a rare species in these parts, the passagus corridorus. It was highjacked by dudes with hard hats and butt cracks for a long long time, but they surrendered it back to us in the end.

You have no idea what this means to me. I no longer have to go downstairs under the building or upstairs and over just to get to the other side of the building. We have access to a lift. We can use trolleys to move things instead of carrying things in a million shifts up and down stairs.

I was walking downstairs after coffee to go the tunnel route when someone said "but Po, you can just walk across now. You don't need to go via the basement any more". The awesomeness. The shiny new-paved corridor glistening before me, the road less travelled.

We still lack many things that a normal lab takes for granted, ie. pure water, an autoclave, a cold room, and the builders are still around leaving a trail of turps everywhere. But the drilling has abated somewhat which is a flippin' relief.

The little known pleasures of walking the corridor. You should try it some time.

The heat of love

2009-11-30T06:15:00.000Z

I think I am the luckiest girl alive.

I wake up at about 6.30 am every morning to get ready for work, and I wake the BFG up at about 7.15 because he takes about 5 minutes to get ready. In my opinion this a twisted state of affairs because the morning is a toothsome beast to me, and I would rather stay in bed than slay monsters at that time of day. BFG is able to spring up in the mornings without any trauma or drama, yet he is the one who gets to sleep in.

Anyway, a few days ago my alarm was whining and I was ignoring it and staying in the warm cocoon (we have no proper heating in our flat) and all of a sudden the BFG jumped out of bed, ran over to my side of the bed, switched on our heater so I could be warm when I got up, and ran back into bed.

Now that is true love! Seriously, where did I find this awesome guy? I wouldn't jump out of bed mostly naked in winter at 6.30am for anyone.

On that loving note, I thought I would share with you a poem about men. It is by Carol Ann Duffy, who wrote a whole collection of poems through the eyes of the wives of famous historical figures. This poem never fails to make me snort. Can anyone identify?

Mrs Icarus

I’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.

Read Africa

2009-11-27T06:15:00.005Z

This is a bit of an intemellectual post for a Friday, so don't worry I don't expect anyone to actually read it ;)

It is inspired by the Read South Africa campaign (on Facebook), which the lovely Damaria is involved in. The campaign aims to encourage South Africans to read. I think that is somewhat obvious. I am all for reading. They are doing a vote for the top 50 books from Africa this decade, and the top 10 South African ones. I have already voted, have you? If you don't have Facebook, you can still vote here.

This list does not obey those requirements, it is just a list of books from Africa that I have read that made an impact on me, or that I enjoyed, or that I think are worth reading, from any time. Just because I like reading, and did some UNISA courses that involved reading African literature and so I have read a few recently.

In no particular order:

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe). This book says everything about a young girl caught between two cultures that you need to know. In the book, a white psychologist denies that a black girl could have an eating disorder. I think that about sums it up.

The heart of Redness by Zakes Mda (South Africa). This book is beautiful, it is like reading a fable. It takes the history of the Xhosa people and weaves into something magical.

Ake by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria). Again this book is magical. It is supposedly autobiographical but we have to allow hugely for poetic licence, as he writes how the world seemed to him as a kid, not as things actually were. I was fascinated by the richness of Nigerian cultures that I never knew existed.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (South Africa). I did not enjoy this book at all. I have not enjoyed any of his books. This one is clinical, dry, bleak to the extreme. That does not mean it is not brilliant though. I think he is just too smart for the average reader to appreciate. I found it strange that this book was controversial though. I could not find one thing in there that seemed controversial to me.

Down Second Avenue by Ezekiel Mphahlele (South Africa). This is an autobiography. What really impacted upon me in this book was the way things were before Apartheid. People can say whatever terrible things they want about Apartheid, and they would be correct, but South Africa was already segregated and as racist as hell long before Apartheid. Apartheid just extended what was already there. I am so glad this writer got to see it all fall down.

A long walk to freedom by Nelson Mandela (South Africa). I already blogged about my appreciation for this book. I loved the tone, the style, the subtle humour. I loved it all.

Cry the beloved Country by Alan Paton (South Africa). I last read this years ago, but every time I enjoyed it very much. IT is just well written and real. The tone of this book defines South Africa for me.

