This Is Not Meant To Be A Food Blog. Am I Obsessed?

Fuelled by the success of last night’s not cooking for myself, I am out again. I just do not want to cook for myself after an 11 hour work day. I’m tired and grumpy and mildly hypo-glycaemic. The idea of standing in front of the hotplate and whipping up a delectable feast leaves me cold. Besides, I need very little provocation to frequent my favourite Friday hangout.

My Friday hangout is not hugely “Cape Town.” No hey shoo wow. No cocktails on Clifton. No wine on the beach while watching the round orb of the softly glowing sun sink gently through the wispy nest of clouds towards the pink tinged water, blah blah. No foray down Long Street slapping at the hands of pick-pockets, street children and beggars. No, it’s very down to earth. It’s a little Asian cuisine spot on the corner of Kloof and Union called Tokyo. They play chilled music and they're friendly. On Friday they do a sushi deal - eat as much as you like for R110. The sushi is usually tasty and fresh and there’s plenty of it. (As much as you can eat, in fact...) Tonight I've had 6 plates and a glass of wine for R128 (ex tip.)

I take my book with me and inhabit a regular seat (the one in the corner next to the goldfish bowl – don’t you dare go there on my recommendation and swipe my seat!) I order one glass of red wine and then I eat, read and people watch. It’s my unwinding time, which I desperately need right now. I’m finding the project extremely stressful and ditto preparing for the trip.

I come here alone. It’s the kind of place where people feel comfortable sitting by themselves. And not only me (I’m happy going just about anywhere alone) but lots of people. Tonight there are four of us here by ourselves – no one looking sad or lonely, just some regulars who enjoy the place. There’s the older guy, watching passers-by on the street. There’s the girl in the red shirt who keeps getting calls on her cell. There’s a guy with glasses and a piece of rice stuck to his chin (I can’t stop peeking.) And there’s me with my writing. There are also a couple of trendy looking young guys, each sporting glasses with a thick, black frame. Sort of 70’s revisited. I’ve seen photos of my Dad in a pair of glasses like that. Has there been some sort of revival that I am unaware of? (The odds are good, since I am sooooo fashion unaware.) I’m not sure that I like it.

I’ve been coming here for a year now, and I haven’t had a bad experience yet. Well unless you count the unfortunate run in with the fat Finnish bloke, but that had nothing to do with the restaurant. He was a fellow customer – an overweight, overly alcoholled (new word), overly confident old chancer.
So do yourself a favour if you like sushi and you’re looking for a good value for money dinner at a pleasant spot. Pop past these guys. They do sushi deals on most days, and Chinese lunch specials, and you can call them on 021 424 5108. Or else just pitch up – there’s usually something good going.


Now here is my short rant for the day. This is something that warrants a long post because I think it is a serious topic, but I am going to keep it short. It is something I could rant about for ages and get most uptight about and it wouldn’t do me any good. So:
I am bitterly disillusioned (I could, without exaggerating, say horrified) with our government for refusing the Dalai Lama a visa. That people who allegedly fought for the universal application of human rights have sold out so flagrantly is depressing. It makes a travesty of our constitution and the bill of rights. It is a spitting on the memory of those who died, believing in the righteousness of their cause, to put the current bunch of fat cats in power. And the ANC’s bumbling PR attempts to justify it are just insulting to everybody’s intelligence.
One positive thing that has come of the sordid affair is the number of South Africans of all creeds and colours who have expressed their outrage. But I can see myself working up speed and so before I change up another gear, I am going to cut it short.

May you have a beautiful weekend. Go out and be happy!

A Disasterous Meal And The Recovery Therefrom

E and I were chatting on email yesterday. She told me that the cooking gods were smiling on her.
So that’s where they were last night! I was wondering, because clearly they were nowhere near my kitchen.

I set out last night to expand my glorious repertoire of chicken breast recipes, and at one stage it was going quite well. Very well, in fact. Stupendously well!
I mixed up some honey and the juice of a fresh lime. I added some secret spices and basted the mixture all over the breasts. (That’s right, I keep saying “breasts.” I can’t help it. It would be far too cumbersome to write “chicken pectoral muscles” every time. And anyway, I don’t even know if they’re called pecs in chickens. But I digress.) I used my lovely Bauer frying pan and I set them breasts a sizzling on the hotplate. Hot breasts. Ok, I’ll stop it now.
Like I said, things were going really well. The smell was incredible. This was going to be the meal of the week.

