myths and fables

 my bum still hurts - gd dug her elbow in and i've used bengay, but the tightness isn't going away and i'm nervous about going to bed...

it's probably not helped by my spending the last hour or so sitting down at my computer.

i began the day trying to figure out why my external monitor was flickering, and it resolved without me getting an answer. apparently it's a known macbook thing. nice.

i then spent the next three hours putting fable through its paces. i sent the following to horseman:

bro, i’ve been using fable for the past couple of hours. it’s… 

it’s…

it’s an AI model 😂

it does seem like a significant improvement so far, but god damn the hype is so detached from the reality - as usual. also, holy shit it’s expensive.

we walked to our favorite vegan coffee spot to meet up with my aunt and her family - we haven't seen my cousins in years! i spent most of our time talking shop with the younger brother, and then tgtbt stayed with us when everyone else left and we talked and talked until mr smear had long had enough :P

the afternoon / evening was going great, mr smear and i agreed to a compromise between video games and fluxx, and i think that's the first time i've held my own in spiderheck. a lot of our math fluxx experience was good - meaning both of us were enjoying it - but then he got in a mode after deciding that the game should have been over (when it wasn't) and made a whole thing... which i kinda the whole thing gd and i have been charged with getting him to learn how to handle. so we entered shabbat with a bit of a shit vibe.

kiddush and dinner were nice once we got over that initial hurdle, and then it was shower and bedtime for mr smear, and then i passed out for a while, and woke up with my hip flexors doing their thing, and for the last while i've been playing slay the spire 2 while occasionally checking in on fable because i forgot to set --dangerously-skip-permissions which are far more nuisance than any real safety they provide.

so far i've apparently used $45 worth of fable tokens, and i've yet to see evidence that the effort is any better than sonnet. perhaps i'm wrong? i guess i'll find out in the morning, but i'm beginning to believe the rumors that LLMs have peaked and the next evolutionary jump is going to have to come from some other idea. and that the magic really is in the harness, and that off-the-shelf harnesses are just not where it's at.

on parole: sound check - part down

i woke up yesterday morning really, really nervous. it didn't help that while attempting to fill out the registration form i realized that i had, a number of weeks ago, downloaded a sample exam that would have helped tremendously in my preparation. feeling stupid, and under a lot of pressure, i hurriedly walked through the materials before leaving for the test. i had just enough time. it was pretty important that i did that, because what followed would have been way worse otherwise!

for the first time i looked properly at the photos i had taken the other day: i looked like shit.

the day was going to be all about panic versus calm in the face of a big life moment. tgtbt made me smile with her enthusiastic support and helpful corrections when we corresponded in french, messages from friends and family were a nice gesture but at the end of the day it would be me alone versus the machine.

listening to my ipod on the metro, i pressed next on a track i wasn't enjoying, then grinned like an idiot when paul van dyke - words came on.

my primary concern on leaving the metro: if i'm so nervous, do i really need caffeine? better safe than sorry, i told myself as i purchased a cup.

phase 1: writing

i found the room i needed to be in without much difficulty, and stood looking at the desks to decide where to sit.
"this is the right place," said one of the women (in french, not one moment of the next four hours would be conducted in english). "find a seat."
i continued looking, so she repeated herself with an unnecessarily condescending tone.
"yes," i stammered, "i understood. i'm trying to decide where to sit."

i hadn't completed the registration form before arriving because i had questions about it that needed answering. when i approached their table after finding my desk i handed them all my documents and began explaining that i had issues that needed resolving. she shoo'ed me away from the table so that she could stand up and inform everyone (with even more condescension in her tone) "it is a GOOD idea for one to complete the registration form BEFORE arriving at the test".

was that really necessary? i bit my tongue and slowly repeated my questions. her answers were flippant and dismissive, so screw her and the horse she rode in on.

the written exam consisted of two parts.

the first, 80+ words continuing an article about a group of neighbours suing some woman for owning a rooster that was waking everyone up each morning. having had my own run-in with this sort of thing, i could draw on my experience, but damn, essay writing is a creative endeavour and tests my ability to make up stories rather than my ability to express myself in french. just saying.

the second part consisted of a phrase extracted from some magazine that i was supposedly writing to to weigh in with my opinion. without context the sentence made so little sense that i sat staring at it for precious minutes before i arrived at something that seemed logical, and proceeded to churn out about half of the 200+ words they wanted from me.

after one hour into three and a half of the total test, i had written 150-200 words of absolute bullshit. i felt like i was failing a blood test.