Country of my skull by Antjie Krog (South Africa). Frik. Frikken frik. I had to read this book for a course, and because I was studying it, I had to read it a second time. I had to stop every two pages or so to recover and have a break. She does not withold any of the details of what was covered in the TRC in the 90's. But somehow she managed to turn this book into a work of art, by weaving her own reactions and interpretations into it that came out almost like a poem. This was very controversial, but in my opinion, she did it brilliantly. There was only one thing that I did not like in the book. She decided to introduce a fictional affair into the narrative. The whole book is about the elusivity of truth, I know. But she presents her side of the story as biographical, and then throws in a made up affair because she felt the story "needed it" at that point. I have to disagree. The book would have been perfect without the affair and by adding it you totally jar the reader, who is puzzled as to why it was necessary, and it detracts from the otherwise perfectly executed narrative. I will never understand her motives there.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria). I enjoyed this much more than her second one. I did not know much about Nigeria when I read this, so I found it all fascinating.

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes (South Africa). Yes, I bought this! What with the soundtrack, the toy (which I am still thinking of getting) and the book, this is quite a product. The book is a really good sci-fi story, especially if you are into a cyberpunk-but-not-quite style. But anyone could read it. I love the ending, it is so unsentimental.

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa (Uganda). This book is also thoroughly unsentimental and portrays what happened in Uganda in such a matter of fact way, through the eyes of a quirky protagonist who is not overly fond of his mother, whose name just happens to be Padlock.

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut (South AFrica). There is something about the interactions between the characters in this book that felt real (and slightly depressing) to me.

Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria). This is a classic and was probably my first introduction to the ideas of colonisation of cultures and what happens when you allow two cultures to clash without considering the possibility of different frames of reference. Okonkwo was probably one of my educational foundations!

This is not an exhaustive list of what I have read and like from Africa, not to mention all the Afrikaans books we read at school, but as these came to my mind first, by my logic they must be the best.

Happy reading!

Yet another myth.

2009-11-25T06:15:00.002Z

Remember last week I threatened to blog about fascinating stuff? Well, unluckily for the blogosphere, I remembered, so you are going to have to sit through one of my brain spasms.

There is another myth that I want to address, oh yes, the world is full of them. This one pertains to me and it pisses me right off.

You see, I am somewhat slight of build and of reasonably slim weight. However I have a huge appetite. It is off the charts. I used to have a rampant metabolism back in South Africa due to a combination of climbing, gymnastics and general running around, and in fact I was not able to eat enough to keep up with my body.

Sadly this has changed since I have come to the cold and hibernating place, and my metabolism has become more slug like, and stuffing my face with chocolate digestives does not help. But still I am fairly small.

At work I usually go with some of my lab mates for lunch and we have a full on cooked extravaganza. I am not used to this at all because for me lunch = sandwiches. So it took me time to adjust but now I eat exactly the same as them, and often more.

There may have been one or two occasions when I was sick or really full when I had soup or a slightly smaller portion. But on the whole I stuff my face every lunch. But because of those one or two times...

"Oh Po doesn't eat very much"

"Po has a small appetite"

"Po needs to have a good steak"

This kind of thing gets said every single day. Arrrrrgh! It is so blatantly not true. I don't eat very much? I eat exactly the same as them every DAY!

I bet a gazillion bucks that if I were naturally fairly chubby, and ate exactly the same way that I eat now, this myth would not exist. They would say I had a good appetite and could "manage" and stuff like that. While secretly making eyes at each other about what a pig I am. What do you reckon?

People are mad. I get quizzed frequently on what exactly I eat at home, as if they are somehow checking up on me. If I ever deign to refuse a piece of cake on cake day, there are whispers and mutterings about "birdlike" and "not eating very much" and blah. Cake time is like Nazi time. Sometimes I don't feel like cake in the mornings, the sugar rush leaves me faint for the rest of the day. But I HAVE to have a piece of frikking cake no matter what, or the cake Nazis will have a field day.

Leave me alone, nutters.

The funny thing is, I have put on quite a bit of weight recently, but it makes no difference, the myth is here to stay. If only I had never had soup that one time...

Tour guide Po's itinerary.

2009-11-24T06:15:00.002Z

If I were to compile a list of the top things tourists can do in South Africa, it would go something like this:

1. Go shark cage diving. Hell no. Hell will sell ice lollies before you get me to play shark biscuit. There is something about those beady eyes that define pure merciless evil to me. I know sharks aren't evil, but they are a good metaphor for evil.

2. Do the world's highest bridge bungy, at Bloukrantz. Sadly no. I am too cowardly. I would need to be pushed really really hard, and would probably pee myself.

3. Tour some wine farms. Have never done this, and would love to, but BFG is highly scornful of the entertainment factor involved. As he is the only one who can drive... I kind of see his point.

