Leaves are green.

No! Really? I thought they were pink with yellow polka dots…

 

This week has had its ups and downs, which is OK if they are normal little ups and downs but not ok if there are more downs than ups and the downs are DOWNS and not downs.

From Sunday: I had a hugely productive, satisfying weekend, because I set myself goals, but little ones. I met every single one of them. So I felt productive, and because I felt productive, I felt satisfied. Sunday was also the day for SWC final, so I watched the closing ceremony. Now, I haven't been exactly supportive of the WC – it took me a while to warm to the fact that it was even being hosted in my country (traffic was a nightmare), but eventually I watched a few games. During the closing ceremony, I had goose bumps on my entire body. I felt so proud that my country could pull off a closing event that was so spectacular. Maybe I was biased because they had elephant “puppets”, which were really really well done, or the fact that the light projection was absolutely amazing, but I was really wowed by the show that we put on, and the fact that we pulled it off :) If you didn't see the show, I'm sure you can find a copy of it on YouTube.

In case my last few blog posts haven't been obvious, I haven't been my usual chipper self lately. Part of it is because in my life, everything goes wrong at the same time. Some of it is a bit too private to share on this blog, some of it is just mundane and thus too boring to put on this blog, but the stuff about varsity life I can…

For a few weeks, I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Staff Member Responsible for assigning Teaching Assistant duties. I worked my ass off in the beginning of the year, just so that I wouldn't have to do these duties in the second half. But I was still assigned, and the relevant staff member had scuttled off to America on holiday, only to return this week (when the term started). She didn't respond to emails either. So, when I explained the situation (nicely, of course), she told me to find a replacement… So I did, but then the replacement let me down at short notice. So I went back to SMR to tell her, and she told me that I’d have to do the lab for this week (from next week, there is no way on hell I'm TAing…). So I did it today (grumbling all the way, of course), but I realised that I actually really do like TAing, even if its just because I can say really strange stuff and they have to listen to me. Which is fun. And I can draw and write on the blackboard (they totally are mutually exclusive), and they get to think that I’m weird, because I talk about stroking plants and stuff (or something to that effect). Mostly its just to get them relatively ok with the fact that plants aren’t just blobs of green stuff, and can be cool, if you allow you mind to let you think that…

Oh, the post title comes from one of my favourite things to say to undergrads about annotating their drawings (i.e., if they annotate a label showing a leaf with “green”, I WILL write No! Really? I thought they were pink with yellow polka dots!)

Trust!

I have always had issues with that gigantic thing called “trust”. Probably because I have been hurt so many time by people who were close to me. From family doing the whole “teasing a shy girl will make her less shy” routine (it only made it worse, until I grew up enough to tease back) to friends in school sharing confidences, turning on me or worse.

So, understandably, I’m not entirely comfortable trusting people. Even close friends, who have never given me a reason to distrust them. Once my trust is broken by a person, good and proper, I find it exceptionally difficult to ever confide in them again – to which some people will testify even today. So, in the spirit of sharing bad poetry (I have no idea where that sentence came out from)…

Fragile, porcelain Trust

Shatters

On cold, hard Life

Fine shards never fit back into place

Partly fixed?

Partly whole?

Can Trust ever be truly absolute again?

Wholly restored, like a broken vase?

They say

Time

Is the best healer

Anyone else feel similarly about trust?

Unhappy times.

Right now I'm not a very happy person (in fact, its 2.45am, I've been awake since 1am, and I cant get back to sleep...). I'm hoping that blogging will help!