And then I stepped out of the kitchen for two minutes. Just two minutes. I wandered into my bedroom, where I was halfway through sorting out the pile of paper clutter that has been adorning my bedroom floor for the past 8 months or so, under the disguise of “filing to be done.” So I threw away the top paper and then I looked at the next one. I put it on the keeping pile. Then I picked up the one after that. And before I knew it I was half way through the pile and smelling a funny smell…..

I charged through to the kitchen, in the nick of time to not rescue the breasts.

I spent the rest of my evening scraping the layer of black caramelised honey from my supper and then eating what remained. When I say caramelised, what I really mean is “honey incinerated into a rigid black layer as hard as plastic”, and that is not very nice to eat.

So tonight I decided to cut my losses and I treated myself to a lovely meal at Jamaica Me Crazy with L. For those not in the know, it is quite a fun little restaurant in Woodstock. Caribbean theme. Their food is very yummy. The service is a bit crap, but that’s pretty much Cape Town for you. I had two starters because I couldn’t pick just one thing. I had the jalapenos stuffed with feta and deep fried. I thoroughly recommend them. The buffalo wings were perhaps not the house speciality. They were also deep fried (which I was not expecting) and a trifle bland. I say go for the Loco Cocos anytime you are there. (That would be the name for the stuffed chillies.) Too delicious!

I managed to restrain myself to a modest two glasses of wine, largely thanks to L's inlfuence - she had some work to read through before tomorrow. And so here I am, home at a very respectable hour and posting my blog in time to get a semi-early night. I am sure that I will be very grateful tomorrow morning, when I drag myself out of bed with the sun still far below the horizon.


In parting, I am going to leave you with a pic of the city from Tafelberg Road. I am afraid that I am now enamoured of the photo uploading functionality and will be treating you to various shots as the fancy takes me. Lucky yoooou!

Nothing Much To Say

I sat down tonight and started to blog but I realised that I didn’t really have anything purposeful to say. I found myself waffling about my day. Boring? Oh yes. After a quick skim through, I decided that it would be self indulgent of me to make you wade through it and that I should spare you. So I did. I deleted the lot. Instead of wittering aimlessly, I am going to track down the remains of the port (there’s not much left – I am doing a fine job of cleaning out the old alcohol stash) and have a fun evening setting up my new laptop. Even though my techie skills could use a bit of a brush up, I am really an IT nerd at heart. Maybe I will even get an early start in preparation for yet another fiendishly early morning.

And now I am going to post a photo. Because I have not yet done so yet and I want to see how, and what it looks like.
This is one of the wild horses from Kaapsehoop up near Waterval Boven, where I use to climb before I moved to CT. They wander through the town, eating lawns and drinking from fishponds. Too cute...

Flying Is Fiendish

It is so refreshing to see how excited children get about flying. Their little eyes glow with pleasure and their faces shine with wonder at the sheer JOY of the whole experience.

I remember those days.

I also used to glow with joy when boarding a plane. We didn’t fly to many places when I was young (we weren’t a particularly well off or extravagant family) and so the joy of flying lasted well into my adult years.

I can say without a trace of doubt, however, that the short haul flights that I have experienced between Jhb and Cape Town over the past year have killed the wonder. Killed it dead.

Along with the Santa Claus fable, the Easter Bunny fantasy and the Tooth Mouse notion, I now know that “flying is fun” is a big, fat myth. Thanks ACSA, and a certain low cost carrier, for disabusing me of that childish notion.

In my experience, approximately one in three flights has been delayed. They also regularly run out of anything decent to eat. “Oh sorry. We don’t have biltong. No, we don’t have Pringles. No. No – not that either. I’m sorry, we ran out because the last people ate everything.”
Huh??? What kind of excuse is that? When you undertake to provide a catering service, surely you should take into account that people will actually eat?
It’s like me saying “Yes please. I will gorge myself on the delicious sparkling water and the solitary packet of Niknaks that you have left. What? You want money for them? Oh, I’m so sorry – I spent it all at the last place.”