phase 2: e-tests

reading, listening comprehension and basic exercises (like completing sentences). some sections of the tests were pleasantly surprising. others, mortifying. i don't know what kind of asshole thought up the audio test, but an exam which automatically plays through the entire forty minutes without the ability to pause nor revise an answer is psychologically abusive.
for example, there was a question near the end where i had to say whether the displayed text matched the audio track, and i said "yes". suddenly i realized that i'd misheard "le" as "ce" and made to correct my mistake, but just as i clicked "no" the question flipped and so my answer remained incorrect.

they subtract points for incorrect answers.

phase 3: oral exam

returning to the dentist who fucked up my teeth would have been more pleasant. of course, the woman before me being fluent did wonders for my confidence...

the oral examination consists of two parts, five minutes formal and ten minutes informal. the formal part saw me being interviewed telephonically for a job. again, that felt like it was testing my ability to interview rather than my linguistic savvy. having said that, the first part seemed to go better than the second. in the second i had to talk to an examiner as if we were good friends and convince her to apply for a reality show. she may have made it relatively easy, but in my opinion it was more along the lines of a debating exam than a language one. shit, i couldn't think of anything to say to this stranger in english, forget translating! she did give me an opportunity for entirely unwarranted flattery, though, which i hope helped rather than hindered.

i'm fairly certain that they'd had enough of me before my time was up. i walked out thinking "that was never ten minutes just there!" in michael palin's voice. i don't think that's a good sign at all.

i was on my way out of the entrance to the building when a cute girl who'd also taken the exam approached me to clarify something she'd misunderstood from the instructions: were we to stay until 6.30, or could we leave once we were done? dumbfounded, now *i* wasn't sure, so i followed her around for a bit until we were fairly certain that we were just wasting our time.

i entered the eaton centre food court in search of pre-boxing dinner, and found myself at subway. for the first time ever since i arrived here, the girl behind the counter spoke to me in french and i responded in french, celebrating the exam being over by ordering everything without reverting to english once.

i was bummed on the metro, though. have i burned out? if so, is this from yesterday's stress or from before... like before i quit? is my brain not functioning properly? did i miss a nervous breakdown? i can't imagine that i did, but i definitely haven't been on top of my game in a long time...

... and yet, life's not bad. i guess it's all about perspectives and emotions, and post-exam mine were pretty bleak. i'll find out in two weeks if i really crashed and burned, or if i somehow pulled through. all i can do is keep calm and carry on.

the big company pulse's friend referred my resume to? i received an email on friday evening saying that they'd like to proceed with interviewing me. superb! now i just need to get comfortable coding again, the last test was painful :(

it was a great fight night! the matches were mostly exciting, the few that weren't were over quickly. one of the best fights came right after the worst, in which a snotty young kid destroyed his opponent while an enthusiastic troll - his father, i presume - shouted grossly inappropriate things like "fuck him up!" and "break his face!". he made everyone so awkward that we all stopped applauding to stare angrily, and it was only after the following fight that the tension dissipated and everyone chilled out again.

it only ever takes one asshole...

afterwards, while waiting with the group from class to go out and celebrate one of ours winning his fight, i chatted with pbb (potential boxing boss) and learned something very interesting indeed! apparently, the permit process should be way shorter for me than before because i already have my caq. it's transferable? i'm gonna check that out tomorrow!

i didn't feel too cold outside until we were almost at the bar, but then suddenly we were all freezing. i don't have a clue where we went, but it was a decent place with a dj playing a surprisingly solid mix of pop, 90's and classics. we all pitched in for a couple of bottles of vodka and mixers, the vibe was excellent and we were all having a fun time.

until i wasn't. fortunately, that was only at the end of the night just before the bar closed. apparently, two solid rums, a beer and i-couldn't-even-keep-track of the quantity of vodka i consumed don't work well on an empty stomache. the last time i've been in such a bad state was in 2008, when i got stuck in a fainting loop. i was constantly on the verge of fainting last night, and staying conscious was extremely demanding. i'm incredibly proud of myself that i managed to confine my throwing up to the toilets - no thanks to the fight organizer (gently) punching me in the belly as i hurried down there the first time - and i was constantly thinking of the "rock bottom" meme and being grateful for not having reached it. one of the girls gave me a ride home, and she's obviously super experienced with drunk people because she was extremely patient and considerate.

i still shouldn't have let her know about my dancing history (which we discussed before i was properly wasted, so i don't have an excuse). i hope that doesn't get back to our coach...

