Today is the first

Does anyone still read this blog?

I've decided to start posting again. What better day than today?

It's 2 days after Valentines Day and it's a beautifully hot day. It's been a very long time since my last post. I've done and seen so much. I went on a cruise, started my own business. it's even started picking up now.

2012 is going to be an amazing and awesome year. There's something about it. I know the world is supposed to end at some point but at least it will end on a high note.

So this is my first post of 2012 and hopefully it will not be my last. If you didn't know or have never read this blog I have ALOT to say

sometimes ... something just work

I'm really in love with my husband at the moment.

There you have it.

Marriage is something amazing for those who get it right and Tim and got it right. I love that he's so funny and charming and so intelligent. My husband is without a doubt one of the smartest people I know.

That being said he's also has the worst sense of toilet humour ever. As wonderful and smart as my husband is, somehow that little part of your brain that supposed to warn you if something you say is going to possibly be VERY INAPPROPIATE never quite activated with Tim which results in me wanting to stick my head in a hole sometimes. But all that aside I'm more in love with him today then we married some 4 and half years ago.

His parents are moving house at the moment and this of course means bringing out the stuff that has been stored away for years. Last night I stumbled across a diary that Tim kept from Dec 1994 to Jan 1995. I'm told the purpose of this diary was to actually prove to his English teacher that he did nothing the entire holiday in response to the yearly "Write an essay on what you did during your holiday."

My hero would be prepared with notebook in hand ready to slay the English teacher giant with meticulous notes about how he spent most days either playing on the computer himself / watching Wayne play on the computer / watching TV (All American Girl seemed to be one of his favourites) and/or swimming (most of his swimming activities could not be recorded down to the second as he had removed his watch).

From there it was a trip down memory lane as I annoyed him by pulling out his year books and looking through them laughing at him with his way to huge glasses covering half his face.

I’m very proud of my husband. I think despite all the crazy stupid things he says sometimes, he really has a great heart and I’m more thankful than anyone will know that I married someone that I can without a doubt say is smarter than me.

Although sometimes, I’m much smarter cos I know when to shut up.


In other news.

YEAH, my HP buddy is back.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH MOTHERLAND

My name is Jo-Anne Holroyd (formerly Jeevarathnam) and I’m South African. I’m also Indian. But I’m South African first and I’m in tears at all the South African Indians who seem to think they owe their undying allegience to India.

Let’s think about this logically.
In 1860, the batch of INDENTURED labourers from India arrived. Indians who were too poor or didn’t have enough in India to make it. In a word - THE SLUMDOG’s. They left the shacks of Mumbai and Calcutta and made the long journey on the Truro to land in South Africa and work on the sugar cane fields. Granted NOT all Indians that came to South Africa came as indentured labourers in the same way that not all Australians are descended from British criminals. Some like Mahatma Ghandi came on contract to South Africa. The biggest difference between Ghandi and the indentured Indians was the Ghandi could actually afford to go back to India and he did in 1915. The indentured workers could not.

So I really don’t understand this undying fascination and stalwart attempt to stay loyal to the MOTHERLAND.

THE MOTHERLAND KICKED YOU OUT

Here in South Africa though, thanks to one redeeming quality, the Indians were no longer at the bottom of the pile. Thanks to our straight hair, we were on top on the bottom of the pile. When I was younger I was told that the Indians were brought to South Africa because the original darker skinned occupants were too lazy to work in the sugar cane fields. Well ... as I grew up and went on to become a History major, I realised that they weren’t too lazy to work in the sugar cane fields. The sods were busy DYING in the mines.

So in fact the Indians who came from India actually got it pretty good. A good clean start and then once we became a democracy we even got a bit more with that whole BEE deal. So the next time you decide to parade at Kingsmeand Cricket stadium in your Sahara shirt at a match that does not even feature India, remember that you should have been a slumdog.

Not the millionaire kind.

life lesson # ... I lost count

If you are so fortunate, take the worst sex you’ve ever had. Multiply it by 1000, it’s still better than spinning.

There are days in your life that you will always remember. They will stick there forever at the edges of your conscious. Some of them are good and some of them are bad and some of them are when you looked in the mirror and saw yourself achieving the impossible. Well … for you anyway.

Today I made a rash decision. I seem to be making a few of those lately. It’s great fun. Go to weigh-less, so I did. Book a cruise, so I did. Go for a spinning class, SO I DID.

Not the brightest of ideas since I had never been for a spinning class. In fact to be certain I’d never even been on a bike longer than 20 minutes. But I plunged on with my obviously Gryffindor courage and booked into a class. I got to the gym and then discovered only one gym towel and without much effort convinced he-who-will get-sucker-punched-in-the-morning-cos-he-laughed-at-me aka Tim that he could do without a gym session. With towel in hand and water bottle in the other, I marched bravely to the spinning class.

I even went in.

And stayed there.

I found my bike. No 5. If only I could have smelt like that afterwards.

A kindly dude named Anton helped my out with the settings on the bike and everything else that I needed to be prepared. I was strapped in and ready to go. The Gryffindor courage kicked in a little bit more and I even began a bit of cycling before the class began. No one ever said bravery is equivalent to wisdom..