4. Go to a game reserve. I could never afford to do this when I was living there so I would love to. But time does not permit in our hectic three week traverse of the country. One day, damnit.

5. Drive the garden route. Did that last time. It rocked. Except one day we encountered about 15 car guards which felt a bit like overkill.

6. Take the cable car up Table Mountain yadda yadda I think we have the general idea.

What I shall actually be doing this trip:

1. Swimming in the sea. Lots and lots. And swimming in sweat too, I surmise.

2. Climbing in the Free State.

3. counting Pep stores.

4. Hopefully, if time allows, visiting the Owl House in Nieu Bethesda. We always heard about this place at school, and I would love to go check it out, but it is a bit off the beaten track.

5. Climbing in the Western Cape, in numerous places.

6. More climbing.

7. climbing.

8. Walking up Table Mountain? Not sure if my knees, fitness and general insanity levels are up to this any more.

9. Eating sushi! There are no sushi restaurants where I live, and South African bloggers always seem to be going on about sushi, so please can you recommend somewhere in either Durban or Cape Town (or Harrismith?) for me? I am desperate for a sushi fix!

10. More climbing. There is talk of going to a super special place that has a 9 hour walk in. I fear that I may die attempting this. Perhaps it is better for all involved if I opt to lie on the beach while they do it.

11. Gain probably about 5 kgs from eating NikNaks, Simba chips, Jumping Jaks popcorn, chocolate Pronutro, rusks, astros, Top Deck, Ghost Pops, Pizza with boerewors in the crust... the list goes on. South Africa does good junk food. Unfortunately.

12. Shopping for clothes to deal with the problems associated with 11.

13. Playing spot the dassiedassiedassie!

I am sure I will come up with more activities, but it is already looking more like a boot camp workout than a holiday.

P.S please can someone alert the weather authorities that I want none of this cold front/10 degrees nonsense while I am there. I have plenty of that over here, thank you. I want to melt in a puddle, complaining loads all the while, but secretly loving it.

The dog days are over.

2009-11-22T19:19:00.004Z

This is totally my favourite song right now. This chicky is gonna be big. Well, she is big in the UK already but a voice that big is gonna be big everywhere I reckon.

Like I said they won't let me embed the original video, but you can watch it here. It is quite good in a disturbing May Day kind of way. She is so good live that it doesn't make too much difference though.

2009-11-20T06:15:00.000Z

Friday.

Thankfuckscusemyfrench.

It was a long time coming.

I wish you all a weekend free of rain and cockroaches and broccoli and other Monday stuff.

Moosik.

2009-11-19T06:15:00.000Z

I know the world follows my music tastes with an eager eye, so I thought I should inform it that Dear Reader has already been eclipsed by "the fickle moon, the inconstant moon" of my musical affections. Now I have discovered Florence and the Machine and bought her entire album of 15 tracks on iTunes for a mere £6.99.

I dig her voice. I have never listened to chick bands much in life, I was always into American husky voiced men. What happened to my taste?

Maybe I finally got some?

They won't let me embed the cool songs, but this will do. She seems to have had an attack of "Greek mural" arms though. Or is that squid arms?

Mini panic.

2009-11-18T06:20:00.002Z

I have stuff I want to blog about. Fascinating stuff. To me. This means fairly sleep-inducing stuff to yous out there. But I think my flurry of blogging activity last week left me deflated like a whoopee cushion. Excuse my excessive use of dodgy metaphors, the poetry classes are playing havoc with my mind.

I am currently a ball, a puddle, a tower of self-pity and misery. For no good reason, except that it is my turn to present a talk at work again, and I never seem to have enough time to get it all done. And I am not good at winters. Arrrrgh. I feel like I felt at the end of last winter. Not a good sign.

But after Thursday I will be back with all that fascinating stuff I have to say.

Until then, sheesh, I dunno what you will do with yourselves. How will you survive without a post of awesomeness??? Don't panic and run for the hills. That's where the monsters are usually waiting, so remember your horror story education and sit tight. Just keep the light on.

Gonna go and do that manic typing of DNA letters now.

Dearheart

2009-11-14T16:16:00.002Z

I like this song, and I love the video. As you may have gathered, I kind of like the band too.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee splat.

Blame it on the bunny.

2009-11-13T06:15:00.004Z

I'm gonna go all Cosmo on you and write a list of what is "hot" and what is "not" in my life right now. Except I am going to "like" it and "lame" it because that is more my style.