---saturday:

it must have been about 4am. i managed to get up the stairs and into the bathroom, got what i hoped was everything out and then tried to get some water down before crashing on the couch, far too drunk to get myself into a shower and certainly not prepared to drag my dirty carcass into bed. even drinking water made me nauseous.

not a good sign.

so without any hydration, i passed out. i woke up several hours later still feeling terribly drunk and incapable of doing anything about it. i suffered hours of anguish and keeping things like water down still wasn't working. it was only about 1pm when i finally could start treating myself. everything would continue to be hazy and the most basic things difficult until around 5pm. all i could handle until then was brainlessly watching a whole lot of freaks and geeks. it's a great series for that.

i stayed away from coffee the whole time because i was really worried that i'd developed an ulcer. fortunately, i think my concerns were for naught.

[continued...]

return to the poutine routine - part i

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

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

---last wednesday:

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

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

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

...

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

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

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


---thursday:

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

[continued...]

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...

post-parties

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

---friday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

---saturday:

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

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

...

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

wtf?! why would somebody do that???

...

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

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

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

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

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

---yesterday:

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

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

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

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

ushering in 2014 - the festival

[... continued]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

thursday, friday, new year - part ii

[... continued]

friday:

early class, catch-up for the italian.
inspiration: not just anime nights, but another bi-weekly as well for all the "must-see" movies.

---quoting the lecturer: "ten centuries - what is that? i don't know the math... a thousand years, more or less?"
good grief. which reminds me, i've been helping pg with a piece on language's influence on math skills. the studies that have been done regarding the japanese and korean children's advantage over the american and french are decidedly unreliable, as there is so much else different that it is impossible to determine the validity of the tests or their results.

i propose taking an american community at random and teaching half the kids to count regularly and the other half to count using a new system:
1 ... one
...
9 ... nine
10 ... ten
11 ... ten one
...
19 ... ten nine
20 ... two ten
21 ... two ten one
... etc.

if that's the only meaningful difference between the two groups then we would be able to see the difference accurately. also, according to the accepted results there's far less chance of the children who learn the "new" math being at all disadvantaged as opposed to paving the way for a more efficient english.

---on the way out i was asked by a political science student why my family doesn't move to israel if things are so bad. i told her about a bunch of "me first! me! mine!" people who miss the important stuff because they're only interested in what's "important" according to some vague pseudo-scientific standard.
"really? is that what you think of us?" she asked, shocked.

the truth is, there's so much good in this country and that's the stuff that foreigners and immigrants see and feel. it takes a long time to get past the horrible stuff to see the beauty within; time that not many people really want to invest. that results in non-israeli enclaves, some of which are becoming really influential. which means we're losing the good stuff in israeli culture to a bunch of people who have only learned from them the bad (see principles - there're a few more in the pipeline).

---on the bus home i was inspired by wilde. the picture of dorian gray begins as a collection of interesting truths. i'm sold :)

i was accompanied by comfortably numb while carrying dry-cleaning home in the sun post-drizzle. i was greeted by a small frog waving a "happy new year!" flag - pg's been playing with her mum's art supplies :)
[even more fantastic was what she didn't present me with: a GIR rides piggy only with GIR disguised as a fish! ^_^]

i don't recall at what point in the day my mum called me, but aside from new year's wishes and old year's summaries we discussed the fact that yin's in cape town for new year's with a friend of hers and they're not going with tgtbt and family to the festival. i don't care if they don't dig the music; not seeing such an extraordinary and incredible event when you get the chance???

ridiculous.

i've also been asked by my mum to remove the soul patch. i'm so glad pg's behind me on that too :)

---i went to meet up with someone on the north side of town who was supposed to be waiting for me. when i called him up he told me he'd stepped out and would be back in ten minutes. i took a walk down the road, stopping in at a number of residences to be disappointed that nobody was home, and received a call from him saying that he was stuck in traffic and he'd be back in another ten minutes. i grabbed a toasted hotdog and slowly walked back to the meeting place... about ten minutes later he drove past, looking for parking.

i've ranted about this before: it's about a lack of respect for other people's time. if i had known that the ten minutes didn't include finding parking i might've behaved differently, instead of spending all of that half an hour sitting on a low wall waiting.

i hate waiting.

---i walked home briskly, strapped on my blades and flew over to urchin's to meet her family and help out a bit with their new year's preparations. now that i've met her brother's palestinian girlfriend i can see why she has such a profound influence on him - she's gorgeous.

i amused myself no end with a small, unhinged cupboard door that i'd laid flat on the floor and imagined as being an entrance to an orthogonal world.

a little rain made my travels back home a bit slippery; the guy working the kiosk was straight out of clerks ("i wasn't even supposed to be here today!").

i skidded straight to pg's for a hot shower and a glass of rum. aside from an excellent dinner with her family (there were some awkward moments, and one downright unpleasant one but the food was amazing), we had a really lazy evening. our plans went from the street party and a desert party to going to bed early.

