Not in a happy place at the moment, too much not right, the usual dark spells of sour mood and inability to do anything. Simple tasks turn into murderous mountain trails, winding through the peaks of my own making, sheer cliffs ready to claim any minor misstep.

(I whine a lot, and this is dark)

I want to remain positive, I want to make it in the world, but I’m constantly bombarded with all that is fucking wrong with this country that I can no longer see what’s right. To put it bluntly, I am unsatisfied with life.

There are many who turn with a retort stating that life is what you make of it. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I do not have the will or the strength any longer to face these challenges. Perhaps the mountains have gotten too high for me to climb. The cliff too sheer to chance.

I am so angry and despondent. The worst is that my partner feeds these spells without intending too. She, herself, I believe, suffers easily with dissapointment and insurmountable odds. Things that should be simple become monumental.

My friends, my good friends, are all no longer here; instead they romp overseas, or endevour on up country. I’ve never adjusted or addressed the betrayal of one of my closest friends, and I don’t know if I ever will, or if I ever can. Perhaps it is the same with the death of my father so many years ago; never truly addressed, never dealt with, never accepted and acted upon.

How many things have I left to resolve themselves? How often have I simply shoved my sorrows deeper within myself and just left them, to fester, to grow malignant? I’m filled with pity for myself and it disgusts me. I do not know myself, or those around me, I do not care for my work, and feel that I am in a continual downward spiral.

Can I survive? Can I overcome these obstacles that have manifested before me? Can I find that spark that used to drive my imagination? Can I overcome the trait that I have developed which allows a single dissapointment to ruin my day, crush my heart, sunder my imagination?

Once it used to be that a dissapointment was merely an oppertunity to do something different, to move the plan, to change, to compensate and continue. Now it is a deathknell, a cataclysm, a complete and utter end.

I lack spirit, faith, determination. One single wrong step and everything collapses. What utter crap. What utter fucking shit. What bollucks. What the fuck is wrong with me and why do I feel so fucking sorry for myself?

FUCK!

Well, that didn’t take long, looks like the reprieve is over… Eskom of South Africa Raises Power Supply Alert to Red Zone (via Bloomberg)

My wife and I went to the Vincent Park Vodashop on the 1st of May to change her details into her married name and upgrade her contract from a TopUp to a Weekender. The gentlemen that assisted us was helpful, efficient and we left knowing that her name would be changed, that the contract would be upgraded, and include an SMS bundle, and that her new phone would arrive by Monday at the latest.

The following Wednesday we still hadn’t received the phone call to say that the phone was ready; instead, my wife had received a statement stating that an amount of R 144.50 would be deducted from her account come the end of the month.

Alarm bell number one.

Eventually my wife received the phone call that her phone was ready for collection that Thursday, and we duly went in on Saturday, concerned about the statement, but nevertheless excited at the prospect that we were going to get a spanky Nokia 5310 Music Xpress with mini-speaker and Bluetooth earphones. When we arrived, there was a lady already shouting at the teller.

Alarm bell number two.

My wife remarked that the lady should shout less and control her child instead, this, it would seem, would be the wrong thing to say, as we were about to find out, first hand, why the woman before us was having such a miserable time. Our turn in the queue came and we stepped forward. Disappointment, anger, and sheer stunned disbelief were about to welcome us with a large wiffle bat.

First, we asked for the phone, the teller didn’t want to know what my wife’s name was, she just wanted the telephone number. She went off, couldn’t find what she was looking for, came back, took the number and name and went back again. Eventually, she returned with the phone in hand. Eagerly we looked at the phone (okay, so maybe I was the one drooling, what can I say, I’m a geek), and I asked the question: where are the Bluetooth earphones and the speaker?

The answer we got back stunned me: Nokia no longer supplies the earphones with the phone, so you don’t get them.

Despite the fact that the contract we are getting explicitly states that the phone comes with Bluetooth earphones and a mini-speaker, because Nokia is no longer supplying the phone with the Bluetooth earphones, the customer doesn’t get them. Somewhat stunned, I asked how much the Bluetooth earphones were. They’re R899.

