Please?

A typical day in Cape Town.

Can there be anything quite as annoying as the wind we are currently experiencing in Cape Town? The gale force howling we have been hearing these last few days, is of course what locals refer to as the “Cape Doctor”, a fierce South Easterly wind which is meant to clean the city of any smog, fumes and other harmful toxins, blowing them all into the poorer suburbs of the Western Cape instead.

In theory it is supposed to clean Cape Town but all it seems to do is blow the city’s rubbish all over the streets before having it all settle, frustratingly enough, onto my car. I staggered out my flat this morning to find what appeared to be someone’s grocery shopping sprawled across my windshield. There were yoghurts, dried fruits and - more disturbingly - a brown sticky substance which I hope to God was some sort of chocolate mousse dessert.

They of course all managed to find their way around the dozens of other cars parked in the street, in between the two heroin addicts who sleep on the pavement, and under and over the various trees which line our property, before deciding to nestle nicely on my car.

I know I’ve written about the wind before, and I know I’m probably sounding like a stuck record now, but I really do detest it. Even as a young boy watching the hit cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, the Russian girl with the power of Wind always rubbed me up the wrong way, to the point where I secretly wished the Asian bird with the Water power would drown her during an alcohol-fuelled argument over one of the boys. Sadly, it being a kids television show, they never did have that drunken fight, but I have continued to be annoyed by both the kid, as well as the shitty element she controlled.

So much so, that I have even spent considerable time researching how to reduce the effects of the wind in the Cape Town city centre. Based on my findings, I’m fairly sure we can successfully divert it with approximately five strategically placed windmill constructions, which will catch the wind as it heads toward my bedroom window, and gently but firmly steer it towards Port Elizabeth instead.

Why Port Elizabeth? Well, the people who live there are fairly reserved and soft spoken and so would not kick up too much of a fuss. Also, I know of at least two people who I don’t get on with who currently reside there, and so this would also appeal to my sense of vengeance.

Seriously though, is there anything we can do to prevent getting blown over on a daily basis? I don’t care about blue light convoys getting banned in the Western Cape, I want Helen Zille to focus her efforts on making the Cape Town Gardens area a wind-free zone. This is becoming a huge problem now.

As my neighbor is fond of telling me, the only good thing about the wind is when you are breaking it. Just make sure to light a match straight after though.

Oakes signing off.

Seriously

Cell Phones: Trendy and cool.

I remember proudly walking around with a brick-sized cell phone attached to my belt during the year 2000, a time where I completely fancied myself. Back then, brick-sized cell phones were all the rage, it was during the cell phone boom in South Africa, and you were considered to be un trendy and slightly pathetic if you did not own one.

A truly multi-purpose gadget, I remember using my Nokia 5110 to leave missed calls for my friends, hit people over the head when they annoyed me, and even used it to send an sms to cute girls I wanted to rub my winky on, but was too shy to speak to in person.

Back then, air time was ridiculously expensive, Vodacom and MTN were bending us over and giving everyone a hefty rogering, and you could easily end up paying the equivalent of a month’s rent on a hour long cell phone call. Being a traditionally stingy nation, South Africans proclaimed the sms as the desired communication tool of choice, as it worked out to about 99c to send a 90 character message. Unlike Twitter’s famous 140 characters though, 90 characters never really got you very far.

Usually, you would just about manage to describe the length and girth of your winky, before running out of characters and having to pay an extra 99c for the pleasure of sending a two unit message, which would then take up 10% of the recipient’s cell phone storage. (Hard to believe, but there was a time when cell phones only stored about 20 messages) Obviously this was a lose lose situation, and so people developed a short hand method of communicating via sms.

And so, “that” soon became “dat”, “before” evolved into “b4”, and just like magic, every man and his dog was soon “Lol”ing at anything mildly amusing, saving the “ROTFLMA”ing for the very special moments in life.

Although this was a horrible time for someone who insisted on speaking eloquently, I grudgingly accepted it, both in terms of the economic value in speaking like a retard, as well as the fact that it was quite an inconvenience typing out long words on a cell phone key board.

That was then though, and this is now. Today, I am completely underwhelmed by people who continue to persist in communicating in this manner, especially with the use of BlackBerry keyboards and predictive text. Don’t even get me started on people who use computers to update their Twitter or Facebook status.

