I watch monkeys for a living!

Great migrations

2011-03-04T14:15:00.002+02:00

Hey Gangstas!

So I'm migrating my blog to a new address: http://iwatchmonkeys.blogspot.com/

I decided that I need a less lame blog address and that, as Leia pointed out, I will not remain in my 20's forever...alas...

So, if you're looking for me and can't find anything more recent than this, panic not! For I have not forsaken you! I have merely moved to another office...in a manner of speaking...

A history of our own

2011-03-01T10:29:00.000+02:00

Last night I was invited to attend the screening of a whole bunch of old 8mm home movies shot by my grandfather and grandmother of their family at various stages of their lives. It was an amazing opportunity to see what my father and his family were like, growing up, as teens, getting married etc. And it was AWESOME! And freaky at the same time...

It's hard to imagine that the people you've only ever known of as adults were once children and teens. I'd seen photos of them, but it's somehow difficult to imagine those still images of someone that you don't recognise as being of real people or even as the 'little' versions of the people you know now. One of the things that really struck me was seeing my father as a child, playing around on a beach. He looked just like in the photos, but he was alive, running around and obviously having a good time. And that kid, was my dad!

I realise how silly it sounds, but it's a difficult experience to put into words.

The other amazing thing was seeing how people's behaviour doesn't change over time! So many of the mannerisms of my fathers family in the films, as little kids, persist to this day! Small things like their posture or how they held their arms are identical and unchanged!

The other thing that I found very interesting was seeing how much my cousin looked like his father when they were both young! He and I were the only ones that agreed on this, but just because nobody else thinks so, doesn't make it not true!

Oh, and a lesson to all would-be home movie makers: When on holiday, don't bother filming the surroundings. In 50 years, nobody will care! Film the people! That's what we all want to see!

Some pictures from the night:

The 'cinema' complete with rows of seats and a screen! I'm not sure why my cousin looks so unimpressed...

Deciphering 50+ year old labels with obscure titles like 'Number 2'

A shot from the footage of my parent's wedding. Unfotunately phone camera's don't cope well with capturing the flickering images off 8mm film. You can just make out the shapes of some people in this one

Repairing the projector. This happened several times throughout the evening. Amazingly enough, none of the film burned out! I was under the impression that the 'burnout' was a common feature of screening such as this, and yet, not so much as a puff of smoke all evening! Our projectionist must have been a reel pro...(pun intended )

I'll miss you SO much!

2011-02-26T12:11:00.000+02:00

Given that I will be leaving my alma mater, Wits, in the not-too-distant future, I have been thinking a lot about how much it has meant to me to be part of it. The other day, while on the hunt for food, I was reminded of one of the more fun aspects of Wits' charm: The quirky promotions that seem to happen on campus on a regular basis. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to snap a few on my phone, before the promo broke up!

Where else in the world am I likely to encounter giant walking fruit on my lunch break?!

I'm not entirely sure why the giant fruit were hiding under black sheets, especially seeing as it is the middle of summer in Johannesburg (usually around 30 degrees centigrade in the shade at this time of day...). The one on the left is a giant lichi, in case you're wondering...

Behold, the giant granadilla! You can also make out the giant mango behind him and what appears to be an orange too...what the other one is...I have no idea.

Even giant fruit get tired! Here they are, parking off on the grass for a well-deserved break.

This, amongst other things, I will really miss when I'm gone.

What's in a name...?

2011-02-09T11:36:00.000+02:00

I don't understand it really. But it's just the way I am. I do all my best thinking either in the shower, or when brushing my teeth. When I say 'best thinking' I don't mean that I come up with solutions to food security or world peace, but rather that this is when my brain tends to really get it's hands dirty, regardless of the idea in question.

Last night, standing in front of my bathroom mirror still dripping and wrapped in a towel after a shower, the topic of choice was names. I began to think about all the people that I'd met in my life and how so many of them seemed to display traits that were common to all the other people I'd met with the same names. Take, for example, Tyron (or any variant thereof, such as Tyrone...).

To this day, I have never met a single individual by that name that was even vaguely pleasant. Parents, if you have a boy and you don't particularly want to spend a good part of your sons life in the principles office at school being read the riot act and waxing his growing list of misdemeanours, don't name your child Tyron! It's strange, but true. My mother was a nursery school teacher and my aunt, a primary school teacher, for many years and both confirmed for me that there is indeed a hex on that name; all who bear it are nothing but trouble.

This is not to say that I believe that Tyrons the world over are evil. Far from it! I just have yet to meet one that wasn't.

This all got me thinking about how no matter what the name in question is, it is forever associated with that first person that we met who had it. Another example: I remember in primary school (elementary school for our American readers) having a girl in my class by the name of Angelique. While a tad on the naughty side, what really set her apart from the rest of us was that she had been born with a physical impairment. Her left leg had not fully developed and thus was permanently about 15cm shorter than her right leg. She wore a prosthetic leg extension all the time except for when we had to do PE (physical education - an excuse for teachers to park off and bark orders at children already burnt out from a hard day's work in the classroom).

The truly amazing thing about this girl was not her leg, but rather her approach to life. Angelique was, in spite of all that her biology had thrown at her, unstoppable! I remember that she was always very friendly, but took no nonsense from anyone. She always stood up for the underdog (with the added advantage that few people would argue with a metal reinforced plasticised leg extension...) and even when doing PE, she strove as hard as, if not harder than, all the other kids to do well. As such, this name has a number of connotations for me: scallywag, virtuous and unbeatable.

Another example from primary school was a girl by the name of Catherine. Actually, more than one by that name. And, true to form, both Catherines had equally unpleasant personalities. The first left our school shortly after entering the second grade, much to our unanimous relief. This child, in hindsight probably a deeply troubled individual, would frequently erupt into fully fledged temper tantrums in the classroom. I remember one in particular when she trashed the reading corner, tossing books willy-nilly and overturning the bookshelf, a feat I at the time marvelled at, unable to budge the bookshelf under my own strength. Obviously, rage provided a fuel unmatched by any amount of sugar and tartrezine.

The second Catherine was with us for longer than the first. But, while physical violence wasn't her thing, her skill lay in her unmatched ability to be very unpleasant. She was one of those kids that just never had anything nice to say about or to anyone. Somehow she had friends, but I certainly didn't count myself in their number. In both cases, I learned very quickly that the one thing common to the name was the tactic you used when dealing with them: don't! Just avoid them completely!

So prospective parents, think long and hard about the names that haunt and colour your past. Consult with others about the names that shaped them and give much consideration to the idea, before frivolously applying a label to your offspring!

Calling all the Faithful

2011-02-07T16:10:00.000+02:00

I am certain that a vast number of my readers will be almost entirely unable to connect with this post. It's one of the hazards of being one of those odd people that actually like listening to electronic music outside of Holland (sue me! I'm hooked!). However, I'm using this blog to chronicle my life and it's highs (and lows) so this is definitely material that deserves to go on here.

Saturday was the day I've been waiting for for months now. I first heard about their visit to Johannesburg through a friend on Facebook who somehow had come across this information prematurely and, knowing that I was a fan, decided to share it with me. Indeed, with a little internet effort, I confirmed; Faithless were coming to South Africa!

I remember the last time they were here. I think I was 17 at the time. It was my first big live performance event. I remember being so excited and nervous at not knowing what to expect. I remember that my cousin and her then boyfriend drove us there and acted as general chaperons for the evening while I, and my two mates chattered away excitedly, awestruck by the whole experience. I remember the opening act was a horrific South African group called 'TK-Zee' who would do best to be forgotten entirely. The crowd came very close to booing them off stage, but luckily for the performers, their performance 'playlist' waned before the crowd got upset enough. Then they came on...

This time round we were due to be entertained by the Cape Town based dance duo 'Goldfish' as the entrée before THE band blew our minds with their performance. However, the gods of music got together with the gods of lets-think-of-something-that'll-just-irritate-the-crap-outa-them and through poor organisation on the part of the hosts, nobody other than the Golden Circle ticket holders actually got to see Goldfish (i.e. we plebs were forced to miss them because the organisers failed to let normal ticket holders into the venue before Goldfish were finished; a gripe for another day).

However, once inside, everything would change! Once Faithless came on stage, things elevated to a level of experience yet unmatched. I cannot put into words what an amazing experience it was, but I'll try.

The concert started with a little known track, followed by one of their latest releases, 'Sun to Me' which was amazing. People were dancing, vigorously abandoning themselves to the music, worshipping the sound that buffeted their senses. I, somewhat reserved, danced along, relishing the moment. However, for me, things only got started with the next song.

As they began the intro to the song, I recognised it immediately. I watched as the music built up, a crescendo heralding the start of something awe-inspiring and bordering on spiritual. As the chorus broke, the crowd went berserk. What had been a black maw behind the stage emerged as a massive screen, a golden light drawing out the outline of a church behind the musicians as they desperately performed their hearts out for us. The song could not have been more apt: 'God is a DJ'

The evening progressed with inspiring performance after performance. Each time the screen behind displaying a colourful assortment of images, visualizations and patterns that accentuated the beauty of the music tearing through us. All around people were jumping, throwing themselves, fighting gravity and all their inhibitions. Involuntarily, I found myself doing the same, literally out of control, caught in an elated fit of sheer movement. We were all one writhing, joyous entity.

The evening ran away from us. Two hours turned into ten minutes. Before we knew we'd arrived, it was over. The lights dimmed, the band left the stage, and a truly unsatisfied audience. The crowd began to chant. Their appetite wasn't satiated. They wanted more. And once again, Faithless failed to disappoint.

The band reemerged, stepping out of the darkness to hit us one last time. Issuing instructions to the crowd, MaxiJazz began one of the most awesome musical experiences of my life. The final song that we would be privileged with would be one of their most profound: 'We Come One'. Reinvigorated, we began to move again, a giant rising. The tide grew, pulling any reluctant dancers under it's powerful tow. As the chorus hit, our tumultuous action reached it's peak. I was merely an element of a whole. Part of something bigger. An entity that reserved judgement, asked for nothing and offered elation in return. We truly had come one.

I will always remember that evening. Nothing parallels that feeling of amazing unity, bliss and excitement all in one. I suffered for it (head-banging isn't too great for your neck...). In fact, I continue to pay. I've been trying to work all day but I can think of nothing else! But it was well worth the price pay!

Life-long To-do list Item 32: Check!

2011-01-26T12:31:00.000+02:00

Before I begin, I must point out that I don't really have a Life-long To-do list. Not in the formal sense, anyway. I rather have a kinda space in my brain that holds all the stuff that looks cool to do and I'll get to later...

Avid followers of my blog will remember me once writing a post about my lifelong quest to partake of all the exotic fruit wonders that our world has to offer. Well, I am now one step closer to that goal! I have finally sampled the amazing flappy-purple-orb that is DRAGONFRUIT!

This is all thanks to my mother, who somehow managed to track down one at our local supermarket (not usually the place for edible rareties of nature...).

Behold! The amazing dragonfruit!

As you can see, my sister takes these things very seriously. Her carpophobia really got away with her...

The innards of a dragonfruit:

Giving the fruit a try:

Look at the amazing colour!! Visually, a stunning piece of food:

It's a very odd fruit. It doesn't really have much flavour. It's very delicate. It has a consistancy that lies somewhere between a persimon and a kiwi fruit. Very odd. The seeds are like those of a kiwi too. But the colour is amazing! It's really beautiful! It also stains your hands like beetroot does, which was kinda cool. I would totally recommend it for anyone to try!

Movies that changed the way I watch movies...and other stuff...

2011-01-06T12:14:00.000+02:00

The idea for this post came to me after a rather unproductive day, watching a film off YouTube in little bits. It was the movie 'Airborne', a 1993 teen comedy (sorta). There I was, nostalgically remeniscing about the hours as a child spent watching the movie and wishing that I too could surf and have an earing and hair to make a wooly mammoth jealous. I then went off to take a bathroom break, and it occurred to me while washing my hands (hygene first!); What other movies have had this kind of impact on my life?

Thus I present a list of some of the movies that changed how I view the world (or at least movies, anyway...):

I remember watching this as a kid and being completely ignorant (and blissfully so) of the fact that the shark itself was clearly made of rubber-latex. Even today, this film still gets me. It is dated, promotes a message with disasterous ecological consequences and discourages recreational swimming, but has you on the edge of your seat to the very end! Well worth the watch. I actually liked the film so much I bought the book (not bad, actually!) from a second-hand book store! The film offers everything a growing boy needs: hot beach-goers, a menacing animal that cannot be stopped, loads of blood and a little something (read: fear) that lingers with you once the film has ended.

Another oceanic story, but this time, of a much gentler kind. This film blew me away with its honest storytelling and characters that everyone could relate to. The tragedy of the story, the bleak beauty of the setting and the hauntingly memorable soundtrack left me yearning to make a movie like this one.

Steve did it again! Okay, on this one, I am completely biased, having been an avid dinosaur fan from age 3. However, even for those entirely clueless about dinosaurs, the suspense of this film is enthralling. To this day, I still feel my body ready itself for that innate flight response when Lex's leg is narrowly missed by a ravenous Velociraptor as she scrambles through the ceiling. A must see that, as with 'Jaws', provides everything a growing boy needs (although, minus the hotties...).

As an African, it is very difficult to not become ambivalent to the many civil disruptions that happen on our continent. Colonialism has left a bloody legacy which is so ubiquitous across our land that for most, it is really par for the course. However, this film told a story that made me sit up and think. This films heart-felt portrayal of the destructive process of revolution and genocide, and the bravery of one in light of certain death really hit home. It made me realise that regardless of ones genetic or cultural history, Africans, and indeed I suspect all peoples, are united by something unpalpable, but powerful.

On a substantially less deep note, this movie became a staple for me after watching the preview on MTV at age 14. The openning club scene of the movie is probably one of the most memorable scenes of all time, for me anyway. The amazing music and the mix of awe and horror as the fire system errupts with blood followed by a kick-ass fight scene made for a perfect hook. This film, released prior to 'The Matrix' featured a form of bullet-time (not of the same quality, but the idea was there!) which wowed me and the film was the epitome of what made the vampire genre awesome. And then...

This should have been titled 'How to ruin an entire genre, waste time and reduce your IQ in only 121 minutes', but I guess 'Twilight' was shorter and a little more catchy. This film taught me a very valuable lesson: Even when a movie appears to be a looming cultural phenomenon, be cautious (a lesson I should have learned from 'Brokeback Mountain'...)! Kirsten Stewart cannot act to save her life, females are apparently attracted to vampires that actually look like the walking dead (perhaps it's the sparkles? Every girl likes sparklies, right?) and that the tastes of 14-16 year old girls is not something to be trusted (No offense Tes!). So, in the likely event that Stephenie Meyer reads my blog post ('cause that'll totally happen!) I have one thing to say: The world would honestly be a better place had you followed your natural urges and given up on this story with that first twinge of writers block.

The first time I watched 'Lost In Translation', the only thing I liked about it was 'Alone in Kyoto', the Air song that was used at the end of the film. But somehow, absense made this heart grow fonder and I am now a fan! Bill Murray has to be one of my favourite actors, and the story told here was something that I could really connect to, having moved to a foreign country and tried to slot into a culture I didn't understand. And I really liked the song at the end...did I mention the song?

Another movie that had me hooked from the beginning, but this time, with music. The film itself deserved all the acclaim it recieved and more. The story was amazing, the acting superb and the music, unforgettable. I actually baught the soundtrack for only two of the tracks, both my Thomas Newman, a musical genius. His subsequent work on 'Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events' just reinforced this for me.

The film itself was nothing worth bothering with. The shock-factor of the on-screen killing of live animals achieves what the director set out to; leaving the audience disturbed and queasy. However, it also served to completely undermine the message of the story. The lesson intended 'film-making should be ethical and truthful' means little when the story was made using the killing of live animals and the mutilation of an actual human cadaver, bought from a morgue, on screen.

My last addition to my list, although there are many more but I need to get some actual work done today, is Disney's 'Fantasia'. Growing up as a kid, whenever I or my siblings were sick and had to stay home from school, we would be entrusted to the care of my grandmother. Part of this process was that we were allowed to watch movies at her house (we didn't have a video machine) and this became a staple. From the dancing hippos to the dinosaurs (again, I'm a little biased, I confess) this film always delivered. The music was amazing and complimented the visuals perfectly. A fantastic effort on the part of all involved!

I'm a dad! World, meet Greg...

2010-11-22T22:00:00.000+02:00

So, seeing as I had never attempted this in the past, I decided to give Movember a bash. Had my last shave at the end of October and have successfully grown quite the facial lawn! Behold:

This picture is a little outdated...Greg has grown substantially since this was taken.

However, two rather unpleasant things have come out of this follicle-driven endevour; My sister has fallen in love with my beard. She has decided that I am just not a whole person without it and that I should never get rid of it. Thus, she has named (I kid you not!) my beard: Greg. Her thoughts were that if I gave it a name, I would feel terrible when I eventually got rid of it and thus would be deterred from shaving ever again.

Unfortunately for her, I have no qualms about slaying Greg come December! This is because Greg has become a bit of a nuisance. He has taken on personality traits and behaviour that I find less than desirable. He seems determined to make me very aware of the fact that when I talk, I do actually use my top lip. He keeps bobbing up and down along the edge of my vision as I converse with people and it drives me nuts!

Secondly, and probably the worst of his character flaws, he has become very vexatious (I like that word...) and continuously pokes me! It's so irritating! It's a bit like a combination of having a pot scourer attached to your face and having a spider walking over your lips at the same time. And it's just that much more irritating because you know that the pot scourer is the product of your own body and that you have consciously decided to cultivate the thing!

Having said all this, I am told I look rather dashing with my new lip-lawn and that I should strive to keep it going. Unfortunately for Greg's admirers, I alone control the razor...heh heh heh...

Pelted with flowers!

2010-11-04T12:20:00.000+02:00

Now, anyone that knows me will tell you, I am by no means a superstitious person. I will happily smash mirrors, hang around black cats (although my cousin's one is genuinely evil) and scoot under open ladders. But for some reason, this year I was overcome with worry regarding a local superstition and it's implications for me.

Okay, so maybe that's a minor exaggeration; I wasn't exactly overcome with worry, but it had occurred to me...

So at our university, there is an urban legend that, come the end of the year and the advent of spring, there is only one sure way to know that you will pass your exams (or the year, if exams are not something you have to do anymore): be hit by a falling Jacaranda flower on campus.

Every spring, the jacarandas of Johannesburg bloom, transforming the landscape from a hollow tan that personifies the dead highveld winters, into a lush forest of deep greens, offset by the lilac-blue explosions that are the jacarandas. Jacarandas produce an exhaustive display of flowers at the start of spring, before they produce any leaves, resulting in huge purple trees scattered across the city, and campus. Johannesburg isn't really known for the jacarandas and dwindles to insignificance when compared to our sister-city, Pretoria (Tourists apparently go there just to see the jacarandas!), but you still feel the transformation in Joburg all the same.

So I was a little concerned when, almost half-way through the university exam month, I had yet to be hit by a flower. Then, yesterday, I was loading stuff into my car, exhausted, mind abuzz with statistics nonsense that I'd been doing all day. I felt a breeze picking up and noticed that my car was awash with little purple flowers, almost adding insult to injury. I looked up at the jacaranda above my car and sighed.

A flower drifted down and bounced playfully off my shoulder and at that moment I knew I was okay. I was going to make it this year.

Look to the sundog!

2010-11-02T11:21:00.000+02:00

Yesterday morning, Johannesburg was privy to a spectacular climatological phenomenon! The sundog, or parhelion! It's a corona (ring) that forms around the sun, creating a glowing, rainbow-halo type of effect. The result: A beautiful coloured ring that encircles the sun. The effect is apparently created by the presence of tiny ice crystals floating around in the upper atmosphere in the form of cirrus clouds. By the sounds of things, the light from the sun is bent at a 22 angle, resulting in the light halo. They are apparently best observed when the sun is low, but we saw it fine with the sun almost directly overhead. There's more info available here on the ever-faithful, source of all true knowledge: wikipedia!

Here are some of the pics that I took yesterday. The dark bits are my building; I really should have been tending to the coffee machine at the time, but these climatological phenomena don't just happen everyday you know...!

What kind of hospital is this?!

2010-10-21T11:12:00.000+02:00

Friday last week: Much of my evening was spent in one of the local government hospitals. I was fine, but the guy who I was there for was not. He's just been hit by a car while crossing an intersection on his motorbike. The whole incident happened as I arrived to fetch my father from our church. He'd been informed that one of the young men from the church had just been hit by a car and we had to get to him as soon as possible.

At the scene, paramedics worked rapidly and diligently to stabilise him and determine the extent of his injuries. He was then transported via ambulance to a local government hospital. We followed and ended up waiting in the ER for news of his condition. While the scenario was not one that I would wish on anyone, there was one thing that emerged as the lighter side of the evening...

I'm not sure how things are in the rest of the world, but here in South Africa, a Friday night is the night that you really don't want to have to go to a government hospital. Our government hospitals are pretty bad as is, but are the only health care available to people who don't have or cannot afford medical aid schemes and thus the luxury of a private hospital. The setting is made so much worse on a Friday because Friday nights are nights of revelry and drinking.

As we sat in the ER, a man in his 40's arrived, walking very slowly and unsteadily into the ER from the main waiting area at reception. He was clearly sozzled, but as I looked around I realised that there were very few in the ER that were not, so thought nothing of it. However, this man was different; he was on a mission.

