August-Inspiration

This week has been a bit crazy: an unhealthy mixture good and bad news. I can handle all good or all bad for a bit, reacting appropriately to each is only natural. But being at the spinning end of an emotional yo-yo just isn’t fun. Anyway, it’s end-of-the-weekish and the general mood has settled on content, even a little pleased. Mountains look climbable and rivers swimable. Not out of the woods yet, but there’s more light and friendlier flora in the area.

My mental tribulations are on the verge of cascading, looking to settle in a final state of mind, but I still manage the reign them in somehow. Still waiting for answers and signs. It’s the waiting that’s the hard part. Especially if you are suppose to be active on the game. I’m sort of sitting on the sidelines of my own life. A creepy thought, but perhaps a necessary break to re-evaluate the twenty years I’ve already played the game.

…I can’t seem to effectively articulate the thought I want to share without causing misinterpretation. Perhaps I just need to get some sleep… yes. Try another time…

*sigh*, I can breath again. Just a bit.

I’ve been thinking way too much lately. Way too much. About choices, events and destiny. It’s really irritating, because I try desperately to shake certain thoughts, but my mind denies my denial. I tend to over think things, which can be a dangerous thing. Its fun having an imaginative mind – a tie to innocent childhood – but reshaping reality into a paradise in your mind just isn’t a good thing. Not always, at least. Sure, sometimes it’s fun playing the what-if game, but when your balancing on sane reality and insane ifs – a nauseating up-and-down tightrope walk that blurs the faces in the audience – harmless speculation becomes infatuation. The latter is never a good thing, no matter what the subject matter. A product of stress and loneliness.

Also, I’ve noticed that my “don’t care” strategy back-fires sometimes. To explain briefly: I’m physically and mentally tired of bending over backwards for people who don’t appreciate what I’m trying to do. So I adopt an “I don’t care” attitude. The problem is that this is contrary to what I’ve always been. Neither this nor the previous attitude was a wholesome one, but it’s going to take time to strike a balance. Until then, it’s just time to move on.

[A friend told me a while back that I deserved a certain opportunity. Unfortunately the world does not operate around the deserving.]

I sort of wish for a start over. Naïve and highly unlikely, but what’s the harm in playing the what-if game every now and again?

Today was the first day of a nation-wide strike by civil servants, all in an effort for much needed wage increases. We’re not in anarchy yet; if fact, the only thing I noticed today was that the roads were a bit quieter… something I don’t mind. But the government isn’t showing signs of budging. At the end of the day, here are some interesting quotes I heard on the radio:

[there is major concern for the suffering education sector]

“Half of the government wouldn’t be there where they are if they couldn’t read or write.” -Spokes person for the Teacher’s Union

And the other half?? Baantjies vir boeties: the South African dream.

“The teachers need to get their one percent… or else our children will stay at home, join gangs, start doing drugs and killing people.” -Concerned parent commenting on the strike

When last did your mom say “I love you and I believe in you, no matter what?”

Honestly? I don’t consider a break that is less than two weeks an actual holiday. Its tradition: academic institutions don’t want to give holidays in April and September, but they are forced by tradition. I am sure that for the first half of my school career we had holidays of decent length. Now we get stuck with two to two and a half months of vacation at the end of the year. Great… Anyway, the holiday is over, I achieved very little and tomorrow the final harsh stretch of the year begins. This is going to be tough one, so I bought me a bottle of Amarula to help along the way.

In the past week I visited another university campus, lost the rest of my gambling credits at the local casino while trying different strategies with my newfound knowledge of probability and statistics and visited South Africa’s only nuclear power plant. The latter was a trip to gain insights into new developments on the nuclear front for a presentation my group and I have to give for our physics class. Fun stuff. It really irritates me that I have to spend so much time on physics, because I don’t have it after this year. Still, if I don’t put in effort into these little projects, I’ll be in as much trouble as I am in now with my Applied Mathematics. This is not how I planned my first year… Still, the visit to the Koeberg nuclear power plant was an interesting one. I didn’t have special clearance or anything of the sort, but I was amazed how much help a mention of “studying B.Sc.” could muster. Hehe The site of the plant is actually really cool. The company that owns the plant developed a nature reserve around it to ease the environmental fanatics and keep residential areas at bay for a while. It’s really nice, especially on one of the first really warm days after winter.

