Surfing Umzumbe
The South Coast is beautiful. It’s not a far drive out of the city, but it’s far enough to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Once a year we make the mini-roadtrip to a spot about 80 minutes away from home for our designated week in Umzumbe Chalets. Well, however long we can stay out of our designated week (It usually clashes with something – work, university, prior commitments).
Umzumbe is a tiny beach town very similar to Blythedale, the town I grew up in. The municipality stretches along the coast between Mtwalume and Hibberdene and then inland for about 60 km. Only a very small part of the municipality is built up (The coastal part – no surprises there), the rest is just rocky, hilly open land. Umzumbe has a railwaytrack, a pub, a superette, a bunch of holiday houses, Chalets, a hotel, a backpackers and not much else. It still has that ‘natural’ feel to it – As if it hasn’t yet been wrecked by people (With the exception of a few ugly oversized holiday houses with tennis courts. I’m not jealous). My brother researched the name and found out that it means ‘place of the cannibal’. I checked it out myself. Wikipedia says that the river in Umzumbe (Mzumbe River – Which means ‘bad Kraal/homestead’) is named after a band of Hlongwa cannibals who occupied the valley cannibals who occupied the valley until they were almost wiped out by King Shaka in 1828. You can choose whether or not you want to beleive Wikipedia, I’m more concerned by the fact that they say ‘almost’ wiped out. So… some still live there? Ok, they not gonna live a couple centuries, but maybe they had Cannibal kids or something. I’m hoping they got hungry and ate their kids and ended the human eating thing.
The only real reason my brother and I go to Umzumbe is because it’s a nice surf spot, and it’s always nice to get away from Durban crowded surf and ‘man-made’ beaches into water that is surrounded by rocks, greenary, Dolphins, Whales and happiness. When there are waves, it’s epic. When there aren’t, it’s an epic fail. This year, there were waves, so we surfed. Well, my brother surfed, and I tried. Lets just say there are some things I can do well and others – not so well. But it’s fun, so I try. On this particular Sunday afternoon, I went down with my brother and attempted the paddle. He made it out and was having a great time, I took the scenic route and ended up crawling out of the water onto the sand among some fisherman, hanging my head in shame. I ran back up the beach, along the rocks that lined the side (converging in a sort of ‘point’) and attempted the ominous paddle once again. Once again I chased the fish away for those poor fisherman. Third time lucky? Run. paddle. rip. fisherman. I was done, and don’t give me that ‘never give up’ crod. I got a little sun and a little excercise, and hey, I was down the coast. No-one knows me at Umzumbe, time to get out. Roger came in, asked to use my board and gave me his to take back to the Chalets. I gave it to him, thinking he wouldn’t make it past the rip with my board, but he did. Humiliation. Definately time to call it a day.
I had a flashback to a very strange night in France where a Brazillion guy rocked up at my flat at some stupid hour of the night. The flat I stayed in was underneath a house that rented by a bunch of young adults. One of these guys had had a chat to the wandering stranger and brought him to my flat. ‘Knock, knock, knock’. “You have GOT to be kidding”, I thought. But I rolled out of bed (more like the couch I was sleeping on) and answered the door. That is when I met Thiago. Thiago is a tall, well tanned Brazillion surfer/skater/now yachtie. He needed a place to stay and my flat mates had either secured permanent work, or were away on extended daywork, so I was there alone that particular night. Thiago moved in for a couple days and we had some good chats. He doesn’t drink, is anti-drugs and loves people. Thiago just meditates, skates, surfs, sails and… no thats all I think. He is a great guy to have around, and I have good memories of our train chats and a particular instance where I had shown him a video of cooking surf in Durban. He had become really excited and then pretty melancholy because there are no waves anywhere even near to where we stayed. We would stare at the tiny swell lines as we travelled that all too familiar train ride from Biot to Antibes, Antibes-Biot… back and forth, back and forth and never see anything. The water didn’t swell up, peak, throw, barrel, run. It didn’t even hint at it. The ripples just lapped the shore like my tiny Jack Russel laps the water from her drinking bowl. Once or twice the wind would pick up and there would be a tiny, messy, shore break and we would see two or three desperate surfers trying to catch something, but doing more paddling than anything else. Thiago would suddenly awake from his permanent meditative and reflective state and become alert and excited, wishing he could be surfing too.
