Marita Says

Marita has Moved

2007-09-23T21:16:00.000+07:00

Because I can not sit still for long and felt like a change I decided to move Marita Says. Follow my cooking, sewing and some other adventures at the new Marita Says.

Future Updates and Recent Activities

2007-09-17T12:39:00.000+07:00

Last week was an exciting week in the kitchen and soon I will be posting some new recipes that I’ve experimented with. Here are some sample pictures to hopefully pique your interest.

I’ve been getting around to some other fun activities as well. On Friday I got round to buying a T-shirt that has been on my mind after a recent trip to Propaganda in the Emporium.

The shirt is designed by a group called Error Clothing whose designs are stocked at various outlets in Bangkok and is also available in Singapore and North America. I liked the simple design, the feel of the 100% cotton jersey fabric, and fell in love with the endearing image. They have numerous other designs available for order at their website, which is easy to navigate and has a simple color search function.

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Alexander and I went on a two-day visa trip to Vientiane last week and got to spend time at our favorite Vientiane coffee shop, JoMa as well as discovering one or two new pleasing places to while away the time in the slowest capital city I know. We got around to the morning market again and I reminded myself that I still want to say a word or two about Hmong crafts, which we saw aplenty in Luang Phabang on our previous visit, but not today.

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About two weeks ago I bought a new sewing machine. It was inexpensive and on sale and it has all the basic functions I need from a machine; straight stitching, zigzag, buttonholes and easy to use. The only problem was the ‘cutesy’ detail on the one side of the machine.

Saturday afternoon I finally got to use it for the first time. I turned a pair of dress pants of Alexander’s into shorts. A really simple procedure, but I was beaming with excitement when I started working on the project. I have not used a sewing machine since late February. The shorts came out nicely. I moved the hem to just below the knee, a style feature I like because it highlights the calves.

Currently I am working on a bag idea I had recently, drawing up the pattern and working on a mockup. Hopefully I will be able to show off the final creation soon.

Fried Tofu with Cashewnuts

2007-09-07T22:15:00.000+07:00

This was my first experiment with a dish we learned how to prepare at the Thai Farm Cooking School in Chiang Mai. It is a very straightforward and tasty Thai dish. The original recipe called for chicken and carrots, I decided to try it with tofu and asparagus.

You’ll need:
90 grams of sliced firm tofu
¼ cup of asparagus sliced into chunks
¼ cup of sliced onions
¼ cup mushrooms
¼ cup of cashew nuts
2 sliced chilies, lightly toasted
¼ cup chopped spring onions
1 tablespoon oil
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon fish sauce
½ teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
2 tablespoons water

When you have all the ingredients chopped and ready, here is how to prepare it:
Heat the oil in a wok and add the tofu. Fry until golden brown. Add asparagus, onions, mushrooms and water. Continue stir-frying. When it is almost cooked, add the oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, salt and spring onions. Stir-fry and mix well. Turn off the heat, add the cashew nuts and chili and you’re done!

Suggestions for Fried Tofu with Cashew Nuts:
- for more bite, do not seed the chilies
- if you cannot find fish sauce you could probably use soy sauce instead
- you can of course substitute tofu with chicken and the asparagus with carrot

Banana in Coconut Milk with Cinnamon

2007-09-05T22:09:00.000+07:00

We have been quite busy in our kitchen. Alexander has been treating me to chicken and red pepper burritos and a fantastically fragrant Oh Paedek or Lao Pork Casserole, while I tried my hand at fried chicken with cashew nuts and a Thai dessert; bananas in coconut milk.

We prepared the very popular and seasonal fresh mango with coconut milk and sticky rice at the Thai Farm Cooking School in Chiang Mai and I decided to add some elements of this dessert plus one or two other ideas to my version of their bananas with coconut milk.

The original recipe calls for one cup of coconut milk, half a cup of water, one tablespoon of sugar, two ripe bananas- sliced into thick chunks, and a pinch of salt. Mine calls for some additional ingredients: an inch of cinnamon stick (thanks to Speedhakoo who supplies me with fresh sticks from Madagascar), half a cup of sticky rice, and vanilla ice cream.

Preparing the dessert is simple. Pour the coconut milk into a pot and heat it over medium heat until it begins to boil. Add the banana, sugar and cinnamon and cook until soft. Remove the cinnamon stick and add just a pinch of salt. Scoop some ice cream and a spoonful of sticky rice into a dessert bowl and pour some of the coconut milk sauce and banana over it and serve.

It turned out to be quite a decadently rich dessert, considering all the ingredients, but one has to go over the top every now and then.

Suggestions for making bananas in coconut milk:
- for two people I suggest halving the recipe, a whole cup of coconut milk could be a bit much.
- a splash of dark rum wouldn’t hurt!
- an attractive serving suggestion would be to add a piece of cinnamon stick to the dish.
- the sticky rice I picked up from a sweet lady selling Thai desserts in bags from a street side table on the way home. If finding sweet sticky rice is going to be tricky, you could probably also use tapioca.
- of course both the ice cream and sticky rice are optional, but it does add a little something to an otherwise very liquid-y dessert

First Balcony Dinner

2007-09-02T23:24:00.000+07:00

Finally having our balcony kitchen ready, I could not wait to try my hand at some ideas that had been taking shape over the past few months of traveling. The recipe books from the Thai and Lao cooking courses we did would finally be put to good use, but for our first home cooked meal in the new apartment it had to be something original.

In Siem Reap we ate stir-fried pumpkin at a couple of Khmer restaurants. The dish was an instant hit with us and Alexander suggested this as the first one to be prepared in the new kitchen.

I decided not to search for a recipe but just let my senses guide me in experimenting with a new dish. The basics seemed pretty simple; pumpkin, perhaps some chicken, egg and flavoring.

At Tesco down the road, there is unfortunately no Trader Joe’s in Bangkok, we picked up a quartered piece of green pumpkin, one de-boned chicken breast, 2 long green chili peppers (I believe it may have been banana chilies, also known as Hungarian wax chilies), a handful of shiitake mushrooms, eggs and mushroom sauce.

I was a bit nervous about how the dish would turn out, but there was nothing to be worried about. It was a scrumptious success and a hearty first meal.

Preparing this dish turned out to be surprisingly simple. Here’s what you do; clean and slice up the mushrooms, cut up the chicken breast, half the piece of pumpkin, peel and cube it, and slice up the two peppers.

When all is sliced and cubed you can start cooking. Heat about a tablespoon full of sunflower oil over medium to high heat (vegetable oil or any other oil that is not too fragrant would also work) in a wok, when the oil is hot add the pumpkin and cook until it begins too soften a little. Add the chicken and the green chilies at the same time and mix it through with the pumpkin. When the chicken begins to turn light brown, add the mushrooms and keep on stirring it all around. Move everything to the side of the wok so there is a little space in the center for breaking one egg. Gently break up the egg in the pan so it can cook a little and then mix this through with the rest of the ingredients as well. Add about a tablespoon and a half for mushroom sauce when everything is cooked, give it a good stir around and your stir-fried pumpkin is ready to be served!

Suggestions for making stir-fried pumpkin:
- one usually stir-fries over a higher heat, make sure you keep on moving the ingredients in the wok so it does not burn.
- the chili peppers I used turned out to be a bit mild, add a small red or green chili, unseeded, for more spice.
- mushroom sauce adds a lovely flavor to your cooking but do not use too much as it could make the dish too salty, you’ll be able to find it at Asian grocers or the Asian section of a good grocery store.
- you could probably use tofu instead of chicken or even pork, but I doubt if beef would go well with this dish.
- the egg is optional, but I find that it adds some texture to certain dishes and somehow ‘binds’ all the ingredients.

Bangkok Kitchen

2007-08-31T17:42:00.000+07:00

Some hours after waxing poetically about living in Ho Chi Minh City we were looking at the earliest possible flights to Bangkok. My beloved Krung Thep has not been calling, but screaming since we left it almost two months before. It just made plain sense to go back.

We barely set foot in Bangkok when a roller coaster ride of interviews, shopping for decent clothes and house hunting began. It was a nerve wrecking couple of days, but after just over a week both of us had work, a couple of ties and we found the perfect little apartment.

As much as I love traveling, I need to nest, and so finding a place seemed almost more of a priority than finding work. We looked at numerous apartments in various parts of town and finally found two we really liked. We had just finished looking at the second one of the two and were standing outside trying to make up our minds. One of the agent's, in a strong move to win us over, told us that he, as an agent, can give us some advice on picking the right place. He said that when you walk into an apartment and you feel like it is home, you should take it. And so we bid him farewell and called the agent for the apartment on Sukhumvit Soi 11.

Our place is newly built, and came furnished with a bed, lounge set, built in cupboards and after some bargaining, a television. It did not come, however, with a kitchen. As buying food on the street here is such a culinary delight and so easy and inexpensive it makes sense that people would opt to rather just pick up a meal than slave away in front of a stove in the tropical city heat.

But we enjoy cooking in all kinds of climes and places and figured that arranging a kitchen would be an exciting challenge.

The layout of the apartment is such that a kitchen would have to go onto one of the tiny balconies where there is a kitchen sink. The surface area is not enormous and after adding a camp gas stove there is very little work space left. I took some measurements and scoured the home ware departments of some stores until I found a cutting board that would be large enough to fit over part of the sink so we can use it as a work surface.

This made working outside easier, but we still had to extend the kitchen somewhat into the living room/ den area of the apartment, creating a pantry.

Through our browsing around cute little coffee shops such as Vanilla Industry, well stocked grocery stores like Tops, and overwhelming centers like Central we picked up enough utensils, crockery, cutlery and seasonings to get our extended kitchen going. We decided to use the extended shelve in the aforementioned room as storage space for all these items.

And so our kitchen happened.

Ho Chi Minh- first impressions

2007-08-10T15:17:00.001+07:00

When I woke up from my nap on the bus we were already somewhere within the limits of Ho Chi Minh city. We were cruising down a narrow street lined with shop houses, goods like clothing, gold and food displayed outside on the street on mannequins or in glass cabinets.

The narrow streets and shop houses reminded me a little of the suburban streets of Taipei, the wares outside was reminiscent of China Town in Bangkok. I felt like I was arriving somewhere familiar.

But I was still nervous and not sure what to expect. Reading in various guide books and listening to the stories of other travelers I was preparing myself for a frenetic city where the traffic is an endless nightmare and everybody is trying to get you to buy something off them.

Our bus arrived at its designated spot in the backpacker area of town and we disembarked, expecting fifty or so touts to jump on our bags and expecting to take us off to the guesthouse or hotel of their choice.

There were only a handful of touts and a simple ‘No thank you’ seemed to be acceptable to them so we were able to pick up our bags and cross the street to the hotel with whom the bus company is affiliated with. We found a clean and neat room with hot water for US$9 and stretched out on the bed. We have arrived in what may become our new hometown.

A peep outside the window revealed another the upstairs patio of another slim, three storied building where a Guanyin statue resided and some back alleys down below. I could be somewhere in Taipei or even downtown Hsinchu, I thought to myself. Even the bathroom looked like a standard Taiwanese bathroom, complete with tiny tub.

We went to a seedy bar/bubble juice shop next door to wait out the rain and ordered iced mocha bubble drinks. The interior reminded me of some tacky places I’ve seen in Taiwan. The kind that wanted to create something funky or classy but the whole aim just got lost somewhere in a sea of fake wisteria and too bright furniture. The mocha was good though and the feeling of being somewhere familiar kept on growing in me.

We waited out the enormous downpour that started just after we arrived and then decided to go for a stroll past the city’s biggest market and to Dong Khoi street where the nicer hotels and restaurants are.

We were walking down a broad boulevard lined with enormous trees. The architecture a combination of attractive French colonial buildings, Chinese shop houses and some modern office blocks and hotels.

This was not what I was expecting and it felt great!

We walked into two bookstores. The one stocked stationary, tacky notebooks and books in Vietnamese. The second one had some English selections as well as really unattractive toys. Reminded me of the kind of book stores I would frequent back in Hsinchu looking for stationary items and the odd English magazine.

The area around Dong Khoi was a complete surprise. Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana, Mango and Versace are all here. Sushi restaurants and pretty cafes seems to abound. I was thrilled.

What definitely lacked, and this is a great thing, was touts. A couple of men approached us offering motorbike rides and then in a lower voice marijuana. One creepy fellow walked up to us and in one breath grumbled, “Sex. Massage. Marijuana.” Otherwise our walk was hassle free. Sure, crossing the streets was a bit of a mission at times, but not as bad as I thought it would be.

It has been weeks since we left Bangkok and for the first time we were back in a city with a truly urban and cosmopolitan feel to it. And it reminds me of Taipei a lot. And Alexander pointed out that it still has a bit of a European atmosphere. And we had awesome noodles at a noodle chain for dinner.

So my first impressions of HCMC or Saigon are overwhelmingly positive. Hopefully I will not be disappointed and if all goes well we will really be calling it home soon.

No More Piercing

2007-08-06T15:51:00.000+07:00

I never thought of the piercing in my left ear as being temporary. There were too many enraged arguments with my parents about it. The piercing was not just a symbol of my rebellious youth anymore, it was something that I’ve had for more than eleven years and I, being the sentimental type, just could not think about getting rid of it.

Over the years I experimented with other piercings; higher up on the earlobe, the right ear, even a tongue piercing at once. None of them lasted longer than a couple of months. Only the lower end of my left earlobe remained.

For the last three or four years I’ve been wearing the same earring. It’s like a thin barbell type that has been curved with a ball at each end, so that it sometimes look like I’m wearing two items instead of one. It was a fun little accessory. I would sometimes twirl it around when I was reading or watching a movie or waiting for something to happen.

Over the years since college I have obviously changed a lot. My hair is mostly short and not too styled. I do not wear ridiculous bohemian-ish outfits anymore. The make-up has been given too away. I quit smoking and I drink a lot less. The earring, however, has been here all the time.

Recently I’ve been contemplating removing it. I cannot put my finger on any exact reason why. It just felt like it was time for a change.

Over a latte macchiato at the Royal Hotel d’ Angkor a couple of days ago I removed the earring and put it into my bag. Touching my earlobe I could just feel a little bump where it used to be. Later in the afternoon I pointed out to Alexander that I removed the earring and the expression on his face made me realize that maybe it was a good idea.

I would not call removing it as much a rite of passage as getting it in the first place, but I guess it is maybe in a little bit. And it felt just as fine.

Reading Matter

2007-07-29T15:45:00.001+07:00

I ordered three books from Amazon before we left the States and with Alexander packing a couple of books as well I thought we’d have enough between the two of us to keep me busy until we reach Vietnam.

Not so. In my first couple of days of travel I ravished Shalimar the Clown. I have always been nervous about reading Rushdie. Ever since I became familiar with is name at the time of The Satanic Verses debacle in the eighties I have been at the same time curious and felt strangely insecure about tackling anything he has written.

I was very happy that I finally decided to read one of his works. Shalimari was an incredible read. Eloquently written, even his descriptions of the most horrible of human atrocities. Towards the end of the book I began pacing myself as I did not want it to end and I almost ended, which it did. And what an ending. It was one where I sat bolt upright in bed and cried out. Frustrated at the question mark at the end and yet thrilled at the thought of not knowing.

This was followed by The Jungle Book which Alexander brought along that I have not read before and found excellent and delightful. It is unfortunate that I spent my childhood reading Hardy Boys (I think I tried to read some gay erotica into it as a young boy) instead of Kipling.

I’ve always been intrigued by Marie Antoinette, ever since we studied some French history in high school, I always had a bit of a soft spot for the unpopular queen with the great taste who had her head removed by the angry mob and a guillotine. So after watching the recent Sofia Coppola film based on the Antonia Fraser biography Marie Antoinette The Journey I ordered that as well.

The book kept me busy for quite a while and I interrupted it at times with other reading. The writer did a lot for research for this one and the book is filled with little details and accounts of other contemporaries. I fell even more in love with Marie Antoinette and discovered why she is regarded as a bit of a gay icon. The book piqued my interest in picking up some other similar biographies and reads on great female figures from the past.

The last book I ordered was The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oats. I’ve so far only read The Tattooed Girl by her. A sad and haunting novel that had my head in a mess for days after reading it. The short stories Species by no means disappointed. There were one or two that I did not enjoy that much. But Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi and Angel of Wrath were two standouts and most of the others were equally enjoyable.

On the bus between Vientiane and Pakse I flew through The Smell of Apples by Mark Behr. I read the original Afrikaans publication in my final year in high school and the book left me somewhat gaping for air. It was such an apt account of growing up in Afrikaans South Africa in the previous era. Even though most of the book is set in the seventies, before the border wars began, a lot of it is similar to the environment in which I grew up. In many of situations it might just as well have been my own family and again, while reading it, I imagined the main character’s house to be the one I grew up in in Paarl.

Read it if you can get a hold of it. It’s really quite brilliant.

Currently I am reading an anthropological novel Alexander picked up in Vientiane by Elenore Smith Bowen (which was the pseudonym for the anthropologist Laura Bohannan). Return to Laughter is a somewhat fictional account of a female anthropologists living and attempting to work in a tribal village in the Nigeria of the 1940’s. It is a lovely account of the struggles she faced, not just in adapting to living in a village (even with some luxuries like gin) but also getting to get the people to trust her with information about their daily lives and infiltrating the society in which was living on a deeper level.

I am about halfway through the book and then I am going to have to dig into one of Alexander’s academic books to keep myself busy, which could be interesting, but I fear might be over my head.

Any suggestions on what to keep an eye out for if I happen upon a good book store in Phnom Penh will be greatly appreciated.

Southern Laos and Onwards

2007-07-27T20:15:00.000+07:00

As I am writing this we are pretty far south in Laos, not far from the border with Cambodia. We left Vientiane Friday the 20th and made our way down through Savannakhet, Pakse and Champassak, mostly by bus but also by boat.

Bus travel in Laos is not a fun experience by any stretch of the imagination. If you are not bounding up and down and getting sick through the mountainous north, its careening down a narrow highway, stopping regularly to pick up more passengers and more cargo until there really is no more space and tires start exploding due to the weight.

On our trip from Savannakhet to Pakse the bus stopped for LITERALLY half the time it took us to get there. Which was six hours where it could have easily been three. Many of these stops seemed to be without reason.

God knows, patience is not my strong point, but what does one do? Plug in the i-Pod and try to be ignorant to the circus happening around you.

The south of Laos contrasts sharply with the north. I’m guessing that a lot of it has to do with more Chinese and Vietnamese influences as well as the fact that there are more lowland Laos in these parts than hill tribe peoples like in the north. There is definitely a more nationalistic feel with Laos and Vietnamese or Communist flags hanging outside of most houses and shops.

Due to an until recent lack of decent roads there are also less tourists coming through these parts and so it lacks the more pleasant and atmospheric restaurants of places like Vientiane and Luang Phabang, or even the tacky backpacker oriented places like in Vang Vieng.

