Oh Happiness

This has been the soundtrack to my life for the past couple of days - I managed to get my hands on my South African visa on Friday, over a month after submitting it and that made me feel happy ... very happy.

I didn't realise how stressed I had actually been about the whole thing until I had been relived of it. I have just become aware that I have not really been functioning properly for at least a couple of weeks not really being able to focus on organising myself because there is always the niggling thought that I might not actually be going. That said it has definitely been a 2 weeks well spent praying that the visa would come through and it did! How much sweeter the South African air will taste now that I have had to endure to obtain it. I am now extremely excited about the next 6 months and all it has in store for me. Bring on the balmy 30 degrees (centigrade for all you american readers)

Getting currency was one of those things that the niggling doubts prevented but on my way home from the South African Consulate I picked some up and now all I have left to do is pack - which is fairly easy given that I can pretty much fit everything I own into a couple of bags.

It's quite strange collecting currency, there are few times when one is walking around with plies of cash in ones' hand and for good reason. It was a little unnerving to have a small line of people behind me listening to the cashier count out rand into the thousands. If they hadn't heard that it was Rand they could be forgiven for thinking that I was loaded. On that note - I think it would have been far more unnerving to have the same situation in South Africa where robbery is somewhat more likely ...

The conversion rate from sterling to rand is about 1:12 but even though I know that I have never felt so bad ass carrying a £20 note I mean seriously - it has a cheetah on the front!

O.K, moving on from money ...

... and on to tea

This is a retake of a photo I uploaded to Facebook recently stating that I had had a productive day except this has a significantly higher stack of tea bags than that one did.

 On a separate but related note about a month ago now I was kept up for the first time due to the affects of caffeine, a bizarre and strange happening as it had never happened to me before despite regularly drinking many cups of tea immediately before bed and if you know me or have read certain posts here then you know that I drink an awful lot of tea and this made me think that the amount of caffeine that I take in cant be great for me and now that it is actually affecting me I should do something about it.
If you combine this thought with the realisation  that for a month my house mate and I had mistaken the decaf jar of tea for the normal tea and as a result had drunk and given all our guests decaf tea for that length of time without noticing then you come to the realisation that you should just drink decaf and so that stack of tea bag you see up their it doesn't represent and caffeine at all.

O.K this is starting to feel like a couple of posts rolled into one and 'Oh happiness' may have finished now, depending on your reading speed (I read super slowly) and if that is the case then you should just go here and listen to the rest of the album and then buy it because it is amazing.

If that does not take your fancy then let your ears suck on this:





There is quite a bit of music getting a mention and that is because I have been preparing for the epic amount of travelling that is going to take place which means that a good amount of non repetitive music is a must.
and on that note check out  this album by Switchfoot - Hello hurricane at only £4 it is a steal.
and this cover by James Vincent McMorrow is better than the original - Higher Love

I think we are done here enjoy - it may be a little while until I can post again.

Title font 'Travel Typewrighter'