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TheTome /
LothedInSpringYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Spring, well, it wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It was a season... Read about mine or go back to LothedInJoburg 29 October 2003 - 4:38pm It's nearly home time... in the fashion of that last interminable hour which just drags! I'm off to role-playing soon. I hope. I'm hoping it isn't cancelled to go watch free japanese movies, because, well, I want to role-play. Much more than I want to read sub-titles, although sub-titles are faaar better than dubbed, the reason british manga doesn't sell well in SA. Anyway, I disgress. Not that I can disgress, because I haven't got started. I don't feel entirely well. I'll blame it on dodgey dried mango and too much muesli. And dairy products. gah.
I have Tyranids.
No, I didn't buy them. Good things come to people who write wiki posts. Actually, good thing come to people who live with the owner of large games/comics companies. Hehehehe. I have Tyranids.
27 October 2003 - 12:07pm Yesterday I painted my first minature. It was one of Richard's (Hensman) Dark Eldar. His colour sheme is metalic purple and green. I've always worked on the assumption that my hands shake too much for me to ever paint anything that small an intricate. I was wrong. I'm not saying that I'll ever be able to paint to the level where my minatures will stun all and I'll be painting 1mm flame patterns on the bottom of cloaks in perfect gradient colour outlines by even 1point thick lines. If you saw some of the entries into this years minature painting competition at Icon, you'll understand... However, despite the slightly lumpy acrylic finish and somewhat wobbly edges not-quite hidden by over-use of a dark wash, my little dude (singular for now, but I've finished the legs and torso's for three of his buddies - and I have promise Richard I'll paint at least 10 so he'll have one unit the same) ain't too bad. Certainly a lot better than most of the paint jobs I used to see coming out of CLAWs back in the Necromunda phase.
Pity I didn't know I could do this back then. Although, I've been painting up those dodgy porcelain dragons of late - in full colour - which has given me a good idea of how to use paint on a 3D object. (Actually, my dragons look pretty cool - ask Simon and Austin - although those were my first attempts) Now I just have to resist the tempation of buying minatures for my self - may be I will... Just one. Or two. Just to look at. Yeah. I do so like tyranids... arg.
25 October 2003 -1:30pm Well, It's a Saturday and I'm in the office. My life over the last while has involved a lot of overtime - paid, and more often, un-paid. Fortunately, today I'm working on - besides my actual work - being able to afford my christmas holiday in CT. Sigh. Why is it that despite moving cities to a job which pays almost double what I was making in Cape Town, I still struggle for money over the 'festive season'? Guess, I'll blame it all on my car. At least this year I'm on paid leave. Oh, and no, I'm not expecting a christmas bonus, this company is faaar to miserly for that.
It also appears, the way things are going, there either isn't going to be an office christmas party, or it will be when I'm away. The boss/owner/director has been paying less and less attention to the company over the last few months as it has become more evident that we're capable of taking care of ourselves. However, he hasn't really handed authority over to anyone else, so certain thing requiring 'executive decisions' are being left in limbo.
23 October 2003 - 10:39am Yeah, I'm being prolific again, it's a phase. I just had a rant I need to share.
I was having a conversation yesterday with one of my co-workers who was curious as to what the goth scene was about and what sort of people are attracted to it. Nikki, who is an ex-goth, and I were trying to explain it. However, I found it quite a struggle to reconcile what I believed the goth scene was about, what I enjoy about the goth scene (the music and the sense of theatrics), and what the average goth you meet in a club is like. I came to the realization late last night, that the goth scene I was introduced to was ''old claws'" well, with exceptions, of course. But the people I associated with goth were students, university students, and therefore generally of above average intelligence. They were intelligent, witty, capable of conversation and generally drawn to goth (or some alternative sub-culture) since well, they were the messed-up "geek" type.
This illusion of "the intellectual goth" is one I've harbored for some time in the face of the morons that I regularly encounter on a night out at Zeplin's or the like. Goth is no longer, and possible has never been, a sub-culture for the dissatisfied cognoscenti. Like any scene, it reflects the intellectual average of the general populace. The people involved range from the Benoni poppie, who enjoys getting dressed up on those nights she can leave her kid with mum, to BA students, to career waitresses, to bookstore clerks, to IT technicians. The one thing that does frighten me most about the scene is they seem to have a lower average age for marriage than a catholic youth group. So many of today's Goths are married, divorced, single mothers, etc. And the use of drugs, while substantially lower than it used to be in the 80's where heroin was the goth drug of choice, is still prevalent. Goths on 'e', isn't that a contradiction in terms happy, 'love everyone' Goths? I'm sorry, but both these things point to me to my opinion that most Goths appear to have had an operation to have their commonsense removed upon sign-up.