Quite frankly, if you are using a fully fledged computer keyboard to update your Facebook status, and you still insist on using “dat” instead of “that”, I will make it my mission to track you down and kick you firmly in the throat. Come on, it’s one extra letter, type the damn thing out. You know how to spell, you are not a cretin.

There is nothing cute about writing like a six year old. Especially when you are a thirty seven year old. Keep this up and you will be needing a colonoscopy, specifically to identify the foreign object found up there, namely my foot. Lol. Or not.

Oakes signing off.

As We Look For New Hobbies

Salsa - 'Why Not?' thought Shaun

The Girlfriend has been rather animated recently about us sharing hobbies and doing more things together. This is easier said than done, as some of my favourite hobbies include getting drunk at grubby bars, watching bikini clad tourists swim in the pool across the street, and just generally being cynical and miserable about most things.

Understandably, she seemed a tad reluctant to take up these activities with me, and so Salsa dancing was mentioned as a compromise hobby instead.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Salsa, it’s probably the biggest and most famous Cuban import we have in South Africa today - well, besides all those clichéd Che Guevara tshirts you see everywhere - but those are made in China anyway.

The Salsa is a very sexy dance, where the women wear revealing outfits, and the men wear disturbingly tight pants. Mix this up with some hypnotic salsa music, which basically sounds like something the Latino singer Ricky Martin might belt out; together with the always lingering presence of booze at the bar, and you have the makings of a seriously sexy Wednesday evening on your hands.

As this would be the only opportunity for me to rub myself up against other women without the risk of The Girlfriend punching me in the throat, I immediately jumped at the invitation, and decided to check it out.

The Girlfriend, who had been doing this for months already, ditched me for her Advanced dancer friends pretty much as soon as we arrived, leaving me to fend for myself and try and make friends in the Beginners Class. The Beginners Class was an eclectic blend of people from all walks of life – shy geeky men, women with facial hair, a couple of attractive model wannabes and, for some obscure reason, a large amount of Scandinavian students.

The class itself is a relatively relaxed affair. Through disciplined repetition, you are made to do the same steps over and over again, until you have successfully molded your second left foot into a fully functional right one. On this particular night, I was taught how to do a two step primarily using my toes and swiveling my hips, whilst at the same time maintaining an air of heterosexuality. The men also learnt how to successfully spin a woman around without twisting her arm or sending her sprawling into an adjacent wall, something I have always wanted to master after several unfortunate incidents in the past. With each new repetition, the women will move one place to their left, meaning that in theory, everyone gets an opportunity to dance with one another. Somehow, this didn’t seem to work in my case, as I kept ending up with a muscular Swedish woman who, despite her rather butch nature, seemed more determined to rub my crotch with her upper thigh, than actually learning any moves.

Somehow, I managed to evade her attempts at indecent assault, and successfully managed to make it all the way to the social part of the evening. Here, normally shy men get the chance to dance with women who would typically be way out of their league. Interestingly enough, the unwritten code in the world of Salsa seems to be that you never decline an invitation to dance.

Trying it out for myself, I gingerly approached a tall brunette who looked as if she could crack walnuts with her chiseled calf muscles, which resembled elongated slabs of solid concrete. It was whilst dancing with the slightly scary Nut Cracker, that I learnt another Salsa lesson – you don’t talk during Salsa. “So do you come here often?” I began, only to be cut short by a look of pure venom, usually given to me by The Girlfriend whenever I forget to courtesy flush.

I looked around the dance floor and yes, although everyone seemed happy and wore reasonably genuine smiles, no one spoke whilst dancing.

So it seems then that Salsa, not unlike many relationships I know, can only truly be enjoyed if the men keep their mouths shut.

Oakes signing off.

As Shaun Takes A Moment To Gloat

A Smoker: About to get screwed by the Man again.

With Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech last week, heavy smokers can now look forward to paying more than R1000 per month for the pleasure of putting tar in their lungs. I can of course sit back and be rather smug about this - with it having absolutely no bearing on me - as I have not had a cigarette in more than 5 months now.

This may surprise many of you, my mom included, but I have often flirted with the likes of Rothmans, Peter Stuyvesant and Marlboro over the years.

Going through about four packs a week - usually two during the work week, with another two during obligatory Friday and Saturday night binge drinking sessions – I may not have been classified as a heavy smoker per se. Looking back, I don’t think I ever woke up wanting to have a smoke - cravings usually occurred whilst vanquishing another stiff Jameson, or trying to look cool in front of impressionable young 18 year old girls who found guys who smoked “edgy”.