Like: my pretty little town. I like it more and more. It is different to other towns. All other towns in England look the same. Mine has the best flower pots, the best park, the best parade. The best Christmas lights, the best Diwali lights, the best atrocious sculpture of yarn. We win!

Lame: the Windows 7 advertising campaign. The posters. The videos. They all make me want to spew. "I'm a pc and Windows 7 was my idea." Or not. Windows 7 is your desperate attempt to make up for the dismality* of Vista and that is that.

Like: my climbing gym. I love it more than jelly tots. It is the best climbing gym ever. It is beautiful. It is the main reason we still live where we do, apart from the pretty town. I could have moved closer to my work, but I just cannot part with the climbing gym. I don't know what I will do if we leave this country. I hope I can find a knapsack big enough.

Lame: my driving lessons. My teacher is great, but lets be honest, some people were not made to wield heavy machinery. I feel like bawling my eyes out after most lessons. But I don't. I collapse into the foetal position and rock catatonically instead.

like: My poetry teacher. My poetry classes. They make me feel so happy. We have to write a poem a week for 10 weeks, and I thought it would be impossible, but so far I have been inspired each week. My teacher is so nice. Can he fit in the knapsack too?

lame: my back. I know I go on about it all the time. But it just won't heal. I feel old before my time.

like: my new winter coat. Ok, when I have to run for the train I end up hastening our demise from global warming, and I pity the person who has to sit next to me, because I end up steaming, but it keeps me sooo warm that I can almost pretend winter is not here at all.

lame: hormones. Evil minions of Beezlebub.

Thasall folks, what it lame or likeable in your life?

* Warning: made up word alert!!!!

30 seconds

2009-11-12T06:20:00.003Z

My chiropractor has this tendency to hit me with deep philosophical conversations in the 10 minutes we see each other every three months. Personally I like to give a topic justice, and I feel I cannot go into the existence of God in 10 minutes. I think deep down I wish we could stick to conversations about muscle groups and spinal tangles. But perhaps these subjects mean so much to him that he could not give them enough attention in 10 minutes.

Last week he hit me with a corker just as I was putting my shoes back on to leave. Actually he had said something similar to me before, but not quite so bluntly:

"I'm not surprised so many South Africans leave, don't you guys have another Mugabe in power now?"

How. To answer that question. In the 30 seconds it would take me to put on my shoes.

That is not a light parting question. That question deserves a good answer, that question is a startling and misguided one. I can't leave my chiropractor thinking like that, even if he doesn't really care and it makes no difference to his life whatsoever.

This is a highly educated man. He knows more about South Africa than almost any other Brit I have met, and trust me, Brits are more clued up about South Africa than most nationalities. At least they don't usually argue with you as to the existence of your home country.

If he thinks this, then what do other people here think?

I tried, in my 30 seconds, to give the best answer I could, but I think I probably just made things worse in his mind.

Poor Zuma. I mean I am not exactly running up and down outside his house with pom-poms and a skimpy skirt, (I am not a fan of his anti-gay views at all, and certain other views on various things) but how can he be another Mugabe? He has not even been in power a single year. Mugabe spent years perfecting his unique brand of megalomanic madness.

My chiropractor seemed to think that land reform in South Africa had followed Zimbabwe. Now as far as I know there was a controversial land reform bill created before Zuma's time, which was then shelved. It has now been taken up again for review. This is an ANC thing, not just a Zuma thing, as far as I can see. But you try saying all that and more in 30 seconds.

That conversation made me sad. I wanted him to understand, to not say misguided things about my country. To know some context at least. But 30 seconds is not enough. And you know what, the stuff he said is coming from other South Africans who he knows, not from him.

We need to stick to discussing the weather from now on. Or God. I don't care if he is not really interested in my views about God, but damnit, don't ask me about the Zunami unless you really want to hear all about him, and his little machine gun too.

Thank godfrey my chiropractor has not yet heard of Malema.

Highly recommended.

2009-11-10T06:20:00.001Z

chillled llama.

Yesterday morning birds were chirping, the sun was peeking round the buildings (in my mind that is. In my mind), the rings around my eyes were reduced to mere shadows and I was bouncy. I couldn't shut up actually. I am usually the silent one at work, but yesterday everyone was exposed to my verbosity. Poor things. I don't think they knew what hit them. Seamonkey jubilance is overpowering.