Last night’s flight was particularly unpleasant.
After the customary delay we were allowed to board and we stampeded onto the plane, pushing and shoving to grab the best overhead space for our bags. Nothing like a little friendly competition amongst fellow passengers… If any of those bright eyed children got slightly crushed, well I’m sorry, but shouldn’t they be standing back for adults anyway?
Having herded most of us into our coops, the annoyingly jovial cabin staff encouraged the stragglers on with cattle prods. (Don’t I wish – there’s always some tosser who thinks that a couple of hundred people would love to add another 10 minutes to an already unacceptable delay.) To the accompaniment of inane jokes, we were treated to a takeoff talk instead of the complimentary cocktails that we would so much have preferred. After we were airborne, the food trolley was wheeled down the aisle and a litany of sold out items was recited. Damn the passengers that went before and their totally unreasonable desire to eat!!

I think they revived Sunday night’s plane from the Ark. The pocket on the back of the chair in front of me was broken so it was difficult to manage my bottle of over-priced mineral water. The fold down tray was broken too, and so it was difficult to work. The only part of the general decrepitude of the plane that worked in my favour was the fact that the reclining mechanism of the chair in front of me was also broken. This meant that the man in front of me had to snooze bolt upright. I doubt it did much for his enjoyment of the flight, but at least I had more space in which to manage my laptop and my water. Of course, “more space” is a very relative term. What I mean is that I was not physically pressing my nose onto my laptop screen. One and a half square foot each is probably overstating things. I was in closer physical proximity to my fellow passengers on Friday night than I have been to most of my relatives. The man behind me pressed his bony knees into my spine for two hours solid. I couldn’t even be cross with him. It wasn’t his fault - battery chickens have more space than we did.

I won’t bore you any longer because my boyfriend says that I should write about nice things in case people think I am just a sour, grumpy person. Since I have nothing nice to say about Sunday’s flight, I will say nothing at all.

Oh wait! They were very nice about my excess luggage! I had a bag with just a laptop in it, and then a small tog bag. (Allowed, ok!) The small tog bag was, unfortunately, a couple of kilos over the allowed limit for hand luggage because I had it stuffed with cds. At the check in counter, they insisted that I check the bag in. I said I wasn’t really thrilled with that because I was worried about things being stolen from it and was there anywhere I could plastic wrap it? No, they said, did I have anything valuable in it?
Well, just my passport, the title deeds to my house, my lease agreement with my tenant, two old and rather expensive bottles of wine, a R2000 pair of boots and a bunch of cd’s. Oh yes, and my undies and one shirt, but they aren’t valuable. Too bad, said the check-in chick. You’ll have to put your valuables into your carry on bag and check the rest in.
So they watched me (as did the entire queue of passengers waiting to board) unpack my tog bag and begin to repack the most valuable and fragile items into my laptop bag. I tell you, they let me get 90% of the way through the job before they said “Oh, ok – We’ll make an exception. You can take both bags onto the plane.” By this stage of course, the entire queue of fascinated passengers knew that I had taken my blue Wonderbra, my pink knickers and some grey socks to Jhb for the weekend. So I removed all of my underwear from the airport floor and packed it back into the tog bag and off I went, trying to smile and practising being grateful.

And that’s about as much positivity as I can muster for Sunday night’s experience.

VOVP - Very Old Vintage Prot. I mean Port

Wed evening. My last post was written on Monday but only posted tonight. Clearly (since you all pay avid attention to every word I write) you will have noticed that the Gods of Technology did not deliver. My “service provider” provided no service for Monday afternoon, Tuesday in its entirety and Wed morning. But on Wed afternoon “service” was again resumed. At last I am able to post. Lucky you, eh? I’m sure you’ve all been wondering where I’ve been. (Don’t correct me. Ignorance is bliss.) It has been the most incredibly gruelling experience to be without the internet. Given the choice, I’d rather run headlong into last night’s fire than be without my internet for such a long time ever again.
Then again, maybe not. After all, it’s quite hard to navigate the net when your fingers have been burned to a crisp. Not to mention the rest of you.
By the way Mum and Dad, not to worry – I’m fine! I’m sure you meant to call me earlier, all anxious, but held off so as to allow me the illusion of my independence. Right?
Never mind – E’s Mum also didn’t call.
Now, Mum. Don’t be offended. I’m just kidding :-)

