Rain, vacation and now I want chicken McNuggets.

This is for my sister and my Dad and a box of Pringles, my good companies on a dark New Year's Eve. I love you guys!

 

I overslept this morning by two hours. My co-worker texted me at 09h30 asking if I was coming in. I think my boss must have thought I wasn’t sleeping alone, because she just greeted me with a big grin when I finally stumbled into the office. Nice of her for not scolding me, but unfortunately I managed to oversleep all by myself. What a waste...

Now a few hours later I am still tired, it is still grey outside and I dream of Africa. Better said of vacation in general. To cheer me up I made the grave mistake to look at vacation pictures, which made my mood worse and now I’m crying. I want to go away! I want, no I really, really need a vacation. Just a mini vacation. A little weekend somewhere else by myself, just a tiny road trip. Pretty please, because my self-portrait vacation collection needs updating*. Common sense is prevailing, because I need to save my money and spend it wisely on:

 

a. Spare tire

b. Cirque du Soleil ticket

c. Dinner at The Roundhouse with RG

d. All of the above

 

Not really a question now, is it?

 

Anyhow, so I came across my pictures from last year’s vacation in Namibia with my sister and Dad. I thought I should share some of our memorable moments. For example when I taught my Dad that he mustn’t indulge in the German cliché and take his socks of when he wears sandals.

My proud Dad - isn't he cute?

He did not know that as he didn’t previously own a pair of sandals. He adapted quickly to the newly learned fashion wisdom and managed to look quite dashing in his Yves Saint Laurent-esque safari outfit with sandals sans socks. Unfortunately he also managed to get sunburn on his feet. I managed to get a lizard stuck on my ear; in fact he was biting it.
Our tour guide thought that would be hilarious for everyone to watch and make a good photo op. I must agree he was right.

 

Noteworthy also on this trip were the lessons we learned regarding celebrating New Year’s Eve in a place like Walvis Bay. We learned the following:

1. If you see some bottles of Dom Perignon the day before New Year’s at a lovely French restaurant, ask them if you can buy them. Pay any price! The restaurant will be closed on 31st, but at least you have something decent to drink. Otherwise you will learn the hard way that:
2. Namibian supermarkets only sell J.C. Le Roux. That should be forbidden. By law or something.
3. Buy enough juice to make the J.D. Le Roux drinkable.
4. Say no, when your guesthouse host asks you whether you want tickets for the Portuguese New Year’s party at the town hall.
5. If you do end up in the town hall (because you didn’t listen to point 4), take your own wine. They may run out an hour into the event. Know that Portuguese are worse when it comes to punctuality than Capetonians, so come full.You may have to wait for 3 hours till they serve dinner as they need to wait for the last Portuguese to arrive.
6. Portuguese are easily impressed – everyone was in awe when I carried three plates at a time out of the kitchen to our table. And no one seemed to mind that the meat was greyish. Maybe that’s a good thing in Portugal.
7. Take the tea light candle decoration to make it worth the R 350 per person you spent (excluding wine – so there was really no good excuse whatsoever for it to run out) and to give ambience to the real celebration later.



The real party starts here!

8. Walvis Bay, please build a 24 hour Mc Donald’s! I don't want to eat any more Pringles as my New Year's Eve feast.

This is a true story. So next time you think you New Year’s sucked. Think again.

 

 

January 1st - better food = more fun.

 

*An annoying habit of mine, which others don’t mind, because they don’t know about it as I only do it when alone for obvious reasons. No results on show here as they always turn out crap. My nose grows by 50% in any given self portrait.