retro-parenting and all the things

 this morning was a bit of a struggle (i did sleep at least, but not nearly enough), i needed to request a tami water filter technician again, have it out with a cannabis license representative (she told me which documents i need to provide and agreed that that should be clearly stated on the application forms). i ordered a bunch of asterix books in english and french and we did an online grocery shopping. and i worked a bit on the language project. then i accompanied gd to the clinic to request said documents on the way to work.

but then i realized, while at the clinic, that i'd forgotten to disconnect the tami so i had to come back home again 🤦‍♂️

anyway, work: i had a feeling that i wasn't going to get to work on my primary tasks today, and i was right. it was a bunch of distractions, not least of which being that gd needed me to go home, pick up mr smear, take him to his therapist, and then have him come to work afterwards.

at least he managed to find his way to the office by himself!

he did most of the homework there - with a little skiving off now and again - and we left the office in good spirits (although we ended up going in the traditional loops of him going to far with the trolling, which reminded me of josh wolf's big fight* and then suddenly i was transported back to the brawl with my father), and arrived home in time for dinner.

* omg there's actually a follow-up with his son.

with no screens, because he hadn't finished his homework. it was pleasant enough, though. and then we told him he'd need to finish the homework before bed. this started off alright, but we had two final questions to get through and he shut down. and we lost patience.

...

i think one of the hardest pills to swallow has been that we never set clear enough boundaries with him, and that not having a strong sense of them is literally hurting him both at home and at school, and is causing him to behave in ways that are potentially damaging to his future. so now we're scrambling to make up for it, but he's already pretty big and it's really hard to force him to face the world and do what needs to be done without things becoming... intense.

i don't know (and mostly don't care) what the neighbors think of the yelling and screaming, but i actually had to make my son properly afraid of me for what i believe is the first time in his life. he's often been angry and upset by me, sure, but not openly afraid.

strangely, once i finally got through to him and got him to accept his fate and finish the job, his mood rapidly settled and he became cooperative, and by the time he'd gotten through it he was clearly happy with himself. i talked to him (sternly) about not making us have to go through this sort of thing again, he calmly agreed and went off to shower and brush his teeth, singing to himself the whole time.

and bedtime was pleasant, too 👀

...

also strangely, i expected to be thoroughly worn out by all of that drama but i felt strangely okay. i spent a lot of the evening watching youtube videos (i really shouldn't) and playing a lot of minesweeper (i probably shouldn't), and fiddling with my computer settings (it keeps restarting randomly) and installing driver updates (which then mysteriously uninstalled themselves), and somewhere in there managed to fix the language project issue i'd been experiencing in the morning.

and now... i don't know. i should probably go to bed soon.

the battle pt 2

yesterday:

i dropped mr smear off at school, then headed to the dentist. old dentist, about to retire. examined my teeth, prescribed an antibiotic, then informed me that i need to get a root canal - and advised me to have both the bad tooth and its neighbor crowned.

the receptionist handed me the quote, and i had to make an effort to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. i sat there for a little while, stunned, trying to quantify how much money is worth me just being in pain and chewing on the other side of my mouth.

my mom and i used to laugh at my father about that - he was too cheap to get dental work done - but now i'm faced with the same choice and it's not so obvious how to proceed. in the best case, i wait until mid-august for my delayed insurance benefits to kick in before making an appointment.

i left work in the afternoon to be with gd and mr smear for his first bjj class. it went really well! aside from the bit where he almost got his elbow dislocated / broken because he didn't "get" tapping (even though he's well-versed in tapping in a different context - tickle-fights with us :P). anyway, he enjoyed it, and we're very happy with the instruction, and we've registered him for next month.

this is good.

i worked late to compensate, and was pretty beat by the time i got home. after reading a bit more of the iron giant in hebrew (which is slow going because i'm translating phrase by phrase), i sat down with gd to watch the first episode of titans. it's really good.

today:

i began the day with recruitment stuff, then went off to work. it was a pretty successful day overall. in the afternoon i skipped out to accompany gd to the doctor and the pharmacy, and i helped carry groceries home while watching an all-hands over zoom. then i took mr smear to the park, where we practices back kicks and tooled around until dinnertime.

after bedtime, gd and i watched another episode of titans and since then i've been taking care of a random selection of things and reading tech news. i'm tired, and i'm a little stressed about all the things that i haven't been taking care of, and i have to take my antibiotic in half an hour... i guess a half an hour's not too big a deal?

on/off call, relationship clarity

sunday night was okay, though if i recall correctly i didn't sleep too well.

then monday hit.

i spent half my day trying to fix somebody else's problem (apt repositories weren't reachable), and ended up setting up a workaround. at least that was a positive. there were a few negatives.

i left work a little early, picked up a birthday card for gd, picked up the shopping, got caught in a heavy downpour on the way home.

i came up with a plan for writing in the card without gd knowing about it - after she said good night and it was my reading time, mr smear and i took turns reading and filling out the card. this, it turns out, was working absolutely perfectly! until gd decided to walk into his bedroom to put some laundry away. she walked in without warning, i continued reading while mr smear scrambled to hide what he was doing. gd left the room, but left the door open behind her, and i did what i could to keep on going (and not look suspicious) while signaling to mr smear to keep still.

she came in again for another couple of items. on her way out she stopped to say good night again, and that was when she registered that something was going on... but up until that point, it was a good plan!

exhausted, i went to bed early.