22 October 2003 - 12:33pm You know, I wonder why I keep that link to the bro's page at the bottom of mine. It's not like he's really written anything for months. You hear that Mojo, you're depriving the vermin of their dose of sarcasatic drivel. They're starting to forget why I'm such a skank-ho! And how it could be possible for me to be so almost sane, when I grew up in a house-hold containing you! (I contribute that to my mother, she's the only sane human being I've ever met.) Oh well, I guess I'm sentimental.
Anyway, in reply to Andy's remark about it still being 8 degree's here after you remove the rain and the wind. It's called more layers. Layers which actually have some funtional value since they're dry and not impregnated with damp from the last two weeks of solid rain and cold. Oh, well, guess I did say almost sane.
21 October 2003 -11:03am The Joburg 'drought' has finally broken. It did so rather decisively on Saturday. And, of course, as it would have to be, that was the weekend that the office (or at least a not insubstantial portion of it) had chosen to go away, myself included. So much for a weekend of lounging in the sun, swimming and partying. Well, I'll admit we still got in quite a bit of partying, although it was a bit dampened by the electricity going down at 11pm on the Saturday and not coming back on at all. This wasn't the end of the world since we had enough candles to see by, but it did mean that the water pumps went off-line and we were without running water. I'll spare you the details, but just consider how this complicates an otherwise simple drinking session, especially for girls - buckets, swimming pools and a pitch-black, rainy night are really not what I call 'entertainment'.
The further joy went that on our way back from this holiday - a good 40min drive outside Jo'burg in good weather - my driver's side windscreen wiper gave up. Since I do not possess a spanner set there was very little that could be done (the bloody panel beaters hadn't tightened the bolt on the arm enough). We stopped at one petrol station, but they were more harm than help and in the process managed to get the good blade, tangled with the non-functioning blade, snapping it. I then had to replace the one with the other and then remove the entire driver's arm to stop it scraping my windscreen. Andy reckons I need to take a pilgrimage to appease the Car Gods, since I'm clearly very out of favour with them.
Ah, well, much as I may sound like I'm bitching about the weather, actually I'm truly gratetful. The damn brown and yellow gets to me, I miss real green. Also I enjoy the little bits of 'Cape Town Winter' we get up here at times like this. Everyone, as I have mentioned before, in the office hates it, and here's me with this stupid grin across my face enjoying every second of it. The cold, the rain, the wind, the drizzle - I love all the sounds. The best part of ths weekend was when we were about 15 meters out onto the lake on this pier thing (rusting metal floating on barrels), but the wind had whipped the water till it was choppy and the entire pier was rolling with the waves. The lake was this grey-green, the sky a dull grey and the Magaliesberg an even darker grey in between. We just sat down and enjoyed it. Somehow, for the first time that day, I wasn't cold either.
09 October 2003 - 12:48am I hate getting older. It's all been down-hill since 21. Or maybe it's not the getting older but rather the getting fatter and lazier. I weigh 10 kilo's more than I did when I left school, and I'm certainly no taller. And while I've never been the world's most energetic person, I just don't have any energy anymore. Once upon a time, sleep deprivation used to kick me into a sort of 'high' of giddy stupidity. Now, I just want to slaughter everything insight and drag the collective bones back into my cage to suck out the marrow - with a bit of accompanying growling. Well, except actually slaughtering things would take energy, so all I really get done is that 'bit of accompanying growling'.
I keep on being told, "Ooo, you should start exercising, you have so much energy when you're fit." (By people older, fitter and more energetic than me) But it's a bit of a vicious cycle, see the less I do, the less I want to do. My current ideal holiday in Cape Town is to sit at home all day in my dad's chair watching DVD's on the wide-screen with surround-sound. I want to do something about my current downward slide, I just don't really really want to do something about my downward slide. It's like matter, you see, it takes more energy for ice to melt, than it takes water to freeze - or like escaping a degrading planetary orbit - all it will take is a short concerted burst of energy to get me to the next state (or to give me acceleration), but the problem is getting that energy.
What it all boils down to (haha, boils) is that I still haven't gone and got a gym-contact. Sigh. I really should - especially since they're putting up the rates from 1st November...
