Speedqueen repair

Our trusty old Speedqueen hasn’t given us one day of worries for over 14 years.  This machine was designed in the USA, most of the parts were made in the USA, and I believe it was assembled in South Africa, but it may even have been assembled in the good ol’ US of A. 

Designed and built to last forever – nothing like the crap you get these days that is assembled in China or Bangladesh, quality checked by a person who can barely write his own name and is paid $2 a day by the communist regime who are stuffing themselves with caviar and turtle eggs. 

No sirree, this baby was made by western people in the old-fashioned proud way that westerners used to display not so long ago.  A pride that seems to have disappeared overnight.

My wife and I bought this machine in Namibia just after we got married.  It travelled to different houses and although it’s a massive machine, it’s worth dragging her big fat body to your new house.  Once she gets going, she’ll wash anything you can stuff into her.

We brought her over to Australia in a 40 foot container.  She spent 5 months inside that container before being able to drink her first serving of Australian water.  And she happily soldiered on - washing clothes, blankets, barbeque covers, car carpets, shoes and anything else that could fit in there.

Until two days ago, when she started screaming like a pig.

I gave her a few pushes and shoves and managed to wiggle her fat body around until the noise sort of went away.  But a few seconds later the noise would return, even though she seemed to do her job despite the screaming noise.  It sounded like someone threw a bag of coins inside a food processor.  (Not that I’d ever done that and would know what it sounded like…)

I guess the noise should have made me think about opening her carcass to see what was causing it, but I just somehow managed to convince myself that “she’ll be right.”  

So yesterday, of course, my worried wife told me that the machine wasn’t working any more.  What would we do without her?

Which led to today’s event.

Armed with my toolbox, socket sets, screwdrivers, and a multimeter which hasn’t been used for more than 3 years, I had my battle plan ready.

The first job was to get all the water out of the machine.  She was full of water but could not pump it out herself – which made me think that the pump might be where the problem was.

I opened her up, and at first I saw a lot of black fluff which I immediately though to be the kind of black stuff you see when a motor burns out.  This wasn’t a happy moment for me.

On closer inspection, though, I noted that this stuff was just fluff from 14 years of washing.  Somehow some of this stuff does end up on the inside of the machine, and no one ever thinks of opening up her guts and cleaning her out, so where else would the fluff go?

I tested the power to the pump, and measured that it was receiving power but was still not running. 

To remove the pump, I had to disconnect the water feed, which meant that the last bit of water that I couldn’t get out of the machine would drain all over me.  Being alone with no extra hands to help, this created quite an annoying situation where my bucket was filling up quicker than I could empty it, and I desperately had to fight to keep water from running into the electrical parts of the machine.  Fun times, indeed.

I finally dismounted the pump and saw something moving inside.

And there it is – a hairpin:

This stupid hairpin was causing all the havoc and was obviously the source of the noise.  When I wiggled and bounced the machine around, the hairpin dislodged a little, but would soon go back into it’s position and cause the screaming noise.  Eventually the pump just couldn’t turn anymore.

The good news was that once I returned everything back into position, I filled up the machine with water and she pumped that water out like Victoria Falls after a good raining season.

What a lucky escape – our baby is still running smoothly, and I saved hundreds of dollars on a repairman that would almost certainly have claimed that the pump was broken and needed replacement.

Of course, after closing the machine and tightening all the freaking screws, I found that the plastic cover that protects the pump inside the machine was still lying on the floor.  Luckily, this time I knew that I only needed to open the front cover and did not have to waste my time screwing off all the sides too.

The clean cover re-installed above the pump:

Mr Fix-it saved the day again. Not to mention the fact that those hard-to-get-to areas inside the machine have been cleaned for the first time in 14 years.

I have to say, I’m still impressed by the quality and durability of this machine.  This was money well spent – many years ago.

The Big Aussie BBQ

Yesterday it was time to greet the queen in a real West Australian way – we had a massive barbeque on the Perth foreshore.

There were 120 barbeques, 120,000 sausages (unfortunately no boerewors), 8000 liters of tamato juice, 130,000 drinks and more than 100,000 people who came to greet the queen.

Public transport was free and we took the train into the city early Saturday morning.

