Sea Gypsy

I am the first to admit that I fail to adult.
And proud of it.

Every time I begin the job hunt or prepare to "settle down", I get whisked away on magical adventures to far away places I have never heard of (I never paid much attention in Geography)
by means I never dreamed I would dabble with.
(No, even though I fall into adventures seemingly elegantly, none of this was planned).

And that's why I found myself back in Sweden.
Neptune knew I was seeking gainful employment, and instead he threw this at me:



The beautiful Eilean of Rue.
She needed help relocating...

Now, for all of you who have never sailed and don't have salt pumping through your veins,
you have to realize that this passionate love of the ocean is not a choice, it's a disease:
That feel of the breeze on your face as your hair knots with joy.
Your heart races as you heel to the side, holding on as you slice through the water carried only on whispers of wind - across bays, across oceans, across the world...
It's the simplest existence.
It's mesmerizing.
It's a drug.
 Once you have tasted it, you have to have more.



And so, only hours after arriving in Stockholm, we set the sails, and were off.
Fortunately there were sights to see even at sea:

We sailed night and day. Day and night.
And didn't stop till the very tip of Sweden to shelter from a passing storm.
(it generally is so very much nicer being in a safe harbour when a storm strikes).

The calm of the after-storm.

After a few hours rest (and a shower) we continued.



We dodged tankers and cargo boats and tall ships and wind farms as we sailed around Denmark and into Germany.
I didn't know what traffic was until we reached the Kiel canal:

Boats before

Boats behind

Boats along side

Boats we're glad we dodged when rounding corners.

There were so many boats and so much wind that we needed a break and a beer and tied up in Rensburg.

Rensburg is a strange place.

What the flip?

The Kiel canal spat us out into the most spectacular sunset as we rounded the German bite into the Northern sea.



The sun came out and the seas calmed.
We sailed past the Netherlands and Belgium and France.
This, my friends, is what we call the high life!
(Although European summer really ought to be much warmer)

Now picture this with a cup of fresh roasted coffee in hand.

After surviving rush hour in the English channel (even those crazy swimmers were out)
the fog descended and the UK disappeared as we followed her shores.
Surreal eerieness as the sea became the sky.
We drifted.

With fuel levels critical, we were forced to sail into Falmouth.
But tacking your way through boats and buoys has its own set of joys.

All too suddenly, the adventure came to an end.
And while it's always horrible to end one epic (especially a boaty one)
you have to walk away from one journey to begin another.

Salt, Rice, and Paper Towels.

Life is full of interesting problems. Theft, murder, speedos, unemployment, poverty, delusions of grandeur, schizophrenia, bad taste in clothing, cockroaches, the list goes on and on… But I think I have found the answer to all of them....Maybe...

Some call the a problem, some call them food!

The other day I left work a little early to escape the torrential downpour. I was cold. I was soaked. My fingers couldn't bend anymore, my brain had frozen over, frostbite was imminent! I swore I would never leave the house again! 

I threw my clothes in the washing machine and sat down [huddled in my brothers duvet because I don't own my own] to reply to my last umteen emails and finish a few proposals before I heard the bouncing of the machine subside. I clicked send and started towards the machine. A few steps later I found myself swimming through a sea of greenish-brown wash mush. The washing machine had flooded the house...

In a panic I tossed my [world's dirtiest] teddy bear in to start soaking, and then blankets and towels. I scooped bucket loads into the bath tub. Hours later it was almost done and I seemed to have escaped without flooding the downstairs neighbours. I had won the battle, but the war hadn't even started yet.

Teddy, on his last night out, a porn star party

The carpets were still soaked, so after a few days of [unsuccessfully] wishing them dry, I got newspaper. The smell worsened. By the weekend the house was so damp and the smell so rank that I was beginning to think I might have health officials notified. As I lay awake at night trying to absolve the billions of other problems the week from hell had bought with it, solutions started forming in my mind. I "awoke" from a sleepless night, walked to the shops and bought 2kg of rice, 1kg of salt and a diarrhea-worthy load of paper towels!

I coated my brothers room in salt, Daisy's room in paper towels covered by magazines and books and most of the house's furniture, and my room (the lounge) was treated to a happy dosage of tastic brown rice.

Life's other problems got worse, but the house started smelling better by the day. A week later (Monday), I finally got around to seeing the results of my efforts. I started by lifting up the books and furniture and paper towels.... and then clearing up the salt and then the rice (which practically formed a ready made meal after a week of soaking)...Amazingly they all worked. And the house was as good as new (and cleaner too).

