Game update, travel update

Oh man, it's a busy Monday. I've just released a game patch for Onslaught of the Electric Zombies, have tried in vain to pay proper attention to various writing commitments, and am now preparing for an overnight bus trip to the noisy ol' province of Gauteng. While I'm no stranger to such journeys (heck, I got pretty deep about them once), I still can't say that I'm looking forward to it.

I obviously need to train up more and get a taste for travel again. Being lame and nest-ish in Grahamstown has its perks, but I'm steadily losing my vagabond mentality. A pity. Maybe hitting the rAge expo this weekend will do something for me.

Hawright!

For those of you who aren't familiar with rAge: well, it's a bloody big game/tech expo -- at least by South African standards. Fancy overseas buggers may be taking a freaking slice out of the moon to hold their own showfloors, but I don't really care as long as I'm surrounded with bright lights, loud noises and lots of like-minded people. Which kinda describes the average student party except for the fact that people aren't, you know, fall-on-your-face drunk. It's quite novel in that respect.

I'll try write a bit more about rAge if I have the time: it's starting this Friday and lasts for three days, so I'm quite sure that something newsworthy can come out of it. At the very least, I'll have an opportunity to flog my- OH YES, GAME UPDATE BY THE WAY! ONSLAUGHT OF THE ELECTRIC ZOMBIES NOW HAS A GLOBAL LEADERBOARD! Check it out now and upload your scores: if you get to the top of the leaderboard, everybody will think you're totally awesome and stuff.

This guy is riding a freaking dragon, and even he isn't as awesome as you are.

Unfortunately, that's all I can afford to write for now: my remaining time in Grahamstown is ticking down, and I don't really think that I'll be able to get everything done in time if I spend too long on this blog post.

Cheers for now. And try my game if you haven't done so already.

Liberation!

See this? This is the INTERNET:

Sneaky advertising, free of charge.

The reason why I find this so special is because one of my regular Grahamstown haunts, Cow Moon Theory, has just gotten itself some sexy wireless access, meaning that I don't have to rely on my bloody unreliable cellphone to get basic chores done. Makes a nice change.

Sorry, Mr Cellphone.

No longer do I have to crumple my face when somebody sends me a paltry 5 megabyte file. No longer am I doomed to turning down Gtalk links just because they happen to be made of videofailure. No longer am I forced to wake up horrifically early (read: pre-noon) every single Tuesday just so that I can make sure a tiny article submission gets uploaded to my editors over at NAG Online without the file mysteriously breaking down and flipping me the bird halfway through.

Seriously, that damn process has taken HOURS sometimes.

Of course, there's a flipside: if I screw up from now on, I probably won't be allowed to blame my cellphone connection. A pity, but it's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make in interest of totally sweet Internetlands.

Kinda hoping that this new development sticks. It's pretty novel being allowed to enable browser pictures again ...

Blog reboot

Avid readers may have noticed my lack of activity recently. The reason for this is simple:

I've stopped travelling.

"No, Nandrew! What have you done?" cry the fans.

Yeah, I know. This trip was originally going to be a year long, but various circumstances have urged me to settle down, grow some moss and be more constructive in other avenues. In particular, I need to focus more on my career in journalism and game development (also known as "that crap I write" and "that random shit I code").

This new development DOESN'T mean two things:

(1) This doesn't mean that I want to stop travelling entirely. Oh ho, no. I may be settling in good ol', hippie-infested Grahamstown now, but I still have a trip or two planned this year. And I plan on making them interesting. Even if I have to take a picture of myself running naked through the highveld.

(2) This doesn't mean that the blog is going to die. It's just going to undergo a bit of a refocus, and I'll probably be talking about geeky things in as accessible and appealing a way as I can muster. This will be interspersed with my regular musings about nubile young Germans and the noble Giant Chicken.

So yeah. If you want to stick around, be my guest. In fact, I encourage you to, because most of you are my friends and stuff and I don't get to see you often enough. This blog is still going to be about my life. It's just that work is an important part of said life -- it's tied in with my hopes, dreams and aspirations, after all.

