I nearly wrote TGIF

Because tomorrow is a public holiday in South Africa, it feels like today is Friday. Yay for long weekends!

TSC and I will be house-sitting for my folks while they are in Durban. I'm looking forward to sitting next to the pool (even if it's with my laptop to get my big story done in time for Monday's deadline) and just being away from home. It means that I have an excuse not to do all the niggly little things on my to-do list (everything from sorting out my beads and magazines to cleaning out my bedside drawer, which is one of those places in our house where homeless objects like spare batteries and lone earrings seem to collect).

It's not a holiday, but it's a nice break. I was thinking that yesterday and TSC asked me what I was pondering. I said that I was trying to figure out what makes a holiday for me. For him, it's being able to do what you want when you want. I thought about it some more and realised that for me, what defines a proper holiday is:

• Not having to do the annoying daily chores and admin, like cleaning, phoning clients, answering work emails and sorting out laundry. I enjoy camping and self-catering holidays, but my favourite treat is if we're away and don't have to worry about cooking our own meals or washing up afterwards.
  
• Not having any major committments that impede spontaneity or flexibility. This is why visiting my gran in Mpumalanga counts as a break, but not a real holiday in my opinion. I'm constantly thinking about whether she'll be able to enjoy what we're doing, if she'll feel left out if we go somewhere without her, if we'll get in the way of her social activities etc. Ultimate holidays for me are where it's just me and TSC doing our own thing, or when I'm with people who don't mind everyone splitting up when they feel like it. My family are good like that - we all tend to gather for meals, but my grandparents are free to nap while my folks go for a drive and TSC and I play tennis. I hate it where you're away with people and there's no privacy and no chance for solitude. And unfortunately, TSC's family are the type who expect that when we're away with them, we can't even be on our own for 30min, which is probably why we struggle to be together for more than a few days at a time - it's two different ways of thinking that collide.
• Not stressing constantly about finances. I don't mean I want to be able to just throw money around. I mean that it's difficult to relax when you can't really afford the holiday you're on. Friends of ours recently went to Australia and although they enjoed the experience, they said that they were on a really tight budget, but staying with friends who didn't understand that, and kept expecting them to join them at expensive restuarants or theatre shows. Our friends found it very stressful to be constantly rebudgeting to try to fit these things in. Personally, I'd rather save up for a long weekend and have enough spending money, than go on a week-long holiday where I'm constantly freaking out about the money and not really relaxing.
• Doing something new. It doesn't have to be exotic or expensive, but doing something new or going on an adventure is part of a holiday for me, even if it's as small as seeing a bushbaby in the wild for the first time (which happened when we went to wonderful Sondela).
• Having enough time to unwind. I've loved touring all the waterfalls in Mpumalanga, sunset horse-riding in Cape Town, doing a bridge swing in Zambia, swimming with dolphins in Zanzibar, visiting art galleries in Paris and all the other exploring I've been fortunate enough to do, but I also need time to sleep late, drink cocktails by a pool, take slow, wandering walks and generally just chill out. Without the chance to chill, as soon as I get back to work, it feels like the holiday never happened.

What about you lot? What defines a good, proper holiday for you?

PS: My bucket list is up on Being Brazen's blog! Yay ;-)

One month down...

...Just one more set of guests to go.

But first a breather. We leave tomorrow for a little break before our last guests arrive on Thursday. CANNOT WAIT to chill and be a guest myself for a bit.

Just doing a bit of work now so I don't have to schlep it with me. I know - working on a Saturday night is lame. But not as lame as going for a mini-holiday and working straight through it.

Btw, anyone been to see a game live in 3D at the cinema? I'm keen to do that for one of the last matches, but wondering if it's worth it.

Have a good one folks. I plan to.

A few lessons learnt this holiday

• There is no substitute for quality time with really good friends.
• I will never entirely get over Cape Town.
• A long stretch of relaxing "us time" at the end of the year is the best possible thing I could wish for TSC and me.
• My mom is the most amazing present-giver I know.
• My brother and I have not yet outgrown the sibling arguments.
• Our cats appreciate us a lot more when we've been away for a bit.
• Saving enough money to have a holiday that doesn't revolve around financial stress is a really good idea.
• That said, there is a lot of fun stuff you can do without spending much money.
• Spring cleaning is cathartic.
• Leaving your veggie garden for five days may result in an untamed jungle developing (my baby marrows / zucchini are about six times the size one finds in grocery stores).
• Good music makes a long car trip seem much shorter.
• TSC and I are so blessed with the life we lead.

In the Mother City

It is so good to be here. Even if it makes me realise how I have missed it over the past two and a half years.