However, this weekend I've volunteered to help Grant out by manning the Outer Limits stall at rAge - Really Awesome Gaming Event. Geek-fest of note. I should feel right at home. I have to wonder how they came up with that stupid name? There the NAG (New Age Gaming - 'nother dodge acronym) lot were sitting and like, huh, one of them said, like, why don't we call it RAGE, that's, huh, like a really cool word. And the rest of them were, like, yeah, that's cool! but, like, what does it mean? Well, like you know, like the G can be for, like, Gaming and the E can be for like exhibition, or like even and, and, yeah. Maybe, like the A could be for Awesome, or like Addictive, but like addictive is bad, which means like the R stands for Really. Yeah, shweeet, like it stands for Really Awesome Gaming Event. Huh. Except since they're from Joburg, less with the Capetonian surfer accents, but about the same with the drugs.
06 October 2003 - 4:40pm Well, I spent three hours today with Daryll Cullinan and the AE (account executive), Roddy, trying to convince the man that as qualified graphic designers we are far more capable of creating a strong corporate identity than he is. He's a nice enough guy, although, as one would not be wrong to expect from a (ex)professional sports-man, a little slow on the uptake. According to Roddy; it was somewhat like herding sheep; every time he tried to head off on a tangent we'd have to show him that his idea was crap and drag him back to the starting point - with a few tweaks - which he'd agree was much better than the version with his changes... Sigh.
I went to dinner last night with my uncle, Peter, at friends of his. He's out in SA from the UK doing a lecture tour, as he's a well-known (to architects) architectural writer. We only get to see him once every two years or so. I was thinking to myself when I got back home, that if I'd ever had the bent for architecture, I'd be soo made. Most of the conversation between my uncle and his friend, also called Peter, a lecturer or HoD? at Wits, went right over my head, but the thing that stood out - in spite of me being completely unfamiliar with most of the names being dropped - is the unbelievable number of local and international connections my uncle has in the architectural community. Oh well, se la vie!
02 October 2003 - 11:45am Wow, comments. People actually read this thing. I'm so proud. Sob, Sob,
* Of course we read it. What else is there to do at work? Work? I don't think so :P -- SynKronos
Nuff with being facetious. I've discovered - to my joy - that tax is nowdays all neatly scaled in such a way that you actually don't notice when you move brackets (since it's kinda stupid that R5 more means that you earn vastly less). Also I'd have to earn about R25 000 rand more during the rest of the financial year to be in the next bracket - which is a loooot of overtime. So, no worries for me on that score. (Not that I'd mind earning R25 000 more in the year, but I like to pretend that I have a life).
I have more reasons for joy. They fixed the air-con. It's 30 degrees outside and I'm wearing a longsleeve top. Whee! I hate heat. In fact I have very mixed feelings about Spring in general. While it's great to finally see some green; pretty flowers and feel the biological imperative to frolic, the heat - to which you have not acclimatised; hayfever and bloody-early-sunrises-through-thin-curtains can be considered a 'wee' bit of a drawback.
The 'lack of car' is already driving me mad. I hate having to be dependant on other people. I don't mind catching lifts, etc. But to be forced to galls me.
Bugger, the Discovery lot has arrived. They waltz in here with an absolute fortune in food and snacks form good old Woolies, seat themselves in a corner of our office, scarf more chocolate, sweets, pasta salads and chips than humanly possible, watch our DSTV, do a bit of 'work' (copy checking), treat us like we're a bunch of foot stools and then - anything between three and fifteen hours later - toddle themselves off to their direly-need gym appointment. Grrr...
Anyway, I'm going to a fancy dress party on Saturday, the theme of which is "It came from above". So avoiding all the obvious alien cliche's, I've hit on another one - I'm going as an angel - with scrapes on my knee's, a bump on my head and I'm going to wander round declaring: "I was pushed!" Shouldn't go down too badly...
28 September 2003 - 1:46pm Well, I've earned myself a fair chunk of money today - provided that we get paid as we should. This is because it's a Sunday, I'm at work and in what might be a short-lived experiment to improve moral and productivity - the office has decided that overtime is paid. It will be taxed though - I'm just glad it's coming at the end of the money - I'm pushing a bit close to the next tax bracket (I think - they keep changing them each year...) and too much extra money could push me into it. Honestly, I have no idea how this will affect my salary. I'm not even registered for tax yet...