at 12.05am, my phone rang. i groggily acknowledged the page and got up. then it rang again. and again. and again and again and again, for over ten straight minutes. it's very hard to look into a problem when there're more than sixty variations of it and it's not clear whether any of them are for entirely different issues.

i spent an hour following the runbook and the runbook's references, none of which were at all helpful. so i started guessing. fortunately, i eventually found something that looked suspicious and then noticed something else suspicious, what looked like one of my coworkers deploying code at 11pm without so much as a "hey, i'm deploying code in the middle of night" to the idiot on duty.

i felt trolled.

and then the traditional attempts to get hold of my boss, because as usual he wasn't answering his phone in the middle of the night, but fortunately i managed to reach the guilty party and sat with him while he reverted his changes and we verified - about two hours after i'd been woken up - that it was those changes and that everything was okay again.

i went to bed feeling a bit disgruntled.

tuesday morning started... not well. it was gd's birthday! so that was great. but i woke up with a really sore neck. and i had to walk mr smear to school in the rain. and i was a mite bothered by the fact that i got another bunch of mysterious paging calls just as we walked out the front door.

was that yesterday? i feels like a long yesterday. yesterday was loooooooong. i worked from home, caught up in a bunch of confusing and uninteresting shit, my only win fixing something that the previous day's workaround had missed.

gd and i went to pick up mr smear from school, and learned that he'd been a real handful (difficult and rude) for his after-school carer. the walk home was unpleasant for all of us, but somehow by the time we got home he'd changed his tune and things eased up a bit.

fortunately i got some respite, some clemency, and went off-call for gd's birthday evening. we celebrated by having dinner, myself managing to ruin dessert due to a misunderstanding and some leftover raw feelings from sunday, but otherwise we all enjoyed a pleasant evening.

gd and i started watching kick-ass after mr smear went to bed. we just finished it a little earlier, and while i always remembered loving it, i'd forgotten that even today it's absolutely one of my favourite movies of all time!

today was better. i think? my mind was all over the place, as it was yesterday, i'm not sure if i really achieved anything work-wise except really dig deep into why i'm not thrilled with my current occupation.

the big deal of today, really, was managing to get everything together just in time for gd's first lidocaine-magnesium treatment. and an appointment for her with the allergist - that was quite an experience, with the good-luck-trying-to-fire-me receptionist behind a heavy sea of humanity - all before i started my work day in a food court with a nice cup of coffee.

after accompanying gd home i realized i had to stay, as the network technician was coming to visit us. did i forget to mention that the past few days we've been having really horrible experiences with our internet? the wifi's been dropping regularly, usually while on important calls. anyway, he replaced a cable and ordered an outside technician because there's definitely a problem with our building's connection, and just before he arrived i figured out that i shouldn't have let my very expensive network application optimize its channels because the best ones aren't compatible with macbooks (old or new) or playstation 4s :/

mr smear went to a classmate's home after school, and gd and i went to pick him. he'd had a great time, and after a quick grocery run we all came home to play evil genius 2: world domination and enjoy a nice dinner followed by a pretty good shower/bedtime ritual.

...

it's been a frustrating few days. i'm really tired, but in spite of how rough the past couple of days have been i feel hopeful.

mr smear and i are still ironing out the kinks in our new strategy. for the most part, things seem to be going well or getting better.

i realized something important, yesterday, on our miserable walk home. i had a revelation about my relationship with my own father. aside from the usual bullying and name-calling that formed the basis of our relationship, there's something he would always describe me as that used to get under my skin: "rude and obnoxious". i never believed i was being either.

yesterday, after mr smear's behaviour when we picked him up, i had those words front-and-center in my mind, and in those moments i could imagine just giving up on my son, giving up on trying to have a good relationship with him and giving up trying to guide him into becoming a decent human being.

just imagining that was a horrible feeling, but it made me realize something very interesting; i think that that must be what happened to me and my father. i was always told it was because i would say "no" to him from an early age, but i suddenly realize that that "no" is hereditary, whether genetic or behaviourally, and that i've passed that "no" on solidly to my son. that "no" is the family curse, and it's not just a "no" - it's a perpetual battle of wills that should never have been in the first place.

i don't know if my father ever really cared about me. maybe he did, once. i know he was severely damaged by his upbringing, that he was a violent and aggressive and venomous person. i know that i inherited a lot of that. but as good as my intentions may always have been, as much as i've tried to raise him with love and build him up, i'm raising a kid who's struggling with the very same anger issues that i did, and with whom i'm struggling in a very similar way to how my father must have with me.

i'm beginning to believe that things really started going badly between me and my father when i was about mr smear's age not because that was when i started standing up to him, but because that was when he finally gave up on our relationship because he just didn't know how to handle me consistently defying him. yelling at me didn't make me want to cooperate with him, physical violence didn't make me want to cooperate with him, and he just didn't have any other tools in his toolbox.

that's kind of how i feel sometimes. "no" was one of mr smear's first words, and it's always been difficult for me to get him to cooperate. it got more difficult the more i tried, and i kept on trying because i care and because i don't know any other way. for the last couple of years - too late to prevent real damage, sadly - i've been doing everything in my power to keep a cool head, to reason and discuss things with my son, and to use non-violent sticks and carrots to convince him to cooperate; but it's hard to convince someone that they don't need to fight when fight-mode has become a baseline for them. it took years for me to be able to see my own angry face reflected in my boy's, in order to even realize that i've been in fight mode the whole time that i'd felt like i was in care mode.