He moved with unsteady purpose to the guy who ran the ER. I'm not sure of the job description for someone who prioritises ER cases, but I shall refer to him as Clive (I also don't know what his name was, so I can't even use that...). As the subject approached Clive, he began to speak to him in hushed tones. He spoke in English but so quietly that there was no way to understand what he was saying. Clive, having heard the full extent of his slurred story, spoke rather loudly and instructed the man to speak to the people at reception.

The subject nodded his head slowly and did a half turn back toward reception before the penny, well, didn't so much as drop as gracefully ooze through his alcohol-laden brain. Clive had not given him the help he wanted! With the sluggish fury that only the inebriated can muster, he rotated back to Clive for a repeat performance.

But Clive, moving at the pace of a normal person, was not there! Obviously befuddled and annoyed, he gyrated again to shuffle to the ER help desk. Ironically, and unfortunately for Clive, Clive had moved behind the desk to collect and deposit paperwork. As Clive looked up and saw the drunkard approaching, he moved quickly, shuffling papers and trying to get things in order before the drunkard could get to him. Alas, he was too slow.

The drunkard arrived, apparently pleased to see Clive behind the desk. He began to recount he tale to Clive again, but Clive, obviously a conscientious man, had a job to do and would not tolerate this man's ramblings much longer. He instructed the drunkard to step aside and that he would help him in a moment.

Apparently pleased with the outcome, the drunkard obliged, standing in the centre of the chaotic ER, occasionally swaying from side to side with a look of complete incomprehension on his face. A moment later, Clive emerged and took his new chum aside. He informed the man that his wife, who he was apparently here to see, was in the Gynecology ward on the first floor and that it was well past visiting hours, but they would allow him to go up and see her. Apparently satisfied with this, the drunkard inquired as to how to get to the Gynecology ward. Clive, having given up on being civil, told him in a stiff tone to take the elevator. Apparently we had all underestimated just how much revelry our subject had engaged in because his next question must have really been the last straw for Clive.

'But how do I get the elevator to work?'

Clive, now stiffling chuckles, instructed him to press the number '1' button on the panel in the elevator and it would take him to the floor he wanted. The man appeared satisfied with this and slower than before rotated toward the elevator. Having performed a 180 turn, he then turned back to the space where Clive had been. This time, his wobbly anger was directed at the hospital as an institution. He began to mutter things like, 'What button? I don't see any button here!' and 'What kind of a hospital is this?!' all while pressing his thumb to random sections of the wall in the hopes that they would activate the elevator and transport him to the floor above.

After about 5 min of observing this, one of our party took pity on the man and guided him to the elevator, put him into it and pressed the appropriate button for him. We assume he found his wife because we never saw him again. That or he collapsed somewhere and slept it off...

Circus life, here I come!

2010-10-04T11:36:00.000+02:00

So on Saturday, I went with a group of my friends to JoziX, an extreme sports park up in the north of Johannesburg. It's activities are all centred around large inflatable rigs so there's no danger of hurting yourself (unless you don't listen to the instructions, but how's that any different to any other physical activities, like ironing?). If you are ever in Joburg, it's well worth the price (financial and physical; you will be in pain the next day; you WORK those muscles...). In spite of the unpleasant end to the day (for me anyway) it was one of the best things I've ever done! I plan to return and complete my trapeze training once I'm all healed up! All the stuff comes from New Zealand. Who thought we'd have something to thank the Kiwi's for? ;P

The monkey bars! You have to swing from bar to bar and then try and sweep over the ears of the angry blue cat on the other end. I managed to land beautifully inbetween the ears and have the cat's head close on my like a pair of scissors...

Proper zorbing! SO much fun! Wanted to puke at the end, but adrenalin did away with the nausea!

Anyone remember 'Gladiators'? Same idea, only you pummel a friend instead of a steroid-laced body-builder...

Tight rope! I managed to grab the handle on the other side and then lost my balance. Good fun though!

The inflatable climbing wall! Much harder than you would think! There are four walls: Red is the easiest, yellow's the hardest. I can do red...that's all.

The highlight of my day! Trapeze! So cool and so much fun!

My cousin doing the trapeze thing. He even managed to transfer to the next handle thing! It looked amazing! I nearly did, but somehow ended up tearing large chunks of skin out of my palms, so doing the full manoeuvre was not going to happen.

Me holding swabs with disinfectant onto my then skinless palms. Painful, but TOTALLY worth it! That trapeze is my new love...

*(I really have nothing against New Zealanders except for when they kick our ass at the rugby. It's just fun to play on the stereotypes. In fact, I have family there now! They're not true Kiwi's because they're actually from South Africa and moved there, but it's the closest thing I have...)

The worlds cutest animals

2010-09-10T13:47:00.000+02:00

So, after the lab meeting today, I was not working (It's a Friday!!) and happened upon the following videos. The contents completely blew my mind. I saw the numbers on that balance and thought, 'What in my world weighs that amount?' I soon realised that a teaspoon of sugar weighs more than this little guy! It's amazing!

Another personal cute-animal-crush is the silky anteater. I am amazed that these little guys have not been snatched up by their millions for the pet trade. Not that I condone that sort of thing at all, but it's amazing that it hasn't happened.

And, just because I can't get enough of the little critters...

Friday is NOT a work day!

2010-09-03T12:22:00.000+02:00

A while back I posted about how fantastic Fridays were because we got to have doughnuts and coffee. Well since then, Fridays have continued to uphold all that is important and true. However, this Friday has been a little different...

Our supervisor is away at the moment and, well, when the cats away, the mice...swordfight with broom-sticks!

...or perhaps a little song and dance number?

Time-warp tests

2010-08-22T13:19:00.000+02:00

Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of having to invigilate a test or exam in their lifetime can attest to this simple truth; it’s not fun. Tests seem to alter the space-time continuum, drawing time out, extending it beyond what is normally possible. It’s much like deadlines, which compress time into smaller and smaller bits, but it works in the opposite way.

Anyone who has ever invigilated a test will also tell you that as an invigilator you need something to occupy your mind while doing this job. If you don’t, the time-warping effect of the test is exacerbated tenfold. If you are smart, you take a book to read, or some marking to do from the previous time that you invigilated. But if you are like me, you only realise you are supposed to be invigilating about two minutes before the test starts and thus fail in the forward-planning department and end up stuck, pacing the rows of students with nothing to occupy your time.

On Friday, I had to invigilate such a test. Unfortunately, true to form, I completely forgot about it and thus failed to take reading material with me. I had walked briskly across campus, strolling nonchalantly past the students who were waiting outside the test venue (as their lecturer, you must maintain your coolness at all times). Once inside the large building, I realised that the test hadn’t even been set out, never mind ready for the students to write. I also discovered that the class, being in excess of 400 students, would be writing in two consecutive sessions.

Once the test was set out, the first batch of students came in to write. Time took on the consistency of syrup and my mind began to strain at the growing emptiness inside. When invigilating, I find that I tend to become pathologically eagre to do mundane tasks; things like collecting unused transcripts, counting the number of absentees, estimating the ages of students, counting how many students pick their noses thinking nobody is watching all become of the utmost importance. Occasionally a student will put up their hand for an extra sheet or to request an escort to the bathroom and your mind rejoices at the opportunity to do something.

After the first batch of students wrote and had been released, the second lot filed into their places and began to worry for my mental health. I still had another hour of waiting before my invigilating duties would come to an end. As the second lot started writing, time, having given a brief respite and returning to normal speed, resumed it’s passage at the speed of snot. I too resumed my seemingly critical tasks. It was during one such task, drifting down one of the aisles between desks, that I noticed something odd.

The test venue is a large hall, built to resemble an aircraft hanger. Whether this was intentional or merely my own perception, I cannot say. But one wall of the building is made mostly of one-way glass. Pacing inside the hall, I looked through the one-way glass to see a pair of girls outside, apparently in the throws of some sort of synchronised seizure or demonic possession. As I got closer to the window, I realised that the pair were actually practicing their synchronised dance moves, using the reflection off the glass to aid them.

While this in itself was amusing, what made it so much worse was the fact that the pair were, I assume, blissfully ignorant to the fact that there were over 200 students sitting inside the room, able to see them. At one stage one of the writing students stopped her test and watched over her shoulder for a good 5 min as the duo gyrated and stamped around outside. I too watched them as they flailed around, occasionally bursting into fits of laughter when one appeared to fail at twitching at the right time.

The responsibility of watching the students drew my mind back to the writing masses. Suddenly, a shriek was herd and I turned back to see what had happened. As I turned, it became clear that the pair outside were the noise. As I watched, the pair tore around the parking lot outside apparently being pursued by something small and white. I looked closer and realised that they were being chased around by a Maltese poodle and that the dog was determined to take them down, no matter the cost. One friend broke away, successfully evading the pooch while the second continued her rampage of shrieking. Eventually, she stopped, apparently exhausted from all the running and screaming, and the dog stopped to. The pair caught their breath and then resumed their chase.

Unfortunately, the test time was nearly up and I had to tear myself away from this very amusing episode. However, I think this has to have been one of the most exciting test invigilations I’ve ever done! It was awesome!

Engrish!

2010-07-08T15:58:00.000+02:00

Some pictures from the ever-entertaining China-Mart!

The menus at the restaurant were princess themed...

Spiced Chemical Egg! My favourite!

Chicken omlettle! Another personal favourite!

Ever need to teach your children the meaning of contradiction? Why not buy them a 'grumpy-baby-with-smiley-face' doll?

My favourite pieces!

2010-07-07T13:47:00.000+02:00

So, I was rummaging through my phone and I came across these pictures of my favourite art pieces from the Joburg Art Fair at the Sandton Convention Centre in March. A little late, yes, but still nice...I think anyway...

...all we wanted was some milk!

2010-06-29T14:27:00.000+02:00

As occasionally happens when one is a professional student, one becomes overwhelmed by the sheer amount of procrastination that one undertakes and is forced to take a step outside, away from all the work and non-working, to clear ones head. I was offered the opportunity to do so today when Leia, discovering that we were out of milk, decided that she was going to go and walk to the shops to buy some. She too was procrastinating and thus, it was better for both parties involved to just take that step and leave the lab...

We walked down to the shops of the Matrix (our student centre where purveyors of everything sweet and greasy ply their trade; if I ever get heart disease, I'll be blaming it on the Matrix...). We walked into the 7/11, deep in meaningless conversation about the perils of the student life, or something to that effect. As we approached the wall of glass doors that are the fridges, we discovered to our horror that there was a large empty space where the milk usually took residence.

In utter disbelief, Leia shuffled from door to door, examining the contents of each fridge, in the vein hope of finding that one carton that somehow went unnoticed by previous shoppers. Unfortunately it was not to be.

Conceding defeat, she announced that they had no milk and together we forlornly left the store.

BUT WAIT! There is also the Cafe Fino in Senate House! Perhaps they might have [ridiculously overpriced] milk!

With the hope of this revelation in our hearts, we began to trek up the hill to Senate House. We arrived through on of the side entrances and continued down the 'Disability Unit' corridor. Just as we were reaching the end of the corridor, the person who had been walking in the opposite direction to us stopped and spoke to us.

She looked Mediterranean, about 50+ years of age and wore an ochre/orange jacket. Her hair was died an impossible blond and had the fatigued look of a little too much time at the office. She started by asking us if there was an exit that took her to the traffic lights in the direction that we had come. A little confused as to what she was asking I responded with silent blinking.

Leia, a little more on the ball than I, requested clarification. It turned out that the woman worked in the block north of the university and had come in to pay something but had somehow gotten lost on campus. She had found the financial office but now needed to return to her car which she had parked near a set of traffic lights on campus.

'Oh...!' I recounted internally. I proceeded to offer her a detailed description of a route that would take her directly to the traffic lights she sought. The route was not complicated; literally just walk in one direction, in a straight line until you reach the road. Then turn right, following the road down the hill. Et viola!

Clearly uncertain, the woman thanked us and proceeded to walk the suggested route, muttering something about how despite her navigational skills she had other redeeming features. Feeling that the incident had concluded, Leia and I resumed our conversation.

A few words into the chat, we were again accosted by the lost woman. This time in a rather determined tone, she asked if there wasn't an alternative route through one of the passages to her left. A little perplexed, we assured her that the route we had suggested was the most direct and simple route. Thanking us again, she resumed her waddle toward the street.

We entered the store, found the milk and payed for it, all the while chuckling and muttering about the crazy woman who seemed convinced that she knew where to go, in spite of demanding directions from complete strangers. As we left the store, we walked toward the building exit and stopped dead in our tracks...

There, waddling between buildings was the crazy woman! She apparently had walked the route we had suggested just enough to seem like she hadn't completely disregarded our advice outright and then had gone with her gut...the wrong way. Neither of us wanting a repeat encounter, we decided that it was best for all involved that we run in the opposite direction, giggling with milk in hand...

Pessimism and the W.C.

2010-05-18T10:51:00.000+02:00

No, not that W.C. ! The World Cup of course!

The W.C. What can I say...Firstly, I sincerely hope that they never get to host it in this country again for as long as I live! I know, I know...I'm unpatriotic and un-South African...blah blah blah. But there are some really big reasons why I'm anti-W.C. at the moment.

Numero uno: It's been really irritating because absolutely everything now is about the world cup! Just the other day, my uncle went to the licensing department to try and get his car re-licensed and the place was closed, only to open an hour later. The reason? The staff were being taught the official world cup dance (it's called the diski dance for those who need to know; what diski has to do with soccer, I have no freaking clue...)! We have a world cup dance?! I mean really! Can't the money that was spent on hiring a Fifa-approved choreographer have been put to better use?! But thank God that now, should some misguided tourist waft into the licensing department and ask for the staff to break into dance, they will be able to deliver without hesitation! Now if only they could process their forms with that kind of efficiency...

Secondly, our country has been inundated with billions of flags. There are flags on everything! People have flags on their cars, houses, children...you name it, it's done! Actually, the children part, I have yet to come across, but I am fairly certain there are a few branded kiddies out there, unaware that they are punting their parent's favourite team. None the less, the flags are a bit much! They have even invented side-mirror socks which allow you to display the flag of your choice on your side mirrors! To give you an idea of how bad it is, several of the houses in our area now display little plastic flags all along their walls; not just of one country,mind you! They display the flags of every team that will be playing! So it's not even about supporting a team!

Once again, the futility of displaying all the flags like this doesn't seem to have dawned on most of the populous. In my opinion, foreigners are not likely to adorn their exorbitantly priced rental vehicles with the flags of their homes so the competition for best soccer supported is a little unfairly weighted toward the SA guys. They are also unlikely to have difficulty in identifying South African drivers on the roads, certainly not up here in Joburg. Just look out for the ones who are aiming at the other cars...that's us! So the need for South Africans to plaster flags over everything is completely unfounded...

Just the other day, I was on my way in to Wits on the highway when I saw, lying dirty and damaged in the freshly cut grass of the middle island, one of those horrid car flags which had obviously snapped off it's host car as they zoomed down the freeway. I felt so good to see it, which gives you some idea of just how sick I am of the stupid flags...

Thirdly, and most importantly, Fifa has demanded that for the duration of the world cup, all street vendors, hawkers and street salesmen are to be rounded up and arrested if they are caught selling their wares on the streets of the host cities! So effectively for two months, these people who make a meagre living on a good day, are to be deprived of their income! Not to mention that Fifa should be paying them compensation for this, but also, the hawkers are such a typically South African thing and by removing them they are also detracting from the full South African experience of visitors!

Other than that, we're all very excited!

Apparently some soccer fundi says that Bafana will be at an advantage because of the fact that they are used to playing with the vuvuzelas and rowdy crowds of South African Soccer. So perhaps we do stand a chance after all!

2010-05-13T15:33:00.000+02:00

Horrors! I've not posted in over two months! What has become of me!

Life just kinda caught up with me I guess. Things have been pretty hectic and as things stand at the moment, I'm in a rut...which is why I thought I should post some pictures of the...interesting...things I have spotted while out shopping lately. Enjoy!

What's wrong with this picture...?

They knew there was a double letter in there somewhere! Which one it was...merely a technicality!

Anyone looking for a 1/4 of a rabbit? I know where to go!

Oddly enough, not bought in a sex shop! Thailand actually!

You'd think that someone must have picked up on the double-entendre here before they printed the packaging...

Becasue Kate Moss and the History of Science have SO much in common...

Spelling isn't their strong point, is it? But at least we know their food is the 'nuggest' of them all!

Food of the Gods/Devil

2010-02-09T17:40:00.000+02:00

Now that I have neglected my blog for a good month or so, I feel that I should write at least ONE post for February. For my fans, alas, I will probably be posting rarely this year as I have a lot of work to do for my PhD (HOORAY!!!) and so I probably won't have the time or inspiration to write. Unless you want to learn about how chimpanzees use space...

Following a post by Leia, I have been thinking about the whole chocolate-is-a-substitute-for-sex thing. And, following a rather fruitless rummage through a text book on biological psychology (What kind of decent text book on psychology doesn't have a section on chocolate?! I mean really...! ), I turned to the faithful Internet for the knowledge which I shall present to you here.

So Leia argued that she was not one to fit the stereotype of chocolate substituting sex. She then went on to describe how she ate chocolate all the time, so it couldn't possibly be related to her libido. As she put it, she ate chocolate whenever she felt, 'tired, frustrated, lonely, etc.'

While the motivation for eating the heavenly gifts of the cocoa plant may not be sexual, it is very interesting to look at the hormones that are released when one eats chocolate. First up, ENDORPHINS!

These are the bodies natural pain killers. According to these guys (they have references, so I am inclined to believe them) endorphins are produced by our body in a variety of circumstances, including pain experience, eating spicy foods, overexposure to light (I'm assuming that refers to sunburn...?), exercise, laughter, crying, stress, acupuncture, shower massagers, calming music, tickling, sex, stimulating the erogenous zones and eating sweet foods, including...drum roll please...chocolate! Interestingly, scalp massage made it's way in there too. That explains why some girls love having their hair washed so much...

Another important chemical is Phenylethylamine. There's an obligatory quiz on all the chemical names at the end of this post...I think I'll just call it 'P' for simplicity's sake. This chemical is naturally found in the brain and is associated with increasing activity in the pleasure centres of the brain by causing the release of dopamine (the happy chemical). This is also produced in relatively high levels during orgasm. They have a strong influence on our mood when found in the brain. However, according to these people, some suggest that chemicals such as P are metabolised long before they get near the brain when taken in through chocolate. It's also found in a number of other foods, including beer, wine and some cheeses.

Interestingly, chocolate also contains cannabinoids, similar chemicals to those found in weed. So, they have the effect of making one feel happy. However, one would have to consume ridiculous quantities of chocolate to get high. The cannabinoids in it are not nearly as strong as those found in cannabis. According to this abstract, some lawyer actually tried this once as a defence against his client dealing and using Mary-Jane. Sadly for him, his defence was shot down in flames...

A well known chemical in chocolate is the caffeine and similar non-caffeine chemicals. I'm not going to say any more apart from the fact that the chemicals occur in very low quantities in chocolate when compared to coffee. Here they claim that 50g of dark chocolate still contains less caffeine than 150ml of tea. Food for thought and whatnot...

So, while the sex-chocolate link isn't exactly gospel, you can still see that chocolate has come very interesting effects on the brain. On the plus side, it also tastes good!

PS. Picture credits; Here, here, here and here.

The car that gave birth to a kitten

2010-01-06T14:41:00.000+02:00

Monday morning; I awoke at 05h45. Insane, I know. But I had to go to work out with my good pal, Dave. The two of us gym together regularly (or try to anyway...) as it forces both of us to do it and helps to keep us motivated. We work out early in the morning because, a) it offers a good excuse not to just sleep in every day and b) we go running in the evenings, so working out in the evening isn't really an option.

On this particular morning, I was unusually alert and managed to get out of bed, get dressed and out of the house in five minutes. To put this into perspective, I am usually so groggy and semi-comatose that it takes me a good 15 minutes to organise myself. So, ready and eager to get going after the Christmas hiatus I collected my car keys and started up my car.

I pulled out of the drive and began to putter along down my road. The crisp morning air was refreshing and humid, carrying the rain from last nights storms back to the clouds above. The roads were their usual desolate selves, unsurprising, given that it was so early. As I pulled into the road which joins one of the main roads in our suburb, I noticed a white Hyundai, perched on the crest of the speed hump in the middle of the road. The car was running, the occupants holding it there, waiting for something. I assumed that they were waiting for a colleague or friend to emerge from the house opposite.

As I got closer I noticed something dark attached to the undercarriage of the car. Now, understand, my knowledge of the anatomy of a car is horrific at best, but this still seemed out of place. I slowed behind the car, expecting them to pull off at any second. But they didn't budge.

However, the lump under the car did.

It wiggled a little and then landed on the tarmac lightly, only to tear across the road as a white, albeit fluffy, bolt of terror. As I watched, I realised that it was a tiny white kitten! My brain instinctively told me that it was way too early to be up anyway and so this probably hadn't really happened. But as I drove past, I realised that it was all real, the scared little cat glaring back at the car from the safety of the driveway.

The poor little thing probably climbed up into the engine of the car for warmth the night before and had not realised what was going on until it was out in the street already. The poor thing must have got such a fright! But it appeared to be okay, if not a little ticked off. The whole experience was very surreal to say the least!

Rodents!!

2009-12-02T14:11:00.000+02:00

Prepare for the 'Awww!' moment.

These are some photos of the rodents that have graced our lab within the last two or three days. Naturally, they are all adorable and make you instinctively want to take them home with you.

Exhibit A:

These are a group of 6 baby dormice that were found in the field. Their mother had died and they were scuttling around on their lonesome. They are currently in the care of an individual from another lab.

One of the little ones up close.
Exhibit B:

This little critter was brought in with a group of gerbils (see below). It's a Mus minutoides or African pygmy mouse. You'll never guess why they chose that name...

