Saturday profound, Sunday sublime

Had such an unusual, but rarely valuable conversation on Saturday.  We went to a party.  Lovely people (sadly leaving for Manila); the woman Nanette plays in Ange's tennis team.  You will remember her as being the person who has the Tesla P85+, who was away when you were here.  Anyway, I digress.  Ange has a friend, Sherida, who played in the same tennis team, but is now, suddenly, dying from cancer.  She came to the party, and I had a conversation with her.  She told me that she was having chemo, because it might prolong her life by a further 9 months.  She has three girls.  I asked her what looked different suddenly from her perspective, what turned out to really matter.  She said enjoying every thing in every day, spending time with her kids, and friendship.  In the former instance, she gave going for a swim as an example - the feeling of water running down her body.  It made me think, a lot - how focused I can be on stuff that is happening tomorrow, the week after. So I wasn't like that today - and had a beauty - hit the rower reasonably early, sanded the coffee table, joined the others in getting butt kicked by Ev at Cludo, Park 'n Shop, lunch, oiled the table, read a bit, tea with Ange, hit the beach with the little brothers, nice game of cricket - supplemented by some Indian dudes who were also on the beach - swam out to the biscuits, generally stuffed around taking a few pics, headed home for dinner.  A perfect day - full of life.  It was great to speak to you on Saturday, you shine sunshine into me, into us.  Thanks.

Not possible to take just an ordinary picture - it's a posed life now...

... this one was funny, because Evan was giggling too much to get it together to follow the instructions...

So I had to wait until guards were dropped for a moment. 

Time to head home - breathtakingly humid - insane weather - I forget every year just what a monster it can be - Aiden found a piece of litter, good boy, took it out - made a pirate's parrot - evening falling fast - only one junk left in the bay, and the street lights coming on in the hills behind.

And here is the new office - though the table of course does not live here - just to show, sanded talcum smooth, and oiled; top left - working new aircon - makes the place inhabitable.  

Birthday girl

Today is Rose's birthday.  I went out for an early ride here this morning, and was thinking, too late, that I should have taken a camera and snapped her a sunrise birthday pic.  It was a beautiful morning - a moment of not-raining (these being very rare for the next month or so).  But at 4.45am it was 32 degrees with 94% humidity.  Birds starting to sing in the sauna.  Anyway - a camera is impossible (unless you seal it in some sort of waterproof bag) - if it's not falling from the sky, it is pouring from your pores.  So I couldn't do a photo.  Then later I was reading a cycling blog, and it had an article about the perils of animals - man they are pesky - dogs (not looking, or chasing), wild pigs, smaller stuff - insects too - big badass insects that thwack you very hard on the nose.  I rode through a cloud of flying ants, somehow one of them found its creepy crawly way into my cycling top - and then got very busy trying to get out (for this I don't blame it).  Anyway - back to the article (one more digression, apparently Australian magpies are known for attacking cyclists - too bizarre). It had this super-fantastic photo of a smiling dog - so that is going to be the birthday pic - and there is a bike in it too (nice bike as it happens - cyclocross ).  Looks like the kind of dog that chases and catches successfully.  Looks like it might have had the cyclist for breakfast.

Because I am mildly obsessive - here is the bike (sad, I know).  For what it is worth, I predict these will take a big bite out of the mountain-bike market.  This is what you want to be riding if you want a great commuter, a bit of trail riding etc - they actually work - note slim little knobblies - not some huge studded takkie that you have to schlepp around for fun.

The woody goes and two from Durban days

Sadly the time arrived for Ange's dad to sell his woodie - the much loved Morris Minor station wagon that was part of the delight of Knysna.  I think it was becoming a real mission to maintain and was pretty exciting to drive (from an education perspective - dodgy synchromesh, cable activated drum brakes - push very hard on the pedal, and slow gradually). None-the-less, a moment of sadness in many ways - something old-world and wonderful.  The other two pics I found because they were part of the same period, though in Durban - love them both.

Aiden showers - Clearwater Bay Second Beach

Occasionally I take a photo that I think is lovely.  This is one of those photos.  I love his hands, the water cascading off him, his farmer's tan - though in his case tennis, soccer, rugby, cricket - I love the bold stripe on his trunks, the symmetry of the showers, their shiny button mounts, and their faded numbers; there is something of a passing glory to them that beach places seem often to have.  I love the patch of organic texture in the leaves.  Its all so everyday yet perfect - loved being there.  How's your marathon challenge - been meaning to ask - hope making you smile.  

Oldish but nice

Was sorting out some pics for some friends, came across these two - really like the humour suggested.

