Category: society

Bring on the Gautrain! (but have it stop in every suburb in Joburg)

There is one major drawback of owning one car — you only have one car. This is, of course, also the major strength of owning one car.

This week, it’s proving to be a weakness.

While driving home via the N1 highway on Tuesday afternoon, the engine stopped working. I don’t really have the full details since Angie was driving. She really should be the one sharing this story, but we all know that is unlikely to happen. I’ll do my best.

The car cut out in the middle lane, and Angie came to a stop. Soon afterwards, I received a frantic phone-call from her, pleading with me to please help her. The car has stopped dead! People are hooting! I can’t get out of the car! Help me!
I wasn’t really sure what I was meant to do, considering that a) I was far from the scene, b) I had no way of easily reaching the scene, c) Even if I could get there quickly, I still wouldn’t be able to do anything.
I should’ve told her to phone the insurance people, but I faltered. Under pressure, I couldn’t really think of what to tell her to do. In the end I told her to phone 112 — the cellphone emergency number.
The problem was further exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t keep Angie on the phone and try to calm her down because her cellphone battery was almost kaput. This left us with SMS communication. Clumsy and difficult. And confusing at times.

On the bright side, Angie had 15 seconds of fame as she made the 5FM traffic news (and probably other radio stations’ news too) for causing an obstruction on the N1, and slowing traffic.

Ultimately, a tow-truck arrived to transport Angie and the car home. The confusion of the SMSs played a part here. From our texted communication, I thought that the tow-truck had picked up the car and left Angie on the side of the road. Panicked, I phoned Quinn to ask him to give me a lift to fetch Angie (who I believed, was flapping at the side of the road — using words like “desperate” can give that impression).
By the time Quinn arrived, Angie texted me to say that the tow-truck had arrived and would be bringing her home soon.
Why I thought it had already made an appearance isn’t entirely clear to me now.

The truck brought the car home, to my slight dismay. Because we’d need to tow it somewhere else the next day — at additional expense. At which point Quinn brought to my attention that the insurance people should do it. At which point I felt foolish for having paid R500.00 to get it towed home.

The fun of the night was not yet complete.

By this point, it was about 18h30. Angie and I had intended to have pizza that night, and we were not intending on changing our plans. Kindly, Quinn dropped us off at the pizza place in our suburb. We ate the pizza, cursed our dismal luck with automobiles, and drank wine.
Then we walked home. At night. In Johannesburg. That’s right kids. It’s not really that scary. The pizza place is only about 1.5 kilometres from home.
Except…
As we got to the last corner before turning into our town-house complex, we encountered many agitated people on the road outside a house. And then one of the ADT security vehicles came flying by. We overheard the word “hijack.” The people looked at us as if we were strange circus beasts, or a rare species of bird — a breeding pair of the lesser-known white-skinned nocturnal pedestrian.

The fun of the night concluded there, but the fun of the car continues! Read on!

The truck was towed on Wednesday morning to a service station, where I was cheerfully informed that the cam-belt had snapped, bending all valves.
People with cars dread this happening. Fixing it involves replacing a bunch of stuff, and taking engines apart and so on. It apparently costs a lot because it takes a while to get everything done. I don’t really know for sure because I’m more of a geek than a mechanic. Which is why I get ripped-off by mechanics and not by PC sales-people. In hindsight, given the relative expense of purchasing and maintaining PCs versus motorcars, I should’ve taken more interest in mechanical operating systems, than in computer operating systems. At least from a financial perspective.
Further adding to my grief is the fact that the service station couldn’t source one of the spare parts before the end of today. It’s now the Easter weekend, which means I have no car until Tuesday.
We booked two nights at Goblin’s cove over the weekend.
Fortunately, Angie can abuse her position at her NGO and borrow the organisation’s car for the weekend. So, at least we are vaguely mobile once again.

These, and other unmentioned things, led me to return to get my hit of Buddhism on Wednesday. Something I’d been missing lately. One needs to attend classes regularly otherwise one forgets to keep doing those useful things that keeps one calm.

I’m keeping calm again, which is much better than the grumpiness I had been returning to.

Enough waffle — for now.

Tammy’s Wedding

I haven’t seen Tammy for ages. Distances separate us, and neither of us seem to try hard enough to bridge those gaps. She did invite me to her wedding though, but it’s telling that I hadn’t met the groom until the big day — 10 March, 2007.

Tammy looked exceptional, as brides generally do. It’s something about the whole energy of the event of a wedding. People are happy and excited and thrilled for the couple, and they just soak up all that positive energy and radiate it back out at everyone.

