Tarot giveaway 2

Um, hello, is this thing on? 

I entered ExMi's tarot giveaway a while ago. And now it turns out there is a tiebreaker going on. 

You all can say what you want, but I want a Tarot reading. I will try most things once and I want to try this. I may be a scientist but I don't close my mind to the strange and the seemingly impossible. My aunt once had a psychic tell her my brother was going to die. He died a week later. She predicted how and everything. Chance? Maybe, maybe not. I don't care how she knew. I am open to possibilities.

So yes, I want to experiment and have some fun with this and see where it goes. Trust me, I don't plan to sit and wait for life to happen, I do plan to take action, but I think it would be fun to hear what the cards have to say. 

So please go over to ExMi's blog, specifically this post, and leave a comment saying why the weird and wonderful me should win.

I will make you brownies again. And I promise to eat them with you in mind.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I am overwhelmed with changes at the moment.

I have just been on holiday in good weather, so coming back to the cold UK has been quite a shock to the system.

And I am starting work in one week! I have been off work since February for one reason or another. I have forgotten everything I need to know to survive in a laboratory, so I guess I better do some revising so I don't feel like a total fool when I start.

I remember when I started my last job in a lab, I had been out of Biology for 3 years and I was shitting myself. I felt like a total fraud, pretending I knew what was going on when I had no clue. I spent at least three months in a state of misery and terror before I settled in. I am hoping it won't take so long this time. Being surrounded by PhD students and other geniuses all the time is hard work I tell you.

And a haircut. I had one. A necessary change. For my split ends.

Unfortunately some things haven't changed. My back is a mess after my holiday. It feels like someone has rammed an ironing board back there. I never thought that this injury would be with me after a whole year. I get sore after standing for 10 minutes, so I am not sure how I am going to survive at work.

I am sure I will not be able to blog as much as before, or be able to read as many blogs as before. I used to have blogging anxiety, like if I didn't blog every day then nobody would read it. I realise that this is ridiculous and more than a little self absorbed. Maybe I should practice not blogging every day just to prepare myself. I'm sure I will work out a new routine eventually.

But the biggest change of all is the appearance of weird confetti bits that Colgate have deemed necessary to insert into my emerald green toothpaste. Why the wedding paraphanalia, Colgate? Are you trying to simulate hol(e)y matrimony in my mouth?

My mouth is happily single and unhol(e)y, thanks.

living with regrets

I am struggling to regain my blogging mojo after 9 days of thinking about absolutely diddly squat, so I hope you will forgive a dip in writing quality.

I have often noticed that some of my ways of thinking are not normal, surprise surprise. For example I find that the majority of the blogs that I read seem to agree about living with no regrets and not looking back.

I do have regrets. I have done things that I wish I had not done. And I do think about them sometimes. And if I had the chance to go back and change them, I think it would be interesting to see how life would have turned out.

I think that everyone has made loads of mistakes, and it is ok to regret them, so long as they don't hold you back and you don't dwell too much on them.

I think remembering your mistakes keeps you humble and also prevents you from doing the same thing twice.

To me there is nothing wrong with being reminded that I am fallible. My regrets are part of my life and who I am and I would not be complete without them.

I would love to know what other people think. In general I encounter the "no regrets" attitude and I think that it is a good attitude too. I think both attitudes are fine ways to live, just different.

Sometimes I wish I could live with no regrets, but that is just not me. So I have to use mine to move forward.

(I know the picture has nothing to do with this post but I think they are cool and pretty. You will have to put up with Egyptian photos for  a while!)

Egyptians are apparently well endowed

I'm back, and am suffering the drastic temperature change. It was about 30 degrees in the desert with humidity to boot, and when we landed in Heathrow it had just snowed. 

We saw so much in Egypt and I think pictures say more than words (and I can't actually remember half the names of things anyway).

This was our mode of transportation:

Ok I exaggerate slightly. We only rode the donkey for 20 minutes. But donkey was faster and more comfortable than the ancient overnight train we were subjected to.

And here are the piles of rubble we saw outside the city:

Impressive piles huh? Apparently the builders were not slaves, like we learned at school, but farmers who had no work during flooding season, and got paid to build these instead. 

