Surviving Stellenbosch!

I HAVE SURVIVED! My first week back at Varsity is coming to an end and by some miracle I am still alive and well. That’s if you count exhausted and slightly hung-over as ‘well’ I suppose. The only thing that hates me more than my liver right now is my wallet, but all in all it’s been worthwhile.

I have attended all my classes, I have done a maths tutorial that wasn’t even compulsory and I attended an extra class on the use of yeast in wine and beer production (who knew wine and beer could be boring!). I have been drunk more times than I care to share, I’ve embarrassed myself infinitely more times and my arms are covered in bruises from taking a fall during a sokkie at Opskop in high heels.

Let’s just say that this week, I learnt a lot!

But whilst I was away playing drunken student it seems the entire world has fallen apart and I missed the whole lot. For starters I missed the Olympics opening ceremony, again! I haven’t seen it once and every four years I vow to myself that next time I will watch it from beginning to end. It just never happens for some reason.

Secondly, some clown decided it was a great idea to get dressed up as The Joker from Batman, walk into a cinema full of innocent civilians and kill the lot! Honestly, are there really people in this world who find that entertaining? What on earth was he hoping to achieve?

Then some other idiot decided to copy him! Luckily he was stopped before he could cause any damage but it’s people like these that are going to cause cinemas to start checking our bags and x-raying us before entering cinemas which means that I’ll have to stop sneaking in my Smarties and pay some ridiculously exorbitant price for them! How inconsiderate can a person be?

Thirdly, my grandmother has turned eighty years old (yes, I remembered to wish her Happy Birthday). Now that is impressive! Here I am celebrating the fact that I survived a week and she’s busy skopping it off for surviving eighty years. I have much respect for her.

The problem of course is that my entire family has decided to get together for her birthday and decided amongst themselves to exclude me (this is for rather obvious travel issues). So there they are, all together, having a moerse jol without me! Well, my liver certainly isn’t complaining.

And truthfully, it’s only really my brother that I want to see anyway. My sister and cousins are coming to visit me next week so I’m not that desperate to see them but I’ll probably only see my little brother bear again in November, which is damn scary. Oh and my mommabear (I know you're reading this). I miss her as well.

Anyway, the important part is that I now need to make it through a MAJOR rugby match which the Stormers WILL win without killing myself or my liver in the hopes of remaining alive long enough to see my sisterling next week.

And then the party will really begin.

By the way, I think my parents sent me to Stellenbosch to study, maybe I should start?

True Inspiration

People like this make me believe in the true beauty of the human race and what can be done when we set our minds to the task at hand!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VqTwnAuHws&feature=b-mv

At The Bottom of Every Bottle

The drama of real life

Unfolding

Slowly in a love

In a dream

Surreal

Fading in a bottle

Of increasing madness

There!

There it is!

A Thought

Racing through a sky...

Chased, by a drink

Gone

Before it starts

The hollow echo

Of a lonely heart

Pounding in a chest

Of a dying soul

Drowning in a love

With the stench

Of too much Vodka

And too much hate

One cannot love, if not loved

The booze numbs my pain

While it slowly kills the beauty of my soul

Katherine McGinn

67 Minutes for Madiba

For 67 minutes the South African public came together in an amazing celebration for Nelson Mandela's Birthday. People of different races, sexes and cultures are taking some time out of their lives, or money out of their pockets, to help someone in their community as encouraged by LeadSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_or0D4144

It is at times like these that I realize the true beauty of our country. If we can come together to celebrate such a well respected man then surely our nation has hope then surely our nation has the ability to succeed. We have one of the greatest sources of inspiration, he was our leader, and still now the public look to him with all the hope and promise needed to free our country.

There is potential - potential for us to become one nation, with one ideal where nobody is left behind. The running of a nation is like the orchestration of an intricate symphony; with the correct conductor the musicians can string together a melody that will break your heart, and yet, with another conductor that very orchestra will fall apart.

Our nation needs to move as one in one direction for a greater and better future. We cannot succeed alone but with the strength of our peers at our sides and with the ideals of a man we will never forget, we can succed. We can become the nation he has always hoped we'd be. In each of us lies a hero but only through unity can we soar.

So, in honour of madiba's birthday, I challenge you to not only make a difference for 67 minutes, make a lifestyle change that will benefit our nation, one that will last longer than 67 minutes, one that will truly impress our hero. Become the peer that your peers need. Become the support that you need and become the hero that every South African holds in their soul.

"Take action, Inspire change."

Perspective...

