Erections, executions and other democratic phrases

If you’re not from Namibia, you’d probably wonder why I’m mixing these words together.  What do erections have in common with democracy, except for Bill Clinton?

In Namibia a common tendency for indigenous people is to mix up their “l”s with their “r”s.  So it is quite common to hear a news reporter referring to “national erections”, when actually meaning “national elections”.

Anyway, Down Under we had some interesting political developments recently.  A few weeks ago, our Prime Minister was unceremoniously politically assassinated by his own Labor Party.  Apparently he is travelling the world to look for a new job, preferably one where people like to listen to long boring spin talk.

Now a redhead with a horrible Aussie strine accent has taken over.  It was really not fun listening to Kevin Rudd lecturing to the masses, but this lady is a step in the wrong direction if you ask me.  I just can’t get myself to listen to her squeaky narratives.

The redhead has now called a national erection, and on 21 August all “Strayljuhns will be cahstin them votes”.

Experience “New millennium Western democracy” in it’s finest form:  two parties logging it out in the media - twittering, tweeting, blogging and facebooking, crapping and belching anywhere and everywhere.  Not even your own homepage is sacred anymore.  I’ve never seen anything like it. 

I’m used to electioneering Namibian style, where posters hang on telephone poles, and Kosie Pretorius stuffs people’s mailboxes with his party’s pamphlets.  The NBC TV channel would give each party a few minutes on air and they would compete to see who could offer the most pathetic-looking person to beg on their behalf.  Normally a previously disadvantaged deaf-mute albino female with only one leg and no teeth is a good spokes-person for your party, as it shows how much you value their contribution to society.  The more pathetic your representative is, the better party you are.  Apparently.

Of course the ruling party in Namibia always wins with a 75% majority, so why would you tweet, twitter and belch anyway?

But Down Under they do it with style.  Technology is used to reach the dumbfounded masses.  Everyone tweets, twitters and blogs like a madman.  Or woman.

The opposition is lead by a guy called Tony Abbot – a real straight-shooter who constantly needs to explain himself after he mouthed off some politically incorrect comments to the media, while wearing budgie smugglers.  His opponent is a godless unmarried childless redheaded welsh-born lady who just knifed her predecessor in the back while he was still PM.

You can just imagine what this contest looks like in the media.  The comments and counter-comments border on slander and outright insults on a daily basis.  Great stuff!

I love democracy.

The redhead stated a few weeks ago that she did not have any intention of taking over from old Kev.  She said the following, among other things:

May 18 "There's more chance of me becoming the full-forward for the Dogs (Western Bulldogs AFL team) than there is any chance of a change in the Labor Party."

May 18 "I know we’ll be welcoming Jessica [Watson] back to Sydney this weekend after her round the world epic feat. I tell you, I think there’s more chance of me going round the world sailing solo a dozen times than this chatter in the media becoming anything more than that."

If "Steven Spielberg rang me from Hollywood and asked me to star opposite Brad Pitt in a movie, would I do it? Well, I'd be a little bit tempted but you know what, I don't reckon Steven Spielberg is going to give me a call."

May 26 "If I exit politics able to look at the scoreboard and say this is what I did as minister for education, this is what I did as minister for workplace relations, that's enough for me. That's beyond the wildest expectations I had for myself when I started this journey."

June 10 "You may as well ask me am I anticipating a trip to Mars."

June 18 "Look, I know there's been all this breathless media speculation about leadership questions. There's not speculation in my mind."

She became PM on 24 June…

The Global Acting Competition

I’ve never been much of a soccer fan. 

Oops, I’m supposed to call it football.  Who cares?

The only time I ever watch soccer is when the world cup is on.  And once in four years may be just a wee bit too much to my liking.

Most of the games are televised at horrible hours, so I only try to watch the first game of the evening.  Or parts of it, anyway – until I fall asleep, or get so angry that I switch over to watch a live dart-throwing competition.  Whoopie…

Watching 90 minutes of poor acting is worse than watching  national news bulletins on Namibia’s NBC channel.  Really.

I try to get excited about this sport, but the openly blatant acting is just too much for me.  Two players will run into each other, and both will act like someone just hit them with a baseball bat, or they would act innocent and indignant at whatever the other actor might have tried to imply.

This is not a manly sport.  These sissies do a ballet dance all over the field, and throw tantrums like actors in a bad Mexican soap opera.

You never even see a little blood – what good is a sport if you can’t see blood flowing? 

Why is this considered to be the world’s most popular sport?  Is it because men all over the world have been so emasculated that they like watching fairies dance over a football field?

Beauty and the beast

World Cup Fever

(click on picture)

Happy Mother's day, everyone!

Talk to me

This is a story about the evolution of the Customer Care Call Centre.

Many years ago, when you had a complaint, you wrote a letter.  You wrote (or typed!!) it up in a formal manner, stating your name and address and detailing your complaint.  You stuck this letter in the mailbox, and waited two weeks for a response. 

Depending on who the company was, they might write or call, if they thought you had a valid complaint.  Most would reply with a nice-sounding letter stating that you somehow got it wrong and you’re stuffed.