So here I sit, procrastinating about downloading the visa rubbish.
As I write this, I am dining on beef and veg cuppa-soup and stale crisp bread (the grocery cupboard strikes back…) and the most sublimely delicious glass of very old, very smooth, incredibly delightful port. After all, not only do I have to consume all of my food before I leave, but also my stash of alcohol. Well, I intend to make a damned good try. My Mum always said to do my best at anything I tried, and that would be good enough for her. And you know what else is good? This port! (Excuse me for one sec while I top up and check on the tumble drier…)
The label on the bottle says “Monis Very Old Vintage Port”. The reason I know that this is not a lie, is because the price sticker (which, incredibly, is still stuck on after all these years – clearly they made everything better way back when, including price stickers) says R1.95.
Now Benny Goldberg Liquor Supermarket (also on the price sticker) may have been fibbing through their teeth about the port being Very Old Vintage when they sold it to my Gramma back when, or maybe they weren’t, but it certainly is now. And since I have opened the bottle, it is now Very Old Port with a Very Short Projected Lifespan.
It is so good that I feel almost guilty for drinking it by myself. (Almost.) Perhaps tomorrow I should have the climbing girls up for a nip after we conquer Higgovale Quarry and before we move on to the Moroccan Restaurant at the top of Kloof Street.

I am having another thought – that I might be drinking, completely unwittingly, something that is worth a day’s salary a sip. But you know what? That’s ok.

It strikes me too, that perhaps I should stop procrastinating about downloading the visa rubbish and actually do what I intended to do when I sat down in front of this computer. And so, as much as it pains me, I shall stop my port pontification and move into constructive mode.

Adios muchachos.

You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me Vodacon

As the sun sank over Signal Hill, I was all set to enjoy a delightful evening alone. I do enjoy my time alone – I get so little of it. Today was another horrible day at work. Not the whole day – moving up to the third floor and sitting with fun people helps to make up for the terrible monster report that I am currently testing. For my sins. What did I DO in my past life?
So, after a terrible day of testing The Report, I had to come home so that the rental agent could conduct a show day in my presence. I didn’t really feel like letting Joe Public loose unsupervised in my flat, after the latest faith-in-human-nature-shaking incident experienced on Saturday, courtesy of the char. Thus no exercise or socialising for me. After half hour an hour of (beadily eyed) watching people wander through my sanctum, I was satisfied that they had all departed sans any of my most treasured personal belongings. Alone at last, I decided that I would not allow the evening to be a complete loss and I cooked myself a most delicious meal of chicken breasts with my very own secret spice mixture. (Everything in the spice drawer gets hurled bravely at the chicken, including lots of chilli. It’s secret cos who knows what’s in my spice drawer...) And there was beetroot. And butternut. And avocado. So delicious. And healthy. And almost low fat to boot. (I have recently had a slight run in with the scale. The scale won.) And a glass of red wine in one of my pretty, pretty, pretty pink cut glass wine glasses. (Thanks Vaughny – great bday pressie – I still use them all the time.)

Anyway there I was, all set to enjoy a delightful evening alone. Just me and the internet. A little blogging. Some online laptop shopping. And a nice Google Talk conversation with my boyfriend, who has gone to England for 3 weeks for a conference, some lectures and some climbing.

Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men…

A thousand fleas upon the poxy carcass of whichever useless employee of my 3G service provider caused the latest connection “glitch.” And when I say service provider, I mean “service” and “provider”. You know – with the big quote marks you make with your fingers when describing some reeeeeeally sarcastically.
As if it wasn’t bad enough to be internetless while I was at work today, I am now alone in my flat, cut off from the internet (the world!!!!!), listening to sad music and staring at the sms from my boyfriend, to which I cannot reply. He smses me from the cellular service website, and I cannot reply by sms because he has not set up international roaming. I kind of count on my internet to keep in contact. For god’s sake – we live in the 21st century! The Age of Technology, except in South Africa, where we are subjected to the Tyranny of the Monopoly.
No. Three does not count. Four does not count! It is still a monopoly. If there is no viable competition it is a de facto monopoly. When all of the “service providers” are as bad as one another, it’s useless to move between them.
(She reins herself in, with great difficulty, from another potentially lengthy digression.)

And so I cannot even post this blog. I am typing into Notepad and will have to post this tomorrow morning, should the vagaries of the Gods of Technology (in whom I have more faith than my "service provider") allow me to connect.

As if that is not enough, I am enjoying a KENNY RODGERS SONG!!!!!!! What does that make me? Old? Sad? Refined? Wise and mature?
I am singing along. Belting out the chorus. The curtains are drawn, I may even dance. I think that now is a fine time to pour myself another glass of wine, Lucille…..
Oh, I’ve had some bad times. Lived through some sad times. La la la la la la la…..

