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…