On my mind:

• My Msc. Its not going too well at the moment, and I'm very stressed out. More so today (actually yesterday), because one of my pieces of equipment shattered into roughly 10 000 000 pieces, and I'll have to get another one made.
• Ill have to start recording another experiment in the meantime. This means that Ill have to try and fine-tune EXACTLY what I'm going to do, plan for the worst possible scenario, and then expect that the worst WILL happen (inevitably, in this project, it really will...).
• I haven't been scoring data like the machine that I should be. This past weekend, I worked late on Friday, did a few hours on Saturday, and nothing on Sunday. And nothing today either.
• I'm worried about my brother, although it has been totally awesome to have my "normal" brother back!
• My parents - I fought with my dad over a relatively minor issue yesterday. I hate fighting. And my mom is questioning my relationship with KCB, which brings me to my next point...
• KCB. Maybe I'm just way too stressed out so that every minor thing is a huge one, but I'm not coping too well even being in a relationship right now! Things like "he isn't treating me right cos he didn't pick me up to go to that wedding" (Thanks for that one, mom), to "he knows I'm super stressed out, why doesn't he frikkin phone instead of gchat?". In retrospect, I'd probably deal with all of the issues a whole lot better if I was calm and rational. Instead, in my head they are all blown up to these humongous things, to the point where, when I was tossing and turning earlier, I just wanted to call everything off.
• I just want a holiday. And to cry. My neck hurts, my sinuses are not behaving themselves, and I just would like to find myself a nice mountain that I can go and be a hermit on. Bugger the masters!

Uh, help?

So, it turns out that I'm pretty useless at social etiquette (who would'a known??). This past week, I went to a wedding - KCB's mates were getting married. Now, not I didn't know the bride and groom from a bar of soap...

Typically, when I have no idea what to do, I froze with a (probably awkward) grin on my face (and may have mumbled a congratulations, but I cant be sure in the panic of the moment), after the ceremony... How awkward. What on earth is one supposed to do??? Most other people were congratulating the couple... Does the same apply to a complete stranger?? AAAARG!

Milk expedition...

For an exceedingly funny see Luke's account of our expedition to find some milk.

Malawi (part 2)

In short, Malawi was beautiful. As I said before, the official reason for me being there was to do a tree project, while the unofficial reasons were to visit KCB, and to have a holiday (by that stage he had been away for about 3 months, which is a long time in my books...) and to have a holiday.

I was pretty shattered after the bus trip, and the day after we got there, we rested. We were staying at a missionaries house and doing some work for them, so we got a bit of an orientation that day. I suppose I was overtired and rather emotional, but TP presented his view of religion which I intensely dislike - his rather bull-headed approach is the one that makes me shudder to be called a Christian... The following day, KCB and I, and the rest of the team drove to a remote village where the missionaries do their work, so that the rest of the team could build a water tank system thing (it slows down the water and acts as a filter for sediment, I just have no idea what it is called!). KCB and I spent the night there, and headed back to the base to do our tree project.

Only, we didn't land up doing the tree project while the rest of the team were doing water stuff, because KCB got malaria. This was possibly the scariest thing that happened during the trip (I have never ever seen someone shake so much), and one of those times where I discovered that I cared for KCB more than I thought I did (soppy moment, yes, but it Happened and was Significant, and therefore will be Included in this post). Anyway, the team came back before KCB had fully recovered, and our hosts were throwing a birthday party, so we did no further work that week, except help with the party preparations. The party was... not my cup of tea. I'm not the world's biggest social butterfly, and being completely out of my comfort zone, and really only knowing the team didn't help matters much. Anyway, the party left me with a nasty stomach bug, which kept me and two other members of the household, in bed and feeling awful for the rest of the following day.

We had aimed to do the tree project during in the next few days, and KCB hauled me onto my feet and into the forest. I learnt some important lessons that day, mainly about the importance of carrying a panga, the difference between a temperate forest and a tropical forest (read: jungle), that the forest can distort sounds that a baboon can sound remarkably like a hippo... The second day of tree sampling was much better than the first, and the third day (although physically the hardest) was the best. We had to try and find a path (it's impossible to hack your way through the jungle) to the top of the mountain, and we had heard that there was a fort there: Fort Mangochi. Where do you find a fort? At the top of a mountain... Or so we thought. We marched up to the top (or rather, KCB, Triathlete and the guide Marched, and I Tottered, feeling like I was going to vomit from exhaustion), and we carried on going, because we had set our sites on the fort and I at least was rather curious. When we eventually found it, we discovered that the ruins had been neatly signposted... Only, the signs had been covered by thick swathes of tall grass... At times the grass was so thick and tall that you could lose the person in front of you (and the path) if they were more than 2m away from you!

