It’s terminal. It has nothing to do with (black) petrol attendants or power cuts.

First-up, my disease: I have a serious, serious case of Google-itis. My friend went for the interview in Zurich (they call themselves ‘Zooglers’), and should know of his success any day soon. The office is a delightfully understated, traditional old-style European architecture building, with a tastefully subtle post at the entrance with an eye-level 30cm sign saying ‘Google’.

I bagged this pen from my friend, whom I ordered to pilfer as many branded items of stationery he could lay his hands on:




Our IT guys came round yesterday and were positively drooling over the writing instrument. My precious…

Then, an incident last night, to follow so many similar incidents before it. Petrol attendants have the serious hots for me. Seriously. I’ve been proposed to, asked on dates, asked to dump my ‘boring white boyfriend’, invited to parties, been given free shit (including a bunch of red roses on Valentine’s Day, rather than the customary single red rose). But last night, I experienced the most touching gesture yet. An attendant sucked rusty water out of my water tank through a dirty plastic tube for me. I was mortified.

It began with the simple request to check my oil and water (and at his insistence, my battery cells’ water level too). When he got to the water tank, he gasped when he saw how rusty orange the water was. “Madam, this is going to damage your radiator. If the water gets there, it’ll break and need seriously expensive repairs. Please let me rinse out the tank and replace it with clean water.” “Um, ok”, I said gratefully. I expected him to bring out some mechanized contraption to remove the offending water from my tank, but all he produced was a muddy two metre-long piece of tube. “No! I’ll find someone who has the proper equipment to replace the water – don’t put into your mouth!” I pleaded.

There was no stopping him, however, as he appeared genuinely concerned that my car would break down and rack up untold fortunes in repair expenses. He flushed the tank out with clean water twice over, then stuck a bottle brush into the tank to dislodge further rusty grime, then re-rinsed it again and filled it. His colleagues and the other customers watched the entire episode in amazement/disbelief/amusement. I’m a total sucker (no pun intended) for great service, so he earned himself a R20 tip. I’ll be back there again.

xxx

On an entirely different note, my frustrations at the sporadic power cuts were briefly abated yesterday when an Zimbabwean colleague told me: “It’s absolutely great that when the power goes out the whole economy shuts down in this place – that’s how you know the country’s going somewhere. In Zimbabwe, it wouldn’t have made a difference, everyone could’ve kept on working!” Viva our intermittently-electrified South Africa!