Hold on, maybe not.

I suggest you check on this blog over the next few weeks. I'm going to try get the ball rolling again and resume my noble quest of sending all of my little ramblings to you: the dearly beloved and delightfully insane audience.

Peace out, and let's see where this bugger goes.

Metallica!

So, my cellphone hates me.

Actual photo of my cellphone. With an angry face drawn on it.

I must admit that I've not been terribly vigilant with my Internet activity over the past week, but even when I have logged on (using the cell as a modem, of course), this device has been fighting me every step of the way. No identifiable reason, really: often, it just refuses to co-operate with my computer until I perform a reboot. Sometimes it freezes my system entirely. Invariably, it will try some sort of cleverdickery just to piss me off. And it will do so at a time when I have a gazillionty-one Firefox tabs open that need my attention. And at least three of those tabs will have nothing to do with that ever-present drain of time and productivity, TVTropes.

Its not been all bad, of course. For a start, I got myself Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Actual photo of me looking rather pleased with myself.

This game is, to say the least, pretty damn cool. Not only has it given me access to my ultra sing-song powers (with the help of an Xbox headset), but as far as Guitar Hero games go, this one is actually pretty gosh-darn good. The reviews have been pretty good and judging from the highly-polished gameplay (and my own inherent Metallica bias, of course), I say that this game gets a solid nine out of ten. Could have done with more TVTropes references.

Enhancing the game experience itself is a little something that I like to call the most badass setup ever. Of course, this is a horrific exaggeration, but after spending most of my game time on a standard-definition, CRT television, it's pretty cool to upgrade to HD and throw a hi-fi into the mix.

Actual photo of my current setup. With a smiley face drawn on it.

So basically, I've just spent my week playing hard, working (reasonably) hard and neglecting any duties which require me to show face on the Internet for more than, say, twenty minutes at a time, or however long it takes for my cellphone to realise that I'm being productive and cut my escapades short.

Damn annoying cellphone. I'll figure it out one day.

Arts Fest over!

So now I'm sitting in that precarious position that most of us encounter at some point in our lives: that moment just after an awesome arts festival finishes and just before that promised shipping of Guitar Hero: Metallica arrives. It is with a heavy heart that I am thus forced to sit down and do something useful for a change.

The festival was grand. No, really, it was. For a start, I managed to snag myself an epic creamy-white jacket thing at the Village Green market.

I do modelling part-time.

I've also been watching a bunch of performances, and am very happy to say that each one has been very impressive in its own right. This is not to say that I'll be starry-eyed and suggest that everything at the fest was awesome forever: it's just that if there were crap elements, they were doing their gosh-darn best to hide themselves from me.

Flee from my divine countenance, crappy performances!

So, what can I take away from this? My top three performances of the fest:

- "Laugh" with David Newton. This was a straightforward stand-up comedy routine. Nothing terribly artsy or thought-provoking, you may say. Well, screw you. The guy's damn funny anyway.

- Alchemy of the Heart. I believe I mentioned it over here already. It was the first performance I watched, but it still sticks with me anyway. Or maybe because.

- Monkey Nuts. Matthew Ribnick is a legendary actor, and Geraldine Naidoo is presumably a legendary producer. Like their other hits, Chilli Boy and Hoot, Monkey Nuts has Ribnick standing on stage with a collection of hats, acting out a full-blown story cast allllllllll by his lonesome. And boy, can that guy act! The sheer number of body builds, cultures, personality types and accents that he can emulate and switch between on the fly is a great demonstration of what "good acting" actually means. That, and I've always loved the bittersweet comedies that this duo choose to perform: there's nothing quite like feeling "mirthful empathy" when you're watching a performance.

Picture of me enjoying Ribnick's performance. In my white jacket.