Details when I am back in Joburg, I promise. Any Cape Town bloggers keen to hook up? Mail me at doodles of a journo at gmail dot com.

Two Mondays

Thanks to yesterday's public holiday, today feels like a Monday. So two Mondays in one week! Eep. But tomorrow's Friday, so it's all good.

And I just realised that we're nearly into October, which means I need to start on Christmas presents now in order not to be broke in December. I tell myself that I'm going to do this every year, and I don't. But this year will be different.

Hmmm... de ja vu.

But seriously... I want to go on a kick-ass holiday at the end of the year, so I will need to have some cash then. Which means I will need to either:

a) Win the lotto (unlikely, seeing I don't play)
b) Get in some more freelance jobs ASAP
c) Convince people to order their corporate gifts through me or let my company do their PR (coz I'd get commission)
d) Cut down on my spending (also unlikely given the current inflation rate. Ok, and my tendancy to buy random gifts for those I love)
e) Open a shebeen on my veranda (anything's possible in uor dodgey complex)
f) Take up a new line of work that pays better (politics, maybe? Or law. I'm argumentative enough to be a lawyer.)

This cash injection is absolutely necessary to my well-being. See, I need to unwind as fully as possible during the first week of holiday because my in-laws are taking TSC and I to a lovely resort just after Christmas for a week, which will be... stressful to put it politely.

There are not many people I would choose to go on holiday with, I prefer to just get away from everything and everyone. And my in-laws, although they are very kind-hearted people who don't mean to make things difficult, are experts at stressing me out. Firstly, we don't speak the same language. Secondly, they live in a different world to me. Theirs is populated with their family, their sheep, farm life and red wine that's been stored overnight in the fridge. Mine is inhabited by lunatics, irrational clients, my mental cats and "room-temperature" red wine. So we battle to relate to each other.

Thirdly, their idea of a holiday is to go shopping. This makes sense, if you think that they live in a small town where there aren't many stores. But my idea of a holiday is to escape to a quiet cabin in the mountains or on a beach and retreat from the madding crowds. They like to spend every single minute surrounded by people. I like to hide from the world with just TSC by my side.

So I worry that the week will be claustrophobic for me. I can handle that for a few days, and I just want TSC to enjoy his time with his folks as much as possible seeing he doesn't see them often. But I do plan on relaxing as much as is humanly possible before then. And seeing it's TSC and my second wedding anniversary on 16 Dec, I'm thinking spa treatments, romantic dinners and adventures together are in order.

So... any advice on making money in a hurry (legally, please)?

Post, as promised

It has been a busy time! I guess it's the whole end-of-year-itis that hits around this time every year, but I really feel like I need a holiday now. That's wishful thinking, of course, but we're all allowed to dream.

My folks are setting off on their little little 3-week jaunt around Eastern Europe next week and I am so jealous. TSC and his team will be repainting their house while they're gone, which means that I will barely see him. That man is unbelievable when it comes to work. As soon as he has a project on the go, everything else falls away... his studying, his wife... *Sigh* I'm hoping that he'll be more reasonable this time, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure that he sees this an yet another opportunity to try to prove himself to my folks.

In other news... I scraped the side of my car on a pillar in the parking bay last week. Argh! I drive so carefully and try to take really good care of my car and then I do something stupid like that. THEN... when I took the bloody thing to the panelbeaters, they tell me that, actually, the front of my car needs work too! Why? Because I went through a huge and completely unavoidable pothole that stretched right across one of the main roads in Rosebank (a very affluent part of Johannesburg) awhile ago, which has buggered up my bumper.

So I call my insurance agency and log the claims. Becuase the incidents are separate, they apparently need separate claims and I must pay the excess twice over. AND... because I am under the age of 26, my excess is very much higher. I could cry.

Sorry - this is very much a rant of a post, isn't it? Even Formula One has let me down. After quite a dull race on Sunday, the last few laps burst into action when the rain came down, and Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton (two of the main championship contenders, from Ferrari and McLaren respectively) were fighting it out on the track. They came close to touching and Lewis, who was behind, needed to go off onto the grass. He came back on the track ahead of Kimi. Now, in this situation, a driver can be penalised for gaining advantage off-track, so according to the rules, Lewis needed to surrender the position back to Kimi. He did, letting Kimi pull in front of him. He then made another attempt at overtaking the Finn, and pulled it off magnificently.

Kimi then lost it and smashed his car into the wall, while Lewis managed to remain cool and calm in crazy conditions (skidding around a wet track on his "dry" tyres) to pull off a win. Celebrations ensued on the podium.

