Every summer since I was a tiny kid I've had the curse of being a little too likeable - to bugs. When I was a kid, I'd get bit by mosquitoes, spiders, anything that likes to suck on human blood. And the bites would swell into hard, red welts. A doctor once said I was allergic to the bites (though I guess most people and that's why we all have a reaction to them.) My bug bites, however, are enough to drive me to distract although my parents always tried to distract me by saying the bugs just loved to bite me because I'm so sweet.
Most summers I can avoid getting more than one or two bites, but some years are just plain bad. Most of these really bad years included some kind of travel. When I was a senior in college I went to Mexico - Rosarito - with some friends. We stayed at this really nice condo overlooking the beach in May. I shared a room with another girl that opened up onto a balcony. We left the doors open to the fresh air the first night. I woke up with my right eyelid swollen shut with a bug bite. For the rest of the trip, I slept with sweatpants and a long sleeved sweatshirt, with the hood pulled tight over my head so a minimal amount of skin was exposed.
Perhaps the worst was a rafting trip to King's Canyon about seven years ago. A friend invited me to go for Memorial Day weekend. I thought I was prepared with some Avon bug repellent. I applied it as well as sunscreen and thought I was ready to go. On the second day, I decided to take a shower. One of the guys brought along a solar shower, which is basically a balloon full of water that heats in the sun. It hangs from a tree and works great for a quick wash up. But in the late afternoon heat and shade, the water caused a swarm of mosquitoes to attack me. I ended up with 42 mosquito bites - I counted them. I actually felt pretty sick after that - like feverish and flu-like - and was plenty itchy. The worst part was driving home in the front cab of a truck, sandwiched in between two people who rubbed up against the bites the whole ride home. The bites were swollen and hard, and took more than a week to go away after all the irritation.
It turns out the only deterrent that works on me is straight DEET, which feels gross and which is so poisonous I'd rather avoid being outdoors during mosquito hours than use it.
Luckily, when I was in South Africa five years ago, where the mosquito bites can come with malaria, I stayed bite free. I took malarone, an anti-malaria drug, just to be on the safe side. But most of the trip was spent in the urban area of Cape Town and Johannesburg. I just needed the malarone around the time we went on safari in Kruger National Park. But since it was winter and the weather was dry there were no bugs to worry about.
This summer, I considered going on the Memorial Day rafting trip again since my trip to Denver earlier in the week was off. I knew my friend would welcome me along, even at the last minute. But I think the thought of all those mosquitoes was enough to make me stay home.
I spent some time outside in my yard barbecuing on Sunday afternoon. I brought a blanket outside on the grass and laid down with the dog for a bit. And as the weather has gotten warmer, we started leaving the glass door open and the screen door shut to let in cool air in the evening. The door doesn't close all the way since the dog broke it last summer and we just haven't gotten around to replacing it. Now I can't say exactly how it happened, but by Monday afternoon I had developed seven itchy red spots in various places on my body. One on each wrist, two on my lower right shin, two on my chest and one on my knuckle. This morning I woke up with two more - one on my back and one on my neck. I don't know whether a few bugs got into the house, or if they got me while I was outside.
I really hope this is not a sign of things to come this summer. But one thing is for sure - getting the screen door fixed is a top priority and from now on, I'll wear long sleeves when I am outdoors in the evening.
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
'District 9' - morality play or B-movie?
I watched the sci-fi movie "District 9" last weekend in an attempt to see as many of the movies nominated for best picture Oscars as possible before the Academy Awards in March. I knew it was out on DVD so it seemed like an easy movie to get out of the way.
When it first came out in movie theaters, "District 9" wasn't really hyped all that much. People thought it was just another sci-fi movie about aliens invading the earth. But then there was talk about how it was really a referendum on the Apartheid era in South Africa and inequality. Then it started getting nominated for awards and an Oscar nomination for a sci-fi film is rare.
The only person I know who saw it, a co-worker, said he turned the movie off in the first 10 minutes because he doesn't like fictional stories that get all high and mighty. I thought for sure I would disagree with him since I've been to South Africa and have seen the aftermath of Apartheid in person.
But about 10 minutes into the movie, I too, wanted to turn it off. Like another movie I've seen recently, "The Book of Eli," "District 9" also has a bit of a split personality. It starts out a bit like a mockumentary, with talking head interviews of people who knew Vikus Van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), though viewers don't know yet what has happened to Vikus.
The crux of the movie is that an alien spaceship has landed on earth, right in the middle of South Africa's capital Johannesburg. And it's just hovering there and not moving, so a team goes in and "rescues" the beings on the ship. These beings don't appear to be the intelligent creatures one would expect to invade the earth. They look like giant craw fish, are addicted to cat food and are generally unpleasant.
