MidnightReign.org

It comes as no great surprise that I heard absolutely nothing from home affairs yesterday.

My father in law will harass them again today.

We went to a parents evening at my son’s school last night. It was just a general welcome / info session for new grade 1 parents. The head teacher gave a fairly long and thought provoking (I hope) speech about our children’s education, and apparent lack of interest / apathy that parents seem to have these days with regards to raising their children. She didn’t pull any punches, which I think is great, because it seems these days that people try so hard not to offend, that nothing useful ever gets said, and it’s the human race that ends up suffering for it.

Don’tcha just love sequels?

I received notice that perhaps, possibly, just maybe the certificates will be available today. I await the call with baited breath. Of course, this means that I’ll have to drive through to Pretoria to go pick the damn things up, and probably queue for ages before I can get them, but, at least it’s better than waiting 12 frikkin’ weeks.

I realise that I just suddenly changed tack a few posts ago, and went off at a tangent about forms and birth certificates etc. At least one of my three readers have probably figured out what I’m up to, but for the others who yet remain in the dark, I’ll provide a hint: It’s got to do with finding a better environment for my kids to live in.

I posted on the MyADSL forums about the unbelievable time period one has to wait in order to receive an unabridged birth certificate. As I had hoped, a bright spark mentioned that it might be possible to speed things up somewhat if the head office in Pretoria were phoned.

I set my father in law on them. On the second day of trying, it seems that he might have reached someone who could “expedite” the process.

Now it’s a case of wait and see…

I spent about an hour at Home Affairs this morning. Yes, amazingly enough, they are open on Saturday mornings. I was there just before they opened, so fortunately there was few people and the queues were short.

In the end, the whole process has cost me R675 – around $90. That’s for 1 adult passport (mine), 2x child passports, 5 unabridged birth certificates, and 1 “computer printed abridged” certificate.

You have to love the time frames too. Passports take 4-6 weeks or 6-8 weeks, depending on who you talk to. The unabridged birth certificates take 12 weeks! Unbelievable. I can get the birth certificates near the beginning of May — if I’m lucky. On the other hand, the abridged certificate was printed right then and there, and I walked out with it.