Exams are here, it's almost time to go, I can't frikkin wait.

It is the ever hated and feared exam time at the moment. I have 6 to write, which is surprising as I only have 4 subjects, but the English department seems to hate me. I have already written my least favourite subject, Philosophy, as well as my major; Journalism. Hopefully I studied enough for them, we shall see. What I have left to write are English prose, drama and poetry as well as a Linguistics exam. Thanks to exams, life is very quiet and dull at the moment. No raucous parties, no loitering around town or anything remotely fun really. I am thoroughly looking forward to the end of exams and the beginning of my 2 month holiday which starts promptly after my last exam of the 26th. woohoo. I also am looking forward to leaving the terrible and unfortunate disappointment that has been my res, and moving into my awesome apartment with my friend, Jade, next year :) Things I will NOT miss about res-life: the communal fridge, walking downstairs to get to the communal fridge, the communal bathroom and its see-through shower curtains, other peoples hair blocking the shower drain, campus-wide power outages, crappy res food, walking to the dining hall to eat the crappy res food, being pressured into bonding happy-clappy res events, people stealing my washing slots, the rowdy-ass crows that live outside my window (try studying with that in the background), my back-breakingly uncomfortable bed and the far-too-long Wednesday night house meetings. Things I will miss about res: apple crumble desert at the dining hall, fun campus vibes, the cat, and yeah that's about it. Anyway, back to the books.

xxx Jamay

No pics today but I thought I'd make a list of some of the funnier BBM statuses I've seen over the last few days. enjoy

• Dad: "It's summer, they all coming down now" ... Me: "what, the dogs?" ... Dad: "no the hobos"
• I want to have a belly so big that when I go over a speed bump I hoot
• The two R's of my December holiday: Rage, and Rehab
• Better late than... pregnant
• I don't like koalas, they have agendas
• What rhymes with Cuba?   Cocaine.

Low-life fridge thief, get your own damn food

My faith in humanity has once again been placed under doubt. On my return to res this Wednesday, Halloween as it were, my lovely mum gave me some koeksisters. I don't particularly love koeksisters but these ones were really good, and so I placed the remaining ones in my res fridge with my name clearly marked on the punnet. I know some people have been complaining about food being taken from the fridge recently, and I myself have suspected for a while that someone has been drinking my milk. I never thought, however, that someone would stoop so low as to steal 3 koeksisters that were clearly marked as belonging to someone else. Come on people, really? How low is the human race to stoop before hitting rock bottom? What kind of person steels another persons food as it is, let alone 3 lowly syrup coated doughnut-braid. I ask you. What angers me most about this is that there will be no justice for the thief. It's not so much that I won't get to eat the koeksisters, but that one of my fellow res mates is a deceptive swine with weak morality. What I would give to look them in the eye and calmly explain how little I think of them, followed by a swift slap and/or punch, whichever feels right in the moment. Someone in res has taken a stand against the food thief, and to whoever they are, I have great admiration for them. This person has stuck a sign on the fridge threatening the thief, which can be seen in the pictures below. I have also just this second made another discovery, that my brand new, clearly marked juice has been opened and half of it has been consumed, and not by me. The low-life strikes again... and next time they will get a nasty surprise.

xxx Jamay

see pics below

Letter on the fridge to the thief

The scene of the koeksister theft

My opened and half finished juice

Oasis album review

Yet another journ assignment has me promoting my work, and this time it is a review of the most recent Oasis album Dig Out Your Soul. So follow the link provided and check out my lovely, informative and well written review in the form of a blog post on the Soundcheck blog on Posterous.com.

xxx Jamay

The Air planes got out noised, what is that.

Having nothing much to complain about lately, I mean apart from the usual things like work, this road-collapsing weather, the state of the current economy and the governments complete failure to, you know... govern, I decided that today I shall talk to you about a band. Not just any band, I have a specific one in mind, its called Your Version, My Story, YVMS for short because like, what a mouthful. So this is a local PE band made up of 6 guys, one of them being my beloved little bro. (Sup Bruv!) The guys are Ben Price on vocals, Tom Price on lead guitar, Dill Jones on rhythm guitar, Dan Tucker (my bro) on bass guitar, Glenn Perry on drums, and their newest member, Jonny Leyland on the Synthesizer /Keyboard. They started off just jamming around with my dad and his friends, and then the band just sorta happened. They used to practice in a hanger near the runway at the PE airport but got kicked out because apparently they were making too much noise... at the airport. yeah. The air planes were getting upset cause the band was being rowdier than them? I don't think so, damn airport politics, I'm just saying. Anyway so since then they've really gotten their act together, written a fair amount of songs and played a couple of gigs around various PE venues. So if you're a PE dweller look out for their next gig, and if your lucky enough to have escaped the clutches of festive, vibrant and ever exciting Port Elizabeth then you can check out their songs on their Facebook page. Enjoy:)

xxx Jamay

Some pics of the band:     

Ben Price (far right)