Savannakhet especially has a lot of potential. With all its old French-Indochinese shophouses and kitchy sixties and modernist structures, it seems the ideal place for a couple of sweet coffee shops on the town square, riverside restaurants and boutique guesthouses. Sadly it seems that nobody is in any great rush to mine this potential as in Luang Phabang.

I do not want to dismiss this sleepy part of the country, but my love of little creature comforts and a lack of coffee shops does little to entice me to spend days and days hanging around like we did in Luang Phabang.

Currently we are on Don Khong island, one of the numerous islands dotting the 4000 Islands region on the Mekong. Here the river widens up to 14 kilometers and some of the islands, like this one, is big enough to sustain numerous villages complete with wats and rice fields.

Tomorrow we head by minivan to Kratie in northeastern Cambodia. In fact, by the time I get to publish this way may be in either Phnom Penh or Siem Reap.

I Miss

2007-07-12T21:17:00.001+07:00

I miss:
- Trader Joe’s in LA
- Coffee shops in LA, specifically the Peet’s in Larchmont, but also the indie ones scattered all over town- there were so many.
- Peanut butter milkshakes at LA diners or Royale in Cape Town.
- Peanut butter.
- Green chili on just about everything in New Mexico.
- Decent gourmet burgers at Royal in Cape Town.
- Vida E in Cape Town.
- Driving along the coast to Simon’s Town.
- The porch at my parent’s house.
- My cat.
- Taiwan.
- The feel of Bangkok.
- A kitchen.
- A sewing machine and fabric.

Backwards

2007-07-12T20:42:00.001+07:00

Backwards from here- Luang Phabang, Laos to Chiang Khong, Thailand.

We have a bit of a view of the Mekong from our window. Just beyond some tall coconut palm trees the mass of muddy brown water is slowly making its way south towards the Mekong Delta in Vietnam where we will probably arrive towards the end of August. Some hills rise up on the opposite bank and from here we can also see some tall trees rising up out of the jungle canopy.

We finally tried durian. I expected my taste buds to be a bit more adventurous, but not so. I was revolted after my first bite. It tastes way worse than it smelled. A bit like really bad mango mixed with castor oil and paraffin. Even mixed in with sticky rice and sweetened coconut milk I could still taste it. Not for me, I am somewhat sorry to admit.

While waiting for dinner at a street side place here a couple of nights ago a young boy of about twelve or thirteen selling some wares approached our table. We were holding hands. At the sight of us holding hands he covered up his eyes and waved a ‘you’re being naughty’ finger in the air. He then harassed Alexander and questioned him about our relationship while trying to get us to buy some items as well. He was obviously a young flamer in the making and seemed to enjoy teasing the two of us about being a couple. We told him that we were not interested in buying anything and he then sat down on a plant pot and said “Then I will sit down and not go!” after a while he left but then returned again and told me to go to the “T-O-I-I-E-T,” so that Alexander can buy me a gift (the second ‘I’ was his). At some point he sat down again and then told us that his name was Miss Tyra. I was impressed. After a while he left us to go home. It was a pity his wares were so dull, otherwise I surely would have supported this young and upcoming little queen.

We took the slow boat from Huai Xai where we crossed from Thailand here. It took us two days, we spent one night in the tiny town of Pakbeng on the way. We passed loads of water buffalo, locals fishing, tiny-tiny villages, hillside farms, bamboo forests and jungle. It was a great experience albeit not the most comfortable and I would consider doing it again.

Unfortunately there will always be some grim tourists to sour a trip. Like the loud older man from somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, pearl earring through that little bit inside the ear. Who thought everybody was interested in his stories. Who threw his cigarette buts into the river while laughing at a girl for being hesitant to throw a lychee skin into the river, “It’s fucking biodegradable.” Not so your cigarette buts, asshole. Or the ignorant kid from a former great kingdom who asked, “Does Laos have a king?” When someone answered said he did not think so the guy asked, “Then who is this bloke on all their money?” Read a book! Do at least the littlest bit of research before you trample all over your destination!

On our last night in Thailand we stayed at Bamboo Guesthouse in Chiang Khong, on the bank of the Mekong. The owner, with a case of OCD, told us that unlike other places all over the country he does not play Bob Marley or The Eagles at his restaurant to attract tourists. He plays his personal collection of soothing jazz and world music, he shares his music with his guests. We weren’t the only ones attracted to his music. Two enormous geckos, about 25-30cm long, were also hanging out in the restaurant! The next morning we enjoyed peanut butter on whole wheat bread his sweet little wife with the cropped hair had baked that morning.

Everywhere

2007-07-05T21:00:00.000+07:00

I just realized that today, exactly a month ago, I flew out of the US. Since I have been traveling throughout various parts of central and northern Thailand.

I spent a couple of dull days by myself visiting Chiang Mai and kayaking down the Kwai Yay river. I had a brilliant time with Alexander in Bangkok figuring out the waterways and bus system, having coffee at various coffee venues and dining on fabulous Thai cuisine. We also got to hang out with my friend Leah from Taiwan who was in bangkok for a teaching course.

And then we left one of my most-loved cities and headed out to Thailand's best preserved jungle park, Khao Yai National Park. In Khao Yai we experienced disorientating Thai directons at its best along with some great wildlife sightings. Great hornbills, gibbons, macaques, jungle elephant, dhol, Malayan porcupine, sambar deer, barking deer and civets as well as loads of different kinds of butterflies, moths, and lizards. The sights and sounds of the jungle more than made up for the lack of decent coffee and countless times we got lost trying to find our camp sites or park headquarters.

After our time in the jungle we headed first to Ayutthaya and then to Sukhothai, both further north of Bangkok on Thailand central plains to admire the old architectural marvels of Thailand's former capitals. Seeing these brilliantly preserved temples got me excited about going back to Siem Reap and exploring the Bayon, Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom and more.

Unfortunately the modern cities or rather towns that now exist by the sides of these formerly impressive cities were rather dull and there was not much to keep us in either Ayutthaya or Sukhothai. I was ready to murder for a good latte or even just a decent cup of drip coffee. At one point I even considered trying McDonalds for capuccino.

A week after leaving behind Bangkok, a week after having my last decent caffeine, we arrived in Chiang Mai. At first Chiang Mai left me cold. It seemed that it draws a rather large crowd of new age-ie looking dreaded creatures and people wearing bloody crocs.

Lucikly we found a restaurant serving great food away from the main drag where restaurants displaying world flags seem to be rather popular (we discovered that a place displaying flags is generally going to be crap).

The next morning we hesitantly ventured out onto the streets of Chiang Mai, wondering if we'd find decent coffee in this city.

How brilliant it was, how great the moment, when we got served our first cups of hill tribe coffee and it tasted divine. Sweet and dark, just a little bitter. I was a bit disappointed in myself for adding a little milk, since the coffee itself needed nothing. I've since learned to have coffee without sugar and sometimes with some milk, unless I have a latte.

We strolled around town a bit and discovered that Chiang Mai place host to quite a lot of different coffee shops, mostly really cute and in pretty garden-like settings.

While in the north we decided to do an independent bike trip and so rented a motorbike and did a 5-day loop through northwest Thailand. The loop is known as the Mae-Hong-Song loop, the name of the biggest town on the loop and can be done by public transport, but since I've always wanted to do a bike trip in Taiwan and never did I thought this was the perfect chance. And I have an equally adventurous boyfriend/travel companion with me.

It was an exhausting trip due to the fact that we got rained on a lot and most of the road was going up and down hectic mountains. One day we drove through a mountainous pass where the road was often gone due to landslides.

But it was an incredible trip. Lots of the time we were the only traffic for miles and for the first three days we were definitely the only foreigners in the villages we stayed at.

We also experimented with some street food. The best were two variations on food steamed in banana leaves. The first one was a bit like a tamale in that it contained some sort of maize together with chicken and curry paste. The other one we had had pork and a lemon grass paste. It was pure yum!

We spent the final two nights of the loop in Pai. A popular little town a couple of hours away from Chiang Mai. It is clearly a very busy tourist town for both Thais and foreigners in the busy seasons, but luckily for us it is low season and it was very quiet. Lots of guesthouses and restaurants displayed signs saying the wer closed until later in the year.

We read about a place called All About Coffee in Pai. According to the Rough Guides it has caffeine in a variety of forms. And it did not disappoint. From the Pai blend coffee to the espresso and banana shake it was all grand caffeine kicks!

We also had our first taste of sticky rice and mango dessert in Pai. More yum!

We've been back in Chiang Mai since Monday, visiting the Chiang Mai Zoo, which was not bad for the most part, we saw giant Mekong catfish and pretty neat hornbills. We also spent quite a bit of time in various coffee spots around town like Wawee, 94degrees and Maze. Today we did a Thai cooking course out on a farm. It was pretty fun making our own curry pastes and Thai dishes. We totally pigged out on all the food we made and got to hang out on a Thai farm.

I like Chiang Mai a bit more now than when we first got here. It's a pretty city set against some beautiful mountains, there are loads of really good coffee shops and coffee to be had and the pace is slow. But I still miss Bangkok, we have even talked about moving there. But we'll have to see about Ho Chih Minh city first.

Tomorrow we leave for Chiang Kong on the border with Laos and Saturday I have to be out of the country. If all goes well we will be making our way down the Mekong on a slowboat to Luang Phabang in north-central Laos in two days time!

And so I say goodbye until I get time to sit down and write again. For pictures of our trip and more stories I have some pics on my other blog or check out Alexander's.

Till later.

Cullinary highlights

2007-06-26T18:55:00.000+07:00

Here are some standoutdishes that I've enjoyed since my arrival in Thailand.

- Pad Thai at Apple-Bee's in Kanchanaburi where the noodles are substituted with green papaya. It tastes great and adds a strange new texture to an old favorite of mine.

- Banana french toast which is just one of many breakfast delights at Rick's Cafe in Bangkok. The banana must have been mushed up and then either spread onto the bread before getting fried in batter or the it was mixed into the batter. I'll have to experiment oncewe have a kitchen again.

- Muesli, yoghurt and fruit at Rick's. A lot of fresh coconut flakes and liberal sprinklings of toasted sesame seeds were thrown into the mix. Extremely tasty!

- Masaman curry. I think masaman literally means Muslim. The curry is a specialty from the deep south of Thailand, which is predominantly Muslim and it is one of the best curries I've ever enjoyed. Sweet potato and peanuts are added o a red curry that is slightly sweet in taste. Making it quite ideal for breakfast at Roti Mataba in Bangkok. The pancake matabas we enjoyed with it was also fantastic. A kind of folded roti with fresh pancake inside, served with a dollop of condensed milk.

- Minced chicken and kale leaves at Ban Chiang in Bangkok. We had this on Alexander's first night at this lovely restaurant set in an old teak house. You put some of the chicken on a kale leave and then add some chopped red onion, green pepper corns, tiny bits of fresh lime and cashew nuts. Roll it all up and bite away. The flavors and textures are out of this world. Another dish I cannot wait to experiment with!

- Dragon fruit salad. On our first afternoon in Ayutthaya we had this salad at the Ban Krun guesthouses restaurant where stayed at. I loved the texture and taste of dragon fruit, but would never have though of using it in a salad combining shrimp, cellery leaves and fish sauce. To my surprise it was yet another great combination of textures and flavors that worked wonderfully.

Next week we are going to be taking a Thai cooking course and I am seriously looking forward to getting some insights into the way flavors are combined and prepared in making fabulous Thai dishes.

Train to Kanchanburi

2007-06-08T17:56:00.000+07:00

Here is what you can see from the open windows on the train to Kanchanaburi:

- white herons in flight, I love the shape of their necks when they are flying
- black birds flying over rice paddies with white markings on their open wings
- cattle with horns that curve up and inwards to almost form a circle
- green and brown hills appearing out of the flat farm lands
- white lotus ponds

In Threes

2007-06-08T10:13:00.000+07:00

I can't wait for Alexander to get here and start photographing the food. My camera does not do it justice.

My three meals yesterday came in the loveliest colors.

For breakfast I had golden fried banana crepes with pale white homemade yoghurt and a light brown latte. The crepe was served on a pale green plate which complemented the dark wood interior of the restaurant.

Lunch I had at the sad looking Roti Mataba (the look of the place does not match the great food!). Chunks of silvery fish, golden yellow chili, and black-purple eggplant were floating in a brown, red and dark orange sauce, accompanied by pale brown roti.

For dinner I ordered hot friend chicken with holy basil and steamed white rice. The chicken was lightly browned with strips of fiery red chili and dark green basil leaves and stems. Delicious!

***

Bangkok always has its fair share of foreign freaks wondering around. On my first day here I encountered a couple of fairly strange locals as well.

On my way to breakfast I noticed a man standing on the side of the road in only a pair of black underpants with a hole in them. He was struggling to get into his pants, holding on to them with one hand while the other arm was waving about.

I passed a beggar later in the day, sitting on the sidewalk with a cup for money at his feet. He sat with crossed legs, palsm together as if praying/greeting and mumbling to whoever passes by. As I approached him he began to mumble more loudly until until his mumbles sounded like a desperate moaning as I passed him and then he became more quiet again.

Walking back to my guesthouse after dinner an awkward looking man with a round head and very friendly face saw me walking in his direction. A huge giddy smile spread across his face as he stopped, took a look at me that read "You are a strange-looking foreign man," made a strange waving movement with one hand and then walked on giggling to himself.

Departure

2007-06-07T18:55:00.000+07:00

I left Albuquerque Tuesday morning on a Southwest flight.

I had just settled into an isle seat at the back of the plane when a lady started shouting behing me "That man! That man is moving my bags!" I looked up and saw a guy moving a piece of cabin luggage from one overhead compartment to another. The lady (rather heavy set) was standing right behind me and the next moment she started flying up the aisle in the direction of That Man.

Between her and the poor guy were two flight attendants but she managed to work her way past them in a space about as wide as my hips to to get to the poor man and tell him off. On her way back she shook her head angrily while whispering through gritted teeth, "Jesus Christ!"

The rest of the flight was rather uneventful. I picked up the new US Weekly at the airport and was done with it halfway to LA.

At LAX I proceeded to the international departure terminal. I checked my luggage and then proceeded through security. I had forgotten which side Alexander told me was more dead at the airport and I figured it must be the side before security.

I was wrong. I will form now on refer to the section beyond security at that airport as The Deserted Waistland Beyond Security.

God it was depressing. But there was some good news. At a newspaper stand I spotted the new i-D and it had Bjork on the cover! Yay! It also had a feature on Kate Moss. How lucky can a boy get?

I got some coffee and a bowl of (rather bland) chile, before boarding for my flight to Bangkok.

Goodbye States

2007-06-05T12:04:00.000+07:00

I'm flying out of Albuquerque to LA tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon I fly to Bangkok via Taiwan.

I can't believe I am leaving the States again. I've had such an incredible time here, way better than I expected I think, and it's hard for me to say goodbye to a new country I called home. I wonder when we'll be back.

Alexander is on his way to South Africa now. He's arriving there tomorrow and will be seeing a lot of our friends in Cape Town as well as my sister in Pretoria. I'm jealous. Mostly of him seeing people I dearly miss, but also because he is going to be having coffee at Vida E and a burger at Royal.

I'm making up for that by staying on a raft house in Kanchanaburi over the weekend. Maybe I'll like it so much i end up staying until Tuesday.

Alexander is getting into Bangkok next Wednesday and that will be the start of a whole new adventure.

I. Can't. Wait.

From LA to Albuquerque

2007-05-31T01:09:00.000+07:00

In a week's time I will be back in Thailand. Cannot believe my time in the US has come to and end and the idea of being back in Asia is somewhat unreal.

Here are some pictures taken during our trip down to Albuquerque. It was an incredible trip and I am looking forward to doing another one. In a camper!

Our first stop was Las Vegas where we stayed at the Flamingo. I was a bit overwhelmed when we first arrived here. Sensory overload and so on. And huge people. So here is where the obesity problem was hanging out. In Vegas we played on the machines and ordered free margaritas, had crepes in Paris, cocktails for breakfast by the pool and a massive lunch buffet at the Luxor. Although I was somewhat relieved when we hit the road again Monday afternoon I would actually like to go again. Just for kicks.

We stopped in the Mojave desert by an abandoned corral on our way to Joshua Tree.

We drove through a forest of Joshua Tree on the way to the park and saw loads more in the park as well. They are unbelievably beautiful. And so were a lot of other plants we saw in the deserts. I was amazed at their size and shapes.

We stopped in the little town of Amboy for some water. This is the Post Office, which was closed when we arrived and something told me it was not going to open again soon.

Cholla (cho-ya) cactus in Joshua Tree. I'm in love with them.

On the way to Organ Pipe we drove past the Salton Sea in southern California. This motel used to have a pool, hot tub and views of the sea. I had the sensations some bums were camping out in parts of it now.

Saguaro cactus at sunset in Organ Pipe where we camped Tuesday night. It's right on the border with Mexico and was the highlight of the trip for me. While writing postcards at our camping table I started dreaming about coming back for longer.

Wednesday night we stayed at a motel in dull Scottsdale. The motel was pretty new and a sweet deal after two days of no showers. The next morning we drove further north to Grand Canyon.

On the way we stopped at a viewpoint and I spotted another pocket gopher feeding on little grasses. I saw one a couple weeks before at Griffith Park in LA. I want one! Scottsdale was still pretty dry and more desert like, but as we went further north the landscape changed a lot. We began entering greener country, seeing more pine trees and so on. On the way to Grand Canyon I saw some mule deer by the side of the road and just before we got to the park we saw pronghorn!

When we arrived at the park there it was pretty chilly and getting dark fast so we decided to set up camp and go to the rim the next morning (we stayed at the South Rim). I've seen lots of images and televised footage of Grand Canyon so I guess I came with some expectations and was worried about being disappointed. But I wasn't. You walk towards the rim and you can kind of see the other side, but not the canyon yet. And the all of a sudden it looms in front of you and it is just too much. It was amazing. We had coffee and beskuit (rusks) on the rim before we started our hike down. We walked for close to three miles before turning back.

We were pretty exhausted by the time we got out and we rested in the tent for the rest of the afternoon. The campground here had hot water showers ($1.75 for 5 little minutes!) but it was a worthwhile relief after the day. We spent another night at Grand Canyon and I prepared a peanut butter curry with noodles for dinner.

Saturday morning we left pretty early and drove further north to Monument Valley on the Utah border. Our plan was to overnight here, but we got here so early that we decide on moving onwards to our next stop. Some spring rain caused a lot of desert plants to flower so the valley had a tint of green among all the red.

We went on adrive through the valley. I could not stop staring at these 'monuments'. They looked almost unreal. There was a bit of wind that blew over the valley from time to time, stirring up red dust. Dark clouds were moving overhead giving everything a very bizarre feel.