There were of course also times when I felt nervous and needed nicotine to calm me down, often when I needed the courage to speak to someone prettier than me, or when I needed to persuade bosses that it would be in their best interests not to fire me, and that they should in fact pay me more instead.

The shock tactics employed by anti-smoking organizations never really phased me. Sure, you hear all the bad press smoking has, the fact that it causes lung cancer, emphysema, can make you sterile and even cause impotency. As a young stud finding his way in the world however, these were not the types of issues which would keep me up at night.

Talk of impotency is best left to old people with saggy balls or the Brazilian footballer Pele, not a twenty year old man who can just about pee straight. As such, these concerns would often all be filed in the “Let’s worry about this in another few years” folder, which also contained plans to eventually be tax registered, and to set up a high yielding pension fund.

As a rule, I tended to buy the “Smoking Can Harm Your Pregnancy” boxes anyway, as it served to re-assure me, fairly confident that I was highly unlikely to fall pregnant, and thus could smoke without causing any danger to my unborn child.

No, It was the noticeable signs of ageing that eventually lead me to throw my cigarettes away.

I was pretty comfortable with the smell - for many reasons, I found it rather comforting that I permanently smelled as if I were at a braai, and the smoker’s breathe could easily be countered with the disciplined use of sugar-free chewing gum. It was the yellowed teeth, wrinkled face and slightly grey complexion I developed which eventually swayed me though.

Which is why I believe these anti-smoking adverts should seriously change their tact. Showing pictures of black lungs are not going to get people to stop buying cigarettes. Showing a photograph of me after a heavy night of boozing and smoking just might though.

Oakes signing off.

It Really Isn’t

Cricket: A fearsome game.

So this past Sunday I had what The Girlfriend often refers to as a “Shaun Moment”, which basically involves me doing something entirely irrational and more than a little silly. Examples of previous Shaun Moments would include the year I gave The Girlfriend a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, the month I decided to invest half my salary in lottery tickets, and the fateful night I decided to consume a large tumbler of what I now know was not cream soda but rather something called “absinthe”.

On this occasion however, I decided to forfeit my usual Sunday ritual of lying on the couch, breaking wind intermittently whilst eating roast chicken and reading the Sunday Times, and instead spend the day chasing a hard piece of leather around a field, in what was meant to be a gentle game of social cricket.

Now, I haven’t played much cricket since high school, back in the days when I often had differing opinions to my cricket coach, leading to endless debates about my role in the team. ( I thought I should open the batting for the team, he thought I shouldn’t be in the team)

Nevertheless, the lack of match practice didn’t really bother me, as I felt confident in my natural fitness, my arguable cricketing talent, and the fact that I would be up against a bunch of internet geeks who were more likely to humiliate me playing cricket online than on an actual field.

So it was with this false sense of bravado that I walked up to the wicket to bat, having not picked up a cricket bat in several months, and then it was only to try and gently tap the vagrant who I found sleeping under my car.

I’ve always thought of cricket as a bit of a soft sport. Sure, there are times when you may have to face 150km/h balls from a maniacal Pakistani fast bowler, but at this social level of the game, it’s more likely to be a dibbly dobbler computer programmer who can just about turn his arm over.

Five minutes of batting however, and I was beginning to question that school of thought, what with my big toe having been severely abused not once, not twice, but three times by a deadly accurate and fiercely aggressive dibbly dobbler. Added to that, my hip and arm resembled something that had been chewed on by a rabid dog, as I had earlier made the suicidal decision to dive into the batting crease, not realizing that with the bone hard pitch, this would be the equivalent of throwing myself into broken glass. If this were not enough, my knees then decided to pack in, no doubt out of pure shock, having not been forced to exert itself in this manner in close to seven years.

The end result saw me scratching around and scoring a fairly respectable 31 runs, having faced approximately 672 balls.(I’ve always believed in a steady and measured approach to batting). I even had a bit of a bowl and took a wicket with my first ball, before reverting to type and bowling, what coaches and fans alike would describe rather aptly as “a pile of shite”.

Unfortunately my hands let me down though, and I ended up dropping a catch off the batsman who would go on to win the game for the other team, leading to various jeers, curses and insulting remarks by both teammates and the crowd.