There was a camel driver outside the pyramids who fleeced us of a fair wad of money for... being annoying? He ended up holding our camera ransom and forced us to have our photo taken until we paid him to give it back. So yes, beware that kind of scam outside the pyramids. Most other places are fine, but if you are a lady, especially if you are a blonde lady, you will be, er, somewhat popular with the locals. Even if you are married. But this is a safe and pretty crime free country so despite the endless hassle you will be just fine.

I think you know what this thingy is:

Apparently it is degrading at a rapid rate so you better go see it soon.

This temple was incredible. It is dedicated, not to a god, but to King Ramses II. Yes, he saw fit to deify himself and carve this entire mountain as a temple to himself. And I think he would be muchly gratified to know that when they dammed the Nile, they moved this ENTIRE mountain, block by block, a few hundred metres back to prevent flooding. So a few thousand years later the dude was important enough to move mountains, hey?

The most interesting carvings we saw on one of the temples was of a god with an inordinately large penis. No his penis was not the interesting part, it was ridiculous. The interesting part was the carving of the sperm. The carving was of the detail you see when you look at sperm under the microscope, flagellum and all. 

How the hell did the ancient Egyptians know what jizz looked like in that detail? I think that will stick in my mind more than any other fact on the trip.

Walk like an Egyptian

We were just driving along the road on our donkeys, as you do, when we came upon a pile of rubble. There were three piles actually, they were quite high and pointy. I think they were built by relations of Wall-e or something. After the aliens had taught them how.

People were taking lots of photos of them pointy things, but if you ask me, they just get in the way of the donkeys.

There is all this weird graffitti all over the place too, buildings covered in little doodles of eyes and birds and beetles. Such vandals.

And just so you know, Egyptians don't walk like "the Egyptians" in the song. Not any more anyway. I did see some camels in the streets of Cairo though. They generally went faster than the cars, which all seem to date back to the 60's.

I am about to get on an overnight train that dates back to about the 50's, and which took 17 hours on the way up. I am not too excited about this prospect. I want my donkey back. He was a speedy one.

Kreativ award

I have kindly been given a few awards lately but I haven't been giving too many out. I have been hoarding them.

I am a bit shy and unsure about the tagging and award-giving etiquette. I don't think all people like to be tagged and awarded. But I have never been any good at etiquette and I generally bumble and stumble about and get by somehow. And this is what I shall continue to do.

Kitty cat gave me this award:

which I think sounds great, because I try to be creative when I blog and I love to read creative blogs. Some of the writing in the blogosphere is amazing and we are so lucky to be able to read this stuff for free.

I want to give this award to some of the really creative bloggers out there:

1) Shebee. She is hilarious and writes so well. She manages to say so much in so few words, something I admire and strive for (in vain). The story of her accidental hijacking will stay with me forever, as will the image of a dwarf humping her leg.

2) Exmi, who manages to keep us hanging on her every word. She knows how to hook our interest and keep us coming for more!

3) Ladyfi seems to have lived all over the world but has settled in Sweden (for now?). She writes about her sewing debacles with much wit. Luckily she has a husband who can sew!

NaBloPoMo-OHNO!

I secretly signed up to NaBloPoMo. I thought it would be a cinch, since it seems like I am the girl who wouldn't shut up. But now I am not going to complete it. I am not going to blog every day this month. And this is because I am going away on holiday! Tomorrow! I still can't believe it is happening. I only started organising this about a week and a half ago, and I am so used to things not working out for me. I have been refused visas for bizzarre reasons so many times now that I expect things to go wrong, you know?

I am not used to stuff happening. This year has been a year of not much going on. Except bad stuff, which I could do without. But now I am going away from it all for a week and I cannot wait.

So what happens if I break NaBloPoMo? Does my blog become cursed? Will I have bad blog karma for ever more? Eeep. Well I will find out. I suppose I could schedule posts for every day I am away, but that is more than a little anal. 

I never told anyone where we are going in case it never came true. Now I'm thinking I should make you guess. What a meanie. I would give something away to the correct guessers, but, well, I don't want to give you anything. HA! Mine.

Just kidding. What I will do is, if you guess correctly, I will dedicate an entire minute of my thoughts to you when I get back. I will even try Peas on toast's  trick of asking the universe for whatever it is you want most. A whole minute. Think about it.

Although, judging by my karma this year, if I am asking the universe for something, you are almost guaranteed not to get it, so it's up to you.

