Strength of the World

I started this blog more than a year ago in order to be able to put my thoughts into words on a page online so that people could read it and the fact that people are reading it makes it more meaningful. And then I called it "Strength of the World" because that's what it's about: it's about my take on the failings and successes of what I see outside my bedroom window every day, or less frequently if I was busy, which was a lot. Figuratively, of course, because literally would imply vague green shapes all day every day: my bedroom window is one of those frosted-blurry installations, ie can't actually see much.

Strength of the World is the title of a song by Avenged Sevenfold, and obviously a cool chorus phrase like this must be part of some deeply spiritual piece of quality music that comments on society and the struggle of mankind against our own oppressions. That would be nice, and it would be entirely appropriate and tie in nicely to what I'm trying to achieve. Unfortunately, the lyrics (as I've eventually found out, thanks to songmeanings.net) have absolute nothing to do with the message I'm trying to get across by running any form of social commentary whatsoever on a blog, and in fact they're pretty much what Taken would be if anyone bothered to turn it into a song. Which would be pretty shaiß, if you haven't yet guessed.

I'm a big fan of the Middle Ages, not partly because of the whole medieval-military vaab, but also because of the lifestyle that people had back then. There was only one word to describe it, really: simple. Well, simpler certainly compared to the lifestyle today. And that was because you knew where you were in society because society hadn't even fully figured itself out yet. You knew what you had to do to succeed, and, more importantly, you knew what you needed to do to fail. This of course differed by class, as the peasantry would have to worry about failing to throw out the poop every day, while the knights and lords would have to worry about failing to uphold the Code of Chivalry (someone else did the poop-throwing for them). Now, for those of you who were brought up in the past decade or so (because we're talking 500 hundred years ago) and who haven't bothered to have it drummed into your skulls in the meantime, it went something like this:

ye shalt treate with great reverence the elderly, ye family, and those who art wiser and older than ye.
ye shalt be a good sportsman in alle games ye partayke inn, including tournaments of knightlye skills wyth reale weaponns.
ye shalt treat with kinde wordes and a pious dispossition those who art lacking in materiel possessions, and be generus if ye art acting as a hoste to guests of alle and aneye creed.
ye shalt seeke revenge if ye art insulted.
ye shalt seeke revenge if ye sister is insulted.

and the gist was pretty much the same from there onwards (ie RESPECT, bitches, but never mind that for now). This wasn't compulsory, in fact many most knights didn't actually hold on to these values, especially those Templar guys. Flip. Regardless, it's a nice idea, and I'm not just being an idealist. These are principles whereby a "good man" would live his life. You'll also make lots of friends; just ask Don Corleone ;) But nothing else really mattered as long as you died knowing you've fulfilled the duty of your king, your God, and your Code: the Holy Trinity of the knight on his deathbed.

In today's world, we're not nearly as excited by the prospect of being a nice guy. But that's not altogether the problem, because, like I said, not every knight in shining armour was a knight in shining armour. And that's cool, really, from a society point of view. But now, there's just a horrid culture of 1-upmanship which does nobody any favours. It's the culture of material wealth that's bigger than your neighbour's but it's also the culture of measuring your success on completely the wrong scale. I'm not saying material goods aren't necessarily success, but just people use completely the wrong ideas to measure even that.

For example, I've been part of a couple of teams which have competed on a pretty high level, ahem nationally and all sorts of others. However, because we're from a certain school, geographical location or whatever, doing well at whatever discipline it happens to be is just made infinitely more difficult by the people who aren't good at it but are nonetheless put in charge and have to organize timetabling, scoring, etc. And it's not just me saying I'm good here, in fact I usually do mediocre-ly because I'm bad at handling pressure, but the point is that usually people in the team I'm in tend to do well (such as #winning), and more of us should obviously be doing the same, but we're just not experienced enough to be overridingly dominant enough to do well + them screwing us over. But it's very counter-productive, because what seems like a "her her this makes us look good ho ho" idea actually ends up screwing over whatever people end up progressing to the next stage of the competition, ie Worlds in kite-surfing or bog-snorkelling or suchlike, which is why the country maintains its pretty damn average standard in non-mainstream international youth competition disciplines, sports and otherwise.

This is all a product of the fact that we've lost sight of what's important in life. I don't know what is important in life, but I know that making people feel as though you've been a positive influence on them is a nice thing to aspire to. And conversely for the negative. But it's about the way you deal with people, I guess.

Humanity at this stage has come far from the Middle Ages, in that we're more complicated as a society. We've also honed our skills: we're now completely badass at screwing each other over in all kinds of ways, which isn't doing the global thingy whatnot togetherness mentality any favours at all.

Is this the strength of the world? Weakness, more like.

rocker week

Aw yeah, it was.

boom.

First three days I spent in Simon's Town on a leadership camp with one of the halves of grade 11. It was an absolute vaab, the whole excessive church camp venue and the amazing facilities. I really enjoyed the leadership talks and stuff, but I'm good at that kinda thing naturally, so my favourite parts were playing touchies and b-ball and waking up at 6 to go up and see the sun rise over the bay... I loved it, and I loved spending time with the guys I'd been going to school with for almost 4 years but never really got to know.

Then after Wednesday afternoon's band jam sessions, it was time to go job shadowing! (hooray!)

Thursday involved going to Sound&Motion Studios in town and hanging out with the crew there while a cover band called the Rockerfellas finished off one of their recordings, recording, mixing, mastering, etc. I learned a lot about the career, but I also learned a flipload about actual music tech... so I might actually be able to finish that project before the end of term! :D

Friday I was hounding a family friend who was a solo architect... working from home, office piled full of stacks and stacks of papers (literally!), going out to sites and meetings and photocopying massive technical drawings...

I think the most I learned from those two experiences was just how much I'm capable of, and just how many different things I would actually enjoy doing later in life... which is why it's so hard because I don't want to have to decide what I want to do!