And then... because the body that runs F1, the FIA, and Ferrari are big buddies (fact: the Ferrari team boss and the FIA boss go on annual ski holidays together), Ferrari complained that Lewis still gained advantage off-track, and the FIA penalised Lewis by 25 seconds, putting him in third place, and handing the race to the other Ferrari driver, Phillipe Massa.

This drives me mental, especially because in the last race, Ferrari unsafely released Massa into oncoming traffic in the pit lane, which blatantly trangresses the regulations, which state that a team needs to check the pit lane before allowing their driver out. Did the FIA allow Ferrari's race to be compromised? No, they just gave Massa a fine.

Almost enough to make me quit watching. Almost.

Da weekend dat woz

Sigh... the long weekend is over. But what a weekend it was. I so enjoyed going away (even though the place turned out to be only about 20 minutes away from where we live!) and spending time outside. When I'm at home, I always feel like I should be doing something - clearing out my guest room so there's actually space to get through the door, sorting photos, cooking supper, doing the washing etc.

It was great to be at the guest farm, because I COULDN'T do any of those things, so I could actually allow myself not to think about them and to think about what I wanted to do and then do it.

This was the quaint little cottage where we stayed, just outside of Muldersdrif. It wasn't luxurious, but it was quiet and clean and, most importantly, it had a heater!


But I'm getting ahead of myself. I really suck at keeping to chronological order. The weekend began on Friday, so I shall start there.

After finishing work early (which I always do on Fridays because we don't take lunch breaks or tea breaks during the week at all), we packed our bags. The cats need almost as much stuff as we do - their kitty hut, litterbox, extra litter, dry food, wet food, food bowls, water bowl etc. Then we headed off to my folks in Pretoria.

We had supper at Cafe 41 in Groenkloof. Not my favourite place, especially seeing they've changed the recipe of their chickpea and sweet potato curry. Ugh.

Saturday morning we rushed to Menlyn Shopping Centre as it opened to get the last part of my dad's Father's Day present, seeing our local branch of the store had run out. We met up with him, my mom, and (surprisingly) my brother, who doesn't normally get out of bed before noon on weekends. After that, we did our shop for everything we'd need for the weekend (food, mainly. And Lindt chocolate, of course) and off we went, leaving the kitties with their grandparents for the weekend. They always come back from my parents spoilt and stuffed ;-)

We checked in at the guest farm and took a drive around the area before heading back to watch the rugby. We followed all these signs promising fresh vegetables and a farm stall, but when we got to the end of the road, we found ouselves at a place called the Dog Park. There were about 50 dogs (seriously), a little honesty bar (where you can help yourself to a drink and leave the money) and nothing else. No veggies in sight. Bizarre. There was a big old Alsation with bloodshot eyes standing on the steps to the bar, like Clint Eastwood in some awful ancient Western flick. He looked at us sternly down his long doggy nose as if to say, 'This here be my bar. Touch my liquor and there'll be trouble.' We left.

Hubby watched the Boks playing Wales and I curled up on a couch outside, in the sunshine, with a book. So nice to have time to read! After that, we braaied a spatchcock chicken and chilled outside with a glass of really good wine. A candlelit bath was next, but being spoilt rotten and used to a nice big bath, not a little one like the cottage had, that didn't last too long ;-)

It was such a lovely chilled night. I managed to finish the book I'd started in bed, much later, and actually managed to sleep well in a new bed, which is a first for me.

Sunday we had a long lie-in and a good heart-to-heart, before setting out adventuring. We stopped at a little nursery, which turned out to be having a half-price sale, so I filled the boot of our car with beautiful green things, for only R200.

The plants then got to enjoy the rest of the day driving through the Rhino and Lion Park with us. Thanks to Angel and Ruby for the idea. What a great day! We arrived just before feeding time, so we got to watch the lions, wild dogs and cheetahs enjoying their lunch.

This is one of the feline chaps, announcing his hunger to the watching crowd.


Then we drove through the park and saw countless animals, including sable (I'd never seen them before), waterbuck, rhinos, and many more. It was quite funny, because they all looked red from the red mud.

Then we went to the animal creche, where we oohed and ahhed at the baby tigers, hippo, jaguars, leopard and these cuties, whom we got to play with...

They were tuckered out from all the attention, so they'd decided to take a snooze. We had fun tickling them under their paws and watching them swat at us in their sleep. They're white lions, so they have big blue eyes (caused by a recessive gene).

This fellow below is a teenage cheetah. Tired of being called cute and of all the attention from the people petting him, he climbed on the roof of his shelter to glare at us all and sulk.


After that, we headed to the Wondercave, South Africa's third largest cave chamber. I love caves. A bit of speleophile am I. Showing off the little bit of Latin I remember.

