Reminders, Defeats

This year, man, this year.
The days a twisted game of Jenga,
with stacks of bureaucratic paperwork
and nothing really to look forward to.
Alas, this is just what everyone feels like
when big changes
are just around the corner
ready to shout "BOO!"
when you least expect it.

Blood

This homecoming is a strange thing.
It feels like I have never left.
Conversations with friends never halt, never fail, never make me feel like I missed a year.
These roads are still mine, knowing where the speed traps hide and where the shortcuts are.
The wine section in Checkers still has the Odd Bins Pinotage.

And yet, everything has changed as well.
I stay with my aunt, digging through boxes of old clothes and books and things that do not matter.
Our house is another family's house now.
The roads are changing, with construction sites everywhere.
The Odd Bins is no longer #706, but #710, with its date changing from 2011 to 2012.

I have missed a year.

But then again, so have the others.

I'm not here/ This isn't happening/ I'm not here/ I'm not here

I cry very rarely. But now, somehow my tear ducts are in overproduction. I was surprised to find myself crying when I said goodbye to friends at a Jeremy Loops concert. I cried on the way home from the concert. I cried at the airport. I cried whilst standing in line, waiting to get my passport checked. I cried whilst waiting to board the plane. I cried in Doha whilst waiting for the next plane. I thought I had cried enough. 

Then the past two weeks have been so busy that there has been no time for crying, no time to think about missing home. Then I went to Flensburg for two days to find a commune, extremely hopeful and optimistic and going into charm-everyone mode. How hard could it be, right?

Hah. I'm crying right now. Maybe it's being overwhelmed, just for a moment, by everything. Maybe it's not really sleeping for two days because a very cute kitten kept bouncing around on me at night. Maybe it's discovering that the university consists of two buildings. Small buildings. I think I handled everything pretty well, until I got back to Berlin with two rejections. 

The rejections were still ok, as well. But then not getting any support from my father, having to live out of my suitcase, not having a moment to myself, not having any space to call mine, well, that made the flippen tear ducts start up again. Fuck. 

I know all of this is not as hard as I make it out to be, I know somehow it'll work out, I know I still have time to find a room, somehow, somewhere. Just in this very moment it would be nice not to feel so very much alone. 

Options

The house smells like jasmine,
leftover scents
of a celebration,
reminding everyone
and myself
that this is
a little like death,
a little death,
except that this time we get to say goodbye.

We get to hug it out
in between promises of
Skype
WhatsApp
letters
postcards
communication in the Digital Age.

But I know (and they know it, too)
that people slip so easily out of another's lives,
even if the knot of friendship was tied tightly,
and that suddenly one has moved along
without really noticing
the past.



 

Sing me a love song / From your heart or from the phonebook

The Editors released a new album recently, emotively titled The Weight of your Love. For me, 2008 was filled with An End has a Start and I was extremely jealous when my sister saw them at a festival. Then came the shock that was In This Light And On This Evening, because suddenly there was a lot more synth and a lot less guitars. It was like listening to a different band, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Well, here is a song I like from their newest release.

Society, you're a crazy breed

Friends and I have started to work on a project. We are not entirely sure what it is or what each of us wants from it, but at the centre is this idea: "play your part". Being in academia is a lonely place where one trades in egos and needs to constantly side-step conversations because no one ever says honestly what they think. It is also an elitist space with people often presenting papers and speaking in such a way that the average Joe is clueless as to what they are actually saying. Maybe it's only me who does not understand.

It bothers me that being 'learned' is restricted to those that can afford learning. It is not like that everywhere in the world, but here (and I am assuming in many third world countries, which South Africa is not and still is, somehow) getting a good education often seems out of reach. I am not sure if the reason people don't demand a better education is because they are uneducated ; if the government preaches better education but does nothing to improve the system in order to keep the majority of the voters dumb and clinging to the ANC's 'liberator' persona; if many are simply not interested in learning, or if the concept of education in itself is wrong.

In the gym the other day I overheard two middle-class white ladies saying that the schools had failed their children because the kids were told that they were bad at a particular subject when in effect it was just the teacher's style of transmitting the information that was wrong. I don't know. I never liked our math teacher and thus also did badly in mathematics, irrespective of going to additional classes and trying to study. I still think that trigonometry and algebra were torture. But young people should also learn that life is not handed to you on a silver platter and that the average person is not great at everything. Finding one thing you are good at is already an achievement. I mean, I know I can bake decent cakes, but beyond that who knows what my strengths are.

