update

so i thought i would be better at posting in 2013, but apparently not. a lot of things have been going on, and while i've been parked at my computer almost every day, and the urge to write has been there... i just have not gotten around to it.

perhaps if i moved some of the inanity of my twitter and facebook posts to here, i'd write more often. angazi.

so, let's see, what's been going on:

kid moved to joburg to live with ex. they're working on a relationship, and kid sees why i was constantly putting my foot up his ass as far as his grades: i didn't want him to have to competed with the teeming masses of uneducated people who are looking for work.... which he ended up having to do anyway, because a) he didn't apply for university entry for this year; b) his original game plan for what to do this year was superseded by the war in mali and despite my constant entreaties, refused to make a plan b; and c) while he did get a bachelor pass, it was a low-end bachelor pass. he's supposed to be applying to universities for next year's entry, but he is yet to contact me to tell me, "okay, i need you to pay these application fees" ... so it looks like i will have to put my foot in his ass when i see him close to his birthday.

i'm already going to be *that* parent -- wherever he goes [he has, essentially, only two viable options], i'll be getting him an apartment to live in. this was in part forced upon me, because university housing for first-year students is only for people whose overall matric exam average is above 65%, and his.... was not. but i have already told him that he's on his own afterwards [ie he has to have above 65% during his first two years of university]. if i have to pay after the first year, it will be at considerably less nice digs than he'll have for his first year.

i'll be moving to joburg, part time, in the near future. it's time to go husband-hunting essentially. basically, the kind of guy i want is not to be found in cape town. if i were into fem dudes, i'd be fine. but i'm not. if i were into married closet cases, i'd be fine. but i'm not.

but also there are too many south africans who believe that there is only opportunity in johannesburg -- which is funny because, several of my friends have been personally poached and headhunted from elsewhere in africa [and particularly zimbabwe] for well-paying positions in cape town which they can't get south africans to fill. it's one of the reasons that i tend to roll  my eyes whenever "educated" (note the quotes) south africans say they can't find work in cape town. i tend to think that they must have *really* bombed in the interviews in order to be able to say that. if you walk into an interview with a huge chip on your shoulder and thus giving off a ton of negativity... no, you probably won't get the gig. so why do it? at some point the south african warm blanket of victimization has to end....

...which brings me to another weird and creepy part of the dating pool equation: i'm pretty likely to end up dating someone that i'm old enough to have made, as i just can't deal with dating someone else with apartheid mental baggage. [ex has it like whoa. ugh.] i've explained it to kid, and he's like, "yeah, i see it in [various of his relatives who are around *my* age], and i can see how you really don't have time for that mess." i have an internet stalker who's around my age who doesn't seem to have it, but we won't actually meet until i'm in joburg, but honestly, i'm not putting too much stock in it as yet. sizobona.

but also -- johannesburg just wasn't ready for me when i moved here eight years ago. it has moved into its own for the "educated-free" generation, which now includes the "born-frees" ie those who have been born or educated since mandela came out of prison [comprising those born since 27 april 1994, the date of the first all-race elections]. now joburg is ready for me, despite being a) at altitude and b) so far away from water. at least it will be cheap for me to be here during high season this year -- but honestly, i think i will stay in johannesburg during high season, or maybe even go to durban if for no other reason to avoid all the vaalies that come down here to clog our beaches and marvel at the clean air. besides, i have a house walking distance to a beach... that's paid for *and* puts money in my pocket every month. no need to actually be in it all the time.

i've been getting more and more back into transcripts after essentially stopping work around this time in 2010. i've been mainly subcontracting for a friend of mine, but i need to get more of my own gigs, just from an "i want to work less for more money" standpoint. but the rate from my friend that i get isn't bad for here -- and it's still significantly higher than transcription offices in south africa pay out. on a blah day, i get more than a week's pay for those at the lowest end of the employment spectrum; on a crazy hectic day, i earn more than a month's pay than those at the bottom. since i live for free, i'm not exactly crying in my soup.

