Category: this is south africa

Not a great start

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It’s not been a great start to the day. No one single thing that’s brought me down*, just a collection of unfortunate events and occurrences that have made the morning worse than it really needed to be.

At the present time – well, any time, I guess – I could do without these sort of mornings. But really, right now, we need the cream cheese of hope and positivity on top of the carrot cake of despair which is daily life in South Africa at the moment.
That mild, sweet veneer keeping your thoughts away from what lies beneath.

Mornings such as this one act as granny’s invasive finger, swooping in over your shoulder and stealing the thin layer of optimism, leaving you with the realisation that all that is left is the god-awful, soggy, weird vegetable gateau below.

I’ve never been a fan of carrot cake since being forced to eat it in Mrs Finch’s History class back in the 1980s in the homeland. Apparently, it was a staple during wartime rationing. Christ, I’d have switched on all my lights and waved welcomingly to the Luftwaffe. Horrific.

On the plus side today, we have a lovely bergwind. This is nature’s way of telling you to open all the windows and get the damp winter out of your house, of getting you to do all your washing because it will dry in minutes, and of warning you that there are probably a couple of days of very wet weather on the way.

That would be the weekend.
I am already prepared with firewood and some Wonderbag potjie plans.

And on the other plus side (two in a day?!?), things are moving fast towards our trip Up North. Mrs 6000 is away next week on a work thing, then there’s just a week until she heads away again, and then just one more week until we go and join her in the top half of the world. It’s soon.

See? Replacement cream cheese. We’re all good**.

* Although bumping into the Greenpeace loonies at the shopping centre didn’t help
** T&Cs apply

What a day

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It didn’t start well, because I was still up watching the disappointingly dull Europa League Final until well after midnight. With football watching opportunities becoming scarce for the winter here, you have to take what you can, but this was sheer desperation and I should have gone to bed long before extra time, never mind the penalties. Oi vey.

So not really enough sleep, so then I decided that a heavy workout in the gym might get me going. Which it did, to be fair: I was feeling STRONG. But it also depleted my already meagre energy levels until a klaxon went off in my head and a little red light with the word “CRITICAL” started flashing.

I thought it better to stop then.

But wait! The afternoon has been filled with emergency waterproofing on the roof.

Oh, the glamourous life of a top SA blogger.

That’s because during the dull final last night, some rain fell INSIDE, through the very new roof. I’m no expert on these sort of things, so I did a bit of googling and discovered that this shouldn’t happen. I know it’s easy to say this now, but I did have an inkling that this might be the case. And so it was up onto the roof with the nasty, thick, volatile paint, trying to find wherever the hole might be and proactively covering anything even vaguely suspicious with a big blob of gloop.

Will it work? Well, the amount of effort it took me to get a few drops off my hand suggests that it’s pretty much indestructible. Although it looks like it’ll get a stern test tomorrow night and throughout the weekend. I’ll keep you informed (I won’t, really – it’s even less interesting that Roma v Sevilla).

That exercise really took the very last of my reserves though, and so I do foresee a lovely little nap you-know-where this evening.

Bad graph

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This graph of cumulative loadshedding hours over the last 6 years makes very depressing viewing.

Ouch. The 2023 line…

We’ve clearly surpassed the 2022 total GWh shed already, and it’s not even June yet. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations, and I reckon that with a continuation of this years trend (which – let’s be honest here – is also actually our best case scenario at the moment), we would top the cumulative figures for the last 5 years put together by about halfway through July.

But whatever happens…

(Please note that I’m not being deliberately flippant. I’m merely deflecting and avoiding genuine fear through the medium of basic maths and memes.)

Error screen frustration

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I got this on the internet the other day:

I’ll be honest, I can’t recall which site I got it from, but looking at the second line, I’d be willing to guess that it was some South African thing.

All those phrases are expressions of a mixture of alarm, surprise, disappointment and shock.
Like you’re feeling when you get that page. Accurate then.

And I do get it: they’re trying to make the best out of a bad situation, but given that I was clearly trying to do something online and now I can’t, I’m unlikely to be in a particularly receptive mood for their attempts at humour.

Not the right time. But ok…

But then, step forward my bank. Now, I think my bank does a pretty good job a lot of the time, and I know that’s an unusual stance for someone in SA. But that also means that when thing don’t work, it’s even more frustrating. And to add insult to injury, pour salt into the would and fuel onto my ire [yes, that was deliberate], they then come up with this twee little line:

Oops. We didn’t bank on that happening!

Which is exactly what you want to see as you desperately try to buy electricity before your last unit expires and this time (for once) it’s your fault that all the lights have gone out.

The exclamation mark is almost enough to send me over the edge.

No apology. No instruction on what you might try next. Just this enraging, misplaced attempt at humour. It’s also completely out of character with the otherwise austere, businesslike approach from the bank. Which is what I want in a bank. I’ll get my comedy elsewhere, thank you. You just look after both of my Rands (hey, it’s been a productive month) and make sure your app works when I want to give them away so that I can boil the kettle.

Up the mountain

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Nice little 9km morning hike on the mountain yesterday. I don’t usually get up early on a Sunday, but this was definitely worth the effort. What a pleasure.

Lovely sunrise, and great views across the misty Cape Flats before coffee and breakfast on a rocky outcrop near Rooikat Ravine.

Then back for a few jobs at home (including editing the photos: nothing too strenuous) before an evening braai.

What’s not to like?