Rhubarber

I have never cooked with rhubarb.
It is strange to me that these green-pink stalks can become anything delicious.
However, the other day a bunch of rhubarb only cost R 9.99 at Fruit 'n Veg so I grabbed a bunch and headed home to find out what one could do with them.

I found a whole selection of recipes on smittenkitchen and through foodgawker, but they all appeared to take a lot of time and I prefer mixing something, throwing it in the oven and taking it out hours later to marvel at how tasty and beautiful it looks.

So ultimately, I adapted smittenkitchen's original recipe:

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble

Yields 6 to 8 servings.

For the topping:
1 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons Demerara sugar (or turbinado sugar aka Sugar in the Raw)
Zest of one lemon
1/4 pound (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 quart strawberries plus a few extras, hulled, quartered
Juice of one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch (some commenters found the flour option a little too, well, floury so this has been updated)
Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Prepare topping: In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugars and lemon zest and add the melted butter. Mix until small and large clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.

2. Prepare filling: Toss rhubarb, strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. (I used an oval dish this time, because they fit better in the bottom of a shopping bag.)

3. Remove topping from refrigerator and cover fruit thickly and evenly with topping. Place pie plate on a (foil-lined, if you really want to think ahead) baking sheet, and bake until crumble topping is golden brown in places and fruit is bubbling beneath, about 40 to 50 minutes.

So, instead, for the topping, I did this: 

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

150ml oats ( slightly more than half a cup)

1ts cinnamin

1ts nutmeg

 ( I wing these until it looks to be the right amount)

100g cold butter

100g chopped walnuts ( I usually just use whichever nuts I have, and am not too specific about the amount)

Place everything except the nuts together in a bowl ( it would be wise to cut the butter into small squares) and rub it all until it is crumbly. You could also do this with a food processor but I like the way your fingers have to rub everything together. 

Add the nuts and mix it well. It should be like slightly wet sand. 

For the Filling: 

I used about 6 stalks of rhubarb

one large Woolies punnet of strawberries ( think that should be round 600g)

Added 3 TB of lemon juice

3 TB of cornflour

1/4 cup sugar

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces ( about 1cm thick) and also cut the strawberries. Place the fruit in a bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Mix everything carefully and make sure everything is well coated. I would adjust the sugar depending on how sweet the strawberries are and how sweet you want your crumble to be. 

Then I placed the fruit in the bottom of an oven-proof dish and crumbled the sandy dough evenly over it. 

Bake for about 40-50 minutes, and whambam: delicious. 

Instead of rhubarb, you could also use frozen berries or apples or pears or nectarines or peaches or plums. Hmmmmm you could basically take any fruit. Imagine a cherry crumble. 

To finish the crumble of I added a scoop of frozen mixed berry yoghurt ( available at Woolworths, where else).

My sister did appreciate it.

nom nom nom

Vir Schoemanstraatslette en ander inwoners *

My friend Berdene features in the following videos, which are part of Webfest's finalists.
Vote for her if you like it:

 - Car Guarded

 - Devil in a Fishtank

The first year I was studying here I was constantly comparing the city to the one's I had lived in in Europe. But one must realize that Pretoria is far removed from the socio-cultural activities that happen in big metropolitan cities and that here, there are different things to experience. You cannot hope to relive Paris in Pretoria. But you can embrace what this city is trying to offer.

As already blogged about, the Pretoria Stadstapper Fotoklap ( read more here and here), aims to experience different neighbourhoods and to explore them with their cameras.

Also, Capital Arts is another venture to bring art back into the city.
Recently, they hosted the Capital Arts in the Park, where one could get together at Magnolia Dell park and look at the exhibited pieces while enjoying a soft serve. Although I did not appreciate any of the art that much, I did enjoy going somewhere a little different and watching all the people.

At Magnolia Dell , October 2011

There is even a blog dedicated to happenings in Pretoria: IlovePretoria.

What else is there to do here? Ah yes, Park Acoustics.

I know there is a lot more going on in the city that I am not aware of, and that if one resists the urge to constantly compare this city to other capitals in the world, one will find that there is still a lot to do here other than sitting at home watching the rugby, having a braai or washing one's car.






* for Schoemanstreetsluts and other residents

Give, and it will be given to you

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is an older lady that spends her days sitting on a camping chair, with a row of colourful plastic bags stretched out in a row at her feet. She sits on one corner of a four-way stop and I drive past her on my way to/from the gym. I have never seen anyone buy a bag from her, so I don't know how she survives. 