The small successes of the rice, salt and paper towels gave me the ummmmph I needed to start tackling other battles creatively (it's been a bit of poo year really) but you know what? Life really is good! - Just look at the amazing people you have around you and you'll know how lucky you are!

I'm not sure what you're struggling with at the moment, but I promise you that there is a solution. They say that time heals all things; but I think what you really need is some creativity [and a hug/ lick/ bowl of rice wine] and the eradication of the speedo.

Happiness [and why you should laugh at those more miserabler]

I always smile a little bit more when I see miserable people – they always remind me how ridiculous it is to not be happy.

I took a walk to the shops the other day and, seeing as there was still daylight, I took the short cut through the park (at night it converts into makeshift homeless housing and I don’t like to disturb meal times because I know they don’t get much protein in their diets). I stopped to watch the tiniest human running through clusters of pigeons. The birds would fluster a couple of feet up in the air making her vanish in a cloud of feathers and then settle down in circles around her again so that she  could do it again. And again. And again. Her laughter filled even the furtherest corners of the park.

The little walk got me thinking about my happiest moments [enter cloudy fade back walk down memory lane]…

At age 2, my first ever memory, was sitting in the nurse’s office at the Joburg Gen hospital waiting for my dad to finish surgery. The nurses all knew me well because I apparently used to cry if dad didn’t take me in to work with him. It’s a very bizarre memory because all I remember is kicking my legs back and forth and humming quietly and a smiley nurse handing me a lemon cream. I was the happiest kid south of the equator that day.

A few years later, at 8ish I think, after months of picking up rusty coins on sidewalks and saving tuck shop money and money that was probably meant to have been put in the offering basket at church, I remember calculating that I finally had enough money saved to go to Gold Reef City – South Africa’s best theme park (actually at that time I was pretty sure that I thought it to be the world’s best theme park).  My mother walked into my bedroom and told me she’d found the puppy she had promised me for my last birthday and that on the weekend we could go to the theme park with my two besties and collect my collie (who was to later to be known as Frisbee). I spent the better part of an hour jumping up and down in excitement. I didn’t have a care in the world.

So in all truth, I think this might have been a picture of Lassie, my brother's dog... but picture a much cuter version of this guy!

…And then there was finally breaking free of high school… getting my driver’s license and first car… the first [and only] time I got 100% for a major varsity exam [without studying or caring that I hadn’t]… there was the first full year I made it through without needing crutches…the first kiss…

The joy of almost beating a monk at am wrestling

The joys of time spent with good friends

The joys of hitch hiking

There were all the joys that came with the gypsy life... And there was the inexplicable joy that came when, back in 2010, I accidently found myself sitting on a plane home after years of being away. And even more joy came as I touched down in Joburg and found my unsuspecting mother proudly waving around a sign that read “Marijuana” expecting my Romanian friend instead of myself.  We both cried and laughed at the same time while airport security kept a vigilant watch from nearby.

You wouldn't thin a mall airport sign could bring you to tears...

Reunioning with mum...

Last year in Vietnam I found myself alone, in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain. Visibility was so bad that I couldn’t see anything and I’d almost had head on collisions with cars 3 times as I rode my trusty scooter down what would have been a picturesque mountain pass had the weather obliged. I stopped to have a quick break from uber concentration the road demanded and then my bike wouldn’t start. I shed a couple of tears – but the misery didn’t last very long because it suddenly dawned on me that I was in one of the most beautiful places in the world in a culture I knew nothing about with only a giant wet teddy bear for company and I burst out laughing because that is exactly where I wanted to be – that sort of adventure was more than most people even dream of.

The road out of Delat, Vietnam

Similarly, after abandoning our self-constructed raft in Malaysia, after watching our hard work and many earthly belongings finding new homes in the depth of the ocean, as we swam for hours to try and reach the nearest shore – singing and laughing to distract ourselves from the harsh reality that our lives were actually in very real danger – Happiness hit me like a heard of frigid elephants: how many people get shipwrecked? How many people ever get to swim for their lives? And I was in good company too – if I was going to die (and I really really really didn’t want to), I couldn’t imagine a better way to go about it.

While I cycled the 20+ km uphill to work on Saturday I first got pinged by a horse carriage and then hit by a boat and again I burst out laughing. The ridiculousness of having to work weekends for the foreseeable future – of cycling ridiculous distances to a ridiculous job – and being clipped by ridiculous vehicles that shouldn’t be on the road in the first place made me look at life afresh again. There really is no point in being unhappy – ever! – There is ALWAYS something to smile about!   

There’s no formula for happiness – it’s simply making the most of where you are while you’re there. And changing your perspective. You might be having a really bad day but if you look at it from a different angle you might find you are exactly where you want to be.