Join the vote boat

Everyone in the world has been following the US election and everyone has an opinion. Makes sense, considering that what happens in the US affects the whole world. But, now that it is over, are all you South Africans back home registered to vote? This weekend is registration weekend. Please vote! This is a crucial time to vote in the new South Africa.

This may sound horribly hypocritical, because I will not be voting. Unfortunately there are no provisions for South African nationals overseas to vote. This is unconstitutional, but that is the way it is. Trust me I have been tempted to fly home to register and then again to vote, but seeing as I have been unemployed a while it will just cost too much :(

I have never voted in my life. This is shameful and disappointing. When I lived back home I tried to register in Durban but as I was studying in Cape Town they wouldn't let me. And to be honest I lived in an apolitical little bubble and didn't really care.

It is ironic that since I moved to the UK I have become politically aware about SA. When I signed up to UNISA it randomly happened that the first course I did was "African philosophy". That course whacked me over the head like a Zunami. I saw things in ways I never had before. This may be because I am a bit slow; it was hardly rocket science. But it was an awakening. I will never take politics for granted EVER again.

Voting is crucial in a democracy, it is what it is founded on. And as you may have noticed South Africa is seeing some interesting political action right now. If you don't vote then you are saying you are perfectly happy with the way things are. Are you? If you are, you should vote because your party is seeing some opposition for once.

Please vote. Think about people like me who have had the right taken from them. We are many. I care so much about the future of my crazy home. I am leaving my country in your able hands ok?

I think our country is at a cross roads and I would strongly recommend participating in the direction it goes next.

Tarot giveaway

ExMi is giving away a free tarot reading. I don't know much about tarot cards, but it sounds like a fun idea to me.

I am the most directionless person on the planet, so some guidance is always welcome. Will I get to be a famous author? Will my back ever ever get better? Will I survive my new job?

To win this tarot reading, what you gotta do is, go and leave a comment on her cosmic giveaway post saying why you would like to win the tarot reading. You also have to say who referred you to this giveaway. Me me me me me me. Me. Then if you blog about it too and link back to her tarot blog and cosmic giveaway post, then you can get people to refer you (or me if you want. me me me me).

Do it people, and help me find my direction. Or at least help me tell left from right. There is no hope of me telling right from wrong any more.

Moo

I have been studying hard for today's exam:

I will do fine, right? Wish me luck.

Strange thing: when I study I doodle all over my notes, and for years now my main doodle has been the word "moo", which I write in all shapes and sizes everywhere, including my leg. It is an unconscious thing. I can't say why. Past life regression? To when I was the sound a cow makes?

I just don't know.                                                                                                                                                                                    

Read ya laterz alligaterz.

A looong decade of me

Shebee tagged me to write a timeline of the last 10 years of me. What a cool tag. I thought I was a slug inching across time, but I was surprised. Stuff did happen. Be warned. HUGE overshare to follow.

1998 Matric, highschool, Durban. I was a penniless boff whose only ticket out of an unhappy home life was a full scholarship to the University of Cape Town, and the only way to get it was to do well in final exams. I had been nowhere, done nothing, seen nothing. All that was going to change. About bloody time.

1999 UCT first year! Everything happened. It was the best. It was the year I stopped harbouring an eating disorder, and I discovered a million types of food I had never tried before. I fell pathetically in love with a boy; he was in love with my new best friend. She was in love with him too. He dumped his girlfriend for her. She chose her boyfriend over him. I loved him so much I thought if I waited forever he would discover he loved me too.

2000 Boy I was still in love with found himself his future wife. I thought that I would die. I ended up on a climbing roadtrip with a stranger with whom I am still in a relationship to this day. I was 19. G wooed me at the bottom of Kloof gorge. I will never forget it. This year I had sex for the first time. I can't believe I ended up fulfilling my high school's endless indoctrination: only have sex with one person (it was supposed to be in wedlock but that is a technicality). It was most certainly not my intention.

2001 What a dark year. Terrible things happened. Do you really want to know? If not, skip to next year. Fuck it. Shebee was honest. My brother shot himself in the head and died. Well. That was not easy to write. And AND G left me to go to Antarctica for 15 months. AND he had training for 4 months in Potchefstroom first. People told me to forget about him. No way in hell! We spoke on the phone a lot. A LOT. Oh and I flew in a plane. Cape Town to Durban. That was a first.

2002 I did my Honours. It was intense. I became a hermit. At the end of the year I got a job at Kirstenbosch which ruled. My family had all moved to the UK over the previous few years.

2003 G came home! I was offered a masters at Kirstenbosch. But G was at the age limit for getting a UK 2 year work holiday visa so if we didn't go then, we could never go. Adventure won. My grandfather faked me some kind of trust fund so I could pretend I had enough money to qualify for the visa. When we arrived we did some crazy ass jobs picking apples and working in factories. And travelled all over the UK.