The other day, a new Mini was driving in front of me, and this tiny blond-haired child was leaning out of the back window. Suddenly the car stopped and in my rear-view mirror I saw the child stretching out its hand with a green apple in it and the lady from the corner running towards it. 

I have never thought about giving her food, because I don't know if charity is appropriate. I mean, if you are trying to earn a living by selling your bags, I guess you would prefer people to actually buy them than having to run after an apple from a car. 

It also bothers me when people give car guards money from their cars. Go up to the person and look them in the eye and put your R2 in their hand. Acknowledge them. The general population seems to want to ignore others who work menial jobs. I know a lot of people get angry about the amount of car guards one encounters and having to pay for every minute you park somewhere. It bothers me as well, because I feel one should be able to park in safety wherever one is. But if you want to give, don't do it condescendingly. 

What do I give? Hmm. I don't go to church, do I don't donate there. I'll give food or money to beggars on street corner. I pay car guards. I'll send an sms to one of those "donate R10 for rhino conservation"-efforts. There is a newspaper-delivery-man whom we will give a plate of food to if we're at home when he  delivers the paper on Tuesdays. 

I would prefer to donate my time rather than donating money which I do not really have. But one must realize that one is always more fortunate, still, than others. I live in comparable luxury. I have the privilege of  education, transport, shelter, a job ( sort-of) and there is always food in the house.

I could share more.  

dog days are over

Sometimes when I feel that my posture is slacking and my brain is overstimulated and I have too much on my mind I will go for a walk around the neighbourhood. Now I live in suburbia, where families with 2.4 children live behind tall fences, park their two cars in the garage, go to church on Sundays, have at least one largish dog and spend their weekends braaing at their house or other friends' houses while the children swim and jump on the trampoline.

My house is situated at the foot of a slight hill, so my walking route starts by conquering the hill. After that, my thighs have worked enough and I just stroll through the neighbourhood, peering though their fences and observing what other people do. A bit like a stalker or person planning on breaking in, except that I am not a criminal.

So while I was walking around and admiring the blooming Jakarandas, a woman with two Jack Russells ran past me. She would run for 200m and then stop to catch her breath and then run for a short distance again. Basically every time I would catch up to her, she would start running again. Since every one here has a dog, my whole walk was accompanied by barking dogs.

One house had left their gate open and as soon as the lady with her Jack Russells had passed, one of the resident Jack Russells shot out from the gate in hot pursuit. Luckily its owner shouted at the thing and it ran back to the gate.

However, that was the moment I strolled past their yard and the dog ran out again to bark and growl at me. I bent down and spoke nicely to it, and it was friendlier, but then its owner came out of the yard. She was a white lady in her late 40s, with a small frame, curly blond hair and reddish lipstick. She was wearing shorts and a shirt and looked like a decent person. Then she said: "Jammer, die hond is heeltemal kleurblind." ( "Sorry, this dog is entirely colourblind")

I don't think she intended on giving me a biology lesson. I mean, I think we've all heard that most animals cannot see colour the way we can. Something to do with the rods and cones on the retina?

If I consider the woman's age and my general life experience, I have encountered a few people who trained their dogs to be overtly aggressive to black people. Don't know how one would train an animal to distinguish between people or why one would want to spend time on this racist non-sense, but then again, my dogs are deaf and sexually frustrated and welcome anyone into the house.

I can somehow still see how white people from the older generation would tell themselves that all criminals are black and that therefore their dogs will need to bark when seeing "the enemy", because that is the way they were indoctrinated to think and it is hard to change a mindset. But one of the guys that tried to break into our house once was white. Or what if the criminal is of some nondescript  origin? Crime does not choose skin colour.

I think by training your dog to hate one person, you are training it to be aggressive to all people, which could end disastrously ( for instance, what if your dog attacks your child? ).

I walked on. The jogging Jack Russells had turned somewhere. The neighbourhood's dogs kept barking. There was a black man in overalls walking in front of me, and the dogs in that street would bark when I passed, but not when he walked by.

At some house with green fencing a little black boy was playing with a little white boy.

Women were sitting on the second floor patio enjoying a glass of wine while the men were downstairs, sitting on a large log and looking at a baby in a stroller.

Two ladies were lounging on the grass on a street corner.

My old substitute headmistress walked past me. We both avoided saying hello.

An elderly man went jogging in shorts that were not appropriate for his age or his legs.

Another man on a bike was being pulled by two Huskys in tandem.