Jonny Leyland

Dan Tucker

Dill Jones

Glenn Perry

Tom Price

Check out my homework

I recently had an assignment for my Journalism class. My tut group was given the topic,"Faith" and were told to plan and write an online story related to this topic to be posted on Grocotts Mail Online, My Story section. Part of the project is to promote my article in several ways, and what better way but to post it on my blog? The article is about a local churches involvement in the Grahamstown community, so please check it out if you have a minute. Here's the link: Jamays awesome article 
Much love!

xxx Jamay

Exams make me super tidy

End of year exams are coming up soon, which means hitting the books and the loss of any form of social life whatsoever. We all know how exhilarating studying can be. I find that during exam time my room stays exceptionally tidy, no dish goes unwashed, no bed unmade and absolutely no clothing can be found on the floor. The reason for this? It may sound crazy but tidying up my room is just more fun than cracking a book. We all have our delay tactics and ways to procrastinate, and I find cleaning my room becomes just that much more important during exam time. Come visit me any other time of the year and its another story.  Ironic since exams are the time of year that people visit the least.
Good luck with your studies and varies procrastinations everyone.

xxx Jamay

#Stop Saying Hashtag

Something that irritates the sanity out of me is this thing that seems to have infected the minds of the world's youth, and even some of our more senior members of humanity. Hashtagging, it sounds like a fishy, marine type term, not a craze of the social network. I don't have a problem with it when people use it on Twitter, because obviously that is what it's for, and I'll admit it's a pretty ingenious way of tracking and creating trending topics. When people started using it on other social media such as bbm, whatsapp and Facebook it began to get mildly irritating. On the irritation scale it was probably  at level 5, that's around the same level as those terrible news readers that can't speak English properly and mess up the grammar and pronunciation of, lets face it, really simple words. So that was irritating but still bearable. Recently though, people have actually began to say "hashtag etc etc" during a conversation. Honestly, what is social discourse coming to.This development greatly increases the irritation level, taking it waaay off the charts. It has now reached a degree of irritation to rival that of say... James Blunt's voice or Julius Malema maybe. Has the standard of conversation dropped so drastically that we have reduced ourselves to saying a key word or phrase in the place of an actual coherent sentence??

xxx Jamay     

Who stole my damn participation star?!

In my res here at Rhodes we have this thing called a participation board. The name pretty much says it all, it tracks the students in my res'es participation in res activities. These activities include inter res sports events, community engagement and other similar things. Now myself and my friend that lives in the same res as me, we aren't really 'participation people'. We went to the same high school and school spirit and taking part in school activities is just something that was not drilled into us, and therefore something we are just not accustomed to or interested in. So where other students in our res were racking up the stars next to their names on the participation board, the spaces next to our names remained blank, and we were okay with that. This, however, changed recently when it was made compulsory for everyone to make at least one trip to help out at a children's home for community engagement. My friend and I made the trip to the children's home as was required of us, and for this we earned our first (and most likely last) participation stars. My friends from other residences had considered it hilarious and, quite frankly, typical that we had no stars, and even more hilarious when we were awarded our single stars for the trip to the children's home. Although I had no problem with my lack of participation, and therefore stars, I was pleased that we did receive a star for our community engagement as we did put in the work for them. So I was severely pissed off the other day, when I discovered that someone has removed the star from next to my name on the participation board. Seriously?!?! Who frikkin does that?? I went to the children's home, I did the participation, so give me back my damn participation star. Talk about a petty crime.

xxx Jamay

Below are pics of the participation board

The Participation Board

My lonely and hard earned star (the blue one)

The star goes missing

If you don't book a slot, you can damn well wear dirty clothes.

We have a system for booking washing machine and tumble dryer slots here at res. There are 2 of each machine and a booking sheet with time slots for each one. One slot is for one hour of machine time. At res, you plan your life around your timetable, and your washing slot. So when some fucker decides to jump the gun it really pisses me off. On several occasions I have walked happily into the washing room with my wash basket full of clothes, armed with Sta-Soft and bio Classic, only to find my carefully booked washing machine filled with clothes, clothes that are not mine. How silly of me, to think that I would be able to do my washing in my washing slot, honestly. It's different when someone takes your tumble dryer, because you can simply stop the machine and throw their trespassing clothes out, but when someone steels your washing machine... that shit is serious. You cant exactly stop it in the middle of its cycle while its filled with soap and water and the clothes are sopping wet. What kind of morally unstable person steals someones CLEARLY BOOKED washing slot anyway. Either they're blind, stupid or just a bad person... take your pick bitch.

