The more things stay the same…

Nine hundred kilometers I traveled, I looked forward to see my gracious host of two and half years. I wondered, would it be the same, would it have changed so much that I would not recognize it?

So I am for the first time attending the Grahamstown national arts festival. I got in a few hours ago and thus far, other than seeing it from afar I am mad, I am unhappy and I am bothered!

Where the fuck is the organisation? How the fuck am I suppose to immerse myself into this age ole festival when I can’t find anything? Where is the help, where are the friendly festival marshals to point me in the right direction? Oh lord. I want to go home.

There should be programmes everywhere and maps that show you where you are and where you need to be.

So far all I’ve seen, I could have seen at the Cape Town station flea market. I am not impressed, I am not happy. Maybe I am just tired from the long drive.

Fuck it, there at least should be something happening at the drama department, right? Right? Wrong! Even they do not know what the hell is showing or where I can get a hold of a programme.

So I’ll just have to find out about the various happenings of this little sleepy town from the web. How ridiculous is that? I am here, I am here for goodness sakes!

Anywho back to Gtown my host for 2.5 year of my life. The first thing I go and check out of course is where I spent most of my time not studying. The loner that I was, my time was largely spent at the movies or at the library where I got through trashy novels by Dean Koontz and Stephen King and Robin Cook!

This is what my one cinema looks like today! I shed a tear.



But somethings stay the same:



This has to be the vision that has stayed in my mind all these years.



Surprisingly, well not so much, the Rhodes residences have stayed the same. Same furniture, same mattresses (rock hard), same lamps. As nice as it is to be taken back, it is a little sad, where is that child today that spent so much time in this room wishing for…

So twelve years later, some things have changed in Res. Like, people probably get bugged by cell phones ringing in the middle of the night. Instead of hearing the tap tap tap of someone working hard at their type writer there is silence. I can not even start to image how technology has changed the way we learn and interact with one another.

Ja anyway. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some show to talk about. For now, it is bed time at 21h00 in Gtown. For me anyway.