Lavinia_Nightelf's Xanga

Some newness

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 06:45:09 GMT

Here's some snapshots of what I've been up to:

rofl

so crazy

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Tue, 31 May 2005 13:54:17 GMT

We've moved:

http://lavinialive.blogspot.com

Come visit

Monday, May 23, 2005

Mon, 23 May 2005 04:57:23 GMT

Well let me tell you this weekend was GGRRRREAT!

I managed to speak to my lecturer on Saturday morning before class and she said it was 100% ok for me to go to work, I just had to stay for 5 minutes to write a news awareness test. I stayed for a little while longer than that and got the note fot the New York Times method of feature writing etc.

I arrived soo hung over to campus, after having gone to Neville's 30th Bday party. I cannot believe he's 30! Wow. Anywho Henry and I were there till way after 1am and when he got home he played Doom and I passed out on the lounge chair next to him. I woke up around 8am and dashed off to campus, splashed in the bath for five minutes and sped off to class.

The march was ok, it was unbelievably short! Thank goodness those poeple wanted to watch a rugby match instead of marching for hours on end...the actual march from Church Square to the Arts and Culture department took about five to ten minutes, no jokes. I got a by-line for my final story.

My one regret is eating soo much fattening food this weekend, and only one meal was particularly good.

I was supposed to go home this weekend to discuss my party plans with my mom, but I couldnt bring myself to spend a weekend there, indoors, stranded in suburbia with Henry out here left to his own devices. So I may go home tonight.

Cheers all! More pictures soon ^_^!

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Thu, 19 May 2005 14:29:49 GMT

I will have no Saturday. I will be working.

I will be covering a march where many right-wing types are to protest the changing of the name Pretoria to Tshwane. Not only will I not have a full rested morning, I will have to miss my features and review class.

This sucks, the march is from 10.30 to 11.15, my class starts at 9.30. Thus far Ive been unable to reach my lecturer to tell her about it. Im screwed, ok?

ok. and News24's dodgy cellphone ringtones page just gobbled up R6,00 from me! I tried twiice to get the Imperial March from Star Wars to my fone. Bastards!

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Wed, 18 May 2005 06:05:50 GMT

Im tired...too much woohoo ^_^

I spent all day yesterday at Pretoria University covering a conference of professionals who work with abused children, social workers, medical and mental healthcare professionals, litigation, law enforcement people etc.

Im going back there today, albeit a little later at around 10.30. I met Larry Braunstein, a defence attorney from New York who has a CV that could exceed my xanga bandwidth. He was the guest speaker at the conference. He's co-chair of the New York State bar association, international lecturer and expert on child custody, abuse and matrimonial litigation, he's the only defence attorney on the FBI advisory body on online child abuse and trafficking, he actually used to be a prosecutor under that awful Judge Judy from tv. That made us laugh. He said she's is not acting at all in that show, she's 100% like that.

I got to see Anathi again after almost nine months. I told her everything about Hnery, which she alsready knew-mostly anyways- from Voctor. He was apparently trying to get she and I to fight over him because he liked her and she didnt care much for him. He's been feeding her all kinds of fucked up info about me and Henry saying he doesn't think much of me etc. Well considering Ive met Victor all of two times in my life, each time drunk, I dont care much.

We're going to mess his life up. He has a girlfriend but is regulalry trying to hook up with chicks in clubs, she's about to know what her man's been up to. He's soo ugly and foul. Too bad for him, he's just messed with the wrong people.

Monday was really cool, after work we had the potjiekos competition at res (pronounced : poy-kie-kos). Man I ate well! A potjie is a three legged pot, the kind witches brew stuff in, and we use them here for traditional cook-outs. Its usually a hearty stew of some kind cooked in there and served with samp and beans or something. Great stuff for a chilly winter evening. Each floor had their own theme as usual.

We all gathered in the parking lot between us and Polonaise and each florr made their own fire, decorated their area and some even had skits. We had a slumber party, outside in the cold. Katlego turned our spot into a bedroom complete with Jamelia and Orlando Bloom posters. We danced around while waited to the judges to come taste our food and sang "Lose my Breath" into our hair brushes.

