Tania.co.za

Gaaaaaap...

Twee laat nagte in 'n ry. Eergisteraand vir Carol na middernag gaan haal by die hospitaal want hulle het nie 'n bed gehad vir haar nie (sy sou in die gang moes slaap). Gisteraand vir Salvin saamgevat na Porgy & Bess by die Artscape, en moes daarna nog Jamestown toe ry vir Carol. Sou maklik kon verslaf raak aan cappucino. By the way, julle kan maar gaan kyk, die opera was die moeite werd. Maar koop in ry B, dis goedkoper. Ek het 'n klomp geld ekstra betaal vir ry C. Dit was onnosel van my.

Ek en Marisa vertrek more Calitzdorp toe. Ek vat vier CDs saam om vir Una te speel: Erna Sack, my nuwe Bach ghitaar-CD, Bobby McFerrin (wat ek met 'n geskenkbewys gekoop het wat sy vir my gegee het) en ons Stadskoor se Requiem.

Foto hierbo: Andrew en Una tydens my vorige besoek aan Calitzdorp.

My CD shopping spree

My CD shopping spree started last Saturday. I was still in bed, I hadn't really slept enough, and was still dozy; then Tom London on 567 Cape Talk put on Money for Nothing, and it was impossible not to dance. So being wide awake after that, I decided then and there to go down town to buy the CD. I hadn't bought anything from Musica for over a decade, so when they asked me for my Clicks Club Card I was quite surprised. (Shows you how little I know about who owns whom now.) I didn't actually even like that song when it was on the hit parade years ago, because they did it to death on the radio; but a mixture of nostalgia and an affinity for a nice solid rock rhythm over the past decade or so seem to have combined to endear it to me. The rest of the stuff on the CD, well, it's fine -- more nostalgia in Sultans of Swing, and some of the other stuff is all fine and good, but I still wouldn't say I am really an avid fan of everything that Dire Straits and Mark Knoffler have ever produced.

Next, Roelof accidentally left his new Muse CD in my CD player, which suited me just fine for that night, because I lay listening to it in the dark; but I had to give it back to him, so on the way back from Cape Town on the N1 one afternoon I decided to stop by at Tyger Valley to... ummm... right... now what was I there for again? I couldn't remember, so I just started wandering through the centre. The first significant place I came to was Lucy Layne, which, as far as I can tell, is the only place in Cape Town where you can buy a plain white duvet cover for a three-quarter bed. (I certainly have been around to many shops trying to find one. White is "in", but plain white is not.) So I got that. OK, so that was a nice serendipity, but it wasn't what I had come for, so I kept going. And then I saw Musica and I remembered why I was there, and went in and bought the Muse CD (Black Holes and Revelations), and for good measure I sommer also bought a double CD set called World Percussion for R33. (The funny thing is, although I like drums very much, I don't like any of the drum CDs I have, and this one wasn't really any better. Perhaps it's like jazz; you really have to hear it live.)

I then decided to go upstairs to CD Select to get another Leopold Hofmann CD (my third; my father can't figure out why I like Leopold Hofmann, he finds the work quite dull); and since they sell Naxos CDs at a discount if you buy three, I also got two Bach CDs. The one was part of the Complete Piano Concertos set; when I got home, I saw that it was the one I already had, so I went and exchanged it today after a meeting nearby at the Business School. The other one is one of the real prize finds: Bach: Guitar Transcriptions. These are not only transcriptions of his lute works, but of other works too. You might think that any transcription would be like airport music, but it wasn't that way at all. In fact, we know that Bach's compositions lend themselves quite well to jazzification (I have two Jacques Loussier Bach CDs, and another one with Bobby McFerrin and Yoyo Ma doing some Bach); but the guitar transcriptions are not really modern-sounding; they remain within the same traditional style, just with a change of instrumentation. Very yum. (I was actually looking for something with cello, but all they had was a CD of Bach's solo cello suites, very technical stuff with no accompaniment, and I imagined I would tire of that after a while.)

I tidied up my whole CD collection tonight, about 100 CDs in all, arranged alphabetically by composer, then all the choral collections; then the solo things like Erna Sack, organ works and drums; then jazz; then more music roughly by genre; and way over on the other side everything else including Lieze Stassen, Phil Collins, Queen, some techno thing and Pepe's autographed CD (which I did not ask him to autograph; in fact, I was quite cross with him: Why give someone a present and then scribble all over it?).

