unusually me

yesterday:

a very positive start to the day, getting mr smear to his fight camp on time.

mostly meetings, with me forcing a retrospective that felt appreciated by most of the team. a good start to sorting out potential on-call rotation issues. very little time for my own work.

leaving the office early and coming home for an early meal with my family before heading south.

efrat gosh in levontin 7 with tahoma - an interesting catch-up, a very intimate performance that really blew me away, as i was simultaneously quite emotional about being in a show in levontin 7 for the first time in about twelve years.

getting home late, showering and snacking even later.

today:

3am mistakenly looking at facebook and seeing a post recommending that a tel aviv family consider relocating to cape town, finally going back to bed an hour and a half later

rough and rushed wakeup, but mr smear being pretty cool

a really good chat with his instructor when dropping him off

a surprising conversation with gd about spirituality.

meeting up with my cousin's kid for coffee to discuss career options, a sudden and dramatic plot twist into a romantic adventure story

arriving late for work, being dropped into an unfamiliar production issue for a customer. an emotional rollercoaster of an afternoon, with gd getting on the wrong bus and picking up mr smear late, and mr smear continuing his struggle to get out of the fight camp, and me getting lost trying to figure out all the pieces of the work puzzle, and then getting news that my nephew just received his british ancestral visa and is finally able to join his mother and sister in london, and then hours trying to decipher truly pathetic documentation (google's envoy) and figuring things out with trial and error (with the AI assistance being the opposite of helpful), finally being inspired to ask a different question and hitting the jackpot, then a loooooot of debugging implementing the solution and eventually leaving the office late, but in time to eat with my family, and feeling exquisitely exhultant.

the evening was great until bedtime, i tried to have a conversation with mr smear and it went south (for no obvious reason), and then gd and i watched the third episode of the new fallout series. it's full of fan service, even if i feel like the pacing's a bit slow it's really inspired me to get back into it.

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

troll tool

jesus, the exhaustion. the distraction. the demoralization.

work has been particularly shit the last couple of weeks, i've been working on stuff that i really don't care about and that every part makes less sense than the last. everything is broken, or not yet implemented, or not planned to be implemented, and it feels like everything i touch was just an ancient, mummified piece of shit that was just waiting for the slightest encouragement to collapse into a fecal dust cloud.

the internet has been particularly toxic over the last month, and on top of worrying about the hostages, and our soldiers, and the victims, and all the people who've been relocated away from the borders, and our own safety... it's very taxing. it's frightening how many "useful idiots" hamas has in its pocket, worse still when those useful idiots are celebrities with large followings or worse - jews.

arguing facts with people is just insane.

meanwhile, today i heard an interesting podcast episode that inspires a little hope in the potential for a saner future: neil lazarus talking to a west bank palestinian.

friday:

gd's jewelery part ii. mr smear and i accompanied her this time, and we ended up having a very nice morning out. we also discovered that the shoe store we saw adult galshoes in - katalina - is completely vegan! and full of cool stuff.

on the way home, we stopped at a supermarket to pick up a couple of things, and just as we finished paying the sirens went off. it turned out to be a good place to get caught in a rocket attack, and good timing, because we just walked through to the back and i enjoyed the baguette we'd bought.

saturday:

by the afternoon, i knew we needed to do something outside. i took mr smear for quite a walkabout, stopping in at dizengoff center to see what card tournaments were taking place (he wasn't too interested, and there was the distinct smell of unwashed teenagers), running into drone hacker on the way back and enjoying a chat, then at mr smear's direction picking up a big, healthy lunch at cafe easy that he just wolfed down. it was a good saturday afternoon experience.

by saturday night, we were freaking out about the smell from the airconditioner. i "did some research", and some of the results scared me, but one forum post include a report that leaving their airconditioner running for 24 hours on the highest fan speed had cleared the smell. i turned ours on on the highest speed, and prayed.

yesterday: 

i dropped mr smear off at school, then walked to the clinic and hospital and got a bunch of things sorted out.

because a frustrating workday wasn't bad enough, there had to be some bad news from sea point. a cousin of mine was on the scene, and it took place right across the road from my mom's apartment. on the one hand, i'm glad the police actually took action, but on the other... these people are mad, and rabidly antisemitic, and their government as a whole is cool with that.

we had a parents webinar around bedtime. insight: a talk from a psychologist who discussed how we process trauma and normalize bad situations. disappointment: while most of the parents are welcoming the 70-or-so kids rescued from the "gaza envelope", a couple were bizarrely and selfishly concerned about their children experiencing second-hand trauma by being exposed to kids who almost lost their lives mere weeks ago. jesus, fuck.

by last night, the smell from the airconditioner seemed to have disappeared, but i wasn't 100% confident so we left it running another night.

today:

by this morning we were convinced that the smell was gone, and turned the airconditioner off. i just tested it out a short while ago, and it seems to be good!

the day began with one downer - mr smear not feeling well - and one thing that got me majorly pissed off: our grocery store order from the day before hadn't arrived. then, after calling them for help and being put on hold by a representative for five minutes, the call was disconnected. then, i had to wait on hold for another fifteen minutes to get to another representative, by which stage i was livid. fortunately, the second representative was legitimately helpful. i'd been angry enough to look up taking them to small claims court, but not quite angry enough to want to put myself through such an admin-heavy process.

while doing the dishes this morning, i caught up with all of tom shapira's (hebrew) podcast about comics called the between-panels's podcast, and i warmly recommend it - fascinating stuff!

i might be very wrong, of course, but gd seems to be doing a lot better. she went out again today by herself.

mr smear's demonstrating a lot of behavior improvement. we had a moment today that traditionally would have become a nasty scene - he was supposed to be on a screen break, i left the room for a few minutes and when i came back i caught his red-handed - but the tension dissapated very quickly and a few minutes later he apologized. and that was the whole damned story. the rest of the day was pretty much good vibes.

aside from another rocket attack just before bedtime, but he's totally into bacterial takeover and big numbers now :P

i was so tired after putting him to bed that i crashed myself, then woke up a while later and was unable to sleep because i needed to a) get all this down and b) respond to people who are wrong on the internet.

god help us all.

rock on!

örmagörd! gonna see foo fighters in cape town (^_^)

freakin' AWESOME.

what would jesus do?

it's gonna be weird writing this while i'm feeling so incredibly lonely that i don't actually feeling like sharing with anyone... i'm writing in my journal and exposing it to the world at large. rational behaviour?

---i shaved before i left, which meant a quick shower (i always manage to get little hairs on me, that's one disadvantage of using beard trimmers over blades) during which i wondered about this article on immersion improving cognizance that i read last night: aside from archimedes' discovery, apparently women do their best thinking in the bath. so it kinda makes sense...

it was so cozy on the metro, and i was so relaxed. as if i haven't stopped being relaxed since sunday's yoga lesson, like something really did get aligned properly and an emotional artery unblocked.

it's really cold tonight. absolutely freezing, primarily attributed to a mean wind that's been slapping everyone around since the late afternoon. pulse told me the place was on sherbrooke, google told me rachel. i decided to walk from mont royal station past rachel and on to sherbrooke. first, that's a much longer walk than i'd expected. second, google's definitely wrong. third, i couldn't find it on sherbrooke, either. we were supposed to meet at 8.15pm; i called at 8.20, and then at 8.30 and both times heard it ring until i got through to her answering machine.

how would you feel?
i sent a message with my frozen fingers briefly explaining what i'd been through and ending "... i'm going home. bon appetit!"

i pressed "send" and then realized that that could be construed as majorly passive-aggressive. then i thought about it some more, and figured that it would be appropriate nonetheless. i mean, what the hell? you invite me out to dinner, to a place which apparently isn't so easy to find, without specific directions and without making yourself available?

i feel like i've been made a fool of. whether by pulse or by the universe in general, i don't know. but i'm decidedly upset by this. i feel like shit; for this i skipped boxing? am i the asshole?

i didn't feel like stressing over dinner so i headed to la panthère verte at guy-concordia to sit and somberly eat a falafel. the traditional techina dripping out the bottom of the pita seemed to be mocking me.

i've returned home and i'm feeling sad. i've felt like this before, for sure, but right now i'm feeling it pretty keenly. i have friends and family here but i don't feel like it. i love it here and i've been extremely fortunate and all but i guess tonight's incident has sparked off some latent homesickness, and by home i mean cape town.

...

the only positive in all this was the violinist i walked past. there're a lot of homeless about tonight, but this dude was sitting on a corner in the freezing cold playing beautifully, and i tossed him a doubloon for his troubles and was glad to have been there to do so.

---while writing this i was listening to the radio, with a francophone interviewing an anglophone speaking in french with an atrocious accent. gods, i don't ever want to sound like that :S

applying myself

every time i hear andy ling - fixation now i'm taken back to the ledhedz bus / afrikaburn fundraising party. and to tens if not hundreds of amazing house parties around the millennium.

