The Ouch Syndrome

I'm not sure about you, but I have this odd habit of saying ouch even when I haven't sustained any physical damage. I'm not talking about experiencing actual pain, like stubbing a toe on the edge of the bed or pinching a finger in a cabinet or drawer; I'm talking about silly little things like bumping my hand against the table and saying ouch even though it doesn't hurt. It's as if the expectation of pain was involuntary - a reflex instead of a reaction.

But oh, how fortune has smiled on me: the ouch syndrome easily be cured first by working on the link between brain and mouth, and secondly – and more importantly – by learning to avoid those behaviours or habits which lead me to actually self-injure in the first place. Instead of complaining about the pain, it makes much more sense for me to plug the source of the pain.

Another (probably more common) situation: someone has a problem with you or something that you're doing – or perhaps you're upset by the actions of others. What would logic and maturity dictate? Most of us can agree: addressing the problem swiftly and directly with the person involved will ensure the least possible damage and allow all involved parties to move on, leaving both personal and professional relationships largely intact.

The metaphor is old and tired, but in both of these cases and in so many others, it still holds true: where there's smoke, there's usually a fire. What boggles my mind is the fact that too many of us – including some of our “esteemed” leaders – seem to be more concerned with showing people just how much smoke there is than actually extinguishing the flames.

I'm referring of course to the Protection of Information bill and its accompanying ANC-proposed medial tribunal. Leaders in the ANC have said that the country's media “target” and “humiliate” senior officials on a regular basis and seek to undermine their integrity.

But instead of becoming incensed with the media for reporting on governmental malfeasance and abuses of power, those in power should instead be focused on preventing such things from happening in the first place. If you know you have a brain tumor, it would probably be a good idea to remove it instead of complaining about the headaches.

It seems as if our leaders need to find the cure for their Ouch Syndrome.

But you know what they say about being a good criminal: rule one is to avoid getting caught....


Trust and believe!

Paris is burning -- and itchy too!

This is the World Cup edition, plain and simple. In fact, I dare you to go through each page and see how many times you find the words “World Cup”. But with all this talk about soccer, transport, how well the country did, what a rousing success it was, how much the tournament unified us, how much of a legacy the World Cup (there it is again!) will leave for the nation, how much it has done to change the perception of both our country and the continent at large, no one is talking about our biggest achievement – the arrest of one Paris Hilton. (One wonders why she was allowed into the country in the first place without some sort of National Herpes Medication Distribution programme preceding her arrival -- we must protect ourselves, after all.) I’m no celebutant-hater, (I’m already planning My Super Sweet 20-something birthday party for next year), but stupid is only cute for so long.

Now before those of you on Team Paris come to her aid and rise up to defend her like, well, herpes sores, I know the facts. She wasn’t really the one who did anything wrong; it was her friend (translation: dealer) who had the marijuana, yada yada yada. Whenever I think of Ms Hilton, all I can do is shake my head and say “No”, and I’m oh so glad that the SAPS finally caught wind of what I’ve wanted to do for so long – lock that young woman up so the rest of us can go on living with one fewer pestilence to worry about.

I suppose I’m just bored with her because I’m easily bored with anyone who aims to derive some glory out of nothing. Yes, she has modelled, acted, starred in a “reality” show, and produced an album of what some people loosely refer to as music, but she’s also opened the door for other rich wannabe-famous people to think people will crowd around them like moths to a flame – except, unlike flames, all they do is shine with alternating layers of bling and desperation. All I’m asking is: do something. If your ego is bigger than your talent or if it eclipses your work entirely, perhaps it’s time to ask yourself how exactly you developed such a superior self-image. In a university setting, one shouldn’t really be proud about the fact that they attend Harvard (or the Harvard of Africa) if they’re consistently failing or not taking advantage of every available opportunity – a phenomenon I see more and more with each step up and down these illustrious corridors.

Not sure about you, but I came here to do the damn thing. And do the damn thing I will...

Trust and Believe!

Throw it out!

When my mother passed away, my sister and I were left with the incredibly exciting task of having to figure out to do with all of her stuff. Mom had two huge storage units, filled to capacity with the contents of a four-bedroom house. Why keep it all? We wouldn’t need to buy many things should we move into a new house. Seeing some of those things was like going back in time, and many of them were things to cherish. HOWEVER. My mom was also your typical packrat. She kept everything and the kitchen sink – literally. (By the way, does anyone need a sink?)

For example, I've always been a singer. I sing all the time, at home, at school, at church, at parties...anywhere there's a microphone or a stage, I'm on it. So of course I was in my elementary school choir. When I was in fifth grade, our conductor introduced a new song for our winter concert that involved the one thing most of us were scared of: a SOLO. Now the thing about the music program at my school is that every student had to be involved in music. If you preferred using an instrument, you had the choice of Band or Orchestra, but if you didn't select either one of those, you were in Choir by default. Obviously, then, not everyone in the choir was, well, a singer. So the idea of a solo? Didn't go over so well, and there were no volunteers.

