I am a keen scuba diver. I love being in the water, not so much in my wetsuit, though. When I first started diving, I used up all my money on equipment and courses, so a camera had to take the back seat. I ended up taking disposable waterproof cameras on all my dives. These little gems seize function at 15m, at that depth all you see is water and bubbles, no fish yet. So by the time I actually got down to the reef, my camera was not functioning at all which meant that most of the photos I ended up with was me with a very seasick looking face on the boat. Not good. Last Christmas, my mom bought me an underwater casing for my digital camera. It's not the most expensive or high-tech model on the market, but it makes my underwater snapping experience a hell of a lot easier and my photos look a lot better. Underwater photography is just amazing and I absolutely love it..
Here are some pictures taken by Bruce Mozert in Silver Springs, Florida in 1938. Bruce built the underwater casing for his camera himself. It’s amazing to look at these pictures now, having tried my hand at underwater photography myself, not only taking pictures, but also posing for them as a fun experiment with my friends as the photographers in my family pool. These pictures might look simple but I can only imagine the amount of time and effort that must have gone into them. If you yourself have ever been underwater, you will know that without a weight belt, you pretty much float to the surface automatically, so kudos to these ladies in the snaps who managed to stay underwater and look gorgeous whilst doing so. I love these pictures because they are the real deal, just the camera, the water and the subject. Enjoy.
Ek is nou maar een maal ‘n rys, vleis en aartappels tipe girl.
Dit klink dalk onsettend “banaal en middelklas” (soos Paula sou se) maar dis hoe dit is met Steve. Eintlik met my. Ek weet nie regtig wat Steve Hofmeyer eet nie. Dalk ook rys, vleis en aartapples, vet weet. Dit maak nie eers sin nie, hoekom sal “vet” nou weet as ek nie eers weet nie. “Vet” is nie eers ‘n mens nie, tensy “vet” regtig ‘n persoon was, soos Yvette, en almal noem haar net “vet” en dalk weet sy tog. Verdere ondersoek is nodig. Beslis.
Terug na my toe. Nie dat ek enigsins ‘n onavontuurlustige persoon is nie, inteendeel. Om uit vliegtuie te spring en saam met haaie te duik is vir my geen probleem, maar kyk, sit nou ‘n ui in my spaghetti, en dan is die hel los. My arme moeder moet alewig as sy haar “signature dish”, Alfredo, maak, twee potte sous maak, een met al die kakkies soos sampioene en uie in, en een vir my, basies net room en ham.
Snaaks genoeg, ek is mal daaroor om cooking shows te kyk. Ek verkyk my aan al die konkoksies wat hulle bak en brou. Dit lyk so mooi, ek kan dink dat dit lekker ruik, maar hel, ek wil dit nie eet nie. Ek kan ‘n restaurant menu met my oe uittrek, maar as die waitress kom, bestel ek maar altyd dieselfde: Vis en chips asb. Dis die safe option. Dis my comfort zone. Ek is nie naief nie, ek weet daar is niks so boring soos ‘n hawaiin pizza nie, maar ek sal nou maar hawaiin pizza eet tot die dag wat ek omkap.
En net so by the way, hawaiin pizza kan sekerlik nie so boring wees nie, ‘n mengsel an italie en ‘n eksotiese eiland, kan verseker nie so ondraagbaar wees nie.
Daar is seker goed waaroor ek net baie sterk opinies het. Party mense is baie standvastig as dit kom by geloof, ander mense is vreeslik passievol oor politiek, my seerpunt is vrugte. Ja vrugte. Daar is niks wat my so irreteer soos rosyntjies in tjoklits of appels in muffins of stukke strawberry in jogurt of neute in roomys nie. Vrugte hoort net nie in tjoklits, roomys, jogurt of muffins nie. Hey, but that’s just me.
Vandat ek hier in Aus geland het, het ek half verplig gevoel om effens buite my culinary boundaries te eksperimenteer. Seker die vreemdste ding wat ek nou al geeet het, was kangaroo vleis.
Definitief bo op my lys van kaas aaklige goed wat ek al in Australia geproe het, is Custard Apple. Dit lyk soos ‘n vrug van Pandora af, en smaak soos ‘n appel wat al effens begin sleg word het, maar met baie baie baie melkerige sap aan die binnekant. Nie baie aangenaam nie. ‘n Vrug wat ek wel geniet het, was ‘n Persimmon. Lyk soos ‘n tamatie buite, maar soos ‘n perske binne. ‘n Vrug orgie. Maar lekker.
