Hello, 2013

</2012>

<2013>

WELL, HELLO!

So, everyone's doing end of year posts and/or start of year posts. I figured I'd do one too.
I just read a long, personal and intricate post from a dear bro and understood a lot more about his year.
I'm not going to be as detailed in my recollections or as personal, but I will blab about 2012 a little.

Okay, so from this side of the looking glass, 2012 might have seemed quite a crappy year, a tiring adventure and overall, the end of my favourite era in life, but I think if I look at the positives, 2012 was great in some ways.

I'll try to be at least MOSTLY chronological so that things make sense here.

Anyway, so the year started off with me at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, finishing off my BCom ISTN degree.
As much as I was tired of studying and writing exams, campus life has been my favourite part of life.
There was enough freedom for me to enjoy everything and to feel liberated but not so much freedom that I had too much responsibility placed on my shoulders.
I admit that I'm able to do so much more now, but I think I will always miss that point of my life.
Well, I had a great time being with my friends and relaxing for most of the day, every day. I miss them so much and it's quite disappointing not to be able to see them often as I did before. I think that's why I miss this area of life so much.
Things were much more fun when I could wake up in the morning, get to campus and trot off to find Cavie and the gang.
I do so miss sitting next to them in the LAN or at a bench near the pond.
(Sigh... okay, yes, I did initially write that about Cavie and then I realised that it sounded mean to leave out the others. Guys, I loved hanging out with all of you. You all gave me company when I needed it and you all helped me have an awesome semester for 2012. Sean, Amy, Prashna, Cohen, Smee, Brad, Hen, Adrian, Byron, Sanchia, Jes and Yashaar. I'm just mentioning the people that I hung out with most often. Hope I didn't forget anyone. I know Tant wasn't physically with us, but she was always there to chat and stuff. WAIT. WE MET HER! I can totally say that now.)
Anyway, so I passed my final set of exams in June after much studying, sweating and staying up late (to play games between studying, of course).
I officially have a degree :)

Unfortunately for most of this time, my beloved Verushka had been working (since January) so I was unable to freely see her. That was the one real pain between January and July.
Although, since she was a lot more mobile than me most of the time, she popped in to visit a few times :)
-and thankfully, we were able to meet on weekends, etc.
I was so happy each and every time I saw her.
I thank her for the many times she went out of her way to see me or help me out.
<3

I realise now that I didn't enjoy my July holiday as much as I wanted to.
I wish I did. I SHOULD HAVE SLEPT MORE.

Otherwise, the next big thing was that I got a car and a job.
ERMERGERD.

Ifrit has been an incredible help. I've become quite used to driving on my own now.
I even enjoy it. Muse has become my driving music (Muse-ic?) recently and I'm quite happy about that.
I currently have all 6 of their main albums in the car.

Work has been boring and tiring, then hectic, then interesting and now boring again due to the lack of anything during the holiday season. I'm hoping to get back to more interesting work such as configurations and setting up other device software.

My parents and granny have been out for the holiday period so I've had to take care of more stuff at home.
Parents went to Egypt and my granny was in Johannesburg.

What I am really happy about is that I got to spend a lot of time with Verushka recently.
I even got to see her around Christmas and New Year.
Her and her family have been very sweet with insisting on having us over for supper, tea and anything else that they were doing at the time.

I also got to spend a lot of time with Previn and Daelin since they were down. In fact, they were awesome in inviting Verushka to their house as well.

Daelin was quite entertaining this holiday. Ironically, Johnnie Walker stopped him from walking.
He's fine now guys. Don't worry.

I watched some awesome movies (Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, Life of Pi)
Found an awesome website (StumbleUpon)
Finally had a good drink on New Years Eve (driving set me back there. Thankfully I didn't have to drive on NYE.)
Played, laughed, loved, lived.
All in all, 2012 wasn't so bad. A lot of new experiences. A few things came to an end. I learnt a lot and experienced a lot of new things.
I know I mentioned it at the beginning, but I chose not to mention much of the negative stuff about the past year because there's no point starting this year with troublesome thoughts.

Coming this year:
-Graduation
-Metallica
-more work stuff
-more blog posts

And... um... yeah. Think that's about it for now. Gonna have some lunch and stuff.
Cheers.

2012-12-21: A Survivor's Diary

21/12/2012
00:00 (South African time)
On the phone with Verushka. We saw some troublesome stuff on the net about today, but the world still seems to be intact so far.

00:30
Going to sleep now. Nothing has happened, but if everything's okay, I'll have to go to work, so I might as well have enough sleep.

07:25
My shower tap has broken off. Is this the catastrophe that the Mayans predicted?

07:56
I'm at work. I survived the drive too.

08:16
I'm at my desk wondering whether anything is going to happen today.

09:07
I have been reading Cavie's blog posts.
I've been so busy with work (and so tired after work) that I haven't been able to give him the attention he deserves from me <3
But the world is crazy if it thinks that it will end before I read and enjoy what he writes.
Work is going slow this week so I'm happy that I can comfortably read his blog.
I continue to marvel at his writings and how his November posts all start with C.

09:23
Adrian said "</world>"
I laughed. He said I should credit Terishka Bissoon for this joke.

09:40
Gangnam Style has 997,228,640 views.
Apparently the 1,000,000,000 mark was to be the end of the world :/

10:16
I'm so tired. Maybe I shouldn't have stayed awake to see if the world ends. Would have been fine if I didn't have late nights every day this week. Verushka keeps telling me how she's at home in bed, having coffee, etc.
I'm jealous.
Champs (Trishanta Pursotham) is chatting to me on GMail and refusing to get me a pillow.
Two songs still remain in my head. One will replay over and over, then the other one will step in for a bit and they alternate this way.
1. http://your-face-is-a-blog.blogspot.com/2012/12/cannot-stop-thinking-of-this.html 
2. www.mochachos.com (Yes, the restaurant franchise. Click and wait. You probably need flash and/or javascript. I'm not sure what it uses.)

