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...

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.

birthday weekend 2013 - part ii

[...continued]

sunday morning:

i spent my morning simultaneously preparing for snowboarding and tidying up the apartment. icarus arrived with... a gift! supremely awkward, because although i appreciate the thoughtfulness - and in this case it's actually amusing - it's a Thing that exists purely to be Owned. not my style at all :(

it's a model of a porsche, to remind me of the porsche story.

we arrived at saint sauveur, the conditions were pure magic! only everyone and their grandmothers seemed to agree and the central lift was out of order. after lunch they fixed the lift, and then later on another exquisite snowstorm would begin... it was a fantastic day, i had plenty of great runs that alternated between switch practice and high-speed survival :D

on the return drive we plugged in my ipod and some trance came on; icarus isn't into electronic music, but i explained to him what trance is all about (that all the music is in the beats and bassline, in the nuances and the spacing / timing) and he got it so quickly that soon he was happily nodding his head to some pretty hardcore stuff!

the difference between going alone and going with friends: the day cost me a total of $2.50, and that was for the coffee :)

when i got home and showered i called sagirl, who'd been telling me repeatedly to get to the d'iberville metro station which i couldn't find on my map. until i realized that the magnet holding up the map was sitting precisely on the station :$

i headed out there, and it was great seeing her! and meeting her friend. we had an excellent evening, the very cool place we went to for dinner had veggie options and we spent the evening discovering that we share more friend networks than we thought and giving her friend an amusing lesson in cape town nightlife history :)

...

the street was empty so i decided to do some funny footprints in the snow on my way home. as i walked backwards back to the pavement i registered a dark figure mere metres away and walking towards me.

i spun around and continued completely nonchalantly. but i was very relieved when they walked past my building entrance and didn't enter!

---monday:

i was distracted constantly by conversations while trying to drop items off my to-do list. my alarm woke me to the unfortunate reality that it was time for my root canal treatment... i just missed the first metro and the second was delayed, so i arrived about ten minutes late.

the two hours in the chair went by very slowly, the soothing classical music in the background and the complete disengagement of my mind made it very hard to stay awake. i was warned a few times that i was closing my mouth, but what the hell? why can't they just use a clamp or something?
SO... while he managed not to hurt me at all, he informed me after he was done that the procedure had taken much longer than anticipated because my nerves were longer than he'd thought and that there had been four canals that needed cleaning and not three. oh, and the calcification interfered too, apparently. so instead of finishing the job, he slapped on cotton wool and temporary filling and i had to make another appointment.

i'm not impressed. i'm even less impressed now that i've heard four separate stories that make this seem entirely normal.

...

i got home with a sore jaw and still a little upset, and spent the following hour or two translating middle english. i then watched sucker punch, which is a fun movie but not the the one icarus was telling me about.

i was planning on posting this all after dinner, but i procrastinated and eventually had to go to bed. not before discussing my grandfather's yahrzeit with my mum... each anniversary of the death of a parent we're supposed to remember them by joining ten male jews for prayers. in addition to not caring too much for prayers others have invented... or hunting the ten men... i also know that our parents live on through us and that our daily actions determine whether we're respecting their memories or not. and that's regardless of whether they're alive or dead.

---today:

well, i've posted, finally. that's something.

---a friend of yang's asked me for help programming, and at one point i couldn't decide if the kid was trolling me or not. he wants help with something but is unable to articulate where he's having trouble. i explained to him that a fundamental skill of programming is knowing how to break down problems into manageable pieces, and his response was "oh, they're only teaching that next semester."

i suggested that he re-evaluate his choice of studies, if he's not interested in using his brain to figure things out then software is definitely NOT for him.

birthday weekend 2013 - part i

friday night:

i headed off to vfmp's and from there we went together to meet his boyfriend at the theatre. before the lights went down i had an sms conversation with a girl i'm going on a date with soon, and was quite proud of myself for managing to transmit my sense of humour. apparently getting hit in the head wasn't all bad :P
in addition to the aggravation of having forgotten my antibiotics at home, my phone reminder went off loudly even though it was set to vibrate and that was horrifically embarrassing! paranoid, i held my phone's silence button at the ready for the next while and it felt like i was receiving tons of messages or phone calls... eventually i turned it off. after the movie, i turned it back on and there were no missed calls or messages. :S

out in the dark - it's an absolutely brilliant film, and does a fantastic job of portraying, in my opinion, a good deal of what makes israel tick.

like a time-bomb.

it's got an excellent story and covers the angles with deeply disturbing accuracy. every time security services opened their mouths i got chills! overall, i loved some of it, hated most of it and appreciated all of it. not the happiest birthday movie - not cathartic at all - but i'm very glad i saw it.

and then i had to rush home to take my pills.

