Fest - Coming soon to a town nowhere near you!

Why does Grahamstown host the National Arts Festival? This little town in the middle of nowhere, this little town filled with University students, most of whom abandon the town at the time of the fest to run along home back to their mommies and daddies and home cooked meals. Why here?

One of my friends asked me today whether Grahamstown has a big Arts scene, and thinking about it… No. It really doesn’t. Sure, there are the plays put on by the drama students attended by their friends, fellows and lecturers and music recitals attended by more lecturers and a couple of locals. But a big Arts scene that does not make. So why Grahamstown?

I have my own theory about this, and it is purely based on my experience of Grahamstown as a town, Cape Town as a city and Johannesburg from the little time that I spent there. Picture the National Arts Festival in Johannesburg. Just think about it for one minute. Think of all the space that the organisers would have, all the places where events could be hosted, all the popular bands who could be included and the big stars who could become a part of the show. And then think about the traffic – how many people would get lost trying to find the place, how many empty theatres there would be and how little exposure the little (or littler) people would get. Think about how much would get lost in the stratosphere as people went about their daily lives. Cape Town would be better, but not by much.

By hosting the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, you get to experience the talent that hasn’t been discovered quite yet, or the talent that has been discovered and has not been completely corrupted and taken advantage of. You get the big guys and the little guys flung together in a schedule that allows you to see them all. And there is no threat of traffic (or no real threat anyway, though there is certainly going to be more of it than on your average weekday). Think that you are going to be late because there are too many cars? Find a place to park and just walk – Grahamstown is small enough to do that after all.

In a place as small as Grahamstown, the town BECOMES fest. Everything about the town revolves around fest. It is all that anyone talks about and it is the highlight of the year every year. Where else would you have that experience? In a big city, the festival would get lost amongst the ten million other things going on. Here, there is nothing else going on! Your life becomes one of comedy and concerts, ballets and drama, shopping and eating, shows, shows, shows. You are swept up in the arts for two whole weeks, attending shows day and night that fit in with your interests and hobbies.

And then it is gone. Slowly the tourists retreat, the students return and life goes back to normal. The locals revel in the fact that the traffic has died down and they can drive again. And, before long, the talk of the festival has fallen away. Life goes on. It is over. Until next year, that is…

Why Grahamstown, you ask? Because fest wouldn’t be the same anywhere else, and we like it just the way it is.

Why weddings stress me out

I am not talking about my own wedding here, though I am sure that when the day comes, I am going to be stressed as all hell. But attending someone else's wedding shouldn't be stressful! Should it?

For someone who (up until recently) was unemployed, a wedding can certainly be stressful. Especially when that wedding involves expenses like flying to Johannesburg. For that same person, being given the honour of bridesmaid (not maid of honour mind you) is even worse. I am sure that being a bridesmaid is an amazing thing, I am sure that when the day comes to stand in front of the crowds beside a close friend, all the stress will be forgotten as you realise that all the hassle was worth it. I am sure that it is going to happen. But it doesn't stop the stresses from seeping in – the stress of having a dress made (particularly when you are the only bridesmaid from out of town and happen to live in a small town where dressmakers are either hard to come by or not very good), the stress of finding the right pair of shoes and the extra expenses including the buying of that dress and those shoes as well as the hair and makeup on the day. Just the idea of these things stresses me out, nevermind actually having to live through them.

Now picture this – you are such a bridesmaid. You manage to find a dressmaker in your small town to make you a bridesmaids dress that will suit the bride's exacting standards. You have been given material and a picture of the dress that is supposed to be made, along with instructions of how the dressmaker should go about making it. You give these instructions to said dressmaker along with the material well in advance – a month and a half before the wedding, just to be sure that it will be made on time. You don't want to stress unnecessarily of course, and planning ahead means that things are less likely to go wrong. Doesn't it?