Even the drilling seemed a little more musical than usual, the clouds of dust strangely beautiful, the paint fumes trippy, my little plants so cute and fluffy and planty (sorry I had to massacre you guys, you know I feel sad while I do it, sometimes), the flies a little less abundant, the liquid nitrogen burns on my fingers healed, and my back pain-free.

What a difference 4 days off makes. I wonder how long the effects will last? My back is already complaining. But for now all I can say is:

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Why you should never trust my opinion on anything:

2009-11-09T06:20:00.001Z

In "conversation*" with the BFG:

"Christmas has become completely hollow and meaningless to me, it is purely a materialistic ritual where we all go mad and feel so much pressure to buy each other loads of crap, and we are supposed to enjoy time with family, but we have to fulfill these rituals of eating only the correct things and doing the correct things and spending unreasonalbe amounts of money and eating unpleasurable amounts of food.

There is no meaning to Christmas except for the few religious people out there, even people of other religions celebrate the material gift-giving part of Christmas, which proves that the essential celebration of Jesus's birth has been lost to the new religion of capitalism. It think this is what Nietzsche meant about nihilism, carrying out empty rituals for which the meaning has been lost, except for the tree, my family always enjoyed decorating the tree, hey, maybe we should buy a tree this year, we have never bought a tree, it could be fun, it will make our flat look cheerful, and we could buy one of those advent calendars, those were quite fun..."

Um.

* more like a monologue really. Yes, I really do speak like this sometimes. Poor POOR BFG, how does he survive? He does seem quite fond of his earplugs.

Another myth

2009-11-05T06:20:00.002Z

Speaking of myths, there is another South African myth, one seized and twisted by every media vehicle you can imagine, that I do prescribe to wholeheartedly.

Yes, I admit to a case of Madiba Feva. While the arguments I gave against the 1995 Rugby World Cup fever could apply to this one, I think arguing these points would take a whole blog post, and this is not my aim. I am aware of dominant narratives in this story. Not all South Africans think he is a hero. I accept that.

The point is, that behind all the hype and confusion, Mandela is just a man, as fallible as you and me, but he happened to make some choices and stand for some things that I admire. That, and he has an infectious charisma, and when it comes down to it, you can't argue with emotion. When I see him on tv I can't control the emotions that flood my peanut brain.

The reason I bring him up is because I just finished reading his autobiography. I am not sure why I waited so long to read it. This is a recurring pattern in my life, being x amount of years too late with everything. I found it in my parents' house and finally read it.

I enjoyed it very much. I know autobiography is biased by definition, but all other biographers are likely to be as dizzy as me with the myth. His autobiography is low on worshipful hyperbole.

My finishing his autobiography coincided with me starting a poetry writing course at the local university.

Good grief, you can see where this is leading, can't you just?

Apparently novice poets like me write poetry that is too personal.

So I decided that if I was inspired to write really personal poetry, I would do it to get it out of my system, but I would not hand it in. I could then focus on writing decent poetry to hand in.

Sooo, I was perhaps a little obsessed with a certain subject as I tried to write my first poem... it was far too personal a poem to share with my class. What I wrote was raw and unfinished, inspired by the moment.

I do believe that very few people write poetry only for themselves. For some reason I want to share this poem. I have questioned my motives and I think I just want it to be known that I had this strength of feeling. A blog is a good chronicle for that kind of thing. I am usually a coward who does not offer up strong views. Also I cannot publish this poem anywhere, it is not good enough, nor would I want to.

So I'm putting it here. I think I may regret this later. And I am closing the comments because I am too embarrassed and sheepish to deal with comments. I am a coward after all. Not that I am not interested to hear what you think about the Mandela myth. I think it would be fascinating to hear other views on the subject. But as I said, that belongs to another post.

So without further ado,

I shall bid you adieu.

UPDATE: ok I opened the comments. I am going away for 3 days so am still in hiding anyway. Still sheepish too. No cow ever had a bigger ward than me.

Sentence

Life is a sentence.

Can a sentence contain a small man

bent over a hammer

crushing stones?

A sentence cannot bind a man

whose roughened hands remould

the dust and gravel and blood and bones

of a wasted, sentenced place,

a man whose tongue digs past words

in men whose words are shackles.

He whose tongue plants hope in stony ground

cannot be stopped or forced to pause by loaded terms

that conjugate divisions and subjugation

into the revisions of the times.

There are no words

he needs no words

his face is our face

he is engraved in our hearts,

a man, an old man bent over a hammer

crushing stones.

A sentence can be very long

A sentence can last 27 years

But no sentence can withstand

your hammer - Amandla!

