97: Lift Loathing

Guess who’s fresh from the beauty salon, lookin’ all stylish? Me! I finally took the plunge and called the salon a few buildings down from mine this morning to book an appointment. The salon is called Pink and its in an apt building next to mine called Hip-Hop Plaza. I frequently walk by Hip-Hop Plaza and wonder why I don’t live there. I mean, its called Hip-Hop Plaza, and for no apparent reason really. There must be something cool going on in there.

Anyway, I get to my hair appointment and am asked if I would like tea or coffee. This is off to a good start! I order tea and am then whisked back to the hair washing area where I am seated in a leather lounger with my head tipped into a sink and my feet propped up on an ottoman. Then I proceed to get a 30 minute hair wash/scalp massage. I wonder if I have died and gone to heaven. Next I am shown to my chair, given a tray of tea, milk, sugar, and two biscuits. The stylist chats me up about what I’m doing here since I’m clearly not from here while combing all the rats out of my hair and giving me a trim. She pays very close attention to detail while cutting my hair and then gives me a fabulous blowout. She even does a little bit more trimming after I’m dry and explains that she cut my hair in some interesting way to try and eliminate the horror of the ends I walked in with (haven’t gotten a cut since Nov). I think I love her. 

I chose today to go in because on Tuesdays and Thursdays they have a 25% discount for students. My total comes out to R 235, I pay her R 260 and she is floored that I don’t want change (apparently they don’t tip their stylists much/at all here). I hope she’ll just accept it as a cultural token thing and walk away from the best hairwash/cut/style of my life paying $28. WINNING.

When I get home, Biva and Justine are chilling about the apartment. I laugh and point out to them how funny it is that Justine has the loudest talking voice on the planet and Biva the quietest. I have to ask Biva to repeat herself no less than 43 times a day because I never can hear her. Justine is going to toast and English muffin, but for some reason, half of the muffin won’t go into the right side of the toaster. She looks in and low and behold there is a MELTED TOY CAR in our toaster!! I come running over to see and about die laughing. I got a red Hot Wheels toy in my Cheerios last week and stuck it on top of the microwave along with one I had gotten before that. I guess it rolled into the toaster when we weren’t around and then one of us toasted something in one side without noticing a CAR was stuck in the other. Justine spend 10 minutes prying the car out and seemingly annihilates our toaster. We decide to try it out again anyway, just to make sure it really is broken. No telling how much Connect would charge us if we broke something… Turns out it works! You just have to toast one thing, on the side that isn’t busted up, at a time.

I am content and go upstairs to watch a movie with Alison. Its some French movie. Oh and it turns out it isn’t even a movie, it’s a collection of short films set in Paris that are all just plain weird. We’re not even entertained. Well, I really liked one actually, about two mimes who meet in jail and fall in love. Ah Paris! Then I get a phone call… Its Justine and apparently somehow the toaster blew a fuse or something and now none of the plugs in our apartment work. GREAT. Now everything might just go back in the fridge (again) if we don’t get someone out to fix whatever is going on ASAP. Ha, stupid Hot Wheels car.

On the way back down to my room, I nearly have a heart attack in the lift. The other day, while I was at a workshop with my supervisor helping a children’s rights non-profit here in town develop tools for their M&E system, the headline of a copy the Cape Times sitting on a table caught my eye. Something about a lift breaking and free-falling THREE stories in Parliament with a bunch of people in it!! Whhaaat! My mind rushed back to conversations I’d had with my friends in the creepy, horrifying lifts in our building. They would always comment that they were scared the lift would break and fall, especially that one time we got stuck in it after going to Robben Island. But I would say, “Nah guys, elevators have safety mechanisms that would keep it from falling. It won’t happen.” Just then, any illusions I had about safety mechanisms were shattered as I read one woman’s account of what happened given as she lay in a hospital bed with knee and back injuries. So flash forward to me in the lift now – as I’m going down, it goes two floors, then slows down and gives a big lurch. I remember what Justine said once about the elevator safety position for if it drops – you get in the corner in a squat and brace yourself against the walls. At the lurch I jump back into the corner and prepare the brace myself. Then it starts moving semi-normally again and I re-punch my floor and make it safely back. But I almost cry because that was terrifying. Stupid African lifts and their non-existent safety measures!

Anyway, some other random things going on lately… The Cape Town Jazz Festival was last weekend. I didn’t get tickets because apparently you have to get them WAY in advance and they’re pricey. Oops. So I settle for going to the free J fest concert in Greenmarket Square on Wednesday after work. That was a great success. I also happened upon a Desmond and the Tutus show at the Assembly Saturday night. They’re some local rock bank that was a smashing show, one of my favorite nights here. Sad thing is, I’m running out of nights to go out – 4 weekends left before I hit the road on my safari. Gotta make em count! Oh and the other sad thing is that its got very fallish/wintery here! Its cold and gets dark so early that I can’t hike after work. I barely have time to do anything after work besides scurry home out of the dark and cold. That’s a bummer. But whatever, Cape Town still rules! Loving life here so much!