All my life I fought against being like you. Being quiet, gentle, soft spoken, kind and unselfish were the kind of virtues I ran away from, thinking it was a show of weakness.

But as I grow older I realise that beneath the hardcore “show and dance” I’m exactly like you – and you are one of the strongest people I know.

What's on your mind?

I have views on most things. From cheese, to politics, from getting just the right amount of vodka in a cosmo, to the dating rituals of the ancient Inca people - if it’s worth talking about, I have an opinion.

Today I bring you my latest view - hot off the press.

FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES: If it’s not funny or just outright ridiculous, nobody gives a fuck.

So last night I trawled through my Facebook account, dropping in on all the status updates of my “friends”. Believe me when I say this: there were quite a few shockers, and not in a good way. Allow me to share a few: (names have been changed to protect the identities of the pathetic)

John White is going for sushi tonight.

If it’s the kinda sushi I’m thinking about, it sounds like quite a fun and raunchy evening. But I’m guessing it’s not. Fail!

Jill Frank: Through god everything is possible.

Hey, I’m all for God, but as far as Facebook evangelists go, they irritate me just as much as those guys who come to your door on a Sunday morning to give you a flyer with pictures of pretty people and peacocks. Fail!

Georgia Smith says: Is anybody going to be PE tonight? If so, let me know.

Here’s a tip Georgia: Stand on the side of the road, stick your thumb out and show some boob. That’s bound to be a little more fun than bumming lifts on Facebook. Fail!

These are just a few of the mind-numbing status updates out there. But hey, they aren’t all bad. So I leave you with a pearl of delight: (name has not be changed, to maintain the identity of the awesome)

Lukanyo Sopotela: I like my women like I like my roads... flat and well travelled.

Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? – Art in this case being movies.

How often have you witnessed a random act on the street that got you thinking: ‘Geez, that’s such a movie moment” or had an experience straight out of one of those weird, “made for TV” flicks on the SciFi channel.

Well, what happened yesterday made me feel like I was in the Twighlight Zone (a super-weird trancy series, aired on the Go channel late at night). So at 17:00 I hop out of the palace of advertising to buy some smokes at the little Grease Factory on the corner. All of a sudden, whilst walking down the road, I could not for the life of me remember where I was and what I was doing. Now usually one would attribute such momentary lapses in memory to a range of hallucinogenics - none of which I was on yesterday.

But movie moments aren’t all bad – It would seem that I just had a really bad trip.

My friend, Kitty let’s us in on her “Big Screen” moment:

“Saturday we went for a drive to Koel Baai. Where there is this cave and water runs down the Mountain and off the rock to form this amazing natural shower. It was too beautiful not to run into so I stripped down to my undies and I went in :)
On our drive back we stopped to watch a pod of dolphins swim by.
It was amazing. Then we went for soft serve in strand.”

Well we might as well just call this girl Meg Ryan and crown her the Queen of the Romantic Comedy because this certainly beats the box-office off my weird and disturbing “made for TV” moment.

Goodbye Winter Blues

It’s usually round about this time of year that I start saying fond farewells to friends and acquaintances. I bid adieu to the alternative Cape Town social scene and retreat into a merlot induced coma in the comfort and warmth of my apartment, only venturing outdoors to fill in my timesheets at the palace of advertising.

It’s during these times of extreme comfort and self-indulgence that I would imagine myself as a fabulous recluse, tucked away in my loft apartment in the city. This was of course until a close friend commented on how lame and pathetic I was actually being.

So this year, I plan a different kind of winter. I intend on braving the cold and misbehaving as if it was the sweltering middle of February.

To loosely quote Dylan Thomas: “I plan to go rocking into that good night.”

Mzantsi for Sure!

For some it was the first time, but for true political activists such as myself, it was the second time I was making my mark.

After shorter than expected queues, and a slight altercation with an electoral official, we celebrated our freedom of choice by hopping over to our favourite hangout spot and taking part in the national past time of South Africans worldwide.

You can’t help but love this country!

COMMON SCENTS

It’s Saturday morning, 10:40 and I’m standing in the aisle of a busy supermarket debating the merits of a swing lid bin, against the one where the lid opens by gently tapping your foot on a pedal.

All of a sudden I’m transported back to a time when the highlight of my day was swinging upside down on the jungle gym and it took all my resolve not to cry when my parents dropped me off in the morning.

No, my crèche days had nothing to do with trash, or any kind of reference to garbage. It was the smell of a lady who walked past – a smell almost identical to that of Teacher Lillian, my much adored pre-school teacher. It was like a mixture between flowers, and a kind of shampoo. (Must’ve been some really good shit because her hair was always silky soft). But what are the chances of some random lady smelling exactly like my pre-school teacher, 18 years ago?

What is it about smell that has this amazing ability to transport you to the often special, the sometimes scary, but mostly forgotten times in your life.

For example, the smell of the green Lux body lotion would always remind me of one of my best friends Nisi, our high school days, and getting ready to go out to some dodge spot without our parents knowing.

What is it about the whiff of baby powder that would have me thinking of my mother and subsequently developing a lump in my throat?

The smell of freshly baked scones transports me back to my Aunty J’s kitchen on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Some would attribute the ability of smell to unlock memories to simple science. But I would like to think of smell as little vessels that hold and carry memories though time, unleashing them on you at just the right moment.

The Easter weekend has come, and like my abundantly stocked choccy egg stash, has gone. And what an Easter it was: apart from running around the apartment in my underwear, as I’m prone to do on occasion, I spent 4 Margarita fuelled days with a few very special people.

This experience got me thinking.

In different phases of life you encounter certain people. You spend a few consecutive Fridays nights together at Fiction, followed by hazy early morning breakfast’ at Arnolds, hangout together at the container every Sunday afternoon of your high school career and play Mission Impossible while frantically running from the headmaster, in an attempt to bunk school for the day.

And then a realisation suddenly and unexpectedly hits you in the face:

You can’t imagine living life without these people, freegn hell; you can’t even remember life before these people came along.