So my wife is losing out on R900 worth of equipment, despite the fact that she’s still paying for it, even though she isn’t getting the earphones? We received a Shox mini-speaker, which I am almost sure is the incorrect one, because I believe that the contract states that it is a Tevo brand speaker, but that I will need to lookup as I may be mistaken.

We then point out the issue with the statement. The price is right for the weekender. So we point out that we requested an SMS bundle. The teller confirms that it was never added. We then query the name change, which hasn’t gone through. The teller states that they cannot change names, that they just fax it through to their regional office. My wife also points out that the contract is still invoiced out to the incorrect person despite her requesting ti to be changed some three years ago!

At this point we have surpassed the annoyed stage, moved passed disbelief and are now angry. Our voices are raised. I can safely state that the Vincent Park Vodashop should be grateful that my wife had a splitting headache (I took her from Vincent Park to the doctor for an injection) otherwise they would have gotten a far greater tongue lashing than I gave them.

What truly stunned me was the complete disinterest from the teller and the other Vodashop employees, including, who I think may have been the manageress, but she never introduced herself so I am unsure. Even when we threatened to take the contract to MTN, they simply just shrugged. They didn’t care.

So tonight I get all the details together, lodge a complaint with their head office at the completely shocking service that we received. The worst part for my wife is that she at first tried to get her phone in early April, but there were no phones that she liked available. It was only after she had settled on the Nokia E65 and was told that she would have to wait a week for stock, and then that I did my upgrade at MTN at Retail Park (who’s service was utterly SUPERB!), in thirty minutes (from documentation, new phone, extra memory card, cell phone holster to walking out the door with a smile on my face) that she saw the 5310 and decided that she wanted it.

We went to the Vodashop in Retail Park, were told that they did not have the phone, and that the Nokia 5310 was a “crappy phone with endless problems”. After researching it and getting second opinions we stuck with it. My only regret is that my wife is now stuck with the Vodacom contract for another two years. The phone wasn’t even in the colour that she wanted – it’s blue, she wanted the red, but Vodacom can only get it in blue (because it’s their corporate colours?).

It was, therefore, with great interest that I read the following article on ITWeb: The Big Cellular Rip Off. I can only hope that when I contact Vodacom customer service tomorrow that they are better able to resolve this, and make up for the shyte service we have received so far.

I can only hope that the cellular providers get to the point where they realise that the customer is what makes them money. Eventually people will grow tired of being treated like crap and they will lose them. I can only hope that the theory presented in the ITWeb article above is tested in court and proves that the cellular providers are not legally entitled to charge subscription charges as a penalty. If that becomes the case, I think a lot more people will flex their customer muscle and move to another provider.

Speaking of which, Virgin Mobile is looking progressively more promising, much like their credit card offering. Free SMS’s? Forever? That makes one question how the other service providers quantify the R 0.75 that they charge for an SMS.

J out.

In case I haven’t punted this blog often enough in the past, visit the Fishbowl for some good running commentary on the politics in South Africa.

The Mail and Guardian, one of the “newspapers” that has often been on the receiving end of Laurence’s scorn, ran an article this morning on their online paper about the whole Pikoli debacle; and it is worrying. Claims that everyone from the SAPS to the President of the country purposefuly obsfucating the inditement / investigation of Selebi.

A thoroughly corrupt government?

If Pikoli’s claims are indeed truthful, and I have little reason to believe otherwise, then it shows a remarkable, and terrifying level of corruption throughout the government. In essence, Pikoli claims that even the president is corrupt and is obstructing the course of justice and subverting the rule of law. I believe that in any other country, outside of Africa that is, this kind of claim would cause riotous uproar.

Yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets swept under the carpet, and Pikoli labeled an “Apartheid Sympathiser” - as is won’t of the current government to blame everything on Apartheid. Regardless of that bit of vitriol, it remains a worrying trend for Mbeki’s cabinet - all of his ministers, except perhaps old Trevor, are being looked at with greater and greater levels of scorn from the people of South Africa, or at least the white people and the “coconuts” (which is apparently an acceptable derogatory statement) that live and pay their taxes in this country.

