(These are the best days of our lives).

It has been a wicked, wicked couple of months. My football knowledge has increased exponetially, and I no longer lie to myself when I check the Premier League scores so that I “know what to expect when I get into work”. Apparently I genuinely care which teams win and lose. Before you ask, I haven’t chosen a team yet, either. So there.

A couple weeks ago (9 May, to be exact) we all headed out to Klein Libertas in Stellenbosch for The Ataris concert which was the most incredible fun I’ve had in a while.

Sir Samuel* properly introduced me to The Ataris when we first starting going out, and “So Long Astoria” was one of my anthems for 2007 and the time around my father’s death. The weeks leading up to the show I had kept saying that I really, really hoped they played it – And despite me having one of the worst colds I’ve had in a while (I’ve now been sick three times in two months, what’s up with that?!), when they did play it, I went completely insane.

Sir Samuel and I acted like total groupies too… we managed to find Kris and nab an autograph which we plan to have laminated. Although the crowd was quite a lot smaller than I initially expected (really bad promotion of the concert, I think) the band really came all out and delivered an incredible performance. I am now officially an Ataris Groupie. I’ve had their songs pretty much on repeat in my car since then!

There were also some epic South African bands – it was great to see Crash Car Burn (formerly Tweak) pop out of the woodwork again, and Foto Na Dans were also fantastic fun.

In other news, I am now firmly behind a camera again! I’ve been doing a series for iafrica.com called ‘Shaping Up’. Our Head of Sport, Rob Peters, is taking part in a four-month long harcore training programme through Transfit in a bid to get fit and lose weight and so on. I get to follow him around with a camera and essentially tell his story – which is so much fun!

As soon as I can I will upload the videos here – in the mean time, you can check out the stories here: ‘Rude Awakenings’ (Video 1) and ‘Time to Assess’ (Video 2).

It’s really awesome to be doing something slightly more creative again… and I’m even secretly enjoying the moments of banging my head on the desk when the Media Encoder goes on the fritz at midnight on a Sunday night.

Bear in mind that the second video was edited in less than 9 hours spanning over 1.5 hours of footage. It’s not my best work – I don’t think I’ll be getting any awards for it. But it’s a step in the right direction. I’m extremely passionate about getting multimedia off the ground at iafrica.com and I have a whole bunch of ideas in the pipeline – so watch this space! (Or, better yet, keep visiting www.iafrica.com. You know you want to.)

* Not his real name. Previously known as “The Hamster”. Which is also not his real name. Clearly.

(The only thing that matters is just following your heart/And eventually you’ll finally get it right)

I was booted deftly into adulthood sometime in the last two weeks. And my god, it came with a hefty price tag!

I inherited a car from my grandmother when she passed away in September 2007 – her precious Dinky. He’s a sexy, green little Opel Corsa Lite. He’s also, apparently, really expensive to maintain!

It’s taken my grandmother’s lawyers literally a year and a half to send me the papers so I could reregister the car in my name. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of this experience, it involves ensuring your car is in roadworthy condition.

So off I went to take my Dinky in for his service. I expected an oil change and a quick exhaust repair. Not so. I had my exhaust repaired in Harrismith in early 2008 – and it turned out they botched the job so much so that I had to have the whole exhaust repaired. R2000 out the window.

Not to be outdone, my shocks sought their fifteen minutes of fame and gave out – to add to my already large bill. Oh, plus your standard service charges. R4650 down – thankfully I was approved for R4500 credit.

Oh well, I thought, that’s about it. So off I went to Wynberg for what I thought would be one times roadworthiness test and a stack of papers to fill out.

Don’t laugh, I genuinely believed that.

So bright and early on my Monday off (I get off Sundays and Mondays – it’s a sports thing) I went out to Wynberg. And stood in a queue, to be told my lawyers needed to fax through a letter stating that my grandmother had, in fact, left the car to me. Fair enough. My mom took over that duty, and in five minutes (my mother is a very persuasive woman when she’s angry) a terse letter was faxed throught.

Back in the queue. To be told I was supposed to go through roadworthiness first. But please pay us the R355 now, and we’ll keep your paperwork right here. Okay.

