Prenguin

Scribblings of Robs

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    20 Oct 2011

    Wide Open Walls: Street Art in The Gambia

    I stumbled across these pictures yesterday and found out [thank you Google] that they’re part of the Wide Open Walls project. W.O.W is a community mural project running in The Gambia and it’s seriously cool. The idea behind the project was to turn villages into living art installations, so a couple of street artists headed off to The Gambia and spent a few days making a couple of really beautiful things.

    The street-artists involved in this were Bushdwellers (The Gambia), ROA (Belgium), Know Hope (Israel), Remed (Madrid), TIKA (Switzerland), Freddy Sam (SA), Selah (SA), and Best Ever (UK).

    ROA’s work is my personal favorite, Selah is a close second, but to me all of the works are both striking and beautiful.

    How awesome is this?

    The work is surprising, inspiring, beautiful and pretty damn awesome. And you can check out more of it here.

    It reminds me a lot of the work in and around Woodstock. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then go to The Bromwell [ near the biscuit mill] and check out the walls of the nearby parking lot.

    Excuse my ignorance, but do we do run any community, street art projects like this in SA? Please let me know.

    *images sourced here

      • Tags:
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      • Street Art
      • Wide Open Walls
      • Woodstock
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  • video

    19 Oct 2011

    Coldplay shot part of their new music video in South Africa and you know what? No you don’t. So I’ll tell you.

    I got really,stupidly proud watching a bunch of guys dressed up as elephants run around in the bushveld. I may have even shed a tear watching Chris Martin unicycle through the Western Cape. How beautiful is the place that we get to call home? How lucky are we? Okay I’m now officially becoming soppy, but every time I take the coast road I think about how we’re surrounded by all this natural beauty. All the time.

    London can keep their riots, New York can keep Wall Street, and Europe can bathe in it’s economic turmoil. I’ll happily keep the African sunrises, sunsets and open skies. South Africa you’re gorgeous and you knock spots off them!

    Warning: Expats this will make you miss home.

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      • Coldplay
      • Music Video
      • Paradise
      • South Africa
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  • post

    18 Oct 2011

    Gareth Cliff on Everything

    A copy of Gareth Cliff’s book: Gareth Cliff on Everything landed in my paws. I like Gareth Cliff. Yes, he’s loud and opinionated but let’s be honest, people without opinions are about as interesting as bits of drying paint. He keeps me sane in traffic and I don’t find him offensive or see him as an arrogant egomaniac.

    To me he is a blunt, 5FM DJ who doesn’t put up with crap at 7am, won’t tolerate stupidity and knows exactly how to bait most South Africans. And his book is certainly going to achieve the latter.

    Almost everyone who has seen me with this book has passed a sarky remark and then expressed shock at the absolute cheek of a man filling a book with his own opinons… and then publishing it. I mean how dare he!   The irony is that most of them have never heard Gareth on air [I asked them] but along with the Parlotones and Bryce Lawrence, it seems Cliff has been added to the SA Haters list of things to Hate on.

    I’m about halfway through, I’m enjoying it and I actually agree with several of his points… some of them have had me in stitches. The chapters are short, it’s a light read and he doesn’t sugar-coat anything. But be warned, if you’re easily offended, highly sensitive or incredibly pretentious, then this book is definitely not for you.

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      • 5FM
      • Gareth Cliff
      • review
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  • link

    18 Oct 2011

    Take This Lollipop

    We are all a little guilty of underestimating how much we actually share on the social networks.

    TakeThisLollipop is a bit of a wake up call. It’s an effective, little clip thats made me want to eradicate any trace of myself on the social networks. I’m now seriously asking myself why I even have a Facebook account? I’ve realised that I don’t have an answer.

    At the moment no one knows who is behind it, or what it’s for [people are suggesting it's for a new movie].
    But it is chilling, it is going viral and it has made me feel extremely uncomfortable.