On face value, if Pikoli is telling the truth, then the law must apply, and even the president should be arrested and charged. Which would be a shock. The fact that Selebi is possibly corrupt, is a further worrying factor of this country, it’s no wonder that so many skilled people are fleeing the country. I really need to find some good news about this country, and soon, otherwise I’m going to be labelled a “white-frighter”.

Eish. Have a look at our country, it’s beautiful, but it’s weeping. We have so many people, yet mostly, they’re under-educated, living in squallor, and begging for food. Unemployment in the Eastern Cape is apprently aorund 38%. That means that four out of every ten people are unemployed. Or, that for the forty people that the company I work for employs, there are twenty four that are unemployed.

Yet the government employees seem so wastefully uninterested in helping the country. When one contacts these departments and asks for a persons name, so that one can track the conversation, the respondant refuses to give it, no-one will sign for anything, and the general level of unfriendliness and unhelpful attitudes makes working with the government, even on the municipal level, an abhored nightmare.

Is there anyone out there that can speak of a pleasant dealing with the government, at any level? Considering the amount of money that we pay in tax, be it VAT, be it petrol levies, sin taxes or whatever else that there may be, why do we have such terrible service levels? Someone, please, show me the path to loving my country again.

Yesterday I spoke of the possibility of a move to New Zealand. Obviously this isn’t something that has just popped up out of the blue, however, since the discussion between myself, family members and my beloved wife, my observation of the errors of this country have become increasingly more detailed. One, of course, understands that one must not belittle the country of their birth in order to make a distant shore more inviting, and one should observe with cold logic and analysis.

And pigs fly too.

One of the greatest issues in this country recently has been the power crisis perpetuated by our embattled and poorly run government provider Eskom. They’ve asked for a 53% increase in the price of power while shutting power off for two to four hours daily in a rotational basis, so that everyone gets to enjoy the dark nights, or fruitless days.

Of course, when the blame game comes into question, the first fingers and salvos are pointed and launched at the “Apartheid Regime”. That seems to have become sucha  knee-jerk reaction for South African Governament institutions and ministers. Further, when the question of performance bonuses being paid to the Eskom board members was queried, the minister in charge, Alec Erwin, said that there were no grounds for not paying the bonuses. After all, Eskom is performing financially well.

Forget the fact that Eskom is costing the country millions, if not billions, of Rands in economic growth and prosperity, they continue blithely on shutting power off here, power off there, and then - they blew up a transformer. Unsurprisingly, the transformers are not designed to have power shut off from them and then switched back on with such rigid consistency. One blew up in Walmer in Port Elizabeth, and residents and businesses, including an old age home, were without power for five days. Then one blew up in Kempton Park in Johannesburg. A few weeks later Eskom released a statement waffling on about how consumers had decreased their consumption of electricity to the point that they could temporarily discontinue load shedding.

The rest of the country pretty much acknowledged that with a rueful grin.

Then today I get a chance to browse through the google news, and come across this article by The Times. Well if that isn’t enough to just piss the hell out of someone. Not only have Eskom decreased the amount of electricity they import into the country, but they’ve increased the amount of power that they export from the country to our “neighbours” and they sell that exported power at less than they sell if to the people of their own nation. Typical.

Deep down, in that coldly rational part of my mind I realize that there may be good reason for this, perhaps it has something to do with supply and demand, quantaties purchased, old legislation that has not yet been corrected, or a plethora of other reasonable issues. One cannot, however, help but feel indignant and livid at the fact that Eskom exports power at a quarter of the price that I pay for it, that when my wife is home alone, in complete darkness, in a country with ludicrously high rape and murder statistics, they’re offering power to our “neighbours”.

I would love to see Alec Irwins inane response to this one.

I do not run the country, I have no experience running the country, I have no experience running a massive business either, so my suggestions, or beliefs in how this should be handled, are probably woefully incompetent - but no less so, I beleive, than the current board of directors that controls Eskom.

Step one - fire the board of directors at Eskom, and issue written warnings to all senior managers for the poor performance of Eskom over the last financial year. Eskom is failing to provide the basics of their purpose, power to the people.

Step two - discontinue supply of export electricity with immediete effect until such a time that power provision in South Africa has stablized and is secured for continued economic growth over the next decade or more, at the very least.

Step three - increas electricity imports to meet demand as required.