The ironic fate of my Muse CD is that Roelof lent his to Madie while he's gone to Nam, so I lent him mine so that he wouldn't shrivel up and expire without his fix. My next mission is to tidy up all my cash slips and invoices. And to withdraw for a while from some of my own addictions...

Snippets

Seen on a fence on the Botfontein Road near Kraaifontein

I don't want any signs; just gimme that magnetic car!

Not what I expected to happen in this line of work

Yesterday was weird. I woke up several hours before I was supposed to get up and couldn't get back to sleep. From work, I set off on what turned into the happless adventures of Barbie.

After that a most unexpected thing happened. I was on an assignment as a journalist — but bear in mind that when I fulfil this role, I am a commercial, trade journalist, so the interviews with various roleplayers are not emotionally very intense (although sometimes they can be a lot of fun).

What happened when I reached Claremont was not what I expected to happen in this line of work. A man saw me taking pictures of the construction work in progress and offered to take me on a tour of the roof and the basement of the building, which I gladly accepted. As we walked about, he explained how the design of the water system worked, and he told me snippets from his tragic life. It was not like when someone tells you something sad because they are begging for something specific, like money or a lift, or something lewd. This man didn't need anything physical, and wasn't really asking for anything. He had a responsible job on the site, and held keys to everything. Yet emotionally, it seemed as if he was held together by fragile strands of paper glue. He was a workaholic — a man whose addiction to work was helping him cope with a rapid and enormous series of personal family losses — deaths and desertions — a burden which he finds impossible to bear. Work provides a distraction from the thoughts of grief and loneliness which would otherwise drive him insane. To fill up more of his time, he is studying towards a further qualification which will ensure that he can be even busier and bear even more distracting responsibility. It's certainly not about the money.

I took a photo of him, and he was pleased. He hasn't had a photo of himself for a long time, he said, and asked if I would print a copy for him. On construction sites, workmen often ask for photos of themselves, but for a different reason; with them, it's more like a natural childlike vanity, or the desire to give a keepsake to a relative. But with this particular man, a supervisor, I think the request was more motivated by a need for proof that he still exists. He told me that he lives in a dangerous area, out of choice, because perhaps some night he will go out onto the street and someone will stab him... And all this with the occasional embarassed smile, manifesting both a passion to live, and a passion to die.

"Ek weet nie hoekom ek vandag al hierdie dinge vertel het nie," he said, "ek kan dit nie gewoonlik vertel nie, want dan huil ek."

As I was getting ready to leave, I heard him address the labourers in a beautiful, nuanced Xhosa, and I said, "Yoo, uthetha kamnandi!" (Wow, you speak well!) We chatted some more in Xhosa, and said our goodbyes without reverting back to our native Afrikaans — he, Coloured, I White.

I cried on the way home. I couldn't write the story I had set out to write that morning. His bigger story ate it all up, and I could neither write his story and tell his name, nor not write it. So I turned to something frivolous, my story of the morning, and I remain haunted by his fragility and a tender wish that I could have known how to heal him. Nothing I can think to do, even over time and within my means, could match the profundity of his pain. Yet I believe it will not be the last time I see him.

I will send him his picture next week.

Dairy products and fat content: Errors in thinking

I have come to the conclusion that the fat content of dairy products is largely over-rated. Some slimmers will quite readily take a brief excursion from their low-kilojoule-low fat-low-carbohydrate diet to snack on a couple of potato crisps (which not only have a high carbohydrate content, but also an incredibly high fat content — over 40% in many cases), because, let's face it, sometimes that's simply what they are lus for; but then they go and compromise on flavour and mouthfeel in cases where the compromise is really of little benefit to their slimming project. This, I believe, often happens in the choice of dairy products.

Nearly two years ago I decided that low fat milk was not a good deal. It costs the same as full cream milk, and you need more of it to colour your coffee. When it comes to drinking it neat, I usually add a lot of ice, which waters it down to some extent, and the resultant taste is still better than that of low fat (unless it is an exceptionally hot day, and you have been playing hockey, in which case ice-cold low fat or no-fat milk is probably still a better bet). So full cream milk is more cost-effective. I made all these decisions without really looking at the actual fat content of full cream milk. The figures may surprise you… (q.v.)

