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| So somehow the M1 year has come to an end. Last Monday I handed in my thesis (no mean feat, considering that as far as I know only 5 other M1 students out of all three classes made this deadline). This meant that I could finally get a good night’s sleep, after averaging somewhere between four and five guilt- and stress-ridden hours sleep a night, and could finally start to really enjoy life again. And luckily last week turned out to be crammed full of parties and good times. It was so wonderful to feel part of the world again. To be honest, I feel almost as though I have been away for a very long time, locked in a dark room, and as the world around me is very bright and unfamiliar. So if I hadn't been able to force myself back into my life, I may have been very happy to stay in a safe space and not speak to anyone for a month or so. So the good times definitely helped! Technically, I suppose the good times started a little bit before The Great Hand-in, with the fantastic Night of a Thousand Drawings. This event was definitely one of the highlights from last year, and this year I even more impressed, It was held at the beautiful Park Station, which has somehow managed to stay preserved for something like 30 years. This year I did not draw anything, but instead I was able to observe a new N1000D event – the Doodle Battle. This was a knock-out competition, where they had two competitors who had to doodle something within a certain amount of time and then the audience would determine which one won that round. Each competitor was placed in front of an overhead projector, and drew their doodle on the transparency which was projected onto a wall, so that the audience could watch while their doodled. This was such fun to watch. Each round had a different theme (such as spacemen, dinosaurs, cowboys, fairies), and it was awesome to see how each person had their own style and vision.   
The drawings themselves were beautiful, the music was cool, and it was simply wonderful to wander around and see the various sights and explore a gorgeous old building. Night of a Thousand Drawings is definitely on my Events calendar for 2010. The following evening I attended a Christmas play, ‘Three Wise Men and a Baby’. Graham (Duncan’s brother-in-law) was one of the three wise men, and it seemed to be the perfect way to start off the Christmas season. The play itself was quite sweet, and there were some hilarious moments. We were able to sing Christmas Carols, and it was a lovely start to the weekend. The Christmas theme continued the next day when I went to a body conditioning class at gym. It was the instructor’s last class of the year, and so he decided to play Christmas medleys instead of the normal music. There is something insanely cool about doing lunges and bicep exercises to ‘Jingle Bells’ and a stomach workout to ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’. I rushed home to send David an e-mail about how the Festive Season has officially began (he was doing a workshop over the weekend). This has sparked an interesting and rather entertaining debate between us, because we have rather different ideas about Christmas – in my mind it is called the Festive Season for a reason, while for him the term Christmas Day is key. Oh well, it makes life interesting! The rest of that day was spent having unplanned chats with special people – Duncan was on Gmail chat in the morning so we managed to have a bit of a chat, and that afternoon Thomas and I caught up with Robin at our home base – Killarney Seattle. The rest of the weekend was rather quiet, and pretty much spent looking after my sister and preparing for The Great Hand-in. After finally handing in, things suddenly started to happen. My friend Jen invited us to a small impromptu birthday dinner that evening for her fiancée Tiaan. It was an awesome and incredibly fun evening which much laughter, lemonade, and absolute joy. We hadn’t seen them for about four months or so, so it was particularly nice to see them! The next day was the Intern tea at my internship site. This was simultaneously surreal (as an aside, how is it that starting M1 felt so natural but starting M2 seems too incredible to comprehend?) and fun – and it was good to see that the people who work there smile at each other and have fun together. The purpose of the tea was for us to get our letters of appointment, meet the staff and break bread with them – and I liked that the latter was a particular priority for them. We felt so welcomed there, and after such a challenging year we cannot wait to start! From there, I went off my class’s end of year lunch at Moyo’s. It was so strange to see everyone again. Despite the fact that most of them have not yet handed in their thesis, they all still looked happy and relaxed and smiling – which was really great to see after having seen them look stressed and drawn and unhappy for the last few months. It was a fantastic way to end the year with them, and I am glad that my last memory of them this year will be this one. Here are some of the photos from the day:   