*sigh*

---yesterday:

yesterday was a better perspective day! though i'm not sure if my mom saying "great!" when i told her i was hit in the face repeatedly for half an hour in order to practice not closing my eyes counts as a part of that perspective. my forehead's a bit tender now :P (though my brain's definitely fine)

i left too early for the date, and there's not a lot to do in ndg on a cold sunday night. i would have bought a container of oreos at the supermarket had it fit in my pocket - i think i may have raised the security guard's suspicions when checking that.

the date was nice, the girl's not my type but we had a good evening nonetheless. i was amused to discover that she's friends with newk'd - but then, he does get around a bit.

---today:

i woke up early, and was surprised by a visit from the caretaker. who wanted a reference from me, of all people. i didn't really want to write it but if he doesn't get another job i'll get even less preference if he's offended... so i wrote one that manages to be honest yet complementary and now i'm wondering how he expects me to give it to him as i don't have a printer.

while he was here he checked out the toilet which is still giving me grief. gorram presence effect! :@

i spent most of the day applying for jobs. if i apply for a job on linkedin do i need to send in a cover letter or a resume? one can only upload a single file so i went with the resume, but as they've already got access to all my resume's information through the linkedin profile that seems like it might not be the right choice.
why do these things have to be so complicated?! why can't i be hired based on my professional merits rather than my ability to seek work expertly?!

...

of all people to be writing comics, alyssa milano has produced hacktivism. i - am - impressed.

...

i went early to the french conversation meetup to enjoy the vegan pseudo-shepherd's pie at cafe juicy lotus while reading harry potter in french, and was pleased to find myself mostly comfortable talking and listening. confidence: level up!
the cute french volunteer and i were headed in the same direction afterwards and continued the conversation in french until she realized that she'd missed her stop :)

boxing: it was a tough class, and excellent. it was mainly tough because i was working with a guy who knows how to work well and is happy to push me past my limits. i'm fairly certain he's gay, which is why when he was being questioned by one of the girls as to why his gear that usually colour matches didn't i suggested that it worked perfectly because his orange shoes were matched to my training shirt. there was a lengthy and hysterical moment wherein the flabbergasted girl couldn't figure out if i was serious or not :D

army brat was a little more enthusiastic about getting back in the ring to hit me than i find flattering, but it was a good opportunity to discover that yesterday's drills were by far not enough. i did worse than before :(

---one of the fighters was doing weights, he and i have talked a couple of times about psychology because he's studying it. he immediately got where i was going about the nature of reality (i think i've learned to explain it better over the years, perhaps i'll rewrite that post someday) and it inspired a thought: you know that worry that other people know what you're thinking when you think an embarrassing thought? or that concern that people will find out when you do something in private that you feel they'd disapprove of?

well, they do. and they already know, and they most certainly disapprove! because your personal representations of those other people are with you every step of the way! so while the "real" person has no clue what's going on in your head, the "spirits" you carry around with you have an all-access pass. how's that for a weird thought?

---i've hurt my back a little - my back wasn't warm enough when i got into the ring - and i'm praying it'll be fine in time to work with the guy who punched me out on friday because that's happening tomorrow evening. it did make me take a hot bath, though; i'm thirty three years old, and training in tristar has finally brought me to an understanding of why hot baths are great :)

i've watched an episode of downton abbey, some ufc, and now that i've posted this i think i'm ready for a good sleep.

---the american empire is proper-fucked: the anti-science brigade is winning their war of stupid..

return to the poutine routine - part i

it's been an intense (almost) week since i left cape town! i guess i got used to being on holiday. the weird part of being on holiday from unemployment is that it was still, in all senses, a holiday. huh?

regarding weather and snowboarding, it turns out i had absolutely perfect timing! after i left the weather became (relatively) warm and rainy, and the first snow opportunity was on the day after i returned. thank you, montreal!

---last wednesday:

after posting, i went upstairs to pay my uncle a visit. he's really ill and uncomfortable, but he was only too happy to talk and so we did that for a while. it was interesting to receive support for what had only just become my backup plan; later over drinks with my aunt and tgtbt at the winchester mansions my plan would be received just as warmly. so far the only person who hasn't thought much of it is my cousin in england - he had very valid things to say about it. the decision won't be made lightly, though. and life is funny, there really aren't right answers so i can only do my best. and right now, my best is to not need any damned backup plans!

packing went smoothly, there was no pressure and after drinks my mother drove me to the airport: the sunset was achingly beautiful with a full moon just showing over transcendent purples. it's usually hard to leave cape town, but this time? after three glorious weeks of full-being massage?

my mum and i had just enough time to talk and eat (though the wimpy service was so slow we almost scrapped the eating part), and laugh about the woman who appeared to be smuggling jewelry by disguising it as a boot decoration.

...

the first thing i saw on the plane was a guy reading maus, which made me smile because tgtbt and i had been using it to explain to her mother why my "comics" don't need to be funny :P

what a difference being able to read my kindle and listen to music during take-off and landing! i can't believe the rules have finally changed, and now that they're official i'm far more comfortable :)

note to self: never again, given the choice, book a seat that isn't near the back of the plane. i had to share four seats with a man on the other end, and he passed out before we even left the ground. that gave me three seats to myself and i made full use of them ^_^


---thursday:

i watched the fifth estate, which wasn't bad - it's a decent story and didn't feel overly treated. it's also very, VERY relevant. we're in trouble, people.. as i've said many times before, internet access and privacy are the weapons of the 21st century; "the right to bear arms" that the americans are all excited about has nothing to do with antiquated bullshit like guns.

i started watching world war z, which i'd finish on the second flight. it's really not a bad zombie movie, but it's Just Another Zombie Flick. what the hell does it have to do with the book of the same name?! it's a completely different take on zombies, the story isn't even similar to *anything* in the text. whether or not you enjoyed the film, if you're at all interested in humans, zombies, humanity in the face of apocalypse or zombie mythology at it's very cleverest you should read the book. the book is brilliant!

...

changing clothes in london was easy enough. i was asked loads of personal questions coming through immigration, just like before, but again i played nice and they let me through. the long tube ride was just more reason to keep listening to the techno protoplasm had provided me with - that would keep me going for days. it's so good!

it was a beautiful day in london! it did rain a bit, but mostly it was sunny and not very cold :)

the helpful guy at the station didn't know how to get to the specific place i was looking for, but he directed me to what he thought was the right area (turned out it would have been far quicker to walk than take the bus). i loved the fact that he seemed to be caught off-balance by my obvious tourist demeanor and my suddenly british accent. my south african accent may be off, but at least i still have something not-americanized :P

i found myself at a bp station (having just been in one in cape town to fill up the rental, that felt odd) asking for directions, and the guy working the shop was really nice but couldn't find my destination using google maps. fortunately the shop had map books for sale, and he had no problem letting me grab one for a minute - i found the place in a second and thanked the man profusely before heading out. while there, an israeli came in to buy chewing gum. it seemed the most arbitrary place to hear half-asleep hebrew...

i had coffee with my cousin and his son; it was great to see them and we talked until they had to get back to work. i walked back to the subway, decided i needed a bathroom and entered a subway; i'd already ordered my lunch when i realized that they didn't have washrooms at all :(
my brain was mostly offline by that point, i was embarrassed when i realized that i'd asked the guy behind the counter if the veggie patties were vegetarian when i'd meant to ask if they contained any dairy. no matter, he probably wouldn't have known anyway...

[continued...]

farewells

since sunday's trip up platteklip, my legs have been as sore or more than my attempt on the elliptical. so i'm feeling like an old man and i'm satisfied with myself simultaneously :P

the "saying goodbye" phase of this visit is both depressing and comforting! my head's spinning with all the last-minute information, such as a job offer and connections i've received which would cushion my fall if i had to leave montreal, the rediscovered family and some exposed familial skeletons that have fallen out the closet; on my way here i was consumed by thoughts of mail-order husbandry, on my way there it'll be by thoughts of french and work and backup plans.

monday:

getting lost in obs treated me to an excellent vegan sandwich and good coffee. protoplasm's workshop is very cool indeed, i know he's not in full swing and profitable yet but it's great to see that he's on his way :)

he completely blew my mind when he informed me that he was recovering from food poisoning - which he'd gotten before the party on saturday! he was horribly sick and had to be so in chemical toilets, but he wouldn't leave or say anything because he didn't want to ruin our fun! that's insane, even if he did manage to enjoy himself and the music in spite of how he was feeling. i will never be more impressed by a designated driver in my life.

neil gaiman's commencement speech which i watched on airplane's insistence - okay, he didn't have to insist too much - is brilliant and funny and validating; he's saying what i've been saying for years but in a much better way and with more authority :)

my mum and i went to say goodbye to my niece and her husband, my sister's husband and kids and the new sisters-in-law, then returned home for dinner with my aunt and uncle puberty. i then headed off to visit an old friend i haven't seen in years, met his wife and glimpsed his daughter before settling in to chat until it felt pretty late.