This woman is wrong. Dogs and people and children and gardens and swimming pools and friends and family and barbecues and running and walking and talking and greeting... We are all colourblind. Life here has moved past the past.

I can (photo)graph

Throughout the year, the University's Archive Department and Qphoto (a local photographic store) host four workshops throughout the year. A lecturer from Vega School of Brand Leadership comes and condenses their intermediate photography course into the four Saturday mornings. One learns about the basic mechnics of a camera, about filters, lenses, flash, etc. My understanding was that if one attended all four workshops, one would receive a certificate attesting that one completed an intermediate course, which I thought could be useful if I would want to take other photographic courses in future. However, the deal was that one had to hand in all four assignments, which I did not do. I missed the fourth assignment and for the fourth I only had my little Panasonic because my mom took the DSLR on tour with her. Last night I attended the prize-giving ceremony and I thought I would receive a little condolence basket and a pat on the back. To be honest, the whole event was a bit of an irritation to me, because I had an assignment due for today that I had far from finished and I was thinking how Derrida and post-humanism and memory are more important for my future than watching people eat Sushi and drink Sherry. When they handed out the 10 "well-done"-awards, I was sure they had mistakenly invited me. This was a waste of time. But then, WHAM BAM, 2nd Prize. For taking a photo of a building with a bottle in. With my little one, my disregarded one,  with the one I throw in my handbag when we go out to take bar-brawl-party-pictures. Here it is ( not sure how the copyright is now, since I think it belongs to the UP Archives, but I took it? If anyone from Archives reads this and wants it removed, just let me know).

The Chemistry Building at the University of Pretoria ( 2nd prize QPhoto Awards 2011)

I think the best image I entered was this one though ( you might notice,I like buildings. They don't move. They like their picture taken):

New building at University of Pretoria and moon, 2011. 

And then, another WHAM BAM moment: the Pretoria Stadstapper Fotoklap was featured in the Beeld, a local Afrikaans newspaper. They spelled my surname wrongly, but I am glad they got my first name right. Such a minefield, these foreign names.

Here is an image of the article:

Beeld Pretoria Stadstapper Fotoklap feature, 26 October 2011.

Guess which one is mine? 

Admittedly, I cannot merge photos on my own, it is all technology and selecting which fotos could fuse together. Hell, I shoot in auto. 

Pretoria at sundown, viewed from Hotel 224.

37°

This is what the car's thermometer read when I stopped in front of the gym. To go swimming. I don't know who would hit a treadmill in this heat. You burn more calories eating an ice cream outside than running on a machine with the air-con blasting in your face.

So I swim my little laps and squeeze my wet legs back into the skinny jeans and throw my bag over my shoulder and start walking to the car, since I just want to drop the bag in the boot and head down ( the gym is on the upper level, whereas the shops are downstairs) to Woolies.

But my flip flops are wet and I am excited about buying food but suddenly I am not walking any more and my foot hurts like hell. I am sitting in a parking spot, in shock about how I got there and about how much my foot hurts. Also, I know there are two security guards nearby who must have seen me fall, but none of them has come to help me up.

I hobble to my feet, proceed to jump on the non-hurt one to the car and decide it is all not so bad; I can still go to Woolies. Foooooood.

So I drive the car one level down, park about 50m from the shop's entrance and get out. After two meters I hobble back, sit in the car and cry because it hurts and no one can help. Normally I am all about female empowerment and helping myself and standing on my own two feet, because I can. But today, fuck, I can't.  The stupid thing is turning blue and needs ice, so we head home. I detest it when my head and my body seem to not be part of the same entity.

Apparently a heat wave has hit the city. I think it is just summer. It is the threat of warm nights and tossing in your bed and being woken by mosquitoes flying around your room and clothes being too hot and everything being drenched in sweat and basically days being on fire. I like spring, but summer, and 37°, no thanks. Heat makes people function less than they already do, so no.

However, it does give me a reason to try Oprah's Moscow Mules:

Servings: Serves 1

Ingredients

• 1 ounce vodka
• 1 tsp. sugar syrup
• Fresh lime juice
• 1/2 cup ginger beer
• 1 sprig fresh mint
• 1 slice of lime

Directions

In a copper mug, pour vodka over ice. Add sugar syrup and lime juice. Top with ginger beer and stir. Garnish with mint sprig and lime slice.

Tomorrow will be 35°. I will have to stop by the bottle store. An invalid needs her medicine.

Wasted youth

On the Champs Elysée, Paris October 2008.