Step four - decrease the cost per kilowatt hour to half of what it currently is, and increase the cost of future exported electricity to thrice what it currently is, thereby exporting at a higher cost than internal usage.

Step five - stop the collective screwing of the South African consumer that seems to be so popular with this populist government.

Crisis! I’m tired of these people.

Things have been changing over the last few weeks, it’s almost as if I’m waking from a long period of dull slumber. There are still, as there will always be, things in my life that need radical change, and that will never quite satisfy me. Recently however, new events, have re-energized me, and now I feel like taking the bull by the horns again.

The biggest bombshell that has struck so far is the fact that my family have made the decision to move to New Zealand by no later than the end of the year. Already my brother-in-law has been to Christchurch and Aukland looking for employment, and my sister has also ensured that they qualify for immigration.

The interesting thing is that once they are there, I will virtually automatically qualify for immigration under the Family Quota law, or something like that. As such, Bunny and I have been spending a lot of time looking over New Zealand, and trying to find contacts that we can mine for information. A side effect of this has been the discovery of a lot of people that are leaving South Africa in a rush, just to escape the government and their bungling attempts at governance. This is one such site here.

Our greatest concern about moving to a new country is our dog. He’s like a child to us and still very young, he’s only three. We’ve examined some of the quarantine kennels in New Zealand and have settled on Canterbury Quarantine which seems to suite our needs. I still need to mail them for prices, but some of the other sites that I have visited suggest about NZ$ 1,200 a month. The quarantine period is 120 days, so that’s be a total layout of around NZ$ 5,000 for the entire period.

Then there’s the ability to sustain ourselves while we look for work and a place to live. Luckily for me, my brother already has his residency, and he has offered up his home for a period of about three months for my sister and, later, for myself. This will give us the oppertunity to ensure that we can find ourselves some work, but there are other logistic issues, such as the fact that he lives about 120kms from the quarantine kennel which is a major issue.

It’s terrifying, exhilarating, tumultuous, intimidating, chaotic, energizing and any other word you can think of to describe the gamut of emotions that are thundering through myself and my Bunny. There’s the fact that we will be leaving her family behind, and all of our friends, but then there is also the chance of a much better life. So many different emotions and options are flying through this muddled head of mine that I don’t know what to decide. It appears that we need a minimum of R 150,000 before we can even consider going to this place. That’s a mountains, but hell, it can be conquered.

A new world, a new life.

Of course one worries about the possibility of things going horribly wrong. There is always the chance that things will go south, but one must remain, at all times, positive. This can, this will, work.

When next I post, it will be more about work than anything else. I have neglected this poor little blog for far too long. I keep making promises, but this time, this time it will be different.

Anyhow, my plane will be boarding in fifteen minutes, so I had better get ready. J out.

It’s a printer that, well, prints itself! That’s just cool. More info here.

It’s not Frank’s Dune, but this open mod for Oblivion is quite breath taking. I really need to find a way to add about 60 hours to my day so that I can do all the things that I want to, like play Oblivion, download mods like this, and then explore.

As you can see, Promethius is a genius when it comes to modding Ob. I only wish I had the time and patience to learn how tomod like that man can. If you want more information on the Dune mod, it can be found here.

So, being in the geeky mood that I am in, and since I am already running FireFox 3 Beta 3, I thought - bugger it, I’m going to install IE 8 Beta 1. So I download the 14.5Mb file, and begin the install process (but not before setting a restore point).
Needless to say, it didn’t install. One of the things that I dislike strongly about Microsoft Software available off of their website is that it often asks to download the latest updates, which is odd, since I just downloaded the appliction - it should be the latest.
Anyway, I attempt to download said update automatically, but hey, that fails too. So I download it manually, and start smelling a rat. Or more specifically, begin to suspect that there is no way in hell that IE 8 is going to run on my current installation. The update it is looking for, is a file that fixes a language bar error which causes crashes in some obscure situations.
Regardless, and being cavalier about it, I attempt to install the update, which it then tells me that I cannot do because, well, the service pack that I have installed has a later version number than the patch itself.
Therefore, unsurprisingly, IE 8 Beta 1 does not work, not even install, on Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3. Go figure.