The rest of the week we quite relaxed - we went to the market at Chiponde, which was rather fun, and the next day we went to Monkey Bay on lake Malawi, where it was windy but beautiful. KCB and I took out a sit-on-top kayak with our snorkel gear to try and find a relatively sheltered spot where the viz wasn't too bad to see the cichlids. We did see them, eventually, but being so windy, the viz really wasn't great, and I actually had more fun paddling, watching the leguwaans and the fish eagle. We also watched a man fishing from his home-made boat - a structure made out of a single tree (which reportedly only cost less than double what we had paid to hire the kayak). We were due to leave the following morning, and after much packing (the rest of the team had been in that particular spot for about a month), we set off for Blantyre.

We took Organiser (one of the team mates) to hospital that night, to check if she had malaria... Turns out she did, and she had it badly. Over the course of the next few days, while we were travelling, she took three courses of anti-malarials, and eventually flew home from Mozambique to recover.

From Blantyre, we crossed the border to Mozambique...

Im working on it!

So, Helen has promised that I will be posting lots more on my trip to Malawi. I really am working on it, but in the meantime, I'm working harder on getting better. I seem to have picked up a random virus or something on my travels. Or I picked it up in dear ol' Jo-burg, I cant decide which is likelier!

So anyway, I will be posting as soon as I can!

Malawi/Mozambique trip: Part 1

The bus trip

For the record, I have no problem slating this particular bus company, because, quite frankly, they need to jack up their service and stop being such a dodgy bus company. Even the "regular" travellers on the bus had a horrendous time, and swore never to take this bus again! Since I have been back, people who heard about my trip have told me that they never, ever use this particular company, because it is so dodgy! Hindsight is such a marvellous thing...

I diligently journaled the events of the bus trip, which is a good thing because so many things happened. However, if nothing else, the take-home message from this part of the trip is: Never use the JR CHOEU bus company. Ever. For any destination. However, I might use another bus company to travel some more - its cheap and you see way more of the countryside than if you flew, not to mention the fact that you get some of the culture too. Anyway, without further ado, here are my notes (square brackets are my thoughts now). Apologies for the confused tenses - I added stuff after it was written, and am too lazy to change it all to the same tense!

• Arrived at JR Choeu building at 7.30, in the middle of town [no, really, the middle of the middle, it was quite dodgy]! Got tickets which was a relief, since I was sure that they would have sold out cos we booked on the morning we were leaving! [with hindsight, this is probably an indication of how dodgy the bus actually is...] But there is no bus yet. People are packing an enormous removal truck that is 22m long, full of goods that are being taken to Malawi.
• 9.30. Still no bus. I discovered the law of packaging tape though: every item of baggage must be covered in as much brown packaging tape as possible, the desirable state of the item is that you shouldn't be able to see any of the original bag/box under the packaging tape. [I was vastly amused by this, it kept me entertained for a few hours] The truck is still being loaded.
• 11.00. Found another law: the law of packing. This law states that there is ALWAYS room for more baggage. Even if there isn't really... We discover that the truck must move before the bus can come.
• 11.30. We watch as the doors to the truck are forced closed on account of the truck being overloaded. Hoping the bus will arrive soon, because the truck has now departed.
• 12.30. No bus. We are assured that the bus will come by 1.15. [At this point, I started telling my parents that we hadn't in fact left yet, and was contemplating getting them to try find a bus company that went to Mangochi that had a number that worked... Travel Partner said we should just wait it out]
• 1.15. No bus.
• 3pm. People are threatening violence against the bus company and its employees, who aren't communicating with us. Bus company hands out cooking oil and food to placate the passengers.
• 5pm. Bus arrives after I got my mom to try and find alternative travel arrangements. Getting on the bus was the most stressful short-term event I have ever experienced! Trying to get your luggage and self onto the bus was crazy. Everyone pushes and shoves, and it is just insane... The bus was one of those extended buses, with no trailer. So much luggage was piled into the bus itself - don't think this is legal. We think the trip was overbooked for a normal bus, so they had to get the bigger capacity bus, and then the licence to go with the bigger bus. There is luggage everywhere.
• 7pm. We attempt to leave, drive 2 blocks, then return to the start point. The brakes sound super dodgy, and I hope that I make it out of the trip alive...
• Eventually we left. It was night time, and on account of being exceptionally lonely throughout the day, and not wanting to use my phone too much (because we were in the middle of JHB), I was smsing people like crazy. The rest of the time, I spent gazing at the stars, and thinking. Lots.