We left Monument Valley and cut through a corner of Utah on our way to Pagosa Springs in Colorado. Alexander's brother in law's dad has a cabin here and we could stay here. We made a stop in Durango on the way for coffee and to pick up some groceries. We arrive at the cabin really late that night. We did not really eat much the whole day and I feel shaken and go to bed after a hot shower. Unfortunately I have a terrible time falling asleep. I'm beginning to realize that I need to eat all the time otherwise my moods become horrid and obviously it affects my sleep as well.

Bluff was one of the dead beat towns in Utah we passed on the way.

The cabin in Pagosa Springs. We got to watch the season finales of The Office and Desperate Housewives here. Some mule deer walked past the cabin when we came home on the second night.

The next morning after omelets for breakfast we backtrack a bit through Durango again to Mesa Verde.

Many years ago some Pueblo tribes moved here and built these houses into the cliffs. At some point they abandoned them, but the houses are still standing. Pretty awesome. The guy in the picture above was our guide. Like any good guide he was brimming with knowledge information, and way too many quirky sayings.

On the road between Mesa Verde and Pagosa we saw quite a lot of mule deer and elk. Lots of pretty old barns like this one too. If anybody feels like buying me a ranch in Colorado with a barn like this one I'd be very pleased.

We had steamed egg and tuna for breakfast at the cabin and then headed out. We saw snow on the mountain tops but was not expecting to pass right through it! From desert to snowy mountains. I was thrilled! We went over The Great Divide (I think this is what it's called) where the rivers and streams split and flow either east or west. Something like that.

Our plan was to camp at Great Sand Dunes the Monday night, but ominous looking clouds covered the area and there was some rainfall. The mountains nearby were still pretty white from recent late snow fall and the air was thin.

We entered the park and spent some time walking along the creek and admiring the dunes that seem to appear out of nowhere. The landscape was so bizarre. Snow capped mountains, sand dunes (it looked like Nambia), a creek and green shrubs.

We decided not to spend the night and rather just push through to Alexander's home in Albuquerque. We were not in the mood to be camping in possibly sub zero temperatures again (like our Lesotho trip last year). So goodbye Colorado and hello New Mexico. We arrived in Albuquerque between nine and ten and Alexander's dad grilled some chicken kebabs for us before we turned in.

We did not get up to too much while here. Mostly we've just been hanging out with the family and going for coffee again. We've also been getting ready for the next trip. I'm rather enjoying our last bit of domestica. We probably won't be calling any place 'home' again for a couple of months.

I realized after looking at my photos of the trip that I took lots of Alexander and his camera. His pictures can be seen at Primitive Cultures.

More States

2007-05-29T21:52:00.000+07:00

On our road trip we managed to spot loads more licence plates. My first Alaska spotting was in Vegas and the most recent one was Rhode Island here in Albuquerque.

We also saw a Washington D.C. car at Mesa Verde, which I thought would kind of be like the cherry on top. But I'm missing two States and so my cake is rather strange looking. All cherry on top while the icing is not yet finished.

I am missing Vermont and bloody West Virginia. I thought it would be harder to see the licence plates of States not actually physically connected to the rest of the country, but NO.

There are Hawaii and Alaska all over the show, just those last two missing. And it's been more than a week since the last new spotting.

I am hoping that someone from West Virginia will pass me by in their car in Taos over the weekend. And hopefully someone from Vermont will park next to us somewhere in town today.

The first Alaska plate I spotted (actually it was Alexander- I just screamed in excitement). It's kind of cute. I will try to post a couple of pictures from our trip soon.

States Plates

2007-05-13T23:03:00.000+07:00

I'm trying to see the number plates of 50 States. It's becoming a bit of an obsession. I've been doing pretty good so far. I'm up to 29, so I need 21 more. Hopefully I'll get to see lots on the road. The tricky ones it seems are some of the smaller ones on the northeastern coast and Alaska. Alaska is my big one.

I've colored in a map to show which ones I've seen and which not. The greenish patches are ones that I have seen. I do amuse myself.

We just got up and I guess we'll be leaving in a couple of hours. The car is packed, everything is basically ready.

We decided to pick up our last LA coffee in Larchmont, at Peet's, on the way out.

I am a confliction of emotions. I'm really sad and upset that we have to leave. I loved it so much here and it really felt like home and I could easily have stayed much-much longer.

But then we also have this really big road trip lying ahead and I am very excited to see more of the country. I am so curious to see how the landscapes and the people and the cities change as we continue on to Albuquerque.

Wait, I just got very excited...

Oh my god I'm going to Las Vegas!

Checkout counter horror

2007-05-11T09:13:00.000+07:00

We stopped by Trader Joe's and Ralph's to pick up some groceries for the road trip. Both stores were incredibly crowded and I was just feeling a massive hunger coming over me so I was feeling a little bit on edge.

We parked our trolley behind some old lady's in the checkout line at Ralph's. I commented on some nasty music coming out of a machine right beside me (think it was a CD stand of sorts).

Next thing this creepy looking old (ooold) lady turned around. Her face was severely made up. Lots of eyeliner and so on. She looked at us and said something about us having a problem with the store and we should take it up with her as she is the store's police.

First I thought she was just some weird lady having fun. But then she got this really angry look in her eyes and stared right at and began rambling something about her costume bracelet. She held out the arm with the bracelet on toward me.

I was totally taken aback. She looked at me as if I had done something horribly mean to her and the next moment she gave me the finger. This wrinkled and bent old middle finger pointing at me.

I know I am generally a bit oversensitive, but this really upset me and I think I almost started crying. I was just so shocked!

She told us to back off and then grabbed her trolley and told as to get out of her way.

We gladly obliged. She stormed (not very fast) past us and then lined up in the next line. Not saying another word.

What the Fuck! I felt pretty violated (yes I know I exaggerate, but it was rather unpleasant) and just wanted to get out.

Once outside I ranted a bit about crazy people and the advantages of special homes. Nasty but hey, I was verbally attacked by a mad old woman.

I am happy to say that I probably won't be go to that Ralph's again anytime soon...

Book List

2007-05-10T01:02:00.000+07:00

Speaking of books for the trip. Here is my list so far, I have to narrow it down to 3 or 4. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

All Over Creation (Ruth L. Ozeki)
Female of the Species (Joyce Carol Oates)
The Tattoo Artist (Jill Ciment)
Shaliman the Clown (Salman Rushdie)
Spring Snow (Yukio Mishima)
After Dark (Haruki Murakami)
Song of Solomon (Toni Morisson)
Marie Antoinette- The Journey (Antonia Fraser)

It is here

2007-05-10T00:32:00.000+07:00

I was strangely nervous about the new Bjork. I was a lot calmer than with other albums coming out. Maybe I was a bit nervous that I would finally find a Bjork album that I might not fully enjoy. Like when you have an author you just love and then one day a book just disappoints and ruins everything.

I have to be honest and say that I did not enjoy the video for Earth Intruders much, so maybe that was adding to my nervousness.

I was not just nervous, I was also very excited. But there was a nervous edge to it all.

And then I bought it and we listened to it twice in the car driving around Long Beach last night.

And it is brilliant. It is truely brilliant. It is all over the place and incredibly free. My darling Bjork never disappoints.

In other news. The new Haruki Murakami,
After Dark also came out yesterday. I'm including it in my list of books for the trip.

Life is good.

New blog

2007-05-09T02:33:00.000+07:00

I've decided to do some travel writing and so forth in a seperate blog. Reason is I'd like to do some writing in Afrikaans and I guess it would be a convenient way for my family and some friends to keep up with me without sending out a million emails.

I tried to do both blogs from this account but decided not to have the two linked in the end and opened a completely new account.

So if you are interested in reading about what we are getting up to and what I am cooking and where go here Van Spys en Reis

I've been spending money on clothing again. It feels fantastic. Since Friday I've bought more than I have in over a year. Which is impressive because that was all I did in Taiwan.

So I bought a pair of flip-flops for the trip. Light long pants for hiking, a sleeveless shirt, a t-shirts, a cap and board shorts. Yay! Today I am buying hiking shoes.

We're also buying some camping gear. Yesterday we picked up a tent and lamp. I'm also thinking of some menus for the trip. I'm extremely excited about the idea of taking curry powder and coriander into the desert and seeing what happens.

last week

2007-05-07T13:10:00.000+07:00

And here I am again. Counting down.

We have exactly a week left in LA. Next week this time we'll hopefully be doing some gambling in Las Vegas!

This past Thursday evening, after a rather exhausting day, Alexander told me to get ready to go for a ride. I saw him looking up directions to Mulholland Drive earlier, but I thought he was planning for us to go the next day.

Some minutes and a couple of songs later, however, we were cruising up the infamous Mulholland Drive.

We past some awesome houses and hillside spaces before stopping at a point where we got an awesome view of downtown LA. The moon was almost full and hanging right over the city. It was an amazing sight and everything felt very right.

We got back in the car and kept on driving past more impressive looking houses. At some point we went round the other side of the hills and our view changed to one of Studio City. It was wicked being able to see two different sides of greater LA at night in one trip.

At times I felt like we were driving round Northcliff in Johannesburg and at others it felt like driving around areas of Cape Town, but mostly I felt completely lost and loved it.

After Mulholland Drive Alexander took me to the 101 Diner for late night dinner. Even though we've been to a couple of diners since I got here, I've been wanting to go out for a burger and shake at a diner, late at night, ever since I got here. So I was pretty thrilled at having this fantasy realized at last!

I had a turkey burger with mashed potatoes (it was an option, I had to try!) and a peanut butter milkshake. Yum! And the setting was perfect, as far as diners go (and there are some pretty cool ones around) the 101 is pretty romantic.

Seen as Thursday was Alexander's last day at work I guess that the drive and dinner was the perfect start to a countdown to our final days in LA. For now.

this and that

2007-05-01T00:15:00.000+07:00

Instead of doing anything useful I spent the last hour or so chatting with Speedhakoo. I know that people were just dying to know that.

match.com

2007-04-24T23:47:00.000+07:00

I am still trying to come to the terms with the internet spying on me and gathering all kinds of information on me and then using it to target me in advertising etc.

After my arrival in LA I was all of a sudden bombarded with adds from gay targeted dating services on myspace in the LA area.

It's a mild annoyance but I can live with it. Especially since it is vaguely amusing and I enjoy cringing.

match.com has the funniest (or creepiest) adds. At the top of the video window it says 'it's not okay to stare' or 'it's okay to stare.'The videos are usually of some half nude guy telling you not to stare at him and I'm assuming inviting you to join him rather than stare by joining match.com. They're rather dull.

The ones I am enjoying are the ones that has the words 'find hot single doctors' near you. Doctors is sometimes substituted with athletes or intellectuals etc. The video then features an appropriately dressed guy not saying much but just 'checking you over'.

For instance, the 'doctor' (same guy as the intellectual) is dressed in scrubs and is 'looking at you' while making notes on a chart. He looks impressed by what he sees. The video ends with him approaching the camera and then uses his stethoscope to listen to 'your' heartbeat or whatever.

The 'intellectual' is said doctor dressed in funky geeky looking gear (wearing frames of course) 'checking you out.' He then approaches the camera and writes some formula on the screen (or is it your face?). Satisfied with his formula he takes out a red apple and starts strolling away while looking back suggestively.

I know there is a huge market for online dating and friend finding. Most of us have been there. But what I'd like to know is who the target audience of these incredibly strange adds are. Any ideas?

more experimental cooking and salvadorian food

2007-04-24T23:23:00.000+07:00

We need to go grocery shopping again. But I'm hoping we can hold out until tomorrow when we go downtown to the Wednesday Farmer's Market. The last time we went was with Eva and I've been wanting to go back ever since.

Last night I decided to make chicken noodle soup following my own mind (read- not quite following a recipe). I mashed up some garlic, lots of ground pepper and curry powder. To this I added some soy sauce and mashed it up some more. I lightly fried/cooked all of this in a saucepan with a little bit of oil and then added the cut up pieces of chicken. I fried everything until it the chicken was no longer pink and then added water. I think I may have added too much water so it tasted a bit watery. To counter this I added more pepper (lots more) and curry until I was satisfied with the taste. I added a teaspoon of sugar too. Not sure what that does but I think it worked. Peppery with a hint of curry and the fragrance of garlic and soy sauce. I cooked the chicken for some time and when the water was boiling nicely I added a bunch of noodles (I used pad thai) and waited for about 4 minutes for the noodles to cook. I also chucked in two boiled eggs right after the noodles. Oh and some sliced up crimini mushrooms for a different texture.

I was pretty satisfied with the taste though I think when I do it again I'll add more pepper and curry right from the start and probably use less water.

Alexander made enchiladas with a New Mexican sauce (I think you call it a sauce on Saturday. He used corn tortillas for the enchiladas and I think it was the first time I tasted it. It was delicious. The corn tortillas has a very distinctive maize-y flavour and smell that complimented the spiciness of the sauce.

Ooh and we had Salvadorian food on Friday. Pupusa, tamales and a dish with a really long name that consisted of friend plantain, pastries and sweet potato. The last dish was incredibly sweet, but it came with a watery corn sauce on the side which I assume is used to counter the sweetness.

The tamales was the highlight of the meal for me. I wonder if it is possible to make tamales with a South African flavor...

Weeks

2007-04-17T00:08:00.000+07:00

We are supposed to be leaving LA in about a month's time. On the one hand I am super excited about the travels that lies ahead of us, on the other I am sad to be leaving, I can see myself settling in here quite easily.

The past couple of weeks have been busy. Visiting sister and friend, birthday, house party etc. Got to see a lot more while we had our guests. Trips to the Getty Museum, both MOCA's downtown, LA Zoo, La Brea Tar Pits and more of LACMA.

I got my first taste of Ethiopian food and fell hard for it. We're going for lunch again tomorrow. Hmmm.

At the moment we're busy with travel planning. Lots of it. Together we are taking a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, via Arizona, Utah and Colorado. On the way we'll be seeing Phoenix, possibly Tucson and the Saguaro Desert, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde and then doing some side trips from Albuquerque.

Early in June we travel in different directions. Alexander will be spending a week in SA while I am heading pretty much straight to Thailand. I'm planning to travel west from Bangkok towards Kanchanaburi and Sangklaburi, close to the border with Myanmar. I saw that it is possible to pass into Myanmar for a day at the Three Pagodas Pass. It's quite restrictive, only one day and you can only go 2km into the country, but it would be worth it just to add another country to the list.

Alexander joins me in Bangkok on the 13th and then begins our trek to Vietnam via Northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

So lots of planning. Lots and lots of it.

Going onto another topic. I recently combined some ideas into what turned out to be a kind of chicken stuffed with spicey peanut paste. It did not turn out exactly as I planned, mainly I guess because I ended up using deboned chicken thighs instead of breasts. Alexander made a paste using peanut butter (crunchy add fun texture), cayenne pepper and a banched tomato. I scooped some of this one the thighs and cooked it all on the stove. The thighs did not really contain the paste as well as chicken breasts might have, but it still turned out really well. I made some brown rice flavored with nutmeg and cinamon with this and the too went reall well together.

Tonight I am attempting bobotie. I think I've only made it once before when I was working at a guesthouse. I'm going to try and add cooked rice into the whole business before putting it into the oven. If anybody has done this before with disastrous results please speak up NOW before I ruin dinner.

LA pictures

2007-04-15T09:15:00.000+07:00

Here are some LA Pictures I've taken during my first month here.

The Mamie Eisenhower Party

2007-04-14T08:34:00.000+07:00

Our housemate Stephen decided to throw a Mamie Eisenhower Party.

I suggested baking Hertzoggies to Alexander, so this afternoon the two of us busied ourselves with a recipe neither one of us have ever tried. I think it turned out pretty fine. I think I added to much apricot jam, but oh well.

Here is a picture of our Hertzoggies.

dinner and a movie for two

2007-03-27T01:39:00.000+07:00

Alexander suggested having our own birthday celebrations a couple of days before the day, since his one sister will be in town and it is in the middle of the week. So on Saturday he took me to a very pretty Thai place in South Pasadena called Saladang Song. We got seating outside which was just perfect. You're basically in a kind of courtyard by the entrance, surrounded by very high walls and iron fencing. It was a pretty night out and the weather was just fine. The highlight on our menu was the rambutan appetizer.
On a lettuce leaf gets placed a pitted rambutan with a slice of ginger wrapped in it, some tofu, peanuts and roasted coconut. It came with a syrupy honey sauce that you drip over before wrapping it up and enjoying it.
We also had pad thai noodles and a curry. It was a perfect birthday dinner.
After the meal we went to see The Namesake. Alexander introduced me to the book last year and we were excited to see the movie. I was certain that Mira Nair would do the book justice (even after that awful Vanity Fair) and I was not disappointed. Go see The Namesake, it was sweet (sorry Dorothy).
After the movie we went for chai tea and then headed home.
The rest of our weekend was pretty relaxing. We went to a farmer's market on Larchmont yesterday and picked up some veggies. And that was it, pretty much.

Beskuit

2007-03-25T01:52:00.000+07:00

Here are some pictures taken during my beskuit baking the other day.

The ingredients

The dry ingredients

The wet ingredients

Mixing it

In the oven

Cut and ready

Beskuit plus another spotting

2007-03-24T01:02:00.000+07:00

I managed to bake decent beskuit in a gas oven. I was a bit nervous about the drying process as I've always used electric ovens for baking beskuit, but all turned out very well I think.
We walked over to Larchmont Village for coffee at Peet's Coffee and Tea. It's a chain in the same vain as the Starbucks group, but better,much better.
Outside of the Starbucks on the way we saw John Paul Pitoc hunched by his dog, talking to a customer about said dog. Mr. Pitoc starred in the '99 movie Trick and also had a role in some episodes of Six Feet Under as a crematory attendant. So I am doing fairly well at spotting strange celebrities. Now my life will really be complete if only I can spot Tori Spelling!
My birthday is coming up soon and I am a little uncomfortable with the situation. Not the ageing. But it will be the first time that I am celebrating a birthday with no South African friends in sight. In fact, I pretty much don't really no anyone that well here and I am planning nothing. I guess I feel a bit more for birthdays than I've always pretended. Hmmmm.