As a bonus shout-out, I have to point to the one act that really made the festival what it was. And that was the festival audience. Unfortunately, I don't mean this in a warm and fuzzy way. Even in this hub of culture, enlightment and high-quality performing arts, the audiences at some of the performances I've been to still behaved like a bunch of cave-dwelling troglodytes. Cthulhu help me, if I find one more inconsiderate little shit who wanders into a performance twenty minutes late, yapping away with their friends and blocking my view of a show that I paid upward of sixty rand to watch (and then adding insult to injury by laughing at all the wrong parts for the rest of the act), I'm going to take a mental note of where they sit, force-feed myself a ton of concrete and do a bellyflop dive right on their heads.

Theatre etiquette, folks. Use it.

This is my disapproval face.

Final note: the picture used in this blog was, in fact, that of a professional Dolce & Gabbana model. Confused readers should note that in reality my jacket is a lot cooler.

Arts fest status report 1

So here I am, about halfway through the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, and it is absolutely lovely. So nice, in fact, that I am almost loathe to take the time out to blog about it instead of, like, actually DOING more stuff.

I've been reasonably cultural and reasonably outdoors-ish, though I must admit that it's really nice to hang out at one of my favourite chill spots instead and see the flood of interesting people arrive. There's a high population of travellers and performers in Grahamstown at the moment: and lo, a few of them are even interesting to talk to! It's like being at a backpacker lodge all over again. Hell, I actually met one of the guys who was running the Amapondo hostel back in Port St Johns.

So yeah, cool and colourful people.

A friend's kitten. This blog is now about kittens.

With regards to the performances so far: I've seen a few, and I've not been disappointed. In fact, if anybody is knocking around in Grahamstown right now and hasn't yet seen Alchemy of the Heart, try get seating for one of the shows. I enjoyed it quite a bit: maybe because it was the first show I saw. Either that, or I just have a thing for freaky masks.

So, with all the awesome stuff going on (and there is a LOT of awesome stuff), what should I choose to write about? Well, considering that my camera isn't allowed into most of the performance venues, I suppose it's safe to have a gander at town itself, as well as the Village Green market that occupies centre stage every year (haha, geddit?).

Unconfirmed Egg Hat Guy sighting.

I'm not sure why I like the Village Green market. Maybe it's just the thought of being able to go outdoors and have access to food and glittery stuff. Perhaps it's just amusing to catch people that I usually see elsewhere, such as the famous Egg Hat Guy and El Rondo the stick juggler.

The market itself extends (somewhat less officially) to Grahamstown's streets -- a nirvana of beanies, cheap sunglasses and plastic toys are on sale for anybody who gets up in the morning and thinks, "Well, gee whiz, I REALLY need some beanies, cheap sunglasses and plastic thingums today!"

Like this guy, har har. Also, in-joke warning.

I suppose it's also important to note that during festival, you get apprehended by all sorts of random people who are NOT beggars. For example, troops of orange-clad, head-shaven individuals chanting the Hare Krishna mantra and playing drums at you. Then there's those esoteric sellers of smelly burny stuff (incense, I think it's called) who shove their hands into your face to prove that their product smells of lilies and lavender instead of, say, Strange Person's Hand.

It bears the question: if I'm interrupted and harassed by really interesting people, does that actually still count? It's like the culture in this town is so overwhelming that it actually presses itself upon your senses. Which is, oddly enough, actually kinda cool.

And how do I maximise my daily doing-ness? Why, with the help of Monster energy drinks, of course!

WARNING: PRODUCT PLACEMENT!

Seriously, look out for these orange-on-black cans. They are, without a doubt, the most delicious energy drinks I have ever come across. In fact, it's quite likely that they could invoke a relapse of the Great Caffeine Overdose of Autumn 2009. And taste awesome while they're doing it.

Anyway, I'm off to say and do more pretentious stuff. Catch y'all again after I next tear myself away from all the cool stuff to try and actually write about it.

It's Gtown!

Gentlemen ...

Helloooooooooo Grahamstown! Wet, cold and miserable by the way.

