the blog at planet-roz

Sometimes when I need to spill and get something off my chest I have a script in which when I’m playing it over in my mind, the other party learns their lines and plays along. It’s a shame then that in real life invariably the other party obviously isn’t interested in reading the script, let alone taking the blinkin’ part. In fact they have their own script written out which might as well be from a different film. If I had the energy I would write a song along the lines of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know”, but I don’t.

Thanks for listening Ange. Fuzzy.

So I got through the birthday. Had a power outage at work in the morning. Got b’day hugs and kisses from various colleagues. In the evening went to Geisha Wok and Noodle Bar in Mouille Point with some colleagues. I had fun, and for those who know me well, and know all about the whole birthday issue, they’ll know that’s no small thing for me to admit I had fun. Bit sticky though when it was time to pay as at first I thought my guests were going to join together and pay for me, which is what I’m used to at birthdays, but apparently not. When I realised this, I then couldn’t find my wallet in my bag as I had borrowed a bag for the evening, so I thought I would also have to borrow money to pay for the meal, but thankfully found the wallet.

At first I thought maybe the mix of people wasn’t going to work, but after a while it got better. Then went to see The Darjeeling Limited with Dazza at the V & A Waterfront, and I must say it wasn’t a bad film. Dazza, who’s a Wes Anderson connoisseur, said it wasn’t his best work, but I had nothing to compare it with. (At first I had thought Dazza had said Wes Craven, which of course would have been a totally different experience!)

So it’s my birthday tomorrow and I officially feel numb! I had wanted to just ignore it, but decided to go against the grain and go out and celebrate with some new friends. Still trying to get used to SA and just everything here, but I am blessed and have everything to be thankful for. Shame I don’t have a digital camera anymore as it was stolen at Johannesburg airport in December. Good luck to whoever nicked it and left the camera bag for me. Wondering how far you’ll get without the software, but that’s probably no big deal in this day and age.

Got to fly Business Class from Jozi to Lagos in December (a happy last-minute gift). Now I see how the other half lives — champagne as soon as you sit down, leather seats that expand and all sorts, four-course meal with much better food than down there in economy. Virgin Nigeria was the airline. Not flying them again if I can help it though as even with the business class experience, the whole sorry saga to and from Lagos was not pleasant.

Anyway, where was I? Yes, tomorrow is my birthday. I remember a few years ago my cousin Hazel was lamenting to me about how we’re “middle aged”, and I vehemently denied it and said we were nowhere near middle aged, and yet here we are (your turn soon Hazel!) very definitely middle aged. How time flies.

So I’ve started driving lessons in a stick shift, as I would like to buy such a car. I learned to drive in a little Rover stick shift car way back in 1995 with the help of the delicious Irishman Marcus Brown who gave me lessons round the Wood Green area in London. Drove an automatic in America for 5 years, so am now extremely rusty at “proper driving”.

Anyway my new instructor’s name is Yaku, and he’s very nice. He reckons I only need about 3 lessons. People here are very impatient. I’m still trying to re-master clutch control, which never used to be a problem for me. (Probably was in the beginning, but I forget!)

Here driving around Cape Town, at one traffic light, I look in my rear view mirror at the driver behind then when the light’s green, get all flustered and the car stalls and stalls and stalls. This woman now proceeds to honk with a vengeance and I’m just laughing away, but getting more flustered. Yaku meanwhile swears at her in English and Afrikaans, and yells out that she should be honking at her mother instead, that we all had to learn to drive at some point.

Today I took my supervisor’s car for a test drive by myself near work and hey, what do you know, had absolutely no problems with clutch control, which I reckon is due to the fact his car is like new and Yaku’s car is not at all new.

Hey, it’s 2008. Not had the opportunity to blog since still can’t get into old blog, so for the last time, this is the new blog. Old blog = Archives.

Got on the train this morning and it was full of uniformed ticket officers. There were so many of them it was quite daunting. When the train stopped at stations, they would open the doors and literally (well almost!) accost people getting on the train to ask to see their tickets. A nice and totally unexpected touch when we got to my station was the “Enjoy your day” bit.

Not sure whether they just hired loads of new people or what, and not sure how long they can sustain it. There were so many of them on this one train it seemed unlikely there were any left for any others. And we won’t even talk about the afternoon trains that are jam-packed and have people hanging out the doors and in between carriages.