I made a similar decision even years before that regarding cottage cheese, but in this instance I did actually read the labels. Creamed cottage cheese contains more fat than regular cottage cheese does, but in my opinion it is significantly more pleasant to eat; and the volumes in which one consumes cottage cheese, compared to, say, bread, Pro-Vita or peanuts (which have a huuuuuuuge kilojoule value), makes creamed cottage cheese the obvious choice for me.

Before I go on, I should perhaps just mention two points, in case someone thinks of raising them: I am perfectly aware that in a processed dairy product such as ice-cream or condensed milk, a lot of the kilojoules come from carbohydrates — sugar — so "dairy" products are not just dairy products, and I not going to pretend that "all dairy products are slimming foods". Having said that, though, I must make my second (somewhat contradictory to the first) point: For some slimmers, all foods are suitable as part of a weight reduction diet — provided that they are consumed in appropriate measure. I would rather drink less tea than to give up the four of five spoons of sugar I use per mug.

OK, now back to the thrust of where I was going: A friend recently pointed out that full cream milk contains only four percent fat. Although I am an ardent reader of food labels, somehow I had never noticed that! Only two percentage points more than low fat milk, and what a difference it makes to the milk! Anyone who actually likes the sensory properties of full cream milk more than those of low fat milk and reckoned he was doing his weight control a favour by choosing the latter can now reassess his purchasing habits or risk falling into the trap of orthorexia.

Last night I went over to Mikhailo to read through the final draft of a patent application. I was hungry, and he offered me the leftovers of a 500 ml tub of Spar (plain) Greek Yoghurt which he had been scoffing. Now normally I wouldn't eat something like that neat. Fine, I'd use it in tzatziki or the like, but I am not really into boring foods. But this wasn't boring. I had to agree with him once I'd tasted it: it was the best-tasting plain yoghurt we'd ever eaten. It was almost like creamed cottage cheese, in fact. I read the label: 8% fat, but with a kilojoule content which is relatively low (compared, once again, to something like Pro-Vita).

And there lies the difference, I believe: fat. Many nice foods contain fat. Not lots of fat, just a decent enough amount. Food scientists go to great expense to invent fat-replacers like Olestra, and food technologists go to great lengths to reformulate products to get the fat content of various products lower than that of their full-fat equivalents. And in the case of a low fat cheese which Mikhailo recently gave me to taste, I must say, they sometimes do very well. But I believe that the solution often lies not in the comparative fat and kilojoule content of the products of a specific type, but in the approach which slimmers take to the balance between the different types of food that they consume. I could go into a lot of detail about the psychology behind it all, but that would take several pages, so let's just keep it short: If you are trying to lose weight, take a holistic approach rather than demonising this or that kind of food. And don't fall into the trap of comparing apples with apples. Compare apples with Coke or slap chips. Similarly, don't compare full cream milk with low fat milk; instead, compare full cream milk with a thick-base salami pizza. When it comes to kilojoules, count the kilojoules you consume instead of trying to buy every low kilojoule version of every type of food. Don't be penny-wise and… (hehe… pun coming) pound foolish.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this grammar?

I was behind this vehicle at a traffic light. Shouldn't this read, "Electrical business and maintenance something" or "Electrical and maintenance business"?

Saterdagoggend by die werk

Net vinnig:

Now I know why people start looking old when they have kids

I have never been a parent. So I have never been able to fully comprehend why my mother worried so much if I was out late. Last night I got a sense of what that feels like.

I have a neighbour who is young enough to be my son (well, assuming I'd given birth to him when I was 19). I often get home late, and he typically comes over for coffee or supper during pyjama hours (although not in his pyjamas). Last night he didn't come, and his door was locked, and he didn't respond to an SMS I sent earlier either. So my mind started doing all those things that parents' minds probably do normally. I eliminated the possibility that he was sleeping over with a girl, or that he had passed out drunk at a friend's place; neither of those are compatible with his normal routine, or likely given any current events in his life. But he had told me before that his car's break pads were practically worn through, and I know he sometimes travels along winding roads and then along Baden Powell Drive at night. So I worried about that first. Then I started thinking about something he said recently (albeit in wry jest): "What if I hanged myself in my room, how many days would it be before anyone found my corpse, considering people don't come to see me there that often?"

I did all the things mothers always do. I even slept with the light on, so that if he did come home sometime he would think I was awake and come and knock on my door.