So, the last time you heard from me, I was in Port St Johns. A little bit has happened since then, and it's a rather long story that's filled with all sorts of juicy details such as me falling sick again, shuttle services being a little unreliable, temporary alliances forming, banks being robbed, helicopters being blown up and a lot of cuddly and adorable kittens being rescued from the smoldering wreckage of inconveniently-situated orphanages.

Suffice it to say, I wound up back in Grahamstown. Somehow. Which is pretty cool, it makes a nice change.

Oh. Wait. Poker again.

I'm also still adjusting to the lack of ADSL Internet. Very poorly. Port St Johns was great, but it didn't have much in the way of plug access. The only way for me to hook up my laptop was to sit down at the bar and ask the good old 'keep for a power point. This arrangement allowed me to do the bare bones stuff like checking my e-mail, updating the Dev.Mag news stuff and looking at LOLcats. Still, it made me a little uneasy, not least because I was permanently paranoid about some drunkard spilling beer onto my baby.

The laptop, I mean, not an actual baby.

Cor blimey, it's pretty.

Still, I shall have fond memories of Port St Johns. The hikes were glorious, the people were awesome and now I shall be tormenting friends for months to come by constantly referring to the awesomeness of dear ol' PSJ in whatever conversation happens to crop up at the time. Man, that place is just too cool.

Anyway, so now I'm in Grahamstown. And guess what? It's just one day before the National Arts Festival is due to start. Well, actually it starts TODAY, given the time I was finally able to post this. Still, the anticipation throughout town is palpable. More stuff on stuff when I start doing stuff.

Havana Nights in Grahamstown

Right, so: it would appear to the layman that I've once again become too well-settled in Grahamstown. This is not true. I have stayed here for two reasons: one, I wanted to sort out my passport and stuff because I've been considering doing some out-of-country travel (nothing too exotic or expensive: I'd basically be going through Africa, if anything). Of course, this particular job was never actually carried out due to a mixture of election hype and my own gross tendency to procrastinate. Go me.

The other reason was that at some point in the past, I promised a friend that I would attend her 21st birthday party. I can't remember when. I may have been raucously drunk after downing half a beer or something (DISCLAIMER: no, not really). It was some time after designing the party invite.

Damn, I'm good.

While my design skills are rather paltry (read: crap) compared to my godlike writing abilities (DISCLAIMER 2: I really am that good) I still like to keep in practice doing odd jobs for people. I received a year of super-duper official training, after all, so I may as well put it to some good use. Here's a higher-res version because I like to show off.

Anyway, enough self-indulgence. I went to this gathering yesterday evening. It was themed “Havana Nights”. Which was really cool. I mean, I had no idea how to really dress, but I decided to use it as a grand opportunity to dress up in my “you look like you came out of a Quentin Tarantino film” outfit, complete with my beloved fedora hat (which, by the way, I'd accidentally left in Grahamstown before backpacking along the Garden Route. I missed it oh so very much).

Actually, this pic was taken the day after. In the same clothes. And very unwashed. Don't ask.

The 21st was very nice, actually. It wasn't one of those typical parties where the aim is to get drunk and dance (those do not gel with me AT ALL) – it was one of those “sophisticated” gatherings with slides, cocktails and speeches. And stuff. I had a great time and all the stops were pulled out to make everybody feel fancy and cool for an evening.

Also: food. And yes, that's a guy in a dress.

I excused myself at about 11pm, shortly after all the main stuff happened. As I said, I don't mix well with all-out partying and even though the main evening was all fancy and stuff, people inevitably got their jollies on afterwards. I decided to have a more laid-back session afterwards and crashed somewhere else for the night. Which, by the way, urges me to post a bed that I have yet to mention:

An actual bed. In Grahamstown. The novelty!

This comes from a spare room in one of my friend's flats. I negotiated it after buying him dinner (his daily withdrawal limit had been exceeded, the silly bugger) and I can fully testify that it was absolutely glorious. I mean, yes, it's a bed, so it's automatically a notch up from couches. But there was such a lovely plethora of blanketry and pillowness that pretty much guaranteed that I could tailor my sleeping experience to just the way I wanted it. Or, very nearly. There was a certain something missing, but I can't exactly figure out what. Oh well. 9/10.