Tammy and Nic leaving the church

Tammy lives in Polokwane, in the Limpopo Province. I’m not entirely sure I’ve been to Limpopo before, but I really think I should’ve made an effort to get there before. It really is beautiful.

Limpopo had this whole marketing thing going down in Gauteng about “Limpopo — Africa’s Eden.” Sounds like the usual exaggerated marketing in your pants. Well, where we went for the wedding and reception, it seemed a reasonable assessment of the situation.

Africa’s Eden

Of course, the thing about a wedding is that you never really get an opportunity to speak at much length with the bride and groom. Things were no different in this case.

The cool thing was that a bunch of people who I knew from university travelled up from Cape Town for the wedding. Did some catching up with the UCT, predominantly chemical engineering, crowd.

Surprising things were discovered — Lisa is married. Sam is in a serious (I think) relationship he didn’t appear to be in the last time I saw him (which was quite a while back when I was torturing myself with post-graduate studies). Mareike is back in the country!

Egads!

Everyone — except MareikeAngie and Mareike

If only the first picture had Mareike in it! I really need to try to be a little less adverse to orchestrating the occasional posed, group photograph.

The Wedding Photograph Taker

Over a week has passed since Rob and Louise rammed shut the deadbolt, and threw away the key. The only way out now is the hacksaw of divorce, but I’m not expecting them to take such drastic measures. Those two were incredibly cheerful newly-weds.

There is more to this other than the fact that Rob and Louise are good friends, and Angie and I were pleased to be part of their wedding. Louise got a silly notion into her head that I know how to take photographs. Sure, everyone does.

  1. Point lens at subject.
  2. Press shutter-release button.
  3. Rinse and Repeat.

Louise, however, figured I do the above so well, that I should be the official wedding photographer. Who needs professionals, when you’ve got Neil?

How Neil was Tricked
I agreed to take photographs at the wedding some months before it was due to take place. It wasn’t clear at the time that I would be the photographer. Sneaky Louise. Sneaky.

Although I’m certainly no professional photographer, I do offer value for money. I didn’t charge for my time, and Louise and Rob still got some half-decent photos. Considering I took over 300, I suppose the stats were on my side that I’d get at least one good one.
Rob and Louise pulled the wedding off spectacularly on just a shoestring budget, so it’s understandable that they weren’t too keen to shell out 1000s of rands for a pro. That would’ve snapped the string.

How Neil Tricked the People into Thinking He Knew What He Was Doing
Normally, wedding photographers have big cameras. The bigger the camera, the more hardcore you appear to be. It’s kind of like porn-stars.
You see, it actually has absolutely nothing to do with talent or skill. It’s all in the impression you give.

Unfortunately, I’ve got a small lens.
So I borrowed Quinn’s. His is big.

This had the desired effect. Many people described my scurrying around the church and taking photos as very professional. People kept referring to me as “The Photographer.”
Even when I tried to insist that, no, I’m just the “photograph taker” and that the big camera was a deceptive device to hide my incompetence, the perception of my professionalism remained.

So, thanks again to Quinn for lending me his camera.
Curses to him too, because now I’m shopping for a DSLR, and they don’t come cheap. But they’re so much better, I just can’t go back to using a compact camera. Looks like I’m paying to enhance my assets, so the porn analogy holds.

So I Took The Photos, and Here are A Few

The bride and groom

Louise and Rob — the bride and groom.

The Dress and the Designer
Roman, who designed and made the dress, and Louise, who wore the dress

leaving church

After signing the registry, Rob and Louise left the church.

The Nature of Money a.k.a. I might be a commie

Dave (that’s Crazy Dave to some, but he’s not really crazy at all — he just pretends) sent me an interesting link the other day. It led me to the Open Money Manifesto.
If you find the manifesto a little heavy reading, try the motivational material for playing the open money simulation game.

Now, describing money as “open” is something that immediately grabs my interest, and runs off with it in a work-avoidance spree of work-hours inefficiency. This is because I like to think of myself as a minor advocate for open source software. It could be described as software socialism — or Buddhism for software (the corollary of open-source software for your brain). But I digress.

That whole lot got me looking into this concept of “community currency.” The community creates its own money for use within the community.
You don’t need any money to begin trading — the money is automatically created when the trade takes place. So someone get debited, and the other party to the transaction gets credited.
The “money” is really just information keeping track of who has traded, and how much.
The money doesn’t ever leave the community. This is what normally happens in today’s economy, resulting in extreme poverty in some areas, and extreme wealth in others — and the wealth is always flowing from the poor to the rich areas. This community currency thing stops that happening.

Those are just a couple of points. Read the linked articles for a better description.

