The Social Butterfly Archives - Passing the Open Windows

In the spirit of trying to not always be too political for the sake of extended family members who are starting to find me terrifying (*giggle*) I thought that I could talk about food today. Yay! Food…

My folks have a lovely lady from India staying with them at the moment. She’s been shadowing my dad and learning a bit more about how the Herbalifers on this side of the world do things at The Rink Street Wellness Club. I have loved having her around here. It’s always so great having long conversations with people from different countries. There’s something extra special about it.

Of course, as happens to all of us when we find ourselves in foreign lands, our guest is struggling a little with the food that is completely different to what she is accustomed to. I, in turn, convinced my folks to take her to one of my favourite places to eat in Port Elizabeth: Raasoie. I then crashed their party because: Raasoie.

I love the way you get to eat in this place and I can’t help but think that I wish we could skip the whole rah-rah-rubbish of the usual Christmas fanfare which includes tons of work and even more mess and just hang out at Raasoie for the day. We could hang out around a huge table with bowls of korma and tikka masala and paneer and and and…yum… And then they have these awesome little table fire pit thingies that you use to cook your own kebabs on. I love this sort of social style of eating. Little bits and pieces all over the place. No stress just a lot of happiness and flavour. (more…)

A bizarre turn of events lead to the husband and I going out on Saturday night. I suppose for most there is nothing unusual about that, but to be honest I have been slowly slipping into extreme hermithood of late (thanks, but no, I don’t need “fixing”) so a bout of spontaneity, prompted by yours truly no less, can be considered quite miraculous. I kept seeing an event popup on my FB feed that told me that a bunch of my friends were going to “Dessa – Live in Concert“. Of course I had no idea who that was so I YouTubed her and discovered that she has kind of cool music. The event was free (this counts as something because we could not be more broke) so we figured we might as well go. We could, after all, skip dinner and afford a beer or two.

I am SO glad we did it. Being the hermit that I am I hadn’t actually been to Chapel Street Studios before and I couldn’t have been more delighted by the vibe of the place. It’s weird I guess but I walked in and immediately was “happy” to be there. This doesn’t happen to me a lot. I used to blame this on myself being uptight, which I am, but the thing is that I tend to be exceptionally sensitive to energy. Some energy flows with you though, like you’re floating in a calm sea, bobbing up and down as gentle waves move towards the shore. Other energies bash up against you, the suffocate you, they drag you down to the ocean bed and twirl you around a couple of times before they let you even think about which way could possibly be up. On Saturday night, Chapel Street Studios had a with you energy. It was pretty damn lovely.

We were treated to a bunch of incredible local performance artists (forgive me for not remembering any names – I had a bit too much wine – it was cheap) as well as the beautiful and enigmatic Dessa, from Minneapolis and all-in-all we just had a great evening. The event was put together by Creative X (if I’m not mistaken – forgive me if I am) and I must admit I am very curious to find out more about what they do. They seem to have gathered around them this beautiful sense of community, and with it a positivity that is electric. And my favourite part? There was enough colour in that room to paint a canvas. And maybe I just usually hang out in all the wrong places, but I found that kind of special. I looked around that room and thought, “this is how my heart knows South Africa to be”.

And the lesson? There are like-minded people out there. I won’t find them in the comments section of media outlets on Facebook. But they are in my back yard. Live in the flesh. And that’s fucking awesome.