Waiting For Emails & Other Types of Hell

I watch the refresh-wheel-thingy spin on my phone, it says "Updated Just Now" but that was two minutes ago, TWO whole minutes... Ugh, I hate liars. When I read that last sentence I hear Tyga's verse on Deuces: I hate liars, fuck love I'm tired of tryin'. I feel you, dog, I feel you. 

The thing is, if you freelance or actually do absolutely anything that requires other people's approval or more importantly authorization to get paid, then waiting for emails is a thing. Not always a bad thing, I mean, Zadie Smith once replied to an email, but a thing nonetheless. 

But as the year enters its victory lap the only inbox that I will concern myself with is my mouth as I eat my way through Cape Town. 

P.S. PLEASE PAY ME YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE KTHANKSBYE. 

Three Things That I Love Right Now!

1. This art from here. 

2. These Snidel sneakers that I cannot find anywhere on the Internet. I spotted them on the Tokyo Fashion IG page and since then I have fruitlessly Googled numerous combinations of the words "sneakers" "Snidel" and "South Africa". 

3. It is only a matter of acceleration now. The way that this article is written. 

Here's A Story

A portrait of a freshly-baked 26 year-old. 16th November 2014. 

It is the worst day: the day after my birthday. Like Boxing Day but worse because there are no leftovers. So in keeping with the melancholic mood, here is some of my personal anguish in letter form...

So here's the thing: I started writing this story about two years ago. I thought that there was a real, proper novel somewhere in my brain waiting to be shoveled out. Now I am not so sure. I think most of it (this is just a slice) is pretty shoddy, this part I kinda like, but again, I am not so sure. I think that I should abandon it and start something else but then I lose five years of my life on Instagram and next thing I know it is bedtime. 

Here it goes:

John outstretched his arms and took both of her shoulders into his embrace. He held her with an earnestness not commonly found in young boys or even men who had not seen their mother’s weep. Thoko and John had known each other’s faces since they had known their very own. 

Growing up with their houses kissing, it was only a matter of time until they kissed and never stopped. The first one was the best one. John and Thoko had been racing each other; they danced through the urban obstacles, the faceless women selling fried food, the stray dogs yelping at a yet to be announced death, the small and hungry children clutching the knees of passers-by.

They ran until they laughed soundlessly, their thumping hearts pleading their legs to stop and so they did, right under the old wizened tree with roots escaping from the cracked soil. Panting in harmony, they smiled at each other as if they both knew a joke that no one else had heard or ever would. John touched Thoko’s cheek with his full palm unembarrassed by the obvious show of affection. Thoko did not flinch and she tried not to blink. She thought to herself that this is what it felt like: happiness.

He moved his hot and glowing face right into hers, nose-to-nose his eyes never left hers. Years later when she was all kinds of lonely, Thoko would greedily recall how moments before her first kiss John did not say I’m going to kiss you now, instead he said something far more heavy, he said I’m going to love you now.

She had always thought that what she needed was lightness. She had believed that the death of her mother and the paper-cut disappointments of the world had made her heavy and tear-sodden. John made her see that what she wanted, what she actually needed, was to be bound to this world. She had been floating just above the ground for so long. Lightly tethered, John’s words made it important that she remain here. 

Someone loved her and that was her responsibility to bear. 

Long Time No See!

Jeez, I don't even go here anymore... 

Let's put it down to an end-of-year slump and be thick as thieves all over again, kay?

This photo is from around about this time last year. Tommy took me on a mini-break for my birthday (I probably, definitely blogged about it), and for a weekend and a bit the world was just as it should be. A universe of two. The best part was eating breakfast together in "our kitchen". I felt like a child playing a hyper-real version of adult-adult. Things like that weekend away kinda eat me up inside (in a good way). 

Nostalgia is one helluva drug. 

The reason being, growing up I never imagined being 20-something. Actually I didn't really imagine being any-something. I was too knotted to my everyday concerns, I didn't honestly see the bigger picture. Also, I feel like I'm between 12-16 years old on most days.

If you read this blog, you probably already know I'm very feels-y. In other words, I feel things, fucking too much I'd say. So doing things like a weekend away is pretty wild to me. Like, how amazing? I have a real boyfriend who does nice things?! Say what?! Insert an existential crisis, giggling and heady dose of impostor syndrome and you've got my average thought pattern. 

A peephole into my mind:

Oh-my-fuuuck + I'm so happy/nervous/excited/scared/pissed and/or terrified + laughing at my own useless jokes + how old am I again? + I should totally just get a dvd and take up daytime drinking

Not being able to imagine myself at this stage has meant that my adult life has really been one big surprise after another. It is like a poorly planned surprise party everyday. Sometimes fun, sometimes exciting, sometimes the-worst-thing-ever. 

Things I have learnt thus far (an incomplete list):

1. Haters don't hate everything. 

They (I mean, me) just know that pretty much everything sucks majorly. BUT! The things in life that don't suck at all are so great, so delicious and beautiful that it makes up for the nonsense. 

Things that don't suck: love, sushi and most fish-based meals, driving fast on the highway at night specifically on a Friday, getting better, friends of mind, doing work that blurs the line between playing and working, cold sheets in summer, making the world as small as just you and the page you're on in the book you're reading. 

2. I can just do stuff.

When I was in school I used to think that life was a bit like a video game. My personal favourite was Crash Bandicoot. So, you had to break boxes, munch apples and climb levels to get what you want. 