Back to Real Meals

Isn’t it funny how the Universe tries to help you out? You decide you have a problem and that you would like a solution - and one is supplied! There I was two posts ago, declaiming about how my latest difficult task in life was to eat up all of the food in the grocery cupboard. Ever so kindly, the Universe stepped in to assist me with my problem. The thing is, you have to be quite specific in your demands, because the Universe will take the path of least resistance and is not so much concerned with the how of it, as much as simply meeting the demand.


This weekend I used the services of a company that supplies you with a char. I will be vacating the flat soon. Potential tenants will need to view it and it was in dire need of a bit of a spruce and a sparkle. Sat morning dawned annoyingly early. The char arrived annoyingly late. To cut a long story short (I have been told before that I can waffle - so rude…) the char nicked a hundred bucks. Well, tried to, because when I got back from a refreshing walk to the post office, I obsessively checked all my things and noticed that the jerseys at the back of the cupboard, under which I had stashed my little pile of money, were dishevelled. And I was R100 short. After much counting and re-counting and then some simmering and telling myself to calm down, I confronted her in a rational fashion. Then there was an interlude, which I shall not go into here, but it included a sob story about not having any food. The whole thing ended up with me getting my money back (and an adaptor plug which she fessed up to also trying to nick) and her getting a Checkers bag filled with food from the grocery cupboard and a lecture about why we don’t steal; how we could potentially lose our jobs; and how we could potentially gain a criminal record and then we will never get another job again. Ever.


I know that there will be a bunch of people who tell me I did the wrong thing and I should have reported her to the char service and I have an obligation to let them know and I am encouraging the spread of rampant crime in SA and so on and so forth. I concede that you are correct to a certain extent; however you weren’t there and don’t know all of the circumstances, so try not to be too judgemental. I don’t want to be responsible for someone losing their job, even if they did do something dishonest, not to mention exceedingly stupid. I reckon most of us have probably done at least one thing that someone else would have fired us for.


But I didn’t start this post with the intention of waging a sociological and/or philosophical debate with myself. My intention was to point out that my grocery cupboard and nasty meals problem has been neatly solved. There is now no need for me to attempt to combine the mackerel and the corn into an edible combination. Maybe I shall move onto bigger Requests to The Universe. Like a massive influx of cash. Of course, the next request shall be a whole lot more carefully phrased!

The Sounds of Silence - Don't I Wish

Oh dear. It’s back. The word association thing. Intermittently, my brain does this thing where I see a picture, or hear a word or phrase, and I start singing a song. No, not aloud, I’m not that far gone. In my head. My brain decides that the word or picture it just encountered means song x and song x starts to play in my head. I draw from a very wide range of music. It’s not just popular, current day stuff. Oh no. If it finds a meaningful association, my brain will start up with any old piece of crap. It doesn’t do me the favour of limiting itself to stuff I enjoy. Hymns. Onwards Christian Soldiers. Why? I’m not a Christian. I guess I have the years of Sunday School to thank. And the interminable afternoons of “Good News” when I was young.
And Xmas carols! That’s another one. How I hate Xmas carols. Why would I sing them? Don’t I get enough of carols in the 4 months preceding Xmas, when every shopping centre is ramming them down my throat in a desperate attempt to propel my hand credit-card-wards? Jovial music warbles cheerfully and incessantly and is piped into every crevice in every mall. No wonder the suicide rate rises over Xmas. It’s not depression from being alone while everyone else is cuddled in the bosoms of loving families or partners. It’s the damned carols.
But back to me. (My favourite topic.)
Sometimes the brain subjects me to nursery rhyme songs. Try working with Jack and Jill belting around in your brain. And around and around and around. Little monsters.
You see, the song doesn’t just give me a line or two and then fade away gracefully. It persists. It keeps on going until I manage to switch out to some other refrain, hopefully slightly less irritating. It’s like a 3 year old “Look Mum! No hands! Look Mum! Look Mum! Look Mum! Muuuuuuum! LOOK!!!!”

