Jim's quiet musings . . .

What a delightful conversation I just had with my good friend Eve Smith who lives in Durban, on the north coast of South Africa. We have so much fun together and she is such a delightful person inside and out. Eve refreshes my perspective on life and today, a rather drab, sickly day, was made brighter by her womanly touch. I have sidelined Eve as she finally got her blog going! It seems Eve is a night owl, keeping the oil lamp lit until early, early in the morning. She gives an interesting account of my name, from perhaps an Afrikaans perspective and comes up with the summation that my name is Zulu. Pronounced Jheimmm or some such thing....Ah well, I will forgive her then for her placing me in the unlikely neighborhood of Vancouver.....Canada perhaps?

I have thus decided that Durban will be my next conquest in travel. A mere 12,780.43 South African Rand.......pocket change! Ha! Eve possesses the remarkable ability of Ballroom and Latin American dancing and says she is going to teach me how. I can't wait as it has been a dream of mine for years to learn. We discuss many different things and it is refreshing to see her perspective on things, from say a different "cultural" twist, although Eve's thoughts and perceptions are not that different than my own. We have much uncharted ground to cover yet.....

"worked my way to the switch that adds sound to the place, then to the wc where I finally recovered on the loo, wondering what day it was" God how I love the sound of that...I can't wait to hear her accent. Accents are funny, they either turn me off totally or totally turn me on. Russian does NOTHING for me, nor does the German accent usually, depending on who is speaking it of course. Most of those are harsh. Austrians tend to soften the tone a bit and add that French twang to it. Or perhaps that is just my imagination. I was a radio operator for well over seventeen years and got used to the different accents, finally being able to tell where a person was from, just by their accent.

Paramaribo, Suriname was my favorite. I used to always speak with Suzie, 73-AT-103 (Ah sebenty treeee ah alpha tango ah one ah cero tree!) I always knew Suzy's sing-song accent the minute she came on. The dutch names were impossible to pronounce....kinda like names of towns in Wales....too many consonants or something.

Anyway, back to Eve....she has pulled me in totally with her story of the loo paper wad...kinda gave me an interesting visual. But, the story about the eggs.....

“ Do you have rubber chickens in the kitchen, or do your chickens mate rubber ducks?” Holy smokes! I thought I'd never stop laughing. I can tell Eve and I are gonna have a blast in South Africa....hell, they'll be talking about us for years to come in Johannesburg and Durbin. Did you know Johannesburg has a zoo? Somehow I can't see the need for a zoo in Africa........is it just me?

Gotta go to bed....a new day tomorrow. Perhaps in the morning I will attempt to recover on the LOO! -Jeeem-