Because we were there early we got into the main stage area, and we got close to the action.  This whole area was later locked off and the rest of the common folk had to go somewhere else to look at the queen on the big screens.

This created it’s own problems of course, because my youngest little darling wanted to go to the toilet, and I had to go through what seemed like 7 heavily guarded gates to get out, and had to get stamped to ensure that I’m allowed back in again.  The same applied if you wanted to buy sausages or drinks.  Security was tight and there was no mercy for anyone without the red stamp.

But it was great fun.  I’ve never had the opportunity to see the  queen in real life before, and I was surprised at how human-like her Duck was.  (I don’t know why this duck is always accompanying her, it must be some mascot or something.)

The crowd was extremely well-behaved, and the WA Police tweeted later:

“about 100,000 ppl/no arrests/1 move-on notice/3 elderly ppl collapsed (fine now)/3 kids reunited with carers #CHOGM”

It was an alcohol-free event after all, as the Premier correctly assumed that good decent Western Australians won’t start drinking at 9am on a Saturday morning…well, not the 200,00 that came to the foreshore anyway.

The national anthem was sung with pride and once again one couldn’t help but notice how much these people love their country and how proud they are to be Western Australians.  And that includes me.

We were close to the action, and when we asked my youngest what the queen looked like, her response was “she looks very old!”

Apparently Her Majesty also had a look at my daughter’s CHOGM photo earlier this week, and she was very impressed with this beautiful young girl from Africa.  She may even have smiled when she looked at it in admiration: 

On the way back we got off at Sterling station to run in to IKEA for a cheap lunch and drank free refill cold drinks till we burst. 

So, in one week we met the Premier of WA in person, and saw the queen and her Duck from Edinburgh.  What a week it was, indeed!

I need a holiday.

Making Biltong Down Under

When you’re from Windhoek, you can only spend so much time without biltong.  I was practically raised on this stuff.  I can still remember the first time my granddad got a kudu and we carved it up into little pieces and hung it up in the little room in our backyard.  I was still very young, but I remember it fondly – like it was yesterday.  I can still taste that kudu when I think about it. 

After nearly three years in Perth, and having to buy beef biltong from local butchers at ridiculous prices, I have finally put aside enough time to build a decent biltong drying cage so that I can start making my own biltong.

At first I tried to use a cheap dehydrator, but I will not recommend this to anyone.  If you don’t have one that has variable temperature control, it will just cook your meat while it’s drying, and it will taste like bad army food.

The better way to make biltong is the traditional way – air drying.  I built myself a nice little cage out of flyscreen, rope and wooden planks, using a staple gun to attach the flyscreen to the sides.  The top and bottom covers are removable, to make it easy to access and clean the cage:

I also added some wheels to make it easier to drag this thing around the house:

The meat is prepared by marinading it in vinegar and the basic biltong spices: coriander, pepper, salt and a little brown sugar.

Then these spiced beauties are hung in the cage by attaching little hooks through them. S-shaped hooks made out of normal binding wire does the job perfectly.

Using a fan to help blow-dry the meat makes the curing process a little faster, but is not essential.  It does help, however, if you have moving air around the meat.

Look at these beauties – pure nature at it’s best: environmentally friendly, bio-degradable, and extremely good for my heart and emotional well-being:

A good piece of biltong is what makes life worth living.

(No additional animals were killed during the production of this blog…)

Farewell

A while ago I had a deep conversation with my son while we spent 24 hours camping alone in the bush of south-western Australia. I told my son how much it hurt me that my own father chose not to love me. Ever since my son was born, it was even more difficult for me to comprehend how anyone could choose not to love their children. Was I so unlovable that my own father wouldn’t want me?

When I was 10 years old, however, another man chose to love me and call me his son. For this I will always be grateful. He changed my life, and gave me one of the greatest things I was longing for. I was a small little boy who needed a strong man to shape my life. A hero, a big strong man who was not afraid of anything.

He taught me that real strength was not just in physical appearance or status, but in how you treated those who were weaker than you.

He always loved children, and seemed to prefer the company of laughing children to that of adults. I’ve never seen children who didn’t love Oom George.

I remember walking down the street with him. He would greet complete strangers as if they should know him, and would make jokes wherever he went. He never considered the possibility that anyone he walked into would not know who he was, and enthusiastically greeted them and asked about their welfare.