Anyway. Back to project no-name. It really doesn't have a name. But the idea is to change the way academia works and to make learning more horizontal instead of hierarchical. Learning doesn't stop when you finish school/university/etc. Learning never stops. And I think that is what is fundamentally wrong with the education system here: it preaches that when you complete your matric or your degree or your diploma, you will get work with that and then you have stopped learning. But in the 21st century it is no longer plausible to believe you will be employed by the same company for your entire life, or that you will find a job doing exactly what you studied. Let's see if our project can succeed in helping to change the way society thinks of education and thus play our part.

They can all/just kiss off into the air

Nicholas Mirzoeff is here.

Initially I did not understand why everyone was so very taken with him. It is just another person, another Professor presenting some lecture on some topic using some words that I don't understand.
Now, I can comprehend why he is the academic equivalent of a rock star. And he is very nice, too.

Visual Culture Studies is not the most widely known field of research. When people ask what it is, I am not even entirely sure myself, although this searching for the visual and what it means is what I am passionate about. Often VCS or just Visual Studies is hidden away in some corner, stashed behind the star attraction that is graphic design or fine art or even art history. We are a field without clear parameters, and as such revel in interdisciplinarity (ja, I know, that is not really a word, but the perks of not knowing what you are doing for sure are the ability to add -ity and -ness whenever you feel like something needs distinction).

Now, with a NYU professor coming to South Africa, coming to speak to US, it validates this existing in the corner and this incomprehension by others (and perhaps by ourselves, too, at least in my case). Having someone come and say, hey, the way you are thinking and questioning and wondering is great, we need to re-evaluate what we know, we are on the cusp of a revolution in the way the world is seen, well, that is like a pat on the shoulder from a father who never shows any emotion.

It's a much bigger deal than I had initially realised.

It's a Good Life

My mom reused the birth-announcement-card as a birthday card this year. Now I know I was born at 00.25 AM. Being born at twenty-five minutes into the day turned out to be a good sign for my 25th birthday. It was the first time in my life that there was no one in the house with me on the day. Normally someone puts out flowers and presents and a cake, even if they had to already leave for work/school.

This time my mom wrote down clues for me to find objects stashed in the house. It wasn't entirely successful because she thought writing down clues about what the present was, and not about its location, would help me find them. No wonder we suck when we're partners in 30 Seconds. Nothing a phone call couldn't fix though.

I am aware that as soon as you hit the double digits, birthdays become less cool. No more goodie bags at the end of a party, no more running around and frolicking in the pool, no more waiters at Spur bringing you something with candles on it and singing to you. Then all you care about is turning 16, turning 18 and getting your licence, and, the big one, turning 21, because then you are an adult and your parents pay for your last big fiesta.

I am still not an adult, but somehow, 25 feels like no one can treat me like a child any more. At a quarter of a century into life, it is a great balance between having experienced enough not to be a completely ignorant fool who thinks she knows everything (me at 19) and still being young enough to depart from what I know without the weight of mortgages, car payments and a long career at the same company.

This was the first birthday of being a semi-adult where I thought, well, you might just be able to do anything you want successfully. And the reason for this was all the great people I have in my life. My mom made a gigantic effort to bake a cake and organise a treasure hunt. She also involved my aunt and cousin to fly up a cape I wanted (yes, cape, like superman-ish, but better). My sister also helped with this cross-country endeavour and spent hours looking for a silk dress she thought I might like (I do).

My friend K planned a super surprise brunch date, with awesome self-made presents. Another friend called completely out of the blue from France and sent me the funniest YouTube video. I got  'Happy Birthday' sung to me via WhatsApp and sent in messages, in emails, in Facebook posts. Other friends, family and neighbours called. Often, sure, it was because someone had been told by FB that this was the day of my birth, but I appreciated all the little and great efforts equally.

William Somerset Maugham said that "we are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person". A birthday provides the opportunity to reflect on what one has done in the past year, how things have changed or not, and which friends you still wish to invite to your party. I remember how I realised a friendship was over: for the first time since 7th grade, I was not invited to her birthday party. 

Somehow, this birthday made me realise the truth of W. Somerset Maugham's quote: things change all the time, people drift apart, and we should value the ones that remain, steadily, in your life because they are the one's that will make an effort to celebrate you being born even if you aren't throwing a party this year. They are the ones that will be there throughout the curve balls that life throws at us, and in turn, so will you, because nobody can make it on their own. 