I trundled off next door, to be told I had to be R250 upfront to do my test. I was quite happy to do so – believing my beautiful car would sail through. Alas, I was wrong.

Apparently a little crack in my windscreen is enough for them to fail me. Thanks for playing, you can’t register your car until you get that fixed. Sucks to be you. Oh, and your front headlamp is loose.

So I had a level 5 meltdown. Don’t judge me – remember I’m already over R5000 down. And found a windscreen repair place to be told, nope, sorry you have to replace your whole windscreen.

Fortunately the gentleman at the counter saw that I was almost out of my mind, and worked as quickly as he could. Then opened up his palm for my money.

By this time it’s 15:15, and the licensing department closes at 15:30. So I race back to the roadworthy testing center, for them to fart around until 15:45, tell me that okay fine they’d pass me but I still HAVE to have the front headlamp fixed, and send me on my way with an official certificate.

Flash forward to Tuesday morning. Like a bat out of hell I tear out to the licensing place, having only an hour to spare before work. To stand in a queue. Well, three queues, seeing as Capetonians are not very bright before their morning skinny latte from Vida. The lady in the front organised us into a queue (nothing funnier than an angry traffic official) and I was wedged between Biker Bob who kept sneaking surreptious glances at my cleavage, and some guy who smelt like the ass-end of a brewery.

Friendly Guy at Counter remembered me, and printed out my card and handed it to me – then sent me around the corner for new numberplates.

As far back as I remember, Dinky was NKR 5026. No longer. Now he is a certified Cape Town car.  So they expected me to fork out over R100 – but sorry, we don’t have a card machine. Go up the road, you’ll find the atm.

To fully appreciate this, I shall tell you what I was wearing. I bought myself a long-sleeved, knee-length black dress. It’s very feminine, very floaty, and has a silk ribbon that you tie around at the back. I was wearing pretty black high-heeled shoes, and had spent ages that morning making sure my hair was just perfect.

I parked as close to the ATM as I could – which was about 250m away. Noticing that I was now perilously near to 9am, I sprinted down the road, my high-heeled shoes clacking, my hair tangling in the wind, my silk ribbon untying itself and trailing behind me.

I made it to work at 9.15 am.

Anyway, now that I have explained my story, I come to my rant. The fact of the matter is that I spent a HELL of a lot of money to get my car legally registered. It’s no wonder there are so many unroadworthy cars on the road – and so many accidents because of it! No wonder taxi drivers wait until their vehicles are no longer running before seeking repairs – and ignore trivial things such as fixing broken windows or reattaching steering wheels.

It is extremely expensive to reregister your car – even if you don’t need to repair chunks of it. And it’s something you have to do. No questions asked.

So it’s going to be a long month. Donations are very much welcome, in the form of food and petrol, and maybe even pre-paid electricity.

Yes yes, everybody point and stare at the bad blogger. Yes I’m back. Is it permanent? I’d like it to be. However, the only access to the Internet I have is at work.

Yes – work. I managed to get myself one time bona fide, relatively well-paying job. A-booyah.

I’m currently working at Primedia Online, but the plot thickens… Not for Primedia or iafrica.com or whatever, but for FoxSoccer. As in the American network’s soccer website. How cool (and random) is that?

Now I’ve always had very basic football knowledge. Like, I can follow the rules and know my Beckhams from my Steven Gerrard, and of course I know the bigger teams, but that was pretty much where it stopped. Until very, very recently.

Working with purely soccer-related stories is not as dull as one might think – if you approach it in a different way. Soccer fans are an entirely separate culture, complete with jargon, nicknames and a whole secret code they’ve developed to make sure nobody else can understand what they’re saying. It’s diabolical. And I had no idea who any of the managers where, except for Sir Alex Ferguson and Luiz Filipe Scolari. So I did what a recently-employed graduate would do: I made crib notes! A list of team names, their nicknames, their stadiums (and the stadiums’ nicknames) as well as the managers and captains. Hah. Then colour-coded it. Then took out the colour-coding because I thought that was going too far.

