swatch watch

One of my very good friends left Dubai today. She’s gone back to the lovely shores of Cape Town to spend some time deciding what she wants to do with her life. I know she feels as though she is in some kind of limbo, but I hope she realises how good these times are for us. Lady, eat some snacks, drink some tea, drink even more bourbon, read some books, cry a bit, laugh a lot, rediscover everything you love about everything, and decide on a next move when you’re good and ready. And again, thank you for my beautiful Colour Code Swatch. I can’t stop looking at its purple loveliness. Look, I even made a small gallery for us to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over:

what a beauty

 

from the 2009 Colour Codes campaign

 

more colours

 

super-cool

In other news, I’ve got one Alice Gnodde, also known as The Soutie, arriving in 3 days! I’ve spent the last 2 weeks trying to decide what to do with her for the 2 days she’s here. I’ve bought magazines, asked around, ravaged the internet, and still, I have come up empty-handed. I think the problem is that there is so much to do, and so little time. So how do I prioritise? Because we all know deep in our good hearts that a drink is the most important thing. Unfortunately, a drink seems to cripple the ability to do much else. I think I should start a renewed search – Things to do in Dubai when you’re utterly smashed. The only things I can think of off the cuff are: Swearing, Stumbling, Eating Burgers, Dancing (badly), Smoking Too Many Fags, More Drinking.

Oh dear.

sexy. crooked. teeth.

I feel all awkward now.

I have not blogged for so long, that I fear the cog in my brain has fallen into severe disrepair. It’s been nice living in the (real) world for the past few weeks. I’ve been away in South Africa, and it was truly sublime. I think I can safely say that it was my finest trip home in all the two years that I’ve been living in the frikkin’ desert. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that I think I have temporarily forgotten how to write a blog post that is both funny and engaging. In light of this utter tragedy, I have decided to get the ball rolling again with a blog post about my experience at Oppikoppi – written in point form. I do this in emails to my friend Alice, and she returns the favour. (Alice started it, in fact – genius). What this does is allows us to answer ALL of one another’s questions and focus on one point at a time. I’ll also try to conduct the point form experiment in chronological order.

• On August 3, I flew from Dubai to Cape Town. Pleasant enough flight. Even managed a nap.
• I spent 2 days or a day and a half walking around the city and having a couple of beers and preparing for Oppikoppi.
• I then met Dylan at the airport and we flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg, where we were collected by some of his awesome friends.
• We stayed with the awesome friends that night, and then drove to Oppikoppi the next day.
• We arrived at the grounds late afternoon, trawled around for a while, and pitched our tents in quite a rad place.
• Night one of Oppikoppi: watched some bands, the best of which was Philadelphia Grand Jury, and Australian 3-piece that re-injected the value of live music back into my system.
• Dylan and I ended up at the top bar – drunk as skunks and dancing to pretty much anything. Imagine a bear and a giraffe getting their groove on to soul and funk and other such things.
• Walked back to the tent, freezing and kicking up clouds of red dust.
• Day two of Oppikoppi: acquired some terrible coffee and had a cigarette in front of the empty, morning-after main stage. Checked out shower queue, and quickly realised that I’d be relying on the good grace of wet wipes for the next 3 days. Trundled back past walking corpses on the way back to tent. Wet-wiped it up, brushed teeth, cracked a beer, and went back to the stage grounds for day of festivities.
• Started the madness with a vodka and some-or-other flavoured juice, delightfully coupled with Corne and Twakkie’s rudeness. Quote of the hour ‘Hey, you, Ginger Afro. You’d better hold someone’s poepol before I come over there and fuck the ginger off of you.’
• Also wandered up the hill to see Wrestlerish perform one or two live tracks for MK TV – this was such a beautiful afternoon. The weather was perfect and there were lots of nice tree-in-the-wind noises. We also got to see some crazy mofo humping a red bull car.
• Night 2: watched my first-ever live death-metal band. Stood huddled in Dylan’s armpit – half out of fear and half out of cold-body-because-it’s-winter-ness. They were pretty good, but I felt oh-so-tired afterwards.
• End of night two: Dylan and I decide that if we don’t get some sleep, we will die. We try to sleep, but encounter 3 separate interruptions: 1. Some serious puke noises coming from a still-unidentified location and source. We giggled a lot and tried to figure out who, or what the fuck it was that spent a good ten minutes heaving it up 2. One of the guys from our camp, kicking the side of the tent and shouting ‘Dylan, I am going to fuck you! Where are you?’ and 3. Brett calling Dylan at 4 am, lost, vulnerable and throwing a girly-phone tantrum at Dylan because Dylan didn’t want to trek the million kilometers to find Brett and bring him back to the tent. Brett, I hope you understand how out of our hands it really was. Plus, we were frozen stiff so I doubt Dylan would have been able to walk all the way anyway. Subsequently, we didn’t sleep.
• Day three: have the best day of my life on this day. Truly. Because I was able to look past the fact that I’d had no sleep, the boogers in my nose were becoming mutant from the dust, and being covered in a layer of grime that would choke a grown man if he licked my arm. Bumped into my friend Kay, had some nice afternoon times of ethereal proportions, and then watched a sunset performance by Tumi and his backing band. Later watched BLK JKS and had tears streaming down my face by the end of the performance. Not due to Emo weaknesses, but joy.
• Again, Dylan and I ended up at the top bar, horrifically drunk.
• We drive back to Pretoria the next day. There is fear that Dylan may miss his flight, and I need to pee more badly than ever. We stop on the side of the road and I pee behind a shop. (Thank you for your kindness, Andre). Dylan makes his flight.
• I stand in the airport, watching Dylan run to get his plane. I wonder where the weekend went. I feel like crying, but I go to the Spur and have a vodka and tonic instead.

Thank you, grizzly. It was the best.

missing in action. you know it.

So. Hi. I am not sure how many of you have actually noticed that i’ve not been posting any blogs for the past while. Juuuuust in case you’ve been wondering what the fuck is going on, I’m here for a few minutes only – to tell you all that I am currently situated in South India, in a state called Kerala, on a beach known as Varkala. please see the map below for further refrence of my whereabouts:

I will be back in the neighbourhood (Dubai) in a few days, and shall return to posting with a vengeance. Although, by the time I return, the word ‘vegeance’ may sound more like ‘wengeance’, due to the lack of Vs in this country.

Cheerio for now. (insert obligatory head-wobble)