And then fencing over the weekend, nice and chilled lokal es lekker WC champs, which I loved because I got to have fun with awesome people, bring in an impressive medal haul, and test-drive my new equipment, including sickly lumo-green shoes which everyone was ripping into... it wasn't my choice, dad got them! And he's colourblind, he thought they were a nice dark yellow!

life is a highwaaaaay

I've compiled this joller ~80s playlist of rock 'n' roll, blasting through my speakers right now :D I really don't understand how humanity could have moved away from this kind of music, but that's for another time...

I know I haven't posted anything remotely anything for a while, and my usual excuse is there to bail me out, but that's not to say I haven't been doing a lot of interesting stuff because I have actually ;) so nyah.

I recently did my piano exam though, which went really well considering the fact I've literally worked my ass off on piano in the last few months... so I hope it's all worth it and a distinction is coming my way!

And other than that, book reviews coming up as soon as I get back from camp! :D

moar death

at the hands of scheduling.... I've had a real bummer week so it's just been a bit of a mare doing things I like and stuff.

So I've been working on this really insane^{[citation needed]} piano piece, a Rachmaninov prelude (here's a kick-ass Lang Lang rendition) and played it at this competition, you know, avs :D but I had to restart it despite the fact that it was pretty much perfect both times... yeah, we'll wait and see how many points they take off on that :P

And Andy and I went highlining today w/ Paskal, and we shot some sick footage and it'll be up on YouTube soon :D so yeah, GASFilms getting its game awn!!! :D woo soon we might get sponsored. or not. hehe

Yeah, life rolls on. We also got reminded we're going to begin actually leading things around the school soon, so I'm sitting here and I'm going to write a leadership proposal after I finish this blog post. Head of school, here I come!





(not really, I'm not that silleh. but deputy head of house would be nice :) )

Come Rain, Come Shine

Woooo! I've been working on this climbing movie of our Rocklands adventure with Andy and Guy but mostly me and it's been quite a mare getting it all together, but today I went to CityRock and borrowed the guidebook and identified all the routes with Andy and it's FINALLY FINISHED!!

So, COME RAIN, COME SHINE premieres tomorrow, and it's going to be really really super sick because I don't actually care how many people watch it or anything... it's just awesome having a climbing movie (and a long-ish one at that) and being able to look at it and saying, "I made this with my mates, start to finish!"

It's always so inspirational to see the guys, whether it's established idols like Shwarma, Carrion, Graham, &c. or guys whom I've recently found about, like Kilian, Nalle, Tommy Caldwell, et al. Flip. Watching those movies just makes me want to go and krush... and if someone watches our movie and is instilled with that feeling, then I have definitely succeeded.

@home

whether the weather be fine,
or whether the weather be not,
we'll weather the weather
whatever the weather,
whether we like it or not.

haha!

gah

It's August.

That awkward moment when you're stuck in a time warp for a week, and then you're like "wooooooaaaah what's the date today!?!?"

shtorytime

So, I'm trying to get citizenship. But apparently there's only one oke in the whole of the Cape who does the fingerprint jobs of this magnitude, and he's just randomly taken a holiday, which totally does not work for anyone because now his desk has a stack of fingerprint docs about the size of the Chrysler Building waiting for him. Enjoy, sucker!

Damn you, Home Affairs...

A funny thought

I find it very amusing to know that computer gaming is going from strength to strength in terms of technology, development, realism, innovation, and so on.

Which brings us the following:

But the greatest computer game ever created during human history still has no physics, no weapons, and next to no graphics. Do yourself a favour and go play it with your friends this first week back at school before the work takes over. It will be one of the most social experiences you can ever have :) and you'll bond with your friends like never before!

Ivanhoe

by Sir Walter Scott.

Ha, it's been an awfully long time since I've read a book anything of this sort, seeing as it was written in 1820 about the Middle Ages, and so it's basically written in Shakespearean tongue, but obviously prose instead of poetry. Not devoid of the expected descriptive passages and curious copy flow, it's also a riveting tale of (you guessed it) chivalry, action, and otherwise knight-vaabs. Indeed the story is extremely well crafted, and although predictable at times it still manages bombshells, but it does so in a very undramatic way compared to modern novels.

Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, as the blurb tells us, has been disinherited by his father and needs to fight for his love Rowena's affections. But that's not really true, because while he does indeed do that in the story, it's a bit misleading... the action isn't centered around him at all, and in fact you're a third of the way through the book before he is first encountered. Switching indiscriminately between all the "good" guys and sometimes bad guys too, the narrative follows several paths which intertwine, meet, separate, and sometimes fall back in the timeline to catch up on different events, making on the whole for very exciting reading.

Looking at the language and descriptions in a different light, one can also find some humour in the way it's written, especially moments like the greatest friendzone of all time (see below), and just the way they tune each other, much like in Star Wars! It's honestly great fun reading this book, and it's serious literature with themes that you only usually get to enjoy until grade 6 or something. Fun stuff. Actually, wait wait wait, it might not be entirely appropriate for children, due to the epic epic womanizing (see also below), which is just king.

Why I said it's not appropriate for children is that it's full of racism, sexism, slavery, and so on, you know, the usual medieval mystery stuff.

FRIENDZONE
[paraphrased]
Rebecca: (who has just healed Ivanhoe of his mortal wounds and also happens to be, only, you know, slightly beautiful. only worth like a page of lauding on Scott's part.) hi, I just healed you lol
Ivanhoe: oh, yeah, well, shot eh. What's your name? (to himself) hey, she's hoooooot!
Rebecca: Rebecca. I'm the son daughter of Isaac of York (he is a Jew)
Ivanhoe: sick, wanna come back to my place and... (realizing she is a Jewess) oh, okay. ... (stops being in any way interested in Rebecca for the rest of the entire story)

He does it, no jokes, in about 5 lines of text. What a champ.

WOMANIZER 101
[also paraphrased]
(Rebecca has been captured, along with all the other peepz like her father, and put in one of the bad guys' castles. The knights who have elaborately disguised themselves as outlaws to achieve these means have even more (read: less) elaborate plans for them, ransoming the rest while this one oke called Brian de Bois-Guilbert wants to take Rebecca as his wife. He's basically given the impression that he wants to rescue her from the castle and then get to know her etc. But it's not like he can just come in and claim from the get-go; otherwise it should be obvious he was working with the outlaws and was part of the plan, so he needs to be rather subtle at this point in time.)
B-G is opening the door
Rebecca: (about to start talking)
B-G: Silence, bitch! If you want to get out you have to marry me!

