Category: learning curve

“The Speciality”

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(Note: We’ve covered this sort of thing before here and here.)

“Traditional” “herbalists” are still very much “a thing” in South Africa. I have to presume that this is the case, because I keep seeing leaflets advertising their services all over town. So I deduce that, much like 419 scams, people must actually be going to these “doctors”, because otherwise, these adverts would stop.
And while you might think that people are “somewhat foolish” to spend their money on some leaves that purport to give them amazing abilities in the sack or at the blackjack table, just remember that several (or more) of you go to a pointy-towered building every week in order to sing songs to an invisible sky fairy.

Each to their own.

Look. Every herbalist can bring back lost lover. That’s basic stuff. BOOOR-INNGGGG! (And, in addition, I “lost” her for a reason.)
But, as the Tall Accountant pointed out in the cooking smell-laden air at Hudson’s in Claremont last night, Dr Nassib is taking things to a whole new level with his “>>RESULTS GUARANTEED” “THE SPECIALITY” package:

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Wow. Let’s just run through those items included in the “The Speciality”, shall we?

1. Get the power to be invisible

Bang. There’s no messing around with Dr N. He’s straight in with the big hits right at the top. Invisibility – an ability only previously seen (pun intended) in the Klingon’s cloaking device and Harry Potter’s… er… cloaking device. I have no idea if this is cloak-related, but just think what you could do with the power of invis… Oi! Get out of that changing room. Now! Now!!

2. Get the ability to fly like a bird

I see three options here: Either it’s very, very briefly, or it’s with some sort of mechanical assistance (like an Airbus A380-800), or he’s thinking of an ostrich.

3. Do you know that you can be in two places at the same time?

Woah! Stand sit back, Stephen Hawking. This is next-level quantum physics, alternative string theory universe stuff right here. How useful would this ability be in today’s busy, modern world?
Can I let you into a secret, dear readers? I’m actually in two places at the same time right now. (It’s just that in one of them, I’m invisible.)

4. Get the power to control the public (this is special for politicians and musicians

Ooh. It’s all gone a bit 1984. Some libertarians would argue that there’s too much of this going on already with our repeatedly, surprisingly successful, ruling party’s election results. This makes me thing that maybe JZ has been consulting with Dr Nassib, and makes me very sure that we need to keep our good doctor and “musician” and “would be politician” Steve Hofmeyr a long way apart. Seriously distant. For everyone’s safety and well-being.

4a. The power to close brackets

Not really. I made that one up.

5. Get all the magical powers that you need

Wait. ALL of them? But if I get all of the magical powers I need, why would I ever need to come back to you.

Only Have Three Wishes This Is The Genie Loophole! - CollegeHumor Post - Google Chrome 2015-08-28 095452 AM.bmp

Aren’t you killing your market here? If I can make myself be invisible, fly, control the public or close brackets, I won’t need you any more, will I? This is an own goal of note.

6. Get the “Ndagu Ritual” to make you rich

I checked this out and found out that Ndagu is a Kenyan thing, and since they’re all massively rich up there, I can actually completely believe this one.

7. Get the “Bahat-Gaflah Ritual”to make you lucky in gambling (casino / lotto)

Look, there’s more to life than money, and regular readers will know of my penchant for all things Norwegian 80s Synthpop. Thus, I was delighted to win (with Dr Nassib’s assistance) a novelty prize at Grand West last night – an a-ha bath flag. I’ve been needing a bath flag for a long time, so this worked out really well for me.
Perhaps Dr Nassib should point out that when using the Bahat-Gaflah Ritual, you will only win stuff that is an anagram of ‘Bahat-Gaflah’, though.
It may be best to leave this one then, unless you actually want A Bag Half Hat or La Hah Bat Fag (I think it’s a sort of French perfume).

The Epilogue:
I began this post with the intention of taking down Dr Nassib and his seemingly phoney business. But as I have investigated the claims he made in his missive, I have realised that perhaps “The Speciality” package is maybe worth a shot. If even one of the promised results comes to fruition, you are, in some way, set for life.

And I do love my bath flag.

Bye Bye Eye Eye…

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We begin with a quote…

It is not a pleasant behaviour to observe, as the seals completely freak out and make a lot of noise.