In case you are struggling to see where the mouse is, here's an enlarged section of the above picture. To give you an idea of scale, that blue pipe in the back is approximately 5.5cm in diameter...

Exhibit C:

Gerbils...Some people think they are cute. I'm not a fan, but they did arrive recently so I have to include them.

Exhibit D:

Last but certainly not least, Rhabdomys babies! Leia's latest catch produced offspring over the last two weeks so now we have little striped mice! They are adorable!

Need some time off from work...?

2009-12-01T14:40:00.001+02:00

I'll take number 9 any day!

http://www.topcultured.com/12-illnesses-that-are-way-worse-than-swine-flu/

Photos from The Fridge Incident...

2009-12-01T12:25:00.000+02:00

Hi all

Just two pics from the fridge incident. Below you can see a member of staff wisely hiding behind the odour barrier of their face mask. Below that, Leia retreating from the building with Kermit, one of our lab plants, and spreading the pleasant smell of incense.

Night of 1000 Drawings!

2009-11-30T16:08:00.000+02:00

Hi all!

For a smidgen of brief entertainment and knowledge-gaining see the list fo emotions at the bottom of the wikipedia page. I had no idea most of them existed...It makes me saudade...or is that weltschmertz...?

I've been furiously working on my proposal for my PhD over the last month or so, so I've really neglected my blog. I R sorrow...

Moving swiftly along, last week Thursday, I went to the 'Night of 1000 drawings'! It was hosted in the old Park Station extension, which has been untouched since about the 70's. It's a fantastic venue, filled with all manner of beautiful art-deco and later elements! Check out the pics below for an idea of what it looks like...

But first, what is the Night of 1000 Drawings? It's a genius charity event organised each year in Johannesburg where over the entire year, the general public are encouraged to draw/paint/photograph something and submit it. The content can be anything at all and the materials used vary considerably. The only unifying factor appears to be the size of the canvas (obviously not a literal canvas...).

Then, on the night of 1000 drawings, each of the submitted drawings are auctioned off for R100 a pop and the proceeds are donated to a number of charities! Genius! I confess, I didn't buy anything myself as I arrived too late and all the good stuff was taken, but the stuff that I did see was rather impressive! Next year, people...next year...

By the way, the whole point of this story is that it's the first time I've been to one of these and they are AWESOME!!!

Behold, the main exhibit; Thousands of small drawings held in place by clothes pegs for the buying!

The drawings themselves were very variable. There was everything from telephone-side doodles and kids scrawlings to beautiful photography and professional artworks.

I liked this one in particular because I'm very anti-facebook (but somehow still can't bring myself to delete my profile...).

In the remains of the old fountains in the station, they had people doing massages; For when the weight of your taxing picture viewing becomes too much...

I like this one! I have no idea why, but I do...

The problem with the internet is that you can't broadcast smells...

2009-11-17T12:05:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was a ridiculous day! It began with the introduction of coconuts to Tas and co. Midway through our munchings, we were interrupted by a student from one of the adjacent labs who had come to announce that the only freezer in our department which can be maintained at -80˚C had been off all weekend because the wall socket it had been plugged into had given up the ghost for no apparent reason. As a result, any material that we had stored in there was more than likely useless as it had probably decayed beyond all recognition.

As one does in our department, we shrugged it off and figured that there would be a few students who would be upset, but the world would continue to turn none-the-less. We were wrong...

As it turned out, the fridge was determined to go out with a bang and that bang was targeted at everyone who worked in our side of the building. The decaying material (which included cat-food - WHY?!) had, as decaying material does, produced the most noxious stench our building has ever smelled. The pong was also really sneaky...it remained out of smell for a good part of the day and then rushed at all of us will full smelly force just after lunch time.

In an effort to overcome the stench, one of the resident academics decided to try and burn some Helichrysum, which she had obtained from a local traditional healers market. The result was a combination of putrification with burning plants and a hint of marijuana (and not in a good way...).

It was around this time that Tas entered my lab and uttered the words, 'What died?!' which pretty much summed things up. We also came to the conclusion that our building has absolutely no fire/smoke alarms at all; a comforting thought...

As much as appreciated the attempt to improve the olfactory conditions of our labs, the smell became too much and we all decided that it was a good idea to go home. So, we all packed ourselves up and began walking out of the building. As we arrived at one of the staircases, we noticed that there was a small cascade of water pouring down the stairs into the passage. As it turned out, one of the pipes had burst on the third floor and the water was using the stairs, as any sensible sentient being would. We gave it some space as the water was slightly yellow and, being that it had come from one of the microbiology labs, you really never know what it could contain...

This morning, when I returned to my lab, the stench still remained and had yet to be exorcised from the building. Some kind soul had replaced the burning plants with incense sticks so instead of the smell of burning grass, we had a building that smelled like an ashram.

And people wonder why I enjoy the work I do...

You've never done WHAT?!

2009-11-16T12:56:00.000+02:00

I'm amazed...So many of my friends have never eaten a fresh coconut before! Obviously not the whole thing (I think I'd be hard-pressed to manage downing an entire coconut), but I can confidently say that I quite like eating coconuts fresh out of the shell. And as it turns out, Tas, one of my lab-mates, has never eaten it, nor has Athena!

So, in an effort to broaden their horizons, I brought in a coconut this morning. I mentioned it to my supervisor who was rather excited at the idea and came to observe the coconut cracking ceremony, and get coffee...

Using my trusty hammer that I snuck out of the house and onto campus, we pulverised the coconut and from it emerged it white and tastey goodness! Unfortunately, I had bought a dud one, without any milk, so that part of the experience was missing, but otherwise, it was a rather tastey specimen. As it turns out, Leia and my supervisor are both expert coconut extractors...

Athena was really rather impressed with the fruit. Tas was not. She preferred the dessicated and shredded kind (I call it dessicrated coconut...). Leia and I were discussing how we think we should make it a weekly thing to introduce a new fruit to each other. Next time: STAR FRUIT! (Helen, you might want to stay in the bush for just that little bit longer to avoid the star fruit... :D )

Ode to the weekend and running!

2009-11-06T16:02:00.000+02:00

I have managed to get through half of my marking for the weekend already! Yay! So, to celebrate, I'm going to go home and go for a run!

It's amazing to think that I, of all people, could possibly enjoy running that much, that I actually look forward to it! A year ago, I'd never have believed that I might get to this point of actually enjoying my running, and yet, here I am, loving it! It's quite bizarre...

Well, I really don't have anything more to say. It's a Friday. The day is almost nearly over and I feel a rewarding jog is in order. Cheerio! But before I go, the photos from our lab Halloween party:

Okay, this has nothing to do with the party, it's just a really cute forlorn-looking doggy... :)

Tas getting into the Halloween spirit.

One of our obese lab mice oggling us as we prepare food...

Our Halloween spiders! Made from scones, grated cheese, raisins and prezel sticks! Genius!

Making an army of cheese-covered spiders!

P.S. I really need a holiday...I keep dreaming I'm on holiday. It's really annoying!

Well, that was a complete waste of time!

2009-11-05T20:18:00.000+02:00

After a good 7 hours, I've finally finished marking the first batch of my medic's practical exams. And I'm not-so-proud to announce that if a third of them pass, it'll be a miracle! It's SO depressing when you mark and realise that all those hours that you spent typing up notes, preparing lectures, giving lectures, preparing practicals and supervising practicals were all for naught. Nothing has sunken in...

It's quite amazing how little understanding of the world they have! For example, my friend Athena, who has not studied biology at all and considers her knowledge of biology limited, appears to have a better grasp of the anatomy of a rat than the average medical student who dissected the wretched creatures for a whole THREE WEEKS!!!

What also leaves me completely speechless is there inability to perform relatively simplistic and straight-forward tasks, like read the instructions on their exam paper. The number of students that completely ignore the instructions and write what they feel the question should be asking is scary to say the least.

Prime example: One of the questions asked them to plot a line graph of a set of mass-specific metabolic rates (basically how much energy used for every gram of body mass in a given time) against their corresponding mass values. What do I get?

A million graphs of mass-specific metabolic rate plotted against species, or mass against species!!! Every possible combination except the one they were ASKED for!!!

(In case you were wondering, I'm a little frustrated and despairing at the moment. I think I'll go home and it'll all be okay in the morning...)

My little sister

2009-10-28T08:59:00.000+02:00

Gosh I hate blogger sometimes!! I had written up a whole post, and then tried to copy/paste it, and now it refuses to paste! AARGH!!!

Anyways, the point of todays post is to showcase my sisters artwork. She's doing her BA fine arts, specialising in sculpture. Today she has to exhibit all of her works from the whole year to be marked. I'm not entirely sure how one goes about marking an artwork, but anyway...

So here are the results. I'm rather impressed with it all! If you happen to be at Wits today, I'm sure she'd be chuffed to have you waddle through and 'Ooo!' and 'Aah!' at it... ;)

For this piece, their directive was to do something for a full 24 hrs. So what did my sister choose? FRENCH KNITTING!!! Of all things to do...The amazing thing about this piece is that it really does preserve the 24 hours in a tangible way; she used different coloured bits of wool for each hour, so the result is a long woolen sausage made of multiple coloured bands, each a chronicle of that hour. She can even point out at which points she fell asleep...The wool on the wall is the response piece to her knitting. The class had to respond to her work and so she got them to unravel tangled wool (the same colours as the piece itself) for an hour. The total that they unraveled was wound up into a wool ball and laid at the floor of each tangle.

For this piece, she made casts of her feet in plaster. The moulding and casting process was loads of fun! We got to play around with the awesome silicon-rubber moulding stuff! It's bright purple and requires that you mix two chemicals together; one bright blue, the other bright pink. Very 5 year old birthday party, just without the screaming children and the nausea from eating too many sweets and potato chips. She then poured resin over the feet to represent the washing of feet (mirroring the story in the bible of Jesus' feet being washed). I'm not entirely sure what the significance of this all was, but it looks cool and we got to play around with some awesome chemicals!

My personal favourite: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For this my sister took a real tree (or at least, part of one...) and coated it in aluminium foil. The leaves were all hand-made by her and the rest of us. We then helped her attach them to the branch. The idea, apart from the fact that she just likes foil (as you will see later), is that the tree itself reflects the observer. It's also a dynamic piece as the reflections are constantly changing, depending on where you stand around it. I asked her if I could have this one, but she'd promised it to someone already...

Her last piece, and her favourite, is a statue of St. Lucia, again, coated in aluminium foil. My sister's name is Lucia, so this might be why she likes this one so much...Surrounding the piece are hundreds of origami lillies, also made of foil. We were all recruited to make those too. They are not easy to make at all! Folding foil like that is a mission! But, with the help of the extended family and a few friends, it got done.

Just to confirm, my sister is in fact fascinated by religious iconography, so that's why the themes for most of these are of biblical/religious origin.

The hell-hound strikes again...

2009-10-18T19:13:00.000+02:00

I am once again house-sitting for my aunt and uncle. It's a fantastic job except for one thing; their dog. I've written to you all about the hell-hound before, and this story follows another of the little *&^%$#'s adventures...

Once, during the house-sitting stint in the post linked to above, I made the mistake of leaving one of the house windows open when I left for university. It is a very low-down window, practically on the floor, but it is part of a wall-like window setup at the main bedroom. The window has bars across it, so I figured, it's safe, nobody will get in through there. So, blissfully ignorant to the peril that awaited me, I left for varsity, confident that all would be well in the world.

Many hours passed, and the day progressed uneventfully...

I returned to the house that evening. I opened the door to find the dog in the main entrance hall. My first thoughts were something along the lines of, 'That's odd...he was locked out earlier...' and immediately graduated to 'Oh no...someone has robbed the house!!'. So, as I frantically ran from room to room searching for evidence of thievery, the true horror of the situation began to dawn on me. Nothing was missing. All the doors were closed. The only possible entrance could have been the window I'd left open!

I sprinted through to the master bedroom and there, glaring at me like a defiant child who has just been refused their demand for sweets in a supermarket, was the open window. A little confused I looked around and again, confirmed that nothing was missing. It was only when I returned to the living room that the true horror of it all sank in. And given how many horror movies I watch, that's pretty bad!

The dog had come in through the window and devoured the entire lounge! Okay, so not the chairs and sofa and stuff, but almost everything else was gone! He had chewed up their grass-weaved basket, a wooden puzzle that they had bought on a previous holiday (it remains unreplaced...) and several garden game tools, including an entire volleyball set...

So, since then I have ALWAYS ensured that the window remains sealed shut. That is, until this time...

So this morning I left the house to head out to my grandmother's for lunch. Once there I suddenly realised that I'd forgotten to close the window!!!

I had too much to do to head back to close it at the house, so I ended up spending all day with the sickening fear in the back of my mind. At the same time, at the end of the day, I was determined not to let the terror get to me and so tried to appreciate the skyscape as I drove along the highway:

When I arrived at the house, I couldn't help but scanning the house from outside for movement. My eyes, darting around furiously, revealed nothing and I breathed a sigh of relief. I soon gave myself a mental slap. The hell-hound could have been somewhere not visible from the outside!

As I opened the door...

...he was there, with the facial expression typical of dogs that says, 'HI! I'M HERE! AREN'T YOU PROUD OF ME?'

My heart sloshed around my ankles...

But, as I moved through the house, surveying the damage, I began to realise that there was...none! The house was intact! Behold, the proof!

Before:

After:

I was SO happy that I gave the dog a MASSIVE sinew-bone-hide-thingy. You can *just* see him in the picture below with the bone in his mouth looking very pleased with himself...

Evil men in white coats

2009-10-17T13:27:00.000+02:00

Following a comment on my last post (and Eebee's not-at-all-helpful response...) I would just like to clarify that, yes, we do experiments on animals, but no, they are not of the stick-the-needle-in-their-eye-and-see-what-happens. Almost all of the experiments we run are along the lines of trying to find ways to improve the housing conditons of captive animals and to try and figure out what causes the behavioural problems we see in captive animals and find ways to fix them. So, in short, we are the good guys. :)

What Fridays are all about

2009-10-16T15:00:00.000+02:00

One of the massive perks to being part of our lab is that Fridays are generally accepted, here anyway, to be a complete write-off. We get absolutely nothing done on a Friday. Even my supervisor admits it! In our lab, this is what Fridays are all about:

Yes, that's it. Coffee and doughnuts. What more can you ask for?

Today was a prime example! I arrived late. I'm house sitting at the moment so I took a little longer to get in today. On my way up to my lab from parking, I picked up some doughnuts. The lady at the shop was very generous and gave us an extra doughnut (which I may have to take home as nobody seems to want to eat it...) and, after skipping the entire paying queue because of the bulk-order, I headed up to the lab. Once there, the 'meeting' began.

I say 'meeting' because we did have meetings on a Friday, but due to lack of attendance, they were discontinued.

We chatted, drank coffee, ate our glazed delights and all had a fantastic time. The rest of the day was occupied with an undergrad lecture on oestrogen mimics (disappointingly tame...) and moving animal test subjects around. That's ALL I DID TODAY!!! And, now I'm going home :)

All in the name of science...

2009-10-13T13:42:00.001+02:00

Every two years, our department runs an undergraduate course on Reproductive Biology (coincidentally, the name of the course!). Students in general hate the course as the majority of it focuses on the reproduction of plants and fungi, but a small section of it relates to reproduction in animals. For this particular section, the amount of giggling and crude jokes that are made during the lectures of the students is, unsurprisingly, high.

For this section of the course, the practical that the students have to do is rather fun. No...it's not what you are thinking...but is instead an examination of the role of perfume in mate selection. It requires that the blindfolded students smell a selection of perfumes on male and female 'models' and state what they think of the perfumes. This year, Luke and Leia were the smell models.

For those that don't know me, I am closer to an ape than most people. In short, I have rather hairy forearms and this complicates matters when the students are not supposed to be able to distinguish the male and female models (shoving your nose into a hairy arm does kinda give away the sex of the model...). So, the solution?

SHAVING!!!

So, both Leia and I had to shave our arms for science! It was actually a fascinating experience! My arms are surprisingly smooth and I've discovered a whole bunch of scars that I had no idea I had, not to mention the shaving techniques that I learned which I can apply when and if I decide to do cycling competitively!

Here are the pics:

The shaving process at work: By shaving in one direction and then pushing the razor backward, it cleans the razor! Nifty hey?! :D

The process at work...Thank goodness we have sinks in the lab. The bathrooms would have been awkward to have to keep explaining to people what I was doing...

Before and After! Great insulation and comforting fluffiness converts to silky smooth and a map of past traumas!

Step aside Indy, this one's alive!

2009-10-08T14:11:00.000+02:00

This was a conversation that I had with EEbEE earlier today. The paper that the exerpt came from is at the bottom of the page. Step aside Indiana Jones, this is how REAL monkeys do it!

Luke: A charming little exerpt I had to share with you: 'Most people with first hand experience of primates will be impressed by the animals' tolerance of injuries and their rapid healing. One example, observed in a large group of tufted capuchins (Cebus apella), concerned a young adult male with a head wound exposing several square centimetres of scalp. The wound was frequently groomed by other group members, who also dipped potatoes in it. Although we might expect that this would be a painful experience for the wounded individual, his behaviour appeared quite normal. In fact he appeared to enjoy attention from the others, and actively sought more of this treatment (see also Dittus & Ratnayeke1989). The wound eventually healed without any human intervention.'
It's from a paper I'm reading. It stopped me in my tracks...
Ebrahim: !!!
who'd have thought
didn't expect that at all
Luke: The mental image is very funny though, in a sick sorta way :)
Ebrahim: hehehe. i admit... i laughed when i read it
Luke: I was just so shocked! I actually jumped back and gasped! Lab-mates must think I'm insane...
Ebrahim: lol. i can't wait to attack my next first aid situation with a bit of potatoe
Luke: It's the ultimate first aid tool! Ambulances should be filled with bags of potatos!
Ebrahim: imagine the look on the face of the guy with a missing arm when the ambulance shows up :O "all you brought were some POTATOES!!!"
Luke: ROFL!!! Yes! I was also wondering what ambulance chase scenes in movies would be like if the vehicle kept shedding small tubers as it roared through the streets of downtown New York...

Chips and ketchup, anyone?

There's more than one way to kill a cat...or die trying...

2009-10-06T09:44:00.000+02:00

Sunday evening was no different to any other. The weekend was drawing to a close and the heavy blanket of depression that is the realisation that the next day is Monday was slowly settling over all, but trying very hard not to be noticed while at it. I was in my kitchen, preparing my dinner; nothing exciting, just a toasted sandwich.

It was a normal Sunday evening...for all except one. Fate had other plans for that one...

At some point, I heard my cell phone ringing. Like a parent who hears their child cry, I dropped what I was doing and hurtled down the long dark passage of my house to answer the call of my electronic child.

Our house is long and thin, so we have one straight passage that runs the full length of the house, from kitchen to garage. Due to the fact that it is the central backbone of our house, it is very dark, with doors leading off on either side to bedrooms and the like. From the kitchen heading down, the first door on your right is my sisters room. It was at this junction that the incident occurred.

As I sprinted down the warren that is our passage, something large and black shot out of my sisters room, aiming itself directly at my ankles. Instinctively I leaped up, hurdling over my dark assailant. My attacker changed its course of action. It had realised that I was considerably larger than it was and that fleeing might, in fact, be the better option. However, it was the mode of escape that could have used a little forethought.

It was my cat, Lady Amelia Fitzpatrick, who had launched herself from my sisters room. The problem was that, as only a cat can do, she had chose to run by moving into every space that I tried to put my feet down and with the inertia I already had, I was not likely to stop any time soon.

So the two of us performed a bizarre zig-zag hopscotch down my passage, me trying very hard not to stand on my cat, which by this stage looked more like a tiny spruce tree than an animal. We finally ran out of passage and the cat continued her puffy, angry sprint into my parents bedroom. I followed her, by this stage having successfully slowed to a walk, finding it very hard to control my laughter. The cat was nowhere to be seen.

As I fumbled in the dark, looking for my parents light switch, I heard a loud hiss from under their bed. In the dim light coming through their bedroom door, I could just make out her VERY large, angry eyes glaring at me.

In her defence, as traumatic as the experience may have been for her, she will get her own back. As the video below shows (sorry about the poor quality; I used my cell phone to record it) she loses her mind daily and when this happens, anything and anyone is fair game. She bullies the dog and we all live in fear of having our legs adopted as claw-sharpening posts, or our ankles considered to be the most viable alternative to actually eating the food in her bowl. Take special note of the final display where the cat attacks the door frame for no apparent reason...

Brussels and Belgium

2009-09-30T20:41:00.000+02:00

After our stay in Holland, we headed over to Belgium. We had arranged our tickets ahead of time for the train through to Brussels from Amsterdam, which had turned out to be a little more complicated than we had anticipated. The problem lay in the fact that the Canadians had been intelligent about their travelling expenses and had organised themselves passes for the whole of Europe. In contrast, the South Africans had arrived with no clue what to do and a strong hope that Europe worked in much the same way home did. Thus, we had to organise separate tickets for the two nationalities.

In a way, it was easier for the Africans because we just had to buy our tickets straight out, whereas the Canadians had to make bookings for the one train, but not pay while paying for the second train. The whole process was smoothed over by the very cheery and, for lack of a better term that doesn't conjure as many images of fat old men with white beards in red suites, jolly ticket lady.

The actual morning of our departure was exciting to say the least. We arrived at the main station to discover that the train we were supposed to take through to Brussels was no longer running and thus, we were to take an new train through to a small town to catch our connecting train.