Tuesday was eventful and Wednesday even more so (continued)

2007-03-23T01:42:00.000+07:00

A couple years ago, my friend Holli's mother came to visit her in Taiwan. I was very excited to meet her mother, so I invited them over for dinner. I prepared sesame seared tuna steaks. A first and a success! We had a fun evening discussing a wide range of topics and enjoying our meal and some wine.
When they left at the end of the evening I was left wondering if I'd ever see Eva again. I mean, what were the chances? She is the friend of a mother who lives in Iowa and I am from South Africa. If I ever did travel to the States I was sure I was not going to visit Iowa. But I was hoping that somehow, some day, I would meet her again.
And so it happened that Eva decided to spend her winter 06/07 in Los Angeles. Perfect! Holli gave me her contact details here in LA and over the past couple of weeks we were corresponding and talking about meeting up while she is still in LA.
Yesterday Alexander and I made our way downtown on the #14 bus. Eva found an apartment downtown, right by the Disney Music Hall.
When we arrived at her place neither one of us were thinking that we'd be taken on a very comprehensive tour of downtown LA by a 70-year old lady. But that is exactly what happened. At a leisurely pace she walked us from her building to a weekly Farmer's market that takes place outside the LA Central Library. She goes there to buy her bread and vegetables on a weekly basis. She was just a well of information; talking about Bunker Hill, the Spanish Steps, architecture and the history of some buildings. She even pointed out a pedestrian crossing where there is no lights and cars have to stop for pedestrians whenever they cross. She seemed particularly taken with this idea.
We picked up some lunch while at the market and walked over to Pershing Square, right in front of the Biltmore Hotel, Eva informing us of the historical significance of some of the buildings along the way. Alexander and I shared a Peruvian friend rice dish that came with an interesting cucumber sauce. Eva enjoyed a hot dog. After lunch she walked us over to the Biltmore.
The Biltmore was at one point the biggest hotel in the US, west of Chicago. It's an incredibly beautiful structure with great interiors. It has been used in numerous movies and even music videos. Eva had done a walking tour of the hotel recently, so she could give us a lot of information.
After the Biltmore we strolled over to the Fine Arts building where her friend's husband has an office. Unfortunately we could not go up in the building, but we were allowed to walk around the foyer. It was impressively decorated both inside and outside. Both the Biltmore and the Fine Arts Building date back to the 1920's.
We were impressed by how beautiful and interesting downtown LA is and Eva made for an impressive tour guide. It's hard to believe that she is 70. She took us to look inside The Standard Hotel and entertained us to a short 4-storey elevator ride in the US Bank building.
After we dropped off her shopping at her apartment she took us to Kendalls Brasserie for ice cream and coffee. She insisted that they had the best pistachio ice cream in the world. We had two scoops. Pistachio and coconut. She had two scoops of pistachio. It was everything she promised. Rich, creamy and very delicious.
It was late afternoon and time for us to head home. She walked us all the way to the Metro station where we parted.
I felt sad saying goodbye to her. This time I really don't know if I'll see her again, but I'm hoping.

Tuesday was eventful and Wednesday even more so

2007-03-22T23:21:00.000+07:00

My sleep cycles are all over the place. I intend to keep it that way. After years of always waking up way too early I am enjoying the fact that I now sometimes wake up at 8AM and other mornings at 10:40AM. I know that I won't be able to do this forever, but I am enjoying the freedom of random sleep cycles right now.
Tuesday turned out to be a very gray day with light drizzles. It was lovely. LA looks incredible against a gray backdrop; buildings, trees and hills etched against that backdrop.
After Alexander got home from his morning job we drove out to Silverlake. I spotted a store driving by the previous evening that I want to take a look at. It's a little design store on Silverlake Blvd called Yolk .
They had some incredibly funky items. There were some mobiles that caught my eyes and beautiful kitchen towels. It made me wish I had loads of cash and a solid home again. But I guess that would all have to wait a couple of years.
Another store we visited was
Monkeyhouse Toys on the same street. It was filled with all kinds of cute and bizarre toys of the Asian variety.
We stopped for coffee at a little bakery called Black Door Bakery. Apparently dogs are welcome, but on this day there were none and I had appreciated that.
After coffee we headed out to Eagle Rock. I wanted to buy a bread tin and a pan for baking beskuit, so Alexander suggested going to Target . Yay! My first 'mart' experience in the States. But it turned out to be fairly (and I guess predictably) dull. So I picked out two pans, some tea towels and left. By this time we were both pretty hungry, so we went to Auntie Em's also in Eagle Rock. Gorgeous little cafe and afterwards I found out that the place is really loved amongst the famed in LA. We had chicken noodle soup, made with pasta rice. I'm hoping to go back soon to try out the ginger pecan cake. It looked decadent!
We came home after lunch and I decided to put my bread pan to the test. A delicious coffee date bread is what came out of the oven.
We left home early evening to visit LA County Museum of Art . It's free on Tuesdays, but we only had about half an hour before closing time. So we just looked at one of the exhibitions.
We spent a long time after driving around in the drizzle, trying to find a place to eat. It's not hard to find a place to eat here really, there are millions. But somehow we could not make up our minds, and since I insisted on taking Alexander out to dinner I suppose I must have made a choice before we left the house. In the end he picked Electric Lotus in Los Feliz. It's a really funky Indian restaurant where they often host DJ's. The decor and layout was really funky and the vibe trendy but not over the top. The food was fantastic. My favorite part was that the music was loud enough so that the people at the next table could not hear your conversations, but we could hear each other perfectly. It made for a really intimate feel at a regular table, if that makes sense to anyone.
We came home after diner, had fresh coffee date bread and tea for desert, before crawling into bed.
As some of you might have noticed in this post I figured out how to add links. I think I'm obsessed now. Yesterday was another brilliant day. But I'll tell you more about that later. Now, I am going to bake beskuit!

Monday's Coffee

2007-03-20T23:11:00.000+07:00

I slept in yesterday, a habit I picked up this past weekend. Those who know me well knows that I have problems sleeping in, so it's worth a mention for me.
Spent most of the day being rather unproductive. I need to find a sewing machine.
We left the house to go grocery shopping and stopped on the way to Trader Joe's at a place in Silver Lake called The Coffee Table. One of many sweet coffee spots dotted across the city. We decided to split a brownie. I can see me picking up some weight here. Is there not a line in a Faithless song that goes "only place in the world even I could gain weight"?
I'll keep you informed.

San Diego

2007-03-19T13:49:00.000+07:00

After less than a week in the States I got to go on my first trip out of LA. We left for San Diego late Thursday afternoon. We were going to be spending the end of some college friends of Alexander's spring break at the beach home of one of the friends' aunt. The beach home is right on the marina on Coronado Island. A sweet house with a view of yachts, palm trees and the city across the bay, decorated in a strange nautical theme.
This was basically my big introductory weekend to a big group of Alexander's friends. I was of course nervous, but everything turned out great. It was a fun group of people and everybody was very welcoming and considerate towards me, the new guy. There were moments when I felt very much out of place and I realized that sometimes even if you do understand the language people are speaking it does not always help.
Twice during our stay in San Diego I got asked for my ID. It pissed me off as I did not have my passport with me, and apparently SA driver's licenses don't count, but at least some people still think I'm under 21. Which is almost fine by me.
We spent a lot of our time playing board games and chatting until very early in the morning.
Friday we went to the Museum of Creation and Earth History. A frightening museum to say the least. Sure, it is actually funny, but at the same time quite scary. It's a museum run by the ICR (http://www.icr.org/). These people fall in the Scary Christian category and is very much opposed to evolutionary science. I wish I could go into detail about some of the things I saw here. Just wrong in so many ways!
On Saturday Alexander and I drove into town looking for a lunch spot. We drove around the attractive Balboa Park and ended up downtown in the old Gaslamp District. We walked blocks searching in vain for a nice coffee or lunch spot and found downtown San Diego to be rather generic. It felt like being in the Northern suburbs of Cape Town. Very Keg and sports bar like. And the St. Patrick's Day celebrations did not help much.
We drove out to Ocean Beach where we had lunch at an organic vegan spot. Ever had cookies with vegan choc chips in? Yum.
Early afternoon we got back to LA. After dropping of some friends and picking up a couple of grocery items we headed back to our apartment in a slightly scruffier part of town.
"I really like LA better than San Diego," noted Alexander.
I agreed. I've only spent a couple days in LA, but I can see that I am going to enjoy living here, much more than I would in San Diego.

Up To

2007-03-15T22:51:00.000+07:00

This past Sunday we were having coffee at Abbot's Habbit in Venice Beach when I recognized the tattoos on the neck of Jeffrey Sebelia, winner of the 3rd season of Project Runway. Ha! I thought, my second day in LA and I already spotted someone kind of famous.
Yesterday we were having Spanish latte's at Urth Caffe in West Hollywood when I saw Tricky motioning wildly with his arms to a friend.
"How did you recognize him?" asked Alexander.
"His nose. And that voice..." I answered.

what?

2007-02-13T06:43:00.000+07:00

Dear All,

I was forced today by the blogspot team or whoever they are to sign up with my gmail account onto the all new blogspot whatever.
And now everything is in I'm guessing Mandarine Chinese.
Help!

volkspele dress

2007-01-30T21:14:00.000+07:00

There was a photo album of my mom as a young girl in the long corridor of my grandmother’s house. I used to take it off the shelf and look at it whenever in we were up in Hoedspruit for a weekend. As a kid I was mesmerized by these images of my mom over the years. From little baby girl playing with porcelain dolls to adolescent girl at the matric dance, complete with a beehive.

There were some of the pictures, where my mom was I think still in primary school, where her hair was cut in a style that seemed almost boyish, which made her look a bit like a tomboy. And then there were pictures of her with her hair cut in a bob and she looked more girlish. I think, on a subconscious level, the slight sense of androgyny that I discovered in these images must have appealed to me at a young age.

What I loved most about these albums were the pictures of my mom in various costumes for school events. I forget all the themes, but I can remember some of these images vividly. There were two I was extremely fond of, in one; she had to dress up as a boy. She looked a bit like a pageboy. She looked very handsome as a boy. This picture confused me. On the one hand she looked like such an attractive young lad, holding hands with a girl in a pretty dress. They complimented each other. On the other hand I found the fact that my mother was dressed as a guy and looked like one very disconcerting. Years later I found myself in a friend’s dress and wig, looking exactly like my mother. Now here is something I think I should explore one day…

The other one I really liked was a picture of my mom in a volkspele dress. In this picture my mother looked a lot more feminine and girly. In a Voortrekker kind of way, of course! If memory serves, the volkspele dresses are pretty conservative. Biggish gowns made of a fabric that rustled when it moved. Poofed sleeves with lace frills at the elbows. A lace piece is draped over the shoulders and knotted on the breast, creating a triangle at the back. Waists are narrow and the skirts are full of volume due to the petticoats. A big frilly cover up of the body underneath. I loved it, and I loved how feminine my mother looked in it.

And I wanted-wanted-wanted to wear one.

I don’t recall volkspele being big in Paarl. And it was not exactly big in Hoedspruit if I remember correctly. My memories of Volkspele were mainly I think from festivals screened on television where these dances were held.

In my final year in primary school, however, volkspele came to Laerskool Mariepskop!

It was our school’s 50th anniversary. A very big event was planned, a Saturday of celebrations. A big event for a school that was 50 years old and boasted just over 100 students at the time. Ha!

Someone must have felt it important to fuse the old and the new at this event. You know, we cling to our history, our culture and our history. But we are also moving forward into modernity. Looking ahead at the future.

So the two highlights of the day was going to be volkspele and a type of mass gymnastics (very North Korea).
Volkspele! Yes! I was super excited. Most of the boys were pretty grumpy about the idea of dancing around with girls in big dresses on the rugby field. I could not be happier. After three years in a dull primary school I finally got the pudding!

Being so close to these dresses made me really excited. I loved looking at the girls and seeing them all dressed up (we wore khaki shorts and shirts I think, very plain). I would have loved to be able to wear a dress like that too. In public, on the rugby field, and dance with a boy.

I was lucky, some part of this fantasy was realized.

My sister had to do volkspele too. My grandmother dug out my mother’s dress from somewhere in her house and one aunt sent her dress from her school years over. We now had two volkspele dresses in our house. One in pink and one in a powder blue.

I was thrilled. Much more than my sister, for sure. She hated it.

I would sneak to her room and look at the dresses in secret. Touching them sometimes and listening to the rustle. Fantasizing about how it would feel against my skin, how I would look in it and how I would twirl. All very camp.

The celebrations came and went. On a Hoedspruit scale I guess it was massive. In those days at least. We did our volkspele. I loved every moment of it, even though I was not wearing a dress, I did like one of the girls in a dress and I guess that compensated. We did our mass gymnastics routine to loud music, impressing everybody with the number 50 we created on the field at the end.

It was very 80s and it was very small town doing it big! There was a sense of accomplishment, pride and nationalism in the air. It was thick with it…

Every kid got a t-shirt with the school’s logo and the number 50 on it in the school’s colors. It was awful! I think there is a picture somewhere with us three siblings from the day, all wearing our shirts. Yuck!

But I had some sort of consolation prize at home. Something far better than an ugly t-shirt or doing volkspele. In my sister’s closet were two volkspele dresses.

I forget when. Maybe it was later the same year. Maybe it was the next. But one day I was alone at home. The details of how it happened are not clear to me anymore. But all of a sudden I was in my sister’s room, in the blue volkspele dress.

I looked at myself in the mirror and giggled uncomfortably. Under the dress I was not wearing anything. I wanted to feel how the fabric felt against my skin. It was an incredibly sensation. I think I was rushing from excitement. I looked and felt so feminine. So incredibly fine.

There was no boy to take my hand and dance with me. But I was embodying both male and female roles. In the mirror, looking back at me, was a very effeminate girl with a short haircut. Under the layers of petticoats was a boy with a flat chest and penis.

I was excited and scared at the same time. I knew if someone caught me in the dress I would never hear the end of it. And at the same time I wanted someone to see me and tell me I looked lovely!

I knew what I was doing was in the eyes of society ‘wrong’ but to me it felt very comfortable and ‘normal’.

I did not know what to make of any of the feelings. Not then at least. Today I can look back at what I was doing there and analyze it and get meaning, which is cool. But then it was just confusing and exhilarating at the same time.

I do not have the desire to get into a volkspele dress or any dress for that matter anymore. I’ve grown out of the confused mental androgyny of my youth. The fact that I would enjoy wearing skirts has nothing to do with wanting to look feminine. That is just a case of personal style.

It’s funny to think that as a boy, I got dressed up in the female costume of what was a symbol of a proud Afrikaner culture. Then I was confused. Years later, being less confused and knowing who I am, I do not get dressed up anymore. I just get naughty with my boyfriend in the shadow of a proud monument of Afrikaner culture. That lovely phallic piece called: The Afrikaanse Taal Monument.

subject

2007-01-28T10:41:00.000+07:00

Alexander sent me the ethnography earlier this week to read through. We worked together on it back in Cape Town quite a bit. Me telling stories, him writing them, me reading what he wrote and suggesting little changes, him questioning and listening and so on.

Reading about myself, through the eyes of another, was pretty hard. I tried to stay as objective as possible, maybe in a sort of self-defence effort.

Some parts of it brought back a lot of unpleasant feelings and made me real angry. But for the first time in my life I am getting a perspective on my childhood and youth and the people that played parts in it and I don't feel like a victim anymore. I sure as shit don't feel sorry for myself anymore, which is fabulous.

But my god, I sometimes sure would love to walk up to some of these trolls from my past and stand in front of them and just spit in their faces. Fuck it would bring me some nasty satisfaction.

Okay, so I'm still mad as hell. But at least I'm not scared anymore!

so much

2007-01-28T10:14:00.000+07:00

A lot has happened recently and I have been too lazy and probably overwhelmed to really write anything.

I left the Republic of South Africa on January 17 for Nairobi, the start of my extended travels to Asia and parts of North America.

Here is why I would not mind living in Nairobi, the birds. I mentioned them before, I know, but they just overwhelmed me so. Gorgeous birds just about everywhere. Black kites swooping down past you while you walk in a park downtown. Hammerheads sitting on university banners. Sacred ibis covering trees. It was awesome.

Here is why I would not live in Nairobi, the coffee at coffeeshops are mediocre. For a coffee producing country I was quite disappointed. But the blend I picked up to bring over here has proved okay. So maybe I'll just buy my own and make it myself.

The city was not nearly as frightening as I expected. I walked everywhere (I found myself in some dodgy hoods getting questioning looks) and never felt like someone was about to nick my bag. I must add that I only ventured out during the day, so that might make a difference. Some German businessman staying at the backpackers had been mugged twice.

I spent a day visiting the Langata Giraffe centre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giraffe_Centre) and the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage (http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/).

The giraffe centre was an absolute highlight. Wicked animals. I'm hoping to have some hanging around my lawn like the ones at the Giraffe Manor too one day.

On my last night in Nairobi I succeeded, unknowingly, to make a Kenyan girl, from the university of Nairobi, fall in love with me.

A group of people, including myself, went out to dinner and she joined in as she wanted to discuss some work with one of the guests. She took our email addresses after dinner, to keep in touch. Three days ago I received an email from her asking me to be 'serious lovers' with her.

Clearly this limp wrist of mine is not doing its job!

Here, some more images from my trip.

My dream lawn

I liked the image

Aw!

The library- imposing piece of British colonial architecture

Totally of the topic- listen to Joanna Newsom (or Newsome- I forget)

channeling meryl streep

2007-01-23T01:28:00.000+07:00

i had a farm in africa at the foot of the ngong hills

i want one

2007-01-23T01:22:00.000+07:00

i got to befriend a 25-year old giraffe bull going by the name of jock

Welcome to Nairobi, how can I wreck your car?

2007-01-18T14:42:00.000+07:00

I spent my last night in South Africa having dinner with my sister and Nike. It was a brilliant dinner and I enjoyed being with them. It made the whole going away and being nervous much easier. They're a scream to be around.

Spent the night at Nike's on their farm. On the way we were treated to the most spectacular lightning and thunderstorm. It was insane and terribly pretty.

My flight to Nairobi was pretty dull. We got treated to a screening of Little Man which I decided to avoid. Although the two guys sitting beside me loved it. They were shaking the whole time as I was reading up on gay and lesbian history.

The drive from Jomo Kenyatta airport was nerve wrecking. My driver was a maniac. On the way into the city I was greeted by flocks of ibis, cattle heron, marabou storks and large falcons. Brilliant! They're nesting in large yellow fever trees lining some of the avenues.

The Nairobi skyline is pretty neat. Very modern and it felt a bit like Johannesburg's. I'm sharing a dorm room with a guy from Canada who's overlanded from Turkey. He shared some of his adventures with me this morning. Horror stories of non-existent roads and non-existent vehicles.

Walked into town. It's busy and city like. I think I'll hang out here today and do some museum and park viewing. Signed up for a bit of a tour tomorrow.

I feel a bit out of sorts, but will probably feel better once I've had breakfast.

transito

2007-01-15T20:08:00.000+07:00

I've had a busy couple of days. Having dinners, breakfasts and drinks and saying so longs etc.

Spent some time at Sandton City this morning. I had to drop off a visa application. Made my way to Pretoria and decided I enjoyed Cape Town's public transport way better than here. It's a much less colorful affair and I got the impression nobody really knew where they were going.

