We can likes to talk good English!

It always amazes me how badly people talk (or should that be, speak). Now, those people who are not mother tongue English speakers are not the ones I am talking about. Surprisingly, they speak very good English - much better than some of my friends who have never spoken another language in their lives.

Apart from the horrendous over-use of the apostrophe (in cases such as one DVD, many DVD's [aargh!], one PC, many PC's [again, aargh!]) the correct usage of simple spelling and phrases that one would have thought could be mangled are consistently being eroded by everyone around me, and it is driving me crazy!

There are, I will grudgingly admit, some phrases or difficult usages that I can understand may change with use and become accepted in another form, but here are some examples that made me cry with laughter: (I have not figured out how to post photos, so you will have to take my word for the fact that I have seen these)

• At the salad station in the canteen: Cold Statoin (Surely since this was printed it could have been spell checked?!?)
• On the gates in the complex next to me, one gate says visitors and the other residence (I almost crashed my car when I read that)
• On the street sign for my road - Eigth road instead of Eighth Road
  

Apart from signs, I also hear mangled expressions such as those listed below:

• Oh, for crying out loud in a bucket (!?!)
• The proof is in the pudding (really? I always thought it was in the eating)
• She is the epiphany of organisation (surely you mean epitome)

Maybe I am becoming an old fart, but I hate to see the poor language tortured so much. Oh well, nothing much I can do about it.

Y'all have a good day now y'hear. (He he)

Running and rolling

Today I saw something that reminded me how much I love living where I do. I live in an area of town where there is an interesting mixture of open land and business, townhouses and free hold houses.

There are still sheep around the corner from me, and lots of plots for horses as well. I have also seen wild rabbits, some sort of wild dog which looked like a jackal, owls, frogs, and squirrels (or perhaps a mongoose or two).

Today (along the road past the prison) the traffic came to a complete stand still for a few seconds while a family of ducks hurtled across the road. The last little one was trying to cross so quickly that it rolled and fell across the road in a particularly frantic way. The parents waited until they were across and then continued on. This is not really so uncommon. I have seen the same thing by the river when we all came to a screeching halt for a large and beautiful legevaan (large type of amphibius lizard I think, which I cannot spell).

I am encouraged that we still do this in Africa, and it pleases me that we still have so many wild things living around here.

I also have a large frog living in my pond. That is very cool too.

I used to have many more birds in my garden before I got a cat who cathes them for me as presents on a regular basis...

I wonder how many wild things you have in your garden?

When hell pretends to freeze over

So the guy from the place called me back and told me that the cheque was ready (about four hours late). Quite impressive actually! so I arrange with a friend to go fetch the cheque (in case they change their mind), first thing on Friday morning. I called the man back and confirmed the address, as well as all the details, and he once again agreed.

Again, I am not surprised, he called me back at 9:30 to let me know that he had misspelled my name on the cheque and it was not ready to be collected at all. he had to redraw the cheque, and redo the whole signature process.

Never mind warm fuzzy ears, now there is black smoke and lightning billowing out of them.

And to top it all, as if I am not feeling bad enough about making such a STUPID mistake, they have levied me with a refund charge.

I take it back - the banks and institutions like the SABS TV License department are the only ones make any money around here.

It kinda makes me question why I am a good citizen and pay my license at all...

Warm fuzzy ears

Why is it that when you want to call a nameless, faceless corporation's call centre to get your money back, or get some help of some sort that you have to wait until your ears feel as if they have been in under a very large man on a bus ride from Cape to Cairo? I think that the sooner we can invent a phone that cools your ears the better.

I have been trying to get my money back from the TV license department for more than a month now - I stupidly paid my car installment to them instead of another beneficiary on my internet banking (yes, okay, my stupid error, sigh!), and they claim that every stage of theprocess takes an incrementally longer period of time to progress.

For example, when I phoned, and told them what I had done, the lady (whose name I shall not publish here) said I had to wait 7 days until the money reflected in their system, after which I had to send a fax with all my details and proof and then wait a further 7 days for the fax to reflect on their system. !?!

After that I would have to wait 15 days and call back to speak to someone in the accounts department.

Not.

I sent the fax on the same day, and called ont he same day, and have kept calling every two days until I have at last found a gentleman (who the accounts department put me through to because they could see that I was not going to give up) who seems to know exactly what is potting. A good sign.. Yaay.

Today, is exactly 20 days after the start of the debacle, and although the man was quite helpful, he denied the time periods and laughed at the fact that I had waited so long. (How rude.)

Now between you and me - the only people who make any money here are the bloddy banks because it goes out of my bank IMMEDIATELY, and I am certain it goes into the beneficiary within 2 working days...

Never mind.

He said he would call me back in 10 minutes.

Let's see when hell will freeze over ...