---
saturday:

i wasn't ready to get up when i did, and the idea of snowboarding was too much. most of my morning (and it's barely stopped even now, three days later) was spent responding to birthday messages - which was awesome! i don't let people post on my facebook wall because i feel it's inappropriate and impersonal, and i've been rewarded by soooo many long catch-up conversations with people i care about and have been out of touch with ^_^

...

i read through wired's "guiltless gift guide":
i think they can drop the "guiltless" pretense, most of the items are just more stuff. it's cool stuff, to be fair, but very little of it is superior in any way to any other equivalents when it comes to being mindful of the planet. i'd have been very glad to see a real "guiltless" guide, but seeing a regular guide labelled "guiltless" is nothing short of offensive.
i'm also still very disappointed by their lack of a digital-only subscription and their physical promotional spam.

...

getting my opus card fixed / replaced at berri-uqam took about two seconds, i was a bit shocked when the woman turned back to me with a smile on her face and wished me well. "is that it?!"

as i purchased by bus tickets to saint sauveur i realized that if i wasn't going snowboarding right after brunch then i could have picked them up any time...

godmother picked me up from the station and we went to an awesome place in old montreal called olive and gourmandeau. it's super hipster funky with great food (two vegan options) and excellent atmosphere. after breakfast she took me to a skate shop to buy a bag for my snowboard - sweet! i quickly settled on a backpack with appropriate straps, so i can have the board on my back and only need a single bag for travelling ^_^

after another round of birthday messaging i stopped at subway for lunch on my way to the starbucks to work on my comics... the nutritionally well-endowed gentleman who works there always appears to be stoned, but this is the first time i've registered him making himself a sandwich as soon as he finished with mine. what a perfect job for a stoner!

on my way out i called fcmg to ask if she'd like to meet during the week, and she was all "sure! i can meet you in ten minutes!"
no, shit! so i flipped my plans, did some rushed shopping (subway's next to the supermarket), dropped everything off at home and then went downtown to meet her at cafe depot - i'm a regular there already :P

coffee and comics were great fun, with a lot of inspirational moments. additionally, she loves my space epic pitch (next project!) and was happy to discover that she knows someone who actually applied for mars one :)

one of the problems she had, and she was embarrassed to tell me this, was that she couldn't read one of the source texts because it's written in middle english. i'd told her that it's not easy, that you have to "relax" your linguistic rules, but while i can do that easily i failed to take into account that i studied literature for two years in addition to my being a poet...

as i'd read in wired that morning: "any communication - is a problem of empathy. you have to imagine yourself in the mind of someone who doesn't know something that you do." that's hard, man. last night i spent a few hours on modernizing the text, and while fcmg responded enthusiastically to the results i'll refrain from publishing it until i've reworked it to a satisfyingly poetic translation. not that it doesn't sound good, but i'd like to maintain the metre and rhyme as much as possible...

after our meeting i returned home to lose more time to once upon a time... omg that series is awesome. the writing is incredible! over the last couple of days i've found myself consistently blown away by the series, and towards the end of the first season (i have two episodes to go) it's become one of my top-rated series of all time. i've actually shouted at an ending for being an evilly clever cliffhanger...

i was eating dinner while watching, and as has become normal over the course of the past week i was eating insanely slowly... we used to laugh at tahoma for eating slowly, but now it's me taking an hour to eat a bowl of salad :(

i was hoping to meet with sagirl who'd just arrived in montreal, but she couldn't get a fix on her plans so i went to vfmp's to play thunderstone instead. we had a great time :)

---sunday:

we enjoyed an epic finish *just* in time for me to catch the bus and metro, and i headed home. there's something magnificently creepy about a parked metro train with the lights off in the middle of the night.

i got home ready for the deepest sleep, but instead woke up soaked in sweat. i dumped the sheet, showered, and spent the next few hours trying out different methods of not overheating. eventually i settled on moving to a cold spot every ten minutes... this has happened every night since, and it's very frustrating.

