Soda Chronicles: Help! I'm turning into a soda!

“Hokey! Hokey, where are you?” I called out, feeling the panic rise in my voice.

In a flash, my sister leaped out of the cupboard, trailed by fine, lightning-white silk. She landed on the table with a frog-like grace, brushing the shimmering strands out of her dark teal hair. Beneath her feet, frost spread across the mahogany like breath on a mirror.

“Hokey!” I said, barely holding back irritation. “Get off the table! You’re freezing it again.”

Hokey hopped down, her eyes wide and round with that puppy-dog look she always uses to get out of trouble. Not this time. I was in full-blown crisis mode.

“My throat is burning, my eyes are watering, my skin’s tingling, my hair’s growing, and my feet are itching,” I said, gesturing wildly. “I think I’m turning into…you-know-what.”

“What?” she croaked.

“A soda!” I blurted, barely holding back a sob.

Hokey’s eyes went even wider, and she started hopping around my room in a frenzy. For a moment, I thought she was laughing, but no, she was in a full-blown panic.

“Call Mama!” I shouted.

Hokey dashed out of the room, her hair streaming behind her, and moments later returned with Mama.

“Hokey said you’re turning into a soda? That’s impossible!” Mama checked my symptoms with a frown, bustling around the room and pulling out bottles and jars. Her beehive hair, normally light green, started sizzling to a bright vermillion. I knew what that meant, she was definitely worried.

“Mama, look!” I whimpered, glancing down. “I’m shrinking!”

Sure enough, my arms and legs were pulling inward, and my skin was feeling oddly cold and fizzy.

“Oh, goodbye, cruel world! Mama, if I’ve been enough of a terror to deserve this, at least let me turn into grape soda. I’ve always wanted to be grape soda.”

Mama pressed a bottle into my hands. “Drink this, honey! It’ll fix you!”

But it was too late. I could feel myself hardening, my skin turning transparent and glassy, and a chill spreading over me. I closed my eyes, bracing for the end.

When I opened them, Hokey and Mama were staring at me. I lay on the bed, glistening with a frosty sheen. A label across my middle read, Dragona’s Poisonous Orange Soda.

Orange soda? Really?

“Well,” I thought, feeling a strange sort of satisfaction. “At least I’m poisonous.”

A note to you. I need to explain my next actions.

Since I started this blog I've been thinking about my old one a lot. In grade 10, we were required to start a LiveJournal, regularly update it and put different types of written entries there. The aim of the LiveJournal blogging experience was to have us writing longer length articles, shorter length pieces and being creative on the web. I think it counted 30% of our term mark and it went on for a few months. 
I used to love writing then. At the time I thought I was going become a writer. 
≈ 25000 words, 5 incomplete books, 11 short stories later and I'm studying engineering. 


I closed my LiveJournal account 3 years ago but I recently came across some of the short stories I posted there. So I'll put them some of them up here for you to read. The first set that I'm putting up is called the Soda Chronicles. It's short stories that lead on from each other. They are highly fictional and crazy! I had a completely different writing style back then. I won't change the stories at all but I have decided to try and create rage cartoons to represent what is happening in stages of the story.


So I hope you enjoy :)

Review: Bravo Pizzeria

Where: Corner of Duncan and South Street, Hatfield, Pretoria

Contact: 012 362 0903 or check out the Bravo Pizzeria Facebook Page

Opening times:
Monday - Tuesday: 12h00 - 21h00
Wednesday: 12h00 - 23h30
Thursday - Sunday: 12h00 - 21h00

Price Range: 
Pizzas: R35 - R55
Other dishes: R35 - R55

Good for: Fixing a pizza craving and a group chill session


Bravo Pizzeria, or Bravo's, is an alternative, student-orientated pizzeria. You’ll immediately notice the seating area looks comfortable and old. I could imagine this is the kind of furniture your grandparents’ beach houses would have. The main seating area is outside, so be sure to go there on a day with clear skies. You'll hear all sorts of alternative, indie music being played. For instance I have heard Animal Collective, La Roux and Tune-Yards (just to name a few). 