2004 G left to work in Dubai for 3 months. I was sad. Did lots of random mind numbing work. When G came back we picked some blueberries and ended up working in a coffee shop in Cambridge. We travelled a bit in Europe.

2005 G got a real job and a work permit. We decided to stay a bit longer in the UK. I was set to renew my UK visa when G broke up with me. I was devastated. We managed to resolve things. I spent ages looking for a job that required my Biology skills. To keep myself busy I started studying UNISA English and Philosophy. This made me insanely homesick, which I have been ever since.

2006 New job doing microbiology. I am afraid to blog about work in case of homing pigeons and stuff. I will say that in the 2 years I was at this job I was taken to the edge of sanity many times. That edge gave me the heebies. Us employees stuck together like glue, it was the only way to cope. G and I went to Thailand. It was awesome. I went to a dentist for the first time since I was 11.

2007 I was very happy. We visited Switzerland. I was climbing like a demon and was into capoeira. Then lots of bad stuff happened to many of my loved ones, especially one person who I care very much about. She knows who. Then I got a shoulder injury. No climbing. Then I got a back injury. No capoiera. Cue the wonder that is:

2008 KAK. We planned to come home but could not find work. I left my job because it was time. My plan: to travel and get a job afterwards. But. I was bedridden for weeks due to back problems. I had an operation on my shoulder. Turns out I was misdiagnosed and spent months recovering from an operation I did not need. My Schengen visa for Europe got refused so I had to cancel everything and lost lots of money. I was sad. I sat around for months looking for work. I questioned my very existence. I eventually found work. I start in a month. Oh yeah, and I started this blog. Thank God one good thing came out of this non-event of a year!

*

Shoowee, talk about overshare. From the above I have discovered: I am dull. I like being dull. I let events steer me rather than me steer events. I tend to waste time, like this entire year.

I want to read everyone's timeline because I think they will be as revealing as mine and Shebee's. The entire channel-crossing blogroll. Do it. But I tag Tamara, Kitty cat, Being Brazen, Lopz, Redsaid and Miss T.

If you hate tags, I won't be offended if you don't do it. No worries.

Facebook attack!

Ho my blasted hanky. I keep getting attacked by Facebook. Whenever I open it in Windows explorer it triggers off some popup mania. One million popups of Facebook. Which is weird because popupblocker blocks me from opening any link that I want to open.

Each time I close a window it causes 10 more Facebooklets to popup until my screen is covered in Facebook and the computer crashes.

Please, what is going on out there in the world wide web? Did I do something naughty I don't know about and am being Facebooked to death as a result? Am I being stalked by Facebook?

I am going to buy a bloody typewriter and send everything by carrier pigeon. They are more reliable.

Job woes

Dear internet, I have gone and done something very stupid. I got a job. I know, I know what you are thinking. When will I blog? How will it affect my blogging? Well, this all could have been avoidable if you had just paid me to blog, see? Then I wouldn't have had to sell myself to science.

I am of course plagued by many doubts and anxieties, all of which are very neurotic and are impairing my ability to think coherently and should not be written about here. Especially not how the hell I am going to learn to wake up at non-existent times again, and we were planning to leave the UK next year but the contract is for two years, and I have forgotten EVERYTHING, and I am a fraud, and the place I will be working at is the most prestigious and famous institution of its kind, probably in the world, and what for the love of Spot the dog possessed them to pick me, the dazed and confused sea monkey who can barely remember her name???

But instead of spewing my neurotic drivel all over your screen I am going to be filled with positivity. After all, in my last job I only set fire to a super expensive explosive machine twice. And nobody died.

The world can sleep safely tonight in that knowledge. And in the knowledge that I will not be working with any kind of infectious diseases or black holes that may expand and swallow us all.

P.S. Of course there is a plus side to this job thingy; we may move out of Poo Palace, as one of my friends so aptly termed our block of flats. No more arsonist. No more mafia. No more Celine Dion karaoke.

P.P.S. But then what the hell will I talk about at dinner parties?

Vista is a blista

Is it just me or does Vista suck balls? My computer has crashed about a million times in the last few days. Of course it could just be my computer. But the thing is less than a year old!

How can one do one's very important work research (about the lives of bloggers) when one's computer pegs every 2 minutes?

I may have to give up and do something else. Woe is me.

Only in England.

You know how if you go to the gym regularly, you generally know how many kilometers per hour to set the treadmill to? 

You know when the person who uses it before you sets the machine to miles per hour and you don't realise?

All I am saying is that my little seamonkey legs can move much faster than I ever thought possible.

Sad Sundays 1

I have always had a thing for sad music. I don't think of myself as hugely depressive and sad. But I do tend to be melancholy sometimes.

I don't see this as something bad. These sad songs express things that I feel but cannot articulate, and because they do it so well I feel more connected to life when I hear them. Make sense? I may appear a bit nutty, but ... I am?

So I am launching Sad Sundays, because is this not the time when we feel most melancholy in general?

I hope the songs I put out on Sundays don't depress you, but I do hope they touch a nerve, or something. Whatever.