The new room (s)

Now that it's actually done, it's something of a relief to see the back of 12 years of accumulated dust and junk (the latter too hard to throw away at some earlier point, the former very well built up as a result).  Like all dodgy reportage, these pictures offer more in the way of an idea than a truth; Aiden helped a little bit, wielding the yankee on the wooden benches that I built.  Ultimately the combination of dust being too much, and computer games too tempting, proved irresistible.  The implication of leaving a shared room is  the person moving out gets the first effort - they need to move in somewhere.  Evan however seemed content and excited - in part for Aiden, in part for himself.  Aiden's new bed took a while to happen - long story that - and not without frustration.  The old office room is so small that a loft bed is the only option - then the people who delivered it declared the space too small to build the bed in.  No level of rational explanation could shift this opinion, and it ended with a HK special passive aggressive stand-off, three days passing, and another team arriving to actually get it done (my contribution to the passive aggressive was to refuse to build the bed for them, even though I could clearly see how it could be done).  The end result proved the point - the guys that showed up to do it had it sorted in an hour.  Below is its new very happy resident peeling off the one remaining sticker, up in his loft.  You will note immaculate walls - Polyfilla action by Rich, painting by Ange.  Smiling by Aiden. (I happen to think the photo is very Bauhaus, with nice rounded Art Deco edges).  On the subject of things arty, apparently Springs (of all places) is a global Art Deco architecture hub - boasting the second largest number of small-scale Art Deco buildings outside Miami - also a weird place come to think of it).  If you're ever into that, it would be worth a tour (there are some very cool organised walking tours of places like Springs, Benoni and Hillbrow btw - places that one might not feel inclined to venture alone - but worth doing I think).

So the next stop is Ev's room.  So far the only thing that has happened is the old bunk bed being dismantled - in this regard Evan was enormously enthusiastic if not especially helpful.  His new desk, mattress, bookshelf and blinds have been ordered and arrive on Wednesday next week (which is a good thing - because Wednesdays are so immensely unpopular).

More rain, of course, thunders down.  The parking lot fills, I worry about Ange's new car flooding. Thus fat it has successfully emptied into the road, roars down the hill into the sea - it all seems mildly wasteful.

Monsoon

It's that time of the year. Forget cycling, cant see where you're going, streets are slimy mossy crash-snakes (on the subject, Nanette got bitten by a snake yesterday, unusual thing to have happen to a friend no matter where you live really), forget swimming - also cant see where you're going - sea is brown and full of heaven knows what.  There is around a billion percent humidity.  It's been raining pretty much continuously for a week.  I remember when we first came here - it rained every day for the first month. So it's hard to know what to do.  Take some pics.  Read. Watch a movie.  Study (which feels like an injustice, the older one gets).  This is what it looks like mid afternoon - look carefully and you'll get the mood.

Will phone you later to find out how the internship interview went - I hope really really well.  BTW, I think you should build these sorts of things - trike recumbents.  The one bottom one is electric - goes like the bomb apparently. I prefer the top.   Kids are shouting.  Liam's come over so all three of them can shout together.  Ange is trying to have a kip.  I'm bound to join in on the shouting soon :-)

My new office...

Been booted out of my office at home - had to take over no-man's land outside your room - though it should be called bloody everyman's land - zero privacy - public dumping site; I remind myself that this is temporary and everything is now mobile.  Here are the guys in the zone.

In case you were wondering...

Whether it was indeed going to happen again, here we are this morning - same place, same time, it was lovely.  Hope your week is turning out a beauty.

5.45am - daybreak at Clearwater Bay Beach

Aiden was keen to start morning swims in the ocean.  So, unsure of the level of commitment, I woke him up at 5.30am as requested, and he absolutely bounced out of bed.  We were on the beach at 5.45am - just a BEAUTIFUL morning - but a little nippy still, walking across the beach with a gentle onshore breeze .  Such a moment of deep happiness for me ten minutes later, out in the beautiful green-blue water, watching the bubbles trailing off my fingers with each stroke, and looking to my left and seeing him next to me, swimming smoothly.  JOY!

The weekend after that ...

I was the best man at my dear delightful perfect friend Jacques and Hisako's wedding.  I love this pic.  Hisako is Japanese, and therefore ultra-refined and graceful - but also with a wicked-lovely charm - which I think this photo caught a perfect moment of.  I am so happy to have been part of this.

Ev thought that being a double ninja was a perfect foil to the week's school ahead.