The seating/chill area

Bravo's is famous in the Hatfield region for its pizzas but this year they added a few more dishes to their menu. If you’re not into pizza for some reason I suggest you try the other stuff: lasagne, pasta, burgers and fish and chips. You’re on your own there because I’m only certain about their pizzas. All the pizzas are baked in a wood-fired oven. The pizzas generally take 10 minutes to get ready, have thin-bases and a standard tomato pizza sauce. I recommend the Sidewalk Vendetta (R50) which has bacon, avocado and feta cheese; and the Italian Stallion (R50) which has bacon, pepperoni, rib and ham. I have also tried the Yellow Belly (R35) which is made up of cheese, spice, their standard base and a choice of ham, pineapple, mushroom or chill; and the Penny Lane (R55) which has salami, parmesan, basil and figs but instead of figs they used strawberries the one time I tried it. The Yellow Belly is one of their three vegetarian pizzas and the Penny Lane falls under their more interesting pizzas. The Penny Lane is pictured below.

The Penny Lane

Bravo's has a dessert pizza! It's called the Free Boatride for 3 (R25) and it has marshmellows, chocolate sauce and wafers. I suggest you find someone to share it with because attempting it on your own will make you sick. That's what I do at least. My favourite exam activity involves calling up a friend, heading down to Bravo's, ordering a pizza as well as a dessert pizza then heading to campus to sit and eat there. It's a perfect activity to break cabin fever.

Other than food Bravo's is also well known for its Wednesday acoustic music evenings. Different bands come in and use Bravo's as their stage. This generally lasts from 19h45 until 23h00. There has been some drama with having Wednesday night shut down but I do believe Bravo's has a valid license for these events so they will go on. 

Overall, I've always had a good experience at Bravo's so I suggest you make your way down to it. 

Photoshop and I

I learned how to Photoshop by myself. That is, I didn't have formal classes or go to design school. One day I just decided that I'd had enough of Microsoft Paint and Word (yes!), got the software and decided to teach myself through tutorials and playing around with it. 

Now it was hard to make stuff without the tutorials initially. I used to try copy tutorials for the purposes I needed them for.

First Photoshop Attempt

This was a picture I did for one of my friends (early 2009). Notice the lack of her foot in the picture, I could have done her black&white transformation and picked a different set of colours.The way I did this image is almost identical to this tutorial, Michael Jackson Wallpaper Tutorial, I read on abduzeedo.com. You'll see, MJ looks way better.

A lot of my knowledge of how to use different tools and different effects come from  abduzeedo.com. If you're ever in need of inspiration or bored then I suggest you go visit the site. This poster below and the logo just after it are the first things I created without tutorials (late 2009). I remember going into a sports shop just to take a picture of a soccer ball so that I trace it for this poster. I even made that little box image there. 

First thing that didn't require a tutorial

First thing that I ever visualised before making

I used that Acid Test Logo for one of my group projects. Not strictly a logo, more of a graphic print but this Acid Test logo was the first time I visualised something in my head before putting it on Photoshop. I knew exactly how I was going to do it as well. Before this happened I used to sit in front of the computer for hours before I got something I could work with. Today, I make use of sketches if I can't picture anything.

Sketched then Photoshopped

I made this beer bottle cover for a friend who needed it for a chemical engineering project. I had to sketch this one but it came out how I wanted it to. I wouldn't change anything about this one. Now I do Photoshop for fun (to make jokes), because it's my job (I am the marketing girl in a society) or people need stuff done. I should start charging! 

Poster I did for a friend, Super Villain Party

Example of a poster for marketing I'm involved in

Example of a joke that I can make using Photoshop 

In my ideal world I would take photos myself and edit them. Kind of like the image with the ape people. I took that photo of the ape people at a zoo exhibit and just photoshopped the black monolith into the photo. It's a spoof of 2001: A Space Odyssey (for those of you who don't get it). I'll share my camera obsession at a later stage. Should have shared that one first... But whatever! It's fine.

Tools I use to make my stuff:

- Tutorials (we've gone through this one)

- dafont.com (for interesting fonts, I've been using this site since I was in grade 10)

- Photoshop brushes (I love brushes! Grass brushes, smoke brushes, arrow brushes, splatter brushes....)

