Last post for 2006!

It’s been a weird year for the world, as well as for me. Humanity seems to be moving further and further away from tolerance and closer and closer to dropping another nuclear bomb on our own planet. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face, eh?

Anyhow, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2006 is “you”. An article from the magazine (edition for 25th December 2006) says it far better than I can, so here are some excerpts that got me thinking:

“But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

“The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.”

“…for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.”
“Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.”

Two things struck me about this choice of Person of the Year (POTY). For starters, is this lack of an individual POTY a sorry condemnation that all those people in power chose to do terrible things, rather than terribly good things, this year? And secondly, does “you” include all 6 billion of us? Or only those that blogged, posted videos or in some way contributed to online publications? We live in a world where the majority of people do not have access to the Internet, so does this “magnanimous” gesture of Time Magazine’s exclude them? The answer is that it has to. So, while I thought they made a great choice for POTY – there is no denying that participatory journalism will to some extent (I’m just not sure how great an extent that is) revolutionise the media and entertainment industry (of course, reality tv falls into this category too, along with the home-made YouTube efforts) – I somehow feel saddened by the fact that this choice highlights the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots. In fact, the Internet has probably been one of the greatest causes of that expanding gulf.

However, living with Peas, I can hardly deny the power of the blogger. During the course of the year she has: won two blogging awards; got into hot water for her name-and-shame exposure of her insurance company’s attempt to have non-original parts fitted to her car; been vitriolically written about in a newspaper; and even been interviewed on air. Hundreds of people frantically keep hitting the refresh button on their permanently-open www.mushypeasontoast.blogspot.com window to see if she has graced their comments to her post with a reply – she’s a brand in her own right.

But I digress – for a reflective post on my year, I have managed to say nothing at all about it. So I’ll sum it up in one sentence: it has not turned out to be the year I imagined it would be in December 2005, but it has actually been a rather good one anyway. I’ve named it the ‘year of the mini-holiday’, due to my numerous weekend trips to different places in and around South Africa – and that means it had to have been good, right? For the rest of it, I will not dwell upon it here. My energy is far better spent thinking about the year ahead, which I hope to name ‘the year of change’. But more about that in the future…

So, a very merry Christmas and a fuddled, yet hangover-free New Year’s to all of you! Thank you to my bloggy acquaintances for all your posts and comments on mine: you’ve entertained me, taught me loads, and provided me with ample distraction from my work. Have safe and wonderful holidays, and I look forward to all the stories in the New Year!

Oddballs at the gym

Damnit! I've got no time to blog today (so what am I busy doing?) but I simply had to share something with you - the FINAL post for 2006 will come tomorrow (you know the drill, where you have to look back on the year in a philosophical kind of way).

Anyhow, I got myself into a gym frenzy - I've been going every weekday since Thursday last week (except for Monday due to excessive weekend antics), and I even went this morning, despite waking up with mild stomach cramps (could it be the alcohol from last night?? Never!), which have since got a lot worse. Anyhow, the crazy community that is the Old Eds Virgin Active members has provided a good number of laughs over the past few days. I've seen 60-something year olds wearing lycra hot pants and crop tops, this gym nut who has been there every day I've been there (and I can comfortably say that unironically - I know this little burst of gym attendance won't last very long into next year if my past track record is anything to go by) completely overdoing it on every machine (and using most of them incorrectly), and on Monday, what I thought was the cherry on top - an old white man swimming... in his peach-coloured Speedo... which came up to his waist... and was tied with a pieve of elastic over it.

But then... this morning after my shower, mid-cramp, I was standing at a basin doing my hair, when this woman comes up, sweaty from her work-out, pulls off her (sweaty, smelly) top, and proceeds to wash just her underarms with water from the tap. She then goes directly to her locker, and gets changed for work. Yeuch!

Mkay, that's all for now, folks - back to work :)

Stinky behaviour at the stinky dam

Q: What’s drunk, foul-tempered and stumbles like a cripple who’s lost her crutches?

A: Third World Ant at Hartbeespoort after a few tokes and two thirds of a bottle of vodka mixed with grapefruit juice in a ratio of 1:2.

It was one of those weekends – the ones where you’re determined to make a big one of it, and end up toasted in bed by 8pm (in my defence, though, we started knocking them back at 11am). Quite sad, actually. I swear this is: truly the last time I smoke and drink simultaneously; truly the last time I get so drunk I terrorise the host’s dog with a very long stick that he couldn’t possibly fetch; truly the last time I wander off in search of a pool and accidentally wake up passed out in someone else’s yard.

The Gilb tells me I abused him (slapped him twice for no apparent reason) and after getting fed up with my drunken antics, cunningly got me into bed at 8. He says he pleaded with me for a while to retire to the bedroom (“no! I’sh perfectshly fine, damnit!”) and then used reverse psychology to do the trick (“I’m a little tired and I want to go lie down for a bit!” he said. “Oh, okay! In that case I’ll join you for a bit!”) So he half-carried me home, tucked me into bed, lay there until I fell asleep and then returned to the party. “Finally, a man who knows how to control you” one of my sympathetic friends told me after I recounted the story.