Clues:

1) geometry is an important feature of this place

2) it is not Europe. They won't have me. I smell.

3) it is 24 degrees there today. I have become a sun slut, I don't care where I am going, so long as it involves some rays.

4) they don't have llamas, which is a bummer, but they do have some similar looking beasties who can fit through the eye of a needle.

*

This is so freaking easy that I am going to be spending at least a day ordering stuff from the cosmic catalogue for you.

Do you want a pony? What if I ask for a pony for you and you get a baby instead? Or a baked potato?

You better make sure your contraceptives are working really well. And have lots of butter and salt ready just in case.

Just call me RamPo

klausscherwinski.de

I am frizzled, frazzled, fried, flat as a pancake. My backbone is a mess. It is kinked and wonky and bent. Commuting between Leamington and London is an exquisite form of torture.

a) how and

b) why do people do it every day? Hate is not a sufficient word.

I am also suffering badly from lack of sun and light. I am like a plant, I need to photosynthesise!

But most importantly I am FREE! No more exams, so no more pretending like I give a shit, and knowing I should probably give a shit, but not remembering why.

The only thing I have to do today is write this blogpost*.

I have decided that while my life is quite boring and really I prefer it that way, (please dear universe, give me a life of boredom rather than a life of "interesting times") I can have it both ways if I want. I can have an exciting life in my spare time. And how am I going to achieve this? I am going to pretend my life is a movie.

Yes, I am going to pretend I am a superhero kickbutt chick in my very own movie, so that while I while away the hours in my labcoat with my pippette, really I will be beating up arsonists and alligators with one hand while performing the one finger death thrust upon a ninja zombie, and jabbing my heel into the vampire mafia boss, all while blindfolded.

Of course I will also have to have sex with lots of attractive but brainless men, but that is all part of the job. And I will have to spend most of my time in exotic locations, but such are the hardships of supergirls. And, oh dear, I will have to learn how to walk in heels.

I can pretend that the work I do is all in aid of the grand plot to save the world, or to end the world, whichever is more fashionable at the time. And my boss can be the nemesis. And I can backflip down the corridor... naked. Oh wait, I can do that anyway.

I am going to have to hire a wardrobe assistant and a makeup assistant for this gig because I can barely dress myself and I have no idea how to apply makeup beyond knowing that lipstick usually goes on the lips (right?). Any takers? I pay well in chocolate digestives. You get the ones that are left drowning in my coffee. I will throw in the coffee as a freebie.

And I am going to need a new spine. But it should all be good.

*You'd think it would have been a bit better then, all things considered.

And the Queen said: "Ja boet, ek pis Cristal*"

You would think that as a white, English speaking South African, with British ancestors no less, I would find it easy to adapt to life in the UK. And for the most part it is easy. But there are some cultural differences that are larger than you think.

For instance. When I first arrived and worked on farms, English people informed me that I was posh. They said this like "posh" was a swear word. Well, in South Africa I was not posh. My family always struggled with money. For a white family.

But my English friends told me that only super posh people say "ja" over here. Only I think it should be spelt "yah" in accordance with English pronunciation.

I thought they were having a laugh. "Ja" is one of the few common denominators in South Africa. Surely every South African, regardless of race or language group has said "ja" at some point in their lives? And then there are the Germans, Belgians, Dutch, Nordic countries; and I think even Minnesotans in the US have a version of "ja". It's like saying the word "yeah" is posh.

So I ignored this piece of information. Until last week when I watched Skins. If you haven't seen it, Skins is a popular English drama series involving a bunch of cool kids. From this show and from my time here I have learned exactly how English culture works and I am going to break it down for you (treat this interpretation as... modern art or something, ie. vaguely based on a version of possible half-truths):

"Chavs" or "townies" wear sports gear and come from working class backgrounds, and own bull terriers or bull dogs (never make eye contact with either owner or dog), or other bullish animals, and say "innit" and despise "posh" people whose parents are upper middle class and often send their kids to private schools (but not neccesarily) and to uni to study banking. They hate "Chavs". Cool kids are middlish class; intelligent but troubled and edgy, and they despise both "chavs" and "posh" people.

