Car wash

Having screwed up vast tracts of admin and car maintenance with my trusty Hyundai, I'm hell bent on keeping my new wheels in good condition. I've resigned myself to upkeep costs, and I'll get the paperwork done correctly if it kills me. Or a government official. Depends.

I feel particularly satisfied when it's clean. It's not just the car either, I feel like I've made progress when something which was dirty... becomes clean. Seriously cheap thrills. But you got to take the easy wins sometimes... keeps you in the game.

I'm perfecting the system too. Following a presumably heavy night, tenant Greg took out the only tap within hose-reach of the driveway. All washing has thus reverted to the bucket system. Fortunately not that bucket system; clean water is on tap. If I follow the right route around the car; roof-bonnet-side-boot-side-wheels... I can get by in 3 buckets and a splash to wash my feet.

Then I get to drive around and make people believe my car is a true reflection of my tight ship.

Fest: Navigation

More on our trip to the Arts Fesival.

Grahamstown is a small place, its the sort of small that makes you believe you'll always know where you are, and that maps are for sissies.

In the same way that Grahamstown's dimensions are comforting, Pete's choice of car turned out to be a bit misleading too. Once I realised that I was infact disorientated, I decided to follow-that-Polo to the next venue. We were pleased to see that Pete et al had waited for us a short way down the road, en route the next show.

This appreciation vanished like the puff of a leather goods salesman's pipe in a strong wind, when the Polo pulled over and an old man climbed out. It seems this old man and his equally advanced travel-mates had lead us astray. Literally.

We then confidently set off in a general direction, in search of the Victoria Theatre.

Finding your way around a foreign town involves an element of voodoo, and in our case feelings and hunches were the only tools we had at our disposal. I think someone even said "im sure its down here, it makes sense". Hows that for precision navigation.

Fest '11

The Grahamstown National Arts Festival. Its that time again.

I'd never class myself as cultured. The only stuff I read regularly is nytimes.com and Aljazeera. I really enjoy music... but I'm only interested in the melody, and while I play the guitar, I still don't know which string is which. True story.

After our trip to the Fest though, Im beginning to think none of that matters. What really struck me this weekend was the fun aspect. Two of the three shows we watched had as much to do with 'appreciation of the arts' as my high school's 'Cultural Week' (a week which only succeeded in highlighting how little culture existed.).

I was inspired by ordinary people, comfortable infront of a crowd, having fun and getting paid to do it, not to mention the standing ovations they won.

Holiday Club

Smudge

Last night our cell helped out at the Stirling Baptist Holiday club. A carnival was staged for the kids, and leaders were paired up to run various stalls.

Adam and I were tasked with selling Smudge. We weren't actually selling it, the kids got some tickets that they could redeem for games and food. But the principle of limited resources satisfying unlimited desires still applied.

In order to out perform the other volunteers we applied some fundamental marketing strategies.

Sales floor:
What matters most in any retail situation is not the quality of the product, rather the appearance of your store. Anyone who's eaten at Spur can verify this. Thus we pillaged some traffic cones and an umbrella to outfit our store in an intimate, yet edgy atmosphere.

Market competition:
Our product was good, but for some reason the kids insisted on investing in games which didn't guarantee return. We approached the market with various slogans, like "You won't always win at carpet bowls, but you always win with Smudge". and "Do you have an ailment?... Because we have the cure" - emphasizing the obvious psychological (if not dietry) benefits of Smudge.

Mobile advertising:
A must-have in any modern day marketing strategy. Unfortunately, due to the complete lack of infrastructure... from internet connections, e-commerce facilities and a critical lack of 'small children with cellphones'... we instead took our store mobile, and hawked our goods through the carnival grounds.

Unfortunately the only available auditors were actually running one of the other stalls, but I'm sure if an impartial judge were present, we would certainly have taken a sweet victory.

127 Hours

I generally avoid movies which are anything other than entertaining. Call me narrow minded but there are other opportunities to be challenged and stretched emotionally everyday, they needn't make themselves visible when I'm vegging on the couch.

One recently snuck by in the guise of a man-movie night. 127 Hours. Now that I think about it, I also watched Blood Diamond on the weekend, largely for educational purposes. Back to 127 Hours. I won't spoil it for you, but its enough to say my bum still clenches when I think about some of the scenes.

In aid of this triumph of human spirit, Ive decided to change my entry to the longer of the two runs this weekend, in the Katberg Eco Trail Run series.

Lunar Eclipse

Am I the only one who felt a bit let down by this week's Lunar Eclipse?

Albeit, I don't have much to compare it to, but aside from being unusual, it wasn't nearly as exciting as the prospect of our pizza cooking in the oven.



The guy in the video says, 'if... you saw the moon had gone an eery shade of red, you musnt be alarmed'. Which raises another point, if a red tinted moon would ordinarily alarm you, its likely you wouldn't have seen the moon at all... You would likely be incapacitated infront of the TV watching the BBC Newshour report on unrest in the Middle East, Iran's nuclear program, riots in Greece and an eColi breakout in Europe.

Our pizza was tasty, a gourmet creation.

(Check out the video here email subscribers.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFaYyhaaCPU )

Flood

We had some epic rain this weekend. There was no warm spell to introduce it, it just rained like crazy for 3 days.

Everything facing upright which resembled a bowl flooded. Including my car's foot well.  Emphasis on well. Turns out the drainage system has a crucial design flaw, but nothing that couple of hundred bucks and a big heater can't fix. And possibly some newspaper.

In chaotic times, news travels faster than it should. I received reports that the sluice gates at Nahoon dam had been opened, only to be told that the dam has no sluice gates. That particular question remains unanswered.

On a positive note, the flood did provide alternative entertainment for the weekend, and had it not availed itself Im not sure what we would have done to entertain friends visiting form the Cape. Flood-damage sight seeing has something going for it.

Check out a wicked video by @kyllcs here http://www.pixelperspective.co.za/4/