We went to eat upstairs back on 2B and watched Will and Grace together.

Yes, I will surely miss res life when its all over.

Ciao for now!

Monday, May 16, 2005

Mon, 16 May 2005 05:50:14 GMT

Hey All!

Food highlight: Dinner at the Indian restaurant, Geet in Brooklyn, on Friday night...mmmn, garlic naan!

I had more driving lessons this weekend, which went really well. Henry and I spent Saturday afternoon and evening in Joburg. He went to pick up his brother, Mongameli (isiZulu, meaning president), from one of his host families when he was in Peace Corps(e). Mongameli brought two of his friends from Wits and they came with us to Sandile and Jadawn's where H was fixing up something for their PC.

Mongameli brought his friends because they hate spending time in their Res in Braamfontien..right on the edge of Hillbrow btw. They are all studying Engineering, Geology and Life Science Bio crap. Nice guys, in as much as fresh out of high-school boys can be. Of course they are immature (not that Im much better) and they irritated me but at least they arent 27 and acting like that...like a certain housemate we know, whom we'll just call "Richard" because thats what his name is. Oh hell, Im a real bitch sometimes.

After Sandile and Jadawn's we went to visit Tumi and Tommy in their flat in Sandton. Its a one bedroom place in a complex called Village Blues. They live right in the heart of the Sandton CBD, really convenient. In fact Tommy walks to work, 702 Talk Radio. Tumi unfortunately works at the SABC which is in Auckland Park. She has to get two taxis to get there.

Henry is thinking of moving to Sandton because the daily commute between Joburg and Pretoria is killing him. I totally understand it too. I hated that route when I was working in Sapa HQ.

After hanging out with the Mohloadis we dropped the guys off at res and went out to Montecasino. We did not gamble, we just went there after Henry couldn't find a restaurant in the area he'd read a review about on Friday. We ended up having a delicious steak dinner at Cocobongo.

Sunday was looong. I had three more driving lessons after which we went to Menlyn. Henry wanted to buy a winter jacket and I wanted a French manicure set. He didnt find what he was looking for (very picky for a man, honestly). I went to the Clicks Hyperpharm and found a French manicure set for R100. It had the sticky white stuff, clear coat and pink polish only. I was like, no way.

I went to the Hyperama and found a set for R60 which had the three nail coatings, two kinds of nail clippers, 4 emery boards, two cuticle pusher thingies, an orange stick (those things are never actually orange), and three nail buffers (the ones that make your nails glow without polish). You bet I bought it. I do cencede that Im a bit of a princess at times but Im such a bargain hunter, I will never buy something simply because its expensive. Hell no, especially now that its with my own cash ^_^!

The flu has subsided somewhat. I think Im well enough to go back to gym tonight. I cant wait. Yes, its hella painful but its good pain you know? When I run I imagine Im running from the fat girl I would be if I gave in to laziness and the lure of chocolate based comforts. rofl!

Happy Monday all.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Fri, 13 May 2005 07:10:41 GMT

This has indeed been a long week. And yay, Friday the 13th, whatever.

I'm so tired..its insane. Ive done a lot though. At 10.30 I'm leaving the office and heading for the driving school. They are taking us to Randburg to make bookings for the drivers licences. I'm booked for July 20, at 10.15. Im really glad this is all moving. I just have to, have to, get myself behind the wheel and break free from rude taxi drivers, unreliable busses and the restricted life of a pedestrian.

I've actually been having vivid dreams about cruising around aimlessly and other dreams have me standing on the pavement watching my friends driving around. Painfull!

Yesterday was cool. I started a crochet club on my floor, crazy. Lethu had been admiring the beanie I made and gave to Henry (which I need to give back to him) and said she wanted to relearn how to crochet. She said she used to know but forgot. I was working on a purple scarf and happened to have an extra crochet needle and some wool in my cupoboard so I started showing her the basics.

Her friend Katlego came in coz she was bored and she also joined in the knitting. At seven we took our knitting to the TV room to watch Half and Half and a few other girls wanted to learn or have me make stuff for them. I was like: um no. I told them to get wool and Id teach them.