Awe and respect, gents.

movie time

so, I don't know if I should be telling anyone but we're making an intense climbing movie from the Rocklands trip... Andy and I are editing it, avec assistance à Guy, et nous finish-ons le movie très soon. It will be legit sick, so yeah. And I could also have written that in French but I'm super-parasseux :D

And that's what I'm doing on a rainy day like this one! Also piano, but that's a different story...

Hidden Empire

by Kevin J Anderson

A stunning way to immerse myself back into the land of science-fiction after finishing all my Asimov about 2 years ago :P So I decided to check out a little bit of different stuff, and this was the book that jumped out at me first.

Anderson does a thrilling job of weaving an extremely suspenseful plot together, with bombshells left, right, and center that are not at all far-fetched, not falling into the common trap of making stuff up as he goes along to suit the plot; this guy has his storyline waxed to the core. Deftly switching between the large cast of characters, the action is expertly woven, the reader not knowing how it will end until the final few chapters. In fact, that's what I admire most about his writing style: the intricate plot design and the stunning narrative and reveal rate.

Sans a single protagonist, it follows various stories of various characters, from the Galactic Chancellor to space gypsies to Ildiran aliens. Humanity has unleashed the Klikiss Torch, a weapon with the capability to create suns, and has used it in a trial experiment. However, all is not as it seems, and various tragedies occur around the galaxy, obvious to the reader as consequences of this experiment but the link in no way being clear. More disastrous attacks by an unknown force are instigated as key players in the game attempt to figure out what's actually going on. More discoveries about the long-lost Klikiss civilisation reveal to the reader more and more the complications humanity finds itself in.

One flaw, however, is that this is, true to its name, book 1 of 7. While absolutely splendid as an introduction, it leaves you super-hungry for more, without resolving much in terms of the big picture story. Or maybe I'm just jealous because EB at Cavendish don't have part 2 :D

Life in Da Big City

[So, holiday time means I get to clean out my room, amongst other things, and so random stuff keeps cropping up... I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane w/ some of my prize writing pieces from aaaaages back, actually the only two I could find, of which this is the first.

A little bit of background might help: we'd just watched Freedom Writers, and so that's where most of the mood is, and I know the others in the class all had stories which reflected the same kind of thing, if not exploring the same topic. It's from grade 8, so obviously the writing style needs maturity, but I've kept it as true to the original as possible. My topic of choice was, simply, "Life in the Big City", and I think I did reasonably well considering all of these are kept to a max word count.]

There is a place which is dreamt about. Those hard workers in yonder fields, the ones who spend their days manhandling the smelliest breeds man domesticated, hammering away at their beloved iron harvesters as their fathers' fathers' fathers did, toiling day after day: those chaps tell their home-educated sons and daughters not only about God, and kindness, and how to grow asparagus, but also about this dreamt-of life. Their misconceptions, however, are as boundless as their hopes.

Welcome to the Big City. Your life is already over.

It looks brilliant from a distance, but, then again, you can't judge a hardcore porno mag by its cover. Those skyscrapers look so flashy, but in reality they loom over the putrid streets like giant, inanimate prison wardens. Those stuck-up, self-centered, suit-toting snobs of Virgin Mobile look at life like any old soulless passer-by would look at the silver they work in. Their matrix of pixelated lights tells nothing of the lives below.

Down here, life is lived like nowhere else on the planet. Looking across the cold tarmac stained with blood and shattered glass, one can see the dirty people, those no-hopers who can do nothing that will ever amount to anything in their short, miserable lives. Why indeed do they live? There is no reason for it.

You can see the factory girls in their twilight gear, selling their bodies for all that it takes to stay alive. Under the soft, flickering neon lights, those n*****s hang out in their Lee Fontino shirts, wild personalities not given away in anything they do. It is them responsible for the obscenities sprayed on the walls inside which the Nips make daily trade, those ruins with their ripped-off Coca-Cola ads where there are boxes upstairs hiding the crack. Then, there are the Latinos, with missing teeth and shaven heads, no longer holding any traces of the culture they came from.

It's not only the people. Also hidden from the panoramic sweeps showcasing urban conquest are the spaces behind the brick walls; behind the concrete shadowing the streets. It's fifty-fifty that along any stretch of wall there will be a hidden club, chop shop, or some weed parlour. These people live their lives in such confined spaces.

There are secret, uni-racial nightclubs where the same throat-throbbing music pumps around the metropol, accompanied by strobes and half-naked bodies. One can take their freshly-gotten, sparkling car, drive it round the back, and it will be untraceable before you can say, "Toyota". You can get to the underground dealer, where the "brothas in da hood" will outfit your frame with the best of dinner-plate-sized specs, "genuine" fake shirts of varying hues, "don't mess with me" sneakers, and cold steel which holds twelve in the mag, straight off the USMC production line.

The epitome of capitalism will leave you stranded in the rubbish dump of evolution's rejects, and no-one will give a damn.

memory

I am sitting in the percussion room. I can't remember why or how, but Andrew is there with me. He has this big marimba piece he really needs to practice, but I don't want to give up valuable drum time. We both want to be nice guys and leave but we actually both need to stay. So we just decide to be awesome and zone out, and so we're both playing at the same time, each of us completely engrossed in our respective instrument. They're on different timbres and frequencies, so it's no problem for skilled musicians. As we prepare to leave for class, we both smile at the absurdity of the situation which has since become routine amongst the percussion students.



I enter the house and she gives me a deep loving hug. I walk over to the door of the room, and see Andrew first. He is sitting on the floor opposite, and he immediately spots me and smiles. I smile back, I think I winked too. Everyone else looks over then and I recognize a few of them, saying an awkward greeting. No one expected me there, and so they all look at me with bewilderment until, as one, they click. I chuckle to myself and move off to spend some time alone with her, but not before I glance at his face and realize he has also found my humour in the situation.



You were an amazing friend. I'll miss you.

holidays

So now, after a long and hard 9-day battle, although actually it was pretty much since the beginning of term, Eisteddfod is now over, and I have a holiday. Which means that I get to tell myself what to do, instead of having other people to tell me what to do.