Now. As I have learned from Skins. The people who say "yah" do not fit into any of these categories. The people who say "yah" are so very posh that they are despised by everyone. They are too posh to be just "posh". These people are descendents of lords and the landed gentry and stuff, like in Pride and Prejudice. These people have tea with the Queen, play polo, carry parasols, that sort of thing. And all of us common and garden Saffas speak like them. English people think we are like the despised ones.

So my advice to you if you ever come over to the UK and want to fit in is:

1) minimise your use of "ja".

2) If you find this hard, like me, do not ever admit to new friends that you had a pool back home, or even that you had a friend with a pool. This is like saying you dined with Prince Charles each Friday afternoon, wearing pantaloons, counting your dubloons and munching macaroons.

3)If you say "pants" for trousers, you WILL get laughed at. However, this is coming from a nation of people who call tracksuit pants "jogging bottoms".

Now just who should be laughing here?

(my artistic interpretation)

*And the Queen said, yes mate (real translation: brother), I pee Cristal.

sinful confessions

I got involved in a "discussion" about AIDS the other day on an online forum. On this forum I was instructed by one irate commenter to "apologise to South Africa" for my stance on AIDS, ie. that the HI virus causes the immuno-deficiency syndrome that we call AIDS.

Note to self: never engage in a "debate" (the fact that there needs to be one breaks my heart) about AIDS ever again. If a person believes that the HI virus has not been isolated and does not cause AIDS, then nothing you say will change their mind.

I do not feel the need to apologise to South Africa for my beliefs about AIDS, but I did start to think of all the naughty things that I did whilst on her soil that may be worthy of apology.


Here is my confessional:

• I lied to my parents more than once. Times a billion. It was for their own good.
  

• At age 6 I instigated a breakout from school. We hid in the bathrooms and then made a run for it. We got caught in the playground but made up cunning lies and avoided punishment. Where were we running to? I have vague memories of a lady in a caravan who we were going to ask for shelter. Oops, this actually didn't happen in South Africa. And this is the naughtiest thing I ever did. Sorry Botswana.

• I was a late starter in swearing, but definitely managed to tell my parents to fuck off a few times.

• I beat up my siblings. They were smaller and weaker than me. What do you expect? When they grew bigger than me I was a good girl and stopped.

• I imbibed alcohol when below the legal age limit. But I merely drank cider or Smirnoff Ice and never got really smashed till University so I don't think this even counts.

• I have jaywalked. Many times. Daredevil me.
  

• I once accidentally nearly stole a ruler. I walked out of a shop without realising I was still holding it. But I ran back in as soon as I realised.

• I had sex before marriage, therebye letting someone take a bite out of my apple. But I have been with the same guy ever since, so he has all of my apple. Technically this doesn't count either.

• I may hypothetically have smoked a vaguely illegal herb a few times. But don't worry, I never got high. I just went faint. I had the wrong lungs. Allegedly.
  

• I wore my school jersey outside of school grounds. Apparently this was as bad as murder. I forget why.
  

*

After reading this list, I think I most definitely owe South Africa an apology.

Dear South Africa,

I am sorry I was such a goody two shoes. I am sorry that in high school I never snuck out of the house and never partied all night and always did all my homework and never bunked school. I am sorry I never puked in your bushes, or dived into your bushes or did naughty things with boys in your bushes. I should have kicked up more of a storm and had more of a jol whilst on your soil.

Some day I will make up for it ;)

modern art?

I need the help of an English person or an intelligent person (I am not implying that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive). Whenever I go to London to write an exam I see a poster all over the tube stations that makes no sense to me. It is a plain white poster with the following writing:

Off to work

8:15am

(nylon uniform).

And in tiny writing at the bottom of the poster: art on the underground.


What the crap does that mean? And why is it art? Can anyone explain it to me? I put my bewilderment down to my complete lack of culture or lack of Englishness. One of the two.

Sad Sundays 2

Here is a sad song by the Goo Goo Dolls called Iris.


And I'd give up forever to touch you,
Cause I know that you feel me somehow.
You're the closest heaven that I'll ever be,
And I don't want to go home right now.

And all I can taste is this moment,
And all I can breathe is your life,
And sooner or later it's over,
I just don't want to miss you tonight.

And I don't want the world to see me,
Cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming,
Or the moment of the truth in your lies.
When everything feels like the movies,
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive.

And I don't want the world to see me,
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

And I don't want the world to see me,
Cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

And I don't want the world to see me,
Cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.