Hodge Podge

This latest blog is going to be a hodge podge of things that I find interesting but that maybe don’t necessarily relate in any way.

1. National Women’s Day: Monday August 10th was a public holiday to celebrate Women’s Day on August 9th. It was nice to have the day off especially after a busy first couple of weeks of school. I decided that for my own edification and those around me that I would look up why this day was so significant that it blessed me with the day off from school. This is what I found out from Wikipedia.
On August 9, in 1956 20,000 women (mostly black or colored) marched in Pretoria to protest against amendments to the Urban Area’s act. Many of these women had been stripped of rights for being non-white and thus they were protesting being segregated for being gendered as well. Many of the women had their children or if they were nannies they had the children that they were watching. The women sang a song of protest that translates to “Now that you have touched the Women, you have struck a Rock.” The day commemorates women’s strength and courage in Africa.

2. Toilet Water does in fact go the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere. I stare in awe every time the toilet is flushed watching the water swirl counterclockwise. Now you are thinking about it and wondering if you have ever noticed which way the water swirls. If should swirl clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the South Hemisphere due to gravity and the rotation of the Earth. Interesting!

3. Fire Alarms: A couple of weeks ago I woke up at 5:30am to hear the fire-alarm going off in our residence. As the trained American that I am, I decide to get out of bed and investigate. As I am outside, I notice that no one else has ventured outside. Apparently, it was a drill and the guy running the drill was perturbed by the fact that in the whole complex I was the only person to venture out of the doors after the alarm had been going off for about ten minutes. Then the alarm malfunctioned and he allowed me to go back to bed. It was a weird experience. Number one, it was not comforting that the fire alarm malfunctioned. Number two, if there really was a fire everyone would automatically think that it was a drill and subsequently burn in the inferno. Though the other day, I somehow got in a conversation with a South African student while in the microbiology computer lab concerning the issue of fire alarms. He said that because there were so many different alarms for different things people pay no mind to any of them, however he is confident that if a fire to really occur that someone would come down the hall screaming so we would know. I don’t know; I am somewhat skeptical.

4. Quaver?!: The first day that I went to orchestra practice, the conductor was talking about crochets and quavers. I had no idea what he was talking about. I understood what he meant due to the context but it was not until later when I asked Vongani, that I learned that a quaver is equivalent to an eighth note. I had never heard of such a thing. He told me all the names for all the different notes. A crochet is a quarter note. A quaver is an eighth note. Then you can have semi, hemi, and demi-quavers, which become progressively smaller. Whole notes are called a semibrevet and a I don’t remember what a half note is called. I have learned since that these terms come from the British colonization and are all derived from that system. I don’t know why they have ridiculous names for these notes. My system makes so much more sense to me. Oh well!

There is so much more that I could write but I need to make a list so I will continue the list once I remember what I was going to write. Really I figured that it was more important to post what I had than to wait. Sorry it has been so long. This week has really been a beast. But I think that I will write about that in a separate blog!