This is me, right, so I'm not going to camp and expect things to come my way. On my to-do list is lots of reading, getting whizz at guitar, getting ready for the next big Highlander Gathering (avec les certains femmes, hehe), probably a bit of piano (oh, you know, just a tad, maybe a Rachimaninov prelude or two to keep me in practice) but seriously I will get boss at sight-reading, and other exciting stuff. Maybe I'll clean my room ;)

So 'nyways, Ed'fd bru.

Jas, it was quite a mission this year: the more responsibility I accumulate, the harder it seems to get... I had a horrendous individual run this year, the adjudicators really didn't like me, and so I'm still feeling bummed even though Mallett came second overall. We're going for the clean sweep next year, so we'll have to work so hard. But next year is going to be a whole different ball-game as a whole. We'll just have to wait and see how the year goes.

But yeah, vaab. Rocklands expedition coming up, thanks Andy, so I won't be completely stuck at home these holidays.

everything is interesting

He is perfectly average. His affluent background has not aided excellence, and his parents have long given up the expensive playthings and incentives. He has no aspirations, no inspiration, content in allowing life to float past him. He is not dull, but no-one knows him well enough to say otherwise; he has not yet succumbed to drugs or sex or alcohol, or rock and roll music for that matter.

She is a vibrant spark of life, ready to explode into full flame at any second. Spontaneous and creative, the world is a puzzle which she must dissect. Everything fascinates her, from the sciences to the arts to how people work, and she does not hide it. She seeks information, she desires experience.

She ends up at his house, quite by chance due to transport and timetabling complications. As his mother serves them lunch, he watches, carefully but silently, as she optimizes a hypothetical solution to the aforementioned complications on a napkin with a stub of pencil.

The second time she is there voluntarily. They sit in his room, bare as an asylum, a solitary window the only source of light. His conversations are dry and lack enthusiasm, so she talks, mostly.

The one time, she brings him a gift. It is a small orange sticker, perfectly round. On it are the words,"
EVERYTHING IS INTERESTING
" and she clambers onto his shoulders and pastes it on the ceiling directly above his bed, a small circle of colour in the whitewashed room. Already, it seems, she knows him.

She fascinates him like no-one else, and he begins to wonder why. She is certainly attractive, but not to the point where they all have dark fantasies about her. He's seen her naked only once, only kissed her about twenty times. But that's not it; he knows the connection is not just physical, not just romance. It's almost more profound or something (he thinks that's the right word).

When she is in his room, the sparks in her eyes transform the bare walls into multitudes of technicolour shapes. She shows him her world through their time together, and she longs for him to open up to her too. Slowly, painfully, their conversations become less one-sided. He begins joining in on her tangents of oil paintings, mine mechanics, train timetables, Baroque music, and Marxist-Leninism. She casts her radiant glow wherever she can in his life, and he is eternally grateful for it, though he does not realize it yet. Every day he wakes up, reads the words, her words, and that feeling rises up again. He can't yet describe it, but he knows that it's the feeling she has coursing through her veins non-stop, every moment in her life.

********

She will lay herself on the railroad tracks in eight years' time. He will become a world-renown artist, and wherever he goes he will give away, freely, the orange stickers he carries in his pocket.

Cryptonomicon

Recently read it, ie finished like 2 weeks ago, but I decided I'd put some interesting stuff on my blog so that other people could go beyond drawing from my all-encompassing and reader-worthy life experiences and actually read something interesting once or twice...

by Neal Stephenson. It's pretty much a story of buried treasure split between four characters: Randy Waterhouse is a present-day programmer trying to make ends meet and working with his friend Avi on his latest information-tech-business-foray, Lawrence Waterhouse is an Allied intelligence officer in WW2, and Bobby Shaftoe and Goto Dengo are troops on opposite sides of that same war. Each of them is through numerous events drawn to the Philippines, where their histories intertwine and each plays his part in the search for the Japanese war gold, most of the time doing so quite unwittingly.

Stephenson's techyness comes through greatly in his writing, allowing the immediate plot to be distracted by Randy's hacking and coding, Lawrence's statistical analysis and pipe organ playing, and guest star Alan Turing's code making and breaking. The thick plot is almost as circular as the Kite Runner but never enough to be predictable, dragging the reader on a fantastic journey to the ends of the earth with each character before pulling them all together in one final giant twist at the end, where every little nuance and hidden link collides in one near-perfect plot finish.

Must-read, especially if you like intellectual stuff with quirky algorithmic puzzles :D
like, 9.3/10 if I have to

bringing home the bacon

There is one thing that I love more than anything else in the world that doesn't involve people or active participation by me. It's also the reason why I can never be a Muslim or attend the Vegan Academy.

I consider breakfast incomplete unless I have dark crispy sizzling bacon straight off the pan into my triple-bacon-single-and-tomato-n-stuff with extra bacon sandwich.

And tonight I had a home-made bacon banana pineapple pizza, which was ultra sick because I completely stuffed myself and now I'm going to have weird pizza-induced dreams. We all know what happened last time :P

Epiphany again

So, in true me style, I've managed to change my career choice while lying in bed at like 1am. Again.

I've realized that I'm the kind of person that likes numbers, and turning things into numbers. If I have to play on people's emotions, I do it through calculation and probabilistic flow diagrams. I have a lot more fun acquainting myself with a new musical instrument than with a new female friend, and when I am forced to, then it's all graphs. As soon as I notice people walking past a certain spot, I automatically start placing variables above and below the line. My own productivity, especially with regards to music, is a carefully managed mood map accounting for chance and unexpected occurrences.

(with regards to the female friends, it's usually because they throw my equations waaaaay out of line with an incalculable Rkf, or Relationship Konstant (Females). Twice already I've had someone suddenly turn out to be interested in me when they, by all rights, shouldn't. Wait, three. No, four. um. nevermind.)

So, here goes nothing...

le footy

So, after much thought and deliberation, and years spent unable to join cool conversations, I have decided to man up and start supporting association football. Which is quite a move, because I am severely disadvantaged due to several reasons:
1. I don't watch/possess a TV
2. I don't have unlimited/mobile access internet
3. I really really suck at footy. But that's just me.

