Home Affairs Hell

11 05 2007

I had to shake my head in dismay listening to the esteemed Mapisa- Ngakula tell etv news that people at home affairs wouldn’t be fired for gross incompetence as it wasn’t a nice thing to do; nice to have that level of job security! … really and it’s a sure fire way of motivating the hoards of current hopelessly incompetent employees to take their jobs seriously … right!

I tried recently to get passports for my wife, son and myself. It took close to six months.

I had to re-visit the grubby hole that is the Randburg home-affairs 3 times because their machine apparently couldn’t read my fingerprints – in case you missed it that was 3 times of standing in queues, being accosted by the pushy hoards at the gates wanting to watch my car and sell me photographs and all sorts of other un-identified things and putting up with completely disinterested clerks who on numerous occasions tried to tell me there was problems with the system so that the problem didn’t need to be rectified on their shift.

Eventually it took me phoning the minister’s office to get the cell phone number of a senior official at Randburg (don’t try the landline – it never gets answered) and pester him daily to follow up on my passport for things to happen.

I recall with sadness a very nice Indian gentleman standing in the queue with a vacant expression on his face; he had been waiting for over a year for his passport.

Way to go Ngakula, thanks for the quality customer service … keep on rewarding incompetence and build another government department to be proud of.





Joss Whedon Quote

4 05 2007

IEEE Spectrum: He’s the King of Sci-Fi These Days

“I was a lonely sci-fi fan boy growing up,” Whedon confided to Kushner. “The point of any great fiction is to make you want to live there. Now fans can live there with other people. This is something I encourage and nourish as much as humanly possible.”

A generation is now growing up who will move into maturity and all its myriad responsibilities and concerns, and they will slowly drift away from the “guilty pleasures” of a good sci-fi show. But somewhere down the line, they’ll still get a momentary thrill from imagining themselves as the underdog heroes and heroines in a Whedon-inspired fantasy.





River Tam on Noah’s Ark

4 05 2007

What can I say; the greatest sci-fi series ever!

The Hallway: Firefly & Serenity Quotes

Book: “What are we up to, sweetheart?”

River: “Fixing your Bible.”

Book: “I, um…(alarmed)…what?”

River: “Bible’s broken. Contradictions, false logistics – doesn’t make sense.” (she’s marked up the bible, crossed out passages)

Book: “No, no. You – you can’t…

River: “So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah’s ark is a problem.”

Book: “Really?”

River: “We’ll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.” (rips out page)