“Spring has sprung”, as the ad on the radio says. We’ve had a few lovely days, the flowers are in full bloom and nature already seems completely revitalized. Whether it is restless pets or junkie bees chasing coffee and cigarette smoke on UCT campus, a change is in the air. The time of sundowners on the balcony and open air concerts returns to the Cape. It is time again for people to get in their cars and explore their favorite places in the Cape: walks on the beach at Campsbay, enjoying fish at Houtbay, driving along Chapman’s Peak, discovering a new restaurant in the City or enjoying a live jazz band at the V&A Waterfront. True, it’s a bit early to start thinking about things like that, but it’s something I sense in the air. It’s a mindset: some people just need to discover for themselves. It’ll be nice to get around to some of that later, but for now I have to focus on the studies. Lekker droë bek.

In closing I want to blame the following factors for the periodically poor spelling and grammar of my posts: fatigue, caught-in-the-moment-syndrome, alcohol and Microsoft’s faulty spelling and grammar checking. As a rule, I don’t re-read stuff I’ve just written, therefore I make few corrections.

Tomorrow is Monday; to arms!

I just got home from the first predicate test of the semester – Applied Mathematics. It was a disaster. Sure, with the effort I put in I didn’t expect to do brilliantly, but what bothers me is that I forgot a couple of fundamental formulas. Really basic stuff. In essence it would be similar to forget the distribution rule for algebra for two hours. At this stage AMath isn’t really difficult, the test and I just wasn’t compatible. Screw it. In the end, I Believe I’ll get by. I’ve been in tight spot before, but until I have the actual results I can’t do anything. It’s sort of like waiting for the test results which will be determine whether you have a terminal illness or not. It’s the waiting that’s the worst. This was a rusty nail in the coffin of a week that has been way more trouble than it was worth.

Anyway, I’m home now, eating a bowl of custard (I love custard) and having Adam and the others share their sorrows over the speakers. When you shut the world out at the end of the day, the worries, obligations and what-not, things aren’t that bad. Or, at least, you’ll find something to be happy about.

Spring has arrived! Well, mister calendar says so. In any case, the days are getting longer and one of these days I’ll face mister sun head-to-head on a daily basis on my east-bound trips to Stellenbosch. Not that we had much of a winter this year… tame, actually.

In the Cape, I don’t really experience transitional seasons. Autumn and spring isn’t clearly defined. I’ll just wake up one day and summer or winter has started. Maybe it’s just me, but winter will probably continue until November, like every year, and the summer starts. Which will make me very happy, because I’m a summer person (I thrive between 20 and 40 degrees Celsius, but I can tolerate higher temperatures happily).

But that’s a tad in the future. Right now I have a holiday to look forward to which starts tomorrow; a nice week off. Actually, it’s only called a holiday, but in reality it’s only meant as a period to study of a volley of tests that follows it. Still, I’m going to enjoy it thoroughly. I’m going sleep late and go seen some friends and catch up on correspondence. It’s only a week, so I doubt that I’ll get away. What I’d really like is a trip to the Namaqualand.

Allow me to explain: the Namaqualand is a rural area off the west coast of South Africa. It’s mostly farms and small towns in a semi-desert-ish area and in the summer it gets quite hot. The people are characterized by a distinct dialect of Afrikaans, something I can appreciate. All-in-all it’s not much to consider, but in the spring time, it is transformed into a paradise of wild flowers. Acres of the stuff: tourists from as far a Japan flock to see the natural spectacle. It’s something I can appreciate at this stage, especially if I can enjoy it in absolute solitude. It would be a nice getaway. But there are a few problems: it’s too far away for a quick drive, I don’t want to find accommodation there and, besides, I don’t think the flowers are in full bloom yet. Anyway, it’s a nice dream: a priori and all that.

Pfft – my custard’s finished.