Lacking any alternative option, we decided to catch the train to the hamlet-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. We were a bit early for that train and so decided to each go and get ourselves some breakfast before the train left. We took it in turns to find food and return to the platform to guard our luggage while the next expedition went for their food. As it turned out, our expeditions took longer than expected and we almost didn't catch the train in time!

The ride out of Amsterdam was uneventful. We arrived at our destination station and disembarked from our train. We waited for a good half hour on the station platform for our train to arrive. It was a surprisingly miserable day and rather chilly, so the wait felt very long! Eventually, one of our number decided that the cold was too much and retreated to the toasty saftey of the station building itself. She returned shortly thereafter to announce that our connection train had been cancelled as well!

At this point we decided to retire to the building as well and wait for the next one to come through. We did so and settled down in one of the restaurants to just take a break. After a while, we went to catch our train which, miraculously, wasn't cancelled. We were on our way to Brussels!

In Brussels we stayed at a small but fantastic Bed and Breakfast called the Lught en Light Bed and Breakfast. It's a family operated place which is really charming! After checking in and dumping our luggage, all except one headed out together into Brussels.

Our first port of call was the European Union centre. We saw several of the EU buildings, including the EU parliment, none of which were particularly interesting. We then went in search of the Natural history museum of Brussels, famous for some of the fossils which they have on display. As it turned out, we'd arrived on a Monday, the only day that the museum is closed. So we opted to find other tourist traps instead and return to the museum the next day instead.

It was still relatively early in the day at this stage, and so we had a lot of the day left to do our exploring. We decided to use our more financially-friendly feet than the metro to get around. As one can imagine, this means you get hungry eventually. This was our problem.

We had managed to induce that feeling of being absolutely famished in the middle of a district in Brussels entirely devoid of anything edible!

So we decided to try and navigate our way out of this doldrum and find food...

Europe: Amsterdam and Holland

2009-09-27T14:21:00.000+02:00

So, given that it is a beautiful, sunny, typical South African Sunday afternoon and I am recovering from eating WAY too much of my grandmothers awesome cooking, I've decided to take the time to write about my amazing trip to Europe! I apologise about how few photos I'll post with this, but the blogger photo thingy just drives me INSANE...so my patience only can cope with about 5 at the most...

The trip started on Thursday the 13th (not nearly as ominous as if it had been a Friday...) of August. I was on my way to Europe to attend the International Ethology Conference, in Rennes, France. We call what we do Ethology because that just sounds way more cool than just saying, 'We watch animals and try figure out what they are doing...'

For financial reasons (being a student does suck sometimes) I had booked myself onto an Egypt Air flight to Amsterdam, my first port of call. Saving the money on my flight with Egypt Air did however mean that I had to spend 5 hours in Cairo, wafting around the airport. It wasn't all that bad and, honestly, the only thing that really struck me about Cairo, was just how flat and desolate it was! I know what you're thinking...'Luke, don't be such a dumbass! It's in the middle of the desert! What were you expecting?! A tropical paradise?!'

Honestly, I don't know what it was that I'd expected to see when I got there. But somehow, it still came as a surprise when I looked out onto the runways and the airport grounds and saw nothing.

I then flew through to Amsterdam from Cairo. Cairo was like the alps in comparison to Amsterdam! I've never been somewhere so flat in all my life! It's just bizarre! Johannesburg is quite a hilly city. We are built on a range of hills which run east-west through the city, so a little gradient isn't anything strange for us. However, a lack of gradient is...

I arrived in Amsterdam feeling that terrified excitement that can only be understood when one is arriving in a country you've never been to. I'd been very smart about my travelling and had printed out a map of where my hotel was and had gotten a bus number off the hotel web-page so that I would have no trouble getting from the airport to my hotel. Once out of the airport, I found my bus-stop almost immediately, and waited all of a minute for my bus to pull up. I got onto the bus and after having a brief but pleasant chat with the driver, in English, moved to the back of the bus to take a seat.

A word of caution to would-be travelers: if you are attending a conference, don't take your poster with you unless you have one of those nifty architect-drawing-carrier-tube-over-the-shoulder thingys. Otherwise it just gets VERY irritating and cumbersome! But, sitting in the back of the bus, trying not to let my poster tube wallop people as they walked past, I could feel myself beginning to relax. It was a pleasant feeling to think, 'For the next few weeks, you don't have any responsibilities, other than staying awake in talks during the conference'.

After about 45min of riding the bus, we were well into Amsterdam and I began to wonder where my stop was. I got a little more worried when I noticed that the next two stops were the last on the line and neither were my street. So I scuttled to the front of the bus and asked the driver, who in very friendly tones and grinning from ear to ear assured me that I was very much on the right bus and that the next was my stop. I figured, who would know better than the guy who drives the bus every day? As it turned out, I'd probably have been better off getting directions from a pot-plant...

I dismounted the bus and thanked the driver, gleefully ignorant to the true nature of my predicament. He had suggested that I walk a few streets down in order to find my hotel, which I dutifully did. As I walked through the very busy area in which I was again, trying not to injure the local populous with my poster tube, I began to suspect that I wasn't where I needed to be.

Eventually, in a display of behaviour most un-befitting my sex, I asked for directions. In truth, I was a little terrified to ask the locals for directions and so sought out the first hotel with a Union Jack hanging outside it. I managed to find one with ease and, trying not to sound too nervous, asked the woman behind the front desk how I got to my hotel. She was very accommodating and kindly pointed out that my hotel was in fact, on the opposite side of the city.

After she suggested a bus to take, I returned to the bus stop to wait and pray that I was heading in the right direction. Another note to would-be travellers: If you are taking a backpack, ensure that it doesn't protrude too far off your back. Standing on a narrow island in the middle of a busy road waiting for a bus, you'd be amazed how many cars have near-misses with the pack on your back. Obviously the poster-tube hellbent on drawing blood by nightfall didn't help much either...

As it turned out, I was catching the correct bus (Thank you SO much reception-girl from Amsterdam!!) and eventually walked into the reception area of my hotel, grinning the triumphant grin of the moron who took the wrong bus, but everything is okay now. After checking in and learning the room number of the friends I was meeting up with there, I headed off to my room to ditch my stuff. The room, which was not bad at all, was a welcome sight and after unloading my baggage, I went in search of my associates.

I got to their room and knocked on the door. There was no response. So I knocked again. Nothing. Just as I was about to give up I heard the clacking of the door being unlatched from inside. As the door was cracked open, I gazed into an entirely unfamiliar face. After exchanging greetings, I apologised for disturbing her, obviously at the wrong room, and left. A little confused, I returned to reception to check on the room number. The receptionist assured me that I had been at the correct door and suggested that I try again.

I returned to the door and knocked again. This time, the response was almost immediate and again, an unfamiliar face appeared on the other side of the portal. This time I thought to ask if my friends were there. As it turned out, they were and the 'unfamiliar face' was in fact one of the people we were going to be travelling around with for the next two weeks.

A little rosy faced and sheepish, I entered the room to see how the others had fared on their arrivals. As it turned out, not one of us had managed to get to the hotel without getting terribly lost! That might have had something to do with the fact that the map and instructions I had used, I had passed on to all the others to aid their navigation, but I prefer to think that it was just rotten luck...

Amsterdam was amazing though! I don't think I've enjoyed a city quite as much as I did Amsterdam! No...wait...I'm lying. London was awesome, but Amsterdam came very close! We did so much! We went to the Anne Frank house (an amazing, but humbling experience), the 'Our Lord in the Attic' church, the red-light district, several amazing parks, the Van Gogh museum and a Holland-in-a-Day tour with the craziest woman I've ever met as our tour guide (Seriously, she was either severely unstable, or very high and given that it was Amsterdam, it could have gone either way...).

More on the rest of my adventures later! For now, gaze in wonder at the amazing photos...

A house opposite one of the very large parks of Amsterdam. Who wouldn't like to live there...?

A water feature near the Van Gogh museum. The panels in the middle are concertinaed metal sheets with pieces of different images on the side of each fold, meaning that the image changes, depending on which direction you look at it from! Clever! And, in the background, you can see the word 'Amsterdam'; it was another artwork.

I think this is a fantastic store! Whoever came up with the idea to market lies to children is a genius!

What would Holland be without clogs? Eh? I mean, look at the variety! They even had 'Hello Kitty' clogs!

Rotterdam (I think...)! The architecture was amazing! It's a little odd to think that you can go about the city by car...or boat...

10 things about me

2009-09-18T09:28:00.000+02:00

I've been tagged by Helen for this one. It requires that I list 10 random things about myself and then pass on the task to three others. So, Athena, Tom and Hanna, you're next!

I love chocolate, but hate chocolate-flavoured foods. Having said that, I'll never turn down a decently sized (read: enormous) slice of black forest cake.
I write and produce my own music in my spare time. I might even post some on this here blog some time!
I can speak three languages, which isn't all that much in my circle of friends, but I think it's quite nifty!
I can't drink tequila. I just can't...bad experience.
I taught medic students this year, and now I honestly fear for the fate of our species. How can you possibly be that thick?!
I really want to visit the USA! I don't really know why, I just do. Arizona looks amazing and all the national forests look stunning! Also, if Universal Studios and Disneyland are anything like EuroDisney, I am SOLD!
I did a personality test recently and found out that I am apparently abnormally expedient. I then had to go look up the word in a dictionary...
I am considerably more reclusive than people think. I just force myself to be social to compensate.
Despite having studied my butt off for the last 18 years, I plan to find myself a simple menial job once I get my PhD.
I love dinosaurs! I've been fascinated by them ever since I was a little kid and for some reason, the obsession has persisted. Which reminds me...I need to bring my dinosaur to decorate my desk at varsity...

It's ON!

2009-09-17T12:34:00.000+02:00

So, having been challenged to the task by Eebee (sorta...) I too have decided to find out what significance my birthday has for the human race in general. Thus I am about to do a search for 15 February. Here goes...

...

...

Well, Eebee, it appears that disaster follows in my wake too.

1898 - USS Maine exploded and sank in Havanna harbour, killing 260 people.
1933 - Giuseppe Angara tried to kill Franklin D. Roosevelt, shot at him, missed and instead killed Chicago mayor, Anton J. Cermak.
1942 - Singapore fell to the Japanese after the British surrendered, resulting in the capture of 80 000 prisoners of war and the start of the Sook Ching massacre.
1961 - Sabena flight 548 crashed in Belguim, resulting in the deaths of the entire United States figure skating team, their coaches and families; 73 deaths in total.
1970 - A Dominican DC9 plummetted from the heavens and crashed into the sea during take-off from Santo Domingo; 102 dead.
1982 - An oceanic oil rig, Ocean Ranger, sank during a storm off Newfoundland, killing 84.

On the plus side though:

1764 - St. Louis, Missouri was established! While this means little to me, I'm sure many of you St. Louis'ians are rather chuffed! ;)
1879 - American President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill that permitted female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Go women-folk!
1971 - Decimalisation of British coinage was completed on Decimal Day. Yay for the Brits! They finally saw the light and converted to a LOGICAL decimal system! 10 points!
2003 - The worlds biggest peace protest action against the Iraq war took place in over 600 cities worldwide involving an estimated 8 million to 30 million people taking part!
2005 - Youtube was launched in the United States! Where would we be without it!! :D

Famous people...?

Ice-T!
Jane Seymour!
Matt Groening!
Birdman! (not too proud of that one...)
Toto (An italian who was really big...in Italy...)
A whole stack of other folks who might be famous...somewhere...but I know nothing about.

If only my brain would listen to itself!!!

2009-09-14T08:38:00.000+02:00

I've recently taken up two new exercise programs. The first is weight training. It's not exactly a new program as I've been doing it with my friends over the last 6 months or so, but now, it's early in the morning. VERY early. Like, 05:45 early...

Herein lies a problem. As with this morning, I often wake up in time, or early (gasp!) and that little motivational speaker in my brain starts wispering, 'Go on, get up! You are expected to go and you know that you will enjoy it! Even if it hurts a little, the effects are great and you will have all the energy for the rest of the day!'

Unfortunately, that's about when the much larger couch-potato in my brain yells, 'Screw that! It's warm, you're sleepy, tired; just go back to sleep!'

Generally, the potato wins...

None the less, I still manage to get some training in on most days which I really do enjoy! I'm amazed at just how much I like it! I used to HATE training and did it more as a chance to see friends than to exercise, but now, I'm totally into it! It's odd. Especially when you think that I'm not a particularly physical person and spent most of my high school career trying to dodge sports events and the gym teacher who invariably was looking for one more to add to the swimming team (Thanks Mr. Hill...you made high school such a blast...).

The other program I've taken up is running. Not of the Flash Gordon, blur around the block, kind. More of the, jog-around-the-park-and-hope-your-lungs-don't-decide-to-evacuate-your-body kind. I've been forced to take it up after my bicycle's front wheel has started generating punctures which I can't seem to identify the cause of.

I'm a big cycling fan! It's such fun! I once cycled from Johannesburg to George; a distance of about 1163+ km. We did it over 10 days and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life! But I can't do running. I loath running! It's horrible!!!

Or at least, it used to be...

Now, as with weight training, I'm really enjoying it! Which is very odd! I know though that if I stop, that'll be it! So I'm trying to keep at it every day! You should try it! It's great!

I'm so screwed...

2009-09-11T08:58:00.000+02:00

Over the last few months I have had to do a great deal of teaching. Specifically, I've been teaching the medic students on the topic of metabolism and digestion. The lecturing went as well as could be expected given the circumstances (having all your work on your laptop stolen a week prior to you starting your lecturing does tend to hamper your teaching somewhat...), and luckily for me, the section has been completed, freeing me from the responsibility of shaping young (albeit empty) minds.

The first of my problems I noticed on Tuesday, when the medics class wrote a test. I started marking the test and was horrified! They have absolutely NO CLUE what is going on in my section! My first instinct was to think, 'Oh no! I'm such a bad teacher!' but I then thought to myself, 'Wait, this is university! They are all adults! If they have a problem they can track me down for help or look it up in a text book! It's not like I'm completely unapproachable (as far as I know...maybe I smell faintly of eggs...?) and I'm on campus ALL THE TIME!!'

I also received confirmation, via Facebook, from one of my students that I had indeed taught them well and that, in his opinion, it is entirely their own fault if they are doing badly in the test. AMEN!!!

As an aside, it's a little weird being contacted, and friended, by one of your students on Facebook. Luckily for me, I'm not closer to 50 yrs old, which would have made the whole thing very awkward...

The other thing that is worrying me is that I have to now supervise the practical that is associated with my section of work. Normally this wouldn't phase me in the least, but the problem is that this practical requires of me that I explain how to do a chemistry procedure that I have not done in at least the last 7 years!! So, understandably, I'm a little freaked out...

I'm going to scan through the memo and hopefully find something that I can use to fool people into believing that I know what I'm talking about...when I don't. Otherwise, there's always google...

Returned

2009-09-03T14:31:00.000+02:00

Hi faithful followers of me!

I have returned! And I come bearing presents! For most people anyway...unfortunately, a student budget does limit one's present-buying abilities.

So, I've been away from my blog for AGES now and here comes the barrage of excuses:

My life was completely thrown upside down by the robbery incident that happened about two months ago and I am still running to catch up with that. I also have yet to have my emotional breakdown that accompanies most peoples assault/robbery experiences in South Africa, which is a little worrying. I hope it doesn't happen somewhere public...that would be embarrassing...
I've had to prepare a poster for the conference in France. This was made extra-difficult because of the above as I had to try and scramble together all the little shreds I could of a project I'd once had.
I experienced a serious social upheaval just prior to my leaving for the conference. This, upsetting in its own right, seriously threw me off when it came to getting things ready for the conference as well. I'm one of those unfortunate people who battle to concentrate on work when their personal life is falling apart.
I had to attend said conference in France. That's where I've been for the last three weeks. But more on that later...

But, I'm back! And VERY glad to be home! As much fun as scuttling around Europe for three weeks is, the attitude of the Parisians totally ruined it for me, so I ended up being more than happy to leave and come home.

P.S. A certain individual in our department is REALLY ticking me off. He coordinates the exams for the medics and just prior to my leaving for the conference, amid all the stress of preparing for that, he started insisting that I send him all my quesitons for the medic exams at the end of the year. I, somehow, managed to throw a few together and email them to him; not all of the required work, but part of it. So today, having been away for three weeks, I ran into him and immediately appologised for the lack of work-handing-in-ness. He then, very nonchalantly, tells me that he's not worried as he's had other things to do and couldn't be bothered to look at 'that stuff of yours' yet...if murder were not criminal and morally questionable, he would not live to see another day...

Hi! I'm here to have my face cut up...

2009-07-17T10:27:00.000+02:00

So, for those of you who are avid readers of my blog (I love you guys!), you will know that I was recently the victim of an assault, during which my nose was broken. Well, yesterday, I went into hospital to have it repaired. Surgically.

This may seem relatively trivial to some. I mean, so what, it's a little surgery. It's not exactly a heart/head transplant. Well actually, it was! Behold, the new me:

On a more serious note, even the most simple surgery which requires me going under complete anaesthesia is potentially life-threatening for me. I have a fantastic little disease called malignant hyperthermia (MH). Just reading that first paragraph on wikipedia makes it sound very fatal. It's genetic and basically means that if I am not given the correct anaesthetics, my body starts to burn off all its possible energy and I end up cooking myself to death. Charming, isn't it?

Apart from being able to instill terror in the hearts of anaesthesiologists everywhere, there's no real perks to having the disorder. The only way that this disorder can be diagnosed is by having a biopsy done on a leg muscle in which the remove a massive chunk of your leg, put it into a special solution of chemicals and watch it twitch and fizzle. They then confirm that you have it. I had the biopsy done when I was 5. I only learned yesterday that in order to avoid giving me anaesthetic, the doctors just doped my little 5 year old body with tons of Valium and then hacked away at my leg. Am I the only one who finds that irresponsible...?

This time round, no Valium was required. But it would have been appreciated. Instead, I was given the safe stuff (I don't actually know what they gave me) and I was the first to be operated on, so as to ensure that the machines were all clean and devoid of normal anaesthetic. The operation (I keep thinking it's spelled with two 'p's...) entailed repositioning my septum (the cartilage that separates your nostrils from one another) and removing part of my turbinates (wafer-like bones in your sinuses that are necessary for heating and cooling air as it enters and leaves the body respectively), which had been damaged when their quiet existence was rudely altered by a firearm. Behold, my x-ray!

Sorry, my scanner can't really cope with the contrast very well, so I had to draw the bits in...Anyway, I awoke in the ICU after the op was over with a mass of memories that I'm still not sure didn't happen. Someone explained to me that apparently with MH, the attacks can take place up to 24 hrs after the surgery is over, so there is still a danger, even if you've made it through already.

But I survived! I then spent the next day drifting in and out of consciousness in the ICU, being attended to by a fantastic male nurse called Presley. After reading his name take I made a mental note not to say 'Hey! Like, Elvis Presley!' as I was sure that he'd probably been hating his parents all his life for giving him that name. Instead, I thought 'Hey! Like Elvis the penguin!'.

Throughout the day the nurses checked my vitals, took my temperature using an ear-gun-thingy (usually, just as I was drifting off to sleep) and occasionally checking my blood sugar just for fun (I'm not kidding. This morning I woke up and the nurse literally said, with great enthusiasm I might add, 'Shall we check your blood sugar? It's not necessary, you're fine, but let's just do it anyway, shall we?'). Every now and then Presley would swing past to make sexist comments like 'These woman...you work so hard and they go and spend all your money...' while looking at me knowingly. I tried to make like I was woozy from all the drugs.

At various times I was also accosted (but in a nice way) by the catering lady, who came around with a menu to ask me what I would like to eat for my next meal. For the record, the Greek salad has no feta and came with a grand total of three olives. But otherwise, hospital food wasn't bad!

I was also visited by my parents, my cousin and my pal Dave! Duncan (cousin) was most unimpressed that nobody had brought me chocolates for him to help himself to. So I sent my mother to buy some, which she did, and he helped himself to. The nurse ended up taking it in the end. I wasn't really in the mood for chocolate anyway.

Eventually, I was permitted to return home. My dad picked me up with some clothes (the underwear they give you in the hospital is amazing! It's so stretchy! But very uncomfortable...) and I was whisked off home after a few goodbyes. Now, I sit at home, wrapped in a blanket, tissues stuffed up my nose and happy to have had a bath. I'll keep you posted on my condition...

Don't read further if you do not want to be scarred.

You were warned! For the record, when you are in ICU, no matter how coherent your speech and how much effort you put into proving that you are quite capable of moving around by yourself without dying, they will NOT let you go to the toilet. Instead they will bring you a little jug-thing into which you must now relieve yourself. Being a male, I'm sure this was easier for me than, say, for a girl. However, peeing at such a funny angle, into a vessel that is filling rapidly and could overflow into your bed at any time is scary! It's even worse when they give you one that doesn't have a lid! It's so much more risky! You could spill at any time!

Staying sane in the traffic...

2009-07-14T09:05:00.000+02:00

Firstly, a brief apology and outline of my reasons for not posting of late. Last Tuesday, I was held at gunpoint and robbed at home. Thus, I have spent the last week trying to reassemble my life through various visits to hospitals (the thieves punched me with a gun, braking my nose in the process...at the same time answering a question that has plagued me since early childhood: What is it like to be punched in the face?), government departments and police stations. Thus, I have not been attending to my blog...

But this is not the theme of today's post! Today's post is a lighthearted look at how my sister and I remain sane in the traffic of Johannesburg while getting to and from university. Naturally, being stuck in a car, one's options as far as coping mechanisms are somewhat limited. However, my sister and I have overcome these limitations through several means.

