Monthly Archives: February 2008

Eeek – it’s an Asus Eee PC – nice….

Posted by on February 29, 2008 No comments

Asus has started to release the ultra-portable Eee-PC into South Africa:

Thin as a slice of toast (almost: 225 x 165 x 21mm), I am waiting for the 8GB model to be launched. The Eee PC 8G features a 7″ display and weighs in at only 0.92kg. The perfect form-/weight-factor to take it anywhere. It features a 8GB dependable solid-state disk and the battery power lasts between 3 – 3 1/2 hours.

The Eee PC comes pre-installed with Linux (Xandros) but also supports Windows XP. Due to the solid-state disk the ultraportable boots into Linux in a matter of a few seconds.

Specifications: Mobile Intel Celeron-M ULV 900MHz processor, Intel UMA graphics
Asus developed Linux based operating system, 7″ TFT screen, 1GB Memory, 8GB Solid-State Hard Drive
Integrated Modem, Ethernet and Wifi 802.11b/g, Integrated webcam (300K pixel)
Optional 3G module, 3 USB ports, VGA out port, SD card reader



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ADT in the wild – reckless driving

Posted by on February 28, 2008 No comments

On a sunny Saturday, the 22nd February at 12:53pm an ADT-driver decided to be cute and funny and cut me off in traffic:

ADT-headoffice – I reported your driver with registration WRL 372GP. Your driver was full of testosterone and felt all manly to race me on Witkoppen Road ending in the grand finale of cutting me off and almost causing a 3 car pile up by nearly ploughing in the cars in front of him (I did mention that he cut me off 3 times before after I left Northgate – yes?). What your driver clearly missed:

  • I am driving a Landrover and IT DOES NOT DRIVE FASTER THAN 100kmh – YOUR POINT IN CUTTING ME OFF AGAIN?
  • For 5km the road had two lanes – why again did you have to overtake, slow-down, cut me off? (3 times)
  • This was a 80km zone and your driver did above 100km

If only your response team would drive that fast when there is an emergency (which in this incident was not the case, since your driver pulled into a petrol station) – REMEMBER WHEN I WAS STILL A PAYING CUSTOMER SEVERAL YEARS AGO AND I PRESSED THAT PANIC BUTTON….. AND YOU DID NOT PITCH FOR 3 HOURS!!!!! (BECAUSE IT WAS TOO DARK)

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Home Affairs – How not to get an ID-book (14 years later)

Posted by on February 23, 2008 2 comments

I have been a permanent resident since 1998 and ever since I received my permanent resident certificate, I have tried to get my first ID-book. It took me a lot of patience to ignore the stuff-up from Home Affairs Randburg with my occupation:

With Home Affairs everyone seems to require a lot of patience. I am not surprised to read stories of people holding staff at gun-point just to get their identity document. The other day I read of a case where someone’s documents (including ID and passport) got stolen, and the poor fellow had to wait for 7 months to get ID and passport back. During that time he was not able to pick up his new credit-cards (you need ID) or renew his drivers license.

My story is similar. The previous 10 applications all disappeared into thin air (or more realistically: I helped 10 illegal immigrants to get a valid ID) and I was overwhelmed when I applied for the 10th time on 24th December last year and received a reference number via SMS. Surely having a reference number will ensure that I will know the progress of my application every step of the way — NOT!

It took Home Affairs Randburg until 23rd January (1 month) to forward my application to Pretoria. The reference number seems to be worth jack, since their online system always reports “System is unavailable”. Phoning home-affairs is equally fruitless – two weeks ago an official could not stop laughing while she was telling me that it will take at least one year to get my ID-book (after which she put the phone down and any subsequent calls the phone remained unanswered).

Home Affairs – you suck!With the amount of tax I am paying the government every year (and in turn I am paying government officials salaries) I would expect at least some basic rights and services. Due to not having an ID book I

  • am not able to finance a car, because banks classify me as a non-resident and flight risk
  • was supposed to convert my international drivers-license within a year. For this I need an ID-book and can not do it without it. I am now not able to convert my license anymore (due to the 1-year restriction) and to get a RSA-license I have do redo a learners/K53 (and everyone knows how much hassle it is to book an appointment with eNatis/Traffic department
  • struggle with any financial institution. Even financing a house with sufficient funds seems to be risky for banks – I might just decide to leave the country and take the house with.

