March 2006 Archives

The silence is partly due to the slowest developing meme podcast in history, the return of my direct boss to work after a three month absence (and the resulting raining down of major and minor tasks upon myself and the department I'm PA to) and, frankly, the lack of anything interesting to say.

Last weekend consisted of F1 and olives, as such, not much to report, other than that Fisichella deserved everything he got and kalamatas are the highest tier of olive-dom that can ever be aspired to.

I've lost 2 kilograms, another tiny achievement, possibly undone by the enormous creamy chicken and mushroom penne pasta I wolfed down at lunch yesterday.

We're giving notice on our sweet, scary council estate flat after 6 months of loving our kitchen and hating the chavs.

I have to have to have to invest in a digital camera. The yellow road sign between Waterloo and Elephant & Castle that had an arrow and the words 'You're Gorgeous' on has made up my mind on that.

Nothing more, nothing less. Time is flying. Ian and I have been together a year and a month today.

Tonight. After some serious relationship-centric admin, Ian drove me to Wimbledon to the clinic. It's good to know that my hard earned tax pounds count for something - mainly my choice of contraception. I only have to pitch up on 18:15 on a Wednesday once every six months, have my blood pressure taken, the nurse asking the series of questions I've so become accustomed to, my sleeve is up before she asks. She believes the weight I tell her; it's true, so inconsequential, but the scale on the floor is left untouched anyway.

I asked Ian to stay in the car. The awkward looks that accompanying boyfriends and husbands throw around the waiting room don't need contributing to. Even with a room full of only women, with only female nurses and female doctors, the room is always tense with a sort of reverence for fertility. Or perhaps, more realistically, a reverence for the anti-fertility that the nurse hands through the hatch to me. Six packs of small white reassurances.

It's nothing new for me. I've been on these for seven years now. I joke that I don't know if I'm even capable anymore. Not that I want it right now. Conflicting stories of long-term pill use contributing to cancer growth and, alternately, preventing it. These aspects hit me when I enter the clinic, but hurrying out of the cold, into the car, package in hand, it's long gone.

Interestingly, the NHS family clinics only provide cervical smears once every three years now.

Is the SA cricket team the shit or IS IT THE SHIT!

Hilton has a great post on the aftermath.

Combined with the qualifying on Saturday, and to a lesser degree the race on Sunday, good sporting weekend!

Oh, and Jenson Button only gets hotter.

To podcasts. For as long as I've had my ipod, I've listened to it on the way to work and back, almost religiously, every day. Sometimes, if I'm reading a particularly gripping book, I'll risk a rainy trip home (and the resulting warping pages, like hundreds of wafer-thin ramen noodles pressed together between covers) and forego the sound to pay full attention to the story. But usually, I'll stick to music – the morning trip to work is often best for listening to new albums I haven't heard. It's a great way to wake up, really; I leave home in the mornings in a pretty dazed state, and my first listen to Death Cab's Plans on a cold sunny morning in December still sticks with me as one of the best ways to first listen to an album. You get to listen to the whole thing, without distraction.

So anyhoo, I have developed a massive addiction to podcasts during these commutes, often choosing a podcast over an album I love, to hear something new. So here, ripped straight from Ade's post about what podcasts he listens to, is my list (all available – with the exception of the first – free from iTunes):

1. the destruct\hour. Developed and made and shamelessly plugged by Danzor; it's great fun.
2. The Ricky Gervais Guardian podcasts. Yes, they're over now, and really I should be over THEM now, but they were great fun, and I did look forward to them greatly every week. I won't pay for them now, despite understanding the motivation for charging for them.
3. The Little Red Envelope podcast, by Andy Ihnatko. Great DVD reviews on a netflix-based premise, he's hilarious really, and reviews films I've never even heard of (and will probably never watch)
4. Mark Kermode's film reviews. A BBC movie reviewer is he, and the reviews are often funny and quite insightful. There's also a weekly box office top 10 countdown thing with little mini reviews of each movie.
5. Best of Moyles. An edited mash of the week's Chris Moyles Radio One show. Funny, mindless, nice to switch off to.
6. Stuff mag's podcast. Nice little 'mag for the ears', some reviews of new gadgets, a young irreverent tone, enjoyable, even if they do get all 'Web 2.0' and jargony at times.
7. In Our Time – older, more knowledgable, and generally more pompous people who roll their 'r's when they speak, talking about interesting topics. I half enjoy it because I like to think I'm learning something, and half because the panelists interrupt each other and have little power struggles on who gets to speak and whose point is valid-er. :)
8. Liquidgeneration Radio – I like the site, I like the podcast. Fun.
9. New Scientist and Scientific American. Similar, lots of grainy sounding phone call recordings, again, I'm learning, I think.
10. Real Time with Bill Maher – this is a gem, posted fairly irregularly. If you enjoy the Daily Show with John Stewart, you may already know of and enjoy Bill Maher. It's left-leaning, sure, but then, aren't all the smart people?

So that's it, hope you pick at least one new podcast up. These aren't listed in order of importance, but rather in how they appear on my iTunes podcast section, so no favouritism here. Except for Dan's. 'Cos I know him.

P.S. While posting this, Ian and I were chatting, and I thought, hey, if only there was a Formula One podcast - well, I found one: Formula Pod. Will report back on quality of this new find; but am very excited to have found one!

How wrong is it that I thought it a given that Tsotsi wouldn't win the Oscar? I haven't seen the film, but knew of the basic storyline... I guess I just figured it'd go to some Croatian or Polish or Bolivian film. Perhaps it was the fact that Yesterday didn't win. Perhaps I'm just jaded about the wole Oscars thing anyway.

So of course I am glad it won. My initial blase attitude about it might mean that I'm being a bit of a fair weather friend, but I can deal with that. And the fact that it won means that it'll probably be on a nice wide release and I'll be able to catch it in the UK.

I did enjoy Gavin Hood's press Q&A, despite the cringe-worthy Amandla's coming from the white press and the white director.

It’s exciting that there’s some movement due to happen in the SA film industry, as this win promises. A couple of really phenomenal films have already been produced (Promised Land comes straight to mind) and if we can make something to the same standard then this could be a really positive thing.

Although I do have this nightmarish vision of someone out there thinking it would be a good idea to package our very own ‘oh shucks’ Leon Schuster as SA’s answer to Crocodile Dundee *cringe*.

Chatting about someone I know from uni days who we've seen since...

Ian: "I know why you didn't like him from the get-go."
Me: "Why's that?"
Ian: "Because he lived in Smuts House. You're res-ist."

Yes, we're back, from two weeks that felt like two seconds, from hot sunny days and wearing bikinis and shorts at 9 in the morning, from our families and the people we know and love. It's good to come back, my bed was very welcoming this morning, but it was just as hard to leave this time as it was last year.

Oh, and if you were with me in high school or I dated you and you've decided to fall pregnant / get engaged / get married, don't bother - it's not big and it's not clever. Stop it.