A month later, you have not heard from the dressmaker. It is now two weeks before the wedding, and you really are starting to stress. Surely you should have been called in for a fitting by now. You decide to visit the dressmaker and find that she hasn't even started because she got the date of the wedding wrong. She wrote down that you need to get the dress on the wedding day, rather than two weeks before as you had requested. Cue the rushing dressmaker trying to get the dress done in time and making fatal errors to the dress as she goes – cutting a slit down the side of the dress, making it too short, not using boning, making the jacket entirely wrong so that there is a gap between the dress and the jacket which would be unacceptable in a synagogue. Oh, did I mention that this is a religious affair that you are attending? And that the dress needs to be worn in a shul and therefore really needs to be right so that there can be no cleavage and no inappropriate showing of skin? I didn't. Well now I have!

The day before you are supposed to leave, you are summoned to the dressmaker and told that your bridesmaid gown is complete. You breathe a sigh of relief and fork over the R550 (cheap for a dressmaker, but is the discount really worth the stress?) and run off without trying the dress on there and then because you need to get back to work. When you try on the dress in the evening, you find that none of the mistakes have been remedied and the dress is a disaster. You phone the bride, practically in tears, and are assured that the dress can be fixed when you arrive in Johannesburg. Your fears are qualmed, but only slightly.

On the day that you are supposed to leave for the airport, you get lost trying to find the friend's house where you are supposed to leave your car. You are left driving around a city that you don't know, shortly before you are supposed to be boarding your plane, and your Google Maps is not working the way it should (stupid Google Maps!) Okay, so you end up making it to your flight on time, but that doesn't mean that the experience wasn't stressful.

On arrival in Johannesburg, you inform the person who is supposed to pick you up that you have arrived. You give them fair warning (considering that they already know that you are coming and when) by sending them a message the minute that the plane lands. You are supposed to catch the Gautrain and diligently do (having paid R115 for the experience). You then find out that the person who was supposed to pick you up completely forgot that you were coming and made other plans. Sure, he changes his plans to pick you up at Sandton, drives you back to the place where you will be staying, gives you a brief tour, but then he is out of there, leaving you without transport in a city that you have only been in twice before and an area that you have never been in at all.

Suddenly you find yourself rather hungry and you start scouring the apartment for food, only to find a fridge filled with random vegetables, a bar of expensive chocolate and just about nothing else. Okay, you say to yourself, so I will walk to find something to eat. When you tell a friend that you plan to do this, she gasps in horror. Walk? Around Johannesburg? Are you crazy?!?!?!?! So apparently I get no food.

A night out on the town with the girls certainly relieves some of the stress as you dance and party the night away, and so does a day shopping with a good friend (who certainly relieves some of the stress of trying to find a pair of the perfect shoes.) But then, after such a day of shopping, you arrive at the apartment you are staying in to find that there is no electricity. Not only that, but your cellphone is dead and so are both of the laptops in the house, meaning that there is no way to charge it! Not to worry, I can always read. There should be, oh, an hour or so of daylight left. Oh, wait! Forget that. Light is gone and it's pitch dark. No way to read now. No way to eat either. Good thing I had a big lunch. And where is that person you are supposed to be staying with? At his girlfriend's place, and most likely not going to be coming home. Queue panic attack as you start hearing noises that prevent you from doing the one thing that you figure you can do in this situation – sleep. After a few hours of panicking, you somehow calm yourself down enough to fall asleep, and wake up hours later to find that you are still in one piece and the electricity has come back on, leading everyone to believe that you were crazy for believing that you would be robbed and murdered in your sleep, even though they all warned you about the dangerous place that Johannesburg really is and how you can never be too careful.

You awake the next morning, glad to be able to charge your cellphone, and lounge around the house for a few hours while waiting to be taken to another dressmaker to fix the disaster that is your dress. You then get informed, a short while before you are supposed to leave, that this other dressmaker does not have time to fix anything, and that nothing can be done about your dress. You will just need to go as is, disaster and all. Thoughts cross your mind, thoughts planted by your mother, of finding another guest and relinquishing the honour of bridesmaid. You voice these thoughts to the bride, but they are quickly shot down with reassurances that she would have you as a bridesmaid even if you went naked, This leads to discussions about how guests and Rabbis would react to seeing a naked bridesmaid, and slowly but surely, your fears are qualmed once again by the healing power of the bride's common sense.