In addition to losing the game then, the damage inflicted on Shaun Oakes was particular heavy. With a big toe as large as my head, bits of sinew and bone hanging off my arm, and walking in a manner which suggests an eventful night in a Pollsmoor Prison cell, I am currently resembling a man who has been a victim of a vicious assault.

Which is why I will probably stick to rugby or bare-knuckle boxing in future. Cricket is just a tad too rough for my liking.

Oakes signing off.

As Shaun Enters Another World

Cape Town Municipality. Or Hell.

Being a raging masochist, I felt like punishing myself last week and so - rather than closing a door on my hand, or having The Girlfriend kick me in the groin repeatedly - I decided to go one step further and pay a visit to the Cape Town Municipal offices instead.

Getting inside the offices is a process in itself, finding legal parking outside the building takes an extraordinary amount of luck and good fortune. Basically, there seems to be more chance of you winning the lottery than actually finding a parking bay which is available to the public, as everything seems to be demarcated and catered for what is referred to as “disk holders”. Who these disk holders are, or where you can get hold of one of these magical passes is anyone’s guess, but I’ll go on the assumption that the vast amount of parking bays are set aside for staff. It will go down as one of life’s great mysteries then, alongside the Loch Ness monster and the existence of aliens, where the municipality expects the public to park.

After several fruitless minutes searching for parking, I eventually stopped crying, composed myself sufficiently, and then reverted to the age old custom of bribery, offering the security guard at the boom gate untold riches as well as the soul of my unborn child if he allowed me to park in one of the demarcated bays.

Once inside the building, I then proceeded to do the customary inter-department dance, which involves going to a department where three clerks are available with no queues in sight, before being twirled around and spun in the direction of another department, where two clerks are available for a queue of approximately twenty thousand.

Now besides dealing with the clerks, who all seemed to have recently woken up from year-long comas, there are also the members of the public one has to contend with.

For some bizarre reason, people seem to think they can unload their life stories to one another when queuing in government buildings. Who came up with this rule? When did I agree to it? Apparently I did though, because I am now privy to the fact that Ethel, a grey-haired woman from Walmer Estate, is eagerly awaiting the return of her son Clive, who is living the dream and serving people warm beer in a seedy pub in Bradford, England. I can also tell you that she hates black people because she found it necessary to mention this to me. Repeatedly.

With the racist Ethel to my left, I was sandwiched nicely with a seemingly retarded woman on my right, who seemed to be seated there for no apparent reason, and who laughed hysterically whenever I asked her to shift up as we got closer to the clerks. To rub further salt in the wounds, I was also lucky enough to have an old man sitting directly behind me at one point, who sounded as if he had water on the lung, and who insisted on coughing on the back of my neck.

Eventually I made it to the front of the queue – although technically I was actually second, the retarded woman in front of me seemed to be treating this as a day out, and seemed more concerned with eating the contents inside her nose then being served.

From here I dealt with one of the recently revived clerks, who spoke to me in slow, dull tones, and who seemed absolutely terrified whenever he looked at his computer screen.

After what felt like a lifetime, I eventually staggered out of the building. To my surprise the whole experience had only taken two hours, it was still Thursday and, as far as I knew the year was still 2010. The municipality is a bit like Narnia in that respect, as time seems to stand still once you enter the grey netherworld.

Nevertheless, if you ever want to punish an enemy or nemesis, get them to file a query at the municipality. There can surely be no fate worse than that.

Oakes signing off.

Oakes Earns His Spurs

Tools: Manliness

After years of sterling service, our beloved toilet seat passed away peacefully in her sleep this week, having developed a terminal crack in her left side after feeling the full force of a particularly heavy dinner guest.

On most occasions, any sort of house related maintenance job would see us calling a variety of tradesmen and professionals, be it plumbers, painters, or even someone to change a car tyre. Although I strike an intimidating pose, I am surprisingly useless when it comes to any sort of DIY job around the home, and it is usually The Girlfriend who will change the light bulbs, whilst I stand behind her, watching and nodding approvingly.

2010 is a year of action however, and so Saturday morning - rather than sleeping off the whiskey of the previous night - saw me lying on my back in the bathroom instead, with an assortment of impressive looking tools at my side. There I lay for a good half hour or so, staring intently at the nether regions of our toilet, as an impending feeling of desperation slowly engulfed me.

