A hectic week, and fabulous weekend...

* Names have been changed to preserve any remaining dignity of the people concerned

Due to Heritage day last week, I had to cram a 5 day week into 3 days (the public holiday was on a Thursday, and I was going away). So I frantically tried to achieve all my goals for the week, I burned and watched many DVDs of mouse behaviour, freaked out completely a few times when some of them wouldn't work, shopped and tried to pack. I also went out, had a good dose of vitamin C, and finally packed properly. This time I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep before Jenny came to pick me up the next morning...

The drive was... interesting... We sang along to pretty much every song that played, had random discussions, and came up with a few key saying that would stick for the rest of the trip. there were:

• Long live Champ Leia
• Johnny Clegg is The Man
• Mary* is like a posh old zombie goat, living on an island, without a pet rabbit.

Other sayings that popped up during the hike included:

• Henry's* insect cream is The Man.
• Damn those Mexicans!!

We stayed in a place that had some incredibly amazing rock formations on Thursday and Saturday nights. We were not the only people staying in the camp: a group that came from Bloemfontein and Pretoria were staying in the same place, and doing the same hike as us. We managed to creep them out completely by going for random walks around the kitchen area, in single file and in complete silence... After deciding not to freak them out any more, we retired to the lookout point with some whisky coffee, and watched the clouds and lightning (it wasn't raining).

The next day turned out to be heavily overcast, and thus, we all overslept. We had a big cook-up breakfast, and left after distributing and re-distributing weight between packs. Jen and I are officially not girl pants. We also discovered that my trail-mix is amazing: at every stop, it came out and everyone had a good few handfuls. I have to admit, I was carrying half, and I made sure that everyone had some... The walk that day was absolutely amazing, as we walked into gullies, past waterfalls and up streams. The only part that I didn't like was the ladders - for some reason I felt like I was about to tip over head-first...

After a very long hike, some awesome food (who knew cherry tomatoes would taste so good?), we reached our over-night stop. The Bloem-Pta group had arrived before us, but kindly left two rooms open for us. I cooked an amazing risotto meal, which was even enjoyed by the sceptics among us... After a crazy night, consisting of red wine, whisky hot chocolate and coffee, howling at the moon, and card games, I managed to catch an early night.

The following morning, we woke up to a bright and sunny day. It was Hot. Very Hot. We explored the bobbejaan's (baboon's) hotel, had lunch and a long swim. I felt super-exhausted at the end of the day, and faded relatively rapidly in the night. Apparently, I missed some goings-on...

The following morning proved to be equally hot, and while we waited for Bob*, Jen and I practiced our rock-jumping, photo-taking techniques. Apparently, I suck at this. Something to do with not lifting my feet high enough or something...

I will post photos on the blog soon. I just haven't had the energy to download any yet!!!

22/10/2009: It has taken me forever to download these pictures, but here are some of the Rooikrans camp. Pretty, hey?

10 things about me!

Helen nominated me for the "10 random things about me" award. While I think this is rather hard to do, I will try my best!!

1. I've tried most activities. While this excludes smoking weed or taking drugs, I have attempted to play the saxophone, hockey, tennis, cycling, gym, rock climbing, diving, rock music, indie music, computer games, programming, gardening...
2. I secretly like teasing people.
3. At any given moment, I tend to have more male friends than female friends
4. When I was younger, my biggest dream was to be an air hostess. I was thwarted by the fact that I kept getting taller, and my mom said that air hostesses were always short. Bugger!
5. I tend to make light of my achievements, and highlight my failures. This seems to be more common in other people than i would have thought, but after an enlightening lab meeting today, where we discussed the reasons for this, it seems that we forget the good things more easily, since achieving them will then give us a bigger high than bad things (I think this is how is works...?).
6. Although I am good at identifying plants, I really am not all that good. And I think I am getting worse with age and lack of practice :)
7. Strangely enough, I am a big fan of hugs. Bear hugs are my best. Grabbing the ass-type hugs, however, are not.
   
8. I really would like to explore my continent (Africa).
9. Something that I discovered about myself recently (apologies to all friends): I whine.
   
10. I'm stronger than I think I am, but sometimes, am a lot weaker than I should be...
    

So: Jen, Terri and Candice, you are up next!

The "Get Wrecked special"/ "Waffles underwater club" weekend

Seven of us went down to Durban this past weekend to dive wrecks, the uShaka aquarium, have a cabaret dinner, and generally have some good times :) First things: all of us got some kind of simile or metaphor attached to them (except me, of course). So:

• Paolo is like... an old man with a metal detector, a chicken, and a Raggie in a cave, waiting to pounce.
• Anthea is like... a turtle warmer.
• Chris is like... a deceptive little squirrel.
• Shona is like... a carbonated bubble in a can of coke, waiting to rise, and a Raggie in a cave, waiting to pounce.
• Alex is like... a ticking time-bomb.
• Doug is like... a Camembert cheese or a magnum ice cream - a little rough and hard on the outside, but nice on the inside

On Friday, the first group of us went for their aquarium dive while the rest of us unpacked and recovered from various rough nights out. We the went for lunch, and decided that the other half of us didn't feel like doing the aquarium dive. SO we went for waffles instead (The first waffles expedition). Later that night, after walking on the beach and cursing out lack of a brown paper bag in which to hold an OBS bottle, and discovering that Paolo has some innate chicken tendencies, we went for waffles. Again (The second waffles expedition).

Our first dive (the Fontaneau) on Saturday was really really horrible. The viz was terrible, I felt like I kept losing my buddies (I was diving in a buddy trio). I did, however see a cool purple fish, some goldies and a whole lot of muck. And potentially a sunken ship.