/* fortunately, it's now the responsibility of one's employer to handle employees' taxes. i discovered this recently when, in an ongoing attempt to fly under the taxman's radar, i flew directly into the fucking thing. so that's good. wither */ /* (grins) I keep bugging our financial director by asking if my bonus or salary increase (woooooohooooo!) will affect my taxes; so far no nasty suits - d@vid */ /* For those tax dodgers, tax starts at around R27000 a year, or R2500 a month. Not sure which, but they are pretty close. - InfernalRabbi */ Ah well, enough with my financial issues. It's rather wierd working a full day on a sunday - the rest of the office - bar the studio which has a full staff compliment, plus assorted clients lurking - is dead. The phones are dead. The roads are dead. It's as if the whole world is dead. While superficially it seems like 'just another day at the office' there's this air of surreality - like we're in our own little time bubble labled 'not-quite-monday'. I'm not looking forward to having to cope with a six day week, but heck, more money means I can afford to buy new tires for my car and get Colin to sort out one or two annoying rattles that have started up. Although this will only happen after I get my car back from the panel-beaters.
Sigh. It goes back in tomorrow. They say that it'll take 8-10 working days. I'm praying they're right. They should have learned by now to pad their time estimate a little with me since I'm not the most patient of customers. Hopefully I'll only be without it for one weekend and since next weekend is pretty much totally planed and sorted in regards to my entertainment (and transport) I won't miss the 'blue tin-can' too badly. Just have to cross my fingers and hope that nothing else goes badly wrong with it...
18 September 2003 - 4:14pm Well, it's been ages. I'll appologise for my side - our internet connectivity had been almost non-existant for the last while. After our ISP finished moving we changed to an ASDL line, moved ISP's, rehauled the internal server, etc. Finally when everything is back to normal - the wiki is down. Sigh
Seeing Ryan was great. It was also a bit of a reminder about how much I've changed (I'd like to call it 'growing up', but then again...) We both agreed that in small subtle ways I'm becoming more and more like my mother, but considering that I love my mummy this is not too bad a thing. Deep down insde I'm pretty certain I'll never be a quite as normal as she is.
I partied it up quite a bit of the time Ryan was here, in fact I hadn't really taken a slow weekend since I got my car back. As a result I went into a bit of a hermatige last weekend. The most social thing I did was invite Nikki round for home-made sushi on the Saturday. (Came out pretty decently for our first attempt, the maki may not have looked great, but they didn't fall to pieces and were recognisable as sushi). I painted up a ceramic dragon for a friends birthday present, I've decided his name is Frederich, he's german.
Otherwise, of all things, I've been gardening. At Grant's place, Loraine likes to garden, but she doesn't really have the expense account to spend on plants and while Grant can afford to spend the money, he's never had the motivation or the direction. It turns out, thanks to my parent's constant fascination with plants (and a certain amount of passive curiosity on my part), I actually know quite a bit about plants and gardening. About R1500 later things are starting to look quite pretty. (Don't worry, at least half of that was pots, soil and equipment)
Right, well, that's sort of the 'catch up', hopefully I'll be a bit more interesting from now on...
28 August 2003 - 2:01pm Well, it been a while since I last posted - this is mostly due, however, to the fact that the wiki's been playing up and then our ISP decided to move some of it's servers so the net's been down for most of the week.
I've been in my fifth accident this year, the second time I've been rear-ended. The irony is that it's my Dad who did it. Never mind, suffice to say that he was following me in a rental car and that in a few situations ABS braking is not an asset. The plus side is that this kind of nullifies the damage from the pole I rear ended shortly before my prior 'big' accident, so at least insurance will be paying to repair the damage - and not me! The not so plus side it that I'm going to be deprived of my car again for a period and that I'm becoming more and more of a nervous driver.
Ryan's coming back! Wheee! Ryan Olsen, that is, for the few of you older CLAWs types who read this and actually remember Ryan. It's been a scarily long time since 'those days'. He's arriving in Jo'berg tomorrow morning, so I'll see him tomorrow evening or some such. I'm really looking forward to seeing him again, Richard Hensman and I've been spending a lot of time reminiscing about Cape Town and CLAWs of late. I feel like I've live whole lives between now and then - and equally, so little time has really passed, I guess 4 years is not to be sneezed at. Just to let you know, I miss you all!
