it's complicated.

so here is something that i learned: people are extremely nice to you if you are about to leave the country for good. in my case all these nice people are usually already quite nice to me, so nice, that i am sometimes not sure how i deserve it. but right now the niceness has gotten to a whole new level.

hi, world!

today is my second last day of work and i thought i should check in because tomorrow i will probably be too busy with all the crying and all the champagne drinking. right now i am equally excited and terrified. fact is i really, really like my job and the people that i work with and the house i work in. the house actually smells like my grandmother’s house, which is really odd considering that the houses are on other ends of the world and not in the same climate zone. but my cousin, who once visited me here and who also knows how our grandmother’s house smells like, concurs. i love this smell, it makes me feel home, which i guess is why i always really liked my office. this morning the smell made me a bit teary.

but back to the nice people. people want to see me, take me out, and they send me more giraffe pictures than usual.

this was a pin i got this morning from claire which of course had me squeal in excitement. anybody flying from california to cape town within the next week and can bring me one please?

besides feeling very grateful for all this love and attention, i feel … odd, for a lack of better word. i am still here, my mind is elsewhere, then i get mad at my mind for not being here, then i’m here, the sun is not, i get sad, i get anxious, yesterday i felt like i just wanted to run away from it all…south africa, germany, my decision, i feel ridiculously happy, i have been sleeping badly with horrible dreams though sometimes a good one sneaks in that makes me optimistic again. argh. if my mind was to be described in a relationship status, it would definitely be it’s complicated.

as i will not be having my awesome desk calendar from the weekend onwards i started to make my own for next week. and it scares me not because of the things i have written down, but because of all the things i probably forgot to write down.

 

i guess i should add write goodbye cape town post, but realistically my next post will my typical airport, drinking too many G&Ts before boarding post. i hope you will bear with me, i will make up for it with an overload of thailand beach pictures. as i said i’m complicated right now.

Sorry!

Yesterday I did something I have never done before. I deleted one of my own posts. I realized I had actually upset someone by writing it. I didn’t stick to the I’d rather be nice than be right motto I’m working on. I realized this only after I wrote it, published it, and was faced with the consequences.

When you complain somewhere about a restaurant or a business they ignore you in the worst case scenario. Sometimes they will at least apologize and if you get lucky they will comp you a meal or send you a freebie of some sort. An ex will usually be pissed at you for being called out so now it’s the best case scenario if he ignores you. In worst case scenario you will be unfriended on Facebook and called the crazy one in any further conversations your name pops up. What you will never get is a satisfying explanation or apology from an ex for anything that he may have done or not done. It just happens and things do and that means usually it is just time to move on. Because in the end it doesn’t matter whether you had a valid point or not, a personal blog is not Hello Peter for ex-boyfriends. At least not for the ones you still care about.

I have a hard time with moving on, so naturally I would be upset when any ex of mine has a new girlfriend and it’s okay to be upset for a moment. Not okay is for me to pretend he owes me an explanation or apology for it. He doesn’t and at the end of the day I just have to admit the fact that it upsets me that he has moved on and not that he didn’t tell me about.

So there. I admit the real reason why I was such a bitch yesterday.

After a horrible day, I took myself home, nursed with red wine and pasta, and finally deleted the post. Then I went to bed and for the first time in almost a year took out my diary and started writing. Realizing that there is a right place to write and complain and whine about all the things I needed to in order to feel better. Funny enough the last time I wrote something in my journal, I wrote about how it’s so much easier to be angry than to be sad. Like attack seems the best defence. Boy, I may have been right with that, but the whole idea is quite wrong. It may have just cost me a friend.

Today the world seems different and I blame it equally on last night’s revelations and this morning’s sunshine. So I thought I should sneak in a giraffe just for good measure. Don’t roll your eyes, this one is special. My Dad scanned it for me and emailed it. A picture my brother drew of my Mum and me when I was just born. I guess he thought it appropriate to picture us as giraffes because my Mum’s neck is really long and I was just huge (59cm!!!) in general. So now you know why I had no choice from the start but to love giraffes!

A giraffe to remember.

It wasn’t my idea, so don’t blame me! This post is for one special girl, who likes giraffes even more than me. In fact so much that she dressed up as a giraffe on carnival including painting her entire face and neck yellow with brown spots. I like that kind of enthusiasm, so this is a story for her.