The radio: While Garreth Cliff may be an obnoxious, insensitive neanderthal with as much foresight as a goldfish, he is rather funny at times. That is why my sister and I have taken to listening to 5fm in the mornings. If you can wade through all the terrible music they play, and concentrate on the good stuff, its not so bad! In addition, they occasionally have intelligent conversations and he seems to have an affinity for the really bizarre news stories, of the like that tend to end up on the Oddly Enough page...
Naming people: It helps to control road rage. Somehow, by giving people names when they wrong you in the traffic, I find I'm more at ease with their wrong-doings. For example, this morning I was cut off in the traffic by a woman with huge poofy blonde hair. Thus, I named her after someone from our department at the university as that was who she looked like. But only from behind!
Compete with other drivers: Making up competitions between you and other drivers makes the traffic more exciting and all-round fun! A prime example was this morning's CC-(But-from-behind)-lady! My sister and I decided that we would try to beat he to each traffic light. Somehow, in the end, she beat us (I'm still not sure how that wiley old bat got past us...) but it certainly spiced up our trip in!
Travel mug tea: Since I was give my first-ever travel mug last year, I have taken to using it to have tea first thing in the mornings. As pointed out by Helen, it's a fantastic way to be able to drink all your tea without wasting the time in the morning waiting for it to cool down! I make my tea with my breakfast, leave it to stand while I brush teeth and whatnot and by the time I'm ready to go, my tea is the perfect drinking temperature! Yay!
Introspection: If the morning is particularly early (in perception, not necessarily early in the literal sense) a little introspection helps to pass the time. I rarely ponder the really deep stuff, but more things along the lines of, 'What will I do today?' or 'If my car is 24 years old, how old is that?!'. Occasionally, memories of conversations past or bad comedy shows will sprout in my brain and I'll giggle to myself. These are usually accompanied by disapproving looks from my sibling...

Am I deep enough for Emo, or shallow enough for Scene...?

2009-07-07T15:50:00.000+02:00

http://littleblackcherry.bttradespace.com/ViewPost.aspx?ID=28

The above, much like Eebee's post, make me wonder about the fate of human kind.

Emo is just about the only social movement which makes me REALLY annoyed. While I cannot claim to be a fan of rap music and gang culture, Emo trumps it, hands down. There's just so much about it that is really irritating! Where do I begin?!

I'll start at the top and work my way down.

I've always wished that I had straighter hair. It would make it manageable. But I would never go through all the effort that emos (is that even a real word...?) go through to make my hair look straw-like and lifeless. Something else that many people fail to realise is that straight hair works for some people and just doesn't for others! I was at a party recently where a friend of a friend announced that he had spent the 2 hours prior to the party straightening his hair (not that we could really tell...it was still all curly). Now, I am fairly certain that most normal males live by the principal of 'if you have clothes on and the mop is vaguely under control, you are now socially acceptable'. So the fact that the emo movement has resulted in a borderline-hysterical buy-up if hair straighteners by men, worries me...

The other element of the emo hair that I find...amusing, to tell the truth, is the obsession with the long fringes (bangs) which must be drawn down over the face. I love walking through campus and seeing an emo kid walking down a corridor, face entirely obscured by their hair. Occasionally, the hair will rise briefly as they blow furiously at if from underneath in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the outside world. While this (somehow) appears not to be done out of annoyance, it appears more to function by preventing collisions with other people and stationary objects.

Helen described the typical emo hairstyle very well: an upside-down mullet.

Next is the make-up. This is about one of the only things that I think works from the emo movement. Eyeliner makes everyone look so much more dramatic and in many cases can really accentuate beautiful eyes! Again, it really works on some people, and not so much on others. In my opinion, the best are those who try to keep is as simple as possible. The alternative is nothing short of ridiculous...

Image from here and here

Then the clothing. There is a reason why girls jeans are made for girls. I saw a Fall Out Boy music video last night in which Pete Wentz was wearing a pair of bright red skinny jeans. The boy looked like the depressed elf that escaped Santa's workshop! It was ridiculous! Having said that, other elements of the emo gettup I like. I'm a fan of black, so that's one plus to their image.

I think the element of emo-ism that annoys me the most is the pseudo-psychology of it. It is a movement that arose from the ashes of the American dream in white suburbia where teens were growing up, wanting for nothing, and this really pissed them off. They had nothing to be angry about and thus they became angry at their lack of anything to direct their rage at. From there it was a hop, skip and jump to being broody, withdrawn and in many cases resorting to self-mutilation and suicide. In short the social aspects of emoism border on pathological.

I personally know of people who are in that exact scenario (albeit, not in America...), provided with everything that they could ask for and resorting to self-injury because it is the done thing as an emo. In truth, this element of the movement has left me with a great deal of pity for emos. Their existance is so fragile and sad that one cannot help but pity them. Another part of me wants to slap across the face really hard and shout 'Snap out of it you stupid *&%#$! Your life doesn't suck!'

Now for the twist in the tale: In order to show that I harbour no ill-feelings toward emoism, and to avoid being one of those people who everone says "...don't knock it 'til you try it" to I, tomorrow, shall become emo. Helen has agreed to help me out and we shall take photos and I shall post them.

Japanese dinner and early workouts

2009-07-06T08:40:00.000+02:00

Because of the fact that my father teaches English as a foreign language to an array of bewildered foreigners who arrive in South Africa for work, life etc, he ends up being exposed to various different cultures. We hardly ever get to share the experiences with him, apart from that repulsive looking dried-fish stuff he brought home once from his Korean students, but Saturday was an exception.

My father had been invited to dinner at the home of one of his students. For a change though, we were invited too! So on Saturday night, we went over to his student's house for a typical Japanese meal! My sister and I were so excited as the only taste of Japanese food we'd ever encountered was sushi and both of us are fascinated by Japanese culture.

We arrived at the house and were greeted almost immediately by the small (in number and stature) Japanese family. We were ushered into the house and give a pair of slippers each which we exchanged for our shoes to be worn in the house. The slippers were amazing. I need to get some! They were so warm and actually had grip (I still can't really figure that out...)!

After some brief introdutions, we were moved over to the table where all the food was layed out for us already. It was really beautiful! We each had our own chopsticks (I love chopsticks!!!) and the most beautiful ceramic plates! they looked like the kind of thing that most people would have hanging on their walls, not eating off!

We then started the meal. We were having sushi, which we made ourselves. Being a vegetarian, I was provided with avocado (it apparently tastes similar to the tune everyone else had) instead of fish as well as sliced omlette-like egg to put into mine. It was so nice! I love sushi and apart from biltong (a South African invention akin to beef jerky, but better, I'm told...), it's the only meat-related food that I miss as a vegetarian.

We also had a soup and some cold rice-salad stuff. The problem with this was that it all had meat in it which I don't do. However, not wanting to offend anyone, I ate it. For the record, I am still feeling a little ill after that.

At the end of the meal, we were given brown rice tea, which was really tastey! I was amazed by the difference in the general flavours of Japanese cooking in comparison to western cooking. Italian food, being part Italian I can discuss this, is all based on very strong flavours and is generally related to sweet or sour tastes. Japanese food by contrast is much more subtle and the flavours are delicate. Also, their flavours tend to be more earthy and bitter, but not in a bad way!

Overall, it was not a bad experience! I really enjoyed it! And the people were really kind and generous! We all had a fantastic time and finished the evening off with a Japanese memory game with cards with pictures of fish, that are placed face-down. We then left, after exchanging our slippers, which I had grown very fond of, for our own shoes.

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In a completely unrelated story, I had my first early-morning gym session today! I decided to try and do my gymming in the morning instead of the evening which is what I've been doing up until now in an effort to make my life more structured. It was a little odd waking up before the sun, but overall it wasn't as bad as I had been expecting! AND, the only part of me that hurts is my stomach from the sit-ups! And my neck, but that was from sleeping funny...

Competition!!!

2009-07-02T14:30:00.000+02:00

So, in our lab, we have three pot-plants. One named Spaz, another named Kermit and a third named...

WAIT!!

Our plant needs a name!!

Thus we have started a competition! A real one, with prizes (sorta) and everything! So please go vote! Just follow this link and vote! It's really worth it! ;)

Bad mood dreaming

2009-07-02T12:49:00.000+02:00

I'm feeling so grumpy today! It's all because I had a dream that I recieved a present from someone and as I was opening up my present, in my dream, I woke up! Now I'll never know what I got for Christmas (in my dreams...)!!!

On the plus side, at least my mother doesn't actually host ball-room dance classes in our lounge...

I'm starting to think that Helen might be right...we DO need a couch...

2009-06-30T10:48:00.000+02:00

At the moment, in spite of the recent family tragedy, my supervisor has been forced to continue acting as head of school. Our official head of school is on sabatical at the moment and seeing as nobody really likes the job, my supervisor reluctantly took on the responsibility. Apart from the ease of conducting admin within your department when your supervisor is head of school, it also means that people are constantly looking for him. And this, in turn means that our lab is constantly being invaded by various people who are waiting for him to finish with whoever he is with at the time.

Herein lies my motivation for a couch. We need to set up a waiting room with a little coffee table, some magazines (all must be at least 15 years old and slightly faded...) and a couch. That way, we would not be forced to entertain people who are not here to see us anyway.

Today was a particularly good example of this. I had made up my mind last night that today was going to be my catch-up day for all the actual work that I'd missed last week. I set my alarm for 07h00, figuring that with traffic and all I could be at varsity by 08h30 at the earliest, giving me loads of time to do stuff.

I only managed to drag myself out of bed at 08h30...

So, I arrived at university around 10h00 to discover that my supervisor was well into his numerous meetings for the day. I chatted to a labmate while prepping the coffee machine (I'd also made my mind up that, seeing as how today was going to be one of my work-furiously-all-day-to-make-that-guilty-feeling-of-laziness-go-away days, I would have a cup-a'-java to speed things along) and openly panicking about how much I had to do. That's when Mr. S arrived.

For newcomers to this blog, Mr. S is our department's groundsman/tech-support/ex-nuclear-physicist-exiled-from-Russia-and-hunted-by-the-KGB/equipment person. This diminutive individual is characterised by his thick Russian accent and eyebrows and his inability to understand the concepts of personal hygene or personal space. For some inexplicable reason, he likes me (I've never really had any dealings with the man...), which I never really question, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth (ironic...); he's not someone who you want to get onto the bad side of.

Well today he came around to see my supervisor, undoubtedly about some or other claim form or internal requisition which was not filled out correctly. But seeing as he was busy at the time, Mr. S decided that our lab was the most appropriate place to wait for a free slot. While my labmate and I continued our conversation, in a mode of unease, Mr. S felt the need to point out that I was cold, and drinking coffee.

I agreed. What with it being winter and all...

He then injected himself into the conversation, informing us about irrelevant topics such as the 'vind tschill vind' (Translate: Wind chill factor) and how each area of Johannesburg will experience different temperatures to the other areas because, well, it's different. Both my labmate and I listened in awkward silence, agreeing at the appropriate times and hoping that our supervisor would be lured into the lab by the smell of coffee.

Suddenly, without changing tone or any indication that the conversation was over, Mr. S declared that this wait was taking too long and marched out of the lab. Somewhat confused, my labmate and I exchanged glances and continued with our chat. Suddenly, another person appeared at the door. It was Harry*, another member of our support staff, who, surprise surprise, was here to see our supervisor. We exchanged greetings and almost immediately thereafter, he was summoned into my supervisors office.

About 5 min later, after I had managed to switch on my laptop and settle down to do some serious email procrastination, Mr. S reappeared at the door. This time the topic of conversation was to be the benefits of taking an academic position at our university over a support staff position in terms of the accumulated leave. I sat, at a loss for words (I really don't know that much about how the leave at our varsity works!), agreeing at all the right places and generally looking interested.

Again, he declared that the wait was taking too long and stormed out without any hint of actually being annoyed, and despite the fact that he'd been at my desk for all of 5 min. I think that he anticipated social awkwardness and made the pre-emptive strike, terminating the conversation before he ran out of stuff to rattle off at me.

After relaying part of my plight to Eebee, he suggested that I make a sign like the one below to prevent this kind of thing.

I however think that a more appropriate response to the situation would be the couch and waiting room...

*Names changed to protect the relatively innocent...

Rushed off my feet...if I could feel them...

2009-06-26T12:50:00.000+02:00

This last week has been INSANE. I've not stopped all week and as a result, I'm exhausted. In addition, this happens to have been one of the coldest weeks we've had this year! Hence the title of the post...

So it really started on Saturday when I was contacted by Oliver for a house-sitting job. I had just finished house-sitting for some other people and it was my first opportunity to be at home in a while, so I was a little reluctant to take the job. The problem for Oliver was that he had double-booked himself for house-sitting. This job was for the family of his ex-girlfriend, and given that his only alternative to asking his current girl-friend to take the job for him, I agreed to do it, saving his relationship in the process.

The money helps too...

So ended up house-sitting in Kempton Park, which lies on the outskirts of civilization and Johannesburg. It has certainly shown me what I snob I really am, which has been a little scary, but apart from that and the bizarre cats (a story for another day...), it's been okay. But there was the creepy clown which was hanging opposite the bed I slept in...I eventually resorted to hanging a towel over it so that I could sleep at night.

My plan for the week was to camp out at this house and do nothing but work on my MSc as the last few months have not afforded me much time to do anything in that regard. It's also a very long way to have to drive on a daily basis to the university, and I am not exactly rolling in money at the moment. But, as you can imagine, fate decided to screw me over.

On Monday I had to go in to university to drop-off and finish some marking. My supervisor called me into his office to ask me to collect some people who were arriving from France, on the Wednesday. I accepted the task and promised to be there to fetch them. I was also really excited to get to be one of those people at the airport who stand there with a sign with the person's name on it, expectant of their arrival! I've always wanted to do that. Not really sure why I have, but it looked fun...

Then, on Monday evening, I received a phone-call from my supervisor's wife to tell me that his father had just died and that he had left me a few things to sort out the next day as he was leaving Johannesburg to be with his family. Naturally I accepted and expressed my condolences. The following morning, I headed in to university to carry out all the tasks required of me. I also managed to get quite a bit of my own admin out of the way, which was nice.

Wednesday rolled around and I got ready to head off to the airport. Unfortunately for me, the house I was looking after had one of those ancient aluminium garage doors which roll up. The unfortunate part was the lock which probably had been installed shortly after the discovery of fire, and in the tradition of all things ancient, it was incredibly difficult to get closed. So difficult was this device, that I banked on spending 15min of my morning trying to close the door each day. Unfortunately, on this day it took me about 35min to close...

So I arrived at the airport about 15min late. I was in a bit of a panic and searched the flight board for the flights coming in from Paris. There was only one. And it had landed on time. Cursing under my breath, I moved over the terminal exit where a permanent crowd of ever-changing faces had taken residence. I was scared that I had missed them already and that, fed-up with my incompetence, they had organised a taxi to take them to their bed-and-breakfast instead. So I stood there, terrified, but trying to look as if I did this all the time and had everything under control.

After about 45min a pair of women came out of the terminal and smiled at me, which I took to be a smile of recognition of the name on the sign I was holding. Luckily for me it was just that and not misinterpreted flirting, which would have been rather awkward. After exchanging greetings and once they had exchanged their euros for rands, we headed off to their abode for the next two days.

Once we arrived, I helped them carry their bags in and we discussed their plans for the next few days. It was decided that I should pick them up the following morning to take them into the university to collect a few things and sort out the vehicle that they would be using for their field-work (that's why they were here, by the way...).

The next morning, after a similar, but shorter, tussle with the garage lock, I went through to collect them. I miraculously was not late (!?) and once all the appropriate belongings had been gathered, we headed to the university. Once there, we had to scuttle from one office to another, collecting keys, materials and access cards, getting forms signed and paying for things. By lunch time, all was sorted, but all were exhausted. Very kindly, they took me out to lunch to thank me for all the help I'd given them which was fantastic. (For whoever this has any meaning for, the restaurant at the bottom of Seventh Avenue in Melville, behind the art gallery and opposite the other gallery makes an amazing grilled veg wrap!)

Immediately after this I had to take my sister off to buy dental-grade plaster of Paris for her sculptures. She does lots of body-casting work, so she uses up a ton of the stuff. It's kinda fun! She cast my hand once. It was amazing, the kind of detail you get!

Friday rolled around and I decided that the week had been such a disaster work-wise that I had to go in to university and catch up on all that lost work time. So I arrived at varsity to meet up with Helen. We were out of coffee so we had to walk into Braamfontein (area immediately around the university) to find a shop that sold ground coffee. At this point I discovered that I had been paid! It was very exciting! I was finally paid for all my lecturing! So to celebrate, we had slices of bar-one cake, amazing stuff, and had coffee. The rest of the day was a complete write-off, with most of our time being spent on failblog.org and YouTube.

Luckily for me, the week ended and I am finally back at home (sleeping in my own bed never felt to good!). Hopefully this week I can actually get something done...

How to save a species on the brink...

2009-06-19T16:09:00.000+02:00

I've just finished having a rather in-depth discussion with my supervisor about the film '11th Hour'. I've not seen it as the idea of sitting through another 'Inconvenient Truth' (Al Gore couldn't even put the ocean currents around Africa flowing in the right direction!!!), this time headed by a pretty-boy multi-millionaire from Hollywood, put me off it somewhat. However, from what my supervisor just told me, I may even go get it to watch this very night!

But this is not the point of this story. What really came out of our discussion, and something that has been plaguing me for some time is the global lack of change, in spite of all the warning signs that we are at the end of our tether. National Geographic published an article on the global food crisis this month in which they outlined the dilemma: most of the planet has been living off food reserves accumulated over the last odd 50 years or so and now the vast majority are either near or completely depleted.

Even much closer to home, the effects of climate change are apparent. Johannesburg had snow last year for the first time in about 45 years. This year, our winter has been milder and also considerably wetter than ever before. While I realise that this is purely anecdotal, it still makes me wonder about how close we are to breaking point.

The problem, as I see it, is a global fixation on capital gain. Saving the species from obliteration hasn't happened because there's no money in it. This is taken to the extreme when one considers that many 'green' techniques that can be employed by people to curb the oncoming behemoth are drastically simple and actually save money.

A prime example is garbage. In many EU countries at the moment, refuse is expected to be separated by households into plastics, metals, paper, biodegradable and other. They have dedicated bins and collection days. Why then do we not have such a system in South Africa? Well, you will say, because we don't have the infra-structure in this country for it. Or alternatively, that'd require employing more people and the government won't pay for that.

While I certainly agree with the latter point, the first point is a bunch of nonsense. The infra-structure exists already but is not adequately utilized! For example, many people in the greater Johannesburg area already go sifting through peoples rubbish to collect the various recyclable components. They then take these off to companies who pay them to do it. Now, what could be easier than separating out the rubbish ahead of time for these people. Not only do you allow them to potentially collect more from other people by freeing up that time they would have spent sifting through your trash, but you are also providing them with a source of income! Eco-friendly meets social up-liftment!

The other problem facing greener life changes is people's lack of willingness to change. Strategies such as the above require effort that people are just not prepared to expend. If you are one of these, then here's an alternative for you. Why not separate at least you biodegradable material from you other rubbish and start a compost heap?

What could possibly require less effort than throwing all your bio-rubbish into a large pile and ignoring it?!

As for the point about the government not forking out the money for green programs...We have some of the most progressive environmental laws in the world in South Africa. Our water act was one of the first to stipulate that environmental functioning requires a certain amount of water and that any excess over and above that was free for human use. So why is the government not helping out more? Because we, the people that live on their land, don't hold them to it! If more pressure was put on government to fund green initiatives and if more people made use of green programs such as recycling programs or car-pooling to reduce emissions and the like, there would be more scope for government to engage with green initiatives.

In short, we, as individuals need to change now as we can't wait for the government fat-cats to decide to do things. There are many different ways in which we could change our lifestyles to prevent the upcoming monster. I, myself, recycle, have a compost heap and am a vegetarian. My house has solar-heated water and up until recently due to work-related changes in my timetable, used to ride public transport which reduces carbon emissions per head. What are you doing? It's up to you and I to save humanity!

Nothing more can go wrong! I've used up all my 'bads'!

2009-06-18T14:46:00.000+02:00

I've been told that bad things happen in threes. Well Universe, I've used up all three of mine! First there was the accident on the weekend, then yesterday left me in a bad mood and finally today's little incident...

Last night, while working out, my good pal David told me that I 'looked tired' and that I should take more time off for myself to just chill. I agreed with him as I have had very little me time lately, but had to admit that I had too much to do to really give myself the time I might need. But, I decided to just have a relaxing evening, free of work, in spite of the fact that I knew I'd feel terribly guilty for not having done the work.

So this morning, after sleeping in an extra hour (shame on me!), I headed off to university as I always do. I had to stop off at the shops on my way as I'm having a bake-off with one of my lab-mates and I needed supplies for the amazing cake I shall concoct for tomorrow (Prepare to be blown away with my AWESOME baking skills!). So, I stopped off at the local Pick-n-Pay to collect supplies, and my air-ticket to France (unrelated to the cakes...) and went to the car to head off to varsity.

And then it happened...my car refused to start. It had been giving trouble lately, but nothing serious. Then, this morning, it decided that it had had enough. There I was, stuck under a shopping centre in a car that looks like it could have been part of a medieval invasion force and a huge wad of guilt from not having worked last night.

So I called the AA and was helped by a very polite woman who obviously thought that your phone bill was based on how loudly you spoke because I could barely hear her at all. I heard more from the fax machine in her office than from her, which made our communications...interesting.