I walked up to my brothers car in the parking lot and began getting out of my wetsuit. Thiago would be weeing in his pants from excitement at the surf and swell at Umzumbe that day. That rip would have been his warm-up excercise. He would have eaten that rip for starters in a three course meal. This is just embarrasing, I am ashamed, but there is no-one here that knows me, so it’s fine. I stand on part of my wetsuit with one foot and lazily pull the other up forcing the wetsuit to peel back over it. Then again with my opposite foot. A surfer opposite me looks as if he is about to get in the water. He is talking to his friend and says “It’s looking good, but there is very strong rip…” All I’m thinking is “Damn right there is.” Then he looks at me, this surfer guy, and he says something. He says “You should know all about it, you tried three times!” Now I’m thinking, “Um… excuse me? Have we met?” but my mouth opens and I politely say, “Yes… but my brother is out there.” As if that makes it OK for me not to be. This guys has been watching me! I wonder if he is a decendant of the Hlongwa, but I know he is not because he is white and if a white person had a tribe it would be called ‘the Smiths’ or something unoriginal like that. He’s not going to eat me.
The next day I make the paddle out and get waves. I catch a couple for my Brazillion mate Thiago. I also wee in my pants for him, because he isn’t here to do it himself.
Thats my girlfriend Shelly.
Thats me.
Thats my brother Roger.
A man and his horse.
“You’ll get a job! Don’t worry.” Dani said. “Everyone gets a job eventually”. And besides all my skeptisism, she was right. Well, close enough. Most people (and I really mean most people) do get a job whether it’s after a week or a couple months. The rest get bitten by the Green Mamba (South African Passport) and have to return home after their stingy three month Schengans run out. In my case a job eventually did come around, two weeks before the Mamba struck. In fact, I had two offers in the same week. The first I could not take because of visa issues, the second because of another small, technical issue. It doesn’t matter now, I took a risk and I knew from the beginning that with any risk you have to be willing to accept the consequences of not quite making it. It’s an odd thing when you you give your heart and mind to a dream and a hope. It is as if part of you is birthed in that dream and lives in it. When your hopes are dashed, it is as if a part of you dies with that dream, and no matter what you do it is going to hurt, maybe not forever, but for a while. I gave it my best shot, I did everthing in my power but regardless, there were factors at work that are beyond my control.
My friend once said to me that “Faint heart never won fair maiden”. I still really like that saying because while girls are possibly one of the furthest things from my mind right now, it still proves a very good point. The quality girl is worth getting rejected for, the gold is worth the risk of acheiving only the silver and the dream job or situation is worth the risk of things not working out. Why? Because if we never take these risks in life, our lives are nothing more than a sigle shade of grey on a canvas, void of life and colour and contrast and everything that make a painting worth looking at or even just noticing in the first place and we have no room to live because inside we are already dead. I want to truly live my life and take the chances that are worth taking even if that means failing at the things that are worth failing for. But I want to get to the point of being humble enough to realise that there is a bigger picture and quite frankly, that with all my delusions of grandeur, I am not quite as big as I think. I don’t know as much as I think I do and I cannot make my own ‘luck’ in the way some people seem to beleive they can. Because no matter how much I do to ’cause’ things to happen, there are some things that I cannot control because I myself am not God. And thats a good thing, because I would not do a very good job of being God.