[Two of my friends pulled through from about 2-5, thankfully they left before total chaos ensued and I only threw my name in front of the Gilb’s friends later.]

On a complete aside, the Gilb tells me if he were pressed to pick a lover from the options of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain cast) he’d pick Jake. I’m astounded by that choice, I had him pegged as the Heath type, myself. When I asked why, he said Jake was prettier. Though he hastened to add he’d want to see the size of their penises. I retorted with “true – you’d definitely want the smaller one up there” to which his incredulous reply was “are you crazy? I’d want to feel filled. It’s all about the depth, you know.” Okay, so he outgayed me there. On the bright side, if we ever got a chance to swing with that couple, there’d be no argument – I’d take Heath in an instant.

On another complete aside, I just realised I have two friend couples whose names rhyme. Xxxxed and Xxxxed, and Xxxan and Xxxan. What are the odds? I have now renamed these pairs the rhyming couplets.

Infucktions to enter an office park

You know how, when you’ve reached the end of some laborious task and you suddenly realise you’ve made some stuff up, and being so loathe to start the task afresh, you find a way to patch it up, Band-Aid style?

In reality of course, the Band-Aid sticks out like the sore thumb itself and is all anyone else ever really notices, so you know you should’ve saved yourself the scorn and put in the effort by redoing the whole thing, 100% properly the second time round.

Well, I have this feeling frequently, so it fills me with immense glee to be able to point out someone else’s Band-Aid for a change, and hopefully you’ll agree this problem would truly have been better fixed (in fact truly only have been fixed) by starting the task over from scratch.

Refer to the picture beneath: this is the entrance to our new office park, a building in which the developer has made a number of priceless errors (hopefully not highly pricey errors as we have bought a sectional title from them and hence would be forking out the cash to fix any of their building blunders). No blunder quite outdoes this entrance, however.





You see, folks, in South Africa, we drive on the left hand side of the road. Which means that when one enters an office park – no different than the one pictured above – one expects, quite rightly (or is that leftly?), to enter the park by remaining in the left-hand lane of the road (which is especially important if a vehicle were to be exiting the park from their left-hand lane, i.e. your right-hand lane). This is unfortunately not the case in practice, as you have to veer to the right lane in both of the possible scenarios: a) if you are a visitor and need to get the guard’s attention, you need to maneuvre yourself into the right-hand lane to speak to him, and he inevitably opens the right-hand boom post to let you in as it involves the least effort on his part; and b) if you have an access card and need to swipe it to enter without the boom guard’s assistance, you must do as in a) because they installed the fucking swipey machine thingy on the right hand side of the entrance.

If one must give the twits credit, then it is for at least being consistently stupid – for the swipey machine thingy is also in the right-hand lane as you exit the complex. It is thus not inconceivable that two cars (one entering and one exiting the complex simultaneously) might be able to avoid getting in each other’s way, because both would be on their respective wrong sides of the road.

But the silliness could not stop there. Some tenants/owners in the park must have complained about the required violation of driving codes, because the developer attempted to “fix” it – not in the ideal start-from-scratch-and-rip-out-the-swipey-thingies-and-reinstall-them-on-the-correct-side-of-the-road manner, but rather in the ill-advised short-cut Band-Aid manner.

The painted signals on the road is the “solution” to their error.

I hereby formally offer a Chocolate Log to anyone who can intelligibly explain how this solution works – Third Roommate and I pondered it extensively yesterday afternoon, and it delights me to see the nervous and bewildered reaction of anyone approaching the signs for the first time.

In my mind, the marks are intended to cause a bumper cars road-rage incident, where two approaching cars are both expected to yield for the other car (approaching in the same lane), daring the other car to make the first move and switch to the other lane, at which point the other car retaliates by doing the same thing, then bang! [Beemer and Merc bumpers merge] and kaboom! [ego’s entangle] and pow! thwack! kkkruuunch! [a Sandton trendy capoeira-style punch-up ensues]

Ideas, anyone?

Forbidden relationships

I’ve been dating the Gilb for four years now, and have finally come to accept that there is a huge stigma attached to our union – that is, the union of a white English-speaking South African and a white Afrikaans-speaking South African.

My experience has led me to believe that this stigma is greater than that I would experience if I were dating a non-white South African, a foreigner from some ‘frowned-upon’ nation (e.g. North Korea) or perhaps even a female.

I can’t begin to list the number of times I’ve met people and started chatting to them, during which the inevitable question “Do you have a boyfriend?” pops up, after which further elaboration reveals that he is Afrikaans, and the response has been “Why on earth are you dating someone who’s Afrikaans?”