In a strange betting incident on the train I lost some money. I am still not exactly sure of what happened and how. But one minute I was reading and the next someone was grabbing forty bucks (I stuffed most of my cash in my pants pockets) from my wallet and asking me to show him the seven of spades. It was most certainly not a mugging or robbery (well...).

I was ignored by loads of taxis in Pretoria before finally getting picked up by one of those unfriendly but kind types of drivers and dropped of in Brooklyn.

Wednesday I fly to Nairobi.

packing

2007-01-08T01:46:00.000+07:00

Opening my eyes this morning the first thing my eyes focused on was the red and black backpack standing on top of the closet. It looked sad and empty. The top drooping over the main body, straps hanging limp form the sides.

Fine, I nodded to it, I’ll begin today.

blah blah blah bored

2007-01-06T03:39:00.000+07:00

I am bored stiff. I should have known better than parking myself in Hoedspruit for four weeks.

My family has a strange way of keeping me somewhat entertained though.

Last week my brother threatened to beat me up in the company of my grandmother. I don’t think she was impressed, neither was I. But we’ve straitened out our differences and now we are thick as thieves again. Kind of.

My mother gets into the car and then she does not keep quiet again until the engine stops running. She is a darling, babbling on to anyone who cares not to listen.

My father mixes up my name with my brother and little cousin’s and says ‘huh?’ a lot while squinting his eyes.

Our youngest cousin moved in with us. He’s thirteen going on fourteen and possible more bored than I am. He is always trying to engage my brother and I in meaningless conversations and then gets very offended if no one responds to his topics.

I try to visit my grandmother everyday. I hope I never turn eighty-one. She revels in bitching to me about my family and how everyone has done her in.

I do amuse myself.

2007-01-01T04:55:00.000+07:00

i hate it when people have a song in their heart and they share.
brilliant 2007 to all

emergency on my phone

2006-12-25T16:38:00.000+07:00

I needed to get a number from directory enquiry services yesterday and accidentally dialed the wrong three-digit number. After about eight or nine rings an automated answering service took my call. I missed the first sentence of the introduction as I was talking to my sister and only started listening around the bit where it was mentioned that the call might be recorded for quality control purposes, the usual story.

The next line kind of shocked me though. Instead of asking which language I preferred, the voice said: “If you feel that you are in a life threatening situation, please press one.”

I realized that I dialed the service provider’s emergency number and ended the call.

When facing a life-threatening situation, does one really care if the call is recorded for quality control purposes and would it help to know you have a variety of options ranging from life threatening to mild skin irritation that you can access by pressing the correct number?

some extensive coverage of december

2006-12-25T16:34:00.000+07:00

About two weeks ago, on December 7th, Alexander and I boarded our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Our last days in Cape Town were spent visiting various favorite spots and enjoying sunsets. Breakfast at Olympia Café, lunch at Empire. A day in the Winelands. Sunsets on Blouberg, Signal Hill and Camps Bay.

A combination of excitedness and nervousness overshadowed the fact that I was leaving away a place that I grew happy with and that began to feel like home. It still feels unreal and I try not to dwell on it.

So we left Cape Town on the 7th. My parents met us at the airport and we arrived in Hoedspruit much later that night. It was a long day and emotionally exhausting.

I showed Alexander around the town, which was a bit depressing. It has changed so much in 20 years and is still ugly. It is a pity, because the area is so incredibly beautiful. We got to see wild dogs, wild cats and cheetahs at the cheetah project though.

Alexander befriended my mom’s strange cousin when he discovered the cousin wants Hillary Clinton to be the next US president and is a huge fan of 7de Laan.

The next day we went with my family to Modjadji where the Rain Queen resides and where an ancient Cycad forest is. It was my third visit and I am still astounded by the sheer size of the cycads and what a beautiful place it is.

Sunday night we spent in an 80-year old farmhouse in White River. I missed out on a tree in the garden being hit by lightning when I went inside for a minute.

The next day we caught our bus from Nelspruit to Maputo.

We fell in love shortly after arriving. Over the past couple of weeks I was told what an unpleasant dump Maputo is. I was not sure what to expect, but I got the impression that I might enjoy it somewhat. The reality far exceeded my expectations. I think I fell in love with the city.

It is a charming old capital that was unlike any other city on the continent that I have been to so far. Massive flamboyant trees line the avenues and streets. People are friendly. Pastry shops sell sweet breads and good coffee. The architecture is varied and impressive. The food was super.

My highlights were the architecture, the Museum Of Natural History (an impressive piece- describing this old museum would not do it justice), the old train station and the tacky but fun restaurants we dined at.

I’m hoping that we can return to Maputo and see more of this city and the rest of the country.

Unfortunately we both suffered some heat/sunstroke on our last day on the island of Cathembe, so we did not get to go to the fish market for dinner and a rather restless night.

Thursday the fourteenth we took our early bus back to Nelspruit. We were stuck at the border for more than three hours. Ugh! We picked up the car in White River again and after a quick stop for coffee and some groceries in Nelspruit we head towards Swaziland. We arrived just before the border closed and arrived at our first destination just as the gate attendants were about to leave. Phew!

Our site at Mlawule was spectacular. Tented accommodation with an outside bathing area overlooking a river, bushes and sugarcane farms. We took a bath in a sink tub with water heated through an archaic paraffin ‘donkey’. It was by far the most romantic and beautiful bath that I’ve ever taken. I wish we could have stayed for much longer. We got to see some game, including what we suspect might have been a rare red duiker and loads of dung beetles working away. A young monitor lizard hung out in our bathing area.

The next day, after waking up at 4:30 and going for a game drive, we headed towards Mkhaya via the Hlane National Park.

Mkhaya was another spectacular experience. The campsite is set besides a dry river bed, the no-walls rooms underneath a natural forest of awesome trees. We were greeted at our lodgings by an nyala bull and later saw an owl swooping low over our footpath. Another place where I could have stayed for days.

At Mkhaya we saw loads of endangered wildlife including a black rhino cow and her baby. I saw more sable antelope than I’ve probably seen in my whole life. We were woken up at some point in the night by the call of hyena somewhere close.

Our last night in Swaziland was spent at Mlilwane in the company of my folks. We went for an evening walk to the dam/lake by the restaurant to see hundreds of birds getting ready to bed down in two large trees on the bank. Maybe I will become a bird watcher.

We left for Johannesburg the next morning. Stayed at a sweet guesthouse in Melville and over indulged at a mainly Vietnamese restaurant.

After a bizarre goodbye to Alexander I spent Monday night at home with Lorette in Roodepoort and realized that families are all pretty much the same. And an outsider will probably think you have the ideal family set-up while all you want is to get away from them.

And now I am tired of writing.

toads

2006-12-25T03:18:00.000+07:00

There are toads and toads and toads out here. They are to be found almost anywhere inside the house and everywhere outside.

I prepared dinner and we decided to have it outside on the large stoep. There is a breeze out and it is much cooler than inside, even with fans on. As we sat down, waiting for my father to say grace, one particular frog started up the most bizarre croaking I’ve ever heard. It was beautiful,

After dinner I went to my parents’ room to make a call. The corridor was dark. I stepped onto something squiggly and heard a sound like the last moist being squeezed out of a sea sponge. I gave a muffled scream and switched on a light. It was a small-ish toad. I was grateful to see it did not die and was hopping away in a hurry. Poor thing.

I enjoy the toads.

Besides the croaking toads I also have the privilege of hearing lions, hyenas and jackals at various times during the day.

A large monitor lizard crossed the road the other day on my way home. Some distance further was a ground squirrel. He ran into the middle of the road, grabbed something and made a u-turn back to the shrubs on the side of the road.

A hawk was flying low over my grandmother’s house when I went for tea yesterday, scanning the earth for easy prey. A pair of little birds were attacking it in an attempt to divert attention from their nest.

On the stoep light is a massive green praying mantis, catching smaller bugs attracted by the light. A fat gecko takes care of the bigger bugs.

I have left the convenience of sweet coffee shops, decent eateries and my friends in Cape Town two weeks ago. I have returned to all of this.

I am trying to make sense of it.

gross

2006-12-22T03:46:00.000+07:00

Let me try to get my thoughts together. Oh shit there just landed a stink bug on my laptop and now wedged its way underneath my keypad. And a huge thing came running across the table. No way my thoughts are getting collected.

Sorry.

in polokwane

2006-12-19T21:40:00.000+07:00

am spending the night at my aunt's here in dull and ugly polokwane. have to pick up my sister's car. i will write all about our trip to moz and swaziland later. right now i just want to disappear for a bit. alexander left last night. it blows.

the plans

2006-12-07T16:23:00.000+07:00

So here it is, Dorothy and everybody else who are just as confused as I am.

We are leaving Cape Town today, in about 3 hours time we will be taking off and flying East to Johannesburg where my parents will meet us. We will be driving through to Hoedspruit directly from the airport and arrive at my folks' home tonight.
And then:
Friday 12/8- Hoedspruit town (the thrill!) and the Kapama Cheetah project to view wild dogs and vultures.
Saturday 12/ 9- Tzaneen and Modjadji Rain Forest.
Sunday 12/10- Hoedspruit to White River
Monday 12/11- Nelspruit to Maputo (Mozambique) by bus- we stay here until the 14th.
Thursday 12/14- Maputo to Nelspruit and from here to Swaziland where we will be spending the next three nights at various locations.
Sunday 12/17- Swaziland to Johannesburg
Monday 12/18- Alexander flies back to the States.
Tuesday 12/19- I drive back to Hoedspruit with teary eyes and spend the rest of time around at home I think.
Around the 12th of January I leave for Pretoria/Johannesburg and spend my last couple of nights with friends.
Wednesday 1/17- fly Johannesburg to Nairodi and spend 3 nights (what am I going to DO there?)
Saturday 1/20- Nairobi to Bangkok arriving early on the 21st.
Wednesday 1/24- Bangkok to Taipei- stay in Hsinchu until somewhere in March.
Hopefully by March 20th I will be in LA, meeting up with Alexander.
Stay in the States until early June and fly back to Bangkok around the 5th of June, maybe via Taiwan again.
12/13 June- meet Alexander in Bangkok and then.....

I will try to keep posts regular and maybe throw in the odd picture if I can figure it out.

just about everywhere

2006-12-05T15:22:00.000+07:00

We have two days left before leaving Cape Town. My nervousness is placing a bit of a damper on all the excitement that I should be experiencing. It is confusing. I find most things confusing though so it's not a problem.
Yesterday we drove out to False Bay. Had a croissants at Olymia Cafe and walked around Kalk Bay. Drove out to Simon's Town and hung around. Had lunch at Empire Cafe in Muizenberg. Driving back to the city I kept on feeling that empty feeling of goodbye.
Yuck.
Still, it's easier than leaving Taiwan.
The apartment is a mess and I think I am coping very well with it. Alexander is repainting. The white glare is a bit much, but that is what the landlady wanted.
Shoot.

same sex marriages

2006-11-15T22:59:00.000+07:00

on the day that the south african parliament was voting on same sex marriages we were walking around the tokai arboratum (sp?) blissfully unaware of all the excitement. so while the ucdp was totally missing the point we were totally enjoying oral satisfaction in wooded areas. maybe it helped.

storms and tickets

2006-11-03T14:06:00.000+07:00

i hate it when people are trying to compliment someone on a new hairdo and you just KNOW they are lying through there teeth

i paid for my ticket to bangkok. will be spending three nights in nairobi. i have NO idea what i will do there for that time, because it's gonna be like 4 days and 3 nights. kind of curious and nervous and excited.

also booked and paid our ticket to joburg for december. we will try to go to mozambique and swaziland if alexander can stay till the 18th. hope-hope-hope.

we counted coutries we've been to last night. i counted 27 and will add 2 more early next year. maybe 4.

there was a massive storm on the way to school this morning and i want a new tattoo NOW

bookings made

2006-10-25T02:15:00.000+07:00

I booked a one way ticket to Bangkok today with a stopover in Nairobi. The adventure begins...

jacket

2006-10-17T19:28:00.000+07:00

i just bought a new item of clothing in under 5 minutes. it's the first time i've bought clothing in i think over a year (aside from three pairs of socks two weeks ago).
i urgently needed a sweater/jacket. i have an idea of exactly what i want and was thinking of having something made. but that would take too long. so i took a shot at image&hair in obs. i browsed around for three minutes until the girl pointed out their jackets. i looked at the only jacket/sweater they had. it was perfect, except for some gold detail on the front. i tried it on and it was a perfect (as in really prefect) fit. and it has a hood and it zips up to under my chin. it looked hot on me and less than 5 minutes after entering the store i left with a giddy smile on my face and a brown paper bag under my arm.
and then i had an aweful latte at mimi's.

2006-10-13T13:44:00.000+07:00

I am giving it one more night and then I am heading to the pharmacy or a health shop for some melatonin (sp?). Last night was better, but there is room for improvement.

awake-asleep

2006-10-12T18:18:00.000+07:00

It has been the same thing pretty much every night for about a month now. I feel like sleep and get into bed, reading until my eyes start feeling dry and tired. I turn out the light and cuddle up to my boyfriend, snuggling into his body. The scene is set for a good night’s rest.

With my eyes closed and my body slowly heating up behind his back, my heart beat becomes faster. The beat becomes juxtaposed against the even breathing of the sleeping body beside me. It becomes frantic and irregular. A knot begins to tie in the centre of my body. I am, again, wide awake.

I feel worn-out and try to lull myself to sleep. I repeat pleasing thoughts. I think about him beside me. I picture an exciting future. I conjure up pleasantries from the past week. I design a new tattoo and think about the pain I will experience when the ink needle pierces my skin.

But nothing works anymore. So my head gets filled with murky thoughts. Lying on my stomach, clutching at the knot, I picture myself sitting on the windowsill with my feet dangling out the window. I look out at the sea beyond the low-rise apartment building. Sometimes I can see the lights of ships. Sometimes I can see the moon’s silver reflection. When the moon is bright enough I see a white ridge of foam where the waves are breaking on the shore.

My breathing becomes regular and slower and deeper until I feel completely calm. I don’t turn around to look at him, peacefully asleep on the bed, a pillow in his arms. I look out at the sea so I don’t have to deal with the feeling of vertigo and I jump.

The fall is quick. Five stories and its over.

Those still awake will be startled by an unpleasant noise. Some will take a look out the windows and see my body spiked through on the security fence. A gruesome sight.

*

I’m on time for the train. The doors close with a pressure releasing squeeze of air. It moves at a slow pace out of the main station area. It only really picks up speed after the second stop. My mind drifts from the short story I’m reading. The noise the train is making is disconcerting.

At times I hear low groans, and then it cracks like the knuckles of my toes. There are deep squeaks and sometimes a cry. The noises sound tortuous. Years of hurtling forwards and backwards on the same route, being subjected to the abuse of aggressive passengers, tired workers and spraying cans of graffiti artists are taking there toll.

I look out the window at the other tracks and I am shocked to notice that they are moving very slowly like branches of a wispy tree, closer and further away from my train. I put my hand slightly out the window, but pull it back swiftly as a passing train scrapes against ours. I realize that our tracks must also be moving. If I close my eyes I imagine our train as something animated. Like the frantic cat-bus in Totoro.

I push up the window.

Underneath the bridges I notice small tribes making fires to celebrate the early morning sun. All the while the train is swerving closer and further from oncoming trains.

As I return my eyes to the pages of my book I notice the two demons spray painted onto the seats facing me. They stare intently at me with little frowns on their foreheads. I force a smile. Both give me a wink and then face each other. One gives a slight shrug and they start kissing passionately. I look until I begin to feel uncomfortable for staring.

At the next stop some passengers get up to leave the train. Only now do I realize that everybody except me has turned into stick figures with long thin bodies. Sexless people carrying briefcases, backpacks and purses. As they leave the train they turn to look at me. Their round expressionless faces move from side to side on elongated necks in a disapproving manner.

I only notice three stops too late that I had missed my stop. I shove my book into my back and rush to the doors. The demons briefly stop their kissing to wink goodbyes at me. The stick people are slowly shaking their heads. It seems like they are saying “no.”

I step onto the platform and as the doors shut behind me and the train begins to drag itself forward I give a couple of steps away, until I am standing outside the yellow “DANGER” line.

Instead of running through the underpass to catch the train pulling into the station that will take me back to my stop I stay fixed in my spot. I look around me and take in the scenery.

If I twist my head just so I can see the train tracks, perfectly normal. Large pieces of motionless metal with chunks of granite around and between it. Two security guards in yellow and black are continuing there conversation with the guards on the opposite platform. A father comes into the station with two children holding onto his hands. There is a group of school girls in maroon uniforms pouring over a tabloid newspaper. A young man is standing to one side, the hood form his jacket covers his head and his feet are slowly tapping to the rhythm of music only he is listening to.

Over the loudspeakers someone announces that the next train won’t be stopping and passengers should wait for the 7:19 train.

The trees, the sun, the sky, the fence, the concrete platform. Everything is as it should be at seven in the morning when I hear the electric current running up ahead of a train. I close my eyes and wish I could be back in bed, actually sleeping this time.
I am still standing with my back to the tracks. I finally feel awake. The first energy boost of the morning begins to surge through my body.

I catch sight of the speeding train out of the corner of my left eye as it comes closer.

With my newfound energy I give one-two-three-four steps backward and fall, a split second before the train crushes over the spot where I fell onto the tracks.

wildebeests on the slopes of devil's peak

2006-10-11T13:44:00.000+07:00

I was lucky to find a seat after the train made its fourth stop. The previous day I stood from Diep River all the way to Cape Town main station, thirty-seven grueling minutes from start to end on a crammed train.

I squeezed onto a bench with four other people at the front-end of the car, while new passenger filled up the space where I stood and others got off. The doors closed and the train started moving again. Stopping at the next station to let more people on, and less off. And so we continued from station to station.

I don’t keep track of station names so I don’t know where the boy (or I guess young man) got onto the train. Maybe it was midway through the journey.

He stood with his back to me, his right arm stretched out to lean onto the side of the car. All the overhead grips for standing passengers were taken. The shape of his head was almost perfectly round. His hair was cut short and he wore two small earrings, one in each ear.

He had on a light blue shirt and deep blue chinos. The shirt seemed ideal for the hot train ride; it was such a light weave. Whenever the son shone through the window opposite, I could make out the silhouette of his body. I could not see his shoes, and did not want to lean forward to try and take a look. His friend, facing me, was already eyeing me suspiciously.

Underneath his left arm was tucked a small backpack. The left arm was bent towards his back with his hand half slipped into his pants. He shifted balance from his left leg to his right and back. And as the train traveled on to Cape Town main station, the-same-the-same-the-same-the-same, his position stayed almost unchanged, except for the shifting of balance from the one leg to the other.