I listened to a talk by Ravi Zacharias on the four tudes (or positions) of prayer. He spoke about solitude, gratitude, finitude and… another one I don’t remember. Anyways, he tells this story that really changed my perspective on a lot of things. It goes (something) like this:
One day a Man’s only hores escaped from his yard and ran away. His neighbour came over and said “bad luck, your only horse ran away”, and the man replied “Good luck, bad luck, what do I know.” The next day the horse came back with a bunch of other wild horses. The neighbour came over and said “Good luck hey, you now have a lot of horses”, but the man replied, “good luck, bad luck, what do I know.” The next day the man’s son had his leg broken after being kicked by one of the wild horses he was trying to tame. The man’s neighbour came over and said, “Bad luck hey, your son has a broken leg from that wild horse you ended up with!” The man replied, “good luck, bad luck, what do I know.” The next day, the military came aroud looking for able bodied young adults to fight in a violent war that had broken out. They could not take the man’s son because of his broken leg. The neighbour came over again and said,”good luck hey? Your son doesn’t have to go to a war that he could die in!” but the man simply replied, “Good luck, bad luck, what do I know”
Some mornings I wake up and the first thing that comes to mind is that dream yacht with that amazing crew that I so narrowly missed. I am now just a tourist in a foreign land. Yesterday I walked into the cellphone shop with my tatty leather dockside shoes that are falling apart because I have worn them everyday for almost three months and I saw a young man with new shiny leather ones and a white, neatly pressed polo shirt buying his first French sim card. I saw myself in him, the me that was here almost three months ago, in the same shop going through the same ritual. “Hey mate, hows the job hunt going?” I said to him. The words echoing in my head as they rolled easily off my tongue. I had both heard them and said them too many times to remember, but this time was perhaps more sincere. He had just arrived and was figuring it all out, like we all had to. I reeled off a million sentances of advice to him, knowledge I had collected and practiced during my time here and for the first time, I really realised just how much I had learned and experienced during my time here. And so the last couple weeks here are bitter-sweet, but what I take home with me in my memory is worth more than gold. Perhaps I have grown in myself in ways I do not yet understand. Perhaps what happened was a real misortune. Either way, I will take a lesson from Job and realise that I wasn’t the one who laid the foundations of the earth, I wasn’t there when the world was created -I am not God. (See Job 38) So I am heading home – good luck, bad luck, what do I know?
Happy happy mothers day to my very special mother Janet. Your constant love, support, sacrifice and prayer have always been a sourse of great strengh for me.
We’re in the same boat.
“you found any work yet dude?” he says. “No,” I reply. “Don’t worry, we are in the same boat.” (Pause) Forgive me for being confused. “Excuse me?” I eventually ask. “Um… we are in the same situation… I mean”. “Oh.” I wish we were in the same boat. I wish I was in any boat actually. I would choose to be in a boat with Justin Bieber music playing in the background 24-7 rather than looking for work.
I stay in a crusty flat in Biot now. It’s pretty cool though and has a hotel sized swimming pool outside. It’s a heated pool but costs too much to heat so it’s not really heated. It’s next to a theme park and a place where they have a car-boot type market where people sell their grannies underwear and sometimes even their grannies. I went to the market today actually. I found a lady selling English books and started looking through them. I found an old cool looking Bible. “You want that Bible?” she asks me. “yes, it’s cool.” I reply. I don’t think she thought it was cool. At home I used to leave my Bible in full view on my car dashboard when I went shopping or surfing. I never worried about people stealing it like they would anything else. It’s not exactly a priority on a criminals ‘to do’ list. (1. Steal a Bible. 2. Murder my girlfiends ex. 3. Rob a bank). Mine has a note inside asking whoever steals it to please at least read it.
“I should read that sometime.” the lady says. “Yea, you should. It’ll change your life”. She wasn’t convinced. I carried on looking through the books and we chatted about other stuff like vegetarianism and my lack of employment. I think she felt sorry for me or was hoping for some good karma because in the end she just gave me the Bible, along with a cool book about slavery called ‘the sins of our father’. ‘The sins of our fathers’ and a Bible – good combo.
The one side of the theme park smells like poo and at night it looks like a scene from a scary movie or a not-so-scary movie thats meant to be scary. Or like a genuinely scary movie without sound. I tried that with the Grinch once. It turned into a comedy. Anyway, I was there at three in the morning once when I left Antibes at some ridiculous hour. I met this rad girl from CT called Michelle. The train never came so we were waiting for a bus. Michelle’s friends left to party, my flat mates got impatient and filled up a cab with some other people. I didn’t want to leave Michelle alone at the bus stop so I waited with her for a bus we weren’t even sure would arrive. Earlier that evening I asked a French girl if the bus stopped at Biot. “I don’t understand” she said. “Does the bus stop at… uh… Bee-ow?” I wasn’t sure if I had the accent right, probably not, but she understood and replied “Yes yes!” Anyways, so Michelle and I cracked jokes a while and eventually the bus came and we hopped on. I missed the stop at Biot and didn’t press the button so that the bus driver would stop for me. After a while of confusion an uncertainty I pressed the button and the bus squeled to a halt. I stepped out through the cold, metal doors into the darkness, clueless as to where I was and very alone. Michelle looked worried. I was worried but acted cool. I started running home, although I didn’t really know where home was. I realised that I was really fit. After a while the adrenalin wore off and I realised that I wasn’t really that fit. Thats when the poo smell hit me – not ideal. Lost. alone. clueless. poo. I found my way eventually. My roommate asked about Michelle when I got home. “Listen here dude, I nearly died out there, right!? I was lost, and alone… and clueless… and and… poo. Hear me? Be glad I am alive!!” I thought. But what came out of my mouth was a little different. “Yea, she’s a hottie, I’m not going to lie!” France is all about hookups and romance after all…
There is a bungie jumping adrenalin thing in the theme park next door. I think I will do it sometime. The girl in the flat did it while she was drunk. “weeeeeeeeeeeee!” she screamed. no no no. Poo.
