COPE rally

Work work work

Dr Dandala addresses the press at the COPE headquaters in downtown East London. Picture by: Tarryn Liddell 16.04.09

As with most students I do not particularly like to give up my holiday in order to work unless some payment is invloved, but being a Journ student at Rhodes you quickly learn that giving up holiday to work for free is unavoidable. They give it the codename 'vac work' but in fact it is free labour or so I thought....

You see while last year I did do 'vac work' it was not all that different from the stuff we had been writing for journ class. I was interning at a local community newsletter so most of its pages were advertisments and fluffy pieces with only the occasional hard news story.

This year on the other hand I was fortunate enough to get a spot at the Daily Dispatch in East London. I can now truthfully say that I can see the value in 'vac work' besides free labour and I would go back and intern for them anyday. It was a interesting experience that opened my eyes up to the real world of investigative journalism.

Not only that but also a look into the day to day work of a newspaper photographer. I spent my Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week tagging along with the Dispatch photographers on a range of stories varying from gangsterism, elections and general interviews. I have to thank Alan, Theo, Mlondolosi and Nigel who answered my sometimes annoying questions and allowed me to tag along on their photo jobs. You guys were fabulous!

These are some on my photos from the COPE rally which I attended on Thursday 16 April and the ANC rally on Friday 17 April.

Ex Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela and Dr Dandala

Something a little fun on a Friday!

Not that I remembered that it was even Friday until I turned on my radio. I have now entered the exam void where you have no clue whether it is Monday or Friday you just know whether you are writing today or not.

So here’s a little bit of fun for you all – it’s a can you guess what this picture is of?
Look carefully …..
HINT: the location is not what you should be looking at.

HAPPY FRIDAY !!!!!

A Calmness in the morning

Despite the end-of-the-year exams being literally around the corner I woke up this morning with a deep feeling of calmness which I can't seem to explain. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I fixed my radio last night and can now wake up to the lovely airwaves of 5FM once again or maybe I just had a really good dream...I don't know. But whatever it was it has left me in a great mood that I thought I would share with you all through a picture.
It's one of my own so I hope you all like it. It was taken at Cambridge University in the UK.

Have a great Tuesday!

Procrastination as a new age art form

One thing that I have learnt to do really well this year is to procrastinate. Although it might sound like an easy thing to do it is in fact an art! A professional procrastinator is as stealthy as a ninja and as self destructive as a shopaholic at a sale! No matter how much I try and put my mind to it I never seem to get my essays done ahead of time but constantly end up writing them the night before. Some of my fellow journalism class mates like to think of this as motivation rather than slacking off as they say that they are waiting for inspiration to hit (otherwise known as last minute panic). I suppose that if I think of it that way I could rationalise that by waiting until the last minute I am teaching myself how to work in the real world of short deadlines and working under pressure. The only problem with that rationalisation is that I know it’s only half true and fuelled by a desire not to do my work. So in order to combat the progressing procrastination I recruited my friends to help me. One of the ways we now use to keep us working is to have scheduled midnight coffee breaks. We actually stumbled across this method by accident one night when we were pulling an all-nighter to finish off an essay (two in my case). I would never have guessed that a scheduled break would actually help me work but it does. After supper we all head off to our respective rooms to work and later meet up for coffee/tea and sometimes biscuits (yum yum). Seeing as we are all more than a little competitive it kind of acts like a competition to see who has finished the most work thus far. Therefore I don’t know if it will work for anyone else but I thought what the hell if it doesn’t work for you, you will have at least gotten a laugh out of this post.

Something different and old

The world changes and supposedly evolves for the better, or so we are told.

Today has been dedicated to the revision of Greek sculpture for my Classic Civilisation class. While studying one sculpture in particular the Ludovisi Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife I remembered what my sculpture lecturer told us about the history of this sculpture and how the Greek’s treated their enemies. He told us that the sculpture is of a Gaul (a Continental Celtic people, who tried to invade Pergamon). It was commissioned by Attalus I to commemorate their victory over the Gauls. Now I know what you must be thinking because I was thinking the same thing when I first heard that. “Why on earth would he commemorate their victory with a sculpture of a Gaul slaying his wife and himself?” Well the answer is that in those days you would make your enemy out to be great, hence the Gauls are portrayed here as being noble. He has killed his wife so that she is not captured or becomes a victim of warfare and is killing himself as he knows that he has been defeated by his GREATER enemy. They wanted people to look at the sculpture and see the compassion and nobility, but on seeing this they would then feel the greatness of their victory over these noble Gauls.

Very different to the way the world works today hey? As people push each other down in order to look better. We just have to look in a newspaper or turn on the news to see how politicians prey on the weaknesses and mistakes of their opponents to make themselves look stronger. Is this the best way? Who knows maybe the Greeks were onto something?

Things that pass us by?

I was watching the first episode of the new season of Heroes (season 3) yesterday and it had gotten to the voiceover at the end of the episode when I had the strangest feeling of déjà vu. Where had I heard those exact words before? Then it dawned on me…in English class of all places. They were reciting William Butler Yeats’s poem The Second Coming, which is in the Modernism section of our poetry book for this year. This got me to thinking about the workings of the universe as that was not the first time that something like that has happened. Now I might be talking absolute nonsense but does anyone else out there find that when they learn something or discuss something it finds it way into your life? Things like this poem which I never would have recognised in the Heroes episode had it not already been mentioned and discussed. I constantly find myself saying in conversations “my friends and I were just saying” or “it’s funny you say that because just the other day”. Makes me wonder if these things always passed me by and I just didn’t notice or if they only pass me by after I have become aware of them. Now I know it is probably the first explanation of these things passing me by unnoticed but I must admit that the more I toyed with the idea of your path in the universe growing and changing with you the more I liked it. To believe that things happen for a reason is a belief that many people use to make it through the day so I thought that this post would be some food for thought.