You who dared to pull

a branch of the tree.

Enkosi utata Mandela.

What I think

2009-11-02T06:20:00.004Z

I have a question to ask the world in general, if you know what I am harping on about, and South Africa in particular.

Do you think that South Africa winning the rugby World Cup in 1995 united our new nation?

If you are wondering why I am asking this, keep an eye on your local cinema and watch out for a movie with a Latin name. I watched the trailer of this movie and so I know I will not be watching the whole thing. I truly believe that if you don't have anything nice to say, you should say nothing at all. So these lips are sealed, mpppgh mmmffggggh mmmmmmmghghgg.

Here is what I think. Please tell me what you think in the comments, and I shall pretend to agree with your wise words ;)

I think us winning the World Cup in 1995 united the rugby fans in South Africa of all creeds and colours into a state of joy and pride. I reckon it also united their non-fan spouses and children, because that kind of atmosphere is contagious. I also reckon it united a few other people because we were the hosts, we had not long been back in international sports, and it was pretty exciting.

Lets say that number of people was about 20% of the country in 1995. 30% if you want.

I pulled that number from the sky, but I feel that it is way overgenerous. What is your estimate? My real estimate is 15% but I really have no clue.

I believe that people who had no TV's, people who hated rugby, people who saw it as an oppressor's sport, people who just did not care, these people felt nothing at that time.

I believe that the local and international media hijacked the blatantly cliched symbol of a black and white man embracing on a field (unity through sport) and used it as a symbol for the new rainbow nation.

I believe many white people, myself included, bought into that, because we were unsure and nervous of the future and wanted to believe in this new, miraculously healed nation. I believe many people still believe in this convenient myth. I believe this it a very dangerous and damaging myth. Forgiveness, healing, moving forward, these things do not suddenly appear with the scoring of any try.

That is what I believe. The film I am referring to will perpetuate this myth overseas and in South Africa, and actually reshapes it to make it more ridiculous and yet more persistant.

I was SO happy the day we won the World Cup in 1995. I was one of the fans. I will remember it always. But leave it as it was, as a wonderful day for a minority of people who love a minority sport. Not some kind of action hero movie where a Rugby team saves the nation.

That is all.

Update: I am not the only person who thinks this way about the movie, check out Africa is a Country: "Invictus, That's not rugby" for another view, one written before mine.

It's my blog and I will go on about me endlessly if I want to.

2009-10-30T06:15:00.002Z

I am feeling totally self absorbed right now so I am going to ramble a bit about me.

I have 4 days off next week due to leave carryover. I am so happy about this I could sneeze tiny Happy dwarfs. Ok, that description sounds like I am on drugs, but it made sense to me.

For some reason my body seems to give out every 3 months or so, and then I need a holiday or I will melt into a puddle. I don't know why, because other people around me don't use up all their holiday, some of them don't take any.

I think it has something to do with my mental fragility. But I can't argue with my body, I have been hanging by my last thread of sanity for the whole of October, which is my 4th month without a break. I think if I had to go one more day I would cry, scream, or do something with a builder's drill that I might regret later.

I don't know why I am feeble like this. It's pretty annoying. They need to make seamonkeys more robust.

Speaking of builders, they are still drilling to Australia, only last weekend there was a near-death mishap which involved an explosion, a circular saw and an enquiry into negligence, so I reckon they will be around even longer. I have started to get headaches when they STOP drilling now. The ground also moves quite frequently, which is novel.

And finally in this lame post, here is something that made me smile for some reason. A Chinese colleague experienced his first English summer this year, and he asked me last month, "so, where was the summer? It feels like it hasn't started but it is already over."

He told me that where he comes from, 40 degrees C is a common temperature, and summer only really starts when it hits 30. So I told him that when it hits 30 here, and it did once or twice this year, the temperature will be on the front page of all the newspapers, the entire country shuts down, and they basically call a state of emergency. They call it "high alert" or something.

It just made me smile to think that there are so many different versions of "normality" and "reality" out there. There is so much diversity. One person's madness is another person average day.

I dunno. I dig it.

Leopard print

2009-10-29T06:15:00.002Z

Image from celebritybeautybuzz.com

I don't get it. Don't get why:

It exists at all, except for caveman dress up parties
it was ever in fashion
it is always in fashion. Someone is always wearing a leopard print something, every year, forever.

Is it attractive, sexy, appealing to you? It certainly is not to me. I think it looks hideous. Snakeskin is almost as bad, but not quite.

