Author: 6000

Nine out of ten for Netcare

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I had to call an ambulance for someone this week. Obviously, that’s never a good thing, but sometimes accidents happen and you have to deal with them. This injury was thankfully not life-threatening, but it did need an ambulance. And so I dialled 082 911 and I got through to Netcare.

The lady on the other end of the line was generally very helpful, and dispatched the ambulance promptly.
I only had two minor gripes. One was the amount of detail that they needed regarding the patient’s medical aid. And yes, I get that they need it, but there’s a time and a place and this was neither.
Honestly, once we had established that the patient had medical aid, I really just needed to get back to her and do my best to look after her, rather than asking her difficult questions about her specific plan and membership number. I told the operator that I needed to go and we could sort out the admin later.

The only other little thing was their SMS telling me that I could track the ambulance as it came through to us. This is a great idea and would be very helpful. Reassuring for the casualty and everyone else there. Except…
Click the link in the SMS and it asks you to download their app.
Download their app and it asks you to create an account.
Name, Cell number, Email address, ID number, Username, Password – no, a stronger one than that, and you’ll need a $p3cial character, and an UPPER CASE letter – ah, there we go.
I’ll send you an OTP now.
But it didn’t. Twice.
And I didn’t have time for this.
Can you imagine if this had have been a life-threatening injury?

In the end I had to call back on their emergency number to find out how far away the ambulance was from us. With hindsight, this would have been the better option from the start.

Anyway, I wanted to get those gripes out of the way because once their guys turned up (within the timeframe we were given), they were amazing.

Truth be told, there wasn’t actually much first aid to be done: just the usual checks for anything properly serious, and making sure that the patient was safe and comfortable, but I was actually impressed with how well my scene management stuff from my first aid courses came back to me.
Once we’d handed over to the paramedics though, it really was absolutely seamless, more like a demonstration of best practice, rather than an actual case with all its variables and difficulties. 25 minutes of friendly, efficient stabilising of the patient and administering some pain relief for the stretcher trip to the ambulance and the drive to the hospital; and then they made the stretcher trip to the ambulance, and the drive to the hospital.

Surgery that afternoon was apparently successful and we’re all hoping for a quick recovery.

All’s well that ends well.

Although I still haven’t got an OTP.

More on fibre problems

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You might recall that I gave you some weekend homework on Saturday. All about the guys that do the undersea cable repairs on… er… undersea cables.

And then you might recall that just yesterday I used the phrase:

Where else in the world except South Africa would you see the paragraph at the bottom of this post?

Well, here’s a thing that ties both those things together.
Because it relates to fibre optic cables, and it also is surely only a thing in South Africa.

And “smoked” isn’t some slang term for “sold” or “recycled”. The thieves in question are actually smoking the glass from the cables. Like, literally burning and inhaling them:

We were always assured that because of the zero metal content of fibre optic cables, and therefore their lack of value at the scrap metal dealers – as opposed to electric cables with their high copper content – they were relatively safe from the bad guys. Now it turns out that the bad guys are stealing them for a whole different reason.

Quite why ground glass is a good bulking agent is beyond me, but when you look at what else you are likely to find in our local street drugs:

Nyaope is a highly potent drug compared to other well-known drugs; while it frequently contains substances such as ARVs, cannabis, heroin, rat poison and detergent, it is worthwhile to denote the chemical makeup of nyaope has been shown to also vary and may change over time.

…maybe some powdered glass isn’t so bad after all.

There are plenty of other things in there which are going to cause you plenty of other problems anyway. So why not pack it out with some fibre optics? Maybe the hit gets to your brain faster: 200Mbps or something.

As long as a trawler hasn’t inadvertently dragged its anchor through a local undersea cable again, of course.

Idiots on the mountain again

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Lightning over the weekend started a few fires in Table Mountain National Park. Some of them are still ongoing, sweeping across the top of the mountain from our side down towards the Back Table area above Camps Bay and Hout Bay.

And last night, there was even some local cliff face action: ironically pretty much where I took this photo just a year ago. This was a quick cellphone pic from a car park in Claremont.

But that was nothing compared to what was going on just out of our view, on top:

And our brave firefighting crews are out there fighting the fires. Although that is exactly what they signed up for, I guess. Still, rather them than me.

There are plenty of idiots out there with them though. Despite the fact that there is clearly a fire (see social media posts, news reports passim., not to mention actually just looking at the mountain), the hikers are out there putting themselves in danger and diverting resources away from fighting the fires.

We’ve seen this before.

Where else in the world except South Africa would you see the paragraph at the bottom of this post?

Table Mountain National Park Management has closed the Platteklip Gorge trail effective immediately, as the fire is actively burning in the vicinity of Maclear’s Beacon. As visibility is poor in the area due to low cloud coverage, there is a great risk to users unexpectedly walking into the fire line.

Further closures include:
? All hiking trails between Newlands and Constantia Nek
? All trails leading to Maclear’s Beacon and the Back Table
? Trails leading from the area between Camps Bay, Hout Bay, and Orangekloof
? Platteklip George trail leading up to Maclear’s Beacon

The priority remains the safety of residents, hikers, and firefighting personnel, therefore we encourage users to refrain from accessing these areas. SANParks is appealing to the public to please respect the trail closures in order not to endanger anyone or hamper firefighting efforts.

What sort of person, having just been told that the trail is closed because they face “a great risk of unexpectedly walking into the fire line”, then needs to be reminded that that means they shouldn’t walk along the closed trail?

We all know what sort of person. There are plenty of them around.

I just find it sad that these potential Darwin Award nominees can’t just be allowed to get on with being Darwin Award nominees.

Second image Brandon Louw via VWS Facebook page

Nineteen years

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I’m back from a most excellent long weekend with the football boys just in time for our wedding anniversary. Yep, it is – as beagle-eyed readers may already have spotted – 19 years since my wife and I tied the matrimonial knot in Kirstenbosch gardens with several (or more) tourists watching on as unofficial witnesses.

If I ever doubted that I was punching well above my weight before, then I was firmly reminded of the fact this evening as she headed out to a black tie work thing* and I was asked to do some photos beforehand.

Wowzers…

That was exactly the gif I had in mind. Exactly.

Look, maybe the soft evening light filtering through the smoke from the fire on Table Mountain helped, or maybe she is just stunningly beautiful and I got very, very lucky.

Maybe it’s both.

Anyway, here’s to the next 19 years and beyond.

* it’s ok – we will make sure that we do an anniversary dinner together soon.

Anthropocene – but not the song

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The song being the one I shared a few weeks ago.

What a way to start a Monday morning.

Same subject, different angle. Rather than wax lyrical (quite literally) about the damage we are doing to the planet, there are some really good – and by “good”, I mean “horrifying” – studies and projects being done to illustrate it.

One of the biggest issues seems to be defining the Anthropocene geological epoch. But while geologists fight about whether it began in the 1950s with the first test of the thermonuclear bomb, we’re still ruining what’s left of the earth anyway.

It’s a pretty depressing subject, but there are some very interesting and beautifully ugly images to enjoy or endure on these two links, detailing the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky and his colleagues.

NPR

PetaPixel