Anyhoo... Hubby had never seen a proper cave, so it was great fun, aside from some of the annoying people in our group who made the guide spend the entire time chasing after them. They dropped sweet papers in the caves, which I dutifully picked up. Neanderthals.



Sunday evening was spent making a yummy potjie (nobody makes potjie like my hubby), with another glass of really good wine, and lots of cuddling to keep away the chills.

Monday morning, we had to up early as check-out time was 9am. We did breakfast at Zest, a dinky little restaurant at the Ngwenya Glass Village, and browsed the shops. At around lunch time, we headed back to my folks. My gran is visiting, so we chilled with them before taking our kitties home and enjoying leftover potjie and a DVD.

It was such a lovely weekend, and I'm sorry if you found my post long and boring, but I've had fun recalling my little getaway in between my chasing of clients. Grrr...

The only bad thing about a long weekend is that one extra day out of the office seems to make me forget how to type, do admin and put my head down ;-)

I'm off to give it another try, and to read your blogs, of course.

Yay - long weekend!

Right, first things first... I read Caz's lastest post yesterday on her blog, Spacebook, and I reckon it's my favourite post of the week. She just wrote something that struck a chord with me. nOthing earth shattering, and you may not get what I'm on about, but I thought it was brilliant. Read it here.

And then... IT'S THE BEGINNING OF A LONG WEEKEND. WOOHOO!

Can you tell that I'm excited? I've been drawing up lists in my head of all the things I want to do. The number one is: nothing. This is followed by: sleep, read and sleep.

Hehehe... no, I also want to explore the sights, eat out at new restaurants, take loads of pics, spend quality time with hubby, and enjoy a little spontaneity.

Till next week, when I will bombard you with pics. Have a good one, Saffers. And for those of you from other parts of the world, have a great non-long weekend.

It's been awhile

I wish I had a fascinating excuse for why I haven't posted in two weeks, but I'm afraid it's the same old stuff - no time. In between working on a not-so-nice-in-fact-it's-really-awful project at work, hubby and I have been scrutinising our budget with a microscope to try and find a way to afford a trip to KwaZulu-Natal to visit my grandparents (well, grandfather and step-grandmother) for Easter.

I have this idea that I will spend the days taking down my grandfather's memoirs. As somebody who can honestly tell those "I used to walk miles to school barefoot" stories without lying, who came from absolute poverty, lived through a war or two and came out fit and fighting, I think his life story is fascinating. Especially seeing his first wife's (English) family disowned her for marrying him (an Afrikaner boxing champ). She, my grandmother, that is, did what the English do best - she colonised him completely. Yet, after she died a few years back, he met an Afrikaans lady, Lilly, and has gone back to his roots in a big way.

If you're bored by the storyline so far, consider that the two eloped when he was around 72, and that she's only 6 or 8 years (I can never remember) older than my dad, making him nearly the same age as his stepmother.

Yes, my family is a little bizarre. But I love them that way. And Lilly and Oupie (our name for my granddad) make a cute couple. He's nearly 82 now, and she's about 58, but you'd swear they were both 65. So I want to write Oupie's memoirs before he starts to show his age and forget things (other than what I do, which he forgets now anyway).

But rather than taking down notes, we're more likely to spend our time being fed by Lilly, who is an accomplished cook, taking a tour of their new home (Oupie has finally decided to retire and sell off his nursery) and trying to explain what it is that I do, seeing the only journalists they understand are those that work for a newspaper. They seem more interested in Josias's line of work (construction) than mine anyway. Not that I'm jealous. Well, not very.

I'm looking forward to escaping Gauteng for a few days and being back in the wonderfully verdant Natal province, where I spent most of my school years.

In the meanwhile, I need to get a grip on this nasty project, so let me leave the talk of holidays for the moment and return to the less-interesting reality.

My Orlando photos

The horned chicken and the horned husband, as seen at Ripley's Believe it or Not



New York New York in Disney-MGM Studios



Waiting for the bus. We did lots of this.



Smoke from the fireworks on New Year's Eve at MGM.



Yours truly with the robotic 'mine! mine!' sea gulls at The Seas With Nemo entrance in Epcot.

The first of the photos

There are many more to come (as soon as I figure out how my new camera's software works), but here is a single photo from each segment of my holiday in the meanwhile. To see all the rest, visit my Flickr page here.


The day of our first year anniversary - a "sunset" (we were around an hour early for that) horseride along Noordehoek beach. It was amazing - the day had been raining and miserable and the weather cleared to give us the perfect 2-hour window for our ride, which we followed up with dinner at the Mount Nelson Hotel (where TSC proposed to me). No photos of that as we're STILL too embarrassed to ask the waiter to take a photo of us. It's just not done at the Mt. N, dahling!