.

• My first border crossing ever! We arrived at the Beit bridge border post early the next morning [I think about 4am on the SA side]. The SA side was pretty quick, about an hour, and I saw my first case of a fake passport [he was a Malawian guy, and taken in for questioning, but later we saw him back on the bus...]. The Zimbabwean side took in the region of 3-4 hours to get through.
• By the time we left the border post, the sun was well and truly up, and I got to see the landscape - loads of random baobabs. [I didn't get to see any of the landscape as we travelled north through South Africa, so I had no idea as to what to expect, and it came as a bit of a surprise, although a pleasant one] Its rather pretty. I told TP about savannas, tree-grass interactions and a bit about landscape drivers. He must think I'm nuts, and I'm not sure that I explained very well either...
• We got stopped at every roadblock we came across, and got 2 fines. Bus driver and "handlers" paid bribes. Good times.
• Dusk: We arrive at Harare: "Welcome to Harare. Enjoy our pleasent environment", with litter and a broken landscape behind the sign. By now, I'm impatient, a little hungry, and really missing communication from the outside world. We were stopped in Harare, and the bus impounded. We waited for another hour, while another bribe was paid. The other passengers were fed up and hungry. The food money was used for the bribe. I was getting fed up with TP, he wouldn't stop complaining and saying "if we had taken another bus we would be at...", etc. I discover that we will have to spend the night at the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. TP slept and I had complete sense of humour failure as TP wont send an sms to let KCB (who was fetching us from Mangochi) know where we were, and that we had been delayed. So I cried, knowing that there is nothing I can do but wait this out, and make the best of a really bad situation.
• TP lets me send an sms when we get to the border, but doesn't wait for a reply before switching off the phone, to conserve his battery [I still had battery, but he didn't want to swap sim cards, and I couldn't use my phone because I don't have international roaming]. The bus is humid and stuffy, cramped and uncomfortable. I left the bus, stepping on people, over people, disturbing them as I try to exit. I find myself a spot on the road to the weigh-bridge and put my feet on one of the blocks. My feet and ankles were really sore from being down for 2 days and not moving.
• I had a chat with DG, a girl of roughly my age from Malawi. We struggled to make ourselves understood, since her English wasn't amazing, and I don't speak any Chichewe. I was shocked to discover that most of the bus thought that TP and I were married! YUCK!!! [my thoughts at this point went along the lines of, if I ever do this again, I'm travelling with my boyfriend!]
• I fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, with my shoes off, backpack under my knees and a copy of Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as my pillow [strangely fitting], and pearl-spotted owls calling close by. I woke up once to put a jersey and my shoes back on, and then again to turn over. I was so unbelievably comfortable, that I'm not entirely sure why I woke up, but was immediately glad that I did, because the bus had started up and was moving toward me [The danger of sleeping in the road is that you could be run over...]! This was my first 3 hours of sleep in two days.

.

