That’s a HUGE b!tch…

I couldn’t resist… :p

I have heard that once or twice, not because I am, for lack of a more sensitive word, obese, but because I am tall. Not hide-your-children-here-she-comes tall but taller than the average female in South Africa. I am 1.78m barefoot (foot here also means size 7/8/9 shoe depending on the shoe), also, I’m not a b!tch… jus’ sayin’. I have always wanted to be taller, 1.85m to be exact. It’s just that 1.85 looks and sounds more rounded and impressive than 1.78… it makes a difference when you have people asking you how tall you are all the time.

I love being tall, there are so many perks/pro’s to being tall;  I never have to ask anyone to get me something off of the top shelf (unless the top shelf is built for Goliath), I am a mean Goal Keeper and Goal Defense  in netball, I turned out to be a mean goal shooter last night as well, long arms and legs help a lot; I have killer legs, shapely, strong and LONG – my inner leg measurement is about 36 inches; people don’t *”sukkel” with me, especially when I wear high heels. I also have a pretty big bone structure so I take longer to look as big as what I weigh, which is a blessing in disguise I suppose… I can legitimately say I’m not fat, I’m just big boned *YESSSS*

I did some quick web research and it seems that the average height of a South African woman is 1.59m… I am almost 20cm taller than that. Here’s a graph for you to understand (cos I was bored).

BUT… for all the positives there are also some negatives, some cons. I will only name one, the worst one. I rarely find pants that fit me all round – meaning length and width. I have been cursed/blessed with “Boesman boude” as my family likes to point out constantly. For those non-South African’s, and I suppose non-Afrikaans readers, “Boesman boude” means Bushman bum AKA round, not necessarily fat but definitely round, the type of round that J-Lo paid for. See the pic of the early Southern Africa natives – the Bushmen – to know what I mean.

Ok, mine aint THAT round…

not this BIG either!!!

“What does this have to do with finding pants?” you ask. Sit, sit, and let me tell you. The lovely clothing outlets in South Africa don’t tend to cater much for my special type of needs – long legs, big ass – and if I do find something then it is highly expensive. I found that Levi’s South Africa caters for my shape better than others when it comes to jeans, but they are not the most affordable, and what about fancy work pants? It’s so bad that I have given up on buying pants, mostly because I do not want to end up in either jail or Groendakkies for having a fit and attacking a shop assistant with the too-short, too-small, too-everything pair of pants.

My answer to myself… learn how to sew properly (I say properly cos I can sew, but not the intricate stuff) and make your own awesome clothes.

*look for trouble

Century followers!!!

Follow me… mwuhahahahaaa.

Well, the big 100 has arrived and I would not have been able to get here without all of you guys, so thank you so much.

Also I would like to send a special thank you to Opinionated Man. Thank you for all your tips, you really helped me get here.

Peace out.

Liez xxx

Change?

This is the first little bit of a post I wrote about 2 months ago: Sometimes I look at that saying and I think… HELL NO! There is no way that getting a new haircut or changing a room around in the house can be as good as a holiday, and then at other times I think. If only I could change something. Read the post to get the whole thing. What I am on about is that I need a holiday, as in NOW!! But, I have settled for a little change, I changed my room around, its bigger now and easier to keep neat. Now I am wanting to change my hair, I’m still on the mermaid hair thing but that reaaaalllyyy limits the amount of change that can be brought.

On the one hand I am thinking lets keep the length, chop the tips (which will probably end up being about 3cm’s because of split ends) and maybe start wearing my fringe to the side. I’ve been rocking the Jo’burg bitch fringe (thats what I call it) for almost 2 years and I still love it, it’s easy and classy, BUT even though I still get A LOT of compliments on my hair (YES!! got 2 in one night this weekend) I feel its time for a little change. So its either this…

Keep the length, sweep the fringe?

OR THIS! (I know… Its crazy)

Keep the fringe, CHOP the hair?

