Four non-blondes, and me

Mkay, so the dreaded 25th is on its way. What does the infinitely wise Lauren decide to do? See her birthday in as a blonde.

Fact 1: an hour of bleaching followed by an hour of blonding makes hair feel like straw.

Fact 2: an hour of bleaching followed by an hour of blonding will not necessarily turn hair blonde, especially when the underlying colour is its very antithesis: blue-black.

Fact 3: everyone will notice carrot-shade hair. No complaining about people not paying attention; unfortunately, all for the wrong reasons.

Fact 4: the carrot hair will stick till after the big party on Saturday, as personal punishment for my utter stupidity.

Fact 5: carrot hair will totally not go with my dominatrix outfit. Bummer.

Over and above the fashion issues, the birthday brings with it the usual concerns about me wasting my life, another year slipping by without me accomplishing anything, some people in the world being multimillionaires by now/having discovered or invented things that puts them in the running for Nobel prizes/have experienced life-changing world trips… what have I done? (apart from hair stuff ups, that is).

So… to combat my latent lethargy, I’ll be enrolling in a couple of courses – while I’m still in SA, I might as well work on self-improvement. Course 1: beginners’ wine tasting course (working towards my goal of one day owning my own wine estate) – already sent through my application form; course 2: German (for the goal of living in Berlin for a while – will enquire next week, but start next year); course 3: none really, but I want to work on my damn handicap! Given that my faithful golfing partner is living in Cape Town, I really will have to resort to golfing with the dreaded boyfriend (we always end up having an argument when we play together, because he gets frustrated that I’m not carrying out his suggestions flawlessy – they’re good suggestions, granted, but fuck, just let me play my game my way, mkay?)

But enough of this ageing paranoia. I’ve been meaning to tell you all - but just haven’t got around to it – to go see Crash on the art circuit – think of it as a homework assignment. It completely blew me away. Straight-talking and funny, its message is particularly driven home when the movie audience is culturally and racially mixed. Do you laugh at all the racial stereotypes, or just the ones that poke fun at your background? Are you equally insulted by all racial jibes, or just the ones that ridicule you? So, book now! (And no, they don’t pay me to say that – they should, but they don’t).

And on that little note, dearies, I leave you to your own devices.

Tag, I'm it!

1). Have you ever been attracted to somebody either really revolting, or someone much younger or older than you, or someone you could never have? Tell me about it.

Yes, someone both older than me and someone I could never have, all in one. He was a dreamy Biochemistry lecturer (late 40s, early 50s, made greying temples look sexy like George Clooney does), with the hottest ass on East Campus! (Pity about the wife and 2 kids). I have three memorable moments (other than every lecherous lecture I attended)…
One: I arrived early one morning to class before anyone else did, and put the shiniest, crispiest red apple on his lectern. When he arrived, he blushed like crazy, asked the class who did it, looking in every direction but mine (I’m pretty damn certain he knew who it was). Two: I had to get something signed by some secretary, and while I was in her office, Prof Veale strolled in, looked me up and down and said “It’s not often someone gets brains with the rest of the package too.” I couldn’t bring myself to say anything sensible in reply, especially with the damn secretary in the office – oh, if I could have that moment back I’d do things a lot differently! Three: on my last lecture ever with him, I walked up to him, gave him a Cutie Pie and thanked him for 3 years of memorable inspiration. He just gave me that crooked grin of his, and I haven’t seen him since….

2). What's in your handbag right now.

You’re giving me the bag question and bag tagging me too! Well, let’s see: bulging red wallet (filled mostly with credit card receipts, but with 12 different cards, a pic of The Gilb and some 5c coins in it too); 4 clean tissues and 1 used one; tube of hand cream; ID book; Canadian pamphlets I can’t bear to part with; a Corenza C tube with 1 tablet left in it; my cell; Labello – Classic, if you care to know; an FNB diary I haven’t used since February; a pen, pencil and permanent marker (for fixing dreadful spelling mistakes on public notices); spare tampon; mystery key; business cards. I usually have a memory stick in there too – rummaging through my bag to answer this question makes me worry about where the hell it’s got to.

3). If you could live anywhere in the world right now, where would it be and why?

I don’t have the location quite pinned down, but I can certainly describe its necessary characteristics: a) nowhere that gets too cold in winter; b) in or very near to a bustling third-world metropolis (think India, China, South America) – I want to be in a place that hasn’t gone crazy lusting after the material things in life, that doesn’t waste too many materials on packaging consumer goods, isn’t obsessed with gamma irradiating all food products, where telemarketing is unheard of ; c) I want a damn large garden, with enough space to put in a vegetable garden. d) nearby mountains and sea – I want chocolate-box scenery! Yip, I’d definitely opt out of the rat race for that.