This is possibly the saddest song I have ever heard. I don't listen to it too often as a result:

STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA - Bruce Springsteen


I was bruised and battered and I couldn't tell
What I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window I didn't know
My own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me
Wastin´away
On the streets of Philadelphia

I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could hear the blood in my veins
Black and whispering as the rain
On the streets of Philadelphia

Ain't no angel gonna greet me
Its just you and I my friend
My clothes don't fit me no more
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip the skin

The night has fallen, I'm lying awake
I can feel myself fading away
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of Philadelphia

Mememememania!

Tagged twice in one day. Shoowee. Good thing my family is watching X-factor and I happened to be lurking on the computer. Rox tagged me and here it is:

Word for the week in my head…
Moo. It's my studying thing.

Thought for the week in my head…

That weak and strong anthropocentric theories of environmental sustainability fail to consider the intrinsic value of nature in a manner unacceptable to me. Word.

Thing for the week in my life…

The fact that I just may be going on a last minute holiday IF all goes to plan and visas are not rejected.

Song for the week in my head…

"Diamonds on the soles of her shoes" by Paul Simon. Weird.

Food for the week in my belly…

Steak. The only time I eat meat is at my parents' house.

Colour for the week in my life…

Grey - the colour of the sky

Smile for the week on my face…

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm I had dinner with my ex colleagues. That was cool.

Blessing for the week in my heart…

That all seems stable with my family at this very moment.

Lewis Hamilton: race or the race?

I am shocked by this story about Spanish grand prix supporters unleashing racist insults upon Lewis Hamilton.

I don't pay much attention to the Grand Prix any more. I watched it out of boredom with my dad when I was a kid. But I have always admired Lewis Hamilton. He comes from the English town of Stevenage, which is where my parents currently live. I am not sure of Hamilton's exact background, but that town is a rough, poor place. It has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the country. Drug abuse and broken homes are rife. For Hamilton to make it as far as he has, coming from a place like that, is impressive, and his age makes it even more impressive to me.

The people who write on this racist website are cowards. They cannot admit to the fact that they hate Lewis Hamilton for irrational reasons, like the fact that he had a fallout with one of their favourites, and may beat another favourite to win the title. These reasons do sound pretty pathetic but that is what sport does to people.

Instead of admitting to their pettiness they grasp onto something that they can cling to: his race. I know Spanish people with darker skins than Hamilton. Just saying. But the race thing gives them a sense of power; it separates him clearly (at least visually) from other drivers.

However, in this instance it is difficult to understand their drawing of the race card. Hamilton is a talented driver. Racists usually try to link race to percieved inferiority, of intelligence or ability. In this instance they are using insulting racist words to describe someone who is succesful, talented, and may well win the Grand Prix title and become the youngest champion ever. They seem to be linking race to superiority instead of inferiority in this instance. Essentially they are saying that black people are superior to them. They really have kicked themselves in their own backsides with their logic of racism here.

The fact that they have resorted to racial insults in this case shows just how inferior they are feeling right now. There are levels that one shouldn't stoop to if one wants to project a certain level of intelligence and maturity.

Saturday social

I have been tagged by Exmi to join in with Saturday social. I am not sure I have followed the rules too well but here goes.

The question for the social is: Did you vote this past Tuesday?

No. I am not American. I know who I would have voted for if I had though, it seems pretty cut and dried to me. Unlike the nightmare that is South African politics. I don't know who I would vote for if I was voting in the South African elections because new parties are only forming now, and their policies are not even formulated yet. In South Africa it seems to be, you either love the ANC and vote for them, or you vote for any old opposition just to weaken the ANC. Odd system, but there is not much choice.

I really want to vote though. I never have, as I said yesterday in this post. I don't know quite where I fit in in the political spectrum, but I am sure many people would say I am liberal, which seems to be the ultimate swear word in politics in SA. I am not sure that "liberal" actually has any meaning. I am probably too left to be liberal and not left enough to join the ANC and Cosatu chummies. I have some strong ideas about politics, which I should probably not mention here because I am not sure I have the acumen to argue the points strongly. I am pro well implemented AA for one. Even if it means G and I can't find work back home.

Geez, I better shut the hell up now in case I start spouting crap and boring the hell out of everyone as I usually do when I get the chance.

I am not in the mood for arguing politics or even thinking about it right now. I don't think it would be a good way to socialise on a Saturday. Yay Bokke! And such.

I tag sass, moe and miss caught up, because they are from the US and might actually answer this question without hijacking it with foreign politics like me!



Saturday Social Rules:

• Post your answer to the Saturday Social question(s) in your blog. Be sure to put in a link to this entry and the blogger who tagged you too!
• Come back, sign Mr. Linky and why not leave me a comment too ;)
• Tag your friends... better yet, tag a stranger (what better way to meet someone new!) You can tag 1 or 100, it is up to you. The more you tag, the more you will meet.
• Visit other Saturday Social participants by clicking their names in Mr. Linky!