Small part of the Identity missing .

Up until this day, the reason for me putting on a pair of earrings every morning was just an extension of my outfit plus earrings are the cheapest way of changing my look. Thinking of something to do for the blog was very hard, I hate doing things that are outside of my comfort zone, outcomes I can’t control so every suggestion was met with a loud No! I was not going to mess up my sleep pattern by going to watch the sunrise at the monument, I couldn’t go to the township, it wouldn’t be a new experience I’ve lived there for the better half of my years. My friend mentioned that she had never ever seen me without earrings, and that is exactly what I was going to do.
I took to the task, it seemed easy enough, but boy was I wrong. Most people are probably rolling their eyes right now, thinking “psh, what’s the worst that could happen, without earrings”. It was the longest hour of my life, earrings are part of my identity, just like I need to wear underwear everyday (To much info, I know), I need to wear earrings. I felt as if my ears had become my face, the first thing that people would see about me, girls would be disgusted in me, I felt as if I hadn’t showered , I truly felt empty. I know, I always judge those girls who cry when taking of make-up, I judged them and here I was, feeling as though I should walk around with my head hung low. I have to admit that after 45 minutes I opened my handbag and put on what I had concluded as “my identity” back on.
I learnt a big lesson that day, our identity is made up of so many different things, like a puzzle, ,when one piece is gone the identity is not complete, even though you are the only person who realises that a piece is missing.

Schrodinger's Cat and the HIV corollary.

On Tuesday the 27th of October I had my first HIV test. The day before I went to the Sanatorium with a friend to get some vitamins and we decided on the spot to sign up for a test the following day. I had never really put much thought into getting a test but as soon as I signed up I began to think quite deeply on the subject. I have never doubted my HIV status but I became rather anxious to see the result. I arrived on time and was led to a little room at the end of a corridor where I was left alone with the man entrusted with counselling me and giving me my sentence. The psychologist/counsellor was a nice man, we got along well, having candid conversion and getting through the pre-test counselling. He must have been satisfied with my overall knowledge and confidence on the subject of HIV and my status, apart from when he asked me if I did drugs and shared needles with my friends! A nurse then entered the room and the fear of the unknown started to hit me as she cleaned my right index finger with a small cloth of alcohol/anti-septic. The pain was fleeting and she used a pipette to suck up a small amount of my blood and placed it on the little testing console. She placed it on a counter, covered with a page, and said she would return in 5 minutes to review the result. We made small talk while I waited anxiously, thinking about all the different possibilities at that moment in time. It was like the one thought experiment I heard about in a science lecture, known as Schrodinger’s Cat. Schrodinger’s Cat was a theory s whereby hypothetically a cat was placed in a box along with a vial of poison gas, and at a certain time a hammer would either break the vial releasing the gas and killing the cat or would not, leaving the cat alive. After the allotted amount of time it is postulated that the cat is both alive and dead and one cannot know until you remove the box and have visual evidence. At that moment in time I did not know whether or not I had HIV, and both possibilities existed. The nurse returned and after checking the test kit filled out a form and passed it to the counsellor. After a brief pensive moment he said “You’re fine” and I laughed in relief. I’m glad that I had the test as I think it is the responsibility of all young adults, especially in South Africa, to know one’s status and be aware of the risks and responsibilities that we face.

WHO DID WHAT , WHERE?

http://confessionsofjournstudents.blogspot.com
A secret is something that no one would want other people to know about. When one writes the “CONFESSIONS OF JOURN STUDENTS” it drew my attention to this particular blogpost making me wonder, what could these confessions be that they would want to expose???
This is a blog about three journ students who confess things about their live or what they did. What I found interesting was that, at the beginning one of the journ student introduced the readers of how they were at home and what kind of person they were perceived to be including what kind of personality they were classified to be and over one night just a sip of one drink it totally changed their lives. The writing style of these bloggers just kept me wanting to read more and adding some humour just made it a really great blog to read. The layout of the page was black all over which brought out the content of the blog. By adding pictures was a good idea due to making it easier for the readers to scroll down and look at what they spoke about. These were truly confessions of journ students because I myself would not reveal information that was revealed there. Although it was fun to read this blog and humorous myself i did not find any serious topics that they wanted to share, it was all about having fun , which was not a bad idea. But all in all these are confession that i would say parents should not read. Like the saying says, what happens at university stays at university!

i came , i read, i concord!!

reading books ha always been a fun thing for me that i do in my spare time.....but finishing a book has never happened before. i usually read the first few chapters than i go the next book. This bad habit needed to stop. Monday afternoon i walked into the school library and went to the second level. I did not want to choose a simple book that had less than 100 pages. On arrival i first walked around than decided to turn to my left, close my eye's and just pull out a book and read it that day and finish it. so i did that! I pulled out the book on the Holocaust....WHAT WAS I THINKING...... i scratched my hair , took a deep breathe and started to read. 11 chapters with 389 pages to read. by wednsay night i was already half way through the book. unfortunalty i got sick during the course of the week and i had set back. the doctors told me i needed to rest and just get better. lying in my bed i was tossing and turning due to bordum.... so i thought to myself , " my body might be week but my mind can still capture information which means i can read so i sat up and finished the book. this was thursday night. i was proud of myself, although i didn finish the task of reading a book in a day i actually managed to read a book and FINISH IT. WHOOP WHOOP !!!!

