Bug Unit

And hot on the heels of that, is another, less maudlin, potentially less pretentious post.

I am going for a job interview this afternoon. For a Production Analyst (????!). Anyhow-be sure to think of me.

Also, I am using my new-found solitude in the flat to walk around naked.

That’s all for now.

Today is a typically gray Scottish day, and as I write this I am overlooking what could be described as my ‘garden’- a quaint little gray river, stark trees and some adventurous grass that has the indecency to be green in what purports to be spring but is still, let’s face it, winter.

Becks and Alana, the two previous inhabitants of Powderhall Rigg, have just left. They have been sleeping on the couch on and off since we moved in on the first. Their sudden departure in, fittingly enough, a Big Yellow Taxi, has put me in a musing mood.

Becks and Alana have lived in this house for more than a year. As foreign and strange and different to home as it is, it has become a place that they think of as home, a place that you come back to every day. A place that becomes home so much so that they now feel sad leaving it to return to Australia. They spent Christmas here, and began their own traditions, much like you would when starting your own families. They put down roots, threw parties, met friends and lovers, worked and sang and drank and laughed, and yet all their things that signify their experiences fitted neatly into backpacks and boxes and bags, and as long as they had been here, in the next minute, with a phone call to a taxi, they were gone.

When Kyle and I first arrived in Edinburgh, we discussed how strange it was that everything so foreign would soon be so familiar, the roads that we got hopelessly lost in are now navigated with ease. And yet, every day I hear a bagpipe or see a tiny shop alongside a cobbled street, and remember how far away I am. Specifically, I think of the map, and where home is, and where I am.

To be a traveller is to be in a state of transience. Stopovers and unpacking and job hunting and friend-making are all just the illusions that we won’t soon leave this place behind. But we will, in a whirlwind of backpacks and taxis and trains and planes, soon a whole life lived is packed neatly into the memory box, only to be related in stories and photos and other trinkets, because nobody you meet in the next place will ever understand.

But then again, you can live in the same house, on the same street corner, going to the same job year in, year out, and still have memories and images and other lifetimes lived or unlived that your nearest and dearest can’t or won’t understand. Ever.

We are all travellers.

My brother in law Neil takes a lot of time detailing his procrastination on his blog. By writing this entry I am doing a little of the same. Basically, I will admit that this blog post is procrastination, but I won’t divide it into sub-categories.
We have had an exciting weekend in Edinburgh, and things can only go up from here.
On Friday night Kyle, Isje, Jack and myself went out for dinner at a nice cheap restaurant in Edinburgh’s student quarter. You always know when you are in the student quarter, because you get specials. On Friday night we took advantage of the special at The Assembly that gives you two main meals and a bottle of wine for £14. To those not earning in pounds, don’t convert. Just trust me that it is cheap. To give you perspective, a large pizza from Pizza Hut is about £10, and a bottle of wine when you are out is usually £10-£12 for a cheap bottle. So this is why I love The Assembly. I had a Thai chicken curry, which is the other reason I love The Assembly. So then two bottles of wine, four main meals and 28 pounds down, we headed off to this club called Frankensteins. The club calls itself The World Famous Frankensteins (1818), but I think they are just preying on the famous name. Although, Frankenstein was written in Edinburgh. As was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Notice a theme?
Anyway, I digress. Frankensteins is very cool, in an old building, and has a nice vibe. We got another bottle of wine and began bopping to all manner of disgustingly pop-y songs, and enjoying ourselves. As the wine finished Kyle and I became even more animated. But I confess that it was my idea to get the people next to us to take photos of us. I think my line was ‘Can we be in your photos? We’re South African.’ It turns out that one of the people with a camera had worked with some South Africans at Disneyland, Florida, and so took our picture(?). So somewhere out there is a photo of Kyle and I, red eyed and red lipped. Nice.
We left Frankensteins to get the last bus home, and who should we meet on at the bus stop? A Zimbo guy who went to Hudson High School in East London, where my friend Laura’s mom is a teacher. Yes, he knew her. Yes, the world is a ridiculously small place. He even invited us to a dress up party, but I am not sure when.

So Friday night was good. Saturday morning was a bit sketchy, but nothing that some water and Ibuprofen can’t fix.

Saturday was St Paddy’s Day. St Paddy’s now always makes me sad, because it reminds me of my Grandad and my Uncle Bruce. You see, my Grandad’s mother was Irish, so every St Paddy’s Day my Uncle Bruce used to take him out for a beer to celebrate. Both of them died very suddenly in 2004, and so it was that I found myself sitting on the couch, crying at the St Paddy’s Day music special with Westlife singing ‘You raise me up’. It isn’t something I can help. It even makes me sad writing about it.