i guess the other major thing that's been going on relates to *how* i'll be moving to joburg part-time sooner rather than later [my original plan was to do this at the end of this year, *after* medupi went online so i wouldn't be subjected to power cuts which could interrupt my work]. ex has been staying in what was formerly kid's bedroom. of course, a major reason why i'm permitting this is because kid asked me nicely. plus, i live pretty close to ex's work, unlike his family [ex grew up in cape town; most of his family are here]. it's been interesting having him around. he's still smoking hot, but to the surprise of most people who know how we were when we were together, it hasn't been... "on". most children want their parents to be together, and kid is no exception, and he pretty much called it out when we were on speakerphone. i'm like.. "nah". if i could smash without getting involved... oh yeah, i'd be in it. but since that is a definite impossibility... it's better to leave sleeping dogs lie. he turns 40 tomorrow, and is staying in joburg an extra day to properly party. my spidey sense tells me that it's a good thing that

okay. so that's the update. i'll make some business related to stuff i've seen on the news, facebook, and twitter, over the next few days i guess.

home sweet homes... the response....

i've been very bad at making posts lately. i don't know why; it's not like i have a job or anything. i just sit around commenting on other people's blogs, and also managing my properties. that's it.

but today i read a post that hit me so much that at first i had written a very long response to it in the "comments" section over there, and then realised that you know, it should be a post here.

this is the post that inspired me; below is my response.

i'm that very rare person who has lived everywhere on my lists.

but first, i'll talk about yours.

i lived in london and paris during times where it was somewhat difficult to be a young black male; the late 80s/early 90s. [i was 17 when i moved to paris to live, basically unsupervised, even tho i was nominally with an aunt, and 22 when i rocked up in london all on my lonesome for the first time.]

i've been back for visits on a fairly regular basis after having moved away, and i'm glad i'd lived there when i was young rather than when i was older.

the thing i liked most about new york is that i didn't have to speak english if i didn't want to; i was perfectly fine, getting everywhere i needed to be, speaking only spanish. but i couldn't live in new york these days because while i can *afford* to live in a 1,000 square foot apartment all by myself in new york if i wanted to, it's really effing expensive to do so. the expense of the life to which i've become accustomed outweighs the potential awesomeness of living there. to put it another way -- i live in a 1,000 sf apartment on a main artery in central cape town for USD1000 a month. i fast talked my way into such a great deal on this place that don't see myself giving it up anytime soon.

my lists:

i think i've just fibbed. i haven't lived everywhere on my lists -- i haven't lived in salvador da bahia, but i've been there so much that it practically seems that i have. and the main reason that i haven't lived there is because i'm not a very big fan of hills. at some point i will make it to fortaleza and get a house there, but i'm fairly sour on brazil as a whole.

it's a socioeconomic thing -- as a black person raised with a lot of upper middle class sensibilities, it can get trying when being in places with large black populations where black people are near the bottom of almost every social indicator. [this is another reason why i can barely tolerate the city where my mother lived at her death.] hearing "but *you're* not like that" by well-meaning non-black friends is just as nerve-wrangling at 40 as it is at 20, but at 40 you're even more aware of what happens if you were to pop them in the mouth for saying it. so you avoid the situation. it would also, of course, be easier if i only spoke english. but i've been reasonably fluent in at least one local language in every place i've lived at the very moment i got off the plane, so this adds a dimension that many "americans" who move abroad don't have.

other than that... i've lived in santo domingo, which is salvador-lite.

i've lived in dakar as well. i actually liked living in dakar. i lived in a part of town where the foreign population is from guinea and mali, not from the eu or the usa. it's a big difference. first of all, it meant that my 1000sf apartment cost USD500 a month instead of USD3000 a month; if i wanted to pay european prices for accommodation, i would live in europe. [this is also a reason i currently don't live in the parts of cape town known to house lots of first-worlders.]

interestingly enough, i also liked living in .... wait for it ... birmingham. [that's burr-ming-um and not bir-ming-hayum, even tho i have family living in the latter.] there was a vibe there that was just unexpected. now if only they could have a decent football team: villa and city are barely out of the drop zone, and if you go into the wider west midlands conurbation, it's very likely that both wolves and west brom are going back down.

a city that disappoints me greatly these days is abidjan. that was the party place of africa while south africa was under apartheid. after the rise of johannesburg, abidjan could have kept its party-spot status at least on a regional level, but the political situation there has sent everyone fleeing. the IADB moved to tunis [oops], many of the cool party places [and partiers] moved to paris, and those that wanted to stay in africa moved to dakar. i think the dakarois social scene was the only place that actually gained status out of the collapse of cote d'ivoire in general and abidjan in particular.

well, i think that's it for now. i need to get some things ready for my upcoming UK/US trip. i leave on wednesday. i pick up my son's report card at school and then i head straight to the airport. imagine that.