It’s like English people think they’re better than Afrikaners – maybe because they have formed the misconceived notions that they’re:

1) smarter (I can guarantee that the Gilb is a lot smarter than at least 90% of these people I’ve spoken to), or

2) better looking (hell no, not in my mind anyway), or

3) more open-minded (nope, I sure as hell would not be dating someone I thought was a racist or a bigot of any kind; besides, English colonial history does not paint a picture of a nation being any more tolerant of indigenous people than Afrikaans history is), or

4) classier (class is overrated if it equates to being snobbish, assuming that having money makes you being a better human being, or assuming that you can judge a person because the job they perform in society is ‘beneath you’)

Of course, I get similar hostility from black people about dating an Afrikaner – and here, it is understandably harder for me to be angry at their prejudice – but I have always been comforted by the fact that any of these people who have subsequently met the Gilb have very quickly realised you can’t judge everybody by their cultural backgrounds – sometimes, you find you have more in common with them than you do with people of your own ‘kind’. (Which is precisely what happened for me and the Gilb – we just clicked in a way that none of our previous partners from our own cultural backgrounds has done for us before).

What makes me more ashamed about the whole thing is that no Afrikaans person I’ve ever spoken to has ever shown the remotest concern that one of ‘theirs’ has strayed from the path to date one of ‘ours’. Why can’t us Engelse show the same tolerance?

Frazzled

My recent promotion has changed my workdays (and dare I add weekend days) quite substantially.

The average day thus far looks like this:

9am – 12: Admin
12 – 6: Checking over other people’s work, dishing out other people’s work, meetings with seniors/managers to decide what other work needs to be done
6 – 12pm: Doing my own work!
12pm – 12:20: every other day, mustering the energy to write up a new blog post.

I have a SPLITTING headache today, and I am starving. Why? I haven’t had the time to go do any food shopping, so I’ve spent the day living on Endearmints (yesterday’s lunch was equally fun – my 5 last cherry tomatoes).

I can’t WAIT for the weekend – another humdinger in the Poenda, where I can curl up in my boyfriend’s arms and feel mildly sorry for myself.

Tis the season for fashion folly

It’s that time of the year – frenzied elbowing in a horde of shoppers frantically trying to get through their shopping list of Christmas prezzies. I decided to brave Suhnd-tuhn City on Saturday, dragging an unwilling boyfriend in tow, to put a serious dent in my shopping list (and in my wallet too, I might add).

Doing anything on Saturday morning was quite a feat, thanks to the revelry of the office Christmas party on Friday night (whose smart idea was it to choose stroh-rum based cocktails as welcome drinks? And all the tequilas? Eh?) Unfortunately, the Gilb’s party also took place on Friday night, so I couldn’t wear my smashing white-and-silver ensemble with reindeer antlers in the Poenda, instead I wore it to mine (and of course spilt a fair amount of the red stroh-rum devil’s juice down the front of the dress). Anyway, the point of this digression is that I woke up still drunk on Saturday morning, and decided to put on an outfit that I thought I could wear straight from Suhnd-tuhn City to the Christmas party I had that afternoon. This outfit consisted of: my fabulous new Vans shoes (black with pink hippo’s all over them), black with baby-blue trim Roxy hot hot hot pants (got to show off the Moz tan while it’s still there, after all), and a rainbow-striped top with a large porno hole nestled between my boobs, Fred and Elsa (the Gilb insists I wear a bikini top under this, so I automatically do, these days, so it’s no longer so porno, I promise you). Anyhow, he didn’t say anything until we got to the centre, at which point the shakes had begun to set in and I was feeling extremely sorry for myself, and had begun to notice the stares I was getting. “Did you dress in the dark this morning, Liefie?” he bluntly, yet politely, asked. Oops. At least I had the good sense to leave the reindeer antlers in the car. One Babalas juice (Kauai) and Danish custard tart later, I was feeling marginally better, and the shopping spree could ensue.

I was back to my normal scathing self (quite hypocritical given my hideous outfit) and had time to look around at the delightful creatures walking around Suhnd-tuhn City, which always brings a smile to my face. Exhibit A: the ridiculously long queue outside Haagen-Dasz. I mean, really. Sure, you have to try it if you haven’t before, but will you wait half an hour in a queue for a scoop of R19 ice cream? I’m willing to bet that in three months’ time, when everyone who’s willing to pay that price has done so once for the novelty, the shop will close down because they realize that the novelty wears off quite quickly for South Africans (evidenced by McDonald’s, Ratanga Junction too). Exhibit B: the kugel who was working at the shop where I bought Peas’ Christmas gift. For starters, I could barely understand her kugelly accent. Then, her nails were getting in the way of handling Peas’ gift without damaging it. But the absolute pearler was when she leaned over to pick up something and I saw the tattoo on the small of her back – the Bad Girl clothing range logo, complete with halo. Uuuuurrrrggghhh!

I emerged relatively unscathed from the present-fest (and might I add with some damn fine gifts in my Santa bag), then proceeded to another Christmas party where my weak resolve saw me switch from cranberry iced tea to cranberry iced tea and vodka pretty quickly. Happily, the hangover was nothing like Friday night’s; though I expect there are many lurking around the corner… bottoms up, folks!