From underneath the angle that his right arm made with his body I could see a bit through the window. The scenery flickered by, train style. Houses-trees-road-houses-road-trees.

I took to my book again and finished another chapter. We were nearing the end of the line. I looked up at the guy’s back again and through the angle of his body and arm to the scenery outside. I noticed flashes of green and trees before the scenery changed to buildings again, and then again the green and trees.

Framed by his body and the window, my last view of the slopes before the industrial buildings of Salt River swallowed it up, was of wildebeest grazing on the side of Devil’s Peak.

public transport

2006-10-06T13:37:00.000+07:00

Ever since that nasty Thursday morning a couple of weeks ago when I discovered my car was not where I had left it I’ve been relying, like so many others in this country, on public transport.

At first I was a bit apprehensive about this. I was not snubbing public transport as such, it just seemed like my life would be greatly inconvenienced by the lack of mobile freedom.

I am happy to report that so far it has not been a problem. I’ve gotten the hang of the trains and minibuses down pat. I bought a week pass for the train this week, and I’m saving quite a buck on transportation costs. Getting to work and back takes a little longer, but I’m not too concerned.

I’m enjoying public transport in Cape Town. I’ve been thinking about making use of it for some time now and now I have no choice. So.

It dawned on me this week that one experiences a part of the city that many people are completely indifferent too. Many people in fact gets unsettled by the thought of taking public transport. What about train robberies and murders and the way the minibuses drive?

I guess we are all a little more comfortable with the idea of dying in a car wreck that by someone else’s knife. Myself included. But in all honesty I feel pretty safe on the trains and having a blast. Here is where I get ideas for stories and garments and I have two hands to write it down with. I can read in between destinations or I can look out the windows at the passing scenery. I listen in on conversations total strangers are having with total strangers. I feel like I am, here in the Cape Colony with its smell of European-ess, like I am in Africa.

It might sound like I am trying to make the best of a shitty situation, but honestly, I am enjoying it and I think if I still had a car I might still make use of public transport as much as I could.

First class!

first letter

2006-09-30T22:32:00.000+07:00

September 27, 2006
Dearest D,

I have been putting off writing to you for months now and finally decided to sit myself down and write before doing anything else.

A group of elephants paraded through the garden again yesterday. I am beginning to get the message; no garden will ever survive here. If it is not elephants, it’s hippos grazing at night, or bush pigs getting to the veggie garden, or something else. I will try to maintain a lawn in as much as it is possible. For the rest, I guess giving up is the only option.

At least the big marula tree is somewhat safe. Delicious is on the swing I managed to get up in the tree. He is making notes for his new performance. Thinking of going back to the city for a couple of months early next year to get it onto stage. I think after the success of the last two shows it won’t be too hard to get support from one of the theatres.

He still seems to be in demand, even though we are living out here, miles away from anything resembling what we came to accept as regular and took for granted.

I was worried that we were not going to adapt well, but all seem to be fine.

Even if, I must admit, the silence becomes a bit devastating at times and I miss the sounds I still associate with the house in the city. I particularly miss the pigeons that nested in the oak tree in spring. I often find myself wishing for the sound of a police siren, or the booming of some kid’s car stereo blowing down the street. And of course, there are no street parades.

All the sounds that I held so dear has now been replaced by silence, mostly. Especially during the day it can get hauntingly quiet. It is at dusk that the noises fill the atmosphere. Jackals and hyenas, bush babies and night owls. In the early morning I sometimes wake up from the watery braying of zebras and grunts of wildebeest by the hippo pool.

When the silence becomes too much for us we listen to Cibo Matto, Sci-fi Wasabi is our current favorite. We generally do a lot of silly jumping around and afterwards we crash down on the floor, out of breath, feeling that for a moment we were back in our ‘old’ world.

I have not been writing at all since we moved here. Whereas Delicious seems to be finding creative encouragement, I am in a bit of lull. I have tried on several occasions to jot down some ideas. But nothing came. I’m not too worried though. I am finally coming to terms with the idea that I do not have to turn out a new piece every two years. Maybe the next one will take me a good couple of years.

Delicious tells me to take my time and for a change I will agree with him. Who knows what will come of it if I just let go.

I guess I can say that so far letting go has done us good. As I said, Delicious is busy with ideas and for myself, well. I will get over my gardening ambitions and the writing will come when the time is ready.

When will you be in the country again? You know that you now have a bed out here in the great ‘unfamiliar’ and you are welcome to come visit anytime. Delicious says he longs for your company. The same goes for me.

Send my love to that other great city I love so much.

B

happiness is- this might be sickly sweet

2006-09-27T23:32:00.000+07:00

The October issue of i-D is called the ‘happiness issue’. On the cover is printed the following “happiness is what I call fashion!”

On page 20 are the musings of some readers on happiness. ZZZZZzzzzz said: “My idea of happiness is drinking a nice cup of tea and then getting out the fancy dress and performing music videos, just because I can.” (ZZZZZzzzz, 12 Aug 2006, 10:15) One Michael Crow said: “I found 50p on the pavement. It made me so happy I left it for another lucky person.” (Michael Crow, 11 Aug 2006, 03:38)

Of course, some of the things said were a bit sickly sweet, but it was nice to read about what makes people happy. And it was fun.

So I decided to go on about what makes me happy. A bit. Or things that made me happy recently.

This morning Casey was jumping up and down (he is a 15-year old boy with the strangest mind I’ve encountered in a 15-year old) not able to wait to tell me about his new greatest moment. In his hand he was holding a faded 1p coin. He picked it up the previous night while on his way to a sushi restaurant with his dad. Picking up the smallest unit in the British monetary system became the greatest moment of his life. It makes sense that this would be Casey’s new greatest moment. I do of course not expect anyone else to understand, but it made me happy. And is making me happier as the day progresses.

Joanna Newsom’s voice. If you’ve never heard of her it is time you make the effort of downloading some of her music. I got a couple of new songs tonight. “lead me to the water lord, I sure am thirsty” from the song Sadie had me hopping. Listen to Joanne Newsom. Other song titles include Flying a Kite, Bridges and Balloons, Sprout and the Bean…

Listen to her.

Being picked up by Alexander, my legs around his waist and my hands on his shoulders. Sometimes he does a little dance and tries to make me move along so I can look like my mom ‘jiving’ along to Noot vir Noot. Sometimes he uses it to render me defenseless against his tickle tactics.

I had two pleasant conversations with overworked Woolworths employees in the dullest place on earth. Both times I was also pretty worn-out. The first time a girl convinced me to buy chocolate pudding to go with the ice-cream I picked-up on a grim day. The second time a guy confessed to me how tired he was and that he did not feel like saying “I’m fine, thank you.” It made moments.

Getting a myspace ‘space’ made me happy. And then realizing how many people are out there. Maybe that made me feel a little safer, and happier.

Of course, getting the new i-D in the mail today made me particularly happy.

Ryan McGinley had the word penis tattoo-ed inside his lip. In his own words “… so that I’d always have a penis in my mouth.” When asked if he is worried about it fading after a while (apparently these tattoos do) he said “…I think I’m gonna die with a penis in my mouth.”

Some forms of happiness is just meant to be strange I guess, but I loved his statement.

And now I will smile for a bit.

in and out of focus

2006-09-25T22:22:00.000+07:00

i recorded this earlier today. i only started paying attetion to the hands yesterday.

goodbye

2006-09-24T13:18:00.000+07:00

We are leaving this house in Fishhoek today. Couldn’t come soon enough. What was supposed to be a stress-free week in a pretty house right on the ocean turned out to be rather stressful and exhausting. And Fishhoek is arguably one of the least appealing places I have ever lived. The ocean, whales and mountain did not help, unfortunately.

That’s just me.

I had to man a table at the Celebrate Life Festival for a couple of hours today on behalf of my boss. I have not seen so many fruits (in the words of a friend) in one space at once in a long while. Everybody walked around with enlightened smiles hopping from one table and stand to the next trying to see how they can get even more enlightened.

At the table with me sat some ancient lady who is presenting A Course in Miracles workshop next weekend. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but she was entertaining enough.

I think she did offend one lady very much though.

Here’s what happened, a lady came to the table and was looking at some flyers. I made some conversation and then let her go about her business. She was taking a look at the Course in Miracles flyer when the following exchange of words happened between her and the older lady.

Old Lady: Yes, that is for the Course in Miracles. It is taking place in Rondebosch next weekend.
Browsing Lady: Oh, I will need a miracle before that to attend (she puts down the flyer).
OL: Yes, we all need miracles.
BL: No. I REALLY need a miracle. (Seems very bent on getting this point across)
OL: Yes, but sometimes it is just a situation of being open and receptive to miracles.
BL: I know that, but I really do need a miracle. (I start getting her drift)
OL: Well, maybe you can come to the workshop.
BL: No, I just need a miracle, I am starting chemo this week. (Shit)
OL: Yes, you just need to really believe in the miracle.

And that was the last we saw of the browsing lady.
Luckily I took a book with and also found that the festival attracted some nice food stands. I had a pleasing pita and a decent enough coffee before leaving. Smiling my enlightened smile to everybody.

the empty space where my car was

2006-09-22T02:19:00.000+07:00

As I stepped out onto the street this morning with pear and paper in one hand and bag in the other I was greeted by a queezy feeling on my stomach.
Behind the white Isuzu bakkie was not my car.
I ran into the house, dropping items on the way (pear on the sidewalk, bag on the kitchen floor and about the paper I am not sure) to wake Alexander up to tell him the news. He was still waking up and trying to understand why his sleep was so horribly interrupted when I ran back outside. It did not feel right, it definetely did not feel right. I wanted to check if I was just confused, but I saw correctly. My car was no longer parked behind the bakkie. It was GONE!
And it still is.
I'm not sure if I have at all dealt with this unpleasantry. My mind went into auto I guess and I made some calls. Later on the police came round to take a statement (I made them coffee and felt very sweet) and I went to work.
Oi.
So now my car is possibly in some chop-shop being cut into pieces, the thought breaks my heart. Someone called form the police station earlier to tell me they have a high success rate and I should keep my hopes up. He was very sweet and it felt like he was a bit flirty even, so I'll keep my hopes up that maybe tomorrow he will call again and tell me I can come pick up my car at the police station.
Quite honestly I don't care for the friendly police officer, I just want anybody to call me and tell me to come pick up my car, that has been found in a similar condition as the one I left it in...
I think I'm depressed

better and better

2006-09-21T00:26:00.000+07:00

It's been almost a year since the big Kate Moss on coke skandaal. I remember being very devastated. Not because of her snorting up lines of the stuff in recording studios (and pretty much everywhere else). But because of the awful press she got because of it. Poor Kate.

I love Kate. I hope to one day meet her and have a glass of Moet while she does a line. I will probably not partake. But I understand that a girl needs her lines to stay as exquisitely beautiful as her.

Kate has been dropped by quite a number of big names. But dear John Galliano stuck with her and she has just been snapped again by the ever brilliant Nick Knight (and airbrushed of course, white lines and airbrush) for Dior's Autumn/Winter 06/07 campaign.

I'm not going to struggle with adding images, but here is the link for some of the images.

http://www.showstudio.com/campaigns/14220/portfolio/14225/1

Sigh....

spirit

2006-09-19T13:51:00.000+07:00

I am not enjoying waking up so very early in the mornings. Tuesday is the only day I do not need to get up early, and then the weekends.

In the mornings at six the alarm goes off. I am usually awake immediately and switch it off. Alexander does not wake up, I think he could sleep through most unpleasantries like noisy alarms and screetching seagulls at 5AM.

I steady myself out of bed, while it is still pretty dark out, and walk to the shower. Less than ten minutes later I am pretty much ready to go. I fill my the plastic dish with muesli and yoghurt, grab a pear and leave the house. Sometimes I will try to give Alexander a kiss, but mostly he is with his head in the pillow so I just wave and leave.

I get into the car and start driving. The first couple of minutes in silence as there is no radio reception in parts of Seapoint. It's a cliche, but it is just my thoughts and I going down Regent Road.

By the time I get to Greenpoint there is reception and I listen to SAFM. Usually what's on the front pages of the papers. I wonder about becoming a radio personality. Sometimes I switch to 5FM.

I pass the speed trap where everybody breaks and continue over the limit to Diep River. Usually all the lights are green.

I move against the traffic so it is quiet for me. I like it that way of course, who wouldn't. I wonder about everything.

All this time, I feel like a spirit. Nothing confirms my existence. I feel like I am not.

I arrive at the house and the first person I see is the mom. After a couple of minutes chatting to her and the kids I start feeling real again.

It reminds me of the times I went on vacation by myself. Roaming the streets of Bangkok and Tokyo with no one to confirm my existence. Only in the moments when I check into a hotel or order a meal do I feel like I am again.

It is fun to go into my own head sometimes and feel like I am not real. Especially when traveling.

But feeling like a spirit on a Wednesday morning does not appeal to me much.

stressful

2006-09-17T01:00:00.000+07:00

i lost my blog tonight. i'm not sure how to explain it all, but it was very stressful. all that came up was this tan coloured screen. i freaked ou and slammed down the screen and stormed out. giving alexander a bit fo a fright i think. feeling stupid i came back and sobbed. which was good. i think it was a bit of a tention release and just nice. and alexander helped. so after sobbing i opened up the computer again and logged onto blogspot and found that everything was still around, i just deleted my template somehow, but its all fine and back now. phew.
otherwise today was pleasant and pleasant and pleasant.
started out with breakfast in the dining room overlooking the bay. had second breakfast in a different position, still with the bay in full view of me. we drove out to cape point and hung around with loads of tourist groups. saw ostrich but unfortunately no eland. also saw a tiny tortoise. cute.
had a very stressful shopping experience. went through three horrible stores and finally ended up at a woollies. i picked up quite a few items we did not need, including chocolate pudding (on the cashier's insistence) and a tub of ice cream. and dates!
tonight we're starting to work on X's Master's paper. i will be the subject of his ethnography. it has been in my head a lot recently and it opened up a whole lot of thought on my sexuality and my identityt. have been doing some reading on the topic and also looking at some ethnographies. i will comment more on that later. but i am excited. and feeling better.
my phone has been off since just after 4 yesterday and i'm loving that. will have to return to the world tomorrow though. and not feeling like it.

from the gate to the porch

2006-09-15T16:58:00.000+07:00

As usual I am standing at the top of the steps on the front porch, looking straight ahead at the gate at the end of the walkway between gate and porch. Three steps and you land on the first of seven concrete slabs with little criss-cross designs on them. Pretty drab and more than average.

Patches of pennyroyal are edging their way onto the slabs. They are trimmed often to keep them from taking over, but mom likes them creeping up just a bit, so when someone accidentally steps on some leaves it releases an herblike sweet fragrance.

I shut my eyes and wait for my watch to beep the hour and when it does I open my eyes again. He stands there, right on time, one hand on the gate and the other giving a slight wave. I motion a wave and smile back at him.

When he opens the gate it does not squeak. You half expect this kind of gate to squeak but it doesn’t. The gardener keeps it greased. He keeps everything greased. He dislikes squeaks.

The gate is wide open and he gives his first step onto the first concrete slab leading my way and in my head I think, here we go again.

As he turns to close the gate it begins. I know what is coming and I can do nothing but watch and urge him on. I wish it could be easier, but there is just no way around this walk.

The concrete starts bubbling swamp like underneath his flip-flops and then he begins to sink into it. It happens quickly, but its not exactly sucking him in, he can still pull his feet out.

He turns back to me and I see that he is frightened. It’s always like this, always the same.

“Start running!” I shout, motioning my way.

He lifts up his right foot and gives a step forward, just as the swampy concrete reaches above his ankle. He gives a big step onto the next slab, but this one is already bubbling quite a bit and immediately his foot sinks in up to his calve. He brings his left foot over and this one sinks just as deep.

My stomach is churning. Usually the second slab is easy.

He is looking around him at the hissing pennyroyal. They lash out at him and he needs to wave wildly with his arms to keep them at bay. He pulls his legs from the slab and onto the next one. The mud drips from his legs and still the pennyroyal keeps on hissing and lashing, exposing their sharp teeth.

The slab is an unstable raft and he is trying to keep his balance. From the lawn comes creeping a large crocodile. He does not attack, but he stays close, watching the situation with enthusiastic eyes. If he falls off the raft he becomes brunch. He also sees the crocodile staring at him.

“Keep your balance and jump. You’re almost halfway here.” My hands are frantically going over each other as I step from side to side. The crocodile is making me nervous.

He gets himself steadied and jumps onto Solid Concrete Slab #4.

“Hurry,” I shout, “before they come!”

He gives a leap and today he completely misses the next slab and steps with one foot on the sixth one and the other right into the hissing pennyroyal. They squeal menacingly and bite at his ankle. He is slapping at them as he brings the other foot onto the slab too. There are tiny scratches on his ankles and he scratches at them. I know they sting and itch something terribly.

He is still scratching wildly when a vulture begins to circle his head. If he does not hurry the vulture will uncharacteristically pick him up and try to fly him to his nest.

With wild arm movements I try to shoo the vulture away, but whatever I do make no difference. The vulture is not even aware of me. It’s just the two of them.

He acts quickly, bending down and snapping a handful of the pennyroyal and throwing it at the vulture. They manage to leave their mark on his hand and wrist, but his plan worked. The moment they hit the vulture’s body the bite into it and the vulture flaps wildly away trying to shake the pennyroyal from him.

I am jumping up and down. There is one slab left and then onto the porch. And the next one is relatively easy, if you’re quick. But now with his one foot full of bites I don’t know.

He is fine for the moment and he steps onto the last slab. Over the pennyroyal and onto the steps and all will be fine. But he hesitated to scratch at his wrist where he got bitten and the next moment he is in the maelstrom spinning round and round. This is the only time when I can help.

I look around me on the porch for something to hold out to him, something he can grab onto, but there is nothing.

“Swim against the current, I must look in the house.”

I come out moments later with the big black umbrella in my hands. I jump down to the last step and hold it out for him. Four times he spins past me, but the fifth time he grabs hold of the umbrella, and I almost lose my balance. I plant my feet further apart and begin to pull him out of the water. When he is close enough he grabs my left arm with his right and then with both and the next moment he is on the bottom step with me. Coughing and completely soaked.

He is exhausted and I pull him up onto the porch laying his head on my lap. His breathing is rushed. I stroke his wet hair and look out to the path. The sun shines in my eyes making my nose twitch. I give a big sneeze.

And we are standing on the porch. It is all over, no sign of the drama that just took place. He looks at me and says “I cannot give any clear answers, but let’s hope.”