---yesterday:

i went to the cape quarter early to look for a specific piece of jewelry for shadowslight's mother's birthday, and walked in to a store manned (or womanned) by a girl i went to school with and who claims only recognized me because of facebook. it's funny, she wasn't good-looking at all as a teenager and has become quite attractive; we chatted for a while and then i left to meet my mother for coffee and be introduced to two of her co-workers.

there's something deeply entertaining about hearing my mother referred to as "battle-axe" :D

i filled the car with petrol and returned it, then walked to the comic / game store to spend some time with another old friend before hyperviper picked me up and we went to the wellness center for lunch. i thought we were going to eat together, but he disappeared and i ate alone. the food was really good, anyway, and i ran into a guy i knew from the dance crew who i'd seen on saturday night.

i went to rick's for a couple of drinks with hyperviper, who then drove me back to sea point to have coffee with my brother. i walked hom from there along main road, my mother picked me up and we went to the golf course (metropolitan is gorgeous) for shadowslight's mom's birthday party. i was introduced to a woman who's apparently my first cousin once removed, who was very excited to meet family she likes. i jumped in on a conversation about psychology not knowing that the woman speaking holds a chair in a psychology department; i told her about my zombies thesis and she was so excited she invited me to teach a seminar. hah!

after a great dinner and more alcohol, we went home and my sister picked me up and we went to call-a-pizza. the pizza was delicious and the music was great (though i expected to purchase more than one disc, but whatever), and we talked about a couple of things that really upset me.

1. my niece's new husband did and does things that are deeply disturbing, and unfortunately my niece is so stubborn that nobody can advise her. all we can do is hope for the best, or at least that if she gets hurt that it's not too badly, and support her as much as we can. i really, really hope that our fears aren't realized and that they're happy together.

2. my brother's behaviour has been even worse than i thought.

in other news, my sister's had some interesting paranormal experiences since her mother's passing that are inexplicable, i don't know how much is coincidence and charlatanism or how much is for real, but if it's the former nobody will ever be able to prove it and if it's the latter it would destabilize my world view. fortunately for me i don't need to worry too much about that right now.

protoplasm rocked up and we went to rafiki's for drinks after deciding that heartache & vine wasn't the place to be. amongst the other topics of discussion he proposed a stupidly simple way to get around the infuriatingly silly laws about working for compensation without a permit*, so if things get interesting i might have an option to earn.

* working for entities outside the country, that is

---today:

languishing in bed, enjoying my last proper sleep until i get back to montreal. walking to my niece's mother-in-law's salon for a pedicure after which i barely recognize my feet, they're not so hippie anymore. getting a cheap (R45) haircut at adelphi center (not very professional, but decent enough) and then lunch at xiang yuan (what an insanely dodgy place!). i shaved my beard for the immigration officials, showered and am now about to make a couple of calls and pack my bags.

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

reset, re-rooted

how do i describe the indescribable? this weekend was defined by magic, an introduction to the ledhedz bus, a small subset of the afrikaburn community and what's apparently called techno but doesn't sound anything like what i thought was techno. i'm officially a convert!

chasing that with a hike up to the top of table mountain on a gorgeous day only served to reinforce my reconnection to this city's power.

the past couple of weeks have been incredible, i feel reset and reconnected, and i'm quite bummed about the fact that there're only another couple of days left before i'm out of here. i love montreal and i know i can't stay here, but i really don't want to leave!

---friday:

i was going to go shopping but decided to spend the stunning sunny afternoon on the beach with sagirl instead - a much better idea! after an incident a few years back when i got burned during a really quick beach visit, i was a little concerned in spite of having put on sunscreen. after a while lying on my belly facing away from sagirl, enjoying the sun on my back, i suddenly felt like my skin was tingling and just at that moment sagirl piped up: "totalwaste, are getting paranoid about being burned? well you can stop, i'll let you know when you need to worry."

whoa (O_o)

...

granadilla lollies cost R20, which is ridiculous. they're also a little smaller than i remember, even if they're just as awesome.

...

my aunt and her kids came over for drinks and debate, which was a lot of fun, and on tgtbt's recommendation my mother and i went to takumi for dinner. firstly, the place is beautiful and the service is excellent. there weren't any vegan options but everything looked really good so i decided to do the sushi experience properly: boy, am i glad i did! everything was absolutely delicious and well presented, by the end my mother couldn't eat any more and i finished everything only because it tasted so good. win!

---saturday:

dreams of airports after america enforces anti-modesty laws to filter out the religious, and about staying in a small community in a generically foreign country.

...

my mother and i went shopping in town. from the parade through grand central and golden acre, we managed to find a pair of shorts for me. it was only when we hit st george's mall that i found a hat i liked, and we did a full browse of greenmarket square before i figured out what beads to buy.

---i hate markets and i hate bargaining. i hate the fact that a conversation about price begins with an outright lie in an attempt to cheat someone out of as much as possible. the whole experience offends me... but somehow, in spite of my feelings of disgust, i seem to have picked up a thing or two while in israel. apparently i've become a tough negotiator, because i walked off with what i wanted at only slightly more than my initial shock-value offer!

the moment that most entertained me was walking away after telling a seller that i wasn't interested in arguing and that i'd give her two minutes to consider my proposal. she changed her tune when i returned.

i can't say i enjoyed doing that, but at least i'm not feeling jipped about my purchases.

---on the way we saw some amazing artwork in the area! we would have gone to crave for lunch but they didn't have vegan options and the guy behind the counter was totally disinterested, so we went to kauai instead where the food was great and the staff pleasant.

the sailors were barbequeing on the beach but that didn't really fit with my other plans, so i decided to go with protoplasm to the party in hillcrest quarry. that didn't actually fit with my other plans either, but i didn't really think about it properly and in retrospect i'm rather glad i didn't :P

---i'm not sure where to begin with the ledhedz bus party. i hadn't thought to bring a sweater and when we arrived the wind was up and it was too chilly to swim, so i'd worn boardies under my shorts for nothing. fortunately we kept warm on the dance floor :)

the subset of the afrikaburn crowd was something i couldn't get a handle on the entire afternoon / night, every now and then i'd register that the only odd man out was me because it was my first event. the crowd included people i went to school with and my niece's new sisters-in-law, which was quite funny and cool.

the music when we arrived was terrible, and the dj after played a lot of empty beats which was boring. after that, though, things got real. the fact that i had deeply entered an alternative state of mind made my introduction to what techno has evolved into an insane experience, i simply could not get a handle on what i was hearing and i've been informed that that's more or less the point. there's something so incredibly strange about dancing to a beat that changed two seconds ago but in such a subtle way that you're not sure why you're off, and something very cool about music that involves such a wide range of electronic that within a single minute you can be standing and nodding your head, dancing like it's disco and stomping like it's psy!

my hippie feet served me well the whole night, i'm extremely glad that i've maintained them so nicely :D

using the public toilets barefoot wasn't too bad - they were kept pretty clean - but there was a moment towards the end of the evening when i was standing by the urinal:
i was in the act when an arm shot across my vision in a most disturbing manner. the guy next to me was trying to settle a can on the sill of the window above us, and i was certain that it'd fall on me the second he let go. eventually he got it right, though, but i still kept an eye on him - peripheral vision only, of course - and was horrified when i registered that he was swaying wildly and struggling to unzip. once he got that right and started to pee, he was too far away from the urinal and swaying too much to not miss at some point.
urinal etiquette be damned, i thought, i'm not having this guy wet my feet!
i told him that i would be very grateful if he would just take a step forward. i was so relieved when he obliged - i was so worried that in whatever state he was he might get aggressive - and i walked out of there with dry feet.

there were only two upsetting moments at the party:

the first was when a dj dropped a tune with a religious sample about jesus' second coming, there were a lot of people on psychedelics and that's *so* unfair whether it was done in jest or not... it actually ejected me from the dance floor for a while :(

the second was me telling protoplasm that i didn't know how i'd feel about the music if i'd been sober. i realized as i said it that it was the stupidest statement of the night because i'd feel exactly the same way, but he suddenly disappeared before i could take it back and i stressed about it for about five minutes until he returned and laughed at me :$

there were plenty of fantastic moments to more than make up for those, though, so that's alright :)

---yesterday:

i was most amused by the sexy german girl we'd gone with passing out on my shoulder while we waited for protoplasm with the car keys - you'd have to be pretty tired to find it comfortable enough :P

i was still high when i returned home at 4am, and only a little concerned about how i was going to get up four hours later to go hiking with airplane. i knew i needed to eat but the peanut butter on toast i made was far too sticky. my mother introduced me to coating it with marmalade, which i'll definitely remember next time as a bloody good idea! we talked for a bit before she went to bed, and it was then that the penny dropped that i only have a couple of days left to say goodbye to everyone...

