spidie isn't my favourite superhero

Bit of a pitiful bitch right now.

It started yesterday, when there was an uncomfortable fittage of my favourite bra. Usually this baby fits me like a glove, and it suddenly started feeling sore in the middle.

Now I have a mole in between my boobs as it is – it’s my Cindy Crawford [On Torso]. And for some reason I named it Sally.

Whatever, so I’m in a meeting, and it’s getting epic, the uncomfortable rubbing of La Senza against skin. Only it’s not Sally.

Chaps I’ve been bitten by a spider in between my boobs.

If that’s not a sorry state of affairs. I saw a spider lurking near my Moulin Rouge linen the other day and fully grabbed the Doom and went apeshit, but clearly the hairy arachnid with 6 eyes and 8 legs laughed in the face of Baygon and ended up more hungry for human flesh than before.

It sunk its hairy mandibles into my cleavage.

And I’ve grown a fourth noombie, which is fast becoming the tallest peak in town, only pipped by a synagogue spire in Glenhazel.

And okes. I haven’t found the spider yet.
That’s a bit kak don’t you think.

Spider bites. Arachnids love me man. Been bitten a few times – and FYI if you’re ever in FTV smoking B&H on the LHS and don’t see the spider actually bite you – it has a black tinge and it’s fucking sore.

When I was 12, we had a family of black widows doing their thing on a wall on the side of our house. While this is not cool by anyone’s standards, it is where angels fear to tread. So no one ever remoofed them, not even Evidence, the maid, who HATED living up to her name.

So then I rolled on one in my bed. Sorry, I know we swallow eight spiders in our lifetime, but you should’ve seen the damage. Eight spiders au tartare is a ghastly thought, but blow me Stuart Townsend, this wasn’t kiff.

Unwittingly, I happened to roll on it about an INCH. That’s 3 centimetres - above my poen. Crisis.
I couldn’t sit, had to lie down for 4 days while I vommed everyday into a bucket and nursed a seemingly endless migraine the size of Evidence’s secret Ricoffy stash. The stash was a cartel, ok.
But then there was the crater itself, which I shan’t give you a visual or sensory invitation to.

On the bright side – because there always is one, even if its 1.5 months away and is in Germany - I will now have two perfectly aligned chakras. Direct poen to boobs alignment.

On the chakras, I’m not really going through a hippie stage though. Or ever have. I once tried to be a goth and wear black lipstick when I was listening to a lot of Nirvana back in high school, and it really didn’t really work out for me, but I’ve never been through the bothnik I-Live-In-A-Teepee type of lady who does chakras and auras and crystals and dreamcatchers and stuff.

But two chakra spots on my erogenous zones? Perhaps it means I’m destined for some sexual healing. Yes that definitely definitely must be it.

So ja.

problem solving 101

So, once robbed, the next mission is to get a new sim card (and phone.)

Well.

Can't really say that storming a Caymans bank or assassinating Robert Mugabe would be more difficult. It wouldn't.

Go to MTN shop in Rosebank. My phone has been stolen before; I know what to do.
Firstly, they opened the shop when they felt like it. Opening hours on a Saturday are 9:00am. I waited outside until 9:20, only to find the man who was to work there chilling outside, watching us customers wait for him outside the door with a semi-amused expression on his face.

Once inside, the service is bad. They're neither friendly or helpful. I buy a new sim, hand over my ID, yadda yadda. He ensures me that my number will be reactivated in 2 -24 hours.
These hours come and go. It would seem that the fucking retard didn't activate it at all.

He simply fucking didn't reactivate fucking anything. Or even at least queue it.

So, at a braai on Saturday night, I call MTN from another phone to say that it hasn't been done. “Oh no, it hasn't. You need to confirm in writing you need it done.”

Well THANKS for the fucking tip.

“Lady. Please, I'm begging you. On my knees. I had my shit stolen, what details do you need from me in order to activate this thing. Banking details?”

No. Turns out I need to submit them everything except maybe a blood sample. In writing, as it has to be signed, etc etc. Above that, she'll only get into work at again at 2:00pm the next day, which means I will have to undergo this process all over again in the morning and she'll only see my letter after that. No ways man. No ways.

I'm at a braai. So this is what happens:

I write a letter by hand on the carpet. Sign it. 3RM takes a picture on his phone of my ID and this letter. Stating I want a reactivation, with all the necessary codes, pins, PUKS, you fucking name it. He logs onto my Gmail on his phone, only to find that WAP web doesn't support FUCKING PHOTO ATTACHMENTS. Or any attachments in this email whatsoever. That's an issue. That's a big issue that the science fiction dudes need to sort out.
3RM also can't find an underscore for the email address on his phone, and eventually does, but we can't send these images. We try a few other things phone-wise, but mobile isn't going to help us today.

So. We set up a laptop – we find one. The hostesses. Unfortunately the laptop doesn't have bluetooth, nor does 3RM have a data cable for his phone on him. We can't transfer these pics from his phone to the laptop. Fuck. We find another laptop. (I do realise, ironically, that luck is on my side.) Pull out a camera and redo the whole picture taking of ID-and-letter process. Scramble in a drawer for a cable.

In the meantime, Eskom is doing its fucking thing, and the electricity is going on and off. But of course it is. So the Internet is intermittent and we need to start up every single time. Tensions are running high, but I will get this information to this MTN woman come hell or high water. Right now.

We load the camera pics to the laptop. This takes time and endless patience. All around me people are scoring, drinking and singing karaoke into SingSong. We plug laptop into ADSL - still intermittent given the electricity shortage – and I prepare the email.
I'm almost there.

Except the computer's “@” key function is not working. It's fucked. And I now have the documentation (3 megapixel jpgs – not bad quality at all), a sort-of-internet connection, and I can't work the fucking “@” key. So I find an “@” on my Gmail page somewhere and copy and paste the @ into the email address. Computer switching on and off. I will not give up. I am a mad woman.

Attach the files and send. It takes forever to send, but it finally goes through. Hurrah! I can have a mojita. I do.

Then I phone the MTN lady again to determine whether she received my email. After another long “press 0 if you wanna speak to another fucking operator” shpeel, and giving them ID numbers and pins and a fucking history of my life, they then say to me: “We've stopped your sim card as you asked.”

Nnnnnnno...I stopped it yesterday, I need you to REACTIVATE IT AGAIN LIKE I SAID IN MY WRITTEN LETTER

“Oh sorry, that's what I meant.” She says to me, while I'm trying to comprehend how this woman doesn't quite have it altogether and yet is a call centre operator. Not that we're surprised, mind you.

“So she reactivated your sim card on your first call, actually.”

Hold on a second. I didn't just need to write you a fucking letter, photograph it, with an ID, tolerate electricity going on and off, find a camera, laptop, another laptop, telephone, copy and paste @ signs after all?

“No you did.”

Ah. They told me 2-24 hours. Exactly what they told me at the shop/Idiot Baron.

So in conclusion:
1)I'm a Virgo through and through. If I need to sort something out, I will fucking do it. At any cost.
2)Technology is incredible. Except there are drawbacks – like WAP and email attachments. Just a suggestion – coders maybe work on this a bit, if you can create WAP to begin with, you need to fine tune the email attachment vibe on Gmail.
3)You can solve a problem if you consider all options; and
4)If you want something to happen and you don't accept anything less, you'll fucking make it happen. Even if the incompetent bureaucracies around us make it FUCKING difficult.

Oh, FYI, the phone was reactivated about 8 hours later, Sunday morning.