Wallowing in the S.H.I.T.

Sugar Honey Ice Tea is a blog by 3 fellow JMS1 bloggers, writing under the pseudonym’s Sugar Honey, Ice and Tea. Their personal profiles provide interesting backgrounds on their choice of pseudonym and their lives, as demonstrated by Tea’s statement, “As a student of the school of life I am here to enlighten like a hot cup of TEA swallowed too quickly burning the chest”. Each writer has set out to create a distinctive persona from the beginning, each providing a unique and interesting perspective on various issues. Basically, as the name suggests, this blog is da S.H.I.T! This blog is colourful, creatively designed, full of energy and is always interesting, combining the personalities of three eccentric characters to create a blog that is difficult to forget about. This statement found on the blog sums up its overall ethos: “Welcome to the craziest blog around! Get ready to think and feel like 3 different people - ALL AT THE SAME TIME! This blog is schizophrenic, so you don't have to be... But it sure does help.” The blog's main focus is entertainment news, providing insightful reviews of the latest hip-hop albums to be released, all the while making use of vibrant language, unbiased referencing and colourful and bold writing to capture and keep the reader's attention. The writing, and even the photos that are featured in the blog are permeated throughout with a distinct hip-hop flavour making it unique, amusing and exciting. The S.H.I.T. is a great blog to read, even if you're not interested in the world of entertainment.

Gobbledy Gook, oh my Fook!

I'm constantly finding out that Rhodes offers so many subjects. Everyday I here of someone going a HAM (History and Appreciation of Music) lecture of Classical Civilizations. So when I heard of one of my friends going to a Gobbledy Gook lecture, I couldn't resisit the temptation for a new experience...
It was eerie and spooky, a massive lecture theatre with an odd looking wiry haired man, a distant relative of Albert Einstein I was told, stood with his back facing the audience, his hand poised to write with some chalk. There seemed to be a vacuum that created an echoey space, if you took a wrong step you could be sucked into the vortex which was the lecturn. "Use the Squeeze Theorom to find the Second Order Homogeneous Differential Equations of the
Tangent Plane Approximation" the 'clever guy' said.
Just like I don't trust any human with 11 fingers, the same goes for any word with more than 11 letters. I was highly suspect. Was this a capitalist brainwashing lecture, where subliminal messgaes get flashed through split second frames only to leave you thristing for a Coke at the end of the lecture? My ears pricked up, I wasn't going to be caught off guard. Some more brainwashing ensued, at one stage when the words consisted of 15 plus letters I even blocked my ears for fear of being hypnotised. It was an unsettling experience to say the least. Walking out the lecture I thought the worst was over, I walked out the building and glanced up at a sign "Mathematics Department", more than 11 letters, I quickly shot my eyes to the floor... shoe anthoer close call!

Predator Editor

ETdit... Etdit... Edit! I cannot express my disgust of unedited work. To be reading an article quite pleasantly and run into a grammatical error or poorly used word is off-putting. We aren’t robotic grammar machines, and thank God for that, but when there are so many bulging errors and slap-dash sentences being strung together, it really does show badly on the writer. I conjure up images of drooling idiots with elongated heads that hold nothing but a cranium of cobwebs. The Yellow Brick Rhode is no exception. Koodos to the bloggers however, they have some interesting articles, with some good sports writing by Tucky. As journalist bloggers we are always looking to share opinions and create platforms for feedback, and I think Yellow Brick Rhode has managed to accomplish that. Chris has a provocative writing style, although at sometimes it is too “dude check this out... I’m this... I dig that” (after all this is a journalism blog not a personal diary), that is not just a summary of an interesting article but a written down thought process. So often we tend to regurgitate other people’s writings in a more concise way, when we should be broadening our readers’ thoughts on the topic. Sinikiwe Mqadi, I’m afraid to say, is a huge culprit for all that is wrong with blogging. I presume he was eating supper, learning for Statistics and brushing his teeth at the same time as writing the article. To make those many mistakes and not be consciously aware of it is mind boggling, not that there was a mind to boggle in the first place. I’m a debater so I know that there is always a rebuttal, so feel free to comb through my post, but don’t feel embarrassed when you don’t find any editing mistakes!