Elk geval, my punt was eintlik, ek het gisteraand op die nuus gesien dat die eerste slaghuis hier in Wes Australia nou openlik en wettiglik perd vleis verkoop. Nou kyk, roasted pumpkin en caramalised onion pizza sal ek nog laat slide, maar hel, perd vleis. Ah nee ah.
So volgende keer as jy jou tande in ‘n heerlike stuk biltong insink, onthou net, dis dalk vir iemand anders die eienaardigste ding ooit dat jy droe, rou vleis eet.
Hulle weet nie wat hulle mis nie. En ek is geel gelukkig om nou maar vir ewig en altyd nie te weet ek mis as dit by perdvleis kom nie.
No one sends postcards anymore, and I can understand why. .some of them are just hideous. Unexpectedly, I found two of the most beautiful postcards on a shopping tirp one weekend. What was so great about them you might ask? They were made of wood.
Here are some pics and the webaddress for Night Owl Paper Goods. They produce and sell a range of eco-friendly cards, postcards, notebooks, jotters and wedding invites all printed on thin lightweight wood. Just absolutely gorgeous.
I have been blessed with many talents; unfortunately, hand-eye coordination is not one of them. This of course had certain implications on my selection of recess activities in primary school. I’m almost certain that if I had to go to a primary school today during break time, I would probably find all the children sitting around each playing on their technologically advanced mobile devices. When I was in primary school, only the teachers had phones, and we had to come up with other ways to keep ourselves entertained through recess.
I’m not exactly sure what the boys used to do on the playground, but I sure know what the girls did. At least what one particularly ball-sense challenged girl use to do.
We use to play a game called Skip tape (Rek Spring for my Afrikaans readers). Ring a bell?
I will be as bold as to say that the person who invented this game, probably had no ball-sense either. Bless them, and the horse they rode in on. (A new Australian saying that I picked up, I’m testing it out). Anyway, it works like this, 3 children play at a time, and two stand about 3ft apart facing each other with a long elastic loop around their ankles. The person whose turn it is sings out a rhyme, while jumping in and out of the elastic loop. The only rhyme I seem to remember goes like this:
“Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite! Inside, Outside, Inside, On! “It doesn’t even rhyme, but that’s all I can remember.
Just goes to show that children don’t necessarily need battery power and fancy graphics to have fun. Or ball sense for that matter. Who needs hand-eye coordination anyway? It’s overrated if you ask me.
Check out this innovative product by Boskke. These patented contraptions allow you to add some funk to your ceiling. The plants and soil are secured to the pot with a ceramic collar that fits around the stem of the plant making sure that your carpet doesn't have to suffer a redecoration.
This would have been a great idea for my teeny weeny flat I had in Uni. Small living spaces often means that style gets sacrificed for practicality. Those days are over. What possibly next?
There are very few things in life that truly scare me or freak me out. I pride myself in my sometimes irrational courage. I figure, it makes for a good picture. There is however one thing that sufficiently rattles my comfy bones. . .
Seagulls.
At first glance, they seem innocent enough, but I’m not fooled. I know that it’s all a show. Sometimes they don’t even bother to put up the furry appearance; they just blatantly expose their evil demeanour to the outside world. I’m telling you, seagulls are mental. There is nothing that I am more certain of.
I truly believe that if there is one animal species that will turn against man kind and try to take over the world, it will indeed not be two animated mice, but actually the world’s population of seagulls.
Upon further research on the subject of evil seagulls, I found the reports of the following incidents involving these vicious birds. Be warned, the following is not for sensitive readers, if such readers exist.In Argentina, scientists are worried that the resident whales might migrate elsewhere as a result of seagulls pestering them. Pictures and sighting report that the seagulls land on the back of the whales when they come up for air and peck huge chunks out of their bodies. The seagulls mostly target mother and calf pairs. Check out some of the pictures below on this link. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8116551.stm
If seagulls aren’t afraid to attack 32ft creatures, then you and I don’t stand a chance.
In other incidents, a Yorkshire terrier beld to death after being pecked in the head by a seagull and an elderly man died of a heart attack after he fell off a wall as result of a seagull swoop attack. No jokes people.
As with everything in life, there is usually an exception, and in this case, I have one very noteworthy exception.
There is one seagull, and only one that I truly believe is not evil, that Seagull is Scuttle, the marvellously funny and innovative seagull in Little Mermaid. I suspect that he might have suffered from ADD though. Nobody’s perfect right?