Today I met this guy at the beach with an eyebrow piercing and piercing eyes. “What are you doing?” he enquired grufly. “Um… I’m going to the beach right here. The one that is in front of me. You know… to uh, chill… and stuff.” Isn’t that what everyone is doing here? “Do you wanna smoke?” Gruf asks. “No thanks”, I reply quickly. There aren’t many shady characters in Antibes, but there are a couple. There is this loopy American guy that steals bikes, sells them and then apparently usually steals them back from you and sells them again. He tells you stories about issues he is having with the government and law suits he is involved in. The guy who lives upstairs says that sometimes he says that he is a secret service agent working in Antibes. Because of course Antibes needs secret service agents that pretend to sell bikes for a living. who would suspect a bike seller, right? He should rather be fishing the poo smell at the theme park if you ask me. He heard through someone about my 20 euro bike and wants to buy it from me. If he steals it I will know because it is the only one of it’s type around and I will get my Liverpool mates to pull his hair or something so that he gives it back. They are cool like that.
There was another guy on the beach as well. Baru, I beleive his name was. Or is still, because names don’t change all that often. He must have said “yes” when gruf asked him if he wanted to smoke because that guy was higher than the Eiffel tower. We played djembe for a while together and people thought we were cool. I think they still do because reputations don’t change all that often. I got a picture of him jamming with this other random French guy.
Tomorrow I have daywork. After that I am back to the docks to beg for more work. Thats what being a yachtie is all about – poverty and being cool. We’re all in the same boat.
The Dilbar experience.
The last couple weeks have flown by super fast and I am overdue for a blog post. Time is always tight when you are doing everything yourself , moving flat almost every week, washing, cooking, cleaning, budgeting and most importantly trying to find a job. Again, thank you for the comments, correspondence is what really encourages me to keep writing. It’s good to know that people are reading my news. Please feel free to voice your thoughts and idea’s.
Right, where to start. For times sake I will focus on the thing that was most significant about last week – working on Dilbar. Dilbar is a 110 meter beauty with a helicopter pad, Jacuzzi and plenty other toys I don’t know about because deckhands work on the outside of the boat. One of the crew members explained that it is owned by a Russian man who owns 25 % of shares in the English football team Arsenal AND lots of other stuff. Like a big yacht named Dilbar. The Yacht is named after his mother and is one of the largest yachts in the world (Go figure). Turns out the owner (Mr. Alisher Usmanov) is building a new Dilbar that will be about 50 or 60 meters longer than the current one. I wonder if my eyes are far enough apart to be able to see both ends if I look at it from the side.
Dilbar has incredible chefs, and while the work is very physical, lunchtimes are a major highlight. Buffets of the choicest food and deserts that smile in your tummy. The trisk while working on Dilbar was to not eat too much that it became uncomfortable to work afterwards and not too little that you had to prepare a propper dinner for yourself when you got back ‘home’. I got the balance (almost) perfect. But the best part of Dilbar is the crew and it was a strange and sad feeling to leave on Friday and feel as if I’d been there for years when it had just been 7days. Unfortunately permanent positions are currently full and my dream crew is still just a dream. As the end of my visa approaches, I am considering carefully what to do with the rest of my time here, realistically considering the fact that I may not get a permanent job and will have to come home in a month.
A few memorable moments. Simon, my dayworker friend that worked with me on Dilbar pops a massive ollie on his skateboard, doesn’t quite land it (possibly due to that fact that he hasn’t skated in years) and helplessly watches as it race ahead of him and off the edge of the dock. Fail. But very very funny.
A French fisherman learns that waterlogged skateboards are heavier and more difficult to catch than fish.
Eventually the fisherman gives up, and Simon gets it out with a large stick and his foot.
He rinses it in fresh water, lets it dry and rides it to work the next day.
I raced a girl on a motorbike. She won.
I moved into a flat with my mates, Ross, Clint and Nick, just for a week. My bicycle is getting overworked.
