30 Years Old In South Africa. I Don't See Black or White, Just Grays...

the medication did the trick and i'm fully recovered from my bout with tonsillitis. don't be fooled, just because it has the word "lite" in it, doesn't mean it's like drinking a cool glass of crystal lite. no! it's pure hell. like drinking a glass of lite beer.

and now about the exciting birthday weekend that just ended. i had three tickets to see pirates of the caribbean part 3. they were for virgillio, me and joelene. joelene, if you remember, is the second date i had on matchmaker.com here. we had a great time together but after our second date i didn't hear a peep from her and moved along reluctantly. since then, we've fallen back into contact and decided to give it another shot to see what we could find together.

on the way to an architect's office friday morning i passed an italian restaurant, "pesto", and decided i should go there first chance. i called and made reservations for joelene and i for 1830 that night before the 2100 film. unfortunately i got stuck at work, drinking beer and arguing about the corialis effect, during bcp's end-of-the-month dinner and drinks so we didn't make it to the restaurant until 1915 (it wasn't ENTIRELY my fault though). the food was as close to home as i've found anywhere in s.a. so far. long story short, we were so late for the film that they oversold the small theater and we had to leave with only a cash refund for the film. virgillio wasn't very pleased with me. a coworker rhona had met up with him, and the four of us went to play some pool (don't call it "billiards" here). rhona and joelene hit it off in classic style and after the bars closed (at 2300 here) they decided that we should go get some bottles of wine and just hang out in the car (not uncommon in s.a.). virgillio begged to be taken home rather than listen to the women cackle away. eventually we ended up at "the golden horse" casino and danced to a guy playing the classics on guitar. he stopped at 0100, just 15 minutes after we got there.

so eventually rhona got in her own car and went home. joelene and i went back to her place to... talk.

the next day was virgillio's (and partly mine as well) birthday braai. we spent the whole of the morning and good portion of the afternoon getting all the necessary shit together for the braai and around 15:00 (a few hours before the sun goes down this time of year) the makeshift braai was up and cooking. a bunch of virgillio's university friends and soccer friends showed up. it was good times. one of the blokes there was a big black guy from new jersey. he's having his mind blown even more than i am. he says his american accent (very pronounced jersey accent) earns him better treatment than his skin color does. for example, if he hangs out with a south african crowd and doesn't open his mouth he gets a much lesser treatment than he does once they realize he's not an african but instead an american.

joelene spent the day working a booth at the "royal agricultural show" in town. it's the big event of the year. it's basically what we call the county fair. rides (many of the same ones you see at the boardwalk for a year or two), music, quilt exhibits, cows, horses... lots of teens dressed like sluts walking around in freezing weather. joelene had a vip pass from work and so she took me and we looked at all the amazing crafts the pietermaritzburgians had made. and naturally we ate junk food till it came out our ears. biltong (aka beef jerkey), mini donuts, boerewors (sausage) and some amarula in a flask i sneaked in.

after going on the ferris wheel, during which i talked incessantly about all the rust i could see on the bolts and how i didn't like the look of the foundation holding the whole thing up, we grabbed a hot chocolate or two and left.

sunday was my birthday and joelene wanted to take me to midmar dam for another braai / picnic. true to form, we got there a little late in the day but we were the only souls around so we had the place all to ourselves. boerewors, crisps, and some chakalaka. turns out 'chakalaka' is like mexican salsa just the african version (with extra corn and more onion and chili).

for the first time ever i remembered to take my camera so i took some pictures of midmar and, of course, the amazingly beautiful joelene. get this: she doesn't like having her picture taken. what is this world coming too? i told her that i either take a picture of her or i draw naked pictures of her.

i'm not sure i've mentioned this, but this country has a range of candy bars in the checkout line that serve as a means of communication for the conversationally inept (aka teens). candy bars where on the wrapper it says things like, "great date", "i love you", "i'm sorry", "do you like to download?", "am i always in trouble?", "can i.........................?", etc. i've never eaten one but joelene bought two for the braai. she gave me "happy birthday" and kept "you mean the world to me" for herself. these bars, called P.S. bars, are better than sex. "caramilk chocolate" with kit-kat-like wafer. i'm going to invent a patch of this candy bar and just ingest it constantly and slowly through my arm or lower back.

and speaking of better than sex... i'm old. 30 has hit me hard. my elbow feels sprained and today i found a collection of gray hairs in my sideburns... my most redeeming trait, my sense of humor, is working overtime to keep a positive spin on this rapid deterioration of my body... maybe i'll look wiser and even a little bad ass, eh? like race bannon, dr. quest's bodyguard... look out lizard people of the amazon!

i should remember the words of my old college flatmate tom mincy who told me, "don't worry about the gray hairs till they start showing up in your pubes."


if anyone's looking for something to send me, make it cialis and grecian formula please. i'll trade you a couple of those "i love you" P.S. candy bars in return. remember, candy bars don't lie.

and i guess i should end with what i assume has become the wildly popular headlines i see on the way to work, "KID KILLED BY GOAL". email me if you want to know what that means. but a little imagination is all it takes to figure out how this child met his fateful end.

so i hope you're all achieving your goals and not being crushed to death by them, both literally and metaphorically. cheers all.