My dad would interrupt the middle of any conversation and point us to the nice sound of the clarinet or trombone in the song that was playing in the background.

Music was his life.

This was the language of my dad – scales and notes and melodies. He spoke this universal language and understood it well.

It is a great honour when someone is chosen to be the son of a hero. I was chosen – and I honour you as my father. May you rest in peace.

I salute you, Sammajoor.

Booger eyes and guttersnipes

Last night it rained for the first time in 600 years. Or something like that – it’s a record, apparently. Nothing new to me, because growing up in Namibia, which is considered to be one of the driest countries in the world, a few decades without rain never really surprised anyone. We were used to describing a yearly rainfall of 300mm as an exceptionally good year.

Anyway, that’s not what this is about.

The sound of the rain coming down is a pleasant one for desert rats like me – I was raised to always appreciate free water falling from heaven.

But the other noises that go with it – that’s what this story is about.

When I started writing this post, I recalled a funny word from memory – “guttersnipe”. I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but it sounded applicable to my situation. According to the World Wide Library, however, a guttersnipe is “a child who spends most of his time in the streets especially in slum areas…”, which isn’t exactly what I had in mind.

What I had in mind was something more like a combination between a sniper and a gutter, with the two connecting in a violent confrontation with each other.

The gutter next to our bedroom window has this awful way of making a dripping noise when it rains. Not a constant rhythm that you can get used to, but an annoying disoriented pattern of drips and bangs that makes you go nuts.

We had a similar problem back in Namibia, but there my solution was simple – place a flat rock or a sponge in the bottom of the gutter where it bends out, and the problem is solved. But this stupid gutter has no access point – it feeds into the ground and the water is being fed into some unknown abyss where no unauthorised members of the public have access to it.

This house also does not belong to me – I’m renting, so I can’t just start sawing and hacking off parts that I don’t like.

This does not have a soothing effect on my friendly character at 00:30 in the morning. In fact, it drives me insane. I have tried all sorts of nasty ways to get this ghastly guttersnipe to stop guttersniping. (Sounds like something the old seadog in the Tintin books would say…)

The best solution for the moment is to stick a little piece of plastic in there, so it stops the water drops from falling all the way to the bottom of the gutter. The fancy tool was hastily handcrafted from old ice cream containers. I might have added a little colourful language in the recipe too.

Every time this happens, I promise myself that I’m going to get out my electrical drill and drill out all the rivets so that I can remove (or is it snipe?) the bottom part of the gutter in order to reduce the noise pollution levels in my neighbourhood.

To top it off, once I finally got into bed, I felt my eye hurting like crazy. Went to have a look in the mirror, and it looked like I was just returning from a bar fight in a western movie. My left eye was puffed up like a watermelon.

For a brief moment I thought a spitting cobra had attacked me while I was hitting a hammer against its nest in the gutter, but then I realised that this may be a bit far-fetched. Although, at that time in the morning nothing really seems far-fetched, except the idea of getting some freaking sleep.

When I finally woke up this morning, the old lazy eye was still huffing and puffing, and this gave me enough reason to make use of one of my sick-days at work. I rang up the old doctor’s waiting room as soon as possible, but of course there is nothing available until tomorrow.

I later even tried to find a vet that would have a spot open for me. No one would make room for me and my booger-eye.

So, here I am, sitting lazily at home trying to fix up the booger-eye. Later I realised that we have a chemist within 10 minutes’ walk from our house, so I took the time and walked over to get some over-the-counter eye drops.

I’m busy preparing that drill. Today will be the day of reckoning.  Booger-eye or not, your time has come my little noisy friend!

Life without engineering

Yikes.  During my previous post I made a few insensitive jokes about Cyclone Bianca, as it did not really have any impact on Perth.  But on the other side of the continent, cyclone Yasi has been raging like an angry dictator with bad indigestion.

This mother of a storm was a category 5 cyclone and caused a lot of havoc around those parts.

The amazing part of this story is the fact that no one was seriously injured or killed during this storm so far, apart from a man who was killed by the fumes of a generator in his room. 

This is all due to the fact that there was enough early warning and that people had enough time to prepare for the worst.  Right across the world everyone was watching expectantly.