Today Ross asked if I understood what the girls that walked past us were saying. I said I did but I wasn’t really listening. They said something about looking somewhere for something or other. He was shocked and said: “You understand German??”. “No”, I replied “that was Afrikaans”. The other day a girl asked if I could do some strange ‘click’ sound because that is how you speak Afrikaans. I think she was thinking of Zulu, but I can never be sure. The farting guy was quite happy with my blog about his accomplishments. He said he was surprised because I write quite well and he expected South Africans to only be able to write in broken English, like: “There. was. guy. who. in. room. my. stayed. and. farted. much. did.” I blame Oprah for all her false media. Whenever she helps a few poor kids in Africa, the camera pans over the freaking Kruger national park or something and now all my new friendsthink I live in a mud hut with lions in my back yard. I tell them that I flew to France in the big metal bird and play with light switches often, pretending to be incredibly fascinated by them.
While working on Dilbar a giant killer shark jumped up really high out of the water and bit my toe while I was sitting on the edge of the yacht. It almost took it right off but I used my other foot to kick it in the nostrils. The crew said that I will never get a job if I tell people the truth because no-one wants someone on their boat that sharks jump out of the water to bite. They suggested I rather say that I kicked a metal something on the boat and hurt myself. For the sake of finding a job, I reluctantly agreed to lie.
And… my toe.
These photo’s were taken a week after the incident. I worked for 6 days in pain – good times! (Again, excuse the bad quality of the pictures please)
This evening I chatted with my mate Belinda. We were speaking about relationships, romance and mooshy stuff like that. She says that everything happens for a reason. I agreed, I said that a shark… that I kicked my foot on a metal thing on Dilbar and now I have a large cut on my foot. Kicking the metal thing was the reason I have it. She looked at me strangely. I don’t think I quite got what she was trying to say, but one never can be sure…
A Thailand Prison
Imagine being stuck in a Thailand prison? A small cramped up cell in a Thailand prison, by yourself, with convicted drug dealers, rapists and murderers. Is it on your bucket list? Do you have a bucket? The other day we were talking about bucket lists. I asked what that was and one guy suggested that it is when you write out all the things you want to do on pieces of paper and put them in a bucket, then you throw them away when you have done them. Another guy disagreed. He said it’s all the things you want to do before you die (kick the bucket). I like both ‘definitions’ but perhaps the second guy was more right? Anyways, I don’t have a bucket to put pieces of paper in. but suppose I did, getting stuck in a Thailand prison would not be one of the things I would put in it.
So my eyes have been opened. I’m still that ignorant Safa who looks at people using dirt bins in disbelief because the day I see someone using a bin in Durban, Michael Jackson will come back to life and sing ‘cure the world’. Anyways, the smoking-weed-on-temple-convict turned deckhand got out of prison. He works on boats now because they also have roofs. The prison officials lost his passport so they didn’t know who he was and let him go. He found out afterwards that the usually sentence for that crime is nine years behind bars . He waslucky. Somehow he managed to sneak past customs at the airport without a passport and got back into his own country. He’s actually quite a cool guy. I don’t think he will smoke weed on a temple again. He says that next time he will smoke inside instead.
Last week I worked on a boat in Cannes that was built in 1965. They are strict and we worked super hard. My friend Blake reckons that when the Captain insisted we work until 4.30, he made it sound like 5. My fingers bled on both hands from sanding the rails and sides for three days in a row. But it’s fun to work with friends and part of the experience. I can live here on two days work a week, so even though I haven’t had a lot of work, I am doing ok and loving being here.
I moved into a flat up the road from the crew house. I share a room with my Swedish friend Josephine. It’s quiet and really nice but I can only stay a week because someone else is coming in on Sat. I have to find another place to stay by then that I can afford because the crew house is full and once you leave it is difficult to get back in. It’s all part of the adventure though, and because of the unpredictability of the industry, I can never know when I am going to get a permanent job and move onto a boat anyway. James has already got one and left for Italy today. A lot of it is luck and being at the right place at the right time. I am waiting for my turn to come. In the mean time, I am loving life in Antibes. The people are great and I have many many good friends. On the weekends we hit the pubs in the evenings (and sometimes in the week too, not always in the evenings). By pubs (plral), I mean two, because there are really only two pubs here that people frequent. They are ‘The blue lady’ and ‘The Hopstore’ and everyone who has truly experienced Antibes will have memories at both. There are a couple other jols people hit after the pubs but at that stage most people are barely coherent and seem to lose their balance a bit, so I just go to bed. I met some girls in The Blue Lady the other night and chatted for a while. My friend at the crew house asked if I got ‘lucky’ with the pretty Safa girls I was talking to. I told him I don’t hook up so he asked if I was gay. I said “yes” and he left me alone. One way to cut an interrogation short.