But it's really nice, because all I needed to do was a bit of internet snooping and I was able to engage in intellectual conversation regarding the latest log standings, despite not really understanding how okes qualify into the Champions League.

So, which team? There are two obvious choices for me, teams which I used to be a huge fan of, I mean back in the day when I played Fifa '99. I remember back in the day when Man United won everything, Aston Villa lost everything, and no-one was any wiser. This time around, Villa wasn't a real choice because they're pretty much about to get relegated, read: sucky players which you can't actually tune. United have just turned into absolute stuck-up glory hogs, but when (a) Rooney retires/gets fired/gets transferred and (b) Ferguson dies, then I will support United again.

For now, it's Newcastle. And obviously my footy trivia isn't up to scratch yet...

(After fencing soccer one day)
...
Me: "Well, I support Newcastle now. I'm into soccer!"
Alex: "Oh really? Hey Rob, Sam is now into soccer... Name 5 Newcastle players, then!"
Me: "ummmm... "
Alex: "Okay, just three."
Me: "Well, there's that Demba oke"
Alex: "Yeah."
Me: "Papiss Cissé" [those two guys are Senegalese strikers who have both scored reeediculous show goals]
Alex: "Wow."
Me: "ummmmmmm...."
Alex: "Come on Sam, one more!"
Me: "... Alan Shearer?"

There's a reason it says "Legend". Hint: It's a term often used with wine and cheese

At this, massive canning ensued. Turns out Shearer, while he did indeed play for Newcastle, had retired in 2006, and in terms of our soccer standards, we might as well be referring to (Sir) Bobby Charlton.

Yes, the goal-keeper is actually wearing leather blacksmith's gloves. And "goal-keeper" is punctuated that way because welcome to 1937

And now my no 1 topic of conversation is how Newcastle still have a chance at making the Champions League even though there is literally one match left until the end of the season. What a convenient job of timing. HENDERSOOOOOONNNNNN!!!!!

The Storm

[This is an essay I wrote for an English task. It was well-liked :) and I would submit it for the Eisteddfod if they didn't change the rules about essay submissions.... dammit! The title I gave it always reminds me of the really really raunchy short story we studied in Canada...]

Thunder could be heard rumbling faintly in the distance; rain began to spit from the sky; the wind was beginning to rise. The last sliver of sunlight was inching behind the ominous, billowing swells of the sky. The trees dotting the hilltops swayed, branches flailing, the wind blindly conducting nature’s percussion. The sea of grass undulated in a rippling spectacle as darkness slowly fell, the tiresome day finally over. The tumult of the coming storm had not yet commenced, but was as certain as the rising of the next morning.

Along those hilltops, curving and snaking around the path of least resistance, lay a faded and hard road. A gritty dirt track, in fact, far too covered in inconvenient pebbles to be seen as well-used, was a more accurate description. Along this track lay a humble cottage, short and squat, built of large stones by ancestral hands. The small chimney poking through the thatching betrayed a hot fire inside as it belched smoke into the thin air. The shutters were closed, but a warm glow emanated from chinks in the wood.

The atmosphere inside the cottage was the antithesis of the exterior, as though it were a sheltered cove, safe from the giant swells outside. The only hint at the coming of the storm was the occasional clatter of a shutter; the thick walls and crackling of the fire blotted out all other sound.

The fluttering flames, though large, were the only source of illumination, casting their orange glow on a table with a solitary bench. On the wall, sometimes hidden in shadow, were hunter’s trophies: skins, heads of animals staring blankly, and the products of these, as jewelry or decorative items. A lone picture frame stood on the mantelpiece, a black-and-white moment of pride frozen in time. A door, shrouded in darkness, led off to an adjacent room.

A man was hunched over the table, well-built but aging, back slouching a little more than expected, hair-ends a little too faded, hands a little too shaky. Maybe one day he had been the epitome of physical prowess, but today he was past his prime. He had discarded a thick cloak in the heat of the interior, and was now clad in roughly-hewn hunter’s clothes. His beard, like his hair, was grizzled and a bit too ungainly, but he had tucked it into his shirt not to disturb the space in front of him.

In his aged hands he held playing cards, no doubt a result of a sojourn in the city. He would slowly twist the deck between his hands, turning it this way and that, and then would place cards on the table in the style of a Russian solitaire. Every card was pinched by the fingers, folded off the deck, and then, after some thought had been given, placed on the table with an audible click. When he had finished, whether in success or failure, he would gather them up and commence again, as the storm battered the little cottage.

That awkward moment when...

So, Eisteddfod madness begins again. AaaaaaAAAAAaaa

But my piano piece is coming along nicely, so it should be fine. Only that Senior Classical Piano is the. most. competitive. section. in the ENTIRE FREAKING ED'FD.

Also, Guy and I have been entered in the Chamber Music section. Which is an issue, because the piece we are down for is Blood to Bleed by Rise Against. As if the title didn't tell you enough, this is most definitely not a chamber music piece. In fact, it's got a screamy bit which I haven't told Guy about yet. In fact, until I told him this morning, he didn't actually know we were even playing :D oh well :D

Drifting apart

sucks.

I wrote a looooooong post about Chloe. But then I decided to take it off because it's not actually what I want to say. Haha, funny that because I haven't deleted it, but it took me two hours.

We like never get to see each other. I miss her a lot even though she lives, for all intents and purposes, right next to me.

success

This weekend was honestly one of the most fun weekends I've had in a while, and that includes the science project :P Okay, fine, maybe that wasn't thaaaat fun, but I learned a lot about group dynamics, how to write an abstract, and also how to best re-enact Eddie Izzard's midnight printing sketch.

Only joking, it worked fine :D

But yes, I managed to play touchies with nice people who made me feel like I was part of the game and could contribute somethig, as opposed to pretty much every single other game of touchies I had ever played before. Also, the rest of Founders Day was a vaab.