Later, we got into a more celebratory mood. Isje and Jack had a couple of friends coming over, so we made some green vodka jelly, and got some chips and roast pepper hummus and naan bread, and started the day off. Luke and Christy were really nice and friendly, and we all got along well. They also gave us a chance to gloat somewhat. They live with a man who has really bad psoriasis and wears a little white nightie. He uses the communal coffee to exfoliate his itching skin in the kitchen sink. He also only believes in reading by candlelight, and refuses to let the other digsmates use his dvd player since they had a fight about what to watch. Kyle told Isje and Jack that they should be more grateful for us, and buy us more presents.

We then headed out to The Three Sisters pub on the Cowgate to watch rugby and drink Guinness (well, I drank Guinness and Kyle drank vodka, but who cares. Only my drink had a shamrock on it and his didn’t.)It was freezing cold, and very windy. The bar was also packed. But I had a steaming bowl of Irish stew, and the Guinness helped, and we moved inside and overall had a great time, except for when some drunk man threw up on Isje’s jacket. Photos will follow, and then everyone can finally see our housemates.

This week presents much excitement as well. On Friday Muppet and Tamaryn arrive in town to be shown around Edinburgh for the weekend. Yay! I plan to do so many touristy things, and also gloat about how much cheaper Edinburgh is than London. Then on Sunday night Louise and Rob arrive to stay with us until Wednesday. Yay. So many friendly faces, and South African accents. I cannot wait.

Ok, so as many of you will glean from the cunning title of this post, I do believe that all my reading Naomi Woolf (sp?) and believing in feminism, but not the way Kyle uses the word, and stuff, has caught up with me. Technically, when you stay home and someone else goes out to earn money, and you do the washing, that makes you a housewife. So now I’m a housewife. Just without the ‘wife’ part. Oh ja, and not in a house either. It’s more like a flatshare, albeit a comfortable one.
There are positives and negatives to this new found role. The positive is getting to loll around in bed with my hair all messy while Kyle bustles around getting ready for work. And getting to visit Tescos to buy a Magnum at 3:32 in the afternoon, because bwahahahahaha, I’m not at work, and I can go for a Magnum break whenever I feel like it.
The negative is the overwhelming desire to make sure there is ’something for supper’ by the time Kyle gets home, dis-empowerment and the danger of brain turning to mush while watching daytime television, especially the price savers channel, where people buy cushions and stuff. It’s basically like Verimark, only not as slick. Being a presenter on one of those shows must be the most challenging thing ever, no jokes. You try ad libbing about Egyptian cushion covers for 40 minutes live on air.

I really hope that I get a job soon. I went to a temping agency the other day, and FAILED A MICROSOFT WORD EFFICIENCY TEST. How does one do that? I don’t know, but I managed. My excuse is that *nobody* has to do mail merges anyway, and one day when I have a corner office, I will gloat and fire anyone who says that anybody needs to. Because nobody needs to.

I think watching too much daytime TV is making me bitter.

Jen’s still digging around for jobs every morning and, whilst being supportive and helpful, I’m finding myself doing the housework. Real masculine style though. Did some of the vacuuming this morning, followed by a clean-up of the room, and soon I’ll be moving on to emptying the dishwasher. Yes, we have a dishwasher… it’s brilliant.

We’ve had *SUCH* a good response to the first episode of Ducklight Travels. It’s been really cool hearing from people far and wide, all just having good things to say. Some people have complained about the sheer size of the download, or time it takes to buffer, but in general I think people have been pretty patient with it. It’s 11 minutes long, guys, there is no real way to make it any smaller than it is, unless you want to watch coloured blobs move across the screen whilst their voices sound like something straight out of Star Wars. I find myself, also, getting petty over large video downloads taking so long, and not being DVD quality once they’re ready to be watched, and then remembering what’s being accomplished, as well as the fact that I can remember a time, not so long ago, when it was completely inconceivable. So just hang in there… I can assure you that I spend about 3 days, on average, resizing and recompressing the files over and over and over again, to ensure that they’re the best possible quality at the smallest size. I’m a geek… it’s in my nature.

