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The second day was kind of boring and I didn’t really like it. I had a list of a bunch of things I wanted to get, errands I wanted to run, basically.
First I looked for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which I found in Exclusive Books right near the waterfront, but it was almost $20 and I thought I might be able to find it cheaper somewhere so I kept looking. I stopped at the stencil shop to see if there were any stencils that I really wanted but none of them were really the style I was going for, so I ended up buying some beads, figuring I would start on my bracelet/anklet project at some point instead. The story didn’t have string though. I wonder why they sell beads but not string.
From there I walked to Long Street because it has tons of shops on it. I was looking for a camera and stopped in at least two shops to look on Long Street, but all they had were like… bad cameras at much-too-high prices or good cameras at INSANELY high prices. I mean, a Canon camera that would cost like $150 in the States would cost about $500 in these shops. Maybe it was just location, but holy crap, I was not doing that. Even the worst cameras were like $200 or more. So I moved on.
I wanted a guitar pick. A guy was sitting outside of some sort of music school and so I asked him if I could get one in there and he said no, but I could try the place called Mister Music just up the road. He was sure they’d have picks but he said that there was this “really sketchy guy” behind the counter. I went up there and the door was locked and no one was inside, so I moved on. It didn’t open for another little while.
I went across the street basically to the big bead shop and I got a couple lengths of elastic to make my bracelets out of. I also looked for pure black beads ‘cuz I thought the ones from the shop were kinda dark blue, but didn’t find any like I was looking for. The rope ended up costing me like $.024 or something, I can’t even remember.
I was also looking for snacks and I found some sort of pretty nice grocery market up there, so I stopped there and got some cookies and other things and ate a doughnut while I was in the store. I think I was just about the only white guy in the store.
There were a few other book stores that I looked in but none of them had Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
A beggar came up to me and asked me, “Are you from South Africa?” And I said No. And she said Good because I need someone who just speaks English, are you from America or Canada? And I told her, and she said, Okay, well look, I have a seven month old daughter and I was kicked out of my last house and I’m living in a shelter right now and I’m trying to get my paycheck but they won’t let me and I was wondering if, and I shook my head and said No thank you and walked away beyond her. She turned and asked, “Why are American people always like this?” And I kind of wanted to pound her into the pavement for saying something like that, especially when you could tell from the way she dressed that she was just not that poor, but I didn’t know if she might have a weapon, so I just kept a close look over my shoulder and walked on. I thought of the four hundred people sleeping on the curb in India. Even in her lie she told me she had a bed.
I went back to Mister Music later. Two people were window shopping but there were no picks there. The door was open now but it, like almost every store in SA, had a steel/iron gate in front of the door that you had to ring for the owner to open before you could come in. I rang and the guy sitting there at the desk writing did nothing. He was bald and old and smoking. I rang again and nothing. I said “Sir, can I come in?” Nothing. “Sir can I come in?” And he came up and let me in. He didn’t say much. I asked him if he had any picks, and he rummaged through the glass display case and showed me one set of picks and said that was all he had. They were weird and heavy and for electric guitars I think and I was having none of it, so I just left. He was the weirdest dude I met in South Africa. I was glad to be out of his shop.
I went around asking for Marshall’s Music, apparently a 3-story music mansion somewhere nearby that the guy at the music school told me about, and kind of got the run-around. Eventually this CD shop told me where to go. I told them that I tried Mister Music already and the guy was weird and they were like, “Oh yeah! Did he make you feel like you should have never even come into the store? Heh, yeah. He’s quite famous for doing that.” They wrote down the address of Marshall’s for me and told me where to go.
I walked there in just a couple minutes basically and walked in and knew I was finally in a place I could get a pick. Coffeeshop on the first floor followed by a baby grand piano for $10000 and then tons of guitars for just as much, and I sat down and played an electric piano ‘cuz I just wanted to play. A guy asked if he could help me and I wanted to explain the situation w/ the ship, but I just said, “I’m away from home and really want a piano. I’m going to buy some picks later.” And then I looked upstairs and there was a lot more stuff like drums and electric pianos more and speakers and a whole recording studio. Then I went down and got two guitar picks, of which I only really like the blue one, and thought about buying strings but didn’t get any.
I thought about putting color in my hair but it was too expensive and people keep telling me it’ll look weird even though I think it’ll look fine but hey whatever, if people like my golden hair they can keep liking it.
