Plugs in the bathroom

Once you start “working” in Australia, you notice that OSH is a dangerous swearword that is used all the time. (Occupational Health and Safety). “Osh” sounds a lot like “eish” - need I say more?

Safety here, safety there. Rules, rules, - wear your safety goggles, your hard hat, your safety boots and your high visibility vest - even sunscreen, long-sleeved shirts and wide-rimmed hats are prescribed everywhere. (And they don’t consider condoms as part of the standard safety gear, like they do in iAfrika.)

We recently got an invitation to our year-end function - they added a friendly reminder that we need to remember our long-sleeved shirts and wide-rimmed hats. Eish. Sounds like fun.

And then you go home and what do you see?

An electrical wall outlet right next to your washbasin in the bathroom. The light switch is on the inside of the bathroom - not the outside, like we’re used to. Totally unacceptable according to SABS wiring regulations:

All this talk about safety, and then you see things like this. What will your hardhat and high-visibility vest help you when you plug your hairdryer into the wall socket, and electrocute yourself in the bathroom while your standing there barefoot, holding the dryer in one hand?

I recently saw photos of high voltage powerlines going right over a school playground. (My apologies to Mark for stealing his photo) Eish. Talk about crazy - even in squatter camps in South Africa people toi-toi about the powerlines that apparently cause cancer, diarrhoea, syphilis and AIDS. Here they build them on the playground.

Just imagine all the fun when the guy with the high visibility vest and hardhat chokes himself in front of 200 kids on the playground while doing maintenance on the power line...what a great idea!