I assume some people out there love it, so please can you explain the appeal. Also, I dare you to post your leopard print items on your blog, as a kind of leopard print wall of shame. Or if you love it, your leopard print wall of pride.

I don't own a single leopardy item and never have. My ancestors left their caves a fair while ago, I like to think.

Or else they were too poor or scaredy cat to wear leopard and had to settle for dassie or even worse, palm leaf instead.

Maybe they just walked around nekkid, it would explain the extent of my dress sense.

UPDATE: here are links to leopard print walls of... wonder:

Goblin Talk- Coming clean

Love is like Fanta

2009-10-27T07:20:00.001Z

I was just pondering, as I do, on the train, when I am not dreaming of seasheep, about love, the romantic kind.

Love is a positive thing. When you are in love with someone you think they are special, , are interested in what they have to say, think they are sexy beasts. These things all make a person feel wonderful, right?

So then why does love have to be such a hit-and-miss affair? I think you know what I mean if you have

a) been in love with someone who doesn't love you back

b) been in a loving relationship with someone but then fallen out of love

c) been in a relationship when they no longer love you and break up with you but you still love them

These are all crappy situations to be in, and there is so much positive loving energy just going down the toilet. I have been in situations a and c. It feels like you are sending out waves of love that just break around the person like Fanta bubbles. If they aren't into you then the love vibes are no good to them and do not make them feel wonderful. In fact unwanted love can be annoying and embarrassing.

WHY? This is a highly inefficient system damnit, please will some engineer person see to it asap. Optimise the energy inputs and outputs and neural networks and all them other made up things you do. (BFG if you are reading this, engineers are very clever and useful and your optimisation of our walk to work to the nearest millisecond is exactly why I stay with you).

There are so many unloved, lonely, unhappy people out there. It is very rare that two people love each other and continue to do so over time.

Don't you think we should be able to harness all those wasted love vibes for something useful, maybe bottle them and give them to unloved people? Or we could give the bottle to the person we love as a gift so that even if they don't love us back they can still benefit from all the positive vibes we send their way? Maybe they would remember us fondly or something.

Have you ever had the unfortunate experience of investing huge amounts of loving energy into someone who does not return your feelings? It doesn't help to know they don't love you, and will NEVER love you, you will keep producing the pointless love energy until hope and delusion finally decide to die.

The world seems to run off entropy. Maybe us unloved lovers are what makes the world go round with our wasted Fanta bubbles. It would be nice to feel that all that intensity went somewhere, to some use, even if it is putrid orange and gives people gas.

Weight of the world

2009-10-23T07:20:00.000+01:00

This has been the weirdest week. Melancholic is the word. I have been plagued by the strangest sadness. I go through every day convinced that someone has died. I have actually scanned the online news looking for announcements of people dying. Disturbing.

This may be partly due to my current music obsession, their songs tend to be heartbreaking to the core. Or perhaps that wintry SAD syndrome thingy is kicking in early.

Maybe since my soul has been roaming it picked up grief from another time or place.

Whatever it may be, may this cobwebby sadness blow away, I have no use for misdirected grief.

I fokken well hope it is misdirected.

Bottled boy

2009-10-22T07:20:00.000+01:00

I am happy to say that the bob has ceased to be.

This is the time of year when I remember why I let the BFG stick around. Boys do have their limited uses*.

The BFG is my personal hot water bottle. He is a heat generator, a geyser, a steam engine, whatever producer of warmth you prefer. The poor guy cannot lie under our duvet without overheating.

I lie there like a slab of cold meat and steal all his heat.

He wakes up sweaty and I wake up cosy. Without him I would not survive the winter. We have no central heating. The nights can be a bit damp but I can put up with that.

Yay for boys and their superior thermoregulation.

*Ok ok who am I kidding. The BFG does everything in this relationship. He's the fixer, the organiser. I can't even drive. I just hang around like a parasite and suction all his bodyheat. I'm not sure what he gets out of this. But there is no accounting for taste.

Soul searching

2009-10-20T07:20:00.003+01:00

Someone once told me that in some country somewhere (Japan?) there is some kind of belief that your soul travels while you sleep and if you sleep too long then it returns but leaves again and you can wake up before it gets to return. If you have ever woken up suddenly after oversleeping I think you can understand this theory. I walked around yesterday like my mind was a kite blown far far away.

These last few days have been a crazy mess. On Friday I ended up on a train going North instead of South (don't ask) and was preeeeetty late for work as a result.