Election day

Wooo! April 22nd! It's our glorious nation's time to exercise its constitutional right and decide who gets to play with our lives for another five years. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: it's the 2009 South African national elections.

... and I failed to take part.

Now look. Don't get me wrong. I wanted to vote today. I really, really did. But unfortunately, I have this weird neutrality streak and by the time I decided to catch a political wake-up call and register as a voter, it was a case of too-little-too-late-you-silly-little-bugger.

And yes, I know the spiel. I officially have to keep my yap shut about the state of the country for the next five years, will be solely responsible for the downfall of said country should it ever come to pass and have signed an abstract contract that will allow baboons to come and eat my children (though I have the last laugh on that particular point. Poor starving baboons).

I am, for all intents and purposes, a noob. I sincerely confess this.

Most tragically, I have now missed out on free coffee from Wimpy – an offer that was extended to everybody who actually had the initiative and political foresight to cast their vote.

WHAT HAVE I DONE???

All that aside, it was really inspiring to see people turning out in their droves to make their voices heard. There's apparently 161 voting stations in Grahamstown alone – not bad for a town that my cruel, cruel friends from Gauteng declare as being an imaginary place that exists only in my head.

Of course, while people turning out in their droves is good and all, it makes for a helluva long wait when you're in the queue. The booth on the Rhodes University campus was particularly bad.

“...wait, you mean this isn't the queue for free coffee?”

People kept their spirits up, though. There was a lot of lively chatter in the queues (which could easily incarcerate voters for a good few hours) and some of the students even brought along their instruments to play a few songs. Journalists were also swarming the place like politically-motivated flies to election-poop (in other news, my ability to construct similes has gone down the drain like something that goes down a drain really, really fast).

Of course, I don't want this blog to become politically aligned or anything, so I'm going to withhold commenting on the situation much further. If you want to know about South African politics, read up elsewhere – and I wholeheartedly recommend that you do.

Remember, people, there's only one way for democracy to work properly and that's to be informed about your vote. Six billion ballots mean absolutely nothing if you're casting them like a doofus, so don't piss away your vote unless you know what you're putting your weight behind. I honestly don't care what party you voted for today, as long as your voice was based on an educated opinion that will, you know, benefit humanity and stuff rather than going with your gut because some jackal-faced MP came over to your house yesterday and promised you free icecream.

If you were a twit and gave a positive vote to people who could screw you over because you didn't bother to check up on them objectively, then you're no better than the idiots like me who failed to vote at all. If anything, it'll just cause more harm.

And there ends (hopefully) the only post on this blog that will ever touch on the subject of politics. Here, wash the bad taste out of your mouth with some kitties:

Tacklehug!

This blog post is dedicated to one J. Cook, who 80% of you have probably never heard of.

Graduation

And so, the dust has finally settled from all the madness of robing, capping, scrolling and whatever other random nouns are associated with the act of graduation.

Yes, dear reader, I've finally graduated. Despite the fact that I've been messing around for a good few months already with work, travel, writing and pretty much all of the real-world stuff that I was going to do anyway, it is only now that Rhodes University has decided to stand up and say, “Right, we're letting you go now ... you mischievous little bugger.”

I do like Rhodes, and I do respect the education that it has given me, but I have little to no tolerance for tradition and ceremony. The justifications are usually weak, and these sort of things always find some way of inconveniencing and/or irritating the heck out of me. In this case, I really didn't want to jump through all sorts of fancily-decorated hoops to get a silly piece of parchment.

Heck, the last 48 hours have been absolutely saturated with unnecessary picture-taking. Yes, it's cool to pose in the graduation gown for the first five or so times. After that, it begins to feel like I've walked right into a certain South Park episode involving cameras, hype and really beleaguered celebrities.

I take a picture of people taking pictures of me. The world implodes.

