Monday, January 31, 2011

(Kinda) good weekend: Venus and The Flat-cooling Friends

On Friday night we drive through to Phil's flat. It was the last night he'll be spending in the place before moving to Pretoria. So he's rounded us all up to celebrate the opposite of a house-warming (a house-cooling?) Cue a whole evening of knee-slapping good times. Anja wants to stay later than I do, but, knowing we have quite a big day tomorrow, I drag her home. On Saturday morning she packs up her stuff that's been living in my room the past two months. It's a pretty crap feeling, knowing this is her last day living in Joburg, but we make the most of it, reading comic and watching TV shows. By 3 we head up the road to Cafe Mexico for Anja's farewell. Most of the usual suspects are there and as usual a jolly old time is had by one and all. After we've stuffed ourselves full of chessy, chilli goodness we head home and rock a final session of Ilomilo and Alan Wake. Jason and Franci come by and we drive through to The Bioscope. The cities greatest independent cinema has just opened the doors of The Chalkboard Cafe, the little coffee shop that's moved into the space previously held by Malva. We meet up with Matt and Nix and head into the cinema still waiting for Shannon and Matthew (who as it turns out never show up). We've come through to see a screening of the new Zeitgeist film, Moving Forward. The film turns out to be pretty absurdly long, separated by interval (!) which features Darryl giving me a complementary cup of Etheopian coffee which I promptly ruin by accidently mistake incense crystals for sugar. Luckily Russle saves my life and points out what I've just done before I take a sip. So, without tasting this exciting new bevrage I head back in to finish the film. Credit roll, we head home. Anja and I wake up early on Sunday, grab some breakfast and head through to Patrick's. We have a cup of tea, then Anja and Patrick climb into Anja's little car and head off on the long drive across the country. I head home, once again a Ben who's girlfriend lives in a far away city. Trying not to feel to down about this I console my self by eating chocolate peppermint cupcakes and finally playing through the totally stellar last two hours of Mass Effect 2. Now, with one of the best video game endings of this generation under my belt, i head off to Hyde Park. Meet up with sonja, ADK, Koos and much later Liz, who's hooked up tickets for the 5 of us to see a preview screening of Black Swan, which, as I'm sure you've heard, is a pretty damn great piece of cinema.