Imagine in the old days when the only warning you had was the birds that disappeared and the ants that started going Rambo on you.  According to some of my friends over East, on the day Yasi reached the continent, it was still a clear bright sunny morning and you would have thought it to be a great day to hang around the beach.

All this early warning is due to modern technology and the marvels of electronic engineering, combined with a few other sciences of course.  Without the reliable instruments and communication systems no one would have known what was coming.  Without the satellite footage and the radar images, combined with pressure, wind and temperature measurements this would have been a disaster and thousands would probably have been killed. 

Without great communication tools like radio, TV, phones and the internet, people out in the country would have been sleeping with the barn windows open when the cyclone hit.  We would have seen a lot more flying cows and a few people would have thought their mother-in-law turned into a witch because she was flying around on a tree trunk.

All thanks to the geeky nerds who became engineers and scientists.  Those same geeks who were bullied by the redneck jerks in school now saved those same brainless muscled idiots.  They always win in the end.

Unfortunately there was a huge material loss for many people.  Farmers lost crops and people lost their homes and cars.  People’s jobs and sources of income were wiped out over night.  Not a laughing matter at all.

But thanks to engineering, it was not as bad as it could have been.

Unfortunately this also means that these climate change nuts will gain a lot of support with their fear-mongering.  They still seem to think that man can actually control weather like this.  All of this was apparently caused by my 3.8 liter V6 engine guzzling fossil fuels and spewing carbon dioxide into the air.

I’ll think about that while I drive out to the beach this afternoon.

Hold on to yer hat mate

Today was one of those days where Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau would say “my, what vundeful wethah we are havink today?…”

The temperature last night was a chilly 26.1 degrees Celsius.

The cyclone also contributed to weather conditions which produced the city's hottest night in 10 months.

The temperature hit 26.1 degrees at 1.57am and continued to climb.

The morning started out pretty hot, and we spent half the day in our little blow-up swimming pool.  Suddenly the clouds gathered and it poured like never before, only to open up again and let the sun burn down on us like someone left open a massive microwave oven.

Two days ago the ants started an all-out assault against me and my household.  This was not the normal trail of ants that you occasionally see, this was a full-on invasion.  By Friday I told my wife there’s bound to be rain on the way, if you look at the way these ants are taking over.  “I know these things”, proudly announced…

This however seemed unlikely with the temperatures continually being in the high 30’s, and not a cloud in sight for the last 2 months.  Is this what Noah felt like before he saw that small cloud on the horizon?

We’ve also been receiving some disturbing warnings from the powers-that-be.

They are telling us a category 3 cyclone is on the way. 

OK, so what exactly is a category 3 cyclone? Should I be concerned?

I’ve been trying to figure out what this means, but could not quite get an uncomplicated answer, apart from some tips as to how you should remove loose objects from your backyard and don’t drive around too much in the rain.

We are asking people to get ready for it and certainly reassess their plans for travelling, camping, boating as Saturday goes on, which could be dangerous” he said.

“We’re asking people to prepare their properties inside and out and check their emergency plan and get emergency kits up to date and make sure they are ready and refreshed with batteries for their torch and transistor."

I don’t see how batteries and torches are going to help me when a howling twister drags me away screaming and kicking?

I did manage to find this pretty picture of Bianca, and it looks like it’s going to be a great day for some amateur photography:

It seems that they cannot really predict her exact path:

FESA State Emergency Service is advising people to start planning for bad weather and listen for further advice about the weather, which it described as very unusual. It could cause significant damage to homes and make travel dangerous.

I have decided to try out our new kite with the kids tomorrow.  Apparently these cyclones bring in quite a nice breeze and we should be able to get the kite flying like a dove.  I think it’ll be a great day to go to the park, throw something on the barbie and let the kite show us what it’s made of.  I’ll take my camera along, maybe there will be some nice cloud coverage – clouds always make great photos.

I’ll also set apart some time to get up on my roof and adjust my TV antenna.  Last time when we had the hailstorm the reception was just awful, so this time I’ll be there to fix her up.

I wonder how long these things last?  2 minutes, maybe 3?  Who knows.  I’ll try to snap a few photos before the sun comes out again.

I’ll keep you posted.