- http://www.sxc.hu/ (It's a free stock photo website, stops you from using copyrighted images)

- Intuition (You have one too, use it. It stops you from putting out shoddy work. I can actually see when I was uncomfortable with the final product from these pictures)

"Erase Everything" - Geoff Hendriks

I'm supposed to be studying but my brain has temporarily shut down from panic and lack of understanding. I decided in the time that it is rebooting I will write an entry about the phrase that inspired my blog. It's this badge: 

I got it from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York earlier on this year and have had it pinned to one of my handbags. I always get asked what it means every time someone sees it and to be honest I never really gave it any proper thought. I would normally just mutter something like, “You must erase everything in your life like the badge says,” or “I don’t know, that’s what Geoff Hendriks said.”

As I got this badge from an art museum I figured I had to look into it, like it's an artwork. My understanding of art is that we can all look at something and get our own interpretations from it. I still suck at getting my own interpretation, because my mind has been conditioned to see only a few alternatives not an expanse of ideas. Being at MoMA made me slightly uncomfortable because I realised I couldn't "see". Still unsure of what was right I went and checked out Geoff Hendriks. He’s an artist of course and he chose to paint sky imagery in everything he did. The mediums ranged from objects (as you’ll see in the picture below) to plays. 

Geoff Hendriks

Skygun, 1968

(Courtesy of Pavel Zoubok Gallery)

I still do not know the exact context in which Geoff Hendriks said, “Erase Everything.” It is a hard quote to track down on the internet, and I would really like to know what he meant.

My interpretation of the “Erase Everything” quote is this: In my ideal world, I would erase everything that made me unhappy or angry. It would be the final step in forgive and forget. I could create a clean, new canvas to paint my life on. Imagine being able to start again, no grudges, no expectations of failure, loving everyone and trusting everyone. Or maybe I would just erase things or people who do not fit in my life.

But as I thought more about this magical life eraser, I realized it would be pointless. This is my sometimes angry, rational side speaking. Sure, I would love to never feel sad and to forgive people quickly, but if I kept erasing people’s mistakes, I would end up sad for the same reasons all over again. What if I just kept erasing and erasing until I erased myself, like rubbing a hole through paper or painting over mistakes until they turn into a thick, unsightly layer on a canvas?

And what if everyone had access to this eraser? Would we forget big events like World War II and end up repeating the same mistakes? I do not think the written records would disappear, but people might forget how those events made them feel. We need those feelings, painful as they are, to keep such tragedies at bay.

So when I thought of a blog name, Erase Nothing came to mind immediately. I realized I have to keep everything because everything matters. Happiness holds more value when we have experienced sadness. Forgiving someone by choice, rather than erasing or forgetting them, ultimately means so much more.

Stage Make-up Attempt 1

If I ever gave up engineering (highly unlikely) and thought that graphic design was not for me then I could do stage make-up. I just realised how scary I made one of my friends look. Check it out:

You didn't even see the other side of his face where he had this huge scar! I think the Zombie in his costume over-shadowed the Steve Jobs bit in his Zombie Steve Jobs costume.

Cell Block Tango?

Over the past three weeks, I’ve often come home feeling heavy, complaining that cell is hard. This quarter, our discussions have centered around assigning a topic, digging into the Bible to see what God says about it, and removing our own opinions from the matter. It’s been challenging, and I can feel my faith being tested. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I like it. Sometimes, I just want to stay ignorant, believe things as they are, and push away all the difficult questions I’ve carried for so long.

Most weeks, I leave cell feeling sad. There aren’t always answers to the most challenging questions, and sometimes, the answers I do get don’t sit well with me. Maybe it’s just me not having the capacity to understand, but I suppose I’ll have a chat with Him when I get there.

The themes that have troubled me most have been the last two: “The Old Covenant vs. The New Covenant” and “The Israelites.”

We went off on tangents during these discussions, and a recurring issue was the interchangeable use of “Hebrew,” “Jewish,” and “Israelite.” Are they the same? Different? Who exactly are the chosen people God refers to? There’s a verse in the New Testament (I’ll find it for next week) that says God intentionally blinded and deafened the Israelites to Christ until the Gentiles return to Israel. So, who does that include now? The Jewish people? What about Israelites who are Christian? Does this mean they get a “free pass” until that day comes?

When discussing The Old Covenant vs. The New Covenant, a friend asked: “Didn’t the Jewish people notice that there is a new covenant? I mean, God’s wrath has ended.” She was referring to moments like Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues, and people being struck down by lightning.