We stayed up late as hell, watched Desparate Housewives, Cheaters, Ali G and then I went to sleep coz the news at 10 was dragging on...I really wanted to watch Oprah but she had a boring epidose about crazy celebrities. Some guy from General Hospital was losing his mind.

You know, I was thinking of making an online photo-story like those old black and white ones we used to have here. They'd take pics of people and put in speech bubbles. It was like a comic but with photos instead of drawings. Pity they arent around anymore. I loooved those things.

Im also thinking of making a Generations type soapie with my Sims. So far Lavinia and Henry sim (who graduated from La Fiesta Tech) are happily living together in Strangetown where Lavinia and Henry Mahlangu-Harya are also living. The real Henry says we have to get rid of the old pair...but Im soo attached to them. They have 3 kids (Xolani, Xanadu and Xena....and adopted Rose who got taken away by the social worker), friends, careers, an alien living with them...how can I let all that go?

Rofl. In Henry and Lavinia's dorm were Paris Hilton (who has a lifetime aspiration to be a celebrity chef...ha! Paris Hilton..eating?) , Pootie Tang (politics major), Richard Wilkins (Henry's rl housemate) and another chick Noxolo who was really boring so we moved her out.

Paris is now living with Vicund Curious and she is working as a Tarot reader, Pootie and Rich live together but I dont use them much coz the real life Rich is boring and lame, thus making me loathe his sim version too.

I cant wait to get Paris her career reward..its a voodoo thingie that brings back dead sims. Woot!

Im out!

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Wed, 11 May 2005 06:46:08 GMT

Wow long time no post.

Whats been happening?

Im the TOAST OF SAPA! Well, kind of. My internship contract is coming to end end on May 31, and I've been asked to stay on at Sapa until the end of the year! Im soo beside myself with happiness! I've been working really hard here (the drugery of high profile court cases, presidential dinners, free press packs, meeting kings etc) and its great that it paid off. This is such a huge thing for me.

I've been saving more than half my salary and I'll keep doing so. Im so glad I wont have to dig into my savings for anything for a while. This job means so much to me, it is my first real full-time, paying job. I love the company, the people, the atmosphere, the freedom and the experience Im gaining is incomparable.

Before I found out about my extention I was at a bomb testing site north of Pretoria, where an invention to dispose of landmines was unveiled. I wrote a story which everyone went crazy for and got myself a by-line too. Im really happy about that, so yesterday was a big day for me.

Friends and family were calling saying they saw me on the news. Im on tv at least once a week because tv crews cover most of the same things we do. Im not sure why everyone only spotted me yesterday. It was at this labour and public service briefing at the tail end of the day. I was at the Sheraton for literally 10 minutes. Anyways I tried to see myself on the 10pm news but missed it-oh well.

Well over the weekend I spoke to Henry about taking our relationship a bit further and making a bigger committment to each other. When we started out I was fine with our 'arrangement' in fact thats what I wanted, freedom. I wanted to have some time to learn to trust him, get to know him better and not committ so soon only to find I hate his guts two months later. Its been 5 months technically (with no third and fourth parties involved), but its really been ten.

He seemed incredibly opposed to the idea, in that he said he had certain reservations about me, our personality differences etc. He says we have more pluses than minuses in our relationship in that we communicate really well, we love spending just about all our free time together, we're intellectually compatible (I compensate for his idiocy-rofl!), we "get" each other.

But besides all that he said he isnt ready and realises its maybe unfair to keep me in limbo while he makes up his mind. What a fucker. But no, we arent fighting or anything, it was a civil discussion over breakfast in Magnolia Dell on Sunday.

I guess people do move at different paces in a relationship and maybe Im being unreasonable, trying to move things too fast. Because really, he loves me and always lets me know that, in word and in deed. Yes, we're in an exclusive, monogamous relationship and no-one is suspected of cheating or anything like that, but Im looking for stability. I want to know this is long-term and not some 6month fling. Am I being too demanding?

