phililen3

Last one for the year

it is going to be a long one...

Have you ever re

ad a book over and over again only to discover that the more that you read it, the more flaws you discover, the more things you realise are problematic with the book and you simply cannot forgive or overlook? I am thinking of quitting an entire series because of that. The worst thing about it is that it is from a genre that I love to bits but unfortunately lacks good authors even though so many people write for that genre… I am talking vampire genre btw. Now what? I have tried three different series in that genre and they were all problematic for me. The rest of the books I have come across I could tell from the title alone that I was going to hate them and I was just not going to put myself through that torture. The only author who has made me happy every time I picked up a book of theirs is Katie Fford. She writes romance which I avoid like auto tune, but she writes so well. Her stories are not Mills and Boon fantasy whipped cream, ride into the sunset on a unicorn type. Instead, they are realistic with characters that could be anybody. Her stories are simple and the stuff to properly accompany comfort food in front of a fire on a rainy day. Sometimes, that is all you need.

I’ve been watching Adele’s iTunes festival performance from a while back. I can’t say how many times I have seen it now. I love how she makes going to or watching her concerts worth your while. She is better live than she is on CD for the most part. I like when it is like that. That is what I want from my artists. I don’t want to ever watch a concert and go, “Eh? What on EARTH was THAT!? Money back please.” I love the artist that can have a stage devoid of any flash bang pop, you know, all the fancy lighting and grand costumes, dancing and pussy popping and still be able to give an AMAZING performance. Not many can do that these days, I think. No vocal talent, no music that can simply be an instrumental and still be amazing and no lyrics that leave something amazing with you. An example of a song that is perfect is Adele’s live cover of Love Song by the Cure. It has a bossa sound to it and is simply beautiful.

Talking about bossa, I have been listening to it quite a bit these days (I wonder why I am so open to many different genres of music). Downloaded an album of a female Korean artist at random and now I want to own it, own the concert DVD, go to a live and worship her. Her name is Kim Yun Ah and that entire album, 315360, is beautiful to me. One of the best albums that I have heard in a long time and probably one of the best I have heard this entire year. It reminds me of how much instrumentals still matter and how a simple song can be pure perfection. I wish I could channel all my love for her to her. I think that it is so brave to do music of a genre that is not really appreciated in her country. Pop is what sells there. Anything else…. Well, good luck. And album sales, even for the big pop artists are not that high. Companies celebrate when their artists can sell 100 000. Yeah. It used to be better back in the day… Beginning of next year, she will be the first I buy with my first pay check. She will be a CD I will proudly own. Bless the fact that Korean CDs are so affordable unlike Japanese ones. Now those are murder…

I am planning on two jobs on campus next semester to support my habit. This holiday was a flop job wise. I found one job: at a carwash. It worked through commission. I stood there all day asking people if they wanted to wash their cars from 7:30 in the morning till 4:30 in the afternoon with a 30 min break. And I only got to wash two cars. Two. The entire day I had been standing there. When I got home, my feet hurt so badly. I actually couldn’t sleep the way that they hurt. It went right up to my knees. Ugh. I quit after two days. It was just not worth it. I had only managed to take home pocket change. The other jobs were looking for pretty skinny people and some of them were looking for people not my skin tone to put it politely. I don’t fit that bill. My boyfriend doesn’t understand that. He thinks that I am pretty and shouldn’t have had trouble getting those jobs. I think I am pretty too but there is a difference between thinking you are pretty and other people thinking you are pretty. I am not commercially attractive and not skinny. And that is that. He needs to get over it.

I have had the strangest comments sent my way from classmates. It being a varsity and a major player on the continent, we have a lot of foreign African students here. I was shocked to hear from a now friend, when we first meet in a psychology class some years back that I didn’t sound South African. He said he wasn’t sure where I was from but he didn’t think I was South African. I have had people say that I sound a bit British in the past. Maybe that is it… What was stranger was this past semester when I had a South African classmate and an Ethiopian one tell me that I don’t look South African. That was a complete first for me. I don’t look South African… hmmm… It is nothing racial. Just that you can sometimes tell where a person comes from simply by the way that they look, especially here on the continent. It is easy to spot ancestry. When I told them that I had Mozambican ancestry, they were like, “Aaah. That makes sense…” I had thought that that part of my ancestry only showed through the colour of my skin and that was that. I am part Shangaan ancestry wise through my paternal grandfather. My skin is slightly dark, but I had always thought it was not an unusual colour and the rest of me looked like everybody else from the region. Guess I was wrong… It is quite something that I am only ¼ Shangaan but it dominates the way that I look. Genetics has always interested me so this has made me think a lot about the way that my family looks. My family is made up of skinny light skinned people. My brother is especially. Our height is thanks to both parents being tall, but where he is as skinny as a stick and is able to eat all he wants, I am the fat one. I am not that fat, but next to the skinny people of my family, I might as well be a house. I have ass a breasts and (this bit I am really proud of) I have a bit of muscle on my body so I am pretty strong. My mother gained weight through her pregnancies over time. She used to be a stick too but three kids have caught up and we share the same dress size now. Looking at pics of her from back in the day, it is quite something. She was REALLY skinny. My brother’s skin is mostly due to my paternal grandmother. She was so light skinned. My brother took that on. He was so light as a baby that blue and green spots were easily visible on his skin and he used to burn red and peel when he was in the sun. He has tanned a bit now and his skin is better for it. No more peeling. Skin and body size wise, we are polar opposites, but when it comes to hair, we are similar. We both have thick hair. His is more loosely curled that mine and people used to think he was mixed ancestry. Mine is curled more tightly. I used to have a fro going through high school and it is only recently that I have realized that even when I didn’t wash my hair that morning, I could still stick a comb through it and comb it even. It hurt but was doable. I am having dreadlocks done right now and I am noticing that my hair will not completely lock together. I don’t know much about my Shangaan ancestry to know if it is because of it that our hair is like this. Maybe mine just needs more time… If it doesn’t lock completely, my hair won’t look neat and I am going to hate that. We will see how it is after a few more months. Nothing wrong with wanting neat pretty hair, is there? I don’t want to have to shave my head try a different hairstyle. I have already put in way too much effort on this. Precious money that should have gone to CDs, hours that should have been spent watching and listening to stuff on my computer or reading.

Oh yeah, I have a fine at the library… Forgot about that…

I wrote more than I had planned…

Happy festive season. Hope next year is better. Still not sure about what to do with myself after next semester, but we will see. I am young and have sooo much I want to accomplish. I hope I can start with it next year. My boyfriend and I will be hitting three years together and I will have to be making serious decisions about my future after school. No sweat.

I want to share some song lyrics with you from the soundtrack of a Korean drama, Coffee Prince.