... how did three weeks pass by so quickly?!

i got into bed but my subconscious was too busy turning imagined white noise into techno for me to sleep; i plugged in to my ipod and that drowned me out of consciousness pretty quickly. good timing, too, because in the morning the battery was drained so i finally remembered to charge it for the flights :P

...

i had no problem waking up, it was an absolutely stunning morning! i drove to airplane's and we headed out together to table mountain. it's cardio up (heavy breathing) and skeletal down (stressed knees), we didn't stop talking the entire way and had a really good time. we went to hudsons for burgers (their veggie burger's good even if it's crumbly) and drinks afterwards; about halfway through the meal the past day caught up with me and my system downshifted. we said goodbye and i drove home, showered and rested for fifteen minutes until my mother came home and we went out for drinks with cousins.

twice, with different cousins. and lots of drinks.

by the time we got home i was completely broken. i had just enough energy to eat my mother's first attempt at cooking tofu - not bad - and lie down on the couch, but suddenly i realized that i needed to brush my teeth and get into bed. i'm so proud of myself for not passing out on the way, i was that exhausted that i was sure that might happen!

---regarding david foster wallace - infinite jest: the whole marijuana addition thing is ridiculous, and it bothers me that people who read the book will have their understanding skewed. tgtbt is a case in point, i had to explain to her that even in such an extreme case, the marijuana is not the culprit. it's psychology, the person has a problem with or without it, and blaming a herb that isn't addictive is irresponsible especially when the world is finally beginning to wake up from the nightmare that the war on drugs and its disinformation have kept us in for the past forty years.

to be fair, the book was written in the nineties, but it still upsets me.

---listening to the news always bugs me. i think america should conquer syria, set up a puppet government and slowly turn the country into another of its states. considering the country's instability they wouldn't need to pretend to be doing anything else, like they are in iraq and afghanistan...

infinite rest - part ii

[... continued]

---yesterday:

the virtual breakup continued. i went to my brother's place for coffee with him and his elder son - the one i don't like - who in addition to appearing to have matured somewhat (which i would hope for from someone who's just made the dean's list when finishing his law degree) actually apologized for the shit he gave me during my matric year and admitted that i hadn't hurt him*.

* this was important for me. the only time i ever completely lost my rag with him i picked him up by his armpits and held him in the air against the wall until he agreed to leave off. he then convinced his little brother that i'd kicked him, and many years later this had turned into a "real" memory that he recalled when we saw each other.

---my brother took me to nü for breakfast, and later in the day i'd hear that my sister is feeling decidedly betrayed because we're spending time together. i'm conflicted, because on the one hand i know she's right and on the other, well, i don't know. i certainly don't trust my brother and i still think he's an asshole, but i'm also pretty sure that he simply doesn't know any better and i'm trying to figure out if i should be shutting him out, or if there could possibly be something worth rescuing. i really don't know if there's an answer, but he is my brother even if i have mixed feelings about him. the only thing i'm sure of is that i wouldn't invite him to my wedding if i got married, that sort of thing, but i'm not sure how that translates to one-on-one interactions if at all.

my sister's currently trying to get the rest of the family to stop attempting to reconcile them; i do feel that it's my duty to stand up for her regardless of my relationship with my brother, what he did to her and her family is totally unforgivable and the rest of our family needs to know not only that but also that he's still keeping inheritance money from our younger sister who's apparently been clean for a couple of years now and will never be capable of taking care of herself.
apparently he doesn't have a clue where she is or how she's doing, though. does that make it better or worse?

---i underwent an emergency beard trim with clippers, then picked up a bottle of rum and headed out to clifton for volleyball. the weather was strange, cloudy with a bit of sun peeking through, big rolling waves and a slight breeze that couldn't make up its mind as to where it wanted to go. the large group on the beach was comprised of a wide variety of people all connected through the years, who were only too welcoming when i arrived :)

in spite of the rum, which did make things a little more hardcore, i played really well despite not having seen a volleyball since 2008; the main difference from the last time being that here, instead of struggling to teach my team-mates about team-work, i was joining a bunch of people who understand the game and we were all having fun and playing decently.

the only bummer was a bit of knee-on-knee action when one of the sailors and i both went for the ball at the same time...

i went into the atlantic twice, and both times it really wasn't as tough as it's been the past few trips. i was concerned that maybe it was just an age thing, because i still fondly recall swimming out to the boats with hyperviper and staying immersed for ages, and the past few visits i've barely been able to walk three feet in without exiting in pain from the cold!
so that was a relieving experience :)

springer arrived with her family in tow, and even though we couldn't see the sun setting we all stayed way past it sitting in a big circle talking, even the threat of rain couldn't detract from the perfectly pleasant sea air and being surrounded by lights in the darkness.

when it eventually did start raining, we all packed up and hurried up the stairs back to our cars to mission off to dizzy's in camps bay. it wasn't just dark and raining, there were odd swirls of mist floating eerily across the road's surface. it was a surreal drive that i thoroughly enjoyed!

how odd running into my niece's new sister-in-law again! the cheeseless pizza was decent, the company was great and the pool was surprisingly decent. when we arrived the guy who had the table beat our first challenger in a way that made me sure that he was bad or that he was a hustler, and either way i wanted the next shot. i discovered that the latter was the case, i made him sweat visibly and was *so* close to winning... but i screwed up a critical shot near the end and gave the game away :(
the rest of the games were a lot of fun and by the time we left we really didn't care that we'd never had the table to ourselves.

i drove home just fine, but i was halfway back when i realized that not only might i fail a breathalyser test but that i'd left my driver's license at home. whoops! :$

---today:

the virtual breakup is now definitely done. this posting is done. i have found my clif builder bars, which my mother had tidied away - out of sight, out of mind, and now it's clear that i over-bought.

the weather is beautiful and i'm really looking forward to the weekend!

infinite rest - part i

it's friday! it's a beautiful day, and i'm pretty sure that after posting this i'm going to head into town and try to get some gift shopping done. and perhaps a little drinking with friends if they're around.

a quick summary of the past week before the details:

1. it's been an extremely relaxed week, the weather was mostly cloudy and cool so it was very indoors and reading or napping or vegging out in front of the telly. which, mind, had so little to offer that it was mostly set to classic music videos. i did see the fifth element again. at some stage i'm going to try to count how many times i've watched it.

2. except when it was outdoors, on monday my mother took me and my london cousins out to our friend's farm and me to visit my second mum in paarl. yesterday i joined my new friends, "the sailors", and springer and crew on the beach for an incredible afternoon / evening of volleyball followed by pizza and good pool.

3. sq and i are definitely not happening. it started with her sending me cooler-than-lukewarm messages, escalated to very unpleasant miscommunications with no sense of humour, and then calmed down with friendly explanations of why this can't work. it's been three days of this, actually, and it's felt like a very real breakup.

oh, well - better virtually than pushing on to a real date and having that fail.

---monday:

the whole day i was tired and perpetually needed to pee. i don't know what that was about. we picked up my cousins and drove through to spice route, which is a beautiful farm with a magical view of the valley; their coffee is terrific, their variety of chocolate is great, their beers are top notch and the brewery-visit experience very cool, their pizzeria is excellent even though they were struggling as they'd hit capacity, and their preserves store had some very interesting items. we then moved on to fairview, but only to drop off my cousins before heading out to paarl.

my second mum's looking good, i hear she wasn't doing so well when my mother last saw her. we didn't talk too much but it was nice to just spend time with her, her family seems nice (it's the first time i've met them, really) and it amused me that i had no problem understanding all the afrikaans even if i wasn't totally comfortable speaking it.

i don't know why her niece's husband kept referring to us as "so-called whites" (the quotations are his), that was kind of awkward.

by the time we were ready to leave the skies had opened up and it was pouring with rain, we were soaked by the time we'd gotten the cousins in the car and the drive back felt cosy and protected and involved a lot of chatter and just the right amount of chocolate tasting.

a braindead evening ensued. i was suffering from restless leg syndrome and it hasn't really let up since.

