Just bloody frikkin marveloooos. On day 2 of a 5 day holiday week excluding weekends on both ends (productivity in West Africa you ask?), the damn internet goes down. Call the techies and they say they will get someone on it “as soon as possible”. Thats just lovely but what if it’s only possible next Monday? Celebrate Africa!
Gotta love the iPhone wiff tinterweb data.
Damn good thing I’m flying out of here tomorrow night! Sanity and civilisation here I come. Sort of.
After sitting at home for a while wondering what the future holds and wishing I was back on the road, I decided that it would probably be better to get back on the road and then wonder which direction I was heading. Any action is better than just sitting on your ass.
It was actually while I was in Durban for Rethom’s birthday looking down over the valleys to the sea when the decision was made. To hell will SA, time to fly. It made perfect sense to head back to Alibanya and go stay with the Flying Majmun, Puccino! Or KP (Klein Puccino) as she has been affectionately known in the past. Decision made, now action.
There wasn’t a lot to do really. Pack house, sell car, buy ticket and fly. I added the rest of the stress myself. What a wonderful idea to redo your entire kitchen with an estimate completion being the day prior departure. Not advised!
Rethom offered some sound advice: Make a list. I hate lists. Lists are for people who plan shit. I don’t plan shit. My shit just happens. I said to her, “I don’t need a list. All I have to do it this, this, this, ummm that, errr this, oh yeah and that…. Oh shit! I need a list!” God I suddenly had so much to do and less than a week to do it!
As a little insert here, there was the mission to sort out regarding Micho, the worlds kewlest cat! But that’s another story.
With the help of a few mates I got it done. All of it. It was incredible. What a buzz.
With the kitchen almost done, all my crap in my house packed into boxes and loaded into a freshly build shed outside, mates ready to move in to take care of the place, car sold and my bags 14kgs over the limit, I was ready to go.
Bye bye Port Elizabeth! Bye bye South Africa! Sort your shit out!
Ok it was a little while ago now but I never got around to writing anything about it again. As a recap, I had an issue with my drivers license in South Africa. I was overseas when the government converted the license system from a book to a photo card system. Excuse me but I never got that memo.
The end of it was my declaration that the government could go to hell and that would be the end of it. Wrong again. Don’t get me wrong, it can still go to hell but after doing a little investigation it seemed that I was screwed no matter which way I looked at it. So I went back to the Port Elizabeth traffic department and tried to plead my case. “Futile” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I would have had better luck talking to a warm steaming pile of dog turd. Needless to say what I was dreading what verbalized. “”Mr Hoox, you have to redo your entire license. Write your learners test and then do your K53 road test”. It’s no wonder why they have to put bullet proof glass windows at the desks!
In short, with a very special thanks to my friends back in Humansdorp license department, I achieved the impossible. I pleaded my case there on the Wednesday, I wrote my learner’s test on the Thursday, went for 2 hours driving lessons on the Friday and passed my drivers test on the Saturday. Street legal again!
Now the rest of the f**ckers can eat that warm steaming pile of dog turd!
Today started just like any other day. Not a lot of plans with the exception of a bit of Playstation 3 and job hunting. I was successfully sticking to those plans when my phone rang. I didn’t get to the phone fast enough and it was a number I didn’t recognise so I just left it. 10 minutes later my mate Mullac called me. He had fantastic news. The call that I had missed was the Uitenhage traffic department to advise my ordeal with my driver’s license has been sorted 3 months faster than predicted. I had fortunately listed Mullac as a secondary contact in case I had already left the country.
Now I am awake and I am ready to get cracking. I was in the car in a flash and on my way to Uitenhage. All the way there I was thinking how wrong I was about this country and it’s abilities (lack of) to run a streamlined government and it’s associated services. Today I was impressed. Sadly though, my original impressions were more accurate. After standing in the queue for about 45 minutes I was issued the temporary license which is to be used while the new card license gets issued. That’s when I noticed it.
That temp license only has my new motorcycle license on it and was sorely lacking any indication of my light vehicle driver’s license. My heart started pumping when I enquired about this obvious mistake. That’s when she said, “Oh I think you misunderstood what the process is. When we sent your license details to Bisho to get sorted out, what they do is delete or cancel your license from your ID book, not give you a new one”. When I asked why, I was told because I never got it converted before so it just had to be removed from my ID book. Even after explaining AGAIN that I was overseas in 2003 when this stupid government came up with this ridiculous new 5 year money making renewal scheme system she simply said that there was nothing she could do there.
I asked with much dread in my gut what the next step was. She said, “Oh you will just have to rewrite your learners test and redo your entire K53 driving test.”
Please try to imagine how must constraint I had to exercise to remain calm and not hop on my imaginary soap box and scream at the top of my lungs exactly what I think of those people and their entire system of useless, fat, greedy bastard idiots in this useless Banana Republic that’s fast being “driven” down the toilet!