The job search continues for Jenbug. She’s been emailing and cold-calling like crazy though, so I’m sure something will materialize in the next few days. We’ve been pondering on going away for a few days later in the week, sort of savouring the last few days of freedom together before I start work on Monday. One of the tours we’re finalising is the 3 Day Skye High, Haggis tour. It tours up into the highlands of Scotland, most importantly, goes past Loch Ness, as well as across to the Isle of Skye. Aaah, the Isle of Skye. I’m so keen. It’s an Isle… covered in ruined castles, lochs, mountains and haggis. We are most probably leaving on Friday, getting back Sunday night. Cost per person is £89, plus about £30 for two nights stay in a hostel, and about £40 for food for the three days. It’s a bit pricey in Saffer terms, but it’s really Not That Bad ™ in local currency. We’re most probably going to fork out for it… suck it up… eat haggis.

Food. I’ve been meaning to make some comments about the food here for the last few posts, but have just never gotten round to it. First off, Haggis. Haggis is manky. It’s mostly manky because of how it is made, not on it’s looks. I haven’t yet tried it, so I can’t really comment on taste, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty good… and thats the opinion of a lot of tourists, not the local Scot’s. I plan on trying it sometime soon… though I’m most probably going to wait until I’m in a restaurant and it’s all nicely prepared, and the person next to me has chosen it Whilst what goes into it is quite off-putting, it’s not too far off from the dry-wors we are more than comfortable eating back home in ZA.

Black Pudding. The ultimate in siff. I really have no intentions of trying it, let alone ordering it anywhere. It’s everywhere you go… but the smell alone has put me off of it. It looks disgusting, smells worse when you’re cooking it, and the texture of it is enough for me to not bother trying it. White Pudding is most probably completely off the cards as well.

Deep Fried Mars Bar. Yes… Thats what they do here. On every odd corner you see a large sign saying “We Sell Deep Fried Mars Bars”. Now at first you think… aah, the Scots have some other sort of food stuff that they call “Mars Bar”, and they’re just deep frying it, and everything is peachy. But then you find out that it is in fact the exact same thing that you’re used to back home, except deep fried. They literally take a mars bar, deep fry it, and serve it to you (sometimes it’s even crumbed, I hear)… for like £2.50 or something. I’m not completely convinced… although I hear that it’s the most amazing drunk food. People fight for it when they’re drunk. It’s the chicken burger and chips of the Scottish highlands.

Though there are strange foods around, and available, you still find an Italian restaurant on every street, sometimes there are a few of them on a single corner. This is a huge positive for me. In England there were a few of them, but the English’s version of Italian food was usually as far off as a white South African preparing traditional Xhosa meals. It’s just not going to happen.

However, the Scottish don’t do it too badly… well, we haven’t yet forked out enough money to go to a nice expensive Italian restaurant, but based on their popularity and commonality, I’m guessing they must be doing something right. Until then, we have our 3Kg bag of penne pasta, which we’re slowly making a dent in. I think I’m the leader in that though, with my new Cromata-Pasta. It’s a hybrid. Crumbed chicken, original Dolmio’s tomato pasta sauce, peppers, and penne pasta. Breathtaking.

No more stealing of the unternet for much longer though. Last night we had Virgin Media here, signing up a contract for a 4Mb/sec uncapped, unlimited cable broadband line. Along with unlimited free phone calls on the weekend, and the usual phone line hire and whatnot, it’s total cost is £27/month. It’s just crazy how cheap and easy it is over here compared to SA. I’m really hoping for the success of the SNO, Neotel, before we get back to SA, so that we can get back on to a nice fast DSL line on our first day back. Being able to piggy-back onto someone else’s wireless, and still get over 5 times faster than the line that we had in the Castle last year is close to unbelievable.

Our makeshift desk-office thing that Jack and I have constructed in the lounge is an absolute pleasure to sit at in the mornings. Whilst it’s not the most comfortable of situations because of the large couch that you sit on, and the coffee table’s offset position next to the “stealing the unternet window”, you get a sore back after a while, as well as a tan. No, no tan. Tanning doesn’t happen below a maximum mid day temperature of 7′C. So you sit back in the mornings, plodding around the internet, finding jobs in Jen’s case and blogging, in mine, all with this neatly laid out grass green and black iron laced playground right in front of you, kids playing in it every once in a while, ugly small yapper dogs trotting around it every other while. Blue skies most mornings, wouldn’t you believe it? Small plants, twiggy trees, old-school lamp posts, twisty black tar paths, and well trimmed lawns.

Edinburgh is surprising.

And just like that, you’re employed! Django Films phoned me this morning and offered me the position that I interviewed for… I took it. I’m getting a really reasonable salary as well, which means no more eating pasta every night, and more steaks It’s just such amazing news. I am really really really so stoked about it… I can’t even explain. They were originally going to only have it as a part time position as well, but because of their interest in the skills I can bring to the company, they’re putting me on full time. Yay, happy days. They’re such an awesome company, and it’s going to be so incredibly cool to work with them, especially on the feature film that they’re working on, The Illusionist (a 2D animated film, not the one that’s on the cinema at the moment). Aaah, happy days.