Couch surfing is quite big here. If you don’t know what that is, google it. Last night Jo brought a guy home because he stays about half an hour away and didn’t want to mission home at about three a.m. They came in here and I woke up. He was standing waving his hands next to his sides. I looked at him confused. On seeing my confusion he responded very politely, “I farh-ed”. Jo walked in behind him and from the look on her face I knew his little hand waving motion had not been as effective as he had probably hoped. When he saw her, a smile spread across his face as if he had just won a guitar hero competition or something. “I farh-ed in your room!” he said triumphantly. I almost congratulated him, he just looked so satisfied. Thankfully I was ‘downwind’. I went back to sleep.
Tonight is movie and pizza night. I have forgotten what the world of academia is like and the anticipation of Monday that comes with every Sunday evening. Tomorrow I dock walk if it isn’t raining. Unlikely according to Mr. weather man. If it rains I will eat croissants and find a flat to move into next week.
Lost in Translation
I bought a bike yesterday on a sale. I was told to take a bus to a shop called Decathlon and buy a bike, because thats the cheapest I will get one. So myself and my Safa mate Nick (thats whats they call us South Africans. Safa’s I mean, not Nick) went to the tourist office where and asked what bus to take. Then we jumped on the bus and traveled somewhere to this massive shop that is like Game on steroids and where all the tillers are really pretty girls. For once, I was in the right place at the right time and stumbled across a second hand sale outside that they apparently only have twice a year. I bought a Peugeot bicycle for 20 euros – amazing. However, when I attempted to get into the bus, I was refused. Well, I think I was refused. The guy actually just pointed away and muttered some French profanity so I thought it was probably a better idea to just ride back to the crew house on my bike, wherever the crew house was. So I figured that if I keep going downhill (more or less) I would eventually meet the coast, and I did. I ended up about 2km up the coast in the direction of Nice, but it was a fun bit of exploring and the excercise was good. Here is Patric doing a weelie on it:
Everything pretty much shuts down here on a Sunday, which is a good thing because it saves electricity and also forces people to have a rest. James and I cycled down the coast towards Cannes. The road runs right next to the sea pretty much the whole way and it looks like something on a postcard that they sell at those expensive tourists shops I can’t afford to buy from. We stopped off on the beach (just off the road) and ate our packed lunch. On our way home we chained up our bikes at old town Antibes and walked through the place eating croissants. oooh, I love croissants. Old town Antibes has lots of streetlets and those french looking windows with potplants that they used to throw their poo out of in the old days. (If you heard the words ‘gardyloo’ – from the French ‘regardez l’eau’ – shouted from a window above, your best move would have been to seek cover, fast! One theory is that this is where the word loo came from).
This afternoon I had some coffee at a little french restaurant with some friends. The coffee here is the best I’ve ever tasted but the waitress couldn’t speak english and I still don’t know what she thought my ‘turning-the-tap’ action really meant, because she nodded to indicate she understood and then didn’t bring me any water.
After coffee we hit the beach where myself and my other Safa mate Patric (from Namibia) lit a very little fire with some twigs and a lighter. My new friend Josephine suggested that we catch a pigeon and cook it but I said that that was not a good idea because it is illegal. The beach is called the toilet bowl because it looks like a toilet bowl and also because sometimes the toilet content from the yachts (that goes straight into the sea) washes into the area. I didn’t really beleive that, but the guy at the crew house told me that it actually really is called the toilet bowl. After that we found a cool statue and took some photo’s of us hanging off it and stuff.
I share a room with three Kiwi’s and after watching a New Zealand movie called ‘boy’, I find it difficult to take them seriously. They use weird slang, like the word ‘hey’ with rising intonation at the end of every sentance as if they are asking a question, hey? My friend Lance will say something like, “I got all F’d up wrestling some guy at the bar hey(?)”, and I will almost respond “uh… yes… uh you did. I mean I think, kinda of maybe, you did, I think?’. And he’ll say “Cool, I’m going for supper now hey(?)” and I will have to refrain from saying “Yes, you are. I mean if you usually do what you say you are going to, well, then you will go eat supper now.” Another girl here is from Scotland. She seems to like the word ‘bru’ because she says it a lot. But I usually just think she is cold because she says ‘brrrrr’ and I sometimes ask if she is ok. Us safa’s told her not to use that word anyway because it’s rude and discusting.