It’s fascinating. On the site we have soccer fans who appear to wake up randomly in the middle of the night to comment on the latest stories. It’s fantastic to work on a site where you get feedback, where you don’t put stuff out there and hear crickets chirping.

So far, it’s been a lot of sub-editing, headline writing, picture-editing and basic site management – what goes where etc. But soon I get to move around iafrica.com and do other cool things, apparently. So yay for that!

And it’s bizarre to work on an American site. When we did photographs for online, we got them as low-res and as small as we could while still being able to see what was in the photo. Americans want it bigger! Better! Brighter! Bolder! So all high-res (maximum, actually) images. They have videos scattered all over the site, good quality videos. My god, I’m glad I don’t have to pay for the bandwidth. That’s all I’m saying!

It’s been wicked, moving to Cape Town. New clothes, new hair, new life, as far as I’m concerned. And we’ll see how it goes from here.

And now, I’m off. Did you hear that Pompey signed a new Algerian defender? Probably not, I wouldn’t have heard it either.

Well, I’m back from a far-too-long hiatus. If you’ve been missing my blogging and want to check out what I’ve done in between, check out www.cyberculting.wordpress.com. It’s my work blog

So life got a little serious lately (as it does), but now I’m living it up in the Mother City (Cape Town, dudes). I say “living it up” when I mean “I’ll be here for a week while I work at 24.com and dieburger.com – aren’t I just a jetsetter!

Did my first CD review in years today, was great fun and I was impressed. I was scared I’d end up with crap to review (and there are only so many ways you can say “they’re awful” in a 200-word review).

It’s awful being away from my hamster though – not a real hamster, but then again I’m not giving away any secrets, man. Especially seeing as it’s stuck out of cellphone range

I’m also no longer the Deputy Editor at Activate… as of last week I am absolved of any pressure from that side. However, I shall soon be on the job hunt again as I find myself a job in the Real World(tm). Not all fun and games, I tell you what.

Anyway, I am off to spread journalistic joy across Cape Town. Hopefully (and I say this often) I shall blog sooner!

It’s Festival time, folks. And you all know what that means. Grahamstown becomes a gathering point for about 30 000 crazy festinos – either first timers, or hardened fans who’ve been coming here since the first days of Fest.

And my dear little town – with easy to find parking, relatively empty streets, and a Pick ‘n Pay that’s pretty much fully stocked most of the time – all of that is gone. Replaced with hundreds and hundreds of people all looking to move as slowly as possible.

I kid you not.

This year I’m working with Die Burger Online (a Media24 production), and it looks like it’s going to be all kinds of crazy. I’ve never been into this hardcore Arts and Entertainment reporting, to be honest. I mean, it’s fun and all – and I love drama and the arts, but trying to produce a 3-minute online video piece….? Er, okay…

But I’m trying, and I’m learning. And I forgot the most important thing about journalism: nothing, and I mean nothing, ever goes according to plan.

This morning I wandered around Grahamstown on a walking tour – Saints, Sinners and Students, it was entitled. And I had this great idea planned in my head – and after being on the tour for ten minutes, I got that sinking feeling in my stomach which meant that my great idea was rapidly dissolving. Really, really rapidly.

So onto plan B. And to begin planning Plan C. Always fun.

So here’s to Festival. Here’s to litres of coke, red bull. Here’s to kilograms of chocolate, to piles of sweets. To having no quota left, no airtime left, no time left.

And here’s thanks to the people I know are going to be frustrated by my possibly 12 – 16 hour long days.

Watch this space. I’ll type if I have my sanity.

Oh, and did I mention I haven’t spoken any Afrikaans since high school? Hahahaha.

People bother me. And I mean that. I don’t like big crowds, I’m not a fan of communal living, and I hate having people I don’t know in my personal space. So I suppose this is why I might be seen as a bit of a bitch sometimes.

In our media studies lecture on Thursday we were shown the documentary War Zone. In the documentary, director Maggie Hadleigh-West takes to the streets with a camera and a microphone,confronting men who openly stare at, hit on or harrass women on the street.

We had a long discussion about it in class – a class made up largely of women around 21 years old. All of us have had at least one experience of being harassed on the street by a man who feels that he is within his rights to hit on you because he is a man and you are a woman.