Karin Schimke


Almost Teetotal


It starts off well enough.
Even,
I'd venture,
fun. A kind of warmth
softens my sinews,
I laugh more easily,
things muddy become clear,
conversation flows
doesn't cease
to flow, so that
things clear become muddy,
muscles become flaccid.
I discover then,
too late,
that a bit of control
is a good thing, but
continue to exercise
unedited stupidity:
Say pointless things
that confuse me;
dance on higher things
because the floor feels
suddenly limited;
turn up the volume
because turning it down
        - or just leaving it -


are not options;
skidding
slipping
tripping
falling
to the final resting place
on cool white tiles
with a view
to the underside of things,
from where I can propel the solid
pain that us my head upwards
only
by the sincere belief that
one
more
sour choking gagging effort
over the exhausted bowl might
       this time -


bring release from the
persistent
myth
that getting pissed
is fun.


So,
If it's all the same to you,
I'd rather not.


In Difficult to explain


The first remembrance of alcohol is when I was in Grade 8. My sister's class had to host the Matric ( that's 12th Grade, last year at school here) Ball and my mom was there as well to help. A big bunch of my friends ( all girls, please) had a sleepover at my house and some of them had stolen a bottle of altar wine from church. I can't remember how exactly, since I was not there. We proceeded to drink the wine but WHAMBAM my mom returned home to bust us with glasses of wine in our hands. I must admit, we did not think the whole drinking thing through properly. Should have thought about when she would get home.. Or at least we should have drunk ( drank?) in my room and not in the kitchen, since it is the first room one walks into when entering our house.

My mother proceeded to give us a lengthy speech and then as punishment I was not allowed my cellphone ( Nokia 3310 bitches) or access to the TV for a month. It is the only punishment I can remember ever having gotten. I can't even remember being hit one time.

So after this first flirtation we once got hold of a small bottle of Amarula and drank that between the four of us, but that's about it.

Grade 10 is when alcohol begins playing a role in my social excursions. I would borrow my sister's driver's licence or Id or student card and go out with her or with friends who were either of age or had their sibling's IDs or had fake student cards. It was all very illegal.

It is not like the group of us got wasted very weekend or like we were completely irresponsible, but I look back now ( as if it has been that long) and would never act as carelessly. We would go out and then walk back to a friends house, which in SA is not the best idea as girls, alone, in the dead of night. Sometimes her brother would walk with us with his baseball bat, or we would just ask strangers for lifts. Now I could never do the same thing.

Now I think: "Ah, driving tonight. Where did you park the car? Will someone be able to hijack you from there and stuff you in the trunk? Is someone driving with you? Oh, this is your second Hunter's Dry, better order some water next. "

It is not like I don't want to drink any more at all, it is just that my sense of responsibility outweighs my desire to drink too much. Perhaps we drink to forget, we drink to have more courage, we drink to be more sociable, we drink to be more likeable, we drink because we don't want to be in our right mind. And  by drink I don't mean the occasional glass of wine or a beer here and there. I mean getting wasted, losing your house-keys, waking up in strange places, having no money left in your wallet, and a general "feeling-like-shit" the next day.

Ultimately, I am glad to have wasted my weekends when we were still at school, to have gotten drunk in relatively safe environments and to never have done too stupid things. Many people who get to university and taste individual freedom for the first time get lost in the partying and drinking of the first year and fail academically. I am only 23 and already feel too old to be doing that.

A few weeks ago the debate here was if the legal drinking age should be pushed up to 21. I don't know. Will it change anything? By the time one is 21, you are in your last year at university. Hmm. How many people would just continue drinking illegally? How has it affected countries like the US? Apparently two-thirds of South Africans support a drinking age of 21.

If a higher age lessens the amount of alcohol-related accidents and deaths, I say do it. But if there is no significant difference, I think parents should rather focus on instilling in their children moral values where each is responsible for the self. As a society we cannot still have some sort of following for people like Jub-Jub who kill children by drunkenly drag-racing through the streets in the morning. It is all very strange: a man is found guilty of assault for almost spilling whiskey on President Zuma, but more serious accusations like rape or murder somehow fall though the cracks. I don't understand it.



.

Käffchen?

Taken during one of the Pretoria Stadstapper Fotoklap's events 

VRIEND

ek verlang na jou

vriend

skaduwee meer reëel as rots

wentelbaan van vrede

Godgegewe lied

waarvan ek soms die wysie vergeet

veral tydens die petit mals

van niksseggende transaksies

en die reise agter die skerms

met arms vol kruideniersware

vriend

die winter kom onvermydelik

die lamppale word ryp soos gebede

die lig gaan kop toe

die vrede duisel

ek dra jou in die sak van my leerbaadjie

en reik na jou soos na sigarette

soos na die onblusbare vlam

wat weier om te sterf

onder jare se debris. 