I know…

A friend told me that I would look good with this look… Its a very drastic change but I have had my hair shorter than that before and got loads of compliment then also. I don’t think that I will cut it this short because when I want to grow it out again then it gets to that awkward phase just above your shoulder where it looks weird. Or maybe its just me. I have a slight kink in my hair and that slight kink becomes even more prominent when my hair is short, which means more maintenance.

Or should I stick with my current style, just give some TLC? What do you think? (and NO, I am not changing the colour!!)

Oxygen…

I think we can all agree that oxygen is a pretty important part of every-minute life. Without O2 we all cease to exist. Shit, without good ‘ol O2 we never existed in the first place. When I was in high school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my favorite subjects were Biology and Physiology. I discovered a passion for it that I can’t explain, to this day I still remember some of the work. I think it stems from being in awe of the Creator of it all. When you pay attention to the little things, the details, then you realise just how amazing and awesomely clever God is, and for Him to say that He knit me together in my mother’s womb… that is just even greater. He spent special time with each of us. Signing His Name differently for each person, like and artist hiding his signature on pieces of art.

That’s a lot of intricate stitching…

Anyways, back to breathing and what not. I learnt in biology that oxygen, apart from keeping us alive, is slowly, oh so slowly, killing us by aging our cells. I can’t remember all the nitty gritty details and so on, but what it comes down to is if we could make our cells immune to the side effects of oxygen (or make oxygen that doesn’t have that effect on our cells), we could live forever. Imagine that, I don’t want to live forever but you know, some people want to. I see a futuristic movie storyline here… Superman needs to be in it, he could hide the oxygen tank of youth in his crystal palace or something. *making notes*

“now I know it’s around here somewhere, I really should keep this place tidy.”

So what this is all about is, on Tuesday Phoenix had some Cellfood Sport, which is a Oxygen for Life product that is way too complicated to explain so go read about it here… What I will say is that is takes on this oxygen aging your cells thing, which sounds quite cool. Also what it does for the sporty/active/boot camping type is it increases the oxygen that goes to the cells which boosts your performance. So as you can imagine Phoenix was on fire (see what I did there?) on Tuesday, and I had a bad workout session, felt like a newby. So yesterday Phoenix suggested I take some liquid oxygen (you laugh… it totally exists, check it out), which I did. 20 Drops of the stuff in some water. I don’t know if it boosted my performance or even if it upped the cells’ O2 intake… I was dying either way. Maybe it did, maybe it just has some sort of placebo effect. Either way the 60 semi-(very girly) pull-ups I (semi) did, still won! However I do feel that I did better yesterday than on Tuesday, so thank you Phoenix.

Basically… drinkable oxygen.

Your thoughts on performance enhancers, yay or nay and why?

Bootcamp: revisited!!

I have been boot camping for about 5 months, and while I feel better about the fact that I am actively doing something to improve the list of things I have about myself that needed improving, I still feel like more needs to be done. More!!! More aching, more pain, more sweat, more blood (there hasn’t been blood, but it sounds baddass enough), more time, more death… and now I’m racking my brain for frighting things to put a “more” in front of, and I’m going to stop myself before I get to more zombies. You get the picture though…

Yowzah… wrong picture!!!

Yes, so, more of what happens before, during and after boot camp. Before, there’s a lot of “Hooah Bitches, Fist Bumps, High Fives, We Got This(es)” and sometimes prayers. Imagine the Springboks’ rugby team locker room before they go out to annihilate every other team that wishes to stand against their awesomeness… now replace the guys with some girls and the green and gold with some pink and spandex and you got boot camp (Disclaimer – I do not work out in pink.) . During, it’s mostly the sounds you hear either from behind closed doors (I’m talking about the toilet here…) or from a maternity ward. Ranging from grunts, to moans, to screams, to whimpers and then obviously the ever present push it… PUSH IT LADIES!!! coming from the instructor. After, it looks like what’s left behind after the Springboks had been there. There are sweaty bodies, a few tears, some blood (still badass even if it’s not true), sometimes fainting, occasionally there would be food that no longer wanted to rent the moving apartment that is your stomach during the 20th burpee of the night. And yes… I want more of all of that. Especially the Springbok rugby team locker room…

Not a locker room but still… sigh!!