I take a deep breath through my nose when he squeezes my hand and it all smells of pennyroyal.

too early

2006-09-15T05:51:00.000+07:00

I should be in bed sleaping, readying myself in a dream state to wake up at six and go to work. But instead I am sitting around rather aimlessly in front of the computer, trying to get rid of the knot in my stomach.
The uncertainty that is facing us about next year and where we will be or not be and everything related to it is making my stomach churn and messes with my head. I'm beginning to feel rather silly, but in a justified way. I wish I could just breathe in and out a couple of times and realize there is NOTHING I can do about it tonight and I should get some sleep. But instead I sit here and way myself down with more worry drinking weird tea.
I've decided to check out the possibility of teaching in the States. Doubtful if anything worthwhile will pop up, but maybe I should just give it a go and who knows what will happen.
I am wishing myself luck.

not judge judy

2006-09-14T18:31:00.000+07:00

I think I am kind of back. It has been a mad couple of weeks and I feel ready to cut off all contact with the world and disappear. Planning to keep my phone switched off over the weekend and spend some quality time with Alexander.

But that is still a day away and in the meantime things still have to happen. Ugh.

A couple of Mondays ago I found myself in City Hall inside the saddest courtroom. It was actually my first time inside a courtroom and a complete letdown. No journalists frantically sketching bored looking judges or hot convicts. No prim lady typing away at an insane speed. Nothing that one would associate with a proper courtroom was present. Even the magistrate was a total letdown.

A rather heavy-set woman with weird hair that looked as if she’s been sleeping underneath heaps of court documents for weeks and could not care less anymore. Although it became apparent that she does actually care a lot. A lot.

Just to be clear, I was with my employer in court who had to appear for not paying a speeding fine. I was just an innocent bystander so to speak.

Everybody sat around the sides of the room on a long bench. I believe I was the only person there who was not to appear in the little guilty box.

At first it seemed like it might be an entertaining morning, but I soon realized that this was not going to be. One case after the other came, mostly to do with speeding or ignoring stop streets.

But there were some highlights. The first accused was a tiny woman from Brooklyn whose neighbour complained about a barking dog. The magistrate reprimanded the lady for not training the dog to behave. She related the tale of her own dog. A little terrier of sorts who lives with her in her tiny apartment and how she trained the dog not to bark all the time and how she often takes it for long walks on the beach to stimulate the puppy. Thank you for that intimate peak into your life, I thought, hoping she will continue relating little personal stories.

The next accused was the highlight. A poor soul from the Congo, not trying to make a better life for himself in SA.

This man’s bumped up little car ran into a building in downtown Cape. The whole story was rather confusing. He was in court because he got a fine for his car brakes not working (the fine was given after the crash). He claimed that the brakes were working up to 5 minutes before the accident. He realized the brakes were not working and was trying to slow the car down. His handbrake was also not working so in the end he just switched of the car. The magistrate freaked out at this.

“How can you switch of the car when it is still running? You have put the people of South Africa in danger. You are a threat to the safety of the people of this country that is hosting you and giving you a home.”

Yes, even here in South Africa we live under the constant threat of terrorist attacks.

After telling him what a threat he is to society and so on and so on she wanted to know if he can pay some of the fine. He told her it’s really tough, he has a wife and three kids and wife gave him a little cash, but he does not have work and cannot pay the full fine.

So the M asked if he is looking for work and this was his reply: “No, mam. The truth is, I am a very lazy man and have never worked, so I am not looking for work.”

The courtroom burst out laughing, but Her Worship was NOT amused. She turned a purplish red and flew off the handle.

The poor man left looking rather confused and also sad that he had to part with the R200 his wife gave him. Apparently she is the only one working in the family.

And so the day continued. Not very eventful. I became rather bored and took notes in the hope that some other funny events will take place, but no such luck.

There was one man who called the M “Your Majesty” to which she answer “No, no, no. Not majesty, Worship.”

Can somebody explain to me why Worship?

When my employer was on the stand there was some confusion and for a moment the judge thought I was responsible for not giving her some court order. Wagging her finger at me, bright red in the face again she started telling me off for not handing over the document, but luckily Antonet came to my rescue and explained to Her Worship that I DID in fact give her the court order. Which is the truth. It was a bit stressful for a moment, but she was kind enough to apologize for being rude.

I felt kind of sorry for the woman. Imagine having to sit day in and day out listening to peoples lame excuses and handling the most inane cases for a living.

What got me the whole time I was there was just the pettiness of some of the cases and reminded me a bit of the Democratic Alliance.

Harassing the president over his retirement home and the deputy about her vacations and always yapping on about corruption, when meantime, there are much bigger issues doing the rounds.

a brave new year

2006-08-23T15:16:00.000+07:00

I am struggling to get what is in my head onto the screen today. Minutes ago what I wanted to say was pretty clear to me, but now it does not seem to want to come out right. It is a bit like 2006.

Around 10 months ago it seemed as if everything was going to fall into place, but rather the opposite happened. I’m sure many would agree.

More than once over the past 8 months I gave in to bouts of depression, wondering what went wrong. Everything that I had planned out so well and that started off so great just disappeared and I started losing a lot of focus.

And not just me, I looked at my friends and family and saw the same things happening to almost everybody around me.

What went wrong?

So 2006 did not work out as planned, but it definitely inspired many people to acts of bravery. Yes, I am being rather sentimental on this Wednesday morning, but I don’t care!

So, the little acts of bravery.

One friend fell madly in lust with an actor/singer and decided to stalk him in a very sexy and clever manner. She ended up going for drinks with this man.

Another developed a crush on a coffee shop/deli manager and pursued this in a rather quirky way. They are going on a date tonight.

Another friend decided to quit his job of the past 6 years to focus more on his studies and write full time.

My little cousin stood up to his step mom and decided he wanted to move in with my parents.

One couple decided to give up their safe life in Taiwan and move to Moscow. Many others are doing the same at the moment. Shipping cats and dogs from Taiwan back to SA or to Canada or the UK. Following new dreams.

Other friends had their first-born and have not given him up for adoption yet.

Quite a few people got married or are getting married this year.

One got into a prestigious glass school in Seattle for a summer course. She lost most of her luggage on the way, but she is their now.

And then of course there is the one that keeps on saying the wrong things or eating the wrong porridge and getting flack for it from just about everybody. Very brave indeed.

So now we are hurtling towards 2007 and I wonder what to expect of the next year?

As for myself, it seems likely that I will have to brave the hollow-and-empty-stomach feelings of a long distance relationship again. But with the knowledge that it would be followed by the rather brave act of traipsing down (or up) East Africa together with X.
But I’m not going to think about it too much, it might not come out right.

it has been

2006-08-20T16:08:00.000+07:00

It has been some time since I have been around. I might be going for the most boring blog on the web prize I think. Hooray!!!!

Had a lovely potluck with Dorothy, Alexander and A last night at D's house. She made this fabulous soup, totally lovely and I woke up this morning wanting more. Anton brought delicious soup, buns and desserts from Woollies and we supplied orange and chocolate cake and spinach dahl. Yum. And of course there was wine.

Not a late night but a pleasant one. I think such events should take place more often.

And that is all I have to say today.

If you feel I should win the prize for most boring blog let me know or nominate someone else. Any prize suggestions?

oh the olsens

2006-08-10T13:35:00.000+07:00

One can not rely on two people completely giddy on mediocre Korean food and love to make good decisions.

Such was the state Alexander I and found ourselves in on Tuesday night in the video store on Tuesday night. It usually takes us a while to select something to watch, even if we know what we want to get, but on this particular night we were in and out of there in under 3 minutes.

With a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie in hand.

Yep, we decided to be extremely daring and rent Holiday in the Sun, Filmed at the Bahamas. The Filmed at... bit was actually part of the title. Not filmed in mind you, but at. At was the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas (or at?).

The back of the video case read like a brochure of the resort and the whole movie (shot in a style reminiscent of travel programs) was like a long commercial for the resort. A bit like those Peter Stuyvesant ads we saw at the movies when advertising smoking was still legal.

I know we should have expected something terrible, but this movie was worse than anything I had ever watched. I think it almost beat the animated Romea & Juliet with some seals in the lead roles.

There was no story or plot or central theme. It moved from one shot of them having fun to the other, with seemingly important characters moving onto the screen and then completely disappearing, never to be seen again.

I kept on waking up during the night wondering if we really did watch something so dreadful.

Scary stuff. But what is even scarier is that I know, I just know, that some rainy night after mediocre food and being very in love, we might just do the same thing again...

oh spare us!

2006-08-01T19:26:00.000+07:00

I read in The Cape Times on Friday that one of N’Sync’s members ‘came out’. I think his name is Lance Bass. It was a very small article, just one paragraph with a picture of the singer.

He said the reason for waiting so long to come out was that he did not want to hurt N’Sync’s image.

Oh come on!

I am so fed-up with gay people who feel they cannot come out because they need to protect someone or some thing. I think there are circumstances where staying hidden makes sense, because coming out is just downright dangerous. It’s sad, but it’s true.

However, if you live in a country like the USA or South Africa and you feel you cannot come out because you will hurt your band’s image, your own image, or your family then I have very little sympathy and even less respect for you.

Maybe I’m being very harsh here and maybe, as is often the case, a big mouth. But it’s time people grow some backbone.

Your thoughts please.

past saturday morning

2006-08-01T19:24:00.000+07:00

It has been a strange week for me. I experienced too many emotions in a very short time period and it was exhausting.

Monday was a nightmare and mostly just an embarrassment. I felt like I was making a fool of myself in more than one way and I really just wanted to curl up in bed and disappear for the week.

But I had to face the music.

Tuesday rolled around and I did not know what to do with myself. Alexander was coming back that same evening from his trip. I was beyond excitement, but at the same time I had to deal with some people that I dealt with miserably the day before again. And I was not sure how the return would be.

But everything went pretty fine. I called the magazine editor and arranged for a next call date. She’ll be back in the office on Wednesday, Tanya suggested I call on Thursday and hopefully I’ll get a meeting. I went to school at noon and met with my principle again about dropping some subjects. It went much better after I wrote down why and how and so forth. I also spoke to my lecturers, they were a little disappointed, but also supportive. I felt much-much better than Monday.

Alexander got home at around 9:30. I was overwhelmed.

The week was exhausting from then on and we did not see much of each other. I had to work and he spent most of the day with his family who’s here at the moment. Everything felt very wrong and out of place for me.

Thursday I did not get to see him at all, I had to take care of the boys and stay at their dad’s house. But I think it was good so we could get some rest. Both of us were mostly very tired.

Yesterday was a fine day; I left work just after 4 to meet Alexander at the Waterfront. I had to pick-up his house keys. He was still going for dinner with his parents later the evening.

I guess I am emotionally prone to exaggeration. Things that other people see as trivial can be huge to me. And because of this I found myself in the most awkward situation ever when I went to the Waterfront.

I told him I wanted to meet his parents before they leave. I know we’ve only been together for a couple of months, but it was not like I would get to meet them again any time soon. Considering the distance between Cape Town and Albuquerque.

When I first suggested it he gave me a funny smile (I call it the “you are weird” smile), but said we could arrange something. So I was happy. We decided on Saturday for lunch or coffee before they leave. So I have been preparing for the occasion during the week. I mean meeting the family is a kind of big deal.

I was therefore not prepared to meet them without warning in CNA at the V&A Waterfront. And I don’t think they knew they were going to meet me either.
I felt like a complete idiot. I was introduced, took the keys, and pretty much ran out of the store. I wanted the earth to swallow me.

I came to the apartment and called Anton. I was feeling terrible. He calmed me down and I felt better. But a little later I was feeling worse. I even cried and felt totally pathetic. I had all these plans for when he arrived later the evening, but all of a sudden everything felt wrong.

I spoke to Dai later and she also calmed me down. I think both her and Anton understood, so that helped a lot. But I still felt rather stupid. Why was I making such a HUGE deal out of this?

I went to Superspar and bought a bottle of wine, deciding that the best way to deal with this was to drink it away. But luckily I did not and only had a little wine while watching Lola Rennt again. It made me feel a lot better.

After watching the movie I got into the bathtub with my new book and a cup of tea.

I was still in the bath when he came home. I told him how I felt about what happened and he was great about it, as he always is. And we are still having lunch today. So all of us have been warned!

The rest of the evening was blissful and it was still like that when we woke up today. He is not here now, I will meet them later. But I think all is well now in my heart and in my head.

I hope…

oh monday

2006-07-24T15:31:00.000+07:00

I don't think this day is going to happen for me in any way. I have been trying my best to do something constructive now for the past hour and nothing has come of it. Can't see it happening anytime soon.

My brain is not functioning and will probably not be for quite some time, which is a pity as I really need it to be in top form this week.

Serves me right I guess.

It kind of helps to think that maybe I am not the only one feeling like this today. I can think of at least three other people who must be going through the same at this very moment. You know who you are.

I am sitting at school not doing what we were told to do because I don't want to and for some really nasty reason there is a television on in the classroom. I think we are watching Gray's Anatomy.

Why, I do not know.

Today will not go well.

a night with the supermodels

2006-07-20T15:10:00.000+07:00

Models, wannabe models, the men who want to fuck models, family members of models, photographers of models, modeling agents, producers, Anton and myself all gathered at the Cape Town International Convention Center this past Sunday night to witness the final of the Supermodel 2006 television show.

We got invited by a friend and were not going to pass up the opportunity to miss the final to the biggest bitch fight on SA television.

Unfortunately, the bitch fights were confined to a big screen showing highlights from the TV show over the past couple of weeks, and due to bad acoustics we could not hear what the fights were about. They also wore boxing gloves, so no claws.

I could not decide if I was disappointed or relieved by the fact that most of the girls (including the winner) were not of the Lily Cole or Erin O’Connor variety. And there were definitely no Kate’s.

Most of the girls looked fairly, well, healthy. Almost a bit too healthy. Obviously not on the diet of coke, bubbly and Marlboro lights that has kept Kate skinny and utterly gorgeous over the years.

The winner, a pretty dark haired girl named Elbe, was called a good ‘all-rounder’ by some of the judges. Which I guess means she’s good for the runway and the cover of Sarie.

The girl Anton and I thought should’ve won was told she had the face and the look of an international runway supermodel. We love her. And she does not eat solids by the look of things.

Post event we went to the after party held at Cruz, a gay bar on Somerset road. Tonight the crowd consisted of the girls from the show, their friends and their very confused looking dads. Fantastic!

We decided to fuck the fact that the next day was Monday and went all out on the dance floor, grinding shoulders with the young and the oh so glamorously pretty. Anton got to light the cigarette of the winner and I got a hug. The whole evening felt a little like a Sex and the City episode.

We even had a model tripping on the runway.

recent videos

2006-07-18T14:05:00.000+07:00

Over the past week or so I watched the following movies:
The Life Aquatic
The United States of Leland
Garden State

For some reason I felt very moved/touched/whatever by each one of them. After some pondering I decided the reason for this is that they touched on different stages of my life, or rather my growing-up.

Watching Jacques Cousteau documentaries and being captivated by the marvelous amphibious vehicles was what Life Aquatic reminded me of. That was of course when I was very little.

US of Leland had me thinking a bit about those teenage/adolescent years when we thought we knew it all and knowing it all was just so ‘incredibly intense’. That kind of beautiful fucked-upness that we were too grateful to leave behind, but sometimes miss just a little.

And then Garden State had me in quarter life crisis again. Not being sure, coming out of adolescence and feeling so totally numb and pointless, but then things start making sense again and you start finding your feet and its all going to be okay.

It is kind of neat to be able to experience feelings and emotions from the past through the movies. It also helps sometimes making sense of what life was then.

What I want to see now is the movie that deals with life in the late twenties and early thirties.

But of course, I will only discover this movie when I hit 37.

sei shonagon

2006-07-15T14:27:00.000+07:00

"I now had a vast quantity of paper to my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material. On the whole I concentrated on things that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects. I was sure that when people saw my book they would say, ‘It’s even worse than I expected. Now one can really tell what she is like.’ After all, it is written entirely for my own amusement and I put things down exactly as they came to me. How could my casual jottings possibly bear comparison with the many impressive books that exist in our time? Readers have declared, however, that I can be proud of my work. This has surprised me greatly; yet I suppose it is not so strange that people would like it, for, as will be gathered from these notes of mine, I am the sort of person who approves of what others abhor and detest the things they like.
Whatever people may think of my book, I still regret that it ever came to light." (Extract taken from The Pillow Book of Sei Shõnagon, translated and edited by Ivan Moris, printed by Columbia University Press 1991 edition, pages 263-264)

Sei Shõnagon lived in Japan during the Heian period- just over a thousand years ago -and served as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Sadako. She is today considered one of greatest writers of prose in the history of Japanese literature.

Her work includes diary entries, anecdotes, some character and nature descriptions, and personal musings. This work, along with others written by feminine writers during the Heian period gives valuable insights into the lives of upper-class Japanese women so many years ago.
Sei Shõnagon’s work reminds me somewhat of the modern day blog.

She would reflect on an event that took place on a particular day, and describe things that she has seen. She relates a discussion she had with some other ladies and poems received from and sent to a romantic interest. She tells of things that she likes and dislikes as well as things that are appropriate and inappropriate.

I find her writings quite enjoyable. It seems somewhat timeless, and for myself, not so much an insight into the daily lives of court ladies from almost a thousand years ago, but rather like opening someone’s online blog and taking a peep into the life of another.

the coming of the new age

2006-07-12T23:37:00.000+07:00

of course then, choice is always a brilliant option...

my daughter is lesbian

2006-07-10T23:52:00.000+07:00

“…and then I said to him, ‘Willem, rather a gay child than a dead child.’”

If it is possible to have a serious expression whilst beaming with pride at the same time that was the expression on my mother’s face when she related the story to me. She stood up to a homophobic comment by a pretty conservative man on behalf of her son and many other mothers with gay children.

I love my mother dearly and love the fact that she is sometimes a P-FLAG group all by herself. But at times I really feel like shaking her a bit.

Ever since she decided that it was not bad having a gay son she has been going out of her way to change people’s perceptions about gay people. I guess on some level she feels it makes her a better Christian, and sure it makes her a great mom. But seriously, rather gay than dead? Now how was that supposed to make me feel?!

I am grateful that my mother is okay with me and loves me all the same and so on. But she’s never told me she is grateful that I accept her for being heterosexual. Hmm.

There are many other mothers out there like mine. Lovely ladies who’ve decided that their homosexual sons and daughters are actually just plain sons and daughters and there is no need to spend nights rolling around in bed wondering what they did wrong.

Most of these mothers go about their daily business and makes no big deal out of it. Which suits me fine.

But every now and then a mother surfaces with too much time on her hands who decides to write a book about her child being gay.

Lidia Theron is one such mother. In the March 30th 2006 issue of Huisgenoot (Afrikaans weekly general interest magazine) appeared an extract from her book Jy Bly My Kind (You are still my child).

This magazine, like the Femina, got flung against a wall.