On Saturday my driving lesson reduced me to a puddle of jelly for the rest of the weekend. I cannot describe how much I hate driving. Broccoli is looking appealing in comparison. Anyhoo I basically slept the whole weekend.

On Monday my alarm did not go off, hence my poor soul being unable to make it back. I managed to put my trousers on back to front but considering I had 5 minutes in which to get ready and leave the house, this was slightly less idiotic than normal.

So if you're ready soul, please come back. I am running around like a loop that lost its fruit down here without you.

If it wasn't for my discovery of this Dear Reader/ Harris Tweed awesomeness, I don't think I would have survived. Here is another one of their whacky songs. Why did I not find these guys before? I have been looking for a new favourite band for months. I played the Killers to death for now. I have killed the Killers. Is that Humanly possible? Is that Dancerly possible?

Interesting metaphysical question.

Not every taxi drives in the yellow. Yeah, some of them use the pavement instead.

Somewhere inbetween.

2009-10-15T07:15:00.000+01:00

I have this urgent feeling of needing to blog about something, but I can't quite find what it is. So I am writing this half-assed post in the hope that I find it.

Things are quiet at the moment. Quiet is very good. Not quiet in the sense of builders not drilling in my ear every single day (until December, preserve my fragile soul. I think they are drilling a causeway to Australia right there in our cold room. That is my only explanation for how it can go on day after day), but quiet on the life falling on my head front.

I scanned the jobs in Cape Town the other day. I do this sometimes when it starts to get cold and dark here. I look for jobs for the BFG, not for me, because I don't mind too much what I do, but he has an awesome job, and it would take something awesome to get him to leave it. No such luck. In fact, as a friend pointed out, the only way we could find that kind of work in Cape Town is if we took it there ourselves. I don't know if this is true but I suspect it is and that is pretty depressing cos both the BFG and I are little lemming-sheep. We are no entrepeneurs. We need to work for someone. Sad but true.

But my heart will not let me give up just yet. Countries that have the right kind of work include Korea, the US, India, Japan and obviously here. There are options out there in the world if you know where to look. So why do I keep looking in Cape Town? I'm like the girl who couldn't let go.

I am planning my holiday to South Africa for January. I can't wait. It will be hothothot. I want to drive across the country and stop at places like Bethlehem and count the PEP stores along the way. Amongst other things of course.

Yip, I am the girl who couldn't let go. Should I be ashamed of this?

Wot's a shoo?

2009-10-13T07:20:00.002+01:00

I know I am always harping on about the searches that lead people to my blog, but it's not my fault that people are so ceaselessly daft.

The huge majority of people come to my blog hunting for naked South African men, as I mentioned here.

The latest question the internet is asking Dr Po is:

Do South Africans need shoes?

Well, if you pay any attention to my blog, the answer would be a definite NO. No clothes, no shoes, no electricity. No elephants on the streets.

But I wouldn't want to mislead the tourists, so

LATEST TRAVEL UPDATE:

The electricity is back online. Can't do anything about the elephants though.

Look, you should be glad. No worrying about what to wear. You can pack light. All the more space in your luggage for the 2 metre carved giraffe you have your heart set on, I just know you do.

Just bring lots of sunscreen for the more sensitive areas. And be warned, if you visit Cape Town, the water is freezing. You might want to consider the effects of shrinkage upon your ego.

P.S. this is another search that led someone to my blog:

nuked men in the sea

How very unfortunate for them, must have been a bit ow-y, I hope they float?

I am loving

2009-10-12T07:18:00.002+01:00

This song Great white bear by Dear Reader, and the awesome music video that goes with it:

You should check out their website too, it is beautiful.

Apparently this album was released in February. But I only heard of this band this weekend. For this I blame:

me, because I am a lowly cowpat and know nothing about new South African music
you South Africans who are not cowpats, for not telling me
me, because I am a nerd, which means I never know about new music and only hear it a year later.

Never fall in love with a spider, guys; "til death do us part" may come more quickly than you think.

A word to the wise

2009-10-08T07:25:00.001+01:00

DO NOT

make a big fuss about going to the shops at 9.30pm after climbing, specifically to buy a sturdy umbrella for the express purpose of staying dry on my 20 minute walk to work each day, and then wake up the next morning and think "I cannot be arsed to lug that enormous thing around with me today, it is huge and won't fit in my bag, and where will I put it, it won't fit into my locker, ah buggrit, it's not raining now anyway."

Am going to go squeeze myself out now.