I type this as my laptop dies a
horrible death. That might be a slight exaggeration, but seriously
this thing is doing my head in.
I went to Tyger Valley shopping centre
today because we want to buy a DVD player for our room so we went to
compare prices. Also, I wanted to buy an external hard drive, there's
a shop there that sells 1TB externals for R900-basically the same
price you would pay in England for a 500gb. I also wanted to buy a
new charger, I know my CCW offered me one from her brother, but as
awesome as a deal as it was, I felt a bit guilty for taking it for
free and she wouldn't let me pay for it. I have a Dell. As it turns
out, you can only buy dell chargers from dell. I HATE DELL. I will
try and take a picture of my charger so you can see what state it's
in. I've re-duct taped the end because one of the wires that should
be inside is now outside and detached from where it's supposed to be
attached. So I duct-taped it. And that made it a little better. At
one point I was able to use the charger, I just had to have it taped
to my laptop so it stayed at the right angle. Then it had to be taped
and propped on my phone or a couple of DVD cases to get the angle and
the height. Now I have to hold it at the right angle and press it
together. So using my laptop is increasingly difficult because it's
quite strenuous to have your hand in such a weird position. Also, did
I mention my laptop is a freaking dell so the battery life is only
about 20 minutes now from full charge. Luckily for me one of the
other volunteers has a dell so I'm currently charging to full from
her charger so that I can balance with mine because last night I was
trying to watch a film but because my battery was at 0%, whenever my
hand moved the slightest bit, the computer would shut down if I
didn't find the right angle within 10 seconds, and you cannot imagine
how annoying and stressful that is!
I now only have 2 options: Buy one
straight from dell for (I was told) around +R900, or take the charger
from the CCW. So I'm going to go guilty option 2 and buy her a really
nice something when I leave to say thank you.
In other news Sarah has bought herself
a djembe! I know! I'm so jealous. Basically, I was working short week
again this week (2nd time in a row, I can't decide whether
it's nice to have so much time off or bad cause I'm bored!) but
because on SW you only work Wednesday and Thursday I can't go
drumming on the Thursday. I'm allowed to take time off from the house
to help with the kids drumming club in the afternoon, but the adults
drumming circle-which I love more than life itself-I can't go to
because I usually finish at 9pm and it starts at 7.30pm. Now there's
a really nice new CCW working in my house (the one that offered me
the charger) and she doesn't see the point in making us sit on the
mattress for 1-2 hours listening to kiddy-winks sleep, so once
they're all asleep, she lets us go. On Thursday, in the morning I was
really really tired, it's so hot at the moment (37 degrees on
Wednesday, about 35 on Thursday) that even when you sleep through the
night, you wake up tired because you haven't slept properly. So my
CCW let me finish at 7.30am instead of 10am! She said: “there's no
point you sitting in house 10 with 2 other volunteers and 3 kids so
you might as well finish now. Go back to bed, you look tired, if you
go now, you can get 6 more hours sleep! And we'll put the kids to bed
early tonight, they need more sleep as well. They can go to bed
early, then we can finish early” I only slept about an hour, but it
was enough to knock me from exhausted, to enough energy for the day.
Now, I was really hoping the kids would go to bed at 7pm instead of
8pm because then they might well be nearly asleep by 7.30 and I could
leave the other volunteer on the mattress and I could go and drum (I
bribed her). I felt a but bad for the kids, but in the end, nearly
all of them misbehaved anyway so they all had to go to bed early as
punishment! So they all went up at 7, but it only began to get quiet
at 7.20, it wasn't ideal, but I asked both the other volunteer and
the CCW if they minded me drossing (skiving/skipping work) and they
said no, so off I skipped to drumming.
I saw Sarah outside the hall waiting
for the guy who we borrow drums from to arrive and she tells me there
are 3 people here that texted him to ask to borrow drums. Usually he
just brings 4 spare drums so we weren't sure if there'd even be a
drum for each of us, technically we are supposed to text him every
week to tell him if we're coming or not, but we both go every other
week when we're not working and there's always enough drums so we
just leave it normally. ANYWAY. He arrives and luckily he's brought
someone else's drums as well as his own so there's plenty of drums to
go around. I call dibs on one with purple rope cause it looks awesome
and it had a really big face/skin/top and it was quite tall. Sarah
took one of the more normal sized ones. After the break, the guy who
brought the drums (I forgot to mention, he's also the guy we're
buying drums off) is talking with someone across the circle about the
ratios of inner hole and the noise the drum makes and how the
skin/top/face can be as big as you like but if the smallest hole in
the middle of the drum is too small, it won't make a nice noise (if
anyone cared-I think half my readers are musicians sent here by my
parents). He then says something about how the drum Sarah is playing
is a really really nice one and makes the best sound. Sarah jokingly
says something like: “Yeah, I'm keeping this drum, I love it” and
the guy who's lent her the drum just looks at her and says you can
have it, talk to me at the end.
I think he said something about a guy
who was emptying his warehouse and had a load of drums he was selling
or something so he'd bought the best ones and that was the only one
he'd had time to tune up that evening. Me and Sarah RAN to the petrol
station to draw out some money. I should explain, it was 9 at night,
so dark outside. It's too dangerous to go outside alone, so I had to
run with Sarah so there were 2 of us. We RAN back again and she
bought it! He's going to tune up the rest this week and bring them
along to Thursdays session so I can try some then, and if I like,
then I can buy.
It's funny because me and Sarah had
been talking when we were waiting for him to first arrive about
getting our own drums. We first asked him about it in December and he
said he would get some for us by the end of January. January came and
went and different people said to both of us separately that he was
very very picky buying djembes and it would take ages for him to find
ones he was happy with. On the one hand, it's good because I totally
trust him to get nice drums and he takes them apart to check for
woodworm and then puts them back together and tunes them. But on the
other hand, we were both desperate to get our drums and we wanted to
be able to play them while we're here!
Now I just have to fix my computer woes
and life will be good again. I want to write something about plans I
have for the future that I need help with from lots of people, but
this post is long enough as it is so I'll write it tonight or
tomorrow. :)
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