Oh, there is one more, a seagull named Nelson. Some of you might know this seagull from an old SA anti-pollution protest song written around the same time that Nelson Mandela was residing on Robben Island. Anything named after Madiba, is fine by me. I tried to find the lyrics to this song to find out more about this seagull, but with no success.
So besides for Scuttle and Nelson, which I am almost certain you will never run (fly?) into, because one is an animated bird and the other is a fictional lyric character, I want to urge you to avoid all other seagulls, for your own safety, and for my peace of mind.
I remember a stage at school when all the girls had sticker books. Maybe even some boys, but maybe they kept theirs at home. Every morning before school all of us would gather around and marvel at each others stickers. Pages and pages of useless stickers. I never quite understood why, but all the girls seemed to be very enthusiastic about the stickers, so I went along with it as best I could. Everyone had the usual stickers of characters from our favourite animated movies. Cinderella, Little Mermaid and Princess Jasmine were some of the most popular amongst the custard coloured pages of everyone’s books.
For the non-sticker-trading reader, you might not know that there are actually different varieties of stickers. Yes indeed. Some of these varieties include soft ones, ones that glitter, ones that glow, and ones with plastic eyeballs. I know. Ridiculous, but true. These were the ones that were most popular to trade with. Soft stickers are ones that are made of a sort of velvety material, and very nice to touch. But you had to be careful not to touch them too much, or the picture would fade. The glittery ones obviously glittered and the glowy ones obviously glows in the dark. Amazing. Some were stickers of funny faces with plastic eyeballs like teddy bears usually have. I never had a lot of pretty stickers; I think I might have got a couple of pity stickers from some of the girls because my sticker book was very empty. Most of the stickers I scored used to be ones that other girls had traded too much, so they wouldn’t stick so well any longer. This is obviously not a good quality in a sticker. Hence the name. I use to take these stickers and just glue them to my book, which seemed like a good idea, but turned out not to be so practical when it came to actually taking them out to trade them. Hmm.
My lack of stickers was not because my mom didn’t want to buy me stickers, but because I simply could not see the point of the whole exercise. I had much better things to spend my money on, like the tuckshop for instance. I do think I had a few stickers, but no one ever seemed to want to trade with me. Most of my stickers included those free stickers you get at the counter at the bank or at the doctor’s office. Somehow “Thank you for donating to CANSA” never caught on as much as Snow White. Frankly, I never saw Snow White doing anything to alleviate social problems. I thought at least my stickers promoted a good cause.
Thank goodness this is not a problem for children like me any longer. I don’t even know what children do at school nowadays. They probably trade iPhone applications and cigarettes. Come to think of it, maybe the stickers weren’t so bad after all.
I am sorry if I have ever given anyone the idea that I actually enjoy being hugged. I am sorry for all the times I might have come running towards you in slow motion with my arms stretched out wide with a “hug me” look on my face. Oh wait, I never do that. So why, why, why Delilah, do people always insist on hugging me? And who was this Delilah lady? I wonder if she got hugs from random strangers all the time as well. Anyway. This is something that has been bugging me for ever, no exaggeration, genuinely forever, so I thought, what better way to get the message out there than to post it on the internet. It saddens me that I have had to go through such extreme measures to protect my self against all the Huggers out there.
I might be sounding a bit harsh right now. If there are any Huggers out there reading this… please understand, I have nothing against you Huggers hugging each other, but leave me and other like myself, out of the bear grip.
At this point, I can imagine that you are thinking to yourself: “Shame, this poor girl must have some sort of an intimacy problem” or “She must be anti-social” or who knows what else. No, I am not anti-social and I certainly do not have problems with intimacy. What I do however have a problem with, is random, strangers thinking that it is totally acceptable to squeeze my body against their body, at any given time or place that they might feel like it. It baffles me that there are so many things that our society looks down on, and disapproves of, but hugging people who clearly wishes not to be hugged is clearly not one of them.
It is simple really. Some people smoke, some don’t. Some people bake, some don’t. Some people wear bicycle shorts, even though they shouldn’t, and some, thankfully, don’t. I don’t hug. This is probably the perfect paragraph to mention my exceptions. Well, let’s see. .. hmmm… tough one. Ok, boyfriends are a definite exception. And extreme mental or emotional breakdowns. That’s it. I can handle any other situation perfectly well without a hug.