Koos Kombuis, uit Die Geel Kafee

Ich hoff du bist gut angekommen Gandalf . 

Postcarding

Back of an old postcard I found at a fleamarket in Perpignan, France, 2010. 

I like writing postcards.
I like telling the recipient of the card that they are wonderful, that they are special, that they make life better by being in it. And then I leave the postcard unsigned. Since my handwriting is rather discernible and because not many people write postcards, I guess whomever receives the card knows it is from me, but I sort of want it to be a sign from the universe.

I want you to get the card in the mail, hidden in between bills and ads for Pick 'n Pay specials. I want you to stumble onto the piece of cardboard and start smiling. I want a piece of paper to make your day. In the end, I want you to feel happy, even if it is just for a minute, and then I want you to go and place the card on your fridge to remind you that someone cares.

If you own any apple device, a (devilish) blackberry or are running Android, you can now get the "A postcard a day from Gauteng"-app, mahala ( this means for free), on your device. It is an application that sends you a pretty image from around the province daily. You can also submit your own image to the site.

Although I prefer the handwritten cards, this is a nice initiative by the province. There is so much beauty all around us and often we do not realize how fortunate we are to live here, now.


.

Bites of Happiness

Paris, August 2010. Indian Ganesh festival. *

I wonder if the purpose of life is not very simple: happiness. But perhaps we get lost in pursuit of constant pleasures, we get lost in hedonism, and miss the daily bites of happiness that we could experience. It seems that we are only happy retrospectively, we are only happy when we are reminiscing about past events and parties.

So now, I am trying to find the momentary happiness when faced with a situation to remember. Like today, my friend I. accompanied me to the Pretoria Stadstap Fotoklap, where people get together and walk around a specific part of the city taking photographs. The walk concluded on the top floor of the Hotel 224, which has a 360° view of the city. Everyone else was taking in the sunset through their lenses, and admittedly, I also captured some frames. But the best moment was when we distanced ourselves from the tripods and shutter noises and just looked at the city.

It is a sense of calm serenity. It is a sense of enormity and luck and preciousness of the moment that surrounds you. It is simply standing and seeing and appreciating the view and the company. Simply put, it is a bite of happiness.

The same embracing sentiment was experienced when we were in Wilderness. The others were doing Yoga, so I headed to the stairs that lead to the beach. Because of recent storms, these stairs were dangerous and one could only walk down to a certain bench in the middle of the dune, and not completely down to the beach.

I did not take my camera along, but it was the most marvellous sunset. Dolphin's peak and Victoria Bay disappeared into a mist. The sky was awash with berries, from the ripest gooseberries over to strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and Youngberries, it seemed as though a basket had spilled and Van Gogh had spread out the fruits' lifeblood to form a perfect sunset.

Gerard Manley Hopkins would have killed for such splendour, for "God's Grandeur" in this daily rotation of the world. The canvas of sea and mountain and mist and colour and waves and breezes was merging into one, was forming into a unity of all elements. It was a moment evoking transcendence. I wondered then if this was what Romantics like C.D. Friedrich were trying to paint in their works. If here was where God is to be found. If this is why people believe in more than earthly pleasures.

Perhaps it is not necessarily God. Perhaps there exists a deeper spirituality in nature which we, through years of city living and the stresses of a fast paced life, have lost track of. I do not feel part of these beautiful land/cityscapes, and maybe this adds to the disconnection from happiness. If one cannot sense a symbiosis with the moment of pure joy, there is no way one can appreciate it.

But this moment, this sitting on the stairs and admiring of berry-stained skies was what the being-in-awe of awesome describes, and it was perfect happiness.





* if you are wondering about the image, it is another moment of perfect happiness, when I randomly went to the Ganesh festival in the Indian "quartier" of Paris. Ganesh is known as the remover of obstacles and the Lord of new beginnings and also associated with wisdom. At the festival, devotees break great amounts of coconuts and then people just pick up the pieces off of the street and eat them. 

Telling

I was parking the car the other day in the swanky neighbourhood next to the university ( there is no parking nearer to campus where I do not get a parking ticket, so into suburbia we go). When I got out to grab my bag from the boot, there was a black gentleman in his 50s, impeccably dressed and looking very much like someone one would like to share a whisky with. He handed me the note in the photograph and asked if I did not have any work for him. 