I realized today that every article I write will only ever be one sided. I can only hold one opinion about a subject at one time and my blog is therefore always going to be very one-sided. The obvious solution is to find another writer and allow that person to publish their work on my blog.

The only problem with that solution however is that I’m a complete attention whore and should someone else get credit for something I started, it could lead to a murder investigation. Or, better yet, a massacre.

The problem is that when I ranted about one of the many imperfections that men were blessed with I forgot to mention the fact that men actually have to make the move. This seriously upset some of my more “disadvantaged” readers. So this is my official apology to all my male readers. I’m sorry that I may have offended you guys, because actually you guys have serious guts.

I cannot imagine how terrifying it must be to be so completely insecure about how the other person feels about you and still have the guts to walk up to that person and make “the move.”

All jokes aside, you guys are really brave, and we do really appreciate it.

After reading this article, my ex-school priest suggested that I make the move myself. The fact that he read my blog terrified me as not all of it is very… ummmmm… innocent - embarrassing to say the least. The second bit was that he actually suggested that I make “the move.” ME?? All by myself? How do I even do that?

So I have decided that bathing my wounds in self-pity is far better than searching my soul for some form of courage in order to make the first move. So I will willingly crawl back under my rock and stop fighting… For now anyway!

The point is however that I need to stop writing before I see both sides of the story, because absolutely everything in life has two sides.

The news we hear about our filthy politicians, the stories we hear from our friends and families and most importantly the things our teachers and lecturers tell us – it all has two sides and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, between the two sides…

…Which brings me to perspective.

The way we each perceive our world differs from person to person. We can all see the exact same saga unfold and yet when asked for an account of what happened we will each have a different story. The main points will remain the same, but the little details will be distorted beyond repair, which is great for broken telephone but not so much for real life.

Or for blogging.

So I’m stuck in a pretty bleak situation, with no way out. And I can’t apologize every time I write something, but at the same time I don’t want to lose my awesome readers because you guys feed my need for attention. So this is my official apology! Forever!

Men!

I think the entire female population will agree with me when I say that men can drive a person absolutely insane!

We sit here waiting for you to text us, call us, mention us or even just look at us - desperately hoping that you might actually take a second out of your lives to think about us. And the longer you make us wait, the more power you have over us, or so you think!

What you don’t realize is that we too have busy lives, we have friends and families and hobbies and if it were up to me, you wouldn’t even exist! Men are completely replaceable and the sooner they realize that, the better their chances are of not being replaced.

You see, due to modern science and technologies woman are able to complete all the necessary functions of life without men. Women can reproduce without men. Women can succeed without men. Women have always been able to raise families without the aid of men. Truth be told we don’t need you lot for anything.

In fact, the modern vibrator means that we don’t even need you for pleasure!

Sure, we won’t be able to dance with men, but we prefer a night out with the girls anyway. We’ll have to open our own doors and carry our own bags but I’m sure we could handle it. And we wouldn’t have to deal with those dirty old men leering at us while trying to slide their hands up our skirts for a feel of our knickers.

…

Well, maybe not. Maybe our lives wouldn’t be better without men. Maybe I’m just ranting because I’m upset. Maybe I’m one of those really fat chicks who is too lazy to get my ass off to a gym and sort myself out, so I have decided to blame men for all my misfortunes. Maybe I’ve taken too much crap from too many men and now I’ve decided that all men are the same.

The truth is that when you have feelings for a guy he has the ability to drive you to distraction. You sit there trying to decipher whether he feels the same. You read and reread all his texts, you try and remember every word he’s said to you all in the hopes of being able to figure out how he feels. But no matter how many times you read those texts you’re not going to know the truth until he makes his move.

So, all you can do is get on with your life and wait for him to say something, or do something, because truth be told, up until that exact moment you’re actually completely clueless. The sooner we admit that to ourselves the sooner we’ll be able to enjoy the feeling that he gives us.

Either that or we kill the lot of them!!!

Siblings Stink!

There are some emotions only a family member can instil in your hearts and for those of you who have sisters will understand when I say they can completely drive you up the wall!

There are many extreme emotions in this world but the most extreme will only be expressed when in the presence of family and friends because only the people you truly love can cause your emotions to go wild. They have a way of pushing your buttons all at the same time.

My sister is probably my best friend on this planet… But OMG!!!

She makes me absolutely psycho sometimes. She knows exactly how to irritate me and this causes her quite a lot of amusement. All she has to do is start singing and I feel like shooting someone. But the truth is the only reason she has this power is because she’s actually (kind of) special to me.