Wendy, the instructor (who will hence forth be known as the Witch of the Spinning Class), came to check if I was all strapped in nicely, made some minor adjustments and then went back to her seat so that the torture could commence.

We started of slow. I’ve heard this is so that you can be lulled into a false sense of security and think you are better than you actually are.

It works.

I was happily peddling away matching the speeds until she decided to “take it up a notch”. That was when the uphill began. After what felt like forever peddling as hard as I can do the ups and down, I looked up into the bright shining white face of the Virgin Active Clock only to discover that a whole 10 minutes had passed. At that point I was ready to pass out. But the Gryffindor courage kept going and I kept cycling. The minutes ticked by and the Witch of the Spinning Class kept saying weird things like go faster. I was already going as fast as I could.

But eventually the class came to an end and I am pleased to report that I survived the entire class and did the full 45 minutes of spinning. I didn’t think I could. I had no Thomas the tank engine delusions. But I did.

And that’s just AWESOME

it's that time again

birthdays

Such lovely things they are. I'm approaching mine with the same gusto and happiness that I always have but I can't help but think about all those nasty questions that keep popping up.

Everyone thinks that hearing it from them will some how make more sense or suddenly make me change me mind in the 5 seconds that they speak to me.

not gonna happen.

moving on.

I've enclosed some the link to a radio show where ANC Youth League spokesperson attempts to clarify what they mean by "sleeping around" in reference to Helen Zille.

http://www.zoopy.com/video/w55/sleeping-around-is-sleeping-around


Please let me know what it means if YOU figure it out.

SEXPO ..... NO No nO oh Oh OH UHHHH

Much has been made in the media regards the Cape Town Sexpo. I get it I really do. But I don't really agree with the reason that Sexpo is being protested. Sexpo does not degrade women. The women cavorting up on that stage want to be up there. Arianna Star, the bore that she is, really does think that dropping milk all over herself and then licking it off the plastic sheet underneath her is sexy as hell.

 

It wasn't really.

 

I don't object to Sexpo. In fact I think everyone should make the trip at least once in their life time. In order just to see how boring it actually is. The thing about Sexpo is not that it degrades women, it's that it trivialises sex. All the best books on sex tell you that it's something intimate to be shared between two people in love with each other. How intimate is it to be wondering around looking at chocolate coated penises and porn DVD's titled "BLACK POLES IN WHITE HOLES"?

 

While I have no objection to the things YOU do behind your closed doors, I don't really want to know about it. And that's the essence of what Sexpo is; the chance for you to show off about what goes on behind closed doors.

 

The real Sexpo should just be you, your partner and a closed door.... and maybe some edible body paint.

 

Ask Arianna for her plastic sheet.

a round up

Oh what a week it has been.

 

The last week has been crazy. I got a new phone, some great new furniture for my bedroom (finally) saw Oasis live, and got pulled over by the police. But let’s start at the beginning.

 

Last week Thursday I breathed sighs of relief and literally felt the world moved off my shoulders as I read that Oasis plane had landed in JHB.  Friday was a world wind of activity as I went to JHB stood for a few hours and then screamed myself sore at the sight of Noel and Liam Gallagher. The guy in front of me screamed that he had been waiting for this for 10 years. Some of us have been fans for 15 years. Retrospectively though I feel proudly South African. Dirty Skirts, Zebra  and Giraffe and Cassette did an awesome job.

 

But then it was back to reality and back to Durban on Saturday.

 

Through this time however I’d been following the very interesting story of Kaylee Wallace. Kaylee is two months old and lives in Canada. She was born with a brain disorder that ‘apparently’ meant she would not be able to breathe on her own when she fell asleep. Kaylee’s parent’s found out about one month old Lillian O’Conner who was born with a heat disorder and would not be able to survive without a heart transplant. So the decision to take Kaylee off life support was made so that when she died her heart could then be given to Lillian.

 

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. 

 

Kaylee was in the operating theatre, the life support was switched off, and the doctors were ready to pronounce her legally dead. The heart needs to be inactive for a five minutes before you can be legally declared dead. The life support was switched off and Kaylee is still alive today. Almost a week later.  So is Lillian. The doctors are not sure how long Kaylee will live. But her parents have made the decision not to put her back on life support and let her make her own journey.

 

And then back to Sunny SA for more news. Yesterday my car broke down on Mount Edgecombe Drive. Thanks to First for Women it was then taken to Durban Chevrolet for repairs and for them to figure out what was wrong.  We borrowed Tim’s mother’s car to get to work and back. It’s a  really old car and this morning we were pulled over by the police on North Coast Road. The Officer was very  strict and upset that we did not have side mirrors on both sides the car. Upon his discovery that the car was actually older then we were, he was amused beyond belief and we were allowed back on our way into the dense sea of taxi’s and trucks that is North Coast Road.

 

It’s been a week of constant activity and it feels like it might just be the beginning.  The elections are almost upon us and not too soon. I am so very tired of listening to endless political advertising.

 

And lastly. Happy Birthday