xxx Jamay

Safety first, then teamwork

So my res has taken safe sex to a whole new level. I mean they were quite intense about it before, and rightly so. They had free condoms at the door, free condoms in every cubicle in every bathroom, and we got several very serious speeches at the beginning of the year on safe sex, STDs and a tutorial involving a water bottle, bananas, condoms, diaphragms, and other latex products. Fun. I'm not undermining the importance of safe sex, seriously, be wise, condemize and all that, but now they're just getting impractical. Several new 'condom boxes' have been attached to the walls throughout res, very large boxes with pointy corners that stick out of the wall very inconveniently. I cannot count the number of times I have walked out of my bathroom and straight into that stupid wooden box, that, by the way, doesn't even have any condoms in it, so like, what's the point? There can be no doubt as to the purpose of these boxes as they all have a large, purple, laminated sign stuck above them displaying the wonderfully witty and completely original message that "SAFE SEX SAVES LIVES!" (and on a side note I'd like to point out that it also prevents lives, so although true, the message leaves itself open to a lot of sarcastic jokes which tend to undermine the deeply sober thoughts and seriousness that it was supposedly meant to instill in it's young and wild sexually active readers). Here I'd like to make another point, and that is that these large boxes coupled with their equally large signs are not very inconspicuous and people are a lot less likely to brave the publicity and actually go get a condom out the box. It made much more sense to keep them in the bathroom which provided a subtle excuse, so that if one did require a condom it would not be so blatantly obvious. I completely agree that safe sex and the promotion of safe sex are important, but i would also like to be able to walk around a corner or down a corridor without sustaining a semi-serious injury. In conclusion, for structures that are meant to promote safety... these boxes are kinda unsafe. 

xxx Jamay         

Below are some pics of said 'safe sex boxes'

Stuff that's averagely interesting at home but exciting as hell at res

So something I've noticed about res life is that certain things are much more exciting here than they would be at home. One of my absolute favorite things at res is every second Wednesday, because every second Wednesday is chicken-mayo-roll-and-chips day at the dining hall. At home, chicken mayo rolls are averagely interesting, but not day-brighteningly exciting. At res I can have a mind-splitting headache, been late for every lecture and tut and have broken my poor overused shoes while walking down the hill, but its okay... because it's chicken mayo day, and chicken mayo day makes Rhodes a better place. Some other things that are unreasonably exciting at res are the double thickness shower curtains that turn up every now and then, Wednesday nights at friars, sales on box wine or any cheap alcohol really, student discounts at any food providing organization, and when that movie or series you've been dying to see (but not enough to pay for it) fiiiannly gets put up on DC++. I'm still trying to decide if this different perspective we seem to have at res is good or bad. On the one hand, we're appreciating the smaller things in life, on the other hand we're turning into cheap ass, food guzzling, illegally-downloading, party animals with a drinking problem, that turn to chicken mayo rolls every time they have a shitty day. Yeah... that sounds about right. :)

xxx Jamay   

To: The Crackberry Using Sports Fans, follow the logic

You know what gets to me? People that post sport scores or game info as their facebook or bbm statuses. I'm not a sporty person myself and I have nothing against you if you like watching sweaty people swinging clubs, bats and/or chasing a ball if that's what floats your boat. Even I watch the big SA rugby and cricket games... some times. Seriously though, the way I see it there's no point in making your status the score of whatever game you're watching, cause if people were interested they'd also be watching and would therefore already know the score. The people that don't know the score aren't watching, and so obviously don't give a damn. Follow the logic. 
 So those are my thoughts on that.

xxx Jamay   

When all the fun things become legal

Today is my little brothers 18th birthday, Happy Birthday bruv! In SA this of course means he can now legally drink, drive and other things we tend to do illegally anyway ;P So I'm a cake person,I love baking. My bruv and I have a tradition of me making him a kick ass birthday cake which I have to top each year. So far I've managed but this year was hard since last years was sooo amazingly awesome and extremely ambitious. I always use this gorgeous brownie recipe for the cake part, and then go to down with the decorating and such. 
Check out the pics of this years cakes and some of the past ones :) 

xxx Jamay

2012- and collage of things he likes

ipod and rowing blades

bike helmet

2011 cake, full sized bass guitar

2010 cake, double chocolate death by chocolate

The Plague of the Peroxided Mullet

It's been a while since my last post and in that time Tri-Varsity, now known as Inter-Varsity, has come and gone. Everyone at Rhodes likes to go a little nuts during this weekend long sporting/ party event and unfortunately for the male Rhodes population this means a 'who has the ugliest hair' competition, usually done by growing a mullet and then badly peroxiding the shit out of it. Now I'm all for the Inter-Varsity madness, heck I went crazy with the purple paint and overalls myself, but it's been over a month now and for some reason I'm still being subjected to the should-be-illegal peroxided mullet all over campus. Seriously guys, it's time to let go. Let it RIP in the tomb of bad hairstyles of the past. If really necessary... you can dig it up next year when the awesome raucousness of Inter-Var allows for the loss of sanity for one, count it one, weekend.

xxx Jamay 

check out some tri-var party pics bellow :)

   

Bushmans River

Wilderness

Last December I went with some friends to Wilderness on the coast. We stayed at my friends house there, it's rigfht on the beach, it was great. Theres so much to do, wind surfing, normal surfing, gliding, and of course the usual beach type activities. One day we started digging and we didn't stop for 3 or so days, the result of which can be seen in the pictures below. Not many people go to Wilderness, and although they're missing out, I like it that was because it means the beaches arn't crowded and commercialized which is a nice change.

The result of our digging, a lovely fire pit and surrounding seating.