Thank God I still have my British diver’s license so I don’t need to put up with this crap. It can flush all on it’s own!
I was shitting myself last night. Not for the test today but more for the weather. It wasn’t looking good at all. Any rain and they cancel the test and postpone. I really didn’t want to have the test postponed. It became frontal last night which to the lay man simply means the wind blows like a son of a bitch from the west and that drags in all the crap wet weather from Cape Town. Fortunately this morning it was holding out sufficiently.
I rushed off to the testing station for an 11:30am booking while staring at the sky and hoping like mad. The test itself was very uneventful. The rain held out and I completed my test. It went really well. I guess that comes with good preparation. I passed with flying colours
And then the shit storm began. The government kicked in and that’s when the happiness ended. There’s a problem with my driver’s license apparently. Supposedly in 2003 while I was out of the country I was supposed to convert my old ID book style driver’s license to an ID card license. Since I did not do the conversion there is now a block on the license. Now that I have passed my bike license they need to issue a card license with both licenses on it. Simple? NO! This is Africa. First they have to remove the license from my ID book before they can issue the card. Simple? NO! They are useless! Apparently it can take up to 4 months to sort this out in a distant town called Bisho which looks after the entire region. Only once this is done can I go in to sort out and pay for my new license. But I am going to be away by then so I have to make another plan for issue and collection. Just a real pain in the ass. I can only hope it will be sorted without too many problems.
Africa!
It was roughly this time last year that I decided to hell with life on the road and living in crazy places and acquiring crazy amounts of air miles. It was also then that I decided to go ahead and do my CPL (Commercial Pilot’s License). It was then that I decided to mothball and pack away my multiple passports for a while.
Well now it’s roughly one year later. Things change.
It’s time to cut the cord. Are we human?
~The Killers
Yup, I think you’ve guessed it. I am now deciding to hell with flying and going back to “The Life” out at 32000ft, departure lounges, crazy places and environmental situations that you will never truly “get” unless you have lived it and lived it hard!
There are many reasons for this re-change of mind. Many that I will talk about, many that I can’t talk about since they are simply feelings and thus relatively difficult to put into words. But in a nut-shell, I just don’t think it’s for me. I gave it a shot and by God I had some fun doing it. There were tough times, great times, nervous times and exciting times.
I really could go on but what’s the point? If you are even remotely interested then let’s get together for that bottle of red wine and let’s have a L&J (laugh & joke) about it all and life in general! No matter what you think, I can almost guarantee I could convince you that what I have chosen is the way forward! However saying that I have been told I should have been a lawyer or politician! God help us all!
So now the plans for the future? You should know better than that. I don’t discuss the future, I make it daily. So just for now the plans are to get back to work, back into the thick of it and settle back into “the life”. Options are open for now. Option 1 is I have a great opportunity to go and work for mates that I used to work with in Iraq. It’s a different company and now they are operating in Afghanistan, in and around the Kabul area. I would be heading up all their communications installations and IT infrastructure. Option 2 is an email that just popped up the other day for incredible work on a 3 on and 3 off rotation in North Africa for a major oil company. Option 3 is an unknown entity working with another good friend who has also changed companies and is trying her damndest to keep me out of war torn territories! Great girl! Miss the Italian conversations!
So I guess that sums it up. I can assure the world that this has not just been a fleeting decision. This has been coming for a some time and I didn’t want to rush into anything. I am still not rushing and these 3 options can take a while to come to fruition but at least it’s in that direction. I have not regretted taking this time and continuing my flying as I have done. It has been a wonderful year of catching up with good friends, buying a house and half settling down and spending more time with my folks than I have done in the 10 years prior to this. I have done so much in this last year. Loads of travel and seeing amazing people and learning new skills. Simply amazing. But now its time to pack that suitcase again, dust off the passports and make my way through security, immigration and the departure gates.
Goodbye Sleepy Hollow. See you soon! 8)
Even if she doesn’t completely understand the game, at least she supports the correct team. The winning team!
COME ON SHARKIES!!!
A few kilometers up the road from the worlds best pie is the Eastern Cape home of the African elephant, Addo Elephant National Park.
This incredibly scenic drive brings you within feet of the mesmorising giant of the African plains. The African elephant is one of the largest in the world and is so majestic and commands respect.
A great few hours if you get the chance.
A trip to South Africa is not complete without a stop at one of the many lion parks scattered around the country and have a few photos taken with some uber cute lion cubs. They may be small but they bite like hell and have serious claws already. They are just having fun but don’t know their own strength. Such good fun!
You remember a few days ago when KP threw herself off a perfectly good bridge at the worlds highest bungy? Well her first words afterwards were “I will NEVER do anything as crazy as this, EVER again”.
In typical female style exercising her prerogative to change her mind, yesterday she asked me if she could jump again. Who am I to deny a mental patient their wish? So here we are.
Back at Bloukrans. Back at the worlds highest 216m bungy jump.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you KP, the flying adrenaline junkie majmun from Albania.