---tuesday:

in spite of the sore legs and feet i got a good night's sleep, had good dreams and woke up feeling right! i went to the dentist to have my sore post-incompetence tooth sorted out, but after much detective work we couldn't figure out which tooth was actually giving me grief so we decided it was better to leave it :S

i was intrigued when i went in to find a young dentist who's good-looking and looks like a serious sportsman; doesn't quite match the stereotypical dentist in my head. after i left i was informed that he was my niece's first serious boyfriend, which i found quite amusing.

i milled around the health store downstairs, finding a couple of things i wanted but getting stuck at the fridge: what the hell does "flexitarian friendly" mean?!?! after much discussion and googling we all decided that it was a particularly bad marketing idea, the products are vegan and the company's not doing itself any favours by not labelling them as such.

i had a powerhouse wrap (sans cheese) for breakfast at nü, then spent the day on the couch reading infinite jest or napping. when i read the preface, which states that nobody could read this book unaffected, i thought "challenge accepted!"
i failed, this book really is crazy and crazy good! i just got through reading a footnote that's so large conceptually and such brazen use of mise en abyme that i'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it.

i bought the first harry potter book in french, but i'm going to need a lot more focus than i'm currently capable of in order to get through it...

in the evening i took my mom out for chinese, the place is great and the food was good, and i was ready for bed by the time we got home.

---wednesday:

horrible dreams of sweating sewerage and being chased by a hippo with a grudge. then waking up to a breakup message. i remedied the morning with a day of doing very little, eventually heading out to mr price to try to buy shorts to replace the ones i destroyed over new year's... i was severely disappointed by their lack of cool :(

i was thinking of heading to town, but found myself taking a walk on the promenade instead. what interesting timing! as i walked past the mini-golf wondering about the variety of people playing on a random overcast afternoon i recognized the sailors that i met at the festival! we went to newport deli for drinks and tapas, i tagged along to town to meet a couple of friends of theirs and we went through to cavendish to meet a sister, eat dinner and watch 47 ronin.

the movie is beautiful, but it's long and a lot less action-packed than the trailer suggests. we were all looking for a fun ride, and about halfway through we were doing the wave with yawns. to make me uncomfortable i'd developed a rather nasty bellyache that made me pretty bleak.

at least overall i enjoyed the evening in spite of that!

[continued...]

post-parties

for the second morning in a row, cape town is blanketed in mist and the fog horn is sounding. i've always loved this, ever since i was little, it's like the world is wrapped in a cool blanket and we're all being sung a lullaby :)

---friday:

i woke up from dreams of adventure, vengeance and personal justice that made me ashamed. they involved my father, he had cronies, and although i felt that they deserved what they got i was not happy to be in any way involved.

we got up early, dressed nicely and went to the cemetery for the unveiling of my aunt's father's tombstone. it's really not a pleasant place to see loved ones for the first time in years... my other two aunts, uncle puberty and i visited my grandparents' graves, my late uncle's and my late great uncle's. it got emotional.

---i was introduced to a man i'd apparently met at kc's brother's barmitzvah in 2010, but i couldn't remember him at all. though he remembered me well, which made me uncomfortable as hell :(

we saw him again as he crossed to the other side of the cemetery (where my father's buried, we felt no need to visit that side), and my mother drove off with her sisters leaving me with her car.
i was still recovering from the festival - meaning i was feeling a little slow - and was focused on not getting lost on my way home, as i've never been familiar with that area; that doesn't excuse the fact that there was an old woman in the parking lot who'd been waiting for the man in question for half an hour and who was terrified to be waiting alone, and instead of staying with her (i had nothing better to do, really) i told her to rather wait in the shade of the buildings.
i was right in the sense that there are security guards there and less heat, but once i'd driven far enough to be unsure of my way back i became certain that i shouldn't have left and spent the whole drive home beating myself up about it. even if she had nothing to fear, she *thought* she had something to fear and i shouldn't have left her alone :(

---i spent the afternoon getting in touch with most of the people i'd met over new year's, applied for a job in the states with an old friend of biggles who i hope still remembers me from way back when, did some shopping and tried to post using a browser that keeps hanging. this computer is totally screwed! it took me too long to figure out that i should type things up using notepad if i want to retain my sanity...

we went to my aunt for drinks with her boyfriend, wp, tgtbt, their little brother, godmother and yang. the new boyfriend seems like a good guy, and he gave me some interesting advice when he heard about my immigration issues.

a simple misunderstanding had everyone thinking that wp was defending the assailants in the killing of a man holidaying with his family that had taken place at midnight on new year's - phrasing is everything :(

---from there we went to dinner with my brother; after all he's done i always feel uncomfortable about seeing him, but it really wasn't so bad. it's weird that although i no longer care much for him we still have a lot in common, and the table conversations were interesting. especially considering that i would have thought them wholly inappropriate in light of the rest of the family there, our uncle and cousins who are a bit on the square side and our cousins' teenage kid...

... that kid is freakishly wise and educated for his age. he's also a really good kid, and talking to him makes me proud!

...

the apartment - which freaked me out once upon a time when our father died and we saw it for the first time - still looks like a recreation of our home before my mother and i left it. the name on the apartment listing downstairs? it's my initial followed by our family name. wtf?!

---my mother was exhausted even though a couple of us were deeply engaged in a discussion about the magic of software development and the failings of industrialized education, so we cut that short and returned home.

where i began my suffering: ingrown hairs on my throat. i'd forgotten why i abhor shaving with a razor so much! it's been three days and the situation hasn't improved much, i'm now seriously considering laser hair removal. i was considering it before, to be fair, but because the last time i actually had to deal with this was so long ago it wasn't really a priority :P

---saturday:

i was too tired for anything, really, so i went to bed. i woke up to post, spoke to sq instead, then met with dirk diggler and we had breakfast at the new health food place. the quinoa porridge i ate for breakfast really wasn't bad, we had tons of stuff to talk about and i'm well impressed that he's got his shit together even if it's not in a way i would ever consider practical.

we shared a supremely uncomfortable moment talking about mistakes of the past and how they shape us. just thinking about it now, even, is pretty overwhelming...

...

i got into my car and found a cigarette butt on the floor - i couldn't figure out where that came from, and my hackles rose as i remembered the break in i had in 2000 before i left where the thieves had enough time to smoke while they worked. when i got out the car i found a cigarette box stuffed into the door handle, and understood that some asshole had simply stuffed the butt through the tiny gap i left for air circulation.

wtf?! why would somebody do that???

...

i went shopping for vegan food to toss on the braai. i started at woolworths: nothing. checkers: nothing, and the guy i asked for assistance looked at me like i was properly mad. i ran into some cousins, one of whom tried to explain to me how to make some vegan dish or other - not helpful - and then finally found myself at the spar.

win! they had a freezer fully stocked with fry's, which has a range of products that all taste pretty damn good!

the directions hyperviper sent me were really easy to follow and i soon arrived at his home in plattekloof. he's got himself a proper, middle-class home out there and i can't say i wasn't impressed :)
he told me that we'd be joined by a dutch friend of his, for some reason i thought he meant "dutchman" (a derogatory term for dutchman, which would have been funny coming from an afrikaner) but the guy and his wife are actually visiting from the netherlands. we all had a great afternoon, the food was good (even the skeptical carnivores tried the vegan sausages and were pleasantly surprised), we talked and laughed non-stop and chilled with our feet in the pool until it was time to go home.

stuck behind brackenfell and bellville cars all the way home, then failing to find parking anywhere near my mom's apartment because in addition to the minstrels locking up town the cape to rio race had just started: i was a little frustrated. i parked in a terrible spot just so that i could get the frozen goods home quickly, and fortunately when my mother returned someone had just left a space so she held it until i could bring the car around...

after dinner i crashed, and when i woke up a couple of hours later i decided that a trance party with yang was not on the cards for me. i joined my mother in watching jeff dunham's very special christmas special, posted a little and went to bed.