mr smear's a good kid, when he's not being stubborn or angry, and most of the time he's pretty chill. most of the time he's a loving, kind human being, and he doesn't like fighting. this week may have started out horribly, but we've had some big conversations and i'm extremely grateful that right now, after everything that's transpired, we're still able to talk to each other, and listen to each other, even when we don't particularly like what we're hearing.

i don't want to fight any more. i don't believe he does, either. this week we all learned a few new words, a few new ideas. now all we have to do is remember them and put them into practice.

recap

my post-nasal drip has been getting progressively better, though i'm still not 100%. i am feeling loads better, though.

i dropped mr smear off today, drove to my mom's, sold his old balance bike, and tried to square things away so i could get some work done.

the first order of business: docker. i spent forever troubleshooting All The Things, eventually it turned out that window's firewall was silently blocking it without any kind of notification or monitor logs. fuckers.

then something bizarre started happening, and it took me a long time to identify exactly what was going on: whenever something was running with administrative privileges, the mouse and trackpad would be completely disabled. i spent hours searching and trying things out, to no avail, but eventually started shutting things down in desperation and lo! the holdkey app that i've been using for a year was the culprit. clearly i hit a bad setting, and once it was closed my system ran beautifully.

over the course of two work days, i've managed one day's worth of billable hours. i have enjoyed exactly none of this whole ordeal, and effectively lost four irretrievable days of quality of life that i sorely needed. the biggest lessons learned? a bit more patience with some of windows' worse flaws, and that i'm most definitely a windows person - at least until the millions of well-meaning asshats who make linux products for money learn that user experience is meaningful and begins at installation.

...

mr smear:

we had a pretty good start to the day, although as we were leaving for school he told us: "we were playing 'simon says' and one of the kids said 'simon says hit mr smear' so they did". i don't know how accurate/true that story is, but even if it's 100% true then he waited so long to tell us (he hasn't been at school in a week) there's not much we can do about it. the whole thing is heartbreaking.

he got himself into trouble with gd this afternoon, and we suspect that he has been having too much screen-time. he's usually okay with downtime but he wasn't today, though he did calm down eventually and got to choose our dinnertime movie as a reward: i'm glad he chose coco, we all enjoyed it immensely (again).

...

gd and i had a bit of a fight this evening, two rounds, and she said/did some really brilliant things (even though i was angry, i couldn't help but laugh at her legitimately hilarious impressions of me), one of which brought up something really powerful: she described me as operating out of a tiger's cage that i've constructed for myself. and i realized something crazy: my father, as abusive and mean and violent as he was, was not as consistently abusive as the kids (and some teachers) that i was forced to spend most of my days with.

i went to a particularly toxic school, where a culture of bullying has always been the norm - not just the students, but the parents and teachers as well - and i always made a great victim. i came from a home with constant fighting, and was socialized with constant fighting, how was i not going to grow up a big, angry baby? i'm embarrassed about my flailing about, but i still don't know how to handle my emotions, how to express myself in healthy ways. i might not be on the spectrum, but i do exhibit similar behaviours and tonight's little revelation makes me realize that i've spent the past two decades on a sine wave of resocializing. some days are better than others, unfortunately the ability to understand a behaviour or emotion doesn't directly equate to managing it properly.

back to my father: it's intriguing that there are some (positive) things i do with mr smear that remind me of him. i think he was very confused about this whole "life" thing, i don't think he was capable of really loving another human being, and i'm very confident that having children was something he wasn't too excited about, but amidst all the awful memories i recall a few fun ones. it wasn't all bad, and it feels surprisingly peaceful just remembering that.

the rush - part iv

[... continued]
i tried to rest, introducing myself to siri and being rather impressed. i uploaded to soundcloud for the first time, then rushed off to meet vfmp and his boyfriend for the monkland street festival. we had a nice walk but i couldn't avoid the sun even with my sunscreen, my big floppy hat and my jumping from shade to shade. it was waaaay too hot.

vfmp and i headed to shaïka for good wraps and to trade bad father stories; we talked about blood donations and i think he's provided me more than enough fuel for a poetic rant. i then took a long trip to meet with someone before her performance in an attempt to sort out a connection, we shared ten minutes together that were totally off-topic and for a reason i'd rather not go into i ended up returning home without staying for so much as a minute. that was totally unprofessional and uncool of me.

i went back home, feeling remarkably shitty about what had happened, and waited for gd to come home to discuss it with her. i was expecting the worst, but while things definitely weren't great they were far better than i'd hoped for and i'm extremely grateful for that.

we enjoyed a peaceful evening, punctuated by an attempt to do something cool for the als ice bucket challenge which resulted in an amusing fail video instead.

just before heading to see the teenage mutant ninja turtles reboot gd started hurting and then my nerve started pinching, so we arrived at the theatre in less than the best of circumstances. the movie was fun, really fun, aside from a bit of shaky-cam-itis and a couple of weird plot decisions. i have to say that the credits, both opening and closing, were awesome and a lot of the shots were just incredible!
ignoring about half an hour of gd's back giving her trouble we had a really good time.