 

Never without cake. This one: Frozen Chocolate Mousse Cake. 

Wildest Moments

I don't jump off bridges or out of planes or fence with crocodiles.
My sister and my cousin think I drive too slowly.
I like being on time.
I don't smoke, or own anything (besides shoes) that is made out of leather.
I like my whiskey with milk, not water.
I like books more than I do Grand Theft Auto (or any video game for that matter).
Motorcycles? Meh.

Basically, I am quite a boring person. No extreme risks, no wild moments, no great need for adrenaline rushes.

When it comes to my hair however, yeah, there I'll pretty much do anything. It grows again. Besides the mullet-stage that inevitably sneaks up on me, well, I quite enjoy having different hair.

This time, I shaved it off and donated my ponytail to Cansa, who hold an annual Shavathon at the beginning of march. If your hair is longer than 22cm and not overly destroyed by bleaching/colouring/blow-drying/etc. they can make a wig out of your donated hair. So that is what I did. (Click here if you feel like sending them a ziplock bag with a ponytail in it. Yay presents for you Cansa).

The cutting of the ponytail was quite liberating somehow. Long hair is not really my thing, so it always ends up in a bun or somehow pinned into submission in any case. This is by far a better use for it. So, dear hair, I hope you can serve someone else better than you did me.

Before (all innocent)

After (so hardcore I have two heads)

Goodbye ponytail. Until you grow again. 

Classy girls.

Aaaaand today's offering, Plum Jam. 

I like plums. Sweet and cold and juicy. Slightly inferior to a nectarine, but still somehow worthy of poetry. Pick 'n Pay had some organic plums on sale, and by coincidence the Sunday Times had a recipe for plum jam. 

When everything you thought would happen suddenly changes, it is as though you are walking into the ocean, and out of the blue (haha) the waves have washed a dip into the sand and bam! you can no longer stand. Time to sink or swim. 

So making plum jam is reassuring, because although it is a new recipe and could flop, the territory is familiar none the less. And it came out really well. High-5-ing myself for the little achievements of the day (others include washing the dishes or repacking everything in sight). 

The recipe is as follows: 

Simple Plum Jam (adapted from the ST Food section, 17 February 2013, p.6)

1kg red plums, halved and pitted

1kg sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

4 star anise

4 cardamom pods

1 cinnamon stick

Layer the plums and the sugar in a large dish, and leave overnight. 

The next day, place the plum-sugar-mix into a saucepan, and stir over a low heat until all the sugar has dissolved. 

Add the lemon, star anise, cardamom and cinnamon and bring to the boil sans stirring. 

Here I went full-steam boiling, which was a mistake because part of the jam boiled over. So on a scale from 1-6, I'd stick to a 4. 

Boil for about 40min, and scoop off the bubbly top layer. It's not essential, but the jam looks cleaner later on. 

Drop a spoonful of the jam in cold water, and if it doesn't dissolve it is ready. This method has never worked for me, so I kind of judge the level of blubbly-top layer. If it looks very sticky, like golden syrup, the jam is done done done. 

Then you just fill it into sterilised jars and seal them. 

The original recipe was double as much as I made, although I added more spices. You could also leave out all the spices for a simple plum jam, but this stuff is quite ttttasty. 

Here you can't see it all that well, but with the "bubbly top layer" I mean the whitish stuff. When this gets to be a lot more, you are done. 

 

It seems the day that your house burned to the ground was the day that you'd always planned to leave anyway

After one month of not being here, I have nothing really to do now. Nothing pressing.
University is done. At least for now.
One interview lined up. Dress up. Prepare a lesson plan. Know you can do this.

But what if it does not work out? 50% fear and 50% excitement all twisted into one whilst awaiting change.
If this is not the one, maybe Istanbul or Mexico City will have me.

Or I'll stay home forever, tending the garden, cleaning the house, battling with the swimming pool, cooking and looking for a husband.

Bahahaha. Never.

The king of limbs

* From birth to death we turn on the autopilot of our lives, and it takes a superhuman courage to deviate from this course.

Today is a friend of mine's birthday, and since he is leaving for #Paris on Monday, here is some advice in French. Happy Birthday Allen :)

Snow ((Hey Oh))

Duft des Schnees

Das Fenster stand trotz winters offen, und ich roch, sobald ich in das Zimmer trat, den Schnee. 