A horror-movie experience at the “New” Esplanade

This year my wife and I celebrated 15 years of married bliss. This means that I know how to identify her “don’t come hither” look, and she has accepted the fact that my “lean and mean” body may be a little less lean but probably a lot meaner.

During a few of those “don’t come hither” moments, she was dropping a lot of hints about wanting to be booked into a nice hotel for a night. Just the two of us, without kids and TVs and computers and cooking and ironing and gardening.

I, of course, loved the idea – it might even turn that look into a “come hither”, if I played my cards right.

But the logistics didn’t exactly work out the way we thought it would. I googled Perth’s hotels for something “affordable” (which means “cheap-as”, but still worth throwing your money at). In the meanwhile we couldn’t get the kids’ sleep-overs arranged on the right date, so had to change the booking date. I saw adverts for quite a few nice spots in the CBD, and then this one jumped up at me.

It had a special discount just for January.

The cost was $118 for a couple, and offered me a great view on the Swan river. Who could resist?

They proudly stated

“Our standard rooms are spacious and newly decorated.
All front rooms face the breathtaking Swan River. They are located on the floors 1 to 6.”

They also claimed to have the following Room facilities:

» Fully air-conditioned » Colour LCD TV

» Ensuite with bath/shower

» Radio & Hairdryer

» Mini bar

» Refrigerator

» Coffee and Tea making facilities

» International Direct Dial

IDD/STD Telephone

I grabbed my credit card and started booking online. I made sure I requested one of those great rooms with a view on the river.

The email came soon enough – booking confirmed. They also supplied the following information:

Breakfast is served daily in the foyer. Price is $25 for cooked, or $18 for a continental per person.
Car parking is available at $25 / day. Height = 2.1m (7ft 1 in)
extra person is $46 per person / day
wireless internet access. please see wifi pricing (3rd party service)
#check in on the day of arrival is after 2pm. check out by 10am. Reception hours: 24/7

I thought the breakfast was a bit on the pricey side but assumed that this was because it’s such good quality.  I never really got to the point of confirming this, however.

The missus was very excited about the whole affair. We couldn’t get rid of the kids soon enough, and finally we were on the freeway on the way the city. I had a Google map direction to follow, but once I hit Howard Street, the place was nowhere to be found. It turns out Google maps had a little error, but we soon found the entrance around the corner in The Esplanade. We walked up to the 24/7 reception area and found an Asian man who was busy on the phone.

When he finally attended to us we were all too excited about getting to our room. We requested access to the parking bay and moved on to get our car parked.

The attendant who worked at the parking bay gate reminded me of some of the hawkers I saw in Singapore. He gave us a piece of paper that we were to have in the car at all times, and another little receipt that would help us get through the boom gate. We had to park on level C or higher.

Moving a Kia Carnival around a parking bay area is always a chore, but this was like driving a tank through a McDonalds’ drive-through. We finally found an open hole the size of a mini, and I gently forced our 8 seater bus into the little spot.

We removed our baggage from the Kia and started looking for the entry door to the hotel. All we could find was a little dodgy elevator that had buttons with illogical floor numbers on it. If you moved sideways and pulled your luggage behind you, you could barely make it past the door into the lift. It was a little larger than a Barbie doll house, and looked like it was built just before Hitler killed himself.

We pushed a few buttons to see what would happen. All the floors had access doors that were locked, and our keys wouldn’t open them. The car park had an awful garbage smell and reminded me of some of my visits to Opuwo in Namibia. Old smelly puddles of water were all over the place, and you had to tread very carefully. We had to ride all the way down to the ground floor, walk around the dirty dark alleys and enter the hotel through a little side-door, trying not to be hit by any oncoming traffic.

“Phew – finally out of the dirty alleys and into the great luxurious hotel”, I thought.

We walked over to the hotel’s inside elevator and I noticed that the wooden handrails looked like they were falling apart. I thought this was probably just something that happened recently and that it would be fixed soon – these things happen.

We found our room on the 6^th floor and this is where the penny really dropped for me.

What exactly they meant by “newly decorated” is beyond me. What met my eyes was a room from hell. This may have been newly decorated in 1955. The room had a view of the river, but you had to look through the tree branches to see a glimpse of it.