Rosie, Josephine and I sitting on the edge of the fort wall.
Two girls that happened to look EXACTLY the same as Rosie and Josephine chilling out on the fort wall.
Rainy Days and Spider Monkeys
It’s raining today so I can’t go Dockwalking. That is a major problem because in this Industry I am at the bottom of the food chain because I have no experience and the only way to get experience is by getting daywork and the best way to get daywork is to be a girl and print your CV with a colour photo. The second best way is to walk the docks, but I can’t do that today so I am bleak. I feel like I am in a video game or something, like one of those roleplay games where a box comes onto the screen and asks where you want to go today, and you choose a port and then it takes off a certain amount of money for the train fee. Or like I am a Pokemon trainer and I start with Pikachu and have to train the little retard before I get upgraded to like Pidgey or something. Right now no-one wants Pikachu. A girl asked me the other day what she should do once she has finished her courses. I told her: “Well… you walk the docks, and you ask someone on every single yacht you go past if they need any deckhand work, then they say ‘no'”. She laughed, but I told her that that really is what they say. She asked if they ever said yes, I said I had no idea.
There was a guy here with a tattoo on his foot that says ‘spider monkey’. Thats all it says. I mean not that a picture would make it any better, lets be honest. I asked him why he had it and he said that once he was in a bar with his friend and he found this “wee las” that he picked up. She wrapped around him like a “spider monkey”, according to his friend at least, and for some strange reason he thought that it was a good enough reason to get a tattoo. I liked it better before he told me the story.
So below are a couple photo’s. When I have had time it’s been raining, so I still don’t have any really interesting pics. Excuse my photography and cheap camera. 
This is a typical room in the crew house. I got kicked out of this one after a week though because they made it into a girls dorm. Now I am in a tiny room with only two bunkbeds.
My two good mates Ross and Rosy sitting on a bench. We were waiting for the train to take us back to Antibes after dockwalking a nearby port, the name of which I cannot spell.
Dockwalking. The story of my life these days.
The buildings are really on top of each other in some places, I thought that this picture showed that quite nicely.
The view of the marina from the old fort wall in Antibes.
Antibes
Jumped on a plane around 6ish on the 7th of March to Dubai. Two mates in the airport on the same flight, what are the chances? My mate James and I meet a retired lawyer. He tells us of his friend, a lawyer down the coast who has a reputation for being so honest that no one stuffs him around. Odd… it’s usually the honest guys that get taken for a ride in this life. More odd: An honest Laywer. I don’t really mean that.
Stupid, cramped plane ride. Old airoplanes, Kulula style ie. “This space could fit 50 people in comfortably, lets put 75 seats in.” My knees made intimate friends with the chair in front of me. Sat next to a guy that works abroad and travels a lot. He ignored the poor Indian fellow behind him that kindly asked him to put his seat up a bit so he could move. That wasn’t nice of him. There is a little picture of the plane moving along a line to its destination on the screen in front of us, showing us how far along the journey we were. At least thats what it was supposed to do. I found that when I looked at it it didn’t move.
Fastforward to arrival at Dubai airport. Sat down to coffee with my two friends David and Glen from Durban. they had joined up with three Dutch girls that study at an arts school in Germany, and a monk looking guy wearing a bright orange sheet-thing. He had just been to Culcutta on a religious outing. They can’t pee standing up like other men, they have to sit down. When they can’t stop for a pee on a long trip they have to croutch and hold a bottle underneath their bright ‘robes’. He told us a story about a monk that missed on a bus trip and blamed the lady in front of him. She didn’t respond because he is a monk. I am thinking of buying an orange sheet as well.
Flight number two to Paris. Newer plane, more space, more people and this irritating kid that cried almost the whole trip. At least my knees and the seat couldn’t make friends this time. I watched ‘The social network’. What a good movie. Then I watched ‘The other guys’. Then I watched the seat, then the fold out table, then the time, then the stupid plane diagram that doesn’t move when you look at it.