Ich roch und erinnerte mich: das kannte ich, das würzig Kühle, das sanfte Duftgewölk von Milliarden winzigen Schneesternen; diesen Flockenduft, der hereinwirbelt, diesen Schneesternschauer. 

- Bruno Epple

For the first time in my lifetime, it snowed in Pretoria. Normally in winter, the sun continues to shine and the days are warm enough, just at night time your feet become like icicles and a heater/warm water bottle/ hot company is needed. But yesterday, everyone kept updating their FB statuses about the snow in Joburg and for the first time in recorded history, snow fell in all nine provinces. Hillary Clinton, here on some business/trade thing, was even named Nimkita, 'bringer of snow'. 

I looked out of my window and saw sunshine. What snow?! An hour later, things had changed, and rough snowflakes were falling on the washing outside. In honour of this, a few people came over for pancakes and Glühwein. No better reason than snow falling for the first time since the 1960s, hey. 

My friend Sliv's view from her office. 

via News24

on FB

I would find a way

Child at tuckshop/caravan in Swaziland

At my school we had a Hexenhäuschen (the witch's house from fables) that during break-time would sell square slices of pizza and fizzers and chips and sweets to the primary school. But then it closed, and everyone had to go to the main tuck shop. I found it very intimidating, all these Grade 8s and above.

Tomorrow I go back, and am still intimidated. Damn, school stays with you. In some episode of Modern Family, Mitchell tells Manny that at school, every one wants to fit in. But as soon as we leave school, we want to be seen as individuals and stand out. It is like flipping a switch, where at school cool means being like everyone else, and then, with that Matric/Abi/Bac/whatever diploma in your hands, you suddenly, with all your might, refuse to fit in.

It makes me nervous, because my decently great PowerPoint might be a failure, I might not find my words, or most of all, yes, worst of all, I might realise nothing has changed in six years. You know, the idea that after school, you evolve into the person you were supposed to become, not hindered and stunted by high-school expectations. But what if it never changes, and there is always some hegemony involved which you can never break free of. What if what we were is all we'll ever be, at the core.

While I am reasoning these insecurities out, all I am actually thinking is "Screw that. That was then, this is now, we constantly change and adapt, and (not to be all 'yay, for tomorrow is another day') you can handle anything the world throws at you".

Why political ads should be banned

via Complex

Political television ads are almost non-existent in South Africa. I remember the ANC and the DA somehow fighting it out, but never really on TV. We also don't have debates between candidates. They just use the press to publish whatever the other party has done wrong.

And then I found this. For a political party, this is terrible. What do you stand for? What are your opinions ( except for pointing out the discrepancies of the current president)? I just don't get it. What does this ad actually do? It's like a kindergarten where one child needs to badmouth another. This is not politics, this is just ridiculous.

Le mal(e)

On the farm, I wanted to pour everyone a glass of wine for dinner when my gran looked at me sternly and said that I should let my cousin do it because he is, after all, the man in the room. I have no problem with gentlemanly behavior, hell, I find it rather encouraging if people have nice manners and if men treat women like ladies. But if I've got the bottle already in my hand, if I am a second away from pouring, it is silly to me not to do it because I was born with a vagina.

It angers me incredibly when people tell me I cannot do something for the simple reason that I am female. To this day, I have not met many men that were not in some form or another a disappointment. Everyone is flawed, everyone makes mistakes, and these stupid gender rules that my grandmother and many others live by irritate me endlessly - I have grown up thinking that I could do anything, that my rights and my role in society was equal to every other person's, irrespective of race and gender and age and whatever else you could list as a reason to separate human from human.

Times change, mindsets adapt, but the old cling to their doctrines as though they were drowning in the thinking of the new age. I will also be old and frustrated and feel a sense of loss because I am being replaced by younger generations who ignore that their achievements could not have been accomplished without the foundations that their lineage laid down.

But I think it is stupid to say that you cannot change the old, that "because they are old" you cannot have a discussion with an elderly person. I love my grandmother, but I cannot stand to hear her speak of the k*****s, of the "anderskleuriges" ( people of a different colour) as though we were not all the same. And she should know better : she speaks fluent Sotho ( one of the 11 national languages), she built a school for the black children on the farm, she always treated the workers on the farm with dignity. Also, she says that the best time in her life was when she worked as a teacher before she got married, and her biggest regret is not doing it for longer. In a life filled to the brim with more fantastic experiences and a great family, I cannot understand why she fixated on those two years of independence,but tells me that I should submit more to a patriarchal way of thinking.

