Monday, October 16, 2006

Writing, Africa, and the Edmonton Oilers

This is a picture I took of a ceramic cat and a bowl of my neighbour's tomatoes. Don't they look tasty?
----------------------------------------

I was setting the room for the Edmonton Oiler's the other day: I put up the tables, polished the silverware, put on the three layers of tablecloths (the silencer the underlayer and the overlayer) and was just starting to set the tables when Hans walked in the room.

"No butterknives!" he bellowed in his Austrian accent.

"wha, am I doing something wrong?"

"No no, you're fine but those hockey guys. They don't like the little knives. No little forks or spoons either. Two big spoons, two big knives and two big forks. They got big hands theees guys. If you give them little knives they just throw them in the corner."

"That actually happens?"

"Ya of course, everytime. And no coffee either. They're on diets theees guys. And take away the butter too, that's verbotten."

"So do they, like, throw the mugs into the corner too?"

"No, but they complain."

---------------------------------------

So yeah, that's one half of my incredibly! exciting! life! The other half you can find out about by reading Streethawk Magazine, or more specifically, articles I write for Streethawk Magazine like my recent review of The Pink Mountaintops concert at the Plaza.

I had an incredible idea the other day. I should go to Africa. Eva just got a job in Ghana, Danny is in Namibia, Munya is in Zimbabwe and Laura and Verashni are in South Africa. In fact, I have more close friends on "the dark continent" than, well anywhere. If I could save up all this winter and just not pay my student loans I could probably afford it. I'm sure there's other, more productive, ways of going there (like volunteer NGO type work) but I don't have the faintest idea about how to do that.

Read Verashni's article on South African Women's Day in The Mail and Guardian.

See Laura's Photos from inside a South African special forces helicopter.

The following picture is a recreation of the jungles of Africa taken in my mother's garden.

4 comments:

Michael said...

Go to Africa. If you make it to Cape Town, you can have tea with my granny.

Unknown said...

Thanks for linking me :-) I'd like to point out I was in that helicopter with Laura. How exciting life is on the dark continent :) I reaaaally like your anecdote from work. The guy sounded a bit like the soup nazi for a second... You have such and eye (and ear!) for people's idiosyncracies. You can really capture a character. Totally readable.

Carley Larissa said...

Forget Africa. You should do Vancouver to Toronto (in April).

Susan Jones said...

I'll go with you!
*to Africa, I want to meet Michael's gran.
heeeeeeeeeee