After taking all of my details, and her disbelief that my surname could be a first name, like Duncan, she asked me to tell her where I was. I told her that I was at Bedford Centre, in the underground parking lot. She asked me where it was. I told her it was under the shopping centre's roof parking area. No, she meant where Bedford Centre was. I said it was in Bedfordview. But where's that?

Luckily, the conversation didn't escalate to me mentioning which planet we were on, but it came close...

Eventually, after asking me three times what colour car I drove, she announced that the 'roadside-assistance' would be there in 60-90min. I thanked her for her help and swore under my breath once the call had ended. What would I do for the next 90 min?!

Luckily for me, I had my laptop with me! So I whipped it out and did what any self-respecting individual would...I played cards! Hearts specifically. Not for long though as some misguided hope raised its stupid head in my heart and made me think that if the guy had to show up, I should probably be visible and not in my car playing cards...

So I climbed out the car, trying to use up as much time as possible in doing so without looking like a complete freak. It used up about 15 seconds at the most...

Realising the prematurity of my move out of the car, I decided to check my email on my phone. I was so glad I did! It used up so much of my time! Helen's post about the licensing department kept me thoroughly entertained while I watched all the local old folks wander around the parking lot (I think they get discounted groceries on Thursdays...) and occasionally find one another, exchanging greetings with as much enthusiasm as they could muster.

It was at this point that I had a thought...When did I last check the oil? AGES ago! I hope that the engine hasn't seized because I forgot to check the oil and it's run dry! Luckily for me, there is a service station right at the centre I was at so I just nipped over and bought a can of oil to put in the car. Lucky I did too! The car was almost completely empty!

Just then I recieved a call from the AA to say that the assitance would be there within the next 20 min. Grateful, I thanked them and ended the call. I glanced down at my watch and realised that it had only taken them a good hour and 15 minutes so far! So I continued to read through my email to pass the time.

I then recieved another call to say that the assistance was only 10 min away. Foolishly I looked to my watch and realised that the last '10 min' had actually been about 30. Luckily, the guy showed up almost immediately, managed to start the car, very sternly suggested I find an auto-electrician and sent me on my way. Very thankful to be in a running car again, I scooted home to find out the number for our mechanic. Once home, I realised I'd forgotten to get some of my ingredients for the cake...

Pathological altruism...?

2009-06-17T14:50:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I wonder whether, by helping other people out, I'm not harming myself. Today was a good example. Now, before I carry on, I would like for Helen and Megan to know that I helped them out because I genuinely wanted to, not out of some misplaced sense of responsibility. So don't come and apologise!

Today I got up and drove through to Kempton park to pick up a bottle of 200% alcohol for Helen. It was rather exciting because it was the first time I'd ever been out to that area of the world, so apart from the interest factor of finding out where all our lab supplies come from, I had the bonus of not having a clue where I was headed! But I managed to find the place in spite of the property owners best efforts to ensure that nobody finds their place by putting the world's most minuscule street number on the outside.

Once inside I had to stand at the entrance to the supply dock and dance around to try and get the attention of the workers inside. I think that there had been a power failure, because the warehouse was in darkness and the bell didn't seem to do anything despite my enthusiastic bushing on the button. I hope that bell works when the power returns...

After about half an hour of faffing on the part of the workers, they gave me the alcohol and I was on my way to university. Once here, I handed over the little gift to Helen and headed down to my lab. It was minutes after sitting down in my seat that Megan snatched me up to help her clean up the mice cages in the next room. We just had to change the bedding, but it's a procedure that requires two people as all the mice are essentially wild-caught and are not anywhere near tame yet. Today was a good day, with only 4 escape!

One escaped into the very large rubbish bag, which we had to dig through to try and get the mouse out of, but other than that one, they were all fairly minor escapes.

After we had done about 15 cages, we decided to take a break from all the sawdust and give Sneha, our lab-mate, a chance to actually use her desk without choking to death on all the dust we made. So I returned to my desk to be intercepted by one of the honours students.

I'm co-supervising her project as it really came out of my own work, so I have to help her out when she hits a snag. So we discussed her problem and came to the conclusion that we didn't really understand the problem itself. So we left it to sort out at a later stage.

Megan then asked me to help finish off the remaining mice, which we did. Then, it was off to the zoo to swap ex-test subjects (i.e. mice) for seeds with the zoo. They have a system whereby we take them all the mice that we have used in experiments (NOTE: NOT of the vivisection kind!) that have been euthanized to be fed to the birds of prey and in exchange, we are given bags of seeds to be fed to the mice. It's kinda like recycling the mice, in a twisted sort of way...

But the person I was supposed to meet there wasn't available! It turned out that she had recieved my email about meeting her at 14h00 at the zoo and had replied to me at 14h00 to say that she couldn't make it but that I should speak to Freddy instead...I was not amused. I did also have to drop off some stuff with the zoo's head office for my supervisor, which I managed, so I'm glad that's out of the way.

Now I'm off to fetch my mother from work who's car has been stolen by my father because it is cold and so he doesn't feel like riding his scooter to work...

Well, I must be off or I shall be late. So, am I pathologically altruistic? I leave that up to you to decide...

It could be anywhere...

2009-06-15T09:52:00.000+02:00

So this hasn't been my best weekend ever. Admittedly, it's been a pretty good one except for the little bumper-bashing that I was involved in last night. It wasn't a fun experience. And I had a pretty good track record as far as traffic accidents go...

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. At the moment I am house-sitting for a couple who have taken a long weekend off, seeing as Tuesday is a public holiday here in South Africa. I can't remember which public holiday it is. We have so many here (in fact, we have 12 days off a year!). I suppose that's what happens when your country has a political revolution and is liberalised after an extended period of imposed unilateral control.

I've just googled it and apparently Tuesday is Youth Day.

So, having spent the day out and about, I returned this evening to discover feathers all over the house. They appear to be from a hoopoe which, at some stage, must have somehow gotten into the house. I just hope that it was able to escape. I don't want to open a cupboard and have a bird fly out at my face...

I LOVE this weather!!!

2009-06-11T12:36:00.000+02:00

It's freezing. It's been raining on and off for the last three days. It's like being stuck in London in the middle of winter. And I couldn't be happier!

I honestly love this weather! It's fantastic! I feel like there is something magical about this kind of weather which revitalises me! I, just like any sane individual would, still ensure that I wear enough layers, my gloves, a scarf and the like, but it's still amazing!

On a more clinical note, this weather is very strange for Johannesburg. Our winters are normally characterised by very dry, chilly days with loads of sun. Occasionally, we have the odd cloud scuttle across the sky looking sheepish and lost, but on the whole rain is a no-no for our winters. Shall we blame climate change?

I laugh in the face of Death! And get a mouthful of feathers...

2009-06-10T12:48:00.001+02:00

Today, after going to withdraw R50 from an ATM and hitting the wrong button, resulting in the machine producing R500 instead, I went to the dentist for a filling...If I could have that word dripping with blood, I would. I hate the dentist. It's nothing personal! He's a really nice old man, albeit with bad teeth. It's the profession that I take offense to...

The point of the story was my rather scary experience in the chair. I have malignant hyperthermia which always makes anaesthesia exciting. Now days, most of the anaesthetics used are safe and will not cause me to die, but I still get nervous whenever I have to have any. So, after the dentist gave me my local shot and left my face to numb up for 5 min, I was a little on edge.

Just as the dentist started drilling, what appeared to be a tall black-hooded figure walked past his cubicle. I only saw them out of the corner of my eye and he was mostly obscured by the wall of the cubicle that I was in, so I couldn't be certain but they bore a striking resemblance to the skeletal, black-robed, pointy-hooded fellow commonly known as Death.

Writing this, I realise that I have a seriously overactive imagination but I'm being perfectly honest when I say that my first thoughts were something along the lines of, 'Oh crap! It's Death! But wait...aren't you supposed to see a white light or something, not some dude in a black hoodie? Maybe he'll come past again...' So, while thinking that maybe it actually was my time to go and how inconvenient the timing was if I was to die today, I kept an eye out for the dark figure.

About 5 min later he reappeared! And it was at this point that I mentally kicked myself in the head for having the mind I have. It turned out that what I thought was the pointed tip of the hood of Death, was actually a feather-duster, skirting along the tops of the cubicles. I decided to focus on counting the roof pannels above the room from that point on...

Joined at the hip...? Thank goodness, no!

2009-06-09T08:38:00.000+02:00

Everyone has one at least. They are those people who are part of the staff where we work who drive everyone else insane! Ours comes in the form of a diminutive Russian man with no concept of personal hygiene, or personal space. I shall refer to him as Mr. S.

Now, for some unknown reason, Mr. S seems to think that I am his best buddy. It's really quite a useful position to be in as he tends to control the flow of important hardware around our department, such as field equipment, laptops and the like. Being his chum (in the loosest sense of the word...) means that I normally have access to all these things with minimal effort.

On the down side, he seems to think that I go about my day, yearning to have conversations with him at close quarters...

A really good example of this occurred last week when he came to discuss some recording equipment with Megan. Megan is trying to record ultra-sonic communication in rodents as part of her MSc project. As a result, Mr. S has had dig up equipment that has not seen the light of day in eons. Last week, he brought the equipment down to our lab for her to try and figure out. Once he had dropped it all off and left, we spent the rest of our Monday afternoon fiddling with the various cables and microphones to try and get all of it to work.

By the end of that fiddling session, we had come to the conclusion that there were various pieces missing and that Megan would have to contact Mr. S and get him to find all the missing bits. Megan then contacted Mr. S and asked him to find the parts she needed which he did. This was then the beginning of the problem.

He arrived in our lab with a box of various cables. Because he and I are best buddies, he, now well enveloped in my personal space, began to ask me a barrage of questions about why I needed these cables and what it was that I was trying to do. I pointed out that I wasn't trying to do anything and that it was in fact Megan's project. However, with my pitifully minuscule knowledge of sound recording equipment, I managed to answer most of his questions.

He decided that the information that I had given him while Megan sat, somewhat anxiously yet a little deflated after being completely sidelined from her own research, in the background, was sufficient and that we had to go and see if one of the other staff members knew anything about the missing cables and how to work the contraption in the first place. Mr. S beckoned me to follow him, which I then echoed onto Megan and the three of us went a-wandering.

Mr. S also has an annoying habit of letting himself into peoples offices and labs without request, as he has a key for every room in our building. So, it was with a surprised and somewhat terrified face that we were greeted by the last staff member to have ever had anything to do with the equipment. After a good grilling from Mr. S, we left the bewildered staff member to return to our lab.

Upon our return to the lab, Mr. S continued to interrogate me as to what it was that I wanted to do. Again, I reinforced the point that it wasn't my project. As if oblivious to anything I had just said, he suggested that I look up the contraption on the Internet, which I dutifully did, seeing the opportunity as a chance to remove myself from his fetid aura (if you know what I mean...). So, at the comfort of my desk I began searching the net. To my horror, a dark, smelly presence took up residence on my left arm. Mr. S had realised that a small area of my desk was not being occupied by paper and felt that this was an open invitation to take up the space and direct my surfing over my shoulder. I found myself performing swimming breaths in order to remain consious at my laptop. Eventually, after about three web-pages had been thoroughly reviewed, he decided (thankfully!!!) that I was not achieving the results he desired and that he would find it all himself.

He departed, leaving a sniggering Megan and a shell-shocked me to breathe (literally). About 10 min later he reappeared with a large wad of paper which he claimed was the manual, printed off the internet.

Why EVERYONE should watch Green Wing!

2009-06-05T11:13:00.000+02:00

Ode to the coffee machine

2009-06-04T10:49:00.000+02:00

This year, with the arrival of Helen to our lab, we acquired, for the first time ever, a coffee machine. It’s nothing amazing. It has the simple functions (i.e. on…off…on again…etc.) including the timer to set for the machine to automatically start producing coffee at a set time. It just produces filter coffee, no espresso, no cappuccino or macchiato, just plain old coffee. Behold!

On the plus side, it looks like the ones you see in police stations that detectives get their coffee from in movies. (It kinda makes you want to adopt a New Yorker accent and try solving crimes and whatnot…) It was this very trait that lead to the start of my favourite lab tradition: Doughnut Friday!

But I digress...

The machine has brought great joy into our collective lives, great knowledge and also great stress. Take Helen’s departing for field work this year as an example…

Megan and I were left to our own devices in the lab once Helen left for her field work this year. Normally Helen would be in charge of the coffee production in the lab, seeing as I refuse to drink the stuff (unless the most optimistic alternative is suicide…) and Megan is one of those I’ll-drink-it-if-it-falls-into-my-outstreched-mug-but-if-not-my-life-will-go-on kinds of people. It also helps that Helen appears to be the only one out of all of us that can successfully make coffee at the concentration that our supervisor likes (I think it has scored her great brownie points with him too). Of course, the fact that she is an avid coffee addict has nothing to do with this.

So there we were. Two ignoramuses and a coffee machine.

Sounds like a book title…or a rock band from the ‘80s!

We were surviving quite well until Doughnut Friday! rolled around. It was then that the pair of us realised that we had probably better learn how to use the thing before the rest of the Doughnut Friday! crowd showed up and attacked us for not having a steaming pot of Java waiting for them. So the two of us set to work trying to decipher the workings of the innocuous black contraption with the jug underneath.

We’d both seen Helen do it in the past. We figured, it can’t be all that tough to figure out! How complicated could it get? All you do it make sure the plastic filter is clean, place a paper filter into that, fill up the filter with grinds and ensure there was sufficient water in the tank at the back…right?

We carried out this procedure, hit the little red button marked ‘ON’ and returned to our work. While we worked the machine began to make the odd and slightly off-putting digesting sounds that could probably make the most repugnant thirteen year old boy blush, as it does. While we listened to the machine suffer through its own case of IBS, we assumed all was well. Little did we know...

At some stage, I thought to check up on our humble beverage-in-preparation. To my horror and amazement, I was greeted by the coffee machine, spewing coffee everywhere but into the pot. In all honesty, the machine looked like one of the fountains that you would expect to see in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel with a circular jet of hot coffee radiated out from the nozzle, not going into the coffee pot.

I performed the standard reaction in a situation such as this in our lab. I panicked. Not in the life threatening, hyperventilating way, but more in the this-is-a-great-opportunity-to-throw-my-hands-into-the-air-and-run-around-shrieking-because-it’s-fun way. Megan came hurtling over to see what was happening and too was awestruck at the terrible beauty of the sight before her. Together we switched off the machine and with painstaking precision, dissected the machine to start cleaning up what had just happened. It was at this point that we decided that we definitely needed new sponges in our lab as the only one we had was about as effective as using a piece of steel.

So two important bits of knowledge were gleaned from this experience: the paper filter goes on the outside of the plastic one. Secondly, sponges, unlike diamonds, are not forever…

In the interim following our little coffee machine adventure, I have learned how to make coffee. My supervisor likes his coffee really strong and so, I’ve had to learn how to up his doses to levels that would kill the average elephant. However, I think I’ve managed to find his cut-off after the last pot I made with about 10 scoops of coffee kept him up all night. Another important bit of information that I’ve learned from our coffee machine is that coffee and I, do not go well together. Once the uncontrollable shaking and heart palpitations subside, the perspiration starts, none of which I am particularly fond of. So I think I shall have to stick to my no-coffee-or-else rule from now on…

Which is worse...?

2009-06-03T09:17:00.000+02:00

Question: Which is worse? People who indicate and proceed to NOT turn/change lanes while driving or people who turn/change lanes WITHOUT indicating?

It's a question which I still can't figure out the answer to. Lately I've been spending a great deal of my time in traffic (which is odd given that there are fewer students around at the moment what with their exams and all...) and there are an alarmingly high number of individuals who do these annoying things. Another thing which I find frustrating about driving is the lack of decisiveness in drivers.

For example, this morning on my way in, I had the misfortune of being stuck behind some girl who appeared to have had her drivers license for approximately the last two minutes. She was supremely un-confident about having to actually use her car and having indicated, refused to change lanes until she had at least 500m of car-free road on all sides.

I know that Johannesburg drivers tend to be particularly aggressive and that we are not particularly tolerant of other driving styles, but I am a firm believer that one should feel comfortable driving one's car and should not live in trepidation of having to encounter another vehicle, even if they are going in the opposite direction to you.

On the other hand, I know that I really should just chill and not let it get to me. But where's the drama in that?! Drama is what makes life fun!

Golly, I need a holiday...

Weekend of DOOM!

2009-06-02T09:12:00.000+02:00

As it turns out, the weekend was nothing like I expected! While I did spend all of my Saturday marking (which did suck) I finished it all by that evening which freed me up to enjoy the remainder of my weekend! I ended up going to visit friends that evening to watch a DVD, which was really awesome!

We watched a Tim Burton film called 'Ed Wood'. I am a huge fan of Burton and really enjoyed the film! It was very funny but terribly tragic at the same time! One of my favourite scenes was when Ed and all his cast and crew are being baptised by the Baptist Church because that is the only way that they could get the money together to make their film.

In short, it is definitely worth watching if you ever get the chance!

At present I'm waiting for my sister to get herself ready so that I can get a move on and go to universty. I'm in a 'writing zone' at the moment so I'm trying to get as much of my MSc written up now as possible!

A fantastic weekend!

2009-05-29T11:57:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a great deal of marking to do...

Thus, I have no life whatsoever and will spend my ENTIRE weekend, wading through the drivel that students hand in and expect to be praised for. I can't wait!

In addition, I have to somehow find time to work on some music, sort out my accommodation in Paris for August (YAY!!!) and my degree (note that it is last on the 'To Do' list...). I have to confess that there are a million thing I'd much rather be doing this weekend! Wouldn't you rather be here this weekend:

Sodwana Bay - Diving!

Or here:A frozen lake I visited when in Germany - Scooting around on the ice!

Or, perhaps, here:

Suikerboschfontein - the most amazing hike!

I'm enjoying this WAY too much!

2009-05-28T16:02:00.000+02:00

For those of you who have never had the fortune (whether good or bad, depends on your outlook) to teach students at any stage, one of the features of the job which can be rather painful is marking. One's responses to students work can range from blinding rage to hysterical laughter. It is the latter that has brought me to write this post.

Over the last two months, I took on my first lecturing job ever. It's been great! I've really enjoyed it immensely! It's fantastic to be able to teach people about something that they've never done or heard of before, and to see them getting excited about what you tell them makes a world of difference!

However, it is when the marking starts that you begin to wonder, 'Are they really this stupid, or am I just a really bad lecturer...?'. Within the last week, I've had to invigilate two exams and I am now in the course of marking both lots. And, because of all the stuff I've read in their exams, I, along with a couple of friends, have decided to start a sister-blog where I shall publish the best of the stupid stuff students write. It is...

Scary things students *think* they know...

I've been told I enjoy the marking way too much and must learn to appreciate the mundane nature of the job...

I'm not into self-mutilation! It was my cat...!

2009-05-26T16:58:00.000+02:00

I have the cutest cat in the world. I realise that that is what every cat owner on the face of our planet says about their pet, but she definitely lies pretty high up on the cuteness scale. Her full name is Lady Amelia Fitzpatrick, but I call her Mia for short, or simply 'kitten' depending on whether she has done something wrong or not.

One of the elements that adds to her charm is the fact that she goes through periods of complete insanity. Early in the morning, she will go tearing around the kitchen, literally leaping off the cupboard doors, spending more time in the air than in contact with any solid surfaces and generally pulling moves that would make the Witkowski bothers exceedingly jealous. but how does this link to self-mutilation, you may ask?

It has more to do with another of her behaviours associated with these spats of lunacy. Considerably less endearing is her tendency to attack almost anything at random during these periods. The victims of her pent-up aggression include anything from a table leg to a human leg, from fingers to fluff. And God forbid you wear anything with tassels or a pull-string! That's fatal!

The other day I made the generous, but foolish decision to engage with my cat during one of her 'fits'. The result is that I now have hands and arms completely covered in scabs and scratches! And they keep coming! This afternoon, I discovered I had a set of kitty-cuts on my right elbow that I never even realised were there! How she managed to slash at my elbows remains a mystery to me (perhaps while she was performing one of her cupboard ricochets...?).

All the same, I love her dearly and to show just how cute (albeit mad) my cat is, I am posting the following video. It's of her sitting in our kitchen sink (a favourite spot for her - she obviously never got the memo about cats hating water...) playing with water as it drips out of the tap. It's my first video upload, so I hope that this works! Ignore the sound...

Be careful what you wish for...

2009-05-26T10:24:00.000+02:00

So, in yesterday's post I wished that I could somehow speed up time and that my day could come to an end sooner so that I could go home. Well, it happened. But not in a good way...

I was supposed to go to gym with a few friends after university yesterday. And because I got my wish, I was late for it.

The end.

Well, that's 10 hours you'll never get back...

2009-05-25T15:54:00.000+02:00

It's been one of those days. The kind where you end up doing loads of admin but feel that you have achieved absolutely nothing all day. I've been doing statistics for undergraduate students all day, which has been a pain. Mostly because they have no idea what's going on but insist on asking about the most arbitrary points in the hope that I will somehow think that they have a clue.

Now, ask anyone, my stats knowledge is not amazing, but I do know a few things. That's why I got so ticked off with one pair of sibling students that came, with the rest of their group, to sort out their stats. In all fairness, the one sibling had some common sense, so my frustration wasn't directed at them both, only the dumb one...

She kept trying to come up with 'practical' (read: lazy-ass) solutions to her stats in an effort to have to do less work. She also kept asking really stupid questions like, 'When you say we should make a bar graph with the averages for each variable plotted according to the times they were sampled, what do you mean?', to which I would answer with, 'Well, basically plot a bar graph with the averages for each variable plotted according to the times they were sampled...'