The bay windows were taped up with cello-tape for some reason. The bed felt like it was standing on three eggs, and the linen seemed like it hadn’t been washed for the last 30 years. The air conditioner was like something out of a 1960’s sci-fi movie, and sounded like it was going to tear the whole building apart. It sounded a lot like a Boeing 747 taking off from Luanda airport.

And then I walked around to inspect the bathroom. This is where I made my decision to go back home.  Some people might think I’m just a snob, but so be it.

The toilet seat was made of some black material that was probably banned in 1956. The shower was one of those in-the-bath thingies with a stupid shower curtain that would only help the water to distribute more evenly onto the bathroom floor.

By the way, I’ve never seen one of those that actually work. Either they flood the whole bathroom, or they creep up into your bum while you try to catch a drop of water from your creepy shower head. They should be declared illegal.

I gave this beautifully restored bathroom the once-over and decided to get the hell out of dodge.

My wife was still excited about getting out of the house, but I just had it. I apologised to her profusely – this was not what I had in mind. None of the “come-hither” stuff is going to happen on this creepy bed anyway… even I have my pride.

I walked down to “reception”, and when Mr Chong finally attended to me I said I wanted to cancel my booking as I’m not happy with this crappy hole. He informed me that I had to talk to the manager, but the manager would only be in by the morning.

I politely notified him that I would unfortunately not be here in the morning, and that I would be sending a friendly email to the manager. I now ran the risk of still paying $118 for the room plus $25 of smelly parking space, but I decided to take that chance rather than spend a night wondering when a bikie gang would take over our room, or when a snake would crawl out from under the bed to kill one of the rats.

We drove around a little and then decided to go for a pizza and a DVD rental. So we spent a night watching a movie alone at home with no kids around.

My email to the manager included some subtle threats like referring this matter to the ACCC and calling the FBI, the KGB and the hit man from Arizona. They quite surprisingly replied by offering that: ”as a sign of good faith” they would not charge anything to my credit card.

The manager did take the time to inform me that “We are only a 3.5 star hotel, not a 5 star. Hence the reasonable rates quoted.”

I wonder how they got those 3.5 stars? Maybe they got them in 1944 and have been desperately holding on to them since then. What does half a star mean anyway?

Honestly, I’ve stayed in a lot of 2-star rated places all over Southern Africa, and all of them have better facilities than this. Beware of Australian stars – they obviously use a different system than other parts of the world, and they don’t seem to re-evaluate these ratings.

If you want to experience the third world in a first world country, by all means book yourself in at the “New” Esplanade in Perth. Don’t let the word “New” fool you however – it was already old when they bombed Hiroshima.

The potholed road to an unabridged birth certificate (Part 2)

[This story was written in 2007 when I still lived in Namibia.]

This morning I pitched up at Home Affairs at 7h30. The row was even longer than the one I encountered yesterday. I got that sinking feeling in my stomach, and decided to tackle the long road to Gobabis. Only 197km of open road between me and four Unabridged Birth Certificates.

I took off after filling up at around 08h20. At exactly 10h00 I stopped in front of the Home Affairs offices in Gobabis.

There were people in front of me, but I’m guessing they were only about 6 persons.

This was a mixture of applications for ID’s, birth certificates and death certificates.

Mr. Agarob (his real surname, no kidding!) was sitting next to me on the bench. He featured a nice homely alcoholic aroma, and I suddenly wished I had also taken a few sips before entering this place. But I was soon relieved of my misery. I was at the counter only 15 minutes later. I explained that I needed full birth certificates. The nice lady said I should rather apply for them in Windhoek, because she has to request them from Windhoek, and she was still waiting for other peoples’ documents since May. I once again felt as if the earth beneath me had sunk in.

But this lady was really nice. She could see my disappointment, and then suggested that we phone them in Windhoek and get confirmation over the phone. The people in Windhoek take very long before they answer the phone, so she will dial the number and I must sit in her office with the phone, and call her when someone finally answers. This happened quite a while later, and she took over and discussed the issue with the person on the other side. This person took down the details of all three my kids’ birth certificates, and told her to hold on. The phone was again transferred to me, and I called my angel lady a few minutes later. The person on the other side confirmed the details on the birth certificates, and she was now happy that all details were correct according to the Birth register in Windhoek.