The aliens don't look nearly as cool as the ones in more high-tech movies, like "Avatar." And there is a bit of splatter blood giving the movie a low-budget feel.
The government huddles the aliens all in District 9, a sort of makeshift township that is outside the city limits. But 20 years later, the alien population has grown and they are venturing into town more often. The government hires a contractor to come in and move the aliens further from town - into a District 10.
Now for anyone who doesn't know about Apartheid, during that era the white conservative minority had control of the government - they decided who could live where, who could do what jobs, what language people could speak and how much education they could have. The color of one's skin determined the level of privilege a person had - and members of the same family could even be classified as different races based on skin color. In the 1970s, 60,000 people were removed forcibly from District 6 in Cape Town, most of them Cape Malay (or Muslim immigrants).
So it's pretty obvious where writer/director Neill Blomkamp was going with his movie.
Unfortunately for me, the story gets lost up in the action film and the conspiracy theories. Van de Merwe is a pawn of his corporation, which really wants the high tech weaponry that the aliens have - humans cant' use it because it requires the alien DNA to make it work. In his efforts to uncover alien weapons, and force the aliens out, Van de Merwe accidentally infects himself with some ink-like stuff that starts transforming him into an alien.
You'd think pretty quickly, he would start to be compassionate to the aliens, given he starts growing a prawn arm of his own. But it takes a really long time, and a lot of shoot outs before, Van de Merwe finally comes to the big conclusion that human or alien, we are all so much alike.
Though the thought behind the movie was well-meaning, I don't really understand how it got nominated for best picture.
People from other countries who want to know about Apartheid would be better served by watching the 2004 film "Forgiveness," which I saw while in South Africa and which unfortunately has never been released in the United States.
When it first came out in movie theaters, "District 9" wasn't really hyped all that much. People thought it was just another sci-fi movie about aliens invading the earth. But then there was talk about how it was really a referendum on the Apartheid era in South Africa and inequality. Then it started getting nominated for awards and an Oscar nomination for a sci-fi film is rare.
The only person I know who saw it, a co-worker, said he turned the movie off in the first 10 minutes because he doesn't like fictional stories that get all high and mighty. I thought for sure I would disagree with him since I've been to South Africa and have seen the aftermath of Apartheid in person.
But about 10 minutes into the movie, I too, wanted to turn it off. Like another movie I've seen recently, "The Book of Eli," "District 9" also has a bit of a split personality. It starts out a bit like a mockumentary, with talking head interviews of people who knew Vikus Van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), though viewers don't know yet what has happened to Vikus.
The crux of the movie is that an alien spaceship has landed on earth, right in the middle of South Africa's capital Johannesburg. And it's just hovering there and not moving, so a team goes in and "rescues" the beings on the ship. These beings don't appear to be the intelligent creatures one would expect to invade the earth. They look like giant craw fish, are addicted to cat food and are generally unpleasant.
The aliens don't look nearly as cool as the ones in more high-tech movies, like "Avatar." And there is a bit of splatter blood giving the movie a low-budget feel.
The government huddles the aliens all in District 9, a sort of makeshift township that is outside the city limits. But 20 years later, the alien population has grown and they are venturing into town more often. The government hires a contractor to come in and move the aliens further from town - into a District 10.
Now for anyone who doesn't know about Apartheid, during that era the white conservative minority had control of the government - they decided who could live where, who could do what jobs, what language people could speak and how much education they could have. The color of one's skin determined the level of privilege a person had - and members of the same family could even be classified as different races based on skin color. In the 1970s, 60,000 people were removed forcibly from District 6 in Cape Town, most of them Cape Malay (or Muslim immigrants).
So it's pretty obvious where writer/director Neill Blomkamp was going with his movie.
Unfortunately for me, the story gets lost up in the action film and the conspiracy theories. Van de Merwe is a pawn of his corporation, which really wants the high tech weaponry that the aliens have - humans cant' use it because it requires the alien DNA to make it work. In his efforts to uncover alien weapons, and force the aliens out, Van de Merwe accidentally infects himself with some ink-like stuff that starts transforming him into an alien.
You'd think pretty quickly, he would start to be compassionate to the aliens, given he starts growing a prawn arm of his own. But it takes a really long time, and a lot of shoot outs before, Van de Merwe finally comes to the big conclusion that human or alien, we are all so much alike.
Though the thought behind the movie was well-meaning, I don't really understand how it got nominated for best picture.
People from other countries who want to know about Apartheid would be better served by watching the 2004 film "Forgiveness," which I saw while in South Africa and which unfortunately has never been released in the United States.
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