And, to add to the unbelievably annoying nature of the individual, she has a lip-ring. Now, I personally am not against the idea of lip piercings (Quite the opposite! I wanted to get one for myself!), and the design of her ring is simple and silver, but somehow, it just makes this individual SO much mor obnoxious and annoying! It's amazing!

So, having done the stats and a little admin, I'm sitting at my desk, hoping that somehow, just for today, time will speed up and the end of the day will suddenly be upon me, forcing me home...

Off to youtube then to be unproductive!

Woo-HOO!

2009-05-18T15:54:00.000+02:00

I recieved my confirmation email for my acceptance to attend the conference in France later this year! I'm so excited! It's a conference on animal behaviour in Rennes, France, which I applied to attend with a poster presentation on the work that I've done with the chimpanzees here in Johannesburg. It'll be my first ever conference where I am presenting something, my first trip to France AND the first time I've ever used a credit-card! I'm SO psyched!

In addition to this, I'm super-excited because it'll give me a chance to visit some amazing places and see some friends who I've not seen in a long time! Laura and Tomkins...watch out!

That's about all I have to say for the moment. My brain has breathed its last for today and so I'm going to head home shortly...

...excuse the pun.

P.S. I had to help two of my 3rd year student groups with the statistics on their projects that they have been doing at the zoo over the last few months and for the first time in my life, I think I actually kinda knew what it was that I was doing! It's a fantastic feeling when you finally grasp stats! Any sane person who has ever done them will be able to understand...

Clustermaps!

2009-05-15T17:53:00.000+02:00

Wow...I just looked at my clustermap thingy! I've had 3 170 people view my blog since I started up in 2007! That's awesome! You guys ROCK! Thanks for making me feel imporant in an internet-microcosm sorta way!

I'm awesome...It's that simple, really... ;P

2009-05-15T17:16:00.000+02:00

Hi!

So, Sarah has given me an award! YAY! The idea is that I now write 7 things about myself which make me the fantastic individual I am and then pass on the award to 7 others. To elaborate on the title of this post, I shall provide some examples below...

I rock because:

I'm witty. Or at least, so I am told by others. Sometimes I doubt the sanity of some of those who accuse me of being witty, but overall, I humbly (because that's the kind of person I am, humble... :D ) accept the complement and move on with my life...

I can get passionately excited about almost anything. Seriously. It's a pain some of the time because I tend to get all excited and nobody else seems to feel that way, so I feel a bit of a nutter...

I am brimming with useless facts! Really! I was actually famous during my undergraduate years for this. I would sprout forth with all manner of redundant trivia to my bemused colleagues whenever I felt the need. It's actually all because of watching Discovery Channel and National Geographic documentaries. And they say TV is bad for you! Hah! Ideal example: did you know that a pumpkin, by the strictest definition of the term, is actually a berry?

I have good taste! Or at least, I like to think so. My friends are all fantastic people, I like the colour green (You can't go wrong with green! It's timeless! Like black!) AND I am impermeable to distasteful trends in fashion and music (Down with pop-music!).

At this point I would like to say that I am seriously struggling to write this. I hate tooting my own horn...Also, blogger is being stupid and can't stop numbering stuff, so this doesn't count as one of my points, I just can't stop the stupid website from doing that! Aargh!

I'm in love with post-its! They are just about the most amazing invention ever! Step aside wheel!

I'm multi-talented! Not only am I a brilliant scientist in the making, but I write and compose my own music too!

I love art-house movies! There is something particularly nice about watching something that actually makes you think every once in a while. I do enjoy vegetating in front of the tele every now and again too, but the deep stuff is more my style.

Wow...I think I was kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel for some of those, but at least I got something in there...So I would like to award this SUPA-AMAZING PERSON award to the following: Jenny, Megan, Eebee, Athena, Helen, Laura and last, but certainly not least, Tomkins.

Nice picture for the day:

On music

2009-05-13T09:21:00.000+02:00

Ironically, without intending to do so I have chosen the same topic for today's post as Eebee did for his. Actually, it's not the same exactly, but along similar lines. For me it was all brought about by my arriving at my lab to discover that our cleaning lady, Sarah, was working away at polishing our countertops, with her cell-phone blaring gospel music in that tiny-distorted cell-phone kinda way. While I certainly have nothing against gospel music, I was a little taken aback at the fact that she felt that it was okay to play music in my office while I was trying to work. But I digress...

In addition to the above musical incident, I was listening to the latest Dido album today for the first time. It's really not bad! My friend David had listened to it and warned me that the vast majority of the album was rubbish but there were one or two tracks that were worthwhile. While I certainly think that there are no tracks on the album (so far...) that are nearly as catchy as some of her previous stuff, it's really not as bad as he made it out to be!

After reading Eebee's post about his top 5 most annoying music 'artists', I feel I have to put my ten cents worth in and rant a little. I have to agree that Nickleback has to be one of the most annoying bands on the planet! They have produced a grand total of about 2 original songs, figured 'Hey! This works!' and decided to clone them for the following 6 ALBUMS!!!

Now, no offense to fans, but they also exploit something in every teenage girl which drives me nuts! They write their songs as these soppy lyrics, masquerading as a rock band. Someone, please have a child by them so that they can go the way of all musicians who have children; an subsequent album with songs riddled with soppy titles like, 'My little angel', following which their career takes a nose dive, never to recover. The world would be a better place! I promise!

Then, Coldplay. I think that both Nickleback and Coldplay suffer from the same problem. Neither are able to inject a smidgen of originality into their music! But I shan't repeat the above rant for them too...

Next on my hate-list is Jay-Z. This man is about as musical as a jack-hammer. While I certainly consider most rappers with disdain due to the fact that what they do is NOT music, his tracks in particular irritate me because of their shallowness and lack of variability. While the backtracks for many of them are really quite good, and in some rare cases, generate that instant tapping foot thing that happens with a good beat, the fact that he 'sings' about how awesome he is and how much money he has, makes me sick. How insecure can you be as a person to feel confident about 'singing' your own praises?!

Then there is the beloved Akon. While I take pride in the fact that he is a fellow African and thus feel a certain kinship with the man, and apart from his various inappropriate stage cavortings with underage children, I would compare his voice to that of a toddler having a temper-tantrum. What possessed music executives to sign him on, is beyond me. What also amazes me is how many people actually like his music! It's amazing!

And thus, I shall end my rant. Sorry to any of you readers who are fans. These are just my opinions and I am a firm believer that music taste is an individual matter and shouldn't be a measure of a persons character.

Cause of death: Library shelf

2009-05-09T14:53:00.000+02:00

Ten points Megs! ;)

Earlier this week I was diligently writing away at my dissertation. I have really been struggling to get myself to even open the file on my computer lately because I'm so terrified about the idea of having to write it all up and finish my masters degree. But somehow, I plucked up the courage to open it and had actually started writing, when I discovered that I needed a reference. So I did what all lazy post-grad students do: I searched the net for one.

I tend to use a site called science-direct, because the papers that it turns up are the best quality in my field and are generally up to date. So while searching through this site, I came across a paper that I thought could be very useful. There was only one problem. The university doesn't subscribe to that journal.

So, being overly dramatic, I threw my arms up in horror and wailed to my lab-mates about how my life was ruined and that I might as well just give up and open a hot-dog stand because that was my only hope of succeeding at anything in life. Or something to that effect...When Megan, being the voice of sanity and in the process totally killing all the fun of wailing about the meaninglessness of my existence, suggested that I just look on Google Scholar.

I did that and discovered, to partial relief that there was no such article on the web. So I turned to the solution of the non-lazy post-grad: The library.

Our university has a library web site that allows one to search for items based with relative ease. Occasionally you wonder whether the site was actually designed by a pot-plant, given the ridiculous answers it can produce to your queries, but overall, it's really not bad. I searched for the article and discovered that it was located in one of the universities 7 libraries. Which one? I had no idea. It was in a journal called 'The Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology', which as it turned out was discontinued. The reason being that the journal had actually split into several other journals.

Now, the way the library system works here, you are directed through the all-knowing site to a particular library and given the shelf number for what you are looking for. In this case, neither the library, nor the shelf number were evident. So, I assumed that it would most likely be located at the same library where all the psychology journals live and headed there.

I arrived at the library and asked one of the librarians at the front desk if they could help me. After explaining my woes, the librarian looked up at me and, in a sweet but obviously couldn't-give-a-rats-ass tone, asked 'Have you tried looking on the Internet?'. A little annoyed at the patronisation, I told them that I had and had found nothing. They smiled and proceeded to look on the Internet and then tell me all about how they had found nothing.

Defeated, the librarian passed me onto another of her kind. This one repeated the condescending procedure, complete with couldn't-give-a-rats-ass tone and the Internet search. Eventually, having given up, and leaving me feeling a little frustrated, he suggested I go speak to the woman upstairs who was in charge of journals.

We climbed the stairs and approached her desk. After making a half-hearted attempt to explain my saga to her (I'm not kidding! He started speaking to her in another language and, with apparent frustration turned to me and said, 'Tell her your problem...'), she began to try and help me. Her first response: 'Have you looked on the Internet?'

In all fairness, she was much more helpful than the last two had been. She managed to decipher the search results on the library site and discovered that the journal was indeed held in that library. She also managed to find the shelf number for me. So, having found the info we needed, this unlikely couple, a skinny white boy and a rather rotund black librarian, plodded off to the basement of the library where the journals reside.

Once in the basement, a sanctuary for the socially inept and dust mites, we began to check the shelf numbers on the rolling shelves for the section that I sought. For those who have never encountered rolling shelves, they are a fantastic invention, essentially a set of normal library shelves set on railway-like tracks which can be pushed back and forth on the tracks. This allows the library to have many more shelves and books for the same amount of space. The only real down side is that if you move the shelves, you can only really access one section of books at a time. And, any normal person who uses them cannot help but imagine that some unsuspecting student may move the shelves when you are in one of the temporary aisles, crushing you in the process.

The pair of us eventually found the section we were looking for and started to push the shelves back so that we could access the books held within. As we were doing this, we discovered that one of the shelves was stuck! This meant that the maximum space that was available for me to access the journals was an aisle about 40cm wide. Immediately, the librarian decided that she would go seek help and left me at the mercy of the dust mites (the socially inept aren't all that likely to attack, you know, the whole 'they're more afraid of you than you are of them' saga, so you're fairly safe around them...)

Up until then, the whole book-hunting ordeal had taken up about 30min of my time and so I decided to risk becoming human paper and entered the 40cm chasm that we had created in the wall of books. I frantically scanned the book spines on the shelves before me, all the while images of some mildly surprised individual 40 years down the line opening up the shelf as a crispy, paper-thin Luke floated down from the recently separated shelves. To my horror, I realised that the book I sought was located on the very bottom shelf at the end of the aisle. I could never get to it in this scenario as that would require that I be able to kneel down, a feat impossible with only 40cm of space in which to move. Reluctantly I retreated to the outside, resolved to wait for help to arrive.

As I exited the aisle, both the librarian and I, completely unaware of one another's presence there gasped as the two of us nearly collided. She had returned with one of the other librarians and was looking to see if I'd been foolish enough to enter the aisle just as I had been exiting. After some embarrassed apologies, we turned to the second librarian for an education in moving rolling shelves. As it turned out, all we had to do was pull the shelf along with the shelf before it. So we did this and it worked! Thanking the man sheepishly, I returned to the now decently sized space that had been created in search of my book. I managed to grab it and with my librarian assistant, headed back up to the main checkout desk to take the book out.

We arrived at the desk and we discovered, to my horror, that I was actually the first person, since the libraries on campus had gone digital to even look for the book, never mind take it out. So this meant that it wasn't even catalogued in the library system. Screaming on the inside, I graciously passed the book over to my assistant librarian who, with a jolly looking smile, waddled over to the lift to take the book up for cataloguing on the forth floor.

She returned about 10 min later, after I had been asked several times by clueless undergraduates whether I would let them print documents from the computer at the desk behind me, with the tome in tow. She had managed to get it catalogued and it was ready for me to take out! Jumping for joy on the inside I thanked her profusely and had the book checked out. The whole thing had taken 45 min but I finally had what I was looking for!

I got back to my lab and scanned the article, using our school's Bizhub (I am in love with a machine...). Once I was at the safety of my desk, I read through the paper. It was only then that I realised, as I read, that the article was almost completely useless to me...

Sci-bono!

2009-04-30T18:49:00.002+02:00

So, for some time, Athena, Duncan and I have been trying to organise between the three of us to go on a photographic expedition. After a half-baked attempt (my sisters fault...), we finally organised between ourselves and went on one on Freedom day (public holidays are more conducive to expeditions...you find you have the time...). So we went to Newtown, and discovered the 'Sci-bono', only the most amazingly fun museum in all of Johannesburg! It's a science museum that comprises loads of fun experimental exhibits for kids to engage with. It's SO much fun! Check out our pics!

Outside the Sci-bono! The unassuming building that houses hours of fun!

Expressionism has never been this easy!

Part Luke, part Duncan...Oh the horror!

It's her only chance to be tall. In her words, 'I look like a model!' Well, sorta... ;)

I have clones! Thousands of them!

This puzzle took us, three adults, about half an hour to finish! Does it reflect on us, or the difficulty of the puzzle?

Entrance to the banking quarter...apparently it's illegal to take photos there, but nobody told us that...

Apparently this was used as a promo thing for the upcoming 2010 world cup...or something...

Sk8r boi! Not... There were skaters all over outside the public library. They warranted a photo.

The Johannesburg Library. I didn't actually know it existed until that day...I kinda figured we had one, somewhere, but I had yet to see the thing.

Oggling the city from the 50th floor of the Carlton Centre. It really is amazing!

The view to the east. My house is out there somewhere...

It's amazing, but evident, that Johannesburg is the worlds largest man-made forest.

Sunset over Jozi (Johannesburg's nickname for all you non-South Africans).

Chirrup-chirrup

2009-04-29T11:12:00.004+02:00

Working in the biology building, one tends to become accustomed to certain things, and indeed, find things that many would be surprised or horrified by, merely notable. As a good example, today Helen told me about how her and Ingrid were walking down the corridor and saw a guinea-pig-sized rat (or so they claim) scuttle into the girls bathroom. Now, for many, this would result in untold intestinal horrors and a great deal of constipation for fear of running into the bathrooms new resident. But not here! The woman of our building will continue to frequent the facilities, unfazed.

Another resident of our building (possibly only our corridor) is a black house-cricket. He's been here for some time and everyone has seen him wandering up and down the hall. We don't pay him much mind nor do we particularly hold him in poor regard. He's just our cricket.

He has frequently come to hang out in our lab, as we often leave the door wide open. He simply saunters in and usually gets met by one of us with a broom, gently showing him the way out. He only once managed to get in and hide behind the fridge, but it was a short-lived stay. I'm not sure why, but he figured the real estate we had on offer was not to his liking.

We hadn't heard or seen him in a very long time and I assumed he had come to the end of his rope and kicked the bucket, until today. I was walking off to the main office to collect some test papers that need marking and as I passed my supervisors office, I heard him. Our little cricket had set up shop in his office and was chirruping like there was no tomorrow! He was really belting forth! It was so funny!

Chuckling to myself, I headed off to the office and collected the papers. On my return, I passed his office again and discovered that someone had come to see him. The really funny part was that I couldn't hear either people over the cricket! He was really going nuts in there! I have yet to find out what my supervisor thinks of his new bunk-mate, but I get the feeling that the halls will smell of insecticide in the near future...

Crowd: Surprise! Luke: Dammit!

2009-02-13T18:54:00.003+02:00

Today started off pretty awful. I had to be in at university at 08h00 in order to invigilate a test that the second year students were writing on tree identification. There are three major problems with this scenario. Firstly, it is at 08h00! I'm not used to being conscious any earlier than 08h00! So having to get up 2 hours before and fight the traffic wasn't the best way to start off the day...

Secondly, it's a test. So that means, no interaction with the students at all, no communication, nothing. Simply walk around the room ensuring that you look stern and making sure nobody tries to cheat. Lastly, it's freaking TREE IDENTIFICATION!!! They get books to do it all by and have over an hour in which to do it! It's really not that difficult (...unless you use that one, really crappy book, in which case, God help you because you'll never find what you are looking for...), and yet, students will sit and stare into their book, occasionally glancing at the specimen before them for more than the allotted time, and STILL fail the test! That, and it's really difficult to get enthused about trees...

Despite all the negatives of invigilating an exam, I left the test feeling content and looking forward to doing a good days-worth of work. In truth, I was also feeling a little ill after the chocolachino I'd had at the beginning of the test to try and keep me awake (I think my stomach isn't used to having to deal with a large, caffeinated, hot, 2-sachets-of-sugar'ed beverage, so early in the morn, given that I rarely drink coffee, or milk for that matter!). But I persevered and got back to my lab.

After a brief email check, I was distracted by one of those Gmail headliners linking to another site. It was one of those discovery.com links about some fossils that had recently been found on the Isle of Wight (VERY cool for those interested in such things...check it out!). After quizzing Helen's knowledge of palaeontology, I began to work.

At some stage during this all, I realised the Helen had been taking an unusually high number of bathroom breaks all morning. I was mildly concerned as to her situation, but, as one does not discuss these things, the state of her digestive system remained a mystery...

Eventually Helen decided she needed to go to the library and return a book and asked if I would like a walk. I, in hindsight, should have stayed to work, as I had by that point achieved very little in the way of actual work (Some of my friends who used to be part of the lab had arrived and we'd been chatting, catching up...you know how it is!). None the less, we departed.

After successfully returning the book, we headed back down the passage to my lab. My supervisor was standing in the corridor, as he does sometimes, and started chatting to us about something. After a little chatter, I decided that I really had better return to work and turned to open my door, but not without noticing how many people were in the room opposite mine. This, too, is fairly normal and so I didn't think much of it.

However, as I opened my door and stepped into my room, I instantly knew something was up. There were baloons everywhere and people shouting 'Surprise!'. Indeed...I was!

It turned out that Helen had organised a surprise party for my birthday on Sunday! It was really awesome! So many people showed up (which kinda weirded me out a tad, as we never have more than 10 or so people come to our surprise parties...) and it was just really nice! I was a little annoyed at myself though. I totally didn't see it coming! Normally I kinda sense that, as my birthday slowly creeps up on me, someone is bound to organise a surprise party! They always do! Without fail! So 10 points to the organisers!

Thanks Helen! :)

PS. Note to self: don't eat two cupcakes and a Sparkle (A type of hard candy) in rapid succession ever again...

Suicide over statistics?

2009-02-10T09:23:00.003+02:00

I'm going to kill myself, or my laptop. One of us has to go. And I like my laptop a lot! So I think it will have to be me...

I'm busy writing up my dissertation for my Masters degree and all has gone relatively smoothly...until now.

On Friday I produced a graph. It's a very pretty graph. It's blue and green and fits well into a document in MS Word! And yesterday (Monday, the next week) I attempted to produce a second graph of the same type, using the same program and procedure, and the damn thing won't work! I can't figure out what I have to do to get a graph! It's driving me insane! And to add insult to injury, my supervisor has promised to help me, but is nowhere to be seen!

Grumble, grumble...

...in my pants!

2009-01-23T21:30:00.005+02:00

My drinking game career didn't get off to a good start. I think I was about 10 or so when I played my first ever drinking game. It was the Star Wars Drinking Game!

I was a huge fan of Star Wars, as was my cousin, Duncan, with whom I played the game. He'd found the rules to the game on the Internet after searching for Star Wars. So one day we decided to play the game while watching the movies.

The rules were simple; drink whenever someone says 'I've got a bad feeling about this...', 'Use the force, Luke...' and so on. Dutifully, we drank at all the appropriate times. Shortly into the movie, the first of our little bladders had given up the fight and the first bathroom break was declared. In fact, they happened with rapid succession as the film progressed. Eventually, between us, we decided that the game was not all that much fun and gave up.

You see, the problem was, neither of us actually knew what a drinking game was about, and so had spent the afternoon drinking litres of water...

My drinking game career has improved dramatically since then, and I was recently introduced to a new drinking game. The game is aptly entitled 'In my pants' and involves adding the phrase '...in my pants!' to the end of every sentence. Failure to do so requires taking a drink and as the game progresses, to invent increasingly complex and ludacris rules that must be adhered to, as one does with drinking games...When played in earnest, the game is fatal, or so I am told.

Besides it's more serious outcomes, the game is hysterical and is almost guaranteed to have you in stitches from the get go! I can say this with conviction having played it once over cocktails with friends. However, it is not always appropriate to play drinking games and thus Helen devised a way to take the game beyond the limitations of appropriate culturally determined drinking hours.

In South Africa, one of the biggest sugar producers is a company called Huletts. Their sugar can be found in little paper sachets in coffee shops and restaurants country-wide and it is these little bags of saccharine goodness that are the key to endless hours of entertainment! For on the back of the sugar packets are printed, what they term 'Words of Wisdom'.

Taken seriously, these can probably impart profound truths into the hearts of the masses, but not when in the hands of Helen or myself! The remainder of this blog will be some examples of these pearls of wisdom. The first two are examples of the lame, nauseating kinds of quotes that can be found. The rest are the kind one really wants for this game. Don't forget to add '...in my pants!' to the end of them! :D

Incurring the wrath of the gods...

2009-01-14T11:27:00.002+02:00

Does anyone believe in the Gods of Traffic? Because if you do, please would you let me know what I did wrong this morning! I got out of bed, got dressed, did some sit-ups, had breakfast, washed up and left the house, as I always do. There was nothing particularly special about today, as far as I know, and yet, it went so horribly wrong.