So says Austin Gallagher, a postdoctoral researcher at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. As if it would be pleasant behaviour to observe were the seals all cool about it.

“What’s ‘it’, though?” I hear you ask?

Well, it is the story about the Kelp Gulls pecking out the baby seals’ eyes and then eating the blinded corpses. (Come now, we’ve all done it…)
Suddenly, what that American tooth bloke did to Cecil the lion seems almost… well… humane.

Life for a Cape fur seal pup is pretty tough to begin with.
For one, the babies can’t swim and have to rely on their mother’s milk.

To be honest this is pretty much the same with human babies.

To supply that milk, the mother seals must occasionally go hunt fish, leaving the pups alone at the colony for several days.

Yeah? Well, new mum Sharon might go down to her local pub and then call in the kebab shop on the way back to the flat.

The unprotected pups might then fall prey to land predators such as lions and hyenas—and now, seagulls.

OK. I’ll admit that this is less likely to occur in a human, urban environment.

In the study, kelp gulls were successful in plucking out eyeballs in roughly 50 percent of observed attacks.

“A blind seal cannot forage, cannot find mom, and will get attacked by other gulls,” says Gallagher.

Nice. And from there, obviously, it’s game over.

I’m not saying the killing animals is right. Not for one minute. (Unless you’re making tasty burgers or ribs or something and then it’s totes fine.) But when Cecil gets a million column inches; when Rhinos get a billion hashtags – why is no-one going after the damn Kelp Gulls and their disgusting torture of these innocent little baby fur seals.

Where are Greenpeace now, huh? Where’s Sea Shepherd and their hopelessly misplaced, xenophobic protests?

I’ll tell you where: Nowhere, because seagulls make difficult targets for their daft campaigns when compared with the poor Faroese fishermen and the wholly landlocked Johannesburg base of the South African Department of Energy.

It’s pure, seagull-favouring hypocrisy, and I, for one, am sick of it.

UK retail innovation

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…and why it might or might not work in SA.

Recent visits to the UK have left me irritated that my homeland has chosen to move on and develop – especially in the technology arena – since I’ve been away. How very dare they?
Trains, buses, pubs and restaurants all have free wifi. You can use NFC to find your way around shopping centres, or log in to your local bus stop to get a live map of where your bus is and when it’s going to arrive.
Google Now works! (well, sometimes)
And then there’s the shopping stuff.

First up, the online ordering stuff. It just makes sense. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work here either, and I don’t quite understand why more stores don’t offer it. If Takealot can manage, why can’t other places? Maybe it’s a critical mass thing, because the shops in the UK have had to adapt or die, so they’ve all pushed their online option hard. When you order online from your supermarket, you get what you asked for, and you get it when you asked for it. If you’ve ever used our local system, you’re probably not using it any more, because those two things don’t happen and it’s a disaster.
But if you’re missing the opportunity to impulse buy, then there’s always ‘click and collect’ – the hybrid of traditional and online shopping – whereby you order on the net and then go and pick up your shopping at the local store. This saves you the delivery fee and means you don’t have to be at home to receive your goods. You can also decide if you need another 4 pack of Murphy’s when you go to collect your groceries (spoiler: you do).
All of this means that fewer people are actually in the supermarkets, and it’s so actually a much less stressful experience when you do go along.

It’s not just food and drink, either. All the major clothing stores offer the same services, so you can shop online and either get it delivered or pick it up at your local store. And if stuff doesn’t fit, you stick a big returns label (supplied) on the bag and drop it off at your local post office. Simples. It’s no fuss, because if it was fuss, people wouldn’t do it, just like you’re not doing it with PicknPay right now.

If you actually want to go to the supermarket and walk around the aisles, in some stores, you can wander round with a barcode scanner and Scan As You Shop. This means that you can pretend to have a raygun and shoot aliens (although you may be charged for items you didn’t actually get if you hit them inadvertently while pretending to be Flash Gordon).
And then there’s the option to scan your own stuff at the end of the shop. Apparently, the phrase “Unexpected item in the bagging area” has been voted one of the most irritating things in the UK, and is being phased out. And it’s not always straightforward either:

Shoppers are stealing more than £1.6 billion worth of items from supermarkets every year as frustration with self service tills leads to theft, a survey found. One in five people admit pilfering items at the checkout, but the results suggest people steal regularly once they realise they can get away with it – the majority admitting they first took goods because they couldn’t work the machines.