The Weather is Here...

south africa just got hit by its first cold snap of the year. temperatures below zero with highs all across the country below 10 degrees celsius. but more on that later.

in the meantime here are two more speedbumps i've hit on the miscommunication highway here. the doctor asked me if i had ulcers in my stomach. i thought she was asking if i had "asses" in my stomach.

also when i was trying to describe the golden gate bridge and the visibility being reduced by fog, seko didn't understand why i couldn't see the bridge because of a thick "fuck".

on a new subject; lamposts here, every morning, have the day's headlines in them to encourage you to buy a newspaper from one of the people selling them at every intersection around town. they're usually pretty sensationalist, misleading or, in today's case, plain weird. "OUR BATTLE WITH EVIL CAT" where to start?

i guess metaphorically, we all battle our own "evil cat" every day. i recently overcame evil cat in the form of tonsillitis just in time for the recent cold snap. the cold snap has brought snow all over mountains all over south africa. some not too far from here. last weekend, despite the tonsillitis, i battled through the pain to end it with gaylene.

rewind: weeks ago, i wrote about this amazing girl i'd met, joelene annaline. good times, ice skating, etc. but then she stopped calling me and i went back online and found gaylene. gaylene is a 29 year-old half-indian girl who's all of 4'-10" and has spent most of the last decade being an au pere everywhere but in south africa. usa, italy, france, london,... she was also a little shy at first and, as the result of her travels, wasn't very familiar with the area. we picnicked at midmar dam on saturday and then had dinner in durban on sunday. gaylene was good company but i was the one starting the conversations and the one cracking wise.

despite the physical attraction, sparks never flew and, last saturday, i ended it at an ice cream parlor in the mall. one unexpected detail was that gaylene found the breakup unexpected. another thing that was unexpected was that joelene emailed me during my brief stint with gaylene. it turns out, believe it or not, that my cellphone had chosen not to receive her text messages and she'd interpreted my withdrawal as withdrawal. these coming week or months will see me trying to put the pieces back together with joelene and, if successful, seeing parts of africa untouched by the average tourist.

i hope you're all winning your battle with evil cat.

deep throat problems

have i been dating still? maybe, but you won't see the four letters "date" in this update.

here's how it starts: on sunday i thought it would be clever to jog to work to see if a.) i could do it and b.) how long it would take. having not exercised in close to four months i was surprised that it took me 22 minutes (about the same time it takes to drive if you leave at a bad time). so i was pleased and i walked back. my right knee was a little tender the next day and by the end of the work day i was feeling pretty out of it. seeing as i couldn't focus enough to do any engineering, i started filling out the health insurance forms on my desk. it's different over here so it's been taking me a long time to research and figure everything out.

i had plans with gaylene already and she didn't mind coming over even though i told her we would just watch a movie. she brought "disprin" (disolvable asprin). i tossed and turned all night and slept in till 10am. i drove her home at noon and returned to my bed where i would, for all intents and purposes, stay until friday morning. here's the quick breakdown.

Tuesday: hoped i had the 24 hour flu. my throat hurt like i'd eaten every pine cone in the sierra nevadas.

Wednesday: wanted to die. couldn't eat, couldn't drink. hurt too much. couldn't stomach anything either. in 48 hours i ate 5 oranges and drank some fruit juice (with vitamins).

Thursday: appetite came back. still hurt too bad to really swallow anything. watched the godfather series. but get this: the video store people (not film buffs by ANY stretch of the imagination) mislabeled the godfather discs. here's how they go: part 1, part 2 (disc 1 & disc 2), part 3). so naturally they grabbed "disc 2" and threw in the box labeled (2/4). so it took me awhile to realize that f.f. copolla didn't have a really backwards way of telling his story. by the end of "disc 2/4" i saw a lot of characters die for mistakes that were only alluded to. "disc 3/4" brought all the characters back to life for me and i got to watch them escape assassination attempts with barely a shrug from me. "i already saw him die at the airport". i also saw part 3 and enjoyed the hell out of it.

Friday: went to work at 0900 and spent hours just trying to find stuff. good stuff to do while you're sick i suppose. infinite patience is a trait that comes naturally with infinite slowness. i also turned the heater on full blast in my office and all my body aches were instantly gone! and so were my visitors. bridgit made me close the door so i wouldn't melt the whole place. oh, the heat also made me fall into a very deep sleep twice.

candice kept asking me why i didn't see a doctor and i had to remind her about the one time she tried to help me fill out the health insurance forms and got nowhere. she also called me a drama queen. how come drama king doesn't outrank the drama queen? is it like chess?

bridgit plopped a piece of paper on my desk. it was a doctor appointment across the street from where i live at 3:30pm so i got to kick off work a half hour early. the doctor took all of 0.2 seconds to say "tonsillitis". she diagnosed me before i even said "ahhhh".

the doctor prescribed me penicillin, some antibacterial throat lozenges, and some horse-pill pain-pills. without insurance, the doctors visit and the meds came to 360 rand (~50 dollars). as i'm writing this, the pain is gone and i just wish i'd gone to the doctor on tuesday but my experience with doctor's bills in the states (even with insurance) scared me away. with insurance it cost me over 100 bucks just to get my health screen done to move to south africa. but speaking of pain-killers, about five minutes ago i thought i felt the pain coming back so i popped some more. now my fingers are getting too heavy to type. so i'll end this post at that.