Fast-forward to today and I still kinda believe that for certain things but there's also this whole bunch of other things that don't require a regimented approach. Like life in general, for one. You can just do things, like, just nje. No permission required.

3. Literally no one cares about the things that you want more than you do.

And that's how it should be. Act accordingly. 

But hell, this is all just a roundabout way of saying that it's my birthday on Sunday!
Gift ideas for my generous internet friends:

1. Pug
2. Money
3. Mochachos vouchers

I've got a good feeling about this. 

My future family portrait:

A Girl's Guide to India!

Jeez guys, the homies at the Travel Channel are taking so super long to recognize my potential as their next travel show host… Ugh, don’t you just hate it when people don’t let you live your best life? So in an effort to idle away the time until stardom I have compiled “A Girl’s Guide to India”.

If you know me or my blog, you may already know that two years ago Tommy and I went to India for six weeks of so much of everything.

But real talk, if you know me even a little bit then you definitely already know that since I find it really, really hard to not talk about it.

See here and here… Also here and here for proof.

For me, it's like going to the moon and not talking about it – crazy. It is the single most amazing place that I have ever experienced. Of course I’m going to blab about it. I think that if I was a person that I hated then I would say something like “sorry, not sorry”.

For starters, India is a perfect example of why we are born with senses. With so much to see, hear, smell, taste and feel, the physical human experience is alight in India. So much so, that I kinda miss it, a lot. Even though it was two years ago, I still think about it often. I have travelled quite a bit (for a broke-ass person) and no place has hit me like India. That’s the thing – it fucking knocks you out. In the best possible way.

Other holidays kinda fade from my memory and exist like snow globes that I can shake every now and then and say “shucks that was nice!” But India stays with you forever and as cheddar-cheesy as it may sound, your life is better for it.

That being said, I wish that I had known a few things before we embarked on our Indian adventure. 

It is a good idea to plan. Well, who would have thunk it?!

This might seem super obvious but we’re not really planners (too much effort and stuff). So we arrived in India with six weeks ahead of us and only accommodation in Delhi organised and a flight to Leh. Big lols.

Once in Delhi, we promptly found a somewhat dodgy travel agent who booked the rest of our trip. So it wasn't really bad at all, but still. Also, the travel agent's office was so fucking hot (it was a thing, okay) and we missed out on visiting certain places simply because the travel agent wouldn't make any money from it. I really wanted to go to Pondicherry because of the Life of Pi, but the travel agent was like “nah bish” and booked us a multi-city tour starting in Delhi and ending in Fort Kochi. I wasn’t exactly unhappy, but I was naïve. I should have insisted on Pondicherry (and Jodhpur) but alas, now I just have to go back.

Pack tampons.

Before I went to India I thought that the retail experience was standardised. I thought that I could just run into an Indian version of Woolies or Clicks and that would be that. Well, like I say almost every day… I was really wrong. 

Shopping is weird. Like good weird, but weird. I never did find tampons but I stockpiled like the apocalypse was nigh so it was fine. Okay, disclaimer: I am definitely not saying that there are no tampons in India. Haha – why would I do that? I’m just saying that I couldn't find them.

Don’t be an asshole like me, don’t pack short anything.

Okay wait, you can. Go ahead! *whistles past* But you will be a social pariah. I know because my milky-white legs made me the belle of the ball and not in a fun way. 

Also, here's a good one: wear a bra. Jeez Louise! I dunno how my mind works sometimes. I mean, I was hot, like fucking disco-inferno hot. So naturally I thought that it would be a swell idea to go bra-less. Needless to say, it rained. Needless to say, I can't show you any photos except the above from the day that I LIVED MY DREAMS AND WENT TO THE TAJ MAHAL because I didn't wear a bra and my boobs are saying "hi" in every photo. 

Don’t take Tripadvisor etc. too seriously.

Sure, websites like the above can be informative and helpful. Also, they make for fun reading if you’re into terrible spelling and photos of sun burnt Brits. However, they also have a sneaky tendency to make everywhere in India sound like it sucks.

I remember once I was so angry at Tommy (he was super into Tripadvisor) because he innocently read a review of our hotel in Agra before we arrived. He then proceeded to inform me that we should be on the lookout for “excrement and blood” on the bed. I wasn't as angry at him as I was terrified of the bed when we checked in. After inspecting the bed and finding nothing it was still difficult to sleep easy with the double-disaster “excrement and blood” flashing in my mind.

Don’t become a sweaty pseudo celebrity like me.

So here’s a fun fact, in India, I was like hot-shit. People, namely men, wanted to take photos with me (a lot). Like they didn't even care that I was sweating like Hunter S. Thompson. At first I was okay with it, but then it descended to a weird, creepy-level that now makes me think that photos of me are crumpled up in someone’s spank bank. Also, not so fun for boyfriend. So yeah, just don’t do it.

Don’t wear makeup.

Granted, we went in summer so I can’t vouch for any other time of year or any person who has normal heat responses (sweating is an unfortunate pastime of mine). But still, I have never, ever been so flippin’ hot in my life. Makeup is a farce. The best you can do is tie a really, really tight pony-tail and edit those photos like it’s Kimye’s wedding. As you can see in the above photo, I was not joking about photo editing. Homie don't play that, yo! 

I'm thinking of doing A Girl's Guide to Paris and Ireland next. But it might take like a month. In related news, travel sponsorships are welcome!