    Ps This is what happens when the hour is up [spoiler]

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      • takethislollipop
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  • post

    17 Oct 2011

    Why I Shouldn’t Watch Contagion

    Contagion is hitting our screens soon. It’s a film about a germ I think. A deadly germ that spreads itself around and kills everyone. Despite the all-star cast, I do not think I should go and see this film because frankly I am already a bit abnormal about germs. And yes I know germs are good and we need them, but that doesn’t mean I have to go and roll around in them.

    I really don’t like public bathrooms [malls, restaurants, cinemas]. You can think I’m a complete snob, but I don’t know anyone who walks around proclaiming their love for the public lavatory. You see, it all started after I had my emergency appendectomy in 2009. I became a complete germa-phobe due to irrational paranoia brought about by my ridiculous belief that somehow a germ would cause my appendix to grow back and I’d have to relive the whole awful experience. I am aware that I am not a starfish, that this is not even remotely possible and that I now sound certifiable.

    I’ve gotten a lot better. It used to include taps, door handles, lift buttons, escalators, staircase rails and restaurant tables.

    Now it’s just public bathrooms.

    I used to be fine about public bathrooms. I’ve used sanitation facilities [stretching the definition here] in Botswana, Namibia and China Proper. And I’m not talking Hong Kong here [ fyi this is not China proper, this is China sprinkled with Western fairy dust]. I’m talking about the China where even the local McDonalds considered stall doors and toilet paper unnecessary luxuries. Thank god I have a mother who is prepared like that. We always had tissues.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I love China. My Dad worked there for about ten years and I’ve really seen a lot of it. But before you hop off to visit it, kill any romantic notions you have about the public loo stone dead. Take tissues with you. Don’t drink out of the taps. And be prepared for the fact that people do spit [even in Hong Kong, EVEN in the expensive, fancy-pants areas]. On reflection, the spitting was probably the biggest culture shock for me. But after the initial shock I was fine. Someone could stand right next to me and deposit their spit on the pavement …and teenage Robs wouldn’t even bat an eyelid.

    This was all pre-appendectomy of course.

    Midway through 2011, I used a public bathroom in Zanzibar. [The pic above is not the bathroom in this story. It is just a cool picture]. I loved Zanzibar, but East African toilets are not for the faint hearted.

    I blame Fae for this. We were on our way to Stone Town. It was a zillion degrees. It was humid. It was the only approved bathroom stop we would make on the entire 2 hour tour. Traveller Robs was aware of what to expect and because of this, post-appendectomy Robs didn’t want to go. But how could I let a good friend navigate through that ordeal alone? So I decided I would have to selflessly sacrifice myself, push aside my fears and accompany her  in order to provide emotional support.

    Plus my pea-sized bladder couldn’t cope with all the juice I’d drunk on the bus trip.

    To call it rudimentary would be paying it a compliment. It smelled like several things had bathed in urine and then died in the rafters. It was filled with spiders and the floor was slippery and wet. When I realised I was in slip slops, I pretty much considered cutting both my feet off and just leaving them there to quietly decompose. We survived, but I did promise Fae that we would never speak of this again. I lied. [Never trust a blogger].

    This experience plus appendectomy-phobia has done nothing but increase my levels of emotional instability in public bathrooms.

    To combat this instability, I have invented a theory. [I have several]. I believe that I am able to minimise my exposure to germs by  always picking the furthest stall. I like to think that people are innately lazy, so they will always choose the closest stall. I’ve always been quietly smug about this theory. Ha! I’m minimising my exposure to germs, aren’t I clever.

    But yesterday, I walked out of the Waterfront bathrooms and it occured to me… what if other people [more loons like me] use this theory as well ?! What if the closest stall is actually the less-used stall.

    Right. This post has affirmed that I am crackers. I cannot go and watch Contagion. Watching the undisputed power of the germ play out on the big screen will end me.

      • Tags:
      • bathrooms
      • china
      • contagion
      • germs
      • zanzibar
      • zhuhai
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