Season

I've spent two weeks off. It was awesome, mostly got to catch up on Admin I've been too busy to get to through the rest of the year. Also I was learning how to drive my new motorbike. Its brilliant, its beautifull look http://motoring.iafrica.com/newsbriefs/711675.htm See told ya. Spent time with family, friends, other people's friends and people who work for Unisa and Vodacom (no we didn't manage accomplish anything at either establishments).

Then on the first day of the year Gethyn left for two days in Joburg and then straight on to Chad. The country. This site is a bit more scary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad and isn't it lovely how they included pictures of a severed head on this one.

Driving and service seems to be getting worse. I used to just get annoyed at people who complain about the service in South Africa and bad driving in Cape Town. Its getting a little rediculous though. Went to a restaurant called Mario's in Greenpoint for a farewell dinner with Gethyn. It has a great reputation and seems very authentic. We made reservations and got a table behind a pillar (perhaps the source of the problem). We ordered a drink and then had the manager running over to say "I see you're looking for something in the menu, we don't DO pizzas you know", fair enough neither of were there for the pizza but lets not get funny about it. We ordered a grilled fish and a marinara pasta, it was fine, nothing spectacular. The fish was a bit salty but both baby potatoes were nicely done (!) . The marinara was okay, nothing to write home about. That was it for the rest of the evening. We weren't offered another drink (which was annoying as I wasn't driving for a change and could have gotten tipsy if I wanted) and couldn't even get the waiter to bring us a bill after sitting around with our dishes still on our table for half an hour. I won't even get into the cell phone provider Vodacom. We went to the shop in the Garden Centre in Cape Town, don't know why, we might as well have just hollered our problems into the view from the balcony for all the good it did. We were completely ignored, no explainations, just ignored.

What I've noticed about driving which is a bit worrying is that certain brands of cars no longer include functioning indicators in their cars. These brands include Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen. Keep an eye open, its pretty weird, people who drive without indicating or putting other motorists in danger are often driving one of the above cars. Must be a manufacturing flaw or something, they don't seem to be able to indicate when changing lanes, parking, turning or for any other reason.

I sounds like a tourist, but unfortunately its true, service is terrible and driving is worse.