I had told Charlotte from Greenpop before coming to Zambia that she needed to organize me a giraffe. They kept on posting pictures of hippos and owls, but no giraffes, and I told her no giraffe, no me. She finally sent me this and basically told me this was as good as it gets.

Not really all that good, but I appreciated her effort and decided to go and check it out for myself. I do think some people are more apt in giraffe spotting than others.

During the week we saw a herd of 20 elephants by the camp, the usual amount of baboons, hippos, crocs, and one scorpion, glowing in the dark, but alas no giraffe. I tided myself over with plenty of gummy giraffes for breakfast on the bus and got unreasonably excited when we got to one of the schools and found this in a classroom:

By the time the last day came along I had given up on the giraffe quest. Luckily my fellow booze cruiser Katie hadn’t and at some point we were all woken out of our G&T haze by her shouting: Giraffes! That is one clever girl with really good eyes because it took the rest of us minutes to spot them, meanwhile accusing Katie of hallucinating. She wasn’t. There they were: not one, not two, but a whole family including a little one.

I don't think we can be entirely faulted for doubting Katie - I think they are

damn hard to spot!

Unfortunately my camera was ill equipped to shoot them from the distance and instead of standing still and making it easier for me, the giraffes decided to do a little sprint along the beach. Mind you that wasn’t their fault, but some idiot’s chasing them with a car.

So if you, Mr. Giraffe Chaser, read this, just know that I think you are an ass and destroyed my probably one and only opportunity of taking a picture of a baby giraffe in the wild!

I should add that we were all still very excited by this. People, including me, were jumping up and down, and I think Kai, the biggest giraffe fan of all, even shed a tear. So thank you, Katie – I think you and your laser vision eyes deserve the title Supergirl!

Little Anna and her giraffe.

I just had a Skype conversation with another single friend of mine in Germany. As per usual we were talking about men and eventually the question came up: where do we always find the crazies? The answers were simple: investment banking (her case, though I have been there, done that) and malls (my case only). I thought I should investigate this notion further, but the thought actually made me a bit depressed and since I was already so good with green juice instead of a muffin for breakfast I didn’t really want to go down this road today.

Instead you get…

…. a giraffe! A little one.

Yes, I can hear the collective moan, but I promise this one is different and very, very special. So special indeed that it shall grace this blog soon, but I honestly haven’t gotten around doing any major layout changes yet.
As you may know I have an amazing and incredible talented sister-in-law, Xenia, who has an amazing and incredible sister too, Serena. Back in the day when our combined nephew Jakob started talking, he called Serena his the little Aja and I was the little Anna. I do believe that Xenia had something to do with adding little to the nicknames probably just to show us, because in fact Serena and I are both a head taller than her. She still calls me little Anna though luckily Jakob has outgrown it, but it actually doesn’t bother me either way. I like being the little Anna.

Anyhow, Serena aka little Aja is not only an amazing photographer (check out her work here), but she also made these pictures a while back when she would draw a face with her eyes closed. The outcome was incredible and fun and always recognizable. So when it came to this blog and my desire to have my own little giraffe logo, I eventually asked her for help as I cannot draw to save my life (as you will all know after yesterday’s post). Look what I found in my inbox two days after I contacted her:

The best part about it, it is not only a giraffe, it is in fact a baby giraffe – just look at this cute, little face!

Stuff like this makes me ridiculously happy. Thank you, little Aja!

Now we need a name - suggestions please.

Sometimes life is similar to being a baby giraffe.*

I have realized a lot of women are in love with cats. A lot of female bloggers take it a step further and share cat pictures with what I find annoying frequency on their blogs. I like cats too, but I don’t think them that exciting as to write a post about them.
Giraffes on the other hand are a whole different story. As you may or may not know I love giraffes and yes, I have written a post or two about them. Thus I can’t really judge the cat bloggers too much, because though I think giraffes are ten times more exciting than cats, I can admit for the possibility that not everybody shares this sentiment.

This post happened by accident though. I promise, all I wanted to do is find one giraffe picture to trace, because I wanted a sort of comic giraffe to be on my new blog design. Then mean Google not only showed me pictures of giraffes, but also one of a baby giraffe. Then it became even meaner and gave me the option of searching ‘baby giraffe’ and then as you can see it went all downhill from there….

