Musings by Generator

My girlfriend and I are in desperate need of a romantic break or weekend away ! So I have been looking around trying to find somewhere for us to go, a close by place not further than 3 hours away. So I am restricted in as far as Dullstroom, Northern Drakensburg, The Waterberg. I have been looking at hotels, Bed & breakfasts etc.

I know that every accommodation provider will be putting up their prices for the World Cup in June & July but to be making it so expensive that South African’s, except for the wealthy, can’t go away, well…. I got quoted nothing less than 1500 rand per person per night, this was a 3 star hotel – nothing magical, which is just crazy. How do these places expect to survive after or even before the world cup with these prices that are going to kill an  average South African’s monthly budget?

families and couples are not going to be able to have a spontaneous holiday, instead, we are going to have to plan months in advance. How can you be really truly romantic and surprise your better half with a weekend away when you need to plan months in advance so you can budget it in, because you will be planning so far in advance, you have to consult your partner cause you have no idea what their schedule will look like then, and you don’t want your six thousand rand weekend to be wasted cause two weeks before, she has to go on a business trip, so no surprise.

I understand that they need to increase the fee’s because of Match’s draconian rules & regulations that are forced on providers, so fine, charge the football tourists more, but please try to stay accessible to us local Safa’s.

At this rate, it is cheaper for me to book flights, and take my lady to Namibia, or Victoria falls in Zimbabwe. At least they want my money.

I am normally a fairly placid person when driving, I don’t mind sitting in traffic at all, I don’t mind robots out etc, I can handle it all, but the one thing I can’t handle is people not paying attention to what the traffic, and the robots are doing around them!

For instance, the other day I was sitting at a robot, behind one person in the queue. The robot went green, and this person just sat there, staring off into space, now normally, I give people a bit to get going cause you don’t have to floor it out of the gate when the robot goes green, cause everyone knows that people regularly chance their arm with red robots in this country, but this person went beyond that wait period, so long in fact that the queue in the right hand lane to go straight and all made it through and I was still waiting for this jackass to move. So, I hooted, he promptly woke up waved an apology and went off just in time for me to be caught by the robot, I repeat again – WANKER!

Now, the fact that I hooted at the guy got me an earful for hooting at someone, regardless of how long they just sat their.

Another one that really gets me going is the way people use traffic circles in this country, now for those of you who did actually do their learners and drivers tests, know that you give way to traffic on your right, until it is safe for you to enter the circle without slowing or stopping traffic already in the circle.

This morning I approached a circle near my house, noticed that there was only traffic coming up from my left, but they were a good 20 metres from the circle, but no traffic on my right so I entered the circle and the person coming up from my left decided to accelerate into the circle, causing me to slam on breaks to avoid hitting him or him hitting me. This prompted a tirade of abuse and hand signals from this “driver” about how I was in the wrong. Look buddy, if I am in the wrong here, which I know I am not, then firstly, your eye sight is bad if you think where I was, was not in the circle yet, and secondly, why accelerate into a circle if you see a car is already there and will be in your way when you get to the circle. All I can say is that this must definitely be a person with some form of complex that he is trying to make up for, he was driving a BMX X5, the 4X4 SUV thing, not that you can call it a 4X4 since it can hardly cope with the curbs in Sandton. As we South Africans say “typical BMW driver”.

I actually took a photo of his number plate when he pushed past me, don’t you love camera phones?, and I was determined to go to the police station and report a case of abuse against him, but decided to take a deep breath, go and do what I had planned to do and then if I still felt that way, then I would do it. Needless to say the irritating car wash people in the Fourways mall parking lot got on my goat shortly afterwards so I completely forgot about mr Short Dick Man in the BMW.