MidnightReign.org

I’ve done around 5800 kilometers already. 721 kilometers were done today. I had to drive up to a mine in Limpopo province.

I’m not religious, I do not believe in god or heaven. I find religion to be irrational. But that’s my opinion, everyone’s entitled to it. My point with that statement is that I’ve sometimes thought, “What happens when you die?”

Now if you think about it, one day when you were a child, you became self-aware. You “woke up”, so to speak, as you. Now who’s to say that it doesn’t happen like that all the time? You die. You become self-aware, but you’re someone else. I’m not talking about reincarnation or past lives, or any of that type of crap. You are just someone else. And so the cycle continues.

I’m not sure if you (the reader) will get what I’m trying to say. Don’t really care either :-p

Here endeth my third week of the new job. I still haven’t decided if it’s the right thing for me. I’ll give it a few months.

My wife is now 6 weeks pregnant with our third child. Dang.

I’ve driven over 1500 kilometers in the past three weeks. Crezzy man, crezzy. For the past 7 years I’ve driven around 72k’s a day (to and from work), but now it’s easily twice that. Fortunately I’m a very relaxed driver, so I don’t (or should I say “try not to”) let the traffic and bad drivers get to me. The taxis have to be the worst. I’m not going to go into a huge tirade about them, other than to say that about the only law of the road that they do obey (from time to time), is which side of the road to drive on. The rest don’t matter.

I’ve just completed my first week of my new job. Dang, but I’m really not used to the pace. I’ve been a desk jockey for the past 7 years and now I’m running around to clients at a rate of knots. Fortunately I’m a very patient driver, so the traffic isn’t worrying me too much yet. It took me 2 hours to get home from the office this afternoon. Ugh. Traffic on the highway was absolutely frikkin’ disgusting.

I’m driving to work this morning, it was very dark, so naturally, I was driving with lights on. I end up behind some prat driving a Citroen (I think – it was dark), who had switched on his rear fog lights. These morons don’t realise that rear fog lights are VERY bright, and in some cases are blinding. I was annoyed, but not particularly surprised, so I was hanging back about 3 car lengths behind him. After a couple of minutes, the guys moves out my lane, so I pass him. He immediately pulls in behind me and flashes his brights. Wtf?

Now I wasn’t driving with my brights on, the angle on my lights was at neutral (well, considering I can only dip them lower), my lights are focused, and I wasn’t tail gating him, so I couldn’t figure out what the heck his problem was. So while he had his brights on, behind me, I flipped my own rear fog lights on and off a couple of times. He then slowed down and backed off.

I continued on my way, wondering what that guy was up to. I eventually decided that maybe he thought my brights were on, so I was going to teach him the error of his ways by pulling in behind him and showing him the difference between the normal lamps and the brights. I moved to the middle lane, and slowed down, hoping he would catch up to me. No such luck unfortunately. He must have dropped to WELL below the speed limit, because he didn’t catch up to me before I had to change highways. sigh

And then I arrive at work. Park in the basement in my usual spot, hop in to the elevator, and arrive at my floor. The elevator doors open, and there’s a great big hulking flower pot with a small tree in it sitting slap bang in the door way, with caution tape attached to either side of the doorway, going around the plant. Again, wtf?

I detached one side of the tape and exited the elevator, all the while looking around cautiously to see if I could figure out why that plant had been deposited right there. No such luck either. shrug

I try to be courteous towards other people on the roads (except taxis). All I would expect from other road users in return, is that courtesy returned in kind. But no. It’s the general ‘Fuck You’ attitude of the South African driver that is bringing society down.

God, it pisses me off.

I just love the level of driver education in this country.

The law says that if a traffic light is not working properly, there are certain things you should do. For example, if a traffic light is flashing yellow, you should treat the intersection as if a yield sign was posted. If the traffic light is flashing red, or not working at all, you should treat the intersection as if a stop sign was posted.

Now that’s basic information during driver education. You learn that when you get your learner’s license.

From what I’ve seen, I don’t think many people have licenses at all. Or if they do, they were probably purchased from some unscrupulous individual, because there are so many people who do not appear to know this basic information.

I often see non-working traffic lights on my route to work. Every few months, the same ones break down, and it usually takes a week or two to repair them. It never fails to amaze me when I see how drivers treat non-functioning traffic lights: The lights just don’t exist for most people; They don’t even slow down.

One day I’m going to be rewarded by witnessing two like-minded individuals navigating the same intersection at the same time. I’ll stop my car, walk up to each smoking wreck, and laugh at each driver in turn. Then I’ll get in my car, and drive away. Emergency services be damned. A Darwinian ending is all that those gene-pool rejects deserve.

And I’ll just laugh… and laugh…