---yesterday:

going to bed at 2.30am after learning about smashwords' greatness: they really are fantastic! they are without a doubt the future of publishing ^_^

...

i woke up to some poetic inspiration, and i'm ridiculously pleased with myself about what came out of it. gd gave me a lesson in humility along with a painful french lesson, after which we enjoyed a blissfully relaxed sunday morning. we arrived at midi 6 famished, and their soy latte to go with my "herbivore" was precisely what i needed ^_^

i finally figured out how to get a naked domain to redirect - that really should be simpler - and we finished watching cheatin' before i hurried out to godmother's for coffee. it was a gorgeous afternoon, the raspberries were delicious and the fact that fudgee-o double stuf cookies are vegan just made a fantastic day even better. also, yang's finally taken a step in the right direction regarding his education, so that's a thing.

i took my slightly pinched nerve and tender jaw (discovered earlier) to my apartment to pick up a set of keys, two folding chairs and the mezuzot off my doors. i need to put them up here, and i need to acquire another one.

i needed the nap that i took when i got home, but i woke up to go shopping feeling like i was still dreaming and had overdone the sun and not napped nearly enough. microwave dinner, posting, and transforming into a being of pure discomfort were the order of the evening... i guess my day couldn't have been too good :P

gd was watching fringe: we need to hunt down whoever's responsible for mastering these shows and slap some sense into them. you shouldn't have to keep turning the volume up to hear speech and down to prevent hearing loss during action sequences.

---today:

i woke from long dream sequences to a morning of k's choice and more posting. i rushed out, soooo tired and still trying to avoid excess coffee. i made it until 11.15, at which point big junior showed up to delegate a documentation task. fortunately, that's the kind of thing i'm really comfortable doing with my brain off so i completed that quickly enough and returned to my grand plans.

i may have sweated a little when i realized that i was reorganizing the team's wiki docs without authorization :P

my junk food mission to the supermarket next door was successful - they have israeli vegan munchies! nice one :)

the shitty part of the day was my wasting other people's time with non-problems - i had the dumb, i thought my virtual machine's hard drive was taking up 80gb and we spent far too long trying to resize a disk that was actually only 20gb :$

i left feeling incredibly tired and slow. the experience with the laser hair clinic was surprisingly pleasant; the technician was cool, she totally got my intentions, the pain wasn't as bad* and the terrible smell of burning hair didn't last as long.

* it apparently eases the less hair you have

on my way home, i found that siri doesn't work without an internet connection. that's just silly. siri. silly. siri.

i spent the evening almost resting, watching safety not guaranteed with gd and then the first part of the battlestar galactica mini-series when she went to bed. omg, i can't believe it's still so incredibly good, and just how much more powerful it is when you know what's coming!

...

this last post brought to you by a thoroughly irresponsible disregard for my need to sleep. but my chapbook has a nice cover now (thanks, pixlr!) and i'm fairly certain i'm gonna crash in a couple of minutes.

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 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...]

every south african has their madiba story

mine was from just before the elections after he was released and apartheid was officially over. he came to speak to our synagogue one morning, which was duly packed to bursting. fortunately my father's seat was conveniently located so i had a great view of the podium.

the man stood up and gave one of his speeches, which - unless you've somehow never heard one - you'll know was full of hope, wisdom and humour, in equally inspirational parts.

afterwards he went around the synagogue to chat personally with every single person who was interested.

i was thirteen years old; the man took one look at me and my father and bent down to shake me firmly by the hand.

"you... are a very bright boy," he told me, looking into my eyes with a big smile and a sense of gravity that only a man that great could possibly command.

...

such a little thing!

it's funny, but back in those days that was something i needed to hear, and it's something that got my father off my back for a little while. through all the incredible things that man achieved, and all the wonderful things he was prevented from achieving by people of lesser heart and mind, through those magical historical moments we shared with the entire world, *that* is the image of the man that will always be foremost in my mind.

...

oh, great. i'm properly in tears now.

rest in peace, nelson mandela. we wanted to believe that we were ready for one with a soul as beautiful as yours; may your legacy survive our cynical times like your faith survived the greatest hardships.

self-diagnostic

monday:

it's so nice to be doing piles of dishes... haven't experienced that in a while :/
i suddenly remembered that on sunday we'd seen august burns red, i guess that shows you how much of an impression they made. they were pretty good, to be fair, but yeah...

the all-hands calendar appointment was for 9am but i'd decided that the first meeting wasn't until later so i'd get in regular time. newk'd sent me an apology for being late before i was even dressed, and then i thought "damn, that was a bad idea" and rushed out. nobody seemed to care that i was half an hour late.

we interviewed one mr nervous loudwatch in the morning. there were four of us at the beginning, then everybody else suddenly disappeared leaving me alone with him. fine, i carried on, but then suddenly they all came back with executives in tow. if he'd been nervous before...
he seemed like a nice guy and gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about, but when we tried to do a technical evaluation it was a total disaster. when he did understand the questions he deftly demonstrated that he hadn't a clue what to do with them, and when hinted at he stood by his previous answers proudly.

we had a few long meetings and i had lunch with a couple of french speakers (they obliged me with english, mostly). later i was talking to moonlighter and the it guy and they stopped me and told me they'd only listen if i spoke in french. i made it through most of a pretty complicated sentence before i ran out of words, and they were well impressed :D

scrapper's phone is open for international calls but not for messages, which makes the call he made to me during a meeting pretty expensive, and the calls i made back later too. he hadn't taken my advice and had rocked up at the bus station expecting to be able to hop on for toronto, but they were all sold out until this morning. he hadn't taken the set of keys i gave him even though he's returning on friday...

*sigh*

we finished the workday with an extended happy hour with loads more alcohol and snacks than usual and everybody stayed for it. it was mostly enjoyable!

my favourite moment was after two beers when darn was telling us a story about a company he'd worked for that experimented with outsourcing.
"so... you're telling us your company went to india and found itself?"
everyone laughed or snickered, darn didn't get it and proceeded to explain what had happened as if i hadn't understood.