11:56
It's almost halfway through the day and I'm still alive.
Dimension Data has a Christmas lunch on the canteen menu today. Obviously to distract us from the truth.
Larisha Govender says that all will be fine because "Goku saved us."

12:04
Gangnam Style has passed 998,000,000
It's only a matter of time now.
Champs says her bum keeps getting bigger. Definitely a sign of the apocalypse. There is no hope.

12:17
I want to see Verushka. I miss her.
We were meant to have lunch today. 5 minutes with her would make my day now.
I heard Cavie recoil and yelp at my previous statement. I heard it from here.

13:30
Verushka's about to take me for lunch. :D
*She's waiting outside for me.
I'm gonna seeee her.  [Dorky dance]

*(No, I didn't make you wait. I wrote some of these things later than they occurred and put the relevant timestamp because that's what I was thinking at the time so it's still cool.)

15:22
I got back from lunch with Verushka.
She's still alive. Whew.
So am I.
THANK YOU. I know SOMEONE in the audience said "whew" in reaction to MY safety. I appreciate your concern regarding my well-being.
She didn't let me pay and I forgot to sneakily leave my money in her car :(
Now I'll have to buy her TWICE as much food next time #BoyfriendProblems
There was some traffic but Verushka's driving skills made short work of any problems.
She jokingly yelled "HEY, LADY" to call the waitress after we attempted to get her attention and when she did yell, the lady actually turned around and looked. She felt awkward. Verushka felt awkward. Not the lady. Maybe the lady too.

15:31
VERUSHKA IS HOME. SHE IS SAFE. I sent her a BBM "Whew" face to let her know how concerned I was. She totally misses me already.
I am at my desk at work.

16:22
The important people have left work now.
I spent a while looking for some cute pictures of animals for Verushka.
I'm tired now.
Yes. Still alive. But there's still time for the world to end.

16:31
Leaving now. Verushka said.
If there's traffic, it's her fault :(

17:09
Got home just now. Was a little traffic but it was okay.

17:25
Tired. A quick nap and I'll be okay.

20:00
Shit. I slept for a while.
My parents and sister went to have supper and will be back just now.

21:30
I ate Verushka and my leftovers and a bit of a ham roll. My parents and sister were at Spur earlier. They came back a while ago. I'm going to Previn's house because it's Ony's birthday just now.
Still alive. If we die before Ony's birthday, it'll be funny.

23:00
There's an hour left. Perhaps we won't die today after all. THERE'S A SURPRISE.
I feel bad. :( I'm not talking to Verushka freely. I hope she forgives me. We'd better not die now.

22/12/2012
00:03
We are wishing Ony happy birthday as it's past 12.
We also did not die. I REPEAT: We did not die.
However, I'll wait for the day to pass in every country/time zone before I assume complete safety.

00:50
Got home a while ago. Gonna phone Verushka :)

01:39
Going to sleep now. If I'm still alive in the morning, I think I'm gonna call it a day and assume the world will survive.

[Awake]
I'm not sure what time it is. Didn't check yet.
But it's day-time and everything's okay.
We survived.

Less than a month to live? (Now with work pics!)

So, despite the Mayan's calendar not including leap years and stuff, I still wonder whether the world will indeed end next month.
Well, I'll be pretty sad if Verushka just wasted money on Metallica's April concert because we die next month and don't get to see it.
Hmm... I think I had a good life. If we're all gonna die, at least I know I had fun, met awesome people, loved some, lost some, got an effing degree, got a job, got a car, went on a short holiday and used my own money, read amazing books, watched amazing stuff, played wonderful games, said and heard memorable things and so much more.

I have a shit-load to read and watch before I die, though. Don't think I'm gonna have time to see everything.

---

Speaking of Game of Thrones...

...I feel horrible that I sorta harassed Cavie in my previous post.

It wasn't intentional at all.

I may have been unfair.
I may have overreacted to the way he let out his feelings and stuff as I already knew he would.
I may have missed his humour and needed it at the time.
I also may have turned into a woman and PMS'd all over him.
DAFUQ.
Anyway, my last post was meant to be more general. I don't know what happened.
But, forgive me, dude. I still love you and stuff <3

http://your-face-is-a-blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/dat-guy.html

Also, I just took immense pleasure in reading his last blog post which was like a late autobiography.
http://cah-vie.blogspot.com/2012/11/cavie.html
Thanks bro. You should slap me sometimes too. Not just on the rump.

---

Otherwise, it's  been a busy couple months.
Work has been pretty tough because we've been moving across the road and stuff.
We moved across already. It was a lot of hard work, but it's awesome to know you accomplished a lot.
At least I learned how to use some basic tools, did some physical labour and became even MORE manly.

Had to help move those whiteboards

The new auditorium before it was completed. We assembled and mounted those screens.

In our old parking lot.

Not prohibited. Just awful.

Checked our stock

Checked the stock with this list.

Ladders love making jokes.

Working in a boardroom

Our new reception area.

Trying to terminate a VGA cable

Stress relief

Rather tired of this guy's face in my online learning stuff.

Yeah, so if the Mayans's stuff was right, I spent my last 2 months doing that stuff.

Anyway, lemme go spend some time with Verushka before the apocalypse.
LATER, YO.