This morning I was paging through Blogs of Note, and I stumbled across an Australian Art Gallery blog (udessi.blogspot.com – I really like the Happiest Birds in the World set of paintings. They did look happy. They made me happy.) The first thing that loaded up was a picture of a kookaburra. Quick as a flash, my brain (clearly more wide awake than the rest of me at this ungodly hour, or I would have stopped it in its tracks) kicked in with a rousing rendition of “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree. Merry, merry king of the bush is heeeee. Laugh Kookaburra! Laugh Kookaburra! Gay your life might be.” A pox upon those old Girl Guide campfire songs.

Coupled with another curried rice and red pepper breakfast, and the pre-6am wake-up, Kookaburra has left my Friday with significant room to improve.

Preparations for The Trip.

Everything seems to be getting a bit on top of me right now. I am swamped with admin. There is so much to DO when you want to go on a life-changing, world-uprooting trip-of-a-lifetime. Go figure, huh?


So anyway, I have some of the tickets, but no visas yet. What a mission. Today, after reading the pages and pages of gumph I have to go through to get visas, I confess to a passing sneaky thought about how much easier it would be not to go at all…

I’m over it. I think.

So yes – a gazillion visas to organise. Much work to finish off. Much, much work. Cars to sell. House to rent out. The Cape Town flat to evacuate. Much stuff to sell. Much, much stuff to sell. I refuse to pay for storage while I’m away for a year. It’s hard to sell stuff in Jhb while I’m in Cape Town. I’m struggling to find the time to sort through my things in CT. There is so much to find a home for. So much to throw out. My life is a bit crazy right now. I think I might be too. If not, I undoubtedly will be by the time we leave.


One of my wee problems is that I’m just totally obsessive about everything. I hate the thought of throwing stuff out. (Save the environment!) And so, despite the big things that I have to obsess about (visas etc) I’m also doing a splendid job of obsessing about the small ones.


For the past month or so I have been trying to finish my toiletries. All the soaps, the bubble baths, the luxury creams, the sugar scrubs, the fruity flavoured lip-ices, the shimmery stuff, the sparkly stuff, the gorgeous smelly stuff that I have been given or have bought and have stock-piled over the years – the thought of not using it bothers me. A lot. And my word, but there is so much of it! How did I acquire all this stuff? How I must have squirrelled and hoarded over the years. Now every night I wallow in a divine smelling bath with the water coloured a pale pink, or blue, or green by bath salts/bubble bath. I light about 9 candles and lie in twilight. It's lovely. I should be the most relaxed person in Cape Town. Pity I’m not. The stress of sorting everything else out is winning out over the languid baths by a fairly convincing margin.


In direct contrast to my luxury bathroom living, is my recent diet. About 2 days ago it dawned on me that I need to start eating my way through the grocery cupboard. If I don’t, there will be a pile of random stuff left when I go. Donate it to a homeless person? Yes, I probably will if there is stuff left over, but in the meanwhile my logical brain has taken a vacation, my OCD has kicked in, and I am trying to eat my way through an extremely odd collection of foodstuffs. It bothers me not to try. So last night I got stuck into the packet of basmati rice. As I was cooking it, I realised that I have no tin opener, (since the time of the camping trip, when it decided that the wilds of Rocklands was a desirable place to stay) and so I could not throw in a tin of yummy ratatouille. Oh no. Desperate I was, but I still couldn’t chew my way through the tin. The only thing in the damned cupboard not clad in impenetrable iron was a packet of curry. I alo had the remains of the red pepper that N kindly donated to me when he discovered it had wrinkly skin. (The pepper was really fine to eat, but he is even pickier than I am and so he rejected it in horror. Thus I had ¾ of a very, very, very slightly wrinkly red pepper in the fridge.) So last night, supper was curried basmati rice with slightly wrinkly red pepper chopped into it. Now I don’t know – maybe some of you think that sounds nice? Bunch of freaks if you do. I don’t. I am strictly a rump steak and roast potatoes kind of girl. Or a sushi kind of girl. Or a red wine and lamb stew kind of girl. But I digress…

Anyway, curried rice and red pepper does not sound nice to me. And indeed it was not nice. I did not enjoy it. But I can’t throw food away. (More environment saving…) And so I ate it. Unfortunately, I am so little of a domestic goddess that I don’t know how much rice actually makes. This morning, breakfast was basmati curry rice and red pepper left-overs. Tomorrow I will probably have to finish the stuff off.

After that, I might never eat rice again. (Note to self – potentially revise food plans for Asia…)



I console myself with the thought that every horrible thing I consume now from the grocery cupboard is saving me money for the trip. But I am not looking forward to this weekend’s meals.