Of course, I went along with the whole show because loads of people were being all super-proud of me and stuff, so I kinda owed it to them to get my head patted by a bunch of academic geriatrics (in related news, I've discovered for the first time ever that Rhodes University actually has a chancellor. Waitwhat?). That, and there were some pretty damn awesome tea parties to go to – I can happily report that these were very well-stocked. I only ate twice during my graduation weekend, and both occasions were munchie-calls at nearby garden buffets.

Pic related.

The graduation ceremony itself was horribly long – about two and a half hours of talking and name-calling ensued after everyone was seated, and this was just for BA graduates. I actually feel sorry for the VC, Registrar and all the other figureheads who need to be in attendance for every single one of these ceremonies.

No, seriously. I proudly maintain that I've not known the sensation of boredom for a good few years already. I always find some way to entertain or busy myself, even if it's just wandering off into daydream-land when I'm stuck on a long bus trip. But the grad ceremony somehow broke through that barrier. A combination of bright lights, ungainly ceremonial garb and a crowd of my peers successfully worked its dark magic on me. And although I would certainly testify that honorary doctorate recipient Dennis Brutus has led a very interesting life – and has possibly the most badass surname in existence – I still think that his speech would have been far more welcome at a time when I wasn't trapped inside an auditorium for several hours surrounded by a gajillion people wearing bat-suits.

Da-duh-da-duh-da-duh-da-duh-BATMAAAAAAN!

Did I feel a certain sense of reverence for this occasion? Regrettably, no. And I say 'regrettably' with sincerity because I'm sure that this graduation really was important to a lot of people. It's just that I can't bring myself to regard a piece of paper or a funny hat as a vindicator of my work and my achievements. In my head, the important stuff happened a long time ago and I've already moved on to do great things. You know, like writing this blog. And bungy jumping.

At least one thing is certain: deep in my heart, I know that the selection of food at the garden party was – and shall forever remain – absolutely awesome.

Grahamstown wrap-up

In the dying hours of my sojourn in the little town of G, I paused for a moment to reflect on my time spent there. Unfortunately, I couldn't really think of much because I've just whiled away the past weekend by working – and playing – pretty damn hard. So I'm just going to mention how that all went instead.

First of all – and I cannot do enough to stress the importance of this knowledge – but anybody who visits Grahamstown absolutely has to try out a Ginos pizza. Not only do they put on enough cheese to fuel the plotlines of a dozen Mills and Boon romance novels, but they have something every Sunday known as the family-sized pizza special:

Many brave souls have perished trying to eat a whole one.

For about R100, you can get one of these monsters and a 2 litre drink of your choice. It may sound steep just like that, but a pizza of this size could feasibly – nay, easily – feed a party of four, and the generosity of the establishment becomes evident in the amount of topping material that you get. Ordering a chicken and feta pizza, for example, will cause the pizza box itself to groan under the weight of meat and cheese inflicted upon it. To this day, it still stands as the most glorious pizza I have ever eaten.

The weekend has also been full of a reasonable amount of hanging out at random places and staying up until all hours just to mess around and screw about with our internal clocks. One particular night had me passing out on this delicious little couch:

It's hidden somewhere under all these blankets and pillows.

I had a really, really glorious night on this thing – to be honest, though, that's not very difficult once you've stayed awake long enough. The couch itself is rather spartan and may be less than comfortable in vanilla form, but the amount of cushiony goodness that they managed to cram into my temporary bed more than made up for it.

Ever jumped into one of those awesome little ball pits as a kid? You know, the kind where you swim in a sea of colourful spheres and hide from your parents when it's time to leave?

Neither have I, but I bet I know what it feels like now. 8.5/10.

So anyway, I've finally hauled my butt out of Gtown and am now sitting at the King's Beach backpacker lodge in Port Elizabeth. I'm going to spend a day or two here and see what this Eastern Cape coastal town is really like, then it's on to Storms River. More info with my next blog post.