*sigh*

---tuesday:

that moment when you wake up from that short nap before dinner and it's 2.45am...

today was a day that made me confident in my self-diagnosis as manic-depressive. i woke up from almost twelve hours of sleep (on a weekday! i was truly broken) to find my apartment in disarray and no note:

who doesn't know the right way to put cutlery in the drying rack? to hang wet laundry? to recycle? to turn off lights? to lock the door? to clean the sink when he drops toothpaste? to refill the water filter? to remove unused hangars from the shower?

these are fairly unimportant things that i've gotten used to taking for granted since i moved into my own apartment and then lived with pg who's a neat freak.

i'm always reminded of my father screaming at my mother about how only a complete idiot can not know the right way to load toilet paper. i was a little kid and was horrified at how he was so abusive towards my mother over such a trivial thing, and i promised myself never to be that kind of asshole. so on the one hand, all this shit really bothers me and on the other, most of it isn't worth being upset about. so i'm actually less upset about them than i am about being upset by them.

also, it's only the stupid shit i'm annoyed about, otherwise having scrapper here is a pleasure and it would suck if he was in montreal an staying somewhere else. i really feel bad every time i make him feel bad for not doing things the way i expect.

---i arrived more than ten minutes late for today's set of meetings, which scored me a "we noticed" email. we enjoyed about five hours of back-to-back meetings during which i desperately needed to pee almost constantly. my bladder would only relax when i finally got to training, i don't know what the hell that was about. the creatine is supposed to make me retain water and i didn't have any more caffeine than usual...

the vegetarian lunches that were ordered for two of us came with pizza. that sucked.

our product manager asked everyone in the company to say why they come to work every day. most of the answers were insipid, so much so that i caused quite a stir when i stated that "i like to work on beautiful things that i can be proud of." i was actually embarrassed to be sitting around with such uninspired people.

the next thing that would bum me out would be the project manager (okay, i've referred to him enough that he needs a name - i'll call him "darn") informing me that the big boys all want a demo of the software that we haven't even received design approval for. to make that worse:
unless something's changed darn and i both report to megaman. we're supposed to be a team. everyone is constantly reminded that it's a small company and that any suggestions and concerns will be heard. megaman and darn made a decision that would cost us more to implement than the alternative and would limit our ability to follow the product manager's plan in addition to reducing the software's usability. i took darn aside and tried to explain this to him, and he was not only dismissive and offensively unwilling to listen but he treated me in a manner fit for a wayward subordinate.

that made my blood boil. it made me consider giving up and leaving. it made me feel a darkness well up inside me. i cannot abide incompetence, i absolutely abhor irrationality and i detest behaviour that runs counter to everyone's interests.

my impressions of darn so far include him having no sense of humour and having his head stuck deep inside megaman's arse. i now have zero confidence in him as a project manager.

that said, i can't stop thinking about the last round of interviews we've given; if i leave the company after only six months, that reflects badly on me. i still want to be there to try and keep things on track. now that i've been offered options it would be financially irresponsible of me to abandon ship before my first year is up.

i was so impressed and hopeful when megaman arrived, but i do believe that the honeymoon is over. now to just ride it out and see where it goes.

---on a different note, the product manager made a comment about using a pcmcia card and followed that with "this was way back when". yeah, well, there were kids at the table who've never heard of pcmcia cards, so that was a bit redundant :P

---i left the office late and filled with a burning desire to smash something. i arrived just in time for kickboxing but had forgotten my hand wraps... i worked light so it was okay. i was more concerned for my leg, the bump on my shin isn't going away. the horrific bruising is now "normal" in my mind. not even worth a funny photo.
the lesson was solid and i did really well, and it ended with us being offered the opportunity to buy tickets to good seats to see david l'oiseau fighting on saturday night. from the man himself, which was pretty cool, so i picked up two and we'll be there :)

on the way back i felt it - it's the beginning of the end of the shortest summer i've ever experienced. but it's not the suddenly earlier sunset nor the dropping temperature i could feel on the rainy breeze that really hit it home... it was receiving the invitation to renew my ski pass in the mail. YEE-HAH!!! ^_^

so i renewed my pass and i bought in to kite patch, a brilliant indigogo project to reduce mosquito-borne infections in africa. i chatted with a friend before buying into hot watch, which may be awesome but i'll wait to see if they actually deliver.

now it's way later than i should be getting to bed. so that's me for tonight.

second-hand nightmares

i suddenly remembered one of the weird dreams i had this morning. my forearms and hands were constructed in an alien fashion, human-shaped and fully functional but with a lot of gaps, kind of like a crustacean's exoskeleton but with less meat keeping everything together. i woke up soon after becoming frustrated by insects that were flying into the cavities i couldn't scrape them out of and being forced to bang my arms on corner surfaces to get rid of them as if emptying the contents of a tin of beans.

---our project manager (darn) was a bit shaken up this morning, and i had to get the whole story. we began with confusing excess political correctness, as he felt so uncomfortable saying "handicapped" that he used "special" instead. he proceeded to explain that he'd been travelling on the metro when a mixed group of mentally handicapped and blind people filled the car he was in. one of the mentally handicapped threw up on the floor right next to him, and he wanted to get out of there but didn't want to seem like an asshole. i think that it's perfectly alright to leave if you feel uncomfortable, but he felt guilty. someone working with the group came over with a towel and cleaned up so he felt a little better about it... but then they arrived at his station and began shuffling out.

he tried to quickly slip through a gap in the doorway, and as he stepped outside heard a sickening noise. he turned around to discover that he'd tripped up one of the guide dogs, and in turn caused a chain reaction that resulted in a whole group of the blind falling on the floor. they were all lying awkwardly, very confused, and he felt terrible and ashamed. while their helpers set about picking them up... he ran away as fast as his legs could carry him.