...

in the morning i had a chat with lipgirl, who wanted to know why i didn't even want to visit israel anymore. i gave a few reasons, but what i didn't say to her - i wrote it out and then deleted it - i'll share here:
it's so hard to deal with the barbarianism and that begins precisely at the point at which you join the line for passport control at ben gurion airport.
...
the psychologist i spoke to prior to my release from the air force warned me to make sure that the terrible things i experienced don't become a great stone around my neck, but no matter how much i made good on my life afterwards each and every negative thing accumulated... it's the country, the government, the lack of national cohesion, not the individual that has brought me to this dark point where i cannot bear the thought of returning.

[continued...]

the first spring of the rest of my life

just up from a peaceful afternoon nap, having drifted in and out of sleep the entire sunny [i suspect, i haven't ventured outside] afternoon while finishing alice in sunderland (immensely delightful and full of wondrous insight!) and beginning the [definitive] annoted alice.

i'm now taking the book outdoors so as not to have spent it all in the shade :)

---
after a great beef parisian breakfast yesterday morning, i headed to disc center in the mall for the experience of the day. after ripping the cds, i played them in the background while continuing to read alice in sunderland on the couch, eventually passing out for a few minutes before forcing myself to get up and walk to the climbing wall.

i shouldn't have walked with one of the guys, i should have bladed and met scrapper there directly. he ended up waiting about half an hour for us, sorting out my new climbing shoes took half an hour and we had less time on the wall than we'd originally thought :/

buying the shoes was unpleasant - everyone gives different advice. i eventually went with size 45, because they were too tight, and it took me a climb and a half to realize that i'd made a huge mistake. i was extremely fortunate that they let me switch out for 46, and it was smooth sailing from there.

on the walk back and over a beer we discussed the possibility of continuing the project, even without my direct involvement, and i'm glad for the support. and for the understanding of why i can't stick my neck out too far :P

i immediately hit the shower on arrival, and had barely enough time to hang up the washing before rushing out to be picked up for dinner. two fresh soldiers in the car had us talking military the whole drive, and i was glad when we got to our destination and switched topic.

i was excited to discover that one of my english cousins is remaining here for the next few months, specifically because she and her friends are particularly interested in outdoor partying and that might make my getting there and back more comfortable ^_^

the seder, or passover meal surrounded by reading and singing and re-experiencing the exodus from egypt (there was an attempt to debate which was cut short by her rather impatiently irreligious mother), was quite fun - as is usual with this family. boisterous, loud, and often silly :)

the food was amazing. i was so engrossed in an argument* with a family-friend's son (an economics / philosophy major) that i only managed to consume two of the succulent steaks on offer, but that turned out to be alright because otherwise i wouldn't have had much room for the most decadently delicious chocolate mousse-meringue-strawberry combo.

i definitely needed to sleep that off on the ride back. i actually felt a little guilty about not having kept the driver company :$

i paid the weekly trance party a visit: the music wasn't great when i arrived, i was really awkward with one of the girls**, there were weird people on the dancefloor (just standing there), and by the time the music started getting wild the place was so packed (about 2.30am) that i was made uncomfortable by the crowd pressure and the smoke. so i left.

i was completely entranced by my psytrance playlist on the walk back, and was feeling much better by the time i got home. i received some travel advice from a friend that got me thinking that i should brush up on my hindu mythology before i go...

sagirl's random outburst:

life is SO precious!!! if you want to moan about something....STOP, change the sentence into something positive and remember that life is to short to ponder on the negative and we have to make the most of the things we have and love the people around us, cause in a blink of an eye, they could be gone!!

is such an obvious truism that i felt slapped in the face, and i put myself to bed feeling much better about the world.

...

i spent the day in slow motion, tidying up a little and playing with my ipod. i finally watched the first episode of rome (thank you, dystopia!), was blown away, and then settled down to read.

it's taken me so long to get this down (interrupted frequently by chats), that i feel compelled to leave the footnotes for later.

superheated

i'm off to stomp a little - tgtbt just informed me that roots is going nuts ^_^

the power in sea point went out this morning when i tried to get the car washed, which i take as a sign that i should hand it over disgustingly dirty. i'll make another attempt when i get up again :P

aside from a walk in the ridiculous heat to find contact information for the taekwondo group here, a great lamb sandwich with my mother and sister for lunch, drinks with hyperviper* and sagirl and an excellent dinner with two of my aunts and uncle puberty (tonight was the first time i've ever had an answer for everything he had to throw at me :) ), i've spent the day sleeping.

