Thursday, February 8, 2007 The mpumulanga puppy killer and the joy of trees. So.

The news media here lurches from crisis to crisis, but the biggest thing rec ently has been the case of the aforementioned puppy killer. In precis; man comes home after a holiday to find that his dog has killed, and presumably eaten, his parrot. Perhaps overreacting to this a touch, he proceeds to get his gardener t o hold the dog while he fills his chainsaw with petrol, and then cuts off the do g's head with it. Now, I'm not saying that this is a good thing. After all, where would we be if w e went around cutting off dogs heads with chainsaws all the time, eh? Well, asid e from covered in blood, of course. The thing is, the frankly rabid responses to this ("if you can do it to an animal, you can do it to a child! He should have his head cut off!") are making me more sympathetic to him as each moment passes. I mean, seriously. 50 people get murdered here every day, and this is what you get worked up about? Not that I'm worked up, of course. God forbid. Instead, I went off to a gorgeous place out in the sticks, and partied a little with some very, very nice people. It's hardly a surprise we got on- they're all friends of friends - but it's put my heart a rest a great deal, y'know? There's always that fear that you'll get there and it'll all be a little bleak, but it's been assuaged, for which I am gr eatly thankful. Of course, they're all fucking miles away now, but through the w onder of facebook, it's as if they are a mere hop and skip away... Other notes; there's a huge amount of accent variation here, which I suspect wil l confuse me for a while, til I start getting the ear for it... the university h ere is majority Indian, which is somewhat strange, especially given that there's virtually no cultural mixing - people seem to hang around in ethnically defined groups, sadly... still haven't found any cufflinks... developing an unhealthy a ddiction to biltong, which is spiced dried meat... Oh, and I climbed my first tree here, which was nice. It wasn't much of a tree, admittedly, but it's the principle of the thing, what? And there's a certain con tinuity to tree climbing... not to get too hippy about it, but all trees partake in the same spirit once you're sitting on them, hmm? Right. I sally forth to take up the good fight against asinine bureaucracy. Once more unto the breach, dear friends; cry havoc, and all that jazz...