• After the sleep I find my sense of humour recovered, and I'm ready to deal with the next part of the trip. I'm still super irritated with TP. We have an apple which TP eats for breakfast, and he shares his packet of chips with me, while masticating in my ear.
• We cross into Mozambique without too many hassles, although as usual, it takes forever to get back onto the road. At the city of Tete, we wait to cross the Zambezi river - the bridge is under construction/repair, and is only open to one lane of traffic at a time. I changed money here, since we would be getting an extremely good rate of 22.50 Malawi Kwacha to a ZA rand. We crossed the massive river, and found that the country was rather pretty after the ugliness of Tete, and the dryness of the landscape before the city.
• I managed to sleep on the bus in the afternoon - must have been exhausted!
• Customs at Malawi took forever... All the luggage that was on the bus was taken off an checked by customs officials. As everything was being re-packed, we discover that the bus has no intention of taking TP and I to Mangochi. In the meantime, KCB somehow managed to get hold of the driver, who gave the phone to me, and in this way, we arranged to get dropped off at a police roadblock near the border, and KCB would come and pick us up (a long drive for him!). TP arranged this, cos KCB phoned back while I went and found a really dodgy toilet at the border...
• After about 3 hours, KCB arrived! Was so happy to see him, and despite not seeing him for 3 months, things were not awkward at all!

This ends the bus trip story. It took me a while to recover, and for a few days I was rather emotional, but I came out alive and unscathed :) Here are some factoids from the trip:

• In 72 hours, I went to the toilet 3 times.
• I drank 2 litres of water, and 2 cokes.
• Between TP and I, we shared 1 packet of chips, 2 apples and 10 mini seed bars.
• I slept about 5 hours
• I crossed 3 borders, and went through 6 border posts
• We travelled approximately 2000km

I'm more than a little impressed with myself, that as a first time traveller, I managed to survive this!

Before I start with the trip reports...

I feel that I need to express my utter dissatisfaction at my lifestyle at the moment. Particularly my life in JHB. I am totally unmotivated to do my masters, I feel like I'm not achieving anything, I feel that my social life is pushing on my decision-making abilities, with too many people that I want to spend time with, and too little time, and poor "saying no" abilities on my part.

Most of me would like to restart my life somewhere as a hermit, but since I know that that isn't at all possible, I need to jack myself up (somehow), start prioritising, start saying no, and find out what I actually want to do (besides get out of this hell-hole). Oh, and do my masters.

Terri is the most organised and jacked up person I know, so I'm going to elicit her help with this small project of mine.... For starters, I think I'm going to try going to bed earlier, in an effort to get up earlier, to cut out the loop of not getting anything done before lunch cos I only got to varsity at like 10.30...

I'm back!

With a million stories to tell (ok, maybe not a million, but enough for a lot a lot for me to write).

Im back from a super awesome trip to Malawi, where I officially went to go and count trees, and unofficially went for a holiday, and to visit KCB (yes, his name has changed yet again. I've stuck with this one in my head for a while now).

I used a bus to get there, which is an entire blog post on its own, (YES! FORTHCOMING ATTRACTION!!), and I travelled back with KCB and team in a landrover. Oh, the tales!

Thanks Helen for welcoming me back!

One reason that animals are bad...

That reason is that they die. Sometimes, inexplicably, other times, because of old age. Either way, its horribly upsetting, even if you have tried your hardest to remain emotionally distant. I was thinking earlier about the kinds of people who are able to remain detached, and thus, their suitability to study to study animals, but then came to the conclusion that they probably wouldn't care enough to study them in the first place.

When the view becomes a nice bonus (TMIT)

I am really not sure why this particular experience sprung to my mind, but I thought it was valuable to air the memories, so to speak.



About four years ago, my family and I went on a camping trip to (in my mind) one of the most beautiful nature reserves in South Africa, Ndumo. The situated on the northern border of KZN and Mozambique, closer to Swaziland than the sea (see map).



The roads were really bad, so a trip into the park (you cant walk without a field guide - there are big things like rhinos running around). Added to this, it really isn't sedan country, so my dad's car (a rather low Toyota Camry) was considered to be a hero for tackling the roads the way it did. However, this meant that a visit to a picnic spot took a few hours, instead of just one.



We were returning home from an outing to a bird hide (camp was at least 45 mins away), when I felt the first grumble in my stomach... This rapidly developed into full on riots within my belly, and I knew I was never, ever gonna make it back to camp in time to reach the loo... it was gonna have to be a hole in the bush somewhere, or... someone checked the map, and realised we were not too far from a picnic spot... WITH A LOO!