On some investigation I discovered that such a network exists in South Africa. Check out the South African New Economics Network and its Community Exchange System for more info.

Some intriguing questions are raised by this system:
If everyone trades in the community currency, and thus never makes profit or actually earns anything, how happy will the tax-man be?
Can you inherit community currency (cc) from a deceased relative, even if you aren’t a member of the particular community?
Since one can start trading before having any credit, what measures are taken to prevent unscrupulous members of the community buying many goods and services, and then simply buggering off? They do mention something about this in the articles, but I think there may be more avenues for fraud here that haven’t been considered.

There we go kids.

Open Source. Open Religion. Open Money.

A co-operative society is the best way. Everyone shares everything — money, views, ideas, time, labour — and is tolerant of others.

What a nice place Utopia Land is.

Cross-hairs on Iran

I’m not looking forward to this one.

I draw your attention to this quote at the end of the article.

“It is absolutely parallel. They’re using the same dance steps — demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux.” — Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

I wonder what the final excuse for bombing Iran will be? WMD probably. I wouldn’t expect Dubya to feel the need for originality in his warmongering. Stick to the formula.

But wait, there’s more!

The good fortune fairy isn’t finished bestowing gifts.

Two posts earlier I mentioned that I received a relatively large tax return. Angie picked me up from work that day and told me more ridiculously good news.
The National Lottery has granted Optimus R300,000—no strings attached. In other words, they are free to use the money, in part, for salaries.
This in turn means Angie gets paid actual money (she’s been volunteering up until now).

Understandably, I am well chuffed.

It even brings into to question my generally cynical attitude towards the lottery. I’m not the only one who thinks the lottery is a dubious operation. Some people have gone to considerable effort to make socio-political statements regarding its value.
There is Laugh-it-off who rebranded the National Lottery as “The National Robbery,” and the Lotto as the “Lo$$o” in The Laugh It Off Annual Volume 2., and this other hacker dude (who I think LIO ripped the National Robbery concept from) who took the liberty of renewing the lottery’s domain name for them, and hijacking their site back in 2002.
Although the lottery is kind of deceiving the poor into thinking they have a good chance of becoming millionaires, it is actually doing some good. Incredible as it seems, the lottery is helping to do good, just like their adverts imply.

Hmm. Much to consider.

Of Namesakes and McBuddhas

For some reason I decided to once again Google my name. I found a link that actually referred to me on the 3rd page of 66,800 results. So, clearly I’m not the most popular, or at least well known, Neil Robinson out there. And damn there’s a lot of us.

Still, this isn’t really the point. I went on to search only blogs for “Neil Robinson” and a turned up this little gem. A namesake touring Thailand and encountering Ronald McDonald.

Er, sorry. Wrong link. Rather click “McDonald’s – Thailand”

Seen the picture. Good. I suspect, that of my readership, only Quinn will fully appreciate the humour in this.
I’d try to explain it, but I fear that I’d fail miserably. Instead, it will have to suffice to say that now that I have a better understanding of the meaning behind the Ronald’s gesture in the picture, the fact that the figurehead for McDonald’s is gesturing in such a way is patently ridiculous.

The Curious Incident of the Spare Wheel in the Night-time

Apologies to readers: this post is long

Apologies to Mark Haddon (or possibly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) for the title of this post. It also seems that they are making a movie of the book, so that is most excellent. But I digress even before I get started. To the point!

The Point
Yesterday was a mostly tranquil day, with very little to set it aside from any other day. The only thing that was different to usual was that Angie and I went to a place called Fuel Cafe to help Lisa celebrate her birthday.
Lisa was discharged from hospital on Wednesday, so she said we should gather for a “tame boogie” at 10:30.
Given that description and the context, one would be forgiven for expecting that this would be some sort of brunch/tea-like affair. Of course, 10:30 should actually have been read 22h30. This is way past my bedtime. I’m an old man now.

Still, we arrived enthusiastically at about 11p.m., expecting to stay maybe and hour or two.

Fuel is a most excellent spot. It is a club and it has plants in buckets hanging from the ceiling. I don’t think I’ve every seen a club decorated with actual living plant things before.
It also had upturned buckets hanging down. They served as lamp-shades. I wish I had my camera with me. Alas!
Since the company was good, and the vibe was good, and I drank coffee and didn’t get tired, we stayed until about 01h45. Then the birthday-girl chose to depart, and we followed. We followed her home in order to continue the tame boogie and partake in a herbal treats.