Then the waitering at the OD Dinner... oh how jolly fun, also got lots of leftover food (score!)... Joe was moaning and complaining the whole way, meanwhile I was entertaining myself by (a) being pro at this whole waiter vaab and (b) making ripper comments about potato juggling as we cleared up. Long story, nevermind :D But I got mega vommochox out of it, so it was all worth it in the end!

Fencing was, as usual, full of just pure kick-ass jolness. The way we do it. And I went and checked out Kon-Tiki in the evening and made someone's day super better. Yay :)

Now my finger is shredded because I was playing guitar for about 2 hours solid. Followed by drums and fencing and piano because I'm awesome like that... just by the way, Guy is wrong. I can sing! so nyaaah!

aaaaaa

I have a science project. And a few tests. I don't need this shit.

What I really really really want to do right now is get a loud guitar and three clones of myself and just rock out for about a day or two non-stop. But right now I don't know if I'll even be capable of listening to the songs without breaking down. Dammit!

I actually just want to talk to her more. About anything really. But I can't because we're both so busy and it's all so stupid. I've never condoned sending people cryptic messages via blogs or tumblr posts, but I'm severely tempted to do so now.

She said indirectly that she just needs someone to love her again. And I can do that. Not a relationship. Not a formal public engagement. Just knowing that there is someone out there who will care about you like you are supposed to be bound together by the social code. Someone who will treat you like you're "together" without actually needing to be "together", I guess. I wonder if that's possible. I wonder if she knows what I'm willing to go through to get that. Because I need that kind of love as well. And I don't know if she doesn't know, or if she's not willing to try anymore. I don't know.

Got that off my chest. Now I can function normally again, hah.

Explosion!

Yes, indeed, my father almost blew the house up. Not really. But he did attempt to fix his coffee machine on the kitchen counter like a Feynman badass, coaxing it into making some whirring noises and then eventually exploding with a distinct anti-climactic lack of black smoke. My mum jumped up as the bang and flash came, running to the kitchen asking "did it kill him?". She sounded hopeful (!?) But, alas, my dad lives to take things apart in future days.

Initiation?

[This is a speech I wrote as a persuasive speaking demo for Public Speaking Society... I whipped it out in about 2 hours for Joey because he asked nicely, and I managed to do it pretty well for a first draft. Well, he said so anyway. I did it as a slightly satirical take, and I obviously wouldn't believe most of it, although most of the younger guys didn't get the jokes! :P Anyways...]

There is a problem in this school today, gentlemen, and not just this school, but multitudes of others all around the world which share our common goal of educating our youth for the real world ahead of them, but are impeded in their purpose by a seemingly done and dusted issue. I’m not talking about the rugby culture, or cheerleading practices, or even Mr Holtman’s pirate DVD store. No, the issue reaches far deeper, and that is the subject of initiation, where a new stance on this controversial topic might drastically improve the school environment. Gentlemen, we should and must legalize initiation in private schools if our privileged youth are to remain competent. Frankly, our over-fed, over-pampered, and far too sheltered up-and-comers are ruining our society with their skewed interests and detachment from reality.

I bring up the old adage: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Short of AIDS, we see that this holds true, and your great-grandfather was right all along. If you have been subject to an experience pushing you outside your comfort zone, it will no doubt increase your strength in withstanding hard experiences like it in the future. Many of the traditional initiation practices involve night swimming, roof climbing, running around naked at midnight, and mild “fun and games” which may involve a bit of rough-and-tumble (hold your snickers, I will get onto that in a moment!) are all aimed at this, showing the new boys that they should believe in themselves and are more than capable of completing these tasks, whether physically or emotionally demanding. They are also considered less “girly” than the obstacle courses at adventure camps. So we see that we are breeding a hard-as-nails generation that will one day be able to share the same stories your old fogies shared with you. There is an irreplaceable sense of bonding that occurs between boys that have gone through this.

Not only does it make the young whippersnappers tougher, but it also puts them in their rightful place. A hierarchy at a private school exists for many reasons.
1. If a cross-grade collective such as an ensemble or stage crew need to get something done, the experienced senior management needs to have faith that their orders will be carried out.
2. Sometimes arrogant and brash juniors will attempt to bully seniors and maybe even take advantage of the system to abuse their underlings, and this cannot be allowed to happen; they must have experience and must earn their right to the top of the pile. Initiation reinforces this hierarchy and readily tells them who the boss is.
3. And we see this in many old schools, seniors are simply overwhelmed with the tasks and responsibilities they are assigned, far more than once they leave school, and so it is perfectly rational for them to be allowed the privilege of having menial tasks such as shoe-shining and sandwich-making done for them, and thus putting these necessities out of their heads so they can focus on productive scholarly, sporting, and cultural pursuits.
4. Having newboys that know their place is less disruptive to the school environment as they go about their tasks, and if the seniors know this, they will spend less time trying to instill this hierarchy and more time being at school.
5. Being able to delegate such tasks and have this “power” is a show of reward for the seniors who have worked hard throughout their school career. Motivation is created because the more respected and hard-working seniors will command more authority, and thus the standard of success with which prospective seniors aim to is higher.

So we see that there are a lot of positives which create a better and more productive school environment, and ultimately thus we do want initiation back. Schools are not just there to teach us maths and English, they are there to teach us about real life and prepare us for independent life when we are deemed worthy of leaving school, and initiation greatly aids this. But obviously it has in recent years come under fire as an un-legit practice because of newboy-rights-activists and whining parents. However, if we examine their arguments closely, they have more holes than a swiss cheese on a Viking’s table.

The counter-arguments vary greatly, but they can all be put under the hood of a possibility of wanton bullying arising from this opportunity, and we can easily prove that this is false on many counts.

The first is the case of sheltered youth. Many parents will complain that their little “mommy’s boys” will be harmed by the due process of education, and we dismiss this as tragic misconception. We have seen that private schools shelter our youth in a little bubble, making them nearly unable to function in the real world. Just as failure and disappointment must be experienced as part of the flow of life, so must the feeling of subordination and following orders. Instead of creating ineffective and expectant citizens, we are creating youth who will have been taught to look out for themselves.

