Category: this is south africa

Overshoot

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I saw this tweet and it reminded me about a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now.

Because, the thing is that you can’t just run the pedestrian over, much as you’d probably like to. You’d get into trouble, sure, but worse than that, we’re still struggling with water restrictions here in Cape Town and people would frown if they saw you washing the bits of skull, brain and matted hair off your bonnet.

So you have to slow down. And then they’ve won.
And then they use that technique to cross the road every time.

But pedestrians aren’t the only ones to utilise this method to get where they need to be. Our local (and already notoriously shit) drivers are doing it too.

They’ve worked out that if they approach a stop sign on a side road at a appropriately foolish speed, and perhaps overshoot the white line by, say maybe just 50cm, then any vehicles on the main road they are joining will have to slow down, rather than risk an accident.

And, like the pedestrian above, once you’ve slowed down, they’ll take advantage of the situation to complete their nefarious manoeuvre.

Newlands Road in Claremont is nice and straight and has a plethora of sideroads where one can witness this action taking place at several junctions within a single 500m stretch. It’s also where I remind myself that I must blog about this each evening, before doing nothing about it.

The perpetrators are relying on your knowledge that Cape Town drivers are so rubbish that they might actually just completely ignore a stop sign and plough into your car. And so if you try and call their bluff, there’s always a reasonable chance that a rubbish driver might actually just completely ignore a stop sign and plough into your car.

I do recognise that – short of asking you nicely not to do it – there’s not much that I can do about halting this practice.
But at least I have now documented it.

Have you experienced this? Is it merely a Cape Town phenomenon?
Are you an overshooter? If so, why do you do it, you twat?

Submit your comments using the link below.

Fool me once…

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I’m not falling for that one again.

As part of Book Week at the kids’ school, there’s a sponsored readathon happening. It’s a great way of getting the kids to get into reading, and our daughter has gone for it in a big way once again.
I’m being more careful with the sponsorship this time around, though. I got stung for a great deal of money last year.

Basically, the kids have to read an age-appropriate book, take an online test on it and score over 80%. The site tells them how many words they’ve read and then they can charge you according to what you promised them on the sponsor form.

Last year, I sponsored per word. It was a tiny amount, like 1c or something. I’ll tell you what else it was: it was a huge mistake.
We encouraged our little darlings to read as much as possible – like model parents should – and we got roundly shafted.

For context, a 300 page kids book like Gangsta Granny has about 33,000 words. Yes. I was equally surprised. Because that’s already R33o of cold hard cash for a book that was knocked off by Little Miss 6000 in just a couple of days.

The readathon lasts fourteen days.

Stuff got ugly. Let’s just say that we had to honour a four-figure sum in sponsorship money last year. I’m still smarting.

This year, I’m being equally encouraging when it comes to the kids reading as much as possible. But I’m going for a flat fee per book, rather than per word. The PTA will still do OK, the kids will still feel that they’ve done something of value, and we’ll be able to eat something more than naked Salticrax for the rest of the month.

Everyone’s a winner.

Great Cape Names, No.1…

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…in a series of n.

There are many Capes in the world: Town, Agulhas, of Good Hope, Horn, Finistere, Fear – the list of wonderful names goes on and on.

But please spare a thought for the worst-named Cape out there:

Step forward Cape Disappointment.

Just down the road from Mount Inferior, and only a hour’s flight from Second-rate City on Meh Airways.

Cape Disappointment was so named by English fur trader John Meares (1756?-1809) on On July 6, 1788. [link]

The name reflects Meares’ chagrin at not finding the Columbia River.

Now. I recognise that Meares must have been pretty upset, irritated, annoyed, pretty… disappointed at not finding the Columbia River, and I do understand that things were very different back in 1788. No satellite, no GPS, no decent maps.
But John… really?

I mean… having got to Cape Disappointment (marked here with the red star), he was pretty much at the Columbia River.

Dude, your disappointing Cape actually marks one side of the end of the waterway you were hoping to find. I’m really not sure how you missed it.
It does suggest that you should have stuck to fur trading and not gone into navigation and exploration. But then by leaving your mark on the land by giving it an insulting name – well, it actually reflects rather badly on you.

Disillusioned with life, John Meares headed back towards Canada and to Miseryville, Despondency County, British Columbia, where he lived out his remaining years in a constant state of frustration.

What is Takealot’s Customer Care number?

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Takealot dot com is our local equivalent of the multinational behemoth Amazon. Except it’s nowhere near as good, organised, cheap, flexible or well-stocked. And if/when Amazon does finally enter the South African market, Takealot will be expunged.

Cheerio.

Here’s their customer service telephone number:

087 362 8000

So why am I posting it here?

Well, when things go wrong with your Takealot order (as they inevitably will), you’ll want to get in touch with them. They’d prefer that you use electronic means to do this, which is entirely reasonable: if they then respond in a decent time to your email or contact form request.

Of course, that doesn’t always happen, so you’ll probably want to phone them. But they make it very difficult for you to do that. I constantly see requests on Twitter for their phone number. It is on their site, but you have to really search for it.

A lot of my posts which provide basic, local information (like this or this, for example) are regularly used, proving that there’s definite need for them.

I can like to be helping out.

Inspired by 6

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I may have mentioned these things before, but not together, and even if I have, it deserves repeating.

First thing: I listen to BBC 6 Music at lot. I’m right in their target demographic, so they suit me and I suit them. Symbiotic, innit?

Second thing: I’m (still) really enjoying Spotify. I love having the flexibility to think of a song and just listen to it, there and then. I recognise that this has been something that’s been around elsewhere (and even here) for a while. But because Spotify is new here it still feels a bit like living in the future.

Now, I have tied these two things together in a wonderful marriage by starting a public playlist called “inspired by 6”.

What I do is to listen to BBC 6 Music all day and each time they play an amazing song (rather than just a really good song), I quickly add it to the playlist. Therefore, what’s currently on there is a collection of more than eighty songs which are the best of what’s available on the best radio station around.

All according to me, at least.

Great for solo listening, background listening or appearing cool (to that certain demographic) at a party.

If you are on Spotify, you can listen and follow the constantly-evolving playlist by clicking the clever little box above or here. You’ll need to be a member of Spotify too, obviously, but I’m told that there’s more than just me on there, so maybe it’s for you too.