It is now the day of the wedding, and you wake up from a fairly restless nights sleep (you were tossing and turning thinking about the wedding, about your hair (which was done yesterday, but is unlikely to look the same in the morning) and about ten million other things that have no bearing on this event at all. You awake to find that there is no electricity, once again, and that the GHD that you borrowed from the neighbour will be completely useless in this instance. And, horror of horrors, your phone is practically dead, once again, and it will be difficult to find another way to straighten your hair which, as you guessed, is not looking all that lovely. Cue your apartment person coming to the rescue, taking you to his office and allowing you to spend an hour straightening your hair at his desk while he attends a meeting, before dropping you back at home. You put on your makeup, you tidy your hair, you slide into that awful dress and suddenly, you are ready to go. It is time.

You arrive at the venue in what you feel is your awful attire, and are immediately assured by everyone that you look beautiful. Sure, the dress isn't perfect, isn't what it's supposed to be, but it's not quite as bad as you made it out to be, and it certainly wasn't worth forfeiting the honour of bridesmaid. You wander through gardens, you pose, you mingle and gush about how gorgeous the bride is, how proud you are, how happy you are and how much you are looking forward to the wedding, even though you are still not quite convinced that it is going to go off without a hitch. And then you are whisked away to the synagogue, and it is all happening so fast – one minute you are being blessed by the bride, the next you are walking down the aisle ahead of her, standing beside her as she circles her husband-to-be, watching as she grows up before your eyes – those eyes that are welling with tears of joy that can barely be suppressed. And then it is over. With the breaking of a glass and a hearty mazeltov, they are married. Or has it just begun?

This is when the celebrations truly begin. You are swept into a room filled with people and filled with more food and drinks than you could possibly imagine. You don't know where to start, so you follow the other bridesmaids, do what they do, eat what they eat and sit where they sit. The speeches start, first the bride's brother, then the groom's, then the groom himself, stumbling over his words because he is so happy, so completely stunned that this day has come, that the bride is actually his and his alone. More ridiculous amounts of food arrive at the table in phases, and there is dancing, celebrating, chittering and chattering until, around midnight, you find yourself on the dancefloor with the bride, the groom and few others, most of the crowd having dispersed. And it is truly over. The last guests kiss the bride (or groom) on the cheek, share hurried hugs, give their best wishes for the millionth time tonight and disappear into the night to their homes, to the clubs, to wherever it is that they want to go after midnight on a Wednesday night.

Suddenly, all the stress that you felt for the last two months is gone, is lifted off your shoulders. The wedding went off without a hitch. The dress, which was pretty damn bad and kept falling off throughout the night, was not quite as bad as you had imagined or as it could have been. The ordeal is over, and it was worth every second of stressing to see your darling friend getting married.

Gina and Joel – here's hoping that the rest of your life together is as wonderful and exciting as your wedding day was.

Electricity

As some of you may know and others may not yet have realised, I am in Johannesburg at the moment. I am here because one of my closest high school friends is getting married, today in fact, and as this is the first of my high school friends' weddings that I can actually attend (one friend got married in Israel last year and another is getting married in Israel next month) I was not going to miss the opportunity.