Focus woman!

I want to go even further. I want to be able to NOT buckle during my 5th non-girly push up, I want to breeze through doing 20 burpees right after each other, I want to be able to do a pull up (focus on “a” as in “one” for now). Someone asked me what my motivation behind boot camp is and I came to the conclusion that apart from wanting to look hot, I want to be proud of myself for achieving something, for sticking to it and through it and struggling with it and myself. I want to enter the Air Force and not have a hard time doing actual, real ass, boot camp. I want it to be MY abs, legs, arms, ass whatever that gets used as the backdrop of some inspirational, motivational, exercise propaganda (which I appreciate). Oh and I want people to look at me and see that I can do some serious harm to them… If I wanted to.

Maybe I should just be scantily dressed and carry dangerous looking knives.

The world makes blood look good!!

Think about the series Dexter… You got it? It’s all blood and it’s all messy… yet we keep watching. WHY??! Why do we keep watching something that gives us nightmares or weird dreams? I’ll tell you my theory.

Angel?! Really?

If you have watched Dexter from Season 1 then you know all about Dexter Morgan and how he turned out to be a serial killer. The most loved serial killer. If you don’t know Dexter, here’s a brief breakdown. (if you want a more in depth breakdown… here you go) 

Dexter is a blood splatter analyst for Miami Metro Police. He was adopted by a cop who found him in a container sitting in his mother’s blood (She had been hacked up by a chainsaw… sorry for the graphicness). As you can well imagine this had quite an impact on little Dexter. As he grew up he started killing animals and his dad saw this thing in him (Dexter refers to this thing as The Dark Passenger) and taught Dexter the CODE, the Code to kill people, only bad people and not get caught. That is rule numero uno… Don’t get caught. So as time goes on Dexter starts to kill bad people. Only people who are either killers or rapists or child molesters, you know the deal.  He doesn’t just kill them; he hacks them up into neat pieces with an electrical saw and keeps a slide of blood as a souvenir. Bottom line, there is a lot of blood in the show. 

Let’s take it apart a bit. We as humans don’t like murderers. I mean just look at February 14^th in South Africa, where Oscar Pistorius’ girlfriend was found shot dead in his house. I won’t go into detail (go read here) but SO MANY had pointed to Oscar, turning their backs on him, not giving him the time of day. This is the great Oscar Pistorius, Paralympic athlete, sprint blade runner. But when we look at Dexter, we feel compassion for him. We don’t want bad things to happen to him because he has had it so rough already. SERIOUSLY? He ritually kills people. Over and over. PREMEDITATED, and we as the audience want him to kill these people because they are bad. But what makes Dexter any better than the people he kills? Yes, ok, Dexter is orphaned and, as he says, was born in blood, BUT Oscar has no legs… Who has it rougher?

I suppose it’s all about your level of sensitivity. But the world is desensitising us, movies and TV shows are making us “gevoelloos” (feeling-less) and has made blood look inviting! Take that Twilight saga crap for instance, or Vampire Diaries. Blood, rituals, sacrifices, vampires, werewolves, warlocks… I get the creeps just writing that… but I sat and watched episode after episode of VD. Wanting to know what happens (never Twilight, my level of intellect goes WAYYYYY beyond Twilight), wanting to know if that really hot guy is going to start dating that pretty girl… or will he suck her blood? I felt sorry for the poor hot guy who had somehow been cursed with the werewolf curse and had excruciating pain as he turned into a werewolf on his first full moon, and the pretty girl vampire who sat by his side until he almost killed her. Felt sorry for the warlock dad who lost his warlock son while they were doing some spell that makes him go into someone else’s house and be invisible but able to move things… You see where I’m going with this? We are made to feel sorry, compassion for the wrong stuff.

Glamorous… bloody glamorous.

What are your thoughts on this?