Working and Living in South Africa
I haven’t seen such a fun Nando’s advert in a long time. But they have done it again. Rather late then never.
This one shows Robert Mugabe sitting alone at a banquet table reminiscing about his days with fellow dictators – Ghadaffi and PW Botha, amongst them.
The Nando’s dictator video is set to the song “Those were the days my friend” by Mary Hopkins.
In my recent post Australia here I come! I mentioned how smooth my application to renew my passport went.
Friday I picked up the passport I had applied for 8 days previously!
The service had been excellent from start to finish and when I picked up said passport I saw that the public servants we normally complain about had gone above and beyond their civil duty.
See, the evening before heading to home affairs I went to have my passport photos taken.
I was a feeling a bit worse for wear since I have Spring fever and a terrible cough and work had been…well, hard work.
So when the guy at the photo shop took my picture and showed it to me, I just shook my head in resignation and told him it wouldn’t get any better.
The next morning I was tempted to get other photos taken at Van Schalk’s, situated right next door to Home Affairs in Maynard mall. But decided to not let vanity prevail.
So when I fetched my passport on Friday I took a quick glance at it, realised it was me on the photo and my personal information and left.
A few hours later I took the passport out of my bag and took another look at the document.
I was still day dreaming about all the places I planned to visit when I arrived at the page which held the photo.
It looked like the picture I sent, but something was different.
After a few seconds I realised what the difference was. The photo had very obviously been doctored.
My eyebrows were thinned and tidied and all traces of tired lines were smoothed out! Even my unruly hair was neatened.
All in one week!
I’ve taken the hint and will be making an appointment with the hairdresser and with a beautician this week to sort out my hair and eyebrows so I can look like my passport photo!
If that wasn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is!
There is obviously something seriously wrong at SABC more so in the last few months especially with programme scheduling.
But it doesn’t end there…
Their SABC 3 Facebook page is a mess – with an obviously orchestrated campaign to get local programme Charly’s Cake Angels shown at 6.00pm during the week and complaints about programming with nary a response from SABC 3 in sight.
Then of course today they gave a media briefing to explain their turnaround strategy. And to explain that they had not spent R20million on luxury vehicles, but had instead leased said Mercs to the tune of R20million!
Maybe the fact that the acting CEO Hlaudi Motsoeneng is said to have failed matric twice and still not graduated from high school, explains a lot.
If everything had been running smoothly and efficiently at the SABC no one would question the CEO’s credentials.
But back to programming…
Some genius at SABC 3 thought that broadcasting the same videos over and over and over every single day would endear themselves to viewers. After a few complaints on Facebook (and who knows where else) this practice was stopped.
Then they started repeating episodes of prime time shows the week after the episodes initially aired! Without a word of apology or explanation.
Who will forget the show that replaced Survivor on a Monday night. Actually other than friends and family of the people featured, who watched that show about two men on horses trekking to Grahamstown, who will remember?
Someone then got a little excited or tried to relieve their boredom and changed the entire SABC 3 schedule!
Isidingo was moved to 7.30pm and adult comedies like 30 Rock to 6.30pm.
They advertised the start of a new season CSI Miami (season 2 that aired a decade ago in the USA) and then had to pull it because the episodes had not arrived.
Since then they changed some programmes back to their original slots but the website and tv guides in the media are all wrong.
And still we have to pay our tv licences!
So in January one of my goals was to travel to Melbourne Australia in December this year.
I told a few people: my family – both in Australia and at home, a few colleagues and a few friends. I might have mentioned it to a few strangers as well.
And of course I blogged about it.
But then did nothing.
I knew my passport needed to be renewed and I knew I didn’t have near enough money saved.
I spoke about my trip less and less. But people kept asking about my plans. And I kept saying that my plans had not changed.
A few weeks ago my colleagues pissed me off like only they can. They did their usual thing which upset me enough to wake me from my inaction.
So last week I contacted a travel agent who booked air tickets for family members. She gave me a few quotes – the best (and cheapest) available to me was on Emirates Airlines, via Dubai.
As suggested by a reader when I blogged at the start of the year.
Then it was off to the Department of Home Affairs in Wynberg. The trip was so unexpectedly painless I walked out in a daze. About 45 minutes after walking in!
I had been told to expect hours of standing in line.
Today, exactly a week later I received an sms informing me that my passport was ready to be collected!
And this wasn’t an emergency passport, but a regular one.
I’m so impressed with Home Affairs! Well done to Minister Nkosaza Zuma-Dlamini for whipping that department into shape! Their new offices in Maynard Mall were pretty impressive looking too.
So all that’s left is the Australian tourist visa!
If all works out I will leave on 19 December and return 12 January!
As is usual for this time of year, I am feeling a bit run down, exhausted and just plain tired.
This feeling can be blamed on a multitude of sins: work, exams, family stuff and just the very fact that I’m me.
Being me is hard work let me tell you.
For instance: this morning I had to remind myself that I could fix other people’s behavioural problems as soon as I fixed my own.
Who says those kinds of things to themselves?
Me! That’s who!
Anyway, I got this brilliant idea the other day.
I decided that meditation alone was not going to do the trick. I needed something a bit more relaxing to calm my raw nerves.
Something that didn’t require someone else, especially not of the male species since they bring a whole set of other problems and blog posts.
A guided meditation MP3, came to mind.
So I Googled the term and clicked on the first one that said ‘free’. It wasn’t exactly free FREE. I had to give my e-mail address and will likely get a lifetime of spam as my reward. Even though they promised not to share my email address.
I know better, of course.
So I considered the forthcoming spam for a second or two and spent another thirty minutes considering that the meditation could contain subliminal messages. And those messages could lead me to who knows where.
Decision made and Mp3 downloaded!
The first half a minute of the recording encouraged me to visit some web page. And then a woman’s voice (sounds to me like an Australian but could be a New Zealander or something similar ) told me to find a quiet place to relax.
She told me to breathe slowly but after breathing slowly for three breaths I heard nothing else.
I woke up two hours later and had no further sleep that night. But I tried to get the lady to put me to sleep again, like she did earlier, to no avail.
I discovered the next part of the audio though. She suggested I close my eyes and imagine a field filled with flowers and a thick bed of soft grass.
Easy…
Then she directed me to a tree filled with different fruit.
I couldn’t imagine such a tree. But I tried to…until she mentioned picking a fruit from the tree…and looking at the fruit…and feeling it!
Hellooooo what kind of fruit?
She went on to suggest I take a bite of this fruit…and then another…followed by another!
I was still stuck deciding what type of fruit grows on a multi-fruit tree.
Before I knew it, she told me to be still for five minutes and to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere I created!
Say what?
The tree has multiple types of fruit. What kind of tree is that? Was it genetically engineered?
I have no intentions of eating unnatural fruit!
And that’s where I keep ending up, even a week later. I either fall asleep or I get stuck at the fruit tree!
It works well as a sleeping aid, I must say.