Yay for Django.
Yay for steady income.
Yay for Edinburgh.

Ducklight Travels Episode 1 is now available for watching. You can check it out at our hosting space on Vimeo (link below). It’s watchable over dial-up if you’re willing to wait about 25 minutes for caching. On ADSL is shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes to buffer.

Ducklight Travels on Vimeo

Leave us some comments or feedback on the Vimeo site, or here.

Edit: Vimeo.com seems to be down this morning. Not too sure why, but it’s not working. Please check back again sometime later on… Sorry for the inconvenience — 11:07am Monday 5th March
Edit: It’s back up! Check it out if you didn’t… and check it again if you already have

Happiness is. Happiness is sitting in your new flat’s lounge, leeching free wireless broadband from your neighbour, geeking with one of your new digsmates, hanging from the crazy night before, chewing on some crumbed chicken fillet tomato based pasta, and listening to mp3’s of a band you heard about last night, called Mika. Aaah. The flat is awesome. It’s everything that I wanted, and some. It’s so comfortable… theres big couches in the lounge, a full on sleeper couch as well, an amazingly fitted kitchen with a big table that we sit around and drink wine at each night, our very own bathroom, and a lovely double bedroom with these cool slide-away-type fitted cupboards. Shoo… it’s just great.

Before I forget though… the interview on Tuesday went really great. Well, it went as well as it could’ve gone. I luckily got to overhear two of the interviews before me, whilst sitting in the hallway waiting for them. I sounded a lot better than the other applicants, which made me a lot more positive and confident when going in to the room with the interviewers. We chit-chatted for around 40 minutes, which was really great. I asked them just as many questions as they asked me… we talked render farms for a while… we talked compositing software for a while… we talked about my working permit for a while… argh. The working permit. They kindof grilled me a bit about it, asking how long it was valid for, working periods etc. I lied a bit and told them that it gives me 2 years working in the UK. They figured that out… they questioned further. Lets just say, that was a bit of an awkward moment, but I think that I got out of it okay. I assured them that, should they give me the position, I’ll worry about working permits… they just worry about having me around their company. It’s a project till the end of 2009, and they would want for me to stay with them until the end of it. This is a bit of a commitment. I’m weary, but also not too phased by it.

So we finally moved into our place on Thursday… spent the day having National Insurance interviews, then moving stuff from the hostel. Moving stuff was done on our own, and also done on our own two-by-fours. Legs were tired. It’s a 2km walk from the hostel to the flat, so walking down from the hostel to the flat twice in the day, plus another return journey to buy some brand spanking new bedding, added up to a whole lot of kaylometers. To be precise, Jen walked 10km that day, I walked 6.

Then I spent the day yesterday cracking the guy next door’s wireless router… there are a couple of wifi signals passing through this house, but his is the strongest through the lounge, and it also had the most traffic on it yesterday morning. I sniffed all the packets that were being passed between his machine and the router, all the packets that were being sent to or from his router to the internet, and after capturing about 100,000 packets, dumping them to a text file, and then using an algorithm to cross-match them all against eachother, the result was a 10 digit password that we needed to compromise his security with. It was in the bag. Logged on to his router, added some port-forwards for torrent and some other apps, and gave ourselves a nice big uncapped 2mb broadband connection. Lifes good. The only restriction, is that it works very strong right next to the window of the lounge, and weak for most of the rest of the lounge… The result is that this morning Jack and I, hungover, pushed the couches out of the way, and twisted the coffee table so that it pushes up against the window, so we can maximize the connection speed. We now have our own little office type setup, looking out the window into the gardens of the complex… it’s quite fantastic really.

We were hungover because last night the whole house went out (house also includes two other aussie girls who are sleeping on the sleeper couch in the lounge until Monday). Jen and I shared two bottles of wine before we left… climbed into a taxi, got to the pub, bought another £10 bottle of wine… talked crap… laughed a lot… almost got kicked out by this crazy bar lady who caught me on a couple occasions lighting these random candles all over the bar and chucking them in glasses… she also took away a plate of cakes that was laid out on the bar for purchase, after having Jen tunnel through the clingwrap over them, and steal two of them. She wasn’t impressed with us… Crazy bar lady. Crazy crazy.

Good night overall… now we’re meeting one of Jen’s friends from varsity who’s over here in Edinburgh, for drinks later on. Can’t even think of drinking any more wine right now, let along buying some! The house is great. Videos and pictures of it will follow soon.