---today was a pretty good day, although there were a few incidents with the network. hopefully it'll all be over soon. we have a contractor helping us out with our backend, and i was embarrassed to show him a piece of code that moonlighter had written that was causing weirdness. i explained the fix and confirmed that we were ready to put that kind of thing behind us...

a very strange and sad incident occurred today: aota made a mistake and the cfo dressed her down disproportionately harshly. this is the man who called me out for my tone of voice when dealing with cam2's incompetence? apparently aota didn't say a word, and the cfo was so embarrassed when he calmed down that he left early.

i understand he's been stressed of late, but damn.

---my father was a complete bigot, totally racist and a hardcore homophobe. i once tried to convince him that i was coming out the closet with "dad, my boyfriend's nigerian so i'd appreciate it if you dialed back the racism a notch".
there was a moment of dead silence, absolutely ruined by my mother's laughter when she realized that i was talking shit.

...

okay, so maybe i didn't say it as cleverly as the way i just quoted it. either way, thanks, mom.

---israel brain gain? a representative tried to contact me and i checked out what appears to be their mission statement. if they want skilled israelis to return to the country, perhaps they ought to work on making the country an attractive place for smart people to live?

just saying.

post zionist post nav

in the quickest summary ever, we spent a week in jerusalem visiting the sites and receiving a solid injection of zionism (and i've begun to grow fond of the city itself), and after a restful weekend reading and finishing projects we entered a week of introspection (personal review) and navigation (running around the desert hunting down little metal plates with numbers on them).

the most important item on the list of things to do is to calm down. i need to learn to chill out and takes things easy, and i'm still finding it hard to do. maybe it's the lack of minutes in the day, maybe it's the fact that i'm surrounded by idiocy, and perhaps it has to do with the fact that as much as i have what it takes to be an officer, my ability to express myself and my comprehension are limited and altogether it's a highly frustrating experience.

oh, and the bit where most of the people with me in the course are not my friends, we don't know anything real about each other and oftentimes don't even like each other might have something to do with it too.

right, the dailies (in case you were wondering, the summary ended after the first paragraph):

the essential books in my future home:
alice in wonderland
the complete narnia series
the science of discworld

speaking of which, i bought copies of dune, ender's game, the adventures of huckleberry finn, the rest of the sherlock holmes books and i think something else that i can't recall right now. the trip to the book store was enforced, my commander got permission for me to do the book report on an english book instead, which means that i have the same deadline and have to choose something i've already read. it's either dune or ender's game...

the nose-picker came up to me one evening and placed his hand on my neck: "they're sending me home". bummer, dude. i'm really glad i'd bought wet-wipes just in case...

jerusalem at 3am covered in fog makes me feel at home. the morning prayers at the western wall were quite special.

i sketched a portrait of a previous chief of staff while he talked to our battalion that was good enough that when the guy next to me glanced at it he laughed out loud... oops :S

the toilets in the hotel we stayed at read: "BOER OK".

my niece told me a story that does my head in.
parting of the jewish mourning process is to say a certain prayer (kaddish), and the belief is that every time we say this prayer the soul of the departed rises up to heaven. my father, not being particularly saintly, didn't cause us to scramble to prayers in the wake of his demise.

i personally, don't believe his soul deserves rest.

my niece explained that her father claims that my father came to him in a dream and complained that nobody had said kaddish for him and so he couldn't pass on to the next world. her father, being the self-righteous prick moron that he is, took it upon himself to say prayers.

last week i had a really odd dream, and one part of it remains clear as crystal. it's almost an exact copy of the scene from a clockwork orange of the man licking the warden's boots, with my now-ex male biological forbear doing the licking. it irks me to think that he might have found redemption, whatever form it may have taken.

i think that speaks rather lowly of me.

we paid a visit to david ben gurion's old house, and in the middle of a talk an interesting idea began to form in my mind. it's been developing since, and although my buddies just laughed at me when i gave it voice i think it's possibly a good direction to take when i finish with my military service.

the sneaky bastard finally pushed me to a point where i gave up trying, and then a few days later approached me and repeated my words back at me. i pointed this out to him, and since then he's been trying to be friendly - it's a pity for him that he's so untrustworthy.

our platoon leader opened a debate about zionism wherein i was the only person not allowed to talk... "yet". by the time he let me loose i'd prepared a speech - and a lot of people came to me afterwards to thank me for giving such a touching one. score!

we have a mouse in our room. the stories being told are getting more and more rediculous as the days go on, and we're hiding our food in the weirdest places. the problem with our mouse is that he's talented enough to open up boxes and packets.

it turns out i'm pretty damn good with finding my way around the desert - a pity that our team almost didn't get to try as our commander decided that we weren't prepared enough [of COURSE we can learn a full page of data by rote within fifteen minutes!]. i'd deliberately picked a difficult partner, and we spent the first session arguing constantly about directions (eventually he started listening to me). we've been described as r2d2 and c3po traversing the dunes :P

i improved my physical to such a drastic degree that further improvement is going to be really hard. i finally have real incentive to do push-ups.

this week was crazy as far as exertion and exhaustion were concerned - and not helped by my consuming an energy drink before the physical, which was then cancelled. i couldn't sleep that night, and was royally screwed for the rest of the week... up until thursday afternoon, at least, when i scored an hour and a half siesta in the kitchens ^_^

can, a short video of dick hoyt and his son, is really, really touching.