And so I arrived in Johannesburg on Saturday evening, was picked up from the Sandton Gautrain by my cousin and was taken to his flat. I didn't spend much time in the flat on Saturday night, as I went out with Gina and the girls for a second miniature bachelorette, but when I arrived back at the flat in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was to discover that the power had gone out. Now, this wasn't too much of a problem at the time, since it was 1am and about time for me to get to bed. It didn't affect me too much on Sunday morning or afternoon either, as I went out for the day with one of the University friends whom I haven't seen in about two years. It did affect me on Sunday evening, however, when I arrived back at the flat at about 5pm to find that the electricity was still off, my cousin was visiting his girlfriend, there was no food in the fridge and every piece of electrical equipment that I owned was on it's way to being dead (if it wasn't dead already.) Cue Lara's silly freaking out about being left alone with no transport in a strange city before falling asleep. I woke up again at 10pm to find that the electricity was back on, and by Monday morning, Dan was telling me that it was fixed for good and that there shouldn't be any more problems.

Then, yesterday morning while Dan was at work and I was playing around on my computer, it went out again. So much for the problem being fixed!! Once again, it wasn't too much of an issue during the day - I had a hair appointment to get to and ten million things to buy for the wedding, and so by the time I got back to the flat, I wasn't so concerned that the electricity was out. I carried on with what needed to get done for the wedding, I read my Kindle a little (something that cannot be done after 5pm in Joburg, as there just isn't enough light) and when Dan got home, he introduced me to one of his neighbours and let me borrow his car (after dropping him off at his girlfriend's place) so that the two of us could go out for dinner. When we arrived back at the flat, the electricity was still off, but it wasn't too disastrous since my laptop had a bit of power and Phumla (Dan's neighbour) and I chilled in the flat and used up the rest of its battery watching How I Met Your Mother. By the time the laptop died, we were both tired and decided to hit the hay anyway.

When I woke up this morning and the electricity was still out, it was a serious issue. There were things that needed to be done - things that needed electricity. Most importantly, my hair needed to be straightened for the wedding. I had gone through so much effort to find a GHD, and after finally managing to find one, I couldn't use it! Dan had said that if this happened, I could come along to his office, but Dan wasn't here, having spent the night at the girlfriend's place. My phone also needed charging, but that was a sideline issue. Thankfully, Dan pitched up right on time and managed to give me a lift to his office where I was able to straighten my hair and write this very blog while I waited for him to get back from his meeting and return me to the place of no-electricity so that I can do my makeup and get dressed in time for the wedding itself.

So, because the lack of electricity has caused me so many issues over the last couple of days, I thought that I would write a post about what to do when there is no electricity. So, here it is:

• If your cellphone is charged, use it to surf the Internet, play games and chat to people over Whatsapp
• If you cellphone is dead, but your laptop is charged, watch an episode, watch a movie, write a blog, and charge your cellphone.
• If your laptop is dead, read your Kindle (or a book if you do not have a kindle).
• If your kindle is dead, write random notes about blogs that you could write, take a walk to the shops and do some window shopping so that you do not actually spend money unnecessarily. Or just shop. Either way is fun.
• If it is night, curl up in your bed/sleeping bag and fall asleep as soon as you can.

Here's hoping that I won't be going through a lack of electricity anytime soon! *Holds thumbs*

Johannesburg

I am terrible. I have lived in South Africa for 22 out of the 23 years of my life, and yet I have never travelled around the country. Sure, I have visited Plettenberg Bay pretty much every year of my life; sure I studied in Grahamstown which is ten hours away from my Cape Town home. But still, there are so many places that I haven't explored.

One of the places that I feel I haven't gotten to know nearly well enough is Johannesburg. When people think of South Africa, the first two cities that generally come to mind are Johannesburg and Cape Town, and yet I have only ever been to Joburg twice, and have never done any real exploring on either of those occasions. The first time was spent driving through the outskirts of the city to get to Sun City and the second time was mostly spent in Benoni and the towns that lie just outside of Johannesburg. This is why I was kind of looking forward to heading there last weekend.