Suggestive Sounds

Cape Town is in the grip of a heat wave. The city is baking. Not a breath of wind is lifting the air. It’s as if someone has laid a blanket over a geyser and tucked us in there too. I awoke this stifling, sticky Saturday morning to furtive shuffling sounds as my boyfriend tip-toed back into the bedroom (Oh sweet – he’s trying not to wake me!) and then a couple of seconds later, a muffled glass clinking and the welcome sound of water being poured. I opened my eyes a crack. He was pouring water from one glass into another. “How lovely!” I thought “He’s brought me a glass of water because it’s so hot!” I opened my eyes fully and smiled.
Anguished face.
“You’re not supposed to wake up! I’m trying to see if the sound of water will make you pee!”
Hmm.


Anyway, I am late for a walk on the beach with E. And then some coffee. Or a croissant. Or an ice-cream. Yay! The day is shaping up to be a good one! Especially since the boyfriend’s dastardly plan didn’t work. Lucky for him…

A Year Since Semigration

Today it was a year. A year since I packed my bakkie chock-full of the essentials and drove 1400 km south. A year since I packed up and rented out my gorgeous, happy house and quit the not so gorgeous, downright unhappy job. A year since I left the desperately worried parents (it doesn’t matter how old you get, they will always be desperately worried about you), an awesome bunch of friends, and the chaotic, blurringly busy streets of Joburg, to perform my own Great Trek, only in reverse. I awoke at 4am on a Saturday to begin the drive. I arrived in Cape Town 18 hours later. 18 sweaty, dusty, tiring hours of solid driving. I stopped once for diesel (long range tank – what a blessing) and once to pee. I had to park on the side of the road and leg it at high speed to find the only tree in what seemed like kilometres and pee behind it, also at high speed, so as to finish before the row of recently over-taken trucks crested the hill to spy me in all my glory. (Interesting fact #1 of this blog – high speed peeing usually results in stage fright.)


I arrived in CT exhausted. 18 hours is an extremely long time to spend pasted behind the wheel of an overloaded, unwieldy bakkie. Hilux Raider 3l TD, in my case, stands for Turbo Disconnected - courtesy of the last fool who owned the car and left me a legacy of deep seated engine damage. (The verdict is still out on whether I was the next fool, since I bought the car….) After 45k of engine repairs, I had the turbo disconnected on the secret advice of some Toyota employees who shall not be named.

Anyway, Hobbes and I crawled into CT totally shattered after our mammoth drive. (Hobbes because he is a tiger of a car, and also because he doubles as my imaginary friend.) And here, barring a couple of weekend frolics in the old stomping ground, we’ve been ever since.


This blog is where I will be sharing my moving experiences with my friends and family (well, those of my family who are pc literate and brave enough to decipher the scary world of the internet) and, potentially, a bunch of voyeuristic strangers who are the scary world of the internet.


Do not take offence, Dear Readers! I too am a voyeur. I love to peek into strangers’ lives. I am LOVING this blogging thing. It is so much better than Fascist Book. (And, joy of joy, you get to keep the copyright to your own material without having to fight with the site administrators.) Dipping into and out of peoples’ lives as I choose. Snippets of conversations. Nuggets of information. Inspiring quotes. Laughter. Tears. Some heart wrenchingly beautiful photographs. Old people sharing their memories of so many years ago. Young people sharing their hopes and fears for the years to come. Comedy, tragedy and joy - it’s all out there. Blogspot - a microcosm of the human condition! Picture, if you will, a little fox, rolling joyously in a massive pile of manure. That little fox is me and the manure is the wealth of information and experiences to be found in the Blog World. I am gloryating in it! (Um, yes it is. Glorying. Luxuriating. I just used it; therefore it must be one.)

I just have one request. I think I speak for everyone (and if I don’t speak for you, then why don’t you go to the trouble of setting up your own blog to contradict me and you can also speak for everyone…) when I say - leave it alone with the consumerist blogs, won’t you? Hmm? When I browse through blogs, I’m looking for a “people connection” not cheap digital cameras, or scrapbooking materials, or ... insert list of boring consumer goods here.... You guys are the blogging equivalent of spammers.


That said, I am definitely including AdSense in my blog.
I have nothing against double standards, as long as they’re mine…