If I don't see him tonight I am going to be in the embarassing situation of trying to locate his parents to share my worry. (Anyway, I had been wanting to phone his mother before to reassure her that he has been eating his carrots and broccoli.) But if he then pitches up not dead, he will probably think I am very daft to have been so concerned... which is also why I have not tried to phone him — after all, he is not my son, and he might just think I am getting too weird and too involved in his life (which is what sons often think of their mothers anyway). But I am certainly earning the grey hairs which have been growing in anticipation of parenthood since I was 22...

Bloggers Geek Dinner revisited

It's probably because I wrote about this yesterday that I went and had a dream about it last night. My dream also included various recent current and personal events, such as the government's limit on Chinese imports (a sad thing for me, because I love bargain clothing), and a recent shopping trip to Shoprite during which I bought cheap wine (Tas, and that white Crackling) to use in stews.

In my dream, Relish (the place where the Bloggers' Geek Dinner had been held) was my home, and everyone was there for an unplanned party. I offered Mike Stopforth some wine, but he politely declined, because the only wine I had at home in this dream was cheap imported wine with a label all in Chinese.

I have actually been considering going out to buy some Stormhoek just so that I have something decent to give my guests instead of offering them my cooking ingredients!

Wednesday

Some people are tiring when you're not even tired. Other people are so uncommonly tolerable that you can be half asleep and you still don't really want to kick them out, in spite of the fact that you know that you're going to have difficulty in dragging yourself out of bed the next morning to make it through rush-hour traffic to teach a class at the Business School.

I am not sure exactly what it is that makes some people so much more bearable, but I have a hunch. Cross-cultural communication can be exhausting. Even within one's own ethno-linguistic or socio-economic grouping, there will be many individuals who have been encultured through their upbringing to relate differently to people — and then of course you have personality profiles (Myers-Briggs/Keirsey, and all that), the individual's personal belief system, and of course, moral character. So when you find someone to whom you don't constantly have to explain what you meant by this or that action or sentence, someone who speaks your languages without need for a great number of metaphors and allegories, then somehow there is just so much less strain on your brain, and you start liking that mellowness, and soon you're addicted.

OK, for most ESFJs, that mellowness is probably normal, because, being guardians of normality, there are many others like them, and they often find friends in whose company they feel comfortable. They naturally fit in, and tend to be good hosts. ENFJs, on the other hand, can be loners in spite of being naturally gregarious. The problem is simply that they can't always immerse themselves in the experience because they tend to distance themselves as they try to assess where the experience fits into the bigger scheme of things, even as it is happening.

That's what happened to me at the Geek Dinner — ironically not through big-picture thoughts at first, but by normal earthly worries. While the speakers were going on about saving the world through blogging, I first became distracted by the fact that those computer guys had sold Mikhailo pirated software, and by the knowledge that I had to take Carol to hospital early the next morning, because nobody else would do it; and I had to give her my last cash. While there seemed to be a feeling of elation at the party about how people from many different backgrounds had been united through the Internet, I was struck by the sameness of those who were present — other than Rafiq (who is also rather pale as it is), I noticed no-one who wasn't White; everyone I spoke to spoke English fluently; and everyone could afford to pay for his own meal. Instead of feeling united, I kept feeling a strange sense of dissonance, even as I got on well with Jeremy (I just love his snotty attitude towards spelling crimes) — and I had good conversations with other individuals. The wine was fine — just because I am not a wine-drinker doesn't mean I can't tell a decent wine from an indecent one — my father saw to that — and I would have no problem in presenting him with a bottle of Stormhoek for Christmas. (And the fact that it's wine with a bit of a story makes it exactly the right sort of thing.)

I wonder if other ENFJs are so full of paradoxes. As soon as they start fitting in, they seem to wonder what's wrong, and they stop fitting in. Do other ENFJs also tend to gravitate towards outsiders and underdogs instead of to their supposedly natural peers, I wonder?

I am sure that my logic has taken a nose-dive somewhere. When I have figured out what I am talking about, I will let you know.

Oh yes, the picture above is in response to a request from Adeleida. Unlike ghosts and vampires, angels can be photographed, they just don't look quite the same in pictures as they do in real life.

Dinsdag

I don't need to drink alcohol to get drunk. Sleep deprivation works just as well. I get giggly and floppy and I behave in a this-is-all-just-a-dream-so-it-doesn't-matter-what-I-do manner.