Then some wise-guy decided to create the concept of the Customer Care number.  This magic number would be staffed by a friendly person who was always willing to help. 

Soon they found out that these numbers got overloaded due to the fact that most companies suck at service.

So, the next concept evolved.  They called it the Customer Care Centre.  A whole room full of people who sat there answering phones all day long.  Some care-giving companies even started populating them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Unfortunately most of these new employees were somehow not placed in the executive salary-scale, and hardly got paid enough to travel from home to the bright shiny CCC office every day.

So, they just did the auto-pilot thing and acted as if they care, although they actually didn’t give a rat about your problem.  Neither were they suitably qualified to really understand your complaint in the first place.  They answered in generic codes and gave you reference numbers to frustrate you in your future endeavours to solve the problem – if you had the guts to try calling them again.

And then it got worse.

Some silly nerd decided to get a computer to do the talking.  This is all part of what they like to call VAS, Value Added Service.  It probably depends on what your definition of “value” is…

The phone rings, and is promptly answered by a male voice.  The voice asks you a bunch of questions, offering a series of possible outcomes.

Some companies, especially mobile phone companies, started experimenting with the buttons on your phone.  They would request you to “press 1 if you have billing enquiries”, and so on.

What they didn’t tell you is that the term VAS actually means that they add value to their own bank account.  While you’re waiting for option number 25 to come up – this is the relevant one – the voice slowly goes through all the other options one-by-one, while your phone bill keeps on ticking over on the not-so-free special VAS number that you dialled. 

Mostly your expected option never comes up, and then you can’t remember the other one that was nearly like the one you wanted.  Was it 7, or 12?

$15 later you press the wrong button, and have to ring them up again.  What a great idea.

The nerds went one step further by forcing you to talk to a computer.  In stead of letting you push buttons, this friendly voice wants you to actually talk to it. 

Now here’s where I get really frustrated.  No one told this computer that half of the residents in Australia are immigrants who have foreign accents.  It can barely understand a basic “yes” or “no” reply, and you can forget about it recognising numbers.  The poor immigrant ends up screaming and swearing at a stupid computer who cannot even respond to the basic verbal abuse that most human operators would understand. 

The only way to get what you want is to keep on harassing the computer until it finally gives up and frantically tries to put you through to a human operator.  The music starts playing, and the waiting game is on…

But it still gets worse.  When you finally get put through to a real person, it’s actually a guy called Muhamatifupila from Pakistan who is “plentifully assisting” you today.  He can barely understand you, and vice-versa.  He sits in a cramped office somewhere in the middle East, on a contract with a multibillion-dollar Australian company that turns out to be too cheap and greedy to pay local people decent wages.

It ends with you getting cut off in the middle of your conversation with your new friend Muhamatifupila, too intimidated to even consider starting all over again.

It’s only the die-hard super-beings with immense amounts of patience who finally get any response, pushing up the KPI’s and other customer care indicators to an acceptable level.  Acceptable to the multibillion dollar company, that is.

It all gives the word “service” a new meaning.

Ten years ago

My oldest daughter was born exactly ten years ago.When she was 6 months old, she and my wife were involved in a vehicle accident on a dirt road in Namibia.

After the accident, she seemed to be fine, but a while later my wife noticed that there was a dent in her head.  Something must have hit hard against her head – it may have been someone’s elbow, but we’ll never really know.

It looked like a golf ball had been pressed into the skull.  The size of this dent was roughly the size of a golf ball, although it did not enter the head that deeply.

She went for X-rays, MRI scans and all sorts of complex and upsetting medical tests.

Here is one of the MRI scans where they virtually “sliced up” the skull and checked different areas of the brain for damage.  This is the skull viewed from above:

The dent can be clearly seen at the back of the head. 

When babies grow, their skull grows outwards as the brain grows. The growing brain pushes out the skull, which is still very flexible at this age. 

This injury could have been fatal, but the inward movement of the skull missed the crucial areas of the brain by millimetres, and did not cause any brain damage or bleeding.  Of course, at the time, there was no way to be sure of this.  The only thing the doctors could tell us was that the skull is still flexible while it’s growing, and that the brain would eventually push the skull back out as it grows.  She did not show any signs of brain damage, and responded well to the huge array of tests that are applicable to 6 month old babies.

It was basically down to a wait and see approach.

It would be an understatement to say that this was a stressful time in our lives.  You feel really helpless when your little baby has to go into big noisy MRI machines and no one tells you what’s going on.  And no one really seemed to know anyway.

The medical theory proved to be correct, and the skull slowly grew back to the way it was supposed to be, with the brain pushing it back into position.  I can’t really remember when I realised that the dent was totally gone, but it’s gone now, and we’ve pretty much forgotten about it.

We are very lucky and grateful today to have a healthy, bright ten year old daughter who excels in all she does, and who bares absolutely no sign of any damage.  She’s a great kid, and I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am.

God gave us a gift ten years ago, and when it was nearly taken away, He gave her back to us again.

Happy birthday, my Special!