---saturday:

i think that was the most needed sleep i've had since i last wrote a sentence like this. and it was good. we had a slow morning that was only improved upon by seeing us making pancakes and following them up with another nap.

---a chat with pg reminded me of a really embarrassing story from my youth (so of course, i'll share it with you). i was a pretty slow kid, and there were a lot of words that i'd picked up gists of without being informed of their actual meaning. i knew that "rape" was a violent act but i didn't know it involved sex.

i once jokingly shouted at my mother "if you don't let me go i'm going to rape you!" (thinking it could easily replace "kill" without being as bad). awkward.
no less awkward than finding myself at school, responding to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" with "a rapist".

---i left to get to work on the flash project - i was *so* glad, after spending a bit of time double-checking everything, to discover that the problem was on the user's side. they hadn't read the instructions. after a bit of facebooking i took a walk to the hotel to meet a cousin, her son and her mother-in-law for a couple of hours of non-stop chatter. it was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours and it's always nice to meet new and likable family members :)

pg and i had a good dinner at coffeeholic, then separated so that i could write this and do some readings for the morning. as is apparent, this all took longer than planned: although she did help me digitize a page or two from my travel journal. wp sent me a message this morning that reminded me that i promised to send it to him... three months ago. and i haven't gotten more than halfway through japan yet...

boy, is it late. i need to get some sleep!

...

oh, yeah! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! two-thousand-ten-one is going to be even better than its predecessor!

aggressive cure

the night at roots - easy driving there, easy parking - was spent on an aggressively meditative aerobic workout with tgtbt on a fairly vacant dancefloor. i'd passed out after posting, and waking up with coffee, then jumping up and down with rum and soda water (that was all that they had left) turned out to be a pretty good way to deal with the uncomfortable belly-ache that had been developing from the evening.

the music was decent when i arrived, and turned solid towards the end of the evening (for us, we both left around 3am). i discovered on the way there that the second disc from goa trance 3 - from fullmoon to sunrise is also incredibly powerful and have been enjoying it immensely.

...

i slept comfortably, having discovered a sleeping configuration that works - the last couple of days have seen me either overheating or freezing - and after a quick and expensive shopping run (primarily for sweets and chocolates) i took the car in for a wash.

i find it hard to trust a stranger with both keys and car :P

i took the opportunity to hit the cafda bookstore - leaving with the works of geoffrey chaucer (robinson) and two shakespeare's - a midsummer night's dream and the merchant of venice: i have the complete works at home, but they're not annotated and i don't naturally speak olde english.

i read and giggled some more catch 22 over coffee and croissant, picked up the car and returned, thinking i'd nap a bit. instead, my mother called me upset (which upset me - i hate her boss) to plan lunch, and i tried and failed to sort out a problem with mnet reception.

i called the helpline, and explained that the problem with the signal is an intermittent one. the woman began reading out the retuning procedure, which i refused at first to begin because the problem is intermittent. once we'd managed to completely untune the decoder with no hope of restoring the working settings (and learning how sucky the delta 9000's interface is), i thanked her for pissing me off and put down the phone.

now my mum's trying, i hope she has better luck than i did. in a minute, we're off for lunch and i'm going to have to buy airtime to cover all the sms conversations that others have felt compelled to force me into - a simple phone call is cheaper and requires less work. he hinted.

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.

quietly now...

shhhh... the mongoose just passed out, don't wanna wake him.

i lie, i do wanna wake him, but my mommy tells me it's not polite.

last night: shadowslight and i went to stones (what used to be ballroom). closed.
CLOSED???
CLOSED.
my word. so much history in there - my first cigarette, the first (only) time i ever got my lights punched out... actually, maybe it's not so bad.

we went through to the camps bay strip - DEAD. so we had a couple of drinks, and chatted for ages. there were some nice girls, but i was completely apathetic. the only chance of anything happening was if one of them had jumped on my lap and begun trying to seduce me.

today:

i slept until twelve. i went shopping, which was a bit of a mission really - it was the day before christmas eve... and then returned home to work on those undisclosed things. visited my brother and his son at my sister's place, and then a bit of getting-sorted-out before dropping her and her boyfriend off at the airport, sitting down for a beer, and then picking up the mongoose.

it's strange, and very cool having him here.

straight back to my place, he showered and we got ready and then rushed off to the dinner. awesome place. good food. quite fun. unsurprisingly, he's completely taken by tgtbt, i think it might've been better if he'd met other girls first :P

tried the camps bay stretch afterwards, even deader than before, so we came back here and he's just crashed. i'll be following suit shortly.