I normally take the hiway to get to university after 9am as it is much faster than driving through, or around, the city to get there from where I live. But today, as I drove on the bridge that crosses over the hiway I looked over and saw that the hiway was completely jammed up. So I decided that dispite the fact that I avoid alternatives because of how much longer they take, I would take the long way round.

I got stopped at the first traffic light. I waited patiently and pulled off once the light went green, as one does. I'd literally been moving for about a minute when I got stopped at the second light. I was a little annoyed as the two lights are about 250m apart, so it's not very far. Here too, I waited patiently and then pulled off. By the third light, another 200m down the road, I was stopped again. This trend continued throughout the morning...

At one stage I knew that there was a longish straight stretch of road, only interrupted by a traffic circle, and so I was rather optimistic about making up for lost time on this stretch. But to my horror, as I pulled up to the circle, a mechanical digger pulled into the road in front of me! And this one was in no hurry to get anywhere at all.

Along my way to university today I was further slowed by one accident (not involving me...thank goodness!) and large road-works which backed up traffic for about three blocks. All in all, my driving experiences of this morning were not ideal and probably would have put any learner drivers off the idea of driving for life.

So after approximately 55min on the road (it usually takes me about 15-20min) I got to university. Once there I discovered to my horror that my supervisor wasn't present! This normally wouldn't phase me, but at the moment I'm really stuck with my work and I can't figure out what to do, hense the need to have him around. So, to calm my nerves, I decided to go to do some photocopying.

I got to the copy room and swiped my copy card in the machine. Nothing happened. Now I know that I am prone to swiping it the wrong way round and so I inevitably have to do it a few times before I get it right. But today, literally nothing happened no matter what I did. I eventually called over the secretary for help and she, after a barrage of questions and a completely incredulous tone, came to my aid. Or, at least, that was her intention.

We finally concluded that the machine had finally given up the ghost and that I should come back later when the other one was free for use. So I retreated to my lab to check my e-mail, which apart from some creative spam and one joke e-mail, wasn't particularly exciting.

I hope that the day improves...

We’re better than you – and we know it!

2009-01-13T15:00:00.003+02:00

So, I recently wrote a guest-post for Helen's blog about child-birth. Following the raving success of my musings, I requested a guest-post from Helen, and here it is...

We’re better than you – and we know it!

I started going to gym about 6 months ago, took a break while I ran up and down mountains chasing lizards and then started again after I went scuba-diving and realised that my arm muscles have almost completely atrophied to a point where I was unable to pull myself up and into the boat. To my credit, it’s a pretty high boat…

I like gym. Maybe it’s just my masochistic side that loves being exhausted to a point where I can barely climb the stairs to the exit (whoever designed the place was a moron), and maybe it’s that I love turning in my ipod and ignoring the world around me as I run until I just can’t anymore. But as the weeks go by, I can’t help but notice the different people who go to the gym. And while it was fun to invent back-stories for them at first, now I find myself allocating them to groups:

Soccer-mom gym bunnies: these are most common if you go to gym midmorning. They are the type to have perfect manicures, matching gym outfits and running shoes and hair that is blow-dried into perfect pouffyness after every session. They tend to travel in packs and between dropping Soleil off at violin and picking Kyle up from karate class (in a gigantic SUV that is never going to go more off-road than parking at the local mall) they are seen running side-by-side on treadmills chatting about their personal lives in rather strident tones. I’m never sure which annoys me more: that they are so loud about what should be private; that their private lives aren’t interesting enough to warrant eavesdropping or that they never seem to sweat. Either way the unspoken competitive streak is there: they are always best friends as long as whoever their gym-buddy is doesn’t lose more weight than them.

Early morning high-achievers: I run into these guys a lot because they tend to go to gym either before work (at around 6am) or after work (around 7pm). I don’t mind these people as they tend to be driven, focused and above all, silent. They arrive early; do their gym routine as quickly as possible before showering, blow-drying hair and applying makeup at lightning speed and then rushing off to work where I presume the PA will have a cup of coffee waiting. I think, on some level, we all want to be like them, as long as it doesn’t come complete with a midlife crisis, stomach ulcer and high blood pressure.

The ex-early morning high-achievers: I feel quite sorry for these guys (they’re always male). These are the people who used to be high-powered yuppies, but years of long hours in the competitive business environment as well as family braais and rugby on the weekend leave them with a lovely beer-gut and the stamina to play 9 holes of golf, but not too much more. Then they hit middle age, realise they are going bald, buy a sports car and try very hard to get their secretaries interested in them. I hate to admit it, but whenever I drive past an oldish man in a sports car I feel the urge to cough ‘Midlife crisis!’ at them and giggle while zooming off. Fortunately I’m not that immature. Anymore anyway. So at the gym these guys still feel as if they are 25. They compete with everyone – not in the macho bodybuilder way where they know they’re better and they show off because they can, but in a rather sad, masochistic way. For instance, they still never ever use any equipment without adding extra weights. Even if they are doing a circuit behind the toughest weightlifter in the country, they will add weights. Of course this means that they usually can’t do anything with any level of control and they end up jerking and dropping weights everywhere. They’re also usually limited to about 2 reps per machine in order to avoid an aneurysm, but they make up for this by glowering at everyone around them and puffing their chest out if they see anyone lifting less than them (although ‘lifting’ is a bit of an overstatement…).

A new generation of stage-mothers: These are the soccer-moms at a whole new level – once the kids get too rebellious for ballet lessons or something they start accompanying their mothers to the gym. I’m not talking about the little kids who go to the play area, or about the bored kids who wander around and poke at anything with buttons (I mean machines, get your minds out the gutter!). Generally these are the pre-teen daughters who are being trained into eating disorders and compulsive exercise regimes at a nice early age. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more supportive of mothers who teach their kids to be healthy and exercise regularly, but these mothers take it to the extreme, effectively living vicariously through their kids. As long as the little darling can run on the treadmill without being propped up, she will continue and therefore be fitter, thinner and altogether better than everyone else’s kids. Unfortunately most other others get this idea too, and so, if you go to gym in the middle of the afternoon you will see row upon row of bobbing blonde ponytails as the kids exercise while their mothers glare at each other and feel obligated to point out every single flaw in every other child (in a very subtle stage whisper) to their own spawn. After gym they will go and get smoothies and go and have pedicures together, in training for the next generation of overachievers who will probably end up as soccer moms.

The macho-men: much like how girls find it difficult to go to the bathroom alone, men find it difficult to go to gym without an entourage. Of course there is always the slight issue of who is in charge, and who forms the entourage, but that’s all in the friendly spirit of competition! These guys go to the gym in groups of three or four and take turns throwing weights around while making macho grunting noises. These guys range from late teens to late twenties, and as time passes the friendly competition becomes more and more intense. Sometimes the guys are really keen on getting in shape and they work hard and appreciate the accountability of belonging to such a group, but as far as I’ve noticed, there is quite often at least one member of the group who lies to feel macho. I’m not sure if this person goes to gym on his own, secretly, or if he just has a high pain threshold, but he’s always pushing the others way out of their comfort zones. This group has an unspoken rule that whatever one of them can lift/bench-press/leg press or whatever, they can all lift. So the scrawny little guy who invariably made friends with the others over an exciting game of D&D and who gets winded throwing the dice more than twice in a row… well lets just say that it’s not pretty to watch him gritting his teeth and straining… on the plus side, people like me get to watch the mach guys and picture them in twenty years time, with receding hairlines and the onset of a beer gut, trying desperately to regain lost youth… yes, they are well on their way to becoming ex-early morning high achievers!

The normal people: I know this post is coming across as bitter and cynical, but I think a lot of that attitude comes from seeing how uncomfortable the various stereotypes make the regular people. They don’t necessarily try, but the macho groups, or the soccer-moms in their designer gym gear can really make the man on the street a bit unhappy. These are the people who wear an old tracksuit and takkies, who actually sweat while exercising (and not in the tough, projectile-type sweat of the macho men either), who take breaks to catch their breath, who stand with their heads tilted, staring at the newest piece of equipment, tying to figure out if it’s a leg-machine, arm-machine, ATM, or a bench to rest on. These are the folks who occasionally feel so intimidated that they try to break out of their routine, where they invariably end up setting the treadmill at 30km/hr on an incline and go flying backwards (true story, I saw it last week!). So normal people, I salute you! Keep tying, and then, one day, when you bench-press more than the nearest macho-man, I will break out into applause as he tries to beat you and burst a blood vessel!

Zee Old Folks: These guys are the terror of most gym-goers (according to 100% of people surveyed, which was basically the last 5 people I spoke to. Thanks guys!). They aren’t too bad while exercising, they tend to do their own thing, usually involving swimming or walking. They aren’t necessarily ancient, in fact the mental image I have while typing this is of a 50-something woman. The reason that the image is burned into my brain? Because these people are the terror of the change room. Yes, the people who you would probably never want to see naked, are the ones who finish their workouts and then proceed to walk around the change rooms stark naked.

This is the scenario: you finish your workout and go to change or take a shower, but then you realise that there is a middle-aged naked person standing in from of your locker, having a conversation with someone across the room. This makes me very uncomfortable, because I hate to interrupt a conversation, don’t want to stare but am uncomfortable making eye-contact with a naked person. At the same time, tapping a naked person on the shoulder… awwwkward… my response is usually to go and wash my face, maybe go to the bathroom and come back later. This doesn’t usually work though and eventually I mutter “excuse me!” while staring at a point about two feet to the left of their head. Then you grab your stuff and go and shower quickly, avoiding looking at another one of zee old folks, who will be showering with the shower door open. WHY???

Then you get back from the shower, usually walking next to the person who was showering with the door open, to find that they will walk, naked, while CARRYING their towel. Seriously, not only is it a lot kinder to wrap the thing around you, it’s also more efficient ad you can carry your shampoo without dropping it and bending in front of me! You go and get your clean clothes out of your new locker (the talker is still standing in front of the one you used before) and try to change while staring at the floor. In the meantime the talker and the showerer will have started a conversation, and one of them will be standing with one leg up on the bench while rubbing lotion all over themselves. As by then I’m usually trying to tie my shoelaces, this will be at my eye-level. Once you are dressed you do not stop staring at the floor, while gathering everything and escaping.

I guess I will stop there, leaving you folks with that fabulous mental image. Have an awesome day!

I survived! Barely...

2008-12-30T19:08:00.006+02:00

Merry Christmas Bloggers! Sorry, it's late, I know, but better late than never!

As the Christmas period draws to a close, one seems to always find one's thoughts wandering to just how over-socialised they have been over the last week and just how over-fed they have been within that same time frame. I, in particular, have been running around from function to function, all of which require a great deal of eating, and it's really taken its toll...

...or so I thought...

Last night I didn't sleep very well. I'm currently house-sitting for my cousin and her husband. They recently moved into a new house, which is enormous by the way, and have yet to actually move in, in the sense that all of their worldly possessions are still in boxes, strewn across the floor throughout the house. While this doesn't bother me in the least, the sheer size of the place does somewhat. It is just so big, and everything gets all creaky at night! To add to the sense of unease, last night it rained, while I watched a movie called 'Turistas' about Brazilian organ trafficking, which didn't ease my nerves at all, and thus, I didn't sleep very well.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, I'd just go about my day feeling tired, potentially grumpy, and hit the hay early the next evening. But today, my parents and I had decided to go on a 7km hike at an amazing place north of Pretoria, called Tswaing Crater. It's a meteor impact crater with a salt-lake in the middle of it. It's really beautiful and, apart from the foul-smelling salt lake, very interesting.

The amazing part about the whole thing was that despite my lack of sleep, recent over-eating and complete absence of exercise I managed to do it all with ease! I am most impressed with myself! The only down side to the day was not taking enough water with and the resulting headache that I now endure. That, and the fact that my mother nearly passed out from exhaustion...

PHOTOS!

Fooling around with the camera in the car on the way there

The view from the crater rim

The plaque of Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, a brilliant scientist, according to the plaque anyway...

A typical, dramatic, stunning and beautiful South African scene

The view from the bottom...

For all your previous-drunken-night-can't-remember-how-I-got-that-cut brawl needs...Puncher repairs! :D

Nostalgia and the embarrasment of the past...

2008-12-21T20:21:00.005+02:00

So, this morning, my parents and I went over to my grandmother's for tea, as we do on Sundays. Somehow, we got round to discussing photos and in the process, began looking through some of my grandmother's old photos. Here is a selection ranging from the ridiculous, to the beautiful...

Believe it or not, these beauties are in fact part of a Church acting ensemble! And they are in fact all women!

This is in fact a photo of my grandmother some time ago. I thought it was quite striking because:

She looks rather beautiful and sometimes, I think anyway, it's hard to imagine grandparents looking anything other than wrinkly and old.
She's got the look of a Hollywood starlet, riding the crest of her own wave of fame... :)

This is a pic of my great-grandmother. Apparently she didn't have much of a sense of humour...you wouldn't think so, would you?

Here we see a rather cute picture of my great-grandfather, doing what dad's do best...pushing kids around in a wheel-barrow! Go great-grandad!

I just like this one because the puppy is cute :D

I think we can all agree that we are, if only just a little, glad that the 50's and 60's have ended...The really scary part:

The one on the right in purple with the disturbing unilateral nipple-stand is the BRIDE! The side-kick is her bridesmaid.

Finally, this is a picture of the Namib desert in Namibia, taken by my father on a family holiday. It's bleak, barren and beautiful...

The most random shopping trip ever

2008-12-16T11:27:00.004+02:00

My mother is of the opinion that one should do all their grocery shopping on a weekly basis. Generally, this happens on a Friday evening so that the rest of the weekend is completely uninterrupted, but occasionally, it has to happen on a Saturday morning, as was the case with 'The most random shopping trip ever'. I took a series of photos on my phone during the trip to give you a taste of the weird things that we encounted on this trip...

The first thing that should have pointed to the odd nature of this excursion was the fact that the shopping centre was hosting what they termed, 'Adventure Christmas!' It was basically a whole bunch of games and fun things to do in the parking lot of the shopping centre. It included rock climbing (pictured here), a mechanical bull, paintball and some other stuff. After all, what is Christmas without a good game of paintball?

As we turned down one of the aisles, my sister shrieked and pointed out that this doll has no pants. She failed to notice that the child-doll-thing at her feet has no face whatsoever...

For some strange reason, management of the store obviously felt the need to comfort shoppers when they buy eggs. Thus they created the 'Safe Zone', an area where all buyers of eggs would have sanctuary from the harrowing and dangerous world of the egg aisle...

As we were waiting at the tills to pay for our shopping my sister and I confirmed that the shopping centre was just a tad on the confused side. After all, how many store managers can claim to play host to the Christmas Bunny?

Sodwana! Diving! Sea-sickness! Pills! Happiness! :D

2008-12-03T20:37:00.008+02:00

This past weekend, I went to Sodwana bay to partake of my final, qualifying scuba dive, and have an all-round awesome time. And I am pleased to announce that I achieved both goals!

The trip down was really great fun! Helen and I spent the majority of the trip chortling away, as we do, while Jenny and Megan (our trip-mates) tried to zone out and ignore us in the front seats. Several key themes would emerge during this drive that would alter the direction of our holiday completely, including the emergence of Helen's narcolepsy (discussed here...) and the overriding theme of conversation that would emerge at random during discussions throughout the following 4 days...taxidermy.

We arrived in Sodwana in the late afternoon, excited, tired, amazed at just how hot it was and generally confused as to why the reception desk was being manned by a Dan Brown novel and not by a person. A little walk around the dive charters camp bumped us into the operator, Eve, who was very nice and checked us in. She then lead us around and explained all to us, including giving us a tour of our accommodation for the next 4 days. Helen and I selected bunks immediately (a VERY hasty decision which I would regret soon thereafter...) and after some dinner cooked in the communal cooking area, we went to bed. After all, we were due for our first dive the next morning and were all very keen and needed to be well rested.

That night, as I ascended onto my bed, the top bunk - Helen, had the bottom one - I immediately realised what a mistake the bed selection had been. There are more steady chronic drunks out there than that bed! It swayed with every bowel movement or breath of both Helen and myself! So, eventually, at about 4AM, I decided to give up on the bed and dismounted to sleep on the floor.

As it turned out, this was probably my best decision as the floor wasn't moving and happened to be the coolest part of our furnace-like room...

The next morning, after a great deal of confusion surrounding whether I had fallen out of the bed or leaped from it in sheer desperation, we all got up and got ready to go diving. We were due to dive at 10:30, and so thought it best to get to the beach by 9:30 at the latest.

Eventually, we left for our dive at 11:30. I would be lying if I claimed that I had been anything short of anxious about this dive, it being my first-ever ocean dive. None the less, I boldly helped push the boat out into the surf, scrambled into the dingy and held on for dear life as we scooted over the waves into the open ocean...

The boat ride out was SO cool! I loved it! It would soon emerge that this was one of the best parts of going scuba-diving, an opinion echoed by both Helen and Jenny. And, apart from one incident where the skipper nearly killed us all, it was great fun and one always felt at ease with having your life in the hands of a hairy old sea dog (...well, only one of them could really pass as a hairy old sea dog, but there's very little drama in describing them as ripped blonde kids in their twenties taking a gap year...).

Eventually, we found our place over the reef and, after being helped by the skipper to don all the gear (an exciting new experience in itself - we were all used to having to struggle and do it ourselves), we dived. I lasted about 34 minutes on my first dive, and following a 5 min ascent to the surface, I was helped into the boat by the skipper. I soon realised that I, in fact, was one of those unfortunates that suffer from sea-sickness. I was given a lollipop by the skipper and I then learned another valuable bit of information: NEVER take the sweet! It makes things SO much worse!

I felt progressively more and more ill while diver after diver emerged from the depths to sing the praises of those who came up with the idea to go under water with a can of pressurized gas on their back. In truth, the diving experience was fantastic, something I'll never forget, but at the time, the sheer amazingness of it all had been overshadowed by my need to reveal my breakfast to the world. After everyone had returned to the surface, we headed back to shore. The ride back was fun (albeit, not as fun as the ride out had been) and as soon as the boat came to a sickening stop on the sands of the beach, I stumbled off and, weight belt and fins in tow, headed back to our gazebo to have a little sit-down.

For all the subsequent dives, I graciously took medication that Helen gave me which worked like a charm! I was due to dive later that day, but hadn't felt confident that the sphincters holding my stomach closed would not stage a coup, and thus opted out. It did allow me to take some great photos of the boat being launched, the beach and the waves:

Our trusty wave-riding, streamlined, balloon...

Look! There's a boat zooming off into the surf!

The beautiful Sodwana coastline

Party! I wish not...

2008-11-25T21:20:00.004+02:00

So, seeing as every other person I know that has a blog has taken to writing again, I feel compelled to do the same. Gotta keep up with the Jones's and all that...

I recently went to a party to celebrate a 25th wedding anniversary. In this day and age, simply having a 25th wedding anniversary is quite a feat and cause for great celebration. However, in this particular case, I just wish that I didn't have to celebrate it with the couple in question. The problem is that they are a family who I have known for some time and in that time I have grown to like them less and less. They are crass, crude, entirely self-centered and juvenile, all of which I cannot stomach. I realise that I am a snob, but what can I do?

So, on Sunday evening, I was dragged, reluctantly, along with my family to this party. Due to the fact that my one sister is currently in the UK, our party of party-goers consisted of my parents, my sister and I. The party was set to start at 5 (what kind of dinner party starts at 5 in the afternoon?!) and the dress code, according to the invitation anyway, was 'smart'. This in itself caused great consternation as none of us could figure out where on the continuum between naked and meeting the Queen of England 'smart' lay, but we figured it sat around the region of smart-casual and dressed accordingly.

Upon our arrival, we realised that smart actually meant, dress as if you are going clubbing in a really seedy area, or alternatively, as if you were going to a house party.

Starting the evening realising that you are severely over-dressed didn't help to improve my outlook on the festivities. The immediate arrival of a waiter with sparkling wine improved my assessment of the situation and after discovering the snack table, I began to think that perhaps things really weren't going to be all that bad. I was gravely mistaken...

To cut a very long, and painful, story short, things tobogganed downhill from this point on. The sparkling wine ran out within about the first 30 minutes, only to be replaced by a truly vile, dry white wine which put a proverbial cork in my sister's and my plans to get tipsy in an effort to make the experience bearable. The DJ for the evening turned out to be tragically overconfident with regard to the ability to woo the audience with his wit. In addition to this, his ability to cram just about every politically incorrect concept into everything he said, as well as a great number of expletives as punctuation didn't exactly warm my sister or I to him. There are hip movements displayed by a 50-something old man on the dancefloor I witnessed that are now permanently burned into my mind which, really, I could have done without. Not knowing a single person there, apart from the celebrated couple and their family didn't help much, but having a camera eased the boredom slightly.

Luckily, we had been placed at a table with a family that had two small children, thus providing the means for our escape. We kept a close eye on the state of fatigue of the children and with the emergence of the first yawn, we proclaimed that we too had best be on our way.

Much to my relief, my mother has decided that this was to be the final event of the family in question that we would ever attend. I've waited about 5 long years to hear that...

OH JOY AND RAPTURE!!!

2008-11-08T22:57:00.003+02:00

Behold! The Majesty! It has finally happened! A company has realised the superiority of E171 and E133!

For the average Joe, that means, someone is making blue food...

For all who don't know me, I am a huge lover of all things blue! In fact, I believe that Helen and I once devoted an entire afternoon to finding out if what we thought was a truely blue fruit actually existed. Turns out, it was a white fruit but the photo had been taken with a flash in such a way as to make it appear blue. We were crushed...or at least, I was...

Cocktails are always better when they are blue (except for that one that had the dead fly in it...)! Blue pasta rocks! And now, blue chocolates! Thank you Nestle!