I have a really simple reason for my resistance to casual hugging. I used to have a business economics teacher at school who always use to tell us “make yourselves scarce”. The bottom line being that scarce skills, objects, minerals, talents and experiences have always been most sought after by people all over the world. Why then are people so generous with handing out physical intimacy? I want my hugs to be scarce. I always tell my friends, don’t take it lightly, if I give you a hug, you can be sure it means something. I can express my love, friendship and companionship to people in many other ways, and that way I get to save the goodies for those special moments. Like a mental breakdown.
So what is the solution to this little problem you might ask? A handshake. Yes, the good old alternative to a hug. It serves the same purpose and saves me having my breasts pushed up against some random person. So go on, shake away people!
Let me paint a picture for you. I am sitting in a typical Internet shop in the city. I am nibbling at a packet of fruity Skittles, and typing this post. What, would you ask yourself is so extraordinary about this scenario? Well I'll tell you. I am currently being held semi-hostage. Yes. I lived in South Africa for 22 years, and now, just on the brink of my 6months Aussie anniversary, I am a hostage. What are the chances? Apparently in my case, very good.
The day started like every other day. Well I suppose that depends on who and where you are. I suppose if you are the Queen for instance, your day would start a bit different than mine. But for me it's just the usual. I went for a bit of shopping and decided to pop into an Internet shop to Skype some friends and family. Big mistake. Big big mistake.
I noticed a police man wandering up and down in front of the window, but thought nothing of it. I have realized that Perth police are everywhere, even when nothing is happening , they are like background music to the city. Then I started noticing some of my fellow Intenet cafe-ers taking pictures with their cellphones out the window. So I decided to have a peep. Apparently there has been a naked man with a gun up on a billboard just outside the establishment for about 3hours. How unobservant of me not to notice a naked man with gun, just goes to show.
Anyway, so here I am, nibbling at my Skittles. I have seen tons and tons of American movies, and I always wonder, what would I do if I had to be in a situation like that, and here I am. Sort of.
It's not what I imagined. First of all, I wish that I had decided to grab coffee instead of broadband. Let me tell you, an Internet cafe is not exactly the best place to be stuck in right now. Granted, at least we have Internet.
The man has thrown down his gun now, but is still up on the billboard. It's getting dark outside. I am freezing my butt off, can't imagine how he's holding up with no clothes at all. And worst of all, I have had a pee for the last 3 hours. And I asked the Chinese man behind the counter where the ladies room was, but couldn't understand what he said. Accents are a bitch.
What can we learn from this friends? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What a complete waste of a perfectly good Saturday. I hope where ever you are, that you are having a better time that what I am. It can't be too difficult.
For someone that struggles so shut up sometimes, this is very unfamiliar territory indeed.
Speechless.
Actually, not so much speechless, just speech-unsure. It would be ridiculous for a speechless person to write a blog. Since this is the first post on my hopefully witty and entertaining blog, I feel tremendous pressure to make this a good one, a standard against which all my future posts can be measured. Choke.
I think a good starting point would be to introduce myself and my blog.
My name is Elaine. Nice to meet you. Or I think at least. It’s just a saying, no one ever meets someone and says: “I’m not sure if it’s nice to meet you, but give me some time, and I will judge you enough to come to that conclusion eventually”. But for now, let’s just say “delighted to make your acquaintance”. Honestly, I don’t even know what acquaintance means. But I got the spelling right at least. Anyway, Elaine, that’s me, for obvious reasons, that is what my parents named me.
I decided to call my blog, Petticote Notes. I love petticoats, they are a little blast of the past, although, that is not what intrigues me about them most. I like the fact that they’re hidden, not obvious, underneath, one layer behind the everyday visible, enticing, and whimsical. I know that is a lot coming from someone who hardly ever wears petticoats, but then again, who does these days? Maybe grannies. Yes. I think grannies wear petticoats. This is not a blog about fashion, my granny, or anything else in particular, but simply some of my thoughts of things that I have noticed, experienced, disliked, experimented and downright just want to say something about.
You might be thinking, why would an ordinary, everyday person make a blog just about nothing at all in particular? Well, don’t you worry about that. But if you must know. ..I am a South African expat now living in Australia. 5 months and counting. I have very diligently kept in touch with a lot of friends and family back home. Emailing and postcards just don’t cut it any longer. I needed a more creative platform to connect with them. So this is it. In my notes, you will find cultural paella of new Aussie experiences, a longing for some of my old cultural titbits and a mixture of the feelings that I am experiencing whilst stuck in the middle.