Wednesday was the lab lunch. The lab refers to the Biology lab, where Luke, Helen and Megan do their work. Somehow I got involved with their weekly research meetings, and Neville (their supervisor) invited me to their year-end breakfast. Doughnut Fridays / research meetings had become something I really looked forward to every week, and I was really unbelievably touched when he invited me to the breakfast. It was fun morning all in all, and it was a good way to end that chapter of the year (although technically I guess the fondue was the real end?). Afterwards, I just had time to browse through two bookshops and edit Leila’s thesis before David collected me to spend the afternoon with Jen and Tiaan. We bought lunch for all of us, drove over to their place and settled in for an awesome afternoon of chatting, laughter and swimming. This was what David considered to be his first afternoon off for many months, and it was really good to see him relaxing again after so long and being his normal crazy wonderful self again. That following evening I went with David to visit a friend in hospital, who had just had a facelift. To be clear, I know that plastic surgeons often do a lot of vitally important work on people and it does often improve quality of life considerably, so I am disparaging their work. However, I don’t like elective unnecessary procedures at all, for so many reasons! Regardless, I went along to offer support. However, there was something about seeing the stitches and knowing exactly what work has been done. It grossed me out so much that I went into another room and quietly fainted (for the first time in my life). It was strange, because I remember holding onto the wall desperately willing myself not to faint, and then suddenly I had a dream – I was in a beautiful library with a good friend of mine who made me feel completely safe and secure. Then suddenly I was being woken up by a panic-stricken David. It seems that while I was quiet, my head made quite a noise when it made contact with the concrete floor and this alerted everyone to the fact that I had fainted. Somehow in my dream, the visit to the hospital seemed dreamlike and the library and my friend were real – I was so cross when I realized that it was the other way around! So the rest of the evening was spent with David, who made sure I stayed awake (whether this is true or not, he believes that if one has a concussion and they go to sleep within the next few hours they can fall into a coma, so he was determined to keep me awake for hours). Finally Friday dawned. The highlights of the day were Tas’s farewell chocolate fondue: 
and Anja and Emma’s joint birthday party. Anja and Emma are two little girls I taught last year at the nursery school, and I see them every so often when I au pair Amelie and Stephanie. I am also on good terms with their mother and friends with their au pair, so I really enjoy spending time there – it just ends up being a ball. This was meant to be a Mamma Mia themed party (they seemed to have played the songs on CD before I arrived, which I suppose constitutes a Mamma Mia party), but the cake was of The Little Mermaid. So I am not really sure of the final theme of the party? Either way the cake was delicious, and the party was awesome fun! I especially liked that the little cupcakes all had blue icing and that the face-painting included glitter! Here is a picture of the cake with the two birthday girls standing between their mother (who is lighting the candles): 
In between the events of Friday I managed to pull something in my shoulder (while trying to save my car from rolling forward), hit my head quite hard on a cupboard, burn my hand on a kettle and bump my hip into the railings of a staircase. Even by my standards, it had been a rather catastrophic 24 hours. David has decided that this is the Universe’s way of telling me I need desperately need sleep – as in spend-quality-time-with-my-cat, not-get-up-even-to-shower sleep. Despite not being a good patient (according to David I am far too stubborn to be a good patient – apparently even more so than him or his dad), I may consider this, as the idea is kind of appealing... Just for a day though... At some point... Finally it was Saturday. A few months ago I decided to have a get-together to celebrate the first year of this degree being completed. I had all these plans for a huge celebration, but it finally ended up being a bring ‘n braai (barbeque), with some swimming (and attempts at snorkling) and board games thrown in for good measure:  
It was really fantastic to have so many of the people I wanted to see there, and I have made plans with most of the others to have one-on-one coffee sessions, so all in all it really feels like I have started to reclaim my life. The day (and I guess really the week in general) helped me crystallize the realization of how extremely lucky I am to be surrounded by some pretty amazing people. Everyone adds something so incredibly and profoundly special in their own way, and I have realized not to take this for granted. | | |
