Unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa

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Yep. Not incorrect.

We’ve talked about flying penguins before. This guy wanted to try it, but the protagonist in our story here went high enough, and decided to promptly return right back down to earth, where penguins belong.

An “unsecured” penguin in a cardboard box was the cause of a helicopter crash in South Africa, a report into the incident has found.
The penguin, which had been placed in the box and on the lap of a passenger, slid off and knocked the pilot’s controls just after take-off from Bird Island off the Eastern Cape on 19 January.

Thankfully, no-one – including the penguin – was injured.

According to the report, released this week, the flight had been conducting an aerial survey of the island in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape province.
After completing the survey, the helicopter landed, where a specialist then requested the transport of one penguin back to Port Elizabeth.
The report did not say why they had picked up the penguin.

This is perfectly reasonable. No-one needs to know why you p-p-p-p-pick up a penguin. You might want a nice chocolate biscuit with your morning coffee. You might be involved in some shady penguin kidnapping scheme. That’s your business. We don’t need to know. We wouldn’t even know now if it weren’t for the damn bird crashing the aircraft.

All we need to make sure of is that now hat you’ve decided to pick up the penguin, you must complete a “risk assessment” and include the transport of the penguin on board.

The aviation authority said the pilot conducted a “risk assessment” but omitted to include the transport of the penguin on board which “was not in accordance with the Civil Aviation Regulations (CAR) 2011”.

Oh.

Oh dear.

The report said all situations should be subject to “established safety protocols” and compliance with aviation safety procedures.

I’m not 100% au fait with how many of those “established safety protocols” and aviation safety procedures specifically mention the transportation of penguins, but reasonably, you’ve got to guess that it’s probably very few.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, and we should be happy that there were no casualties on this occasion.

But as always, there are lessons to be learned here, and next time you are transporting a penguin in a helicopter, I trust that you will remember this blog post, and be well aware of the inherent dangers of such an endeavour.

All a bit weird

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The house is all rather chaotic at the moment and it’s all a bit weird.

The bathroom renos are going well, and hopefully – hopefully – by the end of today, most of the loud, dirty, dusty, invasive destructive bits of the job will be finished.

But at the moment, all the loud, dirty, dusty, invasive destructive bits of the job are continuing apace.

The beagle wasn’t doing so well, and so we took her back to the vet yesterday. He decided that she should stay with them overnight, and so we woke to a beagleless house this morning. It feels very empty, and it’s odd not seeing a hopeful face pop around the corner each time you open the fridge.

More positive news this morning is that she has apparently rallied a little overnight, and even eaten some chicken. This is great news, because she hasn’t been eating much at all this week, and as I mentioned:

Beagles will eat 24/7 if you will allow them, but a sick or unhappy beagle will not eat, and when that happens, you know something needs to be sorted.

And that was enough reason to get her back to the experts and get some tests done, and some treatment administered.

Oh, and just to add potential infection to… well… everything else, Little Miss 6000 has woken up something of a raging sore throat. Great news, as it’s only [checks notes] this weekend that she’s singing in her exam recordings.

Joy.

It’s all rather chaotic here at the moment.

Work memories

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Remembering back to my University days, there was one occasion when a few of us were approached by a guy outside the Students Union.

He said he could give us work putting lipstick on anesthetised pandas, and that if there were more than 10 of us doing it, his business would even qualify for a government subsidy.

At the time, I was very grateful to have a job, but looking back now, it didn’t feel like it was real employment.

I was clearly just there to make up the numb bears.

It’s BRO, bro.

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BRO?

The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is a road construction executive force in India that provides support to Indian Armed Forces. BRO develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas and friendly neighboring countries. 

And, as an aside before I continue (which is the best place for asides), they have a crazy website.

Don’t miss CAFE BRO…

But not only are they known for building tens of thousands of kilometres of roads around the border areas of India, they also put up some of the weirdest road safety signs in the business.

Some of which seem to be aimed at the lady in the passenger seat…

There’s almost certainly a poetic term for this sort of first word/last word almost rhyming stuff.
I don’t know what it is though.

And I’m left wondering if I’d be more distracted by trying to work out that sort of thing rather than the chatty passenger.

Here we go…

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A little over 4 years after we moved into this place, and with our ensuite bathroom top of the list of priorities for renovation when we moved into this place, tomorrow morning will see us finally begin the renovation of our ensuite bathroom.

Eish.

It’s not like we haven’t done other stuff instead. The living room has been transformed. The kitchen refloored. The bar has been completely redone. New French windows. We built a braai. We got rid of the horrible ou doos tiling in the entrance hallway. The kids’ bedrooms have been recarpeted and reglazed. There are several (or more) other new windows around the place.

And these were the things that we chose to do. There was a lot of fixer-upper stuff that has been forced upon us (and this) along the way.

It would have been great to get all of this done ages ago, but the magic money tree simply doesn’t bear that much fruit.

The bathroom was awful when we moved in – hence the priority thing – and so we had to do a few things to it to make it less awful and more livable with. But it turned out that those things apparently made it very livable with, and so we have lived with it for 4 whole years.

Oops.

Now, the time has come to bite the bullet and get on with starting over. Over the next few days, it will be completely gutted, back to the bare walls (and in a couple of places, beyond the bare walls). And then a new bathroom shall spring forth, phoenix-like, from the fiery(?) ruins.

And, since they were here anyway, we’re getting them to remove the hideous guest bathroom tiles and sort that out too.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty stressful, but it will – it will – all be worth it.