A flush toilet, complete with clean and sparkly taps, I hear you thinking. But, we were very far from absolutely anywhere... So, no flush toilets. Rudimentary hand-washing facilities (a large drum of water with a tap set in the base). This was a proper long drop, complete with spiderwebs, a dodgy-ish toilet seat, and a three sided shelter, to preserve one's modesty.


I dashed around to the front of the shack, ripped up the seat (pretended not to notice a few flies. Although, there honestly weren't many), and proceeded to evacuate my bowels. Noisily, as one does when situations like these happen.


After a while, once the urgency in my abdomen had subsided, I noticed the view... I had a private viewing seat with which to witness monkeys playing on the opposite bank of the river, as the loo was situated near the edge of a cliff, overlooking a river dividing SA from Moz. Bliss. Until I started getting a pins and needles from sitting on the loo for too long. This was the best drop-and-listen experience I had had up until that point, it probably will remain one of my favourites...

Suggestions, please?

Since the last time I blogged about Frank (aka Ernest), he has become significant in my life. And thus deserves a new name.

I havent been able to come up with anything other than "Snacker", but then, I was really hungry at the time, and it probably isn't the best name for him. So, any suggestions from other bloggers?

Bringing out my inner engineer

I havent been bloggin in the past little while, becuase I have just been way, way too busy... Small dramas, when added together make a big drama, and I have been struggling to right myself after it has all passed.

 

The subject for today comes from one of my experiments: I am building a maze, but needed infared beams and detectors to tell me when an object has passed a certain point. Now, for starters, I am in no way an engineer. The lat time I worked withcircuits, lights, and resistors and things was in hight school. The males in my family, however, are all engineers. I didnt go to them for help though, I went to a friend, who is an engineer (go figure...). So yesterday, after getting the parts, I built one part (the detector part), under the supervision of my dad. And it worked! And I rebuilt it again this morning, and it still worked!

 

I wonder what next I will bring out... inner artist, perhaps?

Topic #1

Here is my list of helpful topic suggestions:

• Walking in circles in lifts
  
• The Moral Compass in the Southern African Context: Principles Gone Awry
  
• Perfect Low-light Pot Plants for the Office
  
• How to change a fuel pump
  
• Why the world might actually be flat
  
• How different the world be if there was no chocolate?
  
• Sometimes we see our bodies as separate from ourselves. Have a conversation with your body. Write the conversation in dialogue form
  
• Write about the colour of my childhood.
  
• "There are some things you learn best in calm and some in storm" - Willa Cather. Write about things you have learnt in storm. Begin: "One day..."
  
• Is 'Avatar' is worth any of the hype?
  
• How bubbles or a game of Uno would solve many of the world's problems?


• How so many varsity-aged women today appear to have some form of an eating disorder
  
• Some useful suggestions on how the save the planet that do not involve the UK submarine fleet.
  

Thanks for the topics!

It has been an extremely rough week for me, all because Frank (aka B) left on his 4 (maybe 3) month trip. Lab-mates Luke and Helen: You guys totally rock. Thanks for all the support and hugs, everyone!

*drumroll*

Aaaand, the first topic iiiiiis... Chocolate!

Or, more specifically, how different the world would be if there was no chocolate. I felt this was an appropriate topic, given my current situation.

Firstly, although I don't subscribe to this theory, some say that especially for women, chocolate is a substitute for sex. So, if this were true, there was no chocolate, and people had no self-control.... You get my drift, no? I disagree, because I eat chocolate when I feel tired, frustrated, lonely, etc. This doesn't seem to tie up with The Theory.

Anyway, if there were no chocolate, the world would suffer less from post-nasal drips (I would know this, about an hour ago, I snaffled ¼ of a bar, and now, I'm struggling with a massive PND...), spend far less money (when I go through a chocolate phase, I REALLY go through chocolate), and probably be reliant on other things to make us happy. Like exercise.