Situations like these make me feel completely out of place. He called me "missis" ( for non-South Africans, this is similar to "madam". I think it is a sign of respect, but in my mind is more associated with the apartheid "master/madam" oppressive form than something one would say out of a general sense of social order). Missis is bad to me. I am no one's master. Call me miss, if you have to. Or just "you". I am a lot younger, a lot less experienced in the world, I should be the one of lesser rank. 

I promised that I would pass his info onto someone if I would hear of someone who needed work done. And walked away. He continued up the road, which is lined with arches of old trees and enormous mansions, behind whose high gates expensive German cars gleam in the sunlight. I wonder how that must feel: being desperate for work, wandering a rich suburb where the inhabitants probably earn more in a year than you would in a lifetime. 

When I got home, I read the note, and again was saddened. Why? The spelling. It is my belief that a good education, where traditional knowledge is not forced down on students, but rather where the environment is one which acknowledges different forms of learning and knowing, could change the world. And here, I blame my ancestors. If they had not been so blind and full of hatred, if they had not separated people on account of skin colour, many of the older generation could have had their minds unlocked to a fascinating world where your own thoughts matter as much as those you read in books and newspapers. 

If previous generations would already have had access to a good education, perhaps the youth of today would be able to value it more. At university, I see many people who just expect their parents or the government to pay for their studies, even if they do not attend class and fail subjects. It is a privilege to learn. It is a blessing to be able to sit in classes and be taught to think for yourself. 

So when I see this man, struggling to find basic manual labour in an area where money seems to grow on trees, it bothers me. When I see his terrible spelling, while he is walking through an area where a university, a primary school and numerous high schools are situated, it bothers me. When I then see students not valuing the education they are receiving, it infuriates me.  

 It is easy to judge the previous generations for their errors, because one tells oneself one would not have stood for injustice. One tells oneself that one would have fought for equality. One tells oneself that one could never have just accepted a black and white world instead of seeing colour. But I don't know. Depending on the ideology I was raised with and whether I would accept or reject it, I don't know if I could've been a apartheid-supporter or protester. 

But I can judge the youth of now, the decisions of now, the government of now. I am not saying South Africa is going under or we are becoming like Zimbabwe or whatever, but I am saying that young people need to get their act together. They need to demand knowledge. They need to stop supporting idiots like Malema and burning down buses and classrooms. You cannot advance a society through violence and ignorance. Accept that there is much to learn, from everyone. Everyone is an expert in some region. I know language. I know music videos. But I need to call my grandmother to make jam, or ask the gardener where would the basil-plant grow best ( well, my gran with her green thumb knows that as well).

All I am saying is respect everyone you meet. Even Malema. Know that they are not stupid, they are not less than you. Know that you need to open your mind and take responsibility for your own future.

.

Blockage

When life is busy I have nothing to write about. I can think of not one thing that I would consider to be important. Sure, there is unrest all over the world and opinions that could be shared, but I feel like I would not do justice at the moment to their importance. Right now, arguing about religious views, or why young people have lost the desire to do better, or why life is beautiful, well, I just have no words at my disposal.

You know that situation when someone has said something mean or rude about you, or made a sarcastic joke on your expense, and you can say nothing witty back? But then, when you are sitting in your car or in front of the TV or wherever, you come up with the smartest comeback? Well, the French have a term for this : l'esprit de l'escalier. Directly translated it means the spirit of the stairs, or the wit of the stairs, and relates to Diderot, who said that he could only think of something clever when he was at the bottom of the stairs again ( in his time, the nobles would receive guests on the first floor).

Apparently there is a similar term in German, Treppenwitz ( Stair-joke). However, it is used more as relating to events that seem to contradict their own context. This is what Wikipedia says, but I have no idea what that is supposed to mean or what examples one could mention. What events seem to contradict their own context? Perhaps a situation similar to Frank Miller's comic book ( and later film version) 300, where 300 Spartans fight off the threat posed by the gigantic armies of Xerxes, would be suitable as a Treppenwitz?

Here a comeback from a man I would have loved to drink tea with :


During Winston Churchill's early career, he was at a meeting and another member was giving a long-winded speech. Churchill began to close his eyes and fall asleep. At the sight of this, the member became visibly angry and shouted: “Mr. Churchill, must you fall asleep while I’m speaking?”  Instead of making attempts at an apology or a cover-up, Churchill simply replied:

“No, it’s purely voluntary.”

You can find more clever comebacks here. 

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