Tag: SAPO

Day 706, part 2: Will anyone notice?

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The South African Post Office has suspended its “services” to Russia, “The” Ukraine and Belarus.

The South African Post Office has long been so entirely dysfunctional that you would rather spend seventeen times the price to a private courier, but at least your package would actually get to where it was supposed to.

Quite literally no-one will notice that their service to these countries (or anywhere else) has been halted.

Also, please note the bottom paragraph, in which South Africans are once again advised to obey the rules for doing things when doing things. Just like this.

Going Postal

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Incoming from The Telegraph:

Finland’s postal service is to begin opening household mail and sending scanned copies of letters by email to cut down on costs and pollution.

Yep:

Not even the most intimate love letters, payslips, overdue bills and other personal messages will be spared under the controversial scheme.
The service, aimed at cutting the number of postmen and reducing CO2 emissions in the sparsely-populated country, is being offered on a voluntary basis initially.
Volunteers will receive an email or a mobile phone text message as soon as their paper mail has been opened, scanned and sent as an electronic image to a secure digital mailbox, to which only the intended recipient has access.

This is nothing new to us in South Africa. In fact, it seems to me that this Finnish system is based on the SAPO setup which has been running for many years. Our local version is  less helpful and more annoying though.
Here, letters and parcels are scanned for any items of value which are then removed to cut down on deliveries and recipient happiness. Nothing is spared this treatment: birthday cards, cash, kid’s presents from overseas etc.

Further parallels with Finland’s trial exist as the sender will send emails and text messages to the recipient complaining about the thieving bastards at the Post Office.

Sweet Peeps and Muse News

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After the summery sunshine of the weekend, the public holiday turned out to be a wet and windy disappointment, reminiscent of public holidays UK-wide. Out came the Monsters Inc. DVD, which is kept on standby for such emergencies, and a HUGE bowl of popcorn, which is kept on standby for such emergencies. And thus we were sorted.

Yesterday, as I have already mentioned, was a completely different story as we made the best of the stunning weather and headed down to Maynardville – the local park – which the city council have recently furnished with a rather large jungle gym.
We got a call from Dan Plato, the executive mayor, who asked us if we could take the boy down to give it a thorough test. Apparently, if it can survive him, it can survive anything. Much like Cape Town with Dan Plato, I guess.
All of which gives me renewed confidence in my own invincibility. Anyway, he (the boy, not Dan Plato) thoroughly tested it and it passed with flying colours.
And while he was thoroughly testing it, his sister used the opportunity to be thoroughly cute through a hole in the climbing wall.

Come now, even the anti-child brigade (led by Goblin* together with all her little Goblin minions) can’t deny that she is a complete sweetie.
Even if she is apparently a little lopsided. More pics of the sunnier bits of the weekend on flickr.

In other news, Muse announced that you can pre-order their forthcoming album The Resistance and get it posted over to SA so that the workers at SAPO can have early Christmas presents for their Muse-loving family and friends.
Apart from the safe yet boring downloadable version at £7.99, you can order the standard CD for £9.99, the CD/DVD version for £13.99 or go the whole hog and provide the OR Tambo Post Office staff with enough goodies to last them until Easter with the super-duper, dogs-bits deluxe version for a mere £59.99:

THE RESISTANCE
LIMITED EDITION DELUXE BOX SET

Multi format box set containing the following:
– CD + DVD in foldout softpak including The Making Of The Resistance DVD (43 minutes 53 seconds)
– 180g Double heavyweight vinyl
– Muse USB pre-loaded with WAV, Apple Lossless and MP3 320 files plus bespoke audio player
– 12″ Art Print
– **Exclusive to muse.mu** 5.1 surround sound Audio DVD (full bitrate DTS & Dolby)

FREE WORLDWIDE DELIVERY

Sadly, as I suggested, the free worldwide delivery so subtly advertised in upper-case will probably only get it to the first sorting office in Mzansi. And I’m not sure I can chuck R800 out (plus the inevitable 14% VAT bill from SARS) when there’s such a limited possibility of anything actually getting to my front door. Especially when the stuff we’ve heard so far sounds worrying like Queen. Dear lord…

* who, in a moment of weakness, has previously admitted that she thinks K-pu is cute.