It was Sam's twenty-first (Sam being Grant's sister) and Grant's dad had been kind enough to buy us each a ticket to come down for the occasion. The event itself was on a Friday, which meant that Grant had to work a half-day and we started on our way to the airport at 12:15. The check-in for our flight closed at 13:35. We could totally make it. We all climbed into the car and started on our way to the highway.
But wait.
We needed to fetch Grant's jacket from the drycleaner.
Slam on brakes.
Back track.
12:30 and we were back on the road again, speeding a little but not too badly. Just trying to catch up on some lost time. The tunes were pumping, we were all singing along. Everything was hunky dorey and we were making good time. And then...
Slam on brakes.
Procession of cars in front of us held up by two different trucks, both going ridiculously slowly.
This procession lasted for at least half an hour and when we finally managed to overtake, there was no doubt about it. We were going to be late.
Shaun (Grant's brother) tried to phone the airline and check-in over the phone, but alas, no such luck. 1Time does not allow for check-ins over the phone. We had no choice but to hightail it there and try not to get caught by any of the notorious Port Elizabeth speed cameras. Thankfully, we arrived at the airport with about five minutes to spare and Shaun ran to the queue to hold our places while I carried the luggage and Grant parked the car. With about a minute to spare, we checked into the flight and went straight through security and onto the plane.
Sighs of relief were breathed.

The flight to Johannesburg was quite an entertaining one in itself as Grant and I eavesdropped on the argument that Shaun started with the religious girl sitting next to him about how stupid and pointless and unreasonable religion was. Shaun is, of course, an atheist. We merely sat behind him shaking our heads and trying to pretend not to know him, giggling at the look on the flight attendant's face when she realised what they were talking about. Evidently, she agreed that this was not a conversation that should be had in the middle of a flight with no way to leave.

Once we had arrived in Joburg and were on solid ground once more, we made our way to the venue for the 21st and immediately started setting up - blowing up balloons and placing them at all of the tables; setting up the main meal, dessert and tea areas and getting the spit-braai started. A couple of hours later, we finally arrived at the house and had to start getting ready immediately for the party that was to come. Dressing up in the dress that I had worn for my own 21st (since the theme was the same), we quickly got ready and made our way back to the venue to carry on getting things ready. Once the guests started arriving, the birthday girl started calming down. The disaster of the chocolate fountain and the DJs who had neglected to bring her music and had replaced it with their own doof-doof alternatives were quickly forgotten and she slowly started having fun. The rest of the night went smoothly with dinner being served (a perfect spit), toasts being made and alcohol being drunk. Needless to say, Sam and her boyfriend both ended up getting completely sloshed, with the boyfriend taking the brunt of the beating at the hands of his father who wanted to "raise the boy's tolerance." He ended up spending the night hugging the toilet in Grant's spare bathroom and retching non-stop until about 9am.

Saturday morning greeted a number of hungover individuals (me not being one of them) and Grant and I sat around playing Boggle with Shaun and Rob (Grant's dad) until about 12:45, when we decided that we should probably start getting ready if we were going to meet my cousin for lunch at 1:30. We quickly got showered, dressed and freshened up and were on the road by 1. Unfortunately, we hadn't been on it long before we hit some major traffic. Traffic on a Saturday morning? That's Joburg for you apparently! We hadn't been in the traffic for long when Grant noticed the little orange light blinking out of the corner of his eye.
"Uh... we have no petrol."
Forty-five minutes later, we were still well stuck in the traffic with no sign of it relieving and the car was starting to feel like it would stall any minute. After an hour in traffic (and being half an hour late already) we finally found an exit and only just made it to the petrol station on time.
Phew. One less thing to worry about. Now we just had to get to the restaurant where Daniel would have already been waiting for half an hour.
After driving through the centre of Joburg only to turn onto a different highway and go in the opposite direction, we finally found ourselves nearing Waverley and quickly found the restaurant that Daniel was waiting at. After a quick introduction to his friend, Danielle, we went into the restaurant to get some food from the buffet only to find that (thanks to the late hour) there was hardly any of it left. Despite this, we paid R200 for a couple of small plates of food and then went on our way. Not wanting to go our separate ways quite yet, we decided to head to Zoo Lake where we had fun watching the geese (and the people attempting to feed them) and went on a boatride on the lake where Grant decided it would be HILARIOUS to row us into the fountain. None of us were particularly impressed, least of all Daniel who practically jumped out of the boat to stop himself getting wet. When we got off, we decided to go for a quick walk around the lake and then headed back to our cars.

On the drive back to Grant's house, we couldn't help but notice the number of Jews that we were passing, walking on their way to shul (synagogue).
"Wouldn't it be funny if Gina lived in this area?"
We were going to be seeing Gina later that night so that I could see where she lived, meet her fiance and get the material for my dress (me being a bridesmaid and all). We shrugged off the question, figuring that Joburg was a big place and she probably stayed in one of the other Jewish areas - there had to be quite a few, we were sure. When I phoned Gina after sundown and she told me that she lived in Oaklands, I figured it probably wasn't the place we had driven through earlier. I had seen numerous signs there telling me that we were in Glenhazel, not Oaklands. As we got into the car and the Garmin started pointing us in the same direction, we started getting suspicious. When we started seeing sites that we had passed hours earlier, we knew that our earlier suspicions weren't too far off. Oaklands was, in fact, pretty close to Glenhazel. It was too bad that we hadn't been able to contact Gina earlier and spend more time with her during the day.

After meeting with Gina at a petrol station (she didn't know her address, having recently moved), we travelled together to the apartment that her and her fiancee will be living in when they get married in two month's time. As she had only moved in days before, the apartment was in a bit of a state, but that was to be expected, and it didn't take away from the awesomeness of the place itself. Grant immediately fell in love with the giant TV that Joel had insisted they buy, and while he studied it carefully, Gina and I slipped into the bedroom where she showed me the material and design of my bridesmaid dress. I instantly fell in love with it and can't wait to have it made! After showing us around and changing out of her shul clothes, it was time for some food and we headed to Great Burgers - a Kosher burger place in Glenhazel itself. It was only the second time that Grant had had a Kosher meal, and despite his teasing on the way that he was just dying for a cheese burger (Jews cannot eat meat and milk together, so cheese burgers are a serious no-no), his Kosher burger did seem to exceed his expectations. After dinner, we had a quick tour of the neighbourhood, seeing where Gina's old apartment was, where she works, driving past the Yeshiva Academy that I heard so much about during my high school years and finally showing me where Joel works. Since Joel caters events like batmitzvahs and there was one happening that night, he was at work and I got a chance to go in and meet him even though he was ridiculously busy and not too up to chatting. In any case, it was nice to finally meet the guy that one of my best friends is going to marry, even if it was only for a minute or two and even if it did feel excessively awkward standing amongst people in their Saturday best with me in a pair of tracksuit pants and a t-shirt. As we drove Gina back to her apartment, her and I discussed some of the wedding plans. Since I have to make my way to Joburg for the event, I needed to know when to book my flights. Gina calmly informed me that her bachelorette is being planned for 8 days before the wedding, which set me into a bit of a tizzy since I will hopefully have found work by then and can't really take off that much time, nor fork out that much money for accommodation if I don't have a job. But despite this little hiccup, I am really looking forward to coming down to see my HSBFF (High School Best Friend Forever) get hitched. We arrived back at Grant's place without too much difficulty and before his parents did, as they had been at a Neil Diamond concert, and chatted abit with Shaun and Grant's dad and stepmom (when they arrived) before calling it a night and heading to bed. We had to be up early the next morning after all.

Sunday morning dawned and we all packed into the car with the bags that Grant and I had shared at the back and started making our way to the airport. After a quick breakfast at Mugg and Bean and a hurried goodbye, our trip to Joburg was drawn to a close. Even after spending a weekend properly travelling around it, I still feel like I hardly know the city, and I don't think I am the only one. I think you have to have lived in Joburg for a long time to consider yourself knowledgable enough to say that you know the city. But I can tell you what I do know - what with the traffic and the size of the city itself, I am rather glad that I don't live there.