Postcards

Yesterday, my dad found a box of old photos and things that had belonged to my grandad. Our house is still full of boxes and random pieces of furniture in odd places as I mentioned before, but we're going through them all slowly and making some progress. There were some pretty awesome old photographs which I may scan and post up here if I feel so inclined one day, but for now I three really cool old post cards to share:


I love seeing old photos of cities that I know. Its like looking at a really good friend's baby photos. The caption on the back of this first post card reads:

JOHANNESBURG: Hillbrow. The 271m (889 ft.) J.G. Strijdom micro-wave Tower at Hillbrow is the highest structure in Southern Africa and in good weather can be seen from as far as 80km (50 miles) away. Photo by B.K. Bjornsen


I really loved this old photo of the Carlton Centre, standing loftily above a rather different looking 1970's Jo'burg.


Lastly my favourite: A wonderful old photo of Durban. I'm not sure when exactly this photo, accredited to a Mr. John Hone, was taken, but the post card is dated 11/11/85. The arrow drawn in blue pen on the post card points to the block of flats my dad stayed in when he first moved to Durban.

Varsity starts in a week. Holidays have been great, but I am quite looking forward to a bit of purpose again. Expect a lot for Architecture related posts in the next few months!

Post

Today I received something absolutely amazing, from someone rather nice by post.
So cool.



Thank you. =)

Summer Sale

Got this sweet little piece of junk mail in the post today:


So cool! Well done Exclusive Books.

The Funeral

The girls sat in their seats,
In their pressed school uniforms.
How the church echoed with their grief,
As I walked through the doors.

I saw her on the steps,
With the stitches in her face,
But found not a single word
To complement her sad embrace.

But don't you hang around,
There's a beautiful night out there.
But on your favourite pair of shoes,
And tie a ribbon in your hair.

'Cos as that hour hand rolls by,
There's a longing in his wake,
That with each slow degree
Would wain a little heart-ache.

More friends

A little while ago I wrote about our last Gentlemen's Evening of 2009. Well I posted a picture. GME is a tradition we've developed, and basically just an excuse for some of my friends and I to dress up fancy, drink Gin and Tonic and such, and hang out. It's good fun though.

This month however, for some reason or other, a few of the girls came too. Now, this does not follow protocol, but it was still pretty great.

We had it at my friend Kyle's, who has a wonderful balcony which faces out over the city, perfect for sun downers. Meet Kim, Graham and Rebecca:




And some more boys in suits.

Drown

I can't say I've been very productive with my holidays, well not with the important stuff. I've been very productive as far as food-eating, fun-having, sunburnt-getting, etc, goes.

Also, I've been writing and recording a whole lot of new stuff! I've got a couple more lined up, but for now, you get this:


(Facebook/RSS link)

In comparison to the others I've been doing lately, this one's very stripped down. Just one guitar track and a couple of vocal tracks.

I'm not sure why I've been writing such morbid stuff lately, but I really enjoyed doing this one. I suppose its very traditional/folky compared to my usual stuff, but I quite like it and I hope you do to.

My comment boxes are looking very empty. I'd really love to hear from anyone who reads my posts, however seldom you do. I recently checked my Analytics for this site and I'm really excited to see my little map getting greener and greener. So if you're here from Belgium, Spain, India, Japan, New Zealand, etc. I'd particularly like to hear from you!

My God Doesn't Live Under Little Boys' Beds

My God doesn't live
In books full of poems
Written by dead men
Who never left their homes,
Or in old stone buildings,
Or deep catacombs,
Or in religious wars
From which no-one returns.

No, my God doesn't live
Under little boys' beds,
Waiting to strike
When they don't eat their veg.
In old cloistered walls,
Or intellectuals' heads,
Or in each passing day
That the setting sun sheds.

No, my God lives inside
Every Sunday School kid,
Every old widow dreaming
Of loving again.
In quiet men's dreams
And forceful men's actions.
Not in fighting to win,
But the Grace failure brings.