So the baby either has a rather short neck or
the mum a really big head...what do you think?

That's how you end up looking if you play with your food
instead of eating it.

Cocktail hour for baby giraffes.

"Hello, you there, behind the funny black thing!"

The Kiss á la giraffe.

They look so proper in their family portrait, they
should be wearing Ralph Lauren.

Find the baby giraffe in the picture.

Sorry for sharing, I couldn't help it...

P.S. *No, this is not something I came up with and no, I have no idea what it means either. It just came with this picture:

Naked naked naked.

Just testing a theory here...

Today is one of those perfect stay in bed days. I will attend to this project as soon as I get home after work. Including meatball spaghetti a la Jamie or chicken burger a la I’m no Jamie. No, nobody gets to vote on this, it will be decided by me probably only when at Woolies and to be fair I have already made up my mind to 99%. So unless something earth shattering changes, it’s settled. Perfect plan. Just a couple more hours till I can execute it.

In the meanwhile I should happily report defeat. I can no longer call my own pizza the best in Cape Town as I attended the Twitter re-opening of Massimo’s yesterday. Thekla in her semi-official function as food blogger and me, well, as her wingwoman and to stuff my face with as much pizza as I could. In we walked – You remember how back in the day at the school cafeteria each group had their table? The band members, the cheerleaders, the literary circle, etc. and then there was always one table with the left over kids who didn’t quite fit anywhere. That was us last night.  

After the initial envious glances through the room and over to the cool kids’ tables where we didn’t belong and weren’t allowed to sit, we made the best of it and ended up having more fun than the too-cool-for-schools across from us. Of course that wasn’t why we came; it was all for the sake of pizza.  I actually would have been happy to just eat the Focaccia with gorgonzola, cream cheese and rosemary, which we got served first, for the rest of the evening. But thanks to the ever faithful IT guy who kept on refilling our plates when we left for smokes and Massimo’s magic kitchen elves we got to eat about 10 different pizzas and salads instead. All I will say about the food is that if Mowgli still prefers leaves to the pizza there then he can’t be helped. I also did make a bit of a presumptuous reservation for the weekend in the hope for an Easter pizza date. Any takers?

On the note of the PLG project I have news. The lady from the company offering me deals for my blog did email back, saying no unfortunately the giraffe deal was an April’s Fool joke and that they do not make them yet. Yet! A ray of light right there. I do however hope once they get around to ‘making’ them, they will attend to the wait list problem right away too. Otherwise it will take me almost a million years to get Mowgli and I simply cannot wait this long.

P.S. A little update: I just told a friend of mine about the pizza and he was so keen that we decided to go tomorrow. Question: Is it excessive to eat pizza trice a week at the same place? Or since the place is Massimo’s is it reasonable? 

Giraffe pizza speziale.

So my recent giraffe post sparked a chat between Thekla and me, which I simply have to share. It started just after I had posted the story on Facebook:

Thekla: Love it - I think you rock! And you deserve to be moved up the list!!!!
Me: Haha! Thanks - will tell her if she ever replies

Me:  Imagine it was true - sooo cute.

Me:  And the giraffe could play with the kittens too!

I think I have mentioned that I am kitten godmother to THE cutest kittens ever, right?

Thekla:  The kittens could take rides on Mowgli's back!

Thekla:  And we'd get them matching bandanas ‘cause they'd be friends!

Me:  Exactly! But we would have to teach them no clawing on his neck.

Me:  Yay!

Thekla: Otherwise it would cry big tears!

Thekla:  And need some extra filtered water to sooth its nerves.

Me:  Well, I am sure at your house that wouldn't be a problem with your fancy water filter.

There water filter is awesome, you would want to be a giraffe just so you can drink their filtered water.

Me:  And Mowgli would simply love your tub!

Thekla:  And I'm sure my ficus would do for leaves?

Me:  Probably

Me:  But I do think it may eat all the leaves off quite quickly - you know how baby animals are when they are growing.

Thekla:  You can take it to Sylvi's too then she has a few really big ficuses.

Sylvi is our aunt and she has a ficus that reaches all the way to the ceiling.

Thekla:  And Popey can also ride on its back.

Popey is their cat. Technically it is the neighbour’s cat, but he is allowed to come over and gets TLC, is allowed to sit at the dinner table and gets fed with left over prawn tails. This cat has the best life ever.