I thought about getting postcards but didn’t. I thought I’d get some at the game reserve the next day.
I’ve told you a lot about running errands and I don’t want to say much more. I ended up getting a camera at a Fujifilm shop in the mall after looking around for a while because it was marked down a good bit and took pretty alright shots (moderate lens), had a recharge battery, and took video with sound. Then I headed back to the ship.
I basically hung around the ship for a while until it was time to go out again that night. I thought about eating at the Thai restaurant again but no one wanted to go, and so I just ate on the ship because I didn’t want to pay the $33 that we had to pay to eat with Eric and his boyfriend at Mama Africa. I took a taxi with some kids to just about where it was though and walked there on my own by about 8:30 or something. I thought we would head to the free jazz festival just a few blocks over pretty much when I showed up, but we ended up staying and talking for a long time.
I asked Eric’s boyfriend, Michael, what color I should put in my hair and he laughed. I didn’t understand why. Apparently when Eric tells people that he’s a hair dresser he gets kind of annoyed because people always ask him questions like that, so he laughs it off and then says that he’s in some other field. He told me he was in IT, and then to play along with him (I knew it was a joke at this point) I asked him if he did programming or network stuff and what languages he knew, and he said, “Oh, all kinds of languages!” And then he gave up the joke, which was fine. I wasn’t allowed to eat any of the food because it was all you can eat and I would have had to have paid $33. I ate some but they didn’t see so it’s okay. They sang happy birthday to Eric in an African style and it was really loud and really well done. The waitresses were all crazy skilled which was a nice surprise.
My LLC, Emily, was there at my end of the table and so was Rory, a pretty good friend of mine. We talked for a while, and eventually Luzoku (the interport student from South Africa) showed up with the Zimmerman family. There wasn’t really room for them to sit down at that time, so everyone basically just stood up because they were standing and leaning over the balcony as they talked and we figured we should join them. There were like 20 people there altogether or something. They had just come from the township where Luzoku grew up, which I wanted to go to with him, but it never worked out and I was really upset about that, but it’s okay. I forget what we talked about other than monkeys having sex on top of Angkor Wat but I know that I talked to the Zimmerman parents a pretty good bit and I always love talking to them and I remember enjoying standing out on the balcony on a nice night and talking.
We walked to the jazz festival a little while later – probably coming up on 10:30 at this point – and made it there with no trouble except for some of us were scared to cross the roads and Luzoku had to egg us on. The jazz festival wasn’t quite as big or expansive as I had imagined, but it was still well attended. I think this was in Green Market Square and I think there were probably about 1,500 people there. Some of the people I was with tried to push through the crowd with me for a bit, but I got impatient always waiting on them to push through with me and having to check with them, so I just went up on my own. They brought out another band that was from Iceland or something (but don’t worry they’re still HOT! they said) and listened for a little bit when I was not-too-far from the stage, but there were no lyrics and the melodies were kind of forgettable and jazz just really isn’t my style, so I was pretty done with it after a song or so. I worked my way back to where the rest of the crew had stopped.
I remember seeing Steven in the crowd and trying to say hello to him and he didn’t hear me, so I said it again and he didn’t hear me. I don’t think he would remember that I was at the jazz festival at all, which is strange.
I got a chocolate muffin from a store in Green Market Square after organizing with the Zimmermans and a few others that we’d go home at 11:45 or something like that. I think some people were looking at me curiously when I was in the store but nothing bad. They were ready to go when I hopped out of the store and so we took off. I asked their older girl what she wanted to study and where she wanted to go to school on the way home, and I told her I felt like she belonged in a Boston school, though I don’t know why exactly. I forget what she said she wanted to study – something humanities related – but she said she’d probably want to stay in-state for tuition and maybe even go to the school where her mother is a professor in Colorado because it’d be like free… as long as she didn’t drive her to school every day.
I made my piano pattern string that night. It has 88 beads on it, black and white, and they follow the pattern of the piano keys. I was afraid they wouldn’t all fit but they did, and when I was done I didn’t know how to tie it on my own so I walked around the ship until I found someone I knew, and then Bridgette tied it around my ankle. She actually was near my room and she tied it in my room for me. I left it there for a day but then ended up putting it on my wrist later and just wrapping it twice because Tarik and Chloe made fun of me for putting it on my ankle and chokers definitely don’t work on me HEY THANKS PEER PRESSURE
(I remembered after writing this that their daughter said she wanted to study organizational psychology)
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