In Dedication to the Woodstock Stealer

Today is Wednesday, a hot, sunny, wonderful Wednesday. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the heat, oh no, I love it. Really. Just, you know for someone who has overactive sweat glands, it's so not as wonderful as it should be (get rid of that little flaw and I shall be just dandy).

Let me tell you about the awesomeness of my week thus far - Monday began with a little mixed martial arts: I totally annihilated the concrete outside campus. I swear, the ground didn't stand a chance against me, I was THAT good. One minute, there I was strolling into campus and the next thing I know the grounds rushing up to fist me and my glasses is flying in one direction, my bag in another and I just decided to knee it in the groin and move on. So, the results of Round 1: Dash 1; Ground 0.

Tuesday was decidedly uneventful. Oh! Unless you count the fire at campus. I know, we see black billowing smoke and run to find out whats happeneng (someone did say that normal people would be running in the opposite direction, but then again, we're not normal are we?). Anyway, the fire was put out with two extinguishers and three bins of water - it was almost exciting, except I didn't really get to add my 'man-power' to the extinguishing effort (I don't think that I would have made much of a difference though, do you? I give off so much hot air with all my rambling and senseless jargon though, that I might have fuelled that mini furnace).

And now we've turned full cirlce, back to this 29 degree day. I woke up this morning feeling sick, like you know, SICK. I thought, 'oh damn, here we go again, the annual flu is here to bug me'. I couldn't even have been bothered to set my hair properly. And what do you know, the day I don't spend two minutes on the way I look, is the day people keep telling me, 'Oh! I love your look!' Fml, I didn't even comb my hair.

On the bright side, I've got taebo today. Oh yeah! I, literally cannot wait! If I were a ping pong, I'd be bouncing off the walls with anticipation!

Ok, let me go, and entertain the Siv - who's literally pacing up and down the place in boredom.

Bye people of the world (and Kerl-i). Adios, till the next time my very busy and sometimes exasperating scehdule of assignments and readings lets me visit you on the world wide.

Never Let a Pot Plant Fall into the Wrong Hands

AMANDLA!!! Pump your fists in the air and stamp your feet, we’re striking! I think that striking is part of the South African culture. However, when I picture freedom fighters, I picture them serious, well informed and intelligently sensible protestors, calling for our freedom from oppression…AMANDLA! Today, I looked at the strikers and saw rather unfit college students, dragging their feet in a somewhat pathetic rendition (not all of them, some of them were very energetic and in sync) of a rhythmic beat, dancing and waving yellow banners about, calling for Lord knows only what.

Every year, without fail, the Durban Universities can anticipate a strike of some sort, for this or the other. Honestly, they should now print it on the campus calendars, “Week 5: strike,” it’s becoming so regular.

Laurenzo (yup, like from the Merchant of Venice), was telling us how the strikers told him, “join the strike or die.” To which Laurenzo rejoined, “No, we’re going home.” And the strikers blankly concluded, “Oh okay. That too.”

My question is, do half of these people even know what it is that they’re striking about? And secondly, why can’t it be negotiated in a civil manner? What, could you please inform me, is the need to whack a girl with a pot-plant (A POTPLANT!) – while you’re in stitches of laughter, give some thought to the poor things face – I know I certainly wouldn’t want to be taken by surprise like that (especially not with a potplant!)

So in conclusion, while the German students may find watching tyres burning in the quad an experience of great thrill and excitement, many of us are quite simply annoyed with this whole striking business.

Boy are they lucky they didn’t try the whole, “strike or die,” line on me. I would have gone all psycho smurf on them for sure and bombed their ingratiating asses all the way to the fifteenth planet.

4.75 is This Years New Pi!

4.75 - one of my favourite numbers this year. It marks the end of my preschool years, and serves just a quarter term more till I can officially be of age to go to Grade One…again.

The joys, of being a leap year – forever young. That, I think, is my life’s theme song. Even when I’m 64 years old, I can still say with an utterly straight face, without even a hint of a lie, “I’m 16 dear,” when anybody teases me about my age.

I’m not complaining, oh no. I love being a leap year. It’s different. Totally keeping in theme with my life story – where I somehow always manage to do things in a completely contrary manner to those around me. Almost as if the day I was born, was a prelude to what the rest of my life was going to be like. I was supposed to be born in March you see, I popped out early – too eager I guess to assault the world with my over enthusiastic tendencies and bouncing off the wall abstract notions. So I came in peace too soon (either that or Pluto really was tired of me), walked without crawling, talked (too much and too fast) by the time I was two (and never stopped since, nor has my speed dwindled – just increased at an exponential rate), went to school a year before time, and generally fast forwarded my life so that here I am, at the age of 4.75 years, attending University. It’s one of those things that makes absolute sense in its arbitrariness: the day I was born – it was MEANT to be. God took a look inside the soul he’d created and went, “hold up a minute, the rest of the year is too systematic for this one, push her forwarda few days, the 29^th Feb, perfect – now they can’t say that we didn’t warn them”.

So what did I do for my non-birthday? I got depressed. We’ll not get into that, though for a good portion of my day, it felt as if maybe it wasn’t such a happy notion that I was alive. Abandonment, dear readers, is the worst feeling ever. Especially when those who make you think that you’re important to them, then act as if you’re not – a lesson well learnt: actions speak louder than words.

Lin and Bean to the rescue though: an impromptu little ice cream party, with a truly unique rendition of Happy Birthday echoing at every table in the vicinity and all eyes glued to the merry scene and surprised and according to Lin, priceless, expression on my face. “For she’s a jolly good slum-oooooo and so says all of us. Hip hip! Hooray!”

Ah, lovely people of the world, true friends come from farms, little places like Port Elizabeth where every other Indian is ‘Rajesh’, and from Phoenix (even if they had gold teeth, I couldn’t possibly love them any less); true friends come from random chance meetings that you never ever could have guessed would change your life so utterly; true friends come in all shapes and sizes (this is perfectly exact); true friends are drama queens and G’s, mad and funny, sensible and perfectly imperfect; true friends pulled me out from my little well of idiotic self-pity and made me feel that there were at least a few people who were happy that God decided to take my little blemished soul and push it out of the assembly line on that 29^th of February 1992.

To every person who remembered that I was born sometime around this time 19 years ago and wished me; To D and her debatable leap-year-birthday ratio and the 14years of solid and unblemished friendship; Bhen and her bloodlessly solid sisterhood; Nimz who sent me a wonderfully unique and true-to-self message; to Kerl-i who was my first birthday call and graced to walk up and down in the heat; to Tarryn who came to Howard early and Bhai who’s always been my sunshine in the rain, pillar in the wind, and shelter in the storm; to Lin who brightened my day…and most of all to Bean: Bean the wonderful, silly, absolutely cooler than ice G, who always has my back – Thank You.