Not in laws and commands,
But the Spirit within,
Now convicting,
Now transforming,
Now comforting.
So it is that our hearts
In our chests they must sing.
To the rhythm of each day
The rising sun brings.

Roaring Lion

I bought a relatively cheap bottle of wine last night from a display of new start up, and BEE owned wines. There were a few different ones, but I picked this bottle of Roaring Lion for one reason, and one reason only. The awesome label:


As a child I was always told never to judge a book by its cover, but in the design world it really is the other way around. I'm learning more and more that good covers make up about 50% of a good book!

In this case, it was also actually a rather tasty wine. Definitely worth buying again.


That little red label at the bottom reads: South African Wine, 1659, Celebrating 350 years, which I suppose means SA have been making wine for 350 years.

Well, SA wine, Happy Birthday!

Om Nom Nom Nom

I love summer!

I've Done You Wrong

Its been a while since I did a new music post, but I thought it was about time I did.
A couple days ago a posted a little poem-effort-thing in a note with the same title as this one. Well, you guessed it, those few lines have become a song.

It goes like this:


RSS/Facebook Link.

Since I'm still on holiday, I've had a lot of free time on my hands, so I've been writing and recording and scrunching up paper and throwing around guitars quite a bit. Admittedly this one may be rather over produced, but it was really a lot of fun seeing what I could do with a really simple song and some new software I've been playing with.

I also added some electric guitar stuff which I haven't done on a Hiroshima Sunrise song before, so that was quite exciting. Not sure I'm too happy with the tone though; I'm starting to see the flaws of this stupid web cam mic technique.

As always, trying anything too complex always serves to show up my lack of expertise. Lesson of the day: James is NOT a sound technician. Hell! Multiple equalizers and effects on multiple channels are fun, but not easy, so excuse the shoddy quality in sections. (Big sections.)

Anyway.
Hope you like it.

You may be interested to know...

That the Burj Dubai was finished yesterday.
Well, it's been renamed the Burj Khalifa after Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, the president of The United Arab Emirates who bailed Dubai out of about $10 billion of debt last month.

But at 828 meters above the earth, greed and excess has never looked so damn good!


For anyone reading this without the slightest hint of an idea of what I'm talking about, the Burj Khalifa is now the world's tallest building. It's 160 stories tall, more than twice the height of the Empire States building and considerably taller than the previous tallest building, Taipei 101, at 509m.

Work on the building began in 2004, and was concluded by the opening ceremony last night.

The main structure is composed of a re-enforced concrete core with steel and glass cladding.

You can find the rest of the facts and figures here.

I have a few friends..

Believe it or not, I do.

My friend Nick took these a while back with his fish eye lens and my camera, I assume, since they're on my computer somehow. I was just clearing up my hard drive and noticed these and thought them quite nice. They're from a rad sunny day a little while back in September, at an exhibition put on by this guy.

I've Done You Wrong

I've done You wrong,
Since I was up to your knee.
My hair down to my shoulders,
And my heart upon my sleeve.

But how many beers,
And how many cigarettes,
Could blur or blind my vision
Of Your graciousness?

'Cos I'm just a boy
Who never learned to swim.
I'm standing on the edge,
Afraid of jumping in.
This swimming pool's
Full of children and old men:
Half float round like the leaves,
The other pushing deeper in.

Friendly Fires

Happy new years.
That's about all I'm going to say in regards to 2010. Interested to see what everyone in this country will have to talk about now that its finally upon us.
Lets see.
I look forward to a time when all of our buildings are no longer adorned with huge soccer balls.

Moving on.

Yesterday, driving home from a rather successful town shopping mission, some friends and I were met by billows of smoke and a couple police cars and directed back up the road. Curiosity took over though, and we stopped to have a look at what the hold up could be. Well, an electrical box had somehow caught fire and a lot of people were getting quite excitable.

Fun.

It went down something like this:







Welcome to the 10's!