---yesterday:

t'was a day of nothing. i posted, i began reading david foster wallace - infinite jest (tgtbt's recommendation), had coffee with my mother and godmother when she came to visit, and went to my sister's for a braai with her ex-sisters-in-law, a couple of our cousins and my niece's in-laws.

i went with my nephew to pick up a couple of things from their local spar, and he wanted to take a plastic bag that we really didn't need. when i called him on it, he asked the cashier if she wouldn't mind taking me off his hands because he'd had enough... how very disrespectful!

the evening was excellent, swimming, eating way too much, talking non-stop and compulsively playing with the two insanely cute boxers.

now that i'm awake, we're off to paarl to visit my second mum. i've been looking forward to seeing her!

ushering in 2014 - the festival

[... continued]

getting to rezonance wasn't difficult at all, which was only a concern because the last time i went we got lost and ended up in a township. my cute little fiat rental wasn't happy at all with the farm roads, though, and i had to drive extremely slowly... good thing i hadn't forgotten my cds so i could at least sing along and enjoy the ride :)

i walked in carrying my tent and blanket expecting to run into my cousins immediately, but after a short mission i returned to the car to leave them behind and go hunting with my hands free. a good reason for not being able to find them? they weren't there! i thought we'd be doing the full family vibe but only two cousins were there at all, one leaving before the other arrived.

walking in past the third dance floor i heard a bit of george daniel, i'm almost sorry i didn't stay for more, he was amazing!

i found yang on the main dancefloor, we talked for a minute and then springer walked past. it was so cool to see her! she dragged me off to meet her mom and her fiancé, and a couple of minutes later i returned to where i'd met her and yang had already left, not to be seen again. in the minute or two that we had seen each other he'd managed to annoy me by boasting about the quantity of drugs he'd taken in a way that assured me that he'd done nothing at all and didn't realize that that was okay.
okay, then!
the next day one of my new friends would make a comment about how she can't understand how anyone could be stupid enough to leave before the last day, and i kept thinking of yang doing just that...

springer introduced me to her campsite and i set my tent up with them. the wind came up just as i began and subsided soon after i was done. of course :P

i finished just in time to catch the goldfish performance - brilliant! - and then we hit the dam for a swim. i sat on the bank because my boxers weren't appropriate for swimming :(

i was disappointed to find that there were precisely two options for vegan food at the festival, but fortunately the indian food was a very good option indeed. what was super weird was that the stuff they warned me was really hot and spicy wasn't a problem but what wasn't supposed to be spicy burned me :S

the night session didn't impress me too much, the dark psy and full-on were mixed and a lot of the music was loud and crazy but boring: no groove, no clean beats, boring. the few tracks that were good were really good, though, but not enough to keep me out there. i must have gone to bed around 11pm, which in retrospect was a sodding good idea :)

speaking of good ideas - my hippie feet! i've been given some grief about them, most notably by my mother who thinks that i should go for a pedicure, because they'd make a khoisan proud. they're rough and tough and made for stomping, even if they're not the sexiest feet around. i was very glad for them when i discovered an exposed piece of metal on the dance floor in the dark, not by walking on it but by stomping my foot down on it with full force. it hurt, and for a minute i was worried that i'd punctured my sole, but there was no damage done and everything was fine.
in fact, the worst thing to come out of the festival was a splinter in my left foot, i'm not sure if it's still there or not :P

i slept on the ground with a blanket and some clothing piled to make a pillow, and aside from waking up throughout the night to reconnect the tent cover which had been blown off by the wind i actually slept quite well. i woke up feeling rested and, surprisingly, with my body feeling aligned. nice!

i walked down to the dam for a wake-up swim, the water was lovely but drying off was extremely chilly, then headed to get some coffee. as i stood waiting for my order an old couple - and by old i mean somewhere in the range of 50s to 70s, it's hard to tell - stood next to me and were deliberating over their own order. when my coffee was presented to me the gentleman looked over and asked, quizzically, "green coffee?"
his wife (presumably) turned to me and made a calming motion with her hands. "it's the mushrooms," she said. "if you find liquid mushrooms, you really shouldn't take more than one or two drops."
i walked off with the silliest smile on my face!

the music from the second stage was waaaaaay better suited to mornings than that on the main one, so i took my coffee there. talisman was playing, he's a groovy old dude with amazing progressive and there must have been about ten or fifteen of us in total enjoying a perfect session!

when the stage shut down i returned to the tent where my neighbours were just waking up. i convinced them to join me in some rum, but i accidentally pulled out the southern comfort instead. should've labelled the bottles! i brushed my teeth, then returned to the main stage to hunt down tgtbt and her boyfriend. i knew where they were supposed to be but i couldn't find them! eventually i almost walked over them and laughed at them for thinking i'd see them if they were sitting down :P
tgtbt and i talked for a while and it was really cool to get some catch-up time :)

i picked up the bottle of southern comfort, put my boardies on beneath my shorts and hit the dance floor for some quality crazy time. it was getting hotter, too hot for spirits without ice - one of the guys i gave a sip to actually threw up - and eventually i gave up and returned the bottle to the tent. i'd developed heartburn myself, half a bottle of the stuff is apparently not a particularly healthy breakfast.

the vegan place made me a strawberry, banana and apple smoothie that was good, but had precisely one strawberry in it. i found that strange. when i went back for lunch and couldn't decide on quantity, i was called an emasculating name by a very pretty girl and told to take more. i told her i was fully confident in my masculinity and did not succumb to her taunting, and i'm glad because it actually would have been too much for me :P

the afternoon was absolutely wonderful. broken toy were excellent and gandalf finished the day with an amazing set, whoever was in between was good most of the time. there was a lot of mud to splash about in and everyone was having a jolly good time - though there were a few groups of people who weren't quite playing with the rest of us - and the only difficulty was trying to keep in the shade and not get too burned. i'm rather proud of myself for managing to limit the damage so well, big props to my mum for giving me a fantastically silly cowboy (cowgirl?) hat which helped a lot :D

i ran into one of my niece's new husband's sisters on the dancefloor, confirming my original suspicions of her being a bit of a hippie too ;)

my new friends (met through springer) were so much fun to party with and only to happy to share goodies, after the festival was officially over we all spent some time at the dam before heading back to the tents. the wind came up while everyone was striking camp and died down just as soon as the site was clear. of course :P

i stayed with them until i felt ready to drive safely back to cape town, and then a little longer because they'd arranged dinner, and the hours together were spent most joyfully.

after a beautiful, spiritual day and a half on the farm, i got in my car and drove back super-cautiously because cute cars and farm roads don't mix. days have passed, and i'm still feeling wonderful - may the new year bring us all light and love and continue in the vein in which it began!

ushering in 2014 - the private party

[... continued]

i returned home to pack, and got some rest too because i couldn't get hold of protoplasm. when he finally returned my call he gave me directions that seemed simple enough and i jumped in the car and rolled out. driving along the coastal mountain road into the sunset was magnificent!

a slight mistake in the directions had me in the right place convinced that i was completely lost, but i soon found my way. the venue was a beautiful house in the heart of hout bay, i arrived just in time to jump in the pool to cool off and begin meeting all the really interesting people. it was awkward at first, as meeting new people usually is for me, but within a couple of hours it was clear that protoplasm's assessment that we'd all get along famously was entirely accurate. there was even one guy i went to school with who finally realized that i've evolved since those days and could be talked to without reservation :)

moments:

the actual countdown and cheers and things wasn't particularly interesting, loads of handshakes and hugs and cheers and chugs.

in mid-conversation standing next to a table beneath a ledge, someone on the ledge accidentally kicked over a crate filled with glass bottles in our direction. nothing broke and nobody was injured, but for a time i was trapped in a surreal state wherein i existed both in this timeline and the one in which there were terrible consequences.

one of the guys is an advocate for israel and he initiated a political discussion that got more involved and interesting as the night progressed, others joined in and things took a more philosophical and psychological turn, and by the end of the night we were discussing love and relationships and i realized that i'd never spent party-time in such an enjoyably cerebral fashion. very cool people indeed.

one guy wasn't being cool, though. i was sitting in front of the fire after sunrise and he was popping balloons by holding them over the fire. every pop led a cloud of ash to rise and blow into my face, which bothered me and i let him know. he picked up a water pistol and proceeded to shoot the fire, which had the same effect as the balloons popping. i moved to a different seat and rediscovered my innate ability to generate a large amount of guilt verbally with little effort. he finally stopped that shit.

after a glorious three hour nap on the couch, i got up to breakfast and help with the cleanup, along with protoplasm and a couple of the girls (one who lives there and made breakfast, the other who appears to be in protoplasm's sights). the black keys were playing in the background, it was all very perfect for a post-party january first.

and then it was time for a cup of ricoffy (quite the nostalgic taste) to get me ready to drive home and then out to the farm.