| This year is the second year that the Psychology Department has seen Masters’ students completing both their coursework and their thesis in one year. Until last year, the practise was for students to complete their coursework during the first (while starting the thesis) and complete the thesis during the second year of the degree while doing their internships. Last year’s class and the current class are essentially the guinea pigs for the new system, while the Department figures out how to squash two years of work into one. Anyway, as a result everyone is feeling rather drained, and after Wednesday I don’t think anyone really had either the energy or the will to tackle their thesis. After plodding along on Thursday and Friday trying to get motivated, I decided to take the weekend completely off from work (without even switching on the computer to check my e-mail). So the fantastic weekend began with some spontaneity. David picked me up on Friday afternoon, and I immediately shared with him some really awesome news that Duncan had. David started driving automatically towards his house while giving Duncan a call about his news. By the time he had spoken to Dunx we were near David’s house, when he suddenly said that he had in fact meant to drive in the opposite direction, to a park near my house that I had explored a bit with Luke and Duncan earlier in the year. We decided to go to the park anyway, and so turned around and headed in that direction. We had driven for a kilometre or so, when David suddenly suggested that we pick up Duncan and take him with us to the park. So we went past Duncan’s house, collected him and headed off to the James and Ethel Gray Park. This is a beautiful park, and is really rather big – it doesn’t look like it should fit in the space where it is. I like it because it is open and full of trees, has a small lake and tiny waterfall feature and is not very crowded. Here are some photographs from the afternoon:     We then started to drive back to Duncan’s place when we decided to have a movie evening. While driving to Duncan’s house (the location of the movie evening), we somehow started debating whether the Lego Yoda figure was the same size as other Star Wars characters and whether he would have legs, and decided to go past a toy shop in Bedford Centre to investigate this (we were all feeling a little spontaneous and silly). None of the Lego Star Wars boxes had a Yoda figure in it, but we were able to deduce that he would in fact be slightly smaller than the other figures and does have legs. We then went off to the Pick ‘n Pay in the Centre to get popcorn and a drink that evening. While we were paying, Luke arrived. He was there with his sister buying baking supplies and it was just a happy coincidence that we happened to be there at the same time. He decided to join us for movie night, and we arranged to meet him at Duncan’s house a bit later. The three of us then headed off to select the movies for the evening. After some debate we settled on two movies, namely The Fifth Element and Labyrinth (Purple Rain will have to wait for another evening). We then went back to Duncan’s house, prepared dinner, and finally settled down to watch the first movie. Duncan’s dad did not seem very keen to watch The Fifth Element, so we started with Labyrinth. I quite enjoyed Labyrinth. It starred a very young Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie (who played The Goblin King). It was Jim Henson’s final movie, and it was really weird but in a cool sort of way. We then started with The Fifth Element. I had only seen this movie once before, and had been keen to see it again, but dozed off for a part of it. It was a great evening though – completely unplanned and spontaneous and fun. The next day David and I spent some time together. He collected me and took me to the scene of Our First Grand Adventure – the Nescafe at Brightwater Commons. This does not sound like a romantic choice, but we ended up in Randburg by accident, and decided to go off to coffee and thus ended up there on one of our first dates. We opted for ice cream instead of coffee as it was a boiling hot day and wandered around, browsing in the comic book shop and examining the chameleons at the Exotic Pet Shop. It was just really great ‘couple time’, and it was pretty cool J We then went to my friend’s birthday party. This year he decided to go all out, and hosted a 1920’s-themed party at The Rand Club, inspired by the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie. This obviously meant dressing up appropriately, which was half the fun. Luckily I found a suitable black beaded dress in my wardrobe that I have only worn once before (when I went to a Matric Dance when I was 15), borrowed some white beads my grandmother had sent years ago from America and some bright red lipstick from my mom, and managed to make a sparkly head-dress from sequined material, feathers and a material flower clip. We then drove to The Rand Club which is in the heart of town. While driving there, the sun was setting, and watching the sun shimmering on the buildings of town was just so beautiful: 
The Rand Club is one of these exclusive clubs where everything is simply perfect. I had never been there before, but it was really lovely. There were so many places to explore, such as the Billiards Room and the Armoury, which were technically out of bounds but that didn’t deter David in the slightest. It was just such fun exploring the old building with its marble floors, grandfather clocks, portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and the ancient elevator (complete with a door that has to be slammed closed), that has been ever-so-slightly modernized (such as the Nelson Mandela portrait and the twinkle lights on the staircases). The party itself was fantastic. Linda and her boyfriend were there naturally, as well as a girl from my class, Amy, and her husband. There were a few other people I had known from various places, such as Barney, but for the most part it was a group of strangers. Somehow that really didn’t matter so much and we ended up chatting to all sorts of people. A Jazz band performed all evening, and everyone just had fun reliving a wonderful era. It was a real break from reality and I think of the best parties ever. Here are some pictures from the evening:        