This has been something that has always irked me. In high school my friends welcomed the attention, and revelled in the stares from men. Instead I got furious – especially when they abandoned innocent flirtation and became aggressive or intimidating.

In my class, every girl could recall an instance where she had been harrassed by a guy, either on the street or in a bar or club. Why is it that some men cannot see the line between flirtation and harrassment? Some men feel that they have a right, as a man, to pursue a woman, regardless of her level of discomfort. Where does this come from? From the days where women were expected to be submissive?

In South Africa we have a massive problem with rape and sexual assault. It is estimated that only one in every nine rapes are reported to the police. In 2006 alone, over 50 000 rapes were reported. You do the maths. So it’s no wonder that everytime a guy becomes a little forceful in trying to hit on me, I become afraid. No longer angry. Afraid. How do I know that this guy is going to realise when he’s going too far?

I hate that because I am a woman in South Africa, I can’t walk alone at night without feeling that I might be attacked. I hate that I have to worry about what I’m wearing, where I go, who I hang out with, and whether or not what I say might attract the wrong type of guy.

So this is why I generally give off a “don’t-come-near-me” vibe. It’s safer that way. If I don’t want you near me, I won’t have you near me. And it saves me a whole lot of trouble.

Scifest, Scifest, Scifest. Or Scifest Africa, as it is now called. You want a crash course in new media, go to Scifest.

Tracey, one of the girls in my class, and I are preparing an audio slideshow on patients with TB, writing an article on genetic modification, writing an article on using science and technology on solving waste problems in Grahamstown, and I’m probably doing an audiocast on whether or not science can prove or disprove the existence of god.

So this morning was spent at one of the TB clinics, taking photographs and interviewing people. We then sprinted off to a lecture being held by Professor Marc Zimmer to interview him and take photographs. Which is very intimidating, but there you go.

I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with interviewing people – I find that the whole process is very invasive, and I don’t really enjoy stepping deeply into people’s private spaces. But taking photographs is somehow so much worse.

Yes you can hide behind the camera, but here it’s capturing – in immediate form – a moment of somebody’s life. It’s a very strange feeling, but I think I could get used to it.

So this week is topped by my 21st – and I can see indecent amounts of Red Bull being consumed by the end of this week.

Wish me luck – I’m going to need it. And yes, this is a short post. But yes, it’s going to be a very long week.

Yes, I’ve been a bad blogger. But it’s not my fault, I swear. I’ve been working on another blog for new media, discussing cyberculture. It’s been pretty interesting so far, more interesting than I thought it would be, but trying to come up with ideas proves to be problematic! Check it out at cyberculting.wordpress.com – it’s still in the opening stages, so don’t worry if the form changes a bit!

Anyway, I was sitting in a photojournalism class last week, and learned something quite interesting about myself. We were looking at THAT Kevin Carter photograph and obviously our lecturer asked us the vital question: would you have stopped to take that photograph? And everybody ummed and ahhed about the ethics of it in the first place – and what was the context, and what happened to the child? But would I have stopped? Yes, I would have. Without a doubt, I would have.

But then the question arises. Once you’ve taken the photograph, do you scare the bird away? Swoop the child into your arms and save the day? Call me cold-blooded and completely heartless, but that’s not our job as journalists. A journalist is there to report and report only – not to be a humanitarian, not to save the world one starving child at a time. Ideally, I would like to combine both, yes. But what about the 300 other people at the feeding station? Do I try help them, too? The line needs to be drawn, clearly. And I believe it’s up to the individual to make that choice.

Obviously, however, I am contemplating this from the safety of my keyboard. Who’s to say that my maternal instincts (and apparently, because I’m a woman, I have to have those) won’t kick in, and suddenly I’ll find myself clutching the hands of four children and becoming the poorman’s Angelina Jolie.

And once I find that the child has starved to death, would I be able to defend my actions by saying: Well, it wasn’t my job? Who knows. Maybe I’ll slowly go mad with guilt and anger at the world, for something I could not have realistically prevented. But it’s not my job. It should be the job of those with the power to help. I read somewhere that Ethiopia has requested around $68 million dollars for aid after the recent droughts. Now if you think about it, that’s not too much to ask for. Most blockbuster movies rake in that amount without blinking. America spends billions on its defense budget (defending who, from what, I ask?)