Below is a pic I took at the American diplomats' Cinco De Mayo party on Saturday. The guy in the pic is a huge marine, secons after that picture was taken he whacked that lady on the back. She'd gone up to fix the pinyata, without telling him what she was doing...doh! and Ouch!

Monday night kicked ass! We had the floor competition in res. My floors theme was a hospital..it was so insane. We had a huge red cross made of cardboard that reached the ceiling, lit all around by candles. We did a skit with a pregnant chick bursting (literally) into the emergency room, there was a death in the OR, a chick with a knife in her head and we had a few patients with different maladies in the hospital.

It was really funny, we turned a microwave into one of those beepy, lifeline thingies and made an intravenous drip from a 2litre coke bottle and straws.

I took a few pics , very grainy unfortunately. This is me and fellow nurse Mathabo

Tshidi gave birth to a beautiful, fluffy white teddybear. She wouldnt tell us who the father is:

Its such a wonderful life..and Im losing weight. Im officially a size six now *does the almost skinny-girl dance*

Yeah, Im lame :P

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Wed, 04 May 2005 07:17:39 GMT

The long weekend was great!

Henry and I saw The Interpreter, which I loved. I was expecting a really patronising film about how a couple of whities could solve Africa's problems etc but what I saw was a beautiful, complex treatment of two broken people who are in a lot of pain and the background to all that. Africa was not romaticised too much either which is always a pitfall of foreign films about us.

We also got Rich (the roomate who totally grates my boobs *aaargh!*) and Henry heater fans from Hifi Corp. They were the last two on sale. Damn those things are popular and really affordable (thats why I bought two for myself last week, one for res and one for the office).

The highlight of the long weekend was mos def the trip to the Lost City resort. It was Henry's first time out there. Of course we got lost trying to be clever and find a short-cut but we got there all the same.

We walked around in the casino, watched people deluding themselves 1) that it was still warm enough to swim and 2) that the Valley of the Waves some 2000km inland is an actual beach-rofl!. Its really gorgeous out there though.

Henry got attacked by vervet monkeys outside the Cabanas hotel. Thats three separate incidents of him being in tussles with primates. When he was about 13 an orangutan attacked him and his uncle in Indonesia, last year when he was holidaying in the DR Congo a silverback gorilla pimp-slapped him and on Monday a small troupe of vervets pounced on his shoes.

What happened is were were just walking along the hotal veranda and I spotted a mommy vervet grooming her baby on a ledge about 2 metres from us. I pointed it out to Henry and we both went "aaw cute!" Then I saw there were little monkers everywhere and suggested we turn back.

Mr Ironman Harya decided he was too gansta for that and walked right up to them. In a few seconds he was surrounded by half a dozen of them and a couple of them whacked his shoe. Of course I ran away (using my recently acquired speed and fitness^_^) but only after taking a quick snap with the old fone-cam. Henry ran too and then stopped again two more times to spook the poor things, which made them angry and rushed at him. What am I doing with this fool? ^_^

I'll post the monkey pics later this week.

Here's me by the "royal waterfall" or some shit

The two of us under the lion gong, which is huge

its this big:

Its was a really great day...probably the best Monday I'll have for a while.

In other news I almost got mugged yesterday. I was waiting to get on to a taxi when I felt something on my leg and felt my bag's zipper opening. I went on autopilot, swerved around and grabbed the middle of the guy who had tried to open my bag. I screamed at him in Setswana "Hey you opened my bag!" and the people standing around me also waiting for taxis closed in on him and blocked his path.

A guy who was standing directly behind me yelled that he'd seen him too. The kid kept saying he didnt and struggled to get away. Everyone was soo angry at that kid, he couldnt have been more that 15 by the looks of it.

I looked into my bag's now half opened outer pocket and felt around for my fone which, luckily, was still there. I kept yelling at the kid that I saw him abd told everyone I still had my fone. The boy started trying to punch his way out and managed to ran away across the street. People were muttering angrily as he left about what a piece of scum he was.