[continued...]

ushering in 2014 - the wedding

we drove to suikerbossie, the weather was beautiful aside from a bit of wind which would die down after the ceremony. my niece looked amazing, as did her mother and siblings, and everything seemed grand!

the ceremony itself was nice, and we made it almost to the end without a hitch! it would have been nice if my idiot ex-brother-in-law hadn't argued with the rabbi over whether the wine was kosher and it would have been much nicer if he hadn't bumped my niece out from under the canopy and started a men's-only dance after the glass was broken. usually, even at religious weddings in israel, the newly-weds stay under the canopy and all the guests have an opportunity to come and congratulate them.

next on the piss-off-everyone list was the divider on the dance floor. there was lots of traditional dancing - not my thing but my ex-brother-in-law dragged me into it anyway - but after ten frustrating minutes the divider came down and the band showed that they could play really good music too. much better!

their rendition of smokie - living next door to alice saw all of the groom's relatives on the dance floor singing along loudly, i don't know what that was about but it was most amusing. on a related note, i'm not 100% sure how i feel about him (did he really not recognize me without the beard?!) but his sisters are very cool and we got along well.

nobody knows who the bright spark is who invited my ex-brother-in-law to make a speech, but i'm pretty sure that they're sorry they did. the man got up and spent a long time slurring stupid and stupidly inappropriate things. he managed to properly offend a lot of people. that was followed by a speech by the groom's uncle which consisted of family in-jokes and non-sequiturs, none of which seemed to have anything to do with the bride or groom.

my sister's speech was good, though she did a substantial amount of shaming and i was horrified when she told a story of me and my niece that i felt wholly out-of-place:
my brother is three years older than his niece, and when we returned to live in south africa he obviously felt a bit displaced by her. one day we were in the kitchen and the two of them were in the lounge, and he jumped on the opportunity afforded him, chucking a pillow on her head and sitting on it. when we heard the commotion we rushed in on the scene... our father immediately rescued her, put the pillow on his head and promptly sat on it himself.
i was upset partially because introducing one's baby brother as an attempted murderer isn't cool and partially because the details were fudged to make a good story - i remember the incident well and i'm absolutely certain that i never intended to actually hurt her. make her suffer a little, sure, but not actually cause any harm.

the best part of her speech was her warning to the groom to treat his bride right: "if you don't, i'm going to hop on my broomstick and fly right over there..."
nice one, sis, nice one :)

there was no rum, but the food was excellent and the decidedly talented band managed to cover songs i don't like in a way that got me on the dance floor anyway. we all had fun, a little too much sun, and my (relatively) new brother-in-law and i entertained ourselves and others with general silliness until suddenly it was 4pm and everyone realized that it was time to begin the new year's celebrations.

[continued...]

ending 2013 - part ii

[... continued]

sunday:

after a long while talking to sq i put myself to bed, enjoying deepest slumber. and crazy dreams of high adventure and war. i don't know if "enjoying" is the right word for the latter.

i woke up to a discussion with my mom that saw me entering rant mode; she questioned something in a way that irritated me and after getting defensive i looked it up and found that she was right. so that was an entirely unnecessary negative start to the day - fortunately it didn't continue in similar vein.

yang and i had some gift shopping we needed to do, so i picked him up from town and we headed to what used to be the sunday flea market. it's now the saddest little collection of uninteresting junk, we walked through utterly disappointed. fortunately, yang made a call and we learned about the gardens flea market so we headed there. still not amazing, but certainly closer to what we were looking for. i did see a few things i liked, and i found some cool t-shirts for myself, but i'm going to check out greenmarket square before making any final decisions.

we returned to godmother's best friend's house to relax by the pool with yin and yang and our cousins from london, and soon i received a call from airplane so i drove over to his place to spend a couple of hours with him and his girlfriend and a couple of ciders. it was really cool chilling with them, enjoying the view and the summer evening breeze on their balcony :)

i returned home wondering at how comfortable i am driving in cape town. i made a quick stop at home to get ready, then protoplasm rocked up to pick me up just as my mother returned home. we chatted for a short while, my mother telling us about some wedding drama*, and then went to town for visit.

* the groom was causing shit with the wedding because he wanted to put up a divider on the dance floor in order to pander to my niece's biological father's wishes. her biological father has never been there for her nor added much value and most of us don't like him; we were all horrified and angered by his interference.

---monday:

protoplasm and i went to fiction. fiction... is fiction! little has changed, though the music on sunday night only got really good towards the end. we spent most of the night drinking and enjoying the company of strangers, we had lots of laughs and a jolly good time. a notable moment was buying a round of rum; six rum shots and a beer for R120, which was a pleasure, but not as much of a pleasure as describing the importance of pirates in hamlet and having one of the girls joining me in the punchline: "everything... is better with pirates!"

after a good last dance protoplasm and i walked to the old shell select - it's tradition - where i picked up simba salt and vinegar to complete the nostalgia trip before returning home. i then chatted with sq for a couple of hours of sunrise and finally went to bed.

i dreamed crazy dreams until about 1pm and was woken up to go for a massage my mother had booked for me. usually i pass out at some point, but this time i was totally engaged in conversation the whole time. it intrigues me that over the years we've developed a rapport in spite of the fact that i only see the guy every few years.

afterwards, my mother and i did some quick shopping for the festival and i went to cape quarter to meet with sagirl. we ended up at cafe manhattan for a few drinks, the weather was perfect and after montreal's meeting being overtaken by shared nostalgia and introductions to her friend it was nice to discuss more current affairs! amusingly, we're sharing strikingly similar dating stories, though she's not able to physically meet the guy...

sq and i chatted one last time prior to new year's and then i took my mother out to postacino for dinner. my mother has a great relationship with the owner and it's always nice to arrive at the restaurant and be greeted so warmly :)
it's the first time i've eaten there as a vegan, and they don't have too many menu options available but were only too happy to do any of their pizzas without cheese. their "postacino" pizza without cheese was ridiculously delicious! so much so that in spite of my certainty that i'd need to box half of it there were barely any crumbs left.

i watched ronda rousey vs miesha tate, which is one of the most intense fights i've ever seen! not only in the attitudes of the combatants, but it actually freaked me out every time tate tried to take rousey down. like, holy shit!

i spent some time blogging and fighting mosquitoes before going to bed.

---tuesday:

i didn't get nearly enough sleep. my mother was the one who overslept, though. on the morning of the wedding which made for an interesting morning.

the strangest thing? the dreams that i woke up from, long dreams, were boring. i've never experienced that sensation in a dream before.

ending 2013 - part i

it's now 2014: happy new year! i'm a bit behind on posting, and for an exceptionally good reason - this new year's saw me off the grid, it was insane and magical and a description of it, however vaguely rendered, is deserving of its own post. so as i sit here on this beautiful afternoon, a little too tired and sunburned sore (don't worry, i managed to be responsible and it's minor... and in odd places...) to be out enjoying the sun i'm going to catch up on the run-up to new year's. so without further ado, i present the tail end of 2013!

---after the travelling covered by my previous post, my internal rhythms were totally buggered and so i experienced no jet lag whatsoever! in fact, it startles me that i've been running so well on so little sleep - i've been feeling better than ever over the past week and i've managed not to enter any sort of sleep cycle. my body operates better when it doesn't know what's happening, it appears :)

the only contact i've had with french since i've landed has been demonstrating to french speakers here that i'm not ready to communicate. i desperately need to rectify this.

---friday:

dis-chem is an awesome store with extremely helpful and knowledgeable employees. within no time we had vegan protein powder, creatine and vitamins b12 and d, and all for less than protein powder costs back in canada :)

visiting my aunt:

1. the local single kiss on the cheek versus the montreal double? leads to awkwardness.

2. uncle puberty and biggles were on a roll, things got ridiculously funny and that was very welcoming :)

we returned home, i hurriedly dressed nicely for dinner and we were off.

dinner:

1. there were a lot of people, half of whom i hadn't met before and had trouble keeping track of. that's been a theme, actually, over the past week. what's terrible is that i've had trouble recalling people i met years ago when they remember me. awkward. and then trouble keeping track of people's names when i've spent hours on end with them. super awkward.

2. nobody told anyone that i'm vegan. whoops! good thing there was another vegan!

3. it was great seeing the people i care about! not on that list is my ex-brother-in-law. i'm very glad he didn't make more of an effort to talk to me. his sisters are nice enough, though, and i was pleased when my opinions on israel (which they asked for) were accepted without offense.

4. i almost didn't recognize my uncle, he's been struggling with cancer for years but it's the first time the effects have been so visible.

even though i was really tired, when i got home i checked for messages from sq and she'd sent me a way to find her online presence. this accidentally (using google to search instead of going directly to the page she's set up for work) led me to yelp reviews, and i figured that if she'd checked me out on facebook then i could do the same using yelp. lesson learned: yelp is a dangerous source for online stalking and should be avoided. the negative reviews are stacked towards the top and they can paint a pretty ugly picture - you have to be patient (fortunately, i was in spite of my exhaustion) if you want a balanced view. sq explained that yelp uses that as leverage to get small businesses to pay for better control. i think that's disgusting both because it's essentially blackmail and because that skews the reviews and is a corruption precisely of what yelp is supposed to be offering that nobody else does.