So spread the love around, that’s all I’m asking.

Well here I am, sitting at the Port Elizabeth airport. Again. At least this time I’m not rushing off to a funeral. The last time I flew out of here was on November 12, 2007. The day my father passed away.

Strange that I start thinking about this again. It’s probably got to be because of the song I’m listening to.

For years my dad sang a particular song – just the opening two lines, because he could never remember the rest of it. Or what it was called. He would wander up and down the passage in his faded blue rugby shorts, singing at the top of his voice. Just the first two lines

A few months after my dad fell into the coma (he remained in the coma for fourteen and a half months before his body finally gave up) I came back to my digs to hear Mike, my best friend and digsmate, playing this song that my dad always used to sing. And now, Dad, I know the next line. And what it’s called.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog
He was a good friend of mine
I never understood a single word he said
But I helped him drink his wine
And he always had some mighty fine wine
                                          ~ Joy to the World by Three Dog Night

It was only after my father fell into a vegitative state that I realised there was so much I still wanted to ask him. One of the most serious errors we make as children is to assume that our parents will be around forever, and in doing so we take them for granted. And now that he’s gone, I’ll never get him back.

I have no father for my 21st birthday, no father to walk me down the aisle or advise me on parenting. No father to sit at my graduation and beam with pride, no father to cry with me when I break up with my boyfriend.

Well, here’s to my last holiday in this town, as well as the first time I shall meet my mother’s new boyfriend. The woman moves on quickly.

I’m a high-life flyer and a rainbow rider, a straight-shooting son-of-a-gun

You just know it’s going to be one of those days, when mid-morning you find out that your reporter overslept and missed the biggest story of the year.

I’m not going into details – story pending, of course – but this reporter (allegedly) overslept and definitely missed the one-time-only interview given by a Certain Woman on a Certain Topic. Let’s just say, when this story breaks, it’s going to be big. And we missed it.

So what to do now? Do my editor and I go grovel in front of the Woman’s desk? Apologise for the obscene unprofessionalism, tell her the guy is on crack and we’ll deal with it? Probably. All to keep good relations of course, and with the hope she’ll keep sending good stories our way.

This brings me to my point of the post: how do you deal with unprofessionalism in student media?  This is my fourth year at Activate, having signed up for the Features and sub-editing teams in my first year, when I was still all bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Convinced I was going to change the world with That One Story.

Since my first-year, I have been nothing but professional. I attended meetings regularly, organised and planned interviews ahead of time, proof-read stories a thousand times, handed them in in time, and accepted criticism where criticism was due. I quickly moved up the ranks – becoming Features editor in my second year, and deputy editor in my third year.

The people we have at the moment lack the somewhat freakish drive I had in my youth. Stories are late, incomplete, biased, and frankly – awful. People seemed to have stopped caring. And as a student media leader, what can I do? Whack them over the heads (gently) with a rolled up newspaper? See, you can’t hit them too hard because that would be Assault and the Dean of Students would have you out in a minute. You can give them a warning, hold a disciplinary hearing – but Activate works on volunteers alone, and so one mention of any disciplinary action and they scarper, never to be seen or heard from again.

So what do you do? Dangle the threat of The Real World over their heads? Try and convince them that when they actually enter the Real World they can’t hand in stories a week late, without proper research and with minimal comments? Well, you can try, but they all seem to look at you and go: “So?”

It comes down to this. Although Rhodes tries to be an institute “Where leaders learn”, nobody seems to be willing to learn. The majority of people seem to cruise through on a case of beer a weekend and a quick Google search forming the basis of their 1000 word feature. And yes, I generalise. I know this.

And it’s left to four or five of us each paste-up weekend (two subbies, my editor and myself) to clean up the content and correct things that simply pressing F7 in Microsoft Word would fix.

Where Leaders Learn. Unfortunately it’s only the leaders who are learning. The rest are content to simply cruise.