The second is the case of unnecessary bullying. Where does one draw the line between running around at night and getting beaten with a cricket bat? What most people fail to realize is that most schools have a rigorous discipline system put in place to protect the boys from unnecessary abuse. Teachers are well-skilled in where to draw the line, and combined with a collective decision befitting each situation, we will leave the specifics to the disciplinary committees.

Many schools have expelled their top students, making headlines along the way, and so we cannot say that students are not aware of the jurisdictions surrounding this issue. Due punishment shall be dished out if the seniors choose to willingly disregard the school rules. We have seen this at Bishops in the case of Mayhem Week. It got taken too far one year, and all of us saw the consequences.

Many would argue that there are some sociopaths with utter disregard for common decency, but what we see is that these kind of people will look for a way to achieve their means no matter what. Even at Bishops, we experience unnecessary rudeness and hostility which is still completely against school rules. Accepting initiation does in no way imply acceptance of bullying.
The third is the case of divisions in the school environment, in terms of those accepting of it and those not. What many people who were subject to the wrong kind of initiation do not realize is that in many instances it is either fun in of itself or it is one of those harrowing experiences that is laughed about afterwards anyway. I mean, newboy pyramids… come on, who didn’t enjoy them!? This stuff is fun!

There is an ever-expanding gap between the quality and usability of our education and the education of our grandparents. We are able to close it, but we must bring initiation back.

Aaah

Things I like:
Waking up to Skrillex on climbing camp
Not seeing someone for barely a month and they tell you they miss you
Acing tests
Having a vaab with your friends
Inside jokes

Things I don't like:
Not acing tests
Being bleak and heartbroken when you least expect it
FAILING TESTS!
More test failing.

This picture

You can probably be more awesome than this picture. But you would have to try very very hard. Like with a SP/Indy mashup. Maybe :)

Polska entre

So, my mother's family from Poland is staying in Cape Town for a leegit holiday of sorts, and because today was my free day (ie I get home at 6pm as opposed to like 1) we took them around for a ride across the city and seapoint, etc. all the nightlife and vaab like that. Culture shock conversation.

And then I got home and got instantly distracted by finding a facebook page full of Ridley College memes, which absolutely no-one else will get and it reminds of so much. Damn, I wish I could go back.

So, climbing trip this weekend. hehe, I will come back with great photos :D

AWhatup

I return from my 15 day hiatus of general rush life, ignoring everything outside of direct school stuff. Well, not yet, but I figured it was about time I returnéd to my writing haven.

Also, my laptop screen is falling off because the glue was pretty ass. Fun stuff. In other news, I wrote an article on Triond about random meme shizz, but it's just really bad so it's not going up here. Maybe if I write a decent short story or something, god forbid, how retarded they are, but anyways.

So yeah. My guitar (read: guitar in my house) is also getting claimed back by its rightful owner :( :( :( :( :( noooooes. Now I'll actually have to spend all that money and everything.

I love my life and I would never ever give up any of the things I do right now. This weekend is a fat climbing camp, next weekend is Cape Open where I face off for my national sabre title, and the weekend after that is Rayner. Whoop!

Double History

So, yet again I find myself not quite bored, but, shall we say, idle? But that's because I don't have any homework which I can complete at the moment, and I've also just studied LIKE A BOSS for my History essay...

Like, I'm quite stoked, because I literally drew like a RSAnimate-esque fat graphic on Marxism, which is completely legit because now I know all about the socioeconomics that I support.

I'm also blasting Rise Against. It's a really really great little two-album collection I've got, because these songs encompass every emotion across the board. If I'm feeling unsuccessful, I listen to Prayer of the Refugee. If I feel like I can take on the world, I listen to Give It All. If I need to get amped like Fitz, State of the Union will do. The Good Left Undone is perfect for the musical moods, Life Less Frightening and Anywhere But Here are good for just vaabing. Survive is perfect for when you're angry at the world. If I'm filled with a deep girl-related "meh"ness, Paper Wings and Swing Life Away make me wish I could run my fingers through her hair again. Ah well. Wait, that's counter-productive :P

I have a feeling a top 10 music tracks list would be very biased right now :D

And I was going to say something else but I forgot. 'til next time, then!

I don't think I should be doing this.... ;)

LUUUS. Yesterday I got back home at literally 11pm after early morning house run, school, climbing, fencing, and then I still had to finish all my homework and squeeze some piano, pad, and guitar in.

Just letting you know that that's why I haven't done anything else for a while, such as have 5 minutes to sit down and re-hang my posters, or go just chill with friends. Well, I don't like the idea of having to book a band practice a week in advance and then still have it clash with literally everything. But it's happening.

I'm really tired at the moment, but that's probably because of the house runs. Like, when they're over I should have more time.

The good news is the weekends. Not because I can relax, but because they're a bit of a change. What with working two days straight at CityROCK, what the hell, it gives me a break. Also, I get free tea :)

I get to hang out with my friends at school, obviously. But it really brightens my day when people like James or Chloe give me some hope :)

here we go sex-bob-omb

Because there's nothing that puts a smile on my face more than those good moments like coming out of the perc room after a solid solid sesh and getting a cheery Mr Hoole telling me I was an amazing drummer :) and that (because of that) we're booked for the Rock Band concert in October and could possibly open for the Valentine's next year... a gig is a gig is a gig is a gig, as Stephen Stills once said. And for some strange reason, I remembered something I'd read in an interview in a drum mag:

"Always treat every performance the same, because you never know who's in the audience." Or who's listening from across the corridor :D


like the time when........
;) music students :D

oh god

Okay, seriously now, what is happening to me?

First two days back at school and I was already running a sleep:doing things ratio of about 1:OVER 9000! which is retardedly insane. But yeah, I'm super tired permanently, which is my usual style. As usual.

I have people and things that keep me going. Like I'm on drugs or something. Not that I do drugs but anyway. I kinda crashed massively on Saturday afternoon, but I guess it was the weather because the rest of my family were zonked out as well. I was just chilling idly on facebook, making really really valuable conversation actually. So nevermind, it wasn't that much of a waste.

But, as per usual, there are way too many things in my life to have to go through each of them individually, but I will say that school is a jol, climbing is a siiiiick vaab as usual, fencing has political issues but it's still fencing so whatever, and music. gaah.