13 August 2003 -3:27pm We got invaded by the Kalahari on Monday night. I woke up on Tuesday morning to find my car a light shade of grey. In fact a lot of people in Jo'burg woke up to find their cars (and pretty much everything else) a light shade of grey. I gave my car a half-arsed wash yesterday afternoon, spraying it off with the hose and wiping some of dirt off it - at least I can now see out the windows when I'm driving...
Spring has come early up here. The fruit trees are starting to flower and things are generally coming back to life. This, according to the natives, is a little bit concerning since it usually cools down again in September and everything dies off. Guess it's nice while it lasts though, there's also quite a wind, which, unlike Cape Town breezes, lacks the ocean to build up a decent chill factor, so actually isn't quite as unpleasant as I expected.
My saga with Belinda is still going on. She sent me the most laughable account I've ever seen intimating that I owe her more than a grand. Grant and I worked out a new one in which she owes me just over half a grand excluding the amount she owes for utilities. In response to this Isabel (B's mother) phoned the estate agency and tried to get them to pay out the deposit to her! Anyone know a way in which I can trace a phone number back to an address? I know someone who's in dire need of a petrol bomb, or having their brake cable cut...
06 August 2003 - 11:28am I'm doing my goofy grinning thing again this morning. The reason is; it's windy and pissing with rain. I love it when we get these little bits of Cape Town weather. I love the fact that my co-workers don't love the fact that I love bad weather. They don't love the bad weather either.
I have encountered an number of native Joburgers who have joked that Cape Town is another country. I'm also coming to gradual realisation that some of them believe it too. It's kind of a mindset thing. You know how cultural stereotypes come out, the French are romantic, the Germans are anal and the Japanese are just wierd. Well, the average person up here assumes, and somewhat rightly, that people from Cape Town are just not quite the same in the head as the locals. I guess simply due to the different economies, climates and geographies of the two cities the people in them develop different attitudes to life, money and people in general. The biggest thing is however, in the minds of an average Gautengie, Cape Town (and Capetonians) are not really a part of South Africa. Cape Town is some sort of transplanted over-grown European Tourist-destination.
Sometimes, like today, I wonder how wrong they are. After all, don't we, as Capetonians, distain everyone else in the country on the grounds that our city is so much better than theirs. We deplore the fact that Jo'burg is the economical capital of the country, although we're rather glad that they're the ones who have to cope with the side effects of heavy industry. We deplore the fact that Pretoria is the administrative capital of the country, although we're rather glad we're not in an ANC run province. We hate that Gautengies feel the need to 'invade' our city every summer like a semi-civilised remnant of the Mongol hordes. At the same time I guess, we're all glad to be a part of 'the rainbow nation', and perhaps we're not quite at the stage where we're ready to turn ourselves into some Swedish-esque socialist state.
04 August 2003 - 1:51pm The quick update for last week is, my car went in for a service and came out the other side with not a thing changed - the mechanic couldn't find anything on it that needed work, not even the oil or air-filters, so he didn't charge me, not even for the inspection. Also went to see Bulletprook Monk on Thurs with Andy, it was cute. Friday night I went to Zepplins in Pretoria with Neeks and a whole horde of other people and got stalked by some scary guy. Gack!
Saturday morning I got up after three and a half hours of sleep to be driven through to the Magaliesberg for our office conference. It was supposed to start at 10h30 in the morning, but the rugby happened and so we did nothing but sit around in the sun and talk crap until after (a very nice) lunch. We then 'conferenced' for a few hours, had a brief drumming workshop (team building and all that), ate supper and proceeded to all get unbelievably drunk while bouncing around to the CD I'd cut for our car trip (and later to some dodgey 80's stuff involving far to much Sting that the resort owners chose to put on...). The next morning we were all a bit fragile...
I certainly can't say I didn't get out this weekend. I'm also vaguely regretting my promise to go for drinks with a friend tomorrow night. Although, not as much I had suspected I would. I'm also taking immense levels of malicious enjoyment out of mentioning booze to Oxo, who grimaces at the thought of alchohol and probably can't remember the majority of Saturday night (which is fine, since there's a lot of that going around the office). In fact, Wes, one of our multi-media guys who more closely resembles a bouncer, failed to wake Ox despite yelling "Wazzup" loudly in his ear and sitting on him. I think the other multi-media guys (who've only been here a few months and mostly hide in their little corner office resisting all attempts from the studio to pry them out) were a little on the bewildered end of the scale.
And there are two little words which has the entire of our company feeling queesy sympathy pangs already. "Christmas Party..."
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