What happened now still seems like something out of a dream or a movie. She gave me the Official Full Birth Certificate book, and told me to fill in the details just as I had on the application form. My handwriting was very neat on the application, and she was happy that I could fill in the form myself. I faithfully and neatly filled in the details for all three my children. She signed all three certificates and stamped them.

Now the issue of my own birth certificate still remained unresolved. She said I could leave my application with her, enter my name in their other book, and call in a month’s time to see what happened. But maybe I should just try again in Windhoek, because she cannot promise me anything.

Great.

I walked out of the building exactly an hour after my arrival, with my three children's Full Birth Certificates in my hand. Not only were they in my hand, but they were also made out in my own handwriting! How many people can say that?

Lucky kids! Hopefully they will never have to struggle to obtain things like these when they are adults, because they will be citizens of a developed country. I wonder if the Australian and New Zealand Immigration guys know how much trouble we have to go through to obtain these simple items.

On the way home I took a few shots of a nice park in Witvlei. The Joel Kaapanda park. See what you down-under guys are missing?

I also took a nice shot of a donkey car:

When I arrived back in Windhoek at 12h30, I decided to give the Home Affairs Office another try after 14h00. Maybe the crowds disappear after lunch.

I arrived at 14h05. I couldn't believe it! There were only about 10 people outside. At 14h15 they came to open the gate, but did not even bother to control the crowd, as it was too small to worry about. I thought something must be wrong, but what the hell, try it anyway. I ended up second from the front in the row designated “Birth certificates Khomas region”. The only problem was that we were all now sitting nicely on the benches, and waiting, but there was no one behind the counter. Only the cashier’s box had an occupant.

Anyone who tried to go near a counter was confronted by the Police lady, who did not take kindly to any uncontrolled behavior. “Sit there!” was the only answer you got to any question you asked. I sat. The lady next to me began talking to me, and I told her where to go and what to do in order to obtain a passport. I was now suddenly the expert around here.

Ten minutes later our nice Police officer started handing out application forms. She walked along the row, and handed you whatever form you needed. I got a big frown because I had my form already prepared and completed. Now my neighbor needed a pen. I had a pen, because I was prepared for anything! My pen soon became public property, but I don’t mind as long as I get it back.

Finally a lady appeared behind the counter. People everywhere jumped up to storm towards her. “Only ONE at a time!” she yelled. Everybody got back. Soon it was my turn, and she took hold of my papers. She started filling in an A4 paper titled RECEIPT.

“Come back in 7 days” she said and handed me my receipt.

That was it.

I will go back in 7 days, (definitely in the afternoon), take my receipt with me, and see what happens. I got my pen back too. I walked out of the building at 14h30.

I am still a bit stunned. What a day.

And almost no one even noticed I wasn’t at work today.

This had better all be worth it…

The potholed road to an unabridged birth certificate

I originally wrote this story on 30 July 2007, when I still lived in Namibia. This was in preparation for my move to Australia, which was well worth all the trouble:

This morning I had enough courage to try and obtain unabridged (Full) birth certificates for myself and my three children. I phoned the Department of Home Affairs last week about it, and they said I must bring copies of the abridged certificates, and come apply in the Northern Industrial area. You can only apply on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.




So here I was. I first had to go the office to finish a few office-related thingies, and then pitched up at Home Affairs at 10h45. What greeted me was a "row" of people on the outside of the building.

They were roughly organized into three large bunches. I figured out my bunch was the lot standing behind a sign that said something about birth certificates.

The other two rows were Death registration (I don’t want to go there?), and ID documents. (Been there, done that!!! Did my ID in Gobabis, and it was worth the trip.) Imagine having to stand in this line to register the death of one of your loved ones - as if the experience wasn't bad enough already...

Anyway, I was standing here and noticing that nothing was really happening. Until about 11h15. The building is protected by a security gate. Whenever there is enough space inside the building, a police officer opens the gate and tries to control the crowd that wrestles to get inside. Once you're inside, you've made it! You’re “IN”, you’re on your way to progress! But while you're outside, you have to wait for the officer to open the gate every 30 minutes or so, and hope you can squeeze through.

At 12h30, it suddenly seemed that the outside row (where I was still located) tended to become less populated. A German guy next to me was also noticing the sudden progress, and started to investigate. There was a secret! Another door on the right-hand side of the building was open, and people were entering in there. Wow, we squeezed through and were just lucky enough to get in before someone realized the mistake and closed it up again.

