R20 off your parking

I mentioned somewhere – ah, here it is – about Admyt…

…the still quite new, super-duper parking service in South Africa.
And since then, literally several people have used my code:

TRE162273

to earn R10 off their first parking experience with Admyt.

Now, in an incredible offer, if you sign up for Admyt anytime in June – you can get the app on Apple here, or Google here – and use that code, you’ll get twenty whole bucks credited to your balance.

R20 might not seem so much, but next time you’re standing in the queue to pay for your parking in the cold and the rain at the V&A Waterfront, Constantia Uitsig or any of these other Admyt locations – you’ll surely be kicking yourself as you watch me drive up to the barrier – warm and dry – and automatically whizz straight through, as you fumble for change – ironically exactly twenty rands worth – in your pockets.

It’s free to sign up, and there’s no obligation and no payment to be made until you use the service – and, if your first parking session costs less than R20 – no payment to be made there either. Amazing.

You literally have nothing to lose.

A taste of Durban

Given the ongoing state of Durban’s beaches – or rather the water just off them – as illustrated here:

I found the prospect of buying some brown gloop labelled “Taste of Durban”, and with an image of those very same beaches and bits of Indian Ocean, rather unappealing.

Mind you, this actually being Nutella and not sea poop, it’s not like I could afford it anyway.

Ridiculously expensive stuff, although happily E.coli free.

New shoes

Not for me. For Yoshimi. And because Yoshimi has four feet wheels, it means four new shoes tyres.

And they’re not cheap, hey? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
And my imagination is particularly malleable.

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On the plus side, the last tyres did ok: 70,000km in 4½ years, including a lot of high speed stuff and a lot of dirt roads. Also, I think I got an OK deal, and I suddenly feel a lot safer on braking and cornering. There’s also the added benefit of being less likely to get a puncture anywhere iffy. Like the N2 near the airport. Or any other bit of South Africa.

As you can see above, these new tyres are chunky buggers, ready to tackle the potholes of Cape Town and the dirt roads of Cape Agulhas.

But, given the amount of money I shelled out this morning, really, really carefully.

Op

Fair play to our local vets. They opened at 8am after the Christmas break, the beagle was in their rooms by half past, and by 1pm, she’d been x-rayed and we’d been given some vastly expensive options to get her repaired. We came home, had a quick family discussion, made a decision, rang the vet back, and boom: the beagle is off to Paarl for her op tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, she has been mostly sleeping after her sedation earlier, only raising her head for a biscuit and only drunkenly wandering into the kitchen for a bit of gravy.

But there is clearly a bit more energy returning as the medication wears off, so at least she’ll get a good meal in this evening ahead of the nil by mouth of tomorrow morning.

This should be a routine op, with a couple of days in hospital and a few weeks of rehab. But please hold thumbs for this next installment of Project Colin.

This place looks nice…

I live in Cape Town in South Africa. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years. It has it all. I love the food, the culture and the nature.

And I don’t know how much Facebook ads cost, but I feel that this repetitive effort by Dutch airline KLM is a somewhat unnecessary expense on their part.

Book my ticket to Cape Town? On your airline, that’s going to have to be via Amsterdam.

No chance. You might be ok with wasting loads of money, but I’m not.