A stroll through Gtown

To prove to people that Grahamstown really does exist (and because I needed to go do some chores for my very own graduation ceremony in April), I had a stroll about town yesterday and took some pictures during the process. The good old town of G is a pretty historic place, and it brings out what's possibly becoming my borderline fetish for fancy architecture (I have a tendency to talk about buildings quite a bit).

Grahamstown's main zone is High Street, a road which leads out of the University and through the centre of town. Halfway down this street is Grahamstown's impressive cathedral (which apparently makes this place an official city) and a bunch of really old buildings from a time before man even had the Internet. Truly the dark ages.

These pictures weren't actually taken in black and white. I changed them to make them look fancy.

One of these ancient buildings happens to be a local outfitter and clothing supplier known as Birch's. Not only is it the primary supplier of academic gowns to in the country, but it also holds a special place in my heart for its selection of really nice hats, which includes my very own beloved fedora. My appreciation of quality headwear is pretty much another borderline fetish.

They're locked in cabinets for a reason. That reason is me.

Birch's has a rather novel pulley system that it uses to get notes and stuff across the store quickly and easily. It's quite odd to see this system of ropes and wires hanging from the ceiling in this day and age, but the system really works. I've personally witnessed a few airborn post-its whizzing about, and I almost wish I worked at Birch's just to be able to mess about with this sweet little system a little.

Zip-lining, anyone?

A little bit along the main street is Grahamstown's primary bus stop and the Frontier Hotel and an interesting statue that I've never actually looked at before (I've only ever walked past it in my quest for KFC, anyway).

Dude. Dude, wake up. That angel behind you has your wallet.

The statue is a war memorial concerning the deaths of soldiers who fought here at Albany. I suppose these sort of sculptures have always been a bit of a delicate matter, since they generally herald war heroes from an age of colonialism and oppression, but I always find historical monuments to be charming interesting. And in case you can't see clearly in my piccie, there's a gentleman in the front of the angel who appears to be asleep.

If any readers know the significance of sleeping figures in war memorials, I'd genuinely be interested in hearing what it is. I'm quite sure that it holds a specific meaning, but I can't call it to mind.

... or maybe he's dead. Gee, I only thought of that right now.

St Patrick's Day at Cafe Blanca

So, as I approach the end of my three-week sojourn in Grahamstown (yeah, it was only ever meant to be three weeks. I'm eyeing you, Mr Danny “When-are-you-going-to-stop-being-such-a-hippie-at-Cow-Moon?” Day) I look back and realise that perhaps I've been a little too engrossed in work and similar comfort zone activites. I decided to take the opportunity on good old St. Paddy's Day to get out, have some fun and admire all the green booze that was suddenly emerging from nowhere.

My highlight of the evening was spending some time at a cocktail garden known as Cafe Blanca, a place on Grahamstown's High Street where my brother works as a bartender. It's a pretty nice place – the vibe is pretty chilled when compared with other establishments, and the patrons generally aren't all that raucous. Heck, even the bartenders are great: there's a lot of interaction with customers and they bring loads of personality to the place.

Some of the Cafe Blanca bartenders. Now with an extra ninja nosepick.

Overall, Blanca is a great establishment for when you want to sit down with a cocktail, talk to your friends and meet new people. And even if you're not into drinking all that much, they have a pretty respectable food menu – if you ever stop by town, ask for the R25 Gatsby sub. It's awesome.

Anyway. St Paddy's. On this particularly special night, the students came out with the full fury of green behind them. I'm not sure how many of them actually know about the main idea behind St Patrick's Day, but it's well-understood that it's a good excuse to get drunk and dress up in interesting ways.

Aftermath of the food colouring accident.

Aside from impersonating orcs and spinach vat victims, most of Blanca's patrons availed themselves of the opportunity to indulge in some St Paddy's specials: for example, a green “depth charge” that I've been duly informed has the punch of a shot with the liquid volume of a draught. Or something like that.

A depth charge. Also known as doom in a tumbler.

I didn't actually buy one of these. At least, not for myself. I wussed out with a hot chocolate and gave my drink to someone else after I'd snapped the photo.