The inside of the building was stuffed with people. I managed to get through to the counter, and requested information about the Full Birth Certificate. Apparently I was in the wrong line. This line is for people born outside the Khomas region, not those born in Windhoek. My line is the unorganized bundle that occupies the whole third of the building on the other side.

But after begging desperately I managed to get hold of the documents that you need to fill in. Nice photo copies, those that seem to be a copy of a copy of a copy. I still don’t know if I have to pay, but I've prepared myself to take some cash along.

Now I have a new plan. Tomorrow morning I will rise early, make sure I arrive at the building at 07h30 at the latest, and have my already completed forms with me. Maybe I will be able to squeeze through with the first bunch and then it shouldn’t take more than two hours.

If this doesn’t work, I’m getting in my car and driving to Gobabis. It worked for the ID documents, and should hopefully work for the Birth Certificates as well. I’d rather drive 4 hours than stand in a stinking sweaty bundle for two hours.

Pray for patience…

[To be continued]

Fireworks

I haven’t written a lot lately.  I love writing, but at the moment there are a few things happening in my life that I don’t really want to write about.  Frankly most of it is just so negative that I would send you into a depro if I wrote about it.  And to lose the last few committed readers that still dare to venture onto this blog, would be a fatal blow to my waning popularity.

In short, a friend of mine bamboozled me out of a lot of money, and I am in the process of demanding justice.  This process is quite intimidating and complex, not to mention costly, and may in fact not have the required end result, which should be justice. 

I’ve always been one of those suckers who continue to believe in the idea of fairness and justice.  And I still do.  A little bit.

Although I know a few good decent people in the legal industry, I have to say that in general, lawyers are a bunch of blood-sucking thieves, and even when you do have a good case that should go your way, the costs of getting this through court basically reduces your ability to act in any way.

Most of the lawyers I contacted at first, just wanted to go the easy way and create a paper-war.  They want to sit in the office being a pen-pusher, in stead of actually taking the matter to court.  And they literally charge you in 6 minutes timeslots.  When you go over into the 7th minute, you’re out of pocket for another 30 or 40 bucks, depending on the amount of personal debt this lawyer has to cover in order to sustain his expensive lifestyle.  They’re worse than engineering consultants. 

And why not?  These are the folks who end up being judges, members of parliament and other kinds of high-rollers, and they draw up our laws – why wouldn’t they create a system where they are the beneficiaries of other people’s bad luck?

Even though I was totally able to draft and send off my own “final letter of demand” to the debtor, most of the lawyers I contacted insisted that I write a letter of demand on their letterhead, which would apparently have a much better effect than my personally written one, which I simply got off the internet. 

For this great service a company like Ah*rns Lawyers (Full Name withheld to protect the innocent) would charge you $440.00.  What a farce.  Even after I repeatedly stated that I had already sent off a letter of demand, and that I now wanted to proceed with real legal action, M*rc#s Ah*rns still insisted that I first send off another letter on their letterhead.   According to him:

“…I recommend a letter of demand from our firm. It will threaten the claiming of costs and interest and carries a lot more weight than your letter as it shows you are serious as you have engaged solicitors.”

There’s nothing in there that wasn’t in my original letter.  Except a huge cost to print a piece of paper with their colourful letterhead on it.

This, of course, was after Mr Ah*rns took more than a week to respond to my first request for assistance. 

I finally got hold off a legal company who seems to have a lot more integrity.  They responded to all my emails in a speedy fashion - they even arranged the first meeting for free.  I was free to discuss my whole case with a lawyer, and could then decide what to do based on their advice.  If you live in Perth, I would highly recommend Havilah Legal if you ever need to talk to a respectable lawyer.  Check out their website.

Anyway, this still doesn’t mean that I’ve received any of the money this scumbag has stolen from me, but at least it’s a start.  One day when the whole matter has been done and dusted, I will tell you the exact details of what happened.  For the moment, I’ll leave names and details out of this to protect the guilty.

Anyway, last weekend we attended the annual Fireworks at Hillarys, and I took a few nice photos of the events.  Fireworks seem to be part of my life for the moment: