Ekari Writes

Back in my 2nd or 3rd year of university, my friend Ruby and I were living in a hall of residence (or hostel if you like). At the time, Ruby and I participated in student government (which I thought was a bit of an oxymoron), specifically in the sect that they called 'Health and Culture'. She was the elected head of this department and recruited me as a sidekick of sorts. What we were responsible for, amongst many other things, was welcoming the fresh meat- ahem. I mean, 'first years' into the residence. I remembered what it was like to be fresh from high school, transferred from the top of one system to the bottom of another in one day. Many of them were far from home and didn't know where to start when it came to making new friends.  That's where we came in! We began to brainstorm on several ways we could get them to come out of their shells, make friends, enjoy their new environment (as well as the food which, little did they know, would only be good during...

Not too long ago, I asked a friend of mine, a fellow artist, to check out my blog (this one) and give me some feedback on it. She calls herself "Athena Zeus" and she acts, dances, sings and writes - I knew I could learn a lot from her.  I had expected a few points here and there on improvements I could make. However, what I didn't expect was a four day conversation on both of our Facebook walls - ranging from my original writing inspiration, to past theatre exploits, and even plans for the future... Somewhere in the middle of all the artsy babble, I had a feeling it was taking on an interview styled format. Light bulb moment! Why not let my readers have a bit of insight on me? So with Athena's permission, I will let you eavesdrop on our little artsy chat! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ekari Mbvundula posted to Athena Zeus check it! Would love your feedback :-) Ekari Mbvundula: Writer & Performer ekarimbvundula.blogspot.com 22 Augus...

We moved the conversation from Athena's wall to mine: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Athena Zeus posted to Ekari Mbvundula I hope you find my responses helpful. Keep writing...keep talking...stay smart. ;) 24 August at 23:06 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ekari Mbvundula More than helpful! I think we can continue here to de-clutter your wall :-P 25 August at 09:03   Ekari Mbvundula Yeah I knew you'd understand the role playing one has to do in the creative process. Whether or not the characters stay on the page, or make it to the stage, the process stays the same. To be honest, in many of my plays I didn't plan on making a stage appearance at first, but in some cases my fellow cast members would vote that it was logical for me to play the role since I knew it best. I started to embrace the stage more and more because I needed to ensure that the story was told the way I intended. Call me a control freak :-) 25 August at 09:22 Ekari Mbvundula You're right about the never-endi...

It's not every day that I find a car parked right outside my door. I was delighted and surprised at this red beauty, and on closer inspection, I realised that it was electric! Completely chargeable, no fuel tank, 100% eco-friendly. I applauded the owner as an example to all enviro-conscious citizens of the world (he was not available for an interview. I was told he had gone on a lollipop run). Here are the specs on the new model: It's a 4x4 roofless convertible, perfect for your open air adventures. Not the greatest for foul weather days, but I'm sure you would rather be in bed with a hot cup of coco made by Mommy anyway. It has adapted the Mini Cooper/Smart Car approach to saving space - and as you can see, it can park virtually anywhere, including the veranda. It's an automatic, so it's quite simple to drive with no pedals, but rather a button at your feet which serves as an accelerator. The entire chassis was made of plastic - the seats, steering wheel, t...

Simple URLs seem to be rarely used. I recall when I first began to use the internet, and to search for something I would simply type www.[thingthati'mlookingfor].com. The inbuilt problem of this was that more often than not, the relevant site you're looking for has a different format. It could end with .net, .org, or it could be something like http://www.123rf.com/ , which I never could have guessed was an awesome website for images like this:  Some [noun].coms are useful and straightforward. Clearly they had first dibs at the dawn of the World Wide Web - http://www.cars.com/ and http://www.hats.com/ get you handy info on cars and hats, respectively. Some are slightly surprising , like http://www.fruit.com/ , but it still gets you to a solid web page. Me on the other hand? I had first dibs on ekarimbvundula.blogspot.com :-) Alternatively, if you try typing http://www.spider.com/ or http://www.leg.com/ , then you get - hmm, nowhere interesting. I remember when dead-end UR...

As I sat in the auditorium, I thought back to the moment I chose the poem I was about to perform. Q Malewezi's anthology has many powerful pieces, but "The Dress" had me hooked immediately. My love for dresses was the first catch... then there was the layered meaning, the metaphors, the build-up, the ultimate ending. The poem took my breath away. It captured the agony, and the power of being a woman all in one piece. I was compelled to respect that deeply, considering that although it was portrayed from a woman's point of view, the poem was written by a man. Q told me he had performed this piece at an earlier occasion as spoken word, but this time he advised that I take on a monologue approach. I had no idea what the difference between the two was, but after a bit of schooling in the form of a five minute conversation, I got an idea of what I could do. And here I was! On the night of Q's book launch, waiting for time to eat up the first hour before my slo...

Details : This job is the most common in the world right now, and is the easiest to get into. Applicants can begin as soon as they graduate and may be in this position for months, with no visible end in sight, always with the hope that it will end with the next job application. And then it doesn't. Responsibilities : Main duties will be searching and applying for vacancies in a desperate attempt to move out of your parents' house now that you've finished studying Will need to rewrite your CV over a hundred times to make it fit the job vacancy at hand Access to the internet would be a great advantage, although not necessarily a guarantee of successful task execution Networking is a possible method used (otherwise known as bugging people who DO have jobs to, like, you know,hook me up man.) Reading up on all the application, résumé and interview "tricks" used to get a job quickly Finding out that the tricks don't work. Location : Anywhere (and everyw...

Once, at no particularly special time in Cyberspace, there was a blog. It was a new blog, with its design settings barely dry, and hardly fully confirmed by its author. She was likely to change a background or a font for any whim of a reason, in search for the perfect collection of settings that truly defined who she was. The first thing she did was change the font of the first post to - well, anything but Times New Roman really. How she loathed TNR. She didn't really know why either. Perhaps anything that was classified as "default" simply irked her because it was never her choice, but something oppressed upon her words. So. Verdana it was. Unlike Times , it was a basic sans serif font with no extra curly bits that she was sure the Romans never intended to put there in the first place. Verdana was honest. Like she hoped her words would be. And with that, the first post of this new blog began to emerge. One hundred words quickly became one hundred and seventy-nine. T...