Oh yeah, and Chloe wants people to come to the show which she's working really hard on. It's all here, she makes the pitch better than I do. I mean, if ballet's your thing or whatever.

Just by the way, she's really good.

My life is a dolphin

So, tomorrow is the last day of my holiday. Before I have to face down 2 years of solid work. Which is going to be fuuuuuun. :) yay.

I'm just glad I got the chance to play Warhammer and video games and climb and rock out and chill before I get shoved right back into working life. Damn, my friends really make me who I am, and I'm bloody glad for it. Everything, from confiscating Guy's maple syrup to breaking/fixing Andy's amp to embarrassing shopping with Chloe... the light side of the force with Landon and James to magic-throne drop pods with Karl and Chris, and surfer attitudes to everything including sunburn with Joey, and then slappin' da bass at Sevi's house...

hm. I feel like now is a good time to play Siren Song of the Counter Culture on repeat really really loud. But it's half past ten so it'll wait until tomorrow :)

On the fence. Haha.

So, big decision time. And I'm not talking about the

"To delete, or not to delete? That is the question!"
drama which is associated with cleaning out (most of) my external and laptop, because that was relatively easy, just a little time-consuming. bleh. But I'm on Act III of Modern Warfare on Veteran difficulty, so that means I'm almost finished and I'll finally know what all these inside jokes are about in the two later titles. Yay?

No, big decision time is that, for the last time while I'm at school and in 99% probability for the last time ever, I have the opportunity to go to the World Fencing Championships. And because none of my friends are ever on hand at times like these, I had to mull it over in my own little sinking pit of despair for about 30 minutes, and then man up and get over the depression. But I still thought it would make me feel better writing about it.

Basically, aside from all the fencing club politics at Bishops :( I'm also not too sure about how seriously I'm going to take fencing this year. I mean, the choice is kinda between "very" and "extremely", so okes evidently reckon it's a lank chilled decision. Well, obviously it's not, because my life contains literally 20 billion other things. Guy counted :P

Sucky problem is, my coach reckons (and he knows what he's talking about) that I'll need to take it extremely seriously. But then again he always says that. However, what with Northern Russia Gauteng holding all the good SAAFA shares and coincidentally all the crappy fencers, I'm in a bit of a stuck as to whether my pure killstreak will be enough. Because, you know, those guys totally take fencing seriously. The fencers, I mean, not the Northern Russians, because we've established that this is life or death for them. And I'm not even talking about purity and dedication, it's like the guys up north don't even care. And we've got some here too, but they tend to suck and not get into the national team. If you get my drift.

(And they're the ones with all the fancy equipment. Talk about inequality and capitalism!)

And then there's another worry that I won't get that killstreak. Huh boy. I should be okay if I take it at the very least to the same level as last year. But I want to take it further. But at the same time I don't want to give up the rest of my life, especially music. I mean, academics are super-important to me for the next two years. But I can handle them and fencing no problem. But music on top? And everything else on top of that? I mean, I'm not super super duper pro or anything, but still. Tough choice.

I don't know what's necessary and I don't know what's guaranteed, if anything. Argh! Most of all, I don't want to take the fun away from my fencing. Daymn.

Harden up!

I absolutely loooooove scout camps! Partly because I get to do the outdoors stuff I can't do since I moved from Botswana down here, and partly because they're just bloody fun. And I also get to teach people things, which as you all should know gives me an epic rush.

So yeah, fun times. Our troop (1st Rosebank Air Scouts) tagged along on the 1st Bergvliet Sea Scouts' troop camp, and at first we were kind of out of it because they can actually get like 30 people to pitch at a camp and they had all sorts of fancy equipment and stuff. Anyways, I got over that pretty fast and we managed to completely dominate in pretty much most things. Except for the rowing time trials and the commando course, which was avs, but hey. I was pretty bleak that my tankness couldn't carry the rest of my guys across alone :P but hey, talk about team effort! :D

Seriously now :D we did all sorts of cool stuff like sailing and canoeing and hiking and other scout stuff, and it was actually mostly chilled as such. Hey, greatest crack ever: for a survival evening, we told the guys we were going to have a movie night. Later that afternoon, we had an emergency meeting and "evacuated" the campsite because some convicts from a mental facility in Hermanus had escaped. When Adrian told us about the plan, I was like, "Okay, there is no bloody way this is ever going to work!". Hey, human nature surprised me, because everyone swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Some of the scouts still believed it was real at the end of the camp :D God, what are their parents going to think!?

So, what I got out of the camp:

Woodelina, my fiancée, who was 1st Bergvliet's random wooden lady trophy. Which we'd had for the previous five days :D because we'd just been outperforming oaks. And also Bar-Ones and Coke, but hey.

A Tool of the Day award, for dropping the aforementioned wooden lady on my foot during a photo. (Apply directly to face, adhesive optional)

The broken oar and a story. During the pulling, my oar was creaking and cracking, and it eventually snapped. With a loud shout of "F*** IT!", I stole Paskal's one and

All the scouters signed the broken piece and gave it to us/me as a gift, with lots of lulz. And we didn't even win the pulling!

A wife-beating reputation, and another story. So because we were being awesome and stealing their wooden lady, some other oaks were like, "watch out, we'll come put toothpaste on your face in the middle of the night!". Understandably, we were very prepared for this on the final night. So well prepared, in fact, that when Chloe came to our tent at 1am to put a frog on me, she ended up getting whacked in the face and dragged into the tent :D by mistake. Obviously :P it was dark, come on! Anyways, I felt really really bad about it, and even worse the next morning when they put betadine and sand on her face to make it look like she had a massive bruise! And then tuned me about it! God, the shame...

But, best of all, I managed to be friends with her again :) which we both seemed very proud of. I mean, there's still some stuff it would be nice to sort out face-to-face in private, but I'm in no hurry right now. Girlfriends are so overrated actually ;)

Anyone Else But You

So I'm learning more classical guitar songs to play when electric distortion metal is not appropriate or possible.

I've almost got We Are Going To Be Friends down, but then I was looking for a little variety and found this. And I made it as far as verse 2 before I couldn't play anymore.

I hate having a broken heart.