This all happened in less than 2 minutes. I was so on edge, but I didnt feel horrible or victimised. I was really proud of how I reacted, instead of freezing up and and shrinking away in shock I took charge of the situation and made sure everyone around me knew what was going on. I know it could have been a hell of a lot worse. When I grabbed him, I didnt know who it was going to be. He couldve been a grown man with a knife or a gun.

Im glad now that I know how I would react in such a situation.

On that note I bid you all adieu untill tomorow.

Friday, April 29, 2005

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:17:48 GMT

Oh-dear-goddess! Did I die or what in the gym yesterday? It was like dying a thousand deaths only to be resurrected and offered up again to the unmerciful gods of vanity.

Before I even got to the gym I was still sore from, you know, not exercising in 7 years and then bam circuit training! The whole day I was limping slightly and feeling a bit too loose here and too strung up there. So when I got to the gym after work it was like hell. I seriously considered staying indoors in the warm tv room with the rest of the girls and watching Half and Half.

But I thought of my elephantine proportions and decided to soldier on. Well I couldn't even do the circuit that I managed just fine on my first day. Yes, I did it but it was through a veil of tears. I don't know if Im less sore today or if Im just mentally anaesthetising myself.

After gym I took a loong well deserved bubble bath in which I almost fell asleep from pure shock at the comfort and fatigue. After watching Desparate Housewives I went to bed and called Henry to say good night.

I woke up around 3am (can't be too sure) and heard an Irish radio show about a politician (who is also a "respected GP") in some small Irish town who got smashed one night and drove on the wrong side of the road. The interviewers had a truck driver on the show who had apparently saved the day (or night if you will) by cutting off the guy at precarious turn and blocking the path of his car.

He then called the police, or as they call them , the gardie and bust the guy's ass. I laughed for a good 15 minutes at them saying gardie and how ridiculous it was that I, at a bit after 3am in South Africa was listening to the shenanigans of some Irish local politician.

There was also in interesting report after that about the situation in Short Strand, east Belfast where people are in great fear of the Irish Republican Army-IRA. If Im not mistaken thats where the McCartney sisters are from. I remember reading about them and their sister-in-law going to the trial in the US of the IRA people who killed their brother.

The people there are apparently so terrified of the IRA that they think it knows whether or not they vote and if they do, it knows who they vote for. They wouldn't even talk to the radio reporter in the street when they found out he wanted to talk about the upcoming elections in their town.

Its such a sad a brutal world.

Well anyways I fell asleep again after that story and woke up sore (groan) and very tired. Im feeling much better now and looking forward to my long weekend.

I was looking up places to stay over the weekend in the Pilgrim's Rest area for me and Henry. It seems like there are only three hotels/b&bs in the town. Shocker! We might just stay here again over the weekend.

We had one hell of an intense convo on messenger earlier today about my independence (he thinks I dont have any) and his convinient selective listening.

I didn't mince words mapping out exactly how and why I was truly independent and self sufficient after getting him to explain clearly what he meant by saying otherwise. Yes, I admitted Im demanding and expect to be spoilt a lot of the time but I do just as well on my own. We agreed to compromise on things like that.

He said he'd try to be a better listener (blegh! is this marriage counselling?) and be more considerate of me when I have something to say. You know I think I remember Dr Phil saying "I'll try" is just another of saying fuck you...ok not in those words, but similar. Its either you do or you don't.

We ended up resolving some issues and saying how much we love each other and similar sweet rubbish.

In other news I called my uncle Vincent (the one Tshidi and her man see more of than I do) and Im probably going to spend next weekend with them. They're in a new house which my brother has seen (he spent a week there in the holidays) and my little cousins Kgatli and Melissa (aka Angry Baby...really cute and spoilt like me^_^) are probably so big now! Melissa had just started walking the last time I saw them all late last year.

I bought the John Legend CD on Wednesday. Its ok. I like two songs on there but Im sure the rest will grow on me. Current industry whore the lovable Kanye West (price check for a Jesus Complex on aisle two) co-wrote and produced the album.

Damn its almost 4.15 in the pee em (I read too much Onion)! Where did my day go?

Everyone have a banging weekend! See you Tuesday.