I always find it very hard when I remember or am reminded (as I was at James’ wedding) of the degree of animosity that my ex-girlfriend Jess feels towards me, and it always leaves me enormously saddened, because she was for a long time an immensely important part of my life and I still find that I miss her company, even just as a friend. I also have great troubles with my conscience which points out that the degree of ill will she feels towards me is a direct manifestation of how much she felt hurt by me, and I literally hate the fact that I could have unintentionally hurt another human soul so deeply, let alone one whom I had always previously sought to nurture and protect.
Category: Lamentations
The avoidening
I always find it very hard when I remember or am reminded (as I was at James’ wedding) of the degree of animosity that my ex-girlfriend Jess feels towards me, and it always leaves me enormously saddened, because she was for a long time an immensely important part of my life and I still find that I miss her company, even just as a friend. I also have great troubles with my conscience which points out that the degree of ill will she feels towards me is a direct manifestation of how much she felt hurt by me, and I literally hate the fact that I could have unintentionally hurt another human soul so deeply, let alone one whom I had always previously sought to nurture and protect.
Blasé flying
I have spent so much time on planes recently that I am beginning to get a bit sick of it.
I still remember the days (not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things really) that flying on a plane was a significant thing, which you only did for important trips or when you were feeling extravagant. These days you seem to get on a plane for everything more than going across town to aunty Maureen’s for tea and scones.
I now almost go “oh no, not another trip on a plane” whenever I have to fly, because it means another cramped trip with too-dry air and limited entertainment options.
Blasé flying
I have spent so much time on planes recently that I am beginning to get a bit sick of it. I still remember the days (not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things really) that flying on a plane was a significant thing, which you only did for important trips or when you were feeling extravagant. These days you seem to get on a plane for everything more than going across town to aunty Maureen’s for tea and scones. I now almost go “oh no, not another trip on a plane” whenever I have to fly, because it means another cramped trip with too-dry air and limited entertainment options.
Ghost Stories
One of the unfortunate features about the international student crowd here in Joburg is that, almost invariably, whenever we get together the conversation eventually drifts onto everyone comparing tales of all the things they were told be various sources (often of disputable reputability) about the dangers of South Africa and the strategies for remaining safe.
Now after two weeks here I have gotten relatively used to the swing of things and am comfortable in my percieved level of personal risk (I’m not doing anything stupid, and to use that stupid australian government anti-terrorism phrase I’m “Alert but not alarmed”), but the conversations kind of feed off the collective pool of fear and misinformation, and I always leave the conversations in a state of quite unreasonably intense anxiety.
In the post-match analysis it seems depressing that as kids we were generally afraid of stereotypical things like monsters and boogey men under the bed*, whose motivations seemed perfectly reasonable (ie. they were monsters, so of course they wanted to eat little kids, because that was just what monsters did…) whereas as adults we worry about the unpredictable and morally grayer threats posed by the actions of other humans. As an adult the stories we tell to scare each other no longer involve ghosts, but rather normal flesh-and-bones humans.
*For a particularly amusing take on the bogey man idea, read Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Poor Whites
One of the interesting things I have noticed is that post-apartheid South Africa participates in equal opportunity poverty. Whereas the government used to pretty much guarantee a job for every white (apparently those who could do nothing else would be employed in the railways or in the post office…), now they don’t, and so while you don’t see as many whites within the poor and ultra-poor, you do see them, in the hopsital and begging on street corners and at traffic lights. It’s sad that anyone should be in that situation, but here I find it even more confronting because most of my previous experience has been that the poor tend to be non-white minority populations (and so somehow detached from my personal situation (I have rather startlingly realised since arriving here how easy it is to let your western upbringing and conditioning bring out some quite startling passively racists views in you)), and of course this is the first country I’ve spent time in where the resident minority population are whites.
Ghost stories
One of the unfortunate features about the international student crowd here in Joburg is that, almost invariably, whenever we get together the conversation eventually drifts onto everyone comparing tales of all the things they were told be various sources (often of disputable reputability) about the dangers of South Africa and the strategies for remaining safe.
Now after two weeks here I have gotten relatively used to the swing of things and am comfortable in my percieved level of personal risk (I’m not doing anything stupid, and to use that stupid australian government anti-terrorism phrase I’m “Alert but not alarmed”), but the conversations kind of feed off the collective pool of fear and misinformation, and I always leave the conversations in a state of quite unreasonably intense anxiety.
In the post-match analysis it seems depressing that as kids we were generally afraid of stereotypical things like monsters and boogey men under the bed*, whose motivations seemed perfectly reasonable (ie. they were monsters, so of course they wanted to eat little kids, because that was just what monsters did…) whereas as adults we worry about the unpredictable and morally grayer threats posed by the actions of other humans. As an adult the stories we tell to scare each other no longer involve ghosts, but rather normal flesh-and-bones humans.
*For a particularly amusing take on the bogey man idea, read Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Jetlag
Bloody MF melatonin. It’s totally bizarre sitting down at 5 in the afternoon and having your brain go ”right, by my reckoning it’s 1am, way past your bed time young man” and to then want to go to sleep, and then at 4am have the opposite, with your brain going “allrighty, midday, well and truly time to get up”.
It will presumably sort itself out (and since the universe loves irony, it will probably happen some time 2 or 3 days before I leave to go back to Australia. I can imagine that the first few days of trainee internship when I get back to Brisbane could be interesting as a result).
Fuel competition
It’s a pathetic sign of the times when I head a radio competition today were you could win petrol vouchers. I mean people were getting quite significantly excited about the prospect of winning petrol whose total value was probably only about $100. It frankly seemed bloody pathetic.
The Man
I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere I became “the man”. I had always tried to maintain some vicarious association with the hedonistic days of my teenagehood (OK, so those of you who knew me then are busy laughing right now….) but this seems to have finally failed.
I went off to med school, and (despite the drunken excesses associated with that) somewhere along the line my youthfullness slipped, to the point yesterday where I was in a shop and a little kid was running around, and his mother looked at me, then turned to the kid and said “Look out for the man”.
Gutting.