Just cruising through

As with tradition at the beginning of the year my mother lists her dream holidays for our family for the year. Going on a cruise was just one of them and low and behold two months later we were off on the MSC Melody for a 3 night cruise to Mossel Bay and back.


The MSC Melody is an Italian ship with a completely international crew. The Melody cruises the seas around Africa for a few months a year. The trips are very affordable at R2000.00 which includes accommodation,all meals and entertainment, which explained why there were quite a few groups of students who were there for a big party.


We could't have asked for a more beautiful Cape Town day as we left the harbour with cocktails already in hand. My days of lying on a deck chair and reading my book, drinking cocktails, eating delicious food, watching movies at the cinema, shopping and watching live shows had begun. It was hard not to 'take it easy' with not much movement involved in the whole trip, thank goodness it was only three days!

We are what we do - my thoughts on the matter

I think that if we DO we ARE. If people stop doing they lose their sense of identity. Take for instance those people who retire young because they are looking forward to a life of relaxation. After a while relaxing isn't as pleasurable as it use to be when you were working a demanding, full time job and a few minutes of relaxation was blissful. People are built to work, to be involved, to contribute to society sitting back and watching life pass you is not going to make you happy or help you realise who you are.

The dive of a lifetime

Something to save for but totally worth it is tandem skydiving!


Last Saturday was the day that 7 of my friends and I headed up the West Coast to do something crazy, skydiving from 10 000 feet. The rickety and duck taped interior plane took us up to the the correct altitude which took a bumpy 25 minutes at this point I was a mixture of nervousness and nausea. 


My tandem guide spoke into my air over the racket of the plane as we reached 9000 feet and told me what I needed to do when the door opened, head back, arms in front and legs under the plane. Before I knew it we had hit 10 000 feet the door was opened and I was schooched forward and was hit from the side by the wind, trying to keep balance I sat on the edge of the plane as my guide leaned into me and I fell forward for a thrilling 35 second free fall. The land below was a brown quilt of colours as I headed straight for the ground with a few twists and turns. I got a tap on my shoulder which meant that the parachute was going to go up and we were whipped upwards and then there was silence and the most enchanting view of sea and land. My guide let me steer us for a while, I was keen to just observe the beauty he was keen for tricks so I handed the leads over so he could play around.


As we headed toward the landing area I could see my friends with their craned necks looking awards.  We landed swiftly and gently. It took me a second or two to recollect as I unattached myself and walked across the dune to my friends a tad pale but completely blown away!

We are afraid of the wrong things

My mom is currently on a diet, very specific, very complex. To start the diet it stated that you HAD to read the diet book at least twice, you had to buy a whole lot of mineral based beauty products etc, etc. 


The current disaster in Japan has highlighted the fact for me that we are afraid of the wrong things, we are all so inward focussed we are very much an 'I want' world. So many of us and I'm not excluded myself in this generalization, are afraid to be different, to stand out too much some people may not like us then..and then our world would all come crashing down...right? 


Thousands of Japanese people have lost their homes, their cars, all their belongings, their livelihood, family and friends now that's something you could be afraid of.

The challenge

Why do I feel so frustrated all the time? Frustrated that I’m frustrated because its bringing me down. Frustrated with myself for being weak, for letting a bit of frustration ruin my day. Analysing the reason for my frustration because it has no right controlling me like this. Is it some hormonal rollercoaster or is there real meaning behind it? If I was sat down and asked about my frustration I don’t think I could put my finger on why I feel this way. I’m tired of this feeling, this knot in my stomach.

I am moving on, moving away, slowly as the tendrils of frustration unhook themselves from my sides and I walk on as the feeling of suppression leaves me. A lightness fills the void, fills the space where I was empty.

Fish falling from the sky

Fish falling from the sky is number 7 on the About.com top 10 earth mysteries.
The most recent examples happen in the summer of 2000 in Ethiopia. A local newspaper reported: "The unusual rain of fish, which dropped in millions from the air - some dead and others still struggling - created panic among the mostly religious farmers." This is just one of many reported rains of fish, frogs, periwinkles and even alligators that have happened around the world.
The reason for the rain of animals has been attributed to severe storms, tornadoes, water spouts and related phenomena. Although the theory has not yet been proved, it holds that strong winds pick up the fish or frogs from bodies of water such as ponds, streams and lakes, carry them aloft - sometimes for miles and miles - and then drop them over land.
One challenging fact of this theory is that it generally rains one type of species. How could a gust of wind be so particular? When it picked up a herring would it not also pick up reeds or rubbish? 

Present?

Sometimes it's really hard to stop your mind from being somewhere in the past/ future and instead be in the present. I'm am a skilled day dreamer and I love to plan which automatically makes you think about the future constantly, writing appointments and due dates down, smsing, emailing and thinking through the plans for my day. The need to be present often feels like an impossible task to do for more than 5 minutes. One of my resolutions for this year is to be 'in the now' cause it's actually all we have.