Another friend responded, “Maybe His wrath is still here; we just explain it away with science.”

This brought up verses claiming God’s wrath did end because of Jesus and that we’ll only see it again on Judgment Day. And that’s where everything started to unravel for me.

Who is responsible for all the natural disasters now? Or even death?

• Is it still God?
• Is it Satan?

Adam and Eve sinned, releasing death into the world. That’s fair enough. In the Old Testament, Satan held the key to spiritual death because the path to heaven or hell was defined by Old Testament rules. Then Jesus came. He died for our sins and, through resurrection, reclaimed the key to spiritual death. That makes sense to me. If we’re saved, we never have to die spiritually.

But who, then, is responsible for physical death? Sometimes, physical death leads to spiritual death if someone isn’t saved.

Take the example of a Muslim boy who gets shot before he’s had a chance to hear about Christ. What if he’d lived a few more years, escaped his circumstances, and found the good news? Why doesn’t he get that chance?

Or what about people living in remote villages on secluded islands, far from missionaries or Bibles? Why does God make it easier for some people to be saved and not others?

If it’s God, then why create people at all if He knows they’ll die spiritually? Doesn’t He already know the plan?

And this, I suppose, is where faith comes in. At some point, I just have to close my eyes and believe that it will all make sense one day. Otherwise, I’ll drive myself crazy.

Other random questions we didn’t get answers to:

• Cain found a wife and worried that others would kill him for murdering Abel. Where did those other people come from? Adam and Eve alone?
• Why didn’t God give anyone else the chance to be the Chosen People?
• When did the Israelites become Jewish?

Review: L'épis Doré

Where: Greenlyn Village, 13th Street Side, Menlo Park, Pretoria (directions)


Contact:012 346 7853 


Opening times:
Monday - Friday: 07h30 - 18h00
Saturday - Sunday: 08h30 - 15h00


Price Range: R40 - R90


Good for: A date or girls' outing

L'épis Doré is a French restaurant, expect plenty of freshly baked pastries and baguette. When you walk into the L'épis Doré you are greeted by the scent of lavender and french furniture both of which I love. There is a kind of peacefulness about the place, especially because most of the tables are outside in the gardens. When we went there we were placed in a separate pavilion that had a miniature waterfall. I do suggest going when it is a nice, sunny day as alternative seating lies within the restaurant which houses the bakery. I guess that setting would be preferable during winter. 


I've been to L'épis Doré twice and both times I've ordered something different. The first time I went there I ordered Pavot Poulet (pictured below). It was the best R63 I have ever spent on a baguette. The potato salad on the side also made me quite happy.

The second time I rushed straight to the bakery and ordered two Pain Aux Raisins (R13.90 each). L'épis Doré adds a custard filling to it and I was made aware of this by the owner of the cafe. He was sitting at a table by the till. On both occasions that I visited the service was average. The waiters did take a bit long with orders and picking up dishes. The owner was really helpful in explaining what to get while I was at the bakery section of L'épis Doré.


I do recommend a visit. Perhaps a leisurely visit with the girls, or a date (because I did note there were quite a few couples there) or even taking out your mom for a treat. 

Printslam Entry 2011

This was a Printslam entry I did for Oppikoppi 2011. Sadly it didn't win but that's okay. It was fun making it. The theme for Oppikoppi 2011 was the song below, "Unknown Brother" by The Black Keys.


Unknown Brother - The Black Keys
Though I've never met you and we've spoke not a word
I'll never forget you through the stories that I've heard
For you, unknown brother, my baby's mother's in pain
Cause your soul is in heaven but your memory remains

Unknown, unknown brother
I'll meet you someday
Unknown, unknown brother
We'll walk through fields where children play

Your eyes shined bright when you were a kid
Your sisters loved you and all that you did
Big brother, big brother don't worry a bit
Your flame has not faded since the day it was lit

Your life was joy
Your mama's only boy
And when the skies are blue
Big brother, they're blue for you

We'll smile like pictures of you as a boy
Before you retired to heavenly joy

Unknown, unknown brother
I'll meet you someday
Unknown, unknown brother
We'll walk through fields where children play


(Courtesy of SongMeanings)