I like hearing old stories and asking questions that only my grandmother can answer since she has lived the longest. She should be wise and I should learn from her, I should be able to take her life and mould mine accordingly, but all I want to do is shake her and say that for 60 years, she has believed wrongly,that she is ignorant and foolish and keeps making these errors without accepting any blame, without taking any responsibility. I want to say, "Ouma, skrik wakker, wees in beheer van jou lewe, en hou op om die heeltyd so flippen die moer in die wees. Alles was jou keuses" ( Gran, wake up, be in control of your own life and stop being so damn angry. Everything was your own choice). Instead, I ask her if she wants more coffee, listen to every story and complaint 20 times because she forgets she has told them before, and forgive her for not being what I imagined a grandmother should be.

A time for giving

Since returning to Pretoria on Friday after driving for three days ( we had to fetch our grandmother in Jeffrey's Bay and then stop over on the farm in the Free State where she grew up to see my cousin) the focus has been on preparing for the Christmas celebration. We celebrate on the 24th where the family will go to church, have dinner together and then spend the rest of the evening opening the presents. This year, just my family celebrated on Christmas Eve, and then we had guests for the 25th. 

Today was the first day of rest. But because my grandmother likes to keep busy, she was rearranging my mother's cupboards and therefore my sister and I did the same with our rooms. When cleaning up our closets we also clean them out and decide what can be given away and what we will still wear. I have a lot of clothes and shoes and bags and scarves. I have a lot of stuff. Even if I gave half of it away, I would still have more than enough. We take our old clothes to the farm or my mom will donate it to people she has met while on the road as a tour guide who can use it. 

It is very difficult for me to grasp what it means to be poor. We are not rich, but we have all that we need and are privileged to have received an excellent education. But seeing people on the streets begging or the farm workers who have not had the same opportunities, I wonder if South Africa will ever be able to establish its society as mostly middle-class with only a small margin of poverty and excessive wealth. Perhaps the greatest sin of Apartheid is depriving the majority of the population of a decent education. Thereby, there are entire generations who have not expanded their knowledge and their view on the world, and they can also not instil a desire for improvement in social standing. No one wants to be poor, but it seems that most people also don't have the means or the knowledge to escape it. 

I read a German article about a social experiment where the journalist and an actress went to the town where the richest people in Germany have settled and disguised themselves as beggars in order to see if the rich will give to the poor. In the article it is cited that testing by the american psychologist Dacher Keltner, professor at the University of California, showed that the expectation by the poor to be helped by the rich is in fact misconstrued. The richer a person is, the less likely they are of donating. 

Charity is fine if the press is present and the charity on a different continent, preferably in a third-world country like Pakistan or Uganda or Colombia. Also, it seems that poorer people are more inclined to giving because there is a better understanding of the situation and a greater sense of "helping one another". 

I wonder if we are desensitized by being confronted by poverty every time we stop at a traffic light or if it makes us more aware of our own privileged status. Whilst in a township, one of my mother'S tourists turned to her and asked how long they still had to endure being there. Do we at some point see the poor as less deserving, as not hard-working, as lazy, as not deserving of what we have? If rich people instil their children with the same values where money and power trump empathy and compassion, it is no wonder that the world is in a state of chaos. I believe we have lost a sense of being interconnected, of caring for one another. We live in a selfish world and it is no use denying that I am selfish, too. In some way, I could probably be helping all the beggars on the streets or the people that ring our doorbell. 

Perhaps that is a resolution for 2012. Helping more. 

That's not my name

In The Crucible, John Proctor, a farmer who has an affair with a young girl, is willing to confess to witchcraft in exchange for his life. However, when they tell him his signed confession will be nailed to the church's door, he tears up the paper. To him, what others say and what he signs is not the same truth, and his name becomes essential as representation for his good character. Also, he cannot save himself through lies if others were willing to die whilst adhering to the truth. When asked why he will deny this confession, Proctor cries :

"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!" ( Act 4). 

Not many of us will ever be in a similar situation, but I think many heard their name misspelt or misspoken or have themselves been unsure of how to say a name. I have been giving conversation classes to a Korean student named Taejin, and the whole time I called him Taidjin or Taygin, until I asked him how it was actually said: Tejin. One doesn't say the "a". 