Johan Botha het gisteraand verskriklike weird musiek gespeel op Botha Blues. Ek het tydens Spookstasie aan die slaap geraak en wakker geword terwyl 'n man met 'n rasperstem probeer sing het. Daarna was daar 'n lied met 'n tussenstrofe wat uit gille bestaan het. Die gille was effe-georden (dieselfde reeks gille elke keer, min of meer).

My arme studente get vandag ge-suffer. Die laaste oefening het hulle gepootjie. Ek berei nou hulle eksamen voor. Zzz...

Maandag

Sjoe. Het eers twee-uur in die bed gekom na aansienlike probleme met moderne elektronika. Moes vanoggend sesuur opstaan. Gee klas vir 18 mense, gelukkig min of meer almal op dieselfde vaardigheidsvlak, anders sou ek 'n klasassistent nodig gehad het. My woonstel is aan die kant. Wel, nie heeltemal nie, maar aan die kant genoeg dat ek iemand kan innooi. Ek het vir Roelof 'n domeinnaam gegee vir sy verjaarsdag, 'n eposadres geskep, en 'n tydelike Webwerf opgestel. Die weer was uitstekend vandag. Nou gaan ek eet en slaap.

Nou is ek net heeltemal siek en sat vir koffiebetalers

Goed. Ek weet nou wat dit beteken as iemand vir jou koffie wil betaal. En enigiets wat hy tydens die betalery mag sê is irrelevant; en as hy vir jou sê, nee goed, hy is heeltemal happy om jou as 'n sussie te aanvaar, dan moet jy hom nie glo nie. Want gee hom net 'n week of twee, dan stuur hy vir jou 'n doodernstige SMS waarin hy vir jou vra of jy nie dalk met hom vir trou en terugkeer na sy tuisland nie. Watter soort man vra vir sy sussie om te trou?! Hoekom moet ek gepes word deur so 'n mors van tyd? Ek is 41! Ek is nie beeldskoon nie! Ek flirt nie eers nie! Jy kan ook nie eers sê ek het 'n maklike persoonlikheid nie — in fact, as iemand regtig die moeite sou doen om die persoon te leer ken vir wie hulle sulke onbesonne huweliksvoorstelle maak, dan sou hulle ook besef ek is emosioneel nogal high-maintenance en soms heeltemal vol nonsens. En selfs al sou ek myself ook beskikbaar stel, sou dit tog sinvol wees om 'n paar geestelike dinge ook op die gespreksagenda te sit voordat jy besluit om af te haak. Daar is sekerlik derduisende vrouens in die Kaap wat wel hartstogtelik op soek is na 'n minnaar of eggenoot. Hoekom ry al hierdie ridders nie 'n slag na hulle toe nie? Ek wens soms werklik ek kon elke eensame mens red uit sy eensaamheid, maar hoe kan ek vir iemand 'n maat wees as hy nie bereid is om vir my 'n maat te wees nie? Wees tog net van die begin af eerlik. Sê: "Ek is nie bereid om net bloot jou vriend te wees nie. Ek soek iets meer." Dan sal ek heeltemal vriendelik kan wees oor die storie en ons kan as goeie kennisse uitmekaar gaan, en ek sal jou dalk later bel en aan 'n vriendin voorstel wat wel op soek is na 'n boyfriend. En jy sal geld bespaar op koffie.

Vrydagaand

Ek het eers na twee-uur in die bed gekom na daai Bloggers Geek Dinner nou die aand... en ek het besluit om 'n week lank nie mense se Internetdagboeke te lees nie. Sal eers my eie stories skryf sodat ek nie beinvloed word deur ander mense se stories nie. (Hoe kry 'n mens 'n deelteken op 'n i?)

Gisteraand het ek eers drie-uur in die bed gekom nadat ek vir Mikhailo gehelp het met die deurlees van 'n patentaansoek. Sjooooeeee, die patentprokureur het 'n uitstekende stuk skryfwerk gedoen. Dié spesifieke uitvindsel is so moeilik om te verduidelik, en die man het dit so raak beskrywe dat ek vandag vir hom gesê het ek wil hom graag nomineer vir 'n Nobelprys vir Letterkunde. Dis nie regverdig dat bedwelmde vente mag dig en publiseer terwyl sulke skryftalent nie vereer word nie.

Ek sien uit na 'n lieflike ontspannende aand van huisskoonmaak en wasgoed was. Sulke lekker weer daarvoor.