Me:  And Cesario would have a heart attack

Me:  “Sylva - the giraffe ate all the leaves from the ficus!”

Cesario is her husband. He is a professor and quite prim and proper and very lost without her.

Me:  I rather take him to Nikki - he can nibble on some vines - get used to the good stuff.

Thekla’s sister recently planted a little vineyard in her garden and the entire family is eagerly waiting for the 3 years to be already over, so we can harvest and make wine. We have discussed the problem that it may not be enough for the entire family and that even the immediate family drinks too much for the harvest to last more than one night.

Me:  Bonsai is overrated!

Thekla:  “arrs'ol giraffe... fuck!”

Uncle Cesario does have a potty mouth at times.

Thekla:  With Spanish accent.

Yes, with a Spanish accent. I think it’s his Latin temperament coming through when he curses.

Me:  Hehe.

Me:  Just imagine.

Me:  I wonder if he would get big enough so he could look into the pizza oven.

The two of them started the pizza madness in our family and have a special little oven on top of the regular oven where they bake their pizzas in.

Thekla:  We would make him a leaf pizza.

Me:  I think my yoga teacher has a friend who makes 'raw pizza' - that should do.

Me:  It's just bloody expensive.

Thekla:  I hear they are silly good though.

Thekla:  Wanna try one some time.

Me:  Yes, but not for the baby. As much as I believe kids/animals should get used to eating lots of different things, I don't think they need to be thaat spoilt.

Thekla:  http://www.ear thshine.co.za/ra w- pizza- takeaway- 2/

Me:  And do keep this thought for yourself at least today - Massimo might get offended!

Thekla:  We can ask them if they make petit giraffe friendly pizzas.

Me: Awe! Cute, man! Let’s ask them tonight!!

So in case you ever wonder what I do at work, read above. In case you are wondering what I’m doing tonight – asking Massimo if he will make my imaginary giraffe a pizza of course.

A non pasta obsession.

Have I made my obsessions with giraffes clear yet? Probably not as I have only written about them once and is a quite recent obsession. I watched Water for Elephants last Saturday and as much as I thought the elephant was really cool, I was in love with giraffe and very jealous that Edward, eh, Jacob (Wow, this is getting confusing, can’t they come up with some new names for the male leads in Hollywood?) got to pat it. Even though most of you would have probably envied the giraffe, which got patted by him, I know...

Recently I stumbled over a website that offers Petite Lap Giraffes for sale. I was intrigued to say the least.  More than anything I really wanted it to be true. Same feeling when I read Harry Potter – I know it’s all make believe, but I really wish it wasn’t, because that would just be incredibly awesome.

In case you haven’t heard about them and wonder what a Petite Lap Giraffe (= PLG) actually is, here from their website:

About Petite Lap Giraffes!

Petite Lap Giraffes are very funny animal that require special care. They need lots of love. Hugs and kisses every day. Otherwise they make tears.

If you have children, petite lap giraffes no problem. If child is loud, the giraffe will be shy, but does not bite. PLG’s are very clean. With training they will go in box like cats. Allergies never a problem.

Size: adult is 76 centimeters, baby is 15 centimeters tall. Weight is 4.5kg unless the giraffe is fat cow then 5.44kg

Diet: distilled water and bonsai tree leaves

Health problems: none. They are the best.

Gestation: 420 days

Living conditions: PLG’s love being indoors in filtered air conditioning. If they can listen to music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov it is dream.

Grooming: a bubble bath once a week with purified water is all they need.

So just like I am still hoping I will one day be able to flick my hand to make something fly, I am still hoping that the website isn’t just an elaborate hoax and I will find $ 16,000 to buy my own little giraffe. I shall call it Mowgli. Yes, I do know that giraffes don’t live in the jungle, but I think it would be really cute name and he would wear a little bandana with his name tag around the neck.

Before anyone gets worried about my state of sanity, I do not constantly think about that and the name Mowgli really just popped into my head now. So did the idea of a newsboy cap I think he should wear, matching the bandana.

Either way I am only on place 937,461 on the waiting list – the next baby is going to a prince of some sort (I do wonder whether it could be a wedding gift for Prince William and Kate).