But since I had experience singing, and was pretty confident I could do a good job, I volunteered. My first solo! Yay. It went well; I was incredibly nervous, but it was fine..and b y fine, I mean amazing (this is, after all, how divas are born).

Now, pictures and video of the concert were both taken, and of course my mom ordered both. The pictures even ended up in that year's yearbook, which we have two copies of.

The video, and the pictures, were in my mom's storage unit. Definitely a memory to keep, for both her and I.

But guess what else we found? Fifteen (15) copies of the video order form.

Now, why on EARTH would anyone keep this?! We have the pictures, we have the yearbooks, and we have the video. WHY DO WE NEED TO KEEP THE VIDEO ORDER FORMS?! There was nothing special about the forms, nothing about me was mentioned on the forms. And this concert took place in 1996. We opened up the storage unit in 2004. WHY KEEP THESE USELESS THINGS FOR 8 YEARS?!

Ugh. And you know, there were many many examples of this throughout the units. My motto for those few weeks it took us to get rid of everything was, "THROW IT OUT!"


Now I'm living with my dad, and let me tell you, I can see why they got married. My dad also keeps EVERYTHING. When I moved in, I had to basically clear out the office so that I could have a bedroom. That involved getting rid of useless computers from 1989 that were just sitting there collecting dust, emptying out the entire closet and getting rid of even more old magazines and miscellaneous papers from work and home (please tell me why you need to keep your work schedule from 1999? From a company from which you've long since retired?!). He has a subscription to Time Magazine, which he never reads, just keeps. So they just sit there and pile up. It took me a week and a half to get rid of everything.


My recommendation? Go through your things at least once a year, if not more often. Those things you think you "might have a use for someday"? Re-evaluate. Will you REALLY need it? Will you REALLY use it? I'm all about keeping things that have sentimental value, but even then, use some discernment. I can keep the ticket stub from that amazing concert, but do I really need to keep the ticket order form, or the parking slip, or the wrapper from the Snickers bar I got at the vending machine? NO.


I have moved enough times to know that it is NOT worth moving junk. If I'm going get sore feet, lots of stress, and risk pulling a muscle, it had better be worth it…

Trust and believe.


Adapted with author’s permission (since it’s me!) from www.onmyway21.blogspot.com

Oh no you DIDN'T! ...and then I did.

DURING the holiday, I took a trip to the V&A Waterfront to do a bit of after-Christmas returns (insert frustration with Unnamed Computer/Electronics store here). After having successfully educated the manager (free of charge!) about the wonders of proper customer care, I hopped into a taxi for what I hoped would be an uneventful ride on a rather hot day. AND THEN. While stopped at a robot, the taxi driver and the gatjie happened to see a robbery taking place on the sidewalk. Armed with small steel pipes, and in true oh-no-you-didn’t fashion, they proceeded to “educate” the culprits the best way they knew how.


In an instant, the other passengers and I had forgotten about the heat, whatever we were hurrying back to, or our frustration with having to wait, and we cheered on our two transportation engineers as they delivered a swift and calculated justice. After a few minutes, their actions did attract the police; the two culprits were arrested right away, and soon we were back on our merry way.


I'm not at all saying I recommend taking such actions every time you see someone you consider to be "unsavoury". But, despite various arguments concerning the merits or pitfalls of vigilante justice (Batman forever!), I have to say that the actions of these two ordinary men that day filled me with such pride. Hardly a day goes by without a complaint from someone, somewhere, about the problem of crime in this country. But often, that’s all you ever hear: complaints.


Which is why it is great to witness our countrymen fighting back. All I could think that day in the taxi was, “That’s RIGHT! NOT in my house!”

Bottom line? DO SOMETHING.

I was fortunate enough to take part in a protest in December at the Swiss consulate, in which an open letter was delivered to the Swiss ambassador. The letter condemned a recent referendum in which the Swiss public voted to enact a ban on the construction of minarets on Islamic mosques, a decision which is in direct contradiction with Switzerland’s own constitution and every single human rights declaration and agreement to which the government has previously adhered. In that instance, it would have been very easy to watch the story on CNN and go about my business –especially since Switzerland isn’t exactly around the corner.

Nor is Uganda, for that matter. Throughout this week’s Varsity, you’ll see other examples “doing something”. Inequality is indivisible, and we must do whatever we can to keep injustices from happening, whether or not they affect us directly.

And trust..."doing something" isn’t nearly as difficult as it seems.

From Friendster, to MySpace, to Facebook, to…..sorry, I fell asleep.

Remember Xanga? LiveJournal? Friendster?

It’s hard to even remember how those social networking sites even worked when they and others have been almost entirely eclipsed by giants MySpace and Facebook. But MySpace’s star may be dimming as Facebook continues to become the electronic social hub of choice—for now.

