Car Parking Magic

This is not a paid post or an ad. It’s just a very cool idea (with an introductory offer, nogal!).

I used the “new” Admyt app to do some car parking earlier this week. While it might be commonplace in some countries for ANPR and an app to bill you for parking, in SA it still feels like some kind of magic as the car park barrier lifts in front of you as you pull in at the Waterfront parking lot.

Yo, VIP!

And there’s no more fumbling and stumbling around for change or worrying about misplaced or missing tickets. When you’re done, just get into your car, and drive out of the car park.

Magic again.

You can get the app on Apple here, or Google here. Then use this code:

TRE162273

to get R10 off your first parking bill (a promo that covered my parking on my recent Waterfront visit).

It’s very cool. Give it a go.

Day 462 – Not a good idea

I do recognise the need to stimulate the economy. I do see that we need money brought back into the country and businesses running again. I don’t miss the tourists, but I do know that we miss their cold, hard cash.

But surely this is not a good idea.

83 confirmed booking for cruise ships between October and the end of the year? Ah Jesus.

How’s the cruise industry looking at the moment? Awful.

That’s because cruise ships were one of the earliest vectors for Covid-19, and – despite their best efforts, things haven’t improved much. So alongside this sort of headline:

Are ones like this:

And this:

And once one or two passengers have got it, there will inevitably be a whole lot more to follow.
This isn’t rocket science. Stick several thousand people on top of each other for a few weeks and any illness is bound to spread. That’s why the government – very sensibly (gasp) – banned cruise ships from SA ports very early on in this whole ugly mess.

Before cruise liners, ships from foreign parts had a great history of bringing unwanted diseases to vulnerable populations:

Note: For “Black Death” read “Covid-19”; for “the Black Sea” read “Walvisbaai”; for “Messina” read “the V&A Waterfront; for “Sicilian authorities” read “Wesgro”, and for “covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus”… meh… maybe something about a fever, no sense of smell, and an inability to breathe. You get the idea.

And before Covid, cruise liners were food-poisoning hotspots, be it Norovirus, rotavirus, Salmonella or even unusual stuff like Staphylococcus. Thankfully, when that sort of thing is brought ashore, while it may not be very pleasant, it doesn’t close down entire cities and countries. If the statisticians and epidemiologists are right (and they’ve been pretty good so far) we will be a couple of months away from our fourth wave when the majority of these ships arrive. If they are bringing more Covid in with them, then we might see the whole of the summer washed out by more restrictions, and that would certainly be the death knell for any businesses who had somehow managed to survive that far.

Sure, cruise ships (especially 83 of them) are high reward customers for our local tourism industry. But equally, cruise ships (especially 83 of them) are also very high risk customers for all our local industries.

Much as they did with the proposed Horseshoe Bat Market in Woodstock back in March, someone surely has to stand up and just nip this one in the bud. For all our sakes.

About to braai…

…but wouldn’t want to miss out on sharing a few pictures from this morning at the Waterfront. It was a visit prompted by half the family volunteering at the Woof Project (including Puppy Duty):

The place wasn’t as busy as you might think and so we had a wander, had a drink or two, had a very nice burger or three, and took a few photos.

If I remember (you can remind me if you want), I want to try something a bit different with one of the pics. But right now, there’s a pile of Kameeldoring turning into beautiful coals, and a nice cold Black Label both awaiting my immediate attention outside.

Waterfront Butterfly

A quick trip down to the Waterfront on Friday made for some happy children and a leisurely afternoon. We pulled in at the Foodmarket for lunch, and it was while we were sitting outside that fine establishment that we were visited by this individual.

Now, I’m no expert on insects, but I was pretty sure that this was a butterfly. I just didn’t know what sort. A quick visit here:

Butterflies of South Africa’s National Botanical Gardens: an illustrated checklist

led me to believe that it was a Charaxes spp. but I wasn’t sure which one, given that none of them seem to be Cape Town residents. So I went to iSpot, where I described the situation thus:

Lunchtime in Nobel Square, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa.
The boy doesn’t like tomato, and removes it from his otherwise delicious ciabatta.
It’s instantly pounced upon by butterfly, which enjoys the tomato and creamy sauce thereon.
Hung around for around a minute and then flew away.
Tomato left mostly intact.

Because that was pretty much exactly as things happened, and the experts there told me it was likely a female Whitebar Charaxes (Charaxes brutus subsp. natalensis).

…which can be found on Page 61 of that SANBI checklist and which is described therein as:

Pugnacious and aggressive.

Takes one to know one, I guess. It also mentions that it likes to go after red flowers. And tomato is red, so I guess this all fits.

I now know one more species of local butterfly, so I won’t have to ask next time I see one of these.

Management speak

Corporate nonsense, isn’t it?

Keep it simple, stupid. Just say what you mean. It’s a meeting, you’re not “touching base”. You wrote someone an email, you didn’t “reach out” to them. You finished that report, you didn’t “close the loop”.

I’m instantly wary of people using management speak. They’re trying to hide something, whether it’s their innate stupidity, a lack of self-confidence, or some bad news. That’s why I was suspicious when I saw this update from the Cape Wheel at the V&A Waterfront:

u wot m8?

“Restructuring your ticket options”? Those options being an adult ticket or a child ticket. That looks very similar to what’s currently on offer. That’s not “restructuring”, that’s “applying a non-varying approach”.

What has changed then, as beagle-eyed readers will already have noticed, is the price. Here’s where we stand currently:

And “focussing in on the paramount datum”:

We learn then that basically, “restructuring our ticket options” actually means increasing the prices for a ride by an impressive 20%.

As an aside, inflation in South Africa is currently running at 6.4%.

So that’s a pretty hefty restructuring.

In the spirit of these linguistically disguised augmentations, I’ve just told Mrs 6000 that I’m going to be “restructuring my alcohol consumption options” over the summer holidays. The beverages of choice will remain wine, beer and brandy, so I guess that – like the Cape Wheel’s ticketing options – some other parameter variable (see comments below) of the alcohol consumption will have to change.

I wonder what that could be.