Hey hey So yeah, after many deliberations and the enormous tragedy of what happened when I lost my entry on Saturday, I have decided to not re-enter it. Not yet, anyway. Suffice to say, all is well which ended well (this I discovered only a few minutes ago when I finally was able to speak to Claire) and it turns out my stupid, drunk friends did not entirely ruin my chances with her... Having said all that, I still have yet to actually make a move. Some things need to be taken slowly - we do work in the same department at the University here in Cape Town; and she is still just a few months out of a 7-year going-since-high-school relationship which ended dismally and from my preliminary fact-finding sorties into Claire's-mindLand, I get the impression that perhaps an office romance is not her concept of a good idea... fortunately, I think this applies to her and anyone and not just her and me. Nevertheless, all things considered, I am sitting kinda pretty, I think; so that's all good. The weekend was largely as predicted two entries ago (my first entry, in fact); and the predictions I made for Friday night were largely accurate... in terms of points A-F which seem to occur every time I go out, we got to approximately half of point B. In other words, I got a bit smashed but didn't puke and also didn't even feel like puking, which is good. We ended up at the oh-so trendy Cubana nightclub out in Claremont (and Claire lives in Claremont although she did decline my invitation to join us) and Claremont is the jewel in the Southern Suburbs crown. Now, the five of us who went out (that's me, Ands the poet/accountant, Stephen the Doctor, Craig the cost accountant and Mario the computer programmer. Me and Ands have been friends since the 5th grade in 1986, Stephen and Craig joined us from 8th grade which is out first year in High School here in South Africa, and Mario transferred into our neighbourhood in 9th grade. That was in 1990, so we've been mates for a long time) we're all Northern suburbs boys. There is a massive north-south rivalry here in Cape Town - it's the bane of us middle-class folks. Southern suburbs people are largely plastic and full of shit, though; and they think the northen suburbs equate to a hole in the ground. Not true. Anyway, so we head to Cubana in Claremont (bypassing the two other Cubanae in the northern suburbs, for some reason) and they were having a massive Miller's Genuine Draft promo. Ands has just got a new job, which he left a lucrative post in England to apply for, so he was just buying boatloads of Miller's from these two scantily clad young things and we won a fuckload of stuff - between the 5 of us we blagged a t-shirt, about 9 lanyard-keychain thingies, six peak-caps, a cd-wallet and a pile of other stuff. What's the first thign you do when you win a hat or a peak? You put it on, right? THen the Cubana bouncers tell you take it off. Then you suggest to them that perhaps they shouldn't give the fucking things away if they don't want people to wear them. They they look at you all skeef and suggest you watch your attitude. Then you suggest that you were merely pointing out that they still have another 200 peaks to give away and that perhaps they are just making their own lives a little difficult. And then they again suggest that you adjust your attitude. And you explain that you know they are only doing their job, but this was in fact the worst-thought-out idea since Communism. And you down your Miller's, grab your bag o' swag, and head out to the next stop, the Springbok Bar. Now I have never been to the Springbok Bar; the last time I was there, it was still called Springfield II, or, as it was known to all and sundry, the Spring Chicken, because even at 18, back in the day, you were like the oldest person in the place. Any place (not restaurants, obviously) like a nightclub or a casino or bar with a liquor licence is immediately barred to 18 and older only, so God only knows why at 18 we were the oldest people in the Spring Chicken. Now, at 27, nothing has changed - we were still the oldest people there in the Sprinkbok Bar, but the average age has increased a bit to about 20. Anyway, we crawled out of there (And this is where my shithead friends almost blew things with Claire by hijacking my phone and calling her up in the middle of the night; then Ands memorised her number and went for a piss and called her from there and actually had a discusison with her!!! He only got back to town 10 days ago and none of them have ever met her, but he did it anyway!!) at about 2 in the morning, had dodgy hotdogs outside (damn they were mmmmmmm good. ALthough the hot-dog lady was certainly not appreciating the lame attempts at humour from Ands and Craig, that's for damn sure. Credit to her for not telling us to just fuck off, really) and awoke late Saturday morning - like 11:30 - to a very apologetic call from Andrew for his mis/beaviour over the phone to Claire. Who in fact was not taking any of my calls. Needless to say, was rather chuffed this morning when she said she was asleep and remembers answering the phone but doesn't remember who she spoke to or what she said. And she said she's used to getting calls in the middle of the night on her mobile so she doesn't bother to switch it off, so it's cool if I want to give her a shout at like 3am (is this chick nuts or what?). So, as I said earlier, it appears that all is well. Which is good. laters