The best part about it is that forgiveness comes so easily from family members.

My sister and I will fight cat and dog (me being Kat and her being the female dog) and yet five minutes later the whole world is back at peace and she is making me food.

The truth is that the bond between siblings is stronger than any bond that can possibly be formed. They are best friends, sisters and your biggest critic. They are honest and trustworthy and a pain in the ass.

At the end of the day I love my siblings

… even if Heather hasn’t showered in two days!

The Drowning of a Municipality!

After months of waiting for the Chief Albert Luthuli municipality to fix the Carolina water crisis the community finally got together with some human rights lawyers and won a case against the municipality in which the municipality was given 72 hours to fix the water problem.

So, the Minister of Water Affairs announced that the water was fine to drink last night. As the community ran to their tapes to find out whether the news was true they were met with empty taps and no running water.

This morning when they ran their taps this is what they found:

Does this water look healthy to you?

My mum is a councillor for the municipality and when I asked what had happened she merely said that instead of fixing the problem they decided to declare the water healthy in order to buy time.

The water was declared unfit for human consumption in January and has been that way ever since. It seems that the biggest problem is that there are too many heavy metals in the water. This is most likely caused by all the mining in the area.

The problem has been publicized in various newspapers as well as on Carte Blanche and yet the problem has still not been fixed.

Currently the people of Carolina depend on water being supplied in tankers by farmers who have borehole water and are therefore unaffected. Many people have to walk miles to get to the water stations and then have to carry it back to their homes.

This is NOT the answer!

This is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with by people who actually have the community's best interests at heart and not by a bunch of egotistical councillors who attend meetings once a week while quietly pocketing the municipalities budget.

That Damn Stork!

You get to a time in your life when all your friends and family fall pregnant at about the same time and you find yourself attending lots of stork parties.

For most ladies this is the perfect opportunity to become broody. The cute clothes, blankets and mittens are enough to make even the hardest people into a gooey mess. And as ‘mother-to-be’ pulls out baby-grow after baby-grow the audience manages a collective “awwwww.”

I have attended two baby showers in the last week and after the first I was actually starting to like babies until yesterday!

There were about fifteen children at this party ranging from new-borns to about twelve years and the chaos that ensued was enough to put me off children for life. The high-pitched screaming, whining and crying left me close to suicidal and I may even have considered murder.

Young people are a horror!

However, without them there would be no adults. So what is to be done? Well, I suggest that children should be farmed. Scientists in white lab coats can create these strange creatures in test tubes and those adults pathetic enough to actually want to be surrounded by children can be the ‘farmers.’

That way when you’re sitting on a long-distance flight, or in a fancy restaurant or at a funeral there cannot be that ever-present screeching to ruin life’s better moments, in fact you would never have to deal with a little brat ever again!

I suppose eventually I will come to a stage in my life where I will want my own children and then I’ll look back on this moment and be completely flabbergasted that I could ever have written such a thing, but until then, let’s start farming babies!

Brothers: I Found a Use for Them!

Boredom gets to even the best of us. Some of us just have different ways of coping with this boredom.

As I sit here, my Sunday slowly fading into nothingness, I realize that the best way to cope with it is to have a brother. My “darling” little brother was the ultimate cure for my boredom. You see, for ten years I have been searching for a use for this ridiculous little creature and have come up with absolutely nothing! Not one use for this thing my parents call my brother.

So when I finally found a use for him I was in absolute shock! How did he cure my boredom? Well he let me do this to him:

But hey, what are brothers for? So next time you find yourself desperately searching for something to do, attack someone smaller than you. Just keep in mind that little brothers generally grow up to be bigger than you!

Boo!

At the height of last year’s Innibos Fees in Nelspruit I was lucky enough to come across “Boo!” band on the MK stage. It was one of the best performances I have ever seen. To be completely honest, I do not really remember any of the music but the performance is something I will never forget!

The band currently consists of Chris Chameleon, Ampie Omo and Riaan van Rensburg. Most of you have seen Chris Chameleon live and are probably thinking that reading this article is a waste of time. However, do yourself a favour and continue reading for a little bit because this band’s stage presence blew my mind.

The band is known for cross-dressing whilst on stage and with the help of ‘Miss’ Chris Chameleon’s very impressive vocals this performance is something everybody should experience. Not only is the music good, but the acting and dress is absolutely to die for and if you’re looking for all-out entertainment then this is definitely the way to go…

Especially if you’re into sexy cross-dressers.