---saturday:

i slept amazingly well - surprising, right?? - and got up early to shave and go to the synagogue in honour of the wedding. as it's been years (probably about three or three and a half) since i last shaved with a razor, i posted a photo to facebook that my mum took. i was disappointed to see later that that photo received more likes than anything else i've posted in seven years on facebook! because it shows that most people do not share my taste in how i should look. i mean, i knew that already, but i didn't have actual evidence in hand :(

shaving wasn't a problem at all, but the days after i remembered one of the main reasons i don't like doing it. in-grown hairs and general skin irritation. nothing visible, but very annoying.
*sigh*
i'd laser my beard if i didn't enjoy having the potential to grow a solid beard. just in case, you know ;)

the synagogue experience was really weird. i was surprised at how many old faces and names i remember (in contrast to the rest of my week's experiences cited earlier), specifically of the choir members. it occurred to me that i sang in the choir almost exactly twenty years ago, and aside from one or two guys (like the choir master) who've since passed away half of the current members were already ancient then. also in the synagogue were a few guys there that i went to school with, too, but they're people i have even less connection to.

picking up my rental was a good excuse to leave early :P

---i'd reserved the cheapest class possible and got a little fiat for my troubles. it's a cool car, but there's something bizarre about constantly being complimented on how cute it is. it's a *car*, people, it's not even mine. i loved my opel kadett, and nobody ever said anything nice about that one :(
when i gave the agent a dirty look after discovering that the car had gp plates (gauteng province, notoriously shit drivers) he told me that everyone will think i'm from out of town and chill.

buddy, you've never driven in cape town, have you?? the hate you get when you drive with gp plates is palpable!

no matter, it's a stick shift and it's taught me something about my driving. i haven't enjoyed driving in many years, and i now understand why: firstly, because overseas everyone drives automatic and i've never liked not being in full control of the car. i like to DRIVE, man, i like to really drive. secondly, there are few places as enjoyable to drive as cape town simply because there's no grid and everything's on or around the mountains, so it's *interesting* to drive. when i drive over to camps bay side i feel like i'm on a rally course, and i drive accordingly ^_^
thirdly, i drove a lot in cape town in the two years before i left - far more than anywhere else - and knowing the layout and the local behaviour so well lends a level of confidence i don't think i'll ever have outside.

---my mother and i met up with godmother and yang at canal walk. i can get lost in canal walk because it's so big, i don't like malls or shopping in general and i couldn't find anything i liked that wasn't marked with american prices. wtf?! it's been two years since i was last here, i'm perpetually shocked that the rand has devalued so much. everything's still cheap by tourist standards, but by south african standards it's unbearable :(

anyway, my mom and i were both stressed and out-shopped by the end of the day. she doesn't like shopping either. that means we both left with nothing after all that, and we'd been in the busiest mall on the first day of post-christmas sales. ugh!

we headed off to jou ma se comedy club to celebrate shadowslight's birthday. in addition to it being a fun evening spent with nice people, they had a vegan meal on the menu that wasn't bad and the comedians were all really good. piet potgieter had us all in hysterics!

...

it's strange to find a breeze at 19 degrees chilly when i've gotten used to -15. it's all psychological, i'm telling you!

[continued...]

traveling british

wednesday:

i suffered some packing anxiety but i was efficient nonetheless; it's helpful to make lists and handle purchases before the day. i felt a bit silly trying out fez when i wasn't completely done, but then i received an alert from british airways informing me that my flight was to be delayed by three hours.

WHAT?! what a screw-up! so i was ready to go far too early and my otherwise unstressed time visiting family and friends in london would be pressured.

the metro to bus transfer was (unwittingly) perfectly timed. i was made nervous by a woman in the bus putting in or moving around a contact lens while we were in motion. i arrived at the airport and headed straight to a store to buy a tsa-approved lock. at least the plastic clamshell packaging had a little easy-open flap that even *i* could find.

after checking in - handing in my luggage and printing out the boarding pass i couldn't get on my phone - i tried to change us dollars to british pounds. the guy took my money and showed me a number that was higher than i expected: great! odd, but great. he proceeded to give me that amount in canadian dollars.
"i asked you for british pounds."
"i can't change us dollars for you, i have to change them to canadian dollars first."
i gave him a dark look.
"and you couldn't have told me that before? i *have* canadian dollars."
i told him to give me pounds for the canadian dollars. as he turned to do that i realized that he was succeeding in double-charging me for the conversions. rude bastard!
"hey, stop! just give me my damned us dollars back. i'll change them on the other side."

the only good things about the three hour delay were the free subway dinner and a few hours of contemplation / meditation that i sorely needed. and i wrote online dating while i waited, which i'm quite proud of.

airports:

no security problems anywhere. no serviceable wi-fi anywhere. the prices in johannesburg's domestic departures hall are set for international travellers, and that's really, really uncool for south africans.

mariah carey - all i want for christmas is you played EVERY TIME i walked into a men's bathroom. subliminal messaging?

kids:

1. sitting next to the kid's toys by the gate and talking on the phone is not a good idea. a bunch of them decided to come and play and i had to move across the hall. the smallest kid took a shine to me and the bigger kids were taking care of her, which was cute but made trying to converse on the phone a bit of a mission.

2. on the first flight i was sitting just behind the infants' row, and counted us all fortunate that they were all, for the most part, relaxed on the flight. on the second flight, i was sitting IN the infants' row, and the parents next to me were flying with their child for the first time. they were more worried than i was, though, and we were all very grateful by the end of the flight that the squealing had been minimal. also, my headphones block out a good amount of noise :P

food:

the in-flight food i had was undoubtedly the best i have ever tasted in thirty years of flying! i am totally satisfied that i remembered to order vegan meals. they were all delicious and i wasn't forced to compromise on anything :)

sleep:

from wednesday morning until friday night, i must have slept between two to four hours in total. i entered zombie-mode almost immediately, unable to focus on anything like a movie or a book, uninterested in writing or even in listening to music. i kept trying the latter and giving up. most of the time i just kind of stared miserably while my head lolled.

when i *did* manage to sleep, it was at all the wrong times. i'm very grateful that they kept waking me for my meals, though!

health:

my stomache was killing me from just after the first take-off until i arrived at my cousins' in london. i was up and down to he bathrooms with no results, i don't know what the hell that was all about. my second flight was ruined by restless leg syndrome in spite of my repeated top-ups of tonic water. i was not impressed, no matter how much i got up and stretched my legs remained cramped.

overall experience:

in spite of the last items mentioned, overall the experience was really good. the airport stuff was all smooth in all directions, the planes were relatively spacious and the only things to complain about had nothing to do with anyone but me.

london:

the underground was simple and i was surprised at how familiar everything was when i'd last been there in 2004.

on the picadilly line to cockfosters: that's a name they might want to consider changing. just sayin'.

my family: it was great seeing my cousins! i only had an hour or so with them, and they had some friends over. when their kids brought out bread and food, they pointed at a bowl and told me it was a mushroom spread. cool! i put it on a slice of bread and it was excellent. a short while later someone asked how it was made.
"oh, mushroom, ricotta..."
"there's cheese in there?!"

why would somebody describe mushroom AND RICOTTA as just mushroom? does cheese not count? i commented that i wouldn't have taken it then, and was asked about my dietary choices. everyone was cool with my reply that it's for health reasons and was happy to leave it at that.
except for the family friend, who got an angry look on her face as she asked: "what makes you think that being vegan is healthier?"

"if you'd asked me that a couple of years ago you'd have been absolutely right," i began, and proceeded to inform her about the research that's been done over the past years. that sparked a discussion about supplements, and once that was over we could change topic and everything relaxed again. only... when the family friend left, she did so without saying goodbye to me. hmmm.

travelling from there to leicester square i just missed the right train; fortunately i only made moonflake and zenstar wait about fifteen minutes, and even more fortunately we'd be travelling on the tube together for a while so we actually ended up with a decent amount of time for coffee and catch-up. it's so nice to see them doing well and even nicer to hear that we're all thinking along similar lines long-term! :)

that moment when i remembered that i didn't need to pack my nice jacket: *facepalm*

i didn't have time to meet with tpj, so i called him from the airport and we chatted until boarding time. i need to make the most out of the $45 package i took for the uk...

---"gold-digger" is such an ugly term. i prefer "full-time high-class monogamous prostitute".

---i was glad to find an indian toilet at johannesburg's baggage claim. the other stalls would have been impossible to change in. i don't know how people change clothes on an airplane.

i arrived in cape town exhausted and feeling grim - like i'd been travelling since wednesday. as soon as i got off the plane, though, i could feel the summer holiday feeling and once i'd gotten home and had a shower i was feeling quite human again in spite of myself :)

there's something about the mother city

i have a lot of catching up to do, and this is not only the first opportunity to do so but it's also the last opportunity to post anything before ushering in the new year with three or four days of absolute insanity!

so let me begin by sharing a sense of where i am right now: it's summer, and it's summer in a relaxed and beautiful city currently populated by people keeping constantly busy having fun or doing as little as possible in every imaginable way. there's an odd sensation that you feel when you land in cape town, something that's not so much a smell as an indefinable sixth sense reminding you that you're in a place where magic is believable. everything's a little slower, a little nicer, a little prettier.

i hit the ground running, while today was meant to be a relaxed pre-new year's one i spent it getting ready (physically and mentally) for the big bang beginning early next morning as we head out for my niece's wedding. let's see how i do...