When I was in high school, blogging sites like Xanga and LiveJournal reigned supreme. By today’s standards, these sites were quite simple, and didn’t allow for much customization beyond colour and font choices. But even with the near domination of these two sites, MySpace was growing in popularity every day. Soon after its release, it became the most dynamic and feature-filled social website, and I believe helped to define social networking as it is today. With MySpace, users were granted control over almost every aspect of their profile, and adding friends soon became the newest e-hobby.

Soon, however, as MySpace’s popularity increased among middle- and high-school students, it quickly transformed into a place where angsty pre-teens displayed disturbingly provocative photos of themselves, whined about their boyfriends (or lack thereof), and wRoTe Bl0gz liK th*S. Shakespeare would have been so proud.

The source of what some might call the “elitism” of Facebook lies in its history. Facebook’s origins lie in actual “face books” sold and distributed in American colleges and universities. These books were essentially yearbooks which were produced at the beginning of the academic year, so that university students could find out more about their new classmates. Those interested could submit pictures and short self-profiles for inclusion in the book. In 2003, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg had the bright idea to transport these face books to the web, and soon afterwards, what is now known as Facebook was born.

Since its inception in 2004, Facebook was created by university students, and was only accessible by university students. It gave students a clean, elegant way to present themselves in an online social network that distinctly separated them from the average MySpace crowd. It essentially became the more “grown up” way to network electronically, and later grew to include all manner of professionals and businesses, as well as high school students and celebrities.

Having been on each site for a number of years, it’s been quite interesting to see how each has influenced the other. Both sites now offer users unlimited picture galleries, spaces to tell the world “what’s on your mind,” and multimedia integration. Sometimes the features are so blatantly similar that it’s hard to remember exactly which site I’m on…until I see yet another typically MySpace friend suggestion, displaying the typical picture of a six-packed jock standing shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror and trying his best to look tough, or the 14-year-old girl wearing more make-up than a sci-fi movie villain, and a “skirt” that was actually sold as a belt.

To me, while MySpace and I certainly had our good times, I can’t help but perceive the site as distinctly “high school.” It’s basically an electronic popularity competition, and I’m not even being sarcastic: there are MySpace users, commonly known as “MySpace whores” who have profile “friends” simply for the sake of having a higher friend count than the next user. I’m having trouble finding the point in maintaining a membership to a website populated with users with such trite attitudes and approaches to relationships.

Danah Boyd, a Harvard fellow, suggested in a speech in July that the shift from MySpace to Facebook highlighted the fact that race and class divides even exist in cyberspace. She likened this shift to the “white flight” trend seen in America’s (and later in other nations’) communities in the 1950s and ‘60s, where, with segregation no longer legally accepted, blacks were able to move out of urban areas and into more docile suburbs, previously inhabited solely by white people. Often, those whites, who often benefited from better education and economic standing, then moved away to find more secluded and more affluent suburbs and towns in order to preserve their lifestyles.

Boyd contended that this “white flight” is now happening on the internet. In surveys Boyd conducted, high school students said that “the higher castes of high school [society] moved to Facebook” because it was “more cultured, and less cheesy.” According to one teen, “any high school student who has a Facebook profile will tell you that MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious.”

To some degree, I can see the validity of Boyd’s argument of “e-flight” and the truth in her survey respondents’ replies. Facebook’s history as a university-student-only website , and its expansion into more professional realms, means that users will typically be more apt to present themselves decently, and that most users received or are receiving some form of tertiary education.

But is this move from MySpace to Facebook really a racial or socio-economic shift? I think not. Instead, I think MySpace has, unfortunately for its creators and moderators, been “type-cast” into being the more juvenile social networking vehicle. Many young people today are concerned with appearing older and more refined than they actually are, and this concern leads them to abandon the perceived “cheesy” nature of MySpace in favour of the more refined and elegant Facebook. As young people mature, perhaps enter universities, get “real” jobs, and generally become more independent, they almost invariably will change their online identities to mirror these lifestyle changes – they become less concerned with “cool” and more concerned with “classy.” Some might call the internet “the great equaliser,” able to unify all sorts of people – but they also forget that the people, and not any sort of network, decide

And then one has to consider that it might only be a matter of time until something else is released that makes even the mighty Facebook seem like the Kevin Federline (sorry, guy) of social networks. I do think that Facebook has tremendous staying power and appeal, but inevitably it’s only a matter of time before the next big thing appears (Twitter, anyone?).

Personally, I’m slowly starting to get over the whole social networking craze. I’m thisclose to deleting my MySpace profile, and even Facebook gets on my nerves occasionally. Not to say that I’m going to become some sort of keyboard-burning anti-networker, but who knows? Maybe the next phase in this “e-flight” is becoming absent from social networks entirely?

I love my Facebook picture gallery as much as the next guy, and some of those bumper stickers make me laugh so hard I develop an instant six-pack, but it’s a lot more fun to create “social networks” in person…

..trust and believe.

Nkosiyati Khumalo is the Chief Sub-Editor of VARSITY Newspaper, the official student newspaper of the University of Cape Town.