Graduation 2011

On Thursday, April 19, 2012, the 2011 graduation ceremony for the faculty of Informatics and Design was held in the Multipurpose Hall at the Cape Town campus.

Along with my fellow classmates from CPUT, I graduated with my National Diploma in Public Relations Management.  I obtained Cum Laude which is an aggregate of 75% over the three years of study.

The graduation ceremony was absolutely beautiful!  To be honest, for the first time in my university career, I really felt proud to be at CPUT.  As they started to play Gaudeaums Igitur when the Academic Procession walked down the aisle, I began to feel a lump in my throat and tears form in my eyes.  I looked around and felt so proud to be sitting there with my fellow graduates and to be acknowledged for my hard work and effort by lecturers and guests alike.  My mother and father attended the ceremony which was followed by an amazing lunch at Fat Cactus restaurant in Kloof Street with my best friend (and fellow graduate :) ) Leigh-Ann Brown and her family.

This definitely was one of the best days of my life thus far as I am the first person from my family to graduate.  I truly felt honoured to be there and am looking extremely forward to the 2012 graduation ceremony where I will be obtaining my BTech in Public Relations Management and throwing my graducation cap in the air!

It is a poor idea to lie to yourself!

Although it is an extremely poor idea to lie to yourself (nevermind lying to others aswell), but isn't it something that we do all the time anyway?  Everybody lies.  No matter what you say, not one person can say that they have never told a lie to someone, or even to themselves.

You might regularly tell yourself: "I don't care what people think of me" or "I don't care that he's with someone else" or, perhaps one of the best ones, "This one chocolate wont be that bad for me..."  All of these are lies that we try to convince ourselves of.  They are not true.  And by lying to ourselves, we create a false sense of security which could be detrimental to us in the long-run.


The main reason we lie to ourselves is to make us feel better about a bad situation.  When we cannot face the negative parts of our lives, we try to make them more tolerable.  Suffice to say that if we begin to feel comfortable with lying to ourselves, it opens up many other doors for us to start lying to others too.  And once it starts to get out of hand, we become compulsive liers and even start believing our own lies.  It is a vicious, never-ending cycle that we, ourselves, have created.



My advice would be to just face the facts.  Nobody's life is filled with sunshine and roses - we all are subjected to many troublesome times during our lives.  It is how we handle these times that moulds us into the person we are.  By facing our negativity, we can begin to accept it and try to change it to positive ways instead of misleading ourselves.  It is a poor idea to lie to yourself as the only person getting hurt in the process is YOU!

Xavier's Wedding - 14/04/2012

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, I attended my friend, Xavier's, wedding with my friends Chloe and Kirsitn.  The four of us go way back as we all worked together years ago at a craft shop in Plattekloof (which was my first ever job!) and grew a very special bond.  Since meeting in 2007, we have stayed as close as ever and our friendship is still just as strong.

Xavier married her fiance, Andre, in an intimate ceremony in Greyton at The Oaks Estate.  As it was a very far drive for us, we had to find accommodation to stay over for the night as driving back was not an option.

The wedding was absolutely beautiful with long rectangular tables decorated with white and cream flowers and candles, and lanterns hanging from the ceiling which elegantly lit up the reception venue as it turned to evening.  There were beautiful speeches and even a photo booth with fun and crazy props that guests could make use of to keep us entertained.

We had a wonderful time celebrating their union with delicious food, great music and amazing company.

Here's to Xavier and Andre:  May you witness many years of happiness, love and enjoyment!

The sound of one hand clapping

When two hands are joined together in very fast movements, they make the sound that we refer to onomatopoeically as "clapping."  If the term for two hands being joined together is described by an onomatopoeic word, surely the sound that one hand makes would also be referred to by means of an onomatopoeia?  If this is true, we can conclude that the sound of one hand 'clapping' makes no sound at all.  It is silent.  It is nothing.

In an old Zen story, Master Mokurai told his young student, Toyo, to find out what the sound of one hand clapping was.  After Toyo spent almost a year trying to find the answer, implying that the sound of one hand clapping was the sound of music, dripping water, wind and locusts, he finally concluded that there was, in fact, no sound.  It is nothing.

For me, one of the most beautiful and heart-warming things to see is a room or auditorium filled with people performing the 'deaf clap.'  In deaf culture, deaf audiences make use of a a visually expressive variant of clapping.  Instead of joining their palms together to make a 'clapping' noise, they raise their hands straight up with outstretched fingers and twists their wrists.  Even though there is 'nothing' or no sound, there is just beauty, showing their appreciation and admiration in a way that deaf people can also understand and feel.

Luck is only a matter of chance

The term ‘luck’ can be defined as:

1. Good things that happen by chance; or
2. Chance considered as a force that causes good or bad things to happen.

In both the above definitions I have stressed the word ‘chance’ because that is exactly what luck is.  Luck cannot be made or earned.  It is something you have by fortune, or destiny if you will, but not because of anything that you do.  Our lives are not perfect mathematics.

How can every single aspect of our lives be planned out?  Think of winning the jackpot in a casino or having a royal flush in a poker game.  Those things are definitely not planned - you are just plain lucky in those situations.

I definitely do not consider myself a lucky person.  I never win any prizes or competitions.  The fact is, there is nothing I can do to change those outcomes.  If people really believed that luck wasn’t a matter of chance, but instead that people who worked hard were the ones that were lucky, why would they still wish others “good luck” for something, or knock on wood to not jinx something that they have just said or heard?

Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity.  He did this by an apple falling on his head.  I don’t think he planned for that to happen.  He was just in the right place at the right time – as fate or chance would have it.

People very often confuse luck for reward or credit that they have received as a result of their hard work.  From my point of view luck is an unknown an unpredictable phenomenon that causes something to happen, and is not determined by your hard work.

Suffice to say that I can work as hard as I want, but I will still, unfortunately, not win the lottery!

Not all who wander are lost

Being lost could take a physical form where, geographically, you have no idea where you are and cannot find your desired location, or an emotional form where you feel out of place and do not know which path your life should take.

Both forms happen to me quite often. The former occurs while driving in an area I am not used to. I often get lost and begin to panic slightly, but have learnt to never leave the house without knowing where I'm going or without checking my GPS or Google Maps.

The latter also happens to me quite often, as I'm sure it does with most people throughout their lives. We very often find ourselves questioning things such as: 'Did I study the right thing?' or 'Am I really happy in this relationship?' or 'Where am I going in life at the moment?' All these questions lead us to wander, but do not necessarily mean that we are lost.

Sometimes in life, we need to wander off slightly as this is how we learn things we did not previously know. This could be in the form of becoming acquainted with another part of our country that we were too scared to ventur in to, or a deeper meaning of achieving satisfaction with the decisions we have made in our lives. If we didn't wander every now and then, we would never know if the decisions we have made are the right ones or not.

Wandering does not mean that we are lost. It means that we are merely trying to find some sort of reassurance in what we have done in our past, or some guideline as to what we should do in our future.