Contrary to popular belief, changing a toilet seat is a mammoth and intricate task, eclipsed only perhaps by performing brain surgery, or designing an interplanetary space shuttle. Created in the early 19th century by engineers who had grown weary of urinating in the streets, they built a contraption that is pretty much indestructible - save for the seat itself - which is like the Achilles Heel of the traditional bathroom loo. Displaying a wicked sense of humour however, they went and decided to make the process of removing the seat an almost impossible task, a task attempted by many but achieved by few.

You see, the seat is attached to the porcelain base through a complicated set of long screw-like nails carefully mounted on each side of the bowl. These are fastened from both the top and the bottom of the bowl, through carefully hidden screws unseen by the naked eye.

Unfastening these with a traditional screw driver is an exercise in futility - there is simply no space to leverage yourself and turn the screw driver appropriately. It took me about two hours of sweating, swearing and just a little bit of sobbing before I came to this realisation, eventually resorted to contorting my body into a human pretzel, basically having to tuck both my left leg and right arm behind my head in order to successfully unfasten the first bastard of a screw.

Ecstatic at this moral victory, I immediately broke into a celebratory Macarena, until The Girlfriend appeared and sagely pointed out that there were still three sections to complete, I was a mediocre Macarena dancer, and she needed to use the toilet facilities shortly.

Using her threat to turn my car into a porta-loo as a motivating factor, I was able to power through and remove the old seat, and install the new one in a relatively quick turn-around time of three hours 45 minutes, or roughly the time it takes to learn the Macarena.

All in all it was a good day then; we have a new toilet seat in the family, I saved my car from a terrible fate, and I discovered that I am able to to tuck my leg behind my head.

I’d say that’s a win in any man’s book.

Oakes signing off.

Shaun Oakes

Procrastination - Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.

This may surprise some of you, but it usually takes me about 5 hours to write one of these columns every day. Now, this is not due to me carrying out extensive research, spending time verifying facts, or methodically going over my grammar. The simple fact of the matter is that I am a procrastinator. A fearsome one at that.

I think writing was substantially easier twenty years ago, back when chain smoking eccentrics with oily hair and dirty cardigans would sit in their cluttered studies, battering away at their typewriters whilst making a serious dent on their latest bottle of Scotch. No distractions, just you, a plastic tumbler of whiskey, and some A4 printing paper.

These days however, working on a computer with always on internet is a bit like trying to read an intellectually heavy book, whilst a beautiful woman gives you a lap dance.

As an example, I was seated at my desk yesterday evening at around 6pm, ready to whip out 1000 words on the recent adventures I had in the city centre, involving a parking space, a Peugeot 206, and an angry middle aged Muslim woman. At around 10:15pm, I remained rooted at my desk, with 25 words typed and having instead read up on the dark sequel to the Wizard of Oz (incidentally called “Dark Oz”) and having watched a dozen or so amusing interviews on YouTube by the professional wrestler turned Hollywood actor, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Time well spent? Possibly, it’s always entertaining watching old clips of The Rock.

Procrastination? Oh, almost certainly.

It’s this level of procrastination which can sometimes get me into trouble, or at the very least seriously inconvenience me. At the current time of writing, I still have some unpaid speeding fines weighing on my conscience, together with a couple of court dates I seem to have subsequently missed. Even more disturbingly, I recently worked out that there are several thousands of rands owed to me for various freelance work carried out over the past year, amounts that I have yet to invoice for.

I know it needs to be done, I make plans to do it, but then… and then… and then…

To rub further salt in the wounds, it seems as if my procrastination has now also lead to my missing out on the 2010 World Cup experience. Having registered on Fifa.com way back in 2008 already, I have then proceeded to dilly and of course dally during the following two years, to the point where I have now missed the three random draws for World Cup tickets held during this year.

I just logged on again today to get tickets during the fourth and penultimate draw being held, only to discover that there are no more available tickets for Cape Town matches, with every match at the Cape Town stadium in Greenpoint seemingly sold out.

So now, not only am I facing some hefty traffic fines, and missing out on a huge chunk of income, but I also face the ghastly prospect of having to trek all the way to the Mbombela Stadium in the grey wasteland of Nelspruit, in order to catch a World Cup game.

Quite frankly, if that isn’t enough to shake me out of this procrastinating habit, I don’t know what will.

Oakes signing off.