Perhaps not saying a name right is not the end of the world, but like Proctor says, it is the only one we have and because our names are so interwoven with our identities, I think it is important to try and say them the right way. Sure, if you occasionally shorten it or if you prefer your pet name or nickname, that is fine. Or if you really dislike your name, you can still change your name. A friend of mine told me how a friend of his ( keep up now with whose friend it is haha) changed her name legally to William Kentridge, who is already a well-known South-African artist. I don't know why she did it. Does a name constitute the worth of an artist? Is it worth more because it is made by someone famous? Perhaps that is the commentary she was trying to make.  

But I like my name: Sabine ( please don't stalk me now). It stems from the name of an Italian tribe that was conquered by the Romans. So I like it so be said right. It has become increasingly irritating that people are just inventing their own little modifications of it. Or they call me S. I am not a l
eggy, blond bimbo in Gossip Girl, so I would appreciate people expanding on the one-syllable naming. Please. Occasionally it is fine, but please, it is not my name. I know I have said that as long as it starts with an S, I will assume you mean me. But it should continue onward from just the S. 


Have you seen Horrible Bosses? In it, the three main characters have a navigation system in their car which allows them to call someone if they need help. When they do call to find a dodgy bar, an Indian man named Gregory answers. They ask him if that is his real name, and he answers that his real name is Atmanand but that he was assigned that name because Americans would struggle with pronouncing the workers' real names. One of the characters says that he will call him by his real name, but after failing to pronounce it correctly states that "that name is a nightmare" and that they'll just call him Gregory. 


I feel that this is a typically American approach. If you aren't called Judy or Jim or if Robert can't become Bob the world of names does not make sense. I know this is a generalization, but if this attitude is sampled in quite a large international film, there must be some truth to it. 

Not that I can pronounce everything well: hardest for me are Xhosa names. There are different clicks and my tongue gets all tied. I am further afraid that by trying to say it right I am butchering your name and you will judge me for it. So I kind of avoid saying names that I can't pronounce.  Or I avoid saying names if I can't remember them. Perhaps my question is if it is better to butcher a name, but to try and say it and hope through repetition one will succeed? Or to just avoid the name-situation completely?

Fortunata

Here is some advice I found in class: 

Strangely, it came true. I am now presented with various options for 2012 and I want to do all of them at the same time.

For Machiavelli, Fortuna is equal to the unpredictability of life. Ok, he does equate Fortuna with a female destructive force that needs to be conquered if the prince is to survive in his position of power, which offends my inner feminist. But at the moment, Fortuna is more what Lennon sees as "Life is what happens to you while you were busy making other plans" ( from "Beautiful Boy ( Darling Boy)"). I don't know if life really is unpredictable. 

I mean, we all make plans. It might just be about lunch for tomorrow, or about where you'll be going for your next vacation. But it might also be more significant changes that you plan for your life. 

Now, the choice is between staying and going. First some information needs to be sourced about both options. Today is just the culmination of possible futures knocking on my door and saying, listen lady, here is what you can do. Screw any plans you had until now.

Anyways, nothing to be done at the moment. Thank you random fortune cookie advice.

PS: today everything seems to be highlighted and I can't get it not to be so. 

PPS: ok, on the 24.October 2011 I managed to un-highlight it. weird.

Grapefruit

At Fruit & Veg the grapefruits are going for R 3.99 per kilo, so if you like them, that's the place to go.
I actually don't like their taste. I once had a pomelo, and that is quite tasty, but graefruits tip over to the too-bitter edge of things. But I bought some nonetheless. Here is what you can do with them :
Option A:
Buy some Smirnoff Spin/Storm (preferably a quart or two, it's cheaper that way), add a sprig of mint and half a squeezed grapefruit. Then add some ice and pop in a straw. Proceed outside and chill by the pool with your easy summer cocktail.

Option B:
Sort of the same combination. Get loads of fresh mint, squeeze the juice from a grapefruit and perhaps and old orange if it is lying around an no one wants to eat it. Put everything in a pitcher and add one green tea teabag. Top the pitcher up with boiling water, and let the "tea" stand for about 5 minutes. Then add honey if you like it a bit sweeter. Almost like Moroccan Mint tea..

Oh and I changed the blog's layout. If you hadn't noticed.