For some reason, it was deemed necessary to watch an episode or two of “Scrubs.” Having not seen any episodes of the show, the first episode proved most chucklesome.
By this time, 3a.m. was upon us. Angie had passed out on Dan’s bed; Jaco, Dan, and Michaele (guessing on the spelling of this one, and I’m probably guessing wrong) had repeatedly knocked over the same ash-tray, and I was almost completely sober. Time to go home to bed for real. The evening had been a blast, but enough now.

The Actual Point
Just as I revived Angie from her slumber, she received a phonecall from her friend. I will refer to this friend as “Bob-the-Friend” for the sake of her privacy.
Driving home a little less sober than advisable, she’d driven off the road and mangled one of her wheels. Shouldn’t really be a major problem, since cars have spare wheels just for this very kind of thing. Indeed, she has such a spare wheel in her motor-vehicle. Except, on Tuesday, she and my dear wifely unit, Angie, had managed to mangle one of the other wheels by driving into obstacles on the highway, instead of avoiding them (which is customary behaviour). Thus, the spare wheel was already in use, rendering it no longer spare. Eish.

Angie and I travelled from Auckland Park to Northumberland Drive to the rescue. On our arrival we discovered that she’d built up quite a collection of by-standers. Bob-the-Friend, her sister, and her sister’s friend. They’d all been travelling in the vehicle of the mangled wheel.

But that’s not all! Someone from ADT security had arrived, and was protecting the damsels in distress. He was a fairly decent chap, and considering he had a gun and bulletproof-vest, I figure he also a pretty good deterent for those with malicious intensions.

But if you call now, you also get a dodgy, weedy, shifty-eyed character, who drives a Fiat Uno filled with broken computer hardware! Why, oh why did we call?

The shifty-eyed dude was trying to change the tyre, but recall that there was no spare tyre. For some reason he figured his Uno spare would fit nicely onto a Ford Fiesta. No surprise when it didn’t.

Not a problem – we happen to also own a Ford Fiesta, thus the spares would be compatible. All that was required was that we return home, fetch the other car and swop the wheels out. Problem was, Bob-the-Friend’s travelling companions needed to get home, so someone had to give them a lift. Shifty-eyes was really keen to be the guy. Shifty-eyes admitted to not knowing Bob-the-Friend’s companions from a bar of soap, yet felt he was trustworthy enough to drive them home.
Uh… no.

We resolved that I would drive drop them home, fetch my Fiesta and return to the site of the Curious Incident. The ADT dude would kindly hang around at the car with Angie and Bob-the-Friend until my return, continuing with his role as “Damsel in Distress Defender.”
Shifty-eyes started throwing a tantrum. He flung his spare tyre back into the boot of his rickety vehicle and angrily slammed his computer detritus in along with it. All the time muttering about how he couldn’t handle this and how he “Needed to get drugs!”
It was strange how much more composed and friendly he was before it became clear that he wasn’t going to have a couple of under-age teenage girls alone to himself.

So, I ran my errands and returned. The kind ADT man switched the tyres, and we were all pleased and cheerful with ourselves. This was until we realised that the car keys were missing. I realised that Bob-the-Friend’s sister had handed them to me as I dropped her off at home. Unfortunately, I’d left them in the other car which was at home. Bugger.
As I tried to break the news to the ADT man, I could see his patience slipping. Clearly from my face, I wasn’t about to share excellent news like, “Oh, here the keys are!” He looked at me with trepidation, and started to shake his head slowly. Before I’d even started to explain, he was already going, “No. No. No.”
I thanked him for his help, and told him he should go if he wanted, and that I’d return shortly with the keys. Clearly the whole situation had wasted more of his evening than he’d expected. He fled the scene gladly.

Drove home, dropped Bob-the-Friend off. Picked up the keys. Returned with Angie. Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.
Tried to start the car.

STUPID IMMOBILISER!

I lost my cool slightly. Up until that point I’d been very composed and relaxed and quite happy about all of the events that had transpired. I’d enjoyed my evening, and I’d even enjoyed helping out fixing the car situation. That Buddhism stuff is really effective. I am not kidding. It works really well. I hadn’t felt at all put out the whole evening until this point.
5a.m. and the car would mobilise. Gaaaaaaaaah! The was verbal abuse and a brief spurt of irrational ranting. But I noticed it quickly, didn’t give in and pulled it back into check.

We decided to push the car out of the road, and then after pushing it, tried once more to get it started. The engine turned. We drove.

I think Bob has a hang-over now.

And I’d give Fuel Cafe a visit if I were you. Can’t find their webpage (if they have one), but here’s where they are, and here’s what Google spews out so you don’t even have to submit the query. I’m such a buddy!
Well worth it. On the Corner of Carr and Quinn, Newtown, Joburg. Tel:(011) 838 9277