Mmm, chocolate.

The Rhodes University rowing club

Since my first year at Rhodes University, I've been friends with a member of the rowing squad. He doesn't look as badass as one would suspect (he's actually less than seven feet tall), but by golly does he do some crazy stuff. Like all rowers, he had some sort of hectic diet and exercise regime, and there were times when he would get up before sunrise every day for a few weeks to train.

He even gave up drinking during the sport season. Amongst students, this sort of thing is rather unheard of.

Recently, another of my friends decided to take up rowing as well. And willingly, to boot. We're still trying to get him to check in with a psychologist, but in the meantime I've accompanied him on one or two rowing-related expeditions onto campus.

Yesterday evening, we went for some sort of ergo test thingie at the Rhodes University Rowing Club, a small hovel near the swimming pool and squash courts which served as a home to all sorts of burly, hairy-chested, beer-swilling rowing men and women.

WATCH YOUR BACK.

Well, okay, I've met some truly charming rowing ladies out there, but I still think that it made a wonderful picture. And besides, rowers are about the most macho objects in existence, second only to a distilled mixture of pure chest hair and man-sweat. Seriously, I could feel my beard growing the moment I stepped into the clubhouse – I was also overcome with an overpowering urge to constantly high-five people.

This is the chill zone, where you can pose and flex between exercises.

The Rhodes rowing club wasn't always this way. It apparently owes its success – and the dedication of its members – to one gentleman who single-handedly turned the rowing club from its old B-league ways into the pumped-up festival of madness and testosterone that one sees today. Whoever this guy was, he must have been some sort of demi-god: I've never seen any sportsmen exert themselves so hard or commit themselves so fully to a cause in the way that the Rhodes rowers do. I'm not quite sure whether to regard them with awe or concern.

Occasionally they have silly ideas. Like making rowboats out of concrete. Silly silly.

After about twenty minutes at the club, I decided to duck out and head to the local library to get some work done. The rowers are an interesting bunch, but there's only so much uber-manliness that a hardcore geek can take in one sitting.

Chinese drink things are weird-awesome

So, being entrenched as I am within the alternate crowd, I tend to stumble across some interesting things. For example, huge shipments of Eastern beverages. Eastern beverages which you can eat. Seriously, a bunch of cryptically-labelled cans consisting of part liquid and part glop arrived at the doors of Cow Moon Theory yesterday. I lent a hand in unloading some of the contents, and was introduced to the concept of making drinks that people could pretty much eat.

Trial by suspicious-looking psuedo-liquids.

Cow Moon's owner came across these concoctions while travelling about in Johannesburg's Chinatown and subsequently decided that it would be great to inflict them upon the humble residents of Grahamstown. We sat down with a few of these things after unpacking them and indulged in some experimental refreshment (a damn fine idea too, considering how hot it was).

It's actually amazing how incredibly different these drinks taste to our regular old Western stuff. I mean, it's not as if they took standard Squeez-O-Juice and threw in some generic chunks. They have a rather different flavour which I'm not used to with liquids in general, and the chunks are – for lack of a better word – meaningful. Even pretty, if you decide to opt for the awesome fruit juices.

This is either litchi or fish eggs. We're still trying to decide.

Suffice it to say, these drinks are really cool. You can get yourself some grass jelly or white pearl tea for R8 (made by a company called Chin Chin, which has rather blatantly stolen Coca Cola's text style). The fruit juice is a bit expensive (15 bucks a pop) but considering the brand-new taste experience, the ability to eat while you drink AND the fact that you can walk away with an awesome glass bottle, I think it's worth it. Also, it's fantastic to drink while watching anime.

I feel totally asian right now.

As a random little tidbit to end off this blog, I've recently been looking into travel options for a trip along the Garden Route to Cape Town. Stumbled across a service known as Baz Bus and I must admit that I'm rather intrigued. More on my plans a little later – I plan on sorting out the next leg of my trip within the week.