Sunday was a relatively quiet day, where David and I went out for coffee, looked at a cook book at Exclusive Books, and rented Startrek. This was an unexciting way to end the weekend, but it was really nice simply connecting with him again. While the work-free weekend served its purpose, I think the thing I am most grateful for I that it has started to open my heart to small pleasures again. For example eating coconut for the first time yesterday (well a proper coconut), and later taking the Amelie horse-riding and befriending the ponies with Stephanie (my favourite pony is definitely Squeak while her favourite is Thumbelina) and then playing board games with the girls, drumming with Duncan this afternoon, and planning to dress up to watch Coco Avant Chanel with Leila tomorrow – these are all things I would have enjoyed anyway, but there is an extra spark in these activities that was lacking before. I think the mantle of the M1 year is slowly starting to fall, and being replaced with fun and life J | | |
| So yesterday was my final exam for 2009. It was an oral exam, where I had to present my theoretical understanding of my play therapy clients for 10 minutes, and then spend 20 minutes answering gruelling questions from the panel. We were required to submit the written paper a week ago, and I finally put together my Powerpoint presentation over Monday evening and Tuesday morning. This was surprisingly challenging, probably due to the fact that I am feeling a total lack of creativity at the moment, and had no clue how to condense an 11 000 word paper into a 10 minute presentation. Thankfully a) Claire, Marle, and other members of my market research company will never have seen to pass judgement, and b) Luke and Megan were kind enough to offer some pretty awesome suggestions, which in turn sparked a sense of excitement and creativity in me, so that I actually ended up with a presentation that I was actually rather pleased with! Later on Tuesday afternoon I practised the presentation on my cat and later my dog (who both slept through the whole thing); and then presented it to my family while they were trying to enjoy their dinner. Apart from the furious debate between my parents over my choice of background (I opted for a camouflage theme, given my child’s interest in the toy army men), which my dad hated but my mom loved, the final practise round went well. I finally felt okay about the whole thing and was feeling totally prepared – almost like nothing could go wrong. Until the day itself arrived. First of all the external examiner had somehow been given the incorrect schedule, and was rearing to begin the whole examination process at 8:00, while the schedule the class had been given had the first oral exam scheduled for 8:30. Understandably, this caused utter chaos and panic, until the external examiner graciously decided that he would use the time table we had been given. Maria and I still needed to print out the latest drafts of our assessments reports for final sign-off (hopefully!). We then settled down to wait for our turns. Thankfully I was third on the list of presenters, and Leila was second so the waiting period wasn’t too long, but it was still pretty awful. Finally 9:30 came, and it was my turn. I entered the room and set up my computer – only to discover that it would not work! It switched on, but it went to a black screen, and no amount of button-hitting or coaxing (note to self: probably not a good idea to speak to inanimate objects in a coaxing tone too often in front of 6 psychologists!) would convince it to do anything else. After Patrick (my supervisor) helped me try turn it off and then again a few times they asked me to present off the print-outs I had provided them. (As an aside, this was quite possibly the smartest idea I have had this year, as we were definitely not asked to provide them with the Powerpoint print-outs, and to the best of my knowledge, no one else in the class had done so) The actual exam itself went okay, I think. The external examiner was a really nice guy, and told me about how two years ago he presented at a conference to an auditorium packed with his colleagues and his computer did the same thing as mine. My supervisor was also really nice and smiled encouragingly at me throughout the whole process, so that I actually felt strangely affectionate towards him. Afterwards when Leila and I saw the external examiner in the passage of the building he had a few really nice things to say to me about the whole thing, so I am not too stressed about how it went. The best part was the celebratory feelings that had almost taken over me. Leila and I could barely contain ourselves outside the building and we spent some time outlining various fun activities for the upcoming weeks ahead. With a happy outline of holiday plans in mind, I then headed off to the lab for some coffee that Luke has just brewed. I then went off to meet David for coffee, and then later in the evening headed off with him to meet Paul and Neil for an evening of laughter, pizza, Settlers of Catan, watching Neil learn how to make instant coffee (and in the process learn why a teaspoon of coffee in a tiny teacup is preferable to a heaped tablespoon of coffee) and planning a camping / hiking trip in December. It was a really fantastic evening, which really helped centre me again after a very stressful