But for foreign visitors (especially those with kids), scanning your own shopping is actually quite fun. And if you don’t have kids, it can actually be quite quick as well.
Sadly, it would never work in SA though, as passing zebras would constantly trigger the barcode readers.

And finally, contactless payment. Like us here in SA, the UK has long had chip and PIN payment, but there, you do everything yourself. (To explain to anyone not in SA, generally, we hand our cards to the cashier and they put it in the machine for us.) (We also have attendants who fill up our cars with petrol, and fairly regularly, someone at the entrance barrier to car parks to press the button and hand us the ticket.) (Yes, I know.) But contactless payment is the one where you just wave your card over the machine and it takes the money off your account.

_20150818_094824Now, my SA card (it’s the exciting accountant coloured one on the right) has this facility too, but I’ve yet to find anywhere to use it here. Whereas in the UK, it’s everywhere and it’s all too easy to wave and spend without even thinking about it. And yes, I suppose that there are some security worries with this system, but wow, it’s so damn quick and you suddenly realise just how much impact having to enter your PIN has on making you understand that you are spending money.

This certainly isn’t a OMG – Look How Much Better The UK Is Than SA post, but the integration of technology into the retail process has definitely made it better for the consumers over there and they are way ahead of us in this area. The good news is that hopefully, the best bits of these advances will trickle down to South Africa – there’s actually no reason why these ideas wouldn’t work here – and we can all live happily in the future together.

The Lemon Meringue Pie Dispute

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As many of you may already know, ek is ‘n Engelsman.
The long-suffering Mrs 6000 is fully Suth Iffrikan.

From time to time, we come across little nuances and colloquialisms which set our home nations apart from one another:

England are great at cricket and have never lost a series to Bangladesh.
South Africans can cook things over coals.
England are world champions at Health and Safety.
South Africa are top 10 worldwide for traffic-related deaths per 100,000 people.
The English call them traffic lights, South Africans call them robots.
When the English say “now”, they mean immediately. That only happens in SA if you repeat it.

Stuff that every SA blogger has written a hilarious blog post about. Stuff like that. And vive la différence!
Well, vive it until yesterday, when Mrs 6000’s Mum turned up to our Transition Day braai with a lemon meringue pie. Yeah – I went there – a lemon meringue pie.

See, I was told by all the senior South Africans present yesterday that the official South African name for this delicious* dessert is simply “Lemon Meringue”; that there’s no “Pie” involved in the nomenclature at all. And a quick look at the label and the shop receipt seemed to back them up, being, as they were, wholly pie-free.

What balderdash.

How can this be? How can one simply choose to overlook one third of the tri-partite alliance that makes up this dish?
No. And it’s the all important bottom bit too, without which any attempt at serving would surely end up in a trendy “deconstruction” of the original recipe. Structural integrity is as important in desserts as in any other course and in the case of the Lemon Meringue Pie, that strength comes down solely to the pastry bit. The bit that makes it a pie and not a sloppy mess all over the bottom of an ovenproof dish.

Even putting that aside though, you can’t just drop a bit of something’s name just because it suits you. We’re always encouraged to eat more fruit and be more healthy, told that “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. But what if whoever came up with that little ditty had decided to arbitrarily leave out a bit of the name of the foodstuff involved? What if it was meant to be  “An apple crumble a day keeps the doctor away” or “An apple schnapps a day keeps the doctor away” and all this time, we’ve been missing out on a tastier or more fun way to avoid medical intervention simply because someone chose to drop a word?

I did a quick straw poll around my SA collegaues in the lab and there was incredulity that I was asking such stupid questions even suggesting that name should include the word “Pie”.

But then I googled lemon meringue (on the .CO.ZA version of that site, and without the all important P-word) and it seems that not all Saffas think the same way (who knew?), because look what I found:

lmp

Yeah! Look at what the big names in SA food like Ian Paarman, Woolies and PicknPie are calling it!
Look what Google.co.za is calling it! THEY SAY PIE!

Long live Lemon Meringue PIE! Amandla!

 

* for the record, the Checkers version isn't actually that nice.