4). Who do YOU think killed JFK?

Less a question of who killed JFK, but more of “who cares?” So many nameless people die every day in massacres that go unpublicised, that they are of greater immediate concern to me than some dude (iconic, yes) who faked his death to up his popularity and then have it pinned on a poor hick caught in the wrong place at the wrong time! Conspiracy? I think not!

5). What is the most irritating trait anybody could have?

People who say the words moist, panties and making love too much. I hate those freaks. Especially if they’re also overly girly, gossipy, have nasal voices and chew gum loudly. Hand me my revolver, please!

Some days sisters suck

It’s true. The bitch just won’t admit she’s wrong wrong wrong and I’m right. She’s also grown mean and generally intolerable with age, and at only 23 years, she’s got a lot more meanness and intolerability coming. Aaaargh!

First, it was the raincoat I borrowed to take overseas. “Why’s it wrinkled?” she whined. It. Was. In. My. Fucking. Luggage. Then, it was about calorie counting, her favourite pastime. She cut a sliver of avocado small enough to glide down an Ethiopian’s throat unhindered (although probably not hers). “Would you like some avocado with that sandwich?” I asked (admittedly, with substantial vehemence). She launched into an argument about how I have no idea what she eats (wrong: answer – nothing), how she even asked me to bring 3 slabs of chocolate for her from England (R40 a fucking slab, which is so expensive because it dark, really low-fat chocolate at which she will nibble for the next three years), how she’s obsessed with sushi because it’s really tasty (convenient that it’s also low fat, and she will never go to any restaurant that serves any food from any other culture, because they’re a little more generous on the calorie doses).

I’ve come to conclude that personality is proportional to daily calorie intake, but that the relationship is not linear, it slopes off eventually (perhaps because extremely excessive calorie intake leads to death, and most corpses I’ve met are a tad boring). Haven’t I moaned about this before? Probably.

But I’m not yet done. She recently got a gigantic tv set from my father (which brings the number of sets in our house to a ridiculous 4 – yes 4! That’s one per family member, happily I’m tv-set free, the guest room has one), and has turned her study into a loud blaring theatre. She makes up for her lack of conversation with double-volume soapie crap spewing out the room (she is partially deaf in both ears, so I’m not making it up), which is uncomfortably close to my sanctuary of peace and quiet.

Well, that was yesterday’s sibling bliss. Anyone want to trade? I’d really like a brother.

Tim bits and maple syrup

Back in the ‘burg

Was it splendid? Yes. Was it expensive? Oh yes. Was it way too short? Most definitely. No, I’m not talking about sex with an escort, I’m referring to my fab holiday spanning three cities – London (briefly), Vancouver (mostly), Seattle (short yet intensively).

Of course, I’ll write a long-winded philosophic essay peddling my cheap musings on the whole experience, but the blog format doesn’t quite lend itself to posting that up here – if you’re that interested, then I'm afraid you're going to have to wait – of course, I just got back, so I haven’t written it yet. A bit of patience on your parts, please.

What I will say here is, I was truly pleasantly surprised by Canadians. They’re really friendly, in Vancouver they’re mostly quite fit (meaning they exercise, not that they’re necessarily hot – some are, some aren’t), and have astoundingly bad dress sense. They say “thank you!” a lot – even if they’re clambering off the back of the bus and have to yell it loudly so the bus driver can hear.

Some assembled factoids, in point form:

Vancouver

1. The place is half Asian (largest Asian community outside of Asia, I’m told), and reputedly has the best sushi in the world.
2. After a lot of binging on all-you-can-eat sashimi, I’d have to agree. It’s also dirt cheap, so I binged a lot. *raw salmon burp*
3. Berries grow like weeds, so you always have free padkos if you’re going for a walk.
4. They sell the “doughnut holes” in their doughnut shops! There’s a chain called Tim Horton’s (named after a famous Canadian ice hockey player), which calls them “Tim bits”. I really wanted a photo of one, but was too embarrassed to look like the ultimate Japanese tourist, so I sent my good friend Greg to take one instead. He took a lot of flack from the store owner, believe me. But I got my pic.
5. The nerd fringe (computer scientists and physicists) is obsessed about a game called Ultimate Frisbee, known simply as “Ultimate” to those in the know, which is basically just Frisbee for the rest of us. But played seriously, and with point tallies. Greg and his mates play in a league every Thursday, and would probably play more if their theses weren’t getting in the way. Aptly, Microsoft has its own Ultimate league.
6. Unlike our “50 points if you hit the pedestrian!” mentality, in Canada you can just step into the road – right in front of a car – and cross it. No, you won’t get a baseball bat implanted into your skull, you won’t even get the finger, you might just get a smile and wave from the car driver.
7. It’s like stepping on to the set of The Brady Bunch. The houses are wooden structures surrounded by pathologically straight-edged flower beds. And the people are all like the cast too.
8. They sell Ceres! And Peppadews! And Rooibos! So you won’t feel too homesick if you head up there for a sojourn. Just be wary of the border controls, I got harassed. Say the phrase ‘South African’ and they get all “What do you do for a living? Why are you here? Where are you staying? What is your bra size? Have a nice day now!” on you. So have your story sorted.
9. No one wears a watch. Which can be frustrating if you’re a tourist who left her watch at home thinking “I’ll just ask strangers for the time”. Also, there goes a potential pick-up line for the uninventive among us.
10. Vancouver has a big anti-corporation mentality. SABMiller will never succeed in getting its foot in the beer market, the place is full of microbreweries. Who’d have thought our North American friends were capable of brewing a decent beer?
11. The nudist beach, Wreck Beach, is full of ugly wrinklies. Very few hot men in sight, and if they’re there, they’re not interested in boobies.
12. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t say “ey!” a lot. This disappointed me, but I did find a pub that was called “Beer on the Patio, eh!”
13. Very little of the First Nations (Native American Indian, for the rest of us) culture remains – museums largely stock totem poles made in the mid-1900’s by people trying to revive the culture. I only met one real-life First Nations person, and he was flogging the contents of his house, which seemed to consist mainly of air-brushed Indian chiefs paintings in tacky plastic frames. Charming.
14. No one noticed my American Indian tattoo! But then, a number of Vancouverites are heavily tattooed, so it’s understandable that my little one went unnoticed.

Seattle

1. Home of the US’s oldest continuous market (Pike Place Market), Boeing, Microsoft, Frasier and most importantly, Starbucks.
2. The Americans call it the Vancouver of the States, the Canadians call Vancouver the Seattle of Canada. They’re a 3-hour bus drive apart, both have mountains and sea, but I’m not convinced there’s too much else in common.
3. Grunge is dead, truly. Went out to a club that is considered to be one of the great live venues (I wondered if Kurt Cobain had sat in my seat, or sipped from my glass), hoping to catch some neo-Grunge, instead found some neo-Rock neo-noise. Ever heard of Alex White, The Occasion, The Ponys? You probably never will.
4. The Frasier skyline is somewhat fictitious, in that there is no actual spot in Seattle from which you can see that view – the Space Needle (not unlike the Hillbrow Tower, without the cool Telkom sign) is much taller in reality, and would need a far higher vantage point, with some distortion of the surrounding buildings, to see it as Frasier shows it. Or so I’m told.
5. Spam is not that popular in the States, except for Hawaii. I did try spam sushi, which would have most cuisine fundis turning in their graves, and sending many live ones to early graves. Actually, it’s kind of tasty.
6. Seattlians don’t have much dress sense either. They’re only a little fatter on average than Vancouverites, and are apparently the States’ second healthiest citizens (don’t know the first, I’m just feeding you the tourist info I read).
7. Americans put flags on everything. It may be a 9/11 reaction, but it is somewhat disturbing to see it flying from houses’ rooftops and corporations’ main entrances alike.
8. I tried clam chowder! And it’s really good!
9. Boeing, headquartered in hicksville, (an hour out of Seattle) makes for an awesome tour. The largest building (by volume) in the world, it can put out 1 – 7 Boeings a month, employs 20,000 people (230,000 in its other locations around the world), and has a great gift shop. I bought a mug, a model plane (for which I got searched as I tried to board Air Canada, then Virgin in Heathrow too), and a cheesy little keyring with flashing lights.
10. Microsoft is less thrilling to tour, because they’re not that keen on tourists. They have a lame gift shop (Microsoft-emblemed pocket protectors etc), a hall you can go through and play their games, look at black-and-white photos etc, but nothing more thrilling. The campus guards are also quite trigger-happy on people trying to take photos outside the main entrance, so you’ve got to take quick sneaky blurred ones.

London (England, not Ontario) – you’ve all been, so I won’t say anything more. Ok, ok just a little: parties, pubs (I insisted everyone pronounced it as “poobs”), Aussie Walkabout for Aussie-bashing during Aus-SA rugga game, book fairs, art exhibits.

Thanks to all the peeps who put me up (Jade and Richard in London, Greg in Vancouver, Yeechi and Franklin in Seattle), fed me, got me drunk, entertained me (including Andy, Tammy, George) and read this long blog.