period. The thing with Neil and Paul, and other people from that group of friends is that these are people I don’t really have to see very often in order to have a very happy and fulfilling friendship with them. They have always been wonderful and true friends, and I was talking to David about them and shared some of the memories I have with them on the drive over to Neil’s house. The drive over to Neil’s made me realize that one of the things I am most looking forward to over the next few weeks is being able to spend more time with these wonderful people. While I love them, this evening was reminder of just how much so. During the drive over to Neil’s, David told me his plans for the New Year’s period, and the thought going through my mind is I could not imagine better company to spend New Year’s with – the people who have come to mean the world to me. So, the evening proved to be a reminder of how exceptionally lucky and privileged I am to have some really special people in my life. Now that I have had some time to process the last few weeks and the stress that has definitely defined it, I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards the friends who have enriched my life so much, and been there is so many ways. I have noticed every supportive gesture and I appreciate every single one, down to the deepest part of my heart. THANK YOU! | | |
| I’m back! J The last few months have been difficult ones. In fact, this whole year has been a challenging time. It has been a year of ups and down, but the ups have been higher than before and the downs have been lower than ever before (if that makes any sense). For the most part I have coped sort of okay with everything (although there have been some very stressful and intense moments), but there has been one issue in my life that has really stood out in my mind. The situation should never have happened, but it did. I wasn’t really directly involved in the situation, but was affected by it nonetheless. And it made me feel frustrated and angry, although I didn’t realize how much so until yesterday evening, thanks in part to an unexpected and awesome chat with one of my fellow interns for next year which helped me gain perspective on who I am, a heart-to-heart with Dunx, and the therapeutic properties of driving on traffic-less roads whilst singing along loudly to CATS! Anyway, to cut a long story short, the anger and sense of injustice is gone and I have finally spoken my truth (an act that was incredibly difficult and I really hope is taken in the way it was intended). And it feels fantastic and liberating. I doubt the situation will change any time soon, but at least my attitude to it can and hopefully things will eventually sort themselves out. This is quite a wonderful realization in and of itself. Sort of linked to this sense of victory is a conversation Luke and I were having once a couple of months ago when we went to Constitution Hill to visit Thomas. During the chat, he mentioned how he had gone to Anne Frank’s house when he was overseas, and since then I have found myself thinking about her every now and then. Her diary always inspires me to be a better person and dedicate my life to bringing an ideal or dream to life. Having this reminder at a place like Constitution Hill reinforced this thought in me. So to end off this entry, here is one of the quotes from Anne’s book that I have written down to look at every now and then. This is one of those times when it seems to speak to me a lot more than usual: "People will always follow a good example; be the one to set a good example, then it won't be long before the others follow. How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway. And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness" ~ Anne Frank | | |
| The last few days have been pretty much devoted to completing the first of my three exam equivalents for the year. This particular exam consisted of a psychoanalytic view of my client. Which was surprisingly fun to do. To give you an idea of what this would entail, the paper had to include: · Full background history (particularly important given the fact that psychoanalysis focuses a lot on early childhood relationships and the patterns of relationships in the child’s life) · A mental status exam · A provisional DSM-IV-TR diagnosis (where the child gets diagnosed with the relevant disorder, if applicable) · Theoretical conceptualization (thankfully I got to use Melanie Klein's theory, who has always been a bit of a favourite theorist – her theory just makes sense, even if her work is more difficult to read!) The paper is now written, and I have spent two hours trying to shorten the paper by 4 000 words (and failed miserably as I deleted about 350 words, and added 80 words), and 20 minutes trying to disguise the fact that the paper is way too long. I have finally become resigned to the fact that I may get some marks for loquaciousness and finally printed out the paper. One exam equivalent down, two exam equivalents to go, one oral exam and one thesis. And then: FREEDOM In the meantime, here are some photographs from the past few weeks: The Sick-Leaves performing at Back-2-Basics:  My annual photo of the jacarandas in full bloom from the top of Munro Drive:  One of the reasons why I love Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens:  Probably one of the reasons I most love living in Johannesburg – afternoon storms J: 
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