Friday, April 06, 2007

WTF Is Mandy Doing Up At 7 O'Clock In the Morning?

Warning: This post is picture intensive.
Photos without borders link through to Flickr. (If that is of interest to you.)

Can you remember last-week Wednesday? Me neither. Thankfully, I have a photographic record. It was my last week at a job I had been at for two years, and we were on deadline during that week, so I had too much to do and not enough time. Therefore, I trekked into work at a ridiculously early hour with the help of a colleague, so as to get a jump on the day. It's all a blur, so I'm glad I took pictures.

7:04am

7:04am: What you are being prevented from seeing (for your own protection, and mine) is the look of disdain on my face. WTF am I doing up at 7 o'clock in the morning?

7:06am

7:06am: In the suburbs. See the headlights down the road? It's the middle of the night! Yet I am outside, taking photographs. Disaster!

7:07am

7:07am: On the road with a colleague. I'm wearing sunglasses because I had no idea that there would be no sun in the suburbs at 7 o'clock in the morning.

7:11am

7:11am: This is the other side of the mountain, made famous in the figurative sense by Kyknoord's blog.

7:17am

7:17am: See the glow of the street lights? Something must be wrong. They never do that when I'm on the road at 8:45am.

7:22am

7:22am: Subaru! (The blurry blue one.) Completely irrelevant to this post. [For RN, not that he reads my blog.]

7:26am

7:26am: Our first glimpse of misty smog (or smoggy mist) - it's all that brown stuff, as well as the haze over the city (and the reason that you can't really see the city).
This crap gave me adult-onset asthma. For that I will always be immensely appreciative. What else can I use my expensive medical aid for?

7:27am

7:27am: Two empires.

Left: The civic centre, home of the mayor and all things bureaucratic. It is incorrectly positioned, according to Feng Shui principles, and money and bad luck flow straight out of the building (and probably in, too. Well, not money. Money flows into the SARS building, which is a few hundred metres away - it's positioned correctly). Don't we, the poor, harassed (depending on who in particular is mayor at any given point) citizens know all about that! (Bureaucracy and taxes, in case you couldn't follow that. This (lack of) mental flow is what my colleagues have to deal with every day, though not, usually, at 7 o'clock in the morning.)

Right: Media24, the headquarters of the organisation that generates 60% of the country's published media. The money flows in here (and up to the top floor, where it has a great view of the city). One day the building is going to topple over. I'm not being prophetic. I just know these things. I mean, I don't know these things. Seriously, I haven't heard anything. Did you hear something? What did you hear?

7:27am

7:27am: Watch, in amazement (and almost-30-frames-per-second action, except there are only three frames), as two BMW X5s with flashing lights and pompous driving habits drive at high speed down the middle of the highway, lights blazing, and try to force everyone out of the way (case in point: the white car). This has been happening with increased frequency lately. [Paul, this is your chance to rant in my comments section, much like the Cape Times wouldn't let you do on its letters page.]

7:28am

7:28am: Our first glimpse of the other other side of the mountain (the side made famous by a million postcards of Cape Town. If you post your address I'll send you one - a postcard, I mean, not the side of the mountain.)

7:28am

7:28am: The city, the city, the city's on fire (well, something on the tracks near the station is). Burn, Mother City, burn! [For DS and CC.]

7:29am

7:29am: Where's there's smoke... (there's probably a protest).

7:29am

7:29am: The empires loom closer. Heart palpitations anyone?

7:30am

7:30am: Completely irrelevant to this post, except to say that there's a Lube Bay at this Shell garage. That's always good to know (you never know when you might need some lubing...that's probably not a word...).

7:32am

7:32am: If you obey the law and drive under 60 near the docks on the foreshore you may pick up something you didn't really want - I'm just saying (not from personal experience).

7:32am

7:32am: This is where the Media24, Caltex, CTICC, and other empirical plebs have to park, as well as Madame Zingara's Theatre Of Dreams night visitors (sounds bad, but really isn't, although they do have circus people, and that can't be good, right?). Because it's 7 o'clock in the morning we beat everyone, so it only took five minutes to walk to all the way to the office instead of seven.

7:34am

7:34am: From left to right: Media24, Madame Zingara's Theatre Of Dreams, pole, flag, Signal Hill, flag, crane, spikey building, building under construction, crane, Arabella Sheraton hotel.

7:35am

7:35am: Speaks for itself. Well, probably not, unless you already know what it's saying, in which case there's nothing to say, but if you don't then it probably doesn't really, so it's all confusing. I can't really explain.

7:36am

7:36am: Civic Centre, UFO on Civic Centre, Table Mountain.

7:37am

7:37am: The Empire, bathed in its personal officious magnificence. No...wait! That's the sun. No wonder none of it could reach the suburbs.

7:37am

7:37am: One day this will probably be a building, which is the only reason I photographed it now, while it isn't. That's much more exciting.

7:41am

7:41am: Blurry people.
This is what the world looks like to me before I've had my morning tea. Actually, afterwards too. The tea doesn't really help. I just drink it because Martini Bianco would be inappropriate. Or so I've been repeatedly warned.

7:45am

7:45am: Heerengracht Fountain not bathed in sunlight. That's because it's still the middle of the night. How ridiculous is that? I shouldn't be awake yet. Well, technically, I'm not; I'm just physically present. It's better than being presently physical (depending on who you ask).

7:49am

7:49am: "The sun caressed the stiff peaks, much like a whisk wouldn't." [For MV, who doesn't read my blog either (with liberties, since I used up my only spaceship joke, which wasn't even amusing...or my joke, and, anyway, this is a picture of a mountain).]

8:05am

8:05am: Now that the crags are shadowy the mountain is finally recognisable to me.

8:12am

8:12am: We end with a panorama shot. On a normal week day I would be awake about now.
I thought I would be ending this on a joke, but apparently I'm not. Being awake at 7am is a sobering experience. Hopefully this will be my last sobering experience for a while.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Notes From The City: 3 April 2007


Headline Poster: Cape Son - Whore On Bush (Tuesday 3 April 2007)

Above: Cape Son headline poster for 3 April 2007.

This is one of the best posters to have appeared in the last two years. Unfortunately I have no idea of what the story was about. I can think of about five different stories that could go with the headline....

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