* springer saw me while i was waiting, and has had a complication with him recently which caused their walking past one another afterwards to be quite awkward.

a markéd improvemént

top of the news - vaudeville is fantastic! anyone in cape town who reads this *has* to go see it, it was an absolutely wonderful experience - slick, professional and magnificent ^_^

it's the first time i've seen sagirl in action, and that was pure pleasure: it's nice not only to be treated by one of the performers, but to discover just how amazing they really are!

---
the day began on the beach, disturbing uncle hate with my piercing and tattoo, having The Talk with yang and trying unsuccessfully to dip into the ocean while the waves were being decidedly uninviting. he didn't see the angle i took coming, and i hope i managed to get across the important bits.

he then joined me and dirk diggler (and a short while later, mmm) at newport deli for lunch and smoothies, and dirk diggler and i were on a roll so the other two (and half the deli) got to enjoy a meal and a show :)

after lunch, mmm and i returned to the beach to meet with springer, protoplasm and his sister; the waves were ridiculously high and directly onto the sandbar (i dived straight into the ground when the water was being pulled back). we had fun chatting, eating granadilla lollies and being amused by springer's little one, right until mmm noticed that i was going to be late.

it was while planning the evening that we suddenly realized that protoplasm was supposed to be with us (we'd booked for him, too) and due to a miscommunication had thought the night was off. i'm well impressed at how fast he managed to get his sister home and return in time for a quick shower before we all left.

---
the after party was nice, although there weren't enough people. i managed to find an in with a really cute girl at the bar, but was distracted by sagirl (happily, we never get to talk and we have a lot to catch up) and so missed out. oh, well.

we then moved over to fiction, where the music was mostly pretty good (until the last set, at least) and there was quite a bit of talent. we didn't make much headway women-wise but we did drink and dance a lot.

in preparation for driving, we took a walk to the 7-eleven. a couple of street-dwellers provided random encounters that got us a bit on edge, but to make up for it i had a whippy and a ffwd, and the coke that washed them down picked me up fairly quickly.

i'm home, about to shower and get into bed. it's gonna be 5am by the time i do, so i think i'm going the right way already :)

awkwardly uncivilized

work was great - i got a lot of fun stuff done. sagirl put me in touch with a friend of hers, so i bailed early and made my way to a really nice bar / restaurant to meet her.

the entrance wasn't too obvious, or at least looked suspiciously like it wasn't one. as i entered, the handle of the door came off. i can't stop myself blushing when things like that happen - even though i know it wasn't my fault. there was a crowded table right next to the door, everyone stared as i calmly (aside from being beetroot-coloured) re-attached the handle and walked through to the bar.

i called, no answer. i ordered a guinness and sat down waiting for a callback. no dice, so i sent a silly message ("aww, i feel like i've been stood up :("), and soon afterwards got a response: "we're sitting at the entrance, table no. 5". so i asked the waitress if the tables were numbered (i hadn't seen any signs).

"yes - are you on a blind date?" she sounded way too amused
"erm - i'm just meeting someone here. where is table 5?"
"table 5 is the bar"

okay - i quickly check the others at the bar... no way. sod that, i called again, and turned around to see the girl closest to the door (that i'd incidented - is that a word? don't think so) pick up her phone.

*sigh*

anyway, it was a nice group to sit chatting with. i didn't do much chatting though - it's absolutely fantastic how serving in the army can shut your mouth. it doesn't matter how much i have to say, i always get stuck conversationally when i feel like it would be useful not to :(

and plus, as a quick flashback of sitting with sb and her acting buddies (i can't tell acting jokes. i'm not an actor.), i don't have many ship experiences to share - so i just sat listening to some very amusing stories about cruise life. sounds rather soap-opera-y... my life's more drama and pulp fiction.

so all-in-all, it's always nice to be reminded that there are such beautiful girls in south africa (and hey, i'll be there soon! another 25 days!), and it was a fun evening out compared to the usual weekday go-home-sleep-back-to-work, and it was nice meeting friends of friends (i'm seeing sagirl for the first time in years this holiday), and i hope i'll see them again in spite of my life being decidedly anti new friends at the moment.

on the way out, SxS called to inform me that he's back from cyprus and that i have no choice but to go to yogi's tomorrow night in order to see him before we meet in cape town... dammit. poker night in the middle of the week's gonna kill me.