A surprise in Frankfurt

 This was a very lovely surprise for me in Frankfurt: before I started working for CFA, I went to their annual conference in Singapore.  On the first morning I was there, I went down to breakfast in the hotel, and started chatting to this lovely lady that I met.  We ended up having breakfast together.  Later on it turned out that she is the mum of a senior colleague of mine, Jenine, and had traveled to Singapore with her.  Two years later, Frankfurt, the same CFA Annual conference, and guess who was there, again traveling with Jenine.  It was a very cool little reunion - and a reminder of the great delight there is to be had chatting to people who you don't know - but might well end up knowing and being so much better for it.  Lovely life; and lightning quick photographic skills on the part of Jenine, who kindly sent me these two photos.

Today - the first of May

Today, Ange and I have been married for seventeen years; speaking for myself, it feels better now than ever before - I'm so grateful for that.

Today, the Death Star got finished - a celebratory photo of the last piece being put on top, by the person who built the first half.  Ev was about to put it on, but then decided to ask Aiden to do the honours - infinitely sweet and brotherly.

To round it all off, we went down to the Marina, and the little guys (ok a couple by the bigger guy too) flew some light-rocket devices that Ange brought back from Indo - they were soooo cool against the night sky.  Perfect day - it's such a perfect day.

Germany

A word of advice, before I get into this (which for me was very largely about my dear friend Ponti) - apply for a job and move to Germany as soon as you can.  I cannot state this strongly enough - sure there must be a million things wrong about the place - but I couldn't see them anywhere (an ominous winter?  So what?  Skiing!  You don't speak German?  No big deal (everyone, it seems speaks English, and German is clearly learnable (and has some meaningful overlaps with Afrikaans); what's more, you speak mathematics and engineering fluently - widely appreciated languages in Germany, it would seem.)  Immensely cool people; Tokyo clean and yet hugely chilled.  Seemingly classless (i.e. no bastards looking down their moneyed nose at others).  Somehow an absence of preoccupation with petty issues; apparently real issues only; real feeling people.

So off the geography and onto Ponti - the delightful Leon Engelbrecht - who I miss enormously, and had such fun being with for a day.  I think it was also the best weather that I have experienced anywhere, every.  Crisp, warm in the sun, cool in the shade.  I had limited time, kindly he fitted some client work in and a visit to his inlaws - and drove down to Frankfurt where my show was on.  Sadly I therefore did not see Sabine and Lea - who look from the many photos I saw, alarmingly exactly the same (Sabine) and completely different (Lea) - all grown up of course.  Ponti himself appears unaffected by the decade that has passed since we last hung out.  So what to do?  Hire bikes and attack Frankfurt:

 Just about every person I spoke to about being impressed with the place said something like, oh no, if you like this you should really go to Munich or Berlin, those are the places you should really see - which left me wondering just how much better it might be supposed to get.  I did not attempt photography whizzing along the city streets, but every street - right in the very centre of the city too - has a bike path, with it's own set of traffic signals, and absolutely tons of people are using bikes for transport.  The ones we got were called trekking bikes - a sturdy steel frame workhorse with a carrier - turned out to be super-useful, and built in electrics - in the form of front and back LED lights, which were powered via a small generator in the front hub.  So they were just on all the time, without discernible addition to the riding effort.  And Germans are big - so absolutely no problem to get a frame that fitted, with a saddle-pole that rose to the appropriate height.  If I had to choose, I would probably go for something with a bit steeper steering angle - this was not a bike to be swerved suddenly - more a cruiser - which in itself saved us, I am sure, as the ride got quietly more and more booze fueled.  I blame the Germans for this of course, in the miles and miles of path along the river, there were a good number of watering holes - and absolutely everyone looked like they were keen to celebrate the pending summer.

 Beer garden for lunch, of course - and fantastic as one would expect.

A great German invention - the mobile cocktail bar - which appears next to the river on days like these - perfect days.  We subscribed on several occasions.

The river strip was full of people catching rays.  The dude on the roller-blades is just chilling along with cocktail in hand.  The girl behind to the right, smiles warmly for the camera.

Lovely smiling Ponti, the danger of photography on the move, backwards, bringing the smile - it was at this stage already a risky business...

.... as you can see.  Cheers to another cocktail, the chairs belonging to the cocktail bar - help yourself.

Crossing the river, could probably have swum it - underwater - feeling like supermen.

When I say Germany is bike territory - it really is - all sorts of bikes.  Saw these two very cool recumbents - two guys on a tour together - and that is the way to travel on a bike, super comfy, hugely improved wind profile - feet out in front. 

Arriving back at the hotel - at this stage it was probably better not to have bikes - just the best day I have had in a very very long time; friendship, sunlight, bicycles, real civilization, and a big party thrown in.