why would anyone want to get back their virginity?
i spent way too long trying to lose it...

hangover

aint nothin but a g' thang
i'm feeling somewhat hungover today, which may be why i absolutely had to start the day off with a cheese puff pie from pick n pay. i love cheese puffs. the flaky puff pastry so light and fluffy and warm (mmmm. freshbaked) breaking open messily to let out the warm gooey cheesy-with- onion-and-MSG-flavours that burst in my throat. damn. i'm making myself hungry.

i ate the little cheese pillow of love once i arrived at work and people were giving me looks. perhaps they were jealous of the cheesy goodness that was in my posession (and mostly in my tummy). we had a buddy group discussion about this week's groups and we were all pretty much bitching about the academic writing stuff (mapping a paragraph), which was too rushed and waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over most of our heads. i kept pretty quiet though. the MSG high had started to kick in (why do people claim that this stuff is bad for you when it is so damn TASTY!) and i felt good. well except for the hangover-- a headache and dizziness as usual. i don't mind the headache and i'd take it over the dizziness anyday... but instead tha headache dissapears by 11 and the dizzy feeling remains. i feel like i need to lie down and wait for it to pass, but mostly that does't help. i never had a problem with this till the notorious "tequila/ schnapps" incident but i'll not go into that now.


the reason for the hangover was a dinner party at daniel's. daniel is pretty much a rennaisance man, what with the decorating and the photography and the cooking and... well, he has a list of talents, but i'm too hungover to go on about them. sufficit to say that he has them. carla and i shared a bottle of nederburg lyric. very nice. slighly tart but plenty of citrussy flavour and really easy to drink. apparently. of course the box wine that followed (from woolworths i thinks, a black box with pinstripes) may not have been a good idea. conversation was very witty but i don't remember much of it. something about sally's vibrator and also guy's neighbour and her noisy catflap construction. i think there may have been some link made between vibrators and catflaps but for the life of me i can no longer think what it could have been.

dinner was delicious, grilled linefish in a peppery coating with pineapple and lemon sauce with a tasty mash and greenbeans. very similar to the linefish at zero, but different enough not to be a naughty crib. then espresso and lovely crumbly apple crumble with cream. i felt very full but very happy.

carla wanted to go straight home but i convinced her that we should pop in at joburg, which was such a good idea! electroclash heaven. carla and i practised our "80's bored model" dancing. i got at least some of the alcohol out of my system.

anyway, to cut a long story short, they started playing disco, so we went home.

fiendster

because inside i'm just a big ole misanthrope

watashi wa"BP"no sensei desu

watashi no"BP"no sensei desu
teaching for the second year at the med school. what a strange thing. seeing my students from last year and hearing that they've already started on dissections("it's a hand! you look down and it's a hand! but it's really exciting!we've had a few mental breakdowns though...")!

personally i'd prefer not to have to deal with that kind of stuff (i already walked into the dissection rooms while looking for the admin offices- why the two were right next to each other i'll never figure out, and by the way the dead had this weird presence... i'll stick to the living thank you!) and apparently there is a movement towards working with live patients and computers and models rather than cadavers. students claim that working with cadavers is antequated and mostly unnneccesary. i would like to add that it doesn't smell nice either. i suppose though that there's nothing like learning muscular structure off a preserved dead body to burn that knowledge into your brain forever.

i worked at a mental hospital for a year and got all sorts of bodily fluid on me and many people would equate the two.

interview blues

interview blues
today was the day. The culmination of the long and arduous application process (my entire life and times in triplicate no less)! My interview was scheduled for 1h20 in the afternoon, at the Japanese consulate (21st floor standard bank centre, Heerengracht for those who wish to know). So I left training early (thanks Lorna) which was okay because it was the academic literacy part of the course which
a) I've done before ... And
b) is hella boring

in any case, I caught the taxi through to town and for once the driver didn't feel the need for conversation and the gaatjie did not scream like a banshee (or whistle annoyingly in an attention grabbing manner) the entire journey. So it was a relatively peaceful journey. I felt that I had time to reflect and relax myself so that the OVERWHELMING TERROR I was feeling could be repressed. Down. Way down.

it turned out that I was early. waaaaaaaay early. You see, Angela at the embassy (which is in Pretoria. We are in cape town. Why is she in charge?) got the time wrong. I only had to be there at 1h40. I was there at 1h05. So I had plenty of time to peruse JET material, watch a video about the JET programme and chat to my fellow interviewee. Sorry. I don't remember your name. But you were special to me. You helped me feel better. At least I can say "Amanda to moshimasu, hajimemashite". At least I have that.

anyway... My interviewers were Ken, Alex and professor something. Ken and Alex liked me, I could see, but the professor, he was a bit more sceptical I think. Cynical perhaps? Or maybe he doesn't trust short people with brown hair and green eyes. Whatever. They asked a lot of questions about the language... And the culture thing. And whether I really enjoyed a challenge. Like people who want to stay home and be hermits and live ordinary mundane lives would engage in a course of action where they are thrust into a culture and language completely dissimilar to their own. Well, that's my conception anyway. The professor wanted to know how I'd represent south Africa. I mean what kind of questions are these, is anyone going to answer "I'd say it was crap"? I mean come on!

I think the interview went well though. But I'll only find out in march, which is too long to wait, but I'll manage. Repression. yum.