The piece is full of stories about how happy Lidia was the day her daughter was born and how she had big dreams for her and what a lovely daughter she was. WAS. She set a good example for other students, performed well academically, and participated in extra-curricular activities. She participated in the church’s youth activities and was even a Sunday school teacher for a bit. A pretty ‘average’ girl it seemed (you can never tell, can you).

In Liesl’s (the daughter) second year the mother started noticing some changes. Her daughter was not so happy and friendly anymore. She did not look her mother in the eyes anymore and neither did her friends. Of this she says: “It was a kind of self-defense mechanism so people won’t detect that they are different. They were possibly also afraid that you would be able to see something in their eyes about their sexual orientation. Through avoiding eye contact, they would deter you from asking questions like, ‘What are you studying’… everyday questions you ask your child’s friends to make them feel at home in your house. Questions other friends would answer spontaneously. Deep inside they were just normal young people, but with something they wanted to hide from society.”

It’s the whole avoiding eye contact bit and the “deep inside they were just normal young people” bit that really irks me! What she does is making gay young people sound like complete freaks with no pride whatsoever. People who yearn to be normal deep inside of them, but who think they cannot be because of their sexual orientation.

Not looking people in the eye is not an exclusively homosexual trait!

Of course, after finding out her lovely daughter was dating another mother’s lovely daughter Lidia had a bit of a freak out. She felt hysterical and even wished her daughter were dead. At least that way they would get some sympathy out of the community.

Lucky for Liesl her mother came round after years of struggling with the shock, disappointment, and sadness. Unfortunately, she also found a publisher, desperate for something ‘shocking’ to publish.

Included in the 5-page spread are pictures of the daughter as a baby and young girl (no recent pictures) as well as recent pictures of the mom. In one she is posing with the producer of a well-known local soap opera and an actress from the soap.

How did she get to hang out with these celebrities?

Apparently she convinced the producer to give one of the two gay characters in the soap a mother who “…understands her son. If people are more informed, they might be less homophobic.”

I would like to know if they are going to include a mother for one of the white trash characters that are all over the show.

And I wonder if next they will include a snog scene between our two gay guys. As far as myself and another friend could figure out, the only affection the two has ever shown each other is a very manly slap on the arm.

But at least there is an understanding (and most irritating) mother figure.

Some might disagree with me, but I think what people like Lidia are doing is not really improving anybody’s life. Yes maybe she is creating awareness. But it is a very warped awareness.

It is an awareness where gay people are ‘different’ and unhappy with who they are. There lives are a constant struggle for acceptance and there parents go through hell and back before accepting them, if they do.

Some other friends of mine, gay and straight, also read this extract from her book, and not one of us saw the greater good in what she was doing. Most of us were just angered or annoyed by it. So I know I am not the only one who had such a strong reaction to it.

Almost as strong as her reaction to the news from her daughter that she was lesbian.

Thank you Lidia, for trying to make life more bearable for a certain part of the population, but maybe you should ask yourself if would you be writing a book about it when your second daughter comes to you one day and tells you, “Mommy, I am heterosexual.”

it sings

2006-07-07T18:55:00.000+07:00

I read about it a while ago in an Afrikaans daily.

After becoming quite freaked out by the news at first I decided to brush it off as a mistake in the press. Someone who caught wiff of something and then mixed up their stories. No need to break my head or a mug over this. It would all go away. It would all go away.

It did not.

I was flipping through some channels yesterday and there it was. The bane of my existence. The embodiment of everything that is wrong with this world in my opinion. The wrongest thing on two legs. My worst nightmare got given a voice and record deal.

Paris Hilton has a single out.

Whenever something awful happens you look . Two boeings fly into the World Trade Towers, you look. A giant wave drags screaming people out to sea, you look. An earthquake shakes so violently a whole building falls over, you look. Paris Hilton appears in her own music video, you look.

The song's name is Stars are Blind and you can listen to it or watch the video (accident) at www.parishilton.com. It's some reggae-ish number with of course dreadful lyrics and the video could not be more un-orignal if she tried.

My friend Anton claims she does not have to try, she has money. He worships the ground Paris Hilton walks on and regards her as the most supreme form of celebrity. I did slap him twice last night as I feel people like him are responsible for someone like her getting media coverage and record deals.

Under "Occupation" on the Wikipedia website it says she is an actress, model, and singer. They left out heiress. Let's face it, she's more famous for that detail than the others.

Ugh.

I also read on Wikipedia that darling Paris will include some hip-hop numbers too. I cannot wait!

Paris Hilton got under my skin the first time I saw a picture of her in some magazine a couple of years ago. And not in the pleasant under the skin way that Frank Sinatra sang about. More like a sandworm. Those things that crawl under the skin on your feet and makes creepy red patterns. That's what Paris Hilton is.

Like the sand worm she is difficult to get out again. You don't want it their because it causes great discomfort and looks downright gross. You need a lot of patience to get rid of it. It can't be cut out I think because some piece of it might stay behind under your skin. A friend's dad had it many years ago, so I know something about it.

I hate that Paris Hilton gets to me so much. I think it is her smile. That look of self-satisfaction she has. It says, "I know I am completely talentless and useless, but you all just cannot help loving me, can you?" Smile-smile-wink.

A cliche: money=power.

I think Anton has a point.

Jay-Z and my watch

2006-07-07T15:00:00.000+07:00

My friend Gayle told me once that Jay-Z said any man of style must own a hat and a watch. Jay-Z should know.

Gayle is married to the very stylish Laurence, who I know owns a hat (or two) and I’m certain he had a watch too. Or was she looking for a watch for him and was admiring mine and that’s how we got onto the topic of watches and hats?

If Laurence did not have a watch the two of us would have made two halves of Jay-Z’s man of style.

I’ve pretty much always had a watch. I got my first one when I turned 11. It was the day I played my first rugby match at my new primary school in Hoedspruit. My parents were terribly proud of my making the team and becoming a teenager at the same time and my sister and her friend decorated my birthday cake to resemble a rugby field.

Of course, I could not care less about the whole rugby fuss and we lost anyways. I was excited about my watch.

It was a digital Casio I think. Quite simple, silver wristband and it could count down seconds and show the date, but I was happy. I would always know the time.

Watches came and went over the course of my school career. Digital made way for the more traditional one with the arms. I remember this one big and bright watch I had in the early nineties that got smashed in my school suitcase one day. I still suspect some other boy who had a crush on the same girl as me.

At the end of high school I came to visit some friends in the Cape. On my way here I noticed that my watch was losing time. This annoyed me something terribly and I had the batteries changed as soon as I arrived in Stellenbosch.

Later that day I noticed that my watch was loosing time again. Irritated I went back to the store and demanded a new battery. But the same thing happened, after a couple of hours I was behind time again. I went to the store a third time and they decided to check the battery. It was fine. Something was obviously wrong with the watch.

I bought the watch in Switzerland earlier that year and I was saddened by the whole affair, but I managed to pull myself together and moved on.

A couple of years ago I bought a new Swatch while on holiday in Korea. It was a neat watch and drew some compliments.

But then one day, after about two years it started losing time. I had the battery changed at a Swatch store, but the same thing happened as some years before. It kept on lagging behind. By the third time the girl at the store did not seem impressed with my watch and me anymore. I decided to put it back in its box where it is lying to this day.

Some time after that I bought my second Fossil. I think it is my favorite watch to date. It has a large face with arms and a digital second counter on the background. Every time you press a button the way the seconds gets displayed changes. I think there are about ten options. The wristband is silver and it has a special safety mechanism, which ensures the watch will not easily come loose and slip of your arm.

I spent a lot of time showing off my watch to students and friends.

All went well. The watch stayed with me through trips into South East Asia, moving house, a break-up, moving back to South Africa, beginning school again, and a new relationship.

Then a couple of weeks ago it started to loose time…

And the same story repeated itself. After the new battery did not work I took it back to the Fossil store where the girl suggested a service repair. R220 later I had my watch back on my wrist. Good as new.

Until yesterday morning when I noticed that it was still yesterday on my watch. I took it back and it is going in for another service.

I’m a bit freaked by all of this. Is it me or is just co-incidence that so many of my watches just start lagging behind while on my wrist?

So maybe watches and I are not compatible. I don’t think hats and I really are. I’ve tried and it just seems a little uncomfortable on me. It’s like wearing glasses for the first time and looking alien to yourself. And then there’s the hat line.

So according to some that would make me not a man of style. At least I tried. And anyways, Laurence does it so much better.

from eritrea to jt leroy

2006-07-06T20:07:00.000+07:00

Last night I decided I want to go to Eritrea. I guess I am mainly attracted by the cappuccinos. But there is also the architecture, the people, and the Red Sea.

I’ve read up on it in a copy of Africa on a Shoestring. So far that is where I’ve gotten the most information on the relatively newly independent country. I was searching online today for more info but it was kind of few and far between and of course the US and UK are full of warnings. As always. Those websites still make Laos sound like one of the most dangerous countries you can visit.

It’s so stupidly frustrating when you’re looking for something and can find nothing.

Where I found a lack of information on Eritrea, I found loads of it on JT LeRoy.

JT (Jeremy ‘Terminator’) stunned the world with his first book Sarah (published in 2001) about a 12-year old boy who dresses up as a girl and becomes a bit of a truck stop whore. His stories tell of the kind of under-world we would rather not think about. Child prostitution, abuse, rape, drugs.

In 2002 The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things saw the light. Apparently it was written a couple of years before Sarah, but only published later. In 2002, JT was 22 years old. The book, consisting of short stories, tells the story of young Jeremiah who gets returned to his mother after 5 years with a foster family. Again it is pretty grim. It was turned into a movie starring amongst others Asia Argento and Marylin Manson.

I first became aware of LeRoy through his terribly boring contributions to i-D magazine about two years ago. His interviews ended up being more about himself than the interviewees.

I was intrigued by his story though and ordered The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. I found it amazingly well written and very mature, especially considering it was written by someone in his mid-teens. Not to discredit young writers, but this was very impressive stuff.

I realized his bad journalism was just a way to get attention for being such a very sad case. I mean, you should read his stories or watch the movie. Awful stuff.

Writing has paid of for JT. He became a huge celebrity and cult figure and could count Winona Ryder, Bono, Courtney Love, Gus van Sant, and Madonna as friends. Shirley Manson of Garbage wrote two songs about him, Cherry Lips and Bleed Like Me. Everybody wanted to befriend the brilliant writer who’s survived his horrible past and can write so beautifully about it!

JT seemed terribly shy. He did not often do photos and always appeared in public wearing a blond wig and dark sunglasses.

JT LeRoy

For good reasons it seems.

Early this year a friend mentioned to me that she read somewhere JT LeRoy does not really exist.

Today I finally came round to researching it a bit. And what fascinating information did I gather!
Last October the New York Times ran an article by novelist Stephen Beachy questioning the existence of JT LeRoy. Apparently Mr. Beachy was not buying the whole story pretty much from the start and did a whole lot of investigation. (You can read the article at http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/)

The evidence was very circumstantial, yet it all seems to ring somewhat true. Later on various people came up with information proving that he’s statements were true.

It seems the writer of these books is Laura Alberts. Savannah Knoop, the half sister of Laura’s ex-partner Geoffrey Knoop, played the JT that sometimes appeared in public.

It’s intriguing stuff and there are quite a few similarities to another hoax from the 90’s. This one is about the book Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy’s Triumphant Story written by the boy himself, Anthony Godby Johnson. This tells the story of a boy who gets rescued from his abusive parents and is adopted by another couple. After the adoption they find out he has AIDS.

Today it is pretty clear that no such character existed and he was probably invented by his adoptive mother, Vicki Johnson. Not her real name by the way.

Many questions arise from this kind of hoax. Why did the person do it in the first place? Is the work still as good as originally thought?

I guess there is something wrong with the whole story. Making up a fake identity is one thing, but claiming that this person is flesh and blood and faking this person in public is something different.

But is it wrong?

Is it not what drag artists do all the time? Sure, after being on stage and performing you go back to your other identity, but still, while on stage you claim to be one person and most definitely not the other.

Pieter-Dirk Uys and Evita Bezuidenhout hate one another!

When I run to the video store and give my boyfriend’s last name when renting a DVD, do I not do the same? The people at the store think my name is Alex.

I was fooled by JT LeRoy. I bought it all. Same as millions of others. I’m not really bothered by it. In fact, power to JT. Whoever he/she is. A brilliant character.

Maybe these stories created some much needed awareness about the lives some youths the world over lives and maybe it did some good. One can only hope. Even though JT’s story was not his (her?) own, it is the story of many other children. JT just gave them more of a voice.

And made friends with Winona Ryder!

2006-07-05T18:01:00.000+07:00

In the book “Gaze” by Michael Meyersfield I read the following quote by the darling Barbara Cartland from The Sunday Chronicle some time in 1954: “Make no mistake about it, the homosexual is an unhappy misfit in society and therefore extremely dangerous. He grudges the normality and happiness of those around him. His aim is to destroy everything that is decent and conventional.”
Of course, we all have different opinions on what 'scary' is. I thought this picture from an old Rooi Rose was scary and portrayed a complete misfit.

femail from la

2006-07-05T17:51:00.000+07:00

I recently picked up the June issue of Femina, a general interest magazine for women, published in South Africa. This one had Helen Hunt on the cover along with some features on what to wear this winter, the second part in a “gripping” series called Diary of a Divorce, making more time for yourself (as always), schools not being up to standard, and the promise of Margaret Gardiner telling about her life in Los Angeles!

Ms. Gardiner is a former Miss Universe and was the first winner of Miss RSA (not to be confused with Miss SA please) somewhere in the sixties or seventies.

I’ve always liked her. She always seemed like such a nice and pleasant lady. Someone like my mother perhaps, with a title of course.

I decided to look at some other features first and then spoil myself by reading about Ms. Gardiner’s life in LA.

I got bored with the Diary of a Divorce pretty quickly so I turned to page 38 for the Fe-mail from Los Angeles. A fe-mail is an email from a female reader living abroad that gets published each month (is the opposite of a fe-mail a he-mail, and what about trans-gendered people?). Each month a different person gets to tell about her and her family’s life in some foreign destination.

Usually a fe-mail is only about half a page. But this particular one was a whole two pages long. How lucky for me as reader and slight fan of Ms. Gardiner!

Not very, it seemed. I got almost halfway through the article before the magazine got flung against the opposite wall.

What Ms. Gardiner wrote and the way she wrote it was downright offensive and clichéd. It was possibly the worst thing I tried to read in a very long time. I’ve had a better time reading speech bubbles in Heat.

She starts of her letter by carrying on how fake the women in LA are. You know the tits the faces, the tans, the hair, the cars…

Then she explains how she moved there with her husband on account of his work and how they decided to stay there because their son needed to get into an exclusive private school.

Nice.

Next the dear former Miss Universe informs us about what she is currently busy with (hosting TV shows or some such thing) and does not let the opportunity slip by to mention that she has published two books. Winning in Modeling and Beauty Competitions and The Complete Health and Beauty Book. This is followed by more irrelevant tidbits about her past. How she was discovered at a very young age and became Miss Universe at age 18 and so on.

‘Enough about me,’ she thought and started telling us about how she is surrounded by stars in LA. You know, there are all these famous parents’ kids in her son’s school. She mentioned a couple of parents’ names, but kind of lost the plot when it came to Lisa Kudrow, “Also Phoeboe from Friends has her kid there.”

This is followed by the following, “ I used to be a star so I know what it’s like and I’m glad I’m not one anymore.” Her non-star status must be what bought her a two-page spread in Femina for her Fe-mail!

So now she jumps back to how difficult it has been to leave SA and its culture (because we only have one) and how people in LA don’t get truly South African jokes (you lie!- they don’t have van der Merwe jokes outside of SA???) and how she cannot help her son with baseball.

But she could help him with basketball. She forked out thousands of dollars to get him to attend some basketball thing with Michael Jordan and in the end the kid became this super basketball kid at his school. Of course, she does not feel bad about having to spend so much money on her kid (at least its not her tits right?) because, “it’s what everyone does”.

Now she informs us about how well South Africans does in the States and how the principle at her son’s “R110 000 a year school” is from SA. There is Charlize Theron, "enough said." And oh the stars just love SA! She gets this information from little chats with Jared Leto and Harrison Ford.

Here the former Miss Universe jumps from Jared Leto to her nephew who is a hunk and very tall who came to visit. On his visit she took him to all the right places. And of course she spends quite an amount of words on pointing out how fake all the right places are. Oh and they saw Natalie Portman eating a hamburger, but nobody looked because apparently everybody is tired of looking. Good god.

She also mentions what a nice guy George Clooney is because he is no snob and is “surprisingly smart”. Yes, quote-unquote.

She complains how hard it is to keep things real and how she has nightmares about having fakes tits and all and then waking up in cold sweats and calling her mother. And how they then get to talk about things that are real like Table Mountain and her nephew (I’m guessing the hunky one).

And then she thanks God for being so fortunate to have grown up in a real place, with real people, and real morals. Like Cape Town.

For real.

the treatment

2006-07-04T18:25:00.000+07:00

Yesterday morning, just after 11, I was lying face down on a massage bed at a place called the salon to enjoy a birthday gift for a back and neck massage. It was a long overdue voucher treat and I had some time to spare.

For thirty minutes I was in the hands of a darling called Rene. She did not insist on speaking to me the whole time so I could just close my eyes and disappear under the pressure from her elbows, hands, and fingertips.

Half an hour later I felt exactly as one should after a massage.

After getting my shirt back on I went out to the reception area where Rene awaited me with a glass of water. After being silent for the duration of the massage she decided to get chatty.

While I was sipping my water she handed me a price list and told me about the different treatments one offer.

“We also have facials for men,” said Rene, “manicures and pedicures and,” here she pauses and gives an awkward smile, “back waxes.”

I did not choke on my water or spit it out all over the counter. I did not drop the glass. Did not give her an unfriendly look or even said anything back. I just forced a smile and left with a price list in hand.

“Enjoy the rest of your week,” she said with a smile so big her eyes seemed to disappear.

Who did Rene think she was? Suggesting a back wax with her strange little smile.

I realized why Rene had been so silent all the time. While applying deep pressure to my lower back she was contemplating how good a spread of warm wax would look in that exact same spot.

She was getting worked up about the slight jerk of my body and the groan that I’d release every time she pulled away the wax strip. She could not speak because she was fantasizing about my lower back being wiped with skin calming lotion to keep it from breaking out in spots.

I am just too aware that I have a patch of fluff just above my pants line. I was not shouting hooray the day I discovered it and for years I have tried to get rid of it. Living in Asia where bodily hair is as rare a sighting as Bree van der Kemp in a strip club it was a constant bother to me.

But, I have decided to just chill about it and let it sprout for the time being because god knows it could have been worse.

Obviously Rene has other ideas. I’m just grateful that she did not see my chest!