The conditions were so bad in the afternoon, that our second dive was cancelled, and converted to another aquarium dive. We dived in the lagoon and got to swim around and look at all the pretty fish, while I was fighting with buoyancy issues (bubbles kept filling my up in my hoodie, and as a result I kept popping to the surface). It was fun though, and I really enjoyed it. And then we went for the third waffle expedition, while my headache was expanding to elephantine proportions. I had to eat, or the painkillers may have eaten through the lining of my stomach and left me as a not-so-happy-camper.

This brings me to the cabaret dinner. The girls (well, mainly me) decided (and I coerced the others) to dress up for the occasion. So, in a very short space of time, we got dressed up to the nines, complete with dodgy encounters with people who have no concept of personal space in the bathroom (communal showers are NOT my favourite), doing hair and discovering that Shona's GHD was broken, makeup and heels. All this in pretty much an hour, and we were only about 10 mins late! The dinner was really good, and the singing was only marred by the fact that we all faded into various states of comatose-ness. Anthea and Alex were the first to leave, while the rest of us left at the end.

Sundays' dives were completely amazing. We had really good conditions, and saw a lot on the ship (this time, T-Barge). Among other things, I saw lionfish, scorpionfish, boxies, brindle bass, a hermit crab, a really big moray, some goldies and a whole big cloud of bait fish. Lovely :) We did our second aquarium dive after that, which was also really good. The rays were interesting, with one trying to nibble on Shona's hoses and shoulders... Needless to say she got a massive fright...

We had planned to have lunch and leave, so we ordered lunch and then I indulged in some retail therapy with Anthea while we waited for our food. And then it was time to be off back to good old JHB. Seriously. What a good holiday. I now have more than a few "free snorkels" for anyone going to Durbs in the near future, a whole stack of memories, and some cool new friends. Thanks guys!!!

On the down swing

So my last few post have been rather depressed, and that is probably because I have been. It has been a difficult time especially in my masters, and, although things are not currently (as of this afternoon) going wrong, they aren't exactly going right either. I know that because of the current spate of going-wrongness, I am inclined to see the glass as half empty, but hopefully after a break to clear my mind (this weekend), I will be better, brighter and back to normal.

Helen posted a post card that I think is absolutely inspired. She found it here, along with more of this guy's work, which I think is really good. Anyway, back to the post card (Sorry for stealing a potential blog post topic, Helen!). I read it yesterday and nearly burst into tears. Possibility girl describes me so well that it is scary. The only part that doesn't totally fit is the basking in adulation of my potential.

So: which way to go? Will I ever reach my potential? What do I have the potential to be? Another post card from the same guy asks some hard questions:

My answer at this point: I really don't know.

So, For now, in order to be less stressed, I will make lists. Lists of things to do, things that might go wrong (so I can have two zillion back up plans for when they do), things that make me happy, things that I like and things that I want to do.

That will do for starters!

(Note - I'm not fighting anymore, I'm just too tired to do that anymore)

New resolution

Things seem to be going badly for me in all sectors of my life. I can't just give up - that just isn't me.

I heard this song on the radio the other day, and thought that it fits me pretty well (especially now). I know the lyrics are about dating, but the chorus is the important bit. Its by Aaliyah - the song is entitled "Try again". Just so I can come back and read the lyrics often, here they are (only the first two verses - the rest either doesn't apply or is a repeat of the chorus).

What would you do?
To get to me
What would you say?
To have your way
Would you give up?
Or try again
If I hesitated
To let you in
Now would you be yourself
Or play your role
Tell all the boys
I keep you low
If I saw no
Would you turn away?
Or play me off
Or would you stay, oh, oh

And if at first you don"t succeed
Then dust yourself off and try again
You can dust it off and try again, try again
Cause if at first you don"t succeed
You can dust it off and try again
Dust yourself off and try again, try again (and again)

In case you would like to hear the song, it is here.

Its not just Fridays, its Thursdays too!

Why is it that when a whole bunch of maybe-not-so-cool events happen in a short space of time, I pretty much self-destruct? And its not like the good stuff isn't happening either - yesterday I reached the half-way point in my vegetation sampling (yay!).

So: 6 out of 10 DVDs that I have burnt for my experiment over the past week have, for some reason, failed. This wouldn't be so much of a disaster, if:

1. I hadn't deleted one of the sessions off a hard drive. It would have to be me, right?
2. The DVD machines that I use didn't take 5hrs-and-50mins to record one DVD.
3. The hard drives that are in the said DVD machines had a ton more space on them.
4. I didn't have to buy other DVDs - one machine flat out refuses to even consider recording onto the DVDs that I currently have.
5. It may not even be the DVDs! I used some better quality DVDs to start off with, and 2/5 of them didn't work either. So the machines may be at fault.
   
6. I know that I will probably be waking up at arbitrary hours to change DVDs during the night, just so I can get the recording done.
7. My neck hurts. Probably because of tension. Bring on the blinding headache, yes please!!
   

That being said, it is even a mission to do the recording. I have to record three days, solid. The DVD machines only allow me to record for 12 hours. The DVDs can only handle 5hrs50mins. So in between stressing about whether the DVDs have actually worked, I have to divide tracks and combine others, all of which takes a ridiculous amount of time. I haven't finished all my recording, and this setback means that, even if I use the two machines that do have some space on them to record over the weekend, I will still be behind on my schedule.

So I did what any self respecting person would do last night: I went for a good, hard run. The only problem was that after about 800m, my asthma kicked in. Fun times. I did complete 2km's, but seriously. My legs don't even feel tired, and it didn't even feel like a stress buster of a run.

Seriously.

The world is out to get me. I wonder what will go wrong today?

And as a completely arbitrary aside, a guy who I met about 3 month ago (and subsequently haven't had any contact with) asked me out yesterday. Weird. I really don't know how to respond (I haven't yet), and this too is causing me some consternation.