This morning I was feeling quite flattered for a second, because I got my first email ever from a company offering me deals and gifts for my readers. Wow. They said they are huge fans of my blog. Great. The subject line “Hi!” did strike me as a tad bit unprofessional. Also the fact that they are in the States and I am based in Cape Town, which would make any kind of gift sending a bit tricky, struck me as odd. I did however go to the website to check out the deals as I didn’t want to seem too aloof. One of the deals I found:

I think that is an offer you can’t beat and I was so amazed by their connections that I emailed the lady back and asked her if she would be able to move me up the waiting list if I agreed to a deal. I didn't need a freebie here, because I could afford $100, but the length of wait was a bit scary. I haven’t heard back yet. Maybe she is still working it, checking if Prince William and Kate could wait for their 1^st anniversary to get theirs. Will keep you posted.

Roadtripping.

Over the last couple of years I managed to turn myself into a sufficient driver. All thanks to my uncle who taught me with the words “I will hit you over the head if you drive off the road”. And thanks to my Mum’s patience I have learned what Giovanni better known as tomtom really means when he says "turn left, next possible right, and stay left at the traffic light". Giovanni and I had love/hate relationship while driving a rental car in Cologne for work. I would come home after a long day and the first thing my Mum would ask after putting a big glass of wine in my hand: “So how did it go with Giovanni today? Did he finally make sense?” And I would sigh and say: “Ach, I don’t know, I think I must end it. I just don’t know what he wants. Men."

I have come far since then, but I still prefer the passenger seat. I am a certified great car co-pilot and always have been. My Dad taught me as a child how to read a map and that one must always feed the driver well while driving. He himself prefers hard candy, unwrapped and put directly in the palm of his hand. But different drivers have different preferences and I can quickly adjust to the required situation and likes of the pilot. I will be the best co-pilot one can ever imagine as long as I can put my feet up on the dashboard and not having the driver complain about the little toe prints I am most likely to leave on the windscreen.

Road trips are my best. A road trip is a get-away, a drive-away, a dream-away. They don't have to be long - driving to the West Coast National Park to me is a road trip already. It gets me as excited as a two week holiday on the Seychelles.

However I do need partner in crime. A road trip requires Thelma AND Louise and I require a driver. Once I put my feet up, I will feed the driver with biltong or mango, don't interfere with speed and driving style and will only ever shout when the driver doesn't know left from right ("No, your other right!").

Every of my road trips regardless of the when's and where's and where to's had a song. Two stood against time and are still on my 'recently played' list... Happy Dreamer

I listened to it when I visited my friend Kervin in Miami. Funny enough we didn't even go on a road trip, but were just driving to town for dinner. We were driving along the MacArthur Causeway, I believe also called Bridge Road, towards Miami Beach. That Causeway is long, very long. Therefore driving to dinner on it one has perfectly legitimate reason to call it a road trip. Kervin played Happy Dreamer for me. Then I said 'again'. Then he said 'again'. Then I said 'again'. Maybe he did make an attempt to stop me at some point, but it didn't work. I kept on rewinding over and over. We played it for about 30 minutes and again on the way back (even though I don't remember that as I was in agony due to the aftermath of a sun stroke combined with a stomach full of scallop risotto).

Ever since it's our song. One will start to hum it, the other will join immediately. It also works in writing and it makes both of us smile. We like being happy dreamers.

The other one is.... Das Giraffenlied (as per my naming)

My friend Khaled brought it with when he came for a visit. He thought I may like it for the line that says 'and I'll take you in my arm, close my eyes and dream of Africa' all of it happening in the darkness of the giraffe enclosure in a wintery German zoo. A bit cheesy, but he was right - I loved it and still do. It became my falling asleep lullaby and our driving anywhere song. I did not get as lucky as with Kervin, I think I had a once per hour allowance on your trip to Botlierskop. It was probably due to my "routine" that I was even allowed that much. I had a whole little hand routine down to go with the words of the chorus, which he would register with the tiniest smile in the left corner of his mouth.

It was also then when I fell in love with giraffes. After two hours of our three our game drive at the farm I got a bit nervous as we had not seen any. Luckily I seemed to have brought a gentleman along as Khaled promised me to find them elsewhere if we wouldn't see any. Never mind that he wouldn't even know where to even start looking for giraffes in the Western Cape. I did appreciate the gesture, but didn't need to worry though - we stopped a minute later and had drinks with four of them.