Paris. The water from the taps is cold. As cold as water from my fridge at home. The sun is warm on my skin but when you are outside it feels like there is an aircon on. Bought a bigmac from Mac Donalds. Coke tastes… funny. Can’t put my finger on why. Cost me 6.10 euros… 61 Rand. OUCH. Kids screaming in the background again. I wondered if he had followed me from the plane to MacDonalds. Fastforward to Domestic flight to Nice.
Listening to weird music on my iPod while I wait for the boarding for the Nice flight to open. Are you wondering why I said fastforward and then spoke about my waiting? It’s because even if I had lived the wait in fastforward, it still would have felt like a lifetime.
Nice airport. 8.30 on the night of the 8th of March, just over 24 hours of travel. Found a cheapish hotel walking distance form the airport. We caught a shuttle, then walked. James dropped a piece of paper on the road, as he picked it up I realised that it was the only piece of anything in sight. Even Durban after a week of heavy rain doesn’t look that clean. I ran across the road. James said thats called jaywalking, I asked him what that was. It’s definately not in the Pedi dictionary. Hotel was simple but clean.
Today we took a bus trip to Antibes. I asked a French lady which bus would take us there but she only spoke French. After a fun game of Charades and some pointing around we got onto the right bus. 1Euro to Antibes from Nice, about a 30km drive. We drove on the right side of the road because people in France drive on the right side of the road and people in South Africa do not. We eventually got off in central Antibe and started walking until we eventually found the crew house. The crew house is really cool and surprisingly so are the people that stay here. I am sharing a room with seven people, guys and girls. Tomorrow I start looking for work. Fortunately the little crying kid from the airport is nowhere in sight. Tonight I will sleep well.
The only constant is change… and Coca-Cola
Travelling forces you to make a lot of decisions about stuff. Some of them are big and important (like… do I learn French if I’m going to France?), and some of them… well… not so much. I suppose today’s decision falls into the later category. the questions is, ‘What do I do with my unusual collection of ‘stuff’?’
When I was young I collected coca-cola stuff. I didn’t care what it was really, if it had a coca-cola logo on it, it was a collectors item to me. I also collected other stuff that I found collectable. By collectable, I meant anything that had variation. Yes, that meant pretty much anything. I collected matchboxes, pens, atamps and your grannies’ tea cosies. But, unlike the others, I managed to keep up the Coca-cola collection for quite some time. I suppose I found it interesting because there is always something new with Coca-cola. The problem with this unusual fettish was that emptying out the garbage can onto my shelf was not my mothers idea of fun (as you can imagine). But over time my mother gradually warmed up to the idea that my sparkly and colourful cans were worth far more than the dust that they collected. Yes, of course I am joking. A can is a can, and dust is dust. So my collection of assorted cans, bottles and other ‘stuff’ was doomed to suffer the same fate that it had originally been rescued from – disposal.
A few years ago I downsized my can collection at my mothers request. But today the end is imminent. So before my mom could end my life with that wooden broomstick she keeps in the kitchen cupboard, I decided to take a few cellphone snap shots of my childhood pride, to show my readers. Here are a few pics. Ja, I don’t care if you think it’s boring, go read someone elses blog on gardening or something.
Ok, so… we all know the price of stuff goes up. But hows this for ‘inflation’.
R2 for a can of coke? I almost can’t beleive this was in my life time! So… A little bit of political turbulance, affirmative action and crime, and everyone is set to leave the country. Their loss. At least you can still get a can of coke elsewhere… if you know what to look for. Here is some help:
Still confused? Ask Father Christmass for a can (who just by the way, only happens to be red because of Coca-cola”’ marketing. Before they intervened, he was green).
And just by the way, what the heck happened to Vanilla Coke? I actually liked that stuff!
Anyways… after I got through all my cans, it turned out I had very little of real collective value. Besides maybe this truck my uncle gave me (each of the little crates comes out of the side and has individual Coke’s in them)…
A couple ties…
and this bottle my friends mom gave me. The Coke in this bottle is probably close on 20 years old.
But Coke doesn’t mature like wine, And cans dont rust any less when they are out of the trash can. So in the end, my childhood treasure turned out to be a pile of useless rubbish that only I could add value to. It’s a little bit like what God does for us. But unlike God, I chuck my rubbish back into the garbage can that I saved it from. I am grateful that He doesn’t. Goodbye Coca-cola collection. Turns out my life is easier without you.
A journey of a thousand miles... 