I think that the world might end (well, for me anyway) if there were no dark chocolate. Milk and white chocolate I can live without. They are the major reasons why I tend not to indulge too often, as the sugar and dairy content is just too much for my dear mucous-producing sinuses. Dark chocolate is amazing though – I absolutely love the bitterness! However, a lot of people seem to disagree with me about the merits of a piece of really smooth dark chocolate, so I don't think the whole world would change too much is there were none!

Update

The write-a-thon (well, thing where I write and publish a lot) has yet to commence, because I have just been way way too busy at the moment. Ernest (I need a better name now) is leaving next week, I've been doing field work, going to birthday parties, doing varsity admin type stuff...

 

So.

 

I will try and publish at least one topic next week, K? Happy sunday!

Not really panicking...

But at the same time, I'm panicking...

I realised this year, that I have just 1 year left in which to do my masters (well, much less than a year now). To complete it, I need to:

• Record and score all my behaviour data (barring recording 1 section from 1 population)
• Finish measuring vegetation, and analyse all vegetation, including the measurements that were taken a few years back
• Do all the stats on the above data
• Write up an entire masters
• Do my teaching assistant duties for the year, so that I can get paid
• Somehow maintain my image of sanity...

And, some of the above is being hindered by my not-quite-working computer system. So, somehow I need to increase my productivity, decrease faffage (real word). It seems that I might have to shut myself in a dark room for a while, but then, that increases the probability of insanity!

GAAAAH!

Topics, please!

I need to get myself in a writing frame of mind again, but have no idea were to start! A while ago, a friend was in the same position, and i gave her a topic to start off with. I'm not sure if she ha carried on with her writing, but i think that having a topic to write on really does help a ton.

So:

Please please please comment with any random topics for me to write on, and ill post them on my blog?

Poetry!

I really like this poem - and found it again tonight, and thought it would be appropriate to publish...

"I MUST down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."

John Masefield

Happy new year!

Or Not...

Last night, I discovered that I really don't have many good reasons to be staying up till all hours of the night, waiting for the clock to strike 12. I mean, what is the point of celebrating the new year, if it is going to come anyway? And why should everyone make a point of staying up to see this "momentous occasion" in?

I was questioning the reasoning last night, as I was trying desperately to stay awake to wait for the clock to strike 12... For someone who REALLY likes their sleep, it just seems like a stupid idea. Up till about 10.30 last night, I had fun. Three of us went to the top of a koppie, to watch the lunar eclipse and take photos, and look at the stars. It was really nice, until I started getting more and more sleepy, but the rock was far too uncomfortable to sleep on. And my companions wouldn't allow me to go back to the house to go to bed (nasty people - they managed to find comfy places and fell asleep on the rock).

I also don't really understand the significance of waiting to see the new year in. For some, it might be an opportunity to imbibe in the bubbly, or any other alcoholic beverages, get horribly wasted and spend the following day feeling like they've been run over by a tractor, munched on by a crocodile, and spat out. I do know this feeling - last year I went to a new year's party, and we were playing drinking games. I'm bad at drinking games. I felt like a tractor ran over me and a crocodile chewed me up and spat me out the next day.

Or, maybe it is so that people can be "the first" to wish others a happy new year. Also, I don't really understand the significance of this, since a lot of the time, when you wish someone a "Merry Christmas", you tend to wish them a "Happy New Year" too...

Two years ago, I was invited to the 'berg to celebrate new years. I had a whale of a time, and on new years eve, I walked about 20kms, just because they were there and I wanted to go and explore. I had a fabulous day, and we had a lovely meal to top the day. Then I got tired, went to bed, even though all the others were celebrating. It was great for me, although the trip organiser wasn't too pleased with me... The next day, I got up early again, and went walking...

So, last night, I reached a conclusion that I wont stay up to celebrate new years, unless it is exceptional circumstances (like I really need a massive party night - doesn't happen terribly often), or I'm with exceptional people, ones that I stay up with chatting until all hours of the morning anyway. And, thus, for the next new years', I will try and get myself to a remote corner of the 'berg, or actually anywhere where the population density is quite low, and celebrate the new year in my own style.

And that is my only new years' resolution!

Happy new year!