This is our nephew, Jeandre, at around 8 months. Poor boy's already had chicken pox and bronchitis, but he was all smiles when we saw him in Upington - we'd just given him the R400 teddy. He couldn't wait to unpack the bear so he could ignore it and try to climb inside its box.


Me, on the farm in Namibia, trying to look comfortable holding this little goat that was squirming like a worm on speed.


TSC and I on Christmas day, which we spent with my family near Hazyview in Mpumalanga. It was a stunning day of perfect weather, good food, lots of presents and interesting German priests.


Tamara and TSC do Disney. Dancing gingerbread men! Well, I thought it was cool.

I know I promised random observations, the usual rants and more fine writing, so those will come. Well, the rants and observations at least. Two out of three is not bad. In the meantime, just pretend to be interested in my pics, k?

Back to business as usual

Hello infinite ether into which I cast my bitsy blogs!

I have returned. Yes, like a nasty case of the sniffles, I am unstoppable. No desert-heat Namibian farm excursion, post-holiday emptiness of pocket or bumbling US airline can keep me from bouncing back into blog-mode.

In other words, vaction's over, so it's back to work, which means it's back to procrastination. After three weeks of non-stop travelling that took me from the fairest Cape Town to most desolate Keetmanshoop in Namibia and from the luxurious Casa do Sol in Mpumalanga to the cockroach infested Howard Johnson Maingate West in Orlando, Florida, my adjective-addicted self is now plonked back in front of this unfriendly monitor... wiser, even more tired than before my holiday and ever-so-slightly less white than before.

Details, photos and meaningless observations to follow. Until then, adieu.

A new post for a new look (for the new year)

Ta-da! What do you think of the new look? They say that a change is as good as a holiday, and seeing my holiday only starts tomorrow, today was a day for change.

I'm quite chuffed with myself - made the new banner from a chopped up email advert for a restaurant, cut and paste and moved around on Paint (the only image editing software this useless PC has). No Photoshop, as you can tell. But still, I like it. And seeing its my blog, I guess that counts for something.

But I really would like your opinions (especially positive ones).

I know it's a little early for the new year, but your truly is leaving tomorrow and has no plans to touch a PC until she returns in early Jan, when she must also stop speaking and writing in the third person!

Well, my lovelies, if I don't blog soon, wishing you a lovely holiday, a blessed Christmas and lots of beautiful moments that will become cherished memories.

First post of December

It's the third of December, which means that my holiday is only 11 days away! I can hardly wait. I've finished the December deadlines, and now I'm spending my days trying to convince uncooperative people to grant me interviews for my January stories before we close on 14 Dec. But, being uncooperative people, they are not cooperating in the slightest. Strange, that.

I have realised something about the general South African and blogs: most of them don't have one and few even enjoy reading other people's blogs. So imagine my excitement when I discovered that some of the poor people on my monthly communal email list have actually been following my blog!

This could of course be because I tell them to in every email I send, but seeing nobody usually follows my advice I doubt it. I'm left to assume then, that they either really like this blog or they have way too much time on their hands. It's probably the latter, being December, and my comments and number of visitors will almost certainly drop drastically come the new year, but for posterity's sake I am going to enjoy deluding myself that their reason is in actual fact the former. It's better for self-esteem, self-acceptance and all those psychological good things that motivational speakers always talk about.

Nationwide could do with some of those now. The airline has had its entire fleet grounded and is facing suspension. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for suspending unsafe airplanes, but I feel sorry for a) the 6 000 passengers that were stranded without an option of catching another flight and b) the Nationwide staff that have nothing to do with maintenance, but who are still being clobbered along with the rest.

So sympathy to Nationwide employees, and rude words to SAA.

Tis the season to be sleepy

Today is a November day, which means that my brain is suffering from severe end-of-year-itis. I have been saying things like "there is a silver cloud to every lining" and losing my lunch inside my office organiser (although I haven't as yet, as my colleague has, put my shoes in the fridge).

Simply put, this is the time of year where brains switch off, although work continues. The result is that next year, when we all return to work, broke and miserable with the sound of shopping-centre-tinkly Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer grating away at our abused ears, we will have to re-do everything we did between mid-November and closing time anyway.

Which is why I am blogging instead of getting a headstart on my January work. After all, I did just find myself writing holiday instead of Holland, and sleep instead of slight. I think a break from the real world in necessary.

Wich gives me a verry good reasin for terrible spelling ennyway!

Until the next post, wishing the world a merry pre-holiday!