Update 2: I did phone Randburg Home Affairs on Friday. The phone rang for 15 minutes without anyone answering. Eventually I got cellphone numbers of supervisors there. The first official’s voice-mail was full (no surprise) the 2nd official answered and apologized that he can not help, because he is on “a workshop” (must be a nice workshop – loud music booming in the background, women laughing). Oh well – at least my tax-money gives Home Affairs enough budget to socialize.

Update 3 (09/2010): Applied for the 11th time – things are looking good;
Update 4 (10/2010): My application can not be found – WTF?
Update 5 (11/2010): Yeah – I managed to get my ID book – 11 attempts and 14 years later.

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Postnet Northgate still sux. Hooray Postnet Broadacres!!!!

Posted by on February 12, 2008 No comments

Wow – talking about customer service: The lack you find at Postnet Northgate and the service-excellence you get elsewhere. Postnet Northgate managed to piss me off enough with their latest stint where they refused to send a registered letter to the United States, because “… we do not do international mail” was pretty much the cherry on top.

It was a delightful experience to walk into Postnet Broadacres – friendly staff, helpful and believe it or not (listen up Postnet Northgate) – they even managed to send the very same registered letter to the United States. It also wowed me that we managed to get a postbox within a couple of weeks and we are now looking forward to getting all the mail which seem to have disappeared in a blackhole near the CocaCola dome. (I have also convinced the overseas internet shop to try another shipment and am certain that it will arrive on time and in one piece).

To all the other Postnet’s out there – I do believe that all of you (with the exception of Northgate of course) do an outstanding job. It is a pity that outlets such as Northgate cut their nose to spite the face and in the end will loose plenty of customers and I will be suprised if the business will sustain over the years.

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Postnet Northgate – How not to provide service

Posted by on February 6, 2008 No comments

I am normally very patient and have accepted that experiencing customer service in South Africa is as scarse as finding a virgin at a brothel. Postnet Northgate falls in the no-service category. Their core-business should be just delivering mail – that is their bread and butter but their arrogance is beyond belief. Over the last 3 years their branch staff managed to lose several registered parcels where the tracking companies could clearly point out that the items had been delivered to their branch. It has gone as far as that one of the internet-shops refused to process my orders to that postal address since every single parcel went missing.

Aside from losing post, Postnet Northgate is also very capable of misplacing things. Things like your parcel notification – you will check your mail on a Saturday – post box is empty. Then you will check again in a weeks time, and voila all of a sudden a parcel notification slip backdated to the Friday two weeks ago. Until recently I was uncertain if their staff is just spiteful or incompetent, but last weeks visit clearly showed that the whole bunch is missing the big picture – and decided to put the following up in their outlet instead:

Wake-up call: If your branch-staff was doing the job they are supposed to do (such as not loosing post) and not giving customers attitude, I am certain people would not take it out on you.

Update: I moved and will hopefully be serviced by some more helpful people.

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Waterford Landrover – really going beyond

Posted by on February 3, 2008 No comments

My Landrover Defender Td5 has been in and out of workshops over the last 14 months ever since it become utterly stubborn and refused to start without a quickstart. I had a number of mechanics (including the AA and other reputable workshops) look at the car, but none of them was able to find the fault.

As a last resort, I contacted Waterford Landrover and spoke to Jan Nienaber who promised to have a look at the car and try and fix it.

After a thorough inspection it became evident that all of the car’s cylinder heads must have given in and would have resulted in a very expensive (in the region of 50,000 plus) repair. While I was still deliberating if it was worth the effort, Jan phoned my back and reported that the car was now in working condition. He was kind enough to replace the faulty parts with second hand-parts to get the car moving. Jan and his team at Waterford Landrover went the extra mile and have gone beyond providing customer service – WELL DONE AND THANK YOU WATERFORD LANDROVER.

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