my SC [the pointy-haired boss] is a tosser, i think that's been pretty well established. i have no time to think during the course, let alone participate in a popularity contest - "man of the section" my ass. hell, i haven't even been in the office for half a year, and he thinks that voting should be my top priority :/

summer's coming to an end! fog in the morning!

i think the best skill i've acquired during the last four months is the ability to stay awake during boring lectures. i don't actually know how i do it, but i suspect it's got to do with my habit of listening to all the tiny noises around me - like papers shuffling and pens clicking. fascinating that in a big lecture theatre there's a constant symphony / cacophony.

the last day was mostly a bitch, and ended with a screaming match before going to bed without showering. i managed to get my sat phone fixed when we arrived back in tel aviv, bought the books, and returned home *just* too late to pick up my dvds from the post office :S

i did laundry, some important shopping, messed about on facebook, and went out for lunch and to meet up with egg. we paid the sports store a visit on the way back apropos snowboarding, and then i walked home to pack and be picked up by ru55, SxS, mmf and one of ze germans to come through to ra'anana for friday night dinner.

AWESOME dinner. proper steak and fantastic potatoes, and there're still leftovers!

we spent the evening / night / morning talking, playing scrabble and having a good laugh over monopoly [i won!], and at sunrise got into the pool for a couple of hours before getting to bed. i can't say that i've slept better than this in many months.

A Goodbye Israel Experience (28th July)

the day before the day before yesterday:

this day just sucked before it started. i was up at 6.45, and missed the first bus because i stood at the @!$%ing wrong bus stop. the bus ride took forever, as it was peak traffic time, and it was crowded and uncomfortable.
as i got off the bus, my mom called me to tell me that my father had died about an hour before, and after a quick (and not very
tear-filled) conversation i entered the student authority. although not upset, i was quite shaken - it put me into a weird state, and the already-high levels of tension for the day simply got a lot higher.

the student authority:

i had to wait for about half an hour, to be told that i didn't need to speak to anyone there. when you've begun by explaining that you're in a really shitty situation, it's not a pleasant experience. on the plus side, i spent the half an hour trying to get through to the relevant people from the army, and i finally managed to acquire the leave i needed.

i visited karnaf, dropped off a cd, had a quick cup of coffee, and he gave me a ride to the bus stop i needed. i took a minibus-taxi, and the ride was actually quite pleasant. i needed it to sort my head out a bit, but nothing could prepare me for the next phase of my day.

the bank:

i got taken around for about half an hour, and was lectured on the
impossibility of giving me dollars from my dollar account, on account (bleh) of it being a sunday. after the half an hour, they conceded that there's no conversion charge on dollars for dollars, so they finally agreed to let me take them.
by that stage the queue i needed to be in had lengthened dramatically, so i spent another 20 minutes (at least) hanging around waiting. fortunately, i managed to get through to the army again (after a LOT of effort and trauma - they don't answer their phones), and semi-sorted out my unit transfer.
i hope.
nothing more i can do about it now.

i then had to fight with some dude to keep my place in the queue, which resulted in a whole schpiel about "respecting your elders". it's a fucking QUEUE for chrissake - if we all gave up our places, we would never get to the teller.
mutha fucka. and he was only a couple of years older than me
anyhow.

getting the cash took two seconds. i hate all these slow people.

the post office:

i stood in the queue for about 20 minutes, which went nowhere as the two people in front were simply standing there. i'm not kidding. and there were about 6 or 7 of us waiting. then some russian woman
jumped the queue, and got served.
>@
i gave up, and moved to another section, where i had to fight with a few other people who thought i'd just let them sneak in front of me.
bastards.
dumb bastards.
dumb israeli bastards.
yes, especially the old women.

so, i get to the teller, holding american dollars. "i'd like to buy traveller's cheques, please."
she not-so-politely informs me that i can only buy dollar traveller's cheques with NIS (new israeli shekels).
"you're kidding, right?"
"no, i'm not. if you want to buy them, you need to trade your dollars for NIS, then use those to buy the cheques."
"you have GOT to be joking! do you have ANY idea what you've just
said?!"
a small argument ensued, which resulted in me simply walking out,
with my dollars as they were. i will NOT be double charged for a non-transaction. no - fucking - way.

i spent the 10 minute walk to campus cursing the sheer retardedness of the system, and the people in it, but it wasn't enough to calm
me down by the time i got there. SSSO (at least, that's what i *think* i nick'ed her before) got upset with me for being upset, so it took us a minute before everything was calmed down enough to talk.

she's helping me out, as usual, with everything - if nothing else it was nice to be able to really talk to someone about the day. it was also important to see her before i left: she's been my
caretaker for the last 4 years, and if it wasn't for her i never would have made it.

so, after saying goodbye, i walked home, picked up my surfboard and a crown she made for me, and walked to her place. by the time i got there i was dehydrated, exhausted, sweaty and hungry (i still hadn't had breakfast), and it took lunch and plenty of liquids before we could sit and sort out an email address for her. i hope she really understands how to use it :P

once i'd left, most of the pressure was off for the day. i spent the afternoon in the air-conditioner, chilling and eating instant meals. i finally cleared and did a basic clean of my room, and sammy was kind enough to give me a ride to the airport.

t'was a fun ride; we always have tons of crap to discuss. fortunately we had time for some coffee and a snack, and we said goodbye as i
began the security procedure. which was quite funny, as the one girl was in training, and even the experienced ones normally have difficulty keeping a straight face with me ^_^

i sat and meditated for a while, listening to k's choice and just contemplating all the issues of the day, the week, the year.
an old friend, who i haven't seen since LAST passover, sat down with me. it was entertaining company - he was accompanying his two little sisters, who were extremely cute (NOT in the sexy way), and we spent the hour or so talking and laughing, which i really needed.

i had Yet Another Israeli Experience - you can't buy from the duty-free without a passport and boarding pass. not even a box
of chewing gum.
now... HOW THE FUCK DID I GET IN THERE WITHOUT THOSE THINGS IN THE FIRST PLACE? HUH?
Yet Another Retarded Policy.

the beginning of the flight was quite funny. we tried to arrange a seat swap so that i could sit next to this friend of mine, and we ended up with a seriously comlex plan, that involved about ten people switching. this would've worked out alright, except that there was one too many demands for a window-seat (3 of 'em), and so although it was a switch that would've made most of us much happier, we had to stay in the same places.

disappointing.
but i still feel that my organizational skills have dramatically
improved :D

the day before yesterday:

the flight sucked ASS. i barely slept, although the steward/ess(e)s thought i was one of the security team, so i got preferential treatment. oh, and i watched starsky and hutch, which wasn't very funny, but it was another cute ben stiller flick.
oh, yeah. the food. not really food. so much as dehydrated just-add-water crap-inna-bucket. as if i didn't have enough problems, 'cause my stomache was already doing funny things from all the stress and bad eating from the previous days.

i was completely AMAZED in johannesburg. firstly, it was 3o, which is only about 30o colder than the day before. secondly, everything went so smoothly, than it felt like i basically slid from plane to plane. everyone was polite and efficient. not quite what i'm used to.

the second flight was a BAZILLION times better. the food was decent, the people were behaved, and it was far more comfortable.

i arrived in cape town, picked up my bag, and got a big hug from the mommy. it's taken me until this morning to register that i'm ACTUALLY in cape town - everything between landing and now has seemed like a sequence of too-beautiful photos (like the faked stuff from digitalblasphemy). we drove home, had a meeting with the rabbi about funeral protocol, showered, dressed, and drove to the funeral.

oh, yes. my brother and i aren't supposed to do anything fun for the next 11 months. yeah fucking right.

the funeral was a WEIRD experience, from start to finish. i haven't seen my younger sister in many years, and while she didn't look as bad as everyone described, she didn't look so good either. her profession's been catching up to her. i also met her mom, and i've never heard a good word about this woman, who was seriously overly-friendly.

there were a lot of well-wishing people, and a few friends came too. the first eulogy, from my uncle, was really good. he employed excellent doublespeak, and it was like listening to two completely different stories at the same time. we were all quite impressed.

the second was from the rabbi, and a lot of what he said just wasn't right. he really means well, but there are some things you just can't band-aid. it's like saying that joseph stalin really wasn't such a bad guy.

i realized, as we interred the body, that i don't really harbour ill-will towards his body. it's the controller that did a bum job. leaving was a bit complicated - everyone wants to say hi, and do the whole well-wishing thing. some of it was sweet, some was really uncomfortable, and some was just plain aweful. but we smiled the sad smile (at least i HOPE that's what it looked like), and after all was said and done, we went back to the house. the evening meal
was very simple, but pleasant nonetheless, but very soon we were all completely bombed and it was bedtime all around.

yesterday:

i got up around 8.30, and i have no idea why. i arbed around for a bit, had me a jungle-oats breakfast, and then went to my sister's for a long talk. i went to my visit my brother afterwards, and got there just in time to put a stop to a really aweful sequence of events - there were just a lot of unfortunate coincidences going around, and things were getting interesting (in a very bad sort of way).

not only did we sort everything out, but we also had a serious talk about stuff, which we really needed.

everyone came over, we had some interesting discussions, and then my sister and i gave an uncle a ride to the traffic station to recover his towed car. he was supposed to meet us outside when he was done, but forgot and drove straight home, so we sat for about half an hour there before we got fed-up and phoned him...
hmmph.

we went to clear stuff from the post office, and then moved on to woodstock, where i got my phone unblocked (for FAR cheaper than in
israel). by the time we'd done some shopping, and gotten home, it was 17.30, and we were meant to be in the synagogue by 17.45 - after i'd showered and gotten dressed, i made it there JUST in time to leave... whoops. my entrance was a TAD embarrassing.

the sunset was INCREDIBLE. the sky became a rainbow, with all the palm trees silhouetted against it, the water a deep blue dimming towards the horizon...

the evening was somewhat complicated, with lots of running around, but also very nice, with lots of interesting conversations and general togetherness - the funny part of all this is that we're supposed to be mourning my father: this is the first time the family's been all together, with everyone enjoying themselves, and it's mainly because he's not there to stuff it all up...

and the food was simply AMAZING. so much good stuff, i had to taste
a tiny bit of everything to make sure i got it all - AND there were serious leftovers, so when i got the munchies later there was plenty to choose from ^_^

my brother and i spent some time together after everyone left, which
was concluded by a drive to the ATM. that fscking car (my father's) is simply amazing.

this morning:

omfg - i finally got some internet time, and my mom's pc, and the internet in south africa in general, is rediculously outdated, clunky, and bizarre. this whole country needs some serious